Comic Book Creator #8

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No. 8, Spring 2015

Madman TM & © 2015 Michael Allred. Flaming Carrot TM & © 2015 Bob Burden.

A Tw o M o r r o w s P u b l i c a t i o n

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also: HARVEY KURTZMAN • VERNON GRANT • BATTON LASH • STAN LEE • RUTU MODAN

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A Tw o M o r r o w s P u b l i c a t i o n

Edited by JON B. COOKE, COMIC BOOK CREATOR is the new voice of the comics medium, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics—focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. It’s the follow-up to Jon’s multi-Eisner Award winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST magazine.

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #1 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #3

Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

JOE KUBERT double-size Summer Special tribute issue! Comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. Kubert interviews, rare art and artifacts, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, pin-ups and miniinterviews by faculty, students, fans, friends and family! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

NEAL ADAMS vigorously responds to critics of his BATMAN: ODYSSEY mini-series in an in-depth interview, with plenty of amazing artwork! Plus: SEAN HOWE on his hit book MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY; MARK WAID interview, part one; Harbinger writer JOSHUA DYSART; Part Two of our LES DANIELS remembrance; classic cover painter EARL NOREM interviewed, a new ADAMS cover, and more!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #4 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #5 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #6 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #7 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #8

RUSS HEATH career-spanning interview, essay on Heath’s work by S.C. RINGGENBERG (and Heath art gallery), MORT TODD on working with STEVE DITKO, a profile of alt cartoonist DAN GOLDMAN, part two of our MARK WAID interview, DENYS COWAN on his DJANGO series, VIC BLOOM and THE SECRET ORIGIN OF ARCHIE ANDREWS, HEMBECK, new KEVIN NOWLAN cover!

DENIS KITCHEN close-up—from cartoonist, publisher, author, and art agent, to his friendships with HARVEY KURTZMAN, R. CRUMB, WILL EISNER, and many others!

Plus we examine the supreme artistry of JOHN ROMITA, JR., BILL EVERETT’s final splash, the nefarious backroom dealings of STOLEN COMIC BOOK ART, and ascend THE GODS OF MT. OLYMPUS (a ‘70s gem

by ACHZIGER, STATON and WORKMAN)!

SWAMPMEN: MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS dredges up Swamp Thing, ManThing, Heap, and other creepy man-critters of the 1970s bayou! Features interviews with WRIGHTSON, MOORE, PLOOG, WEIN, BRUNNER, GERBER, BISSETTE, VEITCH, CONWAY, MAYERIK, ORLANDO, PASKO, MOONEY, TOTLEBEN, YEATES, BERGER, SANTOS, USLAN, KALUTA, THOMAS, and others. FRANK CHO cover!

BERNIE WRIGHTSON interview on Swamp Thing, Warren Publishing, The Studio, Frankenstein, Stephen King, and designs for movies like Heavy Metal and Ghostbusters, and a gallery of Wrightson artwork! Plus 20th anniversary of Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror with BILL MORRISON; an interview with Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre’s BATTON LASH, and more!

The creators of Madman and Flaming Carrot—MIKE ALLRED & BOB BURDEN— share a cover and provide comprehensive interviews and art galore, plus BILL SCHELLY is interviewed about his new HARVEY KURTZMAN biography; we present the conclusion of our BATTON LASH interview; STAN LEE on his final European comic convention tour; fanfavorite HEMBECK, and more!

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JOE STATON on his comics career (from E-MAN, to co-creating The Huntress, and his current stint on the Dick Tracy comic strip), plus we showcase the lost treasure GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS drawn by Joe! Plus, Part One of our interview with the late STAN GOLDBERG, why JOHN ROMITA, JR. is the best comic book artist working, we quiz PABLO MARCOS about the days of Marvel horror, plus HEMBECK!

The Broadway sci-fi epic WARP examined!

Interviews with art director NEAL ADAMS, director STUART (Reanimator) GORDON, playwright LENNY KLEINFELD, stage manager DAVID GORDON, and a look at Warp’s 1980s FIRST COMICS series! Plus: an interview with PETER (Hate!) BAGGE, our RICH BUCKLER interview Part One, GIANT WHAM-O COMICS, and the conclusion of our STAN GOLDBERG interview!

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S p r i n g 2 0 1 5 • Vo i c e o f t h e C o m i c s M e d i u m • N u m b e r 8

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Ye Ed’s Rant: Catching Up on Stuff................................................................................... 2 MAD SCIENTIST WOOdy CBC mascot by J.D. King ©2015 J.D. King.

About Our Cover

Art & characters ©2015 M. Allred/B. Burden.

Art by MIKE ALLRED & BOB BURDEN Color by LAURA ALLRED

Comics Chatter Rutu Modan: Michael Aushenker talks with the Israeli graphic novelist who gets to the characters inside of events in her books, Exit Wounds and The Property............... 3 Incoming: Phew! Some thought Swampmen was worth the wait… thankfully!........... 8 Vernon Grant: Where we discover the art of a neglected graphic novel pioneer......... 12 Stan Lee: CBC covers the Man’s final European comic convention appearance............ 16 The Good Stuff: George Khoury on the seductive art of Ilya Kuvshinov........................ 18 Hembeck’s Dateline: Fred looks at the heroes of the Justice Society of America...... 21 Harvey Kurtzman: Bill Schelly is interviewed about his new — and exhaustive! — biography of the creator of MAD (and bona fide comic book genius).............................. 22 Batton Lash: Part two of our interview with the creator of Supernatural Law............. 28 THE MAIN EVENTS

Boy, just like so much appearing in Comic Book Creator these days, this issue is a long time in coming! But while the cover was completed by the wonky hero team of Michael D. Allred and Bob Burden more than a decade back, take solace in knowing the interviews herein this double-feature issue are brand-spankin’-new! Our profound thanks to Mike & B.B. for their patience and support — and to Laura Allred for her great coloring job, as well! Cowabunga, surfer dudes!— Ye Ed. If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

Michael Allred’s Pop Art Life: Sure, the artist has toiled for decades and has rightfully earned his status as comic book great, but what charges his engine more than fame and glory? A passion for pop culture and love of family................ 44 The Zen of Bob Burden: Flaming Carrot has the distinction of being one of the oddest oddballs in comics and his creator is a character unto himself, as learned in this smart, funny, fast-moving and comprehensive interview............ 62 BACK MATTER Creator’s Creators: Kendall Whitehouse....................................................................... 79 Coming Attractions: Joe Staton.................................................................................... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: The Carrot gets wild with Pussy Riot!......... 80 Right: The Flaming Carrot and background items are from an image provided by Bob Burden and the Madman figure is from Michael Allred’s cover for The Superman/Madman Hullabaloo! #1 [June 1997].

Comic Book Artist Vol. 1 & 2 are now available as digital downloads from twomorrows.com!

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Comic Book Creator is a proud joint production of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly 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 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $40 US, $54 Canada, $60 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2015 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

Dedicated with great affection and sadness to beloved friend HERB TRIMPE (1939-2015). Godspeed, Trimpdog. ™

JON B. COOKE

Editor

John Morrow

Publisher & Consulting Editor

DAVID GREENAWALT

Design & Production

MICHAEL AUSHENKER

Associate Editor

MIKE Allred & Bob Burden Cover Artists

laura allred Cover Colorist

GEORGE KHOURY RICHARD J. ARNDT CHRISTOPHER IRVING TOM ZIUKO

Contributing Editors

Brian K. Morris Senior Transcriber

STEVEN THOMPSON Transcriber

J.D. KING

CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO

CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON

CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

CBC Contributing Photographers

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE

CBC Convention Photographer

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK CHRISTOPHER IRVING GEORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO

CBC Columnists

To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail CBC, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 2

Getting into the groove with Comic Book Creator (and ACE) First up, given that your humble editor is now juggling three jobs on any given day — day employment as graphic designer, and editor/production of the new ACE magazine, as well as doing my best in these pages — we had to (urk!) finally delegate some responsibility regarding the layout and design of this here periodical. Now, that’s no easy feat, given my… umm… control issues, but I’m trying to let go!

And the reins of production have been given over to our latest addition to the masthead at left, David Greenawalt, who’s done a splendid job this issue (and deserves a medal, lemme tell ya, for putting up with my noodling).

David has been a designer for quite a spell now, and he currently works for the U.S. Department of Energy. He’s been moonlighting for TwoMorrows Publishing for 15 or so years now, most prominently as designer on Write Now! and a few of Keith Dallas’ American Comic Book Chronicles volumes.

Welcome aboard, D.G.!

One of our regulars who isn’t in this issue (though more than his share last ish) — and whose work usally appears right here, illustrating the “Editor’s Rant” piece — is our own Ronn Sutton, who has been swamped with work, most recently as artist for the Phil Cross-scripted (with Darwin Holmstrom) graphic novel, Lucifer’s Sword MC [Motorbooks, 2014].

The 96-page black-&-white trade paperback tells the violent and merciless tale of Mel “Frenchy” Bouget who, as a boy in 1949, has a life-changing experience when a motocycle club, the San Jose chapter of Lucifer’s Sword, rumble through his small town one day. The kid is mesmerized and, in due course, Frenchy purchases his first bike. After being thrown out of the Navy, by the ’60s he becomes a “prospect” to join that same motocycle gang he encountered as a youngster. From there on, for Frenchy it’s boozing, fisticuffs, fornicating, and all-out war with a rival gang, along the way proving his smarts and courage to earn that patch from his gang brothers.

The script is breezily told, with little room for captions or exposition, no intruding narrative voice, but the

readership aimed for must certainly be fellow bikers, thus I imagine the writing, as it is, does the trick rather succinctly for its intended audience.

Natch, what concerns us most is the Ronn Sutton artwork, and I’m impressed with his storytelling and command of the action sequences. In a few instances, dialogue literally covers up Ronn’s linework, but overall, given multiple singleimage pages and plenty of generous panel space, the artist lets the action rip, unafraid of using generous blacks and just the right use of negative space.

Lucifers Sword MC ends with a cliffhanger, and part of me, despite its lack of characterization and excess of one-note depictions of tough guys endlessly out-toughing one another, really wants to find out what’s next for Gypsy, Frenchy, and biker cronies… but, most of all, I’d much like to see more sequential storytelling from a solid professional graced with style revving with verve and power.

Keep ’em coming, Sutton!

John Morrow and I are still working out exact planning and hope to come up with some sort of publishing schedule — whether putting out CBC on a quarterly or bi-monthly basis — but we’ll do our best. We have some nifty issues planned: a massive Joe Staton interview next time; followed by a half-issue devoted to Warp!, the ’70s Broadway science-fiction epic art directed by Neal Adams, with the other side focused on Peter Bagge in an career-spanning interview; then we present our Gil Kane tribute issue, recalling the great Silver Age artist with a major retrospective and remembrances from peers and fans; and thereafter we present our Howard Cruse special. Next year should also see our Frank Frazetta tribute and Wendy & Richard Pini focus… we’ll be mixing it up and sincerely hope you enjoy the efforts of all of us at CBC. In the meantime, I’ll be working the aisles at ComicCon International: San Diego this year, networking for ACE magazine and planning future CBCs, as well as being a nuisance at the TwoMorrows booth. Come on by!

cbc contributors Laura Allred Michael Allred Max Anderson Richard Arndt Michael Aushenker E.B. Boatner Jacq Cohen

Bongo Comics Bob Burden Andrew D. Cooke Jackie Estrada Fantagraphics Chris Gaskin Betsy Grant

C. Michael Hall Fred Hembeck Heritage Auctions George Khoury Denis Kitchen Ilya Kuvshinov Batton Lash

—Y e Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Robert Menzies Rutu Modan Bill Morrison Mark Newgarden Barry Pearl Greg Preston Eric Reynolds

Bill Schelly Ronn Sutton Steven Thompson George E. Warner Kendall Whitehouse Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © 2015 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

SETH KUSHNER Greg PRESTON

Catching Up on Stuff

comic book zeitgeist

Rutu Modan, Ligne Claire Heir The Israeli cartoonist and graphic novelist gets to the characters inside of the events

TM & © 2015 Rutan Modan. Photo © Anke Fuechtenberger.

by Michael Aushenker CBC Associate Editor In the first days of January, Islamist extremists unleashed carnage in France at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket. Cartoonist Rutu Modan could empathize with the victims of both massacres.

After all, the award-winning Jewish cartoonist is a native of Tel Aviv and her resume includes co-editing the Hebrew edition of MAD magazine as well as co-founding — with Yirmi Pinkus — the cartoonist clan Actus Tragicus.

“This was a group of artists that used to work together and talk about comics,” she said of the dozen years with the collective she spent creating absurdest comics, mini-comics and anthologies. “Actus was extremely important to me. It was the most important experience. I wouldn’t be what I am today without Actus. I couldn’t do Exit Wounds.”

Exit Wounds, of course, is her critically acclaimed, Eisner-garnering breakthrough graphic novel, and in this 2007 work — as well as its 2013 follow-up The Property (both published by Drawn & Quarterly), Modan does reference larger Jewish issues — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Holocaust, respectively — but only as a distant backdrop for her apolitical, human-scale stories that otherwise blend a Hergé-derived ligne claire style with a Carveresque attention to human behavior.

While there is a lengthy tradition of American-Jewish cartoonists embedding Jewish elements in super-hero comics dating back to Siegel and Shuster’s Superman and a young Joe Kubert’s take on the Golem in 1946, the list of ostensibly Jewish comics is not as long.

That said, since at least 1978, when Will Eisner began exploring the long-form comics graphic novel format with his autobiographical Lower East Side Jewish tales, overtly Jewish stories in the comics medium have proliferated. In 1986, Art Spiegelman legitimized the graphic novel genre to mainstream America with his Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust account Maus in 1986, while Joann Sfar captured the Sephardic Algerian-Jewish experience two decades later with The Rabbi’s Cat. Kubert and Jules Feiffer have also made late-career contributions to this canon.

But unlike her predecessors, Modan — in works such as Exit Wounds or the Jewish-Palestinian kiss from her collection of short-form tales, Jamilti and Other Stories — has pushed the Jewish content underneath her story as a plot trigger mechanism. In Exit Wounds, a suicide bombing activates her heroine’s search for a missing person, while in The Property, she uses its Jewish themes almost as a prop; a generator running in the background steadily gunning the complex, sometimes dysfunctional dynamics between her characters in the fore.

Modan said she cannot help but react (even indirectly) to the socio-political underpinnings of her country. “It’s my identity,” she said. “I have a very strong identity as a Jew and as an Israeli.”

Investing in ‘Property’

“Identity” has a strong hand in her three-years-in-the-making Property (completed in Nov. 2012 before its spring 2013 release) in which Polish Jews and Poles intersect in a tale rife with forbidden love and the heavy burden of the Shoah.

Young Mica Segal accompanies her grandmother Regina to Poland, where the latter stands to lay claim to her late husband’s property, which, since World War II, has been Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

converted into a hotel. Ulterior motives abound, from Regina’s reason for visiting Warsaw to those of Tomasz, the non-Jewish concentration camp tour guide and aspiring cartoonist for whom Mica falls.

With the ambitious Property, Modan did not necessarily set out to make a book that would top Exit Wounds in complexity and ambition.

“It wasn’t like now I have to be more complex,” she says.

“It sort of happens because I’m a different person and I’m more experienced. When you finish a big project — it happens a lot with students — you don’t like it because at the point you finished it, you can do it better, but you’re better because you have all this experience.”

For The Property, Modan invested more time and thoroughness in her research and development phase than she did for Exit Wounds, traveling to Poland, researching the Warsaw Uprising, and hiring actors to photograph in poses as her characters, images from which she storyboarded her graphic novel. “It made the story better,” says Modan.

“With Exit Wounds, I also used models, but my husband, my friends, and I didn’t dress them,” she said.

Despite their input, the actors did not have any hand in shaping the personalities or particulars of the characters because, “I’m still a control freak. Everything was written, everything was composed.”

“I used to use people to model me for body poses,” she continues. “I took photos of friends and used them to draw the more complicated movements and body poses. In Exit Wounds, I wanted to give each character its body language: not just how they dress but also how they move. What I did this time is I worked with real actors. I hired actors. I did a full storyboard for the whole book. I did sketches of everything in the book, exactly what’s going to be the composition of what will be in each frame. The sketches were very rough doodles.

“After I finished this storyboard, I hired a group of actors, not by how they look but the character, more or less the clothes in what they were going to be wearing. Then I took pho-

Above: Graphic novelist Rutu Modan in a photo by Anke Fuechtenberger.

Below: Rutu Modan self-portrait appearing on a poster promoting her participation at Princeton University’s “Jewish Culture and the Comic Book” program, held in April at the Ivy League school.

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Above: Rutu Modan’s 2012 children’s book, Maya Makes a Mess, was published by Françoise Mouly’s Toon Books.

Below: Maya gets an invitation to dine with the queen in Maya Makes a Mess by Rutu Modan!

tos of everything. I positioned them for each frame for what they were going to be. They were acting.”

Modan originally saw the actress; posing as Regina playing on stage in four productions.

“She’s an amazing actress, she’s 88,” Modan says. “She played an old hooker. It was unbelievable.

She wore a red mini-skirt, boots. I knew I wanted her to play Regina. She’s the cliché of the Jewish grandmother, I told her to be a cliché, but not cliché. I knew she could be funny.”

Originally, the voice of protagonist Mica sounded too much like Modan. “When I gave my script to my friend to read, Mica seemed too cynical,” Modan says. “Why would Tomasz fall in love with her? I wanted to choose an actress who is very feminine, very beautiful. She’s not as suspicious as Regina.

She’s third generation.”

The ambiguity represented by the gentile Tomasz as their concentration camp tour guide represents “this tension is what we feel when Jews come to Poland. We cannot avoid this feeling. It’s part of what I wanted to deal with.

“For me, until I started to work on the book, I wasn’t interested in Poland, the Polish people. I only associated it with concentration camps. In my family, my grandparents didn’t talk about Poland. They referred to it as the land of the dead, or one big cemetery. Exactly how Regina described it.

“I felt that the Poles have a different story about what happened in World War II than the Jews. Even in Germany, people my age know that the Nazis were evil, the Jews were victims. It’s easier to communicate if they have the same story. We can make a relationship based on starting a new page. In Poland, it was really difficult for me to accept their story: ‘The Jews lived happily in Poland, then, suddenly, the Nazis came [and] killed Jews. The Poles helped the Jews; they tried to hide them. There was no anti-Semitism, everyone loved the Jews. The pogroms were in Russia, not Poland. It was even better for Jews in Poland than in other countries.’ I wanted to ask everyone, ‘Okay, what really happened?’”

Modan’s grandparents (like the Regina character) relocated to Palestine before the Warsaw Ghetto, in April 1940.

“On purpose, I didn’t want to make Regina a direct Holocaust survivor. Maus was already written and it’s an excellent book,” Modan says. “Also, I didn’t want Regina to be a victim. When you say [Holocaust survivor], you can’t say bad things about [the person]. I can’t have a character who is [a survivor]. I didn’t want to make anyone too bad or too good.

“The Jews, we are experts in being victims. Israelis are also expert in being victims. Their reaction to the whole world, if someone criticizes Israel, they are anti-Semitic. If someone is a victim, they cannot be an oppressor but the truth is you can be a victim and an oppressor at the same time. The Polish people also feel as if they were victims, as if they suffered the most in World War II.” By example, she notes the Warsaw Uprising, where the non-Jewish Poles helped resist against the Nazis in the onset.

“After three months, sure, the Americans and Russians would help [the Polish Jews],” Modan continues. “This is why they started the uprising. But they didn’t have an army. The Russians were really nearby, they didn’t interfere. The Americans also didn’t interfere. They didn’t want to irritate Stalin.”

“After three months, [the Poles] couldn’t resist, they were surrounded. Hitler said he won’t touch them, he would forgive them. But the Nazis came in and they bombed 90 percent of Warsaw. It was bombed not from the air, from the crowd. They killed 150,000 people and they expelled 250,000 people from the city to Germany. The city was destroyed completely. And then, Russians came and they rebuilt the city as a Communist city.

“This is traumatic and what’s interesting is not a lot of people know about it. The Polish people were left with this feeling that nobody knows how they suffered.”

With Tomasz, Modan keeps his intentions during his tryst with Mica ambiguous, even suspect: Is he sincere or a con artist? “We are suspicious of the Poles,” she says. “At the same time, he is me! It’s also a joke about me being a cartoonist.”

In most of her work, including her 2008 Jamilti collection, Modan acknowledges her heritage. “I have a very strong identity as a Jew and as an Israeli,” Modan says. However, “I’m interested in the drama in between people. I’m just a confabulist, and I have a very safe life. I sit in my room in Tel Aviv, and I have my kids.”

A big reveal in The Property is that the Polish-Jewish Regina and the Polish non-Jew Roman had fathered Ruben, Mica’s father. Was this, on any level, intended to exist as a metaphor regarding Polish Jews and non-Jewish Poles? “I don’t want to look at it only as a metaphor,” Modan says. “I want it to feel like it’s real people.

“The main story is between what happened between Poles and Jews, but it’s a very complicated one. The Jews deny their connection there with the Poles. The Poles have this fantasy. But Jews have lived in Poland for 800 years.

“Part of the anger Jews have for the Poles is because they felt betrayed, because they felt at home. If it was just the Jews were miserable and they hated the Poles, they wouldn’t stay there for 800 years. They felt it was their country. First their home betrayed them, and then their home disappeared. In every other country, survivors could go back home. In Poland, they couldn’t go back home, their home wasn’t there anymore.”

Ultimately, Modan concludes, “I wanted to bring the Jews and the Poles together with these two stories with the couple from the old generation and the new generation. They can have a love story and she doesn’t have to hide it.”

Many historians of comics (this writer included) have attributed her aesthetic to the influence of Hergé, who undoubtedly cast the largest shadow on the European comics industry. But Modan feels such shorthand is “really overstated.”

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#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © 2015 Rutu Modan.

Enter Exit

TM & © 2015 Rutu Modan.

“To me, it’s really surprising when they mention this,” she says. “First of all, I wasn’t raised at all on comics or on ligne claire. I’ve been doing comics for 23 years and it’s a version of my line, it was really very ’80s. It was really rough and grotesque. My stories became more ligne claire, more realistic and less intense. The style of the drawing came. I feel like Hergé was a big influence on me, but I think my style was more influenced by American cartoonists of the ’40s: Louis Williams, Charles Addams, Jules Feiffer, Shel Silverstein.

“My parents lived in America in the ’60s. My mother collected these very eclectic cartoonists. My influences are based on what my mother shared. Hergé influenced me more by how he arranged the page, how he made the storytelling very clear. Because I felt when I started doing Exit Wounds, some comics had too much information. I thought about how do you give information to the reader so that they wouldn’t be tired from it.”

Israel in the cartooning industry. Even if, predictably, when Modan visits America or Europe, her nationality makes her a magnet for political discussions.

“Because I write not just for Israel, but for a foreign audience, I don’t feel it’s easy for me to play this part,” the cartoonist says. “I want peace, and my political views are from the Left. Because I’m critical, it’d be phony for me to just be the good Israeli.”

Bonding with an Israeli over the political situation may be akin to the Caucasian in America who engages in “ghetto talk” when encountering an African-American. “It’d be like he said, ‘You know, I voted for Obama,’” she says. “This is why I don’t want to take this role. In politics, you have to choose an opinion. Reality is much more complex. It’s a paradox, but you can be more realistic if you work in fiction.

When I go to vote, I have to decide who is bad and who is good guy, but when I write, I can support the Poles and the Jews. I’m much more interested in the gray areas; they’re more closer to reality. For me, it’s more sincere.”

Shedding light on the political situation with journalistic comics is not her bag. “I really appreciate what [cartooning journalist] Joe Sacco is doing,” she says. “I think he’s excellent. I appreciate it very much when it’s done sincerely.

When you read one of his graphic novels, we feel that this is his life. But I’m not this person. I like to stay home. I’m more

Above: Rutu’s Exit Wounds, her 2007 graphic novel about a young woman’s search for a former boyfriend gone missing after a Tel Aviv suicide bombing, won the Eisner Award for “Best Graphic Novel” in ’08. Here’s the cover and interior page detail.

Below: Found on Flickr, a peek into Rutu Modan’s creative process, showing the original art and reference photos for an Exit Wounds page, as well asdigital output of the final color work.

As Matt Madden and Jessica Abel mention on their photostream, “Note that it appears she composited the linework in Photoshop with a different background.”

Exit Wounds follows Numi on the trail of her old lover, who disappeared in the aftermath of a suicide bombing, with an unlikely ally in the cab driver Koby, the missing person’s son. Its publication garnered Modan much attention and critical attention. The book won the 2008 Eisner for “Best Graphic Novel,” and AV Club hailed Modan as “one of the most promising creators working in comics today.”

That year, with the success of her breakout book, Modan made her first extensive North American tour, capped by Comic-Con International in San Diego, where she hosted a spotlight panel and attracted long lines at the Drawn & Quarterly booth. She also hit SPX in Maryland and a Philadelphia convention, and she lectured at the New York JCC, Chicago Academy of Art, and the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco.

“It was a wonderful experience,” she recalls of the U.S. trip. “It wasn’t similar to anything I’ve done before. With Exit Wounds, I traveled a lot. I was in different places with different people. It’s isolating to create, so to suddenly have an audience, it felt so good. It’s why we’re work: we want to be heard.”

Modan is one of the few Sabra cartoonists to become famous beyond her country, but she does not feel the pressure to be somewhat of an ambassador or representative of Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

5

interested in family. I wouldn’t be comfortable to pretend I’m someone else as writer.”

Illustrator, Cartoonist, Observer…

6

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & ©2015 Rutu Modan

This page: The Property is Rutu Modan’s 2013 graphic novel and it tells the story of a grandmother and granddaughter traveling to Warsaw, Poland, in a quest to reclaim property lost in the Holocaust.. Published by Drawn & Quarterly. Next page: At top is an evocative New York Times illustration by Rutu.

With her comics, Modan is more comfortable acting as a commentator, not an ambassador.

Modan refers to herself as “an illustrator, I’m an observer.”

While Modan refers herself as an illustrator — and on certain projects, such as her 2012 children’s book, Maya Makes a Mess, she has certainly functioned as one — she adds, “I’m a cartoonist. Where I’m coming from, I’m looking and drawing. Basically, I’m a person who sees and expresses themselves and images and how I perceive, how I see a world.

“This is how I experience the world, through images. This is why comics are so excellent to me. It’s a visual way to tell stories in the role of observer and interpreter.”

Outside of her life in print, professionally Modan has been teaching illustration and comics at the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

“I’ve always taught on a college level [for nearly 20 years],” she says. “For me, teaching is very important. Because illustration and comics are things you’re doing alone.

It’s always interesting to guide young artists to help them find their voices. It’s a good reason to go out of the house and go to the academy and teach and a part of a community: not just with the students but with other instructors.”

At the time of this interview, Modan’s present mindset is on catching up. “I’m on a break now; I’m teaching, I’m reading, I’m meeting friends that I’ve ignored for years now.

I’m going to the movies and being with family.

“But I’m not planning a next project yet. It’s very difficult to go from one project to another.”

When asked if she would ever entertain the idea of leaving her comfort zone to explore another genre — perhaps a science-fiction comic

or a Western —Modan responds, “I’m not so interested in science-fiction. No. It’s always about relationships. Also, I thought to do something about the ’70s. As a child, my parents were doctors, and I lived in a hospital [Tel Hashomer, today Sheba Medical Center, in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan]. I think it would be a nice background for a story, people who lived in the hospital.

“A Western, for sure I won’t do. Crime stories, crime fiction, period pieces, comedy: I could do something like that, but it will always be relationships.”

Modan creates her comics while husband Ofer Bergman is at work and their kids are at school. “I have a small window and no view. Sometimes I’ll write at a café,” she says.

“Cartoonists are like monks. It’s solitary work. With comics, it’s like a movie or play, but you don’t have to be around anyone. You are the director, actor, scriptwriter.”

Just beginning The Property was challenging, she says.

“After the success of Exit Wounds, I was scared that I would feel like a fraud. I can’t write or draw. It was very difficult to start The Property.”

The gestation time between Exit Wounds and The Property was further extended because Modan and her family relocated to England after Bergman landed a university job there.

If there was any pressure for her to produce the follow-up to Exit Wounds, it was internal, not external. “My publisher and agent are angels,” she says. “No pressure at all. The only pressure is me; I’m very difficult.”

Modan characterizes her husband as very supportive, “But artistically, he is not involved at all. We were together for 20 years now and, at the beginning, he was involved, but it wasn’t good for our relationship. He read my books from when I was finished. He was very supportive through my bad moods, and helps with the errands and the kids. For a year, I was working from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. At four o’clock, my son came from school. At 9 p.m., I was on my computer again ’til 4 a.m. and then slept ’til 8 a.m. I was like this for a year.

“For him, this [past] year was more than enough. Now he can [no longer stand to] hear the words ‘new book.’”

So how have Modan’s readers reacted to her comics?

“It’s difficult to say how people react to my work. I don’t know how people see it. If someone says I liked it or I didn’t

TM & ©2015 Rutu Modan

like it, they don’t say why,” she says with a laugh.

She adds that the reviews for Exit Wounds and the perception of that work largely did not differ from Israel to Europe and America. “The problem in Israel is that it is hard to find a critic for comics,” she says. “They don’t read comics, they don’t know comics. The criticism doesn’t have depth. They don’t have the knowledge, they don’t know the history that I’m referencing.”

If Modan feels the pressure of following up what some have deemed her masterpiece, she wasn’t losing sleep over whether Property would become a hit or experience a sophomore slump.

“At this point in my life, I’m really happy with what I’m doing,” she says.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

“If the book is successful, it makes it easier. [Exit Wounds] gave me the opportunity to concentrate only on doing comics. I stopped illustrating for magazines. [If The Property does not connect with readers], it might make it more difficult. But I also think peace is very near and I will be extremely rich.

So I’m an optimist.”

And what if the reviews are bad?

“Does criticism matter to me? It matters to me. If someone doesn’t like my work or how I look, then I’m offended. But I don’t think it would offend me in such a way that I would stop making comics. Before, I had 500 readers. So, at the very least, I’ll have 500 readers, okay?”

7

incoming

Lo, There Shall Come Swampmen Phew! Some readers thought Comic Book Creator #6 was worth the wait, thankfully Inset right: As George E. Warner recalls in his letter o’ comment herein, your humble editor joined up with George Khoury to attend a swamp-related convention in Buffalo in that grim fall of 2001. I remember well that the U.S. had commenced the attack on Afghanistan during the convention, starting a war that continues to this day, 13 years later, the longest in our history. I recall, too, the camaraderie of the former Swamp Thing/Miracleman contributors — Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and Thomas Yeates — who were panelists at the con, with George Khoury moderating.

And, yep, I didn’t forget meeting friend Warner there… I still have the con’s program booklet!

Write to CBC: jonbcooke@ aol.com or P. O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 Below: Looks like CBC #6 got our pal, artist/writer C. Michael Hall itching to draw good ol’ Swamp Thing just for this ish.

Thanks very muchly, Mike!

And so, the years went by. The drooling fiends — err, fans of monsterdom waited. They whiled away the time haunting comic shops, bookstores, conventions. They skulked in that twilight region between the back issue bins and the new release shelves, emerging occasionally from the shadows to ask weary retailers (who weren’t certain just where these weirdos kept coming from), “Has it come out yet? Has it, at long last, arrived to give my life meaning? Has Swampmen finally become a glorious, muck-encrusted reality? ” Sadly, for far too long, the answer was a pointed, “No… now go home! You’re creeping out the customers.”

Until, lo, one magical day, the answer was: “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes! For Pete’s sake, buy it and get out!” And on that day, the fiends— sorry, fans of monsterdom rejoiced. (As did retailers.)

All kidding aside, the Swampmen issue of CBC is an utter delight. Sure, it took a while to get to us, but it was well worth the wait! This book is precisely the kind of product that makes TwoMorrows such a special publisher in today’s comics/media landscape: after all, who else would publish a book-length commemoration and examination of such a specific sub-genre of horror comics?

Editors Jon B. Cooke and George Khoury — noble souls, the both of ’em — are to be applauded for the love and craftsmanship they put into Swampmen.

I have a special fondness for the shambling marsh-hulks (Is that name trademarked yet? Dibs!) of comicdom’s swamps. While I read the usual complement of super-hero comics available to kids in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the books I liked best traded in horror, fantasy, science-fiction. Upon its 1982 revival, Swamp Thing became my favorite title; the woefully under-appreciated Pasko/Yeates run blended all my favorite things into a heady, genre-bending brew. My appreciation for Swamp Thing led me to eventually discover and embrace all the monstrous subjects of Swampmen. These characters continue to resonate with me today, and reading Swampmen stirred my emotions more than I could have expected. I’m just writing to tell you that the aforementioned love and craftsmanship behind Swampmen shines on every page, and it connected with this fan in a big way. So thank you, Jon, George, and TwoMorrows, for mak-

ing this book a reality!

P.S.: Aw, lookit…your book made me feel like drawing!

[Mike, who contributes a regular cartoon and reviews comics and graphic novels for my other magazine, ACE, included a Swamp Thing drawing that appears on the lower left of this page, and many thanks to you, CMH, for that and your able work for CBC and ACE! — Ye Ed.]

George E. Warner Flashback to Buffalo, New York, in October of 2001… Met up with you and George Khoury for Emil J. Novak’s Buffalo Con Miracleman Reunion and had just the greatest time hanging out with you, George Khoury, Tom Yeates, Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and Steranko… You shoved a flyer in my hand and said “If you love swamp monsters (which you obviously do!) you are going to love this book George Khoury and I are putting together, Swampmen!…

It will be out in Summer of 2002”… Well, Summer of 2002 came and went and no Swampmen… Flash forward to October 2003… Receive my copy of Comic Book Artist v2 #5, and what do I see on the back cover?… An advert for Swampmen coming mid-2005!… 2006 and still no Swampmen, so I contact George Khoury and he tells me that the book is pretty much dead… I was crushed needless to say… But, lo and behold eight years later and this awesome tome of muckiness is finally in my grubby little hands!

The book itself is a thing of beauty! The design work, paper stock, and layouts are exactly what I would expect from you. It became obvious as I perused the book that quite a bit of care, love, and enthusiasm was placed on each and every page. The interviews and stand-alone feature articles were all excellent and informative, giving the reader a thorough history and backstory of the subject matter...

The accompanying illustrations and photos complemented the text and popped right off the page! And the behind-thescenes sidebars were most welcome, as well!

My only complaint (and it really is more of a wish) is that the rest of the material you gathered for this could have seen print. But, hey, we can always hope for a Volume Two! Everyone who submitted material for this publication should be proud of the work they turned in (and particular personal salute to my The Human Gargoyles co-scribe, Richard J. Arndt, for his excellent overview of Skywald’s The Heap)! I will say that your readers would be well served to purchase the print and digital combo as there is a lot more color in the PDF versus the print edition… So, in closing, was a wait of eleven+ years worth it? You betcha!

[And thank you, GEW! George is Mr. Horror-Mood, frankly, and on a mission to resurrect the Skywald horror material to new audiences. And, aww gee, George, I wish Swampman sales could’ve warranted a Volume Two but, well… lo, there shall be an ending… On another note, I have to confess that yours truly solicited these letters of comment from my pals #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Illustration © 2015 C. Michael Hall. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Steranko art ©2015 James Steranko.

8

C. Michael Hall

above because CBC hasn’t received much comment from readers, not a single missive from those outside participants and contributors. Oh, well. Kind readers, please consider telling us what you like, don’t like, or want to see, okay? It’s lonely sometimes.... — Y.E.]

Ian Millsted

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Apologies if this is something you’ve already had feedback on this, but I’ve been catching up on CBC and came across the comments by Vivek Tiwary in the piece on The Fifth Beatle [CBC #3] about Lew Grade and the absence of Jewish people working in the entertainment industry in the United Kingdom in the ’60s.

Lew Grade was actually Jewish, having migrated from Ukraine and gone to a school in London that was mostly Yiddish. He was very far from being an old Catholic knight.

It should be noted that Grade was an innovative producer without whom series such as The Avengers, The Muppet Show, and The Prisoner would not have been made.

There were many other successful Jewish people working in the entertainments industry in the U.K. in the ’60s as well.

CORRECTIONS: While he gave ample attaboys to George Khoury and myself for the Swampmen issue, Stephen R. Bissette noted that there were ample typos in his interview within that issue. Hopefully SRB will provide a list of corrections — and we’ll certainly publish it upon receipt — so, in the meantime, please accept my apologies, Steve, and that, of course, I take full responsibility for those errors.

Unfortunately, yours truly neglected to include the credit on the lovely coloring job Tom Ziuko contributed to the great Nestor Redondo Man-Thing/Swamp Thing pin-up in CBC #6, which we’ve reproduced at right. (The actual credit does appear, only on a totally irrelevant page, the unfortunate result of last-minute shuffling of pages before press time.)

Plus, to add insult to injury, we didn’t use the proper caption on Tom’s “A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words” feature in the same issue, a great illustration that should have been captioned: “A pensive Alec Holland contemplates the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral conundrum in this commission piece by Thomas Yeates.” My apologies, Mr. Ziuko. See you in sixty-plus, people. — Y.E.]

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers still available!

“Swampmen… doesn’t get too deeply into why swamp monsters caught on the way they did… but it doesn’t skimp on anything else about these unique creatures. This text-thick, completely illustrated edition features a detailed and critical timeline of muck monsters in the comics, full-color pin-ups, the full text of Sturgeon’s ‘It,’ biographies of the half-dozen or so major muckers, and a series of very in-depth interviews with monster makers such as Len Wein, Alan Moore, and Bernie Wrightson (Swamp Thing), Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik (Man-Thing). Rather than being mere page-filler, these interviews are consistently fascinating, whether Wein offers his brief but thought-provoking take on the appeal of swamp monsters, Wrightson gets into his Monster Kid childhood, or Moore waxes philosophical about his Swamp Thing contributions and handles some no-punches-pulled questions graciously… While Swampmen doesn’t hesitate to take its bizarre topic seriously, there is almost always a sense of fun purveying this colorful, informative, artful, and intelligent volume.” — Psychobabble “This book is terrific… As someone who was inside, Swampmen is a gem that really brought the sub-genre, the creators, and the comics to life, including their business history.” — Stephen R. Bissette Comic Book Creator #6 Presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers, edited by Jon B. Cooke & George Khoury, 192 pages (64 color, 128 b+w), $21.95. Cover by Frank Cho. Full-color digital edition available. Visit www.twomorrows.com for ordering information.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

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THE ORIGINAL GOES DIGITAL!

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all print issues HALF-PRICE!

The forerunner to COMIC BOOK CREATOR, CBA is the 2000-2004 Eisner Award winner for BEST COMICS-RELATED MAG! Edited by CBC’s JON B. COOKE, it features in-depth articles, interviews, and unseen art, celebrating the lives and careers of the great comics artists from the 1970s to today. ALL BACK ISSUES NOW AVAILABLE AS DIGITAL EDITIONS FOR $3.95 FROM www.twomorrows.com!

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com

Order online at www.twomorrows.com COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION, VOLUME 3 Reprinting the Eisner Award-winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST #7-8 (spotlighting 1970s Marvel and 1980s indies), plus over 30 NEW PAGES of features and art! New PAUL GULACY portfolio, MR. MONSTER scrapbook, the story behind MARVEL VALUE STAMPS, and more! New MICHAEL T. GILBERT cover!

(224-page trade paperback) $24.95 • ISBN: 9781893905429

#3: ADAMS AT MARVEL #4: WARREN PUBLISHING

#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

#2: MARVEL 1970-77

Era of “Artist as Editor” at National: New NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews, art, and articles with JOE KUBERT, JACK KIRBY, CARMINE INFANTINO, DICK GIORDANO, JOE ORLANDO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ALEX TOTH, JULIE SCHWARTZ, and many more!

Plus ADAMS thumbnails for a forgotten Batman story, unseen NICK CARDY pages from a controversial Teen Titans story, unpublished TOTH covers, and more!

STAN LEE AND ROY THOMAS discussion about Marvel in the 1970s, ROY THOMAS interview, BILL EVERETT’s daughter WENDY and MIKE FRIEDRICH on Everett, interviews with GIL KANE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, MIKE PLOOG, STERANKO’s Unknown Marvels, the real origin of the New X-Men, Everett tribute cover by GIL KANE, and more!

(80-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(76-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#6: MORE MARVEL ’70s #7: ’70s MARVELMANIA

NEAL ADAMS interview about his work at Marvel Comics in the 1960s from AVENGERS to X-MEN, unpublished Adams covers, thumbnail layouts for classic stories, published pages BEFORE they were inked, and unused pages from his NEVER-COMPLETED X-MEN GRAPHIC NOVEL! Plus TOM PALMER on the art of inking Neal Adams, ADAMS’ MARVEL WORK CHECKLIST, & ADAMS wraparound cover!

Definitive JIM WARREN interview about publishing EERIE, CREEPY, VAMPIRELLA, and other fan favorites, in-depth interview with BERNIE WRIGHTSON with unpublished Warren art, plus unseen art, features and interviews with FRANK FRAZETTA, RICHARD CORBEN, AL WILLIAMSON, JACK DAVIS, ARCHIE GOODWIN, HARVEY KURTZMAN, ALEX NINO, and more!

BERNIE WRIGHTSON cover!

More on DC COMICS 1967-74, with art by and interviews with NICK CARDY, JOE SIMON, NEAL ADAMS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, MIKE KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, MARV WOLFMAN, IRWIN DONENFELD, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GIL KANE, DENNY O’NEIL, HOWARD POST, ALEX TOTH on FRANK ROBBINS, DC Writer’s Purge of 1968 by MIKE BARR, JOHN BROOME’s final interview, and more! CARDY cover!

Unpublished and rarely-seen art by, features on, and interviews with 1970s Bullpenners PAUL GULACY, FRANK BRUNNER, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, MARIE and JOHN SEVERIN, JOHN ROMITA SR., DAVE COCKRUM, DON MCGREGOR, DOUG MOENCH, and others! Plus never-beforeseen pencil pages to an unpublished Master of Kung-Fu graphic novel by PAUL GULACY! Cover by FRANK BRUNNER!

Featuring ’70s Marvel greats PAUL GULACY, JOHN BYRNE, RICH BUCKLER, DOUG MOENCH, DAN ADKINS, JIM MOONEY, STEVE GERBER, FRANK SPRINGER, and DENIS KITCHEN! Plus: a rarely-seen Stan Lee P.R. chat promoting the ’60s Marvel cartoon shows, the real trials and tribulations of Comics Distribution, the true story behind the ’70s Kung Fu Craze, and a new cover by PAUL GULACY!

(60-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(116-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(100-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(128-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#10: WALTER SIMONSON

#11: ALEX TOTH AND SHELLY MAYER

#8: ’80s INDEPENDENTS

#9: CHARLTON PART 1

#12: CHARLTON PART 2

Major independent creators and their fabulous books from the early days of the Direct Sales Market! Featured interviews include STEVE RUDE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DAVE STEVENS, JAIME HERNANDEZ, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, DON SIMPSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, MIKE BARON, MIKE GRELL, and more! Plus plenty of rare and unpublished art, and a new STEVE RUDE cover!

Interviews with Charlton alumni JOE GILL, DICK GIORDANO, STEVE SKEATES, DENNIS O’NEIL, ROY THOMAS, PETE MORISI, JIM APARO, PAT BOYETTE, FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, SAM GLANZMAN, plus ALAN MOORE on the Charlton/ Watchmen Connection, DC’s planned ALLCHARLTON WEEKLY, and more! DICK GIORDANO cover!

Career-spanning SIMONSON INTERVIEW, covering his work from “Manhunter” to Thor to Orion, JOHN WORKMAN interview, TRINA ROBBINS interview, also Trina, MARIE SEVERIN and RAMONA FRADON talk shop about their days in the comics business, MARIE SEVERIN interview, plus other great women cartoonists. New SIMONSON cover!

Interviews with ALEX TOTH, Toth tributes

by KUBERT, SIMONSON, JIM LEE, BOLLAND, GIBBONS and others, TOTH on continuity art, TOTH checklist, plus SHELDON MAYER SECTION with a look at SCRIBBLY, interviews with Mayer’s kids (real-life inspiration for SUGAR & SPIKE), and more! Covers by TOTH and MAYER!

CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983!

Interviews with Charlton alumni GEORGE WILDMAN, NICOLA CUTI, JOE STATON, JOHN BYRNE, TOM SUTTON, MIKE ZECK, JACK KELLER, PETE MORISI, WARREN SATTLER, BOB LAYTON, ROGER STERN, and others, ALEX TOTH, a NEW E-MAN STRIP by CUTI AND STATON, and the art of DON NEWTON! STATON cover!

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#13: MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

1970s Marvel Horror focus, from Son of Satan to Ghost Rider! Interviews with ROY THOMAS, MARV WOLFMAN, GENE COLAN, TOM PALMER, HERB TRIMPE, GARY FRIEDRICH, DON PERLIN, TONY ISABELLA, and PABLOS MARCOS, plus a Portfolio Section featuring RUSS HEATH, MIKE PLOOG, DON PERLIN, PABLO MARCOS, FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE, and more! New GENE COLAN cover!

Interviews with Tower and THUNDER AGENTS alumni WALLACE WOOD, LOU MOUGIN, SAMM SCHWARTZ, DAN ADKINS, LEN BROWN, BILL PEARSON, LARRY IVIE, GEORGE TUSKA, STEVE SKEATES, and RUSS JONES, TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST, history of TIPPY TEEN, 1980s THUNDER AGENTS REVIVAL, and more! WOOD cover!

Interviews with ’80s independent creators DAVE STEVENS, JAIME, MARIO, AND GILBERT HERNANDEZ, MATT WAGNER, DEAN MOTTER, PAUL RIVOCHE, and SANDY PLUNKETT, plus lots of rare and unseen art from The Rocketeer, Love & Rockets, Mr. X, Grendel, other ’80s strips, and more! New cover by STEVENS and the HERNANDEZ BROS.!

’70s ATLAS COMICS HISTORY! Interviews with JEFF ROVIN, ROY THOMAS, ERNIE COLÓN, STEVE MITCHELL, LARRY HAMA, HOWARD CHAYKIN, SAL AMENDOLA, JIM CRAIG, RIC MEYERS, and ALAN KUPPERBERG, Atlas Checklist, HEATH, WRIGHTSON, SIMONSON, MILGROM, AUSTIN, WEISS, and STATON discuss their Atlas work, and more! COLÓN cover!

Discussion with ARTHUR ADAMS about his career (with an extensive CHECKLIST, and gobs of rare art), plus GRAY MORROW tributes from friends and acquaintances and a MORROW interview, Red Circle Comics Checklist, interviews with & remembrances of GEORGE ROUSSOS & GEORGE EVANS, Gallery of Morrow, Evans, and Roussos art, EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER interview, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(128-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#18: 1970s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

#19: HARVEY COMICS

#20: ROMITAs & KUBERTs #21: ADAM HUGHES, ALEX #22: GOLD KEY COMICS & examinations: RUSS MANNING ROSS, & JOHN BUSCEMA Interviews & Magnus Robot Fighter, WALLY WOOD &

Roundtable with JIM STARLIN, ALAN WEISS and AL MILGROM, interviews with STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE LEIALOHA, and FRANK BRUNNER, art from the lost WARLOCK #16, plus a FLO STEINBERG CELEBRATION, with a Flo interview, tributes by HERB TRIMPE, LINDA FITE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, and others! STARLIN/ MILGROM/WEISS cover!

History of Harvey Comics, from Hot Stuf’, Casper, and Richie Rich, to Joe Simon’s “Harvey Thriller” line! Interviews with, art by, and tributes to JACK KIRBY, STERANKO, WILL EISNER, AL WILLIAMSON, GIL KANE, WALLY WOOD, REED CRANDALL, JOE SIMON, WARREN KREMER, ERNIE COLÓN, SID JACOBSON, FRED RHOADES, and more! New wraparound MITCH O’CONNELL cover!

Joint interview between Marvel veteran and superb Spider-Man artist JOHN ROMITA, SR. and fan favorite Thor/Hulk renderer JOHN ROMITA, JR.! On the flipside, JOE, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT share their histories and influences in a special roundtable conversation! Plus unpublished and rarely seen artwork, and a visit by the ladies VIRGINIA and MURIEL! Flip-covers by the KUBERTs and the ROMITAs!

ADAM HUGHES ART ISSUE, with a comprehensive interview, unpublished art, & CHECKLIST! Also, a “Day in the Life” of ALEX ROSS (with plenty of Ross art)! Plus a tribute to the life and career of one of Marvel’s greatest artists, JOHN BUSCEMA, with testimonials from his friends and peers, art section, and biographical essay.

HUGHES and TOM PALMER flip-covers!

Total War M.A.R.S. Patrol, Tarzan by JESSE MARSH, JESSE SANTOS and DON GLUT’S Dagar and Dr. Spektor, Turok, Son of Stone’s ALBERTO GIOLITTI and PAUL S. NEWMAN, plus Doctor Solar, Boris Karloff, The Twilight Zone, and more, including MARK EVANIER on cartoon comics, and a definitive company history! New BRUCE TIMM cover!

(104-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(104-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(104-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(104-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#23: MIKE MIGNOLA

#24: NATIONAL LAMPOON COMICS

#25: ALAN MOORE AND KEVIN NOWLAN

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #1

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #2

Exhaustive MIGNOLA interview, huge art gallery (with never-seen art), and comprehensive checklist! On the flip-side, a careerspanning JILL THOMPSON interview, plus tons of art, and studies of Jill by ALEX ROSS, STEVE RUDE, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and more! Also, interview with JOSÉ DELBO, and a talk with author HARLAN ELLISON on his various forays into comics!

New MIGNOLA HELLBOY cover!

GAHAN WILSON and NatLamp art director MICHAEL GROSS speak, interviews with and art by NEAL ADAMS, FRANK SPRINGER, SEAN KELLY, SHARY FLENNEKIN, ED SUBITSKY, M.K. BROWN, B.K. TAYLOR, BOBBY LONDON, MICHEL CHOQUETTE, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and more! Features new covers by GAHAN WILSON and MARK BODÉ!

Focus on AMERICA’S BEST COMICS! ALAN MOORE interview on everything from SWAMP THING to WATCHMEN to ABC and beyond! Interviews with KEVIN O’NEILL, CHRIS SPROUSE, JIM BAIKIE, HILARY BARTA, SCOTT DUNBIER, TODD KLEIN, JOSE VILLARRUBIA, and more! Flip-side spotlight on the amazing KEVIN NOWLAN! Covers by J.H. WILLIAMS III & NOWLAN!

(106-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

Previously available only to CBA subscribers!

Spotlights great DC Comics of the ’70s: Interviews with MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN on JACK KIRBY’s Fourth World, ALEX TOTH on his mystery work, NEAL ADAMS on Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, RUSS HEATH on Sgt. Rock, BRUCE JONES discussing BERNIE WRIGHTSON (plus a WRIGHTSON portfolio), and a BRUCE TIMM interview, art gallery, and cover!

Compiles the new “extras” from CBA COLLECTION VOL. 1-3: unpublished JACK KIRBY story, unpublished BERNIE WRIGHTSON art, unused JEFF JONES story, ALAN WEISS interview, examination of STEVE ENGLEHART and MARSHALL ROGERS’ 1970s Batman work, a look at DC’s rare Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, PAUL GULACY art gallery, Marvel Value Stamp history, Mr. Monster’s scrapbook, and more!

(76-page Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page Digital Edition) $3.95

graphic novel pioneer

The Art of Vernon Grant Discovering the “lost” graphic novelist, author of Point-Man Palmer and Love Rangers

by BETSY GRANT “Just a man who draws funny pictures? No, not quite. His ability to produce these pictures comes from knowledge of Human traits, undertakings, strengths, weaknesses, shortcomings and ambitions. He is essentially a philosopher, psychologist, storyteller, historian, chronologer, sentimentalist and realist rolled into one.

He quickly sees many sides of issues that escape the notice of the casual observer.

A long memory, a quick eye, plus an ear for the unusual are all earmarks of a good cartoonist. Often his graphic accounts of a happenstance offer the only comprehensive comment of a transpiring … for a common streak in the cartoonist is the role of the ‘self-appointed’ critic.” — Vernon Grant [date unknown]

Above: Betsy and Vernon Grant.

Visit Betsy at bvgrantstudio.com to learn more about her efforts to present her late husband Vernon’s work to new readers.

Inset right: Capt. Vernon Grant during his U.S. Army stint in Vietnam in the 1960s.

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#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

©2015 Betsy Grant.

This article is ©2015 Betsy Grant & bvgrantstudio.

I met Vernon E. Grant, creator of two Point-Man Palmer graphic novels, Stand-By One, A Monster is Loose in Tokyo, and The Love Rangers series, at Sophia University in Tokyo, in 1972, when he was 37 and I was 22.

My journey to Tokyo had started in 1969 with a Judo class at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. Our Japanese instructor and his fellow countrymen in the class, over beer and pizza after the lessons, got me interested in their country. In 1971, I decided to go to Sophia University for my junior year to experience Japan and to study.

Vernon was a graduate student, and I an undergraduate who had only been in Japan for six months at that time. He noticed me first. Always the gentleman, he asked a woman we both knew to introduce us. I thought he was nice, but did not speak to him again for some time. He told me later that he was not only attracted to how I looked but also the way I strode through the lobby of the school with great purpose and confidence. He observed that I took twice weekly karate classes and figured out where to sit in the courtyard so I would have to pass by him on my way to my next class. The strategy worked. I stopped to talk with him and soon learned how much we had in common, even though I came from a white Midwestern (Wisconsin) family and him from a black New England (Massachusetts) family. Vernon had been in Japan for seven years by that time.

He had also lived abroad for most of his ten years in the Army (1958-1968), so was much more comfortable living outside of America. He became my best friend as well as a family to me.

I am very grateful that he taught me to become a runner, too, which brought both of us countless hours of enjoyment. It was the beginning of 34 very happy years together that started in Tokyo and ended in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I write his story in gratitude

for our life together, and to show you the art and the sense of humor of a remarkable man.

Vernon was both an artist and a soldier in his lifetime of 71 years. It may seem to be that those professions would be antithetical to each other, but not in Vernon’s life. He loved being both. Vernon Ethelbert Grant was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Feb. 14, 1935, Valentine’s Day, to Naomi and Joseph Grant, Sr. Naomi and Joseph had met each other in Cambridge after moving there from their childhood home of Barbados. Naomi worked as a cook. Joseph cut sugar cane in Cuba on his way to America and, in Cambridge, was a bricklayer, worked in a bread company, and then sold real estate in later years. Vernon had a half-brother, William, and three other brothers, Joseph Jr., Eugene, and Phillip. Vernon was the second youngest son. With William having been in the Army, and Joseph Jr. in the Air Force, Vernon was inspired to follow in their footsteps. Thus he joined the armed forces at age 23.

Vernon started drawing when he was three, drawing birthday cards and some early science fiction. He enrolled in one year of classes at a Boston school called Vesper George School of Art. His father and a cousin, Pauline Agard, were both artistic, and urged him to draw. He enjoyed reading science fiction and comic books, with his childhood inspiration coming from Disney comics, Carl Barks (Donald Duck), Walter Lantz (Andy Panda), Daredevil in Boy Comics, Little Lulu, and Archie. The comic strip Buck Rogers was his major science fiction influence of this period. Upon reaching adulthood, he learned from studying Vaughn Bodé, Robert Crumb, Hergé, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and other underground comix. His eight years in Japan were a cartoonist’s dream. The Japanese manga, particularly the Lone Wolf and Cub series, done by Goseki Kojima and Kazuo Koike, added new dimensions to his artistic style.

Vernon was an athlete all of his life. He was a Boy Scout, played baseball and basketball, got into weight lifting at the end of high school, and, when he turned 22, began running to prepare for Army life. The young man volunteered for the U.S. Army, and served from 1958 to ’68. He became an Infantry and Communications officer and was promoted to captain. He served in the United States, France, Germany, Japan, and Vietnam in his final year, 1967. Since Vernon passed, I have learned it was rare to promote a high school graduate without a college degree to become an officer. Vernon found time to produce cartoons that today can be found in his Point-Man Palmer books, a story sent to his commanding general arguing for more radios, cartoons for his Classbook in 1962, and strips produced for the Pacific Stars and Stripes.

Vernon’s cartooning life was basically divided into two periods, up to 1972 and after 1973. Commencing his college studies at Sophia University in 1968, he earned his B.A. in Asian Studies and he worked toward a master’s degree. In 1969 and ’70, he self-published two Point-Man Palmer graphic novels, and the cartoon book Stand-By One! When I met him in ’72, he had just published

©2015 Betsy Grant.

A Monster is Loose in Tokyo! We returned to his hometown of Cambridge in ’73 and were married five years later. Vernon decided to return to science fiction, creating and self-publishing seven books of The Love Rangers.

Vernon wrote in the second Love Rangers volume, “Disharmony, strife, discord, upheaval, violence, and Death are woven into the fabric of Nature as ways of effecting change, renewal and selection of the most fit.

Among the forms of sentient beings the humans stand apart. Love, hope, compassion and joy are their added components to this lexicon of change. Enter the Love Rangers, a warm clutch of small sized space soldiers assigned to the great mothership Home. Their mission and that of their great space ship is to effect peaceful changes in critical situations through the use of LOVE.” Vernon sold The Love Rangers through fanzines, and at the Harvard Square comic book shop The Million Year Picnic, where he met the late Bhob Stewart, comics historian and onetime Wallace Wood assistant, and they developed a fast friendship. Vernon also participated in the New England Science Fiction Convention that is now called Boskone.

In the art show, he won “First Place, Amateur Division” in 1985 and 1986. In the ’80s and ’90s, he created single-panel cartoons about computers and life in Harvard Square that were sold as postcards.

We led a very happy life together in the Central Square area of Cambridge. Vernon also spent hours drawing cartoons for the grandchildren of our landlady, Dorothy Williams, and he became like a grandfather to them. In our free time we delighted in travel, going to Wisconsin, taking three trips on the Mississippi aboard the Delta Queen Steamboat, and vacationing in the Caribbean. Our favorite destination was Barbados.

Every day we thoroughly enjoyed running together, from our daily runs to hundreds of road races that included running 19 Boston Marathons together. Running brought Vernon inspiration for his art.

On July 7, 2006, we started out together, running over a Charles Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

River bridge into Boston. I set out on a long run that day, and he parted with me there with plans to run back into Cambridge. Soon after I left, he had a heart attack. He was taken to a Boston hospital, and lapsed into a coma from which he never emerged. He passed away peacefully on July 23. After 49 years of running, he died doing what he loved.

Vernon’s creations of the stories of Point-Man Palmer, Stand-by One, other cartoons in the military field, A Monster is Loose in Tokyo, as well as his science fiction world of The Love Rangers remain his legacy. He was often credited with being one of the first artists to introduce concepts of manga into English language cartoons. As Vernon told the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper back in 1972, “Translating life into humor is the biggest thing with me.” Adventures of Point-Man Palmer in Vietnam shows he was true to his word.

Vernon had put in his will that I should contact Bhob Stewart when he died. I located his friend through TwoMorrows Publishing. We began communicating in February of 2007, meeting once in Cambridge, and communicating by email and phone numerous times a week. He became a great friend and mentor to me as he had to Vernon. Vernon said in an interview with Jason Thompson for Pulp Magazine (2001): “I’ve gotten more help from Stewart than anybody in the industry. He’s given me a lot of very pointed and sage advice on things, and I always listen to what he has to say because the guy is really right on the beam.”

Bhob, in turn, said about Vernon and The Love Rangers, “He continues to turn out his science-fictional tales of ‘cosmic

Above: Lovely work by Vernon Grant done for his Love Rangers #1 graphic novel, circa 1970s.

Inset left: Point-Man Palmer, Vernon’s comedic serviceman whose misadventures in the U.S. Army are chronicled in the cartoonist’s recently-published collection, Adventures of Point-Man Palmer. The cover is below.

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philosophy’ that sometimes reads as if Carl Barks were living in Tokyo.” (As quoted in The Comics Journal #94, Oct. 1984.)

Bhob lectured me on ownership of Vernon’s work, how to market it, and about his own and other people’s lives as artists and writers. He also could be highly entertaining.

I learned much about movies and the music world from him. One day he broke into speaking in dialect lines from a play, in which he played a cab driver, driving people to and from a local mental institution.

However, his most pointed comment was a few months before he passed on Feb. 24, 2014. He said “I have been Betsy Grant talking to many friends; those who are publishing books and those who are talking about publishing.” I was one of the latter. It hit home. I know his constant encouragement and knowledge inspired me in the creation of this book.

Publishing Adventures of Point-Man Palmer in Vietnam was a process spanning eight years. The first year, I listed every piece of work Vernon ever created and transferred them to myself through the U.S. Copyright office.

Bhob insisted I write Vernon’s biography back in 2007. I then began looking

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Editor’s Postscript: It was with the passing of our mutual friend Bhob Stewart that led to Betsy Grant and I becoming friends, and it’s fitting that the spirit of Bhob, who was a pal, mentor, and fan of my work (as I was an avid aficionado of his notable achievements), helped guide the above article about an important and neglected graphic novelist to see print. I’ll miss your consult, your insight, and above all your fascinating conversation, Bhob.

©2015 Betsy Grant.

Two pages from Point-Man Palmer.

for publishers for The Love Rangers books, querying them by mail and at Boskone in ’08 and ’09. I also queried some agents for my proposed book.

All of this was to no avail, although I was learning about publishing in the process.

Finally, late in 2013, I decided to self-publish Vernon’s work, and to first put into print his military cartooning. For the first half of 2014, I endeavored to publish a book through Create Space with Amazon. I eventually decided my computer expertise was not good enough to do Vernon’s drawings justice.

I had heard good things about Little Creek Press from two fellow authors. I talked on the phone to Kristin Mitchell, the owner of Little Creek Press. We then met. She really liked the cartoons and the story of Vernon and his life, and agreed to publish the book. I was ecstatic that I finally would be bringing Vernon’s work back to the world. I am further delighted that this book is making people happier. Amazon reviewer Harlan said it very well: “I enjoyed the humor illustrated in this book even though I did not serve during the Vietnam War. The book did allow me, in a fun way, to recall a variety of my personal Army experiences. It was always a treat having someone in your company that could find humor in any situation no matter how dire things might be. It looks like Vernon was that type of guy. It would have been a joy to have this very clever, perceptive and insightful soldier in our midst, enjoying his satire and interesting analysis of military life. Vernon taps into the ultimate reliever of stress, laughter.”

Adventures of Point-Man Palmer in Vietnam is available at Amazon and www.bvgrantstudio.com. [See ad on the next page.]

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Point-Man Palmer Returns!

For a fun read ORDER YOUR COPY OF

ADVENTURES OF POINT-MAN PALMER IN VIETNAM (156 page PAPERBACK) $15.95 ISBN 978-0-989974-6-0

www.amazon.com www.bvgrantstudio.com

Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist ©2015 Sequential Artisit, LLC. The distinctive Will Eisner signature is a trademark of Will Eisner Studios, Inc.

The Storyteller’s Story Official Selection in over 25 film festivals worldwide “The best comics bio I’ve ever seen… It’s wonderful, well done.”

Brian Michael Bendis “An essential doc for comics fans, ‘Portrait’ will also enlighten the curious.”

John DeFore, Austin American-Statesman “Entertaining and insightful. A great film about a visionary artist!”

Jeffrey Katzenberg Arguably the most influential person in American comics, Will Eisner, as artist, entrepreneur, innovator, and visual storyteller, enjoyed a career that encompassed comic books from their early beginnings in the 1930s to their development as graphic novels in the 1990s. During his sixty-year-plus career, Eisner introduced the now-traditional mode of comic book production; championed mature, sophisticated storytelling; was an early advocate for using the medium as a tool for education; pioneered the now-popular graphic novel, and served as inspiration for generations of artists. Without a doubt, Will Eisner was the godfather of the American comic book.

The award-winning full-length feature film documentary includes interviews with Eisner and many of the foremost creative talents in the U.S., including Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Stan Lee, Gil Kane, and others.

Available Now on DVD & Blu-ray • www.twomorrows.com

an icon’s final jaunt

The Man’s Last Pond Hop Marvel maestro Stan Lee makes his final European comic convention appearance

by Robert Menzies Below: Stan Lee having a ball at the London Film and Comic Con last July, his professed final European con. Photo by Chris Gaskin. Next page bottom: Stan Lee in 1965, from the inside front cover of Fantasy Masterpieces #1 [Feb. ’66].

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Photograph ©2015 Chris Gaskin.

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Last summer, after decades of globe-trotting as Marvel’s greatest promoter, the man they call The Man retired his passport. Sunday, July 13, 2014, was the final day of the last European convention that Stan Lee will ever attend and Comic Book Creator was there to record the historic day.

The London Film and Comic Con 2014 (LFCC), flagship event for serial con organizers Showmasters, was the scene for Stan’s last hurrah.

The convention location was the imposing Earls Court Convention Centre and alongside Stan would appear over 100 film and media guests, 60 writers, and 100 comic creators, as well as a vast marketplace of sellers. It was going to be a summary and a celebration of popular culture in 2014, headlined by perhaps the greatest pop culture figure alive.

Predictably, ticket demand was extraordinarily high, as was media interest, although it soon became apparent that no one had anticipated just how high. One film crew had flown in from football-obsessed Brazil, ignoring the World Cup Final that had its showpiece final in Rio de Janeiro on Stan’s final day. The crowds outside snaked around the halls and beyond. There were enough cosplayers to assemble every incarnation of the Avengers and enough agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to crew a helicarrier, with a re-enactment of Secret Wars thrown in to pass the time while waiting in line.

Stan’s itinerary included a press conference on the Friday, photo shoots with fans on all three days, signing sessions (with fans on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and private sessions with signature authenticators CGC on Thursday and Sunday), a Saturday Meet and Greet and a Sunday panel. It was a merciless — and frankly unrealistic — schedule and, as his assistant Mike said,

would have taxed a man a quarter of Stan’s 91 years.

Stan had flown into the U.K. on the Thursday morning, July 10, so that before the con started he could film his cameo for Avengers: Age of Ultron, due to be released this month. (As an aside, during the Saturday “Meet and Greet,” Stan’s unreliable memory struck again. He claimed to have no idea who Ultron was, and mistakenly stated that the character came after he had ended his day-to-day involvement at Marvel’s New York offices. Ultron, of course, made his first named appearance in The Avengers #55 [Aug. 1968], in a tale that Stan edited and written by Roy Thomas.)

Interestingly, Joan Lee, Stan’s wife, was born in Newcastle, in the north of England, and still has relatives in the Whitley Bay area. If this was to be Stan’s last trip, it would probably be hers as well. Sadly, Joan’s health was not good enough for her to travel.

Sunday, the last day of Stan’s last European convention, started for Stan with a signing session. Fans had spent months agonizing over what to have signed; from listening to them, it was hard to escape the conclusion that many had given less thought to naming their children.

Drained by the hectic two days he’d just had, Stan arrived later than planned. Regardless, it always appears as if Stan has been covered with protective plastic sheeting until revealed to the public as he was immaculately groomed, with freshly pressed white shirt and khaki colored smart trousers. It was only later that I noticed he was wearing odd socks: one white, one cream-colored.

If you saw Stan over the weekend, you also saw Max Anderson, as the Pow! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment event coordinator is never far from Stan’s side. One surprising fact connecting the men, and one that reveals they are close friends as well as business partners, is that Stan taught Max to drive. Stan is known to drive with — how can I phrase this delicately? — undue haste and seems a rather poor, even reckless, choice of instructor. Privately on Sunday night he summed up one of his core driving principles in this way: “If somebody overtakes me, I’ve failed!”

Max’s uniform on Sunday was a salmon-colored Marvel print T-shirt, jeans and loud lime green trainers that play against his understated personality. Although quite laconic, he’s easy-going, friendly and helpful. Around Stan he’s a restless presence, pacing back and forth, shifting his weight from foot to foot, tapping his fingers on the wall behind him and directing Stan’s entourage. Throughout the day, and always unprompted, he’d approach Stan with a cup of water or a Smoothie.

At one point during the Sunday signing, Stan reached down for something on the floor, causing his chair to tilt back slightly. With a speed reminiscent of Spider-Man whisking a pedestrian out of the way of a speeding bus, Max dived forward. Stan, however, righted the chair himself and continued signing autographs, oblivious to what had happened behind him.

In an effort to satisfy the massive demand, Stan only signs autographs and will not add testimonials – not even a “To Robert”, darn it. He will sign anything in front of him, and the variety of objects is astonishing: comicbooks, prints, posters, toys, bobbleheads (of Stan!), scraps of paper, canvasses, replica weapons and costumes, musical instruments, statues, books, photographs, even body parts.

Stan Lee 1965 photo TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Group photo ©2015 the respective copyright holder. Poster ©2015 London Film and Comic Convention.

(I’m using the form “comicbook” without a space as that’s the way Stan prefers to write it. To Stan’s way of thinking, a “comic book” is a book that is humorous.)

Stan is happy to take direction from fans. When I asked him to sign an original drawing of Spider-Man and the Recorder by Sal Buscema and indicated that I’d like him to sign the lower left corner, Stan joked, “I like a man who knows what he wants”.

The first of his two Sunday photo sessions followed afterwards. The fans waiting outside skewed young.

Perhaps surprisingly, the majority had not been born the last time Stan had any regular writing or editorial involvement at Marvel. Nevertheless, Marvel has of course spread beyond comics to be a major player in toys, animation, live action films, computer games and so on. Stan himself has had cameos, voiced characters and narrated in cartoons and games, even had a playable character in a computer game.

He is more recognizable than many of his creations.

While some young attendees were taken by their comicbook-loving fathers — in the sort of way that sports fans “inherit” their team allegiance — many of these young fans were the source of the suggestion to go to LFCC to meet the legendary Stan Lee. Laurence Smith from Berkshire, for example, owns the dressing gown that Stan wore in Iron Man [2008] and he took along his nine-year-old son, Ben. Dressed as Deadpool, Ben said he enjoyed Stan’s cameos, especially the one where Spidey battles the Lizard in a library while an oblivious Stan stamps books (Amazing Spider-Man [’12]).

(Incidentally, at the Saturday M&G, Stan said that it was one of his favorite cameos, too.)

A few babies and toddlers were carried in for photo sessions. At one point, a baby was not looking in the direction of the camera despite his parents’ enthusiastic encouragement. Taking the initiative, John, Stan’s security guard, stepped forward to pick up a silver star, held it aloft until it captured the baby’s attention and then walked towards the camera. The baby tracked the star’s journey and the photo was taken with the entire family looking forward.

Most fans in attendance were Marvelites without any parental encouragement. Three-year-old Dorian Junge is a dedicated fan of the Super Hero Squad Show, the kids’ cartoon that has spawned video games and a line of figures and vehicles.

Surrey resident Joe Breuer passed his flute exam and, when rewarded with a free choice of activity, asked to go to a big convention, specifically the one with Stan Lee. An extremely polite lad, Joe was also impressively knowledgeable about Stan’s achievements.

After 75 minutes in the stool smiling for photos, Stan’s energy levels noticeably dropped. He may be the Man, but he’s still a man. Shockingly, a rumor appeared on the LFCC Facebook page two days later that Stan had fallen asleep and staff has left him in the chair as photos were taken. It is silly beyond words to consider that Max, who hours earlier jumped over when Stan barely leaned back in his chair, would stand by and allow Stan to doze off while perched on a high stool. What was certainly true was that after the two hours were up, Stan was relived to end the photo session.

There was a lengthy break before Stan’s panel appearance and he returned reinvigorated. Mike Conroy, a familiar face to U.K. con attendees, hosted a one-on-one question-and-answer session with Stan.

“Can you hear me?” Stan asked the audience, microphone in hand. After everyone shouted out yes, he replied sarcastically, “That’s your tough luck!” It was a typical moment of self-deprecation. (When asked on the Saturday, “If your wife had a super-power, what would it be?” he immediately fired back “Tolerating me!”)

The format of the gathering was that Stan would answer Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

questions from Mike and then the audience. The problem with this arrangement is that Stan’s hearing is very poor.

As he had the previous night at the M&G, at the start of the interview he made apologies for his hearing: “Even though I look like the most perfect physical specimen ever, my hearing isn’t so good.”

(One of the funny moments on the Saturday evening was when Max was repeating questions to Stan and at one point spoke in Spanish. It took Stan a few seconds to realize he was being tricked and then both men, and the audience, laughed out loud.) Stan has had hearing problems for years now and it’s a mystery why he hasn’t bought a hearing aid. It’s a rather obvious if tactless subject that I have never seen broached.

Despite these issues, Stan had the audience eating out of his hand and he seemed to have enormous fun. He answered Mike’s and the packed crowd’s questions with his usual charm and sense of playfulness, sometimes being drowned out by laughter and cheers. He never milked the fact this was his last European appearance, although at one point he did say, “I think I’ve been asked every question I could ever be asked. I think I’ve heard them all”.

Stan ended by complimenting the crowd and stood to deliver a rousing “Excelsior!,” punching skywards as he did so. The roar and applause from the audience filled the hall.

The second photo shoot of Sunday continued after the panel. Still riding the wave from the panel, Stan was more alert and seemed to enjoy it more than the earlier session.

Fans were just as star-struck as before, and one girl, confused about how to act in front of an icon, curtsied like he was royalty.

At 6 p.m., the official photo shoot stop time, Max inquired of Stan how he was feeling: “I’m fine. I’m alright,” he responded. The photos continued until the last person in line was taken. Charles, Stan’s official photographer, estimated that he took 1,000 photos on Friday, 3,000 on Saturday and another 2,500 on Sunday.

It had been a triumphant trip for Stan, even though it had not always been an easy one. Earls Court had taken on the air of a place of pilgrimage such was the level of love, respect, gratitude, and even awe that so many thousands, many so far-travelled, feel for Stan.

The last word should be left to Stan.

“How do you feel about being an inspiration?”

“It’s hard to believe. It’s a wonderful thing.

Thank you.”

Top: Chris Gaskin (CBC contributing photographer), Max Anderson (POW! event coordinator), Stan Lee (the Man), and Robert Menzies (CBC contributor).

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the good stuff

Ilya Kuvshinov The seductive, alluring artwork of an emerging comics master

by George khoury CBC Contributing Editor

All TM & © 2015 the respective copyright holders.

Popular culture is the common language that we all share.

When it hits all the right notes, it has the power to convey ideas that bring us all together from anywhere around the globe. No matter who we are, what we have, or where we came from, it belongs to all of us. And via the savvy use of pop culture in his illustrations, Ilya Kuvshinov has found a path to our hearts as art lovers.

“Pop culture has an enormous influence on young minds now, and I am not an exception,” says the 24-year-old Russian artist. “I think the future of a whole new generation of people depends on it, so you can’t underestimate it.”

The captivating art of Kuvshinov engages the attention of everyone who encounters it. His choice of subjects display a touch of class and maturity beyond the years of its creator. And, thanks to social media and his openness, this up-and-coming illustrator has amassed a massive audience who follow his creative progress and insightful tutorials. Still growing as an artist, every bit of digital feedback and criticism that comes his way only motives him to carry on with his personal ambitions.

“The importance of social media is huge,” says Kuvshinov. “Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

Among his earliest influences are master artists Alphonse and Mikhail Vrubel, but his real passion ignited with his Japanese art heroes, particularly the works of Murata Renji, Katsuhiro Otomo, Satoshi Kon, and Hayao Miyazaki.

American comics, too, have made an indelible impression.

“It’s not hard to find a young man who isn’t influenced by Spider-Man, Batman, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I love Jim Lee’s work. I’m a big fan of J. Scott Campbell, Adam Warren, Kim Jung Gi, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Sean Galloway, and many others. But the Japanese stuff is the Above: Caption bigger influence.”

Comics are nothing new to this wunderkind. “We did comics every day!” enthuses Kuvshinov. “When our classes were dull, my friends and I drew comics together — you’d draw a panel of comic, and then hand it off to a friend and he’d draw another and just make sure that the teacher wouldn’t see it! It was fun because no one knew what was going to happen

next in the story — so the humor in it was pretty crazy.”

Regarding his art training, “Academically, I started learning at age 11 at Moscow Art Lyceum,” he explains.

“After it, I attended an animation college and an architecture academy, but everything I know about digital art started only three years ago when I began to work as a concept artist at game development. My visual storytelling skills started to develop only two years ago when I started directing motion comics.”

The tools of the trade are a Cintiq Companion for his digital work and a mechanical pencil for sketching. In rare instances, he’ll also use acrylic on canvas. As a real renaissance man, his medium of choice is always the one that best helps him tell a story.

“Right now I’m making my oneshot comic, and, to be honest,” he confesses, “I really love the methods of storytelling in traditional printed comics —

Upper left: Detail of a lovely Audrey Hepburn portrait. Left: Evocative piece. Inset above: The young Russian artist himself. Right: Judge Anderson: Psi-Division #2 cover detail. Next page: Top left is Silent Hill: Downpour #3 variant cover. Top right is his piece “Trumpet Tower. Bottom is Rachel from the movie Blade Runner. All art by Illya Kuvshinov.

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#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All TM & © the respecyive copyright holders.

More on George: https://www.facebook.com/comicbookfever

it’s clearer to understand and you still have enough space to think out of the box. When I’m starting a script, the first thing I do is decide what media best serves the finished product, so all the methods of storytelling I use should suit the format. For example, if it’s a motion comic, it must have cool action scenes because if it’s not using the ‘motion’ side of it, why not make it a traditional comic instead? When I start my animation, I ensure that the story entirely suits animation.”

With a legion of admirers, it’s no surprise American-based publisher IDW finally came calling. For the Californian company, Kuvshinov has rendered two covers so far: Silent Hill: Downpour #4 and Judge Dredd: Anderson, Psi-Division #3. The artist says, “The guys from IDW found my Silent Hill 4 fan art on the internet and offered me the cover to Silent Hill: Downpour. But I’m unsure if there are any hopes of doing sequential art for them though.”

His first professional credit was a motion comic called Knight of the Void. As Ilya’s directorial debut, Knight required his complete commitment, and the artist immersed himself into this production by multitasking on Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

storyboard duties and overall art production to make it work.

“It’s like animation and comics mixed together,” says Ilya about the positive qualities in motion comics. “We can make episodes as fast as comics, but it has a greater impact when it’s moving, with SFX and music.”

Among various companies, Kuvshinov has done work for Game-Insight where he produced game cutscenes and trailers. Presently, he’s attending a Japanese Language School and taking on freelance work at various game development companies in Japan.

“I’m starting an independent motion comic soon,” hints Ilya, “and it’s going be free, so I hope everyone will enjoy our whole-hearted work!”

“My main website is www.patreon. com/KR0NPR1NZ. On my site, I draw illustrations and studies every single day for free, and on this site people can support me in doing all of this. As a gesture of gratitude, my supporters get access to the ground floor of my sketches, underpaintings, video processes, brushes, etc.

The money I receive helps finance my independent projects, which are free.”

For the unstoppable Ilya Kuvshinov, a talented artist at the infancy of his career, the best is yet to come.

19

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21

© 2015 Fred Hembeck. Color by Tom Ziuko. All characters TM & © DC Comics.

Hey, look: It’s Harvey!

The Life of a MAD Man Bill Schelly talks about his forthcoming exhaustive biography of Harvey Kurtzman Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor [Bill Schelly, an early and active member of comic book fandom back in the 1960s, has written innumerable books on those bygone days of fanzines and Alley Awards, and has earned considerable cred as an associate editor of the long-running magazine Alter Ego. Importantly, the historian is producing outstanding biographies on comics legends, including Otto Binder, Joe Kubert, and now a massive tome to be published by Fantagraphics this spring on the life of inarguably one of the most important comic book creators of all, Harvey Kurtzman. The following took place this past winter via e-mail. — Ye Ed.]

22

MAD TM & © Entertaining Comics, Inc. Two-Fisted Tales William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.

Comic Book Creator: What does MAD and specifically the MAD comics run mean to you, and why are they significant?

Bill Schelly: First, Harvey Kurtzman’s work as the creator, editor, artist, designer, and writer of MAD, both as a comic book and then as a magazine, set the pattern for one of the greatest publishing success stories of the century.

Second, during the early 1950s, a time of great social conformity in America, MAD satirized popular culture icons like Superman, then the consumerist lifestyle, and then even Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts, which were happening at that time. MAD satirized attempts of do-gooders like Dr. Fredric Wertham who wanted to sanitize, if not destroy, comic books.

Satire involves criticism, which is why it can be so controversial, yet Kurtzman had the ability to satirize and, at the same time, be very, very funny. In my opinion, the brilliance of his writing, and the finished art by Wally Wood, Jack Davis and Willy Elder, has never been matched in any other humor comics and magazines… except, maybe, Kurtzman’s Humbug. MAD is significant because it brought iconoclastic satire to every city, town and hamlet in the country, encouraging readers — most of them young — to question the status quo, and not just accept things the

way they were. I really believe MAD had a lot to do with the emergence of the counter-culture in the 1960s.

CBC: Was Harvey Kurtzman a genius?

Bill: Kurtzman was an innovator. There had never been a comic book like MAD when he invented it in 1952, or a magazine like MAD when he changed its format in 1955.

There had never been a serious-minded, artfully produced war comic book like Two-Fisted Tales when he invented it in 1950. And later, there had never been a fully-painted comic strip like Little Annie Fanny when he and Willy Elder created it for Playboy in 1962. In my book, I quote philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who said, “Talent hits a target that no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” Kurtzman was a genius. Full stop.

CBC: Give us the background of Kurtzman’s early life, his family and so on, please.

Bill: Kurtzman’s parents were both immigrants from Odessa, an important port city in Ukraine. Life wasn’t great for Jews in Odessa in 1920, so David and Edith were among the masses of Jewish people who came to America at this time. They had two children. Zachary was born in April 1923, Harvey in October 1924. They lived in a tenement apartment in Brooklyn. Harvey’s father died when he was four. Edith married Abraham Perkes about a year later. Harvey always considered Abe his father.

That marriage occurred the same year as the Wall Street crash of 1929, when the country was plunged into what we now call the Great Depression, when a third of all adult males in the U.S. were unemployed. Fortunately, Abe was a

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

MAD TM & © Entertaining Comics, Inc.

brass engraver by trade, and was able to earn a living through those difficult years. By 1935, they were doing well enough that the Perkes-Kurtzman family could afford to move to the Bronx, which was a step up from the Brooklyn ghetto. Harvey had shown an aptitude for artwork and cartooning early on. Therefore, he was chosen to attend the High School of Music and Art, a special school for talented youths. That’s where he met many of his future collaborators, such as Willy Elder, Al Jaffee, John Severin, Al Feldstein, and a number of others. How’s that for a quick capsule summary?

CBC: Not too shabby. To what do you ascertain were the earliest influences on Harvey?

Bill: His mother, Edith, was the most important single influence in his early life. He once described her as a “nightmare of a nudge,” but a nudge is someone who doesn’t accept things as they are. Both she and Harvey’s stepfather Abraham were Communists, and read the Daily Worker. Edith used to say reading the Worker taught her how to “read between the lines” of the mainstream press. She inculcated in Harvey the penchant for reading between the lines. That is, looking for the reality behind the official version of events.

Harvey rejected Communism, but picked up Edith’s questioning attitude, which was, after all, the essence of what became MAD. Also, his mother recognized and encouraged his talent, and arranged for him to take weekend courses at the Pratt Institute and the Brooklyn Museum when he was eight and nine years old.

CBC: What surprises did you find in his overall life?

Bill: There were so many. One was an FBI investigation of Kurtzman’s war comic books in 1952, to find out if EC and Kurtzman could be prosecuted for sedition under the Alien Registration Act. That law, commonly known as the Smith Act, made it a federal crime to advocate or teach the desirability of overthrowing the U.S. government, or to be a member of any organization that did the same. J. Edgar Hoover wanted to know if Kurtzman’s comics were detrimental to the morale of combat soldiers, or urged insubordination or refusal of duty of Army or Navy servicemen. Obviously, since E.C. continued to publish war comics for another couple of years, the FBI and the US Department of Justice decided that they weren’t in violation of the law, but it’s a fascinating shadow event in Kurtzman’s career. And it wasn’t the last time Kurtzman’s work came to the attention of Hoover.

Another surprise was how hard Kurtzman worked to break into television in 1959. He created proposals for original TV programs, and sought a position on the writing staff of established shows such as The Steve Allen Show. He got very close to making it, but always something got in the way. He was actually hired as a writer for a major television show, but then the star had a heart attack just as Kurtzman was reporting for work on his first day, and all bets were off.

Among Kurtzman’s papers, I found scripts, letters, pitches, and all kinds of interesting material about his attempts to get TV work. He spent quite a bit of his creative energy that year on such work, which ultimately didn’t pay off — but some of his ideas were excellent. He was able to interest some people in his work, but never could “close the deal.”

CBC: How do you assess the relationship between Harvey and Bill Gaines? Was Harvey treated fairly? Did Gaines make a fair deal and was Harvey’s insistence on 51% ownership of MAD unrealistic?

Bill: Those are questions that have complex answers. It took me the better part of two chapters in the book to fully lay out all the factors involved. Was Harvey treated fairly?

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

Well, do you consider work-for-hire fair? Yes, Gaines provided the financial capital to publish MAD, but Kurtzman poured every bit of his creative capital into the publication. When sales of MAD took off, Kurtzman’s salary went up a bit, but nothing in comparison to the huge profits the comic book and magazine were making for Gaines. Yes, Kurtzman accepted the work-for-hire system when he first got into comics, and when he started at E.C. But Kurtzman was a freelance editor, writer and artist. As such, his financial arrangements were subject to renegotiation at any time, either by Gaines or by Kurtzman. In fact, Gaines actually agreed to give him 25% of the profits in the MAD paperbacks, and 10% of the profits in MAD magazine.

But Kurtzman never saw any of that money, because, not long after, in April 1956, he suddenly demanded 51% of MAD. At that point, Gaines fired him.

As for the reasons why Kurtzman made such an apparently outrageous demand, there’s disagreement. He said he asked for it so that he would have the editorial power to pay more for freelance writers, because there was no way he could write the whole magazine. Gaines would only pay $25 a page, which was what Kurtzman called “a schlock rate.” But was Kurtzman simply after editorial control, or was he after ownership of MAD? Or was he trying to get fired, to salve his conscience because he had already decided to leave MAD to work for Hugh Hefner? These are some of the things I sort through in the book. When I was interviewing Hugh Hefner, he

Top: Harvey Kurtzman’s elaborate and ornate MAD logo from the first issues of the magazine version. Inset left: Harvey Kurtzman as lensed by E.B. Boatner, likely in the mid- to late ’70s. Above: MAD #20, perhaps the most subversive cover of all, allowing readers to sneak it into classrooms. Below: First appearance of Alfred E. Neuman, at least on a MAD back cover!

23

Above: Cover of Humbug #1 [Aug. 1957. Left: Fancy-schmancy ad for Trump magazine featuring Wallace Wood, Elder, and Davis.

24

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All TM & © the respective copyright holders.

Above: Evocative shot of Kurtzman taken for his 1965 Rogue interview, shot by Roy Komorski.

let loose a bombshell that goes a long way toward revealing the truth behind the situation. I feel I was able to get to the bottom of the matter. I will say that neither Gaines nor Kurtzman was the complete hero or complete villain of this part of the story.

CBC: What was Harvey Kurtzman’s impact on American culture? Do you perceive his influence not just in comics but in other media?

Bill: If you’ll indulge me, I’m going to throw a few more quotes at you to answer your question. I’ll have to consult some notes because I think it’s important to get them word perfect. Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “Dreaming up and writing MAD, Kurtzman virtually invented what would become the era’s dominant tone of irreverent self-reference: one form of pop culture mocking all other forms, and itself.” In The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik stated, “Almost all American satire today follows a formula that Harvey Kurtzman thought up.” Harry Shearer, a member of the Saturday Night cast, wrote, “Without Harvey Kurtzman, there would have been no Saturday Night Live.” I heartily agree with the assessments of these three gentlemen regarding Kurtzman’s impact on satire in America. The kind of referential pop culture humor in The Simpsons and Family Guy got started with MAD.

CBC: What did you discover of significance about Harvey’s post-MAD projects? Any anecdotes about his relationships with Hugh Hefner and Jim Warren?

Bill: Although with Trump, the magazine Kurtzman did for Hefner after leaving MAD, Kurtzman got the slick magazine format that he wanted, he didn’t quite have the same editorial freedom that he did with Gaines. The fact that Hefner had to approve the final contents of Trump before going to press was an inhibiting factor for Kurtzman. “What Hefner might think” was never far from his mind. Bill Gaines had always been an appreciative, non-critical audience for his work, freeing Kurtzman from worrying about how the latest issue would be received at the top. Now, he had a new boss who, while clearly a fan, wasn’t going to be an uncritical one. Hefner had given him a free hand, but was the “elephant in the room” (as Al Jaffee later put it) and hard to put out of mind.

When Trump was canceled after just two issues, Kurtzman and his collaborators did Humbug. I read Humbug thoroughly for the first time while writing this book. I discovered that it’s as good as the Kurtzman MAD, in its own way. It doesn’t have comic book parodies, since comics seemed to be dying in 1957. Instead, it’s like a very sophisticated college humor magazine, as interpreted by Harvey Kurtzman, Willy Elder, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth, and Jack Davis. It was printed on the presses at Charlton on what Kurtzman called “toilet paper,” so the physical package wasn’t impressive, but the work was brilliant. Humbug is very much about the American scene in 1957 and 1958…. The TV shows, the political figures, the popular books. Unfortunately, Kurtzman had chosen a format about the size of comic books for Humbug, instead of doing a magazine the size of MAD. As a result, Humbug got lost behind larger magazines or in the midst of comic books. Humbug was conceived as a magazine, and was priced at 15¢ a copy, while comic books were only 10¢.

So the format was a disaster, a major miscalculation on Kurtzman’s part, which he later acknowledged.

After Humbug died, Kurtzman freelanced for about 18 months, and then he did Help! magazine for publisher Jim Warren, who had a hit magazine with Famous Monsters of Filmland at the time. Help! featured photos of popular comedians on its covers for the first year or so. One of the

Help! TM & © the respective copyright holder. Little Annie Fanny TM & © Playboy Enterprises, Inc. Photo © E.B. Boatner.

comedians Kurtzman sought for the cover was Lenny Bruce.

In January 1961, Kurtzman received a telegram from Bruce saying that he “would love to do a feature photo for Help!”

For reasons unknown, it never came to pass. Later, Kurtzman said that Jim Warren always admired Lenny Bruce, and that Warren heard that the comedian ran around his apartment naked. So whenever Kurtzman would come to his apartment, Warren would be completely naked except for a pair of sweat socks. To quote Kurtzman, “The effect just wasn’t the same. I mean you can’t run around naked in your apartment and be afraid of athlete’s foot. It’s just not Lenny Bruce.”

CBC: Harvey famously quipped that he demanded a blood test when told he was the father of underground comix.

How did Harvey look at what he wrought and what is your assessment of both his influence and comix themselves (that is, are they an important development in the history of the form? And how so, if so?)

Bill: On another occasion, when asked if he was the father of underground comix, he said, “maybe the brother-in-law.”

That was closer to how he felt, that his part in the birth of the undergrounds wasn’t that of a father, who consciously sires children and shapes their growth. But he knew that many of the underground cartoonists were initially inspired by MAD, and that he had perhaps incubated some of them in the pages of Help! magazine, where he published early work by R. Crumb, Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch, Gilbert Shelton, and a few others. In the book, there’s a chapter called “Children of MAD” that’s about this subject. The people who started underground comix explicitly state that Kurtzman was their inspiration. I quote Jay Lynch, who said that underground comix were just a kind of extension of MAD, or what MAD would have been if Kurtzman came around initially in 1968 rather than 1952.

CBC: Was Harvey Kurtzman a tragic figure? That is, did he expect too much and was his spirit daunted by seeing the phenomenal success of his creation after he had left?

Bill: Kurtzman’s tragic flaw was that for him to be truly creative, and stay interested, he had to be doing work that was constantly changing and evolving. He hated repeating himself. One of his problems with Gaines was that he felt Gaines wanted to keep MAD the way it was, whereas Kurtzman’s creativity hinged on growing and developing what he was doing. That’s part of what made him such an innovator. What was tragic is that he became tethered for most of his later life, for economic reasons, to Little Annie Fanny. If change was difficult at MAD, it was impossible on Annie Fanny.

Did he expect too much? I don’t think so. He’d dreamed since childhood of working in the world of high class, slick magazines. When this was offered to him by Hefner, should he have said “no”? You don’t get that kind of offer every day.

The reader can decide whether Kurtzman should have gone for his dream, or downsized his hopes. As for Kurtzman’s reaction to MAD’s success—at one point, he called it a “Frankenstein” — he certainly wished he had the kind of money Al Feldstein made editing MAD. But then, Kurtzman would never, ever have been content to run features like “Spy vs. Spy,” “The Lighter Side of…” and the MAD fold-in every issue for decades. He would have wanted to mix it up.

So, had he stayed, it’s unlikely MAD would have achieved the success it did, by becoming a predictable and comfortable commodity, and being skewed toward younger readers. For the record, in later life he always said he didn’t regret leaving MAD. I said I don’t think of him as a tragic figure. After all, he worked as an editor, writer, and artist for the rest of his life, and was able to make a good, if not great, living. He achieved his dream of working in the slick, high class magazines, Esquire and Playboy.

He was a success in the real world, in that he was able to use his art talent to support his wife and family. But at the Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

same time, he didn’t own anything. He didn’t own MAD, he didn’t own Little Annie Fanny, and he didn’t own stock. He certainly made a lot less than some of his former colleagues and friends, such as Jack Davis and Al Feldstein. So I’m sure Kurtzman would be ambivalent if you asked him if he considered himself successful. But then, he was ambivalent about the quality of his work. On the one hand, he thought MAD was great and the war comics were great. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure if they were. He had a hard time believing people when they came up to him at comics conventions and told him that his work had changed their lives.

Sometimes he would answer, “Oh, that’s too bad.” And he wasn’t entirely kidding. There was always that ambivalence.

CBC: What is the most important takeaway people should have from your biography?

Bill: Readers will know that it was Kurtzman who created MAD, not Bill Gaines or Al Feldstein, and that Kurtzman’s decision to leave MAD after just five magazine issues was a reaction to a more complicated situation than has previously been thought. In hindsight, the general view has been that leaving MAD was a stupid decision on Kurtzman’s part.

The reader might feel differently after finishing the book.

Top: Help! #5 [Dec. ’60] cover.

Above: Kurtzan & Elder’s Little Annie Fanny. Left: Harvey in his studio in 1976. Photo by E.B. Boatner.

25

Above: Harvey in his studio in 1987, after he had lost a considerable amount of weight due to Parkinson’s Disease. The photo was taken by Ben Asen.

Below: Brilliant cartoonist Drew Friedman embraces his mentor, idol and eacher Harvey Kurtzman, during a visit to the School of Visual Arts in 1986. Photo by Mark Newgarden, no slouch in the cartoon department.

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Kurtzman and Friedman photo © 2015 Mark Newgarden.

26

CBC: Please be anecdotal about your personal relationship with Harvey’s work and whether you met the man.

Bill: My first exposure to Kurtzman’s work came in the early 1960s when I was 11 or 12 years old. My older brother Steve had reprint editions of a couple of the early MAD paperbacks. One was The MAD Reader, with “Superduperman!,” another was The Brothers MAD, with ‘”Black & Blue Hawks!” and “Woman Wonder!” He gleefully pointed out “Woman Wonder!” and the bit about her changing into her costume in her see-through plane. So I guess we were our own “brothers MAD.” Being a fan of Superman and Batman, I was first drawn to Kurtzman’s satires of costumed heroes, and also of familiar icons like Archie and The Shadow. What impressed me most was how funny they were, and, equally, how they were so much wilder, and sexier, than anything in comic books in 1963. That there was great excitement to be had outside of what was considered polite or acceptable, and that somewhere in the world there were adults who could create funnier, more outlandish comics than I had ever dreamed possible. I didn’t know who had done them, because Kurtzman’s name didn’t appear in those printings, and the artists names only sometimes.

But I was a Kurtzman fan.

To me, he was “the good MAD writer.”

I didn’t see Kurtzman’s name until a bit later, when it appeared on Little Annie Fanny in the copies of Playboy that I saw on visits to my dad’s office. His clerk, Dick Trageser, had a big stack of Playboys in the storage room, and I always made sure to look for the latest Annie Fanny stories.

A friend of mine told me, “The guy who writes these is the guy who created MAD magazine.” That’s when the pieces began to come together. A bit later, when E.C. fandom was on the rise in the late 1960s, with the publication of Squa Tront, I became aware of exactly who Harvey Kurtzman was, and what he did. I began

reading every copy of Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat I could get my hands on. I loved them so much that I imitated the Kurtzman story-telling techniques in a comic strip for my fanzine Sense of Wonder in 1972.

I never actually met Kurtzman. The closest I got was at the 1973 Comic Art convention in New York City. I was in the dealer room, and suddenly there was this little hubbub.

I looked over and saw that Kurtzman had entered the room and was walking around a little, and people were whispering his name and craning their necks to see him. As far as I can remember, he wasn’t there long or a guest of the convention, or I would have made it a point to meet him. That was the New York convention that Bill Gaines attended just as Frank Jacobs’s book The MAD World of William M. Gaines appeared.

CBC: Why did you take on the project to begin with and how does it differ from the Kitchen/Buhle tome?

Bill: When I got my copy of Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle, Jr.’s book The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, I loved the way they presented the artwork, including art rarities, photographs, and so on. But when I read the biographical text, it felt incomplete. Sure, it told the basics of his career up to a certain point, but then it left out a lot about his later years. I think it runs about 40,000 words, which is about half as long as my Otto Binder biography, and a third as long as my Joe Kubert book. Given the fact that it was mostly an art book, it’s understandable that they had to keep the length of the text down, but I wanted to know more.

Then, sometime in April of 2011, Gary Groth and I were kicking around ideas for my next book. I had written several biographies by that time, so the question was, who would I write about next? He said, “What about Kurtzman?” I sort of gulped, and said, “That would be a big challenge!”

But I was up for it, because Kurtzman is one of the gods of comics, and I thought there definitely should be a complete biography of the man. You know, there are huge biographies of seminal popular culture figures like Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, The Beatles, and so on. I felt there needed to be one like that about Harvey Kurtzman. So I set about interviewing Kurtzman’s family, friends and colleagues, and researching his life in depth. I found out all kinds of things that had never been known before, or explained in any depth. The final manuscript runs 195,000 words, which is about five times as long as the text in the Kitchen-Buhle book. One could say it has five times as much information. There’s no padding. The story of his life moves right along, almost like a novel. It has a separate year-by-year chronology of Kurtzman’s life, and over 1,000 endnotes. It’s the book I wanted to read about the man. I’m the lucky guy that got to write it.

CBC: What was your overall experience working on the book and, most importantly, how the heck did you ever get an interview with Hugh Hefner? And please share some of what was discussed with the Playboy mogul?

Bill: One of the great privileges of writing it was getting to interview people like Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Arnold Roth, and others, who I respect enormously. Sure, most of the interviews were done over the phone, but I got such a kick out of talking to them. Jim Warren gave me a long, fascinating interview, as did Al Feldstein and Russ Heath. I interviewed to a whole bunch of Harvey’s students at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught for 17 years, among them Drew Friedman, Mark Newgarden, John Holcomb, Batton Lash, and Sarah Downs, who became Kurtzman’s assistant on Little Annie Fanny for many years. Robert Crumb gave me his candid thoughts about Kurtzman’s working relationship with Hugh Hefner, and some other matters.

I got in touch with Hefner by making a formal interview request through his organization. Hefner always had enormous respect for Kurtzman’s talent, and when I was able to show him — by email — that this was a legitimate project, he agreed to participate. We talked by phone for about 45 minutes, not long, but I found Hefner to be mentally sharp and able to articulate his points extremely well. We talked

Kurtzman self-portrait TM & © the estate of Harvey Kurtzman.

about how he discovered MAD on a newsstand, how he met with Harvey sometime later, and why Trump failed. He laid a couple of “bombshells” on me that explain the situation in a whole new way.

I also interviewed Harvey’s wife Adele, who is 89 and sharp as a tack, his daughters Meredith, Liz and Nellie, and his nephew Adam Kurtzman. They provided so much new information about Kurtzman’s childhood, his family life as a boy and young man, and then as a husband and father. And, a big part of the experience of writing the book was working with John Benson, who is a world class expert on Kurtzman, and MAD, and the E.C. war comics. Benson contributed everything in his files to the book, and read the manuscript twice. His corrections and suggestions were invaluable. Apart from his knowledge, John was friends with Harvey. He had interviewed him starting in the late 1950s, and did the first in depth interview with Kurtzman in 1965. (It was published as A Talk with Harvey Kurtzman in 1966.) The rapprochement between Bill Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman only happened because Benson wanted to do a dual interview with them for a book. It allowed the two estranged former colleagues and friends to get past most of their resentments, which was of great personal importance to both men. Also, I want to be sure to credit Denis Kitchen, who aided the book enormously. The interview with him described his friendship and working relationship with Kurtzman in a very articulate manner. He knew Harvey well. Beyond that, Denis made Harvey’s archival papers available to me. Those files are loaded with material—letters, royalty statements, notes and so on—that revealed all kinds of previously unknown facts and perspectives. Denis really came through for me.

The experience of putting all the pieces together and actually writing the book was overwhelming at times. It almost exceeded my ability to keep all the material organized and accessible as I worked my way through the chapters. The writing itself took two years, just sitting in front of a computer terminal thinking and writing and thinking some more. There were five drafts of the book. The second draft was 225,000 words, which was too long. So I carefully trimmed, and telescoped, and pruned. The final manuscript was 195,000 words, and even so, the book is 652 pages long! Had I not made

those cuts — nothing important was lost — it would have been 75 pages longer. Of course, of those 652 pages, much of it is illustrations of one kind or another, more than 250 of them. There is an 11-page chronology of Kurtzman’s life, and 28 pages of endnotes. It was just a huge, huge undertaking.

CBC: What is Harvey Kurtzman’s place in the American arts? How should he be remembered and, especially, how should he be honored.

Bill: In my estimation, Harvey Kurtzman was the most important American humorist in print media in the second half of the 20th century — arguably the entire century — because of the far-reaching effects of MAD. The type of satire in MAD is the central mode of humor in all media now. His work profoundly affected societal attitudes toward authority and the status quo, which contributed to the birth to the counter culture. And Kurtzman’s influence was felt internationally, especially in Europe.

Second, he introduced comic books that were art with a capital “a,” with Two-Fisted Tales in 1950. His creative achievements showed the great potential of the sequential art medium, and inspired the work of those who came later, which led to things like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and other artistically ambitious, serious-minded comics. That comic books are widely accepted as a legitimate art form can be traced back to him, and his war comics with a conscience.

How should we honor him? He’s already in the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, and the Harvey Awards, the other major awards in the comics field, are named after him. I think the best way to honor him is to take the time to go back and read or re-read his work, particularly his E.C. stories, but also things like “Hey Look!,” Goodman Beaver, Humbug and The Jungle Book.

They will entertain you and they will inspire you.

[Full disclosure: Bill Schelly is associate editor of Alter Ego from TwoMorrows Publishing. He is also the author of Black Light: The World of L. B. Cole and Man of Rock: A Biography of Joe Kubert from Fantagraphics Books, and numerous other tomes about the history of comics and fandom. His website is www.billschelly.net.]

Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and

Revolutionized Humor in America A Biography By Bill Schelly 642-page hardback book with color insert — $34.99 each “I always considered Alfred E. Neuman as a brother.”

—David Lynch “Those early issues of Mad attacked the hypocrisies of a 1950s society that perceived itself as normal . . . and it wasn’t afraid to make fun of alcoholism or sexism and racism.”

—Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men “He was . . . a kind of unsung Mother Theresa for American comics artists, comedians, goofballs, outsiders, brainiacs and troublemakers.” —Terry Gilliam

www.fantagraphics.com

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

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go west, young man

Of Torts and Terrors

The conclusion of the CBC interview with the cartoonist creator of Supernatural Law Conducted by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor [Last ish, cartoonist Batton Lash, creator of Supernatural Law, discussed his early years as Ditko aficionado and attendance with John Holstrom at the School of Visual Arts, in New York City, where they were students of comic book giants Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner. Though the legends took young Lash under their wing, it was suggested to the neophyte artist that maybe the field of comics wasn’t the right choice, leaving our subject to ponder his future. The following interview was conducted in mid-January and transcribed by Steven “Flash” Thompson (who actually is mentioned herein as an able assist in a time of need for Batton!) — Y.E.]

Above: Batton Lash’s signature characters, Wolff & Byrd.

Right: Lash doing the networking thang at a comic con in a pic by his wife, Jackie Estrada.

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Wolff & Byrd TM & © Batton Lash. Photo ©2015 Jackie Estrada.

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Comic Book Creator: Last we left it, Batton, you’re getting out of the SVA, it’s the mid-’70s, and what are you gonna do?

Batton Lash: I was at a turning point. That summer of 1974 was an interesting one. I decided that I wasn’t going to be a cartoonist, that I probably wasn‘t cut out for it, but I still really liked comics and liked the form. I was still in the middle of my tenure at SVA, so I was looking more towards video, film, and writing to express my creative urges. Interestingly, that summer, I just weaned myself off of comics. Usually every Tuesday I would go down to the newsstand and see what came out, but one Tuesday I woke up and there was no urge. I just quit was cold turkey. Broke the comic mold. I just had no interest in it anymore. The Marvel and DC stuff at the time just wasn’t too interesting to me. I don’t know if it was the product itself or I finally just outgrew it, but I turned my back on it.

So that’s where my knowledge of Marvel and DC comics ends: 1974. When people ask me, “What do you think of Deadpool?” I don’t know what they’re talking about! However, the only comic I would seek out was The Spirit, which Warren was reprinting. That summer, without the pressure and stress of Eisner’s class every week, I was able to just sit down and look at The Spirit. What made it work? What was the storytelling? How did he approach

the story? So I was interested in comics, but my gut feeling was, “I’m never gonna enter this field.” But I just loved The Spirit and the different situations that Eisner was able to put this character in. It was just incredible how flexible the premise was that he could do any type of story with it.

Anyway, that’s the summer of ’74.

Also, one more footnote about Eisner: he liked John Holstrom and me. I can’t remember the circumstances, but in July or August, we went to his studio on Park Avenue South to help clean up. I think he wanted some of the students just to help him move stuff around. And while there, he gave me a copy of Graphic Story Magazine, which had this cover story and interview with an artist I had never heard of, Howard Nostrand. I was fascinated with it! My first thought was this was an elaborate hoax, that someone created this golden age artist and this is what his stories would have looked like. But after I read that interview, I saw that Nostrand was, indeed, the real deal. His impression of Eisner and Kurtzman, and how he appropriated the best qualities of their work without swiping was fascinating to me. And also, another comics history footnote, Eisner, just in passing, said, “Oh, I just got this very ambitious project. An old-time artist named Jack Katz who I don’t remember meeting, but he sent me this… This is the first book in his series of graphic novels he wants to do.” It was The First Kingdom. “He wants a quote from me.” That was the first time I’d ever heard of Jack Katz and his ambitious goal to publish this wide-ranging, rambling graphic novel. So that was interesting.

I’d see Will in SVA, of course. I was always there every so often to say hello, but I had moved on to cartooning and comics and started going into more playwriting and video productions. For a term project, I did the musical version of Night of the Living Dead. [Jon laughs] That was fun to do and being the director. I just thought that was fun. When I say musical version, it was sort of the MAD magazine version where it would take pop songs or classical songs and just fill in new lyrics to it. You know, “As sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle.” Something like that. It was fun to just drag people out of the student lounge and just put them in zombie makeup. Someday I have to convert that videotape to DVD because I haven’t seen it in years. Maybe I’ll put it up on YouTube one of these days.

CBC: Did you graduate SVA? Batton: Yes. I graduated in 1977. That was another turning point. What to do? Because I was interested in playwriting and theater. I was particularly taken with Charles Ludlam and Ridiculous Theater, down in Greenwich Village. I liked that whole idea that you can rent out a whole space and have your stock company and every couple of months premiere a play that you wrote and you could perform in. You’ve gotta remember I was very young and very naive then, and I thought that was just something I would like to do.

CBC: Now, did you attend a lot of theater?

Batton: Yes. Off-Broadway and Broadway. At the time, New York was in a very bad fiscal state. Anyway, the plays could get you into the theater, they would do it. So ticket prices weren’t as expensive as you might think. There was great bargains to be had on the Great White Way. I discovered George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and there were a lot of revivals of those plays. Room Service… I liked the older

Radioactive Man & Bartman TM & © Bongo Entertainment. Supernatural Law TM & © Batton Lash.

plays the best! They were very funny, very antic. The actors that were performing them really nailed it, I thought. So I went to a lot of stuff like that. The trouble with theater is the same trouble with film: there’s just too many people involved.

And that was always difficult, getting all the people on the same page — especially getting everyone on the same non-paying page as well.

CBC: What happened with your theatrical ambitions?

Batton: Well, I tried writing a couple of screenplays. I went out to California. I had relatives and had friends who moved out there. This would be the road that would become very familiar with me. I was very excited that there was actual interest in this screenplay I wrote. Of course, I get out there and it was just lots and lots of talk and lots of meetings. I must have been 21 years old. What did I know? I just thought this was protocol. Instead it’s just mammoth wasting of time. I mean, everyone’s interested and everyone can take a meeting, but that doesn’t mean they had any juice to get anything made.

CBC: What was the screenplay?

Batton: I tried to get this off the ground and had some interest. It was called Bartholdi’s Masterpiece and it was about a group of thieves that stole the Statue of Liberty and hid it in Hoboken!

CBC: [Laughs] Okay, Batton: How’d they do that?

Batton: Piecemeal, of course! I’ve got 10 drafts if you ever wanna read it!

CBC: A caper comedy?

Batton: Oh, it was definitely a caper comedy. In fact, it was an over-the-top caper. One of my favorite authors was Donald Westlake and I liked The Hot Rock, a caper movie and I just thought I wanted to take the caper one step beyond.

Go very brazen and take the Statue of Liberty! Of course, I would never want to do something like that now because just the symbolism of destroying the Statue of Liberty is just something I would never want to perpetuate.

It was never optioned for money. It was always, you know, “I’ll show it around.” At the time, I had no idea what options were. It was very low rent producers that — I’m taking their word for it — showed it around. I’d been to some offices, I remember some poolside meetings. I can’t say it’s a waste of time because everything is an education, but it prepared me for what was gonna come later when Hollywood was interested in Supernatural Law. CBC: How long did you stay out in California?

Batton: I had several trips out there. Like I said, I had relatives and I had a friend out there who I stayed with so it was like a few weeks at a time. I think the longest I was out there was six weeks. But eventually, you’ve gotta come back to Brooklyn! Gotta pay the rent! What am I gonna do?

I can’t wait for these schnooks to make a motion picture out of my screenplay — a screenplay by someone who had absolutely no credits to his name. So I had to do something.

I put together a portfolio. I should add even though I thought cartooning wasn’t for me, when I would do my videos in SVA, I would draw the storyboards and the costume designs and what the characters should look like. A fellow student who became a very close friend — I’m still friends with him — Russell Calabrese, was in one of my videos. He looked at my sketches and said, “Are you doing comic books?” I said, “Naw. No, no.” He goes, “Why not? This stuff’s terrific!” I was shocked! For two years, no one ever said my work was any good at all and I go, “Really?” He says, “Yeah! Why are you doing this? You should be drawing comics!” So that was quite encouraging and all through the years, Russell’s always been a very big supporter. I was always indebted to him for that encouragement! It really gave me that shot in the arm that when I came back to Brooklyn, put together a portfolio, and thought, “Well, if Russell likes it, someone else has to Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

like it out there so maybe I can get a few gigs just drawing. At the time — this would be the late ’70s — there was still a market for local weeklies. Even though people used clip art, a lot of places wanted commissioned art, whether they were drawings for advertisements or little editorial spots. So I thought I could pick up some money doing that. I hauled my portfolio around to different places. At night, I’d go home and either work on a new screenplay or work on a play, but my dreams of theater were fading because it was increasingly difficult to crack that market.

CBC: Did you return to buying comics at all? You had caught wind of The First Kingdom. Wendy and Richard Pini were coming out with Elf Quest, Cerebus was coming out. There was a real beginning of possibilities!

Batton: I didn’t learn of any of that stuff ’til the early ’80s. There were still enough head shops around that sold undergrounds, but I really wasn’t interested.

I had a friend who worked in a second-hand bookstore in Brooklyn that was called My Friend’s Comics. That bookstore is the subject to an article all to itself. I found out how many comics people got their back issue there when they were fans! Everyone from Howard Chaykin to Jimmy Palmiotti to Paul Levitz. When I was a rabid fan, I used to go there.

They would have a box and you could get back issues and they were incredibly cheap. The current stuff was incredibly cheap, also. But I had a friend who, just by coincidence, began working there, and when The Spirit would come in she’d pick it up for me. They got in John Benson’s Panels. She gave me a copy and said, “I thought you’d be interested.” Well, I thought it was just terrific because it was dealing with comics theory which reminded me of Howard Nostrand’s interview and, before that, Gil Kane’s Alter Ego interview. It was just fascinating and I said, you know, comics are just such a fantastic medium and you can do anything in comics. And I thought there’s got to be an outlet somewhere for this, “I still like comics and I’m drawing anyway. Maybe I should just find different markets. Why do I have to go through Marvel and DC?” At the time, if you weren’t doing Marvel or DC, the best you could do after that was Gold Key or Charlton or stuff

Above: Once titled Wolff & Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre Law, Batton Lash renamed the series Supernatural Law at the behest of Hollywood producers pitching a cinematic adaptation, which alas hasn’t yet come to be. Below: Nifty Radioactive Man and Bartman image shared

by Bill Morrison, which actually predates Batton’s scripting on the character.

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This page: Besides the Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre weekly strip Batton Lash contributed to The Brooklyn Paper in the 1980s and ’90s, he also submitted spot illustrations and editorial cartoons for the New York City newspaper.

In other words, they wanted to go to an advertiser and say, “Whatever you’re selling, we can draw it specifically to what you want.” I said, “Yeah, sure.” So I went down to 26 Court Street. This would’ve been April, 1979, and showed my stuff to the editor, Beverly Cheuvront, and her husband at the time was one of the Page Six cartoonists for the New York Post.

So Bev was very sympathetic towards cartoonists. “We can use you for advertisements.” Eventually, they had me doing some editorial cartoons, spot illustrations, and advertising.

That led to State Advertising, which was in the same building. They got wind and so they hired me for some freelance stuff. That was great! So I had some income actually coming in from my artwork. It was during this time where I hit it off with Beverly and the publisher Ed Weintrob. I can’t say Ed was my J. Jonah Jameson but, as long as the work came in on time and the client was happy, he was happy with me. Eventually he became a very big supporter. He liked my tenacity and I asked him and Beverly, “We’ve got a weekly newspaper. How about a comic strip?” And they right away said, “Sure!” I was ecstatic and I remember leaving that day saying, “Well this is great, but what am I gonna do?” Just walking around downtown Brooklyn where The Brooklyn Paper was distributed, it was just lots of small law firms and… to be unkind, downtown Brooklyn at the time was always known as where the ambulance chasers were because these very small firms, just two-man operations, and they specialized in everything — family law, real estate law, every conceivable type of law. I just thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny if you just had a law firm that defended monsters?” I thought, “Maybe I’ll just do that. I’ll do that and just tread water until I come up with something I really want to do.” Well, that was the beginning of Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre.

Beverly laughed when she first heard the idea. “Okay, go for it!” Now, my knowledge of the law was old Perry Mason episodes and old issues of Daredevil [Jon laughs] where Matt Murdock was an attorney. When I say old memories, I mean just memories. I didn’t even look at that stuff. I didn’t even talk to attorneys. I didn’t even know the difference between civil and criminal. But once I started doing the strip within the year… it always takes me a while to get up speed and I’m trying to get my sea legs and I distinctly remember I was working on the third story, which was, “My Dentist Was a Vampire,” and I was saying, “Maybe I should start researching the law here.” So that was the beginning. Working on that, I thought, “I am having so much fun with this, I just think I’m gonna stick with this.” And I’ve been with it ever since.

CBC: What was your living situation at the time?

Batton: I was still living with my parents and I was just moving out around that time. I was just making enough money to move out and I moved to downtown Brooklyn to be close to my new gigs, which were The Brooklyn Paper and State Advertising. That was sort of my post-graduation education because I would go with Ed to the printer, I’d help him cut Rubylith for spot color. He had a production manager who was always overworked, so a lot of the time, when I brought in my strip, they’d ask me if I could help on something. I really loved going to the printer with him in the middle of the night. The printer was in Queens, I think. You know, just to see the big presses and using their light boxes to do last minute touching up. It was very exciting! So yeah, I helped out and I helped deliver the paper to all the law offices that inspired the Wolff and Byrd idea. I was in my early 20s, so it was quite a time.

CBC: How big was the Brooklyn Paper staff? Was it small?

Batton: It would vary. I think the staff was maybe 10 people at the most. You know, they had Johnny Egana, who I mentioned earlier. He was one of their salesmen. I think they had a staff of three salespeople, a production manager, a couple of staff reporters, Laurie Sue Brockway… The Brooklyn Paper had a nice pedigree because the people that went through. There was Laurie Sue Brockway, who went on to become a high profile reporter; Jami Bernard, who became an author and a film critic for the New York Post; J. G. Jones #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Illustrations © the respective copyright owner.

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like that. If you didn’t do that stuff, then you were not in comics. And I thought, “Oh, that’s ridiculous!”

Comics are comics! Remembering Eisner’s class, he always taught us to look for markets for comics! I had that in mind, as well. So I began taking the portfolio around and saying, “By the way, would you want a comic strip or something like that?”

And they didn’t. They just wanted me to draw an ad or something like that.

But it was in the back of my mind saying, oh, let me just find different outlets here.

CBC: What was in the portfolio?

Just illustrations? Was there any continuity?

Batton: No continuity, just illustrations. It’s funny. Right out of the gate, I got a nice assignment from Swank.

They commissioned a full-color piece from me of a Playboy bunny coming out of a UFO. I think it was the only illustration in the magazine where the sexy babe was fully dressed because she was in the Wally Wood-type space outfit. But just about every art director said to me, “Did you take your portfolio to Marvel Comics? ’Cause these look like comics!” [laughter] I said, “No, no, no, no.” I just picked up stuff here and there.

CBC: What is the genesis of Wolff and Byrd?

Batton: The last time we spoke, I said how the people I met at SVA were just great and they helped me later on in life. One of those people was a guy named Johnny Egana.

He was in the photography department. We were in a class together and we hit it off. He was a really good guy and very helpful. And out of the blue, post-SVA, he called me up in 1979. He knew I was taking my portfolio around. He said, “Hey, would you want to bring your stuff to this newspaper I’m working at?” It was less than a year old. It was a weekly downtown newspaper called The Brooklyn Paper and they were looking for an artist to draw specialty advertisements.

Wolff & Byrd © Batton Lash.

who is a hot artist at DC, Jonathan Larsen, who is now a producer at The Daily Show. These people all went through The Brooklyn Paper at one time or another.

CBC: What was the fictional story within Wolff and Byrd?

Was it a gag strip or continuity?

Batton: Oh, it was always a continuity. Again, I was remembering the comic strips of my youth. You know, Dick Tracy and things like that. I was never a fan of gag-a-day strips. Well, I liked them, but it was never my thing. I always liked continuity and, as always, I was always interested in the characters. The thing about Wolff and Byrd was, I thought, “I’ll just use the law as background.” It’s a premise to hang the characters on. The first story was (and this will give you an idea how long ago this was) the ghost of a World War I ace coming back and his sweetheart was a witness, so we still had World War I era people alive back then!

The second one was about a cult and I was really trying to figure out where to go with this. It’s very rare where a strip or even a TV series comes out full-blown. A lot of times you have to feel your way around and find your direction, but I think once you find that direction you’re on the high-speed trip and you just move forward. That’s how I found it with the third one, which was the vampire dentist story. After that, I just found the recipe for Wolff and Byrd. I think Mike Barr had the best definition of, in genre stuff, where it’s been called a formula or stories that are formulaic, he said, no.

The story has a recipe! And I always liked that. I think I found the right recipe for me, for Wolff and Byrd, with that third one.

CBC: Who are the two main characters and what are their relationships with each other? How would you describe them?

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

Batton: Well, I would describe them as the yin and yang of me. Alanna Wolff is tall, thin — a tall drink of water — wears glasses and she represents the no-nonsense aggressor side of me. While Jeff Byrd is more easygoing, rotund, a bit of a pushover. Unfortunately, I think that he represents more of me than the Alanna Wolff side. [laughter] But my mission statement from the get-go is that I wanted to have a male/ female team but it’d be a platonic relationship because a lot of my friends were women and I could never dream of having a personal, romantic relationship with them. I was always friends with them and I always enjoyed their company, and that type of rapport with my characters. I remember The Avengers. As a kid, I liked that Steed and Mrs. Peel were partners, but they weren’t a couple! So I wanted to bring that to Wolff and Byrd. Also, I just thought it would be more interesting that they’d have relationships outside of each other and create an interesting dynamic. I find it very tedious when you see comics or TV shows where there’s a male and female, eventually they wind up together but they have to work together, and then complications ensue.

A thing like Castle — I know this might be blasphemous, but I find it incredibly tedious. I think it would be more fun if those two characters never got together.

CBC: It’s a weekly strip, right? How long would a story arc take?

Batton: That second story was just floundering. Took too long. With the vampire dentist, I made a rule to myself — no stories longer than six weeks. That’s just enough time to absorb it and then move

Above: Batton Lash pencils for two Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre strips that would appear in The Brooklyn Paper.

Courtesy of the cartoonist.

Below: In the early days of the strip, The Brooklyn Paper produced this promotional button trumpeting Lash’s Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre.

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Above: The new strip by Batton Lash appearing in The Brooklyn Paper gets some play atop the weekly’s front page at the close of 1980. Clipping courtesy of B.L.

Next page: At top are both of Batton Lash’s rough layout and finished page from Supernatural Law #25 [Feb. 2000]. Many comics fans first encountered Batton Lash and his signature characters in their appearance in the ninth issue of Michael T. Gilbert’s fondly-recalled Doc Stearn… Mr. Monster [Apr. ’87].

Cover by MTG. Panel by BL.

Below: Two Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre strips appearing in the early ’80s.

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © 2015 Batton Lash.

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I pulled together three separate six-week stories for the Law Journal and pitched it to them January of 1983. Much to my surprise, they accepted it! Now Wolff and Byrd was a national strip, even though it was for a very specific target audience. I was now a national cartoonist and it was a very exciting time.

CBC: So you had the wherewithal to maintain ownership of the strip? It was never a question?

Batton: No! Again, thinking about Eisner and his class, he always stressed, whatever you can do, try to own your own material. When I pitched the idea of doing a weekly strip to The Brooklyn Paper, I said, “But I’d have to own it.” They said, ‘Oh, no problem!” Not only did I own it, but they paid me, too! Life didn’t get better than that. on. Plus it was helping me form a discipline — how do I tell CBC: [Laughs] Did the national law publication pay well? the most in the least amount of time? Now, I don’t say this Batton: It paid pretty good. And again they had no probsmugly. I will never reprint those early strips because they lems letting me own the strip. The publisher was never a fan. are just too verbose and the storytelling is all over the map.

I found out through the editor. “The New York Times doesn’t But that’s the only way you learn. I must have been doing have comics. Why should we have comics?” But again I something right because around 1981, I got a call from a was just very fortunate because Tim and his staff of reportgentleman by the name of Tim Robinson and he said that he ers and his assistants all enjoyed it. The liked me personally was the editor-in-chief of the National Law Journal. He lived and they also enjoyed the strip. They found it creative and in Brooklyn Heights and he read The Brooklyn Paper. He very funny for which I’m very thankful and they saved me at said, “Yeah, I’ve been reading Wolff and Byrd every week, the Law Journal. I was there for 14 years. and was wondering if you’d like to pitch it to my staff to run CBC: Did you continue at The Brooklyn Paper? Were you in the Law Journal?” My acute business sense, the first thing occasionally doing editorial cartoons? out of my mouth was, “Is this a joke?” He said, “No, this is Batton: I was doing editorial cartoons on and off, dependno joke! It’s on the level. Let’s meet for a drink.” So I met ing on what burning issues were going on in downtown him and he’s a hell of a nice guy. He was a Brooklyn Heights Brooklyn, but I think when The Brooklyn Paper expanded local. It must have taken me close to a year to put together into different neighborhoods — they went to Bay Ridge, Bensamples just for the Law Journal. I tried to do my research as sonhurst — I’d sit in on the editorial conferences and we’d well as I could. By this time, I had a nine-to-five job at State do stuff about New York, Brooklyn, and some national issues.

Advertising. I was their copywriter and staff artist. So I had I know I had one with Reagan and Gorbachev being drinking a steady income, but nine-to-five was the advertising work buddies during that whole détente period. and at night I would go work on my other artwork, which was CBC: What was your political bent personally?

Wolff and Byrd.

Batton: Back then I had no political bent. Politics were I remember I had a week’s vacation at State and I used absolutely boring to me and very confusing. I read three that week to go to court. In downtown Brooklyn, there were papers every day — New York Times, Post, and Daily News. all sorts of courthouses and when I came back to State, When I say I had no political bent, I guess I always did. It just my boss said, “You had a week off, but you spent the entire never came out. It wasn’t something I was interested in. But week in courtrooms?” I said, “Yeah.” He couldn’t believe it.

I’d keep up with world events, especially things happening in But it helped quite a bit. The attorneys that I had met were New York. also very helpful and they pointed me in the right direction.

CBC: Tom Wolfe came out with Bonfire of the Vanities about the absurdity of what was going on in New York at the time with all the different scandals.

There’s be a racial scandal every three to four months. It was a crazy time of a lot of absurdity. Did you take note of that?

Batton: In fact, I remember reading Bonfire of the Vanities when it came out because I had always liked Tom Wolfe’s articles in Rolling Stone and this was his first novel. I remember being struck how on-target… [laughs] how he nailed the zeitgeist that was happening in New York at the time. I was very aware of it.

When I say I wasn’t politically aware, it wasn’t something I was interested in. I was certainly aware of what was happening, but if you had to press me to the wall, I’d say, “I’m not sure what my opinion is on this.” [laughs] Of course, that all changed as the ’80s wore on.

CBC: Comic shops were exploding and there were a lot of independent comics that were rising up in the late ’70s/early ’80s. You must have taken notice, yes?

Batton: I remember just walking into Manhattan from where I lived in Brooklyn to a great store called Soho

Wolff & Byrd, Supernatural Law TM & © 2015 Batton Lash. Doc Stearn… Mr. Monster TM & © 2015 Michael T. Gilbert.

Zot, which was this very eclectic store. It was a head shop, vintage clothes store, with all sorts of stuff. I knew they had undergrounds and in the back on my mind I know they had The Spirit. I walked there from over the Brooklyn Bridge, and it was a cold, brisk, February day. You know, it’s one of those days even though it’s cold, you feel like a million bucks because you’re walking in New York and it’s very exciting!

And I go there and I saw The Spirit and, to this day, it’s my favorite cover of The Spirit.

It has the Spirit chained to a wall and a femme fatale has got a gun and is kissing him and there’s thugs. It’s this beautiful watercolor painting

by Eisner. So I bought it!

That was the day I remember seeing First Kingdom, which I realized was that thing that Eisner showed me several years prior. It must have been up to #10 by that time.

I went home, read The Spirit, and the next time I was in Manhattan, I went into Soho Zot to check stuff out. I would begin noticing things that weren’t quite underground, like Cerebus and Elfquest, but they definitely weren’t the current newsstand comics. I remembered Star*Reach, from the mid-’70s on and wondered if that was still around. I saw Imagine for the first time. I was looking through it and I thought, “Oh my god, this guy looks like a combination of Eisner and Ditko!” It was Michael T. Gilbert. I remember buying it thinking he took the story of Moses and the Promised Land and made it a science fiction story and it was the new land of milk and honey. And I thought, “Where is this guy coming from? Who are these people?” So that began my interest in what was happening… A thing that I’d always wished to see in comics was beginning to happen.

CBC: Did you envision that Wolff and Byrd might fit into the equation?

Batton: Not until I saw Cerebus. I thought, “You know, this is something I would really like to do.” I had always liked the idea. Here was this modest looking comic just done by this guy and his wife. I have to stress, while I was doing the strip, I still felt I was not quite there yet. I have to say that I would never reprint those first five years of the strip. Around the time, I started getting into The Law Journal, I thought I was beginning to find my mojo, as it were. But still, a whole comic book? That’s a different animal. I always stress that newspaper strips and comic books are like TV and movies. They’re using the same instruments, but they’re different mediums and they demand different things.

But to get back to what I’m saying, I saw something like Cerebus and I said, “Boy I’d love to do that.” But at the time I had my hands full with just getting the strip out every week.

Some things never change. I’m always down to the wire with the strip and it’s not because I procrastinate. It’s because I always tried to get the best possible end results and sometimes if what I have in mind doesn’t come out on paper exactly the way I would want it so it’s redrawing and redoing it. Again, I had a lot of support at The Law Journal and The Brooklyn Paper where — even though I caused them great agita — they were very patient and understood that I was a finicky cartoonist. Many times I’m down to the wire. An hour Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

before they had to send the thing to press, they’d leave the strip space open for me and I’d rush in and I’d Photostat it — on my own dime! — so I could have the leisure time to put the Zip-A-Tone. That’s another thing! I would never put the Zip-A-Tone on the original art. I’d put it on the stat, so that took time, but I thought the results looked better.

CBC: What would you say artistically your influence was as you were developing your style?

Batton: Oh, I think there was always Eisner and Ditko…

When I saw Johnny Craig at the time, there wasn’t much of his stuff reprinted, but the stuff that I did see I just absorbed.

I loved that bold outline that I would find out later to be the Caniff influence! Even Eisner had that Caniff influence in his work. And then I discovered Caniff! When I was growing up, Steve Canyon wasn’t in any of the New York papers that I was aware of, in none of the New York papers my father bought. I always heard his name and heard how great he was, but I didn’t realize how truly great and influential he

Above: Caption

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ing his pages he was bringing in. He would bring in penciled pages drawn by Joe Staton. I’d go, “Ah! There’s Joe Staton, I know him from E-Man! I loved E-Man!” Steve would tune out whenever I would get too fannish, but he would just let me know what was going on with books or who the talent was or people to look out for. From what I gather, he would bring people up to the studio, but I was at work nine-to-five, so I didn’t really meet any of those people. But Russell would tell me. I mean, Walt Simonson!

CBC: You know, I’m looking at the credits for the first Wolff and Byrd collection from 1987 and they’re referencing strips from ’83 and there’s some familiar comic book names that helped out with lettering… Victor Gorelick, Rick Parker, and Phil Felix.

Batton: Oh, yeah! I shouldn’t overlook them! I totally overlooked a whole minor segment when I was an assistant to Howard Chaykin, too. It was Spring of 1977 and I was working as a busboy at a bar called Ashley’s. That was my nighttime job while I was going to SVA during the day. This is where Howard Chaykin would hang out, with Dave Morris, who I would eventually share a studio. He knew me because he had substituted for Kurtzman during SVA. One time, Howard was on a tight deadline and he said, “I don’t even know what your artwork looks like. I just need someone just to help me with this background thing.” He was working on a graphic novel called Empire for Byron Preiss and my job was to just fill in some blacks and also to lay down flat colors on the artwork which he would go over and and what he would do is “modeling” with acrylics. That didn’t last long and it really was a period of my life where I think I wasn’t interested in comics per se, so I didn’t take advantage of the situation as well as someone who was really ambitious would have. Howard is a real tough customer. He’s really no nonsense and I don’t think he was too happy with my work.

This was right before Star Wars happened. And speaking of Star Wars, Howard had sketches all over the place of Star Wars and he said, “You’re not gonna believe this. This is going to…” He didn’t use the word “game-changer” but whatever the 1977 equivalent was to game-changer, that’s what he used. I remember going, “Really? Science-fiction movies are kinda cheesy.” He goes, “Not this one! Wait until you see it!” And, sure enough, he was absolutely right.

About a month later, it came out. But he said Empire was canceled because the publisher got cold feet. I don’t know what the real story was. Someone else said, “No, he just fired you because he didn’t like your work and just made up that story.” Howard himself just said he doesn’t remember.

“I just remember I wasn’t happy with you.” But to this day, he’s always been very friendly and a big supporter. And very complimentary. He likes that I was tenacious! But anyway, that was my brief apprenticeship.

CBC: So back to Rick Parker and Victor Gorelick.

Batton: Yes! The comics connection. The summer I was developing Wolff and Byrd, I was also developing another strip for a High Times spin-off that was called Stone Age, so I had two strips that I was ready to do. This would have to be July, 1979. Wolff and Byrd wasn’t published until September of ’79. Howard had Upstart Studios on the West Side of Manhattan. I can’t remember how I knew that. Maybe Russell told me. So I called him up and I said, “Howard, would you take a look at these things?” Like I said, even though he wasn’t happy with my work, he liked me, and he said, “Yeah, yeah. Come up. Let me see.” So he looked at my stuff and he wasn’t crazy about the strip that I was gonna pitch to Stone Age but he saw Wolff and Byrd and he goes, “This looks like fun!” And he said—and I’ll never ever forget this—he said, “Can you letter?” I said, “No. Not very well.” He said, “Get a letterer.” He said, “Trust me. Whatever you spend on a letterer, it is going to pay off in the long run.” And I never forgot that.

CBC: Was he right?

Batton: Oh, he was absolutely right because, to me, cartooning is also writing, and if you can’t read the writing, #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Grave Tales, Dread of Night TM & © the Bruce Hamilton Company. Archie TM & © Archie Comic Publications. The Punisher TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Early Batton Lash work appeared in the short-lived Bruce Hamilton b-&-w horror magazines in 1991. Below & next page: Batton wrote this unforgettable mash-up for Marvel and Archie Comicsin 1994.

was until Kitchen Sink started publishing the Steve Canyon reprints. It was like an epiphany. And again, this was all around that same time period where I was discovering Cerebus and getting into The Law Journal with my strip, so… All these influences were informing my sensibilities in producing the strip. As much as I wanted to, I have to confess that when I draw from life, to me it’s just not as interesting as drawing cartoons because everything I draw from life, I have to start over. It just looks too stiff. I just found out, well, I’m never gonna be Reed Crandall! [laughs] But it’s more fun to just draw cartoony and I thought maybe this is the route I should take. Again, I go back to SVA and I had mentioned earlier how I’d be criticized for having technique out of control. Eisner would look at my drawings and say, “Look at animation. Just simplify. Simplify your style.” I’ve been going that route ever since.

CBC: So you continued along in The Law Journal for 15 years?

Batton: Well, 14 years. From ’83 to ’96.

CBC: And then, The Brooklyn Paper? You were associated with them for how long?

Batton: They published the strip from ’79 to April of 2001.

CBC: That’s quite a stretch. You said you were discovering Cerebus, but there was a lot more that was going on, even with mainstream comics, right?

Batton: Well, now that I was a fill-time cartoonist, as I said, I was drawing illustrations for State Advertising, I was copywriting, doing freelance work for The Brooklyn Paper, and other work that would come my way. I think every freelancer will say we get work by word of mouth.

Someone will call up The Brooklyn Paper and ask, “Who did that drawing? I want him to design my letterhead.” So I was getting steady work and I also had a full-time job, This would be around 1980. My friend, animator Russell Calabrese, who I mentioned earlier suggested we get a studio together.

And I liked that idea. It just had more room! We had another friend who was a humorist and another who became a very successful graphic designer. He’d design movie posters and things like that. We all went to SVA together and we said, yeah, let’s get a studio together. So we found one on 21st Street and 7th Avenue, and I remember Russell telling me, “Here’s the room. It’s $450 a month.” Now this was 1980 and I remember thinking, “How are we gonna do that?” Especially split four ways! So you can imagine…We saw the space. It was… yeah. Whatever we have to do to have it! It was this gigantic space! I’m sure the rent there is in the five figures today! But at the time it was just terrific. But to help pay the rent, we got in another animator, Dave Morris, who worked with Russell but he had a lot of outside projects to the point where he was hardly in the studio anymore so he rented his space to Steve Mitchell, who was at the time a very in-demand inker at Marvel and DC. I think he was working on Green Lantern, The Huntress, something like that, at the time he came into our studio. So he began to tell me what was going on in the comic book world. He told me the best book being published — and I told him how I wasn’t too interested, I wasn’t interested at all —and he said, “The book you gotta read is Daredevil. There’s a guy doing it, Frank Miller, you will not believe his work!” That was the first time I had heard of Frank Miller’s work. Steve began telling me what was going on in comics and, of course, I was see-

Archie TM & © Archie Comic Publications. The Punisher TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

you don’t know what’s going on. You can forgive wonky artwork because you’re into the story, but nine times out of ten, you’re not gonna forgive wonky artwork and terrible lettering. If you can’t read it, you’re gonna pass on it. Again, I had a connection through SVA to someone who knew someone who lettered DC comics, so I got in touch with her and she put me in touch with Clem Robins and he lettered the very first Wolff and Byrd strip. Then he was moving on. He wasn’t going to be doing comics. You’re gonna have to talk to Clem about how he had left comics for years and years and years and only came back relatively recently. But he put me in touch with Tom Orzechowski, who lettered a couple of strips for me. And when Tom couldn’t do it anymore, I was at a loss. I didn’t know any other letterers. Russell knew someone who colored at Archie Comics and she said, “Oh, I’ll talk to Bill Yoshida. He letters all the Archie comics.”

So Bill Yoshida was lettering for me and my more verbose scripts for a while. Well, Bill was used to Archie-style strips, so it was just too much for the money I was paying and he kind of left me in the lurch. I went to Archie to pick up the strips from Bill, and Victor Gorelick came out and said, “Look, there’s a little problem here. Bill didn’t want to do your strip anymore, but I didn’t think it was right that he would just not do it because you’re expecting it, so I lettered it for you.” [laughs] I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.” The moment I looked at Victor’s lettering, I loved it! He used the little flags at the exclamation points. When I was a kid, I used to love the way those things were lettered. He said, “I’ll letter this until you find a permanent letterer.” So a few weeks in, Victor said, “Did you ever find a permanent letterer?” I go, “No, not really.” He goes, “Good! I like your scripts.” [laughs] So that was nice to have a letterer who liked your script. He was not only reading it, but enjoying it as well! Victor was still production manager and when he was promoted to Archie’s managing editor, the workload just got too much for him. He had to give up doing my lettering but we always kept in touch after that. Whenever he read the strip, he would always say, “Don’t you wanna write for Archie? How about submitting some strips to me?”

And, of course, my great business sense, I kept putting it off. “Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.” But I can’t remember exactly how Phil Felix or Rick Parker, how I met them. It might have been at that point I knew a couple of people in the business and I’d met them. Maybe Steve Mitchell put me in touch with Phil Felix. Phil did a few fill-ins for me and he got too busy to continue it. Rick was a similar situation with Victor.

He said, “I’ll do this until you find a permanent letterer.” But, like Victor, not only did he read the strip, he enjoyed it. That always helps. He must have lettered for me into the ’90s. At least ten years.

CBC: So what was your first real comic book work?

Batton: Here’s where I knew I really needed more discipline. I just needed more savvy as far as comics go. I talked the publisher of The Brooklyn Paper into doing a comic book insert like the way Eisner did with The Spirit. They were going to do a special edition for an event in Brooklyn Heights called The Atlantic Antic and I said, “I’ll write a story, a Wolff and Byrd story, that takes place during the Antic and we’ll insert that in. It’ll be a brand new eight-page story! Wow!” [laughs] Easier said than done. Even though I remember it was a very hot summer — 1980 — where I was trying to do that eight-page story. That’s where I learned that comic strips are a different medium than comic books. That was an education unto itself! Technically, that was my first real comic book. I remember starting in June and the Antic was in September and I finished in late August. I had visions of Eisner going, ““You can’t take that long for a weekly comic book insert.” [laughs] So I just had to get more experience under my belt and see what I can do. I did some one-page Wolff and Byrd stories for things like American Fantasy and some Brooklyn Paper spin-offs, like The Downtown News, where they gave me one page to fool around with, so I had a longer continuity. But I had to do it done in one. You know, wrap it up. There was no continuity from week to week. It Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

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just had to be done. Again, you just have to learn on the job. I think my big break, and the next time I did a major comic book story, was when Michael T. Gilbert got in touch with me and said, “Why don’t you have Wolff and Byrd meet Mr. Monster?” He gave me I think it was a six-page story in the back of his Eclipse series and I can’t tell you how excited I was. And it was going to be in full color so it was the first time Wolff and Byrd was in color as well.

I remember doing that story and then re-doing it. That’s how much I wanted to just get it right.

CBC: That was definitely the first time I’d seen Wolff and Byrd. Wasn’t the regular strip also reprinted in The Buyer’s Guide?

Batton: That started in ’91. Again we go back to SVA and just the people you 35

Above: Editor Andy Helfer’s Big Book anthologies put a lot of comics creators to work back in the 1990s under the Paradox Press (DC) imprint. Among those working stiffs was Batton Lash in The Big Book of Weirdos [’94].

Below: Husband Batton Lash and wife Jackie Estrada make a cameo appearance in an Archie comic book, as does B.L.’s Supernatural Law!

before, but why not? So that’s how I got that. Munden’s Bar, I think I was a little more… I think when, after attending my first San Diego Con and meeting people in the business, I just thought, like, maybe I should just network a bit more. I was a big fan of First Comics. I loved what they were doing and I liked John Ostrander’s scripts and I liked Munden’s Bar! I noticed that there would be a lot of crossovers with independent characters so, just for the hell of it, I wrote a letter to him care of First and a few weeks later Aninna Bennett, who was the editor of Grimjack — that’s where “Munden’s Bar” appeared — wrote back to me and said, “John tells me that he wants you to do something. Come up with a plot and we’ll take it from there.” So I did the plot and it sent it to Aninna, they accepted it. I think it was six pages. So, yeah, that was Wolff and Byrd’s second full-color thing. The others ones — Panorama — it’s funny. Comics are a small network. You’d meet other independent cartoonists in New York. We used to hang together at the Cedar Tavern. Mitch Berger was the one that originated that, where he goes, “Yeah, why don’t we just invite cartoonists that we know and just get together, have a few drinks, and the Cedar Tavern was the classic place all the post-impressionists used to hang out and it was a great bar! It’s not there anymore. But I would meet people like Debbie David. She’s the one that did Panorama and she liked Wolff and Byrd, so I said, yeah, I’ll do something for her.

I’d just been doing appearances here and there. “Frankie’s Frightmare”… I can’t remember how I got in touch with him… or he might have just gotten in touch with me. But a lot of those strips, I would just piece together existing strips to make a comic book story. And that was an education, too.

Like, how do I transfer this into a comic book story? What do I need to do to tell the story? Even though I don’t think they were paying gigs at all. Still, they paid off in the long run.

CBC: Right. And in the early ’90s, you decided to start a Wolff and Byrd comic series, self-publishing. What inspired you to do that?

Batton: Well, going back to Cerebus, that was always in the back of my mind where I would always like to do a very small production. And I always liked that he did it with his wife. In 1990, I met Jackie Estrada, who would eventually become my wife, and Jackie — as she likes to say — wears many hats, and one of those hats is that she’s been a professional editor for decades. And not just for comics, but for textbooks, magazines, and things like that. When I met her, I don’t think she had edited any comics or comic stories. She had written two comic stories for Renegade Romance, but her big thing was she was a crackerjack editor. Well, I had self-published a collection of Wolff and Byrd strips because, as an editor, she knew how to format things and she’d show me what I was doing wrong.

The first Wolff and Byrd collection was published by Andrion Books, and I’ll always be grateful that they gave me a big chance, but I wanted to be in charge of production and the way it was marketed and things like that. I always believed that artists should be in charge of their own work, but they need an editor. So I’m so grateful that Jackie was there for both of those things. She gave me my space to do what I needed to do as far as the book was concerned, but she was also there to look over the book as an editor.

CBC: Jackie is renowned for working with the San Diego Comic-Con? Batton: Yes. She’s one of the few people that have been to every San Diego Comic-Con. She started working with them first as a volunteer and then more hands on beginning in the mid-’70s. What can I say? She’s guest liaison, she did publications, she created Artist’s Alley! A little comic trivia that people may not be aware of. She was the one that said, “Oh, there’s so many cartoonists just doing sketches, why don’t we create a row just for them?” I think she even coined the term Artist’s Alley! And this would be in the ’70s.

CBC: And she’s been associated with the Eisner Awards for any number of years now, right?

Batton: Eisner wasn’t happy with what was going on with #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Big Book of Weirdos TM & © DC Comics. Archie

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meet there. Mitch Berger, who I met at SVA, was in the photography department at the time, but after graduation, we lost touch and I ran into him at the first San Diego Con I attended in 1989. And not only did I find out that he was publishing a political cartoon magazine called Bullseye, but he was now an attorney and he would see my strip in the national Law Journal every week. So we kept in contact from there, and Mitch is a very generous guy. He would say, “Yeah, if you want, show me your scripts before you have them lettered just so that the legal stuff is correct.” Ever since then, he’s been my legal consultant on the strip. But unbeknownst to me, he took a bunch of my strips and sent them to Don and Maggie Thompson at CBG, asking them if they’d be interested in running them.

Well, one day I get the CBG in the mail and the headlines say, “New Strips by Will Eisner and Batton Lash.” That was the one-two punch. The idea that CBG is running my strip, but to be headlined with my old teacher, Will Eisner…? I always felt I had failed his class but finally felt that I got a passing grade!

It was just very nice. And, of course, I called Mitch and said, “How’d…?” and he goes, “I just sent them to ’em. I thought I’d hear from ’em but…” Then I called Don Thompson and he goes, “Oh, I just figured you’d want it anyway, so we just started running them.” No problem with me! That was my introduction. How do I explain it? I went from Brooklyn, which was very provincial, closed off area, to a national audience which was The Law Journal but which was a very specific audience. Now, Wolff and Byrd was being introduced to the comic audience. So it was exciting. And it was just reprinting the original strips.

CBC: So it was perhaps your connections that you were making in San Diego and at comic conventions that you started getting jobs, such as Munden’s Bar Annual, Panorama, Dread of Night from Hamilton Comics, Satan’s Six….

Batton: I’m, trying to remember. Again, I’m always grateful for anyone who likes my work. The Hamilton Comics thing came out of the blue. I was at a very small convention in San Diego, not their major one, and John Clark came up to me, introduced himself and said he worked for Bruce Hamilton and they were going to do a lot of horror comics and he’d always liked my work and he’d like for me to be one of the staff artists. I said, “Sure!”

He said, “Would you mind drawing other people’s scripts?” I said, “No.” You know, I’d never done that

TM & © notice

the Eisner Awards. There was gonna be a reboot on the Eisner Awards, so Denis Kitchen and he put their heads together. I think Denis suggested Jackie and Will knew Jackie through Comic-Con. In 1990, I was there when he walked up to Jackie and formally asked her to breakfast to talk to her about taking over the Eisner Awards and being the administrator. So she’s been doing it since 1990. My disclaimer is that I am the loving husband, but I just see how hard she works to put together the Awards. Everything from getting the judges to preparing the ceremony and to making sure the ceremony is as entertaining as possible.

CBC: When did you two become an item?

Batton: [Laughs] I don’t know how candid I should be. I met her in Chicago in 1990 at a Chicago Con. My friend Russell Calabrese dabbled in comic books. He did a thing called CD Comic Books where he had the idea of just packaging alternative comics in a CD case. I was promoting myself. In fact, I went to Chicago Comic Con with my revised “Munden’s Bar” plot so I could meet John Ostrander and Aninna Bennett in person for the first time. We met Jackie and CCI’s general manager Fae Desmond at that convention and the reason I met Jackie — if I remember correctly — it was going to be The Spirit’s 50th anniversary and Will was gonna be a guest at Comic Con. I had gotten word that the Comic Con program was gonna have a Spirit section and they were looking for artwork to celebrate this, so I sent in a drawing of The Spirit, the character, and Wolff and Byrd were in it.

I didn’t know what to expect. I got a postcard from Jackie herself saying, “Oh, thanks for the drawing. You’ll be happy to know we’re gonna include it in the program book.” That must have been February or March and that was very nice so when were in Chicago, someone said, “Oh, yeah, People from San Diego are here! There’s Jackie Estrada and Faye Desmond.” So I went up to Jackie and I said, “My name is Batton Lash and I just want to thank you for sending me that postcard. It was a thrill! Eisner was my teacher, so it’s very exciting that I was included and you were considerate enough to let me know that I’m in!” Later on, she came up to me at a party whereMax Allen Collin’s band was performing and just began talking to me. Not for the life of me did I think she liked me, but later on she told me she thought I was going to be a much older person for some reason. I guess either my style or something like that. But she thought I was very polite to thank her for the postcard and actually just began talking to me. Russell and I would run into her and Faye the entire weekend and when I got back to New York, she was calling me! “Are you coming to San Diego?” I went, ‘Oh, yeah! I’ll be there!” When I would tell my friends, Russell and Mitch, they’d go, “We think this girl likes you!” I would say to ’em, “Really? What? Jackie Estrada? Why would she like me?” “There’s no accounting for taste!” [Jon laughs] Anyway, when I got to San Diego Con, Jackie put her cards on the table and I was… you know. The more we talked, the more we found we had in common. Many things in common and many people in common as well. We just hit it off at that San Diego Comic-Con in 1990 and I’ve known her for 25 years now.

CBC: There you go. The origin of the power couple! [laughter] Batton: Well, battery-powered couple!

CBC: The Punisher Meets Archie or Archie Meets the Punisher. What’s the story behind that?

Batton: Depending on who published it, it’s Archie Meets the Punisher. You know, I always feel the trajectory of my life is that it’s always good to prepare, but I can plan something to the most minute detail and it’ll blow up in my face, but then something will just come out of the blue and it’ll work so perfectly. I remember someone just coming up to me a couple years ago at a convention saying, “It’s incredible! Did you have a five-year plan on your career?” I had no plan! I had my deadlines and I had to meet them. Anything positive that happened between that and the deadlines was gravy to me. And that applies to Archie Meets the Punisher. Victor Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

Gorelick, who lettered for me, he was in San Diego — and this was before I moved here! After I got together with Jackie, we’d had a cross-country relationship for three-and-a-half years. Kids, don’t do this at home!

I wouldn’t recommend it but for three-and-a-half years, we’d just have a cross-country relationship. I’d come out here and just stay out here for a few weeks. During one of those times, in 1993, Victor was also out here on a business thing and he knew I was seeing Jackie at the time so he got in touch with me and said, “Let’s have lunch together.” I remember Dave Scroggy was at this lunch. Dave was working for Comic Book Expo, that was part of the San Diego Con at the time. So we were having lunch and the conversation moved to shop talk.

Tom DeFalco, editor-in-chief at Marvel at the time, was a protégé of Victor. He said, “Yeah, I’m always in touch with Tom.” Crossovers were very big at the time, especially Batman.

Batman was meeting everybody. And they said, “Yeah, Archie and Marvel should do a crossover.”

For some reason they said Archie and Spider-Man, but that wasn’t gonna work out. But then we had a big laugh saying Archie should meet the Punisher! And I said, “That sounds great!” And Victor looked at me and goes, “Really?” and I said, “Yeah!” He said, “How could that possibly work?” I always say this and I just hope people believe me. I wasn’t angling for a job. It was just coming off the top of my head. I go, “Well, you just do A, B, and C, and the characters stay true to themselves. In my mind, it’s like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, you know? To me it’s one of the greatest horror/humor movies of all time, where the monsters are true to themselves and Abbott and Costello are true to themselves and that’s where the humor comes out!” And I applied that to Archie Meets the Punisher. Victor says, “Why don’t you write that down?” I said, “Really?” He goes, “Yeah! What can we lose? So again, going back to my history and my “great” business sense, I immediately forgot about it. A week later, Victor calls me and says, “Where’s my outline?” I said, “Were you serious about that?” “Of course, I was! I wasn’t kidding! What do you think, I’m wasting time?

Write it up and I’ll show it to Tom.” There was nothing to lose, so I wrote it up. I think it was just like a page, a pitch, or something like that of what would happen if Archie meets the Punisher. I sent it to Victor, he showed it to Tom DeFalco, and then I get a call from Victor who said, “Why don’t you come to New York because Tom wants to meet you and we’re gonna talk about doing this Archie/Punisher thing?”

And I said, “You mean it’s a go?”

He goes, “Well, yeah! And it’s gotta be done pretty quick!” I found out much later that Tom had shown the pitch to Mark Gruenwald and said to Mark, “If you like this, look over it. If you don’t like it, we’ll forget about it.”

And Mark liked it! Mark, Victor and Tom are the ones we have to thank for this.

CBC: Well, and you! You came up with the idea! [laughter] Batton: Really, Victor and Tom came up with the idea. I just came up with the plot! But, yeah, that was an interesting experience. To this day people still come up to me — people who weren’t even born in 1994! — will come up to me and say, “I was at a panel and someone said there was a comic called Archie Meets

Above: Ever the comedian, groom Batton Lash gets goggily-eyed during pictures for his own betrothal ceremony when marrying bride Jackie Estrada.

Below: Apparently, the Comics Buyer’s Guide simply received samples of Batton’s W&B strip and took it upon themselves to print ’em! And Batton — and newfound fans — were delighted. Many of us are delighted, as well, as it was in the pages of CBG where we discovered the dapper cartoonist’s work.

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This page: For a glorious spell, Batton wrote the adventures of Simpsons’ super-hero Radioactive Man for Bongo. For more on the comic appearances of Claude Kane III’s alter ego, check out the interview last ish with awesome Bill Morrison!

Next page: Another Jackie Estrada snapshot of hubby Bat. Look for her ad in this issue!

CBC: How was your experience working on Bongo?

Batton: Oh, it was just great. Bill Morrison, Terry Delegeane, and Nathan Kane were all terrific. It reminded me of Archie Comics in the way of a company with a very well-known title character, but it was a small group. They were definitely overworked, but were friendly. It was a nice little bullpen. I would usually just send my scripts and layouts in by mail or email, so it was rare when I would get to the Bongo HQ, but occasionally I would see Matt Groening there and one nice time he took us all out to dinner, so that was fun.

CBC: What other memorable freelance gigs do you recall?

Batton: I was just so wrapped up in Supernatural Law that it took most of my time. In the ’90s, when Paradox Press was doing the Big Books, Andy Helfer gave me some assignments for some of those books and that was fun doing the research. Again, it was an exercise, drawing something I didn’t write. Everything’s a learning experience. I am not a fast writer. I’m very painstaking. So, between Radioactive Man and Supernatural Law, and then every so often I’d do Mavis, which was the Wolff and Byrd spin-off. That pretty much took up about all my time, in addition to going to conventions to promote this stuff. I always say to self-publishers, writing and drawing — you can do that — but the real tough assignment is trying to sell it. That’s where everyone runs into the obstacle.

CBC: So how was your experience?

Batton: Well, that’s a full-time job. Trying to sell it, staying with the retailers, always connecting with the fans. When I did the strip for the Law Journal, I wouldn’t even know who was reading it. Once or twice, I’ll get a letter from an enthusiastic lawyer who wanted a piece of original art. But I always used to fantasize, “Wouldn’t it be great if fans asked for a sketch or talked to me about the characters?” Eventually, when the comic book happened, that’s what came to pass.

So I’m very grateful to the fans and I will always make time to talk to them and schmooze, but it’s very time-consuming. You know what the conventions are like. That weekend is like a 40-hour work week in a weekend.

CBC: [Laughs] Are you able to scratch out a living just from the comic book and the trade paperback collections?

Batton: Well, you know, freelance life is either feast or famine. During this period, during the late ’90s into the 2000s, Supernatural Law was optioned to be made into a movie.

The money was very good, so I was able to not scramble as much. If I wasn’t offered freelance work, I didn’t have to go seek it out because the option money paid the rent. Also, Jackie and I have a very low overhead. Well, we used to!

Now, with two cats, the overhead’s a little higher. I’ve always managed to find studios where the rent is manageable. Even when I did the strip, I always found ways to subsidize doing my comics work, which meant doing other freelance work.

Now, right now, I’ll admit it’s getting a little tough just across the board with the economy. Ever since that went into a nosedive a few years ago, things have been a little rough.

But, you know, somehow we make ends meet. I know we’re getting ahead of ourselves with the Webcomic and with Aces Weekly, but the money comes in there not by the bushel… but it comes in! I was always the late bloomer, but slow and steady wins the race. Supernatural Law was never like Bone or Strangers in Paradise, where it was a phenomenal success, but the books continue to sell and there’s always new readers coming on board. Somehow I manage to pay the bills.

CBC: Give us a premise, an overview, of a typical Wolff and Byrd story. There are going to be people here who haven’t read it and we want to certainly entice them to check it out.

Is it comedic? Is it dramatic? Is it a horror story?

Batton: How do I describe it? It’s a humorous premise done straight. We have Wolff and Byrd, who are attorneys that represent monsters and the supernatural, and I always say that the supernatural’s no match for the real world when it comes to the legal system, bureaucracy, and red tape, so they have to deal with that. Usually the monsters, they’re #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © 2015 Bongo Entertainment, Inc.

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the Punisher and you wrote it. Is that for real?” Back then people thought it was a joke and today people think it’s a joke. Some of my friends — people I’ve known for years — I would get emails from them occasionally saying, ‘I was going through my old comics and I saw Archie Meets the Punisher. I never knew you wrote this!” A dubious distinction, but it put me on the map!

CBC: You got a bit of mileage out of working at Archie, right?

Batton: Oh, the people at Archie are great. And I met a lot of people at Marvel, too.

Don Daley was the editor of that and he was really very pragmatic, and we hit it off and I met some of — well I guess most of those people aren’t at Marvel anymore — the famous Marvel bullpen. And to me, the exciting part was, when I went up to Marvel to meet with Don Daley, Don was busy, so Flo Steinberg entertained us until Don had time in his schedule to see me! So that was very exciting for me and Jackie! Just to schmooze with Fabulous Flo! CBC: [Laughs] How did your association with Bongo come about?

Batton: Out of the blue, I got a call from Bill Morrison. I didn’t know him that well, but I met him through Mimi Cruz who owns Night Flight Comics. And we hit it off. Bill’s a really friendly guy. I can’t imagine him not hitting it off with anybody. But out of the blue, he called me and he said Bongo was expanding its line. This would have been in 1999, something like that. He said Bongo was thinking of doing a Radioactive Man comic and Mimi recommended me. I think just from talking to me, Bill kind of knew I just had a talent for remembering, like comics minutiae like crazy! [laughs] So he said, “The mandate of the Radioactive Man comic is each issue takes place in a different era of comics. The numbering will be different. There’s been a thousand Radioactive Man issues. The first issue being in 1952, the last issue… whatever.”

The thing about doing Radioactive Man was not only did I get a chance to exorcise all the comics minutiae in my system, but I was writing the letter pages, the fake ads. [Jon laughs] The feather in my cap was the second issue, which was… Remember how I told you I just woke up one day and quit comics cold turkey? That second issue was everything I hated about comics when I was quitting reading them in the ’70s. The feather in my cap was, Kim Thompson came up to me and said, “That Radioactive Man issue? You nailed it! Right on the money.” [laughter]

Photo ©2015 Jackie Estrada.

kinda schnooks, so Wolff and Byrd have to hold their hand…or their claw in most cases [Jon laughs] and just walk them through the situations that we always have to deal with. I try to take my jabs at some social issues whenever, but I try not to preach, so it’s a balance. I know I keep referring to Eisner, but this is what I loved about The Spirit: he did just about any type of story with that character. It could have been funny, it could have been an out-and-out parody, it could have been a story that had some pathos. That’s what I try to do with Supernatural Law. I admit, sometimes — especially when it was in the strips — it might’ve went a little broad when it should have been a little more low key but, you know, everything’s a learning process… which should be the theme of this interview! Everything’s a learning process.

CBC: [Laughs] About it being optioned for a motion picture: do you think perhaps that somebody was looking for another Ghostbusters or looking for a comedic horror movie?

Batton: I think they were looking for another Men in Black. San Diego Comic-Con was the following week after Men in Black was released and I can’t tell you how many people came up to me and said, “Have you seen Men in Black yet? Because if they can do that, they have to do Wolff and Byrd!” Two months later, I got a call from a producer who was the creator of Max Headroom, Annabel Jankel. She called and wanted to know if the rights were available and that led me to Nancy Roberts who took it to Universal and they said, “This is what we’re looking for.” They were looking for a franchise like the Men in Black franchise. Yes, that was all exciting and it was very interesting, but it was also, as Art Spiegelman would say, “Now my troubles begin.”

CBC: [Laughs] Did you change the name of the series precisely at that same time?

Batton: When I was talking to the people hired to write the movie, they created Tremors, which I had loved even before I met them. It was that type of atmosphere I would want them to bring to Wolff and Byrd, and they were totally in sync with that. Nancy had told me, “Look. You named one of your strip collections Supernatural Law. We think that’s a better name for this because, you see, Wolff and Byrd? No one knows what that is.” And she has a point. The full title of my strip was Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre, and I would always bristle — even though any press is good press — when people would say, “Oh, there’s this thing called Wolff and Byrd,” and they’d spell Byrd wrong and they’d never put the “Counselors of the Macabre.” Well, if you don’t explain what the strip’s about, it just lays there. So I was, like, “Umm, Nancy, you might have a point here.” I thought that when you say Supernatural Law, it really sums it up, so I decided, well, if they’re gonna make a movie… and the main reason I want them to make a movie is so I can get more people to read the comic, let me change it. So I changed it, and I really haven’t regretted that since then. Even when I’m at conventions. I used to be at conventions and people would say, “Tell me about Wolff and Byrd. What is this?”

And I’d explain it. But the moment that people look at Supernatural Law, they get it right away. And it’s funny.

CBC: So you’ve been many years at the Comic-Con International: San Diego. What’s your take? How has it changed since 1990?

Batton: Here’s my full disclosure: I am married to Jackie Estrada, who has been associated to Comic-Con for many years. Everyone associates Comic-Con with Jackie. That said, when I first came to Comic-Con, I didn’t know Jackie! That was one of my first conventions, in 1989, that I’d went to since my fan days going to the Seuling conventions. Now, I loved the Seuling conventions and they were just, as we spoke about them earlier, they were fun, they were great. You’re a fan, you’re in hog heaven!

But this was a different ballgame now. I was a professional trying to sell my wares, trying to network. A little before I went to San Diego Con, I was at an Albany convention, Fantacon it might have been. It was loosey-goosey.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

It was very pleasurable. It reminded me of Creation conventions, that sort of thing. When I went to San Diego, the first thing I was struck with, I saw on the theater marquee, “Welcome to Comic-Con!” Wow! How ’bout that? You don’t see this on the Madison Square Garden marquee! Then I went into Golden Hall and I thought it was big then, but I couldn’t believe how organized it was. I went, “This is pretty tight!” So when I went back to New York, I went to a convention in a mid-town hotel (no name, please) and it was all over the map. I mean, just standing room only, very disorganized. And I thought, as a guy from New York, we can’t let San Diego beat us there.

And the organizer of the show said, “Oh, no. We’re improving,” and two hours later, the fire marshal shut down the show. It was just benign chaos, if that makes any sense. There were tons of people there.

The creators that would eventually go on to Image were all there, so you can imagine it was wall-to-wall people looking for autographs. Just crazy!

So when I went to San Diego in 1990. I have fond memories of that show because that’s when I got together with Jackie. I met the people who are running Comic-Con and they’re all very nice and dedicated, and been with it for years. The following year after that they were moving onto the convention center — just a little corner of the convention center! — and this was the bee’s knees. I just have the highest regard for Comic-Con. It gets a lot of slams and what cracks me up is people will say it’s gone Hollywood and it’s not about comics anymore. To them I would say, “Why don’t you look to the leaders of the field?

Marvel and DC aren’t really about comics anymore, either. They’re about Hollywood. You don’t want comics to go Hollywood and yet I bet you’re not gonna miss the new Avengers movie that’s coming out. So what are you talking about?” [Jon laughs] What I liked about Comic-Con was that it was very user-friendly. By that I mean, a lot of conventions I go to, if you’re not a die-hard fan, you have no interest in this show. And usually the die-hard fan has no interest in the type of independent books that people like me do. But Comic-Con, they reach out to the general public. It was for a local show for a long time, so the locals would come no matter what. Once they… I can’t say they expanded their reach, ’cause from the beginning they were always about comics, movies, science-fiction, fantasy. They covered pop culture! Once the Hollywood people began to go there in earnest and the general public came — and this is what I always say!— the general public comes to see the TV, movie celebrities and people, and then they go walking the exhibit hall, and then they see what comics have to offer. They say, “I didn’t know there were comics like this.” I mean, I can’t tell you how many times they would come upon something like Javier Hernandez’s El Gato comic and say, “Oh, god! Look at this!” or they’ll see something like mine and say, “Oh, my god! A comic about attorneys!” Or Eric Shanower’s Age of Bronze! They had no idea that comics had this wide a range. They thought it was just about super-heroes. So it’s a positive thing. You can’t go home again. I have fond memories of the Seuling convention, but there aren’t conventions like that anymore. I can’t put myself in the same spot as an 18-year-old guy with his graduation money running around getting back issue or doing stiff like that. It’s not gonna happen. You just move ahead. Comics are always at the center of Comic-Con. You may think that video and movies and the games are overshadowing it but, in the center of everything, everything is informed by comics. That’s what I have to say about it.

CBC: Was it in Reason magazine where the Obama Nation material started? What’s the story behind that stuff and what was the reaction?

Batton: Not Reason, it was for breitbart.com. Jackie and I were invited to The Spirit premiere — the movie — and Andrew Breitbart was there, too. Now this was before he really exploded on the national scene, but I knew who he was because I had read his first book about Hollywood and 39

Next page: Besides his Supernatural Law comic, Batton is producing something very different, a series for the webcomic anthology, Aces Weekly, entitled The First Gentleman of the Apocalypse, about a dapper fellow in a world gone to crap.

Check out www.acesweekly. co.uk for more info!

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depicted as animals and look how he’s making fun of the First Lady! They kept saying these things but they wouldn’t show it! So the national hysteria was this has got to be the most vile thing ever published! James was getting death threats! I didn’t get the threats, but I got the hate mail. Jackie was getting calls saying, “What’s it like being married to a racist?” We had to turn off our phone after a while. I was amused by this one call Jackie got. Someone calls and says, “You’re husband’s a racist!” and she’s about to hang up and says, “How you gonna feel when he comes out of the closet and you find out he’s gay?” She goes, “I think I would know if my husband’s gay or not.” “Your husband’s a faggot and you’re gonna be upset when he comes out of the closet!” So what I’m getting from this is: racism bad, homophobia not so much.

CBC: [Laughs] Wow. Batton: Breitbart really stuck up for us, and it was nice to be defended by people I admire like Michelle Malkin, Tony Katz, Dana Loesch, and people like that. The Twitterverse…

I had to stop reading it. I’ve never been in a situation like that with people I don’t know just making these wild judgment calls. It was just crazy! That went on for two days. Then, like being in a tornado, it just ended. Once it left the news cycle, we were able to turn the phone back on, my email hate mail let up but, yeah. It was pretty wild!

CBC: How about professionally within the field itself? Just like any creative field, the conservatives are in the minority.

Did you get backlash that lasted a bit longer than that?

Batton: Well, the nice thing… A couple of things that I was really heartened by… When cartoonists talk about free speech, they mean it! I got a lot of personal correspondence and phone calls from friends of mine who are very liberal and they said, “Look, what’s happening to you is not right.”

One guy in particular, the great Steve Thompson, who I will always be grateful for! He let me know Huffington Post published my home address! Right away he went to them and said, “This isn’t right. Why are you doing this?” And, you know, Steve let me know politically he doesn’t agree with me though I’m not a conservative and I always say to people, “I’ll bet there’s more things we agree on than we disagree.”

Libertarian is very different from a conservative and this was another — what’s the theme of this interview? —everything’s a learning experience! The thing I’ve learned was if you disagree with this administration’s policies, then you’ve gotta be some sort of wingnut conservative! [laughs] Why can’t you just disagree with it? [laughter] CBC: So there really wasn’t much fallout from the comics community?

Batton: Well, if anyone’s not talking to me, I don’t think they were talking to me to begin with. But the fallout was sort of in reverse because the conventions that followed after that happened, so many people came up to me and said, “I don’t spread it around but I’m a conservative and I love those cartoons.” Or even a big name writer — we’ll keep his name out. He came up to me and goes, “You know what? I voted for him and I agree with you.” [laughs] No one’s ever come to my booth and spit in front of me or sneered at me. More people came to me and said, “I agree with your views here.”

That’s the crazy thing. You’re right about every entertainment endeavor seems to have conservatives in the vocal minority, but there’s more than people think. They just keep quiet because frankly — and I feel this way, too — who wants to argue all day?

CBC: Apparently Facebook. [laughter] Batton: Yeah, that’s what Facebook is for! I used to post the Obama Nation cartoons on my Facebook page and then I’d just get people arguing my point of view! “Well, the cartoon speaks for itself. I can’t be here all day going back and forth.” So I just stopped posting them. Anyway, the postscript to all this? After Breitbart died, the editor who took over Big Hollywood and Big Government — those were the pages the cartoons appeared on — decided that there was not going to be any cartoons anymore. And by that time, political #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Obama Nation TM & © James Hudnall & Batton. Lash.

Above: Appearing at the late Andrew Breitbart’s media Web site Big Hollywood, pundit James Hudnall teamed with Batton Lash to produce Obama Nation, a regular webcomic tweaking the present administration.

Batton’s depiction of a big-eared President was oddly deemed as racist by some critics. Alas, after Breitbart’s untimely death, the new editor nixed the strip.

I was a fan of his articles. I always admired his feistiness.

I recognized him and approached him, and he was a little surprised that I knew who he was. We were talking about his book. His theory was that pop culture flows into the politics.

Anyway, he thinks everything begins and ends with pop culture, where it informs the public’s sensibilites. And I agree with that! I remember having an argument with an academic once — a libertarian academic — and he was saying how important it was to teach libertarian philosophy through university. I said, “No! It’s gotta be through things like cartoons, comics, and movies.” He goes, “No, that’s junk.” I go, “No one pays attention to academics! Only other academics!”

Anyway, I was glad to see that Breitbart was on that same page and he said he was starting a site called Big Hollywood where he would discuss things in popular culture and it would encompass not only movies but TV and comics. By this time, he had heard that I was a cartoonist. Despite what people say about Breitbart, he told me that day, “Y’know, I used to think I was a conservative, but I would say I’m a libertarian.” And I go, “Wow!” I’m on that same wavelength.

He asked me if I knew James Hudnall, another libertarian, and I go, “Oh, yeah. I met him years ago.” “He goes, “He might be doing some work for me.” So we exchanged cards.

I was very interested in doing something for Big Hollywood.

Hudnall got in touch and he had just moved back to San Diego, so we had lunch. Obama was just elected president and I already got my feet wet doing a political cartoon for Jim Treacher. Do you know who that is?

CBC: No. Batton: Treacher is a pundit. Now he’s a blogger for The Daily Caller. He’s a smart and very funny guy. I don’t wanna get into a political argument or open a can of worms here, but I had just noticed there seemed to be plenty of slams against McCain and Sarah Palin, but hardly anyone criticizing Obama during the 2008 election. I was astonished to read from political cartoonists saying, “Well, There’s nothing wrong with him.” I go, “C’mon! There’s something wrong with every politician! Come on! You can find something!”

So I did a cartoon, like an emperor has no clothes cartoon, and sent it to Treacher and he said, “This is great!” and ran it. Then I saw the email he was getting, saying it was racist and, “We don’t understand this. Why would you do this hateful thing?” My first thought was, “’Hateful’? What are you talking about?” Here’s a guy there, talking big. I think he’s got a lot of skeletons in his closet. It was my comment on what was going on with Joe the Plumber, when Obama let it slip about, “We have to spread the wealth.” That was my comment on that and it was immediately deemed racial.

But that was a precursor for what was to come.

Hudnall said, “Hey, let’s do some cartoons. Andrew Breitbart wants to give us a forum and we’ll do stuff.” Originally, Hudnall’s idea was he just wanted to do kind of a Blondie and Dagwood type thing with Obama and Michelle. Just silly stuff. But as it went on and stuff would come out that we didn’t agree with, administration policy, we tried to sharpen it. I’m not saying it was perfect. Again, it was something very different that I would do. I was trying to get my caricature chops, fine-tune that. It didn’t get much attention in the beginning. There was a comic site where it compared “the two faces of Obama! Which one is racist?” It was a side by side… there was Alex Ross’s painting of Obama doing his Clark Kent/Superman thing and then there was a picture of my caricature of Obama.

One weekend, Hudnall sends me his gag for the week and it was so limp that James even wrote to me, “I know it’s kinda lame, but I’ll make up for it next week.” Sure enough, this is the one that explodes! I remember being at my studio and I get a call from my sister and she goes, “Why are all my friends calling me, telling me you’re on the news and you’re a racist?” [laughs] That was the first I heard about it.

Apparently, MSNBC latched onto this particular cartoon and they wouldn’t show it! They were just talking about how this is racist and it goes back to the old days when blacks were

TM & © 2015 Batton Lash.

cartoonists got their courage back and there began to be critical cartoons about him in mainstream press. I got that out of my system.

CBC: Why don’t you talk about Aces Weekly and your strip for that. What is it?

Batton: The First Gentleman of the Apocalypse. I guess the high concept of that is “Mad Max meets GQ.” It takes place after a world-changing incident happens. Pretty much 90% of the workforce is employed by the government, but here and there, there are still some people known as traders and they barter for a living. It’s not against the law, but it’d frowned upon. Actually, you can imagine in an environment like this, there’s camps of gangs, and all sorts of thieves and chicanery going on among them, and people pretty much dress from clothes they get from the state. But there are people, in particular our protagonist, Madison Dain, who goes around the country and he finds clothes that he likes, so he’s very well-dressed. He lives out of a double-decker bus that is driven by his valet, Mr. Abraham, who is a badass!

[Jon laughs] Again, it’s something new for me.

David Lloyd, I found out, was a Supernatural Law fan for years. He contacted me and said he was starting up this new thing, an online anthology, and he wanted me to be part of it. I was very flattered but, once again, my great business sense was I kept putting him off. But David wouldn’t let up. He kept saying, “We want you in, we want you in!” So I had this idea for quite a while.

If anyone thinks I’m this crazy conservative, I came up with this during the Bush years, where I thought government was just too intrusive. It was an idea that’s been percolating for quite a while and finally David just sort of gave me that final push where he let me pull out all my notes and develop this. In fact, after I hang up with you, I’m going back to next week’s installment. It’s very different from Wolff and Byrd and very different from anything I’ve ever done so it’s been fun.

CBC: Is the ultimate plan to put this in print? To have a graphic novel or a collection?

Batton: Oh, yeah. My deal with Aces is that they have the exclusive rights for two years, but after that I can put it in print. And I’d like to have Exhibit A Press do a “European style” album, as they used to call it. I tried doing a little different drawing and coloring style than I do with Supernatural Law strips.

We’ll see what happens.

CBC: I think it’s so soon after the incident, I don’t think there’s any way we can’t talk about Charlie Hebdo. What was your experience? How did you get the news and what does it all mean to cartoonists do you think?

Batton: Well, I woke up that Wednesday morning and the first thing Jackie said was, “Horrible news!” I couldn’t imagine and she said, “Terrorists have shot up a humor magazine in France.” I could see the logo in my head but I couldn’t get it out. “Yeah! Charlie Hebdo!” I thought, “Oh my!” So I was riveted trying to read as much of the news as I can, but the first thing I saw was the editor’s poignant battle cry: “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” Even before I was awake, I copied that and pasted that on my Facebook page. Even though I just said I try to keep away from politics on Facebook, I felt this was too important, especially to every creative person, whether that’s a cartoonist or writer or whatever. This is the way you have to live. I say this as someone who, you know, I’m not like the Charlie Hebdo people where I feel I have to make fun of religions or even politicians. The Obama Nation thing was just kind of an anomaly in my career ’cause I’d rather not get political! I don’t live for politics, let’s put it that way. But sometime something comes up and you’ve just gotta say, “Here. This is what I think.”

End of story. Later that day, a local PBS station here in San Diego got in Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

touch with me. They had done some bits with me during Comic-Con, so they knew who I was, and they asked if I would come on air to talk about it and I said, sure. I found myself saying, “Well, the pen is mightier than the sword.”

CBC: What else happened?

Batton: I said the bullets may have killed the cartoonists, but the terrorists were more afraid of the cartoons than the cartoonists were of the bullets!

Like Boss Tweed was more afraid of cartoonist Thomas Nast than he was afraid of the law! So cartoonists have a lot of power. And I was on the air with someone who was kinda saying, “Well, you’ve gotta be responsible for the other people who maybe aren’t cartoonists in the building and they might be hurt...” But I said, “No! Now’s the time to double down! You stand up and they can’t blow up and kill everybody!

If there’s solidarity, they can’t go after everyone! This is global bullying and the only way you stop a bully is you’ve gotta stand up to him and punch him in the nose. End of story. That’s the only thing they understand.” I think a day after that I got a message from John Rovnak who does Panel to Panel and he’s in touch with the French.

He asked me to do a cartoon and, of course, I would do it. Now’s not the time to be meek, you know? I think everyone should just draw what’s on their mind. Of, course, there’s consequences to everything. I think there’s more consequences when you don’t do something if that makes any sense.

CBC: Very few news outlets have the courage to put up the follow-up cover of Charlie Hebdo, which is extremely poignant. A cartoon character who is Mohammed and is crying and saying — Charlie Hebdo is saying — to the terrorists, “You are forgiven.” And people are too afraid to reprint that?

They think it’s insulting. I can’t fathom this.

Batton: I think there’s a worst example of the strange time we’re in.

It was a New York newspaper I think that had a picture of the editor holding Charlie Hebdo — a past issue — and they digitized the Mohammed figure out, but the caricature of the hooknosed Jew stayed intact. To me, here is exactly what’s wrong because you know the Jewish community isn’t going to come and burn your place down. So what kind of courage are you showing? You’re showing that you’re willing to insult one sect of people but you’re afraid of another sect! Stop it! It’s one or the other! Even the august New York Times went to great lengths defending the whole Piss Christ and the Virgin Mary with the elephant sh*t back in the Brooklyn Museum. I’m not a religious person, but I thought, “That’s offensive.” But I would never dream to go in there and kill anybody or support anyone who would do a thing like that! I’m with them! It’s a museum. They should be allowed to do it. It’s art!

But for them to condemn Charlie Hebdo people that they were “asking for it.” Well, it’s on the same level as saying, “It wasn’t rape! She asked for it because she wore a tight dress.” It’s the same principle.

CBC: How’s your career? Have you done everything that you wanted to do?

Is there much more that you do wanna do?

Batton: Oh, yeah, there’s plenty! I have a list full of ideas and strips. The one thing I would love is more time. Like I said, I’m a very slow writer and very meticulous. Even with First Gentleman that I’m doing for David, I feel like I’m just getting my sea legs and I’m trying to figure out the best direction for it. I have a romantic graphic novel that I would love to do but it involves a lot of research and a lot of drawing and I’m just trying to figure out the best way to fit it into my schedule. I’m just grateful. What can I say? It’s just nice to be here. I always wanted to do comics and there were a few bumps on the way but this is what I always wanted to do so I take the good with the bad and just hope there’s more good on the way.

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comics in the library

Loving the Ever-so Lovely Bone Our newest columnist debuts with a discussion of Jeff Smith’s perennial classic

by RicHard J. Ardnt CBC Contributing Editor

Above: Cover for the mammoth complete Bone series book collecting Jeff Smith’s masterpiece.

Below: The Bone boys and their many friends (and a couple of monsters) . Art by Jeff Smith.

Next: Tintin!

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Bone TM & © Cartoon Books.

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I’ve loved, bought and collected comics since I was a kid and, in recent years, that joy has transferred over into my nine-to-five job as a middle school librarian. However, the criteria for choosing my personal library and my professional library are quite different.

First, my personal graphic novel library is dominated, as I suspect every person who collects comics and graphic novels is, by the graphics of the novel.

I’ll be honest. I follow writers far more than I do artists these days, but a favorite artist doing something new will have me reaching for my wallet on pure instinct while the writer will have to convince me, even if just a little.

But as a buyer for the graphic novel section of my library, and this has been true for every librarian I’ve ever talked to or corresponded with, it is the graphic novel that they are most concerned with.

It’s simply not enough to have cool art. Librarians, especially those librarians who don’t know that much about comics or graphic novels themselves, want strong stories first and art, regardless of the talent behind it, second. This is a notion that is often quite foreign to the average comic book collector. In fact, libraries’ disregard for the artwork can lead to some very well-written books aimed at middle school or high school children and libraries that are abysmally drawn. Elementary school libraries tend to avoid having that happening largely by their long reliance on beautifully illustrated picture books.

So what is the graphic novel that is the most popular in my middle school (7-8) library? Quite simply—Jeff Smith’s Bone. Bone is so popular that it is attracting the same kind of idiotic censorship attempts that accompanied the first few volumes of Harry Potter when it first came out (before the movies arrived). One of the more ridiculous charges is that it promotes bestiality because Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley are clearly not human, but Bone appears to have a crush on Thorn, the human girl who befriends them. The fact that those critics should be claiming it’s miscegenation — a mixing of races — rather than bestiality, as Bone is clearly not an animal, is often overlooked. Folks also appear to be upset that Bone and

his buddies often go around with very little, if any, clothing on. What it really amounts to is that kids have discovered and learned to love Bone on their own, usually without parental oversight, just as they discovered Harry Potter and learned to love him long before parents really knew anything about the characters. It’s the popularity, and the chance to make an issue out of that popularity, that drives many of these attempts at censorship.

As a librarian, however, Bone is a joy. With a school composed of 12- and 13-year-olds who come in one year and are gone at the end of the next, it’s sometimes difficult to get them to recognize quality books. A good librarian is as much a salesman or cheerleader as a teacher. Still, great novels and stories can simply get overlooked.

But Bone sells itself. I don’t even have to mention it to kids. They find it on their own. They make it popular by either word of mouth or simply reading it next to their buddies.

The books cut across every genre, every gender, every age group, every reading level as though they don’t actually exist. Girls love Bone. Guys love Bone. Teachers love Bone. Kids who like mysteries, or fantasies, or humor more than other books all love Bone. Good readers and poor readers love Bone. And best of all, disinterested readers love Bone.

Consider this, Bone is a nine-volume single story, consisting of over a thousand pages that usually have to be read in order, from volume one to volume nine. Yet some of the poorest and most disinterested readers you could see — students who make a teacher’s (or a librarian’s) life hell because they don’t like to read or simply can’t read well and, out of boredom, act out all the time — get engrossed in reading Bone.

And it’s not because it’s a simple story written for simple minds. Bone starts out as a humor book with bits of adventure (in many ways resembling a Carl Barks or Don Rosa Donald Duck tale) that gradually evolves into an epic and complex high fantasy saga that has real tension and drama. Tension and drama that draws the reader in and gets them very involved in the events unfolding.

My library has three complete sets of the nine-volume main story and they are constantly checked out. We also have multiple copies of the Smith-written, Charles Vessdrawn prologue Bone: Rose and the follow-up/companion book, Bone: Tall Tales by Tom Sniegoski and Smith as well as a set of the prose novellas, Quest for the Spark, by Sniegoski and Smith that follow a new set of human/bone characters and their adventures.

Bone has a magic to it that knocks down the barriers that kids, parents, teachers and, well, everybody else puts up to resist the notion of graphic novels. And part of that magic is that it’s just damn good. Jeff Smith has created the graphic novel version of The Lord of the Rings and presented it in a fashion that is all comic book. When I was a kid you couldn’t point at a comic book and say, without a trace of doubt, that this was something you were going to be reading 50 years from now. Comic books were of the right now, not the future. But I can easily see the children of today reading to the grandchildren when the opportunity arises. I kind of like that.

Coming in September: A treasure trove of candid photos of artists, writers, and other comics folks taken by insider photographer Jackie Estrada.

Images from the days before comics and conventions were big pop culture events, when the founding fathers of the artform were still among us and today’s top talents were just aspiring young pros trying to get noticed.

You’ll fined rare shots of

• Golden and Silver Age greats: Bob Kane, Will Eisner, Stan Lee, Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby, Murphy Anderson, Al Williamson, John Romita, Marie Severin, Ramona Fradon, Irwin Hasen, John Buscema, Gene Colan, Sheldon Moldoff, Mart Nodell, Joe Kubert, Paul Norris, and more!

• Top comics writers and artists: Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Bernie Wrightson, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Gibbons, Grant Morrison, Jill Thompson, George Peréz, Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, Wendy Pini, Chris Claremont, Matt Wagner, Mike Mignola, Jim Lee, Tand lots of others!

• Indy/alternative cartoonists: The Hernandez Brothers, Dave Sim, Dan Clowes, Mary Fleener, Scott McCloud, Jeff Smith, Terry Moore, Evan Dorkin, Sarah Dyer, Chris Ware, and dozens more from the small press and self-publishing movements of the 1990s • Industry editors, publishers, and historians: Julius Schwartz, Karen Berger, Archie Goodwin, Jim Shooter, Mike Richardson, Diana Schutz, Gary Groth, Kim Thompson, Anina Bennett, Steve Geppi, Mike Carlin, Paul Levitz, Heidi MacDonald . . . the list goes on and on!

Available in fine bookstores or comics shops, or order directly from Exhibit A Press. www.exhibitapress.com

ISBN: 978-0-9815519-6-8

$34.95 U.S.

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humor. You’d have these Sergio Aragonés drawings running down the sides of the magazine. My favorites were the movie satires. I remember having the Planet of the Apes issue which had Alfred E. Neuman on the cover looking ape-ish.

[Jon laughs] I still have the MAD magazine with the Batman TV show satire inside. Also, it was the first time I ever heard of Clockwork Orange [laughter]. When I was a little kid, I’m reading about Clockwork Orange and was fascinated with this movie. And I was probably 20 the first time I saw A Clockwork Orange! But for years I had always been fascinated with it! The poster was just pretty iconic and strange and mysterious. I was just very curious about it and so when I saw it… It remains one of the most powerful viewing experiences of my life but my first introduction to it was in Mad magazine.

TM & © notice

Comic Book Creator: Where do you come from, Michael?

Michael Allred: I was born in Roseburg, Oregon. It’s about an hour south of Eugene, where we live now. Laura’s from Orange, California.

CBC: I read some interviews and was surprised to read perhaps that you were a rebellious kid?

Michael: Not a rebellious child; a rebellious adolescent.

CBC: How was your childhood, then?

Michael: My childhood was about as perfect and ideal as you can imagine.

Very Leave It to Beaver-ish. My older brother, Lee, was the Wally to my Beav. [laughs] Then, when I was about four, my younger brother, Curtis, was born. I was about 11 when my parents split up and then shortly after my parents remarrying, puberty struck, and I turned into a monster.

CBC: [Laughs] Did comics come into play early on in your childhood?

Michael: Always! They were always there. My older brother had the greatest taste. Probably the single most important thing in my life as far as my interests and what spurred any talent (or anything positive artistically) occurred because of my older brother’s taste in comics and what always surrounded me my entire childhood. So all the best stuff was always there and my parents were really great about keeping us supplied with pencils, paper, and paints, so we were always encouraged to be artistic.

CBC: Were you exposed to MAD magazine and the humor stuff coming out as well?

Michael: Absolutely! Yes, it was always there. I have countless memories of going on trips to Cabot Creek, which was our swimming hole, where you could… You know, all these rocks and waterfalls where you could actually sit under the waterfall and watch it flow over you because of the air pockets, and jump off cliffs into the water. It was about a 30–40 minute drive so we would always be given stuff to read and MAD magazine, for some reason, seemed to be one of the more popular things that we would have on these little driving trips. You’d get these little bursts of

X-Statix TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. iZombie TM & © Monkey Brain Inc. & Michael Allred. Batman TM & © DC Comics.

Michael Dalton Allred was born into pop culture. Nursed on cartoons and comic books, weaned on rock ’n’ roll and science-fiction movies, he has grown to become one of the true comic book greats. His effervescent style, emitting a charming, earnest joie de vivre, is at once instantly recognizable as his own and yet reminiscent of the giants who came before him. Simply put, Allred’s artwork is friendly and warm, whether depicting the antics of his Madman or the living dead terrors of iZombie. And the creator himself, loving husband to wife Laura (also his colorist of choice!) and dedicated family man, exudes an authentic friendly and warm nature (never mind generosity!) befitting the artist. The following interview with Michael was conducted by telephone over two sessions this past winter. — Jon B. Cooke

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

CBC: I guess it’s important to point out younger people that it was very hard to get into an R-rated movie then and we didn’t have video at the time. The best exposure that we could get to forbidden movies was through the satire of MAD because they would satirize R movies quite often. I think Clockwork Orange was actually X-rated for a while. So you must have been quite young. You were born in ’62. Do you remember the first run of the Batman TV show?

Michael: I have very hazy memories of its original run.

I’m not even sure. My older brother, Lee, tells me that we’d watch the first episode of the week… I’m sure most people know it aired twice a week. You’d get the first installment and there’d be a cliffhanger and then you’d see the conclusion of that particular story on the second show. Apparently our parents watched something on the second night…

CBC: [Laughs] Oh, no!

Michael: … So we would always see Batman and Robin get into trouble and never see how they got out of it. That was a more frustrating experience for my brother. I don’t remember that so much. Me being younger, I remember the satisfaction of seeing it in the reruns where you’d watch it and then immediately see the conclusion. Although there was one particular episode where they got

TM & © notice

Madman, It Girl TM & © Michael Allred. Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics. All others TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke • Transcribed by Steven Thompson • Photography by Kendall Whitehouse

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

chained into a pool — this dark dungeon-like pool with a gigantic clam in it — and Robin was starting to get eaten.

At the end of the episode, you just saw the horror of his feet dangling out of the mouth of the clam. It was years and years and years before I ever saw the conclusion of that. [laughter] He was fine, but I can just imagine the trauma of my older brother because every week in its initial run, he was conscious and mature enough to be incredibly frustrated by not seeing the conclusions because my parents wanted to see something else.

CBC: A lot of your work is joyful. It’s antic. I don’t know why I’m asking this question but maybe it could be so because reruns were really big when we were kids: Were the Monkees an influence on you at all? That crazy, moptop kind of Beatles joy?

Michael: Again, you’re hitting on the most important things that I was exposed to in my life — and the most lasting! The British Invasion was huge for me. We had an older cousin, Robin, who came to live with us for a while and, again fortunately for me, she had… Just like Lee had this amazing taste in comic books, Robin had the greatest taste in music. That was just really huge to me. The Beatles remain the most important musical influence for me and everything I’m passionate about musically branches off from them. And again it’s mostly British. From the Beatles, you’d have the Who, Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and then the next groups to come in were Led Zeppelin or the glam rock with David Bowie and Mott the Hoople, Roxy Music. But as far as what we would get on a daily basis musically, it would be the Monkees! And they remain a huge favorite for me. I’m ready to get into it as far as how important they were musically, the quality of their music. I don’t think they get the credit they deserve as far as just how really good their stuff was. [laughs] Also my childhood was The Partridge Family and I could also argue how important their music was and culturally, their impact, how important it was. To a lesser degree than the Monkees as far as being songwriters and performers — especially performers since David Cassidy was really the only one who performed at all as far as the Partridge Family goes, but the Monkees were incredibly talented musicians and writers. You could go through their catalog and see some of the incredibly innovative stuff that they did and just don’t 45

This Page: Music is a very important component in Michael Allred’s life, whether as guitarist for his (shades of the Partridges!) family band, The Gear, or as an influence in his artwork, as witnessed by his ambitious Red Rocket 7 mini-series. Above is the cover of The Monkees [#13, July ’68]. Of the band, Michael says, “I don’t think they get the credit they deserve as far as just how really good their stuff was.”

Below is a Madman pastiche of the David Bowie album cover for Alladin Sane [1973] for Michael’s Image series, #15 [Apr. 2009].

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Monkees TM & © Rhino Entertainment Company. Madman TM & ©2015 Michael Allred.

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get credit for.

CBC: You named your own publishing company AAA Pop. Pop is big for you, yes?

Michael: Yeah, it’s what drives my life. Other than friends and family, pop culture is what I get the most joy from. I like mixing it up. My entire life I always wanted to be a storyteller to some degree, either as a comic book artist or a filmmaker or a writer or a musician. Because of any success I’ve had in comic books, I’ve been able to do all of that. It’s what I’m most curious about. The only magazine I subscribe to is Entertainment Weekly. [laughter] I feel sorry for all the generations before us that weren’t able to have access to all the creativity that’s available to us.

I’m very grateful to have lived in the time that I live. And to have lived without certain things growing up where, again, a band like the Beatles could make the impact that it did to pretty much the entire world because of the limitations of what was available. Nowadays, everything is available instantly with iPads and… You know, everything is just coming at you. To have the kind of impact that one musical entity had and the kind of influence that the Beatles had… because they influenced absolutely everything. Everything!

Music, movies, fashion! I think the decade between 1965–75 is probably the most exciting and groundbreaking decade in pop culture in the entire history of mankind.

During that ten-year span some of the most exciting things happened and we’re talking about even how it influenced behavior, the Civil Rights movement, and again, you just look at the fashions as opposed to the previous decade where all men had a certain kind of haircut.

Then, after 1965, it was any kind of hairstyle, facial hairstyle, the anti-war movement.

Look at Life magazine between 1965 and 1975. The photographs are just… the incredible changes that took place!

It… It’s mindboggling! Using the Beatles as an example of cultural change, just look at their appearance between the

years of 1965 and 1970. Just five years! Look how much they changed from month to month and then, culturally, the youth at the time. It’s just amazing. You listen to a band like Led Zeppelin in 1970 and imagine hearing that kind of music in 1960, for instance.

Or 1965. Just how quickly things changed! The giant leaps that were happening.

Here we are in 2015. You just go back 10 years to 2005 and not much has changed as far as music or film. There really hasn’t been that much groundbreaking art in the way of what was happening between 1965 and 1975.

Just look how quickly film changed. Like Clockwork Orange again, using that as an example in film. The idea of that kind of movie being made in 1965 is unthinkable.

CBC: Right.

Michael: Very strict rating systems had to come into play, which didn’t exist before. The strongest thing you’re gonna see in that decade was probably going to be a Hammer horror film. Then more graphic violence became introduced and nudity and sexual content. So this is the decade that I’m born in and all of this stuff is just happening in the air around me. But, at the same time, because of the fact that there were only three TV channels in that decade mostly, that I’m exposed to. Only one radio station that we have any interest in listening to — you know, the one that’s gonna have your top 100 songs which, in that decade, would be primarily rock ’n’ roll. So, again, I have an appreciation for it because the world, through my eyes, came through… and then, of course, cable television was introduced.

When I would come home from school, all of a sudden, instead of nothing being on TV, everything would be on TV! So, in one afternoon, I would be exposed to The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Monkees, Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, Batman, you know. The Saint — Roger Moore before he was James Bond — The Avengers. So this incredible rush of pop culture was available to me every day after I’d come home from school and then, on Saturday mornings, you’d get this incredible wealth of beautiful animation with the Looney Tunes, which was a huge impact on me. So I really appreciate how just the best stuff was available to me! And then there’d be this kind of garbage in the periphery. [laughs] But generally, for whatever reason, I was just fortunately exposed to just the best of everything!

Then, what is it? All of a sudden, in the early ’80s, people could have a VCR and own movies! The video store boom kicked in and all of a sudden movies were… You didn’t have to wait for them to show up cut on television. Like, Wizard of Oz, for instance, is the classic example. Every year, if you weren’t sat down in front of the television to go to this incredibly magical world, you were gonna miss it! Even stuff like A Charlie Brown Christmas or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. They were these annual events that there was this incredible appreciation and excitement and anticipation for. I remember, when Planet of the Apes first showed up on television, it was an amazing thing to me, and, because of MAD magazine, I loved Planet of the Apes! The first time I saw Planet of the Apes was at a drive-in theater where there was… Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was the new film so the night before it premiered, the first three Planet of the Apes movies were at the drive-in — Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Escape From the Planet of the Apes. Pow! I got to see all three first films in one evening and then the next day was Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. So I was just huge into Planet of the Apes. To me, it

2001: A Space Odyssey © Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, inc. Star Wars TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd. MAD TM & © E.C. Publications, Inc. Planet of the Apes TM & ©2015 20th Century Fox.

was just the most important movie I’d ever seen, and certainly series I’d ever seen.

Relatively speaking, it wasn’t that much longer until Star Wars came out and then the entire world changed all over again. Star Wars, to me, was like to film the way Beatles was to music. The whole world changed because of Star Wars. You can be a historian and look back and just see what took place because of Star Wars. I think the most state-of-the-art science fiction films from before Star Wars would have been Logan’s Run or, before that, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which remains one of my absolute favorite films that I think holds up in every single way! 2001: A Space Odyssey is a masterpiece, but, when a kid is exposed to Star Wars, to get them to sit down and watch 2001 and totally appreciate it is next to impossible because it is a slow-moving mood piece. But it’s so authentic! If you see it in a movie theater or on a big screen, you feel like you’ve been in outer space and not just outer space, but you’ve time-traveled! It’s a phenomenal, underrated film at this point. It’s such an amazing movie. And I have to say, my dad took me to the movie theater. It didn’t have the kind of good times child-like love the way Planet of the Apes had. 2001: A Space Odyssey had a more subtle impact on me, which I didn’t realize or fully appreciate until many years later when my dad took me to it. It was one of the re-releases. And it blew me away! It probably upset me because I didn’t know what I’d just seen, I didn’t know what I’d just experienced. It was probably like an irresponsible parent giving a kid drugs [Jon laughs] because it really did have a hallucinatory effect on me.

CBC: So, when you were a kid, you left comics behind naturally like most adolescents? Did you go into music? Did you leave comics behind?

Michael: Yeah, for sure. My parents had split up, my older brother and younger brother went to live with my mom. She went back to where she grew up in the Rocky Mountains of Utah, past Park City, and I stayed with Dad. Lee and I were allowed to choose — if you can imagine what that would do to a kid. Like, “Okay. You’re old enough to decide where you’re gonna stay.” I think I blurted out, “I’m staying with Dad!” so quickly that it probably hurt my mother’s feelings! [laughter] Every summer we would go to Utah to visit family and it was fun… and also frustrating, because I loved being at home. That’s where all my stuff was. Anyway, it was a very easy choice for me to stay with Dad because that was my life and I loved it! We lived on a hill, which was just like four blocks from your classic American downtown so we could walk from our home down the street to the main street of Roseburg, Oregon, and there would be Payless Drug stores and a couple Rexalls. We could go from store to store to pick up our comics.

Just to kind of tie up one thing we were talking about as far as counter-culture in comics, one of the biggest influences on me is Barry Smith — later Barry Windsor-Smith — and what he did with Conan. I think that’s the best example of a hippie getting hold of a mainstream comic book. A youth from the counter-culture making this huge impact. Barry Smith started out as a Jack Kirby wannabe, but when you look at Conan and, again, the few issues he did, between Conan #1 and #24, you saw a guy go from a scrappy, almost amateurish, Jack Kirby wannabe to one of the most innovative and unique artists that ever worked in comic books. You look at Conan # 24 and it’s so ornate and lush with detail. No one is drawing like Barry Smith at that point. He became this completely unique artist. And there was this rock ’n’ roll quality to that. When you’re reading Conan, you feel like you should be listening to Led Zeppelin at the same time. [Jon laughs] You’ve got this long-haired hero and it really just has that rock ’n’ roll vibe to it.

CBC: Valhalla. [laughter] Michael: Yeah! Then we cut to my parents splitting up and me being left to Dad. I didn’t have my older brother bringing home the comics anymore. Usually, my older brother would get the cool stuff and I would get the not-so-cool stuff. I think at this time I was getting Hot Stuff.

[Jon laughs] You know, the little devil, the Harvey character. I’d hit the comic book rack and Hot Stuff would be the one I would go for. Probably because I was younger and it was easier to read and certainly geared toward my age. This was when I would be bending the comics, stuffing them in my back pocket, you know? They’d get torn up and kicked around under the bed. But Lee’s comics would be in a nice, neat, protected stack! It became this valued thing!

So I would find that even though what I would buy wouldn’t be anything to brag about, what I would end up reading and spending hours and hours of time going over and over would be Lee’s comics! Again, it would just be the best stuff! It would be unbroken runs of all of the major titles that you can think of. He was huge into The Avengers! I remember him having lots and lots of Avengers.

One thing that Marvel did was continuing storylines, so in younger years I would be drawn to DC comics because I would read a Batman comic and it would have a beginning, middle and end. With a Marvel comic, there’s more of an investment of one’s attention. You’d be reading Fantastic Four or The Avengers or X-Men and they would continue! You’d hope that you would have that next issue and sometimes — because comic book stores didn’t exist yet — if you missed a month, it was like missing that second Batman TV show. It would be frustrating! But fortunately, Lee was really great about having these continuing runs.

By the time our family split up, fortunately Lee’s habits had finally taken hold with me and I was really keen in being down at the drugstore to make sure, week after week, I was keeping up on the titles which I had become attached to. What became my favorite title was Amazing Spider-Man. By this time, I had a newspaper route and was making a little extra money along with the allowance that our parents would give us, and this led to a very traumatic experience. I can joke about it, but at the time it was very serious. I had fallen in love with Gwen Stacy. My first comic book crush probably would have been Medusa. At the time, I wouldn’t have described her as sexy, you know, as a pre-pubescent… but Medusa was [laughs] kick-ass sexy! But as I hit adolescence and continued reading Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

This Page: Movies, too, are important influences for Mike, particularly the sciencefiction films of the ’60s and ’70s.

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This page: Two of Michael Allred’s earliest series were Graphique Musique (below, 1989) and Grafik Muzik (’90–91).

I think more than anything it spurred my imagination. I think it exercised my imagination. This is why I’m really grateful to the things that I was exposed to and the way that I was exposed to them growing up. I just feel like I have certain tools and access to certain tools that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

If I’d had HBO when I was a kid, I would have spent all my time videotaping everything that had nudity in it [laughter] just so I could quickly fast forward to the nudity. But I didn’t have access to that kind of stuff, so my imagination became key as far as storytelling and art and my appreciation of the female form and wanting to recreate it on paper. Bringing it to life and being my own Dr. Frankenstein, but with paper.

That’s really what it was about for me. I was trying to out what was in my head into some kind of physical form. I was always trying to get what was in my head down through my hand through the pencil or the brush to get these images on paper.

CBC: Right.

Michael: So all of these things kind of came together.

Again, at that time, I would have wanted to be an artist who did album covers or later a storyboard artist and then a filmmaker. You know, a director. And then put these images on screen. As it all kind of came back around to comics, I realized that’s where everything I loved could come together and the best example of that with me would be my Red Rocket 7 project where I did a comic book series, an album, and a film, all tied together in this one project. That really is what my life has… I mean, other than just living my life, human relationships, relations with friends and family, it’s all about pop culture and expression through pop culture and taking in pop culture, celebrating it, and also being a part of it!

CBC: So you were known as an artist in high school?

Michael: Oh, absolutely! It defined me my entire life. I was always “that kid.” I was always the quote-unquote *best* artist in school. I was always that guy. I’d spend a lot of my time in school drawing. By the time I got to junior high, I don’t know if this is a good thing. Now I see it as a bad thing! My art teacher just sat me in a corner with a giant easel and let me choose my own projects. So it wasn’t until college that I really learned anything from an instructor at all! I was completely self-taught otherwise. Dad was really great about buying… Dad did everything! One of his interests, one of his countless interests, was art. So we always had these great art books around the house and the best one was Andrew Loomis’s Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth, probably the most important book in my life. It really had everything you needed to know and now, when people ask me what they should get, I say, How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way, the original edition. I think it’s probably the best introduction for a kid into learning not just art but creating comics, the proper tools and theory. I think it’s a great book. I really do. Andrew Loomis did several books. I think I have all of them, including one which Alex Ross kind of finished. Creative Illustration is probably my second favorite of the Andrew Loomis books.

Successful Drawing, Drawing the Head and Hands, Fun With the Pencil and I Love to Draw. I think this is the one that Alex Ross… Yeah. This one just came out. I Love to Draw.

It’s “the lost Loomis masterpiece featuring an introduction and additional instruction from Alex Ross.” Alex is a very dear friend, by the way. Andrew Loomis also happened to be a huge influence on Alex Ross and Steve Rude. You’ll hear those guys praise Loomis endlessly. But because of Dad, I was exposed to Loomis. Dad was just the coolest. He lost his left hand. I don’t know if this is why he was inspired to try everything available to him in his life, everything from sharp-shooting to parachuting. He did everything! He was a pilot. He built two open cockpit bi-planes in our basement, first a Starduster, then a Starduster 2. He did gliding, scuba diving. He was just a guy that got everything he could out of life. Again, I don’t know if it’s because he lost his hand, but some people have that theory. He was a psychologist and the writer of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was actually #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © Michael Allred.

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comics, Gwen Stacy was everything!

She was just the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen! So when she gets killed in Amazing Spider-Man, it devastated me! I cannot overemphasize how traumatic that experience was. So much so that I think I probably bought one or two — at the most!

— more issues and then… She clearly wasn’t coming back. They’d already killed her father not too long before so it just became too real! And too painful! I pretty much quit buying comics cold turkey after that. I was done!

Now instead of spending 25¢ to buy a comic book, I would spend $4.99 on a record album, so having this greater income with my paper route, instead of buying comics, I completely dove into music. I got an electric guitar. I think it was a Christmas/birthday gift because my birthday follows Christmas pretty closely. Got a faux Gibson black SG and then it was all about rock ’n’ roll after that. And also, being much more interested in girls. You had a lot more to talk about with a girl swapping record albums than you would with comic books.

My interest in art then became about record albums. That’s something that was a huge influence on me. When you look at record album covers like… well, Tommy, for instance, by the Who. It was a tri-fold and just with this rich, intricate design. Of course, there was the Sgt. Pepper album cover, Rolling Stones’ Satanic Majesties Request (which had a 3D flicker cover), David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs by the artist Gut Peellaert, who also did the cover for the Rolling Stones’ It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll and he had this amazing book called Rock Dreams where he did portraits of everybody from Frank Sinatra through Marc Bolan and T. Rex and Roxy Music.

CBC: Right! Ray Charles driving. [laughs] Michael: Yeah, and Guy Peellaert was actually a cartoonist. He did a groundbreaking book in Europe which I wasn’t exposed to at the time. It was years later that I found out that he had done comics.

He did a book called The Adventures of Jodelle, kind of an undergroundish, kind of European book. Barbarella-esque, maybe. But if somebody would have asked me who my favorite artist was in 1975, it would have been Guy Peellaert. He was [laughs] like Norman Rockwell for somebody like me.

CBC: Hipgnosis was coming out with some amazing album covers. Pink Floyd. Roger Dean with the Yes covers.

Michael: Oh! Absolutely!

CBC: I don’t know how you can express this to young people today. I guess with vinyl coming back, they’ll understand it. You had this huge canvas with these LP covers, especially if they were double albums or gatefolds. They were just very graphically an exciting medium to behold.

Michael: And it was integral to the experience of the album. You’d buy the album, bring it home, and it’s what you would stare at while you were — in my case — laying on the floor on my stomach, just staring at the record album and the imagery that was there, and it was a doorway into where the music would take me. Pink Floyd and David Bowie, to this day, are the music that would take me on these mental, artistic trips where the imagery would just come into my head from listening to the music. It was the stuff where I’d sit in my room in the dark and just have this stuff spill over me. It would take me to places.

Grafik Muzik TM & © Michael Allred. The Everyman © Michael Allred & Bernie Mireault.

his orderly at one point.

CBC: Ken Kesey?

Michael: Yeah, Ken Kesey was his orderly. Dad died a few years ago and he had this memorial. It was amazing how many friends he had. It was very moving, but it was also a joyful experience. One of the things we all got a big kick out of was a bunch of his friends came up and talked about him, and everybody had a different story about how he lost his hand. One person, Dad had told him it got caught off by a propeller. Somebody else was told that a shark bit it off. You know, various kinds of explosions. You’d be surprised how many kinds of explosions could be blamed for losing a hand.

I don’t even know how he lost his hand! He had so many stories and I think he always enjoyed the stories more than the actual facts. And Dad was a storyteller. He wrote short stories. The first thing he ever sent to a publisher actually was sent to Reader’s Digest and it got published. He would always joke that everything he submitted to a publisher was published because after that he never submitted anything ever again. [laughs] He just wrote for the pleasure of it.

Since he had a whole other career, it wasn’t anything he really pursued but… Yeah. He was a writer and an artist and a renaissance man who would master something and then move on to something else.

CBC: And Lee is a storyteller, too, right?

Michael: Yeah, he’s brilliant. He’s written several novels and short stories. His favorite thing to write about is alternate histories. You’ll see these, like, Isaac Asimov anthologies and stuff. That’s the kind of stuff that Lee gets published in and now he has his own publishing entity called Rook. But one of the most joyful and satisfying collaborative experiences I’ve ever had was doing FF with Lee at Marvel. It was a 16-issue run that I had committed to with Matt Fraction and Matt just got overwhelmed. He and [wife] Kelly Sue [DeConnick] are very dear to us, very good friends. They’re Oregonians, too, so we see them, we hang out with the same people and stuff, also musically driven. But I was just having the absolute best time with Matt on FF, but because he was just getting pulled in different directions, he had to come off FF which would have been frustrating and tragic, but Lee had this encyclopedic knowledge of comic book history. He knows absolutely everything! Have you ever talked with Mark Waid… ?

CBC: Sure.

Michael: But Lee and Mark, you can out them in a room [laughs] and just feed them and they would be happy for the rest of their lives just talking about all the things that are in their heads, just this incredible wealth of useless comic book trivia! [laughs] Well, it’s not useless because, in this case, it was invaluable! I suggested Lee to Tom Brevoort, our editor, and he was open to it. Lee just dove in and amazingly he built this intricate plan to defeat Dr. Doom, which was our ultimate goal — a confrontation between Scott Lang/Ant-Man and Dr. Doom in the FF series. Lee created diagrams. You’d read the script and have the clear, concise, simple version where it just gave you all the information that you needed. Then he would also have all of this other material with diagrams and explanations and histories, former relationships and geography and… [laughter] It was just… amazing! He would have given Patton a run for his money with this battle plan that he built. Ultimately, we gave Dr. Doom the biggest ass whooping that he’s ever had… ever! It was just brilliant and it felt exactly like it felt when we were little kids making our own stories, but in this case, we were playing with characters that were just beloved to us and creating a little history at the same time. So that was very satisfying. Then he went back to his own thing. He just recently finished writing a Silver Surfer Annual which somebody else is gonna illustrate. I would love to see Lee do more comics. We’ve done some other stuff together. I did an issue of DC Solo where Lee wrote some stuff with me. Also, there’s a little slice of my childhood in the last story of my DC Solo issue, “Comic Book Clubhouse,” where you see us three brothers when we were kids. There’d be Lee and I. This second-hand store showed up downtown Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

which had stacks and stacks of comics and they’d have a little grease pencil mark with a number five on it. You could buy any of these comics for a nickel. Lee tells this horrible story of when… Lee’s also, I should say, a very shy person, very introverted. He saw Fantastic Four #1, but he didn’t have a nickel. So he ran home to get a nickel instead of just asking the guy, “Would you please hold this for me?” Of course, when he came back it was gone.

But that’s the kind of stuff that was just there in stacks and stacks. You could spend hours just looking through the stuff. It was heaven! If you could imagine going to a place like this now, it would just blow your mind! All the stuff! It was the first time we saw… I’ve never seen so many comic books before or since! There were just… stacks! [Jon laughs] It’s probably become exaggerated in my head over time, but in this story in my DC Solo issue, it’s he and I with a little red wagon towing our brother in the little red wagon and scoring some comic books. And I drew these real locations of downtown Roseburg from our childhood and then super-heroes are just first in the periphery and actually literally there with us in our clubhouse by the end of the story. [Jon laughs] And he also did the “Batman a Go-Go” which was one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever been a part of, we did a Batman Black&-White issue, and then now he’s writing a story for Batman ’66, which I’m going to draw. If you know the opening titles from the Batman TV show, we’re going to make a comic book story which integrates all of that imagery.

CBC: Lee also did three tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom?

Michael: He did and he’s never been married. He actually volunteered to go. He said he should go instead of somebody who’s married with a family.

That’s the kind of guy he is. Politically, we’re kind of different in that way. I mean, not that he’s pro-war, but I’m very anti-war. I tend to lean a little liberal and he’s definitely more conservative than I but, you know — religion and politics. You avoid those topics if you can, so it’s rarely discussed. It can get upsetting. Especially with Laura. [laughs] Laura is super-liberal and way more political than I am. I prefer to not have politics in my life any more than I have to.

CBC: Now, I’m anxious to discuss The Golden Plates. It’s just I think it’s such an ambitious and wonderful project. Was that your idea? Are you Mormon?

Michael: Yes, I am. I’m not what you’d call active. I don’t go to church

Above: The back cover of Grafik Muzik #1, [Nov. ’91], which sported the first appearance of Frank Einstein, later known as Madman! Below: Michael and Bernie Mireault teamed — both as writers and artists — on the one-shot The Everyman [1991].

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This page and next: One of the coolest current assignments for Michael are the covers for the Batman ’66 series for DC Comics. Here are a passle of covers. Below: Because of legal issues (that were only recently ironed out, resulting in — finally! — the issuance of The Batman television series on DVD), Michael could not use his Batusi image as a cover for his Solo issue [#7, 2005].

on Sunday but sometimes if there’s kind of an event like…

Christmas parties are fun to go to, but generally speaking I’ve never really enjoyed going to church. I guess I’d describe myself as an existentialist. In fact, it’s almost a mental illness. My dad was a psychologist. He called it existential anxiety. I call it existential terror where every few years I’ll get these attacks where my brain just kind of shoots through eternity. I conceptualize eternity and it terrifies me. It puts me in a place where I’m terrified to be alive, but I’m more terrified to die. It’s just horrible and I do everything I can to distract myself from having this happen. But these thoughts literally attack me and it does involve visions so… Some people are fascinated by it. I’m terrified of it. I’ve found a few people in my life, reaching out, who’ve experienced similar things but these visions… They’re terrifying!

I have very vivid dreams, like flying dreams, where it just feels real, and where you can touch and smell the reality of it. So when I wake up,

I’m convinced I’ve literally flown. They’re that vivid and they’re that realistic. But the flipside of that are these eternity flashes where I just wanna curl up in a ball and sob. It’s so strange and it’s a paradox. It’s the ultimate paradox in my life because, honestly, on a day-to-day basis, I’m generally incredibly happy, content, satisfied, and grateful for my life and all of the blessings in my life. But when this happens — and I don’t understand why it happens — and nothing will bring it on, it’s just… terror.

I just have to grit my teeth and get through it. Sometimes it will take a few days, sometimes weeks, for the after-effects of it to go away. As an example, one of my early memories is a summer night, laying in bed, and being sent to bed when it’s still light out, and not being tired. You know when you’re a kid and you just don’t wanna go to bed yet? But laying in my bed and the ceiling opening up and me looking into the stars and then going past these stars until… finding the last star and then wondering what’s beyond that last star. Then imagining a concrete wall and then trying to contemplate how thick the wall is and then what’s beyond, what’s on the other side of the wall. So, as a little kid, all of a sudden I’m contemplating infinity and my head was just popping. Then screaming, “Mommmmm!” and her running into the room and me trying to explain.

One of the worst aspects of when this happens is the inability to explain the experience. I can describe it as visions, I can describe it as terror, but it’s something that I’ve never found the words to fully describe properly. With that first experience, being inconsolable, you know?

Like… how long is forever? Where did we come from and where did God come from? And who came before God? How did God ever begin and what were the elements that created God in the first place and how is it possible for something to have always existed? So, a little kid with these thoughts!

Not having the ability to even explain the terror, she just saw that I was afraid of “forever,” or the concept of eternity and being overwhelmed by it. So she was able to say, “What are you going to do tomorrow?” She got me focusing on “now,” what was happening now. That’s been my touchstone ever since. So when this happens, I then Batman TM & © DC Comics.

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#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

have to ask myself, “Do I want to die? Do I want to just be snuffed out of existence, or are there things that I’m excited about? Do I enjoy existing? That really is what it comes down to for me and is ultimately the cure and what I hang onto. I enjoy life. I love life!

I love Laura beyond any description and I love her more every day! Every year I’ve been with Laura, I love her more than the year before. We fell in love instantly. I mean, we’ve literally been together from the moment we met. It really was a magical experience. I can go into that more in detail if you want me to, but just, the whole religion thing, because of this, and as I watch current events. You know, I was a journalist before and a TV reporter. I spent a lot of time interviewing people and asking them what makes them tick and where do they come from and what are they all about.

One of the things — one of the most upsetting things in human existence — is religion and how, instead of bringing people together, it tears people apart. Of course, if you’re a member of the same religion, you’re going to bond over that.

You’re going to be unified over your shared belief system.

If you’re not a part of that belief system, you’re going to be defensive and, in some cases, angry and, as we’ve seen throughout human history, murderous! You can argue that more people have been harmed by religion than helped by it.

I’ve always had a belief in God. I’ve always felt like there is some greater intelligent being and the thing that I find most attractive about the Mormon faith — or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Some people don’t even realize it’s a Christian faith. But the concept that God was once like us, that we have heavenly parents. That’s something I can relate to as opposed to some being without form or shape or any way to relate, who just plays with us and, in the case of the Old Testament, is often even cruel. I can’t relate to the God of the Old Testament very easily at all, but I do relate and admire and am inspired by the example of Jesus Christ in the New Testament who is all about not judging one another bit being kind and loving towards one another and just doing all you can to love one another even to the point of being threatened and harmed by somebody and still doing your best to love that person. I can’t think of a better example so, yes, I can appreciate religion and especially Christianity, but at the same time, some of the worst people, some of the worst examples of human beings I’ve ever heard about or known in my lifetime or in history, have called themselves Christian. Of course, they’re not living a very Christian philosophy or else I wouldn’t feel this way about them. But you know. Anyone can look at a history book and can find people that were Christian that did some of the most horrific things that have ever been done in the history of mankind.

So hypocrisy has always been something that I’ve had a problem with and organized religion in general. Now I can argue both sides. I can see the beauty of it and some of my favorite people I’ve ever met are Mormon who truly would give everything for another person, even if that person hated Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

them. These are examples I’ve seen in the church… And my mom! Here’s a dichotomy in my life. My mom was very devout and very faithful and taught Sunday school. My dad, on the other hand, was a Mormon missionary in the first group of men sent to Germany after World War II. I even have his missionary journal. But he was not devout. He went on a mission mostly because it was what was required in his upbringing. He was brought up Mormon. But in his life, he concentrated more on intellectual pursuits. Even in my childhood, I don’t remember him being at church. [laughs] I have more memories of him not going to church. So I take after both of them where I have an interest and appreciation of religion but, at the same time, it isn’t where I want to be on Sunday. There are so many other things I’d rather be doing than going to church. But it did instill this curiosity, so my life has been filled with studying other religions. It’s also a topic where, if I’m in an intimate setting with a friend or a new friend and the topic becomes spirituality, then I want to know, what do you believe in? What do you hope for? How were you raised? Why do you believe what you believe or why don’t you believe what you don’t believe. One of my best friends is a urologist who considers himself an atheist and we’ve argued to where maybe he doesn’t call himself an atheist. An atheist literally would be described as somebody who knows that there is no God but he admits *not* knowing that. That there is a possibility of some kind of higher being or something. But he would label himself as an atheist.

This is a topic that you could go on for hours, but just to sum up, I have a hope in God. I hope God exists, at least hoping that there is some purpose to life and that all of our experiences don’t just snuff out like a candle at the end and all of our experiences are just lost forever! I hope they mean something! I hope they carry on somehow. I hope there’s some kind of purpose. But that’s just where a curiosity has driven me and being raised Mormon, I just have to know why do people believe and how is it different than other Christian faiths? The primary thing the First Prophet of the Restored Church, Joseph Smith… You know, God came to him and gave him this additional book of scriptures, which is the Book of Mormon.

Which pretty much, it’s a history of a people who left Jerusalem, a tribe called the Nephites that eventually died out, but the resurrected Christ visited them in the Americas and the Book of Mormon is a record of that.

Even as just a story, that’s interesting. This lost tribe of people that died out. To find this lost record of Christ — a resurrected Christ! — coming to them and teaching

Above: Michael teamed with older brother Lee for the story “Batman A-Go-Go” in Solo #7.

Below: Adam West, the TV Batman, is actually a family friend.

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This page and next: One of Michael’s most personal — and certainaly the most spiritual — projects was his unfinished comic book adaptation of the Book of Mormon, a projected seven-volume series titled The Golden Plates. At left are the three existing volumes, self-published in 2004. On next page is back cover detail of #1, Michael’s illustration of the Spirit of the Lord.

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#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © 2004 Michael Allred.

them pretty much everything that he taught in the New Testament.

In other words, if you could prove that the Book of Mormon was true, then the only explanation of it would be that Jesus Christ did live, was truly the son of God, was resurrected and that, yes, there is a purpose and plan for life. For me, that’s simply the most incredibly inspiring and interesting thing about the Book of Mormon. So even if it’s just a story, even if you were to be cynical about it and say it’s fiction, it’s still a pretty cool story to have this record of this lost tribe. It’s a thousand-year history and in that history — about 600 years in — the resurrected Christ shows up and teaches some of the things from the New Testament. That’s pretty cool!

Laura and I were reflecting and both agreed that 2014 — all things considered — has been our favorite year. So many wonderful things have happened for us personally and for our family. Our family is closer than it’s ever been, our kids are all with us, and it’s just been wonderful. My mom, who’s never been sick a day in her life, died unexpectedly last year so that’s why I say “all things considered.” It was last February. It was just shocking. I don’t know if you’re familiar with how John Ritter, the actor, died? His heart just tore open. There was no warning, there’s just nothing you can do about it. It’s the kind of thing that if it’s gonna happen, you’re not gonna be aware of the danger of it happening. It just happens. So somebody that appears to be completely healthy, bang! Their heart essentially explodes and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s pretty much what happened to my mom. So somebody that we thought would outlive us all — stubborn, electric, healthy, vital woman — just died.

If you take that out of the picture, 2014 was a perfect year in every way.

CBC: Can you give us a couple of the blessings that took place in 2014?

Michael: Well, we were able to afford to buy this big house. We live on a hill that overlooks the University of Oregon. Like, right now I’m looking out the window and I can see the giant “O” on Autzen Stadium, where the Ducks play, where they were just in the national football championships. I see Matthew Knight Arena. The stadium is right there. I’m just looking over all of Eugene right now. This is my favorite neighborhood in the whole world.

Doing what I do for a living, I can literally live anywhere I want and this is exactly where we want to be. We love this neighborhood. When your kids grow up and leave home, you hope that they stay close. My family, obviously, was dispersed. I’ve got two half-sisters who I’m not as close with as I would like to be and our family… I’m talking about the family Laura and I have created, our offspring.

Laura and I were married young, we had children young, and same thing with our children, so now we have three grandsons and a little granddaughter named Bowie. [laughter] I didn’t name my grandkids! Being named Michael, in school, if the teacher says, “Hey, Mike,” or, ‘Michael,” ten guys look up, right? Growing up, it was the most common male name there was and so, with our kids, we named our first son Han and our second son Bond. Where you might think they wouldn’t want these unusual names, they love their names! So much so they’ve named their kids weird names, too. So our oldest son Han’s kids are Annakin and Frank Einstein [Jon laughs]. I call him Einstein. Then our second son, Bond, he has one son and his name is Ringo. [Jon laughs] Then we have one daughter, whose name is Kelby, a name we made up. Ripley could have been her name. She just had her first child and her name is Bowie. Anyway, we’re all very close.

In fact, me and my two sons and my second son’s daughter are in a band called The Gear. So we play together, travel together, make music together. We’ve made two albums together. We’re working on a third album together. So we are a very close family.

CBC: You’re the Partridge Family! [laughs] Michael: Yeah! I’ll joke and say I grew my own Partridge Family. [Jon laughs] My kids are amazingly talented! Bond worked as an engineer at the Dandy Warhols’ Odditorium Studio. We played at the Hollywood theater with the Dandy Warhols. They’re good friends of ours. So anyway, my kids are brilliant! Han can play any instrument.

He currently works for a music store, but also has a studio in his own house. Bond is the most intuitive, natural, brilliant guitarist I’ve ever met. He’s amazing. One day he just asked me to show him some chords. I showed him some power chords and said, “Here. You can play any song by just using these power chords.” And a couple months later… he was Jimi Hendrix. It was amazing. Just phenomenal to see this happen.

Kelby is also artistic and musical and we expect great things from her, too. But we just want to be together. One of the most exciting things that happened this year was, on the top of the hill right behind us, this house came up for sale that could be divided into individual homes. It’s this big house that’s made of concrete. Just a beautifully-built house that’s unique. It was made in 1950 and there’s just nothing like it. It’s really a cool, unique house.

And we looked to kill two birds with one stone. Our tax lady was encouraging us to get an income property so we were able to get this place and put our kids in it! So everybody’s within walking distance, the bike trails are right off the hill so we can get anywhere in town on a bike. These bike trails run alongside the river which is, like, a major artery that goes up through Eugene. So you can go for miles and miles without seeing a car and get to either of the multiplexes to go to the movies or the mall or the comic book store or the library without dealing with any traffic at all. It really is just this wonderful lifestyle that we’ve carved out or ourselves. By securing this home and finishing the renovation

TM & © 2004 Michael Allred.

to make it a multi-family home, that was probably the major event from 2014 that we’re just really thrilled with… iZombie has been turned into a TV series. Madman has been optioned for a film since 1995.

CBC: Wow. Michael: So I’m still daydreaming about that happening! But for iZombie to just bang-boom into production without sweating it. That was a joy! That made this last year a lot of fun to just not have to sweat it and see it just click.

And Rose McIver, our lead, it’s like she just stepped out of the comic book!

She’s a terrific actress from New Zealand and she’s just wonderful. I could go on and on.

For close to 20 years now, I keep a calendar… You know these desk calendars? It looks like a book, either a spiral bound or the one I have for this year looks like an actual book with a magnetic closing cover. It will have the day to day on it. It’s kind of like a journal, but I pretty much write down what happens, what I get done. So it’s more of a record than a journal. If you open up my book from March of 2012, you’ll be able to see what I was working on. It’ll say such and such page of such and such book. So I’m able to look and see what I did or how quickly I worked on a particular project or what caused me to fall behind on something because this happened. The death of my mother or something would have thrown off my productivity.

CBC: Right.

Michael: So I have these books, which are a record. I highly recommend this to everybody because, as you have more life experiences, a lot of your memories get pushed aside. A book like this, you can open it up, point at a particular day, and you’ll have a flood of memories coming back because of what you happened to be doing at that particular point in your life. It’s not daunting the way a journal is where you feel like, “I’m going to write out all my thoughts and feelings and my experiences.”

At the end of the day, typically, you’re probably exhausted and aren’t going to want to do that. Where, with this, I can just write, “Inked pages two and three of Silver Surfer # 9 today.” Y’know?

It’s invaluable. I highly recommend that people get these desk calendars where they can write down what they get done every day. I’m so glad I started doing it and stuck with it.

CBC: I read the very charming story of how you met Laura from your point of view and I’m interested in hearing through your words what are her memories are of having met you.

Michael: Oh, man! We’ve related this story so many times, it’s, like, become a word-for-word thing. [laughter] We both describe it exactly the same way. It was Oct. 22, 1980, and I had graduated that year, so I drove off to college by myself — and fairly early, so I’d been there for some of the summer. I think I got there in August.

So, when Oct. 22 came around, I was leaving the student center to get on a shuttle bus that took me to the top of the hill. For some reason, I’ve always lived on the top of a hill! [laughter] Even in college. I was at these apartments called the Teton Villa but because they were at the top of a hill, there was a shuttle service that would take us up there. I was in line to get on the bus to go home at the end of the day and getting off the bus was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life — to this day, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen! It was startling and it was shocking but the best thing about it was… I was staring at her, unable to not stare at her, and she was staring back! We Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

looked at each other unembarrassed just as we approached each other and then turned and, walking backwards, still looking at each other! [laughs] It was the weirdest… some might say “creepiest,” thing! [Jon laughs] Got on the bus, sat down and continued to watch her as she’s walking away and she’s continuing to look at me! Then the bus takes off and I’m all of a sudden startled out of this. “Oh, no! It’s Oct. 22. I’ve been here for weeks and I’ve never seen her before! What if I never see her again?” I get home and I’m just, “Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I say something?”

A couple hours later, there’s a knock on the door. Opened the door and there’s these two girls. The girl in front asked me if was Tracy there. Now, Tracy was my roommate. There was like a front room and then there are rooms in the back. I’m, like, “Yeah, Tracy’s in the back.” “He borrowed some of my record albums. I’m here to get ’em back.” Okay, so I let her in… and behind her is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life. And again we’re just kind of, like, “Aaaiiiyeee… ” [Jon laughs] So the first girl goes, “Hey, Tracy! ‘So-and-so’s’ here,” and she goes to the back to talk to Tracy and get her record albums. I’m, like, “Hey, you wanna sit down? What’s your name?” “Laura.” “I’m Michael,” and we just started talking. In fact, very briefly because I said, “I saw you earlier today.” “Yeah, I saw you, too.” I was, like, wow. Then I think I just cut to the chase and said, “You wanna go for a walk?” and she was, like, “Yeah.” So she yelled back to her friend, “Hey, ‘So and so… ’” [laughs] I can’t even remember what this girl’s name was. I don’t think even Laura remembers her name. “Hey, I’m gonna go for a walk with Michael.” She comes out and is, like, “Yeah, huh, what? Umm… okay.” So Laura and I just went for a walk and just walked all night and talked and talked and talked and talked. And talked! I found out that she grew up four miles from Disneyland in Orange, California, and told her everything about my life and we just pretty much learned everything about each other and spent every possible moment together from that moment on.

Then, when Christmas came, that was the first time we had to be apart from each other. She went back to California. I went back to Oregon.

Then her grandparents drove her from L.A. to my dad’s house, so I met her grandparents and they met me. Fortunately they liked me. From there, we got a ride back to school with some other friends. I think we were mostly in the back of a truck in, like, a canopy for the ride back to school. Most of the time, we were laying down and just snuggling and holding each other. Just every possible moment we were together and then just falling deeper and deeper in love. I think it must have been Spring break because I was able to go down to California to meet her parents. At this point, Laura was already talking about us getting married and stuff. I mean, we’re 18 years old. The only way we were gonna be able to spend even more time together is if we were married because her parents are very active LDS — Latter Day Saints. My dad wouldn’t have cared so much. My mom certainly would have. Laura was talking about marriage, marriage, marriage, and I would just kinda tease and always change the subject to her. She’d be, like, “When will you ask me to marry you?” and that kind of thing. So we’re driving down from California for me to meet her parents and we stop in San Francisco 53

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a TV reporter for AFRTS living in Ramstein and was headquartered in Frankfurt. They would fly me all over Europe to do little human-interest stories. Around this time I got a letter from Dan Vado of Slave Labor Graphics. I don’t remember exactly how he contacted me and, in retrospect, I’m stunned that I didn’t submit [movie script] Dead Air to him. And this letter was pretty much asking me what’s happening with Dead Air. I told him Deni went away but it’s pretty much done. At this point, I’d finished the entire story. So Dan simply said, “Well, hey, I’ll publish it and solicit it as a graphic novel.” So that’s the long, exciting version of how I got my first work published.

But what was really cool around this time was, we’d gone to Frankfurt because there was going to be a signing for Will Eisner. He was going around doing signings promoting that documentary film called Comic Book Confidential, which is this great movie which has little vignettes of various comic book creators talking about their comics. Will was supporting this heavily so when we went to the comic store we got there a little bit early. There was this really nifty movie poster for the film and what it was, it was just made up of just a whole bunch of little panels, little rectangles, all the same size, with a sample of each artist featured in the film.

I loved the poster and so asked the owner, “You think I could buy that, or do you have any extras?” He said, “I actually think they have more at the movie theater where it’s going to be showing tonight, so why don’t you go there and ask?” So, since we were early, we went down to this movie theater, knocked on the door, somebody answered and I pointed at the poster, which was on display at the theater. “Do you have any more of these?” [laughs] And he didn’t speak much English because he just kind of nodded and gestured us in. So we went into the movie theater and I’m thinking he’s gonna give us a poster or sell me one. But what he thought was that I was there to get Will Eisner because, as we walked in, Will and his wife were sitting there and they looked bored to tears. So when we walked in, it was, like, “Wow! Will Eisner!” he got so excited to hear somebody who spoke English that he and his wife just leapt to their feet and enthusiastically shook our hands!

[Jon laughs] “How are you?” It was amazing! So, of course, I had this solo opportunity to just ask a little of everything that I ever could have thought to ask given this opportunity! It was a beautiful bonding moment. I had samples of my artwork and he looked at ‘em and gave me advice. We then went to the signing. It was just one big long beautiful day of celebration and bonding with this man! So the second pro I ever met was Will Eisner and he followed my career from that moment on there! Every time that I’d see him at a comic book show after, he was excited to see me and as friendly as can be, would comment about my progress. It was just wonderful. With that, I had also asked him if he would do a Madman drawing for me and he would constantly promise to do it. Unfortunately, it just never happened. It was one of the only disappointments in my relationship with Will because I was so grateful to always see him and have his support and enthusiasm and friendship.

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © Michael Allred.

and go to Golden Gate Park and walk under the Golden Gate Bridge to where we’re facing out over the water and then I proposed to her. That happened to be on the seventh-month anniversary of the day we met.

Two months later — nine months to the date we met, we got married. We pretty much count our anniversary the day we met. The wedding anniversary is like an afterthought. It doesn’t mean anywhere near as much to us because it was just magic from moment one and it’s only gotten better ever since.

CBC: Wow. And you guys work together, right?

Michael: [Laughs] Yeah! She’s been my colorist of choice. A few times, for fun or, in one case, where somebody was contracted to do it, like Ultimate TeamUp, but she’s always been my go-to colorist and now we have process where she has to be my colorist.

The way we work now is a process we’ve pretty much come to. I don’t know if anyone else has done this, but I will draw and ink a page — just the line art — and she will scan that. Then she gives me the original art back and I will put tones on it, whether it’s grey washes or graphite tones, which she will then scan again so that she’ll have a separate scan for the line art and a separate scan for all of the tomes — for the modeling and textures and what-not. Then she turns all those tones into color.

I’m colorblind! It’s no secret. People know this. Color-deficient is a better, more accurate way to describe it. I have a hard time telling colors apart—blues and purples together and similar values and tones. Or reds and greens and Christmas colors. But if somebody will tell me that car is this color or that shirt is that color, then my brain will kind of fill in the blanks and I will learn it and recognize that color when I see it again.

But then it gets mixed up when you throw another color in there. Like, lime-green and a yellow would look similar to me or a green and an orange. If the values are the same, they confuse my brain. It’s certainly where it would be very difficult to color my own work.

I have done it but it’s daunting. Fortunately for me, I am married to who I think is the greatest colorist ever!

I might be a little biased, but I love seeing what she does. She’ll take what I do and put her spin on it. And I love this process. We’ve been doing it for several years now where we just worked up towards it, where I was wanting to control the modeling without having to go back in on the computer and wanting it to have an organic feel instead of a look of computer color. We wanted it to have a hands-on, crafty, organic feel and by doing it this way it has that. Sometimes, you can even see the texture of the paper where if I came back and did some tones with a pencil or graphite, when she colors it and is able to take all those pixels of my grey tones and turn it into color it’ll look like watercolor or color pencil or whatever because that’s the tool that I used.

CBC: How long have you two been married?

Michael: Since July 22, 1981, but again, for us it’s Oct. 22, 1980. We have absolutely been together from the day we met. Next October will be 35 years.

Around this time, we had moved to Europe. I was

when you look at the original design of Madman, he kind of looks like a skeleton. I always intended to have the top of his mask open up so his hair could spill out. I always loved the Kid Flash costume. But I thought… you know, I’ve got a handful of people that like Grafik Muzik and Frank Einstein, For those dozen people, I’m gonna give them a thrill when I reveal that Frank Einstein is the man in the costume! So I did the full head mask. The stitching in his mouth kind of suggested teeth and a skull. There’s like a little crack in the forehead. That’s whey he has the black around his eyes.

They were like skull eyes. The original costume had stripes on the side which suggested ribs. He was very skeletal. And because of my love and affection for Will Eisner, I thought, “Well, I’m gonna call him ‘The Spook.’” And so we made Spook T-shirts that had glow in the dark ink and man, we sold tons of Spook T-shirts! [laughs] So we’re at Wondercon and they have this display of The Spook T-shirts and I took what became my first cover, for the first issue of Madman.

I made a faux copy of it, out it over another comic book and stuck it in a bag with a board behind it so it looked like a published comic book. I had like apiece of foam core that was cut out with Frank Einstein’s head on it wearing the T-shirt so if you can imagine! It was like a display on an easel with this foam core dummy wearing this T-shirt and in front of that was this bagged in board faux issue of The Spook!

[Jon laughs] It was all intentional to show people, “Here’s what my next book’s going to be! So buy a glow-in-the-dark T-shirt!”

Now what was really cool about this was exactly a year later at the next Wondercon, Tundra had picked it up and made these balsa wood gliders with Madman printed on the wing and Madman is, like, strapped to the wing of this balsa wood glider and Tundra was giving them away. So this was one of my favorite comic shows ever. It was so thrilling because you would be in the convention hall and you’d just see balsa wood going through [laughs]. You’d see balsa wood gliders flying overhead everywhere. They were just flying everywhere all the time! So within a year, pow! It hit.

They promoted the heck out of it and it was this unexpected wonderful hit but it was at that Wondercon where we had The Spook.

I met Greg Baisden and he introduced me to Kevin Eastman, who was just completely behind it. They gave me an incredibly generous page rate, and it was from Kevin that I really learned everything that I should expect as a creator like what my rights should be, what I should never accept from a contract, what I should expect from a contract. Kevin was invaluable and just being incredibly generous with the success he had with the Turtles and spilling it into this publishing entity where he was giving great chances to newcomers like me and Al Columbia and also some of his favorite artists like me and Bernie Wrightson, just saying, “Here’s a company where I know everybody has this project they’ve always wanted to do. Well, you can do it here!” So he would just kind of open his door to these established people with this incredibly generous contract, which, now in retrospect, is the contract you, as a creator of your own entities, should expect! So a lot of creators really learned how to go in to any

Previous & this page: Doubtless what brought Michael to the attention of the vast majority of readers was his delightful Madman, a charming and exquisitely drawn character that seems to have a perennial life, through multitudionous series, whether Madman Adventures, Madman Comics, Madman, Madman Atomic Comics, Madman Boogaloo, Madman King-Size Super Groovy Special, Madman All-New Giant-Size Super Ginchy Special, or, most recently, Madman In Your Face 3D Special. Certainly, too, an aspect that makes the series so endearing is Madman’s devotion to his freckled, wholesome girlfriend Joe, who (sans complexion) is based on Mike’s real-life wife of 30-plus years, Laura. Long live Frank Einstein!

TM & © Michael Allred.

CBC: Can you describe Frank Einstein when you originally created him? What made him your favorite?

Michael: I didn’t realize it at the time but subconsciously it was the first character that I instilled my personality into, all of my insecurities. Like, I’ve never understood what Laura sees in me. [Jon laughs] Here she’s this beautiful, perfect, sweet woman with this giant heart and I felt like a creature!

You know, some Hunchback of Notre Dame or Frankenstein’s creature… so with Frank Einstein all scarred up and beat-up and nasty looking, that was me on paper. And there was his girlfriend, Joe, and, with Frank Einstein, he can’t understand why Joe is kind to him and has affection for him. So, with Madman putting the costume on, you see those early issues and it’s like he then has this burst of self-esteem! He’s able to imagine himself as a hero and handsome and somebody special and worthy of Joe’s affection. That was kind of… me! With Laura being able to say, “You know what? You have this passion for the comic book art form. I’m going to do everything I can to help you where you only have to do this.”

I could never understand that! Again, I didn’t realize that at the time but Madman was really a love letter to Laura and to this huge appreciation I have to her making these enormous efforts to me so I can do what I was exited about. So you can imagine how exciting it was to have something so personal become our first major success.

CBC: Is Joe Laura?

Michael: Yes, very much. Laura doesn’t have red hair or freckles, but when I’m writing Joe, I’m pretty much thinking: What would Laura say? What would Laura do? That sort of thing.

CBC: Was it at Tundra first or was it in Grafik Muzik?

Michael: Around the time that I came up with Madman — and, again, the idea of the world that Frank Einstein would exist in was every comic book that I loved as a kid. Anything could have happened. It could be a blood-&-guts and mud action sequence or an adventure story or an outer space adventure. Because these scientists who pretty much become the mentors for Frank Einstein, they can pretty much take him on any kind of adventure, place him on any kind of land or situation. So I had laid the groundwork for this all-encompassing comic book world for Frank Einstein to exist in which then also started or was cemented by my favorite place in the world, which is here in Oregon.

So Snap City is very much a mix of Portland, Oregon, and Eugene, Oregon, but at the same time I would throw in elements of other great cities. You’d see a little bit of Paris or New York, like him on the Brooklyn Bridge or something.

So Snap City became this amalgam or “Everycity,” but very much inspired by my affection for Eugene and Portland. So when Frank Einstein gave me the vehicle of a super-hero comic by just slapping a costume on him… It was really that simple.

All of a sudden, I got this world that came together very quickly. Around that same time, we were planning on going to Wondercon, which was then in Oakland. One thing we had done to make ends meet… There’s this great company that would make custom T-shirts for us for not too much money, for a very reasonable price. So we would make T-shirts and when we went to comic book shows, it was just another way to make money because these were really cool T-shirts and we would make way more money selling T-shirts than we would selling our comics [laughs]. So I made a T-shirt for Madman. Now, at the time it was called The Spook. And

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

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Above: A ginchy Madman crossover occured when Frank Einstein teamed for a threeissue mini-series with the Man of Tomorrow in 1997’s The Superman/Madman Hullabaloo, published by Dark Horse.

Below: In the ’aughts, Michael gave us The Atomics, featuring It Girl, who also had her own one-shot.

CBC: You think that was fortuitous? Is that a better name?

Michael: Oh, yeah. And it’s funny because I don’t think anybody’s ever used The Spook, even though there was an intention to use the title, I don’t think anybody ever used it.

CBC: Well, it potentially carries some baggage, right?

Michael: Oh, yeah. A lot of times, when they would hear The Spook, there was some concern. You know, a racial slur. For me it was, like, let’s use the word the way it was intended. He’s like a ghostly character. Let’s win it back and let’s erase the negative connotations. It’s kind of hard, too, because, with Madman, “madman” has negative connotations and when you’re talking about somebody who’s literally a madman, it’s like an axe murderer or something and yet Frank Einstein is, in some ways, the most sane character in the entire series. But it mirrors my concerns of mental stability, which were inflicted on me by my father, the shrink, and my existential terrors. So, it was through Frank Einstein that I could spill all this and express all this. Even though there’s all these fun, goofy, colorful adventures taking place, there’s constant opportunities for introspection. Like, he’ll wonder if God really exists or where does the universe end or what is a soul. And this is where I could kind of exorcise demons and polish off my insane edges while on the surface giving somebody a comic book that’s just big fun! So it has all these levels in it, which has always been very satisfying to me. Again, going back to Love and Rockets and learning that there should be no rules. You can tell any kind of story you want and do anything you want.

That’s what Madman has always been for me. So I’ve had all these wonderful collaborations that I’ve been able to be a part of but I’ve never felt frustrated because if there’s anything that I don’t feel that I’m able to do elsewhere, I always have Snap City and Madman and Frank Einstein.

This is where I can go to do anything I want and tell any kind of story I want or express any idea, thought or feeling. It’s always been this outlet for me. I never felt like there was something left unspoken.

CBC: Wasn’t there a time when Madman went over to Kitchen Sink?

Michael: Denis stepped up and picked up the loose threads, shepherded some of the projects that were almost finished. I could have #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Superman TM & © DC Comics. All other characters TM & © Michael Allred.

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kind of business with any publisher and make sure they were gonna be treated fairly. That was huge for me! While this was all happening… Very shortly before going to press, Tundra had done a trademark search and somebody had filed an “Intent to Use” for The Spook.

My favorite book at the time and, in fact, it has been my favorite book until recently, Catcher in the Rye, and Holden Caulfield constantly uses “madman” as an expression. Like, “he ran like a madman,” “he ate it like a madman.” It’s just “madman” this, “madman” that! So when I was told that I couldn’t use The Spook, we then scrambled for another title for the book and for about a week it was gonna be called The Goon. I even did a logo for it and did some mock-ups. Eric Powell knows this, too. In fact, I wrote an introduction to one of his collections and you’ll see Madman with The Goon and you’ll see the Goon logo that I created. But, thankfully, I was on a plane reading Catcher in the Rye and I was, like, “This is it! Madman! Madman!” So when we landed, I immediately called and said, “What about Madman?” And we were able to use it and Frank Einstein as Madman ever since.

TM & © Michael Allred.

just gone over with Kitchen Sink. I love Denis Kitchen but other things were happening. I was there when Vertigo was first created, so I did The Geek and some anthology stuff. I had done Sandman. After the success of Madman, rather than having to call people, I was the one getting phone calls and getting invited to all kinds of fun parties, like comic book creating parties! But with Tundra, where they had just said, “Whatever you want.” Every time I had an idea, hey would say, “We’ll figure out how we can make that work.” For instance, with the flip action corners, I would say, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you flipped the corners and there’s a little animated sequence?” and they’d be, like, “Yeah! Let’s make that work!” So, after the initial success, I was wanting to do full color which was really expensive at the time. I think it’s still crazy expensive but the difference between a black-&- white comic and a color comic isn’t as huge as it was then. At the time it was the difference between making a lot of money selling X-amount of comics for a black-&- white to not making any money on a color book. So I wanted to do a color book and they got behind that. It was great.

But when I was told that Tundra was closing its doors and Denis was saying, “Hey, I’ll take on Madman,” I was tempted. Because over that same time period, I had gotten really close to the people at Dark Horse. I love Diana and Bob — two of my favorite people in the whole world. Bob Schreck was the marketing director and he wanted to be an editor. So, as he was transitioning to editor and they were looking for a new marketing director, Bob was, like, “Oh, take it here! I’ll be your editor.” At the time, the only other book that Bob would be editing was Sin City. [laughs] So Bob was pretty much just working with me and Frank Miller and Dave Stevens was very slowly — as he always did — working on The Rocketeer. So, they offered me a very generous advance. And they’re right here! I could walk my artwork in to my publisher. So it was kind of that childhood imagination or how you would perceive of artists dropping off their pages at Marvel in New York City and here it was at Dark Horse. Otherwise, you’d have to FedEx your art to your publisher. Now you just scan it! Nobody ever touches your artwork unless they buy it. You keep all your artwork with you at all times. So there were many advantages of going with Dark Horse and that was, again, right place, right time, right people. After I went with Dark Horse, Frank Miller and Mike Mignola and Dave Gibbons and Art Adams and all these guys formed Legend. Image had been phenomenally successful and Frank thought that he should get a group of people together. And, if you remember, with Image it first started at Malibu! So they had a publisher and was like an imprint at a publisher. But pretty much pulling this group together: John Byrne, Geoff Darrow… There were originally seven guys and this was very exciting news at the time that these seven guys had got together to form Legend for Dark Horse to be publishing.

All their own independent, creator-owned books would be under the Legend imprint at Dark Horse. Frank Miller called me up and asked it I’d like to be a part of this and it was, like, “Well… duh.” [laughter] This was a really exciting time, too. We had this beautiful relaunch of Madman, as Madman Comics. So there was Madman, Madman Adventures — the first two color series — and Madman, the first three-issue color series from Tundra, and then Madman Comics which would be an ongoing series. Madman Adventures was going to be a series of self-contained adventures inspired by the Tintin volumes. I was gonna do these self-contained, larger, squarebound volumes and was talked into doing them as traditional stapled comics so with Madman Comics at Dark Horse, I was all into doing a continuing series.

So then, when it became part of the Legend group, we had a little Legend tour where all of us, or some of us, or most of us, at all these different events would appear. So I would be at a long table with these other literal legends — these living legends in our industry — and how this benefited me and not them at all… [laughs] I still don’t know why they even thought they would benefit anyway from having Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

me be a part of this group. But, on my end, from my perspective, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Every article that was written, every appearance that we made, people would look and know exactly who all these people were. This is where Mike Mignola first published Hellboy, for instance and Geoff Darrow with Big Guy and John Byrne with Next Men and the stuff that Dave Gibbons was doing with Frank Miller. So I mean… You can imagine all of these guys so the reaction would be, “Who’s this guy?” [laughs] CBC: “Aaaand you are… ?”

Michael: Exactly! It would be funny, too, because as people would go down the line… They would line people up at our appearances so that they would have to walk by all of us. And the people would have stacks of Daredevils and all the various DC/Marvel books that Mike Mignola had done, Art Adams had done, and [laughs] there’s be one out of a hundred people who had an issue of Grafik Muzik or something. I’m exaggerating. There were a lot of people that had issues of Madman and stuff, but it felt that way! It’s the whole “I’m not worthy” thing. I am not worthy.

CBC: How old were you at the time?

Michael: I don’t know. Early 30s I guess? I’m not sure. I’m never supposed to tell my age ’cause I’m six days older than Laura and we’re not supposed to know how old Laura is. [laughs] In my mind, Laura will always be the 18-year-old beauty that I first met but let’s face it, this was, like… What’s that expression? The tide that lifts all boats or something like that?

CBC: A rising tide lifts all boats.

Michael: Thank you. This was just incredible. I had this huge spotlight thrown on me. It just kind of felt like every new project… First of all, just the thrill of having anything published at all when Dead Air was first published was so exciting! But at the same time, there was always this dissatisfaction because as I’m working on something, I think that it’s the best thing I’ve ever done and I’m really proud of it and excited for people to see it. Then by the time it’s published it’s painful.

“Oh, it should have been so much better!” To this day, I have this drive, this… fire to be better, to be better, to be better!

In 2007, Madman Atomic Comics, my next series, was published by Image and they have been my Madman publisher ever since.

They did these omnibuses collecting all of my Madman stuff. They’ve collected Red

Above: For a period in the ’00s, Michael and Laura self-published under the family comics imprint AAA Pop. Below: Red Rocket 7 was Michael’s tremendously ambitious project, which actually was a seven-issue mini-series about rock ’n’ roll that was also tied to a record album and film, both produced by the artist. The series was published by Dark Horse Comics between 1997–98.

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Above: Doop, a member of the mutant super-hero team the X-Statix, was created by writer Peter Milligan and artist Michael Allred initially in X-Force #116 [July 2001]. The character speaks his own alien language, dubbed (what else) “doopspeak,”the translation to English guide of which was only recently revealed. Google it, folks!

The odd li’l feller today has his ongoing series, sporting covers by (who else?) Mike Allred!

Below: The Milligan/Allred team started the X-Statix run in the final 11 issues of X-Force, then relaunched into its own title in Sept. 2002, lasting 26 issues.

year. That’s how Laura and I even developed this process with color — which I don’t think anybody else uses — which allows me to be more expressive with textures and tones.

Laura turns all that into color and leaves us less reliant on computers. So we make computers work for us, but are able to have a more organic look on the printed page to where the colors look more water-colored than computer-colored.

It’s because of this desire to keep making steps forward that we’re able to do stuff and it keeps us interested and excited and optimistic. We just have lots and lots of fun with it.

CBC: There’s no doubt that you’re ensconced in the comics community. You were with the Legend crew. You were really renowned and a few years ago you kindly shared with me a bound volume where you would have other artists do pinups — even Frank Frazetta, even Jack Kirby. How did that start and how did you feel about all that stuff?

Michael: It actually started at Wondercon with the balsa wood gliders. Richard Sala, who is mostly published by Fantagraphics, is a great friend of ours, an artist out of the Bay area. He does a lot of commercial art. He does all these really creepy, nifty, cool, Gothic kind of things. When we were going to do Madman in color with Madman Adventures, we were just at dinner or something and I think I just said, “Oooh, man, I would love to see how you would draw my character.” He was, like, “I’m there,” and did this beautiful painting. So I was, like, “Well I wanna show this off,” so it became the back cover of the first issue and when we knew that we were going to use it for the back cover, we thought, “Well, why don’t we do that with every issue?” So we got Dan Clowes to do one and Geoff Darrow did one and it just went on and on. It became like there was a specific goal to have a different artist doing the character for each back cover. Then, with Dark Horse, they were, like, “How many of these do you have?” and I had a couple dozen at that point.

At that time, I think it was bi-monthly. I hadn’t quite locked into the discipline of monthly publishing yet. But they pointed out it was going to be a long time before everybody saw these nifty pieces, so why didn’t we do a card set? So we did a couple of boxed card sets. Like with Alex Toth, when I asked him to do one for me, he’s like, “What’s it for?” and I said, “Well, it’s gonna be a back cover but it’s also gonna be a card.” Of course, he did two for me. [laughs] I always liked that. Everybody’s been really cool.

The only flat out no I ever got was from Steve Ditko. But at least I got a cool letter from him and actually talked to him on the phone. I didn’t understand his politics or philosophies at the time, and I remember being a little hurt. I’m paraphrasing but he pretty much said, there’s nothing that I would get out of it, or something like that. Now I understand! When I get his whole political thing.

But still, I always mention how Will Eisner never did his but I think I’ve got close to 200 now! We did a gallery book and then the 20th anniversary collected absolutely everything up to that point. This is how generous comic book people are and a good example of why I love this industry and my peers so much, because there’s this spirit of love and creation and mutual respect. I would often get several to choose from. Like Bruce Timm did at least a dozen different drawings for me to choose from and we would find opportunities to throw ’em all together or make collages out of ’em. All of these wonderful examples of art from all of these amazing people.

CBC: Can you talk about the development of Madman as a movie? What’s the history of that?

Michael: Early on, I think right after the first issue was published, I got hit up by a bunch of producers and agents and managers, largely due to Kevin Eastman’s connections.

Again, this was part of his generosity where, you know, they had the animated series and the first movie was gonna be developed. Kevin was just very connected and would share these connections so when the stiff would come out, a lot of people would then contact their creators. “Are you interested in having your work made into a movie, TV show, cartoon, #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Doop, X-Factor TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Rocket 7, which was my science-fiction series that was the history of rock ’n’ roll. Image has become my alternative to self-publishing, which Laura and I tried for a while. While I loved it and it has its benefits, I don’t like the business side of doing things. It’s not my idea of a good time. Working with Image is like self-publishing except you have all of these amazingly talented people at Image doing all your busy work for you. So it’s a beautiful relationship. But it was in 2007, planning this new Madman series, where I set a goal to do some kind of experiment, even if it’s just some subtle thing that only I will know. Every issue has to have some kind of progressive effort. And ever since then, I’ve been able to look back at my work and appreciate it and not tear it up and hate it, which, prior to that, [laughs] I was kind of cruel to myself! Internally, and it wasn’t anything that I would vocalize to other people.

Steve Seagle early on told me, “Never point out to other people what’s wrong with your work. When somebody sees your work, they don’t know what your intentions were. They don’t know where you ‘failed,’ you know? They see what’s in front of them and if they like it… don’t take that away from them.”

I’ll never forget that. That was some of the best advice I ever got and Steve’s absolutely right. You can criticize it, but keep that to yourself. Or if somebody criticizes it, you can acknowledge it or agree with it or defend it but if somebody says, “I really love this,” you don’t want to go,” Why? It’s awful!” You know what I mean? [laughs] That was wonderful advice, with this new conscious goal since 2007, I feel like I’ve made the best and most satisfying steps in my progression as an artist and a storyteller.

Some of the experiments I did are pretty obvious and in your face, like one issue of Madman Atomic Comics, I attempted to mimic the style of a different artist in every single panel. It was chronological, too, so, like an E.C. Segar Madman in one panel or Floyd Gottfredson where he kind of looks like Mickey Mouse a little bit or one where he looks like a Peanuts character or a Dr. Seuss character or like Dennis the Menace. Or what he’d look like if Barry Smith had drawn him or if Frank Miller drew him or Jack Kirby drew him or Frank Frazetta drew him. I’d mimic the different styles of these artists throughout the entire issue. That was very satisfying. If I knew what kind of tool the artist used, I would then find that tool and render that panel — like the exact kind of nib pen that somebody would use on that particular panel. In another issue, I wanted to do the world’s biggest comic book panel so I drew this huge, unbroken, left-to-right tracking shot — an action shot where the characters are in this battle against these weird, floating snaky creatures. So you’re just seeing these figures just moving throughout from left to right, creating the world’s biggest comic book panel. You can see it unbroken and you can scroll it at aaapop.com, but in the comic book it’s broken into two-page segments. And then we reprinted it in 3-D with the recent 3-D special which came out this last

X-Statix TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

what have you?” Somewhere along the line I was introduced to a guy wanting to be my manager — a guy named Robert Stein. You never think you’re gonna be the guy going in to the studio and sitting down with movie big shots and he was coaching me on what I should wear and what I should say and what I shouldn’t say. [laughs] At the same time, other people are wanting to pull you in other directions. It’s very exhausting. Some people eat it up and love it! You get put up in fancy hotels and limos pick you up at your house and take you to the airport. All of these various institutions start courting you and then you’re told they do that to everybody.

This is peanuts to them because ultimately what happens is that they’ll option your property and it’s to hold it so that if it becomes really successful, they will have it and other people won’t. So they’re kind of doing a lot of nipping in the bud, finding things and seeing whether it’s worth the investment or not to pretty much lock it down. That doesn’t mean they’re gonna make it into anything or not. But… [laughs] their lockdown money is significant! And tempting!

Mike Richardson was really great, too. He would go with me and we’d fly down to Hollywood, meet with various people. I’d gotten to be great friends with David Silverman, who was the original animator on The Simpsons’ opening title sequence. He did a Madman piece for me, too. With him, I got to go in with him to James Brooks’ office, this huge beautiful office, and talk about us making a Madman film!

David’s wanted to do some live action stuff. He co-directed Monsters, Inc. and The Simpsons Movie, but more importantly, he’s just a wonderful person. I love David Silverman to pieces.

So anyway, all this is happening, it’s exhausting, and you’re not making many comic books, you know? Which — as I’ve hopefully gotten across — is my main passion.

I love being at my drawing board and making comics. It’s something that I can control what’s in front of me and it’s become the most satisfying. But then Universal picked it up and then, in that process, they would fly me down and we would have meetings discussing what we should do. With the option money, I thought, “I want to make the movie.” I want to direct it and I want to have as much control over this as possible. I had read a book called Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez, where he in great detail explains how he scratched some money together and made his first feature, El Mariachi, for something like $7,000. That launched his film career. He started independently and he’s remained independent ever since. He’s created his own “empire” in Austin, Texas, calls his own shots, only does what he wants to do. But at the time he had done… I think he had just finished From Dusk ’Til Dawn. So he had done Desperado prior to that, but here he was working with Quentin Tarantino, who was to me the most exciting filmmaker to step up since David Lynch or Stanley Kubrick. He was absolutely an auteur. He was just flipping the movie industry upside down, and Robert and Quentin were great friends. They were the double barrel — Quentin and Robert! Quentin, with his vision and passion of cinema that’s right in his movies and Robert who had this incredible energy with everything he did but complete and independently where he called all the shots!

So, at Universal, I’m throwing my name in there and, of course, they’re not taking me seriously. I’d spent years creating images and from Day One I wanted to be a filmmaker with Dead Air and I was doing storyboards. I’m trying to explain to them that every day I’m making movies on paper.

I’m making these characters act on the stage. I’m designing sets, I’m doing everything! I’m trying to get that across and, of course, I was in television production at the Air Force Academy — but I got nothing in response. But, inspired by Robert Rodriguez’s book, I thought I’ll take some of the option money and do what Robert did: I’ll make a movie!

So I made a weird little existential science-fiction movie called Astroesque, which I then, with my band, The Gear, made a concept album that’s connected with that and also the Red Rocket 7 series, thinking that this will impress the Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

folks at Universal Pictures and that they’ll go, “Oh, yeah, sure! You’ll be the director!” But they kept insisting that I make a list of filmmakers that, you know, if it doesn’t work out with me as director, who would you like to see direct it? In retrospect, I’m thinking, “Wow! Within weeks I made a feature film! [laughs] for next to no money.” I look at it now and it’s heavily flawed, but I’m really proud of the visuals. I think it’s got some of the most exciting visuals of any movie I’ve ever seen. I think it proves I have a great eye… [laughs] Here, I’m trying to pat myself on the back a little bit and I’m thinking, what have you got to do? I’m in the door. They’ve optioned the film. But they weren’t having it. They clearly weren’t having it. So I provided them with this list and at the very top of the list was Robert Rodriguez.

They contacted him and he quickly passed. You know, he’s a busy guy. I didn’t have any interaction with him at the time. It wasn’t a conference call where we all offered it to him at the same time. They said they approached him and he passed. That’s the information that I got.

But when I got home from this particular trip, I got a phone call and it was Robert! He wanted to explain why he’d passed. At this point, it had probably about a year ’cause I was able to make Astroesque in this time period. I can’t remember of it was a year’s option or 18 months, but Robert called and said, “I love Madman. I’d love to make this movie. I just don’t wanna do it with Universal. I think we should make it.” You can imagine! My brain immediately popped! He flew me down to Austin and showed me the facilities he was making. He could roll out of bed and walk across his driveway and get to work… [laughs] He created Xanadu! He lives on hundreds of acres, which includes this hundred-year-old iron bridge that goes over a canyon and there’s a lake down there and his house looks like a castle overlooking it and there’s a swimming pool. It’s like… wow!

He lives in… Rodriguezland! He’s made his own little Disneyland.

At the time, he had built the largest green screen outside of Hollywood. We’re driving around Austin and I went, “I’d like to film it in Portland because I kind of see Portland as Snap City.” He goes, “We can take Portland and put it right there! See those buildings? You can take any building in Portland and put it in between those buildings. He’s explaining to me how anything I want to do we can make there in Austin! [Jon laughs] I’m just taking this all in.

It pretty much stayed with Robert for at least 12 years. He just kept optioning it and re-optioning it. We made a valiant stab through Dimension at one point, but there were always little obstacles. The first obstacle — and this will provide some time frame because it was going to be his next film. He was finishing Spy Kids. It came out and was a surprise hit, made over $100,000,000. Just did way better than anybody thought it was going to, so he was thinking, “Well, if we’re gonna make more Spy Kids movies, we’ve got to do it now because these kids aren’t gonna stop growing.”

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This page: Nothing to watch on TV, you say? Tain’t so, as Chris Roberson and Michael Allred’s iZombie is currently a weekly comedy/drama/crime and… oh, yeah… horror series on CW. Here’s some sweet Allred art from that 28-issue Vertigo series.

are brought to the public, that’s been flipped on its ear. You’ll have little bursts. You’ll have series like Fargo or Breaking Bad, Madmen, Walking Dead, which is the ultimate example of comic book to screen where the creator is calling the shots there. That is the finest example of comic book to screen… especially since Robert Kirkman is still making comics! He hasn’t abandoned what brought him to Hollywood. But yes. [laughs] How’s that for a rambling answer to a simple question?

CBC: [Laughs] It’s good. What was the thinking behind doing aaapop? Self-publishing?

Michael: Well, Bob Schreck was my go-to guy at Dark Horse so when he became my editor and they were installing their next marketing director, Bob was pretty much my personal marketing director for the even greater success that Madman had at Dark Horse because Bob was giving it so much attention, not just as an editor but as a marketing director! He’d just been a very important figure in my life and career, a great friend, somebody who I really admire. And he also brought me to and introduced me to one of my great and lasting friendships and that’s Jamie Rich, who was Bob’s assistant. Then Bob got excited about publishing and hooked up with Joe Nozemack to create Oni Press and left Dark Horse. This was when I was doing Red Rocket 7, which was the history of rock ’n’ roll through the eyes of an alien clone.

And Jamie was my editor and Jamie, just like me loves film.

He’s a film critic for DVD Talk. He’s an author himself. So here’s somebody who there’s never a dull conversation or a dull moment with.

Jamie was the perfect sounding board toward the music project. And so I finished Red Rocket 7 and, while it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done, I insisted it be in the square format so it resembled a record album, which retailers weren’t very happy about. Their shelves are made for comic books, not for record albums, so they didn’t know how to display it, and it was a very expensive card stock cover. The paper was very expensive.

I also did another independent film, with my friend Shane Hawks, who helped me make Astroesque. To return the favor, I helped him make a movie of his called Eyes To Heaven.

Dark Horse released that and we did a super-creepy oneshot comic book that came with it. So, at a very nice, very long dinner-meeting with Mike Richardson, he was pretty much asking me if I would do more Madman. I was barely doing it bi-monthly, if that. I explained to him that not only was I going to be doing more Madman — after doing these strange, esoteric projects over the past couple of years — I wanted to do a Madman spin-off where I would create a team from the mutant street beatniks that had appeared in Madman Comics.

This was when I was inspired to really up my game. I spent all this time making music and movies and I was pretty much done with that. At this point, I was pretty solid with Robert. We were making satisfactory progress on the film so my desire was to do like Frank Miller was saying and just make comic books! The only distraction I really had at this time would be if I needed to go to Austin or give the movie some time, but there was so much clarity in the schedule that I knew that I was only going to be making comics because distractions and temptations had all been removed from me so I really, really wanted to up my game and commit to a monthly schedule. I thought I was giving Mike some good news: yes, I’ll be doing more Madman but I want to alternate so one month I’ll do Madman and the next I’ll do an issue of The Atomics. So I’d go back to a bi-monthly schedule with Madman but — bonus! — you get another dose of Madman with this spin-off as well.

But his reaction was, “If you can do a monthly schedule, why don’t we try doing Madman monthly?” which, you know, makes a lot of sense, but when I’ve got this fire lit under me and I’m inspired, I just have to go for it. I was like, “Well, this is what I’m going to do and I would like it if you would publish The Atomics.” #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

iZombie TM & © Monkey Brain Inc. & Michael Allred.

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So that was the first major detour that steered him off of Madman. And then he got excited about doing this black-&white technique and asked if I could hook him up with Frank Miller, to which I’m asking, “Whyyyy?” [laughter] He’s saying, “I think I can convince him to make a Sin City movie.” Now, previously, Frank had the opportunity to make a Sin City movie. It was just handed to him. I had seen the screenplay and everything, years before, around the time that Mike Richardson would be taking me down to Hollywood for meetings and stuff! Frank wasn’t interested. He only wanted to make comics. That made a huge impression on me. He would often talk about how, “Movies aren’t the be-all and end-all. Comic books are!

Comic books are a worthy creation in and of themselves so they shouldn’t be a stepping stone to Hollywood.” This was an attitude that was quite prevalent at the time.

A lot of independent comic book people were thinking this is the way into the big time. Hollywood has always been kind of perceived as the big time. But that always made a huge impression on me that Frank was handed the keys to the kingdom. Of course, he had had some experience with Robocop and whatnot, and it just didn’t interest him. He was having so much fun with Sin City, the comic book, he wasn’t interested. As hard as it was being pushed, he just ignored it.

Robert assured me that Sin City would be great practice on the digital techniques that were advancing. And Robert was right there, arm-in-arm, with George Lucas at symposiums, pushing these new technologies… that digital wasn’t what people perceived as digital anymore. That you could shoot a film digitally and make it look like any kind of film stock, for instance. It wouldn’t look digital. You could make it look like an old Technicolor movie or you could make it look however you want in post.

They were really pushing hard on this stuff and for him — at least as he was telling me — Sin City was going to be a great opportunity to exercise this and to also co-direct the film.

Not only did he bring in Frank to co-direct Sin City, he brought in his pal Quentin, who directed a segment, too. So there was Sin City. Then he was contracted to do another Mariachi film for Columbia, blah, blah, blah. So, for whatever reasons, we never really got the wheels rolling in the right direction at the right time. As far as the work I’ve acknowledged over my career, when it comes to making a Madman film, [laughs] that “right place, right time” hasn’t happened, except to say that all of the experiences I’ve had with Robert and everything I’ve had with Robert has just been a huge blessing. Even financially! If I had made it originally with Universal Pictures, I wouldn’t have made as much money as I made just by optioning it over the years. So I’ve made more money not making a movie than if I’d made it initially right out of the box. [Jon laughs] Who knows what that would have been, if it would have been long forgotten or derided or who knows what? So while I would still very much love to see that… I would love to see that, but I really am happy with what has happened. And now, with all of these wonderful examples of television series and the way TV series

Portrait © 2015 Greg Preston. ACE: All Comics Evaluated TM & © 2015 Time Capsule Productions. Ant-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

But I’d been thinking about self-publishing because I’d been watching what Bob Schreck and Joe Nozemack were doing with Oni Press and the success they were having there. And then, around this same time, Jamie left Dark Horse to go to Oni and all of a sudden my liaisons to Dark Horse were gone.

At that point, it was obvious to me that I just had to keep going. I was moving in this direction and I didn’t want to get off course. So Bob and Jamie and Joe laid out the groundwork for me and Laura, explaining how you publish a comic book… “You do this, you do that.” It had become much simpler, too, because Diamond had become pretty much the last entity standing for a distributor, so publishing had become very simplified. There are other, smaller distributors, but Diamond was the lion’s share of your retailers. So they laid it out for me and I agreed.

I owed Dark Horse X-amount of comics I’d agreed to do on my contract with Madman Comics. So I did exactly what I said and did those monthly, along with The Atomics and created our own publishing company, AAA Pop, and that’s what we did. We did that for at least a solid year. I think this was the year 2000, because we had done not only The Atomics every month, because we figured we had to. In order to succeed, we had to publish on a monthly schedule. So we did that with The Atomics. Actually, we wanted the look and feel like an old, classic, pulpy comic. For whatever reason, that old newsprint ended up being more expensive than the glossy stock paper that had become popular at that time. So the early issues of The Atomics are done with this newsprint and then, quickly, for financial reasons, we switched to the fancier paper because it was cheaper. That explains why the early issues were pulpy like that. I wanted it to smell like a classic comic book! But while we stayed with that monthly schedule, I also did four issues of Madman Comics, which I owed them. So in one year’s time, we published at least 16 comic books. Then I quickly realized that the business side of things was more of a headache and detracted from what I really wanted to spend all my time and effort on. Which was just being creative. Although some of the publishing side was fun and creative. We made like a little club that you could join and people get membership cards and all kinds of fun stuff like having people cut up their comics and send stuff in to get goodies. [Jon laughs] So while it was fun calling all the shots on everything that we were doing, but the business side was distracting.

CBC: And you’ve been doing these great Batman go-go variant covers across DC. That must be a blast?

Michael: Oh, thank you. Yes. Laura and I both agree that this last year has been a blast. So many great things have happened personally and then career wise I got to do 20some issues of covers in a single month for DC. That was a thrill! A Green Lantern cover, a Flash cover, a Wonder Woman cover… That was so fantastic! Adam West is such an important part of my childhood and now my entire life.

He’s such a wonderful person. He’s like a second father to me! He’s fantastic! I took the original art for four of my Batman covers with Adam West’s image and had him sign them to each of our four grandkids. So they each have a framed piece of art that I did signed to each personally by Adam West!

CBC: They’re not gonna care about it for about 20 years! [laughter] Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

Michael: And then finally the Batman TV show came out on DVD. I put ’em on a loop on...We have Apple TV which is probably my single favorite piece of technology. I have all of my movies and TV shows on our Hal computer — our Hal2000 computer. [laughter] So, at my fingertips is every single Looney Tune cartoon, every single Batman episode, every single James Bond movie, every single Partridge Family episode. It’s like, click, click, click, beam! There it is. It’s so fantastic! To me, that’s living in the future! And now they have every single Batman episode that can play on a loop one right after the other without ever having to open a DVD case or anything. I can be in a bed and never have to move and they’ll just play one after the other.

CBC: Apparently that’s the plan. Michael, I couldn’t ask for a better round-up here because we spent a lot of time in the very beginning talking about pop culture and now you have instant access to it! [laughs] I hope you got The Monkees episodes, too!

Michael: Every Monkees episode, every record album I ever had. It’s all right there available through my Apple TV, that little tiny black box.

Above: In the 2000s, Greg Preston took this portrait of Michael, Laura, and their children — Han, Bond, and Kelby.

Below: Look for more of Ye Ed’s Michael Allred interview behind M.A.’s great giant Ant-Man cover for ACE #4, coming June 17!

[EDITOR’S POSTSCRIPT: The other portion of Michael’s interview, covering his work of the last 15 years for DC and Marvel, will appear in the July issue of Time Capsule Productions’ ACE magazine, #4. Visit www.allcomicsevaluated.com for details or visit your local comic shops on June 17th.]

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Bob Burden, akin to his most beloved creation’s head, is a man on fire. Despite having been off the scoreboards for a few, long years now, he is still writing and creating all sorts of deranged, offbeat and charming artistic oddities, probably even as you read this. And even if you don’t “get it” or quite understand why any sane person would foist such a bizarre and outré character as Flaming Carrot on an unsuspecting public, it’s hard not to admire his American born-and-bred verve, initiative and salesmanship. But, dig, daddy-o: Burden ain’t no huckster square; rather the cool cat is cut from the same cloth as the Beats of another generation, only funnybooks and not poetry are his scene and Bob’s impact on the world of comics has been a crazy wild trip. This interview with the bang-tail gone cat is wide-ranging and involved and was conducted in two sessions, with the transcript copyedited by Mr. Burden. — JBC

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onto each page, and that makes it hard for the artist. You know you wind up with 18 panels on one page.

CBC: The writer/artists we talked about before, E. C. Segar, Carl Barks, and Will Eisner, are some of the best in the field.

Bob: See if I’m going to draw something, spend time on it, I want it well-written. A bad story becomes an ordeal to draw.

CBC: You’d rather be writing.

Bob: I do have a special love for comic book art. As an art form. In my mind, it is not only a legitimate art form — just like oil painting or sculpture — but one of the most interesting and intriguing art forms there is. I used to deal comic book art. I can sit here and debate, evaluate, and criticize all the wonderful and fantastic comic book artists that we’ve been gifted within the last 50, 75 years of comic book history — but, for me, the racecar driver is the writer and the mechanic in the pit is the artist.

CBC: Yeah, right. That’s not always been so, but people are, more and more, beginning to see it that way now.

Bob: The fans all love artists. People always start out with what they see on the outside, without looking into the essence of a thing. Like actors were super-stars, but today a lot of people follow directors or screenwriters. I like to take time to see the essence — the subtleties. You know, the things you don’t see, but you feel, you hear, you taste. Or things that aren’t said, but are in the tone of somebody’s voice.

While I was in the hospital back ten years ago, I noticed this thing about the way the medical people thought. You’d ask a nurse a question or a doctor or some medical person a question, they’d give you an answer, right there, right off the top of their head. Then they’d bunker it in with why it was true and sandbag it in with two or three reasons supporting their statement or their guess.

So then you’d ask the same person the same question three days later, and they’d come up with a totally different answer, just like out of the Magic Eightball… and they’d bunker that in, and blah blah blah. See, it’s because they’re #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Pandemonium Boulevard TM & ©2015 Bob Burden.

Comic Book Creator: Okay, Bob, a few warm up questions first.

Bob Burden: Sure.

CBC: Beatles or Elvis man?

Bob: Sorry, the Doors.

CBC: What would you do if you saw a monster?

Bob: I’d kill it.

CBC: Why have two cell phone numbers?

Bob: It makes me feel more important.

CBC: Is it true that you used to drive around with a human skull on the dashboard of your car out in San Diego or in L.A.? Was that a rumor?

Bob: No rumor. I used to leave a skull on the dashboard of my rentals so no one would break into my car. Like for when I was in a bad area or something. You know, in Hollywood late at night.

CBC: How would a skull keep someone out of your car?

Bob: If you were a criminal, would you break in a car with a skull on the dashboard? Or would you just go on to another car?

CBC: I guess, as Batman said, criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot.

Bob: And mostly none too bright.

CBC: Let’s get down to business: Talk about being a writer and being an artist. What makes that different, Bob, than being just an artist?

Bob: I’d rather write right now. There are so many other artists out there that are so much better than me. But I do enjoy drawing.

Now a writer/artist, is often better at writing a story, pacing the story. A writer who doesn’t understand visual storytelling and pacing the panels tends to write too much

Flaming Carrot, Mysterymen TM & ©2015 Bob Burden.

Co n d u cted by J on B . C o oke • Tra n sc r ibed by S tev e n T h omps o n trained that way — in school, they’re trained to grab the first thing that comes into their head, spit it out, and then defend it before somebody else raises their hand and comes up with an answer. They’re not trained to think.

Well, I never followed that particular thought process. It’s a competitive kind of thought process. Now me, I like to take something and roll it around in my mind, roll it around like a pebble in my mouth, taste it, feel the shape, the texture. When confronting a problem or anomaly, I like to line up possibilities or theories — line them up there like pencils of different lengths, put ’em in order and basically look at all the different possibilities.

CBC: Yeah, right. That’s not always been so, but people are, more and more, beginning to see it that way now.

And this applies to your writing?

Bob: If there’s some kind of engineering problem or a problem with a story, you don’t want to just grab the first thing that pops into your mind; you want to come up with all the different possibilities, lay ’em out, and pick out the very best one. Try each on for size, you know.

CBC: Comics are really rather idiosyncratic in the way that they developed. I’ve seen written that you revel in the fact — perhaps. You can tell me if this is true or not: that comics really came from a trash medium and that they’re perhaps disposable or what…? Is that so?

Bob: Not a trash medium, but it’s kind of a vulgar medium, and with that comes a certain amount of… how would you say? Lack of self-consciousness. The feeling that this comic story really doesn’t matter because it’s “just a comic book,” that’s what’s best about it. So you can write with a sans souci attitude. So you can go ahead and say whatever you want.

If you’re making a movie, you’ve got six months or a year of your life tied up. Then there’s from 40 to 180 other people’s lives involved, from the key grip to the actor to the lighting guy. A lot on the line.

So you tend be a lot more careful and meticulous, and when you do that, you lose the sort of flair and élan that is possible with comics. Now that being said, comics have become a more self-conscious medium. Now that people are taking themselves more seriously.

CBC: To me, looking through Flaming Carrot, through stories that you’ve written and drawn, they’re… they’re not throwbacks necessarily to the very early comic books Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

of the late ’30s and early ’40s but somehow Flaming Carrot captures the essence of, for lack of a better term, the je ne sais quoi, the certain something, where it is discovery. It’s storytelling unfettered. I guess I’m just making an observation, but that’s a sense that I feel within your stories, beyond the actual working within the construct of a comic book.

Bob: Yes, it was great being there in the frontier period, the revolutionary period, before they fenced off the range. As Kafka says, “Every revolution degenerates into some form of bureaucracy later on.” I liked that early explosive energy that you had in the first stage of comics.

There was a magic in that 1938–’41 period. You could really see it from the comic collector’s point of view. The best golden age comics, for collectors, are in 1939, ’40, and ’41. By ’42, it just all of a sudden became lame. And I was curious about this! Why did this happen? And you know, I mean, I was around back in the days when the people who made it all happen were still alive — Jack Kirby… I would talk to him about the early days of comics, and Gil Kane, and some of these other guys who used to go to conventions. From those discussions of the early days, I got the picture that before 1942, it was kind of the wild, wild West. By ’42, the mothers were chiming in, and the editors started saying, “You can’t do this, you can’t do that,” you know, this whole “Mommy-land” concept. The real early stuff was great, and it was kind of bloody, violent. Like some of the cable series today.

Like Rome or Black Sails or Spartacus. The blood’s 63

Above: A ’70s Buyer’s Guide ad to by comics by Bob Burden and Lamar Waldron back in the early days of fandom, showing some of Bob’s favorites back then: Will Eisner, Basil Wolverton, Jack Kirby, Matt Baker etc.

Below: Bob Burden’s hand fits nice and snug in the Carl Barks handprint at the Disney Studios in Burbank, California.

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Photo © Bob Burden.

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flying everywhere. By 1942 or ’44, the violence was reined in. It’s the same old story. You come up with something, some new frontier or something like that, and then there’s all these knuckleheads who’ve gotta come in and fence it off. They really capture that in the Paul Newman movie The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. He comes back to the town like 20 years later and he sees what the bankers and the women have done. Lonesome Dove is another. There’s a scene there where Woodrow and Gus are talking: “We tamed this territory. We fought the rustlers and the Cheyenne and the Mexican bandits and the gunslingers — and now I get the idea we were just working for the bankers all this time!” [Jon laughs] There are these little periods in comics where you will have another explosion now and then. In that 1950 to ’53 period, you have the E.C. Comics. And then you have another explosion of frontier spirit in the early ’60s Marvel comics, from 1961 to, let’s say, ’64 or ’65. By ’67, the Marvel Comics weren’t what they were in ’61 and ’62 and ’63. It wasn’t violence, though. Now in the late ’60s, they’d evolved into something else and comics were still very popular and kids loved them, but there wasn’t that same magic as in those early ’60s Marvels. That wasn’t there anymore later on. That’s why people pay so much money for those darn things. Then there was the comic book New Wave era, to the revolution of the independents, the black-&-white revolution — whatever you wanna call it — of the early ’80s.

CBC: I think you skipped something important, the era of the undergrounds.

Bob: Oh, yeah, right!

That was another magical

moment, of course. I remember being with Jaime Hernandez at the Dallas con in the “green room” talking to Robert Crumb, who was describing the whole ’60s-era hippie experience he’d seen firsthand in San Francisco. “Well,” Crumb says, “that whole era of the hippies only lasted for a year or two. Then all the poseurs and parasites and the opportunists came in, and they just co-opted it and took it over. And ruined it.”

Everything cool just kind of died. All of a sudden, it wasn’t what it was in the early days.

Jaime shook his head knowingly, saying that’s exactly the way it was in the whole punk rock scene out in L.A. And that’s exactly what I had seen in Atlanta for the punk rock days there. That’s sort of the Spanglerian process: there’s an explosion, there’s a revolution, sort of like a Leninist era — and then somebody like Stalin comes in f*cks it all up.

CBC: So, do you just keep searching for the frontier to keep it interesting?

Bob: Or you wait for the frontier to find you. And that’s one of the cool things about that early ’80s period for me. I was truly in the right place at the right time.

CBC: Let’s talk about the buildup to being in the right place at the right time.

You read comics as a kid?

Bob: Yeah! I was there when the coolness crept back in again in the early ’60s Marvel revolution. I actually, literally, bought Amazing Fantasy #15 off the newsstand and I still have my original copy.

CBC: Was it the appeal of the superheroes? Did you recognize Carl Barks? Did you have any exposure to Harvey Kurtzman’s stuff in the early years?

Bob: No. I liked MAD magazine and everything, but it wasn’t until I got into collecting in the late ’60s and early ’70s that I ran across things like Help! magazine. In fandom, people were talking about the E.C.’s and Barks and Pogo.

People were fanatical about the Carl Barks stuff back then.

But real early on, a lot of Barks fans didn’t know who the hell Carl Barks was! They just knew he was the “good Disney artist.” They could tell the difference between Carl Barks and Al Taliaferro. I mean Taliaferro was good, too, but then there were these other guys that would fill in for Barks and draw Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge, and they were good, but none of their vision had the oomph that Barks had.

CBC: You started reading and collecting comics then. How did that translate into fandom?

Bob: Well, that was right in the very early stages of fandom.

I was literally buying and selling comics when I was still in high school, and then college — and there wasn’t even an Overstreet Price Guide yet. I remember when the first Overstreet came out, and people were freaked out. They said, “I can’t believe these prices!” Everybody believed the “good” and “fine” prices, but the “mint” prices they thought were crazy and it turned out that in the long run those mint prices that were the lowest! [laughs] CBC: So were you just a young entrepreneur? Was it a way to make money? How did you start dealing comics?

Bob: I always had a good knack for business, even when I was young. Basically I put myself through college by dealing.

I was running ads in the paper, buying and selling comics. I used to go to New York conventions and buy up a bunch of original artwork, and bring it back South and sell it. All the art was up in New York back in the day.

CBC: Where did you get that business acumen?

Bob: I think you have to be born with it. My grandfather was a good businessman, and my dad was in business with Westinghouse for years. As far as buying and selling things, I

Phantom Lady TM & © the respective copyright holder. Photos © Bob Burden.

just always had a knack for that, and it was always been fun for me! Always an adventure.

CBC: Ya gotta ask this question. [laughs] Any particularly memorable scores in either art or comics themselves?

Bob: The first thing that pops into my mind happened when I lived in Akron, Ohio, and I was running an ad in the paper.

We lived up in the north area near Cuyahoga Falls. One day, I got a call from a lady, a waitress who had two boxes of comics from out of her attic. She was way down on the south side of town. I went down there and bought ’em for, I dunno, $10 or $12 dollars. They weren’t like huge boxes, maybe a hundred comics all together. But it was really funny taking those comics home and looking through ’em. And again, this is before there was an Overstreet! It was so cool because there were comics books I’d never even heard of! All this stuff was probably from about 1940-’46. One thing I noticed was that the Marvels were the most read and dog-eared.

There was a Captain America #8 and #10 with spine rolls on ’em. They were these big, fat, Golden Age comics that were just so cool! But for some reason, the Fiction House comics were all in very fine to near mint condition. I’d notice this over the years when I’d buy collections! That with Fiction House comics, they’d read ’em once, and that was it! But the Marvel comics got read over and over and over again.

CBC: [Laughs] Now, the appeal of buying original art: Was that purely for business reasons of did you…?

Bob: No, I loved original art. And as for comics as a business, this is the thing — back when fandom and comic collecting was a wild, wild West, it was a lot of fun! All an adventure. Back then it was so much fun to go out and chase down comic books and to buy something that you could actually make a profit on. And it supported the “habit.” I was building a Marvel collection, and I was supporting that. I had, generally speaking, ten copies of each for the early Marvels.

So Fantastic Four #1 through, say #34, #35. Spider-Man #1– 38, all the Ditko issues. After Ditko left, I said, “How can any of these ever be worth anything?” [Jon laughs] You know, after Sean Connery, how could any James Bond measure up? Or in Bewitched! The old Darrin and the new Darrin, you know what I’m sayin’?

CBC: Yep! [laughter] Bob: So I had tried to keep ten copies of each. Hulk #1–6, Tales of Suspense up to maybe… #39 was the first “Iron Man” issue and I would run those up to… I dunno, maybe #60. I can remember going to shows and having a dollar box of comics and in that dollar box were issues of Silver Surfer #1 and Conan #1 because, back then, they were so common and they would never be worth what they are now! And we were making an unholy profit on ’em because we paid, I dunno, 12¢ or 15¢ or whatever cover price was at was at the time. I remember buying a case of Shazam! #1 when I was in college and carrying that whole case of comic books — I had to order them through a newsstand because there wasn’t any comic shop in Athens, Georgia, then — and carrying them all the way back across the campus up and down hills to my dorm room.

CBC: And by 1985, they were worth their cover price! [laughs] Bob: Yeah. I don’t know what a Shazam! #1 is worth now.

That was like the first speculator comic. When that book came out, everybody in the world bought cases of it and put ’em away.

CBC: Yeah, I recall that very well. I saw a notice in some of the Flaming Carrot comics that you were specifically looking for Crumb artwork. Were you attracted to Crumb’s work immediately seeing it from the beginning?

Bob: I just felt that if any artist out of comic books had a chance at becoming iconic and having a value outside the world of comics and moving into the world of fine art, that Crumb would be the one. It wasn’t just because of his artwork. He was a very fine craftsman, yes, but an incredible writer, too — he had a spirit, a feeling that he put into his artwork that was special. There was just a breathtaking

beauty to it, even though in and of itself, it was ugly and vulgar. It was still fantastic! And to be able to create something that all at the same time is ugly and vulgar but also beautiful and scintillating — that’s pretty significant.

That’s an artist!

CBC: How does one make the leap from Marvel Comics to appreciating Zap Comix? Was it just the culture as the culture was changing at the time?

Bob: I had no problem liking both of them. I was into all the art films and foreign films back then. Janus Films collected and distributed all the cool foreign films — Fellini, Bergman, that stuff. So I was cutting my teeth on comics and art films and the poetry of T. S. Eliot.

I read books by S. J. Perelman and Jack Douglas. MAD magazine and Ernie Kovacs TV shows.

CBC: Were you always a doodler? Did you always draw?

Bob: Always, even when I was a kid. Still am. The idea of doing independent comics was always there in my stuff. I met up with Jerry Iger back in the early ’70s on one of my first trips to New York, and I met him at a comic convention and I knew who he was because I was a big fan of the Eisner-Iger studio. You know, Lou Fine and all that stuff. I actually was working with Iger back in the early ’70s on relaunching a Phantom Lady comic book. That was my beginning in the direct market. There was enough of a comic book shop thing around, and there was The Buyer’s Guide. I figured we could sell maybe 500 copies of it through TBG. I drew up this one Phantom Lady cover for the series, and later I actually used it to spice up one of my original art ads in TBG, probably in the latter half of the ’70s, and some guy called up and wanted to buy it, thinking that it was the original Matt Baker cover to Phantom Lady #24.

The series ended with #23, so this was gonna be my continuation of that numbering, which I wanted to do to stay faithful instead of starting over with # 1 like all these people do nowadays. And I wanted to do that when we did the Mystery Men comics! I wanted to start over. The original Mystery Men from Fox made it up to #33 or #34. I wanted to start over with #34 and everybody Top: Bob hoped to revive Phantom Lady, the legendary Jerry Iger at Dark Horse said, “Oh, no! “headlight” comic title from the 1940s. Above: Pix of Bob with comic You’ve gotta have a #1!” But book luminaries, including Sergio Aragonés, Chester Brown, Harvey anyways, I put this Phantom Kurtzman, Frank Miller, Jaime Hernandez, and Daniel Clowes (here Lady cover in an ad — and with the prop skulls mentioned at the opening of the Interview.)

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Above: Bob with author Harlan Ellison. Below: Various shots of Bob at comic book conventions in the days of yore. Next page: Top picture is Bob with Jaime Hernandez and R. Crumb!

ahead and did it even though he knew it was wrong. You know, schtupping Catwoman. So here’s Batman, for the first time in his career doing something bad — and yet something really good comes out of it! This beautiful child that became the Huntress!

It was gonna be called “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suitcase.” [laughter] It starts out with this toady who’s following Catwoman around just doing whatever she says, kind of like a Renfield character like in Dracula, and they find this storage bin and they’re selling… And I used to go to these things before this was popular, I used to… Actually, there’s times when I went to storage bins and bid on that kind of stuff ’cause I was already in the antique business, too.

So here’s how the story begins. Someone buys a bin at a storage auction, and it’s Catwoman’s stuff. Huntress is an older lady now. Catwoman and Batman are gone. And all of these old photo albums and mementoes start showing up on eBay. It’s all Huntress’s early life, thought lost for decades.

Cool, eh? So they find this suitcase and they don’t know if there’s a bomb in it or something because they figure out this is Catwoman’s sh*t and it starts showing up on eBay, her photo albums and this, that and the other thing. And they X-ray it, and there’s this guy inside the suitcase and he’s dead and he’s suffocated, he’s been in there for, you know, 10 or 20 years, scrunched up and put inside the suitcase!

And it’s a gray flannel suitcase which is kind of odd but, you know, it could happen. So that story became “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suitcase.” Great title. So the whole thing of Storage Wars concept was in there. [Jon laughs] The other story was how Huntress became a super-powered person…

It starts out when she’s 14 years old — she winds up escaping these foster parents who are having a big argument, and, as her parents are shooting each other, she jumps into a melon truck as it drives by, and she just goes off. Essentially, she falls asleep in Mexico and winds up in this Mexican circus. All the people in the circus are meta-humans, and the knife-thrower realizes that she’s meta-human, too — so he starts teaching and training her. The whole idea is that meta-humans have existed for a long time, but the place where they all hang out is in the circus. You know, it’s just a logical thing. They stick together and have a “cover” for their powers as performers.

It was a great idea, so they killed it, I guess. Who knows.

Then this TV show called Carnivàle came out, and it was kind of like the same thing — people who join the circus have superpowers or whatever. If DC had gone ahead with that, they would have pre-empted that super-popular Carnivàle.

You ’member that on HBO about five or six years ago?

CBC: Right, very bizarre stuff.

Bob: Anyway, it was kinda fun to write all that stuff, but I just got paid a kill fee. I don’t know what it was that killed it.

Somebody just found out, “Oh, Bob Burden’s working for us?

He’s too weird. Forget about it!”

CBC: Sounds like a corporate decision.

Bob: Often the corporate mentality is a steamroller that just homogenizes everything into one sameness. They don’t want anybody doing anything really creative or different or interesting. Nothing bad, but nothing too great, either! For instance, they don’t want another Pulp Fiction ’cause the rest of the stuff they do can’t measure up to it. They don’t want another Seinfeld show. Now Seinfeld was doing too good for them to kill it, but eventually they want everything to be mediocre. If you open a McDonald’s somewhere and you try to go down and get ground chuck and ground sirloin and start serving it there, they’re gonna shut you down because the McDonald’s everywhere all has to taste the same. It’s the Salieri Principle, which means “Mediocrity must be everywhere.”

CBC: Because they can’t mass-produce genius. Then, through mediocrity the subversive and good stuff rise out?

Bob: Well, eventually everything eventually collapses in on itself. Corporations and pretty much any business can become a Tower of Babel and collapse in upon itself. Like a #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All photos © Bob Burden.

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this guy was convinced it was a Matt Baker drawing [laughs] and he offered me, like, $75 for it! Which was a lot of money at the time! Back then you could buy a really nice Wally Wood T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents page for 20–25 bucks! [Jon laughs] And this guy was so enamored over this piece, and I had to convince him over the phone that this was not drawn by Matt Baker!

CBC: Certainly the greater art movements that have taken place have had some impact on you, haven’t they?

Bob: Well, yeah. I always studied art history, on my own and a little in school. I was always very interested. I liked Dali, Ben Shahn, Blake, Picasso… And I liked movies, you know, art films. I was into Luis Buñuel movies. I was a big fan of Orson Welles. I was a big fan of Fellini, an extremely big fan!

CBC: Bringing it together, perhaps in an absurdist, surrealistic, smart, and funny but… detached way, perhaps? I don’t wanna sit here and categorize your storytelling, but it’s not coming from a Marvel point of view. It’s not pointed toward mainstream readers. Is it more for a wider audience?

Bob: I never really thought about comparing my story writing to Marvel. Certainly I could write Marvel stuff, sure.

I’ve never had a problem writing that kind of stuff. Actually there was a time there when some of the publishers wanted me to write. I came up with some really good storylines, but I don’t know what happened to all that. All of a sudden all these projects just got killed. I had this project they wanted me to do on the origin of The Huntress, who was Catwoman and Batman’s daughter. I wrote this really cool story of how the Huntress came to be born. The Catwoman breaks into this Egyptian museum and steals this vial that used to belong to Cleopatra.

Catwoman figures out that Cleopatra had to have some perfume or pheromones that would really put the hoodoo on men. She finds this sediment dried up and crystalized at the bottom of the vial that she reinvigorates. It’s what Cleopatra used to bewitch men. And she was able to use this on Bruce Wayne in the casinos of the Riviera. She was basically hunting on the Riviera targeting rich millionaires, blackmailing them and stuff like that, and she runs into millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. So Batman uses these nostril things to keep from getting affected by the perfume, you know, keep his Bat-nostrils [laughs] from getting affected by the potion. But somehow or another, her natural allure took over and he gives in, and says, “Ah, what the hell?” and went

All photos © Bob Burden.

forest burning down and then sprouts coming out of the ashes. Then, during the famine period or nuclear-winter period, you have a chance to have some fun. Like when nobody is looking. If you look at comics, the best stuff is born out of these dead periods. Like, if you look at the Marvel comics of the latter half of the ’70s, it was a wasteland. After the death of undergrounds, there was nothing going on in that latter three-quarters of the ’70s. It was a dead era! It was a dead zone. And in that wasteland where comic books were about ready to die and blow away, all of a sudden this new revolution came along — the New Wave, the indie revolution of the early ’80s! The indies breathed life back into the comics, the comic shops… It made the game exciting again! You know what I’m sayin’?

CBC: Yes, definitely. It was move of a do-it-yourself thing?

Bob: I remember sitting next to a big exec in the music business on a plane fight. We got to talking, and he’s telling me about how the music business was dead back in the ’70s.

Record stores were closing up, and he thought it was over.

And then Michael Jackson came along and made it exciting again. People started coming back into record stores, and they started buying records again! Michael Jackson saved the whole business.

You need the hits. The industry needs the hits. But then once you save things, the parasites and connivers and corporatchiks come in and steal scene. The push the good aside and actually hound and persecute the good guys. Look at Jack Kirby or Orson Welles.

CBC: Corporatchiks. You invented a new word. So the corporate mentality owes its existence to the creative types, but at the same time has trouble dealing with them.

Bob: It’s a strange paradigm. Michael Jackson the superstar came out of nowhere. He was kind of a has-been: a kid star, the youngest novelty member of out-of-fashion boy band! Then, all of a sudden, he’s a superstar all on his own!

And he kept the record stores open and the business alive.

Then the whole punk rock thing comes along after music got so dead. Now all of a sudden you had Devo, the Talking Heads, the Go-Gos, and all that stuff — and then all of a sudden, music became interesting again! So, then corporations come in and take over, buy up everyone, and try to assembly line it. When Marvel tried the corporate mentality of “Hey, let’s put out more titles and blow everybody else off the racks,” it almost killed comics. At one time you could have bought Marvel, the company, for a song.

CBC: And that was what almost killed Marvel?

Bob: Yeah, right out of the manual on corporate greed and stupidity. They tried to put out all the titles and blow the completion off the shelves. The battle for shelf space at POP — point of purchase — but if you’re in the business of selling soap or cigarettes or whatever, you know, it can work. Liggett and Myers doesn’t only sell one brand of cigarettes — they put out 15 or 20 different labels of cigarettes.

You mostly can’t tell the difference between the brands, and they’re basically always fighting other companies for shelf space. So it’s not quality or creativity, it’s not for the long run — it’s all about sameness and greed and looking at the bottom line for next quarter… It’s an institutionalization of mediocrity.

That’s how they ran the Vietnam War. Dickless, autistic, loveless, brainiacs like McNamara. All this “quanting.” And you saw where that got us. And what that got the Vietnamese. Wisdom was sacrificed like a lamb at the altar of knowledge.

CBC: You said you talked to Jerry Iger about doing a revival of Phantom Lady. You had print aspirations earlier than that?

Bob: I first saw his art as a kind, there in the IW reprints.

I was just completely brought into drawing by Baker’s art. I loved his mastery of the female form. Later I collected any of his stuff that I could get my hands on. Around 1976 I bought about 70 pages of his Fiction House stuff from Bob Gallagher at a Seuling con in NYC. I think I drew the Phantom Lady cover around ’75 or ’76.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

CBC: And you were thinking about publishing your own indie comics even then?

Bob: Oh yes. And you can see those early, primitive comic covers I did as a kid in the new Pandemonium Boulevard artbook.

Did I envision the direct market?

Did I have a premonition of it? I can’t say whether I did or not, but I was thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was such a thing?” I could easily imagine people collecting comics and people coveting comics back then.

CBC: The undergrounds had come and gone. The Supreme Court came down and pretty much cleared that out. People were trying to put edgy stuff on the newsstand and that was hit or miss.

If you were National Lampoon you really hit, but during the ’70s, there was a real struggle that was taking place for finding the right kind of outlet for cartoonists. Eventually, with the rise of the direct market, there’s this alternative way of publishing.

I’m just thinking, in the mid-’70s, did you really think that you could find a readership? Was it through the conventions? Was it through mail order that you could possibly do a book and find an audience, or was it more networking?

Bob: Well, there was The Comic Buyer’s Guide. You might be able to sell 200 copies there. There was the Phil Seuling distribution system mainlining into comic shops. Undergrounds proved that b-&-w non-corporate comics could sell. Comics began to sell in comic shops, because collectors wanted their comic books in mint condition. In a drugstore, comics were on a spinner rack, and people would flip through the comics and bend them where the spinner rack held them, right there at the top staple. There’d be a crack in the spine right there from the people pawing through them. So these guys would go down to the comic book shops on the day the comic books arrived to get to ’em and take out their mint copies before. You know, this was like stamp collecting or coin collecting or whatever back then, and the early comic book shops were predominantly like coin shops or stamp shops. In 1966, Harvey did the Fighting American and The Spirit reprints, and those got people interested!

CBC: You say they were meeting places for the collectors — the direct sales shops or the comic book shops.

Bob: There were old bookstores that had a comic book section in the back where people could trade in used comics. E.C. comics had a fan community. E.C. fans kind of brought that together. Also in the Blackhawk comics, back in the letters section, they had a section devoted to 67

This page: Clockwise from above is the first issue of Flaming Carrot Comics published by Aardvark-Vanaheim [May ’84], limited edition print from ’89, and line art for a T-shirt design. All artwork by Bob Burden.

back in my time machine!” But, at the time, everybody would turn up their nose at Rogofsky and Bell because their prices were considered so high.

CBC: I guess what I’m trying to get at is, how did Wendy and Richard Pini, how did Jack Katz (well, of course, he went through Bud Plant) — how did these people really see that as an outlet for their comics? “Here’s a way to get our independent comics into readers’ hands”?

Bob: Not sure what came first. But they were able to piggyback on Phil’s delivery system. When I started in comics, Jon, when I first solicited for Flaming Carrot, there were at least 12 or 15 indie comic titles coming out. They were piggybacking on the Marvels that were going into these comic shops. Early fandom was very, very open to fan stuff and indie stuff. Hungry for it. Rich Corben was real popular. It was kind of sort of in a way a little bit of a new revolution but, at the same time, it was a continuation of the old undergrounds and stuff like that. There were some people that were seriously doing some good, cool underground comic books and stuff like that, and not everything was obscene or was pushing counter-culture revolutionary thing. The underground comix piggybacked on the head shops. That’s how they distributed. But when the head shops died out… I think that Crumb possibly sold through head shops about 200,000 or 300,000 copies of Zap #1 back in the day, over the years.

CBC: Right. When the Supreme Court came down with the ruling about paraphernalia: good-bye, head shops.

Bob: Yeah, boom, all of a sudden, they went the way of the buffalo. The story is that Robert Crumb started out selling comics out of a baby carriage in Haight-Ashbury. If you look at all the early stuff he and his brothers did, I think that they were envisioning the direct market and self-publishing too.

They were reading all these old Carl Barks and Walt Kelly stuff, and they started making little Walt Kelly comic books the same way a kid that goes to see a pirate movie would come home and make a paper pirate hat and a cardboard sword and a monocle out of a bottle cap and maybe get an eye infection from it. [laughs] Kids are imitative, sure — but creative, too. It’s called playing. And kids love certain things.

Kids have an eye for the iconic. They just love it. Pirates, cowboys, monsters… they see it, and it’s just so cool. All along, kids have been writing their own comic books. Not just me and the Crumbs. After Flaming Carrot came out, I had kids send me the comic books they were making, too. Like kids who were eight to 12 years old. #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © Bob Burden.

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collectors. See, Blackhawk was one of the few comics that went waaaay back to, like, 1941, and Blackhawk was originally at Quality Comics and then DC got a hold of it. They started trading back issues of Blackhawk in the back of the letters columns in the early ’60s. You know, if you needed Blackhawk # 123 and 127 to complete your collection.

CBC: Did selling new comics — in mint condition — through these new comic book stores, was that opportunism or was that just collectors also wanting to have access to new comics in mint condition? Was it just a mix of this going on or were people going — Phil Seuling’s agents or his associates going into these stores and saying, “Hey, you wanna sell new comics?”

Bob: Phil Seuling started, I think, Seagate, and it was a service where they would actually ship you the comics you ordered, but he didn’t have salesmen.

He would buy a big quantity of ’em from the newsstand distributors or the publishers at wholesale and then send ’em out.

CBC: So, it was the businessmen, the people that were dealing in comics, who said, “We want direct access”?

Bob: Right. But remember, the shop owners were comic fans too. And at the time there were guys named Robert Bell and Howard Rogofsky who were selling comic books. They were the two early mail-order companies that were doing this stuff, and their prices were considered really high, but they were the first dealers. Mail order. If you find an old Howard Rogofsky catalog nowadays, you’ll go, “Oh my god! Look at these prices! If I could just go

TM & © Bob Burden

CBC: As a young kid, reading Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes, which included his childhood handmade comics, was mind-blowing. It was, ‘Wow! I could do this, too!” I didn’t just have to be a reader, but also make my own comics.

Bob: Everybody in early fandom read that Jules Feiffer book! It was in every library and it was just fantastic. It was a wonderful book.

CBC: So where did the idea come in for you to do your own comic book?

Bob: That’s a good question. I was talking about doing it with Iger in ’75 or ’76. I had a bunch of other stuff going on at the time that were different schemes, and it seems like every week we were up to something else. At one point in time, me and my roommate had decided to license all the Herschell Gordon Lewis movies, so we got a bank account and started putting some of our money into it just to get these things and buy ’em up because… Well, the funny thing is that neither of us had ever seen those movies at the time, but we just had this vision that someday they would be marketable. But they were so horrible! You had Blood Feast and 10,000 Maniacs.

We’d heard so many stories about how horrible they were, we said, “These things are so bad, they’ve gotta be good!”

So we were gonna license them! My friend Bob flew up to Chicago to talk to lawyers and the people up there and everything. And this is all before VCRs! You gotta remember, too, back in those days, all this is before cell phones, VCRs, and just so many things. It was a different world back then!

How many channels were there on television before cable?

In any major city you had NBC, CBS, and ABC, and only a few UHF stations.

CBC: Right. So you were entrepreneurial. What’s the genesis of Flaming Carrot? Did that fit into an entrepreneurial scheme, or was that self-expression? Was that an offshoot of those homemade comics that the Crumb brothers were doing? I’m trying to see a connection, a pattern.

Bob: Well, there were a number of factors involved. I had always wanted to do a comic book, but I didn’t think that I could actually do a really good serious comic book, so if you did something just goofy like Robert Crumb or Herbie… I hoped that readers would be a little more lenient with the quality of my artwork.

CBC: [Laughs] You’re a force of personality enough that you could say, “Hey, maybe the quality reaches a certain level on this...” but you could sell it? Are your skills as salesman part of the equation?

Bob: Well, there’s different times in the whole history of Flaming Carrot where I had to bring my business sense in and had to push it. Like, for instance, early on, when Flaming Carrot was beginning to launch into the regular series, I was at odds with the publishers a good bit simply because I wanted to do things my way, and they wanted to do things their way. I argued with publishers Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

about print runs and paper quality. They’d say, “You never sell as much of a book later on as you do with a #1. The # 1 is always a bestseller.” I said, “No. That’s only true of a book that’s a failure.

And why should you publish garbage?

Why not just publish something that’s gonna be good?” Back then a book would dip at around #5–7. Good or bad. But if it was a good book, a hit, then it would start coming back up. Then, by #10, it would be double over what #1 was.

CBC: Why didn’t you self-publish in the early years?

Bob: I did. My roommate. Lamar put out a book called Visions. We had a Neal Adams cover. The idea was that a Neal Adams cover was sure to sell X-amount of copies. We had Jim Steranko in it, and Rudy Nebres on the back cover. It was sort of a fanzine and sort of a comic book, so it was able to sell through that Phil Seuling distribution network. You see, the distribution network has a lot to do with the product, sometimes as much as the artist does.

Music changed when radio was invented.

Certain things were possible once radio was invented that would never have been possible if radio hadn’t come along.

CBC: Collateral effects?

Bob: Yes, like with rock ’n’ roll — would it have ever even happened if it wasn’t for amphetamines? I mean, there would have been something musical there in that decade, but I don’t think it would have been as much fanaticism and energy if it wasn’t for all the bennies and uppers and downers that were floating around back then.

CBC: Amphetamines among the performers, you mean?

Bob: Yes. Everyone was on that stuff. Comedians, actors, songwriters… Take On the Road.

It was written in a few days on one big roll of paper and I’ll bet Kerouac didn’t sleep a lot during the writing of it. You look at early television, look at those early kinescope things, and watch them talk. If you’ve been around people on speed, you know what you’re looking at. It was commonplace back then. It was a household thing. It was “Mother’s Little Helper.”

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This page: The Mysterymen comic, turned into a 1999 feature film starring Ben Stiller and Bill Macy. Now considered visionary and ahead of its time, it has garnered a cult following, and the windfall gave Burden the freedom to create and write more madness. Artwork by BB.

They were prescribing this for everybody. They didn’t know how dangerous it was.

It was like science was on the loose. I remember shoe stores X-raying your foot to determine what kind of shoe you should have.

CBC: I can’t say that I truly understand your humor, but I find it funny and I don’t know if I necessarily need to understand it. Ernie Kovacs, for me, is the same way.

Sometimes I don’t know why I laugh, but I do at those stupid monkeys. [laughs] Bob: Oh, you mean the monkeys with the derbies on? The Nairobi Trio? They were freaky. Scary. I don’t know what they were all about either. Just kind of disturbing.

CBC: Right, but so much of what Kovacs did was within the medium itself — to really use the tools available to him in those early days of television and use the camera in such a way that it made it funny unto itself.

Bob: Other things he did were not funny, but more of an artistic thing. He did some of the most bizarre little black-

outs… they’d come on and they’d just do some things. It was just plain weird. He was like a kid in a candystore. Just being creative and having fun, you know?

CBC: Do you see a connection between you and that style sometimes, pushing the...?

Bob: One of my earliest memories is sneaking into my Aunt Mary’s bedroom while she was watching TV, and peeking at the TV, where just something weird seemed to be going on and I wanted to see it. And it was an Ernie Kovacs show they were watching. I was sitting there watching and this singing Mountie comes along and he’s rowing in a boat with a girl in it and he’s serenading her — and as he does, the camera pulls back and you see this guy watching this on his TV set and he’s just sitting there kind of disgruntled and bored with it. He stands up and goes over and gets a drill, and he starts drilling into the top of the TV set and the people are screaming and the boat sinks — and it was just so cool that they broke this fourth or fifth or sixth wall, whatever it was. It was like a Don Martin cartoon! [Jon laughs] I just sat there and said, “That’s great!

I want to do that!” When you’re a young teenager or young kid or whatever and you want to do something, you just play around with it. You mess around with it. I could have just as well picked up a guitar and got together with some buds and done something like that. It’s just goofin’ around and having fun. That’s where the magic comes from. That’s why I don’t really agree with all this modern educational system stuff.

Learning how to use your tools and utensils is important, but not everyone is an artist. You can teach how to draw a little, and you can teach ’em how to format a script — but as far as teaching ’em how to do the magic? Either you’re born with it, I think, or you discover it and mature into it. Some people may just have it, and some people don’t. They used to say that every artist has 500 bad drawings in him, and he just has to draw and get them out. I disagree. I think some people

Myesterymen, The Mysterians TM & © Bob Burden. Mystery Men TM & © the respecive copyright holder.

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#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Myesterymen TM & © Bob Burden. Mystery Men TM & © the respecive copyright holder.

have 20 or 50 bad drawings in them before they start getting it, and some people have hundreds of thousands. More than a lifetime.

CBC: Where did the idea of Flaming Carrot come from?

Bob: That’s a mystery! It was just one of these things that just sort of popped into my head. See, I have a different creative process. For one thing, I always carry a tape recorder around with me. As things come into my head, I’m always putting them down. “Here’s a character here, a joke or a gag here, a Flaming Carrot concept here, a story here, or whatever!” Snippets of dialogue, whatever the case may be.

For instance, in the first Flaming Carrot I did for Aardvark-Vanaheim, there were a number of things that I had assembled together in my notes that I wanted to see in the story. One of them was the line, “Dr. Heller, there’s an interstellar feller in the cellar.” Then I had the idea that Jimmy Carter’s new all-volunteer Army come out of this helicopter that’s landed crooked on a rock, and as they come running out their heads would get lopped off by the rotor blades which were at an angle. I threw that into the story. I used the concept “roadhogs from outer space” a bunch of times. I told people that I was making a movie called Roadhogs from Outer Space — nothing to do with Flaming Carrot. Just the idea that these aliens would come down and instead of, you know, shoot up Washington, D.C., with rayguns — the Mars Attacks! thing — they’d just get in cars and drive around and bump people off the road. It was ridiculous. It was facetious. It was like a Monty Python-type concept, and so that became the construction… All these pieces started to fit with each other, and I started piecing it together.

CBC: How could you perceive that you could get legs out of that? Was it that you were just gonna do one issue after the other? Was it, “I’ve got a lot of stories to tell,” or “Hey, I could sell this as a regular continuing series?” Because you really do have that dichotomy of being a salesperson, of being cognizant of sales and also having an artistic bent.

Bob: One of the things that my friend and mentor Stanislav Szukalski, he said, “Young man, walk with the moon in one hand and the sun in the other.” Early on, people told me “Flaming Carrot is a one-trick pony. Yeah, he’s a super-hero.

Yeah, he’s retarded, he doesn’t have any super-powers, he’s violent, and I get it. But what’s the next joke? Okay, what’s the next thing?” So I said, “You know what? I’m gonna take this and run with it! I’m gonna make a story out of it.” Like Fitzcarraldo taking the opera boat up the Amazon. I had come up with the stupidest idea you could ever come up with for a super-hero, so let’s run with it. Most super-hero stories are dictated by their secret identities and their super-powers.

Those factors are used by writers to generate stories. So I’m throwing them all away. Let’s play. Let’s experiment. I start off with a tabula rasa, carte blanche, and just go for it.

CBC: [Laughs] A clean slate. So what is the origin of the Carrot?

Bob: Well, the apocryphal story is that he read 5,000 comics in a single sitting to win a bet [Jon laughs], but that was just some flippant thing I came up with and ran with — but the true origin’s never been told!

CBC: You’re too good, Bob. Is it forthcoming per chance?

Bob: I hope so! I would like to do some more comics. Right now I’ve got this storyline that has to do with the Sharktato — half shark, half potato. Oprah Winfrey is made an admiral and she has her own navy… and what else is in there?

There were some other really odd little things that I had, kind of concepts of ideas and stuff like that.

CBC: The first issue of Flaming Carrot came out when?

Bob: Nineteen eighty-one. The first “Flaming Carrot” story came out in Visions #1, in 1979.

CBC: You hooked up with David Sim and his publishing company. How did that happen?

Bob: Dave called and said he wanted to publish me. They were putting together a line of books that were odd, interesting, and unusual, things that would go along with Cerebus.

CBC: Did you have a regular day job at the same time?

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

Bob: No, not at all.

CBC: You were able to survive on producing a bi-monthly book?

Bob: No. I just kind of lived like Kramer, you know? [Jon laughs] I just kind of got by.

CBC: How long did you regularly produce it in that almost bi-monthly schedule?

Bob: That went on for like the first 10 or 15 issues and then, after I left A-V or Renegade, I floated for about six to eight months.

Strangely enough, the comic publishers were hitting on me. Marvel and DC were fishing around.

CBC: Do you remember the numbers at all at its height?

Bob: The first issue we did 11,000.

By #5 we’d fallen off to about 5,800 in orders. But by #10, we were up around 10,000 or 15,000. At the peak we were doing 50,000– 60,000.

CBC: When’s the last time you had a regular job?

Bob: I guess when I was still in college. Summer jobs. But after doing ’em for a couple weeks or a couple months, I started setting up at one of the flea markets, selling comics mail order and at cons. And I found I could make more money in a weekend than I’d make in two weeks at the summer job.

CBC: That’s not what a mother-in-law would say is a very secure life. There’s not a lot of security in being an entrepreneur and jumping from project to project, boom or bust, not knowing maybe where your next meal is coming from… I mean, did you have health insurance?

Bob: It gave me the freedom to do the creative stuff I wanted to do. See, after I got out of college, I kind of retired. [Jon laughs] I had built up a nest egg of money. I had a war chest.

So I could go two or three weeks or a month and not have to work. At times I could go a year and not have to work. Also because I could live cheap! Nowadays, I don’t think you can

Top: Page from unpublished Mysterymen strip, written

by Bob and drawn by Chris McLoughlin. Above: Burden at the Toy Fair in New York during the Mystery Men movie launch in 1999, seen here with college roommate and lifelong collaborator Lance Bell, well known in the worlds of advertising and horse-breeding.

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Right inset: At Forrest J Ackerman’s fabled Ackermansion, Bob Burden is in awe before the “Wall of Virgil Finlay Originals.”

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you. By the later ’80s, some really big changes were taking place in comic books that perhaps culminated with Image.

There was gold in them thar hills, wasn’t there? I mean, the Batman movie was coming out, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen. These things were gaining notice, right?

Bob: From the start, I was aiming at reach an audience beyond comic book fans and the direct market with Flaming Carrot. I knew there was an audience out there for the weird — I just had to find it. The Far Side did. SNL, Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Second City…

Flaming Carrot was always meant to be something that the average person could just sit down and read. Flaming Carrot did well with readers who were average people that just didn’t read comics. I would get that a lot. Also a lot of female readers, too. Gumby was popular with women, too.

CBC: You wanted to get women readers? Girl readers?

Bob: I always aimed to make my books accessible to the average person — to produce the kind of story that went beyond the Marvel and DC continuity so its audience wasn’t all 14-year-old boys. Comic fans were very open minded, and they accepted Flaming Carrot. They gave me a base. So I’m definitely not knocking the fans. Comic book people stepped up big time.

CBC: Were there thoughts to different modes of distribution? Of getting it out there in front of those type of people who wouldn’t typically go into comic stores? Or were you trapped in that...?

Bob: Yeah, there was thought of that. I had the idea of breaking Flaming Carrot stories down into half-page or onepage segments and putting it in college newspapers. There would be maybe five or ten panels between gags. I just don’t know if they would’ve gone for it. I didn’t think doing single-gag things like Zippy the Pinhead would work for the stories we had, broken down like that. But it was one of the ideas I had. I also felt Gumby could get out there and go far and wide. At one point, we were trying to break it down to where it would be like a children’s storybook, with text down below and the Rick Geary pictures above that.

CBC: To get it into bookstores or music stores or any other distribution outside of regular channels?

Bob: We wanted to get it out into the regular bookstores.

People have told me that Pandemonium Boulevard is something that could go into a regular bookstore. Probably would want a different cover and some tweaking.

CBC: You wouldn’t go with the Dave Stevens cover to the mass market.

Bob: That’s a pretty sexy cover. Comic fans know who Dave is, but maybe something less salacious for prime time bookstores.

CBC: How has that book been received?

Bob: The book has a lot of memoirs and explanations; it talks about creativity and all that kind of stuff. So it’s not your average comic artist book. Some people don’t know what to make of it, and others seem to get it.

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

© Bob Burden.

Above: Even as a child, Bob was drawing, creating and envisioning a new comic universe for a yet-to-be direct market.

do that that easily. You know, you’d need like $50–100 grand and that won’t go very far!

CBC: You went to school in Athens, Georgia, where REM, the B-52s, and a lot of good bands came from. Was Athens receptive to you as an artist?

Bob: I had my own little group of odd and creative people that I would hang out with. It was sort of like a Jack Kerouac/William S. Burroughs/Neal Cassady kind of group of odd characters and friends. We had bizarre adventures and a lot of partying. It was just this nice, abnormal existence.

CBC: Were you hanging with an avant-garde crowd?

Or a beat crowd?

Bob: Yeah, it was Bohemian, avant-garde, creative people. These kind of people tend to find each other. They create a center of gravity and 99 times out of 100, nothing ever happens. They just go their merry ways and on to their normal lives. And ours did too, but for me, I just kind of held onto the oddball thing and continued with it.

CBC: In social circles with people outside of comic books, did being a comic book creator have a kid of social cachet? Was it cool?

Bob: Oh, it was reprehensible! [Jon laughs] If you were a comic book artist, people would look at you like you were criminal.

CBC: Even the Bohemian crowd?

Bob: Yeah, back in those days, they looked down their nose at you! Even the artsy people. “Oh, you’re a comic book artist? Please! I don’t even know you! I forgot what you look like already.” They didn’t want anything to do with you. That’s why I would tell people I was in the movie business. And at times I was. At one point I was actually working with a retired producer named Ted Toddy. He made a lot of all-Black feature films back in the ’30s and ’40s. I was trying to get these old films out to a college audience like they had been doing with the Marx Brothers or W. C. Fields. Or Reefer Madness.

There was a market renting them to colleges. Also I was writing screenplays. I wrote a screenplay back in the ’70s for Sheena, Queen of the Jungle because Jerry Iger said, “Hey write a Sheena screenplay. We can sell it!” And of course, I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what I was doing. I think I may even still have a copy of the f*ckin’ screenplay around somewhere.

CBC: You had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show up within your comic book, and that did well for

© Bob Burden.

CBC: Good reviews?

Bob: Well, yes and no. Nobody’s really reviewed it. So...

CBC: It’s a good book!

Bob: It’ll break out sooner or later.

CBC: Moving into the later ’80s, 1986 hit big with comic books reaching more recognition into the mainstream, with Maus coming out. That was the year of Love and Rockets, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen. Certainly, a prestige was added to comics. Did you see that as an opportunity?

Bob: Yeah, comics were a big phenomenon there for a minute. But that just lasted for a few years. It was almost like a trend. It was a hipster thing — funny because there were hipsters back then, but nobody knew it.

CBC: But there’s no denying that within the Hollywood realm, the impact of comics is huge! The word “comics” is on a lot of people’s minds, even though it’s another medium.

Bob: I personally feel that Hollywood is relying on comic books too much. They just can’t come up with anything original themselves, though.

CBC: Do you think an aspect of what attracted you to Jack Kirby back in the early days of Marvel Comics is being fully realized on the screen, and what movies couldn’t do before they can do now with graphic tricks?

Bob: You know, the CGI has changed things around. But it’s still the story, maybe now more than ever that makes the movie. Not CGI. CGI is a servant or handmaiden to the story and not vice versa.

CBC: You obviously did want to see Flaming Carrot in movies right?

Bob: Oh, that would’ve been fine! Or a cartoon or anything like that! But the thing is, at the time, the CGI wasn’t there, so I had to create Mystery Men. One of the jokes of Flaming Carrot is if he really walked into a room, he would have to bend over to get through the doorway, and then his flames would catch the ceiling on fire. I mean, he just sort of appeared in in a room and we never showed him going through the door. That was part of the joke! The artistic license! It was supposed to be ridiculous. It was preposterous. However, when they started thinking about making it as CGI, we were worried it would turn out like Howard the Duck. So first I created a character called Screwball who was basically Flaming Carrot in a simple and filmable outfit — and he was a goofy-looking character, too. So the idea was that we could take all the Flaming Carrot stories and replace FC with the Screwball character. That’s why I created Screwball, along with the rest of the Mystery Men: to take the essence, the concept, the absurdity, the whole wackiness of Flaming Carrot comics, and put it into something that they could put on the screen. And the whole idea of a mediocre, second-string, mill-town superhero was multiplied into a team.

CBC: Maybe it wasn’t you that said it, but I saw a quote: “Here I went to Hollywood to make a Flaming Carrot movie, and who shows up in the movie but Mystery Men?” So was it all due to the fact that technology couldn’t handle it, or were you just talking about the believability of Flaming Carrot?

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

Bob: The fact of the matter is, you know, if we tried really hard, there would have been a way to make Flaming Carrot work. In a way, Mystery Men was just Flaming Carrot, only without Flaming Carrot.

CBC: What was your feeling? Did you enjoy the movie? Were you involved in the production of the movie, the preproduction of it?

Bob: I was out there a number of times, seeing it happen and everything, but cautious not to do something wrong. I tried to help them with the screenplay, but they did not want me. There are a million things that I would have done different. But you never know! You can sit there and look at the rushes, the dailies, and it looks like the best thing since sliced bread — but then it goes up on the screen and boom, it just doesn’t work. Me, I have certain rules for movies, for storytelling. One of them is: the more interesting the villain, the stronger the movie’s going to be. If you have a one-dimensional cardboard villain, that’s the kiss of death. The villain makes the protagonist work.

Now, if the audience doesn’t get or doesn’t care about the protagonist, you’re in trouble.

In our story, the protagonists were kind of wussy and wimpy — not really the tougher, saltier guys I had envisioned in the comic.

Mystery Men ideally was a cross between Lonesome Dove and Repo Man and Our Man Flint… I remember when I saw the costumes, I had this internal groan. The costumes would have been great for Freddie Mercury or RuPaul. I envisioned their costumes being more makeshift and homemade, like Road Warrior, ya know?

CBC: Real characters and absurdity at the same time?

Bob: I saw Mystery Men as a great vehicle for a lot of character actors. Originally, I figured the Shoveler would be somebody like Ernest Borgnine or Vic Tayback, or James Gandolfini… a big fat guy who’s bald. And I was open minded. When I first saw, for instance, the Shoveler, I was happy with it. It worked and everything — but I wanted something where the characters were a little more rough and ready.

But I loved the Herkimer battlewagon! That looked really cool. That was fantastic. But the rest of it…? I don’t know the right word to say here…the whole sensibility of it, the whole tone, was just different. They took a shot at it. They

Inset right: Burden with Joe Kubert and Neal Gaiman at the Dallas Fantasy Fair. Top: Prophetic Kirby cover, reimagined

by BB for a 70’s Buyer’s Guide ad. He was a comic and original art dealer, often supporting his creativity with the profits. Above: Unpublished cover proposed to DC in the ’80s, featuring actual experiences of war veterans.

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Above: A surreal masterpiece drawn by Burden and auctioned off to support Jimmy Carter’s Habitat for Humanity initiative.

Below: Album cover for the Atlanta new wave band The Roys unreleased record album, Kicked Off The Train.

CBC: Does the movie have any afterlife? Does it have any cult cachet?

Bob: Very much so. It’s probably more popular now than when it came out. Some say that the movie was ahead of its time. There’s an invisible thing that some movies have, related to the time they are viewed in. It’s hard to get your mind around this — the technology of it — but at the time there weren’t enough… Like, for instance, if the movie M*A*S*H had come out in 1949, it would have been received a lot different than in 1970. You know, there’s a tone in the country that affects things and people at different times. If Rocky had come out at a different time, it wouldn’t have done as well as it did in 1976. Say, if Midnight Cowboy had come out in 1977 and Rocky had come out in 1969, they both might have bombed.

CBC: Well, I can say that I brought my kids to Mystery Men and we had a really good time at that movie. There was a post-modern tone to it, I guess, but it is Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo after all, and being fans… it was cool to see them. But something happened there. All of a sudden the movie was gone.

Bob: It seemed to me that they pulled the promotion right before the movie came out. I don’t know why. At that time, a lot of the movies got pushed to the end of the summer because they were all frightened and had their panties in a bunch about Star Wars! Everybody freaked out and released their movies late in the summer. So, that same weekend Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense came out. Hollywood executives could not see how Blair Witch could kick ass when it only cost so little. And then Sixth Sense? Well, the previous five Bruce Willis movies had been bombs. Why should this one be any different? The Iron Giant came out the same weekend as us, and they got beat up even worse than we did!

CBC: So, did you have a piece of the merchandising at all?

Bob: Yeah, but they didn’t do any merchandising deals up front, figuring it would be better to sign them after it was a hot property. There was a Bugle Boy Jeans deal that they had, and a couple of thousand action figures were produced, and a few other little odds and ends, but they didn’t make any movie deals early on because they said, “This is a franchise-heavy, licensing-heavy property. Let’s wait till the thing does well and makes a lit of money, and then we can license it.” [laughs] And after it came out, they were left holding the bag. So it was minimal.

CBC: How did you feel?

Bob: I was having a good time. I had a lot of things going on and I just continued doing the things I did. Wrote some good stories. Got back in the groove. There’s a number of periods when I’d have these little bursts of creativity like that. There was a time in the mid-’90s, when I was writing all those Mysterymen stories — I wrote about six or eight of them. Only four of ’em got published, but those were some humdinger stories! People still come up to me and say, “Man, that All-Villain story was incredible!” Mysterymen #4. And that was all done during one of those little burst of creativity. I wrote like eight or nine stories in a week or two.

After the movie came out, I started writing a bunch of other stuff. I wrote a couple of screenplays. I love doing writing. I just haven’t been doing any publishing. I guess I just haven’t been pushing that until lately.

CBC: You said that your lifestyle’s not necessarily expensive.

Bob: I keep a low profile and a light footprint. I like living a Spartan existence. If you have too much you wind up spending all your time taking care of that stuff, maintaining it.

CBC: Was the Hollywood option money that you got from Mystery Men enable you to live a more relaxed life, to take some time off? Was there any benefit to that?

Bob: Most definitely. It gave me sort of the ability to go out and experiment in writing. I’d sort of retired. Then, back in 2004, Joe Pruett came along with Desperado and he said, “Let’s do some comics again.” I did about six issues back #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © Bob Burden.

74

could’ve just as well been very successful with it.

You just never know with a movie, that’s the thing.

CBC: Did you see this as your “shot,” or was this just another entrepreneurial thing that you were doing that led to this?

Bob: I started preparing for more Hollywood. I took a couple of screenwriting classes.

Mystery Men could have been a big payday for me. I had the rights to Mysterymen, one word, and they had the rights to Mystery Men, two words. I had the rights to all the Mystery Men characters they didn’t use in the movie, and they had the rights to all the ones they did use. Now then, if it had taken off and been like the Turtles or Hello Kitty or whatever and just gone through the roof, I would have had an open season.

What I wanted to do was that bowling ball and they said, “No. You can’t do that.”

I wanted to license it from them, and they wouldn’t let me do it. Then somebody went out and did a bootleg with a skull in it, and they did 7,777 of them at $139 each — something like that. They did a bunch of ’em, and they made a sh*tload of money off of those bowling balls — but if I’d done that myself, I’d have been in trouble. Somehow these other people did it, and — boom! — they got away with it. Nobody sued ’em because the movie didn’t do that well. They made more money off the bowling ball than I probably made off the movie.

CBC: [Laughs] You had merchandising plans?

Bob: Well, I rented a warehouse. We started making T-shirts and came up with a bunch of other stuff we were gonna do, but once the movie tanked, we just pulled the plug on everything, and it just kinda sat there.

Gumby TM & © Prema Toy Inc. and Premavision, Inc.

then. I guess if someone came along again….

CBC: Why don’t we talk about Gumby? How did your association with that children’s television character come about?

Bob: Well, I wanted to do Gumby up right. Gumby was such a household word. I felt we had a chance that we could go into “orbit” with Gumby — you know, go mass market. And I put a lot of work into writing it. The writing was good. We got a lot of Eisner nominations the first year. It was going well.

Only two of the three issues had come out in the first year. I remember emailing Mike Richardson and congratulating him.

I said, “Mike, ya beat me. I only had four nominations this year, and you got five!” [laughter] Mike got a kick out of it.

CBC: How did the association start? Who had that idea?

Bob: Back in the ’80s, Comico decided that I would be a good writer for the new Gumby series they were doing and they hired me. This was the 1989 version of Gumby. Art Adams did the art. It was just a lot of fun. Then the second series came along, and that sort of evolved…

CBC: You and Rick doing it together? Who was publisher?

Bob: That was an outfit called Wildcard. It’s a long story. It didn’t go well. We came out with three issues, and then the wheels fell off and that was it. We were selling kind of okay.

We were getting along, but it wasn’t a runaway success or anything like that. And really I was kind of hobbled ’cause I got really sick there. I went in the hospital right in the middle of all that. See, Gumby’s a real good property because everybody loves Gumby! He’s just a phenomenal thing, but it needed a lot of nurturing and finessing and I was on the bench!

CBC: Have you ever thought about getting the property yourself?

Bob: That’s a good question. I didn’t have luck with it either time, so let it roll.

CBC: Right. You’ve been in and out of the comics field for quite some time. You’ve seen it from the inside and outside.

You’ve been there during these explosions of creativity, these rebellious periods that have really had some really creative stuff going around. You’ve been a part of it. You’ve been with the people… You just mentioned the Hernandez Brothers, for instance. Dave Stevens inked your cover. Todd McFarlane did a cover for you….

Bob: Sure! A great bunch of guys. But things change. I thought the Dave Stevens cover on Pandemonium Boulevard would be a big selling point — here’s the first printing ever of a really wonderful Dave Stevens sexy-girl cover, and we only got Diamond orders of 200 or 300 copies. It’s like a TV star has a hit TV series for five years, he is a household word, the world at his beck and call — and then two years later he’s doing summer stock in a Florida dinner theater.

CBC: I do not understand the vagaries of the marketplace.

But what’s your take on this crazy world of comics? You saw it in the beginning with these mainstream publishers, then the undergrounds, the independents… Where’s it going?

What does it all mean, and has it been fun to be here?

Bob: Oh, it’s been a blast! I love it. I think came along at a very wonderful time. That time in the early ’80s was a good ride. I was just a joy to be in the middle of it all! I created some odd and really wacky comic books. Being there at the same time as all those other incredibly talented people — the Hernandez Brothers, Dan Clowes, Dave Stevens, and Dave Sim, these people who were doing just fantastic stuff, and we’re all having a terrific time! I can’t even describe how much fun that was! And at the time, we never thought it would ever end. But all these eras eventually end as we discussed before. I was successful — I was riding the top of the game back then. Did I stay in the business? Yes. Did I wind up writing for Marvel? No. Did I wind up becoming a great movie director? No. But I have had some success with one thing and that’s just being me and writing the stuff I want to write and whether people publish it or not… well, I’ll publish it. Eventually. A lot of stuff is done. Probably 99% of the stuff I’ve written has not been published, has not seen the light of day. I would like to work with other artists on things, Comic Book Creator • Spring 2015 • #8

and I have dabbled with that a little lately.

CBC: Do you see yourself as through?

Bob: Two or three people have been talking about doing documentaries, and when they start hitting it from the angle of a talented guy who disappeared, it creeps me out. Then when they talk about doing the documentary with me being like some kind of a comic-book version of Sixto Rodriguez or Vivian Maier, it really terrifies me. It kinda freaked me out.

That’s when I became committed to publishing again. Now I maybe I can be like Roy Hobbes in the movie The Natural.

Doesn’t that sound better than being a Rodriguez or Vivian Maier? And excuse me, Rodriguez and Vivian Maier are very talented people. I certainly have no right to compare myself to them. Maybe Ed Wood? John Waters?

CBC: No, not Ed Wood. I don’t think so.

Bob: When somebody recently asked me at a comic convention, “What have you been doing lately? I don’t see any comic books out,” and I said, “Hey, man, I have a really good job, and I’m happy with it.” He says, “What do you do?” I said, “I’m one of those guys who stands in front of the condos and I flip the sign around. Sometimes I wear an Uncle Sam outfit. Sometimes I wear an Egyptian outfit. I get to stay out in the fresh air all day, and every now and then I meet some girls, and…”

He says, “Really!!??” [Jon laughs] I made up the whole scenario!

CBC: [Laughs] And he was buying it!

Bob: Who knows? Maybe it’s true. The guy was looking at me like he was really sorry for me. It was fun. I was being a brat. You know, it’s one of those things. I do a lot

Above: Burden’s excellent and fantastical Gumby project that should have broken out into the mass market and made everyone involved rich. But, alas, the best laid plans of mice and men…

Below: Detail of Burden’s variant cover for Gumby #2, where America’s favorite clayboy was turned into a Golem.

75

Above: Give Bob’s latest opus a good home, will ya? This and other books are available through www.bobburden.com.

was for sh*t, and success wasn’t going to change anything really. So what I did was, instead of putting on the brakes, I floored it! I was jumping on the gas with all my weight. And I went right through that brick wall and I pulverized it into dust! But also I kind of vaporized a lot of myself, too.

All of a sudden I was on this rollercoaster ride. I wouldn’t say I was self-destructive, but it was just letting go. I was entering another dimension. A twilight zone of quiet madness… of floating. Rudderless. I was Major Tom and I could hear ground control, but I was walking in outer space.

CBC: How did you survive it?

Bob: I had to make it fun. I had to accept that this was part of it all. The idea that it wasn’t just me, that others had seen and felt these things. That’s how I survived it!

CBC: Were you better for it?

Bob: Well, yes and no. There were some things I was better for, and some… This is one of the things. In the movie Citizen Kane, the whole movie is about them trying to find out what the f*ck “Rosebud” was to Kane. And at the end of the movie, they throw “Rosebud” into the fire. You realize what it represents is his childhood and the sense that everything’s okay — and it just burns up! That’s your survival. Burn your bridges behind you. Float now. Wander. Get lost. Be a spaceman.

I mean, one of the things I still do is I wander… like a child. Like I did when I was a child. That’s one of the things that my current project Hitman For the Dead is kind of about.

The guy is basically a wanderer. In the first episode, he’s down in Florida getting vengeance on a speed trap cop, and then next he might be in Oregon after a serial killer, or whatever.

But anyways, getting back to what I’m talking about, the danger is in losing your childhood essence of excitement and newness. I mean, go talk to people in music and they’ll tell you that some of the best times of their career were back when they were in their early days, just starting out. That’s when it’s the most amount of fun, once everything starts to come together, boom. Suddenly everything changes. And for me to be able to not go chasing the dragon and chasing success in Hollywood is okay, too.

CBC: You want to be storytelling up until you’re 94 or 96?

Bob: Why not? Maybe all the preservatives in the food are keeping us alive longer…

CBC: So, it’s one project after the other, right?

Bob: If some publisher came along and said, “Let’s start publishing something tomorrow,” I could load ’em down.”

CBC: Would you be willing to bring back the Carrot again? Do you have plans?

Bob: Sure, if someone else could draw it. I don’t have it in me to sit at a drawing table for 12 hours a day. Science is now saying that if you sit down all day long, it’s the same thing as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I don’t know. Maybe if I had somebody to do the backgrounds like Gerhard did for Dave Sim, I believe I could pull it off. And I’d love to write more Gumby stories, too.

CBC: Any words for your followers out there?

Bob: For those that stepped up back in the day, and weren’t embarrassed to be seen reading a comic called Flaming Carrot at the bus stop or carrying under their arm on the way to class, thanks. I love you and am glad we shared the fun, you know. For the young ones just coming along yet, or not even born, but who will someday find that the one special thing that hits the spot or rings the bell for them to be a Flaming Carrot comic, I say: “Hello there! And how are you today?” #8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TM & © Bob Burden.

76

of that. I call it “Borat-ing.”

[Jon laughs] You know, it’s kind of like that guy that does all that wacky stuff. I’m capable of coming up with something that’s so utterly and completely insane… At the point where everything is supposed to be the most serious thing you could ever say, you come up with something that’s completely ridiculous.

CBC: To me, you are who you are, a very intriguing personality. You and I have spent some time in San Diego, and I’ve had a great time with you. I’ve always admired your tenacity for self-promotion, for selling your stuff. You always seem to keep an eye on opportunity. If you see somebody who’s looking though your comics, you engage them.

It’s admirable to see you in action, and I think there’s a lot to learn. Many artists are relatively introverted people. They’re shyer. A lot of the guys you mentioned — Dan Clowes and the Hernandez Brothers — they’re somewhat more reserved. They’re not Bob Burden out there, self-promoting! I think comics can learn a lot from you. Also, what’s coming out in this interview is a much more measure of contentment than sour grapes.

Bob: Oh, absolutely — no sour grapes from me! I love the chance I’ve had to do creative stuff, to make so many friends. I’ve survived. The casualty rate among creative people can be abnormally high.

One of the greatest challenges of my life was success! My first check for Mystery Men came in when Kevin Eastman licensed it. Like 1991, way back before Universal did, in the Tundra days. All of a sudden, one day I had this big fat check! The thing is, all these years I’d been fightin’ and struggling and sayin’, “Man, as soon as I have that big check, I can breathe again. I can go out and make my own movie or publish my own book! I won’t have to worry about anything…”

Then that next day, when I woke up after getting that check — that was the toughest day of my life. The tragedy was that I didn’t feel any different being rich than when I was poor. That was the really bad part about it. When you get the big money in and you don’t feel any different the next day? The next week?

You have this horrible, horrible nightmarish feeling like there isn’t a magic answer to everything. That the magic doesn’t work.

You know, like somebody who thinks that if he takes this special potion he can fly, and he jumps out the window. It’s only halfway down when he realizes that the magic potion doesn’t work, and he can’t fly!

CBC: So what was the recourse for Bob Burden when he realized there was no magic?

Bob: Well, what happened was I was coming right at a brick wall and I was going really fast. Like 200 m.p.h.! So I had a choice. I was like in this rocket chair going right at the brick wall. I was going great and everything’s all great for a few weeks. Then all of a sudden I realized that everything

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SHIPPING IN JULY: THE INCREDIBLE HERB TRIMPE

From running the first photostat machine at Marvel Comics to being the first to illustrate Wolverine, no other member of the Marvel Bullpen has had such a varied and remarkable career as HERB TRIMPE. He drew licensed characters based on toys such as G.I. Joe, Godzilla, and Transformers, which went on to become blockbuster movies. He drew runs of super-heroes like Iron Man, Defenders, Captain Britain, and even Marvel’s flagship character Spider-Man. But he’s best known for his definitive eightyear stint drawing the INCREDIBLE HULK. This book chronicles the life and art of Trimpe through his own voice, as well as the voices of friends and colleagues like STAN LEE, TOM DEFALCO, ROY THOMAS, JOHN ROMITA, BILL PECKMANN, SAL BUSCEMA, JOE SINNOTT, LARRY HAMA, DOUG MOENCH, ELIOT BROWN, LEN WEIN, RON FRENZ, STEVE ENGLEHART, and his son ALEX TRIMPE. Their testimony to his talent and his legacy of artwork leave no wonder why he has been dubbed “The Incredible Herb Trimpe.” By DEWEY CASSELL and AARON SULTAN. SHIPS JULY 2015!

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“DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” An indepth exploration of DC’s 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULARS, plus: a history of comics giants, DC indexes galore, and a salute to “human encyclopedia” E. NELSON BRIDWELL. Featuring the work of PAT BRODERICK, RICH BUCKLER, FRANK FRAZETTA, JOE KUBERT, BOB ROZAKIS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. Super Spec tribute cover featuring classic art by NICK CARDY.

“Bronze Age Events!” With extensive coverage of the Avengers/Defenders War, JLA/JSA crossovers, Secret Wars, Crisis’ 30th anniversary, Legends, Millennium, Invasion, Infinity Gauntlet, and more! Featuring the work of SAL BUSCEMA, DICK DILLIN, TODD McFARLANE, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOE STATON, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, MIKE ZECK, and more. Plus an Avengers vs. Defenders cover by JOHN BYRNE.

“International Heroes!” Alpha Flight, the New X-Men, Global Guardians, Captain Canuck, and Justice League International, plus SpiderMan in the UK and more. Also: exclusive interview with cover artists STEVE FASTNER and RICH LARSON. Featuring the work of JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, RICHARD COMELY, KEITH GIFFEN, KEVIN MAGUIRE, and more! Alpha Flight vs. X-Men cover by FASTNER/LARSON.

“Supergirl in the Bronze Age!” Her 1970s and 1980s adventures, including her death in Crisis on Infinite Earths and her many rebirths.

Plus: an ALAN BRENNERT interview, behind the scenes of the Supergirl movie starring HELEN SLATER, Who is Superwoman?, and a look at the DC Superheroes Water Ski Show.

With PAUL KUPPERBERG, ELLIOT MAGGIN, MARV WOLFMAN, plus a jam cover recreation of ADVENTURE COMICS #397!

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History in LEGO Bricks! LEGO pro RYAN McNAUGHT on his LEGO Pompeii and other projects, military builder DAN SISKIND on his BrickMania creations, and LASSE VESTERGARD about his historical building, JARED K. BURKS on minifigure customizing, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd DIY Fan Art, MINDSTORMS robotics lessons by DAMIEN KEE, and more!

Gentleman JIM MOONEY gets a featurelength spotlight, in an in-depth interview conducted by DR. JEFF McLAUGHLIN— never before published! Featuring plenty of rare and unseen MOONEY ART from Batman & Robin, Supergirl, Spider-Man, Legion of Super-Heroes, Tommy Tomorrow, and others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Celebrates SOL BRODSKY—Fantastic Four #3-4 inker, logo designer, and early Marvel production manager! With tributes by daughter and Marvel colorist JANNA PARKER, STAN LEE, HERB TRIMPE, STAN GOLDBERG, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT, TONY ISABELLA, ROY THOMAS, and others! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover portrait

by JOHN ROMITA!

LEN WEIN (writer/co-creator of Swamp Thing, Human Target, and Wolverine) talks about his early days in comics at DC and Marvel! Art by WRIGHTSON, INFANTINO, TRIMPE, DILLON, CARDY, APARO, THORNE, MOONEY, and others! Plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MR. MONSTER’s Comic Crypt, the Comics Code, and DAN BARRY! Cover by DICK GIORDANO with BERNIE WRIGHTSON!

BONUS 100-PAGE issue as ROY THOMAS talks to JIM AMASH about celebrating his 50th year in comics—and especially about the ‘90s at Marvel! Art by TRIMPE, GUICE, RYAN, ROSS, BUCKLER, HOOVER, KAYANAN, BUSCEMA, CHAN, VALENTINO, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’s Comic Crypt, AMY KISTE NYBERG on the Comics Code, and a cover caricature of Roy by MARIE SEVERIN!

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ANYTHING GOES (AGAIN)! Another potpourri issue with a comparison of Jack Kirby’s work vs. the design genius of ALEX TOTH, a lengthy Kirby interview, a look at Kirby’s work with WALLY WOOD, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused Kirby art from JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, MARVELMANIA, Jack’s COMIC STRIP & ANIMATION WORK, and more!

DOUBLE-TAKES ISSUE! Features oddities, coincidences, and reworkings by both Jack and Stan Lee: the Galactus Origin you didn’t see, Ditko’s vs. Kirby’s Spider-Man, how Lee and Kirby viewed “writing” differently, plus a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused pencil art from FANTASTIC FOUR, 2001, CAPTAIN VICTORY, BRUCE LEE, & more!

We focus the radar on Daredevil artist CHRIS SAMNEE (Agents of Atlas, Batman, Avengers, Captain America) with a how-to interview, comics veteran JACKSON GUICE (Captain America, Superman, Ruse, Thor) talks about his creative process and his new series Winter World, columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

How-to demos & interviews with Philadelphia artists JG JONES (52, Final Crisis, Wanted, Batman and Robin) and KHOI PHAM (The Mighty Avengers, The Astonishing SpiderMan, The Mighty World of Marvel), JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews of art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY demos the “ORD-way” or drawing, and Comic Art Bootcamp by MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS! JG Jones cover! Mature readers only.

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creator’s creators

Whitehouse is in the house!

Our outstanding CBC convention photographer gives us a snapshot of his life Sadly, I veered away from comics for a few decades as a I became a card-carrying member of the Merry Marvel Marching young adult (in a vain attempt to behave like a grown-up), but Society in the mid-1960s. It was the “Marvel Age of Comics,” returned to the fold in the late-’80s when a work colleague at least in the eyes Marvel — and in my view as well. Those loaned a copy of Watchmen. (“Wow, modern comics are like mid- to late-1960s titles illustrated by Jack Kirby and Steve this!’)

Ditko — The Fantastic Four, Thor, Strange Tales (with Nick My “day job” has included a number of roles, including Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Doctor Strange), Amazing technical writer, web developer, journalist, and social media Spider-Man, and so many more — still hold the same strategist. While the positions have been varied, my intermagic for me as when I first encountered them in my youth. ests have remained somehow focused on the intersection I occasionally strayed from the Marvel Universe to explore of technology and communication. I developed an interest in the works of other publishers, including Gold Key Comics photography relatively late in life, first as a casual hobby and (especially Russ Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter) and then as an aspect of my job overseeing social media for the Tower Comics (T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents) and even Marvel Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. rival, DC Comics, particularly when Ditko and Kirby worked Photography has now become a passion, with a particular for that publisher. focus on documenting film, theatrical, and music productions; On my first trip to New York City on vacation with my parents emerging visual artists; and street art and graffiti. And, of at around the age of 13, the usual tourist attractions — the Kendall Whitehouse course, capturing portraits of the writers, artists, Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, editors, and corporate executives who create etc. — held little interest for me. I told my comic books and other popular arts. father I just wanted to visit 625 Madison In my current role as the Technology and Avenue, “the place where they make the Media Editor for Knowledge@Wharton, the Marvel Comics” (at least as indicated in business journal of the Wharton School, I cover the fine print of the indicia at the bottom business trends in technology and mass media, of every opening page of every issue). My topics which (fortunately) increasingly include dad dutifully took me up to the offices, aspects of popular culture including movies, spoke to the receptionist on my behalf, television, and comic books. and asked if there was anyone there we I can usually be found lugging around 20 or could meet. Writer Gary Friedrich come 30 pounds of camera equipment at comic conout, shook my hand, and said hello. Ever ventions taking photos for Comic Book Creator since, I’ve been in awe of the men and and ACE magazines. — Kendall Whitehouse women who create comic books.

coming attractions: cbc #9 in august

The Energizing Art of Joltin’ Joe Staton!

Boy, have we been hoping to get this issue done for a loooonnnnggg time! And it looks like this July will be our Sizzlin’ Staton Super-Spectacular devoted to one of our favorite cartoonists ever!

Joe Staton first exploded on the scene at lowly Charlton Comics with his superb artwork on

E-Man TM & © 2015 Nicola Cuti & Joe Staton. Art © 2015 Joe Staton.

co-creation E-Man and other titles (as well as “Mauser”). Before long, Marvel and DC snatched him up and he was producing outstanding work, co-creating The Huntress along the way, and he hasn’t looked back since! Today, as the artist on the Dick Tracy daily comic strip, Joe still keeps his toes wet in comics, most recently on Femme Noir and (hopefully) more E-Man and Nova! Be with us for an extensive career-spanning interview with Joe and wife Hilarie STATON and glory in the astounding assortment of the man’s artwork and artifacts. Also in this issue: The first part of Richard Arndt’s interview with the late Stan Goldberg, about the cartoonist’s decades long stints at Marvel and at Archie Comics; an examination of Joe Staton and Johnny Achziger’s Gods of Mount Olympus super-sized series from the ’70s; why John Romita, Jr., may be today’s best comics artist; remembering Irwin Hasen, Golden Age great and creator of Dondi; checking in on Marvel’s excellent horror artist PABLO MARCOS; and a quick survey of European Humor Comics. If that’s not enough, how ‘bout another installment of HEMBECK?

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a picture is worth a thousand words Usually the thrust of this feature is to showcase artwork sans any logos or lettering.

But that’s lettering that has been added to or on top of the artwork. In this case, the lettering is not just an integral part of the art, it is the art’s raison d’etre.

When I learned that Bob Burden was doing a Flaming Carrot poster in support of the jailed Russian rock ’n’ roll band Pussy Riot, I knew I had to volunteer to color it. (Contact Bob to order your very own copy!) — T.Z.

Bernie Wrightson, pencils and inks, Tom Ziuko, colors.

The colorist shares, “In addition to being one of my alltime favorite Top Ten pieces of my own coloring that I ever worked on — it was also included in the portfolio that I presented to showcase my abilities and got me hired as a colorist. DC’s head of production, Jack Adler himself, was knocked out by it, and told me that he would have hired me to join DC’s stable of colorists based on this single page alone.”

TM & ©

n

b Burde

2015 Bo

Visit www.bobburden.com to inquire about purchasing your own print.

from the archives of Tom Ziuko 80

#8 • Spring 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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THIS JUNE: MONSTER MASH

The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze In America, 1957-1972 Time-trip back to the frightening era of 1957-1972, when monsters stomped into the American mainstream! Once Frankenstein and fiends infiltrated TV in 1957, an avalanche of monster magazines, toys, games, trading cards, and comic books crashed upon an unsuspecting public. This profusely illustrated full-color hardcover covers that creepy, kooky Monster Craze through features on Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, the #1 hit “Monster Mash,” Aurora’s model kits, TV shows (Shock Theatre, The Addams Family, The Munsters, and Dark Shadows), “Mars Attacks” trading cards, Eerie Publications, Planet of the Apes, and more! It features interviews with JAMES WARREN (Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella magazines), FORREST J ACKERMAN (Famous Monsters of Filmland), JOHN ASTIN (The Addams Family), AL LEWIS (The Munsters), JONATHAN FRID (Dark Shadows), GEORGE BARRIS (monster car customizer), ED “BIG DADDY” ROTH (Rat Fink), BOBBY (BORIS) PICKETT (Monster Mash singer/songwriter) and others, with a Foreword by TV horror host ZACHERLEY, the “Cool Ghoul.” Written by MARK VOGER (author of “The Dark Age”). SHIPS JUNE 2015!

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Everybody’s Grandpa (Z LSKLZ[ º4\UZ[LY » 5L^ @VYRLY (S 3L^PZ ^HZ H KYVSS +YHJ\SH

Then there was Aurora Plastics Corporation’s infainfa mous guillotine model kit.

Aurora Witch kiit; the wifee posed) and Aurora’s

Aurora had been enjoying great successBama’s box art forr The Witch (for which his Voger Forgotten Prisoner kit photo by Mark Witch kit photo courtesy of Polar Lights; The Witch box photo by Kathy Voglesong; with its model kits based on movie monsters, themselves often based on classic literature. Its Hunchback of Notre Dame set depicted a scene of outright torture — a chained Quasimodo with whip marks on his exposed back — but no one batted an eye. After all, the Hunchback was a character from classic fiction (Victor Hugo, yo!) and the kit was based on a rel relatively recent Hollywood hit.

Buoyed by its monstrous suc success, Aurora brought out a decid decidedly gruesome kit: a working guil guillotine. “Victim loses his head!

Really works!” proclaimed one ad.

Added another: “Harmless fun!”

The kit worked like this: The blade came down; the head of the bound man was “cut off”; it landed in the basket. Kids across America painted blood stains on the kit’s blade, head and gener basket withsgenerAddam ’s “The a Milton ous Bradley dabs of Testors red enamel.

Game” offered FamilyACard colleagueto of minethe built the nity see kit,opportu way back when.

Said he of the rare in color. show of the of reliability the guillotine’s funcstars TV Productions © Filmways Addams Family” “Thetion: “It worked fine except that I covered and re-covered that poor little man’s head in so much red paint, it did occasionally stick.”

WITH HIS LONG BEAK, COMIC MANNERISM and distinctly Noo Yawk S accent, Al Lewis seemed the least likely actor to be cast as Count Dracula. But in some ways, Lewis was a better-known Dracula than his forebears Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela John Carradine and Christopher That’s because even non-horror Lee. fans know Lewis’ thanks to his role as Grandpa Dracula, Munster.

Lewis with There is confusion over Lewis’ year of birth, apparently created stogie at his by the actor himself, who claimed to New York be older than he was (!). Many sources eatery in put Lewis’ birth in 1923, but he indeed 1989. told me he had been a circus performer Photo by Kathy in 1922.

Oh, that Grandpa ...

Voglesong Lewis died in 2006. I interviewed him at his Greenwich Village restaurant, Grampa’s Bella Gente Street, in 1989. Good conversationon Bleecker ... not to mention, good pasta.

Q: What happened during your audition for Grandpa Munster?

LEWIS: I never auditioned.

They just called me and told me they were pilot, and would I be interested? doing a They sent me some scripts, and then I flew out.

Q: Would you say you created Grandpa? For instance, did you elaborate on the character in the scripts?

LEWIS: Yeah. Of course I created it. Sure! I mean, there was no previous mold.

Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit.

The clearest example of Bama’s use of a movie still was his Dracula box art, which mirrored a publicity photo of Bela Lugosi from “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948).

Again, it seems odd didn’t go with a still that from the 1931 “Dracula” Bama yet again, Bama’s — and instincts were spot-on. © Universal Studios; box photo

by Kathy Voglesong

row for an hour and a half every night, and I’ll just watch movies. I’ll watch the horror movies in sequence, or Sherlock Holmes movies or whatever I’m in the mood for.

Q: Did you see your box art in stores at the time of release?

BAMA: I never saw them. and I wasn’t interested I was 35 years old at the time, in kids’ model kits.

They weren’t offered to me, and I didn’t ask for them.

I was 82 before I saw them! But almost everyone I know who says to me, “I put is in their 50s together those monster models when I was a kid.” So it was tremendous exposure. escape it. For all of But I can’t the beautiful Western paintings I’ve done since 1968, I’m better known for the monster kits and Doc Savage. I did 62 Doc Savage covers. That’s a lot of covers. I told my wife (Lynn), “The world will come to an end, but the monster models will still be know, my wife posed around.” You for one of my Aurora her, posing for The jobs. That was Witch.

Q: Was she prettier than The Witch?

BAMA: A little bit.

I always thought of her as an Margret, Lee Remick type. She was gorgeous. AnnAs I get older, my She still is. eyes get weaker, so she still looks beautiful to me.

“Harmless fun!” proclaimed a 1965 ad for Aurora’s Chamber of Horrors Guillotine model kit. Parents begged to differ.

Photo courtesy of Polar Lights

Disturbing as the guillotine kit was, Aurora seemed to think it had an “out.” The company hedged its bet by naming the kit “The Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors Guillotine.” In other words, this kit didn’t depict an actual beheading — it was a depiction of a depiction.

And that depiction was from a famous attraction at a respected wax museum. Madame Tussaud’s originated in London, you know. And London is a classy place.

It didn’t work. Parents freaked, and Aurora discontin discontinued the product.

Not that Aurora exactly dialed down the nightmarish thereafter. The Witch cooked rat stew. The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit implied torture of a most insidious kind — a poor soul chained by the neck and ankles to a prison wall, defenseless against non-human appar visitors (there’s a nearby snake and a rat), who apparently starved to death over a lengthy period.

Compared to that, a beheading sounds downright merciful.

Famous Monsters of Filmland made Zacherle its cover boy twice, with issues #7 (1960), in a painting by Albert Nuetzell, and #15 (1962), in a painting by Gogos. Zacherle’ Basil s national profile was also enhanced by coverage in Life, TV Guide and The Evening Post. © Saturday W arren Publishing

200 out of the first three designs So there were a track record. not too bad of news. That’s phenomenon? you a national Q: What made What broke “Big Daddy”? when ROTH: It was Revell said, “We a want to make your model out of cars.” And then, of course, they out made models , too. of the monsters into That broke me the big time. on the Q: You worked but did you model designs, 3-D realizawork on their tions?

ROTH: Yeah. them in clay?

Q: Did you do in clay, and ROTH: Did ’em at Revell the model-makers plasticarb. made ’em into different Q: How many had kinds of products on your monsters were them? There decals, T-shirts, patches …

ROTH: Emco of made a bunch ’60s. decals in the That was a big a lot one. There’s naof old parapher lia that I’ve licensed out through the years. you Q: Which do prefer, drawing monsters or working on cars? tosROTH: It’s a real worksup. I suppose where I ing on cars is but I’ve make good at, money with the gotta make the monsters. a car called Q: You designed the Druid Princess for “The Addams

that were bad

ever used? show. Was it never on the the next Family.” It was speculation. And use it, it for them on can’t ROTH: No. I built and said, “We called me up gonna quit the thing was, they because we’re I thought “The series.” And so successful Munsters” was Family” that “The Addams have I still would be. But the car. of the Rat Q: In the wake the Weird-Ohs Fink kits came r. Were and Freddy Flypoggestyle? of your those a ripoff es were three compani ROTH: There kits. One of them putting out monsterwith the (mascot) m, was Monogra There was Hawk Mouse’s stuff. models. It seemed with five or six company went like every model collection. I think into a monster had the best the Revell ones assembly. character called Q: There’s a

by Sid Big Daddy played a Bikini Haig in “It’s …

World” (1967) a couple ROTH: They had those in of Big Daddies Bingo” “Beach Blanket (Don) things, where the Rickles played Big Daddy. They need a Big Daddy those of in all movies to show y’s in that somebod charge, you know? make Q: How did you Did out in the ’60s? share of you get your pie? the Rat Fink lly, I ROTH: Financia statedon’t have any wealth ment, but my in the is in my wife, built all fact that I’ve the fact those cars, and the with straight that I’m These are my man upstairs. to dollars seem wealth, and the es, you take care of themselv d on any go overboar know? I don’t Life is drugs or stuff. you one thing. No affordable if watch your Ps and Qs.

113

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