Comic Book Creator #9 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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No. 9, Summer 2015

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

03 1

82658 97073

also: LEILA LEIZ • STAN GOLDBERG • THE GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS • KATIE GREEN

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S u m m e r 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 9

About Our Cover

Art by JOE STATON Color by MATT WEBB

Comics Chatter Remembering Seth Kushner: The late photographer/writer’s good friend and collaborator Christopher Irving recalls the recently departed CBC contributor................. 3 Katie Green: An interview with the Lighter Than My Shadow graphic novelist............. 4 Aushenkerology: A personal ode to Cowboy Henk and the great European comics..... 6 Incoming: The Therapeutic Value of “It” and Roy Thomas on Kull the Conqueror........ 10 The Good Stuff: George Khoury talks with artist Leila Leiz about living the dream...... 14 Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred chats up longtime pal Joe Staton....................... 17 Stan Goldberg: Part one of Richard J. Arndt’s interview with the late cartoonist and Marvel colorist, a man remarkably appreciative for his long career in comics........ 18 GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS SPECIAL section Johnny Lee Achziger’s Olympian Achievement: CBC’s three-part examination of a little-known but breathtaking 1970s comics project starts with recollections of the guy who authored and helmed the tabloid-size (and ill-fated) series............ 26

Only two things were requested of cover artist Joe Staton: Please include Alec Tron, Nova Kane (a.k.a. Katrinka Colchnzski), and any other creator-owned character he’d like to add — plus caricatures of his kind self and lovely bride Hilarie… and, boy, does Our Man deliver! The bonus figure here is Femme Noir, the artist’s and writer Christopher Mills’ “Blond Justice of Nocturne City,” a tough-talking, gun-slinging, curly-haired vigilante. Check out www.femme-noir.com for her crime-fighting exploits. — Ye Ed. If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

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Joe Staton, Myth-Maker: The issue’s featured subject shares the story behind his spectacular artistry on the Greek mythology comics series................................ 30 John Workman’s Mighty Aphrodite: The artist who followed up Joe on the shortlived series talks about the Gods’ brief revival in Mike Friedrich’s Star*Reach....... 32 The Comics Library: R.J. Arndt looks at Tintin and the Great Library Mystery............ 34 THE MAIN EVENT The Energizing Art of Joe Staton: CBC ’s exhaustive interview with the artist on his career, from Charlton to Dick Tracy, also featuring wife and collaborator, Hilarie.... 36 BACK MATTER Creator’s Creators: Steven Thompson........................................................................... 79 Coming Attractions: Peter Bagge & WARP! The Broadway Play................................... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: X-Ray specs’ mystery artist revealed!......... 80 Right: Sporting the kinchy hues of CBC pal Mort Todd (himself profiled in #4), it’s E-Man and Nova Kane as drawn by the indomitable Joe Staton. The fave Charlton character will be appearing in Todd and Roger McKenzie’s Charlton Neo title Charlton Action soon. Find details at www.morttodd.com/charlton.

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.

aushenkerology

The Cowboy Henk Way A cartoonist’s personal appreciation of the great European humor tradition by Michael Aushenker CBC Associate Editor Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s, I was exposed to a plethora of American-made treasure that ultimately shaped and influenced my professional life: Bronze Age Marvel and DC, syndicated strips such as Peanuts and B.C., and animated cartoons… lots of ’em. There was the Fleischer Popeye, Betty Boop, and Superman cartoons; Tex Avery’s shorts for Warner Bros., MGM and Walter Lantz, and the usual madefor-TV suspects: Jay Ward, Hanna-Barbera, etc. But, as a youth, thanks to my French mom, I got a jump start on an entire universe of imagination that most American readers would not have been exposed to until relatively recently. That would be European comics.

Viva la France!

Above: Caption

#9 • Summer 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

When I was still a kid in our cramped, one-bedroom Canarsie apartment (before our big move to California), my mom would return from visiting relatives in France with a new Tintin or Asterix bande dessinée for me (along with a jar of chocolate magic something called Nutella, back when it wasn’t available at your neighborhood U.S. supermarket). The Tintin and Asterix books were in French and, over the years, I continued to pick up more of the Casterman editions whenever I visited Paris. It didn’t matter that my French was rough. The visual power of The Adventures of Tintin (all 24 albums of them) captured my imagination, vicarious transporting me to different lands and cultures all over the world. This was total eye-candy (or eye-Nutella, to be more precise). Tintin’s sublime mix of high-adventure and situation comedy with its extensive supporting cast, including the titular boy reporter’s loyal white terrier Milou (Snowy in English), Capt. Haddock, and Professor Tournisel (Sunflower), beautifully packaged in that signature ligne claire style, instantly captured my imagination. Created by Georges Remy (whose pen name was Hergé, a play on his initials “R.G.”), the French-language Tintin first appeared in Le Petit Vingtième (a youth supplement inside the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle) as a serialized comic strip on January 10, 1929 (exactly one week before Popeye the Sailor’s first appearance in Segar’s Thimble Theater… wow, what a month in comics history that was!) The success of Hergé’s series propelled it into Le Soir, Belgium’s biggest newspaper, and then to Tintin magazine. To be honest, Asterix, about the short Gaulish hero who derives great strength by drinking a magic elixir and

drawn in a big foot style, did not contain as much magic for me as Hergé’s work. Much of the political connotations informing such titles as Asterix and Cleopatra and Asterix and the Olympic Games were lost on me. Nevertheless, I collected and absorbed them as well, as there is no dispute how iconic and beautifully drawn was this French twist on Popeye. Meanwhile, the Paris newspaper Le Monde ran a very entertaining syndicated strip from Belgium by Morris (a.k.a. Maurice De Bevere) called Lucky Luke that visually resembled an imagining of Asterix team writer René Goscinny and artist Albert Uderzo lampooning the American Old West. (In fact, Lucky Luke, launched in 1946, was briefly written by Goscinny.) Beyond these strips, there was also stuff like the Tintin-inspired Belgian comic Spirou. (Confusing matters, there was a comics anthology magazine called Spirou in which Tintin appeared.) Created in 1938 by Rob-Vel (Robert Velter), the red-uniformed Spirou started out as an elevator operator and bellboy at the Moustique Hotel. He soon evolved into a boy reporter a la Hergé’s creation. Another Belgian comic, Les Schtroupfs, by the 1980s became popularized in the States as The Smurfs, thanks largely to the Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon series. Freshly arrived in Los Angeles at age nine, I befriended a kid in the fifth grade who had originated from Vancouver. As a result, he had English-language editions of Tintin published by Atlantic Little & Brown (still not commonly available in the U.S. in the late 1970s). Tintin in English? This was a first. I borrowed as many of his well-worn soft-cover editions as I could, Cigars of the Pharaoh, The Broken Ear, and King Ottokar’s Scepter ranking among my favorites. Within a few years, my local B. Dalton (a long-defunct California chain of book stores) carried those Atlantic Little & Brown softcover Tintin and Asterix editions and I completed my collection anew in English. Maus was no doubt Art Spiegelman’s greatest achievement creatively, but more importantly to my comics universe as a teen was the1970–80s publication Spiegelman and wife Françoise Mouly published called RAW. Curating a quality anthology of comics by cartoonists from all over the world, RAW was where I was first introduced to a comic strip that would later prove to be hugely instrumental on my own humor comics work: Cowboy Henk, by a pair of Belgian cartoonists from Flanders named Kamagurka and Peter van Hersielle (nom de plume: Herr Seele). “I don’t remember well how we got into RAW magazine, but I think it was [cartoonists] Joost Swarte and Ever who introduced Henk to Art and Francoise,” recalls Kamagurka today. Actually, the irreverent, ligne claire-aping Cowboy Henk initially did not have much impact on me, but it was in RAW where I first remember these strange non-sequitur strips featuring the blond-bobbed Henk, a clear corruption of Herge’s landmark Tintin. “Cowboy Henk is one of the most im-

All material TM & © the respective copyright holders.

portant characters in European alternative comics,” says Autsaider Comics publisher Juan Lassalle, “and [he is] surprisingly nearly unknown in Spain.” That prompted Lassalle to last year publish a big hulking hardcover collection of Cowboy Henk strips translated in Spanish. By the time I graduated college, absurdism had already infiltrated my cartooning thanks to Tex Avery and Walter Lantz cartoons such as “Crazy Mixed-Up Pup,” the “Maw and Paw” series and Sugarfoot. But, in the second half of 1991, following graduation, I was able to spend a half-year living in Paris at my uncle’s old bachelor pad. It was there that I began building up a professional portfolio, including material that would find its way into my first published comic book, the one-man humor comics anthology Bound & Gag, as well as humor comics for Strip Tease!, an oasis of humor comics edited by Mark Martin amid the airbrushed vixens from Venus in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine (famously the American version of the French Metal Hurlant sci-fi anthology, which showcased the late, great Moebius). The French were big on comics anthologies, which were sold right at the newspaper kiosks all over Paris. The Franco-Belgian Fluide Glacial was the leading anthology, but it was a newer one, Psikopat, a mish-mash of sexual and scatological humor lead by the cartoonist Carali (Paul Karali) that featured a strip called Cowboy Jean, which was actually Cowboy Henk. Adding to some confusion, there’s a booklength Henk story called “Maurice le Cowboy” published by French publisher Albin Michel in 1986. And Kamagurka notes that in Sweden, Henk was named Cowboyen Sven Bertil. This time, those Cowboy Henk strips and I connected. They were hilarious. There was one Henk strip in Psikopat that I have never seen since that basically amounted to Henk making sexual advances at a married woman. When the husband comes home and finds them together, he beats the tar out of Henk. Cut to Henk in a full-body cast from cowlick to toe except for a slit for his mouth. The last panel is a close-up of the aperture with Henk’s persistent tongue sticking out as Henk asks the woman, “Sixty-nine?” I loved the sheer madness of these strips, the loopy quasi-surrealness, the mix of sex, violence, and horror that was not pornographic in intent. How Henk swung wildly from G-rated to X-rated humor that was dictated by the gag, not by censors or a moral code. It was as genial or as outlandish as it needed to be depending on the situation. Pure artistic expression. Comic Book Creator • Summer 2015 • #9

Lassalle, the Spanish publisher, calls Kamagurka and Seele “the kings of the absurd, a mix of dadaism, surrealism and [scatological humor] very well-balanced.” What the reader discovers in Cowboy Henk strips, says Lassalle is that in life, “You don’t have to obey any rules at all. Everything is sharp and smart, nothing is subjected to the standards. Cowboy Henk is gay, hetero, good, bad, artist, hairdresser, single, married, [something different] in every strip.” Cowboy Henk/Jean directly inspired me to come up with a series of my own one-pagers, Greenblatt the Great, about a daffy bellhop with a supporting cast who resembled rejects from Tintin’s supporting line-up. I dotted the panels with European in-jokes: “Tabac” on the awnings, specific road signs, a spoof of a character off a dumb French sitcom (Maurice) and other quirky things I had noticed while living in Europe. In no way were my Greenie strips a rip-off of Cowboy Henk. His personality was different, the gags were more layered and I set him in this sitcom-ish environment of a hotel. But I was 100 percent moved to create a Cowboy Henk-type absurdist strip of my own, if you will, after reading these great strips. In an interview, Jack Kirby once pleaded the next generation of cartoonists not to become the next Jack Kirby but to divine inspiration from him by creating their own style, cartoon universe, and visual vocabulary (a lesson too many cartoonists still fail to understand). Likewise, I wasn’t going to copy “Kirby Krackle” or even come up with my own “Krackle,” but to invent my own signatures, driven by the energy I felt reading those Cowboy Henks.

This page: The absurdist comics masterpiece Cowboy Henk is the product of the fertile imaginations of writer Kamagurka (above right) and artist Herr Selle (left), both of Belgium. Previous page: Top left is the kids magazine where Tintin debuted. Spiegelman & Mouly’s RAW boasted the U.S. appearance of many of the best European comics. Lucky Luke and Gaul warrior Asterix are but two acclaimed Euro comics characters.

the good stuff

Working on a Dream The remarkable and undeniably passionate artwork of Parisian artist Leila Leiz by George khoury CBC Contributing Editor Inset right: A photo portrait of comic book artist Leila Leiz, courtesy of LL. The Paris native is hoping to break into the American comics field. Below: Batgirl pin-up by Leila.

Below and background: Leila sent us this great image of the artist drawing in her sketchbook while on vacation in Turkey.

#9 • Summer 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Art © Leila Leiz. Batgirl TM © DC Comics.

If you haven’t yet heard of her name, you soon will. Because, across the sea, the alluring artwork of Leila Leiz is making waves in Europe, waves heading westward to our shore. Leila’s illustrations are full of buoyancy and life with her pitch-perfect storytelling invitingly stylish and smooth. But the French artist’s most admirable attribute is this relentless spirit to rise above by drawing like there’s no tomorrow in the pursuit of perfection. This undeniable passion for the art form of comics is what compels her from ever backing down from whatever challenges life presents. Besides having the heart of a true artist, Leila is one of the most driven and genuine people you’ll ever meet anywhere. Growing up in Paris, art always has a part in her life. She’s visited all the great museums, expositions, and theaters that her hometown offers; she has also seen all the essential works of the great masters. But when Paris became too small for her imagination, Leila became a globetrotter, traveling the world to experience different countries and cultures up close. “I realize over time that we were all the same

all from the same planet,” says the artist, “I’m not French, Italian, or Arabic. I’m a citizen of Earth. All those experiences taught me more about drawing than my hours of practicing on paper.” After those soul-searching voyages, Leila settled down in Italy eight years ago. She had fallen hard for the country, its culture, and its people. In terms of Leila’s career, comics is where she found her calling, but she has had to muster great inner strength to transform this dream into reality. The artist says, “As far as I can remember I’ve always been attracted to art and drawing, but I tried to keep it as a side passion until the day I entered a comic book shop. All those super-heroes, those colors, the fun and enthusiasm of the readers; I just wanted to be a part of this family. So I decided to see if I could get lucky by using all of my savings to purchase an airline ticket to attend the Chicago comic con with my portfolio.” Following her intuition, she traveled all the way to Wizard World, in 1999. Unfortunately, this adventure proved to be a disheartening experience. “At that time,” remembers Leila, “it was difficult for women in the comics industry. It’s not like it is today. I didn’t know anybody and my English was really bad. Add to this I’m a shy person. The results were drastic. I came back to France with my portfolios and a ton of sadness. After that, I decided to keep drawing as a hobby. But I kept this notion that I wanted to obtain this dream to myself.” She went to Chicago with a goal: to meet art idol Marc Silvestri and land an assignment at Top Cow. When that didn’t work out, she felt dejected. But Leila was a long way from being counted out because the ordeal only made this particular self-taught

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

artist become more determined to reach her goal. “My father was an artist and pushed me towards that direction. He had to give up his passion to feed his family. So every time I draw, I draw a little for him,” says this devoted daughter. Fortunately, things began to pick up when she started working as illustrator for a video game company. “A colleague there suggested I meet up with his friend, a comics writer and cartoonist, who was searching for a penciler. That friend turned out to be Farid Boudjellal, who eight months later contacted me and proposed a new project. After that we worked on his story, Les Contes du Djinn [Tales of the Genie], we published two books and since then I’ve done others book in French. The experience with Farid has been both valuable and unforgettable,” states Leila.

Comic Book Creator • Summer 2015 • #9

One opportunity led to another, and she connected with major Italian comics publisher Bonelli. Leila remembers, “A good friend of mine introduced me to Bonelli Editore by sending them my portfolio. After five minutes, they called me back because the editor was really impressed with my work. Working for Bonelli was a long-time dream, the biggest event of my career so far. As you can guess, I was extremely nervous about this opportunity, but everything went smoothly. Lysierum was the title of the book. It’s about a perfect world without violence, chaos, unemployment, and crisis. It’s also a world without children. The life and death cycle is ruled by a sophisticated apparatus that distributes the vital essences of terminated adults into new young bodies ready to work. So there’s no need to fall in love and conceive babies. But, one day, this apparatus jams, freeing a young woman, Elyet, not yet ‘purified’ by its original biological nature and primitive instincts. One of the executors,

Above: Visit Leila’s Deviant Art web page to view her full series of interlocking Marvel Comics character renderings. Here’s Spider Gwen and X-23. Below: The artist has teamed with scribe Fabrice Sapolsky to produce the comics series Harem. Here’s a vignette of one of her femme fatales.

The Other Man Called Stan

Stan G.’s Truest Colors Part one of our interview with the late, great artist about his Marvel and Archie work Conducted by RICHARD J. ARNDT CBC Contributing Editor

Above: In 2010, in consideration for Stan Goldberg’s considerable contributions to Archie Comics from the mid-1970s onward, IDW published Archie: The Best of Stan Goldberg. Inset: The artist at the 2012 Comic-Con International: San Diego in a photo by Kendall Whitehouse. Below: Detail of Stan G.’s Millie the Model #140 [Aug. 1966] cover.

CBC: Thank you for taking the time for this interview. Stan: You’re welcome. I regard all the time I’ve spent in comics with a great fondness. All the people I’ve worked with — Joe Maneely, Stan Lee, John Buscema, Sol Brodsky, Mike Esposito, Frank Springer, all those guys. It’s all real history and I’ve got a great memory. I remember them very fondly. Now that the whole interview is over, thank you for calling, Richard, and that’s the end of it. CBC: Ooookay! [laughter] Before that actually happens can we start off with information about your early life? How you got interested in drawing, that sort of thing. Stan: I grew up during the Depression, in the 1930s. Money was pretty tight in those days, but my dad was fortunate enough to work for those years. Sometimes he had private jobs, but for the most part he worked for the government until he retired. He worked in the Social Security Administration and in the Internal Revenue Service. I was an only child, but that was fine. I didn’t have to share anything with a sibling and I never even missed having a brother or sister, because it was the type of family that would be called an “extended family” today. There was the matriarch, the grandmother, and the patriarch, the grandfather. Mine had a little house in the Bronx. They came from Europe and worked themselves up. They lived in the Lower East Side, where all the new immigrants lived. My grandfather was a tailor. He designed clothes and that sort of thing. When they made enough money, they moved to the Bronx, which at the time was considered moving on up. They bought a little house and had four children, one of whom was my mother. Their house was the meeting place for all the relatives. I had aunts and uncles and a few cousins and we all hung out together. I was always treated quite royally because I was a good grandson. The good nephew. The good son.

[Stan Goldberg began his career in comics in 1949 as a colorist for Timely Comics. Within a few years he became the head of the colorist department, which lasted until ’58, when Timely/Atlas experienced a publication implosion after their distributor went out of business. He then went freelance (and has remained so throughout the rest of his career), beginning with work in TV commercials, then as the colorist for Marvel Comics from ’59 through the mid-’60s. He was also a penciler for numerous teen humor books, including Marvel’s Millie the Model, DC’s Binky and, most notably, Archie Comics’ Archie, among many others. In recent years, before his death last August, he worked for Bongo Comics drawing The Simpsons and for Papercutz on their Three Stooges and Nancy Drew titles. He also did many public service projects, including a one recently dealing with bullying. Mr. Goldberg has been a true mainstay of comics from the Golden Age to his passing at age 82. What follows is the first of a two-part interview conducted between March and April 2013. — RJA]

I always drew, so I was always sitting in a corner and they’d ask “Draw this. Draw that,” and I did. I wasn’t running around the house screaming or breaking things or causing trouble. My cousins used to tease me, you know. “Everybody loves Stanley.” But it was an easy childhood. Of course, my parents knew that I drew and they always encouraged me at it, but they never encouraged me to go out and make a living as an artist. Not because of any lack of talent, but they never thought I would succeed. Nobody really knew what jobs were available for artists in those days. My dad worked for the government and he suggested that I get a federal job, take some tests, work, and retire with a nice pension at the age of 49 or 50. My dad, though, worked until he was 75, and he loved working. My mother would always say, “On Sunday, you can sit home and paint. I’ll buy you an easel.” It never dawned on me that I’d end up with a career as an artist. I graduated from high school. In fact, I got out a little early because I skipped some classes. I graduated when I was 17 years old. Most kids didn’t graduate until they were 18 or older. I went away as a counselor at a summer camp, up in New Hampshire, teaching arts and crafts. When

#9 • Summer 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

I came back, I called up a good friend from school and asked him what he’d been doing all summer. He told me he had this job, but that he wasn’t going back there on Monday, so why didn’t I go up there and take his seat because they’ll need somebody up there. I didn’t even know what job he had, but it turned out that he had a coloring job in the office of Timely Comics. He’d been doing some menial coloring gigs there. There were a lot of books there and a lot of pages to do. So I went up there on Monday and I remember a guy came in who ran the department and he asked me who I was and what I was doing there. I told him I was taking over for my friend — my friend’s name was Marvin — that Marvin wasn’t coming back and he’d asked me to take his chair. I don’t know why, but they gave me some things to do immediately and that’s how I came to work at Timely Comics. This would have been the end of August, so at the beginning of the next year, which would have been 1949, the whole bullpen was fired. I was there for four months and then, I don’t know why, but everybody was laid off. Within a few months they were publishing again and they started hiring artists, writers, and production people back. They wanted me to return to work in the coloring department and, because I had another job by then and I was afraid they’d fire me just as soon as I returned, so I told them no. I didn’t hear from them for a while. Then I got another note from them asking me to please come back. “We like what you do. We’ll give you a couple of dollars raise.” You know, it’s funny: There was another guy up there who got a callback, too, and we thought we were both getting a five dollar raise but they split it between the two of us, so we both got $2.50 apiece. It was a big $25 salary I was making at the time but, in those days, $25 was not that bad for a 17-, almost 18-year-old kid. I also liked that I was working on all the comics that I’d read as a young boy. I sit at my grandmother’s house, on her porch, reading all the comics. I loved Captain America. I loved the Young Allies. I loved those books, but didn’t know who the artists’ names were. I knew all the characters though. I did come back to Timely although it took until the third time that they called me. The job I had in the meantime looked like it wasn’t going anywhere. Not that I knew that this one was going to last for over 60 years! But it did. So I went back and, within a year, I was running the coloring department. The guy, John D’Agonisto, who’d been running it before me, was about three years older than me. About six months or so after I returned, he went to another company to work in their coloring department. That company that John went to was also started by two former Timely colorists. One of them was a Italian fellow who later became an editor at Charlton Comics… CBC: Would that have been Pat Musulli? Stan: Yeah, that would have been Pat. Pat and another guy Comic Book Creator • Summer 2015 • #9

named Hubie Paley. They formed their own coloring company. They worked for a bunch of different companies coloring their books. They did very well for a long time because there were a lot of publishers around putting out comic books and some of them didn’t have a color department. So Pat and Hubie formed this company and did alright with it for quite a while. I don’t know what their rates were, but they had a lot of work. I freelanced for them from time to time, after the day’s work at Timely. I’d spend half the night making some extra money working for them. One night I worked the whole night there. I told my parents where I was going to be, though. John D’Agonisto left Timely to work for them, clearing the way for me to become the head of the coloring department at Timely. John became an artist, working as an inker. He worked for Archie Comics for years and years. He inked probably hundreds of my pages. We were good friends right up until his death a year or so ago. Up until then, he was my oldest friend in the business because I met him when I was 17 years old. The Timely offices were in the Empire State Building at that time. The coloring department was a part of the Bullpen. We were in a different area at first, but shortly, after I came back, they moved the coloring department in with the rest of the Bullpen. We were in a different area because the offices at the Empire State Building were too small. When Timely moved to a different building we had a bigger space and were all moved into the same offices. After the Empire State Building, we moved to a big old hotel on Park Avenue. I think it was called the Hotel Marguerite and

Previous page: Inset bottom, courtesy of Heritage Auctions, is Stan G.’s cover art for Millie the Model #165 [Dec. 1968]. Above: Stan Goldberg was honored by the Australian Cartoonists’ Association in 2010 as he received their Stanley Award for the “Comic Book Artist” category. Courtesy of then-ACA president Jason Chatfield. Below: Kirby & Ayers’ Thing pin-up from FF #2. Hues by Stan G. Courtesy of Cory Sedlmeier.

the gods of mount olympus

An Olympian Achievement Johnny Lee Achziger recalls the ambitious tabloid-sized mythological comics project by JOHNNY LEE ACHZIGER [YE ED’S NOTE: Back in the 1970s, I encountered a tabloidsized, black-&-white comic book exquisitely drawn by a young Joe Staton entitled The Gods of Mount Olympus. The series was short-lived but unforgettable, and it was subsequently reformatted for a regular-size appearance in Mike Friedrich’s Star*Reach anthology. Serendipitously, I came in contact with the original publisher and writer, Johnny Lee Achziger, who agreed to share the story behind this lovely production. Also featured is contributing editor (and Star*Reach Companion author) Richard J. Arndt’s interviews with Joe and John Workman about Gods.]

Above: Cover of the first Gods of Mount Olympus tabloid. Art by Joe Staton. Right: Promo art by Joe of Athena, the goddess of war. All Olympus art in this section courtesy of Johnny Lee Achziger.

I owned an old ’67 Ford station wagon and had just spent some $300 getting it ready for the trip (new tires, brakes, shocks… I had everything checked out… everything except #9 • Summer 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

I have been a comics fan since I learned to read in the mid-1950s. I published a few fanzines in the late ’60s/ early ’70s (The Collector’s Chronicle, Quintessence), and I later published a collection of World War II-era Phantom comic strips, the first and only in what was going to be an ongoing series of comic strip reprints, with Alley Oop and Al Williamson’s Secret Agent Corrigan in the works. But sales were so low, I had to cancel all those ambitious plans. I had always wanted to be a comics writer and had actually “auditioned” when DC had a sort of open-house solicitation for new writers sometime in the ’70s (they called it the Junior Woodchucks, I believe). But, unfortunately, I wasn’t motivated enough to actually sit down and write all the time as any real writer must do. So I decided I’d publish my own comic books. I toyed with the idea of publishing a weekly, tabloid-sized comic, similar in format to the great Menomonee Falls Gazette, but featuring all-new stories and art by top professionals. I even wrote to dozens of writers, including Ray Bradbury, Robert Silverberg, Jane Gaskell (who was very nice), and Robert A. Heinlein (who wasn’t), about adapting their works to comics. I also inquired about licensing some popular TV and movie rights, such as Kung Fu, Honey West, and James Bond 007. When I finally realized what all this would cost, I came to my senses and decided to go with something in the public domain. I had always enjoyed reading about ancient mythology and thought that would be a subject that would be of interest to many in fandom. So The Gods of Mount Olympus was chosen. Let me state up front that I was a very naive young man when it came to how things worked in the real world of publishing (or in the real world in general actually), so everything you read from hereon reflects that youthful stupidity (I never did anything maliciously, I just didn’t know what I was doing). My memory of exact dates and such may not be perfectly clear, but what follows is as best as I can recall. It was sometime in late 1973 when I started this endeavor,

which turned out to be cursed from the get-go. My first inclination was to ask the popular fan artist Don Newton to draw it, but I wanted to go with a “professional” artist (I don’t think Newton had turned pro yet), so I wrote to three of my favorite artists, offering them a guaranteed $25 per page up front with a possibility (based on sales) of as much as $75 per page. Two of my choices, Barry Smith and Russ Heath, never replied to my generous offer, but Joe Staton did respond, in January 1974. I didn’t know what was going on with him at Charlton at the time, but he replied that he would be interested in doing three issues of the series. I was thrilled to have Joe as my artist because I loved his art at Charlton, especially E-Man, and he had recently done some color covers for Fantastic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories magazine, which got me hoping that I could get him to also do some color art. The first thing I commissioned, an illustration of Ares and Aphrodite, just blew me away! I thought it was the best art Joe had ever done and was certain the project would be a success! I used that art in a full-page ad in the Comic Buyer’s Guide; it looked typeset, but the lettering was actually done with those little stick-on letters that you’d rub on one at a time! I advertised the 16-page, tabloid-size comic at $1 per issue, three issues for $2.75, six issues for $5. Joe had only committed for three issues and wondered why I offered a six-issue subscription, but I figured if he bailed, I could continue the series with someone else. The response to the ad was not overwhelming. On the day I took the book to the printers, I only had about 100 orders (I think I got less than 200 orders total). But I went ahead anyway, thinking I could sell a bunch of copies to dealers like Bud Plant (well, actually just Bud Plant; there weren’t a lot of choices in those days). The art for the first story came in and I was thrilled! Joe did a fantastic job and I thought sure we’d make a fortune on this series once the word got around. I had 3,000 copies printed and started work on the next two issues. By now it was Spring ’74 and I thought it would be a great idea to take my product direct to the fans and attend some comic conventions. So I sent Joe the scripts for the next two issues and asked him to get them done as fast as possible so that I could take them to the summer cons. When the art for #2 and #3 arrived, I was somewhat disappointed because it looked very rushed (in fact, Joe stated he had done the third issue over a weekend). I don’t blame Joe at all because I had put the rush on him and he came through as best he could under the circumstances. The art wasn’t bad by any means, just nowhere near the standard he’d set with the first issue. So I printed up the second and third issues at the same time (another 3,000 of each) and picked what I thought would be the best conventions to debut my pride and joy. I had never been to a con yet, but I chose Houston Con as my first stop, intending to go on to New York after that. The following is a true story — several of the people named here are still alive and can testify to the truthfulness of this insane misadventure. Let me also mention that I never in my life did drugs. I was just very stupid at times.

the radiator). I stuffed it full with 2,000 copies of each issue (remember, these were tabloid-size!) and together with my friend Don Kruger, we left Spokane, Washington, and set out for Texas. We drove all the way through Montana, over 700 miles, that first day (that state had no speed limit in those days) and turned south into Wyoming, stopping for the night in Sheridan. The next morning we continued south down the eastern side of Wyoming (did you know that eastern Wyoming is a virtual desert? Neither did I!). The temperature was over 100 degrees and I started to see the radiator gauge go up and up, then greenish liquid started trickling out through the edges of the hood. We were in the middle of the desert, with no towns even close. I pulled over and poured all the water we had into the radiator, then set out again. By the time we neared Cheyenne, Wyoming, steam was billowing from the engine. I took the first exit near Cheyenne and the car died on the exit ramp, but we had enough speed going to coast into the inevitable gas station nearby. The attendant there called a tow truck, which hauled us into town and dropped us off at a Ford dealership repair shop. Now, I knew little or nothing about cars, so when the mechanic told me that the radiator had a massive hole and by continuing driving while it was overheating probably warped the heads and blew the engine, I immediately wrote off the car as damaged beyond repair and started thinking of alternative means to get to Houston. I started calling car rental agencies, but because I didn’t have one of those new-fangled bank cards, none of the major agencies would rent to me (and none would accept cash!). Finally I got a local company to rent me a Volkswagen bug. I thought about renting a small trailer and pulling my 6000 copies of Gods to Houston behind the VW bug, but wisely thought the better of it. Finally, we decided to rent a U-Haul. Of course, the U-Haul dealer didn’t have any of the small vans, so we got a 20-foot Comic Book Creator • Summer 2015 • #9

moving van to haul about a half-foot of comics. Did I mention that I didn’t have enough cash to rent the U-Haul? Nor did I have a bank card. So I went to a nearby bank and asked for a loan! When the nice bank man stopped laughing, he offered to call my bank back in Spokane so I could see if they could do anything to help me. My bank wouldn’t loan me any money, but checking my account, $800 was available. By coincidence, this was the exact amount of the check I had just mailed to Joe Staton for the artwork of #2 and 3… okay, it wasn’t a coincidence. Joe just hadn’t gotten the check yet. So my feeble-minded brain thought that if I had my bank wire me that money, I could make enough in Houston to put the money back, then I would give Joe the money in person in New York, and everything would be fine. But instead of just letting his check bounce, for some stupid reason I had them put a stop-payment on it. So my bank wired the money down to me in Wyoming and we rented the U-Haul. The next morning, I went back to the Ford repair shop and the mechanic told me he thought that if they patched up the radiator we would be good to go. But my brain was convinced that the car was

Above: Spectacular spread by Joe Staton from The Gods of Mount Olympus #1. Someone hurry up and reprint TGOMO at large-size… this masterwork deserves it! Below: Johnny Lee Achziger and his then-fiancée in the 1970s. They have been married for 36 years now!

THE ENERGIZING ART OF

During a period when the “good” comic art was heavily rendered and often overly realistic, the arrival of artist Joe Thomas Staton to the comics scene in the early ’70s, boasting an effervescent, energetic cartooning style, was a delight. Starting at the bottom rung of the professional ladder, Joe began at Charlton Comics, very soon teaming-up with enthusiastic writer (and artist) Nicola Cuti at the Derby, Conn. imprint. Together they created E-Man, perhaps the character they will always be best remembered for, though each would go on to have stellar careers as comics pros. This interview was conducted at the Staton abode in Kingston, N.Y., in mid-March, where we were joined by Joe’s lovely wife, Hilarie. The transcript was copyedited by the pair.

he in the Air Corps immediately before that? Joe: Right. In World War II. He and my Uncle Dave Staton were briefly together in Italy. They would get together on bombing runs… They weren’t bombers, but they were being bombed! So there’s a family history of war stuff. CBC: By the Italian Air Force or the Luftwaffe? Joe: The Luftwaffe. I’m pretty sure. I think. CBC: Wow! He wasn’t involved in any of the invasion force? Joe: No, but he was involved in helping evacuate Naples when Vesuvius erupted. CBC: What year was that? Joe: ’46? ’45? I need to look up these things. [laughs] Hilarie Staton: I’m the reference person. [Looking online] The last serious eruption was in ’44. Joe: Because the U.S. Army was there handy, they had all these trucks to get people out of town. There were all these ashes coming down… CBC: Yeah, right, and we know what happened there before. Joe: Right. We saw that movie. CBC: Did he share any specific stories about the war? Joe: Not really. Occasionally, but mostly funny stories, stuff like that. Getting lost in Libya in a jeep and trying to get out. That sort of thing. Daddy died when I was young, so I heard a lot of stories from my Uncle Dave. CBC: Do you have brothers and sisters? Joe: I have one sister, Janice. Jan may get me for this: When she was born, my parents wrote back to my Staton grandfather and told him her name. He didn’t recognize the name so he figured it out phonetically. He always called her John-ah-see. [laughter] She’s not quite two years younger than me. She was a paralegal for a long time, and actually, before that, she was an agent for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which we always thought of as the FBI [laughs] CBC: A cop? Joe: She was an investigator. She did have to carry a gun and she got tired of that. She was actually involved in wearing wires and that sort of thing. #9 • Summer 2015 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Comic Book Creator: Where are you originally from, Joe? Joe Staton: I was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and I mostly grew up in West Tennessee — Milan, Tennessee. I am a Southern boy. My dad was in the Air Force. That’s why we happened to be in Fort Bragg. We were actually at Fort Pope, which was the Air Force… Pope Field. So I am briefly from North Carolina. CBC: Were there any creative people in your family? Joe: I had an uncle who was an artist. My grandfather had things that he had drawn. He didn’t follow it up, but you could just see that he had done it, illustration-type stuff. Just enough to know that he was interested. So… CBC: What is your mother’s maiden name? Joe: Butler. CBC: Staton is an English name? Joe: It’s English. From what I’m told, it’s a Saxon name. With me it’s a long “a.” Stay-tuhn. CBC: I guess many must say Stah-tuhn. Joe: Yeah. One of my early credits at DC was very often Stanton. [laughs] And I’ll be plugged at conventions very often as “Stanton,” with that extra “n.” CBC: What’s your middle name? Joe: Thomas. CBC: Joseph Thomas Staton. Joe: Not Joseph. It is Joe. CBC: So the Air Force was very new then? Was

From E-Man to the Gods of Olympus to The Huntress to Green Lantern, a dog named Scooby, and Dick Tracy, this guy named Joe has done it all!

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke • Transcribed by Steven Thompson • Portrait by Kendall Whitehouse Hilarie: She worked with insurance investigations. Joe: Right. And being in Florida, there’s a lot of insurance fraud. CBC: How come? Joe: Boats. Lots of boats. You can do things with boats and then collect on them. Sink them and burn them. CBC: Are you close with her? Joe: Reasonably, yes. CBC: Were you close growing up? That’s only two years, right? Joe: Well, I was terrible to her, but I would say we were reasonably close. CBC: Are your earliest memories in Tennessee? How long were you in North Carolina? Joe: I was born there and then we moved around to different parts, mostly in Tennessee. CBC: Were you always moving? Joe: We moved several times. Yeah. CBC: How was that? Joe: I… guess it was… okay! [laughs] Yeah. CBC: What are your earliest memories of growing up? Joe: The comics. My earliest memories are always what comics was I reading at the time. [laughs] I’d be reading Gene Autry, and that’s what happened that year. Now I’m reading Superboy, and that’s what happened that year. I was learning to read. That sort of thing. CBC: So, Gene Autry was the first comic that you remember? Were you immediately drawn to it? Joe: Well, I just remembering reading Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. All that stuff! There was a lot of that. Of course, the earliest things I remember are Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. CBC: Comic strips? Joe: As long as there were newspapers and strips, I was drawn to the strips, drawn to Chester Gould. It was strange. Before I could read, there was that strange drawing. I was always following that. CBC: What were your impressions? Was it the weird villains? Was it the earnestness of the protagonist? Was it… ? Joe: It must have been just the weird black-&-white drawing. CBC: Pruneface? Joe: Pruneface, Flattop, and all that.

CBC: That’s some weird characters! Joe: Yes. That’s right. Bonnie Braids… all that stuff. CBC: Do you remember the newspapers that came into the house? Joe: Oh, golly. It was later. When I was little I had no idea what papers there were. Back in West Tennessee, there were always the Memphis Press, the Commercial Appeal, and Memphis Press-Scimitar. I think it was the Commercial Appeal that had Dick Tracy. Jackson, Tennessee, had the Jackson Sun. I still follow the Jackson Sun online although they don’t carry Tracy anymore. That’s the weird thing. Mike

Previous page: Upper left are, of course, some of Joe Staton’s best-known characters, including E-Man and the Green Lantern Corps. Photo of Joe at the 2012 New York Comic Con snapped by Kendall Whitehouse. Photo inset is uncredited pic of Hilarie. This page: Upper right is the Paul Levitz/Joe Staton creation, The Huntress. At right, done for John Read’s superb Stay Tooned! magazine, Joe’s self-caricature used as cover for #2 (2008). Colors by the marvelous Matt Webb. Comic Book Creator • Summer 2015 • #9