Part 3:
You Never Forget Your First Love
MM: From what I can tell, your first comics job outside of your Liberty Meadows stuff was a pin-up for Batman: No Man’s Land. Is that the first thing you remember doing, or is there something else? This is back in 1999, I think. Oh, no, actually, you did a Cavewoman story first, right?
and it was about an alien that could transfer its mind and take over bodies. Kind of like Deadman. It was a light, comedy adventure written by Al Gross and Mark Wheatley. I was doing that when I was finishing up nursing school. MM: Was that an ongoing feature, or was that just a one-shot thing? I know Penthouse Comix usually had several four- or fivepage stories.
FRANK: Yeah, I handled Cavewoman stuff first. I met Bud Root in North Carolina. I think there was a small convention called Dream Con or something like that, and Bud and I were guests. We hit it off right away. This was in ’97, I think. And I started doing a bunch of pin-ups and short stories for Bud just for fun. I think my first real, professional job in comics was for DC. I think I did a Wonder Woman pin-up.
FRANK: I think it was a 12-chapter story. I did the first two chapters and was working on the third one when we got orders to stop it. And thank God it was never published. They canceled Penthouse Comix an issue or two before our debut, so the story never saw print.
MM: That was for the JSA Secret Files book.
MM: After being in that comic strip mindset for so long, did you have any problems adjusting to the format? Just in terms of pacing and that kind of thing?
FRANK: Yeah. Is that the first one? I’m not sure. MM: They came out around the same time, so it could have been either one—the Batman pin-up or the Wonder Woman pin-up.
FRANK: A little bit. It was very exciting, because I had always felt trapped in that four-panel comic strip grid, and suddenly I got these big, open pages to do whatever I wanted. So it was a little bit overwhelming, but it wasn’t too bad of a transition.
FRANK: Well, if you really want to get technical, my first professional comics job was for Penthouse Comix. That was around 1995, I think. It was called “The Body,” 44