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The Gary Chaloner Interview
ary Chaloner is an award-winning artist and writer who Chaloner also designed the official Will Eisner web site at one created and published the new adventures of Will Eisner’s point. John Law. • • • I interviewed Chaloner via email for the first edition of A Spirited Life. But that was when John Law had yet to be published. BOB ANDELMAN: Tell us a little bit about John Law and how and Now that it’s been out and built an independent audience for one when Will Eisner created it. of Eisner’s lesser known characters, I thought it would be fun to GARY CHALONER: John Law was devised and created by Will back in the mid- to late ’40s. The Spirit was going very well, and talk to him again. Eisner fans will also be excited to learn how many more char- Will wanted to expand his range of publications on the newsstand. acters from Eisner’s early work returned to action in Chaloner’s He developed several titles, one of them being the John Law character, but the first one that he released I think was Baseball Comics, John Law series. and it didn’t go as well as he would have liked, so the other ideas First, let me tell you a little more about Chaloner. He’s an Australian-born creator who began his career as a that he had were put on the shelf for a while. Will, being the frugal person publisher of his own work and the that he was, converted it into work of other Australian creators Spirit stories. So all those stories through his own imprint Cyclone didn’t see print as Spirit stories Comics. Cyclone published a until about 1950. So the John range of popular comic books in Law material was a fully formed the 1980s and 1990s with titles concept that he had been thinking as diverse as The Jackaroo, The about quite a while, for several Southern Squadron, Dark Nebula, years, and so that whole idea was G.I. Joe Australia, Flash Damingo, a bit stillborn, so when the opporand CCQ (Cyclone Comics Quartunity came along when I talked terly). to Will and Denis Kitchen about Gary’s overseas work includes developing the series wasn’t just a U.S. editions of The Jackaroo and dead concept, it was a fully develThe Southern Squadron; a very Wallpaper for the John Law web comic. oped, ready-to-go set of characodd issue of The Badger with Mike Baron; the award-winning Planet of the Apes: Urchak’s Folly; The ters in the universe that Will had already worked on and estabOlympians, a two-issue prestige series for Marvel/Epic Comics; lished, so that was irresistible. and editorial and creative duties on Dark Horse Down Under for Dark Horse Comics—this series featured the first U.S. appearance ANDELMAN: Was John Law ever published in the ’50s or not? CHALONER: No, it was not. All of the work was adapted and of Gary’s creation Morton Stone, Undertaker. His more recent creator-owned projects include the black absorbed into the Spirit universe. John Law in his own environcomedy of Morton Stone: Undertaker; Red Kelso, a pulp-inspired ment wasn’t published until the ’80s in the Eclipse Comics edition. … They stripped back a lot of the pasteovers and art changes that adventure series; and new adventures of The Jackaroo. Chaloner worked closely with Will Eisner in the development Will had made to the original art to reveal the original “John Law” and relaunch of Will Eisner’s John Law both online and in print art underneath. through IDW Publishing. In the 2005 Ledger Awards (Australian Comic Industry Awards), ANDELMAN: How did you first hear of John Law? Will Eisner’s John Law received several awards including Inter- CHALONER: Well, being an Eisner reader for many years and national Title of the Year and Single Issue or Story of the Year. bumping into a lot of the publications that Kitchen Sink first Chaloner was also awarded the Ledger of Honour (a Hall of Fame released and that other publications had written about Will Eisner, award) and received industry awards for Achievement of the Year, if you learn a bit about The Spirit, you also learn about these aborted characters that Will tried to publish back in the ’40s. The Cover Artist of the Year, and Inker of the Year. 143