M A S T E R S
V O L U M E
Edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington
T W O :
Characters TM & ©2003 Cross Generation Ent., Inc.
M O D E R N
MODERN MASTERS VOLUME TWO:
GEORGE PÉREZ edited and designed by Eric Nolen-Weathington production assist by Andy Mangels front cover art by George Pérez front cover color by Larry Molinar all interviews in this book were conducted and transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington all artwork contained in this book was provided by George Pérez, Andy Mangels, and Michael Lovitz proofreading by Fred Perry and Sam Newkirk
TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • November 2003 • Printed in Canada Softcover ISBN: 1-893905-25-x Trademarks & Copyrights All characters and artwork contained herein are ™ and ©2003 George Pérez unless otherwise noted. Sachs & Violens and all related characters ™ and ©2003 Peter David and George Pérez Aqualad, Aquaman, Azrael, Batman, Black Canary, Brother Blood, Captain Marvel, Catwoman, Changeling, Cheetah, Cyborg, Darkseid, Deathstroke, Demon, Eres, Firestorm, Flamebird, Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Guy Gardner, Hawkman, Jericho, Jesse Custer, Joker, Justice League of America, Kid Flash, Killer Frost, Kole, Lex Luthor, Monitor, Nightwing, Poison Ivy, Protector, Ragdoll, Raven, Robin, Saint of Killers, Saturn Girl, Shining Knight, Silent Knight, Spectre, Starfire, Supergirl, Superman, Teen Titans, Troia, Tulip, Ultraman, Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman ©2003 DC Comics. Ant-Man, Apocalypse, Avengers, Beast, Black Widow, Captain America, Crusader, Cyclops, Deathlok, Dr. Doom, Drax the Destroyer, Fantastic Four, Firearm, Firelord, Galactus, Giant-Man, Green Goblin, Havok, Hawkeye, Hercules, Hulk, Inhumans, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Jack of Hearts, Luke Cage, Maestro, Mantra, Man-Wolf, Mephisto, Mockingbird, Phoenix, Polaris, Prime, Prototype, Prowler, Red Skull, Rune, Scarlet Witch, Silver Surfer, Snap Dragon Spider-Man, Squadron Supreme, Thanos, Thing, Thor, Tigra, Topaz, UltraForce, Ultron, Valkyrie, Vision, Warbird, Warlock, Wasp, White Tiger, Wonder Man, X-51 ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Andra, Arwyn, Lindy, Solus ™ and ©2003 CrossGen Intellectual Property. Jane, John Carter of Mars, Tarzan ™ and ©2003 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Swordquest ™ and ©2003 Atari, Inc. Ash ™ and ©2003 Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti. Westwind ™ and ©2003 Kurt Busiek. Hellboy ™ and ©2003 Mike Mignola. P’Gell, The Spirit ™ and ©2003 Will Eisner. Doc Savage, I-Bots, Jurassic Park, Logan’s Run, Miracleman, Miraclewoman, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ™ and ©2003 their respective owners. Editorial package ©2003 Eric Nolen-Weathington and TwoMorrows Publishing.
Dedication To my uncle, Phillip Evans, who bought me my first issue of Adventure Comics along with many others. You are a Survivor, and I am very thankful for it. And, as always, to my wife, Donna, and son, Iain. Acknowledgements George Pérez, for managing to squeeze in eight hours worth of interviews and answering questions he’d heard a million times—and hopefully some he hadn’t—with more enthusiasm than could ever be expected. Andy Mangels, Pérez archivist supreme, for his expertise and for sending a huge selection of artwork. Please visit his website, www.andymangels.com, for information on Andy and his ongoing Pérez Archives project. Tony Lorenz, for tons of useful information. Check out his magazine, Pacesetter, formerly known as The George Pérez Newsletter, for even more Pérez lore and artwork. Michael Lovitz, for sending some much needed artwork and making the book that much better. Special Thanks John & Pamela Morrow, Fred Perry, Sam Newkirk, George Khoury, Rick McGee and the crew of Foundation’s Edge, Marcus Mebes, Jon Mankuta, Shelton Drum, Tom Fleming, Rich D’Allesandro, Jim Mooney, and Vu Nguyen (visit his website, www.george-perez.com).
Modern Masters Volume Two:
George Pérez Table of Contents Introduction by Marv Wolfman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Part One: “Has Anyone Contacted George Pérez?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Part Two: Enter Marvel: A Young Artist with Enthusiasm . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Part Three: Making a Mark of His Own at DC Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Part Four: Bad Endings, False Starts, and New Beginnings. . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Part Five: Can’t Get Enough of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Part Six: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
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Part 1:
“Has Anyone Contacted George Pérez?” GEORGE: Yes, by the time they were married they had moved to New York. My father worked in the meat packing industry and my mom was a homemaker.
MODERN MASTERS: Before we get started I want to clarify the pronunciation of your name: it’s PER-ez, not pe-REZ, as it is commonly mispronounced. With that out of the way, you were born in the Bronx, correct?
MM: And you have a brother?
GEORGE PÉREZ: Yep, on June 9, 1954 in the South Bronx.
GEORGE: Yes, my brother was born 11 months, 11 days after I was—David Pérez—and we were the only children. Even though my parents were both from large families, collectively they only came up with two kids.
MM: Both your parents were born in Puerto Rico? GEORGE: My mom, Luz Maria Izquierdo, and my father, Jorge Pérez, were both born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, the same year, but would not actually meet each other until they moved—I believe the same year, I don’t know the exact year—to New Jersey.
MM: Did you and your brother get along?
GEORGE: They moved themselves. My grandparents still lived in Puerto Rico at the time.
GEORGE: Oh, we got along no differently than other brothers did. We even both aspired to be artists at a young age. Because we were from a poor family, rather than drawing paper we would use the brown paper bags from the grocery store—tear them open and use that as our drawing paper with pencils and crayons. I didn’t even get my first Flair marker pen until I was 13 or 14 years old.
MM: Was it a matter of looking for more job opportunities?
MM: What kind of things were you drawing?
MM: Did they move with their families or on their own?
GEORGE: I believe so, yes. I don’t know what job opportunities my mom was expecting, because as long as I’ve known her she’s only worked part-time. But her ambitions might have been different prior to her marriage. But my dad, obviously, was going to the “land of opportunity” as it were. Both were born in fairly poor areas of Puerto Rico.
GEORGE: We were drawing Popeye... even then we were drawing super-heroes. My brother was more appreciative of the old Steve Reeves Hercules movies—the old Peblum Italian musclemen series. HS was his character, which was Hercules-Samson. I would be drawing more super-hero-oriented characters. There was The Bat—he was a blind guy that had the powers of a bat. This was before there was Daredevil. My very first drawing was on a bathroom hamper, actually. I was about five years old, and it was the Rubber Band Man. It was a rubber band with the head of a man, and if anyone ever found that hamper—which is extremely unlikely.... I’m sure that the head looked a lot worse than the rubber band itself. But I created my own super-characters. The Kleptomaniac Kid [laughter]—I can’t remember how he stole things; I think it was that he would look at an
MM: When did they actually meet and develop a relationship? GEORGE: They were married, I believe, in 1951, because they were married three years before I was born. I’m assuming they probably met in 1949, 1950. Everything else is a blur. I never really asked much about their courtship. MM: They had moved by the time they were married? 6
object and suddenly it would appear in his hands—and other similarly silly characters. I was highly inspired by the Legion of SuperHeroes and their also rather silly names. But we would see who could draw the best Popeye, because we were both cartoon fans. My brother read comics as well, although there came a point as we were in the dawn of our teens where my brother stopped drawing and got into sports more. He became more a kid of the streets, while I would be the one who stayed at home and did a lot of drawing, although we were both good students. My brother was, and still is, a very intelligent, educated man. But we just had a drift at that point, where the thing we had in common was that we lived in the same home, but we had different aspirations and different points of view. To this day we have our differences, but we also embrace our similarities. At one point it seemed that David was going to be the better artist of the two of us, but it became moot when he dropped it altogether. From a child’s point of view I kept thinking he was the better artist. He tended to draw more massive characters; my characters tended to be a little more subtle or wimpy, I guess. [laughter] I don’t think subtlety really applies to a child’s scratchings, but my characters looked smaller compared to his. Granted the muscles were probably ridiculous and nowhere near anatomically correct—just lumps on forms—but to me his drawings were much more super-heroic. MM: Did you both like the same comics or did you have separate piles? GEORGE: Oh yes, we tended to buy the same comics. Either I or he would buy the comic, but we would read the same comics. We didn’t have separate collections.
MM: Did you have other family in the area? GEORGE: We had some family. I remember visiting aunts and uncles and everything else, but I never really got all that close to most of my family. I was pretty much a loner at the time. I tended to find more empathy with my fellow classmates than I did with family members. MM: Was there a family atmosphere where you were living? GEORGE: Because most of our family was in Puerto Rico and we didn’t have a car for a lot of the time, there wasn’t as much of a connection. My brother had a godmother that we were close to and there were some other relatives that we used to enjoy visiting. My mother’s cousins—my second cousins— were a bunch of nice people. I guess I tended to gravitate towards the kids who had more interest in the type of stuff I did. More “American,” for the lack of a better term, as opposed to still feeling connected to Puerto Rico. I was much more connected to my New York environment, so I tended to gravitate towards non-Hispanics. I guess they were closer to my ideals, since I was raised on television. The Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Andy Griffith type of characters were more the characters I embraced, because it was an idyllic world and the world around me—the lower income housing—was poor and sometimes violent. I subconsciously turned my back on my heritage. I wouldn’t 7
Previous Page: It may not be the Steve Reeves version, but this commissioned headshot is all Hercules. Left: A commission piece of Saturn Girl, member of one of George’s childhood favorites: The Legion of Super-Heroes. Above: A high school period self-illo. Below: An early ’70s, pre-pro Captain America sketch. Saturn Girl ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Captain America, Hercules ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.
Part 2:
Enter Marvel : A Young Artist With Enthusiasm wanted to do Fantastic Four. So I tried to take that largerthan-life style and make it work with my own storytelling and then added little details and decorative things—often to hide the fact that I didn’t know how to draw certain things. I had myself saved by the great Joe Sinnott; he made everything more uniform and kept every character to model. That annual ended up becoming two issues of the regular book months after the fact and I had to add a few pages, so I can see stylistic changes, which again were made a little more homogenous by Joe Sinnott. It was another situation where what I lacked in sophisticated drawing ability was made up for by my natural sense of storytelling and my fearlessness. They saw that with enough experience and enough training, I was made to be a comic book artist.
MM: As you were meeting these pros were you making contacts with the idea of future work?
GEORGE: Not consciously. I mean, I wanted work, but it was still that type of thing where I didn’t want to step on toes too much. I told them I loved doing team books. I think the Avengers was the only one I may have mentioned to Bill Mantlo. As it turned out George Tuska hated drawing the book. Bill, who had become a friend of mine, was willing to try to find me work that would make me happy. When Avengers became available—whether it was permanently or short-term I didn’t know—it was sent my way. Thankfully, even with some of the flaws in my work—including storytelling flaws— Steve Englehart enjoyed having a young artist with enthusiasm rather than an experienced artist with none. At the time when there were no royalties to be had from the sales of a book, an artist would earn the same page rate for drawing a page with a single character as he would a page with a dozen characters. Books like the Avengers were not exactly desirable for the people working under that system. And because I loved it so much I could do it as fast, if not faster, than drawing a single character book. I was in tune with it and so hungry to be known in the business that of course I was going to take a highprofile book like the Avengers. I ended up also getting what was supposed to be just an FF Annual that Rich Buckler was supposed to draw, but for whatever reason he only drew about five pages, so they asked me to finish it since I had been his assistant and should be able to keep the same style. It was a lot more difficult since I didn’t really like doing the Kirby swipes that Rich did. I was trying to avoid doing anything that looked like Kirby, but I had to actually blend in if I
MM: Let’s go back just a bit to 1974. You’re penciling two series: “Man-Wolf,” a standard color comic, and “Sons of the Tiger,” a black&-white magazine strip. You were just starting out, so did you yet realize those series called for two different approaches? GEORGE: Not as much in the beginning, though I would learn later. Ironically, when I took “Man-Wolf” I thought it would have more shadings of horror to it, but Dave Kraft, who took on the writing of the series, wanted to be a little more cosmic, a little more super-heroic. So the series that should have been the darker of the two ended up being the brighter of the two. And the “Sons of the Tiger,” which started out being a homage—or ripoff, take your pick—of the Enter the Dragon paradigm of the white martial artist, the black martial artist, and the Oriental martial artist, ended up becoming much more of a dark, sometimes political series than it was intended to be. Bill Mantlo had a very strong social consciousness and ended up putting that into the series. And Archie Goodwin, when he became editor 20
of the black-&-white line, was the one who pointed out that approaching a black-&white comic should be slightly different. You can work with tonal values in addition to black and white and the action can be a little bit more—not restrained—but not quite as exaggerated, because there are certain times when it should look slightly more realistic. Of course I still didn’t understand that. I drew it pretty much the same, but ironically with less backgrounds, because I thought, “He wants tonal stuff, well, that’s what the inker’s going to put in.” [laughter] So I didn’t put in as much work in the black&-white work and put all the detail in the color work when it probably would’ve worked better the other way around. By putting in too much detail, the colors didn’t look as bright, and by not putting in enough detail the black-&-white work didn’t look dense enough or as realistic as it should. As I got to be better I started to say, “Nah, a comic is a comic whether it’s color
or black-&-white,” and drew them both the same way. They were both action, really. One had a wolf’s head; the other three didn’t. [laughter] And the action— because it was a martial arts comic— couldn’t be too exaggerated, because it still had to look like martial arts. MM: In 1975 you picked up the Inhumans series. How did that come about? GEORGE: Again, Bill Mantlo gave me a call. I think I had already gotten the Avengers. MM: They were published a month apart. GEORGE: Right, I had just started the Avengers and he asked if I would be interested in The Inhumans. I loved the characters from the Fantastic Four. The only caveat was it was already a month late, so I drew my first issue of The Inhumans in one week. Knowing that it was bi-monthly allowed me the luxury of taking it on as a regular series, because I was still drawing very, very fast. I had just gotten Avengers, just gotten Fantastic 21
Previous Page: A 1976 sketch of Galactus and his herald. Above: White Tiger fights The Prowler, from Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu #21, with inks by Jack Abel; and Creatures on the Loose #35, page 11, with inks by Frank McLaughlin. Below: A 1977 self-illo. Galactus, Man-Wolf, Prowler, Silver Surfer, White Tiger ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.
Part 3:
Making a Mark of His Own at DC Comics chance of succeeding. The previous incarnation of the Titans I thought was lackluster. And even though I read the 1960s Titans when Nick Cardy, Gil Kane, Neal Adams and George Tuska were all drawing it and I loved those, Justice League was the book that I wanted to do, similarly to my desire to do Avengers at Marvel.
MM: Did you find the gradual move from Marvel to DC a difficult transition?
GEORGE: At first I was a little intimidated. It was like I was auditioning for the first time, because I didn’t know how much editors like Joe Orlando or Julie Schwartz knew me. I had only been working in the business about five years or so and whether they kept up with the new people over at Marvel was totally alien to me. So I kind of felt I had to prove myself. If I hadn’t been invited by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein specifically, I don’t know how I would have fared just going in cold. The fact that I had a letter of introduction, as it were, gave me a little more ease of mind. I was still new and felt that what worked at Marvel may not work at DC—a prime example, of course, being Jack Kirby whose work, I think, wasn’t as well received by the editorial staff at DC as it was at Marvel previously. So Lord knows how things might have been different if it hadn’t been for Marv Wolfman approaching me about the Teen Titans book.
MM: How long was it before your priorities between Titans and Justice League reversed in your mind? GEORGE: In the case of the Titans, the momentum started to build on it even from the very beginning. There was good word of mouth and DC seemed to put a lot of support into that book. It was the first of the Bonus Books offered by DC, where they put a 16-page full comic story into the middle of another book—in our case DC Presents #26. As much as I enjoyed Justice League, some of that might have been dampened by the fact that I knew I was working on plots originally written for Dick Dillin, since Gerry Conway was so incredibly ahead of schedule. He had almost a half a dozen scripts already there. Of course, I wasn’t as involved in the story concepts as I would be on the Teen Titans book. When it came time to decide—as I was slowing down more—which book I should take on, it became apparent that Titans looked like it could very well be a successful book. The sales were better than anyone anticipated. Fan and dealer reaction was also quite favorable. This was a chance to do a book wherein my participation was responsible for its success and I could make a mark of my own.
MM: So New Teen Titans was the first offering from DC? GEORGE: Yes, but I had other things that were printed while it was in development. There was a Green Lantern cover that was my very first work for DC Comics and a “Firestorm” back-up series that also came out before Teen Titans. MM: You did four issues of that, as the back-up in Flash, and then the Justice League came next.
MM: With Titans you received a co-plotting credit.
GEORGE: The Justice League came as a bargaining chip originally. I agreed to do the Teen Titans with Marv and Len—I didn’t have any particular desire to do that series—only if I could get a crack at one or two issues of Justice League. That was the book I really wanted to do, not the Titans, because I didn’t think Titans had much of a
GEORGE: Marv has always been incredibly generous about those types of things. He was adamant about my receiving co-plotting credit on the book. He was also personally instrumental in instituting a tier program of payment for creators; at that point there was no pay32
only drawing the JLA, you’re drawing the JSA and the New Gods. Did you have to do any research or were you familiar with all the characters?
ment for co-plotting. You got paid for a plot, you got paid for a script, and that was pretty much it as far as the writing payments were broken up. Before they finally instituted an official payment where a plot can be divided as well, Marv paid me out of his pocket from the plotting fee that he received. Again, an incredibly generous gesture, since most writers and artists, if they work that way, they figure it’s just the normal way of working and what the artist brings in to the actual storytelling is just part of his job. Marv recognized the fact that I was providing a lot more of my own personal contribution to the story and the direction of the Titans, and felt that deserved recognition both in credit and in payment. MM: Your first issue of Justice League was one of the annual crossover events, so you were not
GEORGE: One of the things about that time period was that I was still a comic book reader. I read the Kirby New Gods, I read the Justice League, I read all the JLA-JSA crossovers. So I was very in tune with the characters. The only restriction I had was that I was working on a full script, since that was the way Gerry Conway and Dick Dillin worked. So there wasn’t as much wiggle room plotwise and in some cases I thought, “God, there’s a hell of a lot going on here and not that much space to put it in.” [laughter] So that was a bit of a challenge. And I was still coming out from my Marvel days, so my characters tended to be big and bulky and maybe a touch stiff at times. I still hadn’t gotten down to the style that would manifest itself after working on the Titans past the first year. I don’t think that Frank McLaughlin—who I inherited from Dick Dillin—was a good fit for me. He worked hard, but he and I really did not work well together. I don’t think I ever found my niche with the proper inker on Justice League. I had a few inkers—some of them did better than others—but never really became a team with any of them. Even though Romeo Tanghal and I over at Titans got to a point where we were no longer complementary—my style was going one way and his was going another way—still it developed a real look for the book. Justice League I don’t think ever really had a definitive Pérez look. MM: You did another crossover before you were done, with the Secret Society of Super-Villains.
33
Previous Page: 1981 Titans illustration. Clockwise from Upper Left: The JLA and Titans square off on the cover of New Teen Titans #4. A Splash page from Justice League of America #185. A 2002 commission of Firestorm, the Nuclear Man. And an ’80s self-illo. Darkseid, Firestorm, Justice League, Teen Titans ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.
remember where I got it from—was the idea that since she killed herself in the garage her parents have yet to go back in there. I got the idea for the title, “Chalk Drawings,” from a trip to the fair and seeing a beautiful rendering on the pavement and knowing full well that it was going to be washed away. MM: Did you get to choose the list of contributors for issue #50?
MM: How did “Chalk Drawings” develop?
Above: Breakdown pages for Action #643. Brett Breeding later finished the artwork. Right: Promotional art for Wonder Woman #50. Next Page: The cover of War of the Gods #1.
Superman, Wonder Woman, and all other characters ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.
GEORGE: Karen and I liked doing socially relevant stories, so I told her I really wanted to do something with teen suicide. She thought I was building up to the suicide of Eileen, Vanessa’s girl friend, who did seem to have a somber look towards life with her father and having to take care of her brother. She looked like the logical choice. But I wanted to turn it around to the girl who had everything. She had high standards to constantly live up to, and Eileen was so used to her life she knew how to survive and was determined to survive. I had done some study, and Mindy Newell, who was a nurse, knew a lot about the psychology of suicide, so that’s why that story ended up being such a strong one. My favorite little scene—and I don’t 58
GEORGE: There were some I suggested, but Karen had made friends with a number of artists as an editor—I believe she was just starting the Vertigo line—and she just wanted to get a lot of different people with many of them not being associated with Wonder Woman. Of course, the prize find was Marie Severin. She had never worked for DC before. MM: In Secret Origins #50, you revisited the type of text illustrations you did in History of the DC Universe, with the Robin origin story. GEORGE: I’m particularly proud of the one that surprised people—the scene of Batman swinging from the rafters of the circus tent, which was almost entirely a black-&-white piece. There’s almost no detail in there— it’s just straight contrast. People expect me to noodle every single thing on his utility belt. It’s kind of nice to surprise them. Also, in that same issue I got to ink Carmine Infantino on the Space Museum origin. That was fun. Again, I was inking an icon.
Part 4:
Bad Endings, False Starts and New Beginnings In some cases—like John Ostrander and Marv Wolfman—they wanted to cooperate and tried to do the best they could. John was incredibly helpful, including suggesting the usage of Indian gods and tying in with Firestorm. And Marv tried as best he could to tie-in with Titans. But for the most part the book was floundering and, for a book that was supposed to focus on Wonder Woman and be the crossover of the year, I was unpleasantly surprised when Armageddon came out as “the crossover of the year.” It was like we were working in a vacuum. So War of the Gods ended up becoming a very unpleasant experience and not what I wanted it to be. Adding fuel to the fire, my disgruntledness led me to be careless with my deadlines, so that the crossovers did not work chronologically. Part of that was bad coordination, the unfortunate placing of an assistant editor in charge to replace Karen, and my own disgruntledness. War of the Gods was the beginning of the end of my relationship with the Wonder Woman character.
MM: Which project were you approached with first, War of the Gods or Infinity Gauntlet?
GEORGE: I think War of the Gods was just taking longer, since it was tied in to the Wonder Woman series and I was trying to lead up to that. Much to my regret, I ended up doing two crowded mini-series at the same time, though I knew I was not going to be drawing War of the Gods. MM: How did War of the Gods develop? GEORGE: Originally it was a gigantic overview from me. I plotted it out with all the tie-ins I wanted to have and discussed it with Karen Berger. It was supposed to be called The Holy Wars, but they thought that was too religious a title. The idea was for it to be a celebration of Wonder Woman’s 50th anniversary. Unfortunately, during the course of War of the Gods, Karen Berger— who was pregnant with her first child—had to take maternity leave. The biggest problem I had was trying to make it a tie-in to the Wonder Woman series. DC might have felt a little less confident about a crossover series centered around a female lead, as opposed to Batman or Superman or some of the stronger selling characters. We were fighting an uphill battle in trying to do the crossovers the way we wanted to make it work. And by the time the series was coming out it was quite obvious that, in some cases, I had done overviews that the creators of the tie-in books never saw—the editors never got them to them. So there was a crossover that no one seemed to know anything about.
MM: Was it your decision to have Son of Vulcan a central character to the story? Was he used because of his mythological association and the fact that he was an obscure character that nothing was being done with? GEORGE: I think both were pivotal in my decision. Son of Vulcan had a Roman mythological reference that I wanted to use. Shazam was used for the same reason— even though he had Zeus in his name, he also had Mercury, the Roman Hermes. It was a desperate ploy to find somebody tied to the Roman pantheon. [laughter] 59
Part 5:
Can’t Get Enough of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes But I definitely believed in what CrossGen was doing, and when they offered me the idea of doing CrossGen Chronicles, initially it was to be on a freelance basis. I wanted to show support for the company, but I really wasn’t ready to give up the opportunities I had as a freelancer. And added to the negotiation problems, it was around that time that I received word that with Joe Quesada ascending to the throne as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, and one of the things he wanted to address was reviving the JLA/Avengers project. So I was approached by Tom Brevoort as well, saying this project looked to be a go. My wife acknowledged that if I had to make a decision between JLA/Avengers and CrossGen, JLA/Avengers would be the project I would choose. JLA/Avengers did not become actuated until Mark Alessi—who wanted to make sure that if I went to CrossGen, it would be with no regrets—said I should demand a dropdead time for Marvel and DC to offer me a contract on paper for JLA/Avengers, so I would know it wasn’t just talk. I got the last piece of the contract on the last possible day— they got in right under the wire. [laughter] So I went to CrossGen and informed them, “Now I’ve got JLA/Avengers. This is a project I’ve been wanting to do for practically my entire career. I thank you, and I’ll fulfill my commitments and finish off CrossGen Chronicles, but then I have to leave.” Mark Alessi, with the approval of the entire CrossGen staff—because an exception cannot be made without the entire staff agreeing to it—thought I’d be more valuable to them as an employee, and that I should finish my commitment to CrossGen Chronicles, but as a
MM: What about CrossGen’s pitch made you think you should be working there as opposed to doing something like the Avengers?
GEORGE: The Avengers was pretty much about done. I had gotten to the point that it was getting a lot more difficult to handle the monthly title. I was getting tired and didn’t think I was producing the best work I could do— although the fans seemed to disagree, and that was the same argument I had about the Titans, so what do I know? [laughter] It was somewhere along the line of my having already deciding to leave Avengers and the gap when I was still working on Crimson Plague for Gorilla that CrossGen came into the picture and I received a call from Barbara Kesel. Mark Alessi felt that was the best way to approach me—with someone I knew personally—so she was the one who actually came in with the pitch and asked if I would meet with Mark. When I went in to CrossGen, part of it was that I was a bit tired and the idea of doing a book that would be a quarterly and earning a regular salary plus all the insurance coverage and all the other profit sharing and things was very, very tempting. But the reservations I had with CrossGen were that I was used to drawing super-heroes and I had tackled work at companies for financial benefit and found that I ended up becoming unhappy. And I didn’t know if I’d end up feeling the same way with the CrossGen properties. And as an employee, I would be exclusive to them, which would mean turning my back on doing any more work for Marvel or DC. 76
JLA/Avengers,” that would have killed it. The only reason it was to exist—in Joe Quesada’s mind and in the minds of most of the others at Marvel and DC—was as a “George Pérez started it, George Pérez should finish it” type of thing. Joe Quesada declared there would be no further Marvel/DC crossovers on his watch, with this being the grand exception. MM: How was the rest of the creative team for JLA/Avengers decided upon?
staffer. I was retroactively—to the beginning of 2001—made an employee of CrossGen wherein I had all the insurance and perks covered and would be given a one-year leave of absence upon completion of CrossGen Chronicles. October of 2001 was when my sabbatical officially started. So during that time, my work was overlapping between CrossGen and the JLA/Avengers project, and after October JLA/Avengers was my sole income-producing work. If it hadn’t been for Mark putting both a great amount of trust and a great amount of worth to my participation in CrossGen, the JLA/Avengers book might still be in negotiations now. Of course if it would have taken this long for negotiations, the project would be over because I would not have been involved any longer. I am immensely flattered that this project lived or died on my say-so. If I had said, “No, I do not want to do
GEORGE: When the project was originally being discussed, it was with the possibility of Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid working together, since Mark at the time was writing JLA. Of course, by the time Marvel and DC put it all together, Mark was no longer working on JLA, because he had gone over to CrossGen. Kurt and I had worked together on the Avengers, and he was my first and foremost choice to write the book. The only other things I requested were that the book not be put on a schedule until there was enough drawn that we knew it would come out in four monthly installments; that I wanted to ink myself, which meant it was going to take a good deal longer; and that I wanted—with the exception of me as inker—the creative team of the Avengers working on it. That meant bringing in Tom Smith, who during my entire run on the Avengers never had a chance 77
Previous Page: A gorgeous commission sketch of Sojourn’s Arwyn. Left: This rejected cover was intended for Avengers v3, #2. Above: George amidst the roses in a 1997 photo by Andy Mangels. Below: The Avengers and Justice League faceoff in this 1996 commission piece. Justice League ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Avengers, Scarlet Witch ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Arwyn ™ and ©2003 CrossGen Intellectual Property.
going to be in, whether it’s a new one or an established one, and then I have nowhere to go. On one of the covers we did a big, big closeup of Andra’s face. Not only because I wasn’t sure what she was going to be wearing, but I wasn’t sure what the story was about. Barbara came up and said, “Here’s an idea for a cover,” and if I had known what the story was about I might have chosen a totally different type of cover. Unless I’m working five months ahead of schedule—like that’s ever going to happen [laughter]—I’m caught with being a bit blind as to what my artistic options are for cover designs from issue to issue. MM: Solus appears to have a definite direction the story is heading. Is it meant to be a finite series?
Above: Cover art for Wizard #121’s CrossGen Special. Inks by John Dell. Next Page Top: This self-illo was drawn for an article which appeared in the Orlando Sentinel. Next Page Bottom: Lovely headshot of Wonder Girl. Batman, Starfire, Superman, Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Captain America, Hulk, Human Torch, Iron Man, Spider-Man ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Arwyn, all characters ™ and ©2003 CrossGen Intellectual Property.
MM: I assume that when Andra visits an established world that you look through issues of that series— GEORGE: To get a style sense, sure. And some of those are a lot of fun. Different artists have different ways of doing costumes, and I have to evoke Steve Epting from Crux, I’ll be doing Brandon Peterson from Mystic—even though he hasn’t drawn the book, his is the style that everyone follows—and the same thing with Brath and Andre DeVito’s stuff. So I do do research, and she’s supposed to be wearing something that’s evocative of that but not exactly that, so I have some freedom. It’s only frustrating when I do a cover and I don’t even know what world she’s 86
GEORGE: That I’m not at liberty to say. There was talk of it being finite, there was talk of being a series that would just change along the way. We have not made a definite decision, but at CrossGen things are pretty much unpredictable. Characters live and die like crazy. With the exception of titles more recently, like Brath, none of the CrossGen books are named after their lead characters, which means even lead characters might die. I frankly don’t know yet what the future is for the two leads of Solus. That’s another thing that sounds strange—I have two leads. I have no supporting cast! [laughter] It’s the smallest cast I’ve ever worked with on a regular basis. MM: So Andra and Lindy are both seen as leads? GEORGE: I consider Lindy as much of a lead as Andra. Andra, of course, has the most to do with the CrossGen universe and what happens to it, but to me Lindy— if she wasn’t there, no one would know what’s going on. MM: So she’s not just a female Rick Jones. GEORGE: She’s Dr. Watson to Andra’s Sherlock Holmes, where Watson is there to explain what Holmes is doing.
Part 6:
Storytelling and the Creative Process nice, little, inbred society. [laughter] So I think I’ve learned more. My characterization on faces is better— not that I didn’t do good faces, but I think I draw more realistic faces now. That’s my Crimson Plague by-product. As far as storytelling is concerned, I probably was inspired by many other comic artists. There are things I can do now because I’m a better artist and I’m more comfortable doing them now.
MM: You said going back and looking at the original JLA/Avengers you see how much you’ve developed over the years. In what ways do you feel your style has developed as far as your figure drawing and your overall approach to a page? Is it a matter of keeping a similar approach but refining your skills?
GEORGE: I think it’s more refining skills and learning more. One of the things of not having a formal artistic education is that my foundation was a little weak, so I was building up on it little by little. Subtle things like how to draw the musculature on bodies, proportions, how blacks can be used to create mass, how to mold the body. Those are the things I was learning as I was going along. Using the example of JLA/Avengers from 20 years ago to now, when I was doing JLA/Avengers I was still primarily doing the Teen Titans book. My characters tended to be a little light. I notice my legs looked a little thin. I didn’t throw bodies into perspective as much as I should have. Although I did do it, I wasn’t as comfortable with it as I have later become. Also other artists have come into the field since then who have inspired me in various ways. The entire Image school, for lack of a better term, did not exist when I did JLA/Avengers, and there are certain positive things I picked up from them— which, of course, they say they picked up from me. It’s a
MM: Logan’s Run is where you started using photo reference and you were using it very heavily then and again in Crimson Plague. What about the projects in between? When do you typically use photo reference? GEORGE: I started to use reference particularly for things in the real world, because otherwise super-heroes have nothing to look super-heroic against. For vehicles and the like I would try to get reference, because I can’t draw vehicles from memory. I have no real love for mechanics, so I don’t have an understanding of how they’re built and I have to have some kind of reference to draw the basic linework. Putting characters into “real” backgrounds as opposed to always, what I call, Kirby backgrounds—Jack created all these incredible buildings, but none of them really existed. I try to find a mixture where I put real buildings with some sense of real architecture to define even the fictional building so they’re not quite as outlandish or “Wow, look at all the great brickwork. Where are the windows?” And remembering now that when I do downshots that it’s not just draw just buildings, but remembering the fact that there are streets down there. With folds in clothing, by using photographs for things like that, then I’m doing my interpretation of reality as opposed to doing my interpretation of another artist’s interpretation. If I needed a photograph for a reference for a background and traced the photo on a lightbox and then did all the drawing, I’m still drawing the background. I haven’t copied anybody’s artwork by doing that. I’ve 87
Batman, Poison Ivy ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.
Black Widow, Snap Dragon ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.
Green Goblin, Spider-Man ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.
Lex Luthor, Ultraman ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.
Classic Confrontations
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Captain America, Red Skull ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.