Issuu

STEVE BISSETTE FROM OUT OF THE SWAMP

Scout: Marauder TM & TM ©2020 Truman. Swamp Thing & ©Timothy DC Comics. S.R. Bissette’s Tyrant ® is a registered trademark of Stephen R. Bissette. Bog Swamp Demon TM & © the respective copyright holder.

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No. 28, Spring 2022

82658 00479

A TwoMorrows Publication

and SNIDEY!

Cover art by Stephen R. Bissette & Richard Case

Spring 2022 • The Stephen R. Bissette Issue • Number 28

T WOODY AND THE VOLCANO CBC mascot by J.D. KING

About Our Cover Pencils by STEPHEN R. BISSETTE Inks & Colors by RICHARD CASE

Ye Ed’s Rant: My, my… how time doth fly when the world goes crazy........................... 2 COMICS CHATTER Up Front: Mike Gold’s Totally Rad Days. The first part of our talk with the Chicago son, chatting about coming of age in the Windy City and becoming radicalized....... 3 Comics & Comix Man: Part two of our career-spanning interview with Bud Plant, on the formation of Comics & Comix, his publishing days, and much more............ 12 Remembering Joe: Concluding portion of pro testimonials of the late Joe Sinnott.... 28 Once Upon a Long Ago: Steven Thompson recalls a first fave artist, Tony Tallarico... 31 Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt on worthy “New Books and Old” for students....... 32 Hembeck’s Dateline: Fred’s colorful take on the magical family Marvel..................... 33 Ten Questions: Smiling Iolanda Zanfardino gets quizzed by Darrick Patrick................. 34

Above: The main image was created by Steve Bissette and Richard Case as a T-shirt design for the cast and crew of the short-lived 2019 TV series featuring the muck-monster. The SRB-drawn vignettes are from the covers of Tales to Terrible To Tell #1 [Winter 1989] and Bog Swamp Demon #1 [Aug. 1996].

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S.R. Bissette: Taboos, Tyrants, and Talking Trash. A fascinating retrospective on the amazing transformative times of comic book rebel Stephen Russell Bissette, as the “first class” graduate of the Kubert School reveals his formative early career, breakout as Swamp Thing artist and Alan Moore collaborator, launch of his innovative horror comics anthology, Taboo, foray into independent comics creation with short-lived but beloved Tyrant, creator rights advocacy, retirement from comics and rebirth as Canter for Cartoon Studies instructor, teaching entirely new generations on the art of comic book storytelling. Plus we discuss SRB’s multi-faceted interests as author, critic, historian, publisher, and horror film fanatic!....................................... 36 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Monochromatic Kendall Whitehouse gets all noir-ish!................. 78 Coming Attractions: “Dauntless” Don McGregor is our featured creator next ish!....... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: The Doctor is in the house (in color!).......... 80 Right: A detail of Stephen R. Bissette’s cover art for Tyrant #3 [Nov. 1994] featuring SRB’s tyrannical T-rex! EDITOR’S CLARIFICATION: Alas, much as we had hoped to include, our feature on the Stan Lee at Carnegie Hall event has been postponed, maybe indefinitely. And, in the meantime, perhaps we’ll get enough mail to justify a letters column next ish, too!

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THE MAIN EVENT

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly (more or less) by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 601, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $49 US, $72 International, $19 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2022 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

This issue is dedicated to the memories of BRIAN AUGUSTYN, ANNE D. BERNSTEIN, LOU BROOKS, ORLANDO BUSINO, RON GOULART, JEAN-CLAUDE MÉZIÈRES, TONY TALLARICO, ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

STEPHEN R. BISSETTE Cover Artist

RICHARD CASE Cover Inker and Colorist

RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO STEVEN THOMPSON Contributing Editors

STEVE THOMPSON Transcriber

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON CBC Contributing Photographer CBC Convention Photographer

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK DARRICK PATRICK STEVEN THOMPSON TOM ZIUKO CBC Columnists To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail Comic Book Creator c /o Jon B. Cooke, P.O. Box 601 West Kingston, RI 02892 2

The mortal realities and the time allotted to get it all done

fall (or maybe winter, given the Great Glorious Godfrey! The awful supply-chain problems we’re march of time has become a fullall enduring), I intend to focus—in on race against the calendar…! between CBCs, natch—on my I reckon it’s a phenomenon of book with co-author Jean Depelley, getting older—I turned 63 in Forging Metal, an extensive history January—but, boy, the reality of the adult SF/fantasy comics that we are all but mere mortals is mags of the 1970s and ’80s. Though smacking me silly as of late. I una publisher hasn’t been chosen yet, derwent emergency surgery (all this one will be just as exhaustive is fine) and also lost a dear friend as my Book of Weirdo and Charlton to Covid-19 who didn’t “believe” Companion… I always strive to be in vaccination (sigh). Plus, major as authoritative as possible, natch. presences in my next two books I have plans for a magnum opus just passed this mortal coil—Tony in the field, a multi-volume tome Tallarico, the Charlton Comics that will take years to compile, but mainstay, and Jean-Claude it’s way too early to discuss in any Mézières, the French artist whose detail just yet. Suffice to say I’ll be Valérian presaged the 1970s adult striving with my co-author to make science-fiction comics of Métal it the definitive take on a massive, Hurlant, Heavy Metal, etc. I had almost unwieldy subject. spoken with Tony in the past and On other fronts, domestic life conducted a wonderful email has lately been smooth. Though interview with Jean-Claude last not a conscious decision, I find year, and I’m grateful for becommyself retired from my long career ing acquainted with these gents. as graphic designer, though I still I am particularly saddened by take on side gigs—like the annual the passing of Anne Bernstein, Will Eisner Week poster for my old who was a creative force behind friend’s studio, and the occasional Nickelodeon magazine’s comics thing for Denis Kitchen—so I spend section—though better known as most days specifically focused on a vital writer of MTV’s animated Stephen R. Bissette by Ronn Sutton my comics-related projects. show, Daria—where she, as seOh, and please wish my brother Andrew and I nior editor, gathered a breathtaking array of cartoonists for Nickelodeon mag in the 1990s, including Kim Deitch, luck with plans for the New York City premiere of our original, four-act play, presently titled The Golden Age. Sam Henderson, David Mazzuchelli, and Kaz, among many, many more excellent talents. I had long hoped to We hope to stage the production for a two-week run in devote, with the help of pal and Anne’s colleague Chris the Big Apple, in part running concurrent with the New York Comic-Con being held, in early October. Duffy, an in-depth retrospective of the golden age of By the time you read these words, Greg Biga and that great and lamented kids’ publication. my biography, John Severin: Two-Fisted Comic Book I’ve been completely immersed in The Charlton Artist, should be available. Alas, supply-chain problems Companion, and it’s turning into quite the history of kept the book from appearing in time for the great Derby, Connecticut’s “all-under-one-roof” comic book publisher. I’m appreciative that publisher John Morrow artist’s 100th birthday observance last Dec. 26th, but we has given me an ample page-count to tell the fascinathope it was worth however long the wait. ing story, and I also welcome the ongoing help of Frank And, before I go, I need to announce that the Motler, whose scholarship regarding the magazine side planned Comic Book Creator Richard Corben tribute of the company is an invaluable aspect in the book. has been cancelled. My sincere regrets to all who Plus Charlton Spotlight editor Michael Ambrose is also shared tributes, but circumstances proved to be part of it all, as are Stephen R. Bissette, Rob Imes, Will beyond our control, much as I profoundly wanted to Murray, David Roach, Bill Pearson, and others. Most celebrate the life and work of one of history’s truly great especially Christopher “Scoop” Irving—my cohort in cartoonists. I’m grateful for the support of José Villarruour original survey of Charlton in Comic Book Artist #9 bia, a good friend who was to co-edit the book-length and #14—gets a nod for all of his help and inspiration. retrospective and to my buddy Bob Fingerman, whose After that’s done this summer and available by late unflagging support is deeply appreciated.

cbc contributors Terry Austin Janice Chiang Stephen R. Bissette Frank Famularo J. Kevin Carrier John Fleskes Richard Case Clay Geerdes

Mike Giacoia Mike Gold Christopher Irving Seth Kushner

Terra Kushner Vicky Lien Mark Masztal David Miller

— Ye Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com Jack Morelli Michelle Nolan Bud Plant Walter Simonson

Joe Staton Tony Tallarico John Workman Tom Ziuko

#28 • Spring 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE

How Time Doth Fly

GEORGE OLSHEVSKY, TOM VEITCH, and my pal JASON PETERSON

up front

Gold’s Totally Rad Days Mike Gold’s been all over, as he tells us in part one of CBC’s interview with the guy

Mutt & Jeff TM & © Pierre S. DeBeaumont, American Nation Red Cross, and The Salvation Army. Conspiracy Capers TM & © The Conspiracy. Art © the estate of Skip Williamson.

Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE [Who knew Mike Gold was such a rad dude? I first came to recognize the name as an amiable and chummy public relations voice at DC Comics shortly after Jenette Kahn came on board as publisher. Then I noted he co-founded First Comics, launching a tremendously ambitious and—in its time—successful independent outfit… But what I later learned was mind-blowing! “Minister of Propaganda” for the Chicago Seven Conspiracy trial, writer for underground newspapers Chicago Seed and the East Village Other, co-founder of the National Runaway Hotline, associate of the Organic Theater Company… So, yeah, before his pro foray into comics, Mike was a hippie, Yippie, and über radical, but let’s hear him tell the story in the first installment (which was transcribed by Rose Rummel Eury)… Ye Ed.] Comic Book Creator: You’re originally from Chicago? Mike Gold: I most certainly am, born in 1950. CBC: How would you characterize your childhood? Mike: Weird… but everybody’s childhood was weird! Still, mine was very weird. I was born dead and I died again four days later. I suspect that’s why I’m a comics fan, because in comics, nobody died forever. CBC: [Chuckles] What was the malady you suffered when you were born? Mike: I was two months premature and, in 1950, surviving that was almost unheard of. My doctor, I’m told, literally confirmed in when I was in my 30s. He told me he spent a week at my crib side, just in case. My lungs weren’t fully developed (and it’s still a little bit of a problem). It got me started in a strange world on a strange foot. I’ve said this a lot: my sister was seven years older than me and was stuck babysitting me in our three-floor walk-up apartment when my mother had to go to the grocery store. She was a comic book reader, so she would read me her comics, and that’s how I got into comic books. I was ridiculously precocious. I loved reading and she’d help me with the words. My first comic that I remember was a DC copy of Mutt & Jeff, which those were words I could recognize and eventually started my lifetime passion. I got a little older and discovered her stash of old comic books. At a very young age, that made me realize there was something that happened before I was around. That’s not a revelation that comes to most people until their teenage years or maybe their 20s. I had it when I was about six or five. That was pretty cool. And not just in comics. I started reading newspapers because of the comics in them. The paper we read was the Chicago Daily News and they had Pogo, Li’l Abner, and Abbie an’ Slats. It’s kind of amazing that I actually learned English as we know it today because those had sort of an artificial dialect. [chuckles] CBC: What did your parents do for work? COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2022 • #28

Mike: My mother was a housewife when I was a small child and then she worked in a factory when I was about seven, so I was a latchkey kid. My father was an accountant for what most people know as the JC Whitney Company, which was a retailer for car parts, where you can order obscure car part. It was a huge, huge operation and my father loved cars. It was a labor of love for him. As I grew older, I realized just through conversation that, when he was a kid, he was a big newspaper comic strip reader before comic books. He was very much into Edgar Rice Burroughs —the John Carter and Tarzan books—as I was when I was like 12. That was pretty cool because it was a link to him. He worked six days a week, so I didn’t really know him that well as a small child. As I grew and could communicate better, he and I bonded really well and that’s when I found out about all this. It’s in the blood! CBC: You stopped breathing when you were four? Mike: I had a problem throughout my earliest years, because, as I said, my lungs weren’t fully developed, being born on the first day of the eighth month of my mother’s pregnancy, so it’s always been a problem. Anesthesia, on a couple of occasions since my childhood, has almost killed me and, about six years ago, I think it did again, but again I got better because you know… Captain America. CBC: You were bookish? Mike: Yes, I read incessantly, partially because it was a pain in the ass to climb down those three flights of stairs. My grammar school—we were just on the edge of the school zone—so my grammar school was a very long walk (or seemed like at the time). My mother was hyper-protective when she was around me, which is understandable. So, I read a lot… biographies… even as a small child, I ate those things up. I would read anything. CBC: You said you were a latchkey kid. Did you get a chance to go downtown? Mike: When I turned 12, my mother gave me pretty much complete freedom. I would go downtown on my own. Prior to that, we’d go downtown together. We

Inset left: A relatively recent photograph of Mike Gold. Above: The cartoon team provided entertainment for a young Mike. This cover detail is from Mutt & Jeff #52 [June 1951]. Art by Sheldon Mayer. Below: Skip Williamson cover art, Conspiracy Capers [’69].

Top: Radio host, journalist, activist, oral historian Studs Terkel in his “lived-in” office, circa 1970s. Above: The “other” Mike Gold—and fellow radical!— Jewish American, communist writer, and literary critic born Itzok Isaac Granich [1894–1967], who Terkel met back in the day.

go American (which used to be a Hearst paper until the Tribune bought it), and the Chicago Sun-Times. CBC: Were your parents Kennedy Democrats? Mike: They were Kennedy Democrats because they were Chicagoans, Jon! CBC: Even in the cemetery they were Kennedy Democrats! [chuckles] Mike: Oh yes! There’s the other side to that story I’ll tell you that doesn’t get reported quite as often. When Republicans in Illinois rose a stink about the election in 1960, Mayor Daley—who was sort of benevolently evil (he was a tyrant)—he said, “Well, fine, we’ll have a recount, as long as the recount is statewide.” The Republicans then went away as they didn’t want a recount because they had more phony votes than Cook County had! So that’s a part of the story that seems to be lost to history. If there was a wake-up moment when I became aware of my surroundings. Again, I was precocious and, when I was five years old, Emmett Till was murdered—a Chicago kid about seven or eight years older than me. His mother demanded an open-casket funeral to show the world that the killers had beaten the poor kid to death. The photo of the dead teen was on the front page the Chicago Defender, which served the black community in Chicago (and was a historically important newspaper). That was their front page and it was ghastly… it was more ghastly than anything. And that had a big impact on me. I started reading the newspapers and started asking my parents questions. I’m sure there was more than that that transformed me, but Emmett Till’s murder was, in and of itself, an electrifying moment for me. I became very interested in the whole idea of how we—simply—treat other people. CBC: How did you get exposed to an African American newspaper? Mike: It was sold in the newsstand on the corner. CBC: I know the photo of his disfigured face was in Jet magazine. I didn’t know that it was on the front page of a daily newspaper… Wow! Mike: On the anniversary of Till’s death, the Defender reprinted it on the front page. I think that was about 10 years ago. And it’s just as impactful today even though we all know the story. CBC: Not enough of us know the story. That’s the thing, Mike…. Mike: That’s true. That was very impactful on a young kid. CBC: Especially because you’re white, right? I didn’t learn about it until I was in my late teens, if not my early 20s. Mike: But I was a local kid. Look at that photograph and, if it doesn’t move you, there’s something wrong with you. The idea we can do this to anybody else—never mind a kid—is shocking to the very core. CBC: He was only 13 or 14, right? Mike: Yes. It’s not that my father would shield me, but around the same time—and this is a true story—walking down the street around the corner from our apartment, it was a hot summer day and there was a drugstore, and the doors to the store were open and you could see the comic book rack from the street. Even though I was merely five, of course I couldn’t let that go without checking it out, and my mother said, “Okay, I’ll buy you a comic book.” I picked up a copy of Tales from the Crypt. This was during the height of Wertham-ism, you know? She wasn’t bothered by my reading comics, but she thought that Tales from the Crypt was a little over the edge. So, instead she bought me Uncle Scrooge, which probably also aided my political development. [chuckles] But, from then on, she didn’t shield me from the Emmett Till thing because it was so important. I’ve talked to other kids my age, and I have 10 years on you, and a number of Chicago kids from white communities saw that as a child and remember it forever I’m sure that until the day I go senile (which may have already happened), I will remember that. No question in my mind. That’s fine. If I could see Emmett Till’s mother today, I’d thank her—al#28 • Spring 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Photos © the respective copyright holders. Dick Tracy TM & © Tribune Media Services, Inc. Chicago Tribune TM & © Chicago Tribune Company, LLC.

Below: Sunday comic section, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 22, 1940, featuring young Mike Gold’s fave comic strip, Dick Tracy, by Chester Gould.

lived not far from the L stations, so getting downtown was pretty easy. Sometimes I’d take the bus. Yeah, I hung out downtown with my friends an awful lot. We’d haunt all the bookstores—first and foremost—and every newsstand we could find for comics and other magazines. We used to have magazines back then—you remember—and newspapers and stuff! I was very informed and loyal to Chicago and also very well-informed about New York history, as well. I’m a member of the Chicago Historical Society and all this other stuff. The lore of some of those people—larger-than-life people, and in many cases, larger-than-death people—just fascinated me, and still does. CBC: Did you know Studs Terkel? Mike: [Laughs] Yes… great question! Given the circumstances of my political work, I knew him pretty well, but Studs was getting along in years. I did his radio show maybe a half-dozen times—once with Jerry Garcia, which was really cool—and every time I’d meet him at a book signing or something, he’d ask my name and I’d tell him. He’d say, “I knew the real Michael.” Well, the “real” Michael was a socialist editor of a number of magazines in the ’20s and ’30s—the New Masses and publications like that—a very well-known left-wing writer. He knew that guy. I would tell him, “No, no, no, I’m the ‘real’ Michael. That guy just assumed that name.” He’d just smile. Until he found out that when I was 19, I was with a newspaper that was more or less the Industrial Workers of the World, so we were both Wobblies. That was a bonding thing. So, yeah, I knew Studs. He was a brilliant man, a brilliant man. CBC: So, was the Chicago Daily News a Democrat paper? Mike: They prided themselves on putting out an independent paper. Chicago is such an overwhelmingly a Democratic town. The last time Chicago had a Republican as mayor, he was voted out of office, in 1931, which was 90 years ago. It’s primarily a democratic-party paper. But they toed the line. CBC: Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the Chicago Tribune a pretty conservative paper? Mike: The owner, Robert McCormick, was very conservative. He was an “America-firster” back when it was a real organization. It was Walt Disney and Harold Gray and people like that. He was pretty hard-core. The Tribune itself wasn’t as hard-core as he was—usually—outside of the editorial page. It was sort of like the Wall Street Journal today. Other than the editorial page, it’s usually pretty straightforward. The Red Scare stuff of the 1950s… everybody participated in that. I’ve yet to see a 1950s newspaper or an old TV broadcast that didn’t reflect those times—a lot of it out of fear and paranoia. Fear for your job, not fear of communism. It was a problem of the times… other than the fact that we got the Tribune on Sundays. I loved the comic section— Dick Tracy remains one of my favorites. We had Little Orphan Annie, Smokey Stover, and wonderful strips like that. So, as a kid, I read the Tribune. By the time I was about 11 or 12, I was reading all four major newspapers in Chicago. CBC: There was the Sun… And what was the fourth one? Mike: The Tribune, the Daily News, the Chica-

Chicago Defender TM & © Real Times Media. Photos © the respective copyright holders. Strange Tales Annual TM & © Marvel Characters, inc.

though I’m not sure I’d use that language—for doing the right thing [allowing the press to photograph the youngster’s brutalized corpse]. It’s one of the events that spurred on the Civil Rights movement. CBC: Did you see MAD comics at all? Mike: Yes, not the comic book. My sister was a reader and followed MAD very closely. Her first issue was around #39 [May ’58]. When I discovered them—going through her stash—I fell in love with it and somehow talked my parents into a subscription, which started with #41 [Sept. ’58]. I grew up with MAD and the cool part was, of course, in my late teens I was hanging out with other comic book collectors and underground cartoonists like Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, and we had all grown up with that and that also helped shaped our world-view. It was also a bonding time … Archie Goodwin… but so is politics. CBC: You had a letter-to-the-editor publisher in #122 of MAD, in ’68. Mike: I did? Wow! I vaguely remember that. [Jon chuckles] You really did your homework! CBC: When was the first time you saw your name in print? Mike: It was before 1968. I have actually been a paid writer since 1967. I was writing prep sports for the Skokie Illinois News, in the Saturday editions of August 1967, and I was paid five bucks apiece. CBC: Skokie is a suburb of Chicago? Mike: Yeah, it’s kind of suburb. You can argue whether it’s a suburb. Places like Evanston, Skokie, and Oak Park—the suburbs are very much like Chicago except they had much better school systems back than. CBC: Were you always in the city in a tenement or apartment house? Mike: It was an apartment house. It would pass as sort of the tenement era for white people in Chicago. It was in Almond Park, in the mid-Northwest side neighborhood of Chicago, which means a lot to Chicagoans but nobody else. We were on the third floor, with two apartments per floor and the building was connected to two or three other buildings. Everybody is still there. The neighborhood has resisted gentrification largely. CBC: Families very often—in a historical context— move into the suburbs after living in the cities. Did your family move into the suburbs? Mike: My family did… sort of. They moved a block or two across the city border so that my sister could go to a good high school and I could go to a good grammar school. That was critical. I know that they couldn’t afford it—I didn’t know it at the time—they really sacrificed for me sister and me to get a better education. All my friends were still in my neighborhood and we all hung out in Chicago anyway. It was virtually across the street. Every Saturday, we’d sort of parade down the busy street and go to seven or eight different drugstores to seek out our comics. We had no fanzines in those days, so everything was sort of a surprise. That was a ritual for us. We’d do other kid stuff, but that was a big part of it. Again, without that access, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy that experience, so that too became part of my daily environment. CBC: Were you wide open in your comic book taste? Did you go to Dell, Gold Key, and Charlton? Mike: Charlton was a little rough, because the only place that sold Charltons was a bicycle shop. This is true: they didn’t sell comics, but they had this box of Charltons in the back. If you grow up in the city of Chicago, you could understand why they had them. Let’s say they fell off the back of a truck and he was told to buy these non-refundables and he wasn’t responsible for the original sales. Some kid would come in and look through the box and he was thrilled. Harveys were hard to find, but in those days, Marvel didn’t come around until 1961 and it was a year before it became a major force, so you read everything because that was what was on the rack. You’ve already read all the DC superhero titles and whatever else and a cool little thing from COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2022 • #28

Gold Key or any of the other publishers, and you’d buy it or otherwise you’d be bored. But back then, I wasn’t much of a fan of the Atlas Comics monster books, much to my regret. After the Fantastic Four, when they came out with the first Strange Tales Annual, I saw it in a subway station downtown, picked it up for a quarter, read it on the L going home, and became a dedicated Marvel monster fan and, to this day, Fin Fang Foom is still one of my favorite characters! [chuckles] CBC: Back then, in the day, were you pretty much a DC fan? Mike: Sure, everybody was. That was it. That was the bread-and-butter. If you were into super-heroes or heroic fantasy, your choices were limited. Archie did a very little bit of super-hero stuff around 1957 or ’58, and The Fly kind of worked, sort of, and The Shield did not last unfortunately because I loved the book, and there were some occasional kind of super-hero books out there, but Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. Superman was in seven titles, Batman was in three, and Wonder Woman was a monthly, so that’s what you had. So, if you were interested in the super-hero genre, you were a DC fan. Most of us my age—technically all Baby Boomers—were DC fans before Marvel Comics, as your know it, existed. That

Above: A dark episode in U.S. history was the horrific murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, Chicago-born African American who was savagely lynched in retaliation for allegedly flirting or whistling at a white woman. His mother, Mamie, courageously insisted on an open casket to expose his mutilated corpse. Below: Strange Tales Annual #1 [1962]. Art by Jack Kirby.

bud plant keeps growin’

Comics & Comix Man

Bud Plant starts to get really busy in the 1970s, retailin’, publishin’, and distributin’! [In part one of Bud Plant’s interview last ish, yours truly spent an inordinately long period of time learning about the mail order maven’s fan beginnings in San Jose, the California city where Bud co-owned two comic book shops before turning 20. We left the conversation as the 1970s were dawning, a new decade when he would help start the Comics & Comix chain, dabble in comics publishing, and become a wholesale distributor in those nascent days of the direct market. This interview was conducted by yours truly in November of last year and was transcribed by Steven “Flash” Thompson.—Ye Ed.]

Above: Nabbed from his Facebook page, a 2017 photo of writer John Ostrander.

Above: Bud Plant at 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, when he was a special guest of the show! Below: Bud’s early ’70s pro-zine, Promethean Enterprises (from left) #5, #4, and #3, produced with Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. and Al Davoren.

Comic Book Creator: We covered a short amount of time in the first interview segment, so I hope we can cover a longer period this time. [laughter] All right, so I think we’re coming into 1970, roughly. What comes first: Promethean Enterprises or Comics & Comix? Bud Plant: Oh, definitely Promethean. We did the first issue in 1969. That was with Jim Vadeboncoeur and Al Davoren, and we actually had another editor called Pat Price. I think he left after the first issue. These were four guys, right, putting out a fanzine, and the first issue was the one with the black-&-white heavy stock covers with Rick Griffin art on the cover. CBC: What was the thinking about doing the fanzine? Bud: You know, that’s a good question, Jon. [chuckles] Vadeboncoeur was probably more oriented toward publishing things than I was, so he may have been the driver behind that. And then, actually, Al Daveron was our contact with all the underground artists. You know, underground comix were coming out then, so people were putting out lots of fanzines, and there was a lot of fanzine activity in San Jose. Somehow, we just all came together and said, “Let’s do this, let’s do a fanzine, but let’s do a nice one.” Jim and Al were both older than I, so they had a little more experience. Jim, in fact, ended up working for a printer and that’s how we got in a back door at a printer and were able to do ’em cheap, because we were handling a lot of the production

ourselves… stripping it up, opaquing the plates (if you can remember that old technology), actually folding and stapling the pages together for the first several issues. This was until we got to #5 and then went totally commercial and had the printer do the whole nine yards. [laughs] So there were five issues over… what…? About five years. About one a year. CBC: What did you specifically do on it aside from production work? Bud: Well, I was the guy that was going out to the conventions at that point. I was starting to score original art—Roy Krenkel drawings from the Phil Seuling shows—starting in ’70, and Gray Morrow, Al Williamson, a little bit. Oh, and I picked up my really nice Reed Crandall “John Carter” piece from Jerry Weist, in ’70 or ’71… We ran the Roy Krenkel piece on the back of Promethean #3, the one with Crumb on the cover. So I was contributing some of the artwork I was picking up and, of course, I was involved in the input on what we were gonna publish and, since I was starting to deal underground comix, I was pretty intimate with what was coming out. Then Al, of course, was the guy who drove up to San Francisco from San Jose to get stoned with, you know, Crumb and Spain and [S. Clay] Wilson, and whoever else he was running into. So, yeah, it was really a group effort. We had above-ground stuff, like I mentioned, and also the underground stuff. It was probably the first kind of hybrid fanzine that ever covered both areas. CBC: Had there been underground fanzines before? Bud: I don’t think so. I could be wrong, but I just can’t think of any particular fanzines were dealing with undergrounds. I mean there could’ve been some coverage in a crud-zine or something… [laughs] what we used to call crud-zines. I can’t think of anything. I’m sure later on there was, but when we first put out the 1969 issue, I don’t think there was much going. That’s early undergrounds, y’know? Crumb only did ZAP in… what…? ’67 or so. So ’69 is still early days. CBC: So, did you impress those underground guys? They must have been… Bud: Were they impressed with the magazine? Oh, yeah.

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Promethean Enterprises TM & © Bud Plant, Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., and Al Davoren. Man from Utopia TM & © the estate of Rick Griffin.

Griffin let us use pieces for the first two covers and he eventually turned into a pretty big deal. In ’69–70, he was one of the hardcore underground guys, but he wasn’t nearly as famous as he became later on. He let us use one of his originals for one of his posters for the second issue. He may have actually done an original for us! It was a couple mice fighting with each other, slashing each other up with swords, and then the logo, definitely was custom done. We were idiots. [laughs] Maybe part of this was Vadeboncoeur because Vadeboncoeur always liked to do things differently than normal people do ’em, and we had decided that we wanted to do a magazine that actually didn’t have a name, that just had a logo, a logotype. Griffin had done this really weird logotype for the first one up above his fighting mice, which is kind of a gobbledygook thing, but it looked really cool. He’d done a poster just like that, too, for…Man, I’m not sure if that was a rock poster or just a doodley drawing but it’s one of these things that’s really cool. You look at it and you go, “Wow, that is really cool, but I have no idea what that means.” It’s not really letters… I don’t know… kinda…? So, anyway, the magazine wasn’t supposed to have a real name and, in the first issue, in the colophon on the inside, it actually has the little logo, saying such and such is published by Promethean Enterprises. So the name of our company, per se, was Promethean Enterprises. But, of course, it had to have a name, so it ended up being called Promethean Enterprises. CBC: So, what’s the story behind Crumb’s cover? What does it mean? Bud: Oh, the story goes that he actually gave us another cover that he had done previously, but it was called AllNi**er Comics. Now, I don’t remember what the picture was, but you can imagine… And, as liberal and all as we were, we just said, [laughs] “Robert, we can not do this. We cannot do All-Ni**er Comics on the cover of Promethean. Who we gonna show it to?” So, I think he knocked that cover off for us as a secondary thing. It’s possible he just had it as a piece of art, but I think he knocked it off for us, because it’s a pretty simplistic drawing. And what does it mean? Hell, if I know! [laughter] I have no idea. Maybe I should ask Al Daveron that sometime, see if he remembers. But hey, yeah, that’s cool! We got a Crumb cover. That’s groovy! I think All-Ni**er Comics did get published somewhere in some sketchbook, but at least we didn’t have our names on it. CBC: [Laughs] So you were dealing in fanzines. Were you dealing with the publishers themselves, each and every individual publisher of those you wanted to carry? Bud: Yes, absolutely. That’s the only way it could be done back then. We’re talking the beginnings in ’71, ’72, ’73. There was no distribution for fanzines except for me and Phil Seuling, and whatever they could sell to their local comic book shop, y’know? Stuff like Voice of Comicdom coming out of San Jose. It originally came out of San Francisco. That was Marty Arbunich, Bill Dubay—who, of course, went on to edit Warren magazines—and Rudi Franke, who was a teacher. Somehow, they got in touch with Rich Corben and they eventually had Rich Corben on the cover. They’d bring that in to a couple comic shops in San Jose and sell it to ’em and maybe a couple shops in San Francisco, but that was it. So, I was the source for fanzines through the mail and selling them at conventions. That’s how I got a lot of the fanzines: simply going to a convention and some fanzine publisher would either come up to me or I’d come up to him and say, “Yeah, I wanna carry that. I’ll buy 10 copies or 20 copies of something, take ’em home and put ’em on my list in the Rocket’s Blast or the Buyer’s Guide to advertise ’em. CBC: That must have been meticulous work. That’s a lot going on in your head, isn’t it? COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2022 • #28

Bud: Well, you know, I started small and worked up. In the early days, there wasn’t that much stuff. I dealt with Jerry Weist for Squa Tront, Rich Hauser for Spa Fon, Rudi Franke for Voice of Comicdom, and Dennis Cunningham, who did Weirdom (he published the first Corben stuff in Weirdom, which was a sort of hybrid fanzine that dealt with horror movies and comics somewhat). So, yeah. I just dealt with individuals, like Gary Arlington. Of course, he did Man from Utopia. I think it was financed by some buddy of his, but he actually published it. And he published AllStars, which was a nice little fanzine and he did Nickel Library, which I used to carry until Bill Gaines shut him down because he was using copyrighted stuff. Bill Spicer who was doing Graphic Story Magazine and I was buying Graphic Story from him or another one of those guys in Los Angeles, Richard Kyle. I was just getting stuff from whoever was doing it. They were all publishing in pretty small print runs. CBC: What was your motivation for doing it? Was it that there was a market niche not being attended to or was it your personal interest? Were you simply fascinated with fanzines? Bud: I’d probably say it was personal interest. I wasn’t smart enough at the time to realize there was a niche. I realized that nobody else seemed to be doing it and it made sense. I was

Above: The first issue of Promethean Enterprises, the Plant/ Vadeboncoeur/Davoren prozine focusing on underground comix that described Bud as the “money man.” Below: Bud holds this particular comic book, Rick Griffin’s Man from Utopia one-shot [1972], in the highest esteem.

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The Transformative Times of a Comic Book Rebel

Interview conducted by Jon B. Cooke • Transcribed by Steven Thompson I’ve been chums with Stephen Russell Bissette for nigh on 30+ years now, he being my oldest friend from the comic book realm, though I’ve admired his efforts since being captivated by SRB’s artistry on Swamp Thing… Heck, I also dug 1941, his whacked-out tour de force done with buddy Rick Veitch. Anyway, back in 1990, I was in an entirely new field—the world of horror fiction—when I produced a fiction-zine for a short (though lauded) spell—and we two met at the Horror Writers of America annual meeting. Though that affair atop the Providence Biltmore was attended by such legends as Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison, it was chatting with Steve I remember best. At the time, he was heavily promoting his horror comics anthology, Taboo, and had graciously given me a set as gift (which I promptly lost, but that’s another story), and since that time we’ve popped into each other’s lives, and I can say honestly that SRB is a true buddy. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2022 • #28

I can also readily admit to admiring the man and his achievements in so many diverse categories, whether as creator rights advocate, amateur paleontologist, horror movie expert, First Amendment champion, Vermont cryptozoologist, comic book historian, film critic, crusading publisher, writer of fiction and non-fiction, lecturer, naturalist, art teacher, and… oh yeah! Before I forget… he’s also one kick-ass ARTIST! On my first out-of-state foray since Covid-19 hit, I drove up to the Green Mountain State to interview SRB in his studio on one chilly December Saturday, when Steve and his lovely wife, Marj, treated me splendidly and kept me nourished and warm. We allude to an earlier interview herein, which was mostly included in CBC’s special ish, Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers. After our conversation, SRB told me he signed a deal for a graphic novel with a major publisher. See postscript for details!—JBC. 37

CBC: Okay, let’s start: Vermont. Do you feel really connected to this state? Is it a part of you and you’re a part of it? Steve: I can’t go as far as H.P. Lovecraft and say, “I am Vermont.” [laughs] But Vermont is in my blood. Seeing how our country’s gone, I’m really glad I’m in Vermont, you know? Things are swinging further and further extreme right, and Vermont, even though we have a Republican governor—we almost always have a Republican governor—he’s handled the pandemic with relative sanity and, yeah, I feel connected here. That said, we have as many buttheads and boneheads as anybody else. CBC: Besides Dover, New Jersey, have you ever lived anywhere else? Steve: Stretches of time in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I began going out to Santa Fe in 1979 to visit friends. I met my first wife there, Nancy O’Conner, who changed her name to Marlene. I’d probably spend cumulatively the equivalent of six to nine months in Santa Fe between 1979–81. I’d go out ’til the money ran out. I’d sell some work to Marvel or Scholastic or whatever, enough to pay my rent ahead where I was living in Vermont, and, at $60 a month, I could afford to do it. And then I’d go and live in Santa Fe as long as I could until the money ran out. If I had been painting cowboys, horses, landscapes, cattle skulls, or Native American girls in the nude on cattle skulls, I probably could’ve made a go of it in the New Mexican arts scene, at that time. But it’s changed a lot. That’s no longer a correct thing. CBC: Let’s be honest to readers up front about Swamp Thing. We’re not gonna talk a lot about Swamp Thing, even though we’ve got the character on the cover, but I do want to obviously touch upon it. For one thing, because you spoke a lot for my Swampmen book, extensively on your history with Swamp Thing, but there’s a lot more to your career. Steve: Well, I’m gonna die being known as the Swamp Thing guy. That’s number one, probably. I mean, my career’s all over the place, Jon. I write, I draw, I’m doing all this Blu-ray and home video bonus stuff—commentary tracks, bonus feature “lectures”—but yeah, Swamp Thing’s what I’m gonna be remembered for, no doubt about it. I still draw him all the time. For various fan commissions and so on, Swamp Thing and Abby is the number one request. Number two is John Constantine. I still have a lot of affection for the characters. I just don’t have any patience left with the powers that be at DC Entertainment because there’s nothing left of the company we worked with before, and, you know, I didn’t have a lot of warm fuzzies back then. [laughter] CBC: Is that okay with you? Steve: Sure. That’s life! I’m lucky! We were very lucky… lucky that our buddy Tom Yeates was the first of the Kubert School graduates to land that gig. John Totleben and I were very fortunate that our close friend Tom suggested we try out for the job. We were very lucky, John and I, that Len Wein chose us… I don’t know who else we were up against, but, in years since, I’ve seen samples by Dave Gibbons, Art Suydam… though I don’t know at what point in Swamp Thing’s history those drawings had been done. We were lucky that we were on the book with [writer] Marty Pasko, who, you know…Marty passed away last year and I miss him. We were

incredibly fortunate to be working on the book when it turned out to be the first American publication Alan Moore started writing for! John Totleben; his wife, Michelle; Rick Veitch; his wife, Cindy, we’re still friends with all these people and that’s in part because we all bonded over that crazy, insane, wonderful, horrible, bizarre chemistry and experience we had on Swamp Thing! We were lucky to be working with Len Wein as editor. I mean, here you are having the blessings of the editor being the original co-creator to work on the character, which, for our generation, was important. We were lucky to get to know [Swamp Thing co-creator] Bernie Wrightson because of Swamp Thing. Bernie was one of the kindest, most generous guys I ever met in the comic book industry. We were lucky to be working with [editor] Karen Berger at the time when Karen stepped up to the plate out of doing editorial coordination work at DC into being a full-fledged editor and ended up being part of the catalyst for what became Vertigo. So, yeah! I feel incredibly fortunate that we got to do that. CBC: It’s still in print, right? And you get a little chunk of that? Steve: We get royalties every quarter, and I have to say, for the record, out of all the work I did in the comics field, DC is the only company that still honors their contracts. We still get quarterly royalties. CBC: Could you give an idea of the amount? Could you, let’s say, pay a month’s mortgage on what you get a year? Steve: You never know. It’s manna from heaven, because you don’t have any advance notice of what it’s gonna be. CBC: But it pays for groceries, right? Steve: Oh, it’s beyond groceries. Sometimes it’s in the thousands. We get a percentage of John Constantine, but not a share of Swamp Thing, to be clear. The way entertainment companies do things, when there’s a Constantine TV show, we don’t earn off of that because that’s all an internal… Warner paying itself or not paying itself. We only get a percentage of what Constantine earns in print or from licensing, but when there’s a videogame, with some outside entity licensing John Constantine, we get a share. John Totleben and I are splitting, like, a fraction of one percent, but that can be thousands of dollars. And we just never know. I’d say the smallest royalty checks are in the hundreds and the largest are in the thousands. They’re quarterly, without fail. There’s only been a few times since 1988 that a quarterly payment might be late and, when they’re late, at most it’s like two to four weeks late. And as I say, given all the publishers all of us ended up working with over the decades, DC’s the only one that honors and still pays those royalties. And they were genuine royalties. They no longer define them as royalties. Now, we have to pay the taxes on that income as income. So, we’re somehow still employees on the books at DC, even though we haven’t done any work for them for ages. [Jon laughs] Corporate tax loss, right? But, yeah, it’s great. I feel honored we got to do it; we’re still benefitting from it; I’m occasionally able to send money to my now-adult kids when there’s a windfall from that. It’s great. I’m very thankful. CBC: What’s the worst thing about Swamp Thing and Constantine and…?

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Steve: Well, you know, I can’t even say it’s the worst thing, but after 10 years of friendship with Alan Moore, when he cut me off, probably the hardest thing is people reaching out to me, still, with an expectation that I can do something for them or I can provide a bridge to Alan Moore when Alan hasn’t spoken to me in over 25 years at this point. But I can’t even say that’s a bad thing. It happens because people associate me with a body of work that we all did that was good enough to stand the test of tome to this point and is still in print. So, you know… It’s a double-edged sword, to be sure, but when you ask, “worst,” quote/unquote thing… that would be it. CBC: You were friends with him. Steve: We were good friends for 10 years. We worked together on projects, we visited each other, we stayed in each other’s homes. Whatever I said in that Comics Journal interview that Alan took umbrage with, that was the end of it. I had seen him do the same sort of thing with other professionals and I knew when my day came that it was final, because that’s Alan. That’s how he deals with the world, right? If you’re cut off, you’re cut off. That’s it. I miss Alan. I miss Melinda Gebbie. We were working together on Taboo, with Lost Girls. I miss them, but I can’t do anything to change it and I’ve stayed in contact with, and friends with, one of their daughters, because…You know, we met Alan and Phyllis’s daughters when they were little girls, and I’m still friends with one of them. Life goes on. You make the best of it. Whatever it was that happened, I couldn’t change it, I can’t fix it. For years, I didn’t even know what it was that was the problem. That’s worst thing. And the worst thing isn’t that that happened and oh, poor me. The worst thing is people unaware of that understandably will reach out to me with an expectation I can facilitate their being in touch with Alan and I have to always say to them, “Well, no. In fact, probably best not to mention my name.” [laughter] CBC: I think that you guys being in the first class, the first class at the Joe Kubert School… At the time that you did, there was a world of jobs and opportunities out there that really weren’t there in the ‘60s and really weren’t there necessarily there in the ’80s… Steve: [Laughs] Well, wait a minute now. That’s a little bit of rose-colored glasses. We were at the Kubert School when the Implosion happened at DC. We came out of the Kubert School groomed to enter an industry that was collapsing. We started in ’76, which is right when newsstand distribution was beginning to implode, and we graduated in the Spring of ’78, by which time not only were mainstream comics in the sh*tter, the underground comix movement was over! We were lucky enough to be able to work with a publisher like Cliff Neal with Dr. Wirtham’s Comix & Stories and Larry Shell self-publishing Alien Encounters and ’50s Funnies. But that was like—pardon my French—but that was like the spent d*ck trickling what’s left of the underground. Arcade was over, right? Brilliant publication, Arcade, but it was the tombstone. RAW didn’t exist yet, so Spiegelman wasn’t even onto the next phase of his career. We entered the field at a time when, suddenly, there was no work in the comic book field. [laughter] And we also entered the field at a time when—we did not know why. We still do not know why—but there was some sort of a blackballing at DC of anyone from the Kubert School. We would go up for interviews and would have what we thought were good interviews. I had a really horrible one with Joe Orlando, probably the worst job interview that I have ever had in my entire life. We would come back and Joe Kubert would ask us happily, “How’d it go?” and we’d, crestfallen, tell him, “Well, they don’t want us.” It’s my understanding that it was finally Len Wein who finally said, “You know what? I’m done with this. I am going to give work to Tom Yeates.” And it was Tom Yeates that broke that logjam, or firewall, or blackballing, or whatever you wanna call it, Jon, that somebody at DC had decided that Joe’s students weren’t gonna be getting a foot in the door up there. As I also mentioned during our earlier interview years ago, my first pro work was with Scholastic magazine and with Heavy Metal. Here’s a little more context about what we’d talked about before, bear with me: I was the first one in the door from our group at Heavy Metal because I saw the ad in National Lampoon magazine that they were gonna start this new magazine and I went to the Kubert school with a full set of Métal Hurlant that my Johnson State College friend Jack Venooker had gifted me when I headed off for Kubert School… So I showed up with Métal Hurlant, showing it to my classmates like Rick Veitch and Tom Yeates, going, “Holy sh*t! Look what’s going on over in France and Belgium. Because we hadn’t seen Druillet and Moebius and…you know? That first year at Kubert School, I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to afford a second year, okay? My money was running out. I had saved all COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2022 • #28

through my high school years from working. I paid my own way for two years at Johnson State College, including dorm and fees and all that, and I had just enough left to go to the first year of the Kubert School. So that first year, which was fall of ’76 to spring of ’77, I was already going in to New York with my folio and I was scared sh*tless. I’m a little scrawny Vermont kid, 21 years old. What’d I know? But I also knew this may be my only shot. This may be my only proximity to New York. Moving back to Vermont was the only option I really had. I was going to art directors and Joe, God bless him, gifted me the Scholastic contract, because the first two stories I did with Scholastic were signed, “Kubert School.” Right? I was ghosting. Joe came to me to do the work and that was very flattering. And Joe loved what I did and it turned out Bob and Jane Stine, my editors—Bob Stine, better known as R.L. Stine of Goosebumps fame—they loved what I’d done, so when I graduated, Joe Kubert gifted me that contact, that connection, right? “Steve. Why don’t you continue working with Scholastic?” Oh, my god! Y’know? But that’s only because I got through that first year, Jon. During that first year, I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to afford to go back so every other week I was cherry-picking a day and going into New York with my portfolio. I went to High Times, I went to MAD, I went to DC, I went to Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal was just starting and John Workman was the editor up there. And then my father saw how serious I was, that I was pursuing this. I was out there hustling for work and my dad said, “We’ll pay for the second year.” So that’s the only reason I got to go to the second year. We were all on pins and needles! Rick Veitch didn’t know if the money was gonna come through with the Vermont state program that funded his going to school. I was out of money. I certainly wasn’t counting on my dad changing his tune, but my dad really bonded with Joe Kubert. I was never made privy to it, but I’m sure some kind of phone conversation went on between ’em. Whether it Joe and Muriel talking to my dad or just Joe and my dad. And my dad said, “I’ll cover you Previous spread: Stephen R. Bissette poses for Ye Ed’s camera and the Tyrant image from SRB’s 2013 print (with color design by Charles “The End of the F***ing World” Forsman!). This spread: At left is the (composited) Swamp Thing promotional three-pager from DC Sampler #3 [1984], layed out, penciled, and written by SRB! Top is The Comics Journal #93 [Sept. ’84] cover painting. Inks & finishes by John Totleben. 39

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