4 Cary Burkett Creator Chat
An Interview with
Conducted by Bradley S. Cobb [Editor’s Note: Cary Burkett has been interested in comics since his youth. He began at DC Comics, working his way up through the editorial staff and creating his own super-hero, Nemesis. At DC, Cary teamed with Rich Buckler on World’s Finest and developed a respect for Rich’s strong storytelling skills. When Rich moved to Red Circle, he asked Cary to work on Mighty Crusaders, and he also freelanced as a writer for Marvel Comics. Burkett currently lives in central Pennsylvania and can be heard on-air at WITF-FM, where he hosts the radio show Classical Air.] Bradley S. Cobb: What was your first introduction to the Mighty Comics heroes? Cary Burkett: As a kid, I was always on the lookout for new superhero comics, always interested in checking out new titles regardless of the brand. I had read some Fly issues in the ’60s and some Jaguar issues, and thought they were okay. And when the Mighty Comics started coming out, I checked them out as well. It was very frustrating because I really wanted to like them, but found them embarrassingly bad. I hated the whole “camp” thing as a kid, hated it in the Batman TV show and hated it in Mighty Comics. But I kept coming back to the comics because at the time I was really interested in the so-called Golden Age of comics and hungry to find out more about it. The characters in The Mighty Crusaders seemed to me that they might have been very interesting if the stories hadn’t been so “camp,” and I was frustrated by that approach. But for those who claim that Mighty Comics were more ridiculous than other super-hero comics of the period, take another look. This was from around the same era when Jimmy Olsen was turning into “porcupine boy” or “Pinocchio-Olsen” or some such every month. It was the era of Krypto leading the Legion of SuperPets, Bat-Mite, the Bizarro World, and so forth. And who could forget that great hero—Bouncing Boy! There’s a character to strike fear in the hearts of criminals. And what about Matter-Eater Lad from the planet Bismoll? He could eat anything! What a superpower! The point is not that these were bad comics—some of them had a real charm—it’s just to point out that super-hero comics were not taken all that seriously in the period when Mighty Comics were published. I remember once when Mike Barr and I were sharing an office at DC Comics; he dug back into the archives of the comics from this Above is an uncredited photo of Cary Burkett. At left is cover detail from Rich Buckler’s The Mighty Crusaders #8 [July ’84] cover featuring (clockwise from immediate left) the Fly, Dr. Malcolm Reeves, Darkling, the Black Hood, and the Web.
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