Part 3:
Marvelous Monsters
MM: What made you decide to approach Marvel for work?
I started doing the werewolf book and everything else is more or less history.
MIKE: I didn’t. Actually, they approached me. They gave me a call and asked if I would be interested in doing some work for them. I thought, “Woah!” But I didn’t know what it was going to be. So what I did is, I did up a presentation story and it was a Western, which they were obviously not interested in. [laughs] Westerns were dead in the water at the time. When I came in there with this Western story they must have thought, “This guy’s living in another world.” They didn’t like the story. I went home. A day or two later Roy Thomas called me and said, “Hey, Mike! Sorry I wasn’t there when you came in. I loved your Western story by the way.” Still, Roy wants to do the damn Western story.
MM: The early issues of Werewolf By Night really had a noticeable Eisner influence. How much of that was your style and how much of it was a result of working with Eisner at PS Magazine? MIKE: Oddly enough, my style of drawing was very much like Will’s anyway because of the fact that I’d
MM: Was the Western story “Tin Star”? MIKE: Yeah! I ran into Roy about two or three years ago and he said, “God! We’ve got to do that ‘Tin Star’ story.” I looked at him like, “What in the hell are you talking about?” He says, “The Western.” I thought, “God, I can’t remember that.” He told me the story because he remembered it. I thought, “Damn! That would make a good book.” At that time, I was really hot on doing a Western because I loved the mountain man sagas: the Jeremiah Johnson stuff and things like that. Man against nature and the Wild West villains. That was one of my favorite subjects. One of these days I may do it. If it’s up to Roy Thomas, I’ll end up doing it tomorrow. Anyway, he says, “We’re thinking seriously about doing a series of horror comics. We’d like you to do one.” I said I’d love it because I needed the work, and it was either do comics or go back to L.A. and do animation. I went in and they pitched me this werewolf book. I thought it was a great idea. I went home and I gave it some thought. I took a look at a video I had of I Was a Teenage Werewolf. I thought, “That’s great. That’s perfect.” So 19