Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Looking Back With Vic Carrabotta

Vic Carrabotta is a relatively unknown name to the bulk of the comic buying public, but that's not due to the quality of his work, but rather the quantity. After meeting Stan Lee with a letter of reference from Jack Kirby, Vic began working at Timely in the early 1950s and remained there until the now famous 'Implosion' that saw many creators thrown out of work. Unlike the bulk of the artists from the Golden Age, once Vic left the comic book field in the late 1950s he never returned, instead forging a career in advertising, illustration, design and storyboards.

Once Vic left the comic book industry he never really looked back. Vic managed to parlay his illustration skills to excellent effect, becoming an award winning advertising illustrator and earning the nick-name 'Quick Vic' due to his speed in meeting deadlines. A short list of companies that have benefited from Vics conceptual and illustration skills can be found on his web-site, and they include companies such as Y & R, Grey Advertising, McCann-Erickson, Disney, Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola, AT&T Worldwide, General Motors, Palmolive, SCANA, Advil, Reader's Digest, Sunbeam, Ometric, Jell-O, Kenner Toys, and many more.

This interview was originally conducted in January of 2006. Since that time the tape was misplaced and I always believed that it'd been lost forever. Recently, due to a clean-up, I found the missing tape, along with a few others, buried at the bottomed of a box. Armed with the tape I did the transcript and now present it for the world to enjoy. And before anyone decides to send an email to the contrary, I'm more than happy to post an audio sample of certain sections...but until then - read and enjoy this insight into one of the more unknown of the Golden Age comic book artists!
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Daniel Best: How did you get started in comic books?
Vic Carrabotta: I’m probably one of the lesser comic book artists of the old days. I got out of comic books a long time ago. I started with Stan back in the mid ‘50s, so far back I can’t remember. [laughter] I’m 75 years old, although I’m pretty spry for my age and I’m still working. I ended up doing storyboards; there was more money in that than in comic books. I’ve done some stuff for a local guy, the Mecca Comic Group, just little things, no big time things though.

I was 21 years old when I started out in comic books. I lived in New York and I had just come back from the Marine Corp. I’d been in the United States Marine Corp for three years and I was a young kid, wet behind the ears and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I used to like to draw a lot as a kid and in fact one of my mentors as a kid was Jerry Grandenetti who worked with DC. Jerry was a couple of years older than I am and he was nice enough to teach me the inking and that kind of thing. My first wife was more inspirational for me for doing comics and she said, “Just get yourself together and do something with this talent.” I made some samples up and we canvassed New York city and went to every publishing house you could think of. One of them, of course, was Timely Comics which ended up being Marvel later on, but nothing really happened and I couldn’t get in to see anyone like Stan Lee. Finally my wife and I ended up with a cup of coffee walking the streets of New York and I got to see Jack Kirby. He’s really the one who got me started. My wife and I went over together to Jack Kirby’s office, which was then called Simon and Kirby, and Jack took me into his office and looked my stuff. My sat in the lobby and by this time she was about eight and half months pregnant. So I went into Jack’s office and he looked at my stuff and said, “Well this is nice,” because I was an amateur and I don’t think I was very good at the time. [laughter] So he walks out into the lobby and while he’s telling me, “You know Vic, your work is nice, but don’t call me, I’ll call you.” It was the old story, the brush off, and as he walked out my wife stood up and I said, “Jack, this is my wife Connie.” He looked her up and down and he did a double take and saw that she was pregnant and what ran across his mind was, “This poor guy, he needs work,” and he said, “How are you?” and introduced himself to my wife and said, “By the way, have you seen Stan Lee at Timely Comics?” I said, “Yes Jack, I went there but I couldn’t get to see Stan.” I was walking around with a pack full of amateurish work; I couldn’t even afford a proper portfolio. He said, “Well, wait a minute,” and he went back into his cubby hole and he writes a letter and sealed it and said, “Take this back to Stan now.” So I took it back to Stan and got past the secretary and I was sitting across the desk from Stan Lee. Stan was a very casual guy and had his feet up on the desk and he said, “Oh, Jack says you can draw this and that,” and I said, “Yes Stan, would you like to see me work?” and he said, “No, that’s ok. Here,” and he threw a script across the desk and said, “I want this back in a week.” And that was the beginning of my comic book career.

I never knew what was in the letter; obviously it was Jack telling Stan to help this poor guy. And that’s how I got started in comics. Had it not been for Jack Kirby I’d probably be laying bricks with my cousin or something. [laughter]

DB: What were Stan and Jack like back in the mid ‘50s?
VC: Jack Kirby was a heck of a nice guy. He was always a model guy and I felt sorry when he died. A very, very nice man. Stan was very nice too, he was a young guy and interested in what he was doing. At the time there was just a handful of guys, I was there, John Romita, Joe Maneely was there, there had to be at least eight to ten cartoonists working up at Timely during those days. Not that many. Stan had not even started Spider-Man. John had come over from Jack Kirby and was doing Captain America, so John Romita had more experience with the superheroes. I wanted to do superheroes but in those days superheroes were not big, so Stan would give me these horror stories and I did a lot of westerns. Ringo Kid, that kind of stuff. I worked with Stan for about five years and my wife, who was born in the South, wanted to go back to her home to her mother, she was young and didn’t like New York city so we left. Stan continued to send me work through the mail. So there I was, living on a farm, sitting out in the sunshine and drawing comic books [laughter], rolling them up and sending them out to New York. I also did some work for Charlie Biro and Lev Gleason.

I guess I worked with Stan for about five or six years and then things got pretty bad in the comic book field, the industry went downhill because of the horror stuff that was going on, which was nothing like it is today. Stan couldn’t send me any more work that point. He said, “Vic, I just can’t send you anything anymore. I’ve got guys that live here, like Gene Colan and John Romita and I can’t even give them work.” At that point that’s when I got out. I’d spent a total of five or six years doing comics with Stan.

From there I got out of comics altogether. I was living in the South and travelled to Atlanta and got a job in a printing house called Stein Printing Company. There were using me as an illustrator doing little booklets and I really learned the printing industry in those days. I learned typography and in those days nothing was computerized, it was just layouts, and from printing I ended up doing advertising and went back to Columbia and started up my own studio there and worked on my own all the time.

Then I went to New York and I went from doing my own advertising stuff to doing storyboards and became the senior Art Director with Alden Advertising Agency in New York. Again, I was jumping around; there were so many politics in advertising. My field of advertising was always up and down and one of the years I was out of work I was offered a job with Mother Earth News Magazine, the owner of that was John Shuttleworth and it was located in Henderson, North Carolina. I worked there, but that didn’t last too long, so I moved back to New York and worked for Reader’s Digest as an art director.

I finally ended up in Atlanta working as an art director with a company called BDA/BBDO, which still exists in New York and I became an accredited art director. I began winning awards in TV and print and the comic book field was past me at that point because I was winning awards. I always used to draw my own layouts and at the point I started to win awards I was propositioned to leave BDA/BBDO with a good friend of mine, Jonas Gold. Jonas told me, “Why don’t you just quit and work with me?” He was with an agency in Atlanta, McDonald and Little was the name of the place. So I started working with him on the side, just moonlighting and I finally quit my job with BDA/BBDO and began freelancing and did very well in Atlanta as well. Jonas got me into the field of storyboarding and I got the reputation and nickname of ‘Quick Vic’, which I use on my web-site, because I’m famous for drawing 100 frames in an hour [laughter] because when I draw I seldom use reference. Even now I don’t do it unless I have to do it. It’s the old comic book background; if you wanted to make money then you had to draw. Jonas then left Atlanta. He was my key man, where he went I’d follow, and he moved to West Port in Connecticut and was working in York City and he called me one day and said, “Vic, why don’t you come up? I’ve got a job for you.” I said, “Ok,” and packed my family up for a summer vacation thinking I’ll only be going for one job for Jonas. In those days you could work two days and make $15,000, and there was nothing unusual about that in the old days. There was far more money in those days in storyboarding than in comic books, so before you know it Jonas says, “Vic, why don’t you just stay here because I can use you all the time.” My wife went back to Atlanta and sold the house and I remained in New York. We finally ended up in West Port, Connecticut and I was making almost two to three hundred thousand dollars per year. It was wonderful, living in West Port with all these famous illustrators like Joe Ives and Bernie Fuchs. I had a beautiful home there; my house was a couple of blocks away from Phil Donahue. And that’s what I did. For the rest of my life I did storyboards. In New York I worked with numerous accounts like General Motors, AT&T Worldwide, Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola; I had a long list of accounts that I worked on and I worked creatively too. Sometimes I had storyboards but I did a lot of conceptual stuff as well. I did a lot of conceptual stuff with Pepsi Cola that I’m very proud of. I’m still doing it now. I’d go from New York to LA and back and worked for many people, including Disney. I did the original posters for 101 Dalmatians and got paid for that very well.

Finally I was in New York and I remarried and then 9-11 hit. It was just horrible and I guess we both panicked and we just got out of there. Nobody in the storyboard industry was even freelancing anymore because they were afraid to go into the city in case something happened. So, at that point, about a month after 9-11 we decided to go south to Columbia, South Carolina. My first wife lives here and five of my kids live here and we came down and I got a few little jobs, only storyboards, but it was bad all over. I still had one shot and I thought, maybe I’ll call my friend John Sabel at Disney, who I’d done the concept for 101 Dalmatians and see how he’s doing. So I phoned him and John said, “Yeah, come on out. I want you to work with me on Pirates Of The Caribbean.” I went out to California and worked with John on the Pirates Of The Caribbean posters and everything was fine. I worked with him for a month and he paid me over $10,000 which was wonderful, but I was out there for another three years and he never called me again. I know they had some problems with Disney, they were laying people off and strangely enough four or five years later he emailed me and asked, “How are you doing?” I was really surprised and I wrote him back, of course. He was a good friend and I liked him a lot.

The old comic book artists, well most of them are dead or they’ve moved on to other fields. In my case it’s a completely new generation as you know. Comics are computerized, some of it’s nice and some of it I just can’t put up with because a lot of these kids I think just don’t know how to draw. I have some friends who are doing work for Marvel, and they’re doing very well I guess, but the problem with me is that I am 75 and I don’t want to stop working. Want’s happened with the storyboard business, which is basically my field, is that my agents will not receive work for me on paper anymore; it’s all got to be done on computer. I was shunning away from that whole field because I said, “Yeah, Quick Vic, I can work faster than anyone with a stylus pen and a tablet,” and it’d drive me crazy. I have a computer and I’d scan it and send it off but they don’t accept that, they want that computerised look. I’m learning to use Photoshop and Corel Paint and my agents said, “If you can learnt to do stuff on the computer then we’ll send you work again,” so that whole field has completely changed. It doesn’t matter how good an illustrator you were they just won’t take stuff on paper anymore; it all has to be done on computer. That’s the way it is.

DB: There are some Fantastic Four illustrations on your site. What’s the story behind them?
VC: A friend of mine, Sanford Greene, who works for Marvel and who’s more of an animator than I am. He does the drawings on computer, the pencils, the inks and the colours. He was telling me, “Vic, if you want to start practicing now to get into comics then maybe you should start drawing character stuff,” and he suggested that I draw the Fantastic Four. I did two pieces, but I did it the old style, paper with magic markers, but its obsolete now, no-one uses markers.

DB: Do you see Stan Lee anymore?
VC: I call him every once in a while. He doesn’t forget who I am, he’ll say, “How ya doin’ Vic?” and I start talking about the people we knew and he’ll say, “My God, you’re still alive and you’ve got such a wonderful memory.” Stan’s memory is terrible [laughter] but he’s nice though. I’ve had lunch with him and tried to talk about the old days but you mention Jack Abel and that’s it. Jack did a lot of my inking. I started off doing my own inking but Jack did a lot, but these days a lot of those people aren’t around anymore. Years ago when I worked with Stan I used to bring him into the Cartoonists and Illustrators Club and I remember going in one evening and walking up to the bar and meeting Al Williamson and Wally Wood. These are things I’ll never forget. Ross Andru, you mentioned him, I only met him once and he was playing great jazz piano, he was a very talented guy. Joe Maneely was a really nice guy. When I met Joe he was an in-house artist. Every time I’d go to deliver my work to Stan Joe would always be there doing mostly war stories that I remember. He was always on the premises and he was Stan’s favourite. He was a very nice guy. Joe Kubert, Joe Letterese, Mike Sekowsky, they were always there, George Tuska, Gene Colan, Alex Toth they were all my mentors. Alex, if you’ll excuse the expression, was a real prick. [laughter] I called Alex up several times, never met him, but I always admired his work and lot of my stuff used to look like Alex’s because I used to copy his stuff. We all used to copy from each other back then. If you look at a lot of the guys we’d copy each other’s faces and hands. I spoke to Alex one time when he was in California and he was very down in the dumps and he was very unfriendly. I remember talking to John Romita about him that he was very reclusive and didn’t like people but he was a very funny guy and he always did his own stuff. He’s a very talented guy. Alex, Gene Colan, I always admired those guys a lot.

I was only in the field professionally for only five years and that was it. There’s such a drive now for the old artists, it’s a funny thing. When I left comics I became better than comics by drawing illustrations. A lot of the comic book artists, like John Romita, are terrific illustrators. But the young kids of today they hype up the muscles and stuff and I guess the kids like that stuff. I once spoke to John before he retired and said, “I wouldn’t mind going back into comics John,” and he said, “Well don’t kill yourself trying.” It’s just a totally different field and you have to have a mindset to do that and it’s difficult for me to even think the way these kids think, not so much with the drawing but the attitude.

The old artists were trained mechanically so to say. We all copied, as kids, from Milton Caniff and Alex Raymond. If you look at Al Williamson you’ll see that he copied him to a T. John Prentice was another. It’s a trend. It’s not to say they don’t draw well, some guys are interesting, but they tend to follow the TV with the action shots and the foreshortening. There were certain rules, per se, in the old days and you just didn’t break the rules.

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FURTHER READING:
Vic Carrabotta's official web-site
Vic Carrabotta at the GCD
Vic Carrabotta's Atlas/Timely Credits

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Looking Back With Dave Simons

These things are best written down while the memory is still fresh in the mind, plus it’s good therapy and helps put things on the record.

This short interview with Dave was done back in February, 2009. Dave’s idea was to do an update to our first ever interview, done in 2004, to update where he was professionally, and because we both knew each other a lot better now. There was a lot that Dave wanted to talk about. What had triggered him was my short, but intense, confrontation with the ‘editors’ at Wikipedia over Dave’s entry on the site. Dave had approached me to write an entry for him on the Wiki with the intention of raising his profile, and possibly increasing his chances of getting more commission work. I had no problem with this, and hey – it was Dave – so I went to work and began to write his entry and posted the first draft on the Wiki site itself. It was promptly removed with the excuse given that Dave wasn’t ‘inherently notable’ as he was merely a comic book artist. This news got to me in the worst heatwave in Adelaide in over a hundred years, so my fuse wasn’t already lit, it’d been burning to exploding point. I began a running battle with the Wiki people, pointed out that there were plenty of people listed who’d maybe lettered one comic book, and that Dave’s credits stretched back to the early 1980s and spanned companies such as Marvel, DC, Topps and more. And that was before I threw in his own creations and his extensive animation work. The main issue the Wiki people had, was that they believed that neither Dave himself or I were qualified to write about Dave as we had no sources. Michael Netzer stepped in, copied my work over and I added the footnotes. The entry is now there for the duration, thanks to Michael. The other offshoot of this was the formation of the Dave Simons Appreciation Society where I handed Dave the title of ‘Inherently Notable’. Publicly Dave showed his usual modesty at this attention, but privately he was egging me along and was highly amused at both my righteous rage and the attention that he was getting.

The format was an interesting one. Instead of doing a standard phone or email interview Dave insisted on using the instant messaging function of Facebook for the conversation. I suspect that Dave didn’t want me hearing his voice, which, at the time, was rough and weak at best and, due to the nature of his illness, speaking exhausted him. It did make for an odd interview as we kept ‘talking’ over each other as we awaited the other’s typed replies. We did the interview over a week in a few sessions, as Dave’s health permitted. There was a lot more discussed, but this is the best of it. Once I’d edited the interview down I sent it over to Dave, only to get an email stating that his doctors had finally diagnosed him as being incurable and given him between six months and two years to live. I was gutted, but Dave took it all in his stride. I knew he was worried, but he felt that life would play itself out and he took faith in both his religion and the fact that he’d known others who lived beyond expectations when faced with the same news. This is when I got the idea to run a series of auctions and a public appeal so that we could wipe Dave’s debts clean and hopefully give him some financial stability. His medical costs were covered as he’d served time in the Coast Guard in the 1970s and was thus eligible for assistance via the Veteran Affairs scheme. Initially Dave was reluctant to accept any such assistance and felt it should be saved as a secret weapon, to be used when he needed it. I pushed the issue and finally Dave responded positively. By this time the wheels were in motion as I’d already contacted Dave’s agent and friend, Bob Shaw and also Bob Almond for assistance. Bob Shaw instantly set up an eBay account and we arranged that Bob would pay the postage and I’d pay the eBay fees, thus every cent raised would be able to go directly to Dave. Dave’s email to me was priceless. “You know,” he said, “every time someone has approached me to help with these things, I’ve done so. I think you’re right, I deserve this.” I couldn’t agree more. At this time Dave was feeling poorly, but was working on finishing up some commissions and the last of his Army Of Darkness pages. Once he’d finished his AoD work he mixed up his medication and found himself in hospital, in a critical condition. As Dave told me later, the doctors believed that he’d not be able to pull through.

We launched the appeal by emailing everyone we knew for donations of art, or anything really. Some, like Gene and Adrienne Colan, Tony Isabella and Norm Breyfogle responded by sending donations directly to Dave. Others questioned the veracity of what we were doing so I then approached Clifford Meth. Cliff gets emails like this all the time but this one was different – we didn’t want Cliff to run the appeal, we just wanted a bit of guidance and, more importantly, the use of his name. Cliff threw himself into the Appeal, emailing people he knows and posting messages at his blog and on Facebook. As I expected once people saw his name they opened their hearts and donated where and what they could. Paul Ryan, Mike Mignola, Fred Hembeck, Brian Postman, Mike Pascale, John Romita Sr, Bob Almond, Scott Ambruson, Kris Carter, Andy Brown, Craig Rousseau, Herb Trimpe, Walter Simonson, Alan Weiss, Simon Bisley, Len Wein, Mark McKenna, Steve Mannion, Jay Fife, Scott Wegener, Kevin West – the list was long and full of talent (and this list is far from complete), professionals and fans alike. Cliff’s assistance can’t be underplayed here – without him on board I doubt we’d have gotten off the ground. Cliff went to pains to tell people that he wasn’t the driving force behind this, but both Bob Shaw and myself didn’t correct anyone when they insisted that he was. It was smoother that way.

Once Dave got out of the hospital he decided to donate to his own Appeal and contributed some sketches which we auctioned off. More donations arrived, people sent over art they’d bought, books and other items of value. People who’d never met Dave, nor spoken to him were moved to help, and help it did. Frank Brunner walked up to Dave at a convention and handed him a sketch from his portfolio for the Appeal. Shawn McManus sent over an incredible piece of art and lamented that he wasn’t a bigger name so it could raise more cash. The whole time is full of wonderful stories like that. Dave’s financial situation was improved out of sight. Bob was the driving force behind Dave’s first sketchbook, which he launched at his last convention appearance. I’m proud of the fact that Dave selected a painting that I owned for the cover and even happier when a box arrived full of Dave’s art, preliminaries and a sketchbook, signed and dedicated, complete with three custom sketches done to such detail that, upon first look, I believed that they were prints in the book. That was how good Dave was as an artist.

Lurking in the background was this interview. About four weeks ago Dave mentioned it again and I went back to it. Dave had said that he’d get to it when he had a bit of free time, but he was tied up with his impending move and some more health problems. In a move which I accepted as Dave being Dave, he was more worried about my wife, Lyndal, and her health situation than his own and expressed his relief at hearing that, after a serious scare, she’d been given a clean bill of health. He was also tickled pink to hear my escapades with my cat, Merlin, after Merlin had gone over the fence and disappeared for a few days. Indeed our last email exchange revolved around my Merlin and his own cat, Smokey. Dave was always more concerned about others than himself.

Sadly Dave never got the chance to edit this interview, but I’ve done what I believe he’d have wanted. As I’ve previously mentioned, there was a lot more discussed, but I doubt if Dave would have wanted all of it on display as some of it could be construed as being negative towards his fans, those people he liked the most. Dave always interacted with people, he loved it, but he did tire of people asking him for free art and sketches all the time. If he was in a position to send a sketch he would, but he wasn’t in such a position and declining these requests always seemed to bother him, not that he’d show it. What Dave wanted to get out there with this interview, was his love for the craft of art and his many influences. We had a few projects in the works, and this is the first that I can put out there for everyone to read and hopefully enjoy.

I miss Dave, and reading this interview just makes me miss him even more. I know there’s a lot more Dave in my archives as he’d given me the task of writing about his life as a whole, but that’s another story...

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DANIEL BEST: We might as well start with the most recent stuff - you're working on Army Of Darkness - how did you land that gig?

DAVE SIMONS: Once again, Joe Rubinstein hooked me up. Told me to get in touch with Nicky at Dynamite.

DB: You did the Christmas Special first?

DS: No. Nicky sent me the Red Sonja re-marks to do while I was waiting for the script.

DB: What was the reaction to the Sonja covers?

DS: There was a little problem with them right from the start because the cover stock was just regular cover stock. Everything smeared, so I ended up using crow quill on them. They ended up with kind of a beat-up look because of that.

DB: That's happened before hasn't it? The Green Lantern commission?

DS: That was different. It had to be on this special acid-free green paper. I ruined the first one accidentally and there wasn't a spare sheet. The client then ran out of the paper. Eventually he got more. I told him to send two sheets just in case. You saw the result.

DB: It looked good, and different. It's an interesting concept. That raises a question - are 'concept' commissions harder to do than just someone asking for, say, a Conan illo?

DS: Not sure what you mean by a 'concept' commission.

DB: When someone has a theme going - like Michael Finn and his One Minute Later covers.

DS: Or John Bamber and his Western Super Heroes.

DB: Exactly.

DS: No, sometimes I get into it and get an idea of what it should be right away. Sometimes I don't. Daredevil was hard for me--that DD vs. Fixer that I did. The Conan that I did for Zack Esser came naturally. I was really into it.

DB: I'd hazard a guess and say you're more familiar with Conan though, as opposed to Daredevil.

DS: Sure! I remember discovering the Lancer paperbacks at Edsall's Drugs in Wallkill, NY when I was in high school. I thought it would make a great comic book, A little over a year later it was one! Did I ever tell you what I thought the ultimate Conan comic would be?

DB: No. Do share.

DS: Figures by John Buscema. Backgrounds by Barry Smith. Costumes by Steranko. The whole thing inked by Wallace Wood. Wouldn't that have been great? That's thinking of the division of labor more like in animation, tho.

DB: Jesus!! I'd have bought that in a heartbeat. Written by whom though?

DS: Written by Roy Thomas, of course!

DB: Works for me. I'd expect that it'd never hit the deadline though (laughter) Steranko and Wood would see to that.

DS: That's why Steranko just does costumes. Woody made deadlines when he was sober, I think. You'd have to ask Kupps, he was a Woody assistant. Wood would be doing backgrounds of course by that point so don't judge by some of the Cannon and Sally Forth stuff. There's obvious Ralph Reese and Larry Hama in there. Whole pages.

DB: Did you ever meet Wood?

DS: I was at a con and I was sitting near Joe. Wood was sitting at an angle across the room. Joe said I should go say hi to him. Wood was obviously not doing well at the time and no one was at his table. It was very sad and I couldn't deal with it, so I didn't go over. If it were today, I would have.

I find now that one of the most important things in life is to try to make others feel better about themselves.

DB: Poor guy - the end of his life wasn't a happy story was it?

DS: No. Hopefully his current lifetime is going along better.

DB: Indeed! Back to the comics...how's the current AOD story going?

DS: AoD--well, coming along. I think I'm doing better than I did on the Christmas book. I've gotten more into drawing comics, making interesting stuff out of the script. I find that beginning writers tend to not think of shots so much. For instance, in this story Ash and three other characters are wandering around this cavern system. The writer wrote it so that they're ALL in every panel. No close-ups, no dynamic shots focusing on one character. So I have to find a way to work those in--while accommodating the dialogue, of course.

DB: That can't be easy. I doubt I could write a full script. When I did Simon Saurian with Alan Weiss we worked Marvel style. To me a full script almost implies that you're telling the artist how to draw - that might work for a new artist, but for the likes of you and Weiss...well I ain't gonna be telling you how to pace it, lay it out, design and almost how to draw the thing.

DS: That has its definite advantages. The drawback is that you don't have a firm idea of how much dialogue there's going to be. With someone like Chris Claremont, this can be a problem.

DB: His scripts must be like phone books.

DS: (laughter) Yeah! That's the thing with writers--they love words. That's why they're writers. Words alone aren't enough, tho. Whether writing or drawing, one should be a storyteller first.

DB: Words are secondary to me - when Weiss and I did Simon we spent hours working out the story before we even touched the dialogue.

DS: That's the best thing to do, whether you're working alone or with someone else.

DB: You did some work for my mates at First Salvo. Did they *ahem* pay you?

DS: Yes. I ALWAYS GET PAID.

DB: He says in large, capitol letters...did Joe hook you up there as well?

DS: Yes. People say a lot of crap about Joe, and some of it is true and some of it's hilarious, but he's been a great friend to me. What did you think of the Aman drawing I sent you?

DB: It's good. Did you get paid for it or did he gave it back...(laughter)

DS: I don't know what happened to it. I'm pretty sure I just sent him a scan, not the original, since I did it as a sample. I'll have to see if the original is still kicking around here some place. It's very Wood-influenced.

DB: First Salvo never published your story did he?

DS: No, Joe never finished inking it. Only the backgrounds are inked.

DB: Did you see the Breyfogle & Weiss covers?

DS: Yes, I saw them when they were fresh at last year's Big Apple Con--the one I sent you photos from.

DB: Those covers are hanging on my wall now. I'll get your art, buy the Sal Velutto and Bob Almond story and make my own First Salvo comic - I have the cover and a few pin-ups now...(laughter)

DS: You should! Only come up with better names.

DB: I think a pet monkey could think of better names. Boss Aman sounds like something out of an old prison movie.


DS: Or Cannonball Run.

DB: That's what we need - instead of Dangers Dozen, Dean(Martin)'s Dozen!

DS: Did you know Jackie Chan was in one of those?

DB: Yep - we watched it the other month - we bought it on DVD for about a dollar...(laughter)...I got it for Jackie Chan and Dean Martin.

DS: Cool. I sent you a bunch of my roughs a little while ago. Have you had much of a chance to examine them?

DB: I've poured through them - I'm impressed by the detail in some of them and very impressed by the energy of them.

DS: Thank you!! Did it give you any insight into my creative process?

DB: Yes - there's a lot of variation from your preliminaries to your finished art. You also have a tendency to do more than one approach to a subject. On some you can see where it was all going, and you've fully realised it, on others you can see where you've worked out any potential problems.

DS: Right. The roughs are just my first thot. On the way to getting finished I often come up with what I think is a better idea. You can never do a drawing (or create anything) and be so in love with it that you can't change it for the good of the story. As Will Meugniot told me "You have to be willing to kill your children."

DB: You said something about the Ghost Rider cover that you inked over Bob Budiansky - you were happier doing it now because you could do it better. I found that an interesting comment indeed.

DS: Really? Why?

DB: Because the original looks amazing. To me, that original, indeed that image, is the pinnacle of you and Bob as an art team. However, having seen a high res scan of the original, and I hope this makes sense, the background on the original has brush strokes, mine is an almost solid black. I can see the improvements.

DS: (laughter) That’s because I used all Black Magic ink on the original. On the re-creation I used FW acrylic ink for the black areas. Joe turned me on to the FW.

I think I know now what made that team click. It's a marriage of opposites. Now Bob is a nice guy and this is not to knock him at all. His actual draftsmanship is better than mine in many cases. But he has a much more conservative nature than I do. What I brought to it was the idea of inking things in a certain way just so they would look cool. Besides my usual influences of Wood and Wrightson, I was also looking at Robert Williams for chrome technique. I had no back-off on changing the line work to bring across a texture or add a sparkle.

DB: I know Bob loved you as an inker on that book and wasn't happy when you left. You guys never did anything outside of Ghost Rider did you?

DS: Nope. I probably should have stayed with it. Oh well.

DB: Why did you leave again?

DS: The sales were poor. Probably topped anything being published today, but in the scale of the times they were poor.

DB: What was the last comic you drew before the recent AOD?

DS: I think that would have to be Wild Stars for Little Rocket. Mike Tierney, publisher, editor, and writer.

DB: How long ago was that?

DS: I guess 7 years now. I was working on it on 9/11.

DB: That's a lot of time between jobs.

DS: I ghosted Mendy and the Golem for Joe in 2003, and I did a lot of storyboards in the intervening years.

DB: What did you do with all the storyboards that you drew? Do the companies keep them?

DS: Yes, that's why I do them digitally if I can. I don't get the art back, so why should they have it?

DB: So they kept them all?

DS: Standard practice in the animation business. They archive them someplace I think. The artist contractually has no rights to them.

DB: Bizarre.

DS: Standard practice in the animation industry.

DB: As it was in the comic industry for decades.

DS: Yeah. But quite often the storyboards are not saleable the way comics pages are. Not always finished works of art. Mine are about as highly finished as any you'll see. You've seen some. I could probably sell the Captain Planet or Jem boards if I still had them, people have fond memories of those shows.

DB: That does factor into it as well - the nostalgia factor.

DS: Big factor from what I've seen.

DB: But that could apply to any comic book art. For me I wanted that Ghost Rider cover - remember, you once offered to do the recreation yourself, but I wanted the whole package - Bob and you - because that's what I liked the most.

Do you collect art or comic books?

DS: Not so much. I have a collection of art books. Many of them are pretty beat-up looking. I use them, they aren't just a collection. Some of the older ones are only held together by a binder clip.

DB: Have you ever had a desire to collect art? I mean, you studied at the feet of John Buscema - did you ever think, "Hmmm, I might sneak a sketch or two out here."?

DS: I used to have a few. He would do demonstration drawings on a big newsprint pad and then pass them out at the end of class.

DB: What happened to them?

DS: That was a long time ago. Lost in a move, I suppose. I learned what I could from them. If I still had them I believe I could learn more, but John's stuff is out there in reproduction.

I used to have a Ka-Zar splash by Brent Anderson and Armando. I also had a couple of Wrightson Swamp Thing pages. I’d like to get a Woody page from one of his Warren stories.

DB: A Woody Warren - that'd not be cheap. Wrightson Swamp Things! Impressive. All gone now?

DS: Yes sorry to say. One Swamp Thing was sold--reluctantly. The Ka-Zar and the other Swamp Thing were lost when I moved back to NY. A Frank Robbins Shadow page would be nice.

I have a question for you.

DB: Ask away.

DS: Now that you know how closely connected some of us artists are--for example, 2 years ago or a little more I had Brian Postman, Gerry Acerno, Joe Rubinstien and Mike Netzer all helping me on storyboards--does it give you any sort of a different viewpoint on the business at all, or any sort of "6 degrees of separation" aspect of it?

DB: Absolutely. For one there isn't really a '6 degree' is there? It’s more like '2 Degrees of Separation".

DS: I suppose!

DB: It's a very incestuous industry - makes me wonder how people cope if they annoy someone.

DS: Well, you've seen that. Kupperberg, Rubinstein, Netzer. I've annoyed people too, I'm sure.

DB: If you have then I've never heard of it. Most everyone likes you. It's the same with Norm Breyfogle; I've yet to hear anyone saying he's no good as a person.

But Joe has his detractors. They all say a similar thing - they like him as an artist but some do think he's a wanker of a person.

DS: I think that's based on the Joe Rubinstein of 20 or 30 years ago. As I said, he's helped me out a lot. I adore Mike too, but I think he has some of the nuttiest ideas I've ever heard. Neal Adams for President?

DB: Hey - he couldn't do a worse job than the guy you had for the past eight years could he? And you've heard Mike laugh - I think his nuttier ideas are just there to get people talking.

What was the attraction towards Frank Robbins?

DS: I loved his stuff. I was in Buscema's class at the time. This is late ‘75; I'm still in the Coast Guard. I especially liked his Shadow stuff. I know a lot of people didn't. He had to follow Kaluta and what they really wanted was more Kaluta.

DB: Had you seen any Caniff at that time?

DS: Oh, sure, I was familiar with Caniff. Robbins' stuff had more energy, which appealed to me.

DB: There's a lot who say Robbins was not cut out for superhero stuff, but I loved him and Springer on The Invaders. How did you see that stuff?

DS: I liked the invaders but would rather have seen Frank ink his own stuff.

DB: And you met him?

DS: I was in the Coast Guard, my last year there, and had been taking Buscema's class. The Coast Guard base was on Governor's Island in the NY harbor. I got the idea that I might like to meet Robbins and, figuring he probably lived in New York, looked him up in the phone book. I called a Frank Robbins on 14th St. and it was him. We arranged for me to come over. I was really excited.

DB: Surely it wasn’t that simple?

DS: It was that simple.
"Are you the Frank Robbins that draws Invaders?"
"Yes."
Some fanboy gushing on my part and he said I could come to his studio. I brought over some of my stuff which was heavily influenced by him. He was really nice, pointed out areas where I needed to improve, which at that time was almost everything.

Personally he was a pretty goofy looking guy. Receding forehead and hairline. big beak of a nose. Receding chin. Prominent Adam’s apple. Thick horn-rimmed glasses. Hair a little on the long side and he smoked cigarettes in a black cigarette holder.

He had these Swedish design sling back type chairs in his studio. You know the kind? From the 60s, canvas stretched over a wire frame. So when I came over he would sit in one and I'd take the other. I think they were red. Frank sat and stood and moved like his characters. Arms and legs at all sorts of odd angles.

So he's sitting in this low-slung chair like that. Invariably he would run out of lighter fluid for his Zippo. For the younger folks reading this, a Zippo has to be filled with naphtha fluid, not butane. In filling his lighter, he would invariably get the lighter fluid all over himself. Then he'd go to light his cigarette (in the cigarette holder) and set himself on fire. Then I'd be treated to the sight of Frank Robbins trying to put himself out, slapping away at his clothes with his arms flapping at all those weird Frank Robbins angles. I had to try not to laugh.

DB: Sounds priceless

DS: It was! Happened almost every time I was over there. He was never hurt, of course.

DB: Why do you think he was unappreciated?

DS: Fans don't necessarily know good art. He wasn't stylistically in tune with the times. The guys that were hot were Wrightson, Adams, and Moebius during his 'Arzach' period. Artists love his stuff. Frank had more energy to his work. I respond to that.

I have to tell you the advice Frank gave me.

This was after about 4 or 5 visits. I would only see him about once a month. I didn't want to be a pest. He told me, “you should quit trying to draw like me." When I asked why, he said "Nobody's hiring the real Frank Robbins, why should they hire a fake Frank Robbins?" Good advice, commercially, but somewhat sad.

I didn't see him much after that. Called to say hi a few times. By this time I was living in the Village on 11th St. and 5th Ave. Then I started working with Ken Landgraf.

DB: The photos of that time look like you all had a lot of fun.

DS: We did! By the way the girl at the keyboard is Jessica Zalkind. Ken had her do some minor assistant work. Some coloring, I think. Could be wrong. Ken was the one who played the keyboard. We kept those oversized editions, like the Superman vs Spider-Man that you wrote about handy. They were a godsend to beginning artists. Ken, Armando and I kept that one around, along with Superman vs. Muhammad Ali and a couple of Russ Cochran EC reprints (the oversize ones in black & white). They were a constant source of reference. If you can find any of the strips that appeared under Ken's name in High Times, the influence of Supes vs. Ali is obvious. For the record, those were laid out by Ken, scripted and lettered by me, tightened up in pencil mostly by Armando, figures mostly inked by Armando with some inking by Ken and background inking by me, and colored by me. The coloring was the worst job, since I had to hand-cut rubylith and zip with an x-acto knife while looking through a magnifying glass. All that for one page with a lame gag at the end.

DB: All that work sounds too damn hard. I'd like to think you were paid well, but then again you probably paid to do the strip.

DS: It was one of our more well-paying jobs from the period. Prior to my getting Howard the Duck, we did most everything that way. Strips for SCREW and SMUT were done this way, too, with the exception of being in black & white and Armando seldom touching them. Mind you, I wouldn't work for any of those clients today.

DB: I wonder where all those art pieces are now? I've always been amused by people asking Norm Breyfogle about the porno comics that he drew. Makes me chuckle when he points out that it was his brother, Kevin, who drew them and not he.

It's an interesting question really - is there anything you'd refuse to draw?

DS: If anyone has them it'd be Ken. He may have sold them off long ago, though. I would never do pro-drug material again. At the time I justified it by thinking that Ken's name was going on it, not mine, that and it was a good payday. I'd never do hardcore porn again, either. Among other things, I still have a career in "children's television" and I am a minister, even though I've only worn the vestments once. Nudity is another story. That would depend on the situation. I have a few nudes in my sketchbooks and of course I've worked from a live model. I wouldn't have any problem with some sexually oriented humor on the level of "Hey fellers! Look! It's a titty!" Y'know, kinda the fifties pin-up mentality. Basically, if I wouldn't sign my legal name to them, I wouldn't do them.

DB: How good was your band?

DS: (laughter) We didn't have a band! Ken wanted it, wanted me to do lead vocals, but I have very little musical talent and no sense of rhythm. Of course, that didn't stop the Sex Pistols.

DB: What was the name of the band?

DS: I don't think we ever settled on one. It was pretty much blues thru a punk sensibility. Ken wanted to be the next Ray Manzarek. (laughter) Armando played guitar. But no matter what he played, it came out sounding like Spanish guitar.

DB: Naturally...(laughter)

DS: You've spoken to Mr. McGillicuddy on the phone, right? We should mention that he doesn't speak with an accent or anything. To hear him you'd never know he was Hispanic. His roots come out in other ways, tho--like the guitar. He's not Sergio Aragones.

DB: He does speak fluent English - I was surprised actually, after doing an interview with Danny Budilandi that I can't transcribe.

DS: Well, Danny's Filipino.

DB: And a damned nice guy and a damned fine artist too, I might point out.

DS: Yeah. Y'know, the Filipinos were all over the animation business in the 80s.

DB: They spawned a genre.

DS: They saw a racket that paid better! More money to send back home to Manila. Their families could live like royalty on that money. Bill DuBay brought a lot of them to L.A. to work at Marvel Productions. When I started they were already there.

DB: Did you know many of them?

DS: Oh, gosh, if I list them all I'm sure I'll leave some out. Just off the top of my head, Nestor Redondo, Rudy Nebres, Romeo Tanghal--more that I can't think of now. Alcala came out too, but didn't work at Marvel Prods. I already worked with him in New York. I like the Filipino people a lot. Very warm.

DB: I've always wondered why they were all so talented.

DS: Competition! Plus their heritage from the war. G.I.s left great stuff behind--magazines with illos by guys like Frank Brangwyn (one of Alfredo's faves) Rockwell, Leyendecker, etc. They have more of an illustrative tradition in their comics because of that.

DB: I have Aussie reprints here full of stuff by Spanish and Filipino artists - all are amazing.

DS: Yeah, well, all of them don't make it to the states or to collections. I've seen some Filipino comics--in Tagalog and everything--that sucked. You know I like manga, but some of it sucks. If you're not in the country, you don't see that much of the crap. Why would anyone take the trouble of translating and reprinting it?

DB: It's a shame because a lot of that art was what I was exposed to growing up. Nebres, Garcia-Lopez...I can't help but wonder how much of it reached there.

DS: Oh sure! Thats the great stuff! That's why we see it. Estaban Maroto's another Spanish artist from the 70s.

DB: We got stuff here that you guys didn't - unpublished stuff from Warren, Skywald, Atlas (Seaboard)…

DS: Oh, really?

DB: Yep - I have an unpublished Starling Bog Beast here - it's on my blog - and a Simonson story

DS: Ha! Before your blog, I had no idea what Aussie comics might be like.

DB: Did they ever find that AoD Christmas cover?

DS: You won't believe it. As you may recall it had some lettering on it as part of the art--some signage. I had sent it to Gerry Acerno to do the lettering. He sent me a scan of the finished piece, I thought he had sent it on to Dynamite as I'd asked. Well, he was cleaning his studio last week and--you guessed it.

DB: No! He didn't!?

DS: Ya gotta say that like the Spanish girls from the Bronx--Oh, no, he DI-int!

DB: Dat he did?

DS: Damn white of him to fess up, tho. HE thought he sent it. I thought he sent it. It was at the bottom of a stack of paper, I guess.

DB: So, now what happens to it?

DS: Well, I'll see if the Dynamite guys want it or have any use for it. If not, I guess it's mine to do with as I please.

DB: You did some samples for DC last year - any feedback or follow-up from that?

DS: No. Looking back at it, they weren't that good. I went up to DC to see Harvey Richards. He liked the samples okay but it's hard to tell Harvey's reaction to things sometimes because he's so low-key. We also stopped in to meet his boss, Michael Siglain. The consensus was that I needed to work out a few things and that some of my linework was too heavy. i suppose that's a holdover from my inking for shit repro back in the day. I'm just pleased that they could take the time out to meet with me. That's more than I'd get anyplace else. That may not sound that good, but it really was a happy occasion in that I've made some progress on getting back into the business. Now that I have a better idea of what's needed and wanted, I can produce it. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way they can just tell you what they want. It has to be seen.

Maybe some other guys my age should actually try to do the kind of work people want to see nowadays. The 80s were fun, but they weren't the Renaissance. There's no reason someone couldn't change his style to suit today's tastes. After all, when I was a kid, once I'd seen Kirby I found Al Plastino boring and stodgy. Nothing wrong with Al Plastino, but he wasn't in step with the 60s. It's funny to me now that Kirby, a WW II vet and thus the same generation as my dad, was hip in the 60s. His art was in head shops. Gene Colan and Wally Wood (Di$neyland), too. I thought my dad was so square when I was 16 (who doesn't) but to me the 60s, especially the late 60s, were defined by Kirby and the Beatles. It was a great pairing, like a burger and a beer, hot dog and a Yoo-Hoo.

DB: Is it harder to break into the comic book industry now than it was back when you did?

DS: Beats me. Totally different game now. I told you how I broke in. You can't approach editors like that any more.

DB: But they still go to conventions...or is it more who you know than how good you are?

DS: Right. But they're not free to wander the floor. They're at the booth with a LONG line of fans. I'm not standing there like a kid with a backpack full of X-Men. I don't know what the answer to that is.

DB: Fair point. How is the reaction to you at conventions now?

DS: Good. I've stopped trying so hard. I go and see people and have a good time. That seems to be good promotion in itself. We'll see what happens at this con when I have a table to sit at (courtesy of Bob Shaw).

DB: Do you think your profile has been lifted now you're more active on-line?

DS: Yes, I do think people are more aware of me because of my online presence. I have you to thank for that.

DB: No need to thank me. I remember when I first interviewed you and people would email looking for you - it was near impossible...(laughter)

DS: Really? How so?

DB: You changed your email address I think. I think I had to wait until Alan Weiss told me your new one.

DS: Oh right! I wasn't that hip to the internet yet. Did I ever tell you about when Ken and I worked with Alfredo? Ken's idea was to hire Alfredo to ink one panel of a page and sacrifice most of the money on the job to him. This being with the proviso that we could watch him work on it. Alfredo inked some panels in Ken's Rock Comics.

DB: What did you get from watching him work?

DS: Alfredo was another character. We met him while we were briefly part of the 'American Tribe'. Ken and I did some work on The Prince and the Pauper adaptation. I remember working a suit of armor to death. Alfredo made stuff. He made his own fountain-pen brushes decades before such a thing was commercially available. He made a device for cleaning his lp records as they played, too. He always had a big bag of rice in his apartment. Once he made Ken go buy some for him. I'm sure Ken thought he was going to nip out and buy a box of Uncle Ben's or something.

Ken nearly had a hernia lugging the damn bag of rice back. It was huge.

Anyway, you asked what I learned. Mostly what I got was the speed at which Alfredo moved the brush and how that affected the line.

DB: Other than John Buscema and Alfredo, how many other formal or 'informal' art lessons like that did you have?

DS: Well, let's see--I learned a lot from Will Meugniot by working for him. He'd have me change something I did and I'd see that his way was better. This often involved storytelling, but he helped me improve my basic drawing, too. His animation credits far outstrip his comic book credits. I worked for him on Jem and the Holograms, Exo-Squad, Secret Files of the Spy Dogs, lots of stuff. If you don't know Exo-Squad, you should check it out. It's like an American version of Macross. Just watch them in order if possible. It's episodic.

DB: Is there more money in animation? A lot of artists move into that field - even Starlin did for a few years.

DS: There was. That business has its own pitfalls.

DB: Such as?

DS: Well, let's say you're doing a segment of storyboard for a 22 minute show. One would probably board 1/3 the episode, especially if it's an action-adventure show. Turn-around time 2-3 weeks. Bottom rate on that is about $3,000.00. It depends on what the show's budget is. No one artist gets a better rate than another, at least on the storyboards. Development is a different story.

Okay, so you make 3 grand in about 2 weeks. Sounds great, right? And that's for a cheap show. But on a show like that they hand out scripts once a week, so at most you're doing 6 episodes. So 3,000 times 6. That's $18,000. Still sounds good, right?

But then the show is finished for the season and you're laid off. Hopefully you can get on another show, but that might just be all the money you're making for that year.

DB: You directed shows though right?

DS: I was directing Spy Dogs and picking up other shows as well. At one time I had Spy Dogs in the day and two other shows I worked on at home at night and on the weekends. Armando worked on some of that.

DB: How did Armando cope with the deadline pressure of animation?

DS: Fine when he worked with me. I know him very well, of course, so I knew when he was running into trouble and could put out the fire before it started.

I used to have him and Don Manuel at my place in North Hollywood jamming out storyboards for Nascar Racers.

DB: What artists are there who you never inked but wanted to?

DS: Gee, that's a good one. I inked a lot of my heroes. Steranko. I would have liked to ink a Kirby comic. I only inked a couple of his presentation pieces for Ruby-Spears. Robbins. I wonder what I'd look like over another Wood-influenced artist such as Wayne Howard. I got to ink so many--both Buscemas, Gene Colan, Budiansky, even Frank Springer!

Springer was a terrific artist. Only inked him once, a Disco Dazzler cover. did you ever see Phoebe Zeitgeist?

DB: I only ever saw Phoebe on-line. Springer was a damned good guy - great to talk to

DS: Used to be able to get it at most tables at any con. Great for swipes because the Lampoon guys made him draw the most insane shit.

DB: I noticed that - I thought he was great inking Robbins - that's where I first noticed him

DS: Same here. I always liked my Robbins undiluted, tho. See some of the Batman comics he did?

DB: Yep – great stuff. The Lampoon stuff used to confuse me though. I couldn't associate a comic book artist with that stuff - same as Kupperberg with the Evil Clown

DS: You're younger than me, right? You kind of had to be there at the time. Bunch of guys at Harvard smoking anything they can get their hands on who are geniuses and grew up reading comics.

DB: Yah, I'm younger...heh....did you ever work for the Lampoon?

DS: It's hard to describe--just something that tapped into reflected and sometimes directed the views and opinions of the early 70s while puncturing their pretensions. No, I never worked for Lampoon.

DB: Did they ever approach you, or you them? I have to say, I loved the Lampoon in the early 1980s, when I reached my mid teens

DS: That’s the right time to discover it. No, I don't think there was ever a reach either way, unless I just cold-called them once.

DB: That's a shame - I could easily see you doing a Red Sonya parody
Like their Conman series

DS: Frank Thorne did something for them, didn't he? Sexy girl feature?

DB: I believe he did. Loads of people did - Kupps did a pile of work for them. Neal Adams - that Son Of God thing he did cracked me up.

DS: Son O' God was a benchmark.

DB: A definite highpoint. Bizarre story, but the art was incredible. Now, back to where we were, Wayne Howard. He was a mysterious character.

DS: I don't know anything about him except that he was a Woody assistant and the style stuck. He was a firearms enthusiast. That's all stuff that's public knowledge. I never met the guy.

DB: Not many did know him. Apparently he never spoke to anyone about his comic book career.

DS: Well, Nick Cuti knew him. I've lost touch with Nick, tho.

DB: How well did you know Nick?

DS: I met him after his comics career, when we were both working in animation. He worked as a background designer. Any time they had him do an alien landscape everyone loved it because it was really his version of a Woody alien landscape, of course. I'd do the same thing if it were me--not copying, just heavily influenced.

DB: And you worked with Kirby at Ruby-Spears?

DS: I wouldn't say I worked with him but I met him there and Gil Kane too. Jack turned out tons of presentation art for shows that never got made. I inked a couple of these things, giant pieces on illustration board. A suitably heroic scale for his art.

DB: What was Kirby like at that stage?

DS: Great! Full of life. This is about 1985.

DB: Was his work hard to ink?

DS: No. You absolutely COULD NOT SCREW IT UP. It was inker-proof. I could have done a better job on it, I think, but I was a bit overwhelmed by having Kirby pencils in my house, on my drawing board.

DB: Were you ever tempted to light box it and keep the pencils intact?

DS: No, it wouldn't have been possible anyway. He used 4 ply illustration boards which are too opaque.

DB: I know artists who have had trouble inking Kirby. Norm, for example, did two versions of the same commission, one true to the pencils and the other he 'fixed' the many errors he found in anatomy and design - that wasn't an issue for you?

DS: Nope. For one thing, the stuff I did was all monsters. Really crazy stuff, I remember there was one creature that had a pointed head and could use it to bore thru rock. So there were no concerns about anatomy. I don't think it would be advisable to 'fix' Kirby. You'd just be opening up a Pandora's Box of drawing issues. By the time you were done, it wouldn't be Kirby any more.

DB: 1985 - that was when Kirby was having the problems with Marvel over the art returns wasn't it? Did you get involved in that?

DS: I think so. Pre-internet, I wasn't aware of it to a great extent.

DB: Did you sign the petition?

DS: Sign it? I don't think I ever even saw it!

DB: Would you have signed it?

DS: Sure! Now watch, some smartass is going to find the damn thing and my signature's going to be on it.

DB: I can always have a look - I have a copy nearby. There's a few who didn't sign it as they felt Kirby knew what he was doing back in the '60s.

DS: Things changed is more to the point. I think Stan and Jack were just thinking "well, this outfit's going down the tubes anyway, let's have a little fun with it."

DB: You DID sign it!

DS: What the fu--I DID??!!!

DB: Yep - there you are, right after Dave Sim and just before Don Simpson.

DS: Well I'll be goddamned.

DB: You were in good company on that petition.

DS: I guess so!

DB: A few didn't sign it for fear of recriminations from Marvel - clearly you weren’t scared or intimidated.

DS: What did I have to be scared of? I wasn't working for them at the time. They had no leverage on me. I was working in animation then and making more than I'd ever made in comics.

DB: Byrne didn't sign it - and he was one of the most high profile artists Marvel had at the time. But then he was earning around six figures per year writing and drawing the Fantastic Four.

DS: I guess he had something to lose then. Wasn't this around the time that he described himself as a company man?

DB: Yep. Destroyer Duck lampooned him perfectly. Now he rallies against Marvel at every opportunity...(laughter)

DS: I remember once at a con in Atlanta I went to dinner with him, Tom De Falco, Mark Gruenwald, and Mike Carlin. All Byrne could talk about was superheroes. I purposely started up a loud conversation with Mark about cars.

DB: How well did that go down?

DS: Byrne was trying to ignore us, I think. Mark and I were having fun with it. I just have a little trouble wrapping my head around the notion of a grown man whose entire life is centered around comics. It's fun, it's a nice way to make a living, but one should have other interests as well--cooking, motorcycles, history, astronomy, something.

You're going to have to open a Dave Simons museum.

DB: I'll have a Simons museum next door to my Breyfogle one. You've signed on with Renne Witterstaeder - what do you think she'll be able to do for you?

DS: Renee has connections. I can get work, as demonstrated by my two recent AoD jobs, but she can (I expect) get me better paying work.

DB: Any closing thoughts?

DS: Just want to say how thankful I am to you, Bob Shaw, the Colans, Alan Weiss, everyone who's helped and all the fans--yes, even the ones on Facebook!

Monday, February 02, 2009

Looking Back With Bob Almond

Speaking with Bob Almond is always a treat - remind me to tell you about the time we spent over two and a half hours on the phone talking for an interview that I've not yet finished transcribing, mainly due to a crappy phone connection. Until I do get that one finished and updated, I'm damn happy to be able to run this interview with Bob, as done by Kevin Scott. I'm sure that people don't want to read what I've got to say here, so without further ado, allow me to present Kevin and Bob!

*This interview took place before the announcement of the new spin on Black Panther with a re-launch in February 2009

KEVIN SCOTT: I’m in the place with the first inker that really caught my eye and made me appreciate the whole skill set........industry veteran Bob Almond!!!

Bob how are things going with you?

BOB ALMOND: Great, thanks!

KS: How long have you been in the industry?

BA: I was hired in late '91 and my first pages arrived on my birthday, January 4, 1992.

KS: What was the first piece you worked on?

BA: Warlock & the Infinity Watch # 5

KS: Did you pick this title or were you just told this is what you’ll be working on?

BA: The latter. But they could have offered me Squirrel Girl and I would’ve jumped...I’D MADE IT TO MARVEL!!!

KS: Marvel was always the BIG goal?

BA: Yes.

KS: Did you try many other Publishers?

BA: I tried EVERY other publisher.

KS: How did it feel to come onto a book that had spun out of such a successful mini series like Infinity Gauntlet?

BA: Holy crap! Among my biggest comic creator heroes were Jim Starlin, George Perez, & Joe Rubenstein! And now I was on the spin-off by Jim, Angel Medina, and Terry Austin, more idols!

KS: Was it daunting following Terry Austin?

BA: More than you can ever know.

KS: So how did you over come this? Did you seek advice or lock yourself away and just work??

BA: Both. I asked the office to speak to a couple of inkers on the phone and I was connected with Silver Surfer inker Tom Christopher, Joe Rubenstein, and Terry himself. Joe asked me a lot of questions and discussed the various tools he used. Terry was gracious but he said very little and didn’t discuss tools, telling me that whatever works for me is fine. Tom was more helpful because he had only recently gone solo as a pro after serving as an assistant of Joe’s. So he knew where I was coming from as a newbie.

After I absorbed all this info I locked myself away and worked.

KS What made you want to get into the Comics Industry?

BA: I became a Marvel zombie (the term coined LONG before the series) at the age of nine and I was a huge AVENGERS fan. But after seeing the powerful and exciting work of a young George Perez was what clinched it for me that I needed to create comic books.

KS: So what made you decide to become an inker?

BA: Failure to become a penciler. I collected a stack of rejection letters from editors in regards to my penciling samples. After I tried out for some inking samples I showed them to the right people (Jim Starlin) at the right time (a Bernie Wrightson artist get-together) and suddenly my future was inked in!

KS: Can you remember what kind of things the Editors were pointing out to you in regards to your pencil work?

BA: In Art College I was drawing a lot from reference so they basically expressed the priority to draw more and get better without the need for the reference. I don’t think I was criticized much for the sequential storytelling. That’s the funny thing about the different areas of illustration. You can rely on a lot of reference as a commercial artist and that’s acceptable. But do the same thing in comic art and there’s a real stigma about it. Plus it slows down your production speed in regards to deadlines.

KS: So you got that last rejection letter, what made you not give up the dream?

BA: I wasn’t yet at the stage where I felt crushed, only disappointed. The criticisms about my work were right on but I was still determined to do whatever I needed to to break in in any manner possible. The inking samples came about because I’d read that Dark Horse Comics was supplying pencil photocopies to ink over and back then I wasn’t aware of anyone else doing that for newbies. So I requested the copies which were from series like Indiana Jones, Predator, Terminator, and Aliens. I was supposed to rubber cement tracing vellum over them and ink them that way. I did so and shipped them out and waited. Later I had that opportunity with Bernie and Jim and, lo and behold, that paid off as previously mentioned. It was later that I got my DHC rejection letter while I was already hired from Marvel.

KS: How did that feel, did you want to call them up and tell them that you didn’t need them anyway?

BA: That thought probably passed through my mind at the time. But the funny thing is that after all these years I have yet to get my foot in the Dark Horse door.

KS: What would you say the differences of penciling and inking are?

BA: The penciler designs the page and tells the story by rendering everything in pencil. The inker elaborates on and enhances that by reinterpreting the work in ink. The penciler is like the lead guitarist in a band. The inker is the bassist, the support. The guitarist can do solo work but they work best together.

KS: I like that analogy, it works nicely. Touching on something you said earlier, what is your opinion on using photo referencing in comics?

BA: I don’t see a problem with using it as a guide occasionally. I can’t really condemn the idea since I was in that boat myself.

KS: Getting back to ‘The BIG break’, were things like the Bernie Wrightson artist get-together happening all the time, back in the 90’s?

BA: These events became bi-monthly and were welcome to the neighboring artist community and the venue rotated. I was at a couple at Bernie’s house and one at another’s.

They were more an excuse to get together and critique each others work. And to feast and booze it up among friends.

KS: Had you met Jim Starlin prior to this get-together?

BA: No, I hadn’t met Jim before and I don’t know if I would’ve approached him on my own. Bernie introduced my work to him as they were close friends.

KS: Did you initially know how long you’d be working on Warlock & the Infinity Watch?

BA: No idea. I just went with it. But it was told to me by someone that there was so much work needed and not enough artists to produce it so I wasn’t worried. Who knew that the bottom would fall out from under the industry within 2-3 years?

KS: What happened next?

BA: I worked on the Medina issues and later inked over much of the Tom Grindberg issues. In between issues, I was also fortunate to ink other material from that office like Silver Sable, Silver Surfer, a Marvel Holiday Special, Secret Defenders, Guardians of the Galaxy, Cosmic Powers, and Starmasters. Then things dried up in early ’95 after my editor was layed off. While I was able to pick up a few projects from other editors I had to find another source of income and I found that at Malibu Comics where I worked for a while. I was still able to get in a decade’s worth of straight work from Marvel in some fashion, after all, Malibu was owned by Marvel at that point.

KS: It seems that you worked on a lot of cosmic properties, was this where you passion lay or just the way things fell into place?

BA: The latter since those titles were produced from mostly one editorial office. But I always enjoyed the cosmic properties. So it was serendipity when Quasar later fell into my lap after a five year absence from Marvel.

KS: When you were working on a lot of books, how did this actually work? How many books could you ink at the same time?

BA: I usually worked on one project at a time with very little overlap. I spent whatever time was necessary to complete it meaning I’d often put in 7 days a week and 14-16 hours a day.

KS: Would you say you’re a fast inker?

BA: After that last explanation, the answer would probably be a no. If there was something I could do I’d gladly give it a shot but nothing yet.

KS: Do you think this may have had an effect on what projects were/are being offered to you?

BA: Sometimes. When I’m offered a job I make sure of I understand what timeline parameters I’ll be dealing with. And if the gig is a rush job and I can’t do it, even with an assistant, then I have to decline. This hurts short term financially but in the long term it’s better because if I don’t meet the deadline because I didn’t know well enough to say ‘no’ I probably won’t hear from them again. Whereas, if I’m honest they will respect that and offer me something later. That’s the hope anyway. Sadly, it doesn’t always play out that way. Some guys can be forgiving about blown deadlines. But y’never know. And I hate being unprofessional about my dealings with editors. It’s the kind of thing to get really neurotic about.

KS: How is it working with an assistant?

BA: Depends on the assistant. I usually recruit them from shows or the mail or email if they showed me their samples. It’s a scary thing when you don’t know someone to trust them with original art from a job because you’re ultimately responsible for it. Most of the time, if I didn’t already know them pretty well, I took on someone whom someone else vouched for. It’s ideal if they’re local and can work within your home because you can follow-up every step of the way and not have to pay to ship art back and forth. Some assistants worked out really well and some others not so much. It takes time to train and get the person to simulate the inker’s style but if you get a good assistant it can really work out well. Regrettably for the inker, if they turn out to be a real talent they probably won’t be around long and go solo professionally. So you have to start over again.

Usually an inker will pick a page where there’s considerable ‘background’ art and have the assistant ink that material and maybe the small figures. I pay proportionally for what percent of the page they did compared to me. It doesn’t pay a lot considering that there’s often no credit for them but being that they are getting on the job training for free and many will eventually break in if they have the skill and perseverance it’s a fairly good deal. Some guys I started out who later went pro include mainstream inker Norman Lee, sculptor Andy Wiernicki, and small press artist Scott Ambruson.

KS: What was it like working in comics in the ‘90’s? You came in at the end of ‘91 and things were booming, but then the balloon popped. How did this affect you?

BA: It was unexpected and scary. It affected all of us to this day in making us more cautious and be more prepared with back-up plans. Not everyone survived but those that did were probably stronger for it.

KS: What keeps you focused?

BA: Paying the bills, but being a longtime fan helps!

KS: So what happened after Malibu?

BA: Acclaim Comics followed where I was paired up with Sal Velluto for the first time. Some intermittent Marvel gigs. Penny-Farthing Press, some DC, and finally Black Panther at Marvel.

KS: Was the Penny-Farthing Press work Captain Gravity?

BA: Later, yes, with Sal. But in ’98-99 I got my first job from them, Decoy, a four-issue limited series and the first one with that property. Between both jobs for PFP I inked some pin-ups for The Victorian series.

KS: What DC work did you do?

BA: Mostly pin-ups and short stories in Resurrection Man, No Man’s Land Secret Files, Batman Chronicles, and a JLA 80-Page Giant. It wasn’t until after Black Panther for Marvel that Sal & I got some JSA and Aquaman work.

KS: Were there any significant differences working DC to Marvel?

BA: At that time, yeah, DC had the talent work way ahead of schedule like by six months whereas Marvel always played it close to the printer deadlines and still does. I understand that over the years DC also runs it closer. Also, the atmosphere at DC was always more like a business whereas the Marvel environment always seemed like a college campus, less structured. The traumatic ‘90s did change these surroundings a bit, of course, but I haven’t been to the Marvel offices since the end of the Black Panther run in ’02 and I haven’t been to DC since just after that. Generally DC has been more structured (I hesitate to say bureaucratic) than Marvel but DC has the nice entertainment corporation backing from Warner Brothers so they show more respect to the talent in areas like royalties and sending comp copies of our work. But Marvel has my fave characters.

KS: How about working at an Independent Publisher, did you notice any difference in the working environment or culture?

BA: Some were like the Big Two and others were smaller with like 3 people in a room doing everything with less company policies and procedures to deal with. Sometimes you get more input and creative freedom at a smaller publisher but you often also get less pay for your work, less recognition since the material is low-profile and a limit to the quantity of work they can offer you.

KS: Are there any independents where you’d really like to work at the moment?

BA: Although they’re mainstream, I’ve never been able to penetrate the Dark Horse wall so that would be rewarding to one day do so, and other than two pages, Image. But I’ve been fortunate to work for so many independents like Acclaim, Valiant, PFP, IDW, Harris, Malibu, Topps, A First Salvo, London Night, etc. with only a few major guys slipping by me over the years like Crossgen, Tekno-comics, etc. that I can’t complain. Maybe Archie, Dynamite, or Bongo would be cool.

KS: Acclaim was where you met Sal. What was the book you worked on?

BA: Bloodshot. I came aboard with issue 8 to replace the previous two inkers who had worked on the series but I stayed until the end with Sal with issue 16.

KS: How did that come about?

BA: During the mid-‘90s dry period I was ink assisting my bud Mark McKenna over Mike McKone on Magnus Robot Fighter and the assistant editor, Alex Glass, felt that if I could ink McKone then I could handle Velluto and faster than the previous ink artist. So he called me in the summer/fall of ’97 to hire me and Sal called me shortly after to discuss what would become our long-lasting relationship since.

KS: Did you and Sal have instant chemistry, cause you really seemed to work well together?

BA: Oh no. If you check out the first few issues of Bloodshot you’ll see that my slick brush style of the time changed after the first couple of issues. Sal had me try our using markers in order to give the work some edge and not be so clean. In fact, I use markers to this day, among other tools. Even so, for a while after Bloodshot, like from ’98 until a few issues into Black Panther by 2000, Sal was not totally satisfied with my look and I kept trying to appease him since that was my job to enhance and elaborate on his intentions. This was why I didn’t ink him on the Marvel Remix Silver Surfer 2-issue series because he wanted that one to look as good as possible since the format was supposed to be more prestigious and he’s a huge Silver Surfer fan. Then as we started out on Black Panther Sal was trying a different look and it took a while to get it down. And then when we did, it wasn’t colored and printed like we were told it would so we reverted back to a more traditional look for us and we’ve been pretty much in synch ever since.

KS: Did Sal tell you his artistic vision and then you’d send samples trying to capture that affect?

BA: Yes but no samples. It was a work in progress as we went along.

KS: How did the Black Panther come about?

BA: When the title left Marvel Knight it was almost cancelled but then it was decided to integrate the series into the Marvel Universe of titles and editor Ruben Diaz intercepted the book. He had worked with Sal at DC previously and he had hired Sal for that Surfer project. So when the slot opened up, he hired us.

KS: Did you meet with Priest before you actually came on board?

BA: No. He lives out west and he doesn’t do public appearances so meeting wasn’t an option, regrettably. Actually, we didn’t hear from Priest via email until like 3 months into the series. The email correspondence was fast and furious from there. After the BP series we did have a 3-way phone conference so that we could discuss pitches for new projects so I did finally get to talk to him which made me happy and nervous at the same time. Sadly, no assignments came out of that discussion. Other than a few emails for some months after that, we haven’t heard from him since. Which is one of my greatest regrets. I’d love to do more work with him. He’s a freakin’ genius!

KS: Did you know about the character before you started work on the book?

BA: Indeed. Remember, Bob the Marvel zombie? I was familiar with all the classic Marvel characters, both from what I collected and read since the ‘70s and from my back issue collection going back to the early silver-age. I had his early guest-appearances, his Jungle Action series, his Kirby series in the late ‘70s, and probably most of his appearances and series from there until the gig.

KS: So you really had an idea on the whole visual ambience as well as the mythos. Did you have any favourite characters/villains or elements about the series from those classic issues you had?

BA: I wanted to use Klaw and Man-ape but Priest resisted. I subsequently wore him down and convinced him to just do it. I lobbied for Storm like many other readers. The various Jungle Action villains. Avengers. I got Sal to draw the original Venom into the final issue.

KS: What did you think of Priest’s take on the character and its mythos? And did this view point change from before taking on the book, to when you were deep in the mix?

BA: I thought he was brilliant and working with the man only reinforced that opinion. He may have reinterpreted or retconned some new ideas into the mythology to give it a fresh feel but he always respected what came before and tried building on much of that. The best of both worlds.

KS: Did you get to have input on the look of things and even story elements?

BA: Did I have input? I had more say with that run than any job I’ve done before or since. Priest welcomed requests and ideas and he used most of the ones I had. In fact, that’s why he started crediting me and Sal as ‘storytellers’ along with him starting with issue 19. If I had visual ideas or occasionally a cover image in mind, Sal would utilize many of them. And I scanned images as reference for Sal from my personal comic collection. I played unofficial ‘continuity cop’, pointing out any errors and discrepancies in the script or art to Priest, Sal and the editor. It was extra work but it was a passion of mine and I’m most proud of that collaboration than any other since.

KS: You mentioned earlier, when you came onto Panther, it had just escaped the clutches of cancelation. Now all the fans know that this was a continuous fear with the book. How did that affect everyone? And did it have any impact on the stories?

BA: It was very stressful. In fact, you’ll notice that after the long Killmonger saga, which ran from 13-24 or 25, all arcs were much shorter. And those arcs were often intended to have another issue/ chapter and priest would have to edit the story elements down leaving some stuff on the cutting room floor, as it were.

KS: What was your take on the low sales, but critical acclaim the book was getting?

BA: Yeah, we were the best book out there that no one was reading. Priest doesn’t write standard super-hero fare or, as he puts it, ‘ten-minute reads’. He wants to engage his readers so that they have to reread the issues to catch elements they missed the first time. They need to be read all at once as arcs. The non-linear storytelling can be quirky for some (and editorial had Priest delete that component late in the run). He’s not everyone’s cup of tea and when you throw in the political backdrop and not have gratuitous slugfests, many readers lose interest. But Priest wouldn’t ‘dumb it down’ so to speak so we were on an inevitable path but we were absolutely loved for what we were doing by a very vocal minority.



KS: What did you think of the introduction of Kasper Cole and the new direction that was tried after your run ended?

BA: I read about 4-6 issues into it before running out of free reading time due to my work schedule but I did buy the rest of the series. The constantly changing artists was tough and I wasn't overly engaged with the different characters and scenario. It may well be that I was simply too close to our own work to appreciate this version. I still plan to go back one day and read the final issues when T'Challa returned and Killmonger woke up.

KS: Is Panther still a character you follow, do you like the new series?

BA: No, I don't read it. I've read a lot of messages by Reggie Hudlin, his fans at his forum, and readers from the Comicboards BP board to get the gist of what's going on. The new series is seemingly a new take, or retcon on the character and his history. While there are some nods to Priest' run, much of the previous series, CJP and before him, has been ejected. I love John Romita. Jr.'s and Klaus Janson's art from the first year but the art teams have rotated frequently since then which I'm not into but I'm perhaps too 'old school' in my likes. This series approach is apparently what Marvel wanted and the sales were strong, or at least initially, so I don't blame Reggie. I wish them all the luck in the world and we'll see how far they can keep it up.

KS: Would you like to revisit it or do you prefer not to go back?

BA: I would be happy to revisit if Marvel and Reggie would have Sal Velluto and myself do an issue or story or cover. And I'd really LOVE to have Priest do a story with us for old time's sake. I'd like to think the fans would appreciate and enjoy both options.

KS: Are there any new books in the pipeline, anymore knowledge you’d like to drop before our time’s up?

BA: This has been a slow year at first but since the summer it's been crazy. I've worked with Sal on an Archer & Armstrong short story with Jim Shooter that shipped in September in a HC compilation of reprinted material from Valiant Entertainment. Sal and I also worked together on some pages for The Phantom for Sweden's Egmont Publishing which is published only in Europe.

For IDW I inked a few pages over Gordon Purcell for the last issue (#5) of Star Trek year Four: The Enterprise Experiment which led to what I'm working on now for IDW, Star Trek: The Last Generation. It's a 5-issue series with Gordon pencils and written by Andrew Harris. Think Star Trek meets the X-men's "Days of Future Past" and you'll see a dark, alternate What-if? style epic incorporating most of the characters and aspects of the Star Trek universe. I just wrapped up issue 1. Besides that I have like 20 commissions waiting for me to do and ongoing Inkwell Awards responsibilities so things will be hectic around here but you won't fine me complaining.

KS: Where will fans be able to find you online and off-line and do you do commissions?

BA: As mentioned, I do commissions, although the list is closed for now until I can eventually catch up.

Offline, hopefully at NYCC again in February. Online, you can catch me everywhere....my official site is The Bob Almond Inkwell. I can also be found at The Inkwell Awards site, my Comixtreme forum, I'm on Comicspace and I have 2 Yahoo mailing lists of my own and I'm a member of The Inkwell mailing list.

KS: Well Bob, you're always welcome to stop by whenever you want to talk about any new projects, this has been live!

BA: Thanks for the opportunity, Kevin. I appreciate it. And thanks for everyone's support and kind words through the years!

KS: Outstanding Bob, thanks a lot for your time, much appreciated. Hope to catch you again in New York.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Looking Back With Dick Giordano

This interview is a bit of a cheat. I originally did this interview via email with Dick Giordano back in 2005 and Dick had always intended it to be part of his site relaunch, which was fine by me as I saw that as an honour. Dick has since revamped his site and for some reason the interview has come down. As old as it might be I still enjoy it and felt that it'd be a good idea for people to be able to access and read it.

At the time of the interview Dick was working with Roy Thomas on the Dracula mini-series at Marvel, finishing up a project that he and Roy Thomas had started nearly thirty years prior. I was busily working on the Andru & Esposito book, so that'll help explain some of the now outdated references.

Dick has been a powerhouse in the field of comics for decades now. It's hard to argue with his credentials, either as an artist, writer or editor. Dick has done it all and, in most cases, done it better than the next guy. From his work at Charlton, through to DC and those that came before and after, Dick has led the way and forged a reputation as one of the true legends of the comic book industry.

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DANIEL BEST: Where did you grow up?
DICK GIORDANO: I was born on Manhattan Island in New York City, but I grew up mostly in Queens and The Bronx, two other boroughs of N.Y.C.

DB: What was your first exposure to comic books
DG: An oft-told story: My father would read the Sunday Funnies to me when I was very young. I was sickly as a child and often bed-ridden and I looked forward each week to my father reading me the comics pages on Sunday. When Famous Funnies was first published, my father brought those to me as well as some other comics that were being published at the time. Even before I could read, I was hooked! By the time I was 7 years old, I started drawing a bit and that habit has continued to this day!

DB: How did you break into the industry and why did you want to work in the field of comic books?
DG: I attended the School of Industrial Arts, a vocational high school in New York City that prepared students for careers in the commercial arts. Upon graduation, I roamed the streets of New York, with portfolio in hand, looking for work. After 2 fruitless months, I took a job as an apprentice at the Jerry Iger Studios. We packaged art for a number of comic book publishers including Fiction House. This was a common practice in those days that comic publishers would buy finished art from outside studios.
I had wanted to be a cartoonist from the time I started reading comics and this was like a dream come true for me even though at Iger's studio I was the low man on the totem pole. After just 9 months, I started freelancing for Charlton Comics...and moved endlessly from there, always improving my position in the field.

DB: Was Will Eisner still at the Iger Studio when you went there?
DG: No, Eisner was gone by the time I started at Iger's in '51 but the art boards still had " Eisner and Iger " printed at the top. I believe they had separated some years before that date. Much later in my career, I met Will and we became friends and I always thought that if Iger had left instead of Will, I'd have spent more than 9 months there.

DB: What people influenced you?
DG: Al Fago, my first ever editor, at Charlton was a big influence. He mentored me and was sort of a father figure. He really helped me get started. The cartoonists that influenced me most tended to be newspaper syndicate cartoonists like Alex Raymond, Frank Robbins, Hal Foster and Milton Caniff. Later, as the adventure strips started to die off, I found some comic book artists who influenced my work. I don't know all of their names, as it wasn't yet the custom for all artists to sign their comic book work.

DB: What was Charlton like in those early days?
DG: For me, Charlton was 3 different places at different times in my career. When I first began freelancing for them, Al Fago, who had hired me and was my editor, lived in New York, as I did, and he would drive to all the freelancer's studios once a week to pick up and/or deliver assignments. All I knew of Charlton was Al Fago, and he was funny, supportive and easy to work with.

Later, when the Comics Code came along, Charlton had Al working in an office in Manhattan, near the Code's offices and Al gave me a staff job as liaison between his office and the Code's. He did this not only because that job had to be done but also because the coming of the code caused such an upheaval in the industry that he could no longer give me enough free lance assignments for me to earn a living and the staff salary helped me keep my head above water until the industry settled down again. So, at that point Charlton was a nice office in Manhattan with Al, his wife Blanche, running the show...and me running around...and leaning an awful lot!

Still later, the owner of Charlton decided that he wanted his editorial staff on premises at his printing facility in Derby, Connecticut. So I moved to Connecticut. And then Charlton became the only self-contained comics publisher in the history of comics publishing. We were able to go from concept to printed book and distribute from under the same roof...and the owner just wasn't wise enough to know what that could mean to his business and he continued putting out material that was, in the main, not competitive, for the sake of not investing a few more dollars his operation. This was the Charlton that finally forced me to give up and move elsewhere.

Charlton was flooded in 1956, I think, when a dam burst upriver which caused the river next to Charlton's buildings to run well over its banks. Some people stayed to try to get important files to safety on an upper floor. The water came in so quickly that they had to be picked off the roof by helicopter. Five of us, who, at that time, still lived in N.Y. and car-pooled in every day, took off when the parking lot, which was below street level, flooded. We all came back several days after the waters receded to see what was what. The plant had been submerged in 12 feet of water and all the comics in various stages of production had been transformed into a quivering mass of paper Mache. We all were out of work for a short time and when we returned the owner had cut rates...again. Not much we could do...the industry was very slow at that point.

DB: What did the job as liaison between Charlton and the Comics Code involve?
DG: When the Comics Code (an industry self-policing program intended to quiet critics who tried to link juvenile delinquency to reading comics) was formed, it specifically banned Crime and Horror comics. These genres made up a major portion of Charlton's output. Charlton had recently purchased the rights to some of Fawcett's old titles and part of the film library for those titles, so Charlton suspended publication of all titles that might not pass the code and slowly started using their more timid Fawcett inventory in order to keep publishing. That effectively eliminated much more than half of the new material they had been buying pre-code. In some cases, Charlton even used Fawcett covers for the material that they had purchased. Many of the titles were westerns; others were tame adventure titles like Nyoka, Queen of the Jungle and Don Winslow of the Navy.

As innocuous as this material was, the code's reviewers found elements that could not pass the written code and demanded changes. It was my job to bring completed books (some just prints of the Fawcett negatives) to the code and later make changes, often on their premises, to allow them to approve the material. They had several drawing tables and art equipment in their large, expensive offices for that purpose. In doing my duties, I occasionally argued with the reviewer's interpretation of the code. It sometimes seemed that this was the job that these prudish ladies had waited their whole life for...the chance to have absolute power over others.

DB: What was the life of a freelancer like?
DG: A freelancer's life wasn't very good in those days. Rates were low, work was scarce and long hours at a drawing board were necessary if you had a family to feed, and by then, I did. Even though Charlton's rates were the lowest in the field, there was no limit on the amount of work we could get. So I learned to be fast and good and learned my craft into the bargain. After a while, work in the industry became more plentiful and I added to my Charlton earnings by getting other, better paying work from Timely (my introduction to Stan Lee), Dell and others. And I learned the skills that would lead to my becoming Charlton's editor- in -chief and later joining DC’s editorial staff. I was never rich but I was never broke, either. We ate and lived well.

DB: How did you end up working with Stan Lee?
DG: I don't recall how I started working for Stan...only that I had to go in to New York (I lived in Connecticut) to pick up my scripts and Stan would come out to the reception area where I waited for him and we completed our business there and I went back to Connecticut. I was never invited inside.

But the receptionist was very attractive and watching her do her duties more than made up for the wait. She stood out ...as did Stan. Two out of two isn't too shoddy!

Timely went out of business shortly thereafter as a result of their distributor going out of business.

DB: What were the main differences between Charlton, Timely and Dell?

DG: The differences are they are spelled differently!

Not the answer you were hoping for, right? At the time in question, Timely published mostly anthology titles. War, Mystery, Romance, Teen-Age, etc. and assignments tended to be stand alone stories, 6 to 10 pages in length, with no recurring characters. Little if any editorial oversight. Dell, on the other hand, published 32 pages all -story, books. No ads. Subject matter was mostly movie and TV adaptations. And because they were so cautious due to declining sales, most 32-page books had to be done in a month. Their on-going titles were published quarterly and they waited to the last second to commit to the next issue in order to see how the previous issue sales were. The movie books were a different problem...they had to wait until the movie was shot in order to get photos and the final script. From start to finish it takes a minimum of 3 months to write, draw, letter, color, print a 32 page comic and get it to newsstands. And that was a hurry-up schedule! We (often needed more than one artist to move pages that quickly) were able to meet these truly ridiculous schedules because the editors knew better and did not interfere in the production of the art. At one point, then editor Don Arneson, occasionally assigned a book to my studio because I had a fast writer, a fast letterer, and several artists working with me and we saved time by passing pages between us instead of mailing to Dell and they mailed to the next person to work on it. Joe Gill, John D'Agostino and Frank McLaughlin and I did a number of books this way.

Charlton's operation was more like Timely's with all of their titles being anthologies, including titles with a recurring character. (Kid Montana Western was all about the Kid but generally contained 3 eight page stories, often drawn by different artists) Later, with the advent of the Action Hero line, Charlton went with longer stories of the title character, but still had back-up features. Charlton published bi-monthly.

Their main difference (spelling aside) was the page rates. Dell, the highest, then Timely, and Charlton brought up the rear.

I couldn't tell you what titles I worked on for Timely. I just drew an endless stream of indistinguishable stories (many of which I've never seen published) when Timely's distributor went belly up.

At Dell: Movie titles I penciled included Beach Blanket Bingo, Two on a Guillotine, D-Day (or some other movie about D-Day), The Great Race, The Naked Prey and others, too long ago to remember. TV titles included Ben Casey, Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes, Camp Runamuck (find someone that remembers that turkey. I did one issue and the show was cancelled before the book came out). I worked one a slew of one shots and/or as ghost for other artists and was the co-creator of Nukla (along with Joe Gill) Dell's attempt at entering the super-hero genre. We did 2 or 3 issues of Nukla before it and Dell folded.

Actually, there were precious few artists and writers that did breakout work during this period. Most of us were turning out the work like 5 pounds of salami...Get it done! Get a check! Get another script! The publishers didn't seem to care...they were just holding on by their fingertips and that attitude passed down to us.

DB: What prompted you to move from your position of E.I.C. at Charlton to DC?
DG: The short answer is the failure of the Action Heroes line that I put together at Charlton with spit and gum. As it turned out, management at Charlton could care less. They treated the line as 5 or 6 other titles on their schedule and didn't support it with money, advertising, marketing...nothing. So when I was offered an editorial position at DC, I took it, even though it meant 4 hours of commuting, round trip, each day, while it was an easy 10-minute ride from my home to Charlton's offices. By contrast, DC management had a well-structured approach to publishing comics and they wanted to do well and were involved in the creative as well as the business end of their operations. They still are...even more so today.

DB: How was DC looked upon in those days?
DG: In the 60s they were still the leader in the industry, with Marvel breathing down their necks. Most artists and writers felt it a coup if they got work from DC. They were more formal than Marvel in the way they approached their business but that may have been a plus in those days.

DB: Did you go to DC prior or after the (now infamous) removal of various writers/editors who asked for a pay increase and better working standards?
DG: It may be infamous now, but those events have been exaggerated and elaborated upon through the years. Although it happened well before I arrived at DCs offices, and I wasn't aware of the happening until years later, all the "ringleaders" of that "revolt" were still working there and to my knowledge the only editor to be let go was George Kashdan for reasons not related to the "revolt". The only "better standards" asked for was hospitalization. At the time, no other publisher was offering that, either. A touch of irony: years later, the first publisher to offer hospitalization to freelancers was DC.

I'm not an apologist for DC simply because I worked there... the fact that no one ever brought it up until someone who was not involved in those meetings or even worked at DC at the time made it public. Of course, no one could ever accuse owner Jack Liebowitz of being a champion of creator rights. He pretty much said NO and everyone went back to work...more or less. If you have other information, I'd like to hear it but it seemed to me after the fact to be much ado about nothing...

DB: Did Marvel ever approach you at that time for a permanent position?
DG: No. Marvel and DC had a gentleman's agreement not to approach high level staff members or those under contract from the other company. Freelancers, though, were fair game. So Roy Thomas (a Marvel editor) and I (a DC editor) would go out to lunch with each other from time to time without causing any undue concern within our respective companies. We would talk business in a general way... mostly creative...without crossing the line.

DB: You did do the occasional inking job at Marvel in the 70s-how was that viewed at DC?
DG: By that time, I was no longer on staff at DC (I left late in 1969) and in 1970 Neal Adams and I formed Continuity Associates and worked for advertising agencies and for any number of other comic companies. DC had no exclusive rights to our (or my) services and so their view was irrelevant. However, the notion that the major companies were in strict competition with each other was generally nonsense. Some freelancer's preferred one company over the other and chose to stay put. Others moved freely between Marvel and DC. Later, if your services were considered essential to either company, you would be offered an exclusive contract with some "goodies" that were not available to other non-committed freelancers, written in.

DB: How was Continuity formed?
DG: I met Neal when I started as editor at DC in 1967. Although it was not common, Neal did most of his work for DC in the office directly across from mine. We would talk a bit...sort of feeling each other out... and when it became obvious that we were essentially on the same page, we became friends and co-workers. I started very shakily as Neal's inker and he did a great deal for me in my capacity as an editor...even to the point of helping out when I got into trouble with creative or deadline matters. I enjoyed our conversations and learned a great deal from him as an artist. He was so good!

I was having trouble with management micro- managing the books I was editing and eventually tendered my resignation in disappointment. Neal thought we should open an art service immediately (we had done some custom comic work together for outside businesses) but I was still smarting from the events that caused me to resign and told Neal that I wanted to sit in a corner and lick my wounds for a while. He let me do so. But about a year later, sensing that I was becoming bored inking pages in my basement studio, Neal called and made a specific offer that sounded like more fun than what I was doing at that moment. And Continuity Associates was born. Our clients were mostly advertising agencies and film studios but we always had a comic job or two hanging around. We were lucky and started off at a dead run and although we encountered speed bumps along the way, things moved along quite briskly.

My role was mostly taking care of business. Neal's art style was our selling point and to allow him maximum time to work at his craft and/or to train people to work in his style, I, with the help of Patti Bastienne, handled all the nuts and bolts that made the business run. Lawyers, accountants. invoicing, paying bills, financial forecasting, etc, became our main responsibility. Not that I didn't draw...I did! Lots. But that wasn't my main responsibility.

Aside: Patti Bastienne still works for me.

The people that worked on staff at Continuity weren't household names at the time and most have dropped out of the business. But a list of freelancers who rented space from us, or came in to do the occasional job, and art assistants that worked for Neal or myself would read like a who's who of the comic industry today. Just a few: Larry Hama, Carl Potts, Terry Austin, Russ Heath, the late Jack Abel, the late Gray Morrow, Howard Chaykin, Nick Cardy, Joe Rubinstein, Walt Simonson and too many more to list! Sorry, but I don't remember any interesting things that might have happened. I didn't take notes...I didn't think anyone would care thirty years later. Suffice it to say that they were all good friends and great artists!

DB: What were the differences between DC and Charlton, both as an editor and a writer/artist?
DG: The major differences were many: Management at Charlton played almost no role in the creative end of their comic book division. While I was Managing Editor there, no one but my proof-reader and I read or even looked at the books before they shipped. DC's management, on the other hand, was deeply involved in the creative process, often taking editorial decision making out of the hands of the editors and approved covers, contents and production before books shipped. DC had money to spend. Art and editorial page rates were much higher than those paid by Charlton...twice as high or more! Charlton's distribution was weak and ineffectual; DC's was the model for the industry. And finally, DC's creative, marketing and distribution staffs were much larger than Charlton's...there were more people working in DC's editorial offices than in all of Charlton's operations which included editorial, engraving, printing, binding, distribution and shipping, many of which departments required enough staff to work 3 shifts daily!

As an artist, I enjoyed a completely free hand at Charlton and I've often credited that fact to explain my quicker than expected progress artistically. I got as much work as I wanted and was allowed to experiment and decide on my own, how the work would be handled. At DC, I learned more about drawing comics by looking at the work of the best artists the business had to offer and was paid very well compared to rates I received at Charlton...but I didn't enjoy the same freedom. There were rules and editorial requisites.

DB: You returned to DC in the early 1980s - how much had DC changed in your time away?
DG: Quite a bit, actually! Mostly as a result of changes in corporate ownership and management. It was no longer a family held business. At this point we were a part of the Warner Communications corporation and as a business, enjoyed a certain amount of security to go along with the corporate oversight. The new management team (at DC ) consisting of Jenette Kahn, Paul Levitz, and Joe Orlando, not satisfied with the status quo, set out to move DC out of the ranks of the also rans and to attain a dominant position both creatively and financially. I was eventually invited to join the management team and how well we attained our goals is up to others to decide.

DB: When you were at Continuity you did a lot of advertising work. What were the differences between working in the mainstream comic book industry and advertising?
DG: Just about everything was different working for advertising agencies vs. comic book publishers. The money was much better, the work was intended to sell products, information or ideas, not entertain. There was no residual income, you rarely (if ever) got your artwork back...unless it was rejected. And about half of our volume wasn't print work but sketch work (story boards, animatics) so you never saw the art again after it left the studio. Payment was usually 90 to 120 days from invoice (comic publishers pay every week or every 2 weeks). A common joke about many advertising art directors was that they didn't know what they wanted but knew what they didn't want...after they saw it!

But the money was great!

DB: You helped re-define Batman in the late '60s and throughout the '70s, both as an artist (with and without Neal Adams) and also as a writer/editor. What are you memories of those days? (Mind you I still believe that Detective Comics #457 is hands down THE most important, and best, Batman origin story printed)
DG: As an artist only in the time period you specify. I didn't edit any Batman titles until my second round as editor at DC which began in November of 1980. Also, I wrote columns and such, but not any story scripts.

I have very fond memories of working on the revitalized Batman. I really loved inking Irv Novick, Bob Brown and, of course, Neal's work ( and just about everyone else who penciled Batman ) and when I was in Pencil Mode, I was fortunate to get wonderful scripts to work with (including 'Tec #457...thanks for the kind words, Daniel ) ! Batman was always my favorite comic book character when I was a youngster and my feelings about the non-powered, but still super, Batman never changed and so I was thrilled to be part of the team that was bringing new vitality to my all-time favorite character! I still feel that was the high point of my career and I was overjoyed at the reception of my peers and the fans. Nothing I've done before or since has been as rewarding.

DB: You inked the Superman v Spider-man cross over. Now in the past few months I've discovered that Neal Adams re-drew the bulk of the Superman figures, and also inked the Superman figure on the front cover - is there any light you can shed on this? (Joel Adams has told me that Neal has indeed confirmed that he did re-draw a lot of it).
DG: Yes. That's true.

No one asked Neal to re-draw the Superman figures but the pages were sent to me @ Continuity and were mostly left on my desk or thereabouts when I went home at night or on weekends and Neal took it upon himself to re-draw the Superman figures without telling me that he was going to do it. I didn't complain but I also never mentioned it to anyone at the time and really never spoke of it until now...mostly out of respect for Ross and his work. Ross was one of the very best storytellers in the business as well as great at composition, layouts and design. But his drawing was a bit quirky and somewhat distorted as a result of an eye problem that affected his perception. He often drew on one side of the paper, then, on a lightbox, turned it over and re-drew it on the other side, correcting the distortion, then reversed the page again and traced the corrected version from the back side of the art board onto the copy side. This took a great deal of time and slowed him down greatly toward the end of his career. But...

I loved the distortions! It gave his work a charm and distinction that I always believed was appealing. I learned how to ink his work to minimize the distortion without losing the charm! That became moot, as Neal changed/corrected all the Superman figures to his own frame of reference. I tried in the inking not to lose too much of the Ross Andru look ( and to his credit, Neal tried, as well, to retain the "look" mostly correcting anatomy errors in his re-drawing ) . You really couldn't lose his storytelling or compositions, so in my mind, the result was still Ross Andru at his best!!

I questioned Neal's son's claim that Neal inked the Superman figure on the cover. He re-drew it and I inked it...and then Neal may have gone back and "tightened up" some of my inks as he often did on my inks on his material. He never much liked my more organic brush inking, preferring the more controlled look of pen inking. Different strokes...


DB: You've worked with some of the legends in art - what are some of the stand-outs for you?
DG: In no particular order: Andru, Adams, Novick, Sekowsky, John Romita Jr., Perez, Toth, John Busema and a bunch of people who I'm sure I'm forgetting at the moment and I hope they will forgive me.

I never thought of them as "legends"at the time...maybe they weren't yet...but they were outstanding artists. Frankly, I preferred stylists to the more illustrative artists...for some reason they got more of my creative juices flowing.

DB: You started the Dracula adaptation over 30 years ago now. How does it feel to be returning to finish it now? How much had your approach to art changed in the meantime?
DG: Considerably! I didn't realize how much until I had to draw a new 12 page story to conclude the second issue that had 32 pages of reprints from 30 years ago in the front of the 44 page issue and I had to make my 12 pager appear seamless. The passage of time wasn't the only problem. The size of the artboards had shrunk making the same amount of detail difficult. The paper itself was nowhere near as good and I was required to use Marvel's paper. Nevertheless, I think I pulled it off. Fortunately, Stoker's story heads in different directions in the last two 44 page installments and the small difference in style isn't as obvious as it might be. I concentrated more on storytelling than on illustrative qualities since the later story elements required that approach.

I feel very good about finally finishing it! Over the last ten years or so, it became almost an obsession to not leave it as unfinished business. Roy and I tried everything we could to get somebody interested in finishing it to no avail. We finally gave up... and then the phone rang and it was Mark Beazley (our editor) asking if we would be interested in finishing the work for Marvel?

I'll be finished with the 100 new pages that concludes the tale by the end of this month.

And I will breath a sigh of relief...that it is done and done!

DB: How do you feel the industry has changed since you first entered it?
DG: 1- Distribution: From Mom and Pop stores to Direct Sales (comic shops).

2- Creative: The talent pool originally was made up of failed illustrators and writers who could not sell their work. Comics became a place that offered steady work and steady (if low) income. Many did not sign their work because they felt it had no value. Others, when asked what they did, would say "Illustrator" or "commercial artist", never "comic book artist ".
Today's creators can think of nothing they'd rather be doing! It was their plan to enter the comic book industry and they admit to their profession proudly. Even the ranks of publishers have changed. They are involved in the day-to-day operations of the editorial process. Marketing, production and licensing have likewise matured. If this sounds like it's become a business, that's only because it has!

3- Financial participation: Yesteryear, you did the work, you got a check and that was it. Today work is prepared to include the creators in the financial "take" of the publications they work on. The deal is better if you created the concepts and characters but even doing "house books" offers reasonable participation for the creators. Domestic royalties, foreign royalties and reprint fees are just part of the average package of financial benefits.
And, of course, page rates have increased tremendously!

Today's editors tend to be much younger and much hipper than those making editorial decisions when I first started. And they are often an integral part of the creative process.

DB: Do you feel that a lot of those changes for the best?
DG: By and large, YES! I really can't think of anything I'd like to revert to the "good old days"! Well, maybe I can, but, nothing that would make the industry better...only my position in it!!!

DB: Any closing thoughts?
DG: I've been in this business for my entire adult life and have enjoyed myself immensely! I take great joy at waking each morning and "going to work"! How many people my age can say that?

Friday, September 12, 2008

Looking Back With Alan Kupperberg: Thor

The Mighty Thor! Introduced in 1962 in a story scripted by Larry Leiber and drawn by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott, according to all accounts Thor was one of Kirby’s favourite creations. Whether he created it with or without plotter Stan Lee is a moot point, but certainly the mythical aspect of the book appealed to Kirby and it’s not hard to see why once you read his later Fourth World titles from DC. Indeed it can be said that his work on Thor laid the groundwork for the DC series and, if given the opportunity, it’d have been interesting to see how Kirby would have officially joined the two series together (outside of the tantalising glimpse of Thor’s damaged helmet which popped up in an early New Gods issue). Once Kirby left the title was handed to a number of artists and writers, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Gerry Conway, Bill Mantlo, Roy Thomas, Klaus Janson, Sal Buscema, Len Wein, Walter Simonson, Mark Gruenwald, Keith Pollard and Gene Day were among the artists who had runs on the title before Alan Kupperberg came along.

In its heyday Thor was a strong seller and one of the flagships of the Marvel Comic group. At the time Alan came on board as yet another in a long line of semi-regular pencilers sales had dropped and the title had all but bottomed out into cancellation. It managed to hang on long enough for Walt Simonson to come on board and re-establish the book to its rightful place in the Marvel Universe. However the issues that came before the Simonson relaunch are often overlooked as being pedestrian at best. This is unfair as it dismisses some quality work from some very quality creators. To avoid those issues that came before Simonson is to avoid two very good runs, the first being the longest run by artist Keith Pollard and the second being Alan Kupperberg’s issues.

Kupperberg’s issues do have flaws, but then Simonson isn’t everyone’s cup of tea either, and the same could easily apply to the later Ron Frenz issues, which gave the title a very Kirbyesque look (and people say Rich Buckler ‘swiped’ Kirby!). Working with writer Doug Moench and paired with inkers of the calibre of Jim Mooney, Chic Stone and even Vinnie Colletta, Kupperberg was able to create some of the more interesting art of his career. From the main title through to the Tales Of Asgaard back-ups (which were resolved in their own full issue), Moench, Kupperberg and Mooney (who inked more of Kupperberg’s run than anyone else) offered up solid stories and, away from prying eyes, managed to weave some interesting little cameos and concepts into the books. Rather than scan and show all of them I’ve deliberately left images out of this interview. Why? Because you can pick these books up fairly cheaply and really, they deserve to be read and enjoyed. And when you’re done pop on over to Alan’s web-site and have him draw you a lovely Thor.

Enjoy!

ALAN KUPPERBERG: I always forget about the first issue of Thor that I did in 1978.

DANIEL BEST: Which was #279.
AK: Yes.

DB: Why do you forget that one?
AK: It’s kind of early in my Marvel career. I never remember that I did it an issue of Thor outside of my run on the book. I recall it when I see it. I’m guessing that this must have been while I was drawing the Invaders. Roy would have seen my Thor in the Invaders.

DB: Would’ve been at the same time, yeah.
AK: Yeah, so Roy Thomas was still the Editor.

DB: Inked by Pablo Marcos.
AK: Yes. This is not the worst ink job Pablo ever did on me. It’s actually not terrible. There are things in the job that he did that are not great, but -- . Back in those days Pablo was inking me a lot. And the main problem I had with Pablo Marcos’s inks, was that he was supposed to be tightening up my layouts and then inking them. And he didn’t do the tightening. He just inked my layouts and then he’d ink a little noodle-doodle around, adding all kinds of meaningless rendering, a lot of hay, in ink.

DB: How did it feel to be drawing the classic Kirby character?
AK: Well, that part of it, the history of the character was very exciting. But I was never satisfied with my Thor. I think I made him too slender at the hips. And the way I drew his helmet looks more like beanie than a Norse helmet. The helmet should come down lower on his brow. I didn’t really get Thor’s helmet right until recently. And by then, it was way too late.

DB: When you look back on this one, what speaks to you?
AK: I haven’t really gone over it recently. Paging through it now, the layouts are interesting enough. This was before Shooter got his hooks into the company, so I was still doing what I wanted to do. Which were more Kirby-like panels. For instance, the panel with Ulik in it, on the bottom of page fifteen.

That’s a nice Kirby-like panel. Kirby would’ve had more power in it, but whatever power there is, it turned out well. I get the feeling when I look at Ulik’s kneecaps, that maybe I swiped it from Kirby. I had been looking at some character reference, because off the top of my head, I don’t know what Ulik looks like.

When I was a kid at Meyer Levin Junior High School in Brooklyn, I would crack up my friends, Michael Shada and Jimmy Henry. Because Ulik sounds like, ‘you lick,’ dig? So I was chucking to myself when I was drawing this story, thinking back on my old pals.

On the next page, I like the panel where Ulik is ripping the wall out and throwing it. That’s okay. That page has some nice layouts. I think that’s what Roy Thomas meant when he said that I “always told a good story.” There are different things going on the page. Different sized figures, panels inter-reacting.

See Thor in the close up in the first panel?

DB: Yep.
AK: I think I swiped the two middle panels from Buscema.

DB: You know it certainly is one on the left looks it.
AK: Well, when you look at Ulik’s face in the next panel, especially, I would say that is a Buscema swipe. It works well, but I have no idea where this came from.

DB: I guess you might be forgiven for not remembering after 30 years.
AK: It is almost 30 years. Going on thirty years. I was talking to Tom Zuico the other day and I sent Tom a scan of the cover of SUPERMAN # 208. Which Neal Adams was working on the first time I ever saw Neal at National. It was a 1968 book, so that means I’ve known Neal 40 years.


Back to Thor 279. This part of the book looks good. With this rocky, underground setting there’s not too much that can go wrong with it. You know, there’s no perspective or cityscapes to worry about. It’s all rock, so that’s kind of fun to do. I feel that these are fine Marvel pages of their day.

DB: I remember you once saying that you never really cared that much for the mystical god characters.
AK: No, Gods are okay. I specifically no not care for magic or mystical stories. I do not care for magicians or magic acts as entertainment either. Well, I suppose I like to deal with the real, 3-D world. As I said when we were speaking about Frenchy of National Lampoon’s Evil Clown Comics. I do not consider superheroes or magic as being of the real world. I generally prefer the real world, as regards my drawings, so when we’re in Asgard, I’m less happy than when we’re on Earth. But I don’t dislike Thor as a character. I love Thor. I particularly loved what Stan and Jack did with Thor.

DB: John Buscema preferred drawing things like Asgard and Conan as opposed to like drawing the real world.
AK: Well, actually, I think Buscema kind of feels the same way about it as I do. It’s not that Buscema didn’t want to draw the real world, he didn’t want to draw superheroes. Because Conan, magical elements aside, mostly occurs in the real, albeit ancient, world. Plus, you don’t have to worry about drawing modern cities or cars. I think that had a bit to do with what Buscema really felt. This is my opinion. Others will interpret Buscema’s statements their own way, but I think that’s what it was. I don’t think Buscema minded drawing real people in any situation. But superheroes never interested him. For myself, it’s not as interesting to draw Thor as it is to draw Ulik. You can work hard on Thor and draw him real well. But you can’t go crazy on Thor because he’s the hero. Ulik you can go nuts on. You can draw Ulik foaming at the mouth, biting people’s arms off, you know? You can go nuts.

DB: You only filled in for the one issue in 1978.
AK: Who was regularly doing Thor at that point?

DB: I’m not sure, I think, I imagine it could’ve been someone like Keith Pollard or John Buscema.
AK: Yeah, that sounds right; I just supposed they couldn’t make the deadline, that they were late with that issue.

DB: You then went on to do five issue run of the book down the track.
AK: The next Thor I did was Thor 307. Frank Giacoia inked my cover on that issue. And it looks like the cover lettering is by Gaspar Saladino.

DB: And you’re inked on this one by Chic Stone.
AK: Yes I was. I think that this job is the best inking job Chic Stone ever did on me.

DB: It’s a good splash page. I think we spoke about this one once before.
AK: Yeah, I worked hard on this one. I really wanted to get this one to turn out nicely. I wanted to get some real architecture in there. That’s supposed to be Odin carved on the top of the building. There are lots of carvings on older buildings in New York. I was noticing a bunch of them just last week. I think this one might have even been called for in the plot.

DB: You’re right. Chic does a good job on this one.
AK: Yeah, very nice, very nice. Chic’s ink’s are not as thick and clumsy looking as it is usually, it’s more delicate than he generally was. I put a lot of work into this job. All those damn buildings. This is not Chicago, is it?

DB: You’ve got your Kirby transformation on page five.
AK: My Don Blake isn’t frail enough. On page six, I think that first panel is mostly a swipe from Frank Miller. All those buildings are Frank Miller swipes.

DB: That’s ironic, because Frank Miller mainly swiped Will Eisner for his buildings.
AK: Well, wherever Frank got them from, I remember I swiped it from him. Frank was doing those vertical panels a lot.

DB: Yeah.
AK: I don’t think this Hispanic character on page seven is based on anybody in particular. He’s just a guy with a uni-brow. These battle scenes are just awful. Thor is much too small in all these panels. If you are going to do some action, I would prefer bigger panels, or bigger figures in the panels.

The colouring is very muddy on this book. And it didn’t print very well either. It’s all mud, and all these damn buildings are lost. I was knocking myself out drawing all these buildings. And all the backgrounds are covered with mud. Can’t even see them.

DB: Page fourteen; I was trying to place that guy, the white haired doctor.
AK: Spencer Tracy.

DB: That’s it! Thank you very much. It was on the tip of my tongue.
AK: Yes, he is Doctor Tongue Tip.

DB: No, I’ve got it now. I was looking at it thinking I know who it is, it’s a bit beefier than what I remembered Spencer Tracy being, but now I can see it.
AK: It’s supposed to be near the end of Tracy’s life. The “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” Spencer Tracy. Tracy died six days after shooting wrapped on that picture.

DB: Exactly.
AK: And of course the doctor with the orange hair is porno star Johnny …

DB: John Holmes.
AK: Johnny Holmes, yeah.

DB: You and your porn stars.
AK: I cast porn stars sometimes.

DB: Yeah, I spotted that one a mile away. But still, it’s good to have it confirmed. Where do you get the reference for John Holmes? Ah, I don’t want to know.
AK: Well, where do you think?

DB: Yeah [laughing].
AK: Photographs.

DB: [Laughing].
AK: The nightmare sequence is nothing. It doesn’t work. There’s no impact.

DB: Yeah, it doesn’t move me or do as much as it should.
AK: Page sixteen is terrible. There is nothing there but miniscule, little figures. This is what Shooter’s various dicta led to. I call pages like these, “doll comics.” Little poseable dolls. By the way, page sixteen, panel two, I don’t know where Marvel got that panel from, but I didn’t draw it.

DB: Oh.
AK: I don’t remember what was in there originally, but that’s not drawn by me. Probably some kid in the Bullpen.

DB: One of the “Romita’s Raiders.”
AK: Possibly. Because it’s not by John Romita or Marie Severin. I don’t know who it could have been. Page eighteen looks a bit better because the figures are a bit bigger.

DB: Yeah, you’ve got some good flying on page nineteen.
AK: Yeah, the page is almost saved by the semi-close up in the first panel. Otherwise it would be another one of those “doll” pages. If you can get one good close up on a page, it often redeems the page. The same goes for page twenty-one. The shot of Johnny Wadd, yeah. But all-in-all, it’s kind of a disappointing job to me. I think I put a lot into it. And a lot of that hard work does not register.

DB: Hmm, it’s a bit of a shame.
AK: Yep. I think Vinnie Colletta would have done much better on this job.

DB: Because it starts off so well and just, you know, it sort of starts to peter out a bit towards the end.
AK: Yeah, the choices I made in pulling so far back on the action now strike me as a fatal mistake, Shooter not withstanding. I feel that anytime I see a close up, or some large design element on a page, it helps. In other words, nothing should be all tiny figures or all close ups. You have to mix it up and it becomes more interesting. Not in an arbitrary manner, mind you. But there are particular shots that accommodate particular situations. I was minding Shooter at this point. I pulled very far back on the action. I would not do it the same way again today.

DB: See, that’s a good cover on 321.
AK: Well, the Thor figure is okay. But when you think about what really could have been going on --. That snake man slithering around Thor could’ve been swell.

DB: I think you’re underselling yourself there a bit.
AK: Oh, it’s not that I -- you know, I have pictures in my mind. And we are looking at pictures on the page. And when the pictures don’t match up, I tell you about where I failed. I KNOW what I wanted to achieve, and it is not on the page.

I’m not saying that I did not give Marvel their monies worth. For what they were paying, this is gold. I’m talking about what I wanted to achieve. It was magical in my mind but came out merely adequate on the page. Adequately inked and colored. And what do you wind up with? Answer: an adequate comic book. What a thrill.

DB: I’m looking at the picture on the page and I’m looking that it’s a very effective cover.
AK: It’s alright. Tom Zuico would’ve done a better color job on this cover. On the inside, who’s the inker … oh, Chic Stone again.

DB: “Chic Stone and friends.” So who else could’ve inked it with him?
AK: I don’t know, off-hand. But when I recognize anyone along the way, I’ll let you know. Yeah, that’s the kind of flabby splash page. That could’ve been a much more interesting, dynamic splash page. The story opens really boringly. It’s people standing around and talking for three pages. That could have been more dynamic.

DB: I was going to say how interesting can you make a splash page where it’s got you know five people sitting there talking?
AK: Oh, I should’ve found a way. Jack Kirby would’ve done it without even thinking about it. The snake guy is a failure. I really didn’t really achieve him slithering around the way I was going for. Kirby used to get that thing going with the villain, the Cobra, remember? You know, the colouring is kind of weak on this issue.

DB: It’s washed-out.
AK: Well, take page two. There are no strong colours to hold the background.

DB: The background is white.
AK: Too much white. There’s nothing wrong with white when properly used. But I don’t think that that’s the case here.

DB: Who is that down at the bottom of page two?
AK: Oh, that’s just a guy. It’s nobody in particular. See how I tried to push in real close on the horses in panel one, page four? That’s so I didn’t have to draw their legs. I think I almost pulled it off there. This page was inked by Chic Stone, as was the next page.

DB: The perspective in the top panel is quite good, looking down on the buildings. You’ve got the Rainbow Bridge in the last panel.
AK: I wonder. I should take a ruler to it to see if I really got the perspective right. It looks fine, but that’s a very simple shot, after all. One-point perspective.

Panel three is okay. I drew Thor’s helmet a little bit better in this issue. The Rainbow Bridge is okay. Yeah, this looks like kind of a scaled-down Asgard, when you think of it. Compared to what Kirby might’ve done, this is kind of a punk Asgard.

DB: Page seven gets a bit interesting, the Thor in the first panel.
AK: Yeah?

DB: I don’t know, I mean it looks different than the others. Which makes you wonder whether that was Chic Stone or not.
AK: It looks like Chic Stone inked this page. Again, my layouts are kind of static. Everyone is just standing there. Though they’re in action, they’re not moving. My sense of action seems to have failed me so far in this issue. As I say, I’m coming across this stuff for the first time in years. I’m fresh now, talking to you about it. I usually go over the material before we speak, and digest it a little bit. So today, these are my first reactions. On page eight, panel three, that’s a decent shot of Loki.

DB: And you’ve got the horse going on?
AK: The horse with six legs. Or eight legs.

DB: Yeah you’re right, eight legged horse.
AK: That would be Odin’s steed, Sleipnir. Now you know why the Norsemen didn’t conquer the world. With eight legged horses, they couldn’t make horseshoes fast enough.

DB: Yeah, how much of the layouts are, I mean I look at your panel layouts and you’re right compared to the issue we looked at before they are very, what’s the word I’m looking for, routine.
AK: Boring. I don’t mind routine if I’m not bored. But this stuff is boring. The layouts start getting a little bit more interesting on page ten. Or not. There is something weird going on, but I didn’t take advantage of it. I didn’t do a very interesting job in weaving those serpents together. I really could’ve, should’ve made that mass of snakes more of a slithery, seething tangle. It could’ve been much more interesting.

DB: The Thor heads are quite good. I went through it, and page twelve, up in the top panel there.
AK: That page -- ah! I would say that these next two pages were inked by Marie Severin. That’s would I would say.

DB: Why would you say that?
AK: Because it looks like her work (laugh).

DB: Don’t shoot the messenger (laugh).
AK: I’m trying to find something that doesn’t say “Marie,” something that says “someone else” to me. Look at the cop on page thirteen. I don’t know how deeply you analyze this stuff, but that looks like a Marie Severin figure to me. Yeah, this looks like Marie’s stuff. And it looks like she might have inked it with a Rapidograph, or something like that. And the next page, page fourteen, that’s Marie’s stuff too. The rendering she does on the fur and the trees tells me so.

DB: It’s an interesting combination; I mean how often did you work with her?
AK: Not very often. Marie didn’t like me at all; she hated me. She was quite rude to me for a long time, until Sol Brodsky told her to knock it off. Did I tell you that story?

DB: Not that story, I know that she wasn’t into you, but I didn’t realise Sol Brodsky got into it.
AK: I got him in to it. Sol Brodsky was running the Special Projects Division at that time. This is about 1980 and Marvel was at 575 Madison Avenue. Marie, Dan Adkins, Paty and one or two other people shared a mini-Bullpen that mostly serviced Sol’s special projects. For some reason I was in that room, I think I was talking with Dan Adkins. And Marie dropped some nasty comment or another on me. And on that particular day it really pissed me off. I was doing a lot of work for Marvel Comics. And doing a lot of work for the Special Projects Division too. So I got my neck all out of joint. I stormed into the hall and Sol Brodsky was in the hall. I said to Sol, “I want to see you in your office!” So I march into his office, he followed me in and I closed the door. And I started ranting about Marie’s attitude. “I never did anything to her! You know, I don’t make any trouble! I meet my deadlines! I do all this work for this company. Why do I have to listen to nasty cracks from Marie all the time? It’s aggravating the hell out of me. And if she doesn’t stop I’m going to get so aggravated that I’m going to drop dead on your carpet!” (extreme agitation, feigned)

DB: (laugh) That’s a bit dramatic isn’t it?
AK: You think? Sol looked at me like he’d heard it a million times from some over-sensitive artist, complaining about something or other. He said, “Alright, calm down. I’ll talk to her.” You know, sort of, ‘stop being an asshole, I’ll talk to her.’ This is the guy who had to accept Steve Ditko’s resignation and take it in to Stan. Now, here’s this little pisher threatening to drop dead on his carpet.

DB: (laugh) I think it’s just a bit overly dramatic.
AK: Yeah, right. But she did stop.

DB: Why didn’t she like you, I mean I’ve seen that letter you sent me.
AK: I’m not saying Marie didn’t have legitimate reasons -- a decade earlier. But those same reasons should have applied to Sol Brodsky, John Verpoorton, Roy Thomas, Stan Lee and John Romita. They would all have had the same reasons to dislike me that Marie had. But they didn’t dislike me. They seemed to have put my bad behaviour behind them.

Because I had been a real bad kid. I did stuff that, if a kid today pulled the stuff that I pulled, they’d call the cops. Really, I’m not kidding. So I was very lucky to have survived that, survived my own bad behaviour and bad judgment.

But Marie didn’t let go of it. Everyone else accepted me for what I was doing that day. At that point, the bad stuff would’ve been ten years past. But she held it against me. I remember that I once asked her, I think it was about 1975 or ‘76, what her problem was with me? And Marie said, “I love this company; I’m trying to protect Marvel from you. I think you are evil.” And then, a decade later, I believe that this loyal woman walked out of the back door of Marvel with half the classic original artwork in the office. Nice going. That’s really looking out for Marvel. And your fellow artists. Nice, hypocritical behavior, if it’s true.

DB: But why would she, I suppose you don’t know why she would do that?
AK: Well, she took dislikes to various people for her own reasons. She held a grudge against Roy Thomas for years. You know, I do the same thing. I can hold a grudge as well as anyone else. But I never said or did anything to Marie. She just didn’t like my general behavior when I was a teenager.

DB: What about John Severin, did you ever have anything to do with him?
AK: I don’t think I’ve ever laid eyes on him, let alone met him.

DB: I’m just curious as to whether or not there might have been something there with them.
AK: I admire both their work immensely. Now, you originally asked me if I worked together with Marie much. And the answer to that is; in the Special Projects, yes I did have quite a bit to do with Marie, after Sol got her to lay off me. Marie would often give me layouts or corrections. And they were almost always tremendously helpful. It was always a learning experience. Although she was not the greatest artist in the world, she knew what she needed to know. Within that context, she was actually an excellent artist, especially when she got the proper inking. Like John Severin. I’m not putting down her artwork. I’ll jump all over Marie as a human being, but not as an artist.

DB: Well, we know what it’s like, the work that they got over Herb Trimpe on the Hulk issues that they did.
AK: Trimpe and John Severin, right?

DB: Well, they alternated.
AK: I don’t think Marie ever inked Trimpe’s Hulk. I think you’re mistaken.

DB: I think Trimpe, I know John Severin and I’m pretty sure Trimpe inked her.
AK: Yes, Herb did ink Marie, but I don’t believe Marie inked Trimpe.

DB: No. But I mean it must have helped Trimpe, because let’s he was finding his feet and to have two artists like that working for you and showing you how to do it, certainly I see a lot of John Severin in Trimpe along with Jack Kirby.
AK: Well, in the Bullpen at 635 Madison Avenue, Marie and Herb had adjacent drawing boards. John Romita and Marie and Herb were in one room together, there was another desk or two in there at which someone else, other people, would rotate. There were times when I was visiting there and there were the people I mentioned, plus Tony Mortellaro. Or John Verpoorten. Sometimes Frank Giacoia would be in there and I’d glance across the hall and there was Bill Everett working away. And they were inking Kirby’s Fantastic Four and The Mighty Thor, respectively. So it was kind of a nice feeling, see? (laugh).

DB: You name dropper. I mean having said that, you know, hearing those names, it blows me away, because you think you know there’s history in the room. Bill Everett, there’s the creator of Sub-Mariner.
AK: This is what I’m saying. In spades. I remember Bill Everett fixing up Vinnie Colletta’s inking on Thor. Bill was sitting there, just tweaking it up a little bit. I could point out the panels and what Bill did.

Decades later, Marie Severin did paint a couple of jobs that I penciled for Marvel Books. Did you ever hear of Crystar?

DB: Yes.
AK: She painted a couple of Crystar children’s books I penciled. They were digest-sized. They were just beautiful, just beautiful. I’ll scan and send a couple pages to you. It’s very lovely stuff. She did a great job and made me look terrific.

DB: So back to Thor, can’t remember what page we’re up to what fifteen or sixteen?
AK: About page fifteen or sixteen.

DB: Okay we’ll go with sixteen.
AK: I think sixteen is the last page that looks like Marie had anything to do with it. Oh, I like that figure of Thor in panel one, page sixteen, that’s fine. Thor’s got a nice twist to his body. I think I started to warm up to the job at this point. There’s a lot of stuff going on and a lot of little panels, but at least to me, it is interesting stuff. It’s got movement to it. Yeah, that’s okay.

DB: Why would it take you that long to warm up to?
AK: Well, you know, the more you play the better you get. Sometimes, as you go along, suddenly something clicks in your head and you’re really into the story. And as I said before, much too often, it’s too late. Here I am on page seventeen, and I just get hot.

DB: So is this Chic Stone, that inking or -- ?
AK: I think so. Oh, now on page twenty-one, I can tell who it is. Can you tell who inked page twenty-one?

DB: That close up of Thor there looks damn familiar.
AK: When I first opened up to the page now, my first reaction was, “Oh my god, Neal Adams?”

DB: Yeah, that’s what I was kind of thinking there. The close up, certainly.
AK: Well, it’s the dwarf’s inking.

DB: (laughter)
AK: You instantly knew whom I meant (laugh).

DB: (laugh) And I’ve never met him. Little joke.
AK: Yes, he is. But that’s a swell page.

DB: I had a sense it was, because obviously, you know, personal differences aside, he wasn’t a bad artist.
AK: No I never said he was. He’s not nearly as good as he thinks he is, but he’s not awful. I can have personal differences with people, but it doesn’t stop me from truly seeing their artwork. You know, there are people I love personally, whose artwork I don’t care for, and visa versa. On the last page, you can see who inked that, can’t you? Look at the Thor face -- who inked that? Let’s turn it to a guessing game.

DB: So it’s a guessing game?
AK: Yes, Daniel, this quetion is for the brand-new car, the refrigerator and the solid silver tableware from the Michael C. Fina Company, Chicago Illinois, 60660 …

DB: Yeah, I’m no good under pressure.
AK: Vinnie Colletta. Oh, that’s a Vinnie. Look at Thor’s face in the last panel.

DB: How much of it did he get right? (laugh)
AK: Well, he’s done as right as anyone else, if not righter. I much prefer Vinnie’s inking over Chic Stone, for instance. Any day of the week.

DB: I mean, it’s weird to see the difference between, you know, the close up of Thor’s face and the one on the page before it, you know what Vinnie did?
AK: Vinnie took my pencils and inked it Vinnie Colletta-style. But they’re still my pencils. On the other hand, the dwarf dug in. It’s not so much my pencils any more. Over all, once again, I’ll take Vinnie. I doubt if the dwarf penciled that stuff in before he inked it, but he put more into it than was there in my pencils. The dwarf added a lot of unnecessary hay in there. Like, on the close-up, under Thor’s nose. There are three little brush strokes there. That kind of stuff wasn’t in my work. The dwarf added all kinds of Neal Adams-esque doodle. And in so doing, he’s actually broken Thor’s nose. That’s my only real quibble with the panel. That he got so fancy, he didn’t realize he’d given Thor a broken nose.

Now, you take Gil Kane. Gil hated the dwarf’s inks on his pencils, he just he loathed it. You know, a lot of people don’t like what the dwarf did. I was okay with it when he inked my work. If you squint and look at it sideways, it almost looked like half-assed Neal Adams inking. Is bad, demi-Neal Adams better than good Vinnie Colletta? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

The point is, I have absolutely nothing against what Vinnie did. It’s very professional. In the first panel on the last page, inked by Vinnie -- I doubt that I would’ve drawn a panel with those lines in the bottom indicating the planks fading off into nothing. I think I would’ve either put a horizon line in there or something. Maybe spotted a black. I don’t know if Vinnie took something out or not.

DB: You think that’s what happened, you think Vinnie took something out, took the background out?
AK: There’s no way for me to know now. I used to have Xeroxes of all my pencils. And they really started piling up. And at some point, you know, a million years ago, I said to myself, “what the fuck do I need this stuff hanging around?” So I trashed it, and now I very much wish I hadn’t.

DB: A lot of artists I’ve spoken to have said the same thing. John Romita threw all his photocopied pencils out. Norm Breyfogle has been telling me how he binned all of these photocopies of his thumbnails that he did for Batman, all of that stuff has just gone.
AK: I used to save all the plots and scripts too.

DB: Yeah, well those sorts of things, it’s the sort of stuff that’s interesting to people now, I hear people say that, “why would you want a script?” You may never know why I want a script (laugh).
AK: To answer all the questions we’d be asking each other now.

DB: Yeah, you know was that in the script, was that issue late? It all goes to get the big picture that comes out of it.
AK: Now, the next issue, the splash panel, is basically the same splash as the issue before, but I find it more interesting.

DB: Yeah, different angle.
AK: There’s some nice figure work going on there. The figure of Thor is okay until you get above the shoulders and then the head is very poorly done. I think I would not have drawn the helmet wings like that. I think Jim Mooney probably shrank the wings down so as not to obscure the story title.

DB: Inks by “Mooney and friends.”
AK: As we go along, I’ll tell you if I notice whom his “friends” are.

DB: Well, certainly page two, that’s Mooney?
AK: Of course, all those Mooney eyes! Supergirl is all over that page.

DB: The eyes are there. But, I mean, he never denied it and he admitted it to me. I mean, I don’t think he was ever ashamed of it, that’s for sure. All the girls look like Linda Lee.
AK: See, now, I started warmer on this issue. When we get to page four, with the horse, that’s a more dynamic shot than last issue.

DB: It’s a better horse than the other one.
AK: Yeah, well I got a leg up, or four, on this one.

DB: It’s interesting how a lot of the shots you can identify back to previous issues.
AK: Yeah. Well, luckily I’m able to say they’re better in this issue. But I know every panel that a lot of guys did. Much more than I remember my own stuff.

DB: And page five, that doesn’t look like Mooney inked it, down on the bottom?
AK: Yeah. You’re right. I’d say that looks like it’s by Al Milgrom. Look at Thor’s face. That heavily inked, lower eyelid shadow. Yeah, I always thought Milgrom was kind of a heavy-handed inker. Heavier than I would’ve preferred. Now page six, I don’t know who that is inking me. That could’ve been a more exciting fight.

DB: Oh that’s good. “Whank”. Did you put your own sound effects in there?
AK: I don’t think I was still putting in sound effects. So I don’t think so. “Whank” or wank didn’t mean anything to Americans back then. No one noticed it or considered the implications. When I first started drawing the Invaders I would put in my own sound effects. Finally, Roy said, “please stop doing that. What if the writer doesn’t a want that sound effect there? If Don Glut is the writer, let him decide where and what the sound effects are.” So I reluctantly gave it up. But I liked to use them as a design element, see? Maybe the sound effect would be my right angle, or my perpendicular in a panel. But I gave it up on request. See, I never I felt that most writers knew how to properly place sound effects. F’rinstance, on page six, panel two, that “Frak.” I don’t know what’s underneath the sound effect. Oh, I guess I can see now. It’s the other guy’s arm. Of course the “Frak” should have been placed at a right-angle, over Thor’s arm, in my opinion. The writer would invariably put the sound effects in places that obscured the action or harmed the composition.

Now this inking might be, what’s that guy’s name, Brett Breeding?

DB: Brett Breeding, yeah.
AK: Maybe this is his work, but I don’t know. It’s kind of slick. So slick that I find it boring. It’s the kind of slick done by someone who doesn’t know how to draw. They have a nice ink line but it’s often misapplied. That’s what my opinion is of this stuff, whomever did it.

DB: Any clues on page seven, because it looks like the same inker?
AK: Yeah, and page eight, look at the Thor face in panel four.

DB: Well, that’s funny because one of the things that stuck out for me when I was looking at it earlier, the Thor face on the bottom of page seven and page eight pretty much are identical, just different angles, even with the hand coming out.
AK: Yeah.

DB: Other than the slight expression change?
AK: Well, that’s me using the same basic shot twice, without ever noticing that I’d done it. In other words, if you look at the dialogue in both panels, Thor is saying similar things, so Thor is making a similar gesture. This is the gesture that my actor makes in this situation. As in panel two on page eight. When Odin accuses people, you will very often see him pointing off panel, “Uncle Sam Wants YOU!” style. So, does that sound like a cop out?

DB: It did a bit (laugh).
AK: Did it?

DB: No (laugh).
AK: It wasn’t intended as one.

DB: No I’m only joking.
AK: You can tell me if you feel it’s a cop out. I’m telling you what probably happened at the time.

DB: He’s making a plea of some sort and that’s what he gets, you know the hand up. Yeah, I mean you’re right, with Odin accusing someone of course it’s with his hand up.
AK: But it wasn’t a short cut. I only have so many shots and this one comes up again. In other words, I didn’t see it as the same panel because it’s not cropped the same and the action is flopped. But, you’re right, it does look very similar. Too similar.

DB: On page ten, it looks like another inker, the Thor shot at the bottom. I can’t help but wonder who?
AK: I think this is the same inker.

DB: I can’t help but wonder what was going on that you had so many inkers on the two books?
AK: Well, I assume that there was no one inker available that could ink it in the time allotted. That’s the only reason there would ever be for multiple inkers. I guess the same inking keeps going on, through pages twelve and thirteen. Jim Mooney seems to be back on page fourteen.

DB: Yeah, well that’s Jim Mooney’s eyes.
AK: Oh, no, no, no. I’m wrong, it’s not Jim.

DB: Are you sure that Thor looks like Mooney’s eyes?
AK: Well, it could be, but I’m thinking that’s what threw me at first, but the girl doesn’t look like a Mooney. I don’t know.

I’ll tell you what makes me say it’s not Mooney. Those wolf guys in panel three.

DB: Well, the close up of Thor certainly looks like Mooney’s inking.
AK: No you’re right. Thor’s hair too, the kind of mushy stuff, when he’s kind of lost the form. He could do that sometimes.

DB: I don’t know if it’s him on the next page though?
AK: You know, it’s more fun to name the inker by guessing.

DB: “Guess the Inker.” (Laughter)
AK: After a closer look, I think these pages were inked by Jim Fern.

You know, you’ve got to admit that if Kirby had done this story, it would’ve been a rip-snorter. From the same shitty plot, it would’ve been a rip-snorter. And this stuff just -- you know, it just kind of fills up the pages. It’s okay, it’s not awful. It’s just kind of lays there.

DB: But you could say that about say John Buscema, if he’d done it. It could’ve been a rip-snorter as well, but you know, you weren’t Kirby, you weren’t John Buscema.
AK: I’ll say.

DB: And I can think of artists that probably wouldn’t have done any better.
AK: The point is, I got on the book and it kept going down. It was going down and it kept going down. And then Marvel put Walt Simonson in on it, it became a best seller.

DB: Well, it was slotted for cancellation at this stage I think.
AK: Yes?

DB: By about this stage.
AK: Well, why else did they give me the book (laugh)? Now, on page sixteen of this issue, on the bottom panel that’s nice Thor. The inking is nice, because it’s got some nice fine line-work where it’s appropriate; on Thor’s hair and the musculature of his arm. I think it’s Jim Fern again.

DB: Did you break the panel boarder with his hand?
AK: Yeah. Now the next page is by Jim Mooney.

DB: Wasn’t breaking the panel a no-no for Shooter?
AK: Well, I don’t recall. Not to this extent, at least. I think Shooter objected to an element from one panel intruding into another panel. And we get Jim Mooney back the next page.

DB: Yep. Now you and Mooney were a fairly compatible partnership there?
AK: Yeah, it was not unpleasant association, because he’s a thorough-going professional. Now, this next page is kind of throwing me, because I can tell who inked it but I can’t put a name to it. Who the hell is that?

DB: Well, the bull figures, one of the bull figures there almost looks Gil Kane-ish. The one in the foreground there, just the half face.
AK: Gil Kane-ish?

DB: Well it looks like Gil Kane.
AK: Gil Kane. I wish it looked like that.

DB: (laugh). Well, that’s how I see it.
AK: It kind of looks like, what the hell is his name, Dick Giordano’s brother-in-law. Oh, yeah, Sal Trapani. But the page after that, page nineteen, Jim Mooney’s back.

DB: Yeah. That’s okay.
AK: Jim Mooney seems to have finished the book. Is it by someone else? No, it’s Jim Mooney.

DB: No, it’s Jim Mooney, there’s his eyes there, down the bottom, yeah.
AK: I like the last page because it’s full of civilians (laugh).

DB: I’m starting to realise that’s your forte, drawing people in non action sequences.
AK: It’s funny, because I would not have said that back then. I would’ve said, “no, I want to draw super heroes! I want to draw what are, in essence, naked bodies fighting each other. You know, spray-painted naked bodies.” And, I see now, in retrospect, what shines through to me, what I was better at.

DB: You should’ve been doing romance book.
AK: Yeah, had there been any.

DB: Yeah true. Or Archie? No Archie? Okay (laugh).
AK: You know, Sal Amendola gave me a copy of a script, years ago, which he had written and drawn for Archie. So that I could do some Archie samples. And I could never bring myself to draw them. I broke down the script, I did the lettering on the boards, but I can’t bring myself to draw the samples. I should.

Anyhow, the next job the villain is Graviton.

DB: I’ve got two pages from that.
AK: Two original pages?

DB: Two original pages in total.
AK: I like the splash panel pretty well.

DB: Now, I’ve got to admit this is one of the first Thors that I bought off the newsstand when I was a young one, because we didn’t get, well certainly not where I grew up, we didn’t get Thor. The only Thors we got were the reprints, which were Kirby reprints. This would’ve been one of the first Thors I remember buying because it had a great cover which sucked me in. Yeah, the splash page I’ve always liked.
AK: Yeah, it’s a good figure.

DB: And it’s Mooney inks all the way through it.
AK: Yes. We can’t play the guessing game. I see the Wasp’s costume was incorrectly coloured. The colourist left her neck flesh coloured. I presume it was supposed to be white.

DB: No I don’t think it was incorrectly coloured.
AK: Well, there’s a line there to hold the colour, see. I don’t remember that costume at all; I don’t remember ever seeing it before.

DB: I do, I remember seeing in an issue of the Avengers at the time.
AK: I guess I didn’t really follow that stuff very carefully if I weren’t involved in it.

Now, on page two, panel six, that’s supposed to be Sol Harrison and his wife Gert, Gertrude. That’s a pretty good Sol Harrison. Maybe this is his first appearance in a Marvel comic.

DB: We’re coming up to the page, the first page I own which is page five, and of course you know the lettering is done directly onto the page itself, as opposed to it being paste-ups, like a lot of them were at that stage.
AK: Yes, it was.

DB: So do you put the balloons in?
AK: No, I didn’t. The writer indicates where he wants the balloons and the letterer letters it.

DB: So what happens to the art underneath the paste-ups?
AK: It’s covered up. Or erased.

DB: Oh, good god.
AK: Well, for instance, page five, you said? There’s not much artwork under the balloons. I left enough dead-space to accommodate the lettering. It never bothered me. I never thought, “oh, what a waste of time.” Because you leave an area that you know is going to be devoted to the lettering. I was not always happy with the balloon placement. But I never thought, “oh, all the work I wasted underneath those balloons.” I never thought about that. And we have Joe the Bartender on page six.

DB: Of course you put him in a few comic books.
AK: Yeah, sure. If I had to draw a bartender, chances were you were going to get Jackie Gleason. I like that bottom panel of the bad guy.

DB: Yeah with the glass? It’s almost two faces?
AK: Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. I think that Jim Mooney kind of put more of an angle on my distortion than I had, so it kind of makes it look even weirder. I just wanted it to be wavy and he made it kind of sharper. But it’s good.

DB: Could’ve been far worse.
AK: On page seven I used reference.

DB: I was going to ask about that, Bloomingdales?
AK: When I went to high school, every morning chances were that I’d come up out of the subway in Bloomingdales, out under that marquee awning on the extreme right hand side there. And there would be this fellow standing there. I guess he had some mental impairment. And he sold comic books. Brand new comic books. I never bought them from him because I already had the ones he was selling. And then I’d walk east one block to Third Avenue and maybe see Stan buying his morning newspapers at the corner new stand. So maybe that’s why I put some effort into these panels. Because it meant something to me. It was my neighbourhood, so to speak.

I’d say I put some work into page eight.

DB: Yeah see page eight is quite good, you know the three figures, especially the one front on, I mean, I’m sure you’ll find fault with it but I think it actually works quite well.
AK: I could, technically, but I won’t. Faults and all, it all happens to work here. You see, if I look at something and I accept it, I don’t criticize it. But when I see things that break my acceptance of the reality, these are the things I point out. To me a successful comic book panel, by anybody, is if I accept it and think it’s the real world instead of a drawing. In other words, you only really notice what’s wrong. The stuff that’s correct, you accept and you are just in the story.

DB: The next page the Thor figure is flying up. Again that works.
AK: Oh, that’s kind of nice too. Had they done the Superman Versus Spiderman book yet? Yeah, sure they had.

DB: Oh yeah, well and truly.
AK: I think that was kind of inspired by one of Ross’ figures, I think. That’s the feeling I get from it.

DB: It looks familiar to me.
AK: I’m not saying I swiped it, because I didn’t. If I’d swiped it I think I would’ve done a better job. I seem to do a better Thor when he’s in the air than when he’s standing on the ground. Of course, Thor just standing on the ground and talking is not the best usage of the character.

DB: Well, it’s not Thor is it?
AK: The writers call for these boring, static expository sequences because they’re not thinking about what the practical result will be. When Kirby was plotting out his Marvel stuff by himself, he didn’t do boring stuff because, being the generator of the story he could do it whatever way he wanted. And Stan would accommodate the drawing. That’s one of the advantages of having one person generate the stuff spontaneously. You don’t have to try to make someone else’s ill thought out ideas work. You can just do what works best for the story and the visual on the page, as you get to it.

DB: Now I did like, you know, Thor/Don Blake falling out of the building and coming down through the air.
AK: I seriously question if the hammer was out of his hand for a full minute, but okay.

DB: I think it probably wasn’t, but a quick minute.
AK: And how can he reach it, you know?

DB: Simple physics. (laughter)
AK: Well, that’s impossible.

DB: Yeah, I know that.
AK: See that building in panel four on page thirteen? That building was across the street from Marvel at 575 Madison Avenue. They constructed it while Marvel was at 575 and it was designed by Philip Johnson. Oh, I see the background is continuous across those four panels. It doesn’t quite come across. I don’t know why.

DB: It’s subtle.
AK: Partly because of the colouring.

DB: It looks like each figure is smaller than the last.
AK: Well, yeah, yeah.

DB: Again, it works.
AK: Yep.

DB: It could’ve been worse (laugh).
AK: That’s encouraging.


DB: (laugh) And then Thor jabs him in the rear with a needle on page fifteen. I know that’s not what he does but by gosh that what it looks like and that’s what I always thought it was.
AK: Oh, I didn’t even notice the hypodermic there, yeah. I didn’t remember that was a part of the story, yeah. If I’ve ever read the story, it was just once when it was published and I bought a copy.

DB: Why did you buy a copy, weren’t you given one?
AK: Oh, I never counted on receiving anything from Marvel. If I wanted something, I went out and bought it. I couldn’t depend on Marvel and then be stuck without something at some point and then bitch about it. I used to buy ten copies of everything I did. Eventually, I lugged most of them down to the comic book shop and sold them or traded them in.

I don’t think I was ever on the list for what they called, “the bundle.” Not at Marvel, not at DC. The bundle was all of the Marvel and DC books of the week or a couple of weeks. Every yabbo in the world was on that list, except me.

DB: Now, I have to laugh, because on the next page, page sixteen there’s an error in the comic itself, that’s the other page I’ve got the original art for.
AK: Sixteen?

DB: Yeah. And the error that’s on the original art was to be corrected, or at least the notation was made to correct it, wasn’t corrected.
AK: Thor’s helmet?

DB: No, no it’s in the lettering. If you have a look in the second to last panel a bit of ‘that’ says ‘hat’.
AK: Oh, “hat.”

DB: Now on the original art it’s actually got ‘that’ with a circle in the border and I can’t make out what word has been, someone whited out the word and I can’t make it out.
AK: I thought you were saying “hat” because his helmet looks so stupid in that panel. Why doesn’t Thor just medicate his helmet point and then head butt the villain?

DB: Yeah true, but his face looks good.
AK: But why is Thor’s hair suddenly coming out from under his helmet?

DB: Where should it be coming out from?
AK: The front. Why has he suddenly got bangs? What is going on? I mean, there’s the same thing on the next page, also. Oh well, I don’t know. Thor has got this Hershey’s Kisses™ helmet as well. I didn’t draw it that way.

DB: Yeah, the first, on that last page, that first panel, I’m sure. Yeah, I’m sure I’ve seen that before.
AK: It’s not a swipe at all, but it does look familiar. Kirby would sometimes do things that didn’t make sense to me, and that kind of hammer-swirl is one of them. How exactly is Thor doing that? Is he twirling around or is his hammer going all around his body, like an eggbeater or something? What exactly is going on?

DB: And then he just leaves him in there to die a lonely death.
AK: If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime, son. And then on the next page we have the return of the Tales of Asgard.

DB: Asgard, yeah, which Mooney also inked.
AK: I think I drew a grander looking Asgard this time around. I thought I got some nice feeling on Loki on page two. But the colour is kind of washed out. The blue plate is almost non-existent.

DB: It’s yellow in my scan.
AK: The blue plate is very washed out. That should only be my worst problem. Page three is kind of nice too, except that I wish Mooney had gone a bit lighter on some of that background texture. It’s too heavy. Or if the colourist had done something to drop it out or make it recede. In other words, why I am looking at all the fancy line work on those pillars instead of paying attention to Odin?

DB: On the next page, what do you think of your Loki figure?
AK: I think it looks bad.

DB: Why? I knew you were going to say that. (laugh)
AK: I don’t know if it’s my fault, Jim’s fault or both or our faults. I think this looks like a case of it being both our faults. I think I drew something not so well and I think he made it worse. Those feet look like the kind of feet that Jim Mooney draws when he’s not really paying attention.

DB: It’s a short story, it’s only five pages long.
AK: Yeah. I got to draw a lot of characters that I’d never drawn before like Carnilla.

DB: You did a fairly good job on that one.
AK: Yeah, I liked my Loki. I guess I was trying to get some of what Neal got with Loki. Without exactly copying what Neal did.

Now, the next issue is 325. I inked that splash panel.

DB: Now, that is a damn good.
AK: Yeah, I inked it. See, I penciled it on Craftint Duotone ™ board. Do you know what that is? So that’s why I inked it. Yeah, that’s fine, that’s alright. I wonder if I swiped it? I may have, because there’s too much good stuff in there to not have been swiped.

DB: Yeah, but who did you swipe it from, who was drawing Mephisto other than John Buscema?
AK: Well, Neal did a swell Mephisto when he drew Thor.

DB: Neal and John is there anyone else?
AK: John Buscema created the visual in the Silver Surfer #4, didn’t he?

DB: Yeah, that iconic figure, shot of him sitting on his throne with his hands.
AK: So I can do good spooky stuff too. And then, on the next page I did some nice civilian stuff. See, again, on Mephisto, I can go wild. Whether I do or not, the opportunity exists. Yeah, that civilian stuff is decent. In the first two panels on page three, you can see where I left plenty of room for the dialogue, especially in the second panel. The writer didn’t actually use it all. And some poor balloon placement accentuates the problem. A decent Don Blake. He looks too good for Don Blake, actually. Too robust, he doesn’t look frail enough.

DB: And then you come back to the stuff on the next page.
AK: You know, I could quibble with things, but overall it’s fine. The figures have some nice movement to them. I got to do the Buscema throne-shtick. Except mine looks like Mephisto is doing his chicken impression (chicken noises). Flapping his wings.

DB: I like that because it’s certainly not swiped from anywhere.
AK: Yeah, this is fairly decent stuff; the bad guy’s origin is drawn okay.

DB: Now, do you think that, I don’t suppose no one was really paying attention to it at the time, if they’re getting ready to cancel it who cares, do you think that helped you know free you up art wise?
AK: Well, no, if they were going to cancel the book I wouldn’t treat it any different than any other book. Jim Shooter wouldn’t say, “well, this is last issue we’re printing, who the fuck cares what goes into it,” he wouldn’t have allowed that. So, no, you can’t do anything that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Not on a mainstream character like Thor.

If I were drawing, say, Deadman, I would probably do a better job on it because of my feelings for the character and the original artist that -- .

Sorry, I got distracted. I just glanced out my window and I noticed trucks unloading movie equipment. Which didn’t surprise me because the street was roped off to prevent people from parking their cars on it all last night. I presume they’re shooting the “Sex and the City” over there.

DB: Your friend Andy is not in it?
AK: No, he’s still in London now. He was in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. Now, I think he’s probably trapped, penniless in London. I don’t think he would say he was trapped, but I don’t know what he’s going to do to get the money back to get over here. Or even if he’s in a hurry to get back over here. Whatever I know I learn because I’ve been following his blog. And I often find his blog so repulsive that I’m kind of turned off to him now.

DB: You’ll have to send me through the link, I’ve not seen it.
AK: I’ll send you the link. (http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/andrewjlederer) His blog is what prompted to me to make my comments, in the Evil Clown interview, about me being the freak show or not. I’m not saying he has any thoughts or feelings that I don’t have, but I don’t know why he wants to put them in a blog and have people stare at them and consider them, because it’s not attractive in my opinion. Now, I understand his life is his work of art, so to speak. His commentary on his life is kind of his shtick, grist for his act on stage. Of course, he doesn’t tell jokes per se, he’s an observational conversationalist, so his life is his work. But I don’t find all of it attractive. He’s often penniless. He’ll blog about how he stinks. How his feet stink, you see (laugh)? I mean there are entry upon entry about how his feet smell and how he’s wearing ill fitting shoes so he’s got to grip the bottom of his shoes with his toes so they don’t fall off, and how that hurts and warps his posture and how THAT hurts. You know, I don’t want to hear about this stuff. I mean, maybe it’s okay if you’re sitting here talking to me about it, but to think that he’s proud to expose this to the world about how he’s not getting out of bed for days and this shit. It turns me off.

DB: I mean, some of the stuff I’ve written, I’ve written some really weird shit, I’ve certainly not put anything about my feet stinking (laugh), it’s just a bit off.
AK: You know, he’s blogged about having to take a dump. And he knocks on somebody’s door and says, “can I come into your home and take a dump,” or something like that. Maybe he didn’t literally say that, but he said things to that effect. And on top of that, he’s passing judgment about everyone around him as well. Well, you know, doesn’t everyone have the right to be just as cruddy as you?

DB: Well, what’s he doing in London?
AK: London was his next stop after Edinburgh. I don’t know, I think he gigs when he wants to. He may be a big star of sorts at the Festival. You know, he knows a lot of people and a lot of people know him. He blogs about people that you would probably know about, but I have no idea who the fuck he’s blogging about most of the time. These people are faceless to me. I don’t live in the real world any more (laugh). I’m “The Man From The Past,” more than ever. I don’t follow the new local comedians, let alone British or Canadian or Scottish comedians.

DB: I’ll have a look at it and see what I can get out of it.
AK: Someone ripped off his laptop computer the other night, so he can’t even blog regularly any more until he replaces it. But you’ve got his whole archive there to go through. This guy, anything he touches is destroyed, you know. He’s blogged the story about visiting his father’s home in Arizona. And he straightened a picture hanging on the wall. And of course, it falls off the wall along with the little nail on which it had hung. He can’t find the nail. Now he’s got to find a nail. You know, knowing him, the whole wall is going to be destroyed before he’s finished. Because he tries to cover it up. “Oh my god, if my father sees what happened he’ll yell ‘You’re a shmuck! You fuck everything up, and you fucked this up too!’ So he tries to fix it and invariably makes it worse. Oh, that’s right, the dump he took clogged up his father’s toilet. That was another disaster in Arizona. (laughter) He had to try and fix the toilet before his father got home. I don’t remember whether or not he made it worse or not. You know, Jesus -- just, you know, stop where you are. Don’t make it worse. Back away. Put your hands up and back away slowly.

DB: “Stand away from the toilet.” “Stand back from the toilet sir, stand back.” Oh, god. Oh, well. Yeah, back to Thor on that note (laugh).
AK: Back to hell.

DB: Back to hell. From one hell to another.
AK: As Dorothy Parker, the famous writer of the ‘30s and ‘40s etc, would say when her phone rang, “Oh, what fresh hell is this?” And that’s my life, when the phone rings, “oh, what fresh hell is this?”

DB: Oh, thank you very much (laugh).
AK: No , no, no, not you, not you. When the phone just rings. I actually provoked your call. I said, “I’m ready, I’m here.”

But anyhow, back on page eight, I like those shots. Those are nice shots. Again, when I look at panel three, I think I might’ve swiped that from somewhere. But, maybe not. Sometimes when something looks good, I think I might not have drawn it from scratch. I think the cab driver on the next page was supposed to be Archie Bunker but the colourist and Jim Mooney didn’t get it.

DB: Does that often frustrate you that you know you were going for something which they didn’t get?
AK: It doesn’t frustrate that me that these people didn’t get it, because if I’d done it well enough, they would have gotten it. That’s what I think, so I don’t hold it against them, no. I could have made a margin note, too.

DB: But the hands on page ten, panel two?
AK: You mean Mephisto’s hands?

DB: Yeah.
AK: What about it?

DB: The big hands.
AK: Yeah, that’s okay. Jim Mooney did a good job on it. Do you like them?

DB: Yeah, yes.
AK: Yeah, nice Jim Mooney. I don’t know if Jim Mooney improved them, or if I really drew well, but they’re okay.

DB: Well that’s what I was trying to lead you know to the fact that you and Mooney made a good, certainly a compatible art team.
AK: Yeah fairly. Again, I wish there was more crispness in his inking. I always considered Jim Mooney a kind of a soft inker. Not the softest, by any means; not as soft as Chic Stone or some other people. If you know what I mean. Even Mike Esposito could get some nice crispness sometimes. All it takes is a little bit of a sharp, right angle when you don’t expect it. Sometimes something counter-intuitive can really bring out the form. I like, on page twelve, some of the inking on Mephisto in panel two. This is what I’m talking about. There are some sharp little angles on Thor’s face too. Like on the right hand nostril there, if you get it sharp sometimes it brings things out.

I noticed when Jim Mooney does that kind of stuff, like on page thirteen, it works.

DB: Yeah page thirteen it’s an impressive splash but Thor’s right hand -- .
AK: I think his hand is awkward.

DB: Yeah his hand looks very awkward.
AK: Is it on backwards?

DB: That’s unusual, you’d think that Mooney would’ve picked it up.
AK: You know what I say about that? Let’s turn the page! (laugh)

And I say the next page is a good page because everyone’s hand is around the right way. But even Kirby did it once in a while. There’s a famous flash page of the Fantastic Four where Reed Richards is stretching his hand out to coochey-coo the baby or something like that and it’s on backward.

DB: Wasn’t there that one where he drew two hands and on the foot was a hand as well, as Reed Richards was falling, he’d been stretching out and he had one of his feet is a hand, or the two left hands or something?
AK: Hmm, I sort of remember that one. I saw the Fantastic Four II yesterday for the first time.

DB: What did you think?
AK: Well, just before I’d seen it I read somewhere someone saying that it was the best superhero movie ever made. I didn’t think that was the case, but it was okay.

DB: I liked the Silver Surfer.
AK: Oh, the Surfer was terrific, the Surfer was terrific. I liked the bits with Stan recreating that business from the original story. And I noticed when they threw that bundle of newspapers out before the wedding. It was the same headline, the same layout that Stan and Jack had put in the original splash panel of that story. You know, “The Big Day.” That gave me goose pimples about an inch high. Yeah, the Silver Surfer was very well done. The characterisations are not exactly what I would like. Some of the actor’s looks are too far off to me. I don’t buy Jessica Alba at all.

DB: You’re not the only one that says that. Why is that?
AK: She looks ethnic to me. And there’s nothing wrong with an ethnic Sue Storm if she had been an ethnic, but she’s not. As far as I could tell, Sue Storm was white bread. And if she’s ethnic, why isn’t Johnny?

DB: I don’t know if you know what John Byrne’s famous comments were about Jessica Alba which was, “if you put blonde hair on a Latino lady she looks like a hooker.”
AK: Oh, yeah, that’s true. That wasn’t the exact thought I had looking at her but it comes down to the same thing. Yeah, I thought that the blond hair made Jessica Alba look cheap.

DB: I liked it, I thought she looked fine.
AK: You’re allowed to. And Johnny Storm was a little bit too old for me. And he doesn’t have an attractive personality.

DB: No, well, that I can’t get past that. I just think that’s not Johnny Storm.
AK: You know, there are ways to do that, the same things this guy’s doing, but he’s so over-the-top. You can just be a naïve kid presenting the same attitude, and I don’t think it would be as offensive. He’s like an un-socialised adult rather than a teenager.

DB: The character to me just comes across as being you know an obnoxious, spoilt brat.
AK: Okay, same thing. In other words he’s old enough to know better. He doesn’t seem to be a hero that is attractive. If you’ve got these great powers, you’ve got really great responsibility.

DB: “With great talent comes great lunch.”
AK: Well, “On-location shooting comes with great lunch.”

DB: True.
AK: Luckily when I was working on the animated “Thumbelina,” for Sullivan-Bluth Studios, in Dublin, Ireland, they had us in a warehouse, which actually qualified it as location. So the craft services had to deliver us a free lunch buffet every day. The people over in the main studio building had a lunchroom where they could pay these exorbitant prices for their lunch. But we were on location in the warehouse, where Don Bluth used to shoot his live action stuff to rotoscope.

So anyhow, Thor’s bad guy gets fried. Oh, that guy’s just a troll on page sixteen. I like the shot of him getting crisped. I like all the panels on the page, except panel three.

DB: What’s wrong with panel three?
AK: The Mephisto is lame but everything else is okay. Yeah, the last page is nice too. Ah, yes, followed by my favourite Tales of Asgard.

DB: Why is that?
AK: Well, because my good pal Jack Abel inked it.

DB: I mean, the Loki figure on the splash, it’s pretty good.
AK: Yeah, I wish he’d leaned a little bit heavier on the brush. I love Jack’s work. He could’ve been bolder. But you know, back then I did not very often indicate line weights in my pencils. I just assumed when an inker would ink something, he know what to juice up. But too often they didn’t juice it up enough or at all. My only complaints about this job are, for instance, on the right hand side of page two, that the tree bark doesn’t have enough differentiation. The line weight is all the same and there are no blacks. I can’t imagine that I put stuff in that Jack left out so, it’s probably my fault.

DB: It’s a mystical tree.
AK: Yeah, maybe that’s it. You know, if you study this tree and then look back at Mike Esposito’s inks over Curt Swan on Superman circa 1970 -- .

DB: Yes?
AK: If you look at the backgrounds you will see these trees and this kind of rendering. And the rocks on the ground, as well. You will often see this rendering on the backgrounds, because Jack Abel did a lot of the backgrounds for Mike on Superman. In case you wanted to know.

DB: Oh, there’s all sorts of things I want to know (laugh).
AK: Do you know Beanie and Cecil?

DB: Beanie and Cecil?
AK: Bob Clampett’s Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent?

DB: Yes.
AK: Well, Cecil makes an appearance on page three.

DB: Page three, I was going to say that looks really familiar too.
AK: Well, it’s not exactly Cecil, but -- .

DB: Was that the last Tales of Asgard that you did?
AK: No.

On the page four of Asgard I got a bit more grandeur into it. See, that’s an excellent panel by Jack because the background is properly inked; it doesn’t distract from the figures in it. That’s very nice job by Jack and not a bad job by me. And the last page is okay, too.

Okay, the next job, the Scarab. John DeAgostino, I think this is one of the inkers who we couldn’t figure out in the last, ‘And Friends’ job.

DB: 326, which has a very nice Ed Hangingan cover, which clearly you haven’t got.
AK: No I haven’t got that. Anyhow it’s a very decent splash page. The Thor figure works out pretty well, although Thor looks like he’s about to be kneed in the groin. [Laughter]

DB: By this stage you were having a fairly good run on Thor.
AK: Yeah, I was well into it. This one looks like I was having fun. I’m not usually into jeeps and guns, but I seem to have put a little bit more work into this. These first few pages look well. I remember not liking the inks originally. But as usual, in retrospect the inks are not as bad as I remembered. The pencils weren’t as good as I would image them to be either. But this is okay. This works today.

DB: Who the person is down the bottom there on page four.
AK: I don’t know if that is based on anyone in real life. I don’t think I was trying to draw anyone in particular there. But that’s a real long shot the first panel on that page. Pulling back, that’s a cast of thousands there. Oh, that’s supposed to be Chicago. Yeah, I forgot that they moved Thor to Chicago. I don’t know why. I tried to find books on Chicago for reference and they were very hard to come by. There are millions of photo books on New York but not many on Chicago. At least, not available in New York. So I guess that was a real, referenced shot.

DB: Now, had you ever been to Chicago at that point?
AK: I’d been there several times. Once, for a convention. Do you know an actor named Keith Szarabajka? He co-stared on the Equaliser.

DB: I’ve seen the Equaliser.
AK: Keith was the young blonde guy who was Edward Woodward’s assistant or something. He’s a friend of mine. He was in “Warp.” You know about the Neal Adams /Warp connection, right? Keith and I actually hitchhiked from New York to Chicago once. I like Chicago, it’s a very nice city. Howard Chaykin and I were in Chicago, I guess it was for a convention. And the two of us were walking down the street and people were staring at us. And we couldn’t figure out why they were staring at us at first. Finally, it occurred to us that we were charging down the street like New Yorkers. You know, at full tilt, warp six. And everyone else there was kind of mid-western and taking it easy. They saw these two guys almost running down the street, compared to them.

DB: No, I only ask that because the of the amount of times you see comic books where the artist will draw a city, say London or something, they’ve never been there and the looks nothing like it. I remember Keith Giffen drawing Melbourne in the Invasion series and I was looking at the cityscape that he drew and I thought well that’s nice but that’s not the Melbourne I know.
AK: Well, you know 99.9% of the New York City you see in comic books is not the New York City I know. I mean, it tends to get generic.

DB: But I expect to see all these things when I come to New York. I want to see Dr Strange’s house.
AK: I can show you the address where Dr Strange’s home is supposed to be, just three or four blocks away from me. But a bit further east, on The Bowery at Houston Street there is a building that actually looks just like Strange’s home.

DB: Oh, cool.
AK: Yeah, the Bleecker Street address is just another apartment building with street level shops that Roy Thomas had lived in. The civilian stuff here is nice, as usual and I am very happy looking at these Thor figures, they work for me. I’ve finally gotten the right proportions on his head, the helmet sits properly on his head, so I’m happy.

DB: You get a splash page in on page eight.
AK: Yeah, that’s not bad. I like the professor character a lot. I can see in that the first shot of him on page six, the inker paid a lot of attention to him. Actually, the inker paid a lot of attention to that character, which is interesting. All the Egyptian stuff is decent. I was always into ancient Egyptian material when I was a kid. The Brooklyn Museum has a very excellent Egyptian collection covering an entire floor. I grew up around that stuff, and I’ve always liked it. Now, moving on -- . Gee, not a bad job at all.

DB: No, it’s quite good. Whatever did happen to John D’Agostino? I’ve not even heard his name before.
AK: Maybe he is an Archie Comics guy?

DB: Could possibly be.
AK: I think he may an Archie inker because this stuff is very round-ish. It doesn’t have any sharp edges to it, no snap. Which is kind of what bothered me back then. It’s kind of mushy, at least to my eyes.

DB: Yeah, but it does work well.
AK: Oh, yeah, as I say, I’m a lot happier with it now than I was 25 years ago, or whenever it was, yeah.

DB: And you managed to sneak the Invaders in, they appear on page thirteen.
AK: Oh, there they are! “How do you like America?” as my late Aunt Nettie used to say! All these big panels with the two of them fighting, they start getting boring because the figures are all the same size. It’s repetitive. I’d have preferred more variation. I’m just being picky.

DB: Nit picking, yeah I know you are picking nits. I quite like it. I mean I was looking at it earlier this evening and out of all the ones that are done I quite like this one, probably even more so than the Graviton one.
AK: Yeah, you’re right, it’s very nice. “It don’t bother me at all,” as one might say in Brooklyn. Yeah, again on page fifteen, panel five, you see the two of them, too close in size. See, panel four seems more interesting to me than panel five, because of the variation in the size of the figures. And let’s see. On page fifteen I see, I was getting a little bit playful. There’s a copy of Crazy magazine on page sixteen, with Obnoxio The Clown on the cover.

DB: There is?
AK: Yeah, in the lower right hand corner of the first panel on page sixteen.

DB: Oh, yep, I’ve got it there. [Laughing]
AK: And in the second panel there, that’s a Jack Kirby-type reaction shot. Not a swipe. Just an exaggerated reaction from the Kirby-type, craven hoodlum there.

DB: Now, that might be the only nit I pick, Thor’s hammer is very small.
AK: Well, the hammer’s supposed to be farther away than it looks. The handle should have been larger, in perspective. So you’re right, it was badly drawn. Speaking of perspective, notice that every panel on my page has some element of perspective in it. Which I feel tends to draw the reader into the picture. Oh, I like that next page fine. If it had a nice strong background colour in the last panel it would have been an even better page.

DB: It’s funny, only a short issue. I mean, you’ve got the Tales of Asgard follow up, but, yeah it was only an eighteen page story, which was a bit unusual at the time.
AK: What was unusual?

DB: Just having the eighteen pages.
AK: I don’t know why they made the decision, really.

DB: But, I mean, your Tales of Asgard, inked by John Tartaglione, which would have been one of the, probably about the only time that he ever inks you wasn’t it?
AK: Ah, probably. I cannot think of another instance. This may well be the only time Tartag inked me. I’m not very happy with it. Although, once again, it’s not as dead as I remembered. I would say that the big head on page two, panel two, that’s looks like a John Romita fix there, on the guy’s mouth.

DB: Yeah, I was going to say some of the book is good and some of it doesn’t look so good.
AK: Yeah. Tartag worked up in the office, so I knew him. He was on staff in those days. We were friendly, but it’s the only time he inked me. I like the last page of that story but the colouring on this page stinks. Too orange.

DB: This next issue would’ve been one of the few covers that you did that Alan Weiss inked.
AK: The only time he ever inked me, I think. Yes, Alan Weiss inked this cover, number 327. Yeah, I finally got him to ink something of mine. Not that he wouldn’t have before, but the time and the place and the piece were right and it just worked out. It was signed ‘Alans’.

DB: Kupperberg and Weiss.
AK: Yep, yeah nice. The black plate printed a bit heavy. But this cover certainly shows what can be brought out in my artwork by someone who has the wherewithal and the desire to do so. I don’t know if my drawing reads properly as the earth being within the jaws of the Serpent of Midgard. So what? The rest of it works.

Yeah, I think I made a breakthrough of sorts on this issue. Although I didn’t really pull off what I was going for in the splash panel. Oh god, I see what the problem is. I couldn’t have drawn it that way. I would not have drawn a two foot tall nurse standing next to the desk. I never would have drawn it that way.

DB: It looks very much out of perspective.
AK: You bet your ass. Someone monkeyed with the desk and maybe with Blake’s feet. I know what perspective is. I would never have drawn a two foot tall woman coming through a foot and a half high doorway, no. Somebody monkeyed with that, I don’t know who or why or when. Maybe I did something wrong to begin with and they tried to fix it and screwed it up worse. I wouldn’t even begin to guess who that would’ve been. It could’ve been anywhere along the line.

DB: Mooney inked it. I’m wondering whether Mooney might have fixed it.
AK: I can’t tell. Whoever did it didn’t know what he was doing.

DB: Yeah, well, that’s it, I mean Mooney knows what he’s doing so I imagine it couldn’t have been him.
AK: Sometimes I can look at a fix and know that John Romita did that fix. Or I can tell if Marie Severin did a fix. But all I see is Mooney here. For instance, on the next page, everyone is standing on the same plane. But they’re not. That floor works as though there is a hill in the room. But it doesn’t look wrong. I sort of got the effect I wanted. Even though Thor is kind of squashed in, because of the way I choose to do it. Oh, well.

DB: That’s a nice serpent on page four.
AK: It’s a decent page. Ah, on page five, “Tony Stark, makes me feel, he’s a cool Exec with a heart of steel.” Now, the Stark figure in panel four, that does not say “me” to me.

DB: That doesn’t look like your faces on Tony Stark.
AK: It looks like Al Milgrom might have had something to do with it. I don’t know. It just doesn’t look like I did it. Yeah, the whole thing with these Norse Gods eating mess in an Air Force hanger is kind of silly. That’s a nice Volstagg.

DB: Actually, yeah, that’s nice. Big and fat.
AK: When I get a lot of blacks on my pages, they always looked better. I think that’s one of the things that appeal to me.

DB: But on Page 7, bang, there you go.
AK: Yeah, again some nice blacks on page seven and eight. Yeah, like Odin in panel two on page eight. It’s got a nice weight there, some nice juicy blacks.

DB: That’s an unusual page for, you know, that whole Shooter era?
AK: Yes, but an epic was called for so I didn’t pull back. No, if the writer indicates, “I want to have a big two thirds of a page panel here,” Shooter is not going to yell at the artist. But if the artist just reads the plot and decides to consolidate all the multi-panel action into just one big panel on the page, Shooter may take his head off. And even then, if you were Shooter’s pet or if you knocked Shooter’s socks off, you might get away with it. I think I finally got the hang of Odin in this issue.


DB: It looks like you well and truly got the hang of Loki as well, page nine, the bottom panels of page nine, especially the last panel.
AK: Had anyone ever drawn that kind of oval-shaped head on Loki before? I don’t know.

DB: Not that I’m aware of, not the really long face with the accent on the chin.
AK: Maybe Neal did that. The big fight panel on page eleven could’ve been a lot stronger. Moving so far back on the action there, on all those fights, it loses focus. There should’ve been some larger forms mixed into those panels. For instance, on page thirteen, those fight scenes are more interesting to me because we’re concentrating on one set of actions. A mass fight scene is okay in one panel, to establish the setting. But to me, it is boring to view, panel after panel. You have to move in on one thing and stay with it. On page fifteen, that’s not a bad shot of Thor hefting the bull on his shoulder. I wouldn’t have expected myself to have pulled that one off that well. This page has got nice stuff on it.

DB: Well, I tell you what I like is the boat sailing in panel three.
AK: Yeah that’s okay. In my head it’s much better, much better. I like the flood panel on page sixteen. God, it keeps going on. Page after page of this crap. I can’t believe it. Oh, the Golden Apples. Oh this is the story we started in Tales of Asgard, isn’t it?

DB: Yes.
AK: I see. That’s why we were running Tales Of Asgard. Setting up an unrelated sub-plot that suddenly comes to fruition in the main feature.

DB: Now, I’m wondering whether or not they did that to, I’m pretty sure by this stage the book was virtually cancelled, whether or not they were doing it just to tie up the loose ends?
AK: No, I don’t think so. It was never really cancelled.

DB: No, no it was never cancelled but it was certainly talked about being cancelled.
AK: As I say, I don’t think that’s why they did this. I think just was a neat way to start a B story going. Stan and Jack did that with the Ragnorrock Saga, no? I think they just saw an opportunity to do something quote, unquote, cool. At least that’s the way I read the situation.

You’ve got another big boring fight scene on page twenty.

DB: Yeah, but it’s odd because the Loki figure is quite powerful and yet the Sif figure is weak.
AK: Yep.

DB: How to sort of reconcile them (laugh).
AK: At least Sif gets a Golden Apple at the end of the story.

DB: Indeed, she does and it’s a lovely little last panel there.
AK: And then, my last issue 328. Vinnie Colletta finally inks my Thor.

DB: Vinnie Colletta, yeah. Now, thanks to you, I can spot Vinnie Colletta a mile away.
AK: Why thanks to me?

DB: Oh, because you’ve pointed out the various Vinnie things which I think I’ve taken for granted over the years.
AK: Yeah, like what?

DB: The women’s faces for a start.
AK: Oh. Well, I mean you never noticed that every women he inks tends to look the same?

DB: Not as blatantly as I do now.
AK: Well, you know, it’s no more or less than what Jim Mooney or Sinnott or Wally Wood did in terms of influencing the work. Almost any inker.

DB: True.
AK: I like the cover of this issue a lot. The only thing wrong with the cover, Sif’s neck is much too short. But Vin did a nice job, especially on the villain. I couldn’t complain about anything he did there.

DB: And of course with Vinnie inking you on Thor, it looks like Thor.
AK: Yeah, it doesn’t look like Kirby but it looks like Thor. On the splash page, everyone looks like they are supposed to. [chuckles] Thanks, Vince.

DB: I do like the Thor figure on page three, in panel three, the big …
AK: I didn’t draw those bushy eyebrows, believe me. But I like page two.

DB: Hmm.
AK: I tried some different things in this issue. Yeah, I did a lot of vignettes, floating panels. Shooter didn’t like that kind of stuff. I’m kind of surprised he let it go through.

DB: Actually, this is one of the more adventurous issues you ever did.
AK: I wonder if I knew it in advance that Vinnie was going to ink it? On page three, panel two, I like the Thor.

DB: Did you know at this stage that this was going to be the last issue you did?
AK: I believe I knew it. I think I so.

DB: Would that have contributed to the fact that you went a bit further with it than you normally would?
AK: I don’t know. It might have.

DB: Page four is good; in fact page four is pretty damn good.
AK: That’s a Neal Adams swipe from the cover of Superman #243.

DB: Ah yes, yeah, I hadn’t noticed that before.
AK: I think everyone noticed it in New York. Everyone called me on that one. Vinnie and I did not improve the shot either, I must add. But Vinnie knew how to draw that helmet. The helmet is big enough now. Why, only on my last issue, is the helmet big enough? I noticed that on page five that I finally got Don Blake nice and frail.

DB: It’s almost like everything falls into place, I mean you’re not doing it again.
AK: Waaaaahhhh! [Laughter]

DB: It’s like you get it right and suddenly, “nah, that’s it, you’re gone.” Page six, now that’s the one that really got me.
AK: Oh yes, yes, I really liked doing that panel, yeah. I don’t know if it worked, or would have worked without the arrows. I can’t imagine Shooter being happy about that panel. He must have been very unhappy. I remember getting specific critique from him on pages of this issue, but I don’t remember him talking to me about this. He figured a lot of young kids cannot figure out what was going on if you set up pages like this. But, in my opinion, it was a good way to get in a big establishing shot and focus in on the little action as well. I like the next page as well. Again, I don’t know why Vinnie started getting all fancy on me, with the eyebrows.

DB: It’s almost like he didn’t do a Vinnie Colletta, if that makes sense. Instead of erasing things and not inking them, he actually, it’s almost like he went all out to do a really, really good job.
AK: Yeah. Maybe he was sick that week. “Vinnie’s not feeling well and he’s doing a good job.” The patient Dr. Blake is treating on page seven is Perry White.

DB: Oh.
AK: Although the colourist colured in his white temples.

DB: White hair, yeah.
AK: That’s a nice little page, page eight. It moves around. I was really proud of that first panel on page nine. Then, after Vinnie inked it, I really noticed how bad my drawing had been. Vin didn’t hurt it, but I thought I was drawing a really sexy figure there. But she looks like a dumpy old middle aged woman.

DB: Now, page nine, now that looks like more like you’d expect from Vinnie because it doesn’t look inked all that well.
AK: Well, may I suggest that it may not have been penciled all that well. Now, I’m not saying for sure. But no, it’s not the best work from either Vinnie or me, let’s put it that way. But he didn’t hurt anything, no.

DB: Now did you design the costume on the villain?
AK: I guess so. I don’t know who else would have. Drawing all those circuit boards was not fun. Vinnie put all that texture on the curtains.

DB: Yeah, which makes me wonder, did Vinnie ink it or did Vinnie and assistant?
AK: Well, if it is his assistant, his assistant really has got his style down; it looks like Vinnie’s stuff. I don’t know -- personally know anyone who was Vinnie’s assistant, by the way. You can meet dozens of guys in the business who’ve said they’ve done stuff for Mike Esposito or Murphy Anderson, etc. But I can’t think of anyone who worked for Vinnie. There must have been people, of course, but they weren’t people who hung around me.

DB: But I thought Vinnie had a little stable or a core group of people that he used to call upon when he had pressing jobs that he couldn’t do.
AK: Yeah, sure, no doubt.

DB: Like backgrounds and things.
AK: Yeah, well I’m sure he must have. I just don’t know who they were.

DB: I know Mike had a whole pile of people that he would use from time to time.
AK: Steve Mitchell comes to mind, as well as the aforementioned Jack Abel who worked for Espo. Jack did backgrounds for Murphy Anderson, too. Page twelve is kind of nice. Sort of like that, “Journey To The Centre of The Vision,” by Ant Man in the Avengers.

DB: Of course, yeah.
AK: I don’t know if I looked at that Avengers story. But this panel evokes that feeling. Oh, I remember page thirteen. Sif is very affronted that the salesman touching her bodice.

DB: Well, they are Gods.
AK: The salesman is clearly gay. He’s not even interested in her. I don’t know if that comes across. Then she beats up a bunch of construction workers. Which is always fun to do.

DB: Hmm, what beating up construction workers?
AK: Oh, I do it all the time.

DB: Oh sure [laughing]. Now, this is the only thing that dates it, the video game. On page fifteen.
AK: The giant computers.

DB: Yeah.
AK: In those days they were still trying to make computers bigger. They didn’t really get the fact that people wanted miniaturization.

DB: Oh no, I can, I remember the computers I started out on, they were huge bloody monsters.
AK: Yeah, this is more like the Batman story with the giant typewriter.

DB: Yeah, of course, like a Bill Finger story.
AK: The whole story is kind of a take-off on the Disney movie, “Tron.”

DB: Yeah. Very similar. Of course, Sif is the one that saves the day. Thor doesn’t pop back up until page eighteen.
AK: Yeah, page eighteen. The action is nice. A nice, frail looking Don Blake. Those action shots look really nice when Vinnie takes care with them. It really looks like Thor. [Laughter] I keep saying it. But that’s the thing that strikes me when I look at it. This is really Thor by Vinnie Colletta. Especially on the top of page twenty. This is the panel where Shooter said to me, “You know, if these figures were not the same size, it would have been a wonderful page.” I took that to heart and I tried not to do that anymore.

DB: I don’t know, I quite like it. I think it …
AK: It’s all right, but this is Shooter’s particular prejudice. But he does have --

DB: Yeah there is merit in what he says.
AK: A picture is inherently less interesting with two equal sized objects in it. Balance is not as interesting as imbalance. You may intellectually dispute that, but as a practical fact, there is a great deal of truth to it.

DB: Yep, and all too quickly your Thor run was over.
AK: Yep, but with nice inks. I went out with nice inks.

DB: Yep, it was quite good.
AK: That’s some nice shoulders Sif’s got on that last panel.

DB: I was going to say …
AK: I think I had a “next issue” banner across the bottom of the page that they excised.

DB: Very broad shouldered girl.
AK: Yes, like I say, that last inch or so wasn’t there when I penciled it. So that’s why she’s got those shoulders. In the original pencils, she didn’t look like that.

The next story after this in my book is an episode of the Transformers from 1988 and it’s such a strange looking thing. They changed the printing process and had gone to plastic printing plates. And it’s awful.

DB: I know that there’s some people who are surprised that you did do some Transformer stuff.
AK: Yeah, oh yeah. I barely remember this one at all. There are no human beings in the story. I have no memory of it except the memory of my not enjoying doing it.

DB: You’ve got a lot of people who go nuts over Transformers stuff. You may think I kid, but I do not kid.
AK: No. I don’t think you’re kidding. A guy came up to me at a convention a year ago or so and said, “you drew the first comic book I ever read. An issue of the Transformers and I loved it and you’re great.” I said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” (laughter) I think he got one of the better issues that I did. But this particular one is awful. But then, in the next story in my book are pages from a Red Sonja story I did that appear to have been inked by Rudy Nebres, and it’s breathtaking.

DB: Well, Rudy was a good artist.
AK: All those fellas were at the last convention I was at. There was a whole table full of them.

DB: Well Rudy still is alive, that’s good.
AK: And Ernie is alive, because he was there. But I didn’t talk to him. I don’t even know if they’d remember my stuff. Both of those guys inked my stuff, beautifully. It didn’t look like my stuff, but it was beautiful artwork.

DB: And you never went back to Thor again? That was the end of it.
AK: As far as I remember. For the next seven years or so I never touched Thor again, did I?

DB: No.
AK: Not that I can think of.

DB: I can’t think of where you draw him after that.
AK: But I went on to better things anyhow, Spiderman. No, Thor was not my favourite thing to draw. I never felt I really captured the character. Not to my own satisfaction.

DB: Yeah, what …
AK: That’s my feeling about Thor.

DB: But what did you have in your head when you drew Thor? Whose vision, I mean Jack Kirby of course?
AK: Well failing that, at least John Buscema. Either way, if I had approximated either Kirby or Buscema, it would have made me happy. But I don’t think I did.

DB: Well you came close.
AK: Thanks. Well, it’s more important for you to be satisfied than it is for me to be satisfied. In the big picture, you’re the customer. So what I think is irrelevant as long as the customer is happy. I’m glad to hear that some of it works for you.

DB: And it was a good little series for you to do. It’s one of the more high profile books.
AK: Well, I think, I almost killed the book. And my neighbour saved it, so there you go. Walt came on Thor and it became one of Marvel’s top selling books.

DB: Did you read Walt’s run?
AK: Yeah, I did.

DB: What did you think of it?
AK: I didn’t care for it. But you know, that’s one man’s opinion.

DB: Why didn’t you care for it?
AK: It was too magical and as I’ve said over and over again, I’m not a big fan of magical transformation, magical spells and stuff like that. I like straight adventure. I think Walt created characters that are still being used, aren’t they?

DB: Yeah, oh yeah. Beta Ray Bill and a lot of the other ones. A lot of the things he did they still reference and still use.
AK: Yep, you can’t say that for me!

DB: Blue Devil is still about the only place and so is Kid Devil. You can’t say everything you did ceases to exist when you know, leave the title.
AK: Well, I spent more time drawing the last issues of titles than a lot of people. Maybe even more last issues than Neal Adams.

DB: Yeah, but Neal Adams drew last issues by choice.
AK: Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s by choice.

DB: Well, of course there’s always that famous story that he says that when he went to Marvel he wanted to be put on a book that was about to be cancelled and hence he got the X-Men.
AK: Yeah, but you notice that he didn’t save it either.

DB: No, but I mean, if it was about to be cancelled, why did it take it another, what was it, about ten or eleven issues for it to be cancelled.
AK: No, Neal said, “give me your lowest selling book.” The same thing that Kirby said when he went over DC. Kirby didn’t want to put anyone out of a job. Kirby didn’t want anyone kicked off a book so it could be given it to him. Let me put it this way, Neal has never had a commercial successful comic book has he?

DB: Oh, the Avengers?
AK: Neal never was the regular artist on a book that survived. He left the Avengers, so we don’t know what would have happened there. And he missed issues.

DB: Well, Batman was never cancelled.
AK: Batman was never his regular feature.

DB: Yeah, but I suppose Batman, the Avengers. Surely those were hugely commercial?
AK: Well, the Avengers were never in trouble. And he got himself taken off the book by not making the deadlines and stuff. But when he stayed on a book, it didn’t survive. I’m not saying the Avengers would have tanked if he stayed on it, I’m just saying that everything he DID stay on, died.

DB: So he was the perfect fill in artist?
AK: Look, I loved everything he did back then. But not enough people were buying it to allow it to survive. Now, Neal will tell you that, just because he was drawing the book, the wholesalers were selling it out the backdoor of the warehouses. So his books didn’t get on the stands and were written off by the wholesalers as returns.

DB: Yeah, I’ve heard that so many times, I don’t know if …
AK: My point is, why Neal, Adams? Why didn’t they do that with any successful book? It makes no long-term sense for the distributor to do this.

DB: Yeah.
AK: Why just Neal’s books?

DB: I mean, I’ve never subscribed to that. The other one I’ve heard similar to that is John Byrne who claimed that retailers colluded to prevent his books from hitting the shelf, that they would have, you know people would, all of the retailers would get together and decide that, you know, no John Byrne book was going to make the bookshop.
AK: So they disliked Byrne so much that they would rather take the potential profits out of their own pockets and flush it down the toilet?

DB: Yeah. That was his theory, that’s why his books did poorly.
AK: I don’t believe it.

DB: Yeah, you feel like saying …
AK: At least these guys in the wholesaler’s warehouse in Neal’s story were making their money off the books, albeit under the table. But I don’t believe that a comic book shop owner would cut his own throat to make a point like that. Not in enough numbers to have a significant impact.

DB: But then, the other side of that thing is, why can’t people take responsibility and go. “well, maybe the books weren’t selling because they weren’t that good” ?
AK: Oh, well, that’s a given. At this point we are just picking the lame excuse apart. That’s a given, yeah. Not that I ever disliked the stuff that John Byrne did. Some of the stuff he does I like, some of it I just don’t care about. When he’s working with iconic characters, I generally like it. When he’s doing stories about his own characters, not so much.

DB: Yeah, well, the one he claimed the retailers were ganging up against him was that Lab Rats series he did for DC.
AK: Lab Rats. I think I started off buying it and I could not sustain interest. There were a couple of independent series he started and I would follow them. And I would not be interested. There were a lot of guys like that. You know, like Chaykin. I would automatically buy whatever he did. And then I’d find myself not caring about the characters and then I’d drop it. Now, I don’t even check out these guys’ stuff any more. I just figure it’s the same old stuff again, over and over again.

DB: Actually, Chaykin has been doing some interesting things at Marvel of late.
AK: I was reading about it the other day. Unfortunately, I think I’ve been out of it too long to re-immerse myself in this stuff.

DB: Probably a good thing.
AK: Oh, it certainly saves a lot of money and I don’t have a feeling that I am missing anything. There’s no sense of deprivation.

DB: Yeah, well, because you’re not deprived. I mean, it’s probably a good thing. You’re not wading through crap to find two or three stories.
AK: Yeah and if there is a gem there, there are enough people who will tell me about it so that I can go out and check it out if I want to. So I would not miss it.

DB: I suppose the two Chaykin stories that really stuck out for me of late was an issue of Wolverine he did and also a Punisher issue which I bought solely on the strength that it was Chaykin artwork.
AK: Chaykin uses an awful lot of assistants. I think he does most of his own figure work, but I don’t think he draws or inks his backgrounds. When a guy turns into a corporation I loose a lot of interest.

DB: Yeah, but how many of the big boy’s aren’t corporations?
AK: Nowadays. But in the old days no one touched a page of Kirby. Nobody touched a page of Buscema. Inkers had assistants, but most Marvel pencilers didn’t, really. Well, I’m probably wrong. There were probably guys who had help. Gil Kane used Roger Brand and Howie Chaykin. And Wally Wood, don’t get me started. But Marvel’s top pencilers generally had no help in penciling. Ditko, Heck, Ayers, Leiber were all solo acts. Kirby did layouts, but they were credited.

DB: Yeah, but then people used to pass around pages. Artists would pass around pages. There’s a Ghost Rider issue where you know it’s Starlin, Netzer, Leiohla, Weiss, a whole pile of people did it.
AK: That’s true, the younger guys did it more often. But it wasn’t business, you know. Wrightson, Jeff Jones and Weiss, they lived in the same apartment building on 79th street. They passed pages around, amongst themselves, mostly for kicks. But it wasn’t a professional decision and it wasn’t a regular thing. It was kind of a romantic decision. Like the Fleagle Gang, at EC.

DB: I was talking to Weiss not so long ago and we were talking about the Atlas issue that he draw, I can’t remember what the title was, the Brute, I think it was, and he was telling me, he said, well not a lot of it, but some of it was drawn by Frank Brunner and Jim Starlin who were hanging around and picked up different pages and went for it.
AK: Right, that’s exactly the way it used to happen. I remember Starlin handed me a page of Captain Marvel or Warlock once. This is early on, in the early seventies. He told me to pencil this guy’s head. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t up to it. I think they erased whatever I did and maybe Weiss wound up doing that head.

DB: How did you see Starlin’s pencils, especially on the Captain Marvel stuff?
AK: Um, I’ve never been a fan of Starlin’s artwork or writing. I don’t care for heroes whose thighs are wider than their head. Or villains whose thighs are bigger than Sequoia trees.

DB: I’ve got to admit, I do like Starlin, I do like his writing and I do like his artwork. But then taste is totally subjective.
AK: It doesn’t make me lose respect for you. [Laughing] No, it’s no better or worse than a lot of people’s stuff. But it just doesn’t appeal to me. I was already in the business when Jim Starlin showed up. So I’m looking at it differently than you are. You are looking at it as a consumer, so you consume this stuff and internalised it, along with everyone else’s stuff. But I cannot see it. When I look at these guys stuff, I’m looking at the person and not necessarily just at the artwork. As a kid, who doesn’t know the artist as a person, the art just takes me into the story. Now I’m analyzing the artwork, not just reading stories and internalising it that way. So I can’t help but look at these post 1970 guys differently than you do. Thank god I knew Neal Adams’ work before I knew Neal Adams. Knowing him as a person before I knew his art could have ruined it for me. Big-time.

DB: You’re not removed enough.
AK: I met Neal pretty shortly after he got into the comic book business. But there was enough time for me to me dazzled by those covers he was doing to be able to accept that stuff as quote, unquote, real. In other words, the “real” stories took place before I got into the business. And these “fiction’ stories happened after I got into the business. When I first met Neal he was still drawing Bob Hope Comics.

I think Jack Kirby was drawing the third issues of his DC books when I went to work at DC. So I can’t look at Kirby’s DC stuff as a fan. I’m looking it as a professional and it really turns me off. The dividing line in Kirby’s career for everyone, I’m sure, is the Marvel pre-Fourth World stuff and post Fourth World. And for me, it’s not just a change of venue and characters. It’s an actual physical difference. I was a participant in the Fourth World, not a reader.

DB: Yeah, well I’m not a huge fan of his Fourth World stuff, and the reason I wasn’t a huge fan of the Fourth World stuff was because I thought it was very poorly dialogued.
AK: That’s true.

DB: You know and I know people that literally fight you on that and say no, it was Kirby at his purest and I maintain that if it was Kirby at his purest, then it shows that Kirby really couldn’t write and hence Kirby did not write …
AK: He could not dialogue. And he didn’t have the discipline to edit the stuff. Kirby’s mind was all over the place. He did not have the discipline of a dialoguer. He needed a throttle.

DB: He needed Stan Lee.
AK: Or someone like Joe Simon, or Stan Lee. Or someone.

DB: Yeah, it’s a shame.
AK: Oh well, the point is nothing lasts forever, good, bad or indifferent.

DB: True.
AK: And things change.

DB: And change is very necessary.
AK: Well, is it? Always? In everything?

DB: Yeah. That way we don’t get stuck in a rut. If things change, you know they can either go downhill but then they could change for the better.
AK: Well, change, merely for the sake of change itself is not what I want. I have no problem with evolution, but change for the sake of change is not necessarily a good thing.

DB: Fair point.
AK: You get the last word, Daniel.

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Friday, May 23, 2008

Looking Back With: James Kemsley

Allow me to set the stage for this one. I conducted it on a hot February afternoon in 2004 and it's remained in the archives since then. There's two reasons why this interview has taken this long to appear. They are, in order, because James Kemsley and myself were always going to do a follow-up to this covering his non-comic strip work, his work in movies and on television. Although we spoke a few times since the interview we never got around to locking in a time to finish it off. So this isn't quite as complete as it could have been.

The second reason was that I recorded it on mini-disc and subsequently lost the disc. The same disc had conversations with Jim Mooney, Mike Netzer and Alex Saviuk on it as well. During our recent move I found the disc, charged up my barely working mini-disc player and copied it over. After having it transcribed I felt that it still held up as a good insight into how James was working at that time - hence I've left in a few references to events that were going on back in 2004, including the (then) upcoming Meggs XI game at the Tanunda Winery, which is where I first met James and got to hang out with a bunch of cartoonists, cricketers and at least one internationally famous rock star. It was a fine day and remains in my memory as being a shining ray of light during an otherwise dark time.

Our main interaction came about when the Ginger Meggs strip was threatened. In mid 2004 the Sunday Mail in Adelaide decided to drop Meggs in favour of American sourced strips, most of which seemed to cross promote FoxTel. James contacted me and had me act as his 'man on the ground', which I did. We formed a plan of action, arranged a petition and raised some media awareness. Our first shot was to be a two pronged approach - on the same day I spoke to the ABC here in the form of radio station 5AN, and James spoke to 5DN. We expected more but within two hours of the pair of us going to air the editors at the Sunday Mail had offered James a new contract and were begging for a new Meggs to appear that very Sunday. We'd won the war with our first shots, something that impressed and amazed us both. We then backed that up with a campaign in Sydney, where Meggs was dropped in favour of a Su-Doku page! We had a victory there as well, as Meggs was soon snapped up by a rival daily.

James isn't with us anymore, and we're all poorer for his passing. Jason Chatfield has taken the mantle of being the Ginger Meggs cartoonist now and he's doing pretty darn fine with it. James would be proud to see Jason's strips appearing everywhere and he'd even happier to know that Meggs is still going strong. As it should be.

So sit back, grab a cold, frosty drink, and enjoy!


DANIEL BEST: What is your background and how did you start cartooning?
JAMES KEMSLEY: I guess I was one of these kids who always enjoyed drawing and copying Disney cartoons and general animation type things, Popeye and whatever. I always found it very relaxing to draw, and it was the one thing that my parents thought that I could do at a very young age and so they encouraged me. I also wish they had encouraged me to sing or play cricket, but they didn’t encourage me as much, so I am not able to do those other two things. But just at a very young age I started drawing and then I got to a stage when I was about 15 or 16, it might have been as late as 18, I was living in a country town in Victoria and they had their local problems. I did a cartoon protesting against one of their local environmental problems and it was published in the local newspaper and this was back in about 1960, it must have been 1965 or 1966, and they approached me about doing a cartoon once a week for the paper after that, which I ended up doing for about two and a half years, so I guess that is how I got into it.

DB: What were some of your early influences back then?
JK: Well gosh, when you live in Victoria and you grow up and, I don’t know if you know much about the Victorian cartooning scene in the 1960s, but it was dominated by WEG and Jeff Hook in Melbourne and on a national scene, people like Bruce Petty and Paul Rigby – I was more along the lines of trying to forge WEG and Rigby and Hook more than anybody else and they were the cartoonists that I really enjoyed. At the same time reading comic strips, I had always been a Wizard of ID fan and that is the humour that I enjoyed. This is getting onto the stage where I actually started thinking about what I enjoyed, as opposed to when you are a kid and you pick up the paper. Like all kids, I used to read the Sunday comic veraciously, probably up until I moved to Victoria where there were no Sunday comics as such in those days. But I used to enjoy reading Ginger Meggs and Uncle Joe’s Horse Radish and Fatty Finn and mainly the Australian comics are the ones that appealed to me really.

DB: Did you have had a temptation to draw one of WEGs grand final pin ups?
JK: No, but he drew Ginger Meggs in a political cartoon once and sent it off to me and we are quite good friends, WEG and I. I am President of the Australian Cartoonist Association and last year it was quite a thrill and pleasure to present WEG with what we call our Jim Russell Award, which is an award for contribution to the art form shall we say and he was a recipient last year. It is not so much something that you win, but you are rewarded.

DB: I’ve never met him, and I have only ever seen WEG once on the Footy Show.
JK: Oh yes, he was on there, yes.

DB: He came on and he drew one of his banners, I can’t remember what it was, but it was one of the full size things that he does and did it in about an hour and it was perfectly detailed.
JK: Oh he could probably do it in about 15 minutes.

DB: Well I think for a lot of the time he was just sitting there and waiting for them to call him back on. I was stunned by how good he could do it so quickly as well. I have always been envious of people who can draw so well, so fast and it is always in the back of my mind thinking I wonder what would happen if this guy actually sat down and took his time?
JK: It is very hard to draw. Most of the things that people draw quickly are things that they have done a thousand times before, because what you need to do to is see it on the page and then do it. What people forget that artists do it with felt pens and there it is. There is no sketching out first or anything like that, generally it is the stuff that they have done a million times before that they do very quickly. When it comes to sitting down, drawing a cartoon or a comic strip, well you obviously take a lot more time, and you are far more careful in doing it.

DB: It was fast and quite interesting because he did do it with marker pens.
JK: Yeah, yeah.

DB: And as I was watching him start, I thought you are a brave man going into this with marker pens, because if you make a mistake...
JK: You have got to remember that WEG is nearly 80 and he has been drawing for 60 years. You don’t have to be brave; you just know what you are going to do.

DB: Auto pilot.
JK: Yeah, that is basically it. I am sure when he does the final one he will take a lot more time and probably pencil it in and go over it and make sure because they are the ones that people unfortunately hang onto for years and they come back to haunt you. I try not to do anything in public anymore, because every six months I hate what I did six months before so I like to keep it hidden. One of the reasons that I do very few collections of books, it’s only when I get my arm twisted or get a vast amount of money thrown in front of me that I do them, because I know within six months of having done it, I wish I hadn’t.


DB: How did it come about that you took over Ginger Meggs and what appealed to you about Ginger Meggs?
JK: I took it over in 1983, so that is quite a long while ago now. Jimmy Bancks was the creator of Meggs as you are probably aware.

DB: Yes.
JK: I have known his family for some 35 years now and in fact, I was very close with his daughter and her husband. Anyway, I was working in London in the early 80s and late 70s and we had a couple of businesses happening together and one which eventually lead to a Ginger Meggs movie being made in 1982. Now although I didn’t have a great deal to do with the movie, it was my idea to do it. I was working in New York when the movie was being filmed so they asked me to come back and work on the film and have some influence on it because as I said it had been my idea to do the movie. At the same time I had started drawing a comic strip on a weekly basis for an Australian and New Zealand newspaper in London. And so, while I came back here, I was busily doing my comic strip and sending it back to London, which was really convoluted because I was actually working out of New York, but that is a very long and dull story.

While I was drawing the comic strip one night, some of the kids that were in the movie asked if I could draw Ginger Meggs comic strips. So I took one of my gags that I was doing for London and instead of having my two characters in it, I think I put two of Bancks’ characters in it, Ginger and someone else, his mum from memory, and gave it to them. Anyway about 18 months after that, the artist who was drawing Ginger Meggs was killed when his car crashed into a pole and unbeknown to me, the kids had given the comic strip to the Bancks family as a thank you and they had it framed. So the Bancks family contacted me and said, “Listen, we have to submit a name for the takeover of doing the strip. We want to keep it going and we think you can do it, are you interested?” And at that stage I was at loose ends about what I was going to do with myself and I said, “Oh yeah, I’ll give it a bash,” because I knew the character fairly well because I had been involved with the movie fairly closely and knew what Meggs was about. The movie was actually based on a whole lot of old Bancks comic strips. So I could see where the character was coming and going and so the bottom line was that, they picked three people for the job. The guy that I think they really wanted to do it was already doing two comic strips for the paper already, so they said, “If you do this, you have got to finish your two strips.” And he didn’t want to do that because he didn’t want to be doing a strip for someone else, he wanted to do his own creativity

The other guy was about 70 and they thought well if they gave him the gig, he might not be around long and they might be looking for someone else in a year and they might have to go through the whole process again. So it fell in my lap. And they just said, “Look you have got the job, but we have got to tell you that we think the comic strip is past its use by date and we don’t know if it is getting any great reaction, but we will give you 16 weeks to make it work. And at the end of that period we will reassess where it stands in the marketplace and if we think it is having an impact, we will leave it.” And lucky for me, 16 weeks later they kept it going and that was about 21 years ago.


DB: Was it daunting taking on such an icon, because Ginger Meggs has been around...
JK: Since 1921.

DB: Yeah.
JK: You have got to remember that you are taking over something that is very well established. There is no other comic established as well in Australia as Ginger Meggs. It’s a little bit like taking over the Premiership Team; you are on a hiding to nothing. If someone has just won the Premiership and even if you win the Premiership next year, you know big deal.

DB: You're riding on the coat tails.
JK: Yeah. So I did that and I thought a lot about it and I went to them and I said, “Look, I have looked at this and I think the reason that it is failing is because it is not relevant to now.” And they said, “Well you take the punt and we will support you and update it.” I suddenly started bringing in contemporary settings and contemporary characters and contemporary language. I should have gone the whole hog but it took me years to make the drawings really contemporary and have the kids in very modern clothing, which I do now, but it took a while to get to that point. So with the paper behind me, I thought I have got nothing to lose because there is going to be a lot of people whinge and moan and there were a lot of readers that wrote in and said, “Oh we don’t like Ginger being modern.” They had been reading it for years and it should be like it was. What they didn’t realise is that Bancks very subtly in his tenure on the strip, actually updated it each week as he went with the language and the drawings and so on.

So yeah, taking over an icon strip, was daunting. I know where I stand on the pecking order of people who have done the strip and I don’t rate me any better than Jimmy Bancks. In fact, unfortunately for me, he was quite a genius when it comes to writing and in the later part of his life, his artwork, so I just like to settle in at the back there and do my own thing now.


DB: I wouldn’t under-rate yourself too much. The Bancks stuff is great and that is the stuff that I'm pretty sure I grew up reading.
JK: How old are you?

DB: 36.
JK: No you probably grew up on me.

DB: I can remember it back in the early 70s, the Sunday strips especially.
JK: In that case you grew up on Lloyd Piper. Lloyd Piper took over in 1973 when Ron Vivian died. It is like me, I read Ginger Meggs as a kid, but the Ginger Meggs I read was obviously Ron Vivian, because Jimmy Bancks had died in 1952. I didn’t start getting into comic strips until ’58 or ’59, so I would have been bought up on Ginger as Vivian saw it, but I still enjoyed it, you know.

DB: I loved it. I think it was still signed by Bancks or it was Ginger Meggs by Bancks.
JK: When Bancks died he wanted it to keep going, it was his wish. A good friend of his was Sir Frank Packer; Kerry’s dad, and he had expressed his wish that if anything ever happened to him, that he would keep it going; the paper would keep it going. So they found another artist, but Sir Frank apparently issued a memo saying, “Look the other artist can draw it, but it has got to have Bancks name on it,” so it was always known as Ginger Meggs by Bancks. It wasn’t until I took over that we discussed it and almost right from the beginning, I labelled it Bancks’ Ginger Meggs by Kemsley. See I thought that...

DB: As I said, the ones I grew up with, the ones that I can remember I always thought were Bancks and then I found out later on that they weren’t by Bancks.
JK: No.

DB: And the only way that I found out is that I had picked up The Golden Years of Ginger Meggs by Bancks.
JK: Although I got a lot of brick-bats, I got a lot of bouquets from people who started reading the strip and it obviously worked for them because it is still in the paper. They said, “Oh we can’t tell the difference between your work and Jimmy Bancks’ work,” and as I said a minute ago, that is probably where I made the big mistake that I tried to update everything in the strip, but I thought gee people really know Bancks’ work and I really should try and forge it. And for probably 10 years, I really went out of my way to make sure if I drew something, I drew it like he would draw it. I have got all the Ginger Meggs annuals and the Golden Years of Ginger Meggs and when you are doing something in your own way, you will lay it out in your perspective and everything that you do comes naturally. You can’t force a drawing; you just have to do it as it is in your head. And Bancks’ head is different to my head, so for that 10 years, I always referred to how would he do a layout and I really tried to make people think that they were still reading Bancks’ cartoon. Until one day I said this is silly, this is taking me too long to do and I started doing the daily strip about 10 or 12 years ago which took off fairly well for me, so I didn’t have time to keep referring to books and everything for every strip I did, so I just one day let my head draw and that is how it comes out.

It must be 10 years ago again, or even longer, there was a guy interested in doing a Ginger Meggs animation show. He went bankrupt eventually on a lot of projects, and it was one of them, but I did a lot of initial drawings for him and we decided that it was going to look better if Ginger had eyes instead of the streaky eyes that Bancks had given him, which was part of the 1920s or ‘30s style of drawing anyway. If you look at the early Blondie’s or Little Orphan Annie or Fatty Finn, that was the style of drawing and we just decided that it should look a little bit more modern than it is and so I suddenly took his shoes off and put gym boots on him and put a tee shirt underneath his vest and gave him eyes that could be animated really well if necessary. And now no one has ever come up to me and said, “Whatever happened to his eyes?” They just...

DB: Accepted it.
JK: Accepted it and of course I try and give the whole strip a modern look. I love comics and I love people’s artwork. I am very lucky to know a lot of the major cartoonists in the world and we often sit down once or twice a year wherever I am and I talk to them about their style and their technique and I think it is important with Meggs that the whole look of it is modern, you know. I don’t know, do you read it in The Advertiser over – The Mail over there?

DB: Yes I do.
JK: Well you will often see that I get away from panel by panel and just use the space to put drawings in and that is kind of a 2000 thing to do. You know, the ground that everyone thinks is broken by Calvin and Hobbes was actually broken by Windsor McKay about 100 years ago. Then people started conforming to little boxes and people like Watterson and now Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman who do Zits and Patrick MacDonald who does Mutts and all these people, to say well we have got that much space to fill, why do little boxes and do something that is intricate to the story.


DB: Do you find any resistance when you do go outside of the circle? I have the Watterson book, the Tenth Anniversary of Calvin and Hobbes, where he goes through the process of doing a strip and how he disregarded, as you said, the boxes, and he just went with whatever he wanted to and the syndicates would say, “No that is not what we want,” but he dug his heels in.
JK: I think that he broke the mould and said it was okay. I send my stuff across as it is published in a few papers in the States and on websites, and I have never had anybody complain about it, it just gives you more artistic freedom. Sometimes the strip lends it itself to being in boxes. It just says, this should be in boxes and you do it. Other times you think no, no, I want to take the whole background and put a couple of little squares on top of the background and continue the story. Also with the modern comic strip, people don’t want to sit down and read. I promise you if we put Bancks in the paper now, as wonderful and as funny as he is, no one will read it and no one would bother because it is incredibly wordy. There is a school of thought that if you have more than 26 words in a modern comic strip, particularly a daily strip, people won’t read it.

If you look at the popular strips like say Garfield for instance on a Sunday, if Garfield had got 26 words in it I would be very surprised. People want to have their fast food comics now, they want to look at it, literally scan it and look at the tag and then move on. You will get a chuckle or a belly laugh although these days a lot of cartoonists don’t specifically go for one, you don’t know if you are going to get a belly laugh. I have done some strips which I thought were very philosophical and I thought that people were going to grin at and I remember that they have ended up laughing out loud at them. Others I have done that I thought were very, very funny, that have fallen flat. So you just do it as you draw it and that is how you write it. Yu can’t write anything that isn’t in you to start with. I try every so often to redraw a Jimmy Bancks story line and they are the hardest ones for me to do, because they are very foreign to my way of writing. I would have more of a chance of drawing a Calvin and Hobbes or drawing a Mutts or drawing a Zitts, than I would have of going back and doing Bancks, but I still try and do it just to get me back to what was the basic character of Ginger Meggs. It was this basic character that Bancks created that has obviously lasted 50 years longer than Bancks did.


DB: It's interesting that you say that about Bancks because one things that stands out when you look at his artwork, is the use of blacks. Where he would have all panels that were black, which I don’t think you could do that now.
JK: Well see I did one Sunday strip where I did one, two, four black panels and one large coloured panel. I did it intentionally because I basically had half of the page with a very colourful deep, busy drawing. What it was was a pair of eyes and the first panel had one character saying to the other, “Huh.” And then he said, “Are you still there Meggsie?” And all it was in one panel was a pair of eyes with a balloon in it and the second panel was Meggsie saying, “Of course I am still here, when do you think I am going?” And then the third panel had both sets of eyes and one is saying, “Well what do you think Ginge?” And the eyes are saying, “What do I think, what do I think?” And then the last panel which took up 90% of the picture, was looking behind an audience, looking though their heads to a stage where there are two guys in a deer suit with a kids singing on stage and he is saying, “I don’t think show business is what it is cracked up to be.”
But there was a case, a reason why I had the dark panels and the black panels. I think in about 20 years I have done that two or three times because when you really want to have the last on jump off the page and be a very strong tag, it works very well. It is like colour now. When you use colour, you can really drown in colour and I find that if I am going to have a panel that is really busy and really colourful, I will make the others very plain and generally I will put a white background on them, because that just helps life up the colour that I want to be the strong panel.


DB: How long does it take you to do a strip, say a daily?
JK: If I have to, I can sit down, start one in the morning and do it and colour it and finish it and have it shipped off that afternoon. I have a really weird working life. But if I start at 10:30 and I haven’t got an idea, by the time I get the idea and physically do it, it takes me about 12 or 15 hours. Often I will start at about nine o’clock or ten o’clock and I will just go until two or three the next day and knock off at four in the morning, which is not unusual. That is the Sunday strip. The daily strip will take me two hours to do one, from getting an idea and going from the idea to the final version. I use a lot of electronic help these days like Photoshop and Illustrator but I still draw the strip with ink on paper. I save everything I draw and I have got 2000 or 3000 drawings that I have done over the years of individual characters and sometimes I can use those characters again. I say, well I have got Meggs running and I might have spent an hour getting it exactly as I like it and I think well I will use that again. So I might wait for a while and I will just use that one picture in a different strip. Like reversed or flipped or something with it, because that helps with the timing too. I find it quite a laborious thing to do seven strips a week as well as having a life.

DB: Cricket is predominant in your strip and from what you said earlier it sounds like you are a very frustrated cricketer.
JK: I am totally frustrated and I blame it on my father for not telling me how good I was when I was eight. I have two boys whom I have told are good from the time they were four. One is the leading wicket taker with his club and the other is a natural athlete and last weekend took three for 18 in his first spell.

DB: Beautiful.
JK: The Ginger Meggs XI goes back to the fact that I like cricket and being, it is an awful word to use, being in the public eye, I don’t want to use the word celebrity or personality or anything, but being in the public eye you get invited to a lot of things. I always accept the things that I get invited to for cricket and over the years I have made a lot of friends who are test cricketers who enjoy comics. Steve Waugh is a big comic fan and I was also involved for about 17 years as a director on the Bradman Foundation, so that also helped.

But Jimmy Bancks and Arthur Mailey who were very close friends. Arthur Mailey was a leg spinner for Australia and he was an editorial cartoonist and a caricaturist for The Sydney Sun. He and Jimmy Bancks were very close friends and in the 1930s formed a cricket side called the Bohemians and one of the members of the Bohemians was Don Bradman. And they would play what they used to call second class games and play exhibition matches around New South Wales and where ever.

What happened one day, I was talking to Geoff Lawson about this and he said, “We should reform the Bohemians and go and play second class matches.” And I said, “Well yeah, except the Bohemians now have a different connotation to what it had in the ‘30s.” And I said, “If we want to get sponsorship or we want to get some sort of notoriety, let’s just call it the Meggs XI?” And for of the last 10 years, the Meggs XI has played a dozen or two dozen matches I suppose. I have never counted them up. I think we have played in Vanuatu, against Vanuatu and we have played over there in the Barossa Valley once. We play again in a month’s time and it is just when we can get everybody together and say, “Well if you have got the airfares to get us there, we will all come over for a couple of days break and play cricket.” Geoff Lawson is in it as I mentioned and Len Pascoe, I don’t know if you have seen the rundown of it at all?

DB: Yes I have. Len Pascoe, he is a bit of a cult figure.
JK: Oh he is. Len is great and Len is probably one of my closest cricketing friends to be honest. He is a mad computer buff and he is always ring me up and trying to sort things out for him on Photoshop and Premiere and mind you, as the years have gone on he phones up less because he probably now knows more than I know. But we see quite a bit of each other and our families are good friends. Merv Hughes is apparently playing with us, so I have been told. Merv came on a couple of games with us to Vanuatu and threatened to come back, but I was going to ring him to see if he wanted to play in this one, but someone got in first and he agreed to it.

DB: I am pretty sure you drew Merv Hughes in a couple strips.
JK: No, the only cricketers I have actually drawn into the strip – I drew Mike Whitney.

DB: That’s right.
JK: Years and years ago when Mike retired, that was a surprise for him because I had known him for a while and we had always been good friends and I thought I would surprise him. And I was going to his testimonial match so I drew him in. You are right, I drew Merv in, but I never actually said it was Merv. With Mike Whitney I said was Mike.

DB: The Mike Whitney strip was, “We’ve got this ring in bowler”.
JK: That’s it.

DB: And I am pretty sure that I saw Merv in at least one.
JK: I did one where I had Ginger metamorphing into a fast bowler. He started out running in as Meggs and then in the course into running in he turned into Merv. I never actually said it was Merv; I just made it look a lot like Merv and in the daily strip. Gee, it must be a long, long while ago. When Merv first got dropped from the Australian side, I did a daily with Ginge lamenting that Merv was no longer in the side.


DB: I think that is pretty much where I knew that there was a big change going on with Ginger Meggs because before that, I think the only other cricketer I had seen mentioned was Don Bradman and now suddenly you are sitting down and talking about Merv Hughes and I thought this is odd.
JK: Well I took the lead from that because Bancks used to put contemporary characters into his strip all the time. Apart from Don Bradman who made an appearance in the ‘30s, he also had Charles Kingsford Smith in it, he also had William Dobell in it and in fact I used to have a list of the real people and these were all friends of his by the way.

DB: Yes.
JK: Bill Dobell was a close mate, he had some dealings with Kingsford Smith and, of course, he played cricket and golf with Bradman. So I thought, well people love seeing that and relating to it. Strangely people have got this funny thing about cartoons that they get a real buzz out of seeing character A and character B’s strip cross over thing, but they also love seeing real people. I haven’t done it too much and again it has mainly been friends that I have done it with. Mike Whitney is one and Merv is another. I often use friends name in the strip and they get a buzz out of it, although the characters don’t look like them.

Some years back when I first started doing the strip, I used to hang around with Mel Gibson quite a bit and so I drew Mel in it. I did him as Mel and as Mad Max in the same strip. Unfortunately in those days my caricatures weren’t what they are now, but none the less, he has the strip on his kid’s walls in Hollywood somewhere he tells me. I also did Molly Meldrum in one, because I had some dealings with Molly Meldrum. For a while there I was doing guest spots on Young Talent Time when I first started and I became very friendly with a young guy called Bevan who used to be on the show and Danni Minogue. They used to write to me and ring me quite often and so I drew both of them into the strip. I think I drew Danni in years ago when she was just a 14 or 13 year old or something.

DB: A little Minogue.
JK: Yeah.

DB: You have sent a whole lot of little Minogue collectors of their nut trying to find that now.
JK: Yeah, it will be there. In fact I think I did her in the first panel with Ginger writing her a love letter if I remember from memory. She used to ring me up all the time and chat away and it goes so far back. I mean she was talking to me on the phone one day and she said, “Oh my sister has just come home, do you want to say hello to her?” And I said, “Oh yeah.” And this voice came on and said, “Hello Mr Kemsley,” and I said, “Hello, what’s your name?” And she said, “Oh Kylie.” “Hello Kylie, how are you?” “I’m good; I’ll put you back to Danni now.” And that was it, you know, this predates Neighbours and all those shows and it must be 17 years ago I suppose.



DB: What do you do with the artwork when you have finished? Do you keep it, do you stock pile it do you auction it or sell it?
JK: Well I used to keep the artwork. I used to do a very traditional big piece of Bristol board and I’d start with the first panel and draw my way down to the bottom panel and do all that. Then I found myself having to scan it in and reduce it and send it off. And I thought how stupid is this? Why not just draw panel by panel, so I started out just on almost photocopy paper just drawing the panels and scanning those in, because they were easier to scan in, an A4 piece of paper and then I assembled it in Photoshop. And then I thought, how stupid is this, just do some rough drawings. So I would just grab a bit of paper and I map out where the strip is going and how it is going to look and I just have a great big bin which I empty every so often, when I can’t draw any more on a piece of paper and I just scan that section in and then I position it to the size and the shape that I want. So I longer have any comic strips. I get asked for them quite often and even from my colleagues. When I go to American in May for the Rubens again, I will be taking over three or four large laser prints of strips that I have mentioned them in or I have done something that they enjoy, so now when people phone up and want an original, the best I can offer them is a laser copy of the one they like. I just don’t have it. On the odd occasion I get people writing to me and wanting a particular daily strip and what I will generally do then is actually redraw that daily strip for them, but they are obviously not as complicated or as busy to do as it is to do you know, a Sunday strip. A daily strip is only about – I draw mine about 20 centimetres by 6 centimetres so you know, it is almost a case of printing it out and putting it on a light box and drawing over it and saying, “There it is.”

Ginger Meggs XI

Chateau Tanuda, Barossa Valley, April 3 - 6 2004


Back row, left to right: Tim Farris, Ron Harrivel, Warwick Adlam, Shane Lee, Wayne Holdsworth, Len Pascoe, Geoff Lawson, Lord Mayor Brian Hurn (umpire), Brian Taber (umpire)
Front Row, left to right: Brad Hughes, John Moses, James Machin, Grant Brown, James Kemsley



Same event, same place, same day, myself with James

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GINGER MEGGS© is syndicated in Australia by Jimera Pty.Ltd and is published in over 120 newspapers and magazines in countries including Antigua, Australia, Barbados, Bolivia, Canada, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, UAE, USA, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Western Samoa

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Friday, February 01, 2008

Looking Back With Fred Hembeck

It's hard not to like Fred Hembeck. At least, I find it hard not to like the guy, but then I do know people who look at his stuff and remain fairly stone faced, so I guess I'll clarify that - if you've got any form of a sense of humour then it's hard not to like Fred Hembeck. If you take your comic books seriously, and think that those characters are real then you're probably not a fan of Hembeck. More's the shame because Fred loves these characters too, which is why he does what he does.

Fred Hembeck has been around for decades now. He's an institution. He's been providing the comic book world with his own unique insights into it's history since he began submitting his drawings and commentaries back in the 1970s. And the comic book world is a better place for it, and a better place for Fred Hembeck. Love him or hate him, and frankly if you hate him then you really need to lighten up a lot, he's still going strong and will only be getting stronger with the release of his newest book, The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus, coming your way from Image very shortly. Buy a copy, sit back and take in an afternoon of Hembeck. You'll be glad you did. Then buy a few of his pieces of art, you'll be even happier. In a perfect world an original Hembeck would sell for just about the same as an original Ditko, but the world isn't perfect so you can grab an original Hembeck at a very affordable price.

The world of comic books is a far better place with people like Fred Hembeck in it. I managed to tie Hembeck down for a couple of hours a few weeks ago, and this is the result. After speaking to him I can't help but like the guy even more and I'm sure that you'll see why once you start reading.

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DANIEL BEST: Your artworks are unique little pieces of drawing. I can’t think of anyone who does anything similar.
FRED HEMBECK: I guess not, you’re probably right about that. Julie, my daughter, was telling me that she was at school the other day and while her friends know I’m a cartoonist, they asked, “Well, what does he draw?” and she said, “I don’t know what to tell them.” I said, “Yeah, I don’t know what to tell them either.” I know what to tell you obviously, but for people who aren’t into the whole comic book thing, it’s a little hard to explain. You draw yourself as a cartoon character talking to famous comic book icons. It’s a little odd.

DB: So how do you explain it?
FH: Generally I don’t. [laughter] I show them stuff like the Petey stories I did, I show them some of the more mainstream stuff that I’ve done during my career. I don’t generally say, “I did ‘Fred Hembeck Destroys The Marvel Universe’,” because they'd look at me like I’m crazy.

DB: You didn’t start out to be a funny cartoonist.
FH: No, not at all. It was all kind of like an accident because Vince Colletta told me I was awful and would never work in comics.

DB: That must have been soul destroying, having Vinnie Colletta tell you you’re no good.
FH: Yeah, of all people.

DB: What was Vinnie like when you met him?
FH: Pretty professional but a bit brusque. Move you in, move you out, take a look at your stuff, show you some stuff that happened to be lying around to explain how you could do it better and then say, “Well, you’ll never make it in comics. Good luck kid, goodbye.” Then he flashed me a crocodile smile on the way out and that was the end of it.

DB: How did you view Vinnie's work when you were reading comics?
FH: I didn’t like it. I just didn’t like it at all. I’m well known for liking everybody’s stuff but even when I was a kid it was, “Oh, Vinnie Colletta, I hate this stuff.” I didn’t even like it on the Kirby Thor books. The only time I liked it was those first three issues that Joe Orlando did on Daredevil because it just seemed so unusual to me at that point, so I thought, ‘Well this is kind of neat.’ I think the next thing I saw was the Sub-Mariner stuff he did with Gene Colan, and I didn’t care for that at all.

DB: Gene is notoriously hard to ink though.
FH: Yeah, and I so much more preferred the Iron Man stuff that was being inked at the same time by Jack Abel, who generally I’ve not been that big a fan of, but I liked the combo at the time.

DB: Going way back now, where were you born and where did you grow up?
FH: I was born in a hospital in New York City, but my parents were living on Long Island at the time, about fifty miles out in a small town called Yaphank, which was the name of an Indian tribe I believe. I grew up there. I was an only child and my parents were a lot older than I was. My dad was fifty and my mom was thirty nine when I was born. I didn’t find out until after my mom passed away that they weren’t even married when I was born, they were married shortly there after, meaning I was only a temporary bastard [laughter] as I like to tell my wife. She says, “No, I think you’re pretty much full time, but ok.” I had a pretty decent childhood.

DB: When did you discover comic books?
FH: Around 1959 my dad came home with an issue of Spooky The Tough Little Ghost and I really liked it. It turned out that someone at his job had a kid who was outgrowing comics. Can you believe that? Outgrowing comics. He wanted to know if his son, that being me, would be interested in them enough to keep from just throwing them out. I passed the test with the Spooky comic so he brought home a big box of them. The box was almost entirely made up of kid orientated comics--there was only two super hero books. There was one World’s Finest and a Jimmy Olsen that had Superman playing marbles on the cover, as ridiculous as that may seem. It also had Little Lulu, Dennis The Menace and Little Archie, which remain three of my favourite comics to this day. It had a lot of Harvey and Dell comics. That kind of hooked me. My grandmother saw I liked them so she started buying them off the stands for me, mainly Harveys and Dells. She also tried to give me some culture so she bought me some Classics Illustrateds but, of course, they had creepy artwork and people getting killed, and that kind of freaked me out when I was seven or eight years old. When I was in second grade a friend of mine kept bringing in these Superman comics, the Mort Weisinger things. I guess it was really the Bizarro characters that caught my attention, and all the weird transformations, like the one where Superman had the big head on the cover because he was from the future, or the one where Superman was suffering from old age and it showed him as a decrepit old man. The one that really pushed me over the top was when they had the story, “The Night Of March 31st” with the boo-boo contest, which just flabbergasted me. Tales Of The Bizarro World had just started up in Adventure Comics, so I went out and tried to find that issue, but I just missed it and I wound up buying the Superman issue that retold his origin instead, which was perfect timing. Maybe a month later the Secret Origins giant came out, and so suddenly, I had a much needed primer. That’s how I started buying Superman comics and all the other DC super heroes.

DB: It’s a bit unsual that you came in via the Bizarro stuff, because most people I speak to who were reading Superman back in the day came in with the Superman Red, Superman Blue or The Death Of Superman.
FH: The Death Of Superman came along in about the third or fourth issue I bought off the stands, so that was something I saw when it first came out. That, to me, was one of the greatest comics I've ever read. So was the other one you mentioned, Superman Red, Superman Blue. So yeah, if I hadn’t already been hooked, those two would have definitely brought me into the fold and kept me there.

DB: I can’t help but think that if you saw those before the Bizarro you might have become a more mainstream artist.
FH: Possibly, very true. But that’s when I was buying everything, Flash, Green Lantern. It’s odd, I was buying everything that DC put out that was superhero except for Space Ranger in the comic Tales Of The Unexpected. For some reason I just couldn’t stomach Space Ranger and I don’t know why that was. I was very undiscriminating otherwise.

DB: What sort of art training did you get?
FH: Well, when I was in kindergarten I did some drawings and the teacher told my mom, “Hey, he’s pretty good, you should encourage him.” That’s what I was told and that planted the seed in my head. That was a couple of years before I got into the comics. I didn’t really have any art training, I just did a lot of drawing. I’ve got a notebook full of old comic book characters that I was drawing back in 1963, ’64. I just kind of kept going along. Of course, when I got out of high school, I went to college for art. I went to the State University of New York at Farmingdale where they had an Advertising Art and Design course, which I knew about because I’d seen it mentioned in an issue of Swamp Thing. Len Wein had taken that same course, so I thought, “Oh, well that’s great.” Of course Len Wein was a famous comic book writer and not an artist, but I didn’t let that stop me.

DB: How did you break into the industry?
FH: I put together a portfolio in 1977 and came home that summer from Buffalo. I was living in Buffalo at that point, five hundred miles from my Yaphank home, and had finished my last two years of college up there. I took my portflio around, but didn’t get much interest. DC, at the very least, let me bring it in and show it to people. Marvel just said, “Leave it overnight and come back tomorrow and we’ll tell you what we think,” and I did and they didn’t. They just said, “No thank you.” I never actually saw anybody for an interview there. I tried to get into mainstream comics; I wasn’t successful. Vince Colletta said, “Go home, and practice your anatomy.” I went home and was trying to do that but at the same time, I was trying to keep my spirits up by doing as much drawing as possible. I had just left a number of room mates--good friends--in Buffalo, so I'd write letters to them but I would do it in cartoon form. In those cartoons is where I came up with the character based on myself, because obviously my buddies knew what I looked like--I have the long hair, parted in the middle with the beard. So I did a lot of those letters. Even though I hadn’t used a cartoony style at all until a few months earlier, here I was also writing letters of comment to the comics, and I sent in several in cartoon form and one of them went to Bill Mantlo who was writing Iron Man at the time. He really liked what I’d written and drawn but I guess I’d done it in three or four different colour markers because he said he couldn’t print it, but asked if it could be redrawn in black and white and we’ll even pay you for it? Well, obviously, I said, “Yes, I think I can do that,”! So that was my first professional sale. $35 for the full page letter column in issue #114 of Iron Man. I discovered that I liked doing that sort of drawing so I came up with a little interview strip of Spider-Man and Cartoon Fred, and put that together and sent it off on a whim to the Comic Buyer’s Guide, which was a weekly publication. They printed it and it became pretty popular soon after. I didn’t expect it to, but it did and they asked for more, so I sent them more and I made a point of putting my address at the bottom of each strip (of course this was in the old days before email), and various fans would write to me and occasionally even people working in comics did. The first regular thing I got was when Bob Rozakis, Tony Tollin and Mike Gold contacted me to do those little strips that ran in the Daily Planet ad pages. That was that. Pretty exciting, for sure.

DB: You did a lot of work in fanzines.
FH: Yep. After I did my thing in the Buyer’s Guide and put my address in there I got a fair amount of mail, and it was kind of neat and a number of it was from fanzine publishers, some of which were fairly well established, like The Comic Reader--and others that probably had no more than one issue ever published--they'd contact me and ask me to contribute stuff. More often than not, I did. It was a real thrill to be in The Comic Reader because several years earlier I’d have been, “Wow! That’s a big fanzine!” So it was kind of neat and I’d been following fanzines since around 1967, back when I first started reading them. I kind of let them slide for a while but for a couple of years there, they were more important to me than the actual comics.

DB: You were one of the few, who got your name above the title at Marvel, which I thought, at the time, was unusual.
FH: That’s true and it’s very odd. One thing I clearly remember happened shortly after I first started doing this stuff. I went to a convention in New York and I was walking around, meeting some people and I ran into Jim Shooter. He had just taken over the editor-in-chief job at Marvel. We stopped to talk in an aisle and he was pleased to meet me because one of my earliest strips was in praise of his Avengers run and all the while, a number of fans were gathering around as he was telling us his plans for Marvel and how he was going to make things better for the creators. At one point he said, “You know, if we wanted to a Fred Hembeck comic, we could do it. Fred would keep the copyright and we’d all share in the profits,” and I’m smiling and thinking, “Yeah, sure, like that’s ever going to happen. Thanks anyway,Jim--that’s still a very nice thing to say.” After that, I kept bumping into him at one convention after another-- it seemed like we were always going to the same conventions for a while there. Then about a year or so later he called me up and said that he had an idea to do a roast of the Fantastic Four and that he had another writer in mind for it but that writer didn’t really feel comfortable with the whole format, so he thought maybe I’d like to take a shot at it. Again, I said, “Ok,” and that’s how that one came about!

DB: You had almost everybody who was anyone at Marvel, artistically wise, on that book, Michael Golden, John Byrne, Bob Hall, Alan Weiss...
FH: Yeah, Frank Miller.

DB: John Buscema, Walt Simonson, Mike Zeck, it’s a great cast of artists.
FH: I know. That was a really amazing thing to do. Oddly enough, that was done in piecemeal fashion. I just sent the various artists rough layouts that didn’t have any dialogue in them, I just generally indicated what was going to be happening. So I'd get the pages back and I'd put in the dialogue after I saw the artwork, and assembled the book in not necessarily the same order in which those pages appear in the book. The fact that it reads reasonably smoothly is one of my greatest achievements I think. I always liked that book more than the destruction of the Marvel Universe one, which kind of makes me crazy because people always seem to remember the Destroys The Marvel Universe more, so what can I say?

DB: Was it your idea to get all the artists involved?
FH: No. Jim Shooter was the editor of the thing and he told me which characters we were going to use, to devote a page apiece to each. It was mainly all the characters who had their own books at the time, and he assigned the pages to the proper people. In a lot of cases I didn’t even know who was going to be doing the art at the time. I remember I was kind of surprised that the X-Men page wasn’t by Dave Cockrum. In fact, I didn’t know who did it, and it was only years later I found out it was Denys Cowan. Cockrum is in there, though-- I believe he’s in that double page spread where there's that montage of most of the characters, so he’s in there at least a little bit. I only realised recently that Herb Trimpe isn’t in that book. I don’t know how we missed him, but that was during the days when Sal Buscema was doing the Hulk and Herb was doing licensed stuff like Godzilla and Shogun Warriors, who weren't invited to the party for obvious reasons.

DB: It’s a great line-up. I remember reading it and really enjoying the fact that it had Byrne doing the Fantastic Four pages, Zeck doing Captain America, Simonson Thor and the Miller Daredevil. It’s a great concept. Do you think something like that could happen now?
FH: I suppose so. I wouldn’t be the one writing it, but I’m sure somebody could do something new along those lines. Not with those same people but with the current guys, sure.

DB: It must have been a challenge to get that cast of artists together and still get the book out on time.
FH: Yeah. It was supposed to come out in time for the Fantastic Four’s 20th anniversary but I believe it was issued in 1982, so we might have missed the target date just a little bit.

DB: Who was the latest on it?
FH: Ah, you know, I don’t know. Maybe the Sub-Mariner page by Alan Weiss? I hate to say that because I don’t know if that’s true or not, and I've since met Alan, who's a great guy besides being a great artist I really can’t say for sure. It wasn’t me though.

DB: How many of the artists who worked on it had you met previously?
FH: I’d seen John Byrne at quite a few conventions at that point and Frank Miller, too. In fact, those were the two guys who actually gave me their pages. I have the Frank Miller page framed and on the wall. John gave me about four pages; he did a bunch of them. I knew Terry Austin, the inker, who I now know much better. I’d met a lot of those guys actually. Brent Anderson, I knew him. Marshall Rogers I'd met. I didn’t meet Keith Pollard until much later; he did the Thor page. I knew quite a few of the people involved in the field at that point. Marv and Len were always coming to parties at Joe Staton’s house and stuff. I've met a fair amount of the ‘Names Of The ’80s’ shall we say.

DB: Terry Austin and you appear to be very close these days.
FH: Yeah, I’ve known Terry for a long time now. That FF Roast book was done before he moved into my area, but about four or five years later, he moved into the next town over. Of course, I’ve since moved away from there, but we’re still pretty close. We talk on the phone and get together every so often and probably, out of all the people I know in comics, I know him best.

DB: I’ve been trying to interview Terry for years now. He speaks to me but I’ve all but given up interviewing him properly.
FH: Terry’s a real treat to talk to off the record, but I don’t think he likes going on the record. He knows far more crazy stuff than I do. In my limited capacity in the field, I either flat out don’t know or don’t know from first hand experience, so in instances like this, I don’t have to worry about spilling any beans that shouldn't be spilled. Personally, I have no horrible stories that I have to keep concealed. [laughter] I certainly know of some, but they’re not mine, so I can’t tell you.

DB: There’s a challenge.
FH: Well yeah. [laughter] I’m exaggerating, of course I’m exaggerating. [laughter]

DB: Did DC ever approach you to do something similar?
FH: You know, they never did. That would have been kind of cool but it never quite happened. I did do some stuff for DC. I did a back-up feature in “Mazing Man comics called Zoot Sputnik that ran for several issues. I did some odd things here and there. I had a two page strip in Flash #300 which was originally going to be in the Amazing World Of DC Comics magazine but got cancelled before it made it into there. I did a cover for the DC Sampler, as well as some interior pages in another issue. Just the other day, I was trying to think what the most recent thing I did for DC was, and I couldn't remember. I have done a couple of things for Marvel recently and I might do a couple more in the future.

DB: You also did a full issue of Spectacular Spider-Man back in the ‘80s, but it was done Hembeck style.
FH: Yeah. Almost full--there was a framing story by Al Milgrom as the editor. Essentially, it was a full issue. It was the whole ‘Assistant Editors Month’ thing.

DB: How did it feel doing that?
FH: Well, that’s kind of an odd story. Bill Mantlo was the guy who sort of got me rolling on this whole comics thing by printing that letter in Iron Man. He and I would talk on the phone quite a bit in the early days when I was first getting involved in all of this stuff. I never actually met him face to face. For some reason, although he was living in New York City, he never went to comic conventions. So we worked together, kind of, on that Iron Man letter, and we worked together on a ten page story that we were going to submit to what became Epic but I think was called Odyssey at the time, but it got the thumbs down. It was a story that Bill wrote and had no dialogue; it was all told in pantomime. He eventually told me I could just have it and print it in one of my FantaCo books, which I did--that was very nice of him. So he was the regular writer of the Spectacular Spider-Man book and I guess he probably said, “Why don’t we do something outrageous for the Assistant Editors Month, like have Fred Hembeck do the artwork?” I don’t remember who approached me, it was either Bill or the editor, it wasn’t really the assistant editor, that was all a big goof because I never really spoke to an assistant editor, just the real editor, Al Milgrom. I knew Al and Al was very nice, I’d met him a number of times. He was in the Fantastic Four Roast book too. So Bill gave me a plot but it was one of those three paragraphs, half a page plots I guess he was used to giving to Sal Buscema and people of that ilk who were really tried and true professionals, and here I was, just some guy who’d done a handful of gag strips. It went along pretty well as long as I just had to deal with Spider-Man and J Jonah Jameson, and Spider-Man talking to the Black Cat, but then there was a long sequence where Spider-Man is fighting the Human Fly in the printing press room down underneath the Daily Bugle and I believe Bill’s direction was, ‘And then they fight!’ I was like, ‘OK, what’s going on here?” so I tried my best and turned it in but they rejected the fighting sequence because I simply didn’t know what the heck I was doing with this big battle sequence! So they made Bill go back and rewrite the thing to the point where it was far more detailed and more specific to what they wanted and they sent it to me and I got a chance to draw it again. I remember Bill calling me up on the phone and he sounded kind of annoyed at me kind for letting him down by making him redo all this work. I pointed out, “Well, you know, I’m kind of new at this, I don’t have any real experience doing fight scenes.” We didn’t exactly argue, but we were both clearly annoyed at each other for our own reasons, and that was the last time I ever spoke to the guy. We all know that years later he had that horrible accident, so I always felt bad because as much as anyone, he got me into the whole comics thing, and our relationship all kind of went south because of that Assistant Editors Month issue.

DB: It’s a sad story.
FH: Yeah, it’s too bad.

DB: Along the way you were doing your Dateline: Hembeck material. How were they received?
FH: Right. The early ones were very well received in the Buyer’s Guide. They got a lot of mail, I got a lot of exposure from them. Eclipse came out with the first collection because they needed something to print and Richard Bruning, who’s now a bigwig at DC comics, was friends with the publisher, Dean Mullaney. They'd just published their first book, Sabre I think it was, and they wanted another publication but didn’t have anything ready. But Richard said, “Fred could probably gather together a collection of his stuff and throw a new cover on it you’d have yourself an instant book.” And that’s pretty much what we did. But after that, they kept stalling on the second one, which was all ready to go. I had moved up to Albany in the meantime and began going to a comic store that wanted to get involved with publishing called FantaCo. Well, eventually more or less with Eclipse’s blessing, we took the series to FantaCo and there were seven collections of the Dateline strips, though some were made up of completely new material. That lasted for a couple of years but towards the late ‘80s, I just lost steam doing the Datelines. When this new collection comes out which has everything from the ‘80s in it you’ll see that pretty clearly. Both Alan Gordon and Erik Larsen said, “In this book, we want all the Datelines, even the really horrible bad ones.” So you’ll get to see some of the really horrible bad ones. I kind of shifted over to Marvel Age at that point and began working with editor Jim Salicrup, and for many years after that, that was my main outlet. I had a run of over 100 issues I believe.

DB: How did it come about that Image approached you to do this current collection?
FH: That was Al Gordon’s idea. Al, of course, is an inker and has been for many, many years. I first met him because I guess I said something nice about his inking on Carmine Infantino’s Spider-Woman way back in the first year I was doing the strip and he contacted me. It’s weird how some of this stuff comes back at you. He’s from California and I’ve only met him once face-to-face when he came out here to visit Terry years ago. We talk every so often on the phone and one day he called me up and said he had this idea and wouldn’t it be kind of cool if you collected all your Dateline strips. I said, “yeah, that would be kind of cool , but who’s gonna buy it?” He said, “No, no, I think it’s a good idea,” and I said, “Yeah, well, maybe it is.” Again this is about three years ago and it kind of meandered along for a while until he said, “You know, Erik Larsen is kind of interested in publishing this.” I go, “Really? You’re not making this up? Really? Honest to God?” “Oh, yeah, yeah, Erik is,” because Erik is close friends with Al and apparently they live close by each other and Erik was of course the publisher of Image at that point. Still is. So I dropped Erik an email. I’d met him once before (also in the presence of Terry at a different time), and he said, “Yeah, we would like to do that but why don’t we extend it beyond just the Datelines and make it into a real massive collection?” I guess when Al first mentioned the idea to me, the format of these big, thick telephone directoriy style type reprints wasn’t as popuar a trend as they now are. It seems like now everyone is putting out these Omnibus or Essentials type things. So that’s how it came about, and I've spent a fair amount of the last year putting it all together.

DB: It’s a brave move from Image.
FH: Yeah, I know. We’ll see. I’ve gotten a bunch of positive responses about it after it was announced and, well, I don’t know how well it’s going to go over with people who are not familiar with my work, but we shall see.

DB: What else is in the book other than the Datelines?
FH: Well, we have a number of strips featuring characters I’ve done over the years that I’ve created, like The Dog and Mr. Mumbo Jumbo. There was a nine page strip that I submitted to Epic just as they were going to be cancelled. The early strip that I mentioned was called Erosion, written by Bill Mantlo, and that was rejected before the book hit the stands, and then I sent this one in and Archie Goodwin called me up and said, “Well, you know Fred, we're just about to announce the cancellation of the magazine so I’m afraid we’re all full up for the remaining issues.” So I kind of got rejected at both the beginning and the end and I never did have a story published in Epic. They're both in this book, though, and the later one is called A Date With History. I’ve always kind of liked it and I'm happy to get it into print. I was in CAPA-alpha for a while and I chose about sixty pages of oddball strips that I did for them in the early ‘80s to include in the book. And you know, Christmas cards, commissioned drawings, sketchbook strips, just a lot of odd stuff.

DB: How do you go about publishing Marvel and DC characters in an Image book?
FH: That’s the question I don’t want anyone to ask until the book is out and we’re home free. [laughter] I don’t know. That’s obviously something I wonder about because back in 1981, 1982, things were vastly different. We were able to publish those things with FantaCo and we never really seemed to have any problem. This book was announced months ago now and so far there’s been no lawyers at the door from Marvel, which is a good thing. I’ve got Stan Lee in there doing the Foreword, which probably helps to some extent. I tried to make a point on the cover by not overly exploiting anybody else's properties. You’ve probably seen the covers of my old FantaCo books which had the likes of Superman and Batman on them--well, here I tried not to put any really copyrighted characters out front except for my own little Fred head. Maybe a few of those are a little bit sneaky in the way they sneak in the images of Marvel and DC characters via the Fred head, but nothing nearly as blatant as what I'd done in the past. I just hope it’s not stopped at the last second. [laughter]

DB: Do you think this might open the doors for future Hembeck work?
FH: It actually appears to have gotten my name out there already. I’ve been approached to do a number of interesting things over the last few weeks. Including one that I can’t really discuss because it’s not really set in stone yet, but if and when it comes about, it won't be from Marvel or DC, but it'll be done with a writer who’s done a lot of work for both of those big companies. It’ll be a five issue series, and it might even go further than that. That’s kind of neat. Then there's an autobiographical graphic novel I'm trying to put together as well.

DB: When it comes to commission work your cover recreations are becoming somewhat legendary.
FH: Ok, right--that’s a good one, ok.

DB: No, no, no, each time I post one of yours into a gallery people make good comments.
FH: I enjoy doing them, they’re kind of fun.

DB: it’s a different way of looking at classic covers. I don’t think I ever realised just how many Silver Age comic book covers were so unintentionally funny.
FH: Yeah, too true. It all kind of started back when I was doing the Datelines because I wanted to describe how whacky these old Jimmy Olsen covers were and I guess one day I decided, “Well, why not just copy it over in my own style, and then write some comments all around it, and that'll be the strip,” and that’s kind of how it all started. I remember the first one I did was Jimmy doing the Kryptonian Crawl on the cover, which was a dance. The main difference was that I just did an outlined version, I didn’t fill in the blacks or anything, but it still gave you the layout and the dialogue and stuff. But yeah, the whole point was to make fun of the Superman covers.

DB: You’ve started a cottage industry there.
FH: Yeah, now everyone goofs on Superman. “I was the first!” I declare. I was the first guy to say Mort Weisinger was crazy, but in a good way. Or in a bad way, depending on how you want to look at it.

DB: Did you ever meet Mort?
FH: No. I can remember when he died, but I don’t know if he was alive when I was first doing this stuff. If he was, then he must have died only a few years later. I just read about him in the Gerard Jones' Men of Tomorrow book. It did mention when he died, but I forget exactly when that was. Nah, I never met him. I’d've been scared to meet him. He would have bit my head off! He would have said, “Hey, kid, you know how many comics I’ve sold? Don’t mock me.” [laughter] Of course if he were alive today, he’d have to say that to half the people on the internet with comics blogs.

DB: It wasn’t just Mort. One of my favourite covers is a romance cover with one girl saying to her friend that a certain girl will do anything to hold onto Dick (Dick being a name).
FH: Yeah, [laughter] the most obvious thing. People didn’t understand. They must have known what they were saying but they got it by the Comics Code anyway.

DB: I’ve always thought that some of it must have been intentional.
FH: Oh yeah. You can’t be that crude accidentally, no.

DB: Then there’s that Superman cover where he’s verbally attacking Lana and Lois about them being too stupid to recognise that he’s Clark Kent.
FH: The way he treated those women in his comics was just insane.

DB: But they let him do it.
FH: I know. And you know, I go back and I reread those issues now and find that they’re a lot more entertaining than most of the other stuff that was coming out from DC at the time because there’s a lot of emotion in them. They’re twisted emotions, no denying it, but still, the emotional content really helps you enjoy the stories, as opposed to the deadly dry stories found in most every other DC book of the early sixties.

DB: How do you see comics now, as opposed to comics then?
FH: I really don’t read them too much anymore. I try. Or more correctly, I tried. Up until about 2000, I kept trying. I kept piling up issues of my favourite titles, saying to myself, “I’m gonna get to those someday,” and finally I realised, “No, I don’t think I am.” So I just gave up on new stuff and now instead, like the Spider-Man Omnibus I reread recently, after not having read those books for over thirty years, rediscovered what a wonderful thing some of those old books truly were. I do keep up on the Internet by checking reviews to see what’s going on in the latest Crisis and who’s getting killed, who they're turning into a bad guy and stuff. Sometimes I’m just aghast at what they’re doing, but then I think, well, every generation gets to mess with these icons. Even though there’s supposed to be a continuity from 1961 right on up to now for the Fantastic Four, somewhere along the line, it kind of got fudged and let's face it, they're not really the same characters anymore. So let people do what they want. The thing is, I can’t imagine how you can buy very many comics in order to follow a whole line with the prices what they are now. When I was a kid, they were going for ten or twelve cents. You could buy eight for a dollar. I don’t know what you can buy for a dollar now when they’re all at least three ninety-nine. That math just doesn’t work for me.

DB: You’re a huge fan of Steve Ditko.
FH: Oh, man, I love Ditko. Man, do I ever love Ditko.

DB: When did you discover his stuff? When did you cross over from DC to Marvel as a reader?
FH: It was 1962. I had a little bit of scarlet fever, nothing too bad, but I couldn’t really go out of the house except to go to the doctors for a couple of weeks. On the way home from one of my doctor visits, I was really missing my comics books so my mom pulled up in front of the store where I usually bought my comics and luckily the big book shelf was right in front of the window. She went in, and because she didn’t know what to buy me, she held up several comics and I would either shake my head yes or no. I remember shaking my head yes to a Blackhawk and then she held up this book, it was the Fantastic Four number four and it had such an oddball looking logo to it that I paused for a second and then said, ok, sure, why not? So she bought that and I was just really, really taken with it. I’d never seen anything like it, even though I had actually avoided the pre-Marvel monsters books. The kid who used to bring in the Superman comics at school also had a lot of those giant monster books. I thought they were creepy so I stayed away from them, but here I was with the Fantastic Four. The first issue I bought was number four, I missed number five, bought number six and I think the very next comic I bought from Marvel was Strange Tales #101, which featured the Human Torch’s solo series debut. But, of course, in the back was this story, “What Is X-35 ?”, I believe it was. And it was a Ditko/Stan Lee story and I’d never seen anything quite so stunning. There was this really strange looking guy, who was the protagonist of the story. He was a crook who was on the run who’d found this card that said “X-35” and he didn’t know what to make of it. He was on the run during the whole story and on the last page he ran in front of a car, gets killed and you see that the license plate of the car was “X-35”! That was my first exposure to Ditko. Soon after, I'd see him in the back pages of Journey Into Mystery and Tales To Astonish and eventually Spider-Man. That was it.

DB: So, Ditko or Kirby?
FH: Oh, I love Ditko. Kirby’s the best in a lot of ways, certainly he’s superior in a few crucial ways, but Ditko is the one who won my heart.

DB: Have you ever met him?
FH: No, but I did have an odd near-miss brush with him once. It was the only time I ever got anywhere near him. I was visiting the DC offices with Joe Staton (who also lived near by me upstate), and once in a while, I’d go down to the city with him, maybe two or three times. We went up to DC, walked into the offices, met some of the editors, talked to them. This has got to be the mid to late ‘80s, and Joe was talking to Jack C Harris, who was his editor at the time, and Jack said, “We have to discuss some business, Fred. So if you don’t mind, could you wait out in the waiting area for a few minutes?” I said, “Sure,” and went out to the waiting area, sat there, and as I was sitting there just staring off into space two different people came in and two different people left. I wasn’t paying very close attention to them, so when Joe and Jack came back out, they said, “Did you see him? Did you see him?”, and I'm like, “Who? What do you mean?” “Ditko was here! He came in, delivered some pages and he left again.” I said, “You mean those guys that walked past me, one of them was Ditko?” “Yep.” “Oh my God!” But I wasn’t really paying close attention. That was my closest brush with Steve Ditko.

DB: You can always just go and knock on his door.
FH: Apparently you can. [laughter] I guess I need to go down to the city and visit him with a camera crew too. [laughter]

DB: What attracted you the most with the Ditko stuff?
FH: I like the Dr Strange stuff, but for me it was always the Spider-Man stuff that really resonated. It was so down to earth while at the same time being so totally unique in its look. Nothing else looked like it. As I said, I've just finished reading the Omnibus and I’m amazed. It’s really the story of Peter Parker as opposed to Spider-Man, much more than in a Superman book where he turned into Clark Kent simply as a plot device. I liked the way Ditko (and Stan Lee, let's not forget) told what seemed like a more life-like story than any I had ever seen in comics up to that point concerning a guy who’d become a superhero reluctantly. Kirby could have done it I suppose, but it might not have been as effective because his characters are just so powerful, even skinny old Dr Blake. I just liked everything Ditko did back in the sixties. On the other hand, I can’t read any of the stuff he does these days. I can’t read that crazy Mr A/ Avenging World stuff. It makes my head spin. You just have to have your Ditko and your Lee together for me to be completely happy.

DB: And yet some people prefer that stuff as they see it as being more pure.
FH: Yeah, I can see that. Just like in the case of Kirby, he just doesn’t have the ear for dialogue. It’s better when guys like that work with someone else. I don’t rule out anything he did outside of Marvel because the stuff Ditko did for Warren was phenomenal. The Creepy and Eerie stories, even a lot of stuff he did for Charlton, which was collected not long ago in paperback, well, Joe Gill might not have been the greatest writer, but somehow Steve did a really good job illustrating his stories. It’s just when the stories got so preachy that I was turned off. I remember the first couple of Mr A stories were actually very impressive because I’d never seen anything like them before. But after a while it got a little awkward when the message clearly became more important than the drama. His drawing is still really good though.

What do you think of Ditko?

DB: I like his Spider-Man stuff. I’m not a big fan of the preaching Ditko.
FH: Preaching Ditko. That’s a good way of saying it. [laughter]

DB: I like his Blue Beetle and his Charlton horror stuff a lot.
FH: Yeah, that stuff is good.

DB: Captain Atom.
FH: Captain Atom, a lot of good work there.

DB: I’ve picked up a few of the Ditko Readers that he’s done with Robin Snyder and I just can’t get into it, it’s too dense.
FH: Exactly. Too dense describes it perfectly.

DB: With the writing and the artwork. It’s sad because I remember picking up one and thinking, as horrible as it sounds, too much Ditko can be a bad thing.
FH: Yeah, if it’s that particular kind of Ditko, sure.

DB: I do like his work, especially his early stuff and the Charlton horror stuff. We got that reprinted here in the ‘70s and ‘80s in black and white and its mind blowing. The horror and science fiction stuff is great. I love his Dr Strange and think his Dr Strange is probably the best there was.
FH: Oh yeah, that was beautifully drawn. I didn’t mean to downplay that. I was just never as engaged by the storyline as I was by the story in Spider-Man, but art wise, yeah, that’s phenomenal.

DB: Did you keep reading Spider-Man when he left?
FH: Oh yeah, sure. I remember back when my favourite DC character was The Flash primarily because Carmine Infantino was the artist. But that was a case of when he left the book I just couldn’t go for the Ross Andru Flash. The stories weren’t really riveting enough for me to keep reading it, whereas with Spider-Man, I knew that even if I didn’t have Ditko, I was still going to have Stan Lee and the stories were still going to be really good, so yeah, I kept reading it. I liked it but, y'know, to this day--no offence, I really shouldn't have--but I always kind of held it against John Romita. It’s not his fault that he wasn’t Ditko. I’ve never given those books a fair shake. It's just that I lived and breathed those Ditko Spider-Man issues when they were coming out, and then one day, I had them torn away from me for seemingly no reason! Oh my God! What can I tell you, I still get emotional remembering learning that Steve was leaving.

DB: If it helps even Ross Andru didn’t like his Flash work.
FH: Ah, ok. I later came to really enjoy Ross Andru's work when he eventually did Spider-Man, to tell you the truth.

DB: It’s funny because I’ve discovered that a lot of people didn’t, but a lot of artists did.
FH: That is odd. When that book was coming out I was just becoming a professional, so maybe that’s why. I remember going to conventions and hearing Len Wein and Marv Wolfman up on panels sayng, “You know Ross is a really good artist if you look at things closely.” And I thought, “Oh, then maybe I should look at it closely,” and that kind of turned me on to it. Maybe it was just my time to realise that.

DB: The critique that I often hear is that his faces were all the same, yet the detail he put into panels, the backgrounds and the like, was just insane.
FH: Right.

DB: At the same time you can see people who did no backgrounds, and there was Ross Andru who was killing himself with the background detail. But in regards to his Flash, he always claimed that he got it wrong by trying to make the Flash look like a Marvel character and it didn’t work, it was too bulky.
FH: Yeah, that didn’t look right.

DB: You mentioned Carmine Infantino. What did you think of his work?
FH: Oh, he was my favourite DC artist. I just loved the Flash, I loved the way it looked, the design, it was just one of those perfect matches of subject matter and artist. Adam Strange was always well drawn too. It’s kind of like Spider-Man and Ditko, I always liked the down to earth stories of Spider-Man and the Flash, and while I admired the Adam Strange and Dr Strange material, I wasn’t quite as engaged with those as they took place in whole other worlds. But no one’s ever done a mystical landscape like Ditko and I don’t think anyone’s ever done a science fiction setting quite like the Adam Strange. That was kind of like the top of the line for me.

DB: As a casual reader, how did you see Carmine’s art when he went over to Marvel?
FH: I was excited. I just wanted to see whatever he drew. I remember when he got the job being the big boss at DC, all of a sudden his drawing output dropped to nothing. I later learnt that he did the layouts for all of the covers, but at the time I had no idea, so I was just happy to see the Human Target story that he managed to turn out once. And then of course he gets bumped from DC. The first place he turned up was in the Warren books and they came out with issue after issue full of Carmine Infantino stories that were inked by the likes of Bernie Wrightson and all these other young, hot-shot inkers. Great stuff! Then he goes over to Marvel and does one of my favourite characters at the time, Nova, and I also liked his Spider-Woman. I know some people don’t like that stuff, but to me it was Carmine Infantino, and that was enough! I really dug him! I really dug it when he went back to do The Flash too. I’m just a sucker for the guy. And he never got too preachy either, which was a plus! [laughter] So I could easily still enjoy looking at his superheroes.

DB: Did you ever meet Carmine?
FH: Only briefly. Last year he was at a convention so I went over to his table, introduced myself and got his autograph. I don’t think he was aware that I was a cartoonist who did what I did, but that’s ok, I told him how much I enjoyed his work and got him to sign my little book. I’m always a little bit in awe of these older guys. I never know what to say to them because they were so important to me as a kid, so beyond saying I like their stuff, I’m usually at a complete loss for words.

DB: Yet you interviewed Will Eisner.
FH: Yeah, but not in person. [laughter] It’s a lot easier when you just draw it up and get to control both ends of the conversation. It was a little bit presumptuous of me; I don’t know what I was thinking. I see some of those old Datelines; I’ve got one with Dick Giordano in there and a couple of other ones where I’m doing all their dialogue and now I have to wonder, what did they think when they saw those? I made a point of not making them say anything nasty, but what was I thinking? But, you know, what are you gonna do? What's done is done.

DB: Being that you are a fan as well as an artist and writer, how does that make you feel, or act, when people approach you as fans?
FH: I try to be nice to them. Of course, why not, right? These days, after kind of not being in contact with them for any number of years, having gone on the Internet and also on the MySpace, it’s an interesting situation when I hear from people who say to me, “Yeah, I remember your Fantastic Four Roast, or your Hembeck Destroys The Marvel Universe, when I was a teenager and I thought that was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life.” I’d think, “Wow!” Then they say, “And I’m 40 now,” or whatever and I’ll be thinking, “Oh my God! What happened here?” [laughter] It’s just odd when people say to me the sort of stuff I was saying to Jim Steranko back when I ran into him at a convention when I was 17. But it’s cool. I like it. I’m not knocking it. It’s better than them saying, “Oh, Hembeck? I hated that stuff.”

DB: People buy your artwork as well.
FH: Yes, they do, and I love every single one of them. [laughter] I'm pretty darn fond of anybody who forks over their hard-earned cash for The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus too!

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LINKS FOR FURTHER READING: Fred Hembecks official web-site
Omnibus Information Page

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Looking Back With Frank Springer

Growing up I always thought highly of Frank Springer's work. His was a name that I saw quite a bit on the books that I bought, especially on the Invaders where he worked with Frank Robbins, creating an All Frank Art Team in my youthful eyes. I loved reading the Invaders, it was unusual for a World War II book in that it featured superheroes that were featured in the current books and the art was just light years away from the standard Kirby influenced art and the like that was appearing in other books. At that point I'd not been exposed to artists such as Noel Sickles or Milton Caniff so it was fresh for me to see that style imposed on a character such as Captain America. Say what you will but it wasn't Sal Buscema (not that there's anything wrong with Sal).

Down the track when I really began to take notice of artists name I discovered that any book with the name 'Frank Springer' on it was an instant buy. Why? Because no matter how bad the story might have been, the art would be solid. When it came to inking artists as diverse as John Buscema, Bill Sienkiewicz, John Romita, Frank Miller, Jim Mooney or Alan Kupperberg, Frank Springer brought something to everyone - quality. Frank didn't appear to change anyone, he didn't overpower them with his own style either unlike say a Klaus Janson (not to knock Janson, just that everything he inked look like, well Klaus Janson, same as almost everything George Perez inks looks like George Perez, no matter who penciled it), instead he enchanced what was there and managed to bring out the best in a penciler. Slowly over time, as I grew older, his name began to vanish from the books until one day it was just gone for good. By that time a lot of the artists I enjoyed had also vanished from mainstream comics.

Where did Frank Springer go? I had no idea but I'd ask other artists from time to time if they had a handle on him. I rang a number I was given a few years only to speak to a nice gentleman who assured me that, although he was indeed an artist, he wasn't the Frank Springer I was looking for. Eventually I was given Frank's email address and made contact and, well, you can read the rest. It was a pure delight to speak to Frank, he's a damn good guy and he deserves all the accolades that he's given. Without Frank Springer a lot of my favourite books might not look as good as they do.

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DANIEL BEST: What is your background, where do you come from?
FRANK SPRINGER: I was born in Queens, New York, right outside of Manhattan on this day in 1929.
DB: Happy birthday!
FS: Thank you! During the depression I always liked to draw. We moved out to Long Island, to Nassau County, when I was almost ten and I grew up there and went to High School there. I always drew, I didn’t know exactly how I would eventually fit into the commercial art field because I didn’t have any idea what it was all about. I didn’t have any idea how you went about that and all of us who liked to draw at that period of time wondered if we should draw comic strips or do Saturday Evening Post covers. How’s that for chutzpah? [laughter] Thinking, “Do I want to be a movie star or be the President of the United Stats?” [laughter] I went to Syracuse University in the fall of ’48 and took art course there, got a degree in 1952 and was drafted that same year. The Korean War was going on and I was sent to Fort Dix to do infantry training and fortunately they kept me there drawing pictures, drawing charts and that kind of thing. I found out that if you could draw the army would put you to work doing that kind of thing as opposed to shooting people. That is if you were lucky, and I was lucky. It’s not very heroic but I got a lot of training in the army in doing sports cartoons with a deadline and so on. I was turning out what amounted to commercial work but, of course, we were still paid eleven cents an hour or whatever it was. We were forced to churn out a product and that was good training for the real world when you have to do the same.

I was discharged in ’54 and started to freelance. It was a two year hitch in those days and I think the draft is a good thing looking back. Just as an aside, I think if we had a draft in this country where every and I mean every, able bodied man had to spend two years in the service, Congress, who’s own sons would then be in the service as well, would be less likely to get into these wars all over the place.

I got out of the army in late ’54 and started freelancing in New York City doing spots. I still did not know much about the ‘business’. I was essentially a line artist and it was through one of the freelance jobs that I learnt that George Wunder, who wrote and drew Terry And The Pirates, was looking for an assistant and I was given his number. I called him up, was hired and I stayed there for five years doing some backgrounds and foregrounds, answering his mail, colouring the Sunday strips. That was good training, watching a professional churning this stuff out, day after day, writing the synopsis, then writing the strips and so on. I loved the strips when I was growing up. I grew up on Terry And The Pirates, Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant, those were the main adventure ones. There were a lot of adventure strips at that time, Buck Rogers, Smilin’ Jack and all of that, so I leaned towards all of that rather than the gag cartoons. In other words”little foot” rather than “big foot”. After a while I realised that when you’re somebody’s assistant you can’t get ahead. They are looking an extension of themselves, they’re not looking for a new Frank Springer, they’re looking for an extension of George Wunder or whoever you might be working for. There’s nothing wrong with that but you can’t really get anywhere that way so we parted company and I started to do work for Dell comics and that led to doing work for DC and Marvel. I got a call from Evergreen Review, a magazine that was published by Grove Press, and that led to “The Adventures Of Phoebe Zeit-Geist”. Michael O’Donoghue wrote it and we did monthly adventures for a couple of years when Grove Press decided to put all the adventures in a book. It was published in 1968.

At any rate that’s really it. Along the way I did editorial cartoons for the New York Daily News. I did some limited animation for a period of time for “The Adventures of Space Ghost”, which was a mayhem filled Saturday morning cartoon. Lots of creatures getting zapped, they didn’t hurt any people, it was large insects and that kind of thing. [laughter] That really brings us up to date. You lose one account, you gain another and now I’m doing some oil painting and doing some recreations of comic book covers and I’m generally retired. That’s 78 years in a nutshell. [laughter]
DB: You have had a long career.
FS: Yeah, yeah. Well unless you get run over by a bus you should stay active for a long time. Cartoonists last a long time because they rarely go anywhere or do anything hazardous. Sitting at a drawing board for most of the day isn’t dangerous. For some there is the temptation to drink or over eat but that was not me. We can last for a long time, unlike professional athletes.
DB: You did a fair bit of ghosting on a couple of newspaper strips, like the Phantom, the Heart Of Juliet Jones
FS: I did, I did. I did very little work on the Phantom but I did do some. Sy Barry was doing the strip at the time and he used some one to pencil it most of the time. I did work with Stan Drake, which was a marvellous experience because I’d known Stan and this was for a really brief period because Stan was always a little bit late and he used a number of people. I think Stan was about the finest penman that ever lived. It was just great to watch him in action. Besides being a terrific guy he was an absolutely marvellous artist and that was fun. I worked with Leonard Starr for some years doing part of that strip. Leonard always handled the figures but I’d come in once a week and do the backgrounds, pick up a cheque and leave. [laughter] Leonard was a great guy to work with as well. There was a strip called Friday Foster drawn by a Spaniard in Spain (Jorge Longeron). I knew the writer (Jim Lawrence) who lived here in New Jersey, he’s gone now, but I got a call a couple of times from Lawrence who said they hadn’t gotten the material through from Spain, it was published by the Daily News at that time, and I said, “Look, if I do the Sunday page and seven dailies and the stuff comes through from Spain in the meantime then I still get paid, ok?” [laughter] I guess over the years I did two Sunday pages, maybe three. Lawrence told me there was an old saying, “Never hurry a Spaniard.” [laughter] God, he was a marvellous artist, just terrific.
DB: When you worked at Dell you were pencilling and inking your own work…
FS: Yes.
DB: But when you went over to Marvel and DC you did one or the other and you were predominantly an inker. Did you prefer pencilling or inking?
FS: I didn’t have a preference. I did a lot of pencilling for DC and for Marvel. I think I did more pencilling at DC than at Marvel. At Marvel I did maybe half and half. I loved to ink stuff. It was easier to have a pile of pages to ink that were neatly pencilled, than to do the pencilling and have to jump up every few minutes and go to the reference files to see what a sewing machine looks like, or a freight train. The stuff was all down there for you. I did enjoy pencilling though. With DC and Marvel they wouldn’t really have you do both. They found it was more efficient that if you were pencilling character X then they’d keep you pencilling character X because you became familiar with it. It was good for the artist as well because after you’d finished pencilling 22 pages of such and such a character you’re ready to go off and do something else rather than to start over again at the beginning and go through the whole thing again. So it was really more interesting to get a new story to start pencilling or go inking something that somebody else had done in the meantime.
DB: At Marvel the one artist who leaps out to me that you worked with was Frank Robbins.
FS: Yes. That was a great experience. Frank was a terrific artist and he drew everything there. Everything was down so you could fall asleep at the board and still ink it. I loved doing it because his stuff was good and it was clear. Some guys were good but their stuff was very sketchy and you had to do a lot of drawing with the pen. With Frank’s stuff it was all down there and I think it was a good combination. I kind of worked in his style, or at least I thought that way.
DB: It almost looked as if Milton Caniff had come to Marvel.
FS: Yes, that’s right. Frank Robbins was really a Caniff clone and I mean that in the best way. They said of Frank that he drew the “bottom” of everything. It was always kind of a top light so shadows under the brow, under the nose, shadows under the chin, under the deltoid muscle, the pectorals, [laughter] it was kind of Milton Caniff taken to another stage, almost a cartoon stage. Although look at Caniff’s stuff, look at the faces of his characters. He was really a cartoonist, a Bigfoot cartoonist. Along with all the wrinkles in the right places and the great scenes of the Far East, or the Middle East, the trains or whatever he was doing. That was all very realistic and you could smell the motor oil leaking out of the fighter planes parked on the tarmac, [laughter] but his characters like Happy Easter, or almost any of the ancillary characters in Steve Canyon or Terry had rather “cartooned” faces. Another guy who had that combination of “Big” and “Little Foot” was Roy Crane. Roy Crane was somebody that Milton Caniff idolised. Crane came along much earlier with his Wash Tubbs strip and he used the blacks and action and the Ben Day process really before anyone else was doing that kind of thing; even before Noel Sickles. Anyway Frank Robbins did Scorchy Smith which had been done by Noel Sickles years earlier; Noel did that in the ‘30s. Robbins then did Johnny Hazard which was really Son of Scorchy Smith, an airplane adventure strip. He was very fast and very good but it was cartoony, a Caniff style taken to another level.
DB: You worked with a lot of different artists other than Frank Robbins. Does anyone stand out for you?
FS: Let me see, I did stuff pencilled by John Buscema. He was excellent. They were good pencils to work on. I can’t think of some of the others. I inked some of Dick Ayers stuff, he’s still around. I can’t think right now of some of the other pencillers I might of inked and I’ve forgotten some of the inkers who inked my pencils. [laughter] John Romita might have been one who did the pencils or inks. John Romita is a fabulous artist and some of his Spider-Man stuff brings huge prices today.
DB: You inked Frank Miller’s first Daredevil stories when he was trying out for the book on Spectacular Spider-Man.
FS: Yes. It was a ghost kind of thing wasn’t it?
DB: yes.
FS: I’ve forgotten the name of it, but yes I did. That was for Marvel. I’d never heard of him at the time but I’ve heard of him now. [laughter] The idea was to keep the work rolling in and most of the guys in comics started there when they were very young and stayed there. I was a little different in that I had grown up with the strips, I always thought of the strips as being more sophisticated and being written for adults than the comic books which were not as sophisticated. When you look at it objectively the idea of people flying through the air with little tiny wings on their ankles, like the Sub-Mariner, well it’s really absurd. But that was what they did so I tried to keep in touch with clients besides the comics, with the editorial cartooning, the sports cartooning, and magazines and so on, so I wasn’t as wrapped up as others. The comics were less of a percentage of my life as they were for other people who’d never really done anything else and never wanted to do anything else. There’s nothing wrong with that but it wasn’t the way I was put together. I really wanted to be known as an artist who could do other stuff and did do other stuff. I have to admit that a large percentage of the work I did was for the comics because of the volume of it. You don’t get a two page story in the comics, you get a twenty two page story, whereas a magazine piece might be a two page story, but you got more money. [laughter]
DB: You worked at National Lampoon as well.
FS: I forgot about that. That was because of Michael O’Donoghue. I’d done Phoebe Ziet-Giest with Michael for Grove Press, he was now with the new “National Lampoon” and called me up almost right away to do a piece called “Tarzan Of The Cows”. I don’t know what issue it was in, but it was one of the earlier ones. I did several other pieces for the magazine and I worked with several of the other writers, Henry Beard, Doug Kenney, Brian McConnachie; all fabulous writers. These guys were really funny and I think I did some of my best work because the writing was so good. I know you’re supposed to do your best work no matter what the subject matter is but it doesn’t always work out that way. [laughter] I think when you’re doing something that’s really funny or really exciting then you’re bound to put more into it.
DB: You’re also a member of the Cartoonists Society. In fact you were the president of it for a while.
FS: That’s right. I went on the board in the late ‘80s and surprising to me I became president in ’95 and served two years, to ’97. A lot of fun. A great organisation. I never thought that I’d do anything there except be a member but I’d been there for thirty years, [laughter] so by that time I knew where a lot of the bodies were buried. [laughter] Then it was finally my turn and it was a lot of fun. I don’t think I screwed up [laughter] and I was happy about that.
DB: You’re an incredibly fit man as well. You rode your pushbike across Iowa, you ran the New York marathon. I can’t think of any other artist who’s done that.
FS: Oh, there are other artists who’ve done that. I guess in my middle or late 30s I got the idea that as I was in such a sedentary profession that I better start moving around a little bit and keep my health up. I had a friend down on Long Island and we used to go down to the local school running track and do a few laps after dinner. A little later the running craze hit and I started running. They say, ‘if you want to get drunk fast, drink martinis, if you want to get into shape fast, run’. So I’d go out in the morning, do a couple of miles, come back, have breakfast, take a shower and get to work. This became a routine and later on, in the ‘90s, when the kids were out of college I had a little more time and the pressure was off, I heard about this Iowa bike ride. I got interested in that and applied for it, they accepted me and I went out there. It’s strenuous but there were little old ladies out there, guys fifteen years older than me were out there. It was a lot of fun. I had never seen the mid west before, I had no idea. I’d been to California and I grew up on the East Coast, but nobody goes to Iowa really [laughter] and for the most part people from Iowa, stay there. [laughter] I did some athletics in high school but at best I was a mediocre athlete, I wasn’t fast enough for the sprints and I didn’t have the endurance for long distance. As for the marathon, well anybody can run a marathon given the training. The training is the toughest part. Once you’re there at the starting line you should be confident of finishing. You know it’s going to be over that day and that’s that.
DB: You’re the only artist I’ve spoken to who has run a marathon. [laughter] I have to ask, were you friends with Joe Sinnott?
FS: Oh yes! Well not friends really, I met him on a couple of occasions and I know his work very well. He lives up on the Hudson a ways, and one thing we have in common is a love for
BOTH: Bing Crosby.
DB: That’s why I asked, you’ve both got Bing Crosby in common.
FS: That’s right. Bing Crosby was kind of the Milton Caniff of the music business. He really began the crooning style, the casual style of putting across a ballad and he was a great jazz singer in his early days. The early Crosby music history is classic. I kind of got into that late, but when you sit at a drawing board all day long you listen to the radio so you get a love of baseball, which used to be played during the day, opera, which is on Saturday afternoon, popular music, dramas and the news. All that stuff. I think one follows the other. [laughter]
DB: Going back again, what had the most influence on you when you started out?
FS: It was the comic strips I think, and the magazine covers. I was very taken by Norman Rockwell, Dean Cornwell, J.C Lyenedecker. At that time, in the ‘30s, those magazine artists and illustrators, belonged to the golden age of illustration. They did realistic paintings and were true artists. That and the strips. Prince Valiant was just a marvellous looking strip. Full paged, standard newspaper with those beautiful drawings, the mountains, the oceans, the Viking ships and the battle royals between Prince Valiant and his group and some vandals from somewhere. The whole thing was just fabulous. Flash Gordon with the strange characters on the planet Mongo. That was what really turned us on at that time, that and radio drama and the movies. The movies were a big deal at that time, in the days before television. To go into a theatre and see a drama unfolding in front of you. It’s hard for people to realise what a big deal going to the movies was at that time. It’s not anymore and I can’t remember what the last movie I saw was.
DB: What kinds of movies did you see?
FS: Just about anything that was there. There were pirate adventures with Errol Flynn, just about anything that was playing. We couldn’t afford to go more than once a week and really we didn’t have the time because we were going to school. Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon prices were ten to twenty cents and that was the time to go. I think you look at any of the movies that came out between the early ‘40s and the late ‘40s and I guess you can figure that any kid at that time in their late teens would have seen just about all of the big ones. Casablanca, that era. There were a lot of war movies of course. The war began the day after my twelfth birthday, on December 7th. We watched just about everything at that time. I can’t pick out any one particular one. There were horror movies also, I saw Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, all that stuff. It was just a big deal to go to the movies that we didn’t care what was playing. [laughter]
DB: It’s interesting that you mentioned artists like Rockwell in regards to painting, because now you’re doing fine arts and oil painting.
FS: Yes. I hadn’t done any oil painting since college. There was no call for it and it never occurred to me. I was kind of afraid of it actually, working in line so much, when I started it I really had to re-learn and get through some books just to learn how to go about it. I find that having drawn for many years it really aided my painting ability and I find that painting helped my drawing. I wish I’d learnt that years ago. [laughter] With painting you’re working in masses and with line you’re working in line, but of course there are crossovers there. I enjoy it and I’ve looked into some books which I had for years but hadn’t studied them. I bought a number of new ones when I bought my easel, I bought some paints and found out which brushes are good and which aren’t and I really enjoy it. I found a book that I had for years, called “Making Faces” by Fritz Willis. Willis was a girlie artist really, a pin-up artist, he’s been gone for many years, but he was just a beautiful painter and he wrote a step by step method, a “How To” book. I found I had this book for years and re-discovered it when I started painting. I found some really valuable stuff in there and I would recommend it to everyone. Good luck finding it, by the way, it’s perhaps 40 years old.
DB: What prompted you to start painting after all these years?
FS: I had to do something. The comics were in the past and I’d been doing a feature for Sports Illustrated for kids through the ‘90s. That was a lot of fun because it wasn’t that many pages and it paid really well. When that finally ended I only had a few other things going that didn’t take up too much time and I found I really had to do something. The idea of just sitting around reading a book and so on just wasn’t enough. My wife bought me an easel and soon after that I started. Nearby there was an art league and they had model sessions several times a week. I started showing up there with my paints and brushes and learned by doing. When the three hours are up you should have something down on the canvas. The classes were three hours long, so it was back to deadlines again. Without deadlines I’m not sure what would happen to artists. [laughter]
DB: So many artists miss deadlines though.
FS: Yeah, yeah. But I don’t think you can get away with that forever. It’s like borrowing money.
DB: What made you so disciplined?
FS: Five kids and the mortgage. I don’t know if that was really it, but I think if you go into freelance art then you have to be the kind of person who gets up in the morning or at night if you work at night, and turn out the product. I think that’s it. It’s easy to say that the rent was due and I had to work, but, and I’m not alone in this business, I’m self motivated. You have to be, I believe. It’s a self motivation type of thing. It’s like running a marathon. If you’re going to run a marathon then you know you’re going to have to get up every morning and run a certain amount of miles for a period of time, it could be months, or years, in order to show up at the starting line with any hope of finishing. If you’re going to be an artist then you have to show up every day if you’ve got any hope of churning it out.
DB: Your comic book career petered out in the late ‘80s through to the early ‘90s, was that a conscious decision on your behalf or was it the companies?
FS: I think that they were going on a youth movement. When Stan Lee was there at Marvel, if Stan wanted you, you worked and if Stan didn’t want you, you didn’t work. When Stan went to the West Coast and left the day to day editing, there were a lot of individual editors who hired people who some of us old timers didn’t think could really cut it, but that’s what they did. I know some artists at the time, better than I, who could not find work. Fortunately I had some other accounts so that wasn’t a huge problem with me, but gradually the comic work did disappear and they used younger artists, figuring the younger artists would get along better with their young clientele and so on. I don’t think that improved things, but that’s what happened. It was a similar thing at DC. I didn’t press it. When they didn’t call me I didn’t call them.
DB: it’s a shame because as an artist you have a lot to give and you have things that you can’t buy in a young artist, experience and knowledge.
FS: I know it, I know it. But look, Don Heck, a long time artist who’s been gone now for years, he was one of the top comic book guys ever. He could not buy a job at any of these places. That’s one thing if they say, “Don’t call Frank,” but if they don’t call Don then that’s really stupid. Part of it I guess is that I was not one of these guys who believed in these characters in the first place. Guys like me and Frank Robbins, we liked to draw and here were muscular bodies in action which is what we did when we were kids before we got hired by anybody, and that was fun. In our minds we might have thought that the stories were, you know, [laughter] really absurd and the characters don’t really talk like adults talk and everything, but they’re not paying me to write this thing so that’s that and I’m going to do as good a job as I can on the drawing. I think they might have sensed that with us. We weren’t one of those gung ho guys who’d sit there and say, “Gee, what is Captain America really like?” That kind of thing. I guess we didn’t care. It was just the idea of illustrating the adventures as best as we knew how. I hope that’s not a shock. [laughter]
DB: Not at all.
FS: I think that might have been part of it.
DB: No emotional attachment to the characters?
FS: Yeah, we had an emotional attachment to drawing, and an emotional attachment to getting the next assignment because it might be a juicy interesting thing to draw this character picking up a submarine and throwing it at an aircraft carrier. That was a challenge and that was fun. But did we eat and breathe these guys? No, I don’t think a lot of us did. Eventually, of course, the money got a lot better but none of us had any ownership over these things so we weren’t going to last. They had put in a royalty system after a while and I still get cheques when they reprint stuff, so that’s good.

If you look at Spider-Man, the person who co-invented Spider-Man, actually more than co-invented it was Steve Ditko and I don’t think he made a dime out of that movie but it wasn’t in his contract to make a dime. The case of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, sure they were treated poorly, but legally they didn’t have a leg to stand on. In fact they drew a character and there was nothing in the contract that said they owned that thing. As it turned out that was really all they had and as kids they gave it away, because nobody knew at that time what was to become of that character, but legally they didn’t have a leg to stand on. When they came out with the Superman movie, DC Comics looked so chintzy when it was learnt that these guys who had invented Superman were practically indigent. They were really embarrassed into giving them a stipend. Bob Kane, it turns out had signed a contract (giving ‘Batman’ to DC) when he was a minor – seventeen. It was invalidated and Kane was able to ‘collect’ for Batman for the rest of his life, although he did little or none of the actual art or writing. But Siegel and Shuster didn’t insist on any kind of a contract that would give them ownership.

People do things out of self interest, which is ok if you’re a moral type of a person, but those publishers weren’t particularly moral, they were out to get everything they could without giving anyone else any kind of rightful share. If you don’t sign a contract, if you don’t have something in writing you can really be up the creek. You can’t say, “Well the corporal told me if I did this I wouldn’t get into trouble,” “Not so fast buddy.”
DB: Were there any artists you didn’t work with that you wanted to?
FS: In the spring of 1952 I was still in college and I was home for Easter Vacation. A friend of mine, also from Syracuse, phoned me up and said, “Can you get into the city this afternoon?” I said, “Sure, what’s up?” He said, “We’re going to go see Dean Cornwell.” I thought, ‘what moxie this guy’s got to actually call up Dean Cornwell, a couple of jerk kids and ask for an interview’. So we went in there and went up to his studio in the ‘50s and he was fabulous. We were there for an hour and a half and watched this guy pad around the studio and looked at his drawings and paintings. If only he were working today I’d love to spend time in the studio there watching him work. Another guy would be Haddon Sundblom who for years did the Santa Claus with the Coke bottle in his hand. He did those from the early ‘30s through to the ‘40s and into the ‘60s. He had this Chicago school of illustration and he was sort of the chief guy in this painting style, which included Andrew Loomis and a bunch of other guys working in Chicago, working in this juicy, royal medium. I’d like to see them, watch them work and see how they do hair, how they do hands, that kind of a thing. I’d liked to have seen Charles Dana Gibson, or James Montgomery Flagg. When I look at some of those illustrations from those eras I realise how good those guys were and whether or not I should shoot myself in the head before the day is out. [laughter] As for cartoonists, I’m fortunate to have seen Stan Drake, Milton Caniff and Leonard Starr in action, and Alex Raymond also, briefly. I saw and met some of the greats and I was certainly fortunate in that regard. And to make a living doing something I enjoyed and supporting a family at the same time. Life is good!

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If you'd like to contact Frank for a commission, or just to say "Hi, love your work!" then feel free to email me and I'll pass it all on directly to Frank. Just make sure you include the words 'Frank Springer' in the email subject line.

Interview copyright 2007-2008 by Frank Springer and Daniel Best. Interview cannot be reproduced without the express permission of both authors. Interview copyedited by Frank Springer, conducted and transcribed by Daniel Best.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Looking Back With Alan Kupperberg: Evil Clown Comics

Evil Clown Comics is living proof that everyone has a darker side than we might expect. Or is it the opposite? I'm not sure. What I do know is that it's hard to reconcile the artist of such quaint titles as Spider-Man, Avengers, Thor and the like drawing material the like of what appeared in Evil Clown comics.

Frenchy, The Evil Clown, was the brainchild of Nick Bakay, the man who went on to become better known as the voice of Salem, Sabrina The Teenage Witch's talking black cat (and if that doesn't spin you out then check out the link - yep, ole Salem has his own web-site! And people think I'm odd...). Appearing in the pages of National Lampoon, Evil Clown Comics soon became a cult, yet it was over all too quickly. Gross, offensive, disgusting and confronting, Evil Clown was everything that mainstream comics could never be, and yet it wasn't that far removed from Alan Kupperberg's previousl clown comic, Marvel Comics Obnoxio The Clown. The main difference was that what Obnoxio hinted at, Frenchy, the Evil Clown, did, in full glory and in glorious black and white.

For years now Evil Clown has existed only in it's original form, in the original magazines, and only avaliable if you were willing to dig through back issues when they appeared. That's all about to change with a collected volume of Evil Clown comics being planned for the near future. The new volume not only collects the original material, but will have two new, previously unseen stories by Bakay and Kupperberg, new artwork and, best of all, new colouring by the incredibly talented Tom Ziuko. This will be an essential item for the bookshelves and an ideal present for both grandparents and the kids as it'll provide hours of entertainment and enjoyment for all. Then again, perhaps not. One thing is for sure, once you read Evil Clown Comics, you'll never look at clowns in the same way again.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEW CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE AND THEMES. DO NOT READ IF EASILY OFFENDED. Don't say you weren't warned.
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DANIEL BEST: The Evil Clown, that’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever read.
ALAN KUPPERBERG: Are you serious?
DB: No, actually it’s offensive and vile. [laughter]
AK: “Dat’s baby shit!” as Jackie Gleason’s Sheriff Buford T. Justice said in “Smokey and the Bandit”.
DB: It is, I mean it is offensive and it is a bit disgusting in its own right.
AK: In comic books it’s offensive, but in real life, it’s just real life. Spider-Man is not real life. The Evil Clown is real life. It is for adults. I’ve lived in New York City proper since the 1970’s through to this day, and I’m telling you, the clown stories are real life. It’s not everyone’s life, but real people live as Frenchy does. Who lives like Peter Parker?
DB: Now, how did you end up doing Evil Clown?
AK: I don’t really know. I never knew why the Lampoon gave me any particular assignment. No one ever told me why, and I was always so happy to get these assignments that I didn’t want to jinx the thing by inquiring too closely. They didn’t handle too many superhero things at Lampoon. But they knew that the superhero artists were the artists that could draw “real.” Actually, on the first few comic strip jobs I did for the Lampoon, I was afraid they were taking advantage of my lack of ability. That they wanted a tacky looking job! I’m talking about 1976 here. The Evil Clown was over ten years later, thank God. By then, I could handle that stuff. But to try and answer your question, it might have been as simple as; I was available. Maybe they asked Frank Springer first, and he wasn’t available. Who knows?
DB: Did you do Frenchy before Obnoxio?
AK: No, no. Larry Hama created Obnoxio around 1979, I think, for Marvel’s humour magazine, Crazy. And the Evil Clown started in 1988 or 1987, I believe. And I don’t know if the Evil Clown was generated by the writer, Nick Bakay. Or in Editorial, by Larry “Ratso” Sloman. Or elsewhere.
DB: Because I wonder whether someone had seen Obnoxio and probably handed it to you because you can actually draw a clown?
AK: I don’t think so. I don’t think these Lampoon guys looked at Crazy magazine. Or Mad magazine, for that matter. They didn’t consider themselves to be in the same category. Of course, evil clowns are not a new thing. It’s a very well known story device. Lon Chaney famously played an evil clown once.
DB: He did indeed, yep.
AK: The Simpson’s Krusty the Clown goes back to 1987, I think. And it’s not a new trope in comics either. Batman’s got the Joker. On the Adventures of Superman television program, there’s a crook that disguises himself as a good clown, and frames the poor sap. [laughter]
DB: Well clowns, I mean you either like clowns or you’re afraid of them. I’m afraid of clowns, I hate them.
AK: Oh, I’m totally neutral on clowns in their natural entertainment setting. I don’t care. I don’t like clowns or hate them. [laughter] I don’t need clowns. At least, not in the classic, Barnum and Bailey Circus sense. A clown like Jerry Lewis or Red Skelton can be a lot of fun. Or Laurel & Hardy. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are sublime clowns.
DB: I suppose I’m thinking more clown as in, yeah, circus clown. I mean you look at… what killed it for me was that Stephen King novel, “It.” Once I read that I thought “No, that’s it, no more clowns for me,” and of course…
AK: Bobcat Goldthwait did a clown movie too; “Shakes, The Clown,” in 1992. I thought that one might actually have been a rip-off of our strip.
DB: Yeah, and then of course there’s John Wayne Gacy the serial killer who was a clown. [laughter]
AK: I’ve actually seen a John Wayne Gacy clown painting, “in the flesh,” so to speak.
DB: I have as well. A friend of mine used to import them, believe it or not, back in the 1990’s. He used to contact all the serial killers and get them to send over paintings and drawings and came up and showed me four of them and wanted me to buy them and I went, “No.” I’m kicking myself now because they were about $150 a piece and I could’ve done that ten times over by now. [laughter]
AK: I was up at the Comedy Central Network, in Eddie Gorodetsky’s office and he had one on the wall.
DB: I don’t think I’d want to know why you would have one on the wall.
AK: I wouldn’t, but Eddie Gorodetsky would. At least he didn’t buy it. Gacy sent it to Eddie because he liked Eddie on television.
DB: I’m just saying I’m wondering why anyone would pop one on the wall.
AK: Oh, because it’s Comedy Central, man.
DB: Yeah, true, okay.
AK: Irony, irony.
DB: Irony, yep. Too ironic for me. Nick Bakay, how did you work with him, was it the traditional comic book way, Marvel method or full scripts?
AK: Well I didn’t work with him, per se, but I received full scripts with full dialogue. I believe I always received all my assignments, all my instructions from the Art Director at National Lampoon. The Art Director at that time was Peter Kleinman, I think. When I started out at the Lampoon, the Art Director was the original A.D., Michael Gross. Michael went on to design movies and stuff for Terry Gilliam. I used to see the Monty Python guys in Michael’s studio shop. But I would see Nick Bakay up in the Lampoon office once in a while. And we did go to a couple of… I went to a Comedy Channel party for Allan Havey’s show or something, a couple of things with him. I did know him and we did like each other and we hung out a little bit.
DB: Were you ever asked to make it more offensive or more…?
AK: I don’t remember receiving any overt instructions other than what were written by the writer in the script. As I said, it was a full script. No, no one asked me to make it look gross, or cruddy or anything like that. I tried to do a clean job on it because I just wanted the pictures to speak for themselves. But now that you mention it, I really could have gone in a whole different direction and made it really, you know, kind of a real Graham Ingels type of thing. Which might have been more interesting, actually. What you just asked me has made me call into question my whole approach, my whole conception of the way I did these stories. Suddenly, I think I may have missed the boat.
DB: I mean it’s some of your best work. It’s so completely foreign, yeah.
AK: Oh yeah, yeah, I think it’s well done. Actually the story you’re looking at now is the redrawn version.
DB: Which one’s that one, “Weekend Rampage?”
AK: Yes, the first two, “Weekend Rampage” and “Hollywood Producer.” These two have been redrawn. What you’re looking at, you’ve never seen before, no one has ever seen before. In 1994 Heavy Metal was going to publish a collection of the Evil Clown stories. I didn’t feel that the artwork on the first two stories was up to par with the rest of the stories. So I re-lettered and re-drew them. The project did not go forward because Nick Bakay didn’t seem to be interested in signing the contracts or something like that. I don’t know what it was. He had an agent involved and I think it just got too complicated. But I don’t know what was going on, and it just fell apart. I don’t know whether the comic book industry crash in 1994 or something like that had anything to do with it. And I think Heavy Metal went away also. But these are the new versions of the stories.
DB: So the other ones, like “Blood and Sand,” they’re the originals?
AK: Oh yeah, the rest of them are the original versions. We are going to include the original versions in the new collection, as well. It helps fatten up the book.
DB: I remember when I was reading it, some of it was coming back to me and I thought, “Yeah, I remember that one before, I remember that one, I remember seeing that one”.
AK: What I did was to put the original pages on a light box and traced them off. And I just tried to do them better. Same compositions, but the lettering is better. And I was a better artist by that time. I had made a breakthrough. I had actually made my breakthrough, on one of these jobs. “The Prodigal Clown, You Can’t Go Home Again,” whatever the name of that story is. But I made a breakthrough and I wanted to retrofit the rest of the series to try to be almost that good. So that’s why I re-did those two stories.
DB: Did anyone that you know ever comment on them and say, “What’s this, what are you doing?”
AK: Well it’s for the National Lampoon. That’s what’s in the National Lampoon. It’s not unusual material for the National Lampoon. Actually, it’s kind of mild for the Lampoon.
DB: It may be quite mild for the Lampoon but, you know, you are Alan Kupperberg, you’re a Comic Book Artist and most people equate that to Spider-Man.
AK: But the whole group I hung out with, everyone I knew worked for the Lampoon. Joe Orlando, Don Perlin, Russ Heath, Frank Springer, Frank Frazetta, Neal Adams, you name ‘em. These guys, like Nick Cardy, they all worked for Lampoon. They all did this gross stuff. So why should I be any different from them? Ralph Reese, Larry Hama, Alan Weiss, Mike Kaluta, Vaughn Bode, Chaykin, everyone. Gray Morrow, Barry Smith, Wrightson, we all worked for Lampoon. I lettered jobs for Gray Morrow and Neal Adams. Gray did the “Oral Passions of William Howard Taft” and I lettered that. And Jack Adler of DC Comics often did the colour separations for these jobs. By hand. When I worked for Jack in 1972, I used to order the blue lines that he did the separation work on from Altag Press. I remember that I’d speak to Frank Tag on the phone. Then I would dry mount the Bristol board blue lines on poster board for Jack so that they wouldn’t warp when he “worked wet” on them. We did all this on DC’s time.
DB: I always remember with Neal Adams is that, what is it, the “Son of Christ” strip that he did… Jesus...
AK: “Son O’ God,” yeah.
DB: “Son of God,” Jesus is a superhero, yeah.
AK: Yep, I lettered a word balloon in the first story. A balloon coming from the White House. [laughter] DC cover letterer Gaspar Salidino lettered that whole job, though. And Jack Adler did the color. And Neal drew a great deal of that story up at DC. “Dragula,” too.
DB: I don’t know. I suppose where I’m coming from is that because it is different from what people would equate with you…
AK: Well, to you. You don’t know me. No, I’m an evil, dirty, fuck. So this, you know, this is, I guess even to me, “dis is baby shit.” This was the kind of humour I grew up with at home. My father was a salesman, and he could tell a dirty joke like nobody’s business. I grew up twisted. This was my metier.
DB: So none of this ever offended you when you were doing it?
AK: Not a bit.
DB: Not one thing in any of the Evil Clown stuff when you were doing it that you looked at and you went, “I -- I don’t like that.”
AK: I’m much more vile than the clown is. I’m much more vile than he is, but I don’t write and draw stories about it. I don’t want to be the freak show. That’s what the clown is for. I’m just guessing, but I’d bet you a chocolate malted that Nick Bakay would say the same thing.
DB: Fair enough.
AK: You haven’t had your nasty moments?
DB: Oh, every second of the day.
AK: Well … ?
DB: I mean to me it doesn’t offend me at all. I could see how it could offend people and where it would offend people, but to me, I mean, to me to it just makes me laugh. I find it amusing.
AK: Oh no, the more perverted this stuff is, the better. You know, unless you’re hurting people. I don’t want to see people get hurt, or draw real people getting hurt. But depicting consensual sexual perversion doesn’t bother me.
DB: I think the only place I’d draw my line is kids and that’s about it.
AK: Yeah, well, kids can’t give consent and that would be hurting someone in any case.
DB: So what’s prompted Nick Bakay to put it out now in a collector’s format, did he refuse or sort of reject it before?
AK: I don’t know. He’s been the producer of a long-running television program called “King of Queens.” It just ended production. I don’t know why now. Because, there are no contracts or anything this time. This is all a “handshake deal.”
DB: Did he contact you about it or did a publisher? I’m just wondering…
AK: The Publisher came through my web site, AlanKupperberg.com. Nyles Bauer is the publisher. Yeah, he’s a member of the website.
DB: Yes, he is.
AK: Nyles is a research microbiologist. And his father, Eli Bauer, worked for Terrytoons Cartoons and wrote Heckle and Jeckle cartoons as well as Mighty Mouse. Eli also created the Hector Heathcoate cartoons. Nyles was a fan of the Evil Clown. He contacted me through the website and he wanted to buy some Evil Clown original art. I said, “sure,” and he sent me a down payment. He sent me money for about a page and a half’s worth of art. I went to look for the artwork and I couldn’t find it. I tore my studio apart. I tore my storage space apart. As it turned out, I eventually discovered I didn’t have it; I had sold it to Frank Giella. And odder still, this guy Nyles, his sister was friends with Frank Giella. Totally outside the context of comics or art, just in real life. So Nyles contacted Frank. But Frank wasn’t even interested in looking though his stuff to find the pages. But to make a long story short, I had two scripts, Evil Clown scripts left over. From 1994 or maybe even from earlier when Lampoon went out of business. Or stopped publication. Nick had written two stories. I hadn’t illustrated them yet, because there was no money for them at that time. But I had lettered both stories on the board, back in 1992 or ‘94. So these pages sat blank for almost 15 years, other than the lettering. So I said to Nyles, “I will finish this two page story for you, you will have an unpublished Evil Clown story.” We went back and forth and eventually he said, “I want to publish them all, I want a published collection.” So that’s how this new collection, with new material happened.
DB: It is good stuff, it is. I think on the whole…
AK: I think it’s a lot of fun.
DB: ... it’s some of your best work and the irony is that…
AK: Technically, yeah.
DB: … that not a lot of people, well when I say, “Not a lot of people,” a lot of people who would be more familiar with your work via Marvel or DC, the mainstream, might be surprised and a lot of them probably would never have even seen it because they might not have picked up the Lampoon.
AK: Well, that’s what kills me about it. Like, the Streetwise story published by TwoMorrows and stuff like that. You know, I think, nobody sees this stuff. If 5,000 people see it, you’re lucky. And whether or not they’re the right 5,000 people.
DB: But your best work is not always the stuff that’s out there, that everyone gets.
AK: Yes, yes. I think some of the best stories I ever did, by far, were for Lampoon and Cracked Monster Party. I sent you a story about that fat, rural, police chief in the squad car? I think that’s the best job I ever did, or one of the three or four best jobs I ever did. I don’t know how you feel about it. But I’m sure no one ever saw it.
DB: Does that frustrate you?
AK: Oh, it’s very frustrating. Very.
DB: I mean it’s more than good that the Evil Clown stuff’s coming out. Because the irony was, I was in the comic shop today that I go to, to pick up some stuff, and one of the guys there who owns it is a very close friend of mine and he said, “What are you working on?” “I’m talking to Alan Kupperberg tonight.” “What about?” And I said, “Oh, the Evil Clown stuff.” And he went, “Obnoxio?” I went, “No, no, National Lampoon, Evil Clown.” “Never heard of it.” And I thought, “Geez, there’s that many people out there that just have not seen it, would never have seen it.” Maybe with the reprint they will.
AK: Yeah, well, I sure hope so. Well, the collection is going to be around for a while. It’s not a periodical, so it will stick around, be on the shelves. So, maybe with luck…
DB: Yeah, oh, but this would have a, I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if this would have a lot of, in fact I know it would, it would have a lot of commercial appeal to people.
AK: Well, I think and I hope the book is going into real bookstores, as well as comic shops.
DB: Yeah, the stories themselves, one thing I’ve noticed looking through them is a lot of your regular cast members are in there.
AK: Oh sure. “A Good Cast Is Worth Repeating,” as they used to say at the end of old Warner Bros. films. On the first page of the first story, that is me, as the bartender. And the girl that the clown is hitting on was my girlfriend at the time, Thea. She is now married to Bea Arthur’s son, Danny Saks.
DB: Oh God, I thought you were going to say she is married to Bea Arthur.
AK: No, no, Thea’s mother-in-law is “Maude.” She had also dated Danny in college before I met her. So I heard Bea Arthur stories. And Thea’s father-in-law, Gene Saks directed a whole slew of Neil Simon’s plays on Broadway. Oh, the best part is, that in between dating me and marrying Danny Saks, Thea was engaged to George Carrigone, the one-time editor of Penthouse Comics! He’s the moax that committed suicide by doing a swan dive off of the top of the atrium lobby in the Marriott Hotel on Broadway? Splat! I knew George. He was a pig. A male chauvinist pig, and cocaine pig as well as a pig, physically. I sure speak well of the dead, huh? Because of these things Thea had broken up with George by that point, but I sure got a hysterical call from Thea that morning. George’s suicide made all the papers that day.
DB: Oh, good God. Well that’s a good claim to fame.
AK: Oh, yeah. [laughter]
DB: I was flicking through it and noticed, I’m pretty sure Jack Adler’s in there more than once.
AK: He could be. You know, all those people in the background in the bar panel, are wonderful, I think. There are wonderful characters drawn back there. They’re all different people and they’re all “real” people, they’re not comic book faces.
DB: That’s the thing that Erik Larson pointed out to me. That your background people are all different, distinctive and unique, which we’ve talked about before. Whereas a lot of other artists, their background people are just ovals with dots.
AK: Yeah, they can be. These scans are very low resolution, but I think you can see in panel one on page two, on the wall behind Frenchy’s agent are photos of Bob Hope and others.
DB: George Burns is there.
AK: Bob Hope, George Burns and those teeth belong to Milton Berle.
DB: It is rich in detail, and certainly rich in background detail.
AK: Well, you know, these Lampoon things pay much better than the average comic book would.
DB: Well, what were the comparison of rates? I mean you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.
AK: I’ll look in my account book.
DB: For the same time, for example, what were you being paid for a Marvel or a DC page as opposed to what you were paid for one of these?
AK: I see that for Evil Clown number three, yeah, with the lettering and inking and all, I got $470 a page. And, let’s see, and for an Iron Man I did for Marvel at about the same time, I think I would have received about $180 a page for pencils, inks and lettering.
DB: Jesus, so why didn’t poor people just work for National Lampoon exclusively?
AK: Well there’s… how many pages of comics did Lampoon run a month?
DB: True.
AK: Maybe six pages, some issues.
DB: Which is why they could pay more obviously.
AK: Well, no. They could pay us more because they were a high-end glossy. They sold the magazine for a lot more than comic books sold for. And they had real, high-end advertising. You can’t pay the page rates I quoted by advertising Sea Monkeys and Grit. That’s why Lampoon could pay more; they got more. That’s why comic book people liked to work for them. We all wanted to do illustration for slick magazines. But at that point in history, illustration had almost completely disappeared from slick magazines, replaced by photography. And, as the years went on, from, say 1976, every several years, I’d ask the Lampoon for a rate raise and get it. Through to the nineties. One day I happened to mention to art director Peter Kleinman that I knew Frank Springer. He got nervous and he said, “Look, Frank Springer has never asked for a raise. He still bills us for the same $200 (or whatever) a page as he did in 1974. Please don’t tell him what you get.” I must have been up to about $500 a page by then, so I felt badly for Frank. I didn’t see Frank regularly, so it didn’t come up.
DB: With the ads, the funny ads that go with them, like the “Elite Marauding Clown Squad” ad. Did you just draw that or did you write and draw that as well or was it a collaboration?
AK: It’s all in the script.
DB: In the script.
AK: Yep. Boy I didn’t like drawing that ad, the Evil Marauding Clown Squad. I see that I didn’t do a good job on it.
DB: Why’s that?
AK: Because, why don’t I like it? You think it’s okay?
DB: Evil Marauding Clown Squad?
AK: The artwork, you think that’s okay?
DB: It’s not your best effort.
AK: This will sound awful, but I didn’t care about it. See, I didn’t care about drawing military themes. And there’s nothing there to get any personality into. The clown figure up front is okay, but everything else is like, “Oh, Jesus, this is just tedium. This is just a diagram.” That’s not engaging comic book art to me. That’s a diagram that needed doing. And it didn’t have anything of any interest to me in it. Tiny, little guns and a little picture of an elephant. I didn’t care. I don’t feel the same way today. Boy, I’d love to write and draw an issue of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos!
DB: I suppose for me it’s humorous because I remember the ads on the back of the comic books.
AK: Oh sure, but Russ Heath cared about the stuff he was drawing. He did a wonderful job on those ads. Russ is great.
DB: And the “Hollywood…”
AK: The artwork on the ad is contemporaneous with the original first job. This is not a redo.
DB: The one that got me was the Charles Atlas ad, I thought that was hilarious.
AK: Oh yeah, well that one was a lot more fun to do. My father went to high school with Charles Atlas, strangely enough.
DB: But the new stories, when were they done? So they were done…
AK: Oh, 1994.
DB: Yeah, I wondered why Wilson Philips was suddenly there.
AK: Pardon me?
DB: I wondered why it was Wilson Phillips. Now it makes sense.
AK: Oh, yeah, yeah. The two pagers?
DB: The two pagers, yeah.
AK: I drew the last two this year, 2007.
DB: When were they written? This year?
AK: They were written in the early 1990’s. I’m not exactly sure if it was 1992 or 1994.
DB: Does Nick Bakay know all about them and he’s fine with that?
AK: Well, he wrote them. I don’t know if he’s seen them finished, though. I don’t even know his email address. Nyles is dealing with Nick, I’m not.
DB: I just love the punch line in “Three On A Clown.” I just thought that was hilarious. He’s opening for cockfights in Tijuana. “Any regrets?” “No, I still get to fuck the headliner”. There’s a lot to go through and most of it speaks for itself. “Blood and Sand”.
AK: Nick writes very funny stuff. I like the cover of “Blood and Sand” very much. The covers ran in colour originally, by the way. The “insides” were all run in black and white. In the collection, all the stories will be in colour. Tom Ziuko is colouring the book. Tom is doing the most beautiful job of colouring I’ve ever seen. He’s been a collaborator in the truest sense of the word. Tom has generated or inspired most of the ideas for the 2007 art contribution I’ve made. I consider him the de facto co-art director and co-editor for the book. If this book succeeds, I think it will be due as much or more to Tom’s contributions as anybody else’s. He’s given me great encouragement, and I can’t thank him enough. Tom literally saved the project on several occasions. I just wasn't going to proceed with this new collection unless Tom came on board.
DB: Oh, that’s good.
AK: That’s not bad brushwork on that cover. That’s me inking with a brush. As opposed to the first two stories, where I’m inking with a pen. If I’ve got a good brush and my hand is steady, it can really juice up my work a good deal. But that’s my opinion, how do you feel about it?
DB: I agree with you.
AK: It’s juicier.
DB: It’s juicier. On page four, on the second panel, the “Alfred E. Neuman”, it’s a woman.
AK: Oh. You see, that’s Courtney. Here’s a perfect example of the difference between people’s perceptions. That face, that you read as being Alfred E. Neuman-esque, that is the face that Nyles was in love with for his entire teenage years.
DB: Oh, Jesus Christ.
AK: That face is why Nyles is publishing the book.
DB: I see Alfred E Neuman.
AK: You’re not wrong. But neither is Nyles. But it’s Courtney. I was just following the script. It never, ever occurred to me that she looked like Alfred E. Neuman. That’s not where my head was. But in hindsight, I see what you’re saying. So you see, you never know how you’re going to be “read.”
DB: Oh, good God.
AK: Is it chicken shit or chicken salad? There’s no accounting for taste.
DB: True. Oh my God. I mean that’s a fairly…
AK: I really like Frenchy dancing in the next panel. I love that panel, you know? “Who has the Chivas and milk?” “My man, Frenchy T. Clown.” “Do he be French?” Love that dialogue. Some of my characters in that panel almost have a Will Eisner-ish touch. Especially the woman who says, “Do he be French?” If you told some people that Will Eisner had drawn that woman, they might not argue with you. I’m being delusional again. I like the next panel too, that’s swell.
DB: Back to that other panel, you’re right. That is a very… they’re very Eisner-ish, the dancing girl.
AK: I love the “up periscope” line. And I like the whorehouse in the next panel. That is story telling for you. We can see out the window, silhouetted against the moon, is their shop sign. A cat.
DB: It’s a cat.
AK: It’s a cathouse.
DB: A cathouse, yep, I know I saw that one.
AK: And in the background a client is going upstairs behind a girl.
DB: Yeah.
AK: I like it. It’s nice. It’s got some juicy details. Sometimes there’s too much ruler work, you know, ruling lines. But there’s a lot of freehand brushwork in this job. Like on the couch. You know, you can either ink it straight with straight edge like a ruler or try it freehand and hope you will get a more organic feel with a brush. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I was lucky that week. I had a brush that was cooperating.
DB: How different were your techniques and the brushwork on this, as opposed to the mainstream stuff that you did?
AK: Only as different as … you have to look at it and decide for yourself. I just think the brushwork looks different, lusher. I’m too cheap to buy good brushes. I buy cheap brushes or brushes on sale because, cheap or expensive, there’s no guarantee a brush is good. Or that they will stay good for more than a few strokes. And if you don’t take care of them properly they will absolutely not stay good for very long. I’m not going to spend $40 plus on a brush and then get home and find out that it’s a lemon. Guys like Dick Giordano and Joe Sinnott know how to pick brushes, I don’t know if I do. So if I get one that works well with India ink, I’m happy. I buy brushes for filling in blacks and colouring with Dr. Martin’s dyes. And for whiteout. But sometimes I find one that will take a point and keep it and is suitable as an ink brush and I just use it until it dies.
DB: Hmm. I mean for me I suppose the difference is, is I can’t find a bad panel in these. I’m sure you can.
AK: Oh yeah. Well in this job, at the end, I can find a couple of panels that I don’t care for. But, by and large, they’re not bad. I was really on the cusp, whether or not to redraw this one also. And I gave it a pass. I said, “There’s enough okay stuff in here”.
DB: Are you ever tempted to sit there and say that you’ll redraw just select panels, you know, just say you don’t like the last panel, redraw that one?
AK: The problem on this job is, that the panels I did not draw well the first time around, I still have no enthusiasm for the subject matter. So I don’t know if I could do them any better now. If you saw my colour schemes for this particular job on page four, once they got into the military stuff I lost enthusiasm for it again, I couldn’t even colour it. I could not gin up the enthusiasm for that stuff enough to colour it. The fornication in the first panel is a different matter. That, I could get into. By the way, the waitress is holding onto a jar of mayonnaise…
DB: And dill pickles.
AK: … and pickles! So don’t let the subtle symbolism be lost. That was my contribution. That was not in the script. That’s my sophisticated take on sex. Pickles and mayonnaise. That’s why I’m big with the ladies. That is class.
DB: Yeah, I think it’s quite obvious, actually.
AK: Maybe that’s why they didn’t ask me to write.
DB: How would you have written one?
AK: I would have figured out a scenario into which I could have shoe horned things I like to draw. Like, Alex Toth. Give Toth his head and you get Errol Flynn and biplanes. I think Frenchy’s expression in panel five on that page is priceless. That’s Jack Nicholson playing Frenchy the Evil Clown, see.
DB: Were you ever tempted to write one?
AK: It was not up to me. The editor has got to decide the theme of the issue. Then decide if he wants an Evil Clown story in this particular issue. Then he contacts the Evil Clown writer, Nick Bakay. This isn’t like Marvel Comics. Nick and I own the character, not the National Lampoon. “So dat’s da name o’dat tune.”
DB: But you were never tempted just to do one just…
AK: Well, in a sense I am writing some Evil Clown stuff. Because, I’m writing some new material for the collection. I’ve done a whole bunch of new “covers” for stories that had never had covers before. And I’ve done a brand new cover for the collection. Actually, three covers. I did a version of the cover, that big wrap around thing with all the faces. And Nyles took it up to some publishers. And they said, “This cover is not the best way to go.” And I got real pissy about it, and I said, “No, I’m not doing another cover. If this is a deal breaker, then let’s just forget the whole book.” And I reported this to Tom Ziuko. And Tom said, “Well, I’m kind of glad this came up. Because I don’t think it’s the right cover either.” When Tom said that, I came back down to the real world and said, “Oh, okay.” And I followed Tom’s fine suggestion for a new cover. And that’s going to be the cover of the book.
DB: Is that the one with him sitting down with the two girls?
AK: Yes. Based on Tom’s suggestion.
DB: I was going to say, it’s a good cover.
AK: If you know the character, you can write the character.
DB: Hmm. I mean it’s a good cover, I like it.
AK: It’s alright. There are problems with it.
DB: You’ll find problems with everything.
AK: I hope no one will even notice.
DB: Now, “Man of the Year,” I remember seeing that one at the time it came out.
AK: Yeah, “Man of the Year.” Yeah, I think I should’ve gone bigger on that Times Square splash panel, though. I had hoped for more impact in that panel. But there was a lot of information to put in there.
DB: Now, is that Julie Schwartz there?
AK: No, definitely not.
DB: God, it looks like him.
AK: That is actually… I definitely had a particular actor in mind there. I can’t recall his name at the moment. He was doing a lot of television in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. A guy that mostly did bit parts. He did Perry Mason often. Almost everyone in that panel is a real person that I’ve seen in life. Or based on someone who is like someone. But they’re real people even if I don’t know who they are.
DB: Fair enough.
AK: The checkout girl in panel three there, she’s supposed to be kind of a brain damaged person.
DB: You’re a cruel man.
AK: I am.
DB: I remember seeing it at the time. The panel that always made me laugh was on page four, the first panel, “If you don’t stop wriggling your back, it’s the paddle.” I always thought that was hilarious. I don’t know why. Then, of course, you have Jerry Lewis make an appearance on the next panel.
AK: I’m not sure whether or not I swiped that first panel. I might have swiped that girl from a Wally Wood dirty story. Wally Wood drew a lot of girls posed that way. That actually might be a swipe, I don’t remember. Except for the machine, which, in perspective, is really out of whack. I suppose it’s kind of okay because of the supposed weirdness of it. There is Jerry Lewis in the next panel. Not a great… I wish I had done a better job on Jerry. I tried to get kind of weird, to do the weirdly angled panels.
DB: Hmm, I was just going to say, on this one I’ve noticed that there’s no real structure to the panels. It’s not a traditional panel arrangement at all.
AK: Well, it’s all supposed to be a weird, out of kilter dream.
DB: Yeah, it’s very surrealistic.
AK: That was what I was going for. I didn’t set the art form on it’s head, but…
DB: No, the panels come back to normal when he is awake.
AK: Yes, they surely do. That’s a nice panel, where the critters are carrying the clown.
DB: Hmm. And you’ve got the cosmic panel when he’s waking up.
AK: Oh, yeah. Ditko-cosmic.
DB: Yeah, and “Sea Honkeys.” Now did you like that ad?
AK: Did I like that?
DB: Yeah. I’m hazarding a guess that you didn’t overly get into this one.
AK: Well, I was trying for a Joe Orlando take on that one, because he’d drawn the classic Sea Monkeys ad. But I guess it didn’t come off. And before I forget, there’s Jackie Gleason. That’s Ed Norton and Ralph Kramden in the next panel.
DB: Yeah, oh yeah, there is, too.
AK: Oh, you hadn’t noticed that?
DB: I hadn’t noticed it; I’m just seeing it now, yeah. It’s Jackie Gleeson and Art Carney coming on down the fire escape stairs.
AK: Yep.
DB: Oh.
AK: Dealing with those little creatures was kind of a challenge for me. Once you make them up, you’re going to have to stay on model. You have to design the characters to try and reflect the particular sin that they represent. In panel two on page three, in the upper right hand corner I drew a Groucho Marx creature. To me, that was the most exciting creature to draw. But those guys are all fun to look at. I think their intended personality comes through. I could get into the panels on page three, the top of the page. That stuff was fun.
DB: Stealing money from an orphanage.
AK: Yeah. Well, not stealing. He’s just not donating his money to the orphanage. And Frenchy is running down Fred Mertz with a golf cart at the Unemployment Office. Then there’s another cathouse scene, which is always fun.
DB: Now the panels that really impressed me on this one as well, it’s on page four, those last three panels, especially that last one, that’s just pure maniac.
AK: Oh yeah. He’s the lunatic. I’m glad that came across, because I wanted him to be a lunatic. And he warms up to it. He gets into it, you know. We pull in closer and closer in a series of panels.
DB: It’s very effective. Now you said Jack Nicholson earlier, is that what you’ve based the clown on?
AK: Not in this sequence. I think he came out looking like Ron Jeremy, the porn star here. Do you know who he is?
DB: Yeah, I try to avoid him.
AK: Yeah, well this is only his face, which is bad enough. But there he is. My friend Andrew J. Lederer is a background bystander, fully clothed, an extra in a Ron Jeremy film.
DB: Oh, God.
AK: I’ve never seen it, but Andy said he was standing there in the background while Ron was humping away. Andrew is so versatile.
DB: Clearly. I don’t think I would want to be anywhere near Ron Jeremy when he’s on the job.
AK: Or off.
DB: I can’t think of anything worse. I think the one story which really, for me, I think is probably the pinnacle; the peak of the whole lot is “Too Much Funny.”
AK: Oh.
DB: Now you will disagree with me.
AK: Well, it’s not my pinnacle, no. I would say my favourite job is, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” That’s my favourite job. I think the cover for that one is magnificent. Of course, it’s based on the iconic Norman Rockwell painting. So it’s me “inking” Norman Rockwell. And I think it came out incredibly well. I think it’s beautiful. You may not agree, but I love that cover.
DB: No it’s a great cover, I do like it. I do like… I was highly impressed when I first saw it and I’m still impressed now with it.
AK: I just got the colour on that cover from Tom Ziuko, and I’ve got to tell you that he absolutely put me away. Its just beautiful, just stunning. Tom spent three or four days on it. If time is money, Tom lost a fortune on it. The man is a true artist, a passionate artist. And that makes him a hero in my book. And I like the Clown Comics Checklist, those little covers in the advert on the bottom of the inside cover.
DB: Yeah, well those are just sick. “Spastic Mutant Squad,” “Little Spastic Mutant Squad,” “The Glans Gang.”
AK: That third little cover …
DB: “Junior Wet Nurse.”
AK: My illustration is based on a cartoon that Wally Wood drew. It was in his private file. In Woody’s cartoon, the male wet nurse was Bill Gaines. And Gaines is suckling an artist at his teat. Otherwise, I think I just made up the rest of those cover illustrations based on the titles Nick indicated in his script. I like the heading for the letters page, too. It took me back to my days when I was designing all those headings for the Atlas Comics letters pages.
DB: I noticed Nick Fury gets a letter in.
AK: Oh, you’re right. That’s in Nick Bakay’s script. I really did have fan letters printed in Sgt. Fury #’s 59 & 79. I really like page one a lot.
DB: Well, the lettering, the lettering in the scroll in the first panel is great.
AK: Well, that’s computer generated…
DB: There you go, ruined.
AK: In the original printing of that story, it’s terrible. It’s just awful. I think I hand lettered it. And I really can’t do that calligraphy stuff, so it’s awful. So, if for no other reason than this panel, I’m so glad it will be reprinted with the nice calligraphy. But everything else is hand lettered by me. I also made a kind of a breakthrough on my lettering in this job. That was before my hand went on me. I can’t letter a whole job anymore. My hand can’t take the concentration that you need. After a few panels, it’s agony. Luckily, with computer lettering, it’s not necessary. But I like to do my own balloons. I don’t like the perfectly generated computer balloons. My favourite letterer is Sam Rosen. Though I do have a soft spot in my heart for Artie Simek’s television screen shaped balloons.
DB: So what is it about this story that really grabs you more than the others?
AK: I don’t know if it was the subject matter in particular, but I was just full of it, so to speak. I was great that weekend and when I’m good it often comes out of me very fast. And I think this job came out of me pretty damned fast. I was just boiling.
DB: Page three, where they introduce him at the party. Some very exaggerated faces and very, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, I can’t think of the word.
AK: Cynical?
DB: Hmm, no I don’t think it’s cynical.
AK: Ahh, decayed?
DB: Decayed, that’s it. Yeah it could be.
AK: I think if all the Clown stories had this type of texture to them, this decayed, or Drew Friedman type of overwrought delineation to them I would have been much happier. This job was the main reason that I went back and re-did those first two stories. I wanted to get them closer to this one. But I didn’t accomplish it totally. I mean, I could go over every panel with you, in detail about what I put into this story. For instance, the cab driver is letterer Tom Orzechowski. The clown’s parents are my parents. There’s an awful lot of stuff in there.
DB: It comes across, the enjoyment that you’ve had in it. The enjoyment that you’ve obviously had doing it. It’s a very enthusiastic and to use the cliché, it pops off the page.
AK: Thank you. I’m glad the work I put into shows.
DB: It does, it shows. It just really leaps out.
AK: You know, I was in -- sometimes you just get in a zone and I was in the zone. Everything worked. Almost everything. There were a few little things that didn’t come across but, you know, that’s just quibbling. That’s just wanting the moon.
DB: No, that’s good.
AK: I’m very happy with this job.
DB: And as I said in the other one… the one I like is the “Too Much Funny”. I don’t know why I prefer it over that one.
AK: Oh, that job is good. I thought… I was thinking that that was a different job. You’re right. This one is very good too. This is the original splash page, illustrated as written. Lampoon got scared at that point. I don’t remember why, but they really pulled back. I redrew a lot of that nasty stuff and put a patch on the art. A lot of this stuff wasn’t in the printed version. I cleaned it up. Something was going on in the country.
DB: Interesting.
AK: So we will finally get to see the true version. I peeled off the patch. That must be Andrew J. Lederer there in the middle of that crowd in the splash panel. I was looking for real people real people in this job.
DB: Well you’ve got Charlton Heston; you’ve got Bob Hope.
AK: Yeah. In the bottom panel of page one that’s me, and my then girlfriend sitting there, on the subway, being harassed by the panhandling clown. Oh, and you’ve got Ed McMahon on page two.
DB: Well you’ve got Charlton Heston. Who’s Orville Redenbacher?
AK: Do you know who Arsenio Hall is?
DB: Yes.
AK: Oh, okay. Orville Redenbacher is a person and a brand name of popcorn. And that’s the old guy himself. He used to appear in the television commercials.
DB: Oh, okay.
AK: Now his grandson does the commercials, but it’s a brand of microwave popcorn.
DB: On the next page you’ve really taken out on Bob Hope.
AK: Yeah, this whole job is kind of built around that panel, in a sense. If I can find a panel that sets me off right, I can build a whole job around it. This is one such panel. I really got off on that panel. There’s Jack Nicholson sitting in the lower left hand corner.
DB: Yep, is that Ronald Reagan next to Bob Hope there?
AK: Yep, yep and there’s Milton Berle standing…
DB: Is that Dolly Parton or is that Loni Anderson?
AK: Ahh, no it’s supposed to be Dolly Parton and Johnny Carson is standing behind her talking to Kenny Rogers. And if you look all the way in the upper left hand corner of that panel, there is George Burns in a stupor, a senile stupor. Yeah, maybe I could’ve gotten a better Bob Hope if I tried, but it’s pretty keen, it’s okay. That’s actually a real outfit that Bob Hope used to wear back then. In the colouring it becomes clear. It’s kind of a white or cream coloured jacket and a brown shirt with dark slacks. Hope wore that outfit often back around that time. If you look at the drawing of Milton Berle, you’ll see that this is the only spot in the whole job that has zip-a-tone on it, on his head.
DB: Oh yeah it does, oh yeah.
AK: Because if you look at the lines that I inked, that’s Milton’s real hairline. The zip-a-tone indicates the area that Milton used to paint on his head. Milton would paint his head grey. And before that he used to paint his head black. I spent quite a few hours with Milton, so I know what I’m talking about.
DB: I love hearing about people with hair paint.
AK: It’s so weird. I can understand it on television. It almost works. If you’re not looking for it, it works on television. But in real life, it’s so very strange.
DB: Get a wig or go bald.
AK: No, a wig is worse.
DB: Just shave it off and let it go.
AK: Well, just be what you are. It’s not as though Milton was a 25 year old heart throb and was prematurely bald, or sick. Then, maybe you have to try to do something about it. But Berle was a 90 year old tummler. Be a 90 year old tummler! I like the girl in the inset panel above Dolly Parton, there. She kind of turned out Kubert-like. If you see what I’m saying.
DB: Yeah.

AK: Maybe not. But that’s how it always struck me. And then on the very next page the clown is walking along the dry bed of the Los Angeles River. That’s where that’s supposed to be. The Los Angeles River is paved! And it’s dry for a good portion of the year.
DB: Oh, okay.
AK: Have you ever see the movie “Them”?
DB: “Them”?
AK: With the giant ants.
DB: With giant ants, yep.
AK: That’s the riverbed that at the end of the film, when the army goes through the storm drains, hunting the ants. And then, it’s always fun drawing circus freaks. I’ve got to tell you that and I like the Siamese triplets, because one of them is white, one of them is black and one of them is Chinese. But they’re Siamese triplets.
DB: Yeah, I noticed that.
AK: That panel where he’s scoring with the triplets? That also was a replacement panel for the original. The original panel was incredibly graphic. Lampoon didn’t want to show that.
DB: Why did they suddenly crack down on the censorship of it?
AK: I don’t remember what the reason was, but they suddenly got scared. Things that they hadn’t thought twice about before suddenly brought them up short.
DB: Well something must have happened, I suppose, yeah. Something must’ve happened.
AK: I don’t think it was anything to do with the Lampoon itself. I think it was the climate in the country at that point. Do you know when this story was? It must’ve been around 1990, let’s say. Wasn’t “Murphy Brown” having a baby then? And Dan Quayle was all bent out of shape?
DB: It would’ve been. Yeah, that would’ve been around about that time. I used to watch Murphy Brown, believe it or not. When he was screaming about how an unwed…
AK: I watched it too, it was brilliant. She had an out of wedlock baby.
DB: “An unwed mother who didn’t know who the father was shouldn’t be on TV.” It’s like, a television show, get over it. But surely, I mean that wouldn’t cause National Lampoon to suddenly censor everything or lose their image.
AK: I don’t know. Maybe they were in the process of trying to sell the magazine, as they regularly were back then. Could have been that. Did you know for a while the actor from “Animal House,” Tim Matheson and a partner owned the magazine?
DB: I didn’t know that. Now, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Frenchy,” did that come after the “Too Much Funny?”
AK: That came after “Too Much Funny,” that’s the next story in the sequence.
DB: Was any of this censored? I mean you’ve got him hitting a crack pipe with a, you know, with a, I don’t know, it looks like a child prostitute in the background there.
AK: On page one?
DB: Yeah.
AK: Oh yeah. No, that’s a fully mature, but totally wasted, skanky, crack whore. Well, apparently the fright was over at that point. What can I tell you? [laughter]
DB: Jesus.
AK: I just run with the script as I get it, and they either get scared or not. But I think I’ve pointed out all the instances I’m aware of. It hardly ever happened.
DB: I was going to say, they’re freaked out about the other ones and they’re not going to do anything about that. It just makes me wonder what was going on at the time to make them…
AK: Well this story involves children. Frenchy is corrupting the hell out of these kids.
DB: Yeah, clearly.
AK: He’s not physically abusing or mistreating them or anything, but he’s still not doing good things here. Actually, all he’s really doing is telling the kids about real life, when you get down to it. [laughter]
DB: I mean this is another one of those bizarre stories, “The Call Of The Wild.”
AK: Yeah. For some reason this guy, the Graham Bishop character there, I always thought I was channelling Neal Adams when I did that guy. I know it’s a delusion, but I felt this character was a choice Neal might have made. But I don’t know why I think that. I just… sometimes I make these weird associations in my head. But as long as the end result is satisfying to me, it doesn’t matter what I thought. Now, that next panel, panel three there. That stuff is all pasted up. There is no drawing in that panel at all.
DB: Did you paste up the…
AK: That’s all clipart. The park, the van, everything.
DB: The van is very consistent, it’s the same pose in every panel.
AK: That’s all clipart, the whole panel.
DB: Hmm. Did you then paste up the van for all the other panels?
AK: Yes. I had a great Xerox machine back then and I just xeroxed the van any size I wanted it to be or I could reverse the picture if I wanted to. I know it’s obvious, but I don’t think it’s offensive at all. I hope not.
DB: No, I was actually going to ask you about that because the van is the same in every panel.
AK: Yeah, I hate drawing things like that. Mechanical things, with no personality. So I took the cheap way out and I hope it’s not too offensive.
DB: No I don’t think anyone, I mean it actually adds to the appeal of it.
AK: Oh, okay. [laughter] Good. Cheap chic.
DB: Yeah I was going to say it adds to the tacky appeal of it. It’s tacky and it’s just, it’s apt.
AK: So it’s got a legitimate artistic reason for it, huh? There you go, instead of taking the cheap way out, it’s artistic, it’s chic. [laughter]
DB: It’s got a very violent ending to this story as well. It looks like a “Lord of the Flies” type thing and then the kids invade the countryside.
AK: Yeah, and I like the van going off the cliff with the lemmings.
DB: Yeah, yeah.
AK: Some of the story telling in those panels is kind of like a jigsaw puzzle to put together when you’re composing it, you know. I think about some artists in this business and what they might have done with stuff like this. It could have been a mess. But I had a lot of fun with this job.
DB: You know, kicking a bunny in the next panel there.
AK: Oh yeah. I like the wolf chewing the kid’s the kid’s arm off.
DB: Yeah.
AK: I felt that I achieved some kind of, almost Wally Wood and/or Harvey Kurtzman type figures posing in these particular panels. Which was fun. If the story suggests those types of poses, in my head, that’s where I wind up going. I think for the wolf, instead of doing real research, I went to my copies of Kubert’s Enemy Ace.
DB: Oh, yep.
AK: I love how I’ve got the kid pointing off panel with his arm stump. I always thought that was the height of grossness. Okay, and there’s another, different clipart van in the next panel.
DB: Yep, I picked that up. The minute you confirmed that the other one was a paste up I knew that one was. I mean, again it sort of adds to it really. It doesn’t detract from anything.
AK: I really got into some of these panels because once the background is established, you can pull in and just concentrate on the human beings and do some “acting”. You have to worry that your viewers always know where you are. I always seem to get Frenchy nice and maniacal when he’s putting war paint on people.
DB: Yeah the expressions you put on his face, you know, they really are good.
AK: Yeah, when I get what I want, it can work out well. For instance, panel five on that page; I think those guys are wonderful. The upside-down guys.
DB: Yeah.
AK: There’s a lot of stuff packed in that panel. These are very dense panels, story-wise. I think the clown in the next panel is an excellent drawing. It’s really wonderful.
DB: Well there would be a lot of people that’d be happy to have done that and that’s what I’m saying there’s a lot of, it comes back to what I was saying before, there’s got to be a lot of people that would be very surprised to see it.
AK: I hope they’ll see it and be pleased.
DB: Now, the next thing is the two-pager, “Tales from the Road,” is that where it all stopped, with this two pager?
AK: In fact, yes. I think maybe what the Lampoon wanted to do at that time was to get a clown two-pager into every issue. I was told that it was a very popular feature. Maybe that’s why Nick wrote a bunch of two pagers. It’s so long ago, I don’t remember. But Lampoon just stopped publishing. So there are three, two page stories altogether. One illustrated in 1992, two illustrated in 2007.
DB: Yeah.
AK: I think Nick may have written them all at the same time. But only “Luscious Martyr Mission” was drawn back then.
DB: And you can see the difference in them. Mind you, the first panel you’ve got on the “Luscious Martyr Mission,” which is the first two pager, you’ve got every clown known to man in there. Is that Obnoxio up the back?
AK: Oh yeah, there’s a whole bunch of clowns, yes. That’s Obnoxio the Clown at the back of the line there. But there isn’t every known clown in there. Hardly. And then, in front of Obnoxio is a guy I called Ditko Clown, because he looks like a Steve Ditko character to me.
DB: Is that Clarabelle the Clown in there as well?
AK: No, it’s not. It may look like him, but I didn’t reference Clarabelle. I made up all the clowns in that panel. Behind Frenchy is my friend Andrew J. Lederer as a clown again. Andy plays Pippo the Clown in “Hollywood Producer.” In all these stories over the years you can watch Andy lose his hair. You saw him on MTV recently and he is totally hairless there. In this splash panel I really like the amount of crap hanging around Frenchy’s neck. It’s all clustered together there. That panel worked out well. I like to mix things up and I was going for a differently shaped splash panel. Vertical instead of horizontal. I think it worked out well.
DB: Now, I do like the second page. The whole page and especially that top panel in the nightclub, yeah.
AK: Oh yeah, that’s really nice. It’s fun when you can get a big panel in there with something good going on and then carry it off well. Ahh, yeah, there’s a lot of good character work and acting in there. Very gratifying.
DB: No, I do, I really like it. And again the crazy face in panel four, that really comes across as nice and maniacal.
AK: Yeah, that page worked out really well. I’m very happy with it.
DB: But you can certainly feel the difference between those pages, I suppose, and the artwork in those as opposed to the newer stuff you’ve done. The newer stuff you’ve done it’s very… it’s very heavy on the blacks.
AK: I wish the original stories had had more blacks. I think it reads better because there’s more contrast going on.
DB: It does. And if it doesn’t sound too weird, going heavy on the black means you’ve got more detail going on in it.
AK: Well, not really. But it makes the detail that’s there pop. Because, if there’s all detail and no black, it just kind of turns to grey. There’s another reason for all the blacks. Actually, when I said this job was only lettered back in 1994, that wasn’t totally accurate. I had very roughly laid this job out in 1994. Not much more than scribbles. So when I finished this particular job up in 2007, I was not starting from scratch. But it could have been another unfortunate case like my final Justice League of America, number 232. Like the JLA story, I did not pencil the job tightly enough before I started inking. Woody used to say, “When in doubt, black it out.” So that accounts for some of the heavy blacks. Unlike the JLA story, there was no deadline on it. So when I stalled on the job and it sat there half-finished for months on end, I didn’t have to force it, and ruin it, like the JLA. The whole time Nyles is asking, “Where’s my story, where’s my story?” I would not finish it until I sat myself down and finally finished pencilling it properly. Then I finally went ahead and inked it. I did not want another Justice League 232 on my conscience. So “Three On A Clown” turned out okay, but it could’ve gone the other way.
DB: It’s a good thing it didn’t.
AK: And even still I’m not really… I don’t know who Wilson Phillips is, you see, I know who they are, but I don’t know them. So I’m drawing these kids from photos, but I don’t know them. They are not in my viscera. I can only do my best not being very familiar with the source material.
DB: And “Mr Johnson Comes A-Calling,” I mean that’s the last one you’ve done. That’s a great splash page.
AK: Ahh, well, yeah it’s got a kind of simplicity to it. Actually, my original artistic conception for the job really was… really, I don’t think it was in the script but the feeling suggested by the script made me think of the famous Edward Hopper painting, “Nighthawks.” The diner on the deserted street corner, at night. Very stark. Very desolate.
DB: The diner, yeah.
AK: I really wanted to repeat Hopper’s composition over and over again in this piece. But practically speaking, I didn’t think the shot was close enough to the action to show anything. So this is a compromise. This is a different camera placement on the same angle. You know what I mean?
DB: Yeah.
AK: So this is what I wound up with. On the second page, I wasn’t so sure about being that static. But it’s supposed to be static and repetitious. I could have moved my camera around like a mad man, but I felt that wouldn’t have properly told the story.
DB: Yeah, I mean…
AK: There’s virtually no movement called for in the story, it’s just, you know, it just is what it is.
DB: Yeah, but with going the static shot of every panel, you know, his head being the same in every panel I think would make it more static and, yeah, you’re right, there’s not a lot going on it in but to have something the same in each one of them would just, for me, make it boring.
AK: I like the fact that his expression, his body language changes in each panel. He’s getting more and more depressed, you know, to the point of settling for the donut, which is a panel that puts me away. You know, not being a subtle fellow, I wanted Frenchy’s finger pointing right at the hole.
DB: Leave nothing for chance.
AK: I’m kind of hoping Tom will put something nice on the counter top texture wise or, you know, marble or some neat Formica, or something like that.
DB: How close are you working with Tom on it?
AK: Back when Heavy Metal was going to publish this book in 1994, we were going to do it in colour. So we shot two sets of Photostats from the originals. One set was for backup. I started colouring the first set. I had finished colouring about 90% of it before the project ground to a halt. So now Tom’s got my colour schemes. Tom’s free to use what he wants from my schemes. Or not. I totally trust Tom. We seem to be of one mind on almost everything. We both come out of the same “schools.” Jack Adler High School and The University of Neal Adams. And we’ve both got the scars to prove it.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Looking Back With Bob Budiansky

Bob Budiansky is one of the more unsung heroes of Marvel Comics to emerge from the explosion of talent that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally beginning his career as an artist with the British department at Marvel, he soon graduated to being both a writer and editor, reaching the top of the pile when he became an Editor-In-Chief before his departure in the mid 1990s. Primarily a cover artist, Bob had one regular run as an artist, the incredible relaunch of the Ghost Rider.

Beginning with the issue #68 (an incredible story even today), the creative team of Roger Stern, Bob Budiansky and Dave Simons would go on to re-define the character and in the process made it their own. With the departure of Stern, Bob was boosted to the status of co-plotter with writer J.M. DeMatties. Bob then remained on the title until it was canceled with issue #81. Before it's cancellation the creative team took a second string character and unleashed it's full potential to the comic book world at large. The run remains one of the most talked about in the titles existance and stands alongside Frank Miller's Daredevil, John Byrne's Fantastic Four, Walt Simonson's Thor as one of the must have comic book runs of the early 1980s. It's a shame that Marvel hasn't collected the run, but as third and fourth volumes of Essential Ghost Rider appear more people will be exposed to what made the title great.

If Ghost Rider was all Bob had done then he'd have made his mark. However once he left that title he went onto other things, including overseeing the now legendary Transformers when Marvel published it. Indeed there are Transformers fans who consider Bob Budiansky to be the real creator of the line and with very few exceptions he wrote every issue of the 55 issue run of that title.

Bob Budiansky is semi-retired from the comic book world these days. For a long while rumours circulated about him. The most common rumour was that he had become a recluse, withdrawn from the comic book world, bitter about his treatment and not wanting to speak about his past. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While it's true that he's found other pastures to play in, he now does recreations and commissions. Bob is a great guy to speak to and remains an artist above the rest of the pack.
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DANIEL BEST: Let’s start at the start. Where were you born? Where did you come from?
BOB BUDIANSKY: That is a start. I was born in the Bronx, New York City.

DB: And where did you go to school?
BB: I went to public school in the Bronx, and then I went to college at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

DB: And when did you first become aware of comic books, what was your first comic book experience so to speak?
BB: Oh, that’s really probing. Ahh, I have two older brothers, so my first comic book experience was no doubt comic books that they brought into the house. In fact I have a very particular memory, are you with me?

DB: Yep.
BB: Right. I have a very particular memory of a comic book, which would have been Brave and the Bold #28, which introduced the Justice League of America, because I remember looking at it and I still remember a couple of scenes from that, and I remember that was about 1960 or 1961. Justice League of America eventually became my favourite comic book. I remember the very first comic book I ever bought with my own money was Justice League of America Number 6. The Wheel of Misfortune! was the name of the story, and I still have it.

DB: Oh, good God. Most people I speak to, they have thrown all their stuff out over the years.
BB: I wish I could say it was in pristine condition, but it’s not quite.

DB: So you sort of gravitated more towards the DCs than the Marvels?
BB: Oh, without a doubt. I was definitely a big DC fan for the first several years of my comic book collecting. But then I shifted over to Marvel for the last couple of years of my comic book collecting while I was still a kid, and then when I got to high school I stopped all my comic book purchases completely. I just turned off to it and then I did not get back involved with comics again until I think around my second year of college. A friend of mine showed me some comics that he had gotten that were unlike anything I remember from the days I used to collect comics.

In the 1960’s, the comic books were, if you’re familiar with that era, very black and white. There were the good guys, there were the bad guys. DC had a very clean style of artwork. Marvel’s artwork was a little funkier, with Jack Kirby and so on. But still, overall they looked like very traditional comic book art, at least to me, looking backward.

Well, anyway, in the 1970’s when I was in college, a friend of mine showed me some Conan comic books. First of all, the character was unlike anything I had seen before. He wasn’t exactly a goody two-shoes superhero. He was quite a mixture of things and very much more of a living, breathing person than a Superman or anything like that, and it added the elements of magic and fantasy. Plus, it had wonderful artwork by Barry Windsor-Smith and John Buscema, and that just blew me away, that feeling of “wow this is several steps ahead of where I left off back in the 1960’s”. So that got me interested in comic books again.

DB: So how did you actually get involved in comic books? I mean you sort of popped up from nowhere as an artist, what was your art training?
BB: When I was a kid I thought about growing up to become a comic book artist. If you had asked me at the end of eighth grade what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would say, “I want to be a comic book artist.” Then I went to a high school called Bronx High School of Science, which was an excellent high school in New York City. It’s still one of the best high schools in the country, in fact, and I always had an interest in science anyway. So as I got older I figured, “Well, it’s more practical for me to go into science. Who makes a living as a comic book artist?” and I actually went to college and I got a degree in Civil Engineering.

So you’re probably thinking, “Well, how does that prepare one to become a comic book artist?”

DB: That was my question.
BB: That’s not the most direct route that I took. Anyway, all that time when I was in college I was also drawing for the student newspaper as a sideline, and after a couple of years I become the Graphic Arts Editor. We had a student newspaper that came out three times as week. I typically had at least one illustration in every issue by the time I was the Graphic Arts Editor. With a friend of mine in my senior year there, I started my own comic strip in the newspaper.

So I had my hand in drawing all the time I was studying Civil Engineering. A friend of mine from the student newspaper graduated the same year I did. He wound up getting a job in New York City for Marvel Comics as an Editorial Assistant. I stayed in college for one more year for graduate school. So when I would come down to New York City during my spring break or Christmas break or whatever it was, I’d visit him at the Marvel offices. He encouraged me to submit an illustration or two, and I got a couple of things printed, and then he quit his job. From my college, 400 miles away, I interviewed over the telephone for his job as an Editorial Assistant in the Marvel British Department. And I got the job after talking to my future boss for about a half hour. My future boss was Larry Lieber, Stan Lee’s brother, and he was the head of the Marvel British Department at the time. Marvel’s British Department was not in England, it was in New York City. Marvel had not opened up a British branch yet.

So anyway, that’s how I got involved in comics. I was at the end of my first year of graduate school. I dropped out. I took the job at Marvel Comics. I already had some drawing ability, although I wasn’t trained in an art school or anything. I picked up a tremendous amount of experience and information just being around some really great artists. The two Marvel Art Directors at the time were John Romita and Marie Severin, and they were just wonderful as far as helping out and giving me pointers. Especially Marie, she was terrific. But John was great too, except I think he was busier so he wasn’t as available as Marie to give feedback. But he was also terrific. So after a couple of years of shuttling back and forth between freelance and Editorial I finally was able to get a gig as a regular artist for a while.

DB: It is a bit unusual because you were sort of doing pinups in one page and a few page stories there.
BB: Oh, you really know my history if you know that. Yeah, I started out doing pinups and things like that, yeah, and even lesser known is like I said, I worked for the British Department. Initially, the Marvel British Department was reprinting American stories in England, and the English schedule was weekly, as you might know, whereas the American schedule was monthly. I think we used to divide up a 20-page story or a 22-page story, whatever it was back then, we divided a story in half and then we would run two halves of two American stories in one single issue of a British book. And so every other issue of every other story needed a new splash page, and so people like myself and Ron Wilson and John Romita Junior and Michael Golden…and I’m trying to think of them all, a whole bunch of guys, got their start this way, drawing these splashes. This is back in the late 1970’s.

We all got our start doing these splash pages for the British books. That was a good way to train. We’d just do a splash page here and there. It wasn’t like a lot of pressure to do a whole comic book. From that a lot of careers developed. I did an occasional pinup, like you said, as well.

DB: I’ve spoken to a lot of artists over the time and pretty much all of them have pointed that “Oh yeah, I worked for Marvel UK at one stage,” and it’s incredible the amount of people. It must have been a good training ground.
BB: Just to clarify, when you say Marvel UK, what I’m talking about preceded Marvel UK. This is the Marvel British Department within the New York City offices, and then a lot of British artists came out of Marvel UK, perhaps, afterwards. But I’m talking about all of these American artists.

DB: I often get Marvel UK mixed up with the British Department. To me it’s all Marvel UK.
BB: Yeah, right, right, okay. But I wasn’t sure if you were making that distinction. Okay, well anyway. As you were saying, I did some pinups, and then, eventually after bouncing back and forth from staff to freelance for a couple of years, I finally quit staff again. I stayed on staff for a year initially, then went freelance. Most of the work I did at that time was actually non_illustration work for Marvel. It was production work, and I did some illustrations.
Then I went back on staff for about a year and a half or two years as an Assistant Editor, and then I quit to become a full-time artist, and my assignment was Ghost Rider.

DB: I always tell people that the Ghost Rider run you did was one of my favourite runs ever.
BB: Well, thank you very much.

DB: It was a great book to start with, but when you came on it with Dave Simons and Roger Stern and the rest of them, I mean, just that one issue where you started with the origin story that you retold with Johnny Blaze getting confession.
BB: That was a conscious effort to relaunch the book. The editor at the time, I think, was Tom DeFalco. Roger Stern was the writer, he was the new writer and the new artist, me. It was a conscious effort to give it a new look and a new breath of life or whatever, and it worked, actually, because sales throughout at least the first half or so of my run kept rising. People took notice, and then after Roger Stern left Marc DeMatteis came on the book and we still kept rising, and the only speed bump we hit in this whole thing was when Dave Simons, who of that team is the unsung hero, left. He used to come to the office dressed in leather. I mean, this was not an act, he’d come dressed in one of these black leather, zipper jackets.

I don’t know if he also wore leather pants. He might have worn them. But anyway, the point is, he knew how to ink leather, which was really important for Ghost Rider.

So when he left the book we never really were able to replace that look that he gave the book. The rest of the team was all somewhat saddened by his departure. Anyway, the book was cancelled, I think it was issue 81, which was about maybe five or six issues after he left. Thank you for saying those kind words about it. I enjoyed doing it at the time.

DB: Why was it cancelled? I mean, because it was just building and building and building. The artwork and the storylines were great; the artwork was some of the best that was appearing in Marvel books at the time.
BB: I don’t know how much you’re aware of what sales figures are in the American books. I’m not talking about Australia or England or any place. But at the time when Ghost Rider was cancelled we had brought sales up to maybe about 120,000 a month in the U.S., and then it started dropping, like I said, when Dave left the book, couldn’t replace that look. It started dropping, and I think it maybe went down to close to 105,000. At the time Jim Shooter, the Editor-in-Chief, wanted to launch a few new books. So he chose a few low-selling books and cancelled them to make room, and Ghost Rider was considered low-selling at 105,000. Now today…

DB: …People would kill for that.
BB: I don’t follow the comic book market very closely. I have been out of comics for, except for some little odds and ends, I’ve been pretty much out of comic books for over ten years. Well, today I think 105,000 would qualify a book to be in the top five or ten of sales. But that number was considered low enough to make a book worthy of cancellation back then.

I didn’t cry about it, I had my run on Ghost Rider, and I was ready to move onto something different and actually write. The day I was told the book was being cancelled I was offered six months’ worth of work as an artist, and soon after I was offered a full-time job as a full editor at Marvel. So, it’s like, “Okay, I did Ghost Rider, it was fun, I’m happy to move along”.

DB: After that you went on to be an editor for the most part.
BB: Yeah, for 13 years.

DB: That always made me wonder: I could never figure out whether you were an editor that drew occasionally or an artist that was an editor.
BB: Well, I was an artist. I was an editor who intended to be an artist and I got sidetracked. Like I said, back in junior high school in eighth grade and years before that too, I dreamed of growing up to become a comic book artist, which I can actually say I did for a while, and then I liked the editorial life. Drawing for me was always a struggle. It still is, and even now I’m struggling over the commissions that I’m doing for you.

It was always a struggle, and so I kind of welcomed the chance to take a break from it when I got the editorial job. At the time I didn’t know if I was going to stay on for a year or five years or ten years, I had no idea. But my job as an editor really developed over the years to a point where I really enjoyed it. It also gave me the opportunity to write. You might be aware that I have probably written more books for Marvel than I drew. But I never intended to be a writer.

DB: I suppose for me, I’m sure for a few other people as well, that’s the frustrating thing because I look at your artwork and especially on that Ghost Rider run, and all I wanted was more of it and it just sort of dried up. It was such a shame.
BB: I appreciate your saying that and I have a similar feeling sometimes. Like I probably should have toughed it out a little bit longer and really made a go of it and things would have all been different perhaps. But by dropping the artwork it released me, it kind of liberated me to try other things, and it got me the opportunity to do things I would never have been able to do if I had been just grinding out the artwork. And, to be honest, I was making a lot more money as a writer than as an artist, and as an editor than as an artist. So money had something to do with it as well.

If I was like a John Byrne who, besides being an excellent artist, was able to crank out a couple of books a month, things might have been different. But I could never do that. I could barely do one book a month. So there was a financial factor as well that I had to consider. I was happy to take the editorial job at that time.

Now looking back, since I’m not in comics anymore, maybe if I’d stuck it out as an artist I would’ve rose to a point of fame and I would be in such demand that I would be some superstar artist today… who knows. But anyway, you can’t look back like that. At the time it seemed like the right decision to make, and like I said, it did give me a chance to write and actually it gave me a little bit of a legacy that’s not related to my artwork, which is that I got involved with Transformers. Transformers may not be everybody’s style of comic book, but obviously there’s a brand new movie that just came out this summer, so it’s still a big deal all these years later. At the time, in 1983, I was given an opportunity to work on Transformers because nobody else in my office really wanted to. I was an editor and Jim Shooter came down the hall and said, “Who can do this work?” and so I was like the fourth person he asked or something. And I was able to do it, and Hasbro Toys really liked what I was doing, and I stuck with it for five years.

And so, again, I don’t know how much you’re familiar with what I’ve done in Transformers, but people have been interviewing me about it for years. You’re a very rare interviewer in that you’re interviewing me about my comic book career. Usually I get contacted on my Transformers career.

DB: It’s almost your legacy. You’re always going to be the Transformers guy, but to a lot of other people you are always going to be the Ghost Rider artist.
BB: Oh, it’s good too. I mean I’m not knocking any of it, I’m just saying by quitting artwork it gave me an opportunity to do things that I probably would never have gotten to do.

DB: Did you see the Ghost Rider movie?
BB: No, but it got terrible reviews. I skipped it. I did see the Transformers movie though because it got good reviews and I liked it. Did you see the Ghost Rider movie?

DB: I did indeed.
BB: And were the reviews correct?

DB: I liked the look of the Ghost Rider itself. I thought that was good. But it wasn’t the greatest movie I have ever seen, that’s for sure. It could have been a lot worse I suppose, but then I’m not a huge fan of Nicholas Cage. He sort of doesn’t move me that much in movies, and then in this one he was right over the top, and as a friend of mine once said “more ham than a pizza with the lot”. It was pretty bad. But again, the Ghost Rider itself looked great.
BB: Oh, right.

DB: As a writer who draws, how does that help you write scripts for other artists, and conversely how did it help you when you were drawing?
BB: When I was writing scripts for other artists, especially Transformers and then I created a book after Transformers called Sleepwalker, I always had in mind what was visual, what would make good visuals, what would be a good cover scene. In fact, on the Transformers and to a lesser degree on Sleepwalker, I sketched out most of the covers. I didn’t draw most of the covers. I drew about four or five Transformers covers. I wrote about 50 issues of it. The vast majority of those covers, I did the cover sketch. So I always had in mind as I was writing it, “Where’s my cover scene?” I would kind of write backwards from that. I’d start with that scene in mind sometimes, not all the time, and I would… I try to give something juicy to the artist so that they can work with it. Sometimes with greater success than others and sometimes I might look back at some of my stories and I think, “Oh, they’re kind of wordy, I wish I could cut a few scenes here and there”.

But anyway, I try to make things visual. Try to make things so that exposition happens while something else is happening instead of a couple of characters sitting around talking to each other. I’ll throw in a little anecdote about Ghost Rider. When I worked with Roger Stern on the book Roger did things the traditional Marvel way. He would turn in a plot, I would draw it then he would get back my drawings and he would do a script.

But with Marc DeMatteis on Ghost Rider, we collaborated. If you look at the credits it was co-plotted by both of us and he scripted. So we would get on the phone with each other and, this is the way I recall it, he might disagree: Typically he would come up with the story, he’d come up with the overall structure of the story and the different emotional changes the characters were going through or whatever angst that they were experiencing, and then I would go back and I would put in the visual scenes, the big action moments. That would be my contribution to the plot: “Okay, now how can we make this thing look exciting and have a big moment where something happens that’s really visual?” So it was actually a really good partnership, we really enjoyed working that way.

DB: It worked well. You only worked for Marvel; you never worked for DC, never worked for any other company by the look of it. Not that I can find.
BB: That’s pretty much true. There was one point when I was freelance years and years ago; I was approached by Al Milgrom, who was another guy that worked mostly for Marvel, but at the time he was working for DC. It was probably the late 1970’s when he approached me to do something for DC, and I tried drawing a story for them, and it just never took off. So that was my one aborted attempt to work for DC.

The only other company I’ve worked for was recently I did a four-issue adaptation of the original Transformers animated movie for IDW, who’s the current publisher of the Transformers. I did that last summer. Summer of 2006.

DB: People were leaving Marvel in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. They were going left, right and centre. They were either going for DC, Jim Shooter took a whole pile with him to Valiant and…
BB: Well, Jim Shooter was escorted to the door at Marvel, too. So he was looking for other opportunities. It wasn’t like Marvel had a place for him… he was told to leave. So there’re other factors there. But I was at Marvel because Marvel was very, very good to me for most of that time. All through the late 1980’s, early 1990’s, my career was on the rise as an editor, so I had no real reason to leave.

In fact, the closest I came to leaving was internal. For a time I was doing a lot of work with our Licensing Department. At one point the Director of Licensing kind of made a half-hearted attempt to have me go over to Licensing and leave Editorial. At that time being a Marvel editor was about the pinnacle of one’s comic book career anywhere. So I wasn’t about to leave. It didn’t last, but being a Marvel editor looked good at the time. So I kind of said, “Thank you, but no, I think I will stay where I am”.

DB: You rose to the top; I mean you rose to become Editor-in-Chief at one stage.
BB: Yeah, I was. Well, before Marvel completely busted in the mid-1990’s…

DB: Fell apart.
BB: …Marvel was decentralised. There were five editorial lines and I became the Editor-in-Chief of the Spider-Man line for the last, about last year and a half of my time there. Then it was restructured again, and then I was out of there. But for that last year or so I was the Editor-in-Chief of the Spider-Man line.

Prior to that I was Executive Editor. I was in charge of all the Marvel trading cards, I was in charge of the Marvel poster program, I had a lot of other responsibilities that were not specifically about comic books, which I liked because I had been an editor of just comic books for a number of years and then I kind of branched out. I liked the diversity of opportunities there.

DB: You were an insider at the time, so how did you see the implosion of Marvel because, it just really went belly up there in the mid-1990’s?
BB: Well, interesting question. There were a lot of setbacks to Marvel from the early 1990’s until the late 1990’s. I left in January of 1996, and it was kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion up until then. First, there was the defection of all the guys to Image. Okay, there were reasons for that. Comics were hotter than ever, and these guys had made names for themselves and they felt that Marvel was exploiting a lot of their creations. I guess they wanted to go out and create their own stuff and own it. I couldn’t blame them.

A couple of years earlier, in 1989 I believe, Ron Perelman and his group bought Marvel. Perelman is a billionaire. I don’t know, I can’t put it into words exactly, you probably have some familiarity with him, but basically he buys up companies and tries to leverage them into big profits for himself and for his partners and so on, and I guess that’s the way of the world.

Well anyway, so he soon took Marvel public, which means he made a public offering on the stock market so investors could buy shares of Marvel, and for the first couple of years, this is like around 1990, 1991, comic book sales were just booming. For the first couple of years it was terrific. The stock price kept going up and up and up, and everybody was making money and there were big bonuses.

When you put your company in a position like that, the investors expect that if you made a 50% increase in profits last year, then they expect that that you should be making a 50% increase in profits next year. My feeling was that Ronald Perelman went ahead or his management group went ahead and they had Marvel acquire all these other companies to try to add more money to the bottom line.

Meanwhile, they were expecting Editorial to continue producing comic books and continue to grow at the same rate that we had started growing in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. And I remember being in meetings with Tom DeFalco, who was the Editor-in-Chief at the time, and some of the other senior editors, and we were kind of laughing, because on the one hand our heads were on the line, that sense of, “Hey, you guys, you’ve got to keep doing this”. But on the other hand we knew there’s a limit to how many people are out there who are going to buy these comic books. You can’t expect a huge, whatever it was, 50% increase in sales and profits every year, it doesn’t work that way. So… but that’s the pressures of the financial markets.
So anyway, one of the responses was for Marvel to acquire all these other companies, which included Panini, Fleer and Skybox, which are trading card companies, what was it, oh, Malibu Comics. I mean, they bought up a distributorship. Anyway, they bought up all these companies and none of them performed well for various reasons.

So Marvel, which initially was a small publishing company, went from a small publishing company to a conglomerate with about $600M or $700M in debt by 1996 or 1997, and it was heading that way for a couple of years. So there were huge waves of layoffs that started in 1995 because they had to cut back somewhere to start saving money.

I’m not sure what your original question was. But we saw all this coming, one catastrophe after another, because of the mismanagement of the people who were running the company. They just took Marvel and they put it into an impossible position.

As far as my personal experience, in January of 1995, I think it was two days after New Year’s Day, there was a big wave of layoffs, like 100 to 200 people got laid off. Okay, it wasn’t me, but maybe 20% of the editorial staff, all up and down the company, all the different departments. A year later things were still going bad. By this time there was a new president of the company. He had realigned the realignment of the five Editors-in-Chief and went back to one Editor-in-Chief, which was Bob Harras.

So I remember the week before New Years Eve going out to lunch with a bunch of my friends who were also Senior Editors, fellow Editors-in-Chief, and going down the line of the editors who were sitting at that table, and I said, “Okay, January 1st is coming around again, there’s going to be another big wave of layoffs”. We all knew it, we all could feel it, and I predicted exactly who at this table was not going to be here anymore and I predicted myself as one of them.

So that’s how I looked upon it, it was very obvious what was going on, and sure enough, two days after New Years Day, just like the previous year, there was another massive wave of layoffs in 1996, and I was one of them, as well as many other editors of that era. And so that’s my story.

DB: It’s just insane in a way. I’ve read about it in a couple of the books, but just to think of how badly it was managed at the time and everything was just going…
BB: Did you read the book Comic Wars?

DB: I did.
BB: Yeah, that explains it probably far better than I can.

DB: I was just sort of wondering from your perspective.
BB: From the inside point of view, I wasn’t sitting in the circle of power that was making all these decisions, obviously. But we could see, we, editors who don’t have any MBA’s, we’re not corporate managers or merger and acquisition gurus or anything like that. We could see that they were just driving this company into the ground. They were just making one bad decision after another. I don’t think any of us had an idea of the amount of debt that Marvel was acquiring. But we knew these were bad business decisions that were following one on the heels of another one, and it almost killed the company. It certainly ended my career there and it ended many other people’s careers.

DB: What did you do when you left Marvel or when you were shown the door at Marvel, I suppose?
BB: I wasn’t sure what to do so I went back to school. I knew at that time, this is 1996, that there was something called multimedia out there. I wanted to learn multimedia, so I went back to school, took a few classes in different multimedia aspects like marketing on the Internet. I don’t even think the Internet was such a big name at the time. I think it was more like coming up with product ideas for CD-ROM games and things like that. I forget the names of the courses.
But I also took Photoshop and Illustrator classes and things like that. Eventually I gravitated toward being more of a graphic designer working on a computer. I kind of reinvented myself, and so eventually I wound up as an Assistant Creative Director at Scholastic, which is a children’s book publisher here in the States.

DB: Now, was there ever any temptation to get back into comics? Did anyone ever approach you or you approach anyone else?
BB: I made some initial inquiries. Right after I left Marvel, I went over to DC Comics. I spoke to a couple of people there. But my gut feeling was that comic books was a shrinking industry, at least at the time. In fact, it’s still true to some extent; I’ll get back to that in a minute, but it was a shrinking industry. I compare it to what radio was like when television came along—too much competition for comic books from computer games and the like.

With a shrinking industry, sales were going down. There were a lot of people chasing a shrinking number of full-time jobs. I didn’t want to be one of them. I felt that it was time to move on. Although I loved comics when I was a kid, I wasn’t as passionate about them as lots of people at Marvel were, who were probably as passionate about comics as adults as they were as children, even more so. I wasn’t one of those. I enjoyed working in the industry, but it wasn’t my entire life. I didn’t feel like I had to be there for the rest of my life.

So I made a conscious decision not to pursue another job in comic books. I didn’t feel it was prudent. I thought it’s a shrinking industry, and to some extent it’s true because what comics has really become today is not so much a huge publishing industry… it’s a huge licensing industry. So the amount of publishing that’s going on today I don’t think compares to what it was like in the 1980’s as far as sales go, and probably the number of titles have gone down also. I don’t know that for a fact, but I do know sales are nowhere near what they used to be and the publishing end of the business is not as healthy as it used to be.

But it does support the licensing, which is the movies and all the other products and all that that are created based on comic book characters these days. Perhaps if I had made a decision to try to get back into comics I might have hung on and gotten back into the licensing aspects of it or something, who knows what would’ve happened. But as an editor and a sometime writer, sometime artist, I didn’t feel like it was a good place to further pursue a career at that time.

DB: Now, back into the comic books, I mean, was there ever a title you wanted to draw that you never got to?
BB: I guess two of my favourite comic book characters when I was at Marvel were Conan and Spider-Man. I liked Daredevil too. Ghost Rider would not have been my first choice for a lot of reasons, but that was what was offered to me and I kind of felt that it was a good opportunity. It was one of these second-tier characters that had been kind of left on the sidelines for a while. I feel I had a chance to make it mine with that opportunity. So I appreciated that.

If I had drawn Spider-Man, I would have been a fill-in artist and just another Spider-Man artist that people forget as soon as John Romita Junior came back on the book or something. So if I had stuck it out, I think I would’ve liked to do one of those characters that I just mentioned.

DB: You edited Spider-Man, you edited Daredevil at one stage.
BB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so I had my hand in it in different ways. With Daredevil I might have been involved in helping out some plotting. With Spider-Man I know when I was Editor-in-Chief I was involved a lot more with plot and with cover ideas and so on and so forth, and hiring different creative talent to do the books and so on. So I had a different set of responsibilities when I was the Editor-in-Chief. That was good too, except, unfortunately, my timing was poor because I walked into the clone saga, which you might be familiar with, and I had to pick up a lot of storylines that were already laid out for me, and they were not good storylines. I was kind of thrown into a lion’s den the way I look at it now. And maybe I did as good a job as I could’ve, but I think I could’ve done a better job, because those stories were not the highlight of my career.

DB: And you mentioned that you worked on Sleepwalker. I think you created it, did you not?
BB: Yes I did.

DB: Yeah, what happened there? How did all that come about for you?
BB: Like I said, being an editor allowed me to do other things, and one of them was write because, and this is no slight on writers, but as far as I’m concerned, it takes me a lot less time to write a book than to draw a book. So whereas I could write a monthly book and keep a full-time job as an editor, I could never illustrate a book on a monthly basis and keep a full-time job as an editor.

So after writing Transformers for five years and begging to get off of it because five years was more than enough, I finally got off of it. I had been kicking around this idea in my head for several years about this Sleepwalker character. I fleshed it out, I submitted a proposal to the Editor-in-Chief at the time, Tom DeFalco, and after he kicked it back to me a couple of times for some revisions we agreed on doing the book, which was quite an accomplishment, because at the time we were getting dozens of proposals from all sorts of people. Many were people who had established comic book careers. It wasn’t just because I was editor that I got the chance to write my own book. But people who had great comic book credentials would submit ideas for new titles, and they would go through a whole committee process, and some would make it but most of them would be bounced out, out the door, because they just didn’t add up.

Anyway, so I had the chance to write Sleepwalker, I went through the process, the people on the committee and the Editor-in-Chief. In fact the Editor-in-Chief wouldn’t even read my proposal until it went through, I think it was called the New Projects Committee, and it got passed through. Only then would it go to Tom DeFalco, and once he approved it I had the opportunity to write it.

So I was real happy that I was able to create something and write it and it was a modest success. It lasted about two and a half years, maybe almost three years, and so I had my chance.

DB: You coloured that book as well.
BB: I did as much as I could without drawing it. I designed the character, I designed most of the villains, I designed a couple of the secondary characters, I coloured as many of them as I could. I just couldn’t draw it [laughter] because I was still a full-time editor. But I did get my number one choice to draw most of the first 17 issues, so I was real happy about that. Brett Blevins was the artist, and he’s a far better artist than I ever was, so I was real thrilled that he was able to do it.

DB: I think you sold yourself short a little bit there. You didn’t do much inking over your time though.
BB: That’s true, yeah, I was not known as an inker. I barely ever inked anything. Just another skill. Most pencillers just pencilled. If they could manage to pencil and ink a book in a month they would do that. Eventually John Byrne started inking his own work, and so on. But I consider myself a penciller so I stuck to that pretty much.

DB: And you’re fairly well known as a cover artist back in the day as well; you did a lot of covers. BB: Some covers, yeah. The reason I got involved with Ghost Rider is because I started illustrating the covers probably about three years before I started drawing the book. I’ll give you a little anecdote about the first cover of Ghost Rider I drew. I forget the number of the issue, I think it was in the 30’s (it was issue #33). But Don Perlin was the artist and it had a spaceship on the cover. So I was given a cover sketch—I may have even done the cover sketch—and I guess at the time the editor, I think it was Jim Salicrup, felt that the book needed a fresher look on the cover or something, I don’t know.

Anyway, he asked me to draw the cover, and so I saw the pages that Don had drawn and they showed a spaceship, which is kind of funny when you think of Ghost Rider and a spaceship in the same book, but that’s another subject, I didn’t write the story, so no comment. [laughter] But in any case, there’s this big spaceship hovering overhead, and it probably is around the time of one of the Star Wars movies, one of the first three, not the second three. And so I saw what Don drew and then I drew that spaceship on the cover, but I added all that little noodly detail that Star Wars spaceships made famous. Up until then you had flying saucers and rocket ships; Star Wars really kicked it up a couple of levels.

So I took what Don did and I added all these details to it and then when Don Perlin saw what I did he took back his pencils and changed all the spaceships to match what I did. So I influenced him, I guess. But anyway, I guess from that cover on, the editors, whoever was the editor of the Ghost Rider book, felt I was a good choice for the cover art.

DB: One of the things that got me back into reading Ghost Rider was the covers.
BB: Well, I guess the editors knew what they were doing there. [laughter]

DB: Some of them don’t match up, yeah.
BB: That was the idea.

DB: You probably did more cover art than what you think.
BB: Perhaps, yeah, it’s been a while. But I know I did it, like I said, from somewhere in the mid 30’s or so until issue 81. I did probably the majority, I’m sure I did the majority of the covers. I don’t know how many it adds up to.

DB: You did some iconic covers.
BB: Oh, that’s good to know. [laughter] Yeah, and it was definitely fun to do, but again, I was on staff at the time so when I was drawing Ghost Rider I was an Assistant Editor and I couldn’t handle more than an occasional cover. I still had a full-time job and I was not the fastest artist around. So I was just happy to get an occasional assignment like that.

DB: And the second issue that sticks in my mind of Ghost Rider is the Freaks issue.
BB: Freaks issue, right.

DB: It always reminds me of Bernie Wrightson.
BB: Well, I was looking at Bernie Wrightson at that period of time. In fact, he had a graphic novel around that time called Creepshow, and I know I had that. Anyway, I don’t know if it came out before or after I had Ghost Rider in my hands, but I was definitely looking at Bernie Wrightson stuff, and I think a lot of the look of Ghost Rider is due to Dave Simons. He really added so much to the feel of that book. You can’t say enough about what he added to it. I was also looking at the early Mike Ploog stuff and I was definitely looking at Bernie Wrightson, without a doubt.


DB: Probably after Ghost Rider and Sleepwalker and obviously the Transformers stuff, the longest thing that you did was with Sub-Mariner.
BB: That was just a four-issue limited series and frankly that was not one of my stellar moments. That was one of those jobs I referred to earlier when I was told that Ghost Rider was being cancelled and I was offered six months’ worth of illustration work. That was one of the jobs, that was a four-issue limited series, and I took that and then soon after I was offered the editor’s job. So I was doing that while I was starting up an editor’s job, and it was really too much for me.

I look back at that Sub-Mariner series and go, “Well parts of that job I’m very happy with, but a lot of that job I’m sure I didn’t spend enough time on to bring it up to the level I might have brought it up to if I felt I had more time to spend on it”. That’s a very long-winded way of saying, “I probably hacked out a couple of pages here and there”. [laughter]

So anyway, I’m not really happy with it, and also, as much as I loved working with Marc DeMatteis on Ghost Rider, he wrote that limited series, not my favourite limited series, not my favourite storyline that he came up with. I thought the storyline was not great, it was okay.

The one thing I’ll tell you about that Sub-Mariner series that I really liked was the covers. I really enjoyed drawing those four covers. A little known fact is those four covers fit together as one giant image. If you have those four comic books, put them together one and two on top, three and four on the bottom, and they’ll fit together.

DB: I wasn’t aware of that. Who were some of the standout people you worked with other than obviously Roger Stern and Marc DeMatteis?
BB: Oh, well again, most of my experience was as an editor. So I worked with some great people among my fellow editors, like Mark Gruenwald, Tom DeFalco, Ralph Macchio, Carl Potts. I learned an awful lot from Jim Shooter. He wasn’t always the easiest boss to work for, but he was brilliant in his way and he really taught me a lot just by being around him. I appreciate everything I learned from him. And like I said before I worked earlier in my career with Marie Severin and with John Romita. John Romita was there for basically all the years I was there, as Art Director. He was always a great guy to work with.

Generally, most people over the years that I worked with up there are pretty good people. So I’m mentioning a lot of people I felt either I learned a lot from or I was just good friends with, and plus they were talented as well. Some of those guys were good friends of mine back then and they were terrific editors and good writers and so on.

I could go down a list. But I have very fond memories of most people I worked with, so I’ll leave it at that, and I’m not going to talk about the people I don’t have fond memories about. [laughter]

DB: No, it’s alright. Despite what may appear on my website, I’m not always about the negative stuff. [laughter] I’m getting known now as the guy with that Vinnie Colletta interview. [laughter]
BB: That’s right. I looked at that. When Jeff pointed me towards your website, I noticed that Vinnie Colletta interview right off the bat. I didn’t read the whole thing, but I was there during that period when Shooter was evicted. Vinnie was a very close buddy of Shooter, and that was obviously his point of view on what was going on. But I wasn’t really in the middle of that. But, yeah, Vinnie was a character. [laughter] He was a very interesting character.

DB: One of the most common questions that most people I know ask me, “Does he sound like a gangster?”
BB: Who, Vinnie Colletta?

DB: Yeah.
BB: He sounded like he could play one [laughter] in The Sopranos or something like that but, [laughter] you know, he was an artist. But he had a certain accent that placed him in a certain social rung, which could include being an artist. Did you ever see or hear John Buscema speak?

DB: I’ve heard John Buscema speak, from a tape once.
BB: Okay. John Buscema, in my opinion, he just draws, when he was alive obviously, he just drew beautifully just like, you know, he was like… he could draw anything, and draw it with grace and power and beauty. If it was a woman she was beautiful. If it was a man he was handsome. He could just draw anything. But when he talked he didn’t sound like an artist, not in my opinion anyway, and he himself said he would rather be running a restaurant. [laughter] He sounded like a truck driver to me. He sounded like some blue-collar guy. But you look at his artwork, and especially the more he moved away from superheroes and to fantasy and drawing other non-superhero stuff--it just had so much grace and beauty, and you would just not associate this guy drawing that if you heard him talk. He’d just talk one way and he just drew another way, well, at least in my opinion. So my point is, you can’t tell what a person does by the way they talk.

He gave one of the best art lessons I ever took. My first year up at Marvel, he invited all the up-and-coming young artists to a one hour seminar that he gave, and he was brilliant. He just kind of cut right to the meat of the problem, he said, “This is how you do it, this is how you approach it”. This is going back 30 years; I’m not going to remember every detail of it. But I learned a lot.
He was just brilliant, he just had it down, he knew the whole science of it. So, anyway, the seminar didn’t make me as good an artist as John Buscema, but it helped.

DB: I mean, I always looked at John Buscema and thought, “how does this guy draw?” I mean it just doesn’t look like he would be able to pick up a pen and draw but… BB: There you go.

DB: He just didn’t look the part.
BB: Exactly, that’s my point, that’s my point. Except for the goatee, the little artist-type goatee. [laughter] I think that was his only deference to being an artist, is that the right word? His only way of saying, “Okay, I’m an artist”. [laughter] But he was a wonderful guy. I had the privilege and pleasure of working with him on a couple of projects and it was a lot of fun. He illustrated Labyrinth for me, which was a movie adaptation. He probably did a couple of other odds and ends for me also, and he was always great to work with.

DB: He seemed to have no limit to his talent. There’s always that story that he saw The Wizard of Oz once and then drew the comic book from memory. [laughter]
BB: I didn’t hear that one but it wouldn’t surprise me, and he probably made it look better than the movie. [laughter] He probably drew it the way he imagined the movie looked [laughter], which was probably better than the movie. The movie was no slouch, the movie was pretty brilliant, you know.

DB: Oh yeah, he had imagination.
BB: Yeah, yeah.

DB: Now it’s a shame that you never worked at DC because I can only think of how something like a Batman would have looked especially after that Ghost Rider stuff.
BB: Oh, well thanks. Marvel did it’s best to keep me around. In the early 1980’s, as opposed to the mid 1990’s, Marvel wanted people like me. They weren’t showing me the door. As soon as Ghost Rider disappeared they were rushing to keep me. So at no time did I say to myself, “Oh no, I think I’m going to try DC Comics now”.

DB: There was a bit of an exodus though around about that time.
BB: In which time?

DB: From about the early to mid 1980’s onwards, where George Perez, Frank Miller, Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, Gene Colan, a whole pile of Marvel creators.
BB: You probably know the history better than me if you’re, I guess you’re somewhat of an historian with all these people you’re interviewing. A lot of that was just personality clashes. I think a lot of the people you’re mentioning had difficulties working with Jim Shooter as Editor-in-Chief. I wasn’t in the middle of it, so I’m not going to say for sure this guy couldn’t get along with that guy. But I knew there was a lot of dissention as a result of Jim Shooter being Editor-in-Chief, and it was accumulating. When he first took over in the late 1970’s he was great because Marvel at that time had a reputation of not meeting deadlines. Books would have a cover showing a new story in it, and then you’d open it up and there’d be a reprint in it. He ended that.

Jim Shooter was excellent at organising the editorial teams and getting books to be shipped on time and getting away from all those reprints. He was excellent at expanding the line. There was a big period of expansion with him as Editor-in-Chief. I think he brought a lot more discipline to the way stories were created and produced, and he worked to get writers to actually put stories into each book and so on.

But on the other hand, I think there were certain talents that at one point or another just chafed at working with him for whatever reason, so they moved on.

DB: He certainly was a polarising sort of a character, that’s for sure. How did you find working with him?
BB: Like I said earlier, he was very instructive. He gave me a lot of opportunities, which I really appreciate. Toward the end of his reign as Editor-in-Chief, I, like many of my peers, was probably having more difficulties with him. I think he was just going through a phase. I think Jim Shooter is actually a perfectionist and when you’re a perfectionist sometimes there’s only one way of doing it and it has to be your way. If you see somebody else doing something a different way, it’s hard to accommodate that. And in a creative field like comic books, certainly there’s a terrible way of doing comic books and there’s a perfect way of doing comic books. But there has to be some wiggle room for some other points of view, otherwise when you do get to working with certain talents who really can go to any company and find work, if you don’t give them a little wiggle room then they’re going to leave.

So as an editor I worked with him very well, generally. But I could see the writing on the wall then that he was becoming, like you said, a polarising figure. He became a polarising figure not only with the creative community but within the company itself with his superiors.

DB: Hmm, it’s such a shame. So ten years, no comic books.
BB: Who me?

DB: Yeah, you. [laughter] You sort of dropped off the planet…
BB: Oh, well I appreciate your saying that. I don’t know if there’s a huge audience out there saying that but…[laughter]

DB: For a while there it was, like you’d dropped off the face of the earth, the planet. [laughter]
BB: Well, you know, you move on. Right now I’m a freelance graphic designer. Another job that came to me through virtually no effort of my own, I live in a small town in New Jersey and I became my town’s Recreation Director, which I hardly prepared for in my previous career. It’s only a part-time job. Even though you said I dropped off the face of the earth, people in my town know who I am! [laughter] So it all depends on what part of the earth you’re looking at, you know.

DB: Too true, too true. I mean, and then you started to do the commissions. How are you finding that?
BB: I’m enjoying it, I’m enjoying it, but I’ve lost my discipline. For instance, the commissions I’m doing for you, I started doing them in July. It doesn’t take me that long to do a drawing, but I get another job that has a deadline or the Recreation Department work comes up or whatever, and I get distracted. Anyway, my goal in the next month or two is to become much more disciplined. So I sit down, I get this work done and I get the positive feedback of having it done and enjoying it, and maybe what you’re alluding to, which is me getting back into the comic book business, will actually come about as a result of that.

Part of me thinks I’ve always been a frustrated artist. You know I always wanted to be an artist when I was a kid, I gave it a go, I got detoured in a major way and maybe now is the time for me to get back to it, I don’t know. But it’s a very labour-intensive and time-intensive process for me. So it’s not the easiest thing for me to do.

DB: But if someone came along and said “Look we’d love a pinup, we’d love a cover”?

BB: Yeah, I’d do it. When I was working with IDW on that four-issue comic book series for the Transformers adaptation, at one point the publisher, Chris Ryall, suggested that maybe I would do an alternate version of one of the covers. But he never came to me and asked me to do it actually, and frankly the artist that he had doing the covers, doing the whole series, he was far better at drawing robots than I ever was. [laughter] But I had drawn a few Transformers covers for Marvel. Actually, when I drew the Transformers covers that I did I typically picked out the ones that featured a human prominently on it [laughter] because although I drew the robots too, my sole interest was not just drawing robots. I wanted to draw people.

DB: I’m waiting for word to get out that you’re doing commissions because you’ll be swamped.
BB: Yeah, well, I have to get more proficient at it, I have to get more of them out there. But you’re right. Jeff [Bob’s agent who provides him with art commissions] is great. Every time I send in a finished commission, the next day or later that same day he says, “Okay, I have another person lined up for you”. So it’s really up to me to get the work out because it seems like there’re some interested parties out there.

DB: Oh, I think there’s a long list that he’s got, he’s probably just not telling you how long. [laughter]
BB: Okay, he doesn’t want to make me sweat, okay. [laughter]

DB: I know when I initially approached him about something else and he mentioned it and I went, “Wow, put me on that list”. When he finally came around to it I said, “I thought you’d forgotten or, you know, you’d stopped drawing,” and he went, “No, no, no”, “Good, good”.
BB: Yeah, people come up with all sorts of theories about me. Not that there’re so many people out there talking about me. But over the years I’ve learned people come up with all sorts of theories about me who have never spoken to me, who don’t know me. And then it was probably like what you said, I dropped off the face of the earth. So they hear, “Oh, he doesn’t do interviews”. Well, I do interviews if you ask me! [laughter]

DB: I’ve got to admit that was one of the ones I’d heard. When I launched the site a few years ago I said to a couple of people, “I have a list of people I want to interview,” and your name was up at the top of them because of the Ghost Rider stuff for a start, and pretty much everyone I’d spoken to said, “Oh no, he hates comic books, wants nothing more to do with them and doesn’t do interviews.”, and I thought, “Oh, okay”.
BB: But see, no, that’s not true. [laughter] I hate comics? My point is people come up with all these theories about me based on the fact I’m not in comics anymore, so I must hate them. I don’t know, I don’t know why they think that. But no, no, I still, like I said, I still have the number six issue of Justice League of America. If I hated comics I would’ve gotten rid of it a long time ago. [laughter]

DB: Absolutely. No, because that’s what surprised me when I’ve asked Jeff, I said, “Just sound out the waters very delicately and see whether or not he would be interested in doing a little interview,” and when he came back and said, “Yeah, he’d love to”, “Holy crap you’re kidding?” One artist told me that he considered you to be something like the Howard Hughes of comic books, only without the money.
BB: What was that, one artist said what?

DB: Said that you were the Howard Hughes of comic books only without the money. You are just a recluse. [laughter] And I thought, that didn’t really give me much hope. I thought, “Oh God”.
BB: I’m only a recluse because people haven’t approached me. I don’t go out there. I’ve been asked to go to a couple of conventions and things like that. I don’t go make an effort to spend my weekends in some other city away from my family to just be at a comic book convention. Does that mean that I’m a recluse? No, it means I have other things to do with my life.

So it doesn’t make me a recluse, it just makes me, it just means, like I’ve told you, that I’ve been out of comics for most of the time for over ten years. I worked at Scholastic for six years, I’ve been a freelance graphic designer, Recreation Director for my town. It’s not like I’m living in a hole under the ground. It’s just that I’ve moved on and done other things. So comics is not especially a vital part of my life right now. But it doesn’t mean I dislike them or anything.
Same thing with Transformers. People came up with these theories about me without ever talking to me, and as I’ve explained in a couple of interviews about Transformers, I take it you’re not into Transformers which is perfectly fine, I’m not making any judgment of you so, perfectly understandable.

But there are probably thousands, tens of thousands of people your age who grew up with the Transformers. I’m assuming you’re probably around that age, growing up in the 1980’s, and they’ve never let them go. They’re 20-something, 30-something, whatever age they are, and they are just totally immersed in the Transformers universe.

And so when they’ve contacted me for one reason or another, like for an interview for instance, they don’t understand how I’m not as passionate about the Transformers as they are now, even though I worked on them for so long. All I could basically say is, “Well, I enjoyed working on them while I did it, but it was a job, and then after I finished that job I moved onto the next job”. And that may sound very mercenary, but that’s just the way it is. It’s the same thing with comic books. I did comic books. I was in comic books for 20 years and it was great while it lasted and then I made a conscious decision to move on.

DB: No, but it is an interesting thing. I suppose part of the theories that surround you is because a lot of artists now, pretty much anyone that’s everyone and even people who weren’t anyone, have websites, they have galleries everywhere, they have representatives, they sell their art all over the places and…
BB: See, now you’ve touched on my biggest frustration, which is I started working on a website like a year and a half ago. [laughter] I built one for my Recreation Department in my town but I haven’t built my own. [laughter] So I do aspire to do that. [laughter] So stay tuned and one day there will be a Bob Budiansky website and it will have all my various services available. I know I’ve checked out some of the other artists’ websites to see what they’re up to. So it’s not like something I’ve turned my back on, it’s just something I haven’t got my act together about.
I’m aware that once I get my name up there I’ll be contacted by more people than probably I would be able to handle. But I’ve been busy up till now. So, even though I could probably be a little busier, with my various other enterprises I’ve been busy enough. Actually, I’m approaching a slow period in my other work right now so I’m hoping to get back to building the website. I’m aware my website will get a response if I just have it up there, because a person like Jeff is a great example. Jeff did excellent detective work to track me down and find my email address. And he’s not the first one. There’re several other people over the years who have contacted me from out of the blue, and this is without me even trying. I don’t even have my name up there on a website yet.

So I’m aware that once my name is up there it will be a more publicised way or easier-to-reach way for people to contact me; other things might happen.

DB: You’re probably better off with the recluse. I mean it’s your reputation, you know. [laughter]
BB: Well, I’m not a movie star. Nobody’s going to be knocking on my door, I don’t think. [laughter] I’m not that big a name, so I’ll take it as it comes. If and when I get the website up I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it. Have you ever visited Mike Zeck’s website?

DB: Yes I have, yes.
BB: I visited his several months ago, and basically what he says is, “Enough! I can’t handle anymore, I’m not taking anymore waiting-list people”. So if I should ever get to that level of success like Mike Zeck, I’ll worry about it then. [laughter]

He’s another nice guy, since you’re asking about all the nice people I worked with. I loved working with Mike Zeck over the years, he’s a great guy.

DB: Were you involved in the Secret War series? It seems everyone else I’ve spoken to had a part.
BB: I was the editor of the second series.

DB: It seems everyone I’ve spoken to that drew anything from Marvel at the time drew something in those books.
BB: Well, probably because the books were so late, you’ve probably heard this story if you’ve talked to other people. The books were so late that people had to be dragged in left and right to do the books. Now, I’ll give you another little anecdote about that Secret Wars 2 book. As you know, Jim Shooter was the writer of it and he was also the Editor-in-Chief. There was an office tradition at that time, whenever an editor took over a book that Jim Shooter was writing they would fire him [laughter] because the only chance anyone had to fire Shooter was when he first became the editor of a book Shooter was writing. Shooter was a nightmare to work with because he couldn’t keep to a schedule. It wasn’t as if he was a prima donna to work with as a writer, it was just that he was always really late, and Secret Wars is the prime example of that.

So I became the editor of the Secret Wars 2 book and Jim Shooter was again the writer, he was the creator of the whole idea. Carl Potts, who was also an editor at the time, was a real stickler for meeting deadlines. We were friends, and he came to me and said, “You’ve got to fire him”. [laughter] Because when Secret Wars 1 was around everybody else’s books got bumped to the side of the production room, or the Marvel Bullpen as it was called, so that Secret Wars could be produced, because it had to be done at the last minute and all hands were needed on deck.

So when Secret Wars 2 came around, Carl Potts, it may have been after the first issue, which was probably another one of those disasters that had to be done at the last minute or redone at the last minute, Carl Potts said to me, “You’ve got to fire him, you’ve got to fire him,” and I said “No, because it would be worse if he was the Editor-in-Chief looking over my shoulder. If I hired a different writer what would happen is I would get the whole book put together, drawn, written, coloured, etcetera, it would go to his desk and, because he didn’t write it, at the last moment he would ask for it to be redone all over again. So I’m better off keeping him as the writer where he’s doing it all along, even if it’s late. At least he’s involved in the process along the way and he’s not going to reject his own story. I’m better off if he’s doing it that way than if I fire him as the writer, because then he’s going to, as Editor-in-Chief, change everything at the last moment”.

So that was my logic anyway. [laughter]

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FURTHER INFORMATION: As you would have gleaned from reading this Bob is avaliable for commission work. There is a list though and be warned, Bob does take his time, but quality doesn't come rushed. For more information feel free to email Jeff Jawarski - he'll handle it all for you. Make sure youy tell him you saw the interview.

While you're at it you might want to revisit an old interview of mine, with Dave Simons. Dave is another great guy and inked a lot of the classic Ghost Rider material over Bob's pencils.

Monday, September 10, 2007

God Finally Speaks

You know, I thought I was doing well with some of the people I've interviewed over the years. And not just in the comic book circles. After all not only did I interview Johnny Ramone back in the day (still got that tape somewhere), but I also got up on stage and belted out a tune during a soundcheck with the band themselves. That's Godlike surely?

Nope.

In a world's first God has finally spoken and, naturally, He has decided to speak to His disciple on Earth, Michael Netzer. Yep, this is what we've been missing.

I can't wait for further installments.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Looking Back With Mike Royer

There are artists and then there are artists. There are those who hack away for year after year and manage to have a career built upon longevity and sheer output. More often than not those are the people who are eventually celebrated in the public eye, for right or for wrong. That their careers span decades does not always mean that they're any good, quantity does not always equal quality. Still, it's those people who often sit there and tell you how good they were, and still are, while others with less output are more deserving of the accolades.

Mike Royer is one of those who is deserving of accolades, and in spades. His is a career that has been marked with several highs. No matter what else anyone cares to say about Royer you'd find it difficult to uncover a fan who has anything bad to say about his inking. A few words stand out when anyone describes Mike Royer - quality, professionalism and standards. Along with Joe Sinnott, Mike Royer is probably the best inker to ever happen to Jack Kirby. Indeed as it's difficult to imagine Kirbys Fantastic Four being inked by anyone other than Sinnott, it's nearly impossible to imagine anyone else but Royer inking Kirby on his '70s work. For years at Marvel Kirby's work had been inked by artists such as Vinnie Colletta, Frank Giacoia, Mike Esposito, Syd Shores, Dick Ayers and a host of others, with mixed results. Once Kirby left Marvel for DC he asked for his own inker and eventually he got it. As soon as Royer took over the inking, Kirby began to reach new heights and as such it's almost impossible to imagine Kirby's latter DC and Marvel work without thinking of Mike Royer.

Mike is a genuine talent: he pencils, inks, letters and has dabbled in colouring in his time. For the past few years he's been busy working outside of the comic book industry. If you've bought anything from the Disney Stores in the last ten or so years then the odds are excellent that you've bought a Mike Royer design. He does venture back into comics from time to time, if only to show the world just how good he is. And he isn't just good, he's better than good. It may be a big claim to make, but it can be argued that without Mike Royer, Jack Kirby might well have left the comic book industry years before he did.

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(Click on any image to enlarge the art)
DANIEL BEST: Thanks for talking to me today, it is appreciated.
MIKE ROYER: Well, I need to preface this with the fact that, except for experiences of a personal nature and my love for old movies, I don’t live in the past. So, there are not a lot of details. I just did an email interview with someone from the Kirby Collector talking about inkers and their feelings about whether they were Sci-Fi fans and about Jack’s machinery and so on and they wanted to know if I had any anecdotes and I said, “No, the only thing I was concerned about at the time was that I had to ink three pages a day and letter a whole book in less than two days, and I was thinking about which templates I could use to make inking of the machinery go faster”, and I don’t know if that’s what anyone wants to read, but…

DB: If that’s all that’s there, then that’s all that’s there. Let’s go back to the beginning, where did you grow up, where were you born?
MR: I was born and raised in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. People who don’t live here in Oregon look at it and say “The Will-a-met Valley”. No, no it’s Wil-lam-ette Valley. Or you can just say I was born in the middle of the state in a little town called Lebanon, way back in the dark ages, 1941.

DB: And what sort of exposure did you have to comic books back then. Were you aware of them? Did you read them?
MR: Well as a kid, my first ten years my family lived in the country several miles outside of the town of Lebanon and about a quarter of mile down the highway from us was a little mom and pop country store and at the back of the store they had a huge box of coverless comic books which were a nickel a piece, or you could trade two of whatever comic books you had for one of theirs. At about age, oh, I suppose seven or eight, I discovered that box of comic books and being that was a time when it was actually safe for you to walk a quarter of a mile down the highway, I would go quite often to that little store and take what comic books my parents had bought me (mostly “funny animal” titles) at the market in town, that I’d read, and I’d trade for these old things from the early 1940s that were totally new to me and a lot of these books, with titles like Ace, Magic, Super, Tip Top, and, oh Lord, I forget the names now, published/reprinted the King Features syndicated comic strips (and other syndicated strips as well) from years earlier. This was my first exposure to many of the classic strips of another era. So I saw a lot of comic strips from the 1930’s in these reprint comics in the late 1940s and early 1950’s. I liked the Dick Tracy reprint comic books in the late 1940’s and as a youngster I amassed a collection of the Dick Tracy reprint comics, many of them bought at the downtown market so they still had covers on them; and as a kid at that little country store I also discovered and loved what I saw in the early and mid1940’s comic books that Jack Kirby drew and I became a big fan of his original creations, although I never really noticed if there was a by-line giving the artist credit. I just knew looking at this dynamic stuff that it was by the artist I really liked.

It’s like all of us who loved Carl Barks and his Donald Duck. Until the late 1960’s when we found out what his name was, to us he was simply “The Duck Artist” and Jack Kirby was “The Hero Artist” that I liked. In, I guess, the early 1950’s, or late 1940’s/early 1950’s, the things he did like Boys’ Ranch and Crossbow and some of those things I found very exciting. If I’ve gotten the names wrong, please excuse me. American humorist Dave Berry once said, “The human brain can only hold so much information and as you add new information you have to throw out some old.” I like to look at it as if the brain is a hard-drive and the more stuff you put in, you’ll need to really search for the password to get all he older stuff out… and I don’t know how to defrag my brain to get it all reorganised as I don’t often talk about these things from another time.

I do remember some things fondly from my youth. My mother was a voracious reader of science fiction pulp magazines and it must have been in a letter column or somewhere that someone mentioned the EC Science Fiction comic books and my mother told me about them. As a result of her sharing this information with me I sought them out at our family grocery store’s revolving comic book rack and discovered EC Comics, first the science fiction, then all the rest of them. In the early 1950’s I also discovered the Harvey reprint comics of Flash Gordon and here was this incredibly beautiful artwork and melodramatic storyline that I found irresistible. Also at some point in this time period, while rummaging through a couple of old trunks in my grandmother’s attic, looking for stamps, I found stacks of Sunday funny sections my mother had put there as a little girl and here was all this splendid Hogarth Tarzan, and Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon and all this other incredible comic art that covered all genre, everything from the weirdest funny animal to the straightest/serious beautifully drawn Hal Foster Prince Valiant in the sizes they were originally printed…so much better than the smaller truncated versions in the reprint comics.

So I guess by 1952 I’d pretty much decided I wanted to do comic strips.

DB: What art training did you have before you eventually broke into comics?
MR: Well I never got the training I should have had. Unfortunately, my mother lavished praise on everything I did as a kid and when all you hear is praise you don’t really mature as an artist. You don’t realise what you don’t know when everything you do is “wonderful” according to your mother who is, of course, your closest and biggest fan. So about the time I really thought seriously about trying to get into the comic strip field was about the same time I realised that the comic strip market was a dead end. Newspaper editors weren’t buying continuity strips (editors must have felt TV was taking that readership away) and it seemed no one was trying anything in the way of new adventure material. I think Captain Kate was the last adventure strip attempted in the early 1960’s and that didn’t last long and subsequently in the last 40 years any attempts to revive adventure things like Terry and the Pirates or Zorro, die a sure death, usually surviving barely two years before the syndicates throw in the towel. So I reasoned that comic books might be the place to go, after, in the mid 1960s, discovering Marvel and Jack Kirby again and realised (I was paying better attention now) that he actually had a name.

Growing up in a small farm and plywood mill community, you pretty much found that the options in one’s life were: you went through High School, found Miss Right, got married and lived happily ever after. Of course, what was left out of this equation was a most important word that Milton Caniff once used as his one word to describe life: “Meanwhile”; and so by the time I decided I really wanted to pursue a career in comic books I had a wife, three young children and the sudden painful realisation that I didn’t know very damn much as an artist. But… I could ink.

So I moved my family from Oregon to Southern California and became assistant to Russ Manning. There was not a lot of money in it, however. Russ, bless his heart, took me under his wing and gave me work, when he didn’t have to. So by day I was a Credit Manager/Salesman in a Sherwin Williams paint store and by evenings and weekends I assisted Russ Manning. There was a certain point in 1967/1968 that Western Publishing wanted more work from Russ Manning, who was their star artist, and he told them the only way he could give them more work was if he had me as a full time assistant and there wasn’t enough money for him to pay me full time. He suggested that if they gave me work, then the whole idea of him producing more work for Western was viable.

They gave me a call and asked, “Would you like to work for us?”, and since then I’d have to say that my career’s been a series of similar lucky breaks. Thus I was working full time with Russ Manning and Western Publishing, inking comic books and drawing things for them for their Hanna-Barbera TV comic books. I’ve left out the year of Animation Studio layout work. Shoot…I came close to being the voice of Peter Parker/Spiderman in the first Saturday morning animated TV series in 1967. But, that’s a subject for another interview!

DB: How did you come to hook up with Russ Manning?
MR: Well, when I saw the first Magnus, Robot Fighter and saw his signature after years of admiring his Brothers of the Spear and the Tarzan comic books and other miscellaneous things done for Western Publishing, under first the Dell and then the Gold Key imprint, I was delighted to find that this artist I admired actually had a name. At about the time that Russ was doing his first Magnus, I got involved in Edgar Rice Burroughs fandom and I found out that Russ Manning was a Tarzan and a Burroughs fan and I just made the assumption (Sherlock Holmes said one should never assume) that being a Burroughs fan he undoubtedly would be going to the World Science Fiction Convention in Oakland, California in 1964 to attend the Dum-Dum. I met through Burroughs fandom, Dale Broadhurst, a fan writer in Idaho, and the two of us obtained permission from Edgar Rice Burroughs Incorporated to produce a comic book based on Carson Of Venus. Very crudely drawn, but interesting, you know, in a prehistoric way. We both journeyed to this convention in Oakland with at least a100 copies of this fanzine/B&W comic book that we’d printed. Hulbert Burroughs had told us that we could sell approximately 100 copies and we asked, “How many is that, Hulbert, exactly?” He responded, “Anywhere between one and 1000.”

I had assumed that I would be able to meet Russ Manning at this fan gathering and had planned to ask him if he’d consider me as his assistant. At the convention I found out that Russ didn’t go to these events at that time in his career. But while there I met the publisher of ERBdom, and he encouraged me to send some samples of my comic book work to Russ, because at that time I had patterned my work to be similar, or at least tried to make it appear similar, to what Russ Manning was doing. I did up samples, sent them to Russ. Months later he responded and made the mistake of writing, “You know, if I ever needed an assistant, you could probably do the work.” which was all the encouragement I needed to pack up my family, tell the company who I was working for that we were taking a month vacation, borrow some money from a finance company, put half of my things in storage, put the rest in a big U-Haul trailer and drive to Southern California. I parked myself in Russ’s back yard and said, “Well, here I am” and as I said earlier, bless his heart, he gave me work. My first assignment was completing all the alien creatures in the back-up feature in Magnus #12.

DB: What was Russ like as a person? I mean because I’ve not really read a lot about Russ as, I mean I know what he was like as an artist, he was a great artist, but I’ve never read a lot about what he was like as a person.
MR: Well, I really loved his work and found Russ to be a very interesting guy. I will say of all the cartoonists I have known, met, gotten close to in all the years since April of 1965 when I moved to Southern California, Russ was probably the most “regular.” He didn’t have any of the quirks or loveable eccentricities of most of the artists I know. He was so regular that it was almost scary. I don’t mean that to sound, like you know, I’m being a smart ass, it’s just he belonged to the volunteer fire department (he lived out in the boondocks) and was very involved with the local water district and its functions, etc…very civic minded. While working with him we’d be often interrupted by this blaring box on a nearby table that was a fire or rescue “alert” that would instantly have him jumping to his feet and immediately racing off to fight a fire or rescue somebody. He did things on the weekends with family and friends that most of the other cartoonists I’ve ever known never did. He was such a down to earth regular guy that you would have never known that he was a cartoonist; but I’ve always felt he may have suffered from a dented ego because every time he would send samples to the big publishers in New York, they would turn him down out of hand. I’ve never understood why, unless it was that mentality (at that point in history) that the world ended at the Hudson River and that anyone living west of it couldn’t possibly have any talent!

DB: You started out as Russ’s assistant but you also started out pencilling before you started doing inking on a full time basis.
MR: When I worked with Russ he would give me a page that was at least half inked and at least a half or two thirds final pencils. I would finish the rest of the pencils and the inks so that when I was finished with the page you never knew where I started and he left off, which I always felt was truly what an assistant was supposed to be invisible, so to speak. You could never find my hand in the finished work and I suppose that’s where I acquired my attitude that, as an inker, anybody I inked I would try as hard as I could to make it look like I felt it would have looked if the penciler had inked it himself. I tried not to introduce my personality into the work and maybe that’s why it took me so many years to even develop a personality art wise, which I finally did at Disney in the late 1970’s and through the 1980’s, 1990’s and to the present.

DB: And from there, you then became Jack Kirby’s inker of choice. How did that come about?
MR: How? One night when my first wife and my kids were at the Community College doing their swim workout (they were all AAU swimmers) and I was working late (they weren’t usually home until seven o’clock in the evening) at some point after 6:30pm I was walking from the studio that I had built at the rear of my garage to the house and as I stepped through the back door into the kitchen the phone was ringing. I picked it up and somebody asked, “Is this Mike Royer?” and I replied, “Yes”. The caller then said, “Well, this is Jack Kirby. Alex Toth tells me you’re a pretty good inker!” Abject shock! Subsequently I was asked to come to his house the next morning in Irvine (the first city that he lived in Southern California after moving there in the late 1960’s) and asked me if I’d like to ink some of his work for the company Marvel Mania that was producing licensed merchandise of Marvel comic characters. On a hunch, before leaving for his home that next morning, I pulled out my tools to take with me, my pens and brushes and ink and razor blades and so on. At his house he showed me a drawing of himself seated at his drawing board surrounded by his cast of creations and asked me if I would like to ink it, and I said, “Sure. When do you want me to bring it back?” and he said, “Why don’t you just sit down and do it here?”

Here I was face to face with the artist who, for the last four or five years, while looking at his work at Marvel I’d constantly remarked, “Why the hell doesn’t somebody ink Jack Kirby?” I’d seen a few of his pencilled pages reproduced in fanzines and realised that no one was really inking what I thought they should have been inking on Jack’s marvellous pencils. And now here I was with the opportunity to ink Jack Kirby, but at his drawing board, while he in essence looked over my shoulder. Intimidating as hell. But I got to meet the family, have sandwiches in the kitchen, visit and when I was finished with the inking he was pleased and I subsequently did many more things that he was doing for Marvel Mania. At some point, these events are all in the late 1960’s, he said he was going to New York and would have a surprise for me when he came back. Before he returned from the East, I got a phone call from Don and Maggie Thompson.

What was the name of the publication they toiled for?

DB: Comic Buyers Guide.
MR: I’m not sure if it was called the Comic Buyers Guide back then…it was just a newsletter thing.

DB: Oh I know the one and I can’t remember the name of it.
MR: I can’t remember the name of it either. Some historian will pop up with the correct “handle.” Anyway, I got a phone call from Don Thompson inquiring, “What do you know about Jack quitting Marvel and going over to DC?” and I answered, “Boy, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” and then shortly after that I got a phone call from Jack from LAX saying that he had just gotten back from New York and that he had gone back and made this new deal with DC and he’d told them he wanted me to ink his books, but unfortunately they said, “No, we want to control the books back here”. It was nice to know that Jack had gone to New York, left Marvel and signed on with D.C. and he’d felt strong enough about my work on his pencils that he had asked for me as part of the package. Of course it didn’t happen, not at first. Within four issues of each of his Fourth World titles, as a result of Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman constantly pointing out to Jack all of the art that Vince Colletta was leaving out or changing while inking the pages, the situation would change. Jack had really, I think to this point, never paid that much attention to the finished pages and books. He’d already written and drawn them in his head and then done them in carbon on paper and that was enough. He knew the material inside and out. When his young assistants started pointing out all the differences as they saw them he became concerned and lobbied strongly to get me involved. Before this occurred I remember going back to New York to Phil Seuling’s convention (always held on the Fourth of July weekend) and going to the DC’s offices and meeting with Carmine Infantino, walking into his office and proclaiming, “Hey, I can ink Jack and do a better job than Vince is doing”. Later at lunch Dick Giordano told me that I should be careful, I was going to get a reputation as being “cocky.” I simply said, “Well I just told him the truth” and he told me, “Yeah, but Carmine and Vinnie are like this,” with his two fingers held tightly together.

I finally wound up getting the assignment with the number five issues of New Gods, Mister Miracle, Forever People and most of everything after that until he quit DC and went back to Marvel and then it was the same situation again. They wanted to control everything back there, so it was about four issues of the new Marvel material he was doing before I was back inking Jack. At least DC had kept me busy after Jack returned to Marvel, which was nice knowing their prejudice about dealing with anybody west of the Hudson River was coming to an end. So, I continued contributing to D.C. until Jack called and brought me into his camp once more.

DB: And then of course you worked with other artists during all of this time as well. What were some of the names and some of the things that you did that you…?
MR: Well, let’s see. I drew a lot of pages for Jim Warren’s B&W horror mags and lots for Western Publishing. I drew stories for Hannah-Barbera High Adventure Heroes, and Hannah-Barbera TV Superheros…I think those were the titles. I conceived ideas for and did covers, I drew some stories, I inked a lot of stories by other Western stalwards…Sparky Moore, Hi Mankin, Mike Arens, Nat Edson, etc. and at one time I went into the editor, Chase Craig and said, “You know, Chase, since you’ve got me inking and lettering all this stuff, (the H-B TV comics) why don’t you let me produce the book for you and I’ll deal with the artists and everything and save you the headache. You just give me the scripts and I’ll take care of the rest”. I continued, “I’ll be using Sparky Moore and Mike Arens”, and he said “Okay.” I’d already gotten permission from Mike and Sparky to go ahead with my plan. I drew the entire book, lettered and inked it and turned it in and Chase couldn’t tell the difference, although he was reluctant to give me that many pencilling assignments if I went in as me. That was kind of fun, producing a book using ‘Mike and Sparky’ and actually I doing all the work myself. I think that’s a good example…ahhh… I don’t know whether you should quote me on this or not…but one of the problems with comic books then and today is that most editors don’t really know one artist from another. In my case they might just have a preference for one kind of drawing or maybe it’s simply a case that they just don’t like my work…me. Anytime I’ve contacted Marvel and DC about procuring inking assignments their usual response is, “Well, if we have a Jack Kirby project come along”, and I want to respond with, “What, you’ve never seen my inks on Steve Rude? Russ Manning? Doug Wildey? That’s not Jack Kirby. I’ve inked everything from Alvin and the Chipmunks to Zorro in every style imaginable”. But I don’t say anything. Most editors don’t even know who these guys are/were.

There was an issue of The Defenders at Marvel…or maybe D.C….it all runs together…I think it was the Defenders that Rick Estrada pencilled at a time when I was getting tired of doing stuff at Marvel and never getting what I considered my share of the original art back. I had inked an issue of Kazar that was pencilled by Paul Reinman. Mike Friedrich, who had written the book, when he sent the pages from his home in the San Francisco Bay area, asked me to redraw completely three of the pages because he didn’t care for what Paul had done. Of course, when the original art was split up Paul kept those three pages and in my one third share of the original art I didn’t get the three pages that I had drawn from scratch. So whenever this was chronologically, working on this Defenders book that Rick Estrada had drawn, I did not want to lose any originals that I might have felt I’d done a better than average job on. They sent me Rick’s rough layouts and of course I was being paid a little extra to finish Rick’s pencils and then ink them, and I did everything on the light box. What I sent back to Marvel (or D.C…whatever…) in New York was two sets of art: Rick’s rough pencils and then the pencils, inks and lettering that I had done on the light box and informed them, “When this is printed and you return the artwork, I want the complete book of inked pages because Rick will have his complete book of pencils.” I think in the letter pages they mentioned something about this amazing new technique that Mike Royer had created which was really nothing new at all. Almost from the beginning when Western Publishing, on the West Coast, started doing comics released through Dell (in the 1940’s they had licensed almost all the animated characters being produced in animated cartoons) most of the art was drawn by studio animators on tissue and then inked on a light board/box by the inkers. So I had not done anything new, except I guess Marvel or DC had never seen books done that way.

Something I’m very proud of…excuse me for bouncing all over the place here…but I’d heard from Mark Evanier that Ramona Fradon, whose Plastic Man I’d inked during the period that Jack had returned to Marvel and editors at D.C. were still supplying me lots of work, was particularly pleased with what I had done over her pencils. When I finally got to meet her a couple of years ago at San Diego Con I took advantage of the meeting to relate to her, “You know, Mark Evanier tells me that you were very pleased with my inking of your pencils way back then.” and she responded, “Oh, absolutely.” She continued, “Of all the people who ever inked me, you’re the only person that inked me”. In other words, when I finished with the book it looked exactly like Ramona Fradon’s pencils except it was slicked up a little bit and her statement completed in ink. Because, if you look at all the work that she did in her career, very little of it looks like her in the inking.

DB: Mmm.
MR: I’m probably not making any sense, but that’s the problem I have. You look in the encyclopaedia under verbose and you’ll see colour portraits of me and Roy Thomas. [laughter] Meant with all good humor. I’m very fond of Roy and Dann.

DB: One of the things that’s always struck me with looking at your work over the Jack Kirby pencils, is you are very faithful to the pencils. Now the interesting thing that I found recently was I took a Jack Kirby commission, I had an artist ink it and he emailed me back and he said, “There’s a problem here. I want to ink it, I want to be faithful to the pencils, but there are problems”. So what he ended up doing was doing two versions. One was totally faithful to the pencils and the other one was where he’d fixed things in the anatomy. It was a Captain America piece and we fixed the shield because the perspective was all wrong. Both of them came in and both of them looked brilliant.

So was there any temptation there at any stage to go, “Well that might be a little bit off, I’ll fix that”?
MR: Well, mostly the things that I, on a regular basis, would “fix” would be simple things like eyes. Jack drew so fast that sometimes eyes in a close up would not exactly be on the same plain, and it’s a problem that is easy for artists to have if they’re working real, real fast and all I would simply do is put them on the same plain. I added simple things like pupil highlights and a shadow over the top of the eyeball, cast from the eyelid, little things like that. The only time I did any kind of a major change was on the first Mister Miracle I inked. I made Barda’s face prettier on the page 1 splash. Now at the time I was heavily influenced by artists like Stan Drake and Leonard Starr and a couple European artists who all drew beautiful women; and so I made her what I thought was a little prettier and it’s the only criticism I ever got from Jack. He called and said, “Don’t ever change the faces!” So I never did again to any amount that you or he’d ever notice. What he didn’t notice was that I slimmed down her ankles and her thighs and her waist quite often. But the face was really obvious to him; and he was probably right. Oh Gawd, who was the artist, Plastino, or somebody, that redrew his Superman faces in the Jimmy Olsen comics? After a couple of times of seeing these glaring “corrections” I called the New York office and I said, “Look, send me the model sheets and let me change the faces and change the S on Jack’s Superman, so that at least the finish is consistent”. I believe on the Jimmy Olsen’s that I inked and lettered, I made the changes on Olsen and Superman, so that they were consistent with the inking on the rest of the material.

One thing I found with Jack is that I loved the power in his work. From the time his first book arrived in the mail and the very last book arrived at my house, I would open them up and just be excited by the sheer power, even if it was for characters that I had no empathy for, like Sandman (I hated that character) and Devil Dinosaur, which I just couldn’t relate to. But I always related to the raw power of his pencils, and as I said, with things like eyes, little minor things like that I might correct, I wouldn’t mess with anything else. My job was to complete Jack’s statement, not “fix it” as others felt.

I remember in the first New Gods, there’s a page where Orion, at the top of the page has his right or left leg trapped in a huge clam shell and then half way through the page it’s the opposite leg ensnarled. But it worked because of the sheer power of what Jack had drawn, the visual storytelling, it’s… its like, well, so what if it’s a different leg. Dramatically it worked! I think Jack was an absolutely tremendous designer, but there are his detractors who say, “Well, his page layouts were so boring, it was just that same six panel grid or a four panel grid, yadda-yadda-yadda.” Jack’s philosophy was that the comic page and its panels are like a movie screen. When you’re at the movies look: the screen size doesn’t change; it’s what goes on inside it that changes…moves. That’s what is most important. I can remember an early Neal Adams work, I think it was Deadman, where there’s a page that if you squint your eyes you can see a head shot of the character formed by the design of the elements inside the panels. Another time you could see something like smoke rising up in the panel and if you turned the page sidewards it spells “a Steranko effect.” All of those kinds of things are “cute” but for me they had nothing to do with telling a good story…just ‘smarty pants.’ I’m trying to modify my language. My wife keeps correcting me by saying, “There’s no reason for you to use that language”. They didn’t talk that way in my favourite movies of all time in the 1930’s, as you know.

DB: What are some of your favourite movies from the 1930’s?
MR: Well, I think my favourite 1930’s films are almost everything through mid 1934… well not everything, but the films before mid 1934 are those that film fans lovingly call “pre-code.” There was a motion picture code that was supposed to enforce decency regulations in films, but nothing much was really being regulated. By the mid 1930’s, as a result of some of Mae West’s racy dialog and material such as a naked underwater ballet sequence in Tarzan and his Mate, the Catholic Church’s film rating board announced, “We’re going to give every film an X rating if you don’t clean up your act, Hollywood.” The movie industry was run by European Jewish immigrants and they were, if nothing, very smart businessmen. Knowing that the bulk of their paying audience was Christian and mostly Catholic they did not wish to incur the wrath of the Catholic Church and their threatened placement of an X rating on everything they produced. It would be real disaster at the Box Office. So the film barons appointed a new tsar to the motion picture production code office and he clamped down, created a list of do’s and don’ts, which is why after mid 1934, and until the late 1960’s that you never saw a woman’s naval in the movies or on television again, as an example. All kinds of things became forbidden.

What I love about pre code films is not the fact that they incurred the wrath of the Catholic Church, but that by today’s standards they’re extremely innocent, yet they possessed a kind of realism. People actually, oh my Gawd, horror, slept together without the benefit of marriage. Married folk actually were seen sleeping in the same bed. Lordy! Sometimes people were killed and the murderer was never brought to justice because in the context of the film, the person who was killed deserved it. Certain kinds of dialogue and situations that seem to work for me. One of my favourites of the last of the great pre-code films is Tarzan and his Mate. The outfit that Maureen O’Sullivan wears is just cuter than the dickens and I suppose you could look at it as being extremely sexy, (she just wears a couple of flaps with a string around her mid section) but I don’t know if one can find a more beautiful, sensual, feminine and innocent all wrapped up in one actress as is found in this second MGM Tarzan feature. Scandalous! There’s a sequence in the film where one of the big game hunters has Jane trying on these gowns, brought from back home, in a tent out in the middle of Africa. He casually states, “You know it’s funny, I’m usually trying to talk a beautiful woman out of her dress.” And the long underwater naked ballet thing with Tarzan and Jane, when you look at it, compared to todays “anything goes,” is pretty innocent, you know. Anyway, I love the pre-code films. But when Hollywood was forced to avoid “risqué” things, the studios developed a way of handling the same topics but in such a way that the code didn’t forbid them and it was because the writing became more sophisticated and by the early 1940’s when you look at a film like the Maltese Falcon with Bogart, there might be some question in some peoples’ minds just what Bridgette O'Shaughnessy is offering Sam Spade to take her case, but it’s clearly obvious in the early 1930’s version with Ricardo Cortez. Shame!

So, my favourite films are the 1930’s, my next are the 1940’s and I can’t really say there’s a genre that I prefer over another. I love the mysteries, detectives; you know the wise cracking reporter films, the gangster pictures, which as a child when I saw them on television disturbed me because every time Bogart got beat up by some guy in an ally, you know, to me it was real. Yeah, I felt it. But I also love the cowboy films. I love the programmers, the B’s, and B didn’t necessarily mean bad or cheap. In the old days all theatres kept a log and there was the A feature which was the big prestigious feature from Hollywood which cost them a percentage and then there was the B feature, the second feature on the night’s double bill, which cost them a flat rental fee because it was usually shorter than 70 minutes and was done in a couple of weeks or less on a tight budget. So it was called the B feature and now the term usually means just cheap, but I prefer, when talking about Hollywood’s Golden Age, the word “programmer.” I just love programmers. First from the 1930’s and then the 1940’s and there’s a handful of 1950’s films that I think are worth mentioning. I just did an interview this morning via email asking me if I am a sci-fi fan. Yes, since I was eight or nine years old and went to the movies with my folks and saw things like Destination Moon and The Man from Planet X and Rocketship X-M and The Day The Earth Stood Still. I love that stuff; and what’s funny is that at the time they were kind of like B+ programmers and I do take some satisfaction in the fact that now all these years later many of them are considered classics. You know, there’s probably not one person in the world that doesn’t know or has not seen the original King Kong, but ask anybody who won the Academy Award for the best picture in 1933 and you’ll be hard pressed to find anybody that knows it was a movie called Cavalcade. Everybody remembers King Kong. Not a programmer but one of pre code’s finest!

I love Hopalong Cassidy. I was a Saturday matinee kid in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry films. I’ve gotten way off the topic, haven’t I? I’m sorry.

DB: No, that’s fine. I love the old movies as well. My mother introduced me to them when I was very young. One of my favourite things of the last two years was when Universal released the Universal Monsters Series with all of the classic horror movies in the… finally on a DVD with things that just never came out on video or were rarely seen on TV. Frankenstein versus the Wolfman and things like that. I just love those movies.
MR: Well, in the mid 1950’s when Universal opened its package of films to television, (released in packages called Shock and then Shock 2) the way TV stations would run those films in this country was late at night and each TV station always had some local celebrity that was the host or hostess. In Portland, Oregon, the TV station that ran the Shock packages did it on Thursday nights starting at 10:30pm and I’m telling you, as a young high school kid I really had to plead to get my folks to allow me to stay up late on a school night to watch “Tarantula Ghoul,” Portlands Gothic Horror Hostess, a good looking slinky gall who opened the show by stepping out of her coffin. You know, over the years there’ve been all types of hosts that horror movie and monster movie fans rap enthusiastically and nostalgic about, but in Portland it was a gal named Tarantula Ghoul.

DB: We had a guy here called Deadly Ernest who introduced the movies.
MR: But these old films by today’s standards are pretty bland because they don’t have all the blood letting and the guts spilling all over the place, and… I’m sorry; none of that crap does anything for me except repel me. What happened with the film industry with the crack down by the motion picture production code office in mid 1934 is that the film makers started doing really great writing and did the same kinds of things they had done before the code enforced standards, but they did it surreptitiously and subtly and all that fell apart in the late 1960’s and now with very few exceptions, most movies in my opinion are just boring exercises in CGI effects, involving people that I don’t care about, and I was really disappointed with Peter Jackson’s King Kong. I loved what he did with the Ring Trilogy and I remember reading in Newsweek before the third Ring film was released that he said that his next project was King Kong because when he saw it as a kid on television, not only had it changed his life, but it rearranged his DNA and I thought, “Yeah, here is somebody to redo a classic!” But unfortunately, because there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do visually with CGI, I think he went too far overboard with the thing. For me the last 30 minutes of the film is great but everything before that is just another wasted exercise in CGI technology.

So I prefer films that have stories, characters, people that you can care about. Maybe I’m just old and naïve but I also like my heroes that are heroes. I don’t like them so grey.

DB: It’s not a case of being old and naïve. I agree with everything you said there. It all works for me.
MR: I don’t mean to interrupt you but since you’re Australian, I do have to mention that in the mid 1950’s the fledgling ABC television network on Thursday nights, because they didn’t have a lot of programming other than movies and old syndicated stuff, ran a Famous (or maybe Foreign) Film Festival and all the movies they ran were either from England or Australia and at one time in my life I guess you could say that I was a fan of Chips Rafferty.

DB: Oh good old Chips.
MR: All these years later, you might be able to show me a picture from it, but if it’s not labelled I probably wouldn’t recognise it, but I can remember in the mid 1950’s seeing, I think, one of his hits called Bonanza, not to be confused with the stupid American TV series. Made me want to go to Australia, Mate. Fan-Bloody-Tastic!

DB: Yep, that’s about right. You would have seen him probably in the Smiley series.
MR: All I know is that I saw several of these “foreign” films and I became Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons fans because of their British films. I knew Granger from his early American films like King Solomon’s Mines, but I didn’t know that there was this whole wealth of material that he did before MGM turned him into a swashbuckler and then after seeing Australian films in the mid 1950’s that I thought “I would love to go to Australia,” you know. I have a very good friend who’s from Australia who, when he was 15, sent me a fan letter in the form of a little reel to reel audio cassette and you probably know him, Paul Power?

DB: Yes, I know of him.
MR: Paul said, “Hey mate, I love what you’re doing with the Jack Kirby comic books” and so we had an audio correspondence for some time and then he came to the States. We didn’t hit it off immediately because, being in the States, I think he was more interested in women than anything else. After he’d calmed down a bit we got reacquainted (in person) and… then, I was not married at the time, we were both looking for women together. Had neon signs on our foreheads (seen only by the fair sex) that blinked on and off “Hunter…Hunter…” We spent a lot of evenings shooting pool. Paul’s an old mate who emails me quite often and we talk on the phone now and then and once a year we get together at the San Diego Comic-Con and act foolish and go to a little place a couple of blocks from the Convention Centre called the Kansas City Barbeque which is where they filmed scenes from the movie Top Gun and the bartender there seems to really like me and the fact that I’ve drawn so many napkins and placemats for his regulars that being a co-owner of the place, I’ve never had a bar tab that came anywhere near being a quarter of what I actually owed.

Finally after three years of going to this bar during the convention, we finally saw a girl donate her bra to the ceiling which has all these bras hanging from it. There was a scene covering that in Top Gun and then I realised that all these nights and years in a row that we’ve gone to Kansas City Barbeque hoping for somebody to donate their bra and how absolutely unspectacular it actually is. Amazing how a woman can remove a bra from the sleeves of her blouse. We exclaimed, “Oh wow, this is great! She’s going to give them her bra!” and then it was “Okay, which was pretty exciting, (not) let’s have another glass of wine.”

You know my problem, Daniel, is that in about eight or seven days I’m going to be 65 and I find that outrageous because between my ears I’m 23 and… so I get angry sometimes and feel “I’m not 65, this is ridiculous” and when I’m with Paul, and gosh I think he turned 50 recently, I’m thinking, “Paul’s not 50, I’m not 65… we’re both kids”. I digress again.

DB: No, I mean having a young outlook is probably; well it is the only way to go. I’ve realised…
MR: I think that Chips Rafferty film might have been called Bonanza Stockade, no? Was that it?

DB: It sounds familiar. I mean I’ve seen so many of Chip Rafferty’s films. They used to put them on TV every day there for a while. It was a…
MR: And of course I’m a big fan of all the Australian actors that I see making it in some way or another in this country. I get a kick out of …who is it? Ingo Rodamocker… that’s on General Hospital.

DB: Yes.
MR: He’s an interesting guy; and of course, oh my God, senior moment, what’s her face with the Alabaster skin that had the wise sense to let Tom Cruise go?

DB: Nicole Kidman.
MR: Oh yeah, the movie she made about the weather girl that wanted to be a star. In that one film I think she is just so incredibly irresistible. See I’m not even addressing her abilities as an actress, am I? I’m just objectively admiring her.

DB: Everyone else does it to her and I don’t think anyone…
MR: Oh and I’m telling you, one of my favourite, probably my number one favourite all time sci-fi space opera was/is Farscape.

DB: Farscape? Virginia Hey?
MR: Everybody was Australian except for Ben Browder.

DB: Yeah true. I think they filmed that, was it in New Zealand?
MR: Australia first and then in New Zealand.

DB: Yeah I forgot about that.
MR: But almost everybody involved with the series was Australian! Luckily, two years ago at San Diego-Con I got to meet Claudia Black, who I think is just absolutely gorgeous, and I gave her an original Disney Tigger drawing I’d done especially for her. I told her that when I saw the first episode of Farscape, about six years ago, I called my wife into my studio/office and I remarked, “Look at this one” and then “We both agreed how incredibly beautiful you are” and she remarked, “But in those first shows I was so mean looking.” I told her, “But there were those shots of you in the album credits”. She agreed, “Yeah, they were pretty nice, but I have to credit my parents for the bones.” Anyway, it was a great 20 minutes (just the two of us in the press room) for this ol’ fan of good sci-fi and beautiful women. Later, Comic Con Guest Relations informed me that all Claudia could talk about on the way back to the airport was the original drawing of Tigger (her favorite character) that she’d been given.

I guess if I have any credibility as an artist, (and I sometimes wonder if I do) it’s that I’ve been incredibly lucky in my career because I feel that I was really just a small cog in a huge comic book machine. I’ve been influenced by all kinds of things. There were the icons, artist icons of my youth, some of whom I got to meet and there were the movies, the last days of dramatic radio when I was a kid and… oh, I also enjoy, it’s probably just historical stuff to you, but the Australian broadcast companies versions of American radio shows like the Avengers and Charlie Chan…I have some of those recordings and I enjoy them thoroughly…all these “storytelling” influences on me, have made me who/what I am today. Just a lucky stiff… but the journey’s been Fan-Bloody-Tastic. That was one of the first expressions I learned, that is repeatable, from Paul.

DB: It’s a very Australian expression that one. Now you became the Winnie the Pooh artist.
MR: Well, I do like to tell people that at the Disney stores they did refer to me as “The Pooh Man!” I was still on staff at Disney (in my 14th year) and a designer, Claudia, who lived in Simi Valley (where I lived and we occasionally would carpool) came into my office and said, “Mike, I’ve been given the assignment to update and create a whole new licensing program for the Winnie the Pooh property, because Sears is at the end of their 30 year exclusive license.” Until that time (1993/1994) the only place you could buy Pooh merchandise was at the Disney Parks and Sears. “We want to retool everything and would you like to do the artwork, come up with the new look?”, and I told her, “Well, I’m not really crazy about the Pooh characters. If you let me come up with something…a style that I enjoy doing I’ll try.” “Do whatever you want to do.” and so I developed the style that became the “look” of the launch, in late 1993 of the International Pooh Licensing Program and in a year and a half, Pooh was outselling Mickey Mouse worldwide! It was the style that I can say launched the program, but it was a style that all the other artists had trouble doing. I created something that I could do better than the rest of them, felt more comfortable doing.

So, eventually the (person) that was in charge of consumer products creative simplified things and watered it down and as a result of this and many other dunderhead moves, I think ten years later Disney licensing was almost dead. But that’s another story. After a year of her taking over, I bit the bullet and told her (I took her to lunch, bought her a glass of wine and…) “Susan, you’ve heard me talk about how life is an adventure. Well, I’m going to stop saying it and do it. I’m quitting!” and she blacklisted me and I never worked for licensing again for nine years. But the Disney stores immediately said, “Come, come. You’ll never be out of work. Don’t even come in in person, it’ll take you away from the drawing board.” and that lasted for seven years before things fell apart. A long, long story involving the stock market and idiot management which results in the Disney philosophy of, if there are problems, lay off talent.

So for seven and a half years I was The Pooh Man for the Disney stores and I would say I did 75% of the Pooh art found on their merchandise. 50% of what I did for the Stores was concepting and 50% was doing finished art from my concepts and the concepts done in house and by a couple other free lancers. The stuff that I didn’t concept that came from in-house I made “work” and any of the stuff that was produced by Studio Licensing Creative that the Stores wanted to use they’d have me “fix” so that it was “my” Pooh rather than what it had eventually become in Licensing…something so simple that any idiot could draw it. Believe it or not, those characters are very hard to do if you do them right.

DB: I suppose when anyone hears your name, they instantly think Jack Kirby and some people may feel that that’s all you’ve done, and you’ve done so…
MR: Well, a lot of people that’s all they know.

DB: Yeah I know but you’ve done so much before, you’ve done so much in the middle of it and so much after it. I mean it’s almost a shame that that’s what they think because you know you’ve sort of been labelled, to use a musical term, a one hit wonder when in fact you’ve got a huge body of work without Jack Kirby which is just as valid if not more valid.
MR: Well, that’s funny. Starting in 2001 when the consumer products industry and the Disney Stores started going to hell, I began looking around for other work and I thought “Well hell, I’ll try comic books again.” If anybody remembered me it was because of Jack Kirby and they couldn’t look at any of my other work (penciling or just inking) and see how different it was. “Well, we’ll think of you for a Jack Kirby project” and I was looking for work so I wasn’t going to be nasty and say, “Look you idiot, you can’t tell the difference between Jack Kirby and Alvin and Zorro!” Of course I would love to draw “bigfoot” comics, but no one’s really producing them and what DC does with the Warner characters is so bad in my opinion…not bad… it’s just it could be so much better. You know, it’s just “by the numbers” boring, as far as I’m concerned. They’re not really doing any new Disney stuff at the new publishers because for $26 bucks a page they can reprint all this stuff that was done in Europe by a bunch of really great artists. I think some of the most fun I ever had in comic books was… Lord, was it late 1980’s or early 1990’s?… when I did three 12 page Mickey Mouse stories for the Mickey Mouse comics when they were published by Marvel and produced at Disney.

I had a great deal of fun doing those stories and they were a real challenge because they were written by Marv Wolfman and I really like Marv but he had three times as much dialogue as really needed. So it was a challenge to make it work with the writing. It’s not… the writing…you know the writing wasn’t bad, I just think it didn’t need to have that many words. But nobody is really producing the kind of stuff I like to draw and as an inker, nobody’s really interested in me because “We don’t have any Kirby projects at the moment” and between you and me, I don’t really enjoy inking anymore anyway. I much prefer drawing.

I do occasional artwork for a pin company that produces collector lapel pins for several Disney divisions. The most recent thing I did was a set of pins in honour of American Labour Day which is in September. I did a series of pins for Flag Day with the standard characters and then before that I did 14 or so pins for the Torino Winter Olympic Games called Mickey’s Olympics. That’s where I do most of my Disney art these days. Occasionally I do things for Danbury Mint. I’ve done a lot of work in concepting ideas for faux bronze statues, some of them Disney characters. I just recently did a bunch of concepts for… are you familiar with the garden gnomes…the little gnomes, statues people have in their garden?

DB: Yeah I’m familiar with garden gnomes, yeah.
MR: Well, I did a series of gnomes playing baseball and gnomes playing football. Occasionally they have me do corrections on statues that other people designed, and bless the account executive I work with. She’ll email (with attachment) and say, “Mike, would you please put a tissue over this and add your magic.” So it’s nice to have a handful of people still thinking that I might have some “magic” left. I don’t know what it’s like in Australia but in this country, if you’re over 30 the comic book companies think you’re brain dead. I guess they don’t figure that the older you get the more experience and knowledge you might have.

It’s funny, the people who are in the decision making roles drive me nuts. The Disney Store people would say, “Now Mike, we want you to do some concepts for children’s bibs, so keep them simple because, remember, they’re for infants.” And I had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting “Wait a minute! The only difference between infant and adult fashions is the size of the garment. An infant doesn’t even know what the hell is on the bib!” Its mom and dad and grandma and grandpa that shell out the credit cards, the cash, you know, write the cheques to buy this merchandise. If you get them smiling or laughing aloud…”

DB: They’ll buy it.
MR: “It’s sold!” But they always made this distinction between child and adult fashions and if you were drawing something for sleepwear, you couldn’t do too much acting because the characters had to have their eyes closed “because it’s sleepwear.” Sigh… I once did what I thought were a bunch of cute concepts and I said, “These would be perfect for kitchen aprons.” They were plays on cookbook recipes (I was inspired by some old Our Gang theatrical shorts from the early 1930’s) and I had Tigger furiously rolling on the floor in clouds of dust, on the floor behind him was an old fashioned large metal flour tin and then in the back on a little easel was a cookbook with an arrow pointing at it showing what the recipe says: “First roll in flour”. I had things like Pooh handing Piglet a wooden mallet and Piglet has a cutting board with three eggs on it and sitting to his side is a dozen egg carton with three empty spaces and the recipe book says, “Separate three eggs and beat.” I showed these to adults and they laughed aloud. The Disney stores response was, “Well, we like these but we don’t make aprons.”

DB: Oh God.
MR: “Well, why don’t you make some aprons?” I should just get over it. I haven’t done full time art since 2001 for Disney. Now it’s just the pin company and related vendors and an occasional pencil job for some California illustrators who do full paint stuff for Disney in Asia. But I’ll go to my grave a Disney man, a Disney company man, you know, remembering the company that existed until the mid/late 1990’s.

DB: Well you’ve worked at Disney longer than what you did over Jack Kirby’s artwork; you’ve done more years at Disney.
MR: A lot of people don’t understand when I try to explain this. I guess I don’t have a grasp of the vocabulary and sophisticated words to explain it properly. But there’s very rarely a drawing of any kind that I do on Disney characters art that I don’t think about Jack, because I’ve got in front of me a blank tissue drawing pad or a piece of white paper and I have to tell a story in one picture with either one character or six or eight characters and I learned from Jack not to be afraid of that white space, that blank space, and to tell the story; and so I would say that 90% of what I did for the Disney stores told a story. The finished art that I did for them that doesn’t tell a story, the stuff that was concepted in-house and I couldn’t change the concept I just had to make it work. I’ve done some large group scenes where I just took a piece of paper 12 x 18 and started in the centre and when I was finished I looked at it and I thought, “Holy cow, did I do that?” I’d had an idea what I wanted to do and when I was finished it was, “Don’t tell me I didn’t learn something from Jack Kirby that won’t work with funny animals!”

DB: No that’s good. I suppose we…
MR: Are you going to be able to use any of this, Daniel?

DB: Yes I am, yes I am. I’ve got plenty there. It’s all good, it’s all very good. What I’ll do is I’ll transcribe it all up, type it all up and send it through to you so that way you can take out anything you don’t want in there.
MR: Sometimes my stream of consciousness, when I see it in print, I realise that there are sections of thought that were totally left out that need to be added. I do tend to ramble.
You know, I think that Jack got a bum deal in the end from Marvel. So many people…I see/hear this from many professionals at conventions…so many people wanted to have the opportunity to fix, I say that in quotes, “fix” Jack and I think it was just to grab a hold of his shirt tales and share in the glory. There were those at Marvel who wanted to write the dialogue for Jack’s stories and so they were constantly saying that Jack’s prose is just bad, old fashioned and stiff. Well, maybe on one hand it might have been considered that…it was not Stan Lee…you knew it wasn’t all the other hot shot writers at Marvel, but it was Jack, straight, direct, to the point. They wanted to fix it and I think that they, in a way, sabotaged him.

You look at the letter pages in some of the later Devil Dinosaurs, for example, and you’ve got these 12 year old kids writing letters (after all, Jack was producing the comic book for 12 year old kids) and the letters that were printed seemed to basically all say the same thing: “Gee, the artwork is great but the writing sucks!” Well, you put enough of those letters in a magazine and the 12 year old who buys it, susceptible to peer pressure from everywhere, in person and in print, reads these “stacked” letters pages and he’s going to start to question his taste. “Why am I buying this if the writing sucks?” Maybe I’m doing Lucy’s five cent analysis (from Peanuts) but it’s just something I feel strongly about. You tell somebody that’s reading a book long enough that they have no taste, and they’ll probably soon stop buying it. Funny… you know what’s interesting; the sales started dropping off on those books. Also funny how many folks walk up to me at Comic Con saying how much they “loved” Devil Dinosaur. Go figure…
They had to fix Jack. So at the end of his Kamandi drawn issues, another example, with Denny O’Neil writing it, it’s not Jack’s Kamandi anymore and it shows in the artwork. The graphics are powerful and strong and the visual design is still great, but the soul is gone. They took Jack’s soul away.

DB: That must have impacted upon Jack himself because surely month after month he must have been looking at this and thinking, you know, “Can you print one letter that doesn’t say, ’Geez this book sucks’”.

So I’ve always wondered towards the end there whether he just went, “Well I’ve got a contract, you want x amount of pages, here they are, go for it, I don’t care”.
MR: In my opinion, again Sherlock says, “One should not assume”, but I’m assuming that it did have an effect on Jack and at the end he just became a wrist and, no longer in control of his own material. They were no longer his babies.

I believe that Jack Kirby needed an editor, but not an editor to fix him, an editor to point out that he might have left out an explanation that was necessary.

As an example, there was the time that Jack and his wife Roz and I met for lunch at the Copper Penny Restaurant that used to be across the street from the bungalows at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank. He wanted to know if I would ink this new comic book he was doing called Silver Star. I was busy working full time at Disney then and we hadn’t done a project together in a while, and he proceeded to tell me the story of Silver Star; and all through lunch I’m thinking. “My Gawd, all of this material in one issue?” No, what Jack had done was relate to me the complete six or seven issue saga. It was all in his head. So when he sat down to draw it and put his dialogue in, he already knew everything about his story. When I got the penciled pages, looking them over, sometimes I’d find an instance of something left out, maybe just a word or explanation of motivation or something. Jack didn’t realise it because he knew his plot and characters by heart. Roz did too. What he needed was an editor who had no vested interest in anything except “Does this part make sense to me?” At Marvel I believe the attitude was “We’ve got to rewrite this so that it’s Stan Lee type dialogue yadda-yadda-yadda.” Jack needed an editor but someone to just simply say, if they were unsure of a story point, or whatever, “Jack, I’m confused…is this what you meant?” Am I making any sense?

DB: Yeah.
MR: There were…I don’t remember how many Silver Stars that I inked. I always thought it was one but somebody said I did four or five of them, so geez…who knows. As it turned out, the screen cartoonists were on strike and so I was working for the studio at home (we’d pick up work at the Jack In The Box drive through across the street from the studio), rather than cross the picket line. It was a case where we (the creative department for consumer products) weren’t violating the strike; we were just honouring the strike by not crossing the picket line. We were doing work that had nothing to do with what the animation cartoonists were striking over. So we worked at home. Well, I could do in four or five hours what one could do in an office situation in twelve hours. I had plenty of time to work on Silver Star. But there were a couple of spots where I thought, “This is a little confusing.” So I thought about it and added a couple of words here and there in narrative and then it made sense. But like I say, people wanted to “fix” Jack.

I was at San Diego Convention once on a panel with John Romita and Robert Kanigher, and a whole bunch of famous people. Privately, before we went on stage, I mentioned my theory about the people at Marvel sabotaging Jack in the letter columns to John and he agreed with me. But on stage not one person felt I had a valid point and I was actually booed from the audience when I said, “The problem with comics today, is that they’re being produced by a bunch of incestuous fan boys who grew up loving comic books, wanting to do comic books and now that they’re doing comic books they don’t like the idea that they’re doing comic books primarily read by kids. They feel It needs to be something a little more prestigious, more elevated, an adult medium…but kids?”

Well Jack Kirby was producing comic books for twelve year old kids and I guess the fan boys didn’t like the stigma of writing comic books for kids. Like I said, someone might agreed with me privately, but no one backed me up on stage and I was booed from the audience because I called many of the editors fan boys who didn’t want to admit they were doing comics for kids.

DB: The truth often hurts.
MR: But that’s a long time ago and I look at comic books now and they’re not being produced for kids, but I’m not sure who they were being produced for. There was a period a decade or so ago that it looked to me that most comic books were just huge guns and every woman had a 62 inch bust…it was all phallic symbols and big boobs.

DB: It hasn’t gotten much better.
MR: I’ve been fortunate enough to work with somebody like Steve Rude, who I consider the contemporary Alex Raymond. He doesn’t draw like Raymond but he is the master draftsman that Raymond was in another era and he does terrific work; and if I were inking on a regular basis, I would want to ink Steve Rude because what he does inspires me, the inker part of me, to do the best I can possibly do. He believes like I do that comic books are comics, comic books, you know. They may not be cheap pulp paper with a maximum of 64 colours now, but why do we need 356 colours on a page and all this graduated colours and modelling and so on, it’s just…overkill. You know, I’m a dinosaur and it’s probably a good that I’m not working in comic books, although Steve wanted me to letter the comic books of his new character, The Moth, because apparently I’m one of the few guys in the world that letters, that letters on the actual paper. Everybody does it in a computer and pastes it down and he doesn’t want that. But, I declined.

DB: That was a good sign then. I mean I’ve always liked Steve. I’ve always thought, looking at Steve Rude, I’ve always thought it was to my eyes and I’m an uneducated art person I suppose, I always see it as a perfect combination of Jack Kirby and Alex Toth.
MR: Well from a… maybe, maybe from a design sense. I see more Raymond and Manning, but he thinks like Jack dynamically; and I remember some of the reviews on the internet, some of the pages that cover and critique contemporary comic books and when his… the four issues of Captain America came out, the What Price Glory, everybody said, “Well it’s just Steve doing his Jack Kirby thing again” and maybe I’m just stupid, but I looked at his pages and I didn’t see Jack Kirby in the drawing. I see a methodology and a thinking, a dynamic, perhaps like Jack, but to just dismiss his talent by saying, “Oh, it’s just, you know, it’s Steve doing Jack Kirby.” These critics…I don’t think they know shit from shinola.

DB: I loved that series. I bought the preliminary cover years and years… preliminary to the first cover from Steve, oh God a couple of years back now. I loved that when it came out. I thought it was brilliant.
MR: On every one of the title splash pages Steve penciled in and instructed me to letter “Based on the characters created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon” and Marvel removed it every time.

DB: It’s insane. It was a very, very, very good, very good series that one. In fact the series, because he did a few, I think he did, he wanted to do Spiderman, and he did a Thor. The Thor was brilliant.
MR: Well, the Thor…I had less fun on the three issues of Thor than I did on the four Captain America's because I hadn’t done production inking in, Lord, a long time. You know how many years ago it was that I inked that Mr Miracle over Steve’s pencils, that special issue? I mean, you know I was working full time at Disney and it’s probably 15 years ago or more, probably 20 years ago. And in that 20 years the only comic book stuff I inked was, I think, a Steve Rude Rainbow story for Mark Evanier’s DNAgents and then a six or seven page Last of the Viking Heroes for Mike Thiebedeaux. Those were things that I did on weekends…so I was just learning how to work with tools that I hadn’t really used for a long time and I don’t know whether it’s me and being an old codger and that I’ve lost the ability or, what I suspect more, is that the papers, pens, brushes and inks today suck!

I remember in 1966 at the little studio when I worked on the limited animation syndicated Marvel Superheroes with Doug Wildey, Sparky Moore, Mike Areas and Mel Kieffer and it was one of the times that Stan Lee came out to meet with the studio crew. We were in a conference room, visiting with Stan while we were picking out the brushes we used for inking our pencil work on the drawings we produced to work with the stat art of the comics which we were “animating.”. The company bought them by the bulk on cards and we all selected our brushes in the same manner. You pulled the brush off the card and you stuck it in your mouth, licked it and studied the point it made. In 1966 those Windsor Newton Series 7 No 2’s cost $2.50 each and I’ll never forget Doug Wildey, trying to put a point on one bitterly saying, “This stuff is shit!!” Well, I’m telling you, I would kill to get some of that 1966 shit! Today the brushes are $30.00 or $40.00 and for my money they suck rubber donkey lungs. [laughter] I don’t know what that means, but it’s a great expression…it works.

DB: It’s a great expression. I’ve never heard it before.
MR: I heard it my first week at Disney back in May of 1979. One of the designers and I were discussing something and he remarked, “Man, that sucks rubber donkey lungs!” I love that expression and use it quite often, to this day.

DB: Oh no, that is, that’s priceless. Well I’ll leave it there for now. Look thank you very much for your time today, it’s been great. I’ve really…
MR: Well, I talk to much and I don’t really say anything and when my kids and my wife start groaning while I’m talking, I know they’ve heard that story three or four times and… You know, recently Marvel asked me to write the introduction to their hardcover book The Complete Collected Jack Kirby’s Eternals which they’re going to release with the launch of the new comic book series done by some of their new young guns, and asked me to write an introduction and talk about what it was like working on the Eternals. I can’t remember what it was like.
I had to ink three pages a day and letter a whole book in less than two days to keep up with Jack. So in the first paragraph in essence I said, “For those of you who are approaching the Eternals for the first time, the icons of another era, I don’t wish to be a spoiler, and for those of you who are returning to heroes from another time, I don’t have to wax nostalgically, you know what it’s all about” and then spent the rest of the 1200 words talking about me and Jack and our friendship/relationship rather than the work, because I remember more about that now. Going to his house and my kids swimming in his swimming pool right outside his studio while we talked over the current project. I would either pick up and deliver in person half of the time, the rest of the time his pages would come by special delivery. I’d open up that package and first thing I woult be engulfed by this aroma of Roy Tan cigars which was intoxicating and then I’d look at the pages and think, “Oh my Gawd, don’t screw this up!” I remember the sitting and talking philosophy and all that sort of stuff and, of course, old movies. He loved the Warner Bros. movies and I don’t know how to explain this intelligently but when I look at the Warner Bros. movies of the 1930’s and 1940’s, I know why they were Jack’s favourites.

I guess I have to state that his comic books are the Warner Bros. of comics. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just a gut feeling, it’s just something I know when I see it. When I look at the programmers… when Jack Kirby would draw buildings and rooms and houses and stuff, look closely… it’s not really contemporary times, it’s from a Warner Bros. programmer from the 1930s or the 1940s.

Maybe all that added together is what struck me about Jack’s work. He was a master designer. I refer to him as an impressionist/expressionist. The expressionism happened when he would draw action figures that performed in time, actually. If you looked at one of his typical figures in motion from a correct anatomical position, that leg is wrong or that arm is incorrect perhaps. But if you look at the foot at the end of that leg that’s stretched behind a character, it is in a different time zone, a different period in time than the fist in the foreground …the rest of the figure is receding in time…it works. That’s Jack and his dynamics. Look at Jack’s early work and Jack knew how to draw, he knew the anatomy, but the more and more he became an impressionist/expressionist his action storytelling became…something else. He was drawing movement in time. One could say he was drawing emotion, rather than motion.
As they used to say at Marvel, “Nuff said!”

DB: Enough said. Well thank you for your time today. As I said, it’s appreciated; it’s been terrific to talk to you.
MR: Well, I hope you don’t have to take out a second mortgage to pay for this phone call.
I read interviews with artists like Neal Adams and Dick Giordano and I think, “Gawd, these guys are so intelligent and they have such a grasp and organisational use of words” and then I read me and it’s “What is this stream of consciousness blather?!” you know.

DB: It should be like that, everyone’s different.
MR: Well, way back in 1959 Wally Wood drew a Mad Magazine piece where Al “Jazbo” Collins says, “Art is cool, and cool is everything!” and I cripped that to go with my picture in my Senior Year Book in my High School graduation year of 1959. I got away with it because I was on the annual staff and I had the type set by my picture to say “Art is cool and cool is everything!” But I’ve amended that thought in recent years and it’s become, “Art is cool and cool is everything and everything is subjective!”

DB: Interesting.
MR: One man’s opinion.

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FURTHER READING: Michael Royer's web-site. Plenty of art for sale and while you're browsing you can also arrange a commission from Mike.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Looking Back With Larry Lieber

LARRY LIEBER is one of the more overlooked, underrated and as such forgotten men from the Silver Age of Marvel comics. For a while there it appeared that there was nothing that Larry couldn't do - he wrote and he drew, and he did them both solidly and more than competently and remained at Marvel for many years. It can be argued that Larry Lieber wrote more stories for legendary artist Jack Kirby other than Stan Lee and Joe Simon. As a writer Larry scripted the first appearances of both Iron Man (working with Don Heck) and Thor (with Kirby). As an artist he enjoyed a memorable run on Marvel's western title Rawhide Kid, where he provided both stories and art.

Often working in the shadow of his more famous older brother, Stan Lee (born Stanley Lieber), Larry was often the subject of many (unfair) nepotism charges, even after Lee had left the company. Larry landed at Marvel in the late 1950s and remained until 1974, when he was head-hunted by his uncle, the infamous Martin Goodman, to become a writer/artist/editor at the short lived company Atlas (Seaboard). After that venture failed Larry returned to Marvel where he saw out the remainder of his career. A victim of a Jim Shooter purge, Larry has been drawing the Spider-Man daily newspaper strip since the late 1980s, and, health permitting, he'll be drawing that until he finally puts down the pen and retires.
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DANIEL BEST: Where were you born and where did you grow up?
LARRY LIEBER: New York City. Born in New York and grew up in Manhattan but my first years were in the Bronx. Do you know New York at all? I guess not if you’re in Australia.

DB: Only from what I’ve seen.
LL: Well there are boroughs in the City. New York is made up of Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Those are five boroughs and the main one is Manhattan, which I’m sure you know from the movies. But the Bronx is, I don’t know how to describe it, it was a quiet or a little, almost suburban in a way. That’s where I grew up. Actually I was only there until I was about ten and a half and then we moved to Manhattan. Then I grew up in Manhattan in a place called Washington Heights.

My brother, of course you know about my brother right?

DB: Yes.
LL: He’s nine years older than me. So when I was born he was nine years old and we hardly had anything to do with each other. By the time I was nine he was 18 and he went into the Service, it was World War II. He was in the Service for a while, until the end of the War I guess; and as I said, I was in Manhattan for a few years, in my teen years.

DB: What kind of art schooling did you have?
LL: Well it was just public schools there, where everybody went. It was nothing special. As a kid you start about five years old, I did that in the Bronx and then in Manhattan I did the same. I went to Junior High School and then High School. I went to a place called George Washington High School, up in Washington Heights and my brother had gone to De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx. I would have liked to have gone there but you had to live there to go, so I wasn’t eligible.

When it was time for High School, I tried to get into a High School that specialised in music and art and that’s what it was called, High School of Music and Art, but I didn’t make it. I asked why I didn’t make it and they said, “One of your teachers said you had a poor attendance record,” which was untrue. The one thing I know is I came to school, maybe I wasn’t a good student or something, but I was there. At any rate, I never got into Music & Art and I always regretted it.

DB: And how did you break into the comic book industry?
LL: It was in my family really. My brother was in it and he started when he was about 17 or 18 or whatever. Also my uncle was in it and a cousin of ours owned the company. At that time it was called Timely Comics and he owned it, Martin Goodman. I was just a kid and kids liked comics at that time. We didn’t have television then and so there were newspaper comics and the comic books. I used to like to draw and copy them and so on. I remember once, and I don’t know when it was, but my uncle, Rob Solomon, took me down to Timely Comics. They were in a building called the McGraw Hill Building, later on in the Empire State Building. I actually worked there when I was about 17, but not in the comics; and he took me down there. While I was there I remember meeting Jack Kirby. I was a kid and Jack Kirby drew a picture for me, you know, because it’s a little picture of Captain America and Bucky and it’s signed, “Hi Larry, your pal Captain America and Bucky!” It was signed Jack Kirby and then Joe Simon signed it also. I still have the original drawing here hanging in a frame.

DB: Oh beautiful.
LL: I don’t know how young you are, may I ask?

DB: I’m 38.
LL: Okay, well that’s young from where I sit. I’m 74.

My mother died when I was 16. My brother was back from the Service, he was just married and he moved out outside of New York to Long Island. I lived with him for a while and it didn’t work out so well. I wanted to leave, so I left. I was very young and I had a couple of jobs.

I worked for the New York Times as a messenger when I was 17 and I also worked in a lettering studio in Times Square. I worked for an excellent letterer who did lettering with a brush. His name was Sam Furber and he had done lettering on movies, when you see movies in those days you’d see a title like ‘Beau Geste’ and it was lettered by hand. I don’t know what they called it, show card, whatever the heck it was, but you had to be a very good letterer to do it with a brush. I was in his lettering studio and he wanted to teach me to letter, but I draw with my left hand, even though I do everything else with my right hand and he said you can’t be a left handed letterer, you’ve got to work with your right hand.

I tried and I couldn’t of course, it was very difficult, so I didn’t really letter. I then worked for a company called Magazine Management, which was also owned by Goodman and they put out other books, not comics. They put out movie magazines, what they called men’s magazines like Male Stag and things like that and they put out some pocket books.

Any rate I worked there but I had no skills at all. All I did was paste up. I did so much paste up with rubber cement and I was using the thinners that after a while I found out I had no fingerprints. Along came the Korean War and I joined up. When you join the Service the first thing they want to do is take your fingerprints so they can keep track of you and I had to come back two or three times to the fingerprints, the developer said, “We’re not getting anything”.

So that was my thing there and at the time I was living in Manhattan. I lived in a hotel for about a year and a half that no longer exists. The Hotel Manhattan Towers, it was on Broadway and 76th Street; and then I went into the Service for four years and the first year when I got out of basic. The basic training was at a place that also no longer exists anymore. It was a place called Sampson Air Force Base, up near the Finger Lake area of New York State, Lake Geneva I think it was; and I was there for a year and a half.

When you first come out of basic training they have to give you a job of some sort right? You can’t do basic forever so they ask you what you’d like to do, what you’re suited for and I said, “I don’t know,” and as it turned out I wasn’t suited for anything. I didn’t know enough mathematics to be a technician and I hadn’t gone to college where I could I think be a pilot, you had to have more education and more this. So I said, “Well I know how to draw,” and the guy said, “You can draw?” I said, “Yeah”. So he gives me a piece of pencil and a paper and he says, “Draw me.” So I sketched the man and it must have been good enough. He says, “Alright, you can draw, you’re an artist”.

Unfortunately there was no classification for an artist when you get out of basic. When I got out of basic training I had one stripe on me. In the Army that would have been called a Private First Class, in the Air Force it was an Airman Third Class. So there was no classification for an artist. So the nearest classification they had was a draftsman. So they classified me as a draftsman, which I’m not. A draftsman knows how to make plans for bridges, buildings and things and I don’t know the first thing about it. So I’m classified as a draftsman and they put me in the training aides where they were making up different things. While I was there I made up a little cartoon character. I wasn’t really a cartoonist; I wanted to be a comic artist, like Jack Kirby, doing heroes or something or other, more realistic, not humorous cartoons.

But I happen to make up this little thing, I think it was called Itch and Scratch and it appeared in the Base Newspaper. After it appeared in the Base Newspaper I received a letter or something from a Sergeant in Wright Patterson Air Force Base which is a very big Air Base in Dayton, Ohio. He wrote to me and said, “I’ve seen your work and we’re starting a command wide magazine and we’d like to have you work on it, we think you’re good”. So I was delighted, I thought, “Oh boy that’ll be great”. But it took a little while for him to process the papers to go through and to get me there and in the meantime at Sampson, they got a call from the Far East that they needed a draftsman.

Now the place where I was working in was the training aides. It reminded me of a prison movie a little bit, in that there was a guy in charge, a Sergeant in Charge and the Sergeant had his friends, people he liked and they flattered him a lot. They called him by his initials, and whenever a call came through it was up to the Sergeant to select somebody to go overseas. Well he never selected his friends, he selected the people who were sort of the outsiders and I was one of the outsiders. There was a guy from West Virginia who was an outsider, somebody else who was a tough guy from Brooklyn and a few others and me.

So he picked me and when he told you this, it was so funny, the reason I say it’s like a prison, he had a room where all his friends would sit in the room and he would face them like a school teacher facing a classroom and the people who weren’t his friends were outside the room.

I was called into the room and he told me you have to go and so on and that he picked me. Okay. Well I thought I’m going to go over there, they think I’m a draftsman, I’m not, they’re not going to be happy with that but somebody in Wright Patterson Base knows what I am and wants me, it would be a lot better to go where I can be appropriate, where I could do the work. But I didn’t know what to do. So I went to a place on the base called the Air and Spec you can go there with grievances and problems and so on. So I went there.

Unfortunately the Air Inspector, some Sergeant, I don’t know, he’d been in a long time, had I guess the military type of reasoning. I told him the Sergeant wanted me and the first thing he said was, “Look, I am not interested in any deals entered into between you and a Sergeant out of base”. He said, “You’re classified, you’re going”. I said, “But I’m not a draftsman”. He said, “You’re classified as a draftsman, you’re supposed to be a draftsman”. There was no reasoning with him. I’m supposed to be a draftsman. If I explained why they gave me that, he didn’t want to know that. It was a real military thing. If you’re classified, you’re supposed to learn it quick.

So it was hopeless. So they sent me overseas. I just remember being on a big ship and they sent me to Okinawa. It took about 12 days to get there. The first day I was sea sick, second day sea sick and as soon as I stopped throwing up, they put me on duty for the trip doing KP in the kitchen. So for 12 days I was washing dishes and doing this and doing that. The last day I cut my finger and whoever was in charge took pity on me and said, “Alright, you can take off today”. That was the last day. So that was my lovely trip abroad.

When I got there I had to report in. I reported and I just remember there was one point where I entered a room and somebody “Ah at last, a draftsman is here.” This was when I felt I was in a prison movie like the new guy and I had to tell them, “I’m not a draftsman fella's, I don’t…” and they looked at me. Well they realised it’s not my fault, so they weren’t going to throw me into the sea. “Oh shit we didn’t get…” I don’t know anything about drafting. So they said just kept out of their way.


There was a recreation room and I learned to play a little bit of pool but I had to do something so finally they put me in training aides there too. It gets even better. On the base, or in the Air Force, there are two kinds of officers or there were then. There are officers who fly planes and there are offices that don’t fly planes. Now the officers who fly planes are generally nice guys. They have their airplanes, they fly, they’re proud and all that. The ones who don’t fly planes aren’t always nice because I guess they must feel a little inferior, you know. You’re in the Air Force and you don’t fly, what are you doing? Yeah, compared to the pilots.

So they’re usually the people who want discipline and other things that compensate them. Although I don’t know that many of them. But on our base we had a guy who was a handsome man and a pilot and he had the name to go with it too, Colonel Kincaid; and he was a wonderful guy.

But he had an assistant under him and his name was Colonel Twitty. Colonel Twitty was not a pilot and he believed in military discipline and the morale on Okinawa was very low. At the time it had, I believe, the second highest venereal disease rate in the Air Force or something. In those days it wasn’t so serious because they didn’t have AIDS or anything that they couldn’t cure. Whatever the guys got they gave them penicillin and they got cured. It also had about the lowest reenlistment rate in the Air Force which you can usually tell about the military. You know if people reenlist it’s not bad. So it wasn’t a very great place; and because of that Colonel Twitty decided that we need to bolster the morale. He came up with the idea that everybody should go through basic training again. Now most of these people had been in the Service for a while. It was my second year or third year. See this will give you morale. That’s what we need.

So they had to make up plans for this and all that and I’m still not a draftsman but I made up some signs. I had to work on it, I don’t remember how and they made a training centre and as luck would have it, or irony or poetic justice or whatever, I was one of those working on it and they sent me through, one of the first. So I had to go back into basic training again on this hot and miserable island of Okinawa; and we had two leper colonies off the island there. We had snakes there, poisonous snakes. We slept under mosquito nets for two years because they were afraid of encephalitis.

So it wasn’t a delight. Somebody described it once. They said, “It’s the only place where you can stand with mud up to your knees and have dust blow in your face at the same time.” It never got too cold or too hot but because of the humidity you felt it very much when the weather was kind. But I went through it and then, and this was my triumph in the Air Force, Colonel Twitty decided he wanted an emblem on the base, a new emblem or something and the case headquarters and he wanted an eagle painted. So they come to me and they say “Lieber you’ve got to paint an eagle”.

Now Lieber had been to art school, Pratt Artist Institute, while I was doing my paste ups for Magazine Management, a couple of years, a few years previously. But I never finished my illustration and I never really painted a picture, I never got to it. So Lieber did not know how to paint, and here I was given the assignment, I can’t tell on my cans of paint, I’m not a draftsman but now I’m not an artist.

So I don’t know how the hell I did it, I really don’t. But I must have gotten photographs from Life Magazine of an eagle and he wanted a fierce eagle no less. So I did it very slowly because I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t remember where I got the paints, some cans of paint or why I stood on the ladder like Michelangelo because there was a big emblem. In the headquarters, I think it was a big shield and it had the number of the squadron, you know, above the shield and this was an eagle above that looking fierce and I must have been on that thing for weeks or months.

Now between me and Colonel Twitty there were some other officers. My immediate officer was a warrant officer, a very nice man called Major Hamilton and he was due to retire. He didn’t want anything to spoil his retirement, the poor guy, and his boss was a major I liked very much, an older man. Anyway this major was his boss and he was a nice guy too, everybody was nice. I guess Twitty in his own way was nice too.

The only problem was I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and it took me a long time, so I kept trying to paint. I swear to you, I don’t remember how I did it, whether I drew it first or must have drawn something looking at a picture; and I was working on it and working on it. Well as time went by, Colonel Twitty was getting impatient and he would let the Major know he was impatient in no uncertain terms and the Major would let the Warrant Officer know and those two guys were sweating a little, understandably and the Warrant Officer said, “Lieber when are you going to get this done? When are we going to have our eagle?” They were all worried and I felt bad for them but I was doing the best I could.

Anyway it took a very long time. I don’t remember whether it was months or weeks or whatever, and Colonel Twitty was going to have apoplexy or something, have a fit. Finally Lieber finished the eagle okay and they were going to have a ceremony. I remember standing in the Headquarters down there, in front of the shield and everything and the Warrant Officer that was there and the Major was there and they’re waiting for Colonel Twitty to arrive, you know; and Colonel Twitty arrived and when he walked in the first thing he did was give me a look, that if looks could kill I would have dropped dead on the spot. Like you son of a bitch, you’re making me wait.

But then he looked at the thing and he looked up and when he looked up, he looked up pass the shield and the number of the squad and he saw the eagle. Suddenly his face broke into a smile and he said, “This was worth waiting for”; and that was my triumph in the Service. The Warrant Officer breathed a sigh of relief, as did the Major and I and they took my picture. We had a base newspaper and my picture appeared in the newspaper, okay and oh boy was I relieved and happy and other people talk about they were heroes, they were this, this was my triumph.

I was in the service for four years. The first year was at Sampson, two years on Okinawa and then they said, “We’re sending you back to the States for your fourth year, where would you like to be, what section?” So they gave us sections of choices. So the first section I picked was the East Coast with New York City and they said, “What’s your second choice?” I said, “My second choice is California”. I thought that would be nice, Hollywood, something I could look at. So they sent me to Del Rio Texas, my choice. Del Rio Texas is a little town and the base was near the Rio Grande River. It’s nothing that anybody would really want to go to and it reminded me of Okinawa, it was the same thing. Okinawa when you looked out, all you saw was water and here when you looked out, all you saw was sand.

So that was it. I always kept that newspaper and years later when I was married they decided to have a Korean Reunion and they had it in West Virginia, I forget where it is. Virginia Beach I think it was; and I went with my wife, my late wife, and before I went I wanted to find that newspaper, I don’t think I had ever shown it to her. I looked all over my apartment, there are bundles, there’s this, and I never found it. So I couldn’t take it with me but I could tell people the story but they were telling more interesting stories to guys who were in combat and in Korea and you know, all the battles. So that’s my war experience.

DB: It sounds like the plot of Catch 22 or something like that.
LL: Yeah, it could be a comedy. I’ll give you another thing. Somebody wrote a play called the Tea House of the August Moon, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that?

DB: It rings a bell on me for some reason.
LL: There was a tea house on Okinawa, previously during World War II or just after. Anyway while I was there, somebody wrote the play in the United States and it was showing so because of that they went and opened another tea house to copy the play. Anyway that was a comedy with Marlon Brando and you could see it sometime with Glen Ford. It was called the Tea House of the August Moon. So that’s that. Now what else. You ask a question so I can relax a second.

DB: When you got out of the Services you went straight into working at Marvel?
LL: Well not quite, a couple of years later. I went to art school for a while. I still wanted to be an illustrator but I didn’t go back to Pratt, instead I went to the Art Students League. I wanted to study and I ended up actually studying with a famous teacher there but I had to leave in the middle of it and again I never finished painting, I never learnt to paint.

He had a thing when you paint a picture, I think it was ten steps, I was up to step three when I had to quit. So I still can’t paint a picture and years later when I joined the Society of Illustrators because they lowered their standards and let me in as a comic artist. I used to be embarrassed. I’d go there and I’d say I’m not a painter, I’m not an illustrator, but it turned out that I was like a star because it’s almost like a dark haired girl going to Scandinavia, she stands out you know, or a blonde in South America. So I stood out, “Oh you did Spider-Man”? But I never became the illustrator.

But I started working and I forget exactly what, it was in 1958. I wasn’t fast enough or good enough to draw comics, although that was what I wanted to do, so my brother offered me a chance to write.

In the art school at that time, they didn’t teach you how to draw without a model. All the drawing when you learn anatomy they have models there. So with a model what you do is, you develop your eye, you get a very good eye and most artists use models. Illustrators do it, certainly the fine artists didn’t just make it up, they draw with models. In comics it’s the one field you don’t use models. You’re not getting paid enough and you’ve got to grind out picture after picture and be able to construct the figure and do it so that I never really learned. You know I wasn’t that good at it.


DB: I’ve always wondered what training you had when you started writing.
LL: Oh okay. My brother said he had no writer but himself. He was the only one. He said, “I can use you, you can help me, you can write”. I said, “Stan I’m not a writer”. He said, “Oh I’ve read your letters from the Service, you can write. I’ll show you, you can do it”. So he taught me and that was an interesting experience for about I don’t know how many years, I guess a few years. Let’s say 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962. Yeah for a few years I was writing.
At first they were, the stories were these, what were these monster stories and you know the books?

DB: Journey into Mystery…
LL: Yes, that’s it. Journey into Mystery.

DB: Tales To Astonish, Tales Of Suspense…
LL: Yeah, those books right. They were five page stories or seven page stories, he would make up the plot then he would give it to me and I would write it. At the time I was living in a place called Tudor City, in a furnished room. I would write and I wrote stories for Jack Kirby who was so fast; he was drawing faster than I could write. I had to keep feeding him stories; he needed them to earn a living. I think he was living in New Jersey at the time and I’d go to the post office on Saturday night and send the stuff there. I did that for a few years; and then they started making up the Super Heroes and I wrote a few of the first, Ant Man and Iron Man and Thor.

Stan again made up the plots, but I made up the civilian names for a few of them that I create. Let’s see, the Ant Man was Henry Pym. I made up the name Henry Pym and Don Blake I made up for Thor and Tony Stark I made up, you know. But the important names, such as Ant Man, Thor and Iron Man, Stan made up.

So that was what I did. I must have drawn a little and then when they started doing the superheroes, he needed other people to draw them. It was more work and he was going to hire artists and I don’t know how good I would have been as an Editor compared to others, so I never even tried. I sort of melted into the background. I didn’t want to write that kind of stuff all that much. I didn’t want to get involved; and what they did was Jack Kirby had been doing a Western and Western’s weren’t selling that well, it didn’t matter what you did with them as long as they sold a certain amount.

Anyway he of course was used on the superheroes which were important. He was so wonderful at that.

When Jack gave up one of the Westerns, the Rawhide Kid, they gave it to me. Stan gave it to me and it didn’t matter much, so I was really on my own. I wrote and drew it and I enjoyed that. I’ve always enjoyed it when I write the stuff and draw it myself and I did that for seven years.

I liked it. However it wasn’t that popular a thing because everybody was interested in all the superheroes. Occasionally I’d meet somebody who said, “You know I read that one, I really liked it”. So I enjoyed that and after that I did covers for a while, superhero covers. In the meantime I did some other things. There was one point where I was doing romance comics. I was writing and they were actually pretty good; and then there were periods where I had difficulty getting work and Martin Goodman went into difficulty. I’ll just put this in and I don’t want to elaborate on this, but many of the artists and writers could go from National comics from DC to Marvel, go back, one and another, and if they weren’t happy at one company they’d go to another. If they wanted more money they could go. I was the only one who could never do that because that was the price for Stan being my brother. So I could never do that.

As a matter of fact, once I didn’t have any work and I sent work to DC and a friend of mine brought it over, Frank Giacoia. He came back and he said, “Well it’s alright, but they’d have no need for it now,” so I didn’t get the work. Some time later, I was in a restaurant where some of the artists in Manhattan used to go to and I happened to be sitting with Carmine Infantino who was the art director of DC. We had met a few times before, we were friendly and I brought this up to him. I said, “You know I sent over that work and I never heard”, and he looked at me with surprise and he said, “Do you mean that was on the level?” I said, “Yes, yes, I needed work”. He hadn’t replied because they were very suspicious. They would have thought Stan Lee is sending over a spy or something you know. I would see what they’re doing and go back or whatever the hell it was. So I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t work.

So at any rate Martin Goodman started his company, Seaboard and Atlas. I knew colour comics and he was putting out colour comics and he was putting out black and white books, like Warren Publications. He picked me to do the black and white books and he picked the guy from Warren to do the colour comics, don’t ask me why. It didn’t work out and the guy ended up getting all the books except a couple and then that didn’t work out. The guy left and then I had to do all the things. It was an experience that was not too pleasant and I don’t, I don’t like to talk about it.

But when that was over, I don’t know, maybe it was only a year and a half or something or a year, I don’t know how long Seaboard was around, about a year. Then I came back from Marvel and they offered me a job in the British Department. The British Department was the Department where they did reprints of the books and they sent them to Great Britain and so I had very little original to do. Actually we did make up one original story there which was Captain Britain. John Buscema drew it and it was a delight to work with him, somebody else wrote it and I worked on covers. So I was in the British Department for a while; then that ended, they closed the Department. Stan started Spider-Man in the newspapers. He was writing it, Romita was drawing it and then they decided he wanted The Hulk. Let’s try that. The Hulk was kind of popular on television; and so I drew The Hulk. Stan was writing it and after a while The Hulk wasn’t doing well and I don’t know exactly why, but it wasn’t and Stan decided to give it up, or give up his part. He said, “Larry if you want, you can write The Hulk and draw it”. So once again I was writing and drawing and that I enjoyed even more than the Rawhide Kid.

I made up stories that I really liked and it lasted a little while. After that, after the Hulk, Stan left. I think he went out to Hollywood or out to California and that’s when Jim Shooter came in and took over. I didn’t have any steady work then. I did a few inventory stories or different things, until finally they needed somebody, an artist, on Spider-Man on the strip which Fred Kida had been doing until he retired. They tried somebody else and it didn’t work out and they offered it to me and I started doing it and I’ve been doing it for 20 years now it’ll be.

DB: It’s a long run.
LL: Yeah. For a while after about the first or second year, I inked it myself but it was very hard in terms of time. I’d sit up all night inking it. We were in this one room apartment studio and I’d be inking all night and one day and then I’d rush down to King Features and deliver it. One day I just delivered it to King Features and I left and I tried to think of something and I couldn’t think of the numbers, or remember dates or something and I got a little nervous and I said, “Maybe I can’t take this sitting up all night, a whole night anymore. I’m not that young”.

So I gave up the inking. I said, “If I ever get fast I’ll do it again,” but I never went back to it and that’s it, that’s my story.

DB: The Hulk newspaper strip; I remember reading that when it came out at the time and I always thought that the work you were doing there was more interesting than the comic book in a lot of ways.
LL: Oh you mean the stories? Well thank you, yeah.
I liked doing it. When I was writing, before the superheroes, Stan was teaching me to write. Now he had never taught anybody else to write so he didn’t know how well somebody learns or doesn’t learn or, he didn’t know how to compare me to anybody else. All he knew was I didn’t write as well as he did.

He wasn’t always the most patient person and I had problems with the dialogue and he said, “Why did you say that? You could have said it this way, or this way or that way,” and I’m realising yeah, I don’t think of it that way or this way.

So at any rate finally I think at one point he got a little exasperated and he said, “Look,” he said, “I’m going to hire some of the old pros.” He remembered writers from the past. So anyway he must have for a while. He still gave me work, he didn’t want to take work away but they were putting out a few more books.

So he hired somebody and then the next week when I came back to him he said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Larry, you know something, you’re no good, but you’re better than these other guys”. So that was my first victory if you want to call that a victory right. The others are worse than me.

My second victory came years later when I was doing the Hulk, newspapers, when I was writing it and he said to me one day, he said, “Larry,” he said, “I look at the Hulk, and it’s very good. Also I think it’s even more dramatic than Spider-Man”. So when he said that to me that he liked it and thought that in a certain way more dramatic. I felt good about that. So that was my second victory.
Unfortunately the strip failed, it isn’t around but Spider-Man still is. So those were my experiences in comics.

DB: Now for a writer who thought he couldn’t really write, you probably wrote more stories for Jack Kirby than anyone else outside of Stan and probably Joe Simon.
LL: Did I? Amazing. You would know better than I. I did write them for a few years.

Kirby was in every book. I remember some of the stories were for Don Heck and the only ones that I never wrote, because Stan liked writing them himself, are the ones for Steve Ditko. At the back of each book I think, there was a story for Ditko and that was Stan’s own story.

I did learn to write and I learned a lot from Stan. Some years later he and John Buscema had a course, an artist course teaching drawing to some people. They used work out of a hotel and I don’t know how long it lasted, maybe a couple of years. When they were about to end it or before they ended it, they decided they’d like to put writing into, teach people to write and they asked me if I wanted to teach it. I remember I went there, down to this hotel, and for one semester I guess you’d call it or something, I was teaching about six or seven people about comics and in order to teach them, I’ve never thought about it, I had to make up some kind of curriculum or something. I remember I had a whole bunch of index cards. What a comic should be, what it shouldn’t be, I’d Xeroxed some papers to show, to explain this and that, and it must have been pretty good.

I went down and when it was over, they gave me a book with a lot of appreciation saying how patient I was and how much they learned and so on.

DB: When you were writing back in the day of Marvel, did you write with a particular artist in mind, such as Kirby?
LL: No, I wasn’t thinking of Jack when I did it. It could have been Jack or Don Heck or anybody. The only one I was concerned about was Stan because I had to show it to him. I was only hoping Stan would like it but Jack would do what he wants; I didn’t care about what he did afterwards. You know I just wanted to put something down that Stan would say, “Hey, this is okay. Hey this pretty good, that reads nice”. You know, “that’s okay”. I remember he praised the names I made up, places and people. You know my famous story which I told so many about Thor’s hammer?

DB: No, I don’t think I’ve heard that one.
LL: You don’t know that one? When Stan made up Thor and he gave him to me and said, “This guy has got a hammer and swings it around”. I guess the hammer I felt it had to have a name. Maybe Stan said it, I don’t remember. I just know because, there’s going to be a name, I said, “What the hell kind of a name I’ll give to the hammer”, so it just came to me.

I used to look at it in the back of the dictionary, Miriam Webster’s they have geographical places and they have biographical names and a lot I would take from that according to what the character was, what a person was and that’s where I must have gotten Henry Pym or I got the name Pym from an English scientist. It sounds like an English scientist; and so somehow I made up the name and I wanted it to be short, I’m always thinking of the lettering. I also think of other people, I don’t want to put a burden on the inker, on the letterer, so I said, “Uru”. I made up the name Uru, U-R-U.

The Uru hammer, I said, “That sounds exciting”. I don’t know what the hell; it’s just a name. So I made that thing up and after a couple of issues, Roy Thomas, who was the editor of the books, came in and one day I’m in the office, I don’t know what I was doing and Roy came over to me and he comes over with this big book, “Bullfinches Mythology”. I never read the book. Roy comes over to me and he says, “Larry, where in here did you find the Uru hammer”. I said, “Roy I didn’t find it in there, I made it up,” and he looked aghast that I’d made it up because he had been a schoolteacher, an English teacher. He left and the next thing I know, he found the real name for it which is Mjölnir or something according to the Norse legends, so it became Mjölnir instead of Uru which was made up by Larry Lieber.

Well a couple years ago, a couple years ago they invited me out to the San Diego convention, which I think is the largest convention. I don’t usually go to conventions, I had never been there before but they invited me as a guest and I was on a panel. I’m on the panel and there were people in the audience and I forget who else was there, there were a couple of men and there was a very talented writer and there was a woman on there from DC I think. Anyway I can’t see the other people on the panel and somebody in the audience asks me about it, everybody wants the story so I told the story of the Uru hammer and I said I made it up and then Roy Thomas put the real name in, this and that and I hear a voice, a woman’s voice say, “You made that up?” and I said, “Yeah”. She says, “Well don’t you know what that means?” I said, “No, I don’t know what it means”, and it turns out that it was a woman on the panel and she says, “In the Norse language or something that means power, strength”.

In other words, it had an appropriate meaning which I had no idea, I just made up a word. So I thought that was kind of cute. Here I make up something which Roy changed immediately. But that’s my claim to fame and fortune that I made up a name and it turned out to be an appropriate name, according to this woman.

DB: Getting back to the writing aspect and the artists. Were they Marvel-style or full scripts that you presented to artists like Kirby and Heck?
LL: They were full scripts and I didn’t think of Jack when I wrote it at all. All I thought of was will Stan like this or will he tell me, “Larry this isn’t good, you can’t do this”. I didn’t want to hear something like that.

DB: Now when you were working at Marvel at that stage, were you working at home or actually in the offices?
LL: When I was writing this stuff I did it all at home. I would go into the office and Stan would give me a synopsis, this is what I want and I would take it home and write. When I started, I lived in this place, this little furnished room, this place in Manhattan called Tudor City. There’s a little park there, near the United Nations area, and I remember sitting there with a pad and some yellow paper or something and because I was trained as an artist and I thought visually, especially with a comic.

I would lay it out at first in, little boxes, like I was doing little story boards for myself; and I’d say, “Alright panel one, I’ll do this or I’ll do that” and then write it. I’d sit out in the park when the weather was nice and do it; and then I’d go into my room, I had a furnished room, one little room.

I remember there was an elderly woman owned the apartment and the windows were not normal windows that opened up and down, go up and down but they were little French windows that opened out, so you could not put in an air-conditioner. So it got pretty hot in the city there then and I had a Vornado fan that saved my life, I kept it on all the time; and I was at the typewriter, typing with two fingers and learning to write.

DB: On the job training.
LL: Yeah it was, it really was and I learned a lot I think. My two favourite writers were Rod Sirling and Sterling Silliphant and they were writing for television. I used to hear their stuff. I love good dialogue and tried to write and think about it. That’s how I did it, I’d have to send out a full script, it was always a full script.

I think the Marvel style came when Stan was doing the superheroes and he had so much to write. Also he was working with a guy like Jack. He knew the characters and could come up with different gimmicks perhaps; things in the stories so. I don’t know who started that, but I never worked with it that way at all.

DB: So even after the superhero thing started and you were working at Marvel in the late 1960’s and the 1970’s, you never worked the Marvel style, everything was full script for you?
LL: As far as I know, yes. Now I could be wrong, my memory isn’t the best and so you may be able to find somebody who says “He did write Marvel style,” but as far as I know, I don’t recall ever writing that way. Not that I know of. When I wrote, every time, it was a script.

Except when I was writing for myself, like when I did the Hulk, but I’m not even sure then. I didn’t have to type it all out when I did the Hulk. I don’t know how I did it but I knew I was going to draw it and if I’m drawing and writing it I could put it together.

But I really don’t, now that you mention it, I don’t even recall how I did it myself. But whenever it was anybody else, I don’t remember ever telling somebody here’s the story, go ahead and then I had to fit in dialogue. I don’t remember that process. Stan was very good at it. He could look at the picture and decide what the dialogue should be and sometimes he’d look and he’d say, “Here’s a little area that could use something”. Oh he did it so easily and smoothly.

You know, “Here’s a little area that could use something,” and he’d put a little gem in there in those days and just write to fit the story, to fit the drawing. I never did that as far as I know.

DB: When you’d go up to the offices, who were some of the people
that were hanging around at the times?
LL: Well it depends when. In the early years when I started writing before the superheroes, I was the only one he had. As a matter of fact, it was almost like something out of the movie Citizen Kane.

When I started working for Stan doing those little stories he was in an office that was as big as nothing, like somebody’s little alcove almost. It had a window there and I don’t know if anybody was there with him. I don’t know if he had Sol Brodsky at the time or who the other people were. I just remember going up and there might have been somebody sitting there doing a little colouring. It was a narrow little nothing of a few feet and he was making all his own lettering corrections; and we were on the second floor of a building on Madison Avenue and 60 of looking down into the street.

Now the years pass and then came the superheroes, then came this, the company was sold to Perfect Films and Cadence Industries and Ronald Perlman. One day years later they have a party or something to celebrate; this was before business got bad. It was downtown in Manhattan and I got an invitation. So I go down there and it was being held in I guess a discotheque or a nightclub, and I walk in there and I see a load of people and I see people coming down a staircase dressed like comic characters and I look over and I think I see Stan over there talking to Perlman and others and businessmen and artists and I think to myself, like this feels like Citizen Kane to me. You know that movie?

DB: Yes when they start up the newspaper it’s with just Kane and his assistant, the two people and then…
LL: Exactly. Yeah or where he came from and he had the sled as a child. Well that’s what I felt that this was. It started as nothing and I thought, “Oh my God, look what this has become?” Because I didn’t go down to the office often or anything there. All those years I just thought Stan and I were just about the only two. I think he had Brodsky doing it and then later he got, as it went on, he got some more people, secretaries, a big space. But that was the beginning. Later on I knew the artists when Jack Kirby would come up; when John Buscema, the first time I met him. He was the most amazing artist. I couldn’t believe that anybody could be that good. The first time I met him I remember shaking hands with him and he had a grip, I thought he’d crush my fingers. He didn’t look very much like an artist; he looked more like the Head of the Long Shoreman’s Union or something. You know he was a weightlifter but he could draw the most beautiful and sensitive. I told him one day, I said “I know your secret. You’ve sold your soul to the devil,” I said, “because nobody draws that well that hasn’t”. He was what I’d call the best drawer, maybe not the best artist, but the best drawer I ever saw.
Though I knew him I never saw much of Kirby. But occasionally he’d come up but I knew him through his work and I loved his work very much; and then I saw the others there.

Gil Kane sometimes came up, as did Don Heck. When I worked with the staff, and there was a big staff there of people who, I don’t know, they’re retired, they’re gone. There was a wonderful inker who was I guess my closest friend. His name was Frank Giacoia. He was wonderful and he was a very human guy. He and I had a similar problem, we were always late with our work, slow and behind, and he really suffered; but he was a wonderful human being; and that’s all. That’s was it.

I knew some others there of course. In the 1960’s it was a very relaxed atmosphere. So anybody could come in and they’d talk and they walked around and so on and so forth. Later on it changed very much because people were different and I don’t know. This is when Cadance had it and they moved some place else and they had to watch things, people would steal things. They’d come in and steal whatever the hell they could so before I could get in I had to be announced, I had to this, or wait out in the waiting room for somebody to come and see you. It changed completely. But in those early days, it was the most relaxed place you could think of and it was very nice, it was very nice.

I don’t look back on the days with fondness because I barely got a living and I wasn’t the artist that I wanted to be and they just were not happy days for me at all. But that’s what it was. They were there and I do remember there were some nice, nice people and good artwork and a relaxed atmosphere.

I think most of the other people would tell you happier stories than I, because I think most of them were earning more of a living and as I said, they could go from company to company and they did this and that. For me it wasn’t so great.
But I did have friends there. For a lot of the time I was living alone. I wasn’t married and I didn’t go out much. Then later on I did meet a woman, we got married and unfortunately there was a great deal of illness on her part. We had a marriage but she’s gone now and so I sit here alone in the room and I try to go out and do things but I’m glad I have Spider-Man and in an odd way I try to think ahead of what I’d like to do, what I’d still like to do. I seldom look back on those days with any great nostalgia, because I guess I was a lonely person and I didn’t want to be that way.

I used to say as a matter of fact, I wish I had gone to College and there were times I would have wanted to leave and just get a job, but I never went to College. So often over the years if I meet a young artist who says, “How do I, what do I draw, what do I do?” I say, “Look whatever you do, go to College, get an education so if you ever decide you don’t want to do this, you could do something else. Don’t just depend on comics.” Also, I’ll tell you one other thing which is kind of ironic. When I started writing those comics, The Journey into Mystery type, I asked Martin Goodman, “How would you describe this industry? Because now I’m starting to write this stuff,” and at the time he said, “I’d call it a dying industry,” and it probably was; and so I didn’t how long I would be around. Well the industry not only didn’t die, but you know what happened and it was because of Stan I think. Stan was really made for comics. He and Jack Kirby. I have always felt that he was the essential comic artist. Stan was the essential comic writer and Jack was the essential comic artist; and by that they didn’t put in anything more than a comic in their work and they didn’t put anything less than the best comic.

DB: Makes sense. I’ve always thought that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as a team were far better…
LL: Oh I thought they were the best.

DB: …than what they were on their own.
LL: Yes, yes, because Kirby could add stuff to Stan’s, that’s why Stan could do it. Jack needed Stan I think. There used to be friction between them and he left. He went over to DC and when he went there he put out I don’t know ten books or something or other, eleven, whatever it was, and almost all but one failed, they didn’t make money.

Then he came back to Marvel later. But when he was with Stan certainly they made money.

DB: There was a period there where everything they did was just pure gold.
LL: Yes, yes. Jack was a very good storyteller and he knew how to do it. Stan certainly flourished and he developed this whole style of writing that was very individual where he would talk to the writer. It was very much his personality and if I happened to come across once in a while an old comic, you know he didn’t do that. I don’t think he did it in the books that I was doing, Journey into Mystery, I don’t think he had enough to do it to work. But when he started with the older superheroes, each one had their own personality like Spider-Man and the dialogue was very individual and came very easily to him. So I think he was perfect for it.
----------------------------

Many thanks to Will Murray for making this interview possible - you're one of the best Will!

Friday, August 03, 2007

Looking Back With Steve Mitchell

A Cheeseburger Grows in Whitestone

An Introduction to STEVE MITCHELL

By Alan Kupperberg


He is “Big Steve,” “Baby Conan,” or “Steve-Man.” And he was a charter member of the “blue jean generation.”

I met Steve Mitchell in the reception area of National Periodicals Publications. It was 1969 and DC Comics were newly installed at 909 Third Avenue. You could still smell the fresh paint.

After introductions, Steve told me that he had “run away from home” and that he was sleeping in Joe Orlando’s studio. This got us into discussing a hot topic among sixteen year old boys; how much we hated our parents. We were simpatico. Oy, were we simpatico! Actually, in years to come, we’d come to like each other’s (and our own) parents quite a bit.

Steve transferred to the High School of Art & Design, joining me there, in our junior year. We had many adventures in New York City. We cut school an awful lot. We’d bother artists in their studios. Steve actually knew where they were. He’d just pick up a payphone and dial up Milton Caniff. Or Leonard Starr. They’d just say, “Don’t come up.” Or we’d just drop in on Steve Ditko (listed in the phone book). He just wouldn’t let us in. Nick Cardy and Tex Blaisdell were happy to entertain us for an hour or two, though.

But most of our success as young hunter-gatherers consisted of following Steve’s passion for movie stills. Oh, we were bad boys. We’d show up at, oh, say, Allied Artists on Broadway (we hit every company in town) and ask for movie stills that we needed for a high school “project.” Usually some harried secretary, too busy to be bothered, would point to a bank of file cabinets and mutter, “Help yourself.”

Were any sweeter words ever spoken?

We would load our artist’s portfolios to the bursting and stagger out under the weight. Very good hunting, indeed.

Steve often invited me to weekend at his family’s home in Whitestone, Queens. He had a studio/office set up in his basement, with a sixteen millimeter sound projector to screen his extensive and impressive collection of movie trailers. What a great hideout! We’d stay down there all weekend and I’d pencil and Steve’d ink pathetic features for never-published fanzines.

We emerged, blinking, into the daylight and Steve made me my first bacon cheeseburger in his folk’s kitchen. I’d never had a cheeseburger. Steve was very proud of his bacon cheeseburgers. They were good.

I vividly recall Steve inking Marvel Team Up number four down in his studio while I ruled his backgrounds at another desk. (This hot-shot had a background man on his first job! Fancy schmancy)

Imagine. It’s your first inking assignment, and John Verpoorten hands you a Gil Kane job.

No blacks spotted. No line weights indicated. A marked dearth of textures. And it’s your first full ink job. They were asking a novice to put flesh on skeletons.

If Steve was daunted, I can’t recall it now. I just know that that book has been a source of grief for Steve ever since. I’ve never understood the critical reaction to that book. The only explanation I can come up with is that the “powers that be” didn’t “recognize” Steve’s work. Was it Sinnott? No. Was it Giacoia or Esposito or Giordano, etc, etc, ad infinitum? No. They didn’t recognize it and it confused them.

I think it was a great shame and a grim injustice. I feel Steve Mitchell did a very nice job inking M-T-U #4. I think it is one of the strongest inking debuts I can think of in this business. At a different time, a later time, this effort would have been lauded. It’s a fine effort.

Steve was set back. But you can’t keep Baby Conan down for long. Steve came back.

He’ll tell you about “The Shark,” and how we played tag at National and at Atlas. And how we babysat Continuity for Neal and Dick.

If he doesn’t tell you about our trip across Europe in the summer of 1973, ask me about it sometime. And Steve and Pablo Picasso.

And ask me about the time we dressed up like swells and went nightclubbing uptown at the Copacabana to see Don Rickles. And how we laughed ourselves silly.

Steve tells the truth in this interview, so pay heed.

Here’s the bottom line on Big Steve; he’s one of the good guys, and I love him.

M’sure.

AK
July 30, 2007
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DANIEL BEST: Did you work for the DC production department at the same time as Alan Kupperberg?
STEVE MITCHELL: I think I was there before he was. Alan and I switched seats a couple of times as Jack Adler’s assistant. I think it might have been twice, but the first time it was sort of a summer job. I had a lengthy period working for Jack, then I got an offer to be the Production Manager at the, well not so lamented, but late Atlas Comics.


DB: We’ll get to Atlas in a second. How did you find Jack Adler because Alan Kupperberg has told me some great stories about him.
SM: I thought Jack was a very colourful guy and I liked working with him. I thought he was a lot of laughs from time to time and ultimately not a bad guy to work for. By the way just as a side bar, I’m probably one of the five people on the planet who kind of likes Sol Harrison who was Jack’s boss.


DB: Oh good God. [laughter]
SM: Sol Harrison was the Production Manager when I first started working for DC. He and Carmine were running the company for quite some time, and then Sol left the production department and became an executive.

I always kind of liked Sol, I was scared to death of him when I first met him. But I always respected him. I think he had a lot of shortcomings, but there was something about him that I kind of liked. I know I’m in the minority about that.


DB: Yes, you’re about the only person I’ve spoken to that actually admits to liking him. Even Jim Mooney, who's one of the nicest guys on the planet, said that he wasn’t all that fond of him.
SM: Sol was not a warm guy naturally. I think Alan kind of laid a nickname on Sol… “The Shark.” He didn’t grin very easily and if he was grinning either he was either nervous or he was going to bite your head off. [laughter]

But the thing I liked about Sol was that I respected his knowledge and I felt that he was fair. He never gave you anything, but if you asked for something he would give it to you. He was very old school in that regard. A lot of guys who were in business in the 1940’s and the 1950’s, post war especially, post American depression, never gave anything away.

But Sol was a good guy and he was a kind of a fair guy to work for. He wanted you to give him a full day every day. I really didn’t think he was a bad guy and in point of fact I know for a fact he was quite the humanitarian. He wasn’t a Bill Gates kind of humanitarian, but I think Sol was often involved with a bunch of charities. So there was some good to the guy. But he wasn’t the kind of guy that you would want to go out and have a beer with.


DB: I suppose everyone has a different side to them at times. It’s all in the perception I guess.
SM: Like I said I was scared to death of him in the beginning, but I had some degree of fondness for him and I always respected him. I don’t know anybody who would say they didn’t respect him. They may not have liked him but Sol was too knowledgeable, too good and too dedicated not to be respected.


DB: So how did you go from working in the Production Department to becoming an artist?
SM: I always wanted to be a freelancer, on the art side of things. You’re probably aware of my famous first inking job which I thought for some time was my last.
DB: Yep.
SM: Marvel Team-Up #4.
DB: I didn’t think it was that bad. It wasn’t until I read the article that was done about it and the resulting interview you did that I thought “Geez”, I never thought it was that bad.
SM: Well neither did Jim Shooter, neither did a number of other people. I look back at it today and I see that it was certainly not as good as guys who were making a regular living in the business, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying on my part. But I didn’t really get much work after that and I wanted to stay in comics, I didn’t not want to be in comics.

I don’t know if Alan had talked about working for Neal Adams and Dick Giordano when they had their studio, but after the Marvel team up fiasco I wound up working for Neal and Dick. Alan and I worked for Neal and Dick, I think Alan worked specifically for Neal, I worked specifically for Dick but we worked for their company” Continuity Associates.

So we worked as assistants and did all kinds of stuff. I did, mostly, backgrounds for Dick on comic stuff, but we were basically there to help them with their advertising projects. They were doing a lot of story-boards for commercials. I don’t know what kind of stories you’ve heard of Continuity, but, I think, they’re probably mostly all true. It was an interesting place to work.


DB: I’ve heard some interesting stories. One of them that I heard that really made me laugh, and it involved you specifically, was Neal Adams throwing lumber down the corridors one night.
SM: Oh God yes. [laughter] Yeah, I think I had work to do and I decided to go into the city, I lived in the outer borough of Queens, and we always called Manhattan: “the city.” I think it was a Sunday night, and Neal was there at his board, as usual. Neal was always there or it sure seemed like he was always was there. It was got to be pretty late, and we had a room in the back, which had a couch in it. It was essentially a bed for anybody who needed a nap. I went back there to take a bit of a snooze and Neal... I guess Alan was there. I don’t remember who else was there but at one point or another after they had given me pretty much just enough time to fall asleep, I remember being shocked by an extraordinarily loud thump! It was a wooden 2 x 4 that Neal had hurled half way down the hall which landed somewhere in the vicinity of that back room and woke me up! It scared the crap out of me. [laughter]


Everyone there had a good laugh at my expense.


DB: What was Neal like? I’ve heard very, very mixed stories about Neal.
SM: Neal Adams is one of the most complex guys I ever knew. On the one hand he was generally friendly and warm and on the other hand I thought he was just capable of being very cruel to people. He wasn’t cruel to people that worked for him. The cruelty that I saw was when people wanted to show him their portfolios and ask his opinion of their work. Neal could be very blunt, and as a by-product, hurtful. I think he may have squashed a number of guys who had dreams of being in comics. Neal was not the right guy to show a portfolio to unless you were really, really good. I think Frank Miller may have shown his portfolio to Neal once and I think Neal may have tore into it a bit.


DB: That’s interesting because Alan’s told me that as he got older and people started showing him their portfolios, he would do the opposite to Neal and everything that he’d think that Neal would think about it he would do the opposite of and thus give a more well rounded critique of people’s work.
SM: Well there’s a famous quote of Neal’s which I heard a number of times when he looked at portfolios. I’m mostly paraphrasing but it was something like: “This work is so bad that I don’t have enough time this afternoon to tell you how bad it is.”

Now I’ve been to a few conventions as a guest and I’ve looked at some really bad portfolios. A lot of people, especially far away from New York and the centre of the biz, will bring you their portfolio and ask for your opinion. I sort of understand what Neal went through, because It took a lot to explain to someone who just was not ready what they needed to do to improve. The lousier the work, or the poorer the work, the longer you had to explain what was wrong. A lot of guys would think that if you could draw good figures you could be a good comic book artist. That has never been the case; and you could say to me, “Well there are an awful lot of guys who are making a good living today by doing essentially pin up page comic book stories”. Well that’s one kind of comics but that’s not the kind of comics that I knew, that’s not the kind of comics that was based on storytelling.

But yeah looking at portfolios is always tough. It can be draining and I did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Because I’ll tell you one thing and I actually believe that Neal may have felt this way, is that you want to like the portfolio. You want to be impressed, you want to go “Wow, that’s great,” but it rarely happened to me. But, I always looked and hoped to see great stuff.

I remember I was working at DC, and Walt Simonson showed up with his portfolio. The buzz about Walt’s portfolio went through the office like a wildfire. Some guy brought in his portfolio today, and it was really, really good. The other guy I remember that about was Mike Grell. Those guys were good enough to sort of walk in an out with a script that day. There was no trial and error, there was no “Bring me back some samples, let me see if you can do this”. Those guys got work. But it didn’t happen often.


DB: Just quickly, the famous Marvel Team-Up #4. For your first job that could not have been easy because you’re inking over Gil Kane. I’ve seen Gil Kane pencils; they’re not the greatest thing in the world to fathom out.
SM: It was not easy. Gil had a tendency to sort of knock the stuff out. The first half of the job was pretty well pencilled and the second half of the job was not pencilled nearly as well. If you look at the front part of the job my work is better than the back end of the job, and that’s due partly to my own lack of ability at the time and part of that is due to the fact that Gil was knocking the job out.

I will go on the record and say I think that Gil Kane was one of the biggest hacks of all time.


DB: Oh good God. [laughter]
SM: Now I will counter that or I will layer that with, I think he was an extraordinarily talented hack. Gil had one skill that most guys never had back in the day, and that was Gil understood dynamism. He understood a certain kind of drama, but the reason I call him a hack is that Gil was always knocking the work out for money, which was my understanding. Also, Howard Chaykin said Gil never used reference. If you look at Gil’s work, his cars were always the same, his hats were always the same, his horses were always the same, his six guns were always the same and his understanding of clothing was always the same. Gil learned how to draw something one way and that was it. The guys, who are truly great, in my humble opinion, were guys who knew how to use reference and were able to make that work for their work.

Look at “His Name Is Savage,” which I think is Gil’s magnum opus. It’s an espionage story and all the guys in this story are carrying revolvers. Well in the espionage world real guys didn’t carry revolvers, cops carried revolvers. Would it have killed Gil to get a gun reference book and learn how to draw a 45 or a Walther PPK or some other weapon? Gil always took the easy way out. Howard and I agreed that Gil’s work could have been so much better had he used reference like a number of his peers did at the time.

This said, I think Gil was very talented. The other thing about Gil and this is a personal taste thing, is that Gil never used black very well. I think all of the great comic book artists were /guys who knew how to use black. Alex Toth, of course, Wally Wood, and in a more recent context: Mignola and Tim Sale.

Guys who knew how to use black to me were the complete and real deal because I believe in, what Toth had talked about which was if you have a perfect black plate… you know how comics are printed right?


DB: Yep.
SM: They’re basically four plates. If you had a perfect black plate, no matter how bad the colouring is, you couldn’t hurt the job. I have always worked better with pencillers that used a lot of black. Gil didn’t. For me Gil was tough sledding.


DB: Fair enough. Certainly I’m familiar with your work. I’m probably more familiar with the work that you did over Norm Breyfogle, the Batman work you did but that’s only because I’ve been working with Norm myself with articles and different bits and pieces over the years. So I’ve seen a lot of it.
SM: I always liked inking Norm’s stuff and I thought I did it well.


DB: How difficult was it doing Norm’s stuff? I look at some of his pencils and some of them are almost like Gene Colan in sort of a fashion with his use of shadows and graphite.
SM: Norm’s stuff was pretty clean, pretty linear. I think because he wanted to control the result, the pencils were reasonably tight. But I liked inking Norm’s stuff. I could have inked Norm’s stuff even longer than the few years that I inked it.

I enjoyed doing it. I never thought that Norm went overboard in terms of just throwing a lot of stuff on the page for the sake of throwing the stuff on the page. I always loved Norm’s stuff from a storytelling point. It was very strong. I liked the way he drew and I thought that he and I were a pretty good match chemistry wise in terms of my line and his style. I could give you a list of guys who that was not true. There were a lot of guys who I was not compatible with, but I always thought that I was compatible with Norm’s stuff.



DB: It’s interesting because Norm, in that era that he was working in, his Batman that he did along with the Alan Grant’s scripts and your inking as well, which was a fairly big part of that. That whole run is, it’s looked back upon now and become something of a definitive seminal run.
SM: Is it really?


DB: Yep. When I interviewed Norm a few years back I had a few people email me because I just threw a couple of things on a message board saying, “Look I’m about to interview Norm, if there’s one thing you could ask him”; and pretty much everyone emailed me and said, ask him “How does it feel to draw the best Batman in the last 25 years”? Oh far out.
SM: That’s far out indeed.


DB: He doesn’t really see it that way. I think it’s only now that people are fully becoming aware of the appreciation everyone has for that, that it’s almost looked upon that you’ve got that Neal Adams Batman back in the 1960’s, in the early 1970’s and then perhaps someone like Jim Aparo or Don Newton in the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s and now it’s Norm Breyfogle and as I say you’re a part of that.
SM: I think I am nothing if not surprised. I don’t believe that the work was looked down upon at the time but I don’t believe that the work was held in the regard you’re talking about today.


DB: I always wonder whether it was because it was different. I remember reading it at the time thinking “This is not Jim Aparo”, which is no slight on Jim Aparo but it’s…
SM: I like Jim’s work.


DB: I do as well, but I thought this is just not Jim Aparo, I don’t know what this is and as the years went on I just thought “This is great”. It just struck me as being a melting pot of influences in there. I could see Frank Miller, I can see Gene Colan, I can see Neal Adams, I can see everyone and it was…
SM: Well I’m certainly a son of Neal, I’ve inked Gene, and I did a lot of Batman stuff back in those days. The two characters I think I’m most associated with are Batman and paradoxically Iron Man. I say paradoxically largely due to the fact that I never liked anything terribly mechanical. I hate using rulers, I hate using t-squares, and I hate using French curves. I use them but I never like to use them and I never thought that I would be a guy that would have such a long run on Iron Man.


DB: I think you even appeared in an Iron Man story.
SM: I appeared?
DB: You guest starred. Neal Adams drew you into an Iron Man story.
SM: He drew me… Neal drew me into an Iron Man story?
DB: He did indeed.
SM: Well I know that he drew me into a Batman story and I can tell you that story if you like. I was also on the cover of the Ali book.
DB: Yep, and you were in an Iron Man story as well.
SM: Wow, I didn’t know Neal ever drew Iron Man.
DB: He didn’t. It was a George Tuska issue and it had Iron Man at a comic book convention, meeting Roy Thomas and somehow Neal got hold of the pages and one of the characters that he drew in there was yourself.
SM: What year was this?
DB: This would have been early 1970’s. It would have been, I’m not sure what year exactly, but it was certainly the early 1970’s. I could find out exactly I suppose.
SM: Well the timing is right.
DB: Yeah. They have you pointing at Iron Man saying something like “How could anyone run around with an ugly nose on his face” because it was when Iron Man’s mask had a nose on it.
SM: Okay. You learn something every day I guess.


DB: Tell me about how he drew you into Batman.
SM: I was at the studio one night. I don’t remember what year off hand. It was a Batman story where the Joker is running around killing a bunch of guys who crossed him in some way. Batman was trying to stop the Joker from doing this. It was called: “The Joker’s Five – Way Revenge.”

Anyway, I was sitting at my drawing table and all of a sudden Neal yells, “Mitchell!!” and I snapped to and I said, “What?” I assumed I had done something wrong and he said, “Don’t move” and I said, “Okay, why?” or something along those lines and he said, “You’re going to be Bigger Melvin” and I’m going “What!” He was some guy who had doublecrossed the Joker. The first panel where you see me is kind of a profile. I froze for however many moments or minutes and the rest of my appearance is sort of Neal’s interpretation of my looks and it’s interesting, I look very Asian in a lot of shots. I didn’t know I had those kinds of eyes back in the day but perhaps I did. I’m Scot, Irish, English, and German. I’ve got blue eyes, I don’t look anything terribly Asian. So, that was how “I” made a guest appearance in that story.


DB: That’s a great story. You’ve briefly mentioned Frank Miller.
SM: Right.
DB: You inked his first Batman story.
SM: Yes I did.
DB: It doesn’t really look Frank Millerish, the Batman certainly doesn’t.
SM: Well Frank hadn’t arrived at his style yet. You’ve got to remember that the Batman story that I inked preceded Daredevil. It wasn’t really until Frank had done Daredevil that the Frank Miller style really kind of came to pass.


Now I didn’t know who Frank was. All I knew it was a Batman job, which I always liked to ink.

So when I got the pencils I said, “Gee this guy’s pretty good” and I just had a pretty fair amount of fun with it. A collector friend of mine said to me once, I was sort of a little down on my comics career at the time, and he said, “Hey man, you inked the first Frank Miller Batman job. They can’t take that away from you”, and I said, “Okay, good point”.

I had a good time with it. I got it done. I had no idea that I would be attached to someone who is now a legendary creator. Frank and I actually were really pretty good friends when I lived in New York. He had a studio which he shared with Chaykin and Simonson. It was about four or five blocks away from my studio and oftentimes when we were working late we would have dinner. Occasionally he and I would play put down the tools and go to the movies together. Usually on a Friday afternoon – one of the benefits of being freelance -- and see action movies because we had that in common.


DB: Do you ever see Frank anymore or?
SM: The last time I saw Frank was at Comic-Com a couple of years ago. We say hello to one another, and it was cordial. But Frank has gone a certain way in the world and I’ve gone a certain way in the world. Whatever closeness we had was really due to proximity. We were also young and the caste system that kind of exists was not in place. We were young, in the same biz, liked the same stuff, and that was enough.

I have no animosity towards Frank and in point of fact I think he’s one of the few comic book creators whose work I still really enjoy and I’m a big fan of Sin City.


DB: And back to Iron Man. You inked Iron Man over quite a number of different artists. Which one of them leapt out to you?
SM: I think the guy who I was most in sync with was Luke McDonnell. One of the things that was nice about working with Luke was that Luke was in New York and I was in New York. We would run into each other every once in a while and we would talk about the work. We would talk about the things that he liked in my work. I would talk about things I liked in his work. I always wound up pushing him to use more black because I always thought that that gave his work a lot more strength. Actually one of the guys he was looking at for spotting blacks was Al Williamson. He liked the way Al used black, he especially liked the sort of double lighting effects that Al would use in his work and he kind of found a way to use those effects in his own work. I always had a really, really good time inking Luke’s stuff. Luke’s stuff was a bit cartoonier than I was kind of used to but I thought that for some odd reason we had chemistry as penciller and inker.


DB: They were certainly good issues to read back in the day. Batman of course as you said that was one of the ones that you worked on extensively. There was a wide range of artists that you worked on there.
SM: It seemed that I had worked on virtually every guy who had pencilled Batman at one time or another in the 1980’s. I inked Don Newton’s stuff, I did some Irv Novick stuff. I worked on some Colan stuff, but I don’t know if those were Batman stories per se. Might have been Batman in World’s Finest. I know I inked at least one World’s Finest.

I inked Garcia Lopez and I think the Garcia Lopez job that I’d done, the first Batman job I’d done over Garcia Lopez helped my career quite a bit at DC.


DB: How so?
SM: Joe Orlando liked it and that was the back in the day when they were offering people contracts. You had work for a year and if you delivered all your jobs on time they gave you an extra book’s worth of money as a bonus.


DB: That’s always a good thing for someone to get the job done.
SM: As a freelancer it’s a nice incentive. I was a little concerned about taking the contract because Marvel was always looming. I never really thought of myself as a Marvel guy per se. Shooter I think, because of the Garcia Lopez job and the Marvel Team Up #4 job, was anxious to have me work for Marvel. I think Shooter was always anxious to have anybody who worked for DC at Marvel.


DB: Take the opposition away.
SM: Very much so. Shooter was always big on raiding. Jim was a very competitive guy and Jim was always interested in sticking it to DC, let’s say.
DB: Well you can’t blame him for that.
SM: No I could never blame him and if you ever get around to asking me about Jim Shooter I have an interesting point of view about Jim.


DB: Oh well, now you can’t give me an opening like that and just let that slide. That’s just not happening.
SM: In a nutshell my experience with Jim and Marvel was like the Charles Dickens line from Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the...”
DB: “...worst of times”
SM: I had a great experience working for Jim until one day Jim decided he didn’t want me to work for Marvel anymore. Let me backtrack a bit. What was great about Jim was that Jim was the only executive I ever worked for who absolutely, positively, completely was on the side of a freelancer in terms of being able to make a living. Jim had been a freelancer, and Jim felt that if you could make a living, if you could pay your rent, your taxes and appease yourself etcetera, you would be a greater asset for Marvel than if you were having a hard time making ends meet. So Jim always tried to give you the most he could within his parameters, to help you make the best possible living.

Case in point, one day I went into Jim’s office just to say hi because he’s my client, I’ve got to go in and say hi to him. Personally I kind of liked Jim. He said, “How’s it going?” and I said, somewhat casually, I said, “Oh you know it’s going well but I wouldn’t mind making some more money”. Every freelancer’s going to say that; and he said, “What are you getting paid”, and I told him what my rate was and then he said, “Okay, I’m giving you a raise”. He gave me a $5.00 a page raise. This was a nice raise at the time.

So the thing that was great about Jim and I’ve always said this was, you could walk into his office, have some sort of question or issue that needed to be dealt with and you would walk out with an answer. It was a one stop shopping kind of thing. It wasn’t, “Let me ask about this, let me run it by management, let me check and see, budgets on the book” or any number of those excuses that a lot of people could come up with. Jim was the man and he could make those decisions. It was great to work for him on that side of the street.

On the other side of the street, if Jim for one reason or another decided, and Len Wein came up with this turn of phrase, “With Jim one day you would do ’the thing’ and no-one would ever know what the thing was, it was never the same twice, but it was just something you either did or Jim imagined you did or thought you did and then all of a sudden you would fall out of favour”; and so one day, I think it was on my Luke McDonnell Iron Man run, Mark Gruenwald said to me essentially, “I’ve got to let you go” and he was essentially firing me for doing good work which was on time.
DB: Okay.
SM: And I’m going “How come?” and he says to me, “Because Shooter said to do it”. I was pretty pissed about that.
DB: I don’t think I’d be happy.
SM: I didn’t do anything to earn it and so that was the “worst of times” side of Jim.

I remember one night years ago I got a call from Bob Layton, on a really, really hot summer night in New York. Bob was late with a Hercules book. He called me up and said, “Steve, I’m really in a pinch. Can you spare some time and just help me with this job?” My studio didn’t have air-conditioning at the time and it was a really rough night. It was so humid, I would put my forearm down on the page and the page would come up attached to the forearm; I had the time and I didn’t want to work late at the studio, so I said I would help Bob out.

Now Bob was a guy that I had kind of an industry relationship with, I wouldn’t say that we were really chummy, but we knew each other. He was a guy looking for some help, and guys helped guys out back then.

I went over to the Marvel office and just started to ink away along with a couple of other guys, I don’t remember who they were. But I remember Shooter was the last guy to leave that night and first guy to come in the morning. He said, “You guys have been here all night, what do you want to eat?” and he fed us. He got our breakfast himself. Bob paid me to help him out, but Jim also gave me some combat pay for helping Marvel out.

So Jim was a real study in contrast. He was a guy who was great to work for, and then all of a sudden he was not the greatest guy in the world to be around, professionally.
DB: That’s very odd.
SM: I hope that answered that question.


DB: Yeah, it certainly did. Now backtracking a bit, back to the Batman thing. The artists that you’ve mentioned, Irv Novick, Don Newman, Gene Colan and Jose Garcia-Lopez…
SM: Oh also Dick Giordano.
DB: Dick Giordano. Now that’s five very unique distinctive styles. You were doing some of them almost at the same time. How did you get your head around that? Is it slightly schizophrenic in a way to adjust style of inking and attack?
SM: Well it wasn’t really schizophrenic, for me it was a treat because it was different and any good penciller is always fun to ink. All of those guys are good pencillers and some of those guys I inked better than others.


I think with Newton, I sometimes tried to pull Newton towards my way of thinking. Dick and I were very much in sync with one another but then there was the mentor-student relationship. My work to one degree or another bears some resemblance to Dick’s work or has at times. So I think he and I were in sync stylistically.

Novick was tough. Garcia-Lopez was not a problem. Garcia-Lopez just draws so beautifully it was a pleasure. Colan was the biggest challenge but I liked working on Colan’s stuff.

The thing with Gene Colan, and I don’t know if anyone has talked to you about Gene Colan, is that every line that you make is a choice. If you’ve ever seen Gene’s pencils they are expressionistic and impressionistic. Gene is all about grey and what Gene does is he creates the illusion of real drawing and he does it very well. But when you have to ink that stuff, you’ve got to make a bunch of choices and the choices that he would make in grey tone are very different from the choices I would have to make in black.

But I loved inking Gene’s stuff. It was very challenging and I felt that it forced me to grow.


DB: Don Newton, only now people are starting to really, really appreciate him. But artists always knew. Joe Rubinstein’s told me that he thought Don Newton was one of the best he ever worked with.
SM: I think Don was always underrated. There are a couple of other guys I think were underrated, but Don was always highly underrated. Don was mostly a guy who drew stuff in medium shot and because he didn’t have quite the dynamism of some of his other peers, he was probably considered to be not as good, which of course was complete hooey. Don was very, very good.


I like the way he drew, his stuff had personality. Nobody drew like Don did, which I think, is always an indication of why he was very underrated.

I’ll tell you a story about Don Heck. Now historically Don Heck was a guy that had been crapped on left and right, mostly famously by Harlan Ellison in an issue of The Comics Journal. I always liked Don’s stuff because, again, it was idiosyncratic, nobody drew like Heck. But historically he had a bad case of really shitty inkers, once he stopped inking his own stuff.

Now when Don left Marvel where most of the shitty inking took place and he came over to DC, better inkers worked on his stuff. I used to share studio space with Bob Smith, and I think it was a Friday afternoon and I was sitting at my drawing table and stroking away there with the old 170 which was my pen nib of choice. Bob walked into the studio and he said to me, “Do you want to see something really nice?” I said, “Sure”. I walked over to his drawing table and he pulled out an issue of Justice League that Don had pencilled. Bob and I looked at these pencils and we looked at the quality of the drawing and we were really impressed by how well he drew. He had a crummy rap as a penciller due to the fact that he’d had a lot of bad inking.

Don drew women extremely well. Beautiful women, almost effortlessly, with very little line work, and that was kind of a revelation for me. Bob did a great job inking them. I actually think Bob’s inks were as good or better than anybody else who ever inked Don’s stuff. Bob was sympathetic to Don’s pencils and then he put his own sort of signature style on the pencils.


DB: Don Heck, I agree with everything you’ve said. I’ve always thought that he’d gotten a really, really bad rap. The same as Don Newton, no-one’s ever drawn like Don Heck’s since and it’s a very distinct, you pick up anything that’s unsigned by Don Heck, you know that he drew it, it’s...
SM: Absolutely.
DB: It’s always as distinctive as Jack Kirby or John Romita, it’s there. You know it’s him.
SM: Well that’s kind of a trick isn’t it Daniel?
DB: Yeah.
SM: Being idiosyncratic.
DB: There’s a lot of people you can pick up, especially now, and you go “Is that Jim Lee or is that just someone trying to be Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane” or whatever. But I suppose it was the same back in the Neal Adams era as well; there were a lot of artists that were “doing” Neal Adams.

But Don Heck, I don’t know whether the people sat there and went, “Well I’m not going to do Don Heck because I think it’s bad” or “I’m not going to do Don Heck because I don’t know how to do Don Heck”.
SM: Well the thing about Don was that Don’s style was, uniquely, Don’s style and it wasn’t easily accessible. There was no line that you could do, no rendering pattern that you could do that would make it look like Don Heck. It just was Don Heck. A lot of guys figured out a way how to emulate Neal’s work. A lot of guys were kicking into what Neal kind of created which was sort of a house style for comics in the 1960’s. There was no more influential guy in the late 1960’s than Neal. More guys looked at Neal’s stuff, more guys wanted to draw like Neal, more guys wanted to ink like Neal than almost anybody. I think Neal was the first guy that everybody said, one way or another, “Man I want to draw like that”. Neal really turned the business upside down and brought comics from a primarily a cartooning medium into more of an illustrative medium.

Newspaper strips over here had been doing illustrative cartooning for decades, but when Neal sort of showed up, he brought that illustrative thing to mainstream comics. Neal, to me, was the guy who turned the business from a cartooning medium into an illustrative/cartooning medium.


DB: Definitely, definitely.
SM: Neal had a tremendous impact on everybody and especially if you were in New York and you were in the loop.


DB: It seems that Continuity was certainly the hot centre. Everyone that I have spoken to, Alan Weiss through to Alan Kupperberg, you, everyone, went to Continuity at some stage, Bob McLeod, Terry Austin, Mike Netzer, its incredible the amount of people I’ve spoken to that went through those doors.
SM: It was the club house because all of the guys used to go there and hang out. But it was also the King’s court. If Neal was the centre of the universe in comics at the time, and one could make an argument for that to be the case, well everybody wanted to go near the sun and feel the heat. I’m mixing my metaphors.


DB: Again with the unique artist styles, Alan Weiss that’s another one that’s got such a unique look.
SM: I inked some of Alan’s stuff. I met Alan when he first came to New York. I was a fan; he was a guy from Las Vegas. We met at a panel at one of the famous Phil Seuling Conventions. I just started talking, there’s no other way to put it and he mentioned he wanted to meet Neal or something like that. I was a very sort of pushy fan and I said, “Oh you want to meet Neal? Okay.” and according to Alan I just got up and I yelled, “Hey Neal!” which cracked up Alan no end and I was a conduit for introducing Alan to Neal.

But the thing Alan always had when he came to town, even in the beginning, was Alan really could draw well. The only thing that I think kept Alan back was unacceptance on the part of a number of editors for new guys. It was tough to break into the club at DC or Marvel. But also I don’t think that Alan’s storytelling was that great. I always thought that as well as he drew, he was not the world’s greatest storyteller. Now Alan of course would say, “What are you talking about; you don’t know what you’re saying”. But that’s my opinion and I believe that that was generally the knock on Alan’s work, certainly in the beginning.


DB: I think one of the things that has made Alan as popular as he is, and I suppose the same could be said for again Don Newton, is that it’s such a small body of work. With Alan, he’s told me that that was deliberate because he got bored drawing the same characters over and over. So he’d only draw a character for one or two issues and then move onwards and it’s left such a small body of work that everyone wants to see more of.
SM: Well the problem with Alan was that I think Alan had focus issues. I know he was a very dedicated artist, but I don’t know whether or not he wanted to work as hard as you had to work to really have a major career in comics.
DB: You and Alan go way back.
SM: The greatest artist who was never a star in comics.
DB: Depends who you talk to. I think he was a star.
SM: Here’s the problem with Alan. He never had a long run on anything; also Alan was not fond of deadlines. I think he followed in Neal’s tradition. Alan doesn’t really have that big of body of work in comics and I think that was Alan’s fault more than anybody else’s.


DB: I think that also helps his mystique. I said this to Alan as well, I said that because he only did a couple of issues of a certain title or whatever, he’s always left people wanting more and he’s walked away from them. So he’s certainly created his own little mystique there, his own little air of mystery around him. Everyone that looks at, for example, the Avengers issues that he drew and they want to see more of it but it’s never going to happen.

He never got bad I suppose. Every job that he did was a good job and he didn’t stay on a book long enough to become stale.
SM: He was known in the business, but I don’t think he was known in the marketplace. You’ve got to do a book for about a year before anybody knows that you’ve been doing it. Kind of strange but that’s the way it goes.


Had he found a book or a character that he was really suited to and had done, I’m not even talking a long run, I’m talking like maybe six, seven, eight issues maybe a year, then the mystique would even be greater because people would have had a chance to sort of really see his work. Alan’s a very talented guy.


DB: Oh no argument there. I’ve always been impressed by him, still am. The things I’ve seen him do lately, commissions and the like just blow me away.
SM: He’s good.
DB: He’s very good.
SM: That’s why I still feel he was like the greatest talented guy that nobody ever really knew. There were a couple of guys like Alan who didn’t do a whole lot of work when they were around. It’s good that David Mazzucchelli worked on Batman. Otherwise nobody would have ever remembered him and I really like Mazzucchelli’s work. I really wish he could have done more, but I think he had a real hard time drawing to deadline. I think that was an issue for him; and guys like Ralph Reese, I thought Ralph was really talented man.

Ralph inked an issue of Conan over Gil Kane that I thought just rocked back in the day. I said, “This is what you want”. You want those dynamics that Gil brings as a penciller and the draftsmanship and the rendering that Ralph was bringing as an inker. Had those two guys done Conan on a regular basis that would really be considered very high watermark work for the day. But I don’t think Ralph could have kept it up.

Marshall Rogers of course. I think the greatest example is Michael Golden. There’s a guy who just couldn’t get it out, get it done.


DB: It’s a shame because I look at his artwork and it just blew me away every time I saw it.
SM: Everybody in comics was a Michael Golden fan. He was an artist’s artist and he was also a fan’s artist. He was great. I used to share a studio with Sean McManus and Sean had a loose leaf book of all of his covers in plastic sleeves. He wanted to be able to just pull it off the shelf and refer to it whenever possible. To me that’s a pretty high compliment.

Nobody was like Golden. I think Golden was one of the most unique talents; and to quote a line from “Serpico,” I think he was “uniquely unique.”

Golden could draw, man he could draw; and he could make pictures and he could tell stories and his characters… the acting that they could do! A lot of guys can draw but a lot of guys aren’t really great with the acting part. A lot of the guys working today are better at it. But Golden was 20 years ahead of them. He was an extraordinarily talented guy who could have been one of the all time greats. I guess he was, but it seemed that he couldn’t put the pedal to the metal, focus, and produce more work.


DB: It almost makes you wonder why people don’t focus. whether they just can’t be bothered. It’s the only thing I can think of.
SM: I don’t think it’s really that, Daniel, I think part of it is just being able to sit there and focus on it. I used to share a studio with a guy named Rick Magyar.
DB: Yep I’ve heard of him.
SM: And Rick was very talented inker, maybe one of the five nicest guys I’ve ever known in comics.

But every once in a while he would just vanish and no-one would hear from him. The work was not getting done, it was late and I think every once in a while the enormity of what he was doing would just sort of paralyse him in such a way he couldn’t get it done.

A lot of it is about getting it done and I think that for Golden and a lot of guys, just being able to focus on it and get it done was a big problem.
DB: It’s such a shame.
SM: It is a shame because some of the greatest guys did not really do much work. Look at Steranko. As a kid I loved Steranko’s stuff, I thought Steranko was the second coming. I’ve never seen anything like it. The problem was Steranko had a real hard time getting it done.

The thing about comics that you have to remember is that the comic book business was a periodical business. In fact Sol Harrison always called the books magazines. The concept of doing comics that were late, just to make them better, was something that the business did not accept and Neal always used to say, “Well you know we’re doing good stuff, you know it’s good”. But good and late wasn’t the way things needed to be done then and now.

A lot of editors who were artists probably understood and they wanted good stuff in their books. The stuff had to be done, it had to appear every month and guys who didn’t get it done every month were not given as much work. They were considered to be somewhat problematic.

But during the 1970’s, late 1960’s, 1970’s, when the blue jean generation arrived making deadlines was sort of tough, because a lot of guys wanted to do the job the best way they knew how and sometimes you couldn’t do the job the best job in 30 days or 60 days.

A lot of guys had a hard time making deadlines. I know that the reason why Mike Grell was inked by Vince Colletta. It was because Mike always had a hard time making deadlines and Vince could get it done, sometimes over just a few days, and make the deadline.

I’ll tell you why Vince Colletta got work. Do you want to know why?
DB: I think I know why. You tell me or do you want me to tell you first?
SM: I asked Sol one day, “Why do you give Vinnie so much work?” and he said it to me, “Well basically if you have a job on Friday that needs to be inked by Monday…
DB: It’ll turn up.
SM: …Vinnie will get it done” and Sol said, “It won’t be good, but it will be done and sometimes it needs to get done”.
DB: Don Perlin told me exactly the same thing with exactly the same wording, ironically enough because I actually asked him that question. I said, “Why did Vinnie Colletta get work?” and he told me precisely that.
SM: Vinnie was a means to an end and the business needed a means to an end.
DB: Yep. He’d say that he’d erased things but it would turn up and that’s all that mattered.
SM: Yeah but the thing is it wasn’t good but you could send it to Chemical Colour Plant and they can make plates.


DB: Yep. Atlas, you worked at Atlas.
SM: Yes I did.
DB: What do you remember about those days because that was an explosion of talented and explosions, an explosion of a comic book company that just went as quickly as it came.
SM: Well I’ll sort of make the Atlas story as clear as possible. First, Atlas was started for two reasons.

Martin Goodman who used to own Magazine Management needed to have an office to go to every day, if for no other reason where he could make phone calls, schedule having lunch with people, take a nap and occasionally have an opinion about stuff. It was a way for him to be retired, but still in the loop. His son, Chip Goodman, who I always thought was an idiot, was essentially running the company. Chip really didn’t give a shit about anything except being a men’s magazine publisher. In fact they bought a magazine called Swank which was, I would say at best, it was a B- or a C+ level men’s magazine. They were trying to upgrade it. That was back in the day when Playboy was getting competition from Penthouse, there’s probably one or two other mags back in the day but Chip wanted to make Swank kind of on that level. Chip was involved with Atlas when he sort of had the time or when he had the interest, which was occasionally.

Jeff Rovin had been hired to be the Editor. Jeff had been a friend of mine and the thing about Jeff is that Jeff always thought he was the smartest guy in the room. After about six to eight months whatever it was, Jeff had written a letter to Chip which ultimately got him fired and got me fired.

But it was an interesting time. Jeff wanted to shake things up, he offered much better money than most guys did, and he offered, I think, an opportunity for a lot of guys to think out of the box. Those books were very interesting for the two to four issues that they were out.
DB: I’ve picked up quite a few of the books over the last year and they don’t look that bad.
SM: They were good books.
DB: Yeah.
SM: I think a lot of guys did good work for those books. I wrote a couple of stories for them. I was sort of the production manager/ art director. The Atlas A that was at the top of the books with the banner, that was my design. It was an interesting place to work but I knew that Chip Goodman was not going to be a good guy to work for. I realised that, sadly, fairly early on, and while we did very, very interesting work, it was not a really fun place to be.
DB: Well certainly a lot of talent that went through it.
SM: A lot of talent because everybody thought, “Wait a second, we can make more money?” Remember it’s before royalties, and our page rates were very good. Neal Adams said the best line about Atlas, “Too much money, too little sense”. I would have to for the most part agree with that.

There was exciting stuff being done. It wasn’t always good, but what was nice about it was that it was fresh.
DB: A lot of it seems to be derivative of Marvel, I guess obviously so after all they hired Larry Lieber.
SM: Well Chip really wanted it to be more like Marvel. Whenever it sort of went away from being Marvelesque, I think Chip was unhappy. But I think that there were a lot of guys who had opportunities to do interesting stuff. Ernie Colon did interesting stuff, Pat Boyette did interesting stuff, Mike Sekowsky did some interesting stuff, and Larry did some interesting stuff. Ditko had done some work inked by Woody. Simonson had done a really good job. I got John Severin to draw a story that I wrote, which was thrilling to me.

Yeah, it was derivative, but if you look between the lines it was still very interesting. In a lot of ways it was just different from what the other companies were producing.

There are also guys who weren’t normally comic book guys working on the books, like Howard Nostrand who did Target. Howard was a newspaper strip guy; he never really did a lot of comics.
DB: I always look at Howard Nostrand and think of Mad Magazine.
SM: Kind of, kind of. Russ Heath did a story for Thrilling Adventure Stories. It was a police story that I recall being a really, really nice job. Atlas was kind of a grand experiment that never ultimately paid off, which is too bad.
DB: Larry Lieber just doesn’t talk about those days anymore. It must have hurt him for some reason.
SM: Yeah Jeff and Larry were definitely oil and water. Jeff, I think, didn’t care for the way Larry went about his work and Larry was the nicest, sweetest guy in the world. I liked Larry very much.

But, Jeff wanted to do what he wanted to do. Larry wanted to do Marvel comics because that’s what he was weaned on. Jeff was trying to do something different and I think both guys did good books; they just went about them differently.
DB: I spoke to Larry not so long ago and I asked him about Atlas. He just went quiet so I asked him, “Would you prefer not to talk about that?” He replied, “Yeah”. “Oh okay, that’s fine, on to the next thing”. It certainly left a lot of damage behind.
SM: For Larry or for everybody else?
DB: Well I’d imagine for everybody else because I figure if Larry felt that way then obviously other people did. I know Alan Kupperberg; he doesn’t seem to have any problems with it.
SM: When I got fired Alan replaced me.
DB: As I said, he certainly doesn’t appear to have any kind of bad memory so to speak about it. I don’t know, obviously it affected people differently.
SM: It wasn’t a great place to work. There was always an air of some tension. Part of that, or a great deal of it I think, was based on the way Jeff went about his work.

Jeff could be a fun guy to be around, we’re still friends, I like him personally, but sometimes he just had a tendency to be a bit too serious about it. The thing about comics is that it’s supposed to be fun, that it’s supposed to be a job where you’re having fun doing your job. Whether you’re an editor or production guy or freelancer, that’s the whole appeal, it’s show business; and Jeff was occasionally a tad too businesslike. Jeff was occasionally opinionated about things that he really was not entitled to be opinionated about; and I think that in the end it was another one of those “best of times, worst of times” kinds of things.

I’m glad I worked there, but in the long run it didn’t do me much good.
DB: It certainly didn’t do much to enhance reputations I suppose. Now you’ve not done a lot in recent times. What’s sort of happened there? Is it just natural attrition through the industry or did you step back from it?
SM: There are not a lot of guys my age working in comics as freelancers and my last comics work was the run on Detective with Shawn Martinborough. We didn’t quite gel, he and I. I knew how I went about inking comics and he knew how he wanted it to look and he pencilled it that way. Shawn’s pencils are so tight you could have photoshopped them and they would be inked pencils. Any deviation from any line weight, any deviation from the way he wanted it was wrong, there was no allowing for interpretation on my part. There was a bit of a shit storm between him and me and the penciller, ultimately, is the guy who wins out in the long run.

Shawn didn’t like what I was doing and what I said was, “Well I’m doing it the way my instincts tell me to do it” and then I said, “Why don’t we let Mark Chiarello arbitrate it? See what Mark thinks.” Mark had no real problem based on what I understood. But Bob Shrek was in a position where he had a penciller and an inker who were not in sync as far as he was concerned.
The other issue was that Shawn was always late and I always got the book done close to on time, if not on time. I would have to turn a book around faster than my normal allotted amount of time for inks. Shawn was often late and that’s why there were a number of different fill in pencillers. Phil Hester did two issues and I would say that of all the jobs I’ve ever done, I would say those two issues by Phil Hester are probably two of the best jobs I’ve ever inked. Phil and I, I think, were just naturally compatible.

Anyway somewhere after that I was fired and that was even after I was making Shawn look good by getting the book done on time. Once I was let go, no-one wanted to hire me. I harbour a certain degree of bitterness over how things shook out. I have absolutely no love for Bob Shrek who I think is a weasel. I think that he didn’t really see the forest for the trees and no matter what I say, it’s just going to seem like I’m a bitter freelancer.

But frankly, I was kind of done. Comics had stopped being fun for me. I just wasn’t enjoying it after a career of 20 plus years. I’m happy to be retired from comics.
DB: It’s a very good career too. If you look back on it you did a lot of good work with a lot of incredibly talented people.
SM: Well I really appreciate that Daniel. I look back at my career and I just look at all the stuff I didn’t like. I think that there were some guys I had real compatibility with, as I said, like Phil Hester. I had a run for Milestone with John Paul Leon on Static and I think he and I were very well suited to one another. I like my Iron Man stuff; I like my Brave & Bold stuff. I inked about five jobs with Dick Giordano and I’m very pleased with how those turned out. I like for the most part my Gene Colan stuff. Then there are guys who I just never clicked with, and it’s funny I can’t really remember those guys. It’s almost like I want to forget that.

DB: That’s only fair enough, why bother focusing on them when you look at the names you’ve just mentioned. That’s a gallery of artists that most people would kill to have worked on.
SM: Yeah and there are guys who I wish I’d worked with who I never really got a real chance. I only inked one John Buscema job. It was a Conan Magazine job and I frankly have to admit I wasn’t good enough to do that job then. I think if I was to get, if John was to come back from the grave and say alright here’s that one job of pencils that you wanted, I think I’d probably do a much better job today than I did then.

There are a few other guys. I would have loved to have inked a whole job of Neal’s. I’ve inked a number of things of Neal’s. I did some uncredited background work on a number of jobs, inked a few fingers here, a finger there but I never had a job of Neal’s to ink and I think I would have had a really good time. I would have been scared to death, but I think that would have been fun; and there are a bunch of guys that I would have liked to have worked on. I wasn’t a great inker, but I wasn’t a bad inker. On days I was a very good inker, on days I was an okay inker and that was due completely and totally to who I was working with.

I believe that casting is an important part of an editor’s job and if you cast the right guys together you can get really nice results and I think that when I was cast with the right guys the results were good.
DB: Absolutely.
SM: And there were a few guys where that was not the case and I would be the first one to admit it.
DB: Why focus on them? For me the first thing I think of is the Breyfogle stuff and then the rest of it flows after that. When I first saw that Breyfogle stuff, I thought you’d only just broken into the industry then. It was only later that I thought, “Hang on that’s the same guys name that, oh okay”, so there you go.
SM: People sort of know you from when they first saw you.
DB: Absolutely. It wouldn’t be when I first saw you though. When I first saw your work, it would have been way back when, it’s when I first noticed your name on a book would have been on that Breyfogle stuff. So and there’s nothing wrong with that, definitely not.
SM: Not at all. The other thing I was once told, is that nobody really knows who you are and nobody really knows what book you work on until you’ve done it for about a year. Dick Giordano said that once a long time ago and I believe that to be mostly true. Certainly that now because of the internet and the amount of coverage that comics has, that’s different. But back in the day when there weren’t as many avenues to promote comics, people had to sort of find your stuff on a regular basis before they knew you were doing something or before they knew who you were.

I think Alan Weiss for example was one of those guys. Had Alan done a book for a year, I think Alan would be even better known today, but I don’t think Alan ever lasted on anything really that long.
DB: I think about three issues. I think the most he ever did was the Tom Strong stuff that he’s done recently and that’s only about four or five issues. So what have you been doing since?
SM: I’m currently producing DVD special features. In addition to comics, I had done film journalism when I lived in New York years ago. I’ve written a couple of low budget feature films that have been made. I’ve directed second unit on about eight or nine pictures and I’m also a huge movie fan. So I have the skill set for this kind of work.

I started working on DVD special features a couple of years ago, with the old Combat TV series which is a show that I loved from the 1960’s and I produced five seasons worth of special features. I produced three documentaries. I produced I think 30 some odd commentary tracks and I’m on some of those commentary tracks as a host, not because I made that choice, but because the people I was working for said, “When you do the interviews you’re very chatty. So do you mind being on the track?” I said, “If that’s what you want that’s fine”; and there was a show on last year called Sleeper Cell and I produced the documentary for that and I’m currently working on doing new documentary material for the original Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again.
DB: Good God. That’s…
SM: The two non-Bond…
DB: The two non-Bond Bond’s. That’s terrific, so many artists I speak to when they finish with the comic books they sort of go to and they do commissions, you know I’ll freely admit, some of them become bitter and they don’t have much to fall back on but if anything, you’ve gone into the stratosphere with it.
SM: I’m trying to make it work and the thing is I really enjoy it and I think that I’m actually better at it than I was at comics. I always am surprised when people tell me they like my comics work because when I look at my comics work I just, I don’t care for most of it as we said before. I’m not going to crap on somebody for liking my work. That would be stupid, although some guys will do that.

But comics was great when I did it. I did it at a great time. One of the things that was great about being part of the blue jean generation is that I got a chance to work next to all my heroes. I got a chance to work with them.

Back in the day, none of us wanted to replace them; we just wanted to be part of their club. No animosity whatsoever to any of the guys that preceded us.
DB: And you’ve become a peer, you’re one of their peers.
SM: Yeah. You get to hang out with guys who gave you pleasure when you were a fan. I have to tell you something. I met John Severin years and years and years later at a San Diego Comic-Con and I told him that I wrote a story for him when he worked for Atlas and his attitude was, “Yeah I don’t remember it”. His attitude towards his work is , “The next job is the next job”; and that crushed me because Severin always was one of my favourite comic book artists, he still is.

Pound for pound, dollar for dollar nobody draws as well as he does, and his stuff wasn’t overly dynamic but man oh man oh man was he a great storyteller! He just could outdraw anybody and it was idiosyncratic and everything that’s good about comics. So that one time when I got to meet one of the guys who I had most admired it was tinged with some sadness I think. In fact when I met most of my heroes they were all disappointing to me to one degree or another, which is also a bit sad.
DB: I’ve only had that a couple of times, thankfully since I’ve started doing this. the only one I’ve had that did upset me was John Byrne but I think he does that to everyone. So I’m in good company there.
SM: Yeah, I’m not a big fan of his in any way.
DB: He took an instant dislike to me because of my email address.
SM: Well then that’s his problem isn’t it?
DB: Absolutely. It did hurt because I did like those X-Men, I still do like them. I’ve always said to people, I like his work however I don’t like him now. I like his work but I don’t think much of him.
SM: Well I’ll tell you the list of my favourite guys in comics over my lifetime. Joe Kubert. I absolutely love Joe Kubert, loved his work, he’s a great guy, I’m very fond of him personally.

Archie Goodwin; simply hands down my all time favourite guy in comics. He gave me my first writing jobs. I wrote a couple of backup stories when he was doing war books at DC. When I was a fan and I used to visit him at Warren, he always shared artwork with me. One of the truly greatest people I have ever known, and funnier than almost anybody I’ve ever met because when Archie was funny he would sort of turn it on and off like a light switch and it would come at you completely by surprise and he was sometimes shockingly funny. On the other hand he’s the most mild mannered, easy going guy you’ve ever met. Loved Archie, loved Archie.

Mark Chiarello is just a great guy; a good friend, enormously talented and really an important part of DC Comics.

Tim Sale’s a great guy I love his stuff. I think Tim is the best guy working today.

Dick Giordano was my mentor, my friend and a great guy. I learned a lot from him and I always enjoyed his company. I liked Alan Weiss a great deal. I’ve always liked Alan’s work, it was very appealing to me.

I’m probably the only guy who ever got along with Steve Ditko.
DB: You’re the certainly only one I’ve met that says that.
SM: Well for some reason Steve and I always kind of got along. Steve was an odd duck to be sure, but he and I always got along. Maybe because our names are Steve, I don’t really know.

Gray Morrow was always great. Witty, urbane, you name a guy and I obviously have an opinion about them.

I like doing comics, I had a great time doing comics, I like being in comics during the 1970’s, I liked being in New York during the 1970’s. I like being young in New York in comics in the 1970’s and I feel bad because none of the guys today will really know the kind of fraternal atmosphere that existed back in the day. It was a nice fraternity to be a part of. I never finished college and so the fraternity that I had in comics was the fraternity that I didn’t have in college. So that was nice too.

DB: One of the things that has always struck me is how much inkers bring to a job and how much that they don’t. Some inkers, like Klaus Janson or Alfredo Alcala, can overpower a penciller’s style with their own ink style, their own particular style. As an inker how do you get around that?
SM: Every inker is different. I would believe that Alfredo was expected to make it look like his stuff when he inked it. Alfredo had such a distinguished kind of line and when you hire Alfredo you knew that the job was going to look like an Alfredo Alcala job. It just wouldn’t have his approach to storytelling or composition, but it would definitely look like Alfredo.

Klaus has always been one of my favourite inkers. I think I’ve always envied his nimbleness with tools. He’s one of those guys you put a pen or a brush in his hand, it doesn’t really matter, he’s always able to get a great result.

I think inkers are hired for two reasons. They’re hired to just get the job done, just the pragmatic side of it and then inkers are also hired to bring perhaps something of themselves, which is why guys like Dick Giordano were great over certain pencillers and guys like Joe Sinnott were great over certain pencillers. If you’re a Marvel editor and you want that Marvel style, well you don’t hire Dick Giordano or you don’t hire a guy like that, you hire a guy like Joe Sinnott or Frank Giacoia; and the flipside is true.

Dick had really defined I think the DC look some time in the late 1960’s and the 1970’s and even into the 1980’s. If DC had a house style then I think Dick was kind of responsible for that.

Since I was a son of Giordano that was the style that I always gravitated towards. The one thing that I always liked were guys where I could use a lot of black.
DB: Ageism has always been a huge problem with comic books. It goes back to the 1960’s and even through to the 1950’s where once someone reached a certain age they were overlooked for the young talent.
SM: Well I can tell you from experience that anybody who came in during the blue jean generation really had to sing for their supper. There was a very strong bias against anybody young and anybody new back in the day. There was this tremendous reluctance to use anybody young at DC and at Marvel.

Comics used to be a club and you really had to break your ass to get into the club. There was also the trust issue. Can you get the work done? DC used to be called “National Periodical Publications”. They were periodicals and periodicals came out…
DB: Periodically.
SM: … monthly, bi-monthly, periodically, however you want to look at it and it had to come out on time; and one of the problems with the new guys was ultimately can anybody get their work done on time. As far as I know out of all the guys who came in during that period Chaykin was about the only guy who routinely made his deadlines.

Chaykin was very, very proud of the fact that he made his deadlines. They were very reluctant to use anybody young and new; at that time ageism wasn’t an issue, and I’ve got news for you, it wasn’t an issue with the young guys either.

None of us wanted to replace those guys. All of us, or mostly all of us I can’t speak for absolute certainty for everybody, but everybody I know, we wanted to work next to those guys. It was as much as a treat for us to be sitting at the drawing boards next to these guys. I never wanted to replace Jack Abel, I didn’t want to replace Murphy Anderson, I wanted to sit with Jack Abel, I wanted to sit with Murphy Anderson and work alongside these guys.

It wasn’t until the generations, I think, after my generation, where those guys thought they were better than us, and that we all needed to get the boot. I’ll say it for the record, I think that sucks.

DB: It seems to be almost a complete 180 to when you were in then because now they’ll go for the young people and go for the people just breaking in at the expense of the established artists.
SM: Sadly we live in a world where new is new and everybody’s into the concept of new, but new isn’t always better. In every generation when you have new guys, they bring along something different and something of value. I think generally most guys who grew up in comics today and I’m not a real comic fan so I really can’t speak with any real serious marketplace overview, but a lot of the guys who do comics today I think are better draftsman than perhaps the generations before.

I think every generation gets better in terms of draftsmanship and that’s what they bring, but the flipside is why get rid of guys who are good at their job, who know the craft and know the art and also can get it done. The thing I always hear is nobody can make a deadline anymore.
DB: Yet back in the day you look at someone, even John Byrne that was pumping out four monthly books and they were team books, and managed to get the deadlines on those. It’s incredible; and even before going back before that I think of Ross Andru, he’d put out about five books a month and managed to do pencils and Esposito inked them and they all came out on time. Incredible.
SM: It was a factory kind of business.
DB: Yeah.
SM: It was about output. A friend of mine has started a publishing company, does Japanese Manga but beforehand he was thinking about doing American style comics and the one piece of advice I gave him is, “Well whoever you hire, make sure they can get it done”.

See getting it done at the end of the day is what really matters and he never really quite forgot that and I said, “There are a lot of people who have huge reservoirs of talent, but working on a regular basis and getting it done to deadline, that isn’t part of that reservoir of talent”.
DB: Well see now it’s the thing with no-one will solicit a book until it’s finished. If you were doing a six issue mini series, they want Issue 6 at least pencilled before they’ll even put out Issue 1 or even say that they’ve got it going.
SM: Oh was that true?
DB: Yep, it’s a bit of a shame.
SM: It’s… but…
DB: But then it’s there.
SM: There’s a reason for that though, Daniel. It’s because historically you would hire guys who were really talented and you wanted them to do this mini-series of that graphic novel or whatever and they couldn’t get it done, they couldn’t get it done on time. A lot of guys from back in the day just couldn’t get it done. There was the whole notion of getting a bunch of issues in the can and hope that it would buy more time later for the penciller and the inker.

The last assignment that I had on a regular basis was at DC on Batman and I don’t think I missed a deadline. If I did I blew it by a day or two, negligible I think, especially since I knew what kind of wiggle time there was in production. I had a consistent run as the inker on the book for the last year or so that I worked in comics but I worked with one, two, three, maybe four pencillers over the course of the year, and Martinborough, as talented as he was, could not just draw to deadline. I hear that a lot of guys who do comics today, that’s deadlines are their strong suit.
DB: I wouldn’t be able to hire anyone that couldn’t make a deadline. As a writer if I don’t hit my deadline, I don’t get paid, I don’t get the next job and with some comic book artists it seems that not hitting the deadline is what they’re known for. Jim Lee is a classic example, this series he’s doing with Frank Miller they’re unable to produce a regular issue, Miller can’t produce a script for Lee and Lee can’t produce the art.
SM: Well both of these guys are rich and they’re rock stars. Comic books strangely enough became kind of a rock and roll medium in a sense that everybody started to believe that they were stars; especially when you go to the San Diego Comicon.

At the Con you have people coming up to you saying, “Oh you’re great, you’re great, you’re great, you’re great”. When you hear that five, six thousand times a day, you start to believe it. There’s nothing greater for any creative person than to have some humility. If you’re going to be an egomaniac or egocentric, you’d better be really friggin’ good and you’d better really be on time. If you’re going to essentially act like a rock star, you better not live in a glass house. Simple as that.

Jim Lee doesn’t need to draw comics. He draws comics ‘cause he wants to, because he chooses to, because it’s fun to. Frank Miller draws comics because he chooses to, especially with the success of his stuff in the movies. He doesn’t need to do comics.

He may do it because he chooses to keep limber and to keep the skill set finely honed, but he doesn’t need to do it; and it’s kind of amazing how a lot of guys’ whole attitude towards it is totally contrary or contrasty to the way it used to be done back in the day.

DB: Do you think part of it is the fact that no-one’s hungry anymore?
SM: I think there are a lot of hungry guys because there are a lot of guys who would like to do comics on a regular basis. I don’t know many people who make a living drawing comics or writing comics. Chuck Dixon might make a great living writing comics, because every time I ever see anything related to comics it seems Chuck has written it. But there are too many professionals, too many people who want to do it and I’ve heard stories where editors have said to artists, “Well just because you did this, don’t expect that you’re going to get anymore work” or they’ll say, “Don’t quit your day job”. It used to be you could make a living in comics. That was your day job. It’s now very different and I have to say that frankly I don’t like it and that I’m glad I’m not a part of it. I miss it occasionally; I miss the fun of it. But I sort of don’t miss the whole nature of the way the industry has kind of evolved. I really don’t.


Frankly I don’t know if you read a lot of contemporary comics or not… are they any good?
DB: That’s a loaded question.
SM: Well okay…
DB: No, I’d have to say that really, they’re not as good as what I would like them to be I suppose. Nothing much I pick up really grabs me. There’s been very little that has really grabbed me in the last, certainly in the last few years. I picked up the Civil War series, I didn’t mind it but I thought the last issue was a cop out and everything that’s come since it hasn’t been that good.

But no, I can’t think of anything that’s really made me want to go out and buy something on a regular basis.
SM: The one thing that I think has really hurt comics is cynicism. All I can tell you is that when I worked in the comic book business, especially when I was living in New York, everybody was enjoying themselves and having a ball. It was about having fun, it was about doing fun things, it was about trying to do things that would be as much fun for the reader as it was for the doer; and I don’t know if that’s the way it is done today.
DB: It certainly doesn’t…
SM: But it doesn’t seem that way.
DB: Yeah, I was going to say it certainly doesn’t come across that way anymore that’s for sure.
SM: Fun for me was inking Batman. I could ink Batman 24/7. Strangely enough the one time I didn’t enjoy it quite as much was the issue I inked over Irv Novick. I thought because all of those issues of Batman that Giordano had inked -- I probably did some backgrounds for him -- and it always looked like fun to me and I have to say that the one issue that I did was not fun. Maybe it was a boring story and the visuals weren’t very good, but I never really enjoyed that one issue of Batman that I inked over Novick. I inked a lot of Don Newton stuff and I always had a good time with that.
DB: That sort of, it sort of shows because Don Newton, that’s another artist who, looking back on his art now, always seems like he had a lot of fun when he was doing it. He really, really was enjoying it and obviously you were as well, it does come through.
SM: Yeah very much so. I always had a good time inking Don. My only problem is that he used to draw on plate finish Bristol and I was using a lot of crow quills at the time. Sometimes it wasn’t the best quality Bristol and I would get little wads of paper stuck in the crow quill nib. So sometimes it would screw up a rendering pattern. A little white out would usually save the day.

DB: I recently spoke to Norm Breyfogle about experts, how long does it take before you’re an expert in your field. He mentioned Steranko and I replied “Well Steranko is apparently an expert in comic books but he’s done very, very little”.
SM: I don’t think you ever become an expert if you have any degree of humility. I think if you say you’re an expert that means you know it all. I think that the really good guys never know it all.

Take a guy like Walt Simonson. I think Walt is very, very accomplished in just about every way that there is and if you were to ask Walt, “Do you think you’re an expert?”, I think Walt would say “Hardly” or “Not yet” or “Not as much as I’d like to be”.
DB: It’s that thing, always watch out for the person that says, “I’ve reached the peak and there’s nowhere left for me except down”.
SM: It’s to a lot of guys’ credit from my generation that I don’t think anybody ever felt they knew it all. There were too many guys out there that you could say, “Oh really? You mean you know as much as Alex Toth does?”, “Oh really, you know as much as Al Williamson does?”, “You know as much as Neal Adams does? Joe Kubert?” There are just too many names that someone would throw out that would basically deflate you.
DB: Not such a bad thing though.
SM: I think that’s a very good thing. I don’t think any creative person ever gets to the end of the journey. I think every creative person it’s about the journey and it’s always about more experience, it’s always about more doing, it’s about getting better, if nothing else, it’s about developing craft. No one is born with craft. Craft is learned. People are born with talent but they’re not born with craft and I think craft is something that you develop and you learn; and if your craft is really good, it’s amazing what you can do.


Take Alex Toth for example. A lot of times you look at what he was doing and you’d say, “Oh he’s hacking”. No, it’s just that he had such profound craft that he could find the simplest way to solve something and solve it brilliantly that he made it look too easy. Do you know how hard you’ve got to work to get there?
DB: Very.
SM: Yeah.
DB: Very. Yeah I know I’ll never get there.
SM: And I never felt I ever got there either. I’ll leave this as sort of my end point here for the night. I was in the animation business for a couple of years and I was working at HBO on the Spawn Animated Series and when I was done working at HBO and done working on Spawn, I felt that my inking craft had improved a lot because when I was doing that work it was all about form and weight and mass and blacks. All the things that I was familiar with when I was inking comics, but I was distracted by rendering and the line. Now when you work in the animation business, line is the least important thing, it’s all about the other stuff.

So, ironically, when I left Spawn and animation, I was actually a better inker from a craft standpoint than I was beforehand; and my career didn’t last all that long after that. I think I was still in comics for about three or four years at most after I was done with HBO; and I think that a lot of my later work was actually some of my best work.

I inked two issues of Detective over Phil Hester and I thought that was the best work I’d ever done because is was a synthesis of how I used my line and also just in terms of weight and mass and shape and form. Like I was seeing the total rather than the part and it’s sort of ironic to me and it will always remain ironic to me that not all that long after I did that work I basically was no longer in the comic book business.
DB: That’s weird. You’ve reached the point where you want to be and suddenly your chosen field is no longer there.
SM: Yeah but it’s actually a little bit more about being where I want to be. Again it comes back to craft. You can never have enough craft, you can never learn enough craft and I thought that my craft had really improved for the experience of working in animation and that, along with my professionalism, I had something to offer and then one day I was out.
DB: Not good.
SM: And if you talk to a lot of guys from my generation, Terry Austin, Al Milgrom, Bob Smith, etcetera, etcetera, it all kind of happened to them too at around the same time. One day we were making a living in comics and then another day we weren’t. Weird.
DB: Very weird.
SM: Very bizarre.
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Thanks to Alan Kupperberg for the great introduction. Images in the introduction are copyright 2007 Alan Kupperberg.

Thanks also to Steve Mitchell himself for being as patient and open as he is - a true class act!

If you like this interview then feel free to leave a comment.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Vinnie Colletta's Exit 'Conversation'

Vinnie Colletta. Much has been written about Vinnie in the years since his passing (1991), not all of it is true or accurate. Speak to a professional artist and more often than not they'll have an opinion on Vinnie. "He was a no talent, no good hack," they say, "a bum that ruined Jack Kirby's artwork by haphazard inking and shortcuts." In some regards they're right, he was a bit of a hack. He also indeed did take a lot of shortcuts in his work, in some cases he erased the pencils so he'd not have to ink them. Jack Kirby would draw detailed backgrounds only to see them simplified by Colletta. Yet there were other sides to Vinnie.

When I first spoke to Don Perlin he chastised me for chuckling at the mention of Vinnie's name and told me that, "Vinnie was a very nice guy and Vinnie could do great work." He then explained to me why Vinnie would take shortcuts so here's how I now understand it: Vinnie was the go-to man anywhere he worked. A job would arrive late, an inker would pull out at the last second and an editor would face the prospect of missing a deadline. Back in the day if a book missed a deadline then an entire month or more would pass before it'd appear. As companies were racing against time to get product out into a fiercely competitive marketplace missing a deadline wasn't an option. So the editor would call Vinnie and Vinnie would get the job done. He'd get it done over a weekend if need be. It'd look like crap but it would be there, on time, ready to be printed.

That's why Vinnie got so much work. Because he never missed a deadline and could produce fast work under the pump. Often when Vinnie had time (which was rare) he could produce some fine inking. Dave Simons also shared his memories of Vinnie with me a while back. "The funny thing about Vinnie is that I had the same opinion of him as what most people did," says Dave. "But Vinnie was a great guy. Personally I liked him a lot. He was one of these guys, he had the silver hair, he was always a sharp dresser and it was easy to see how people would think he was connected. To this day I don’t know if he really was or not, but he’d always have these stories to tell about some fashion model that he’d met. He loved to sit back and tell stories. He inked me on the Red Sonja and he came in with the pages and I happened to be up there and he was so proud of it, he thought it was one of the best jobs he’d done in years. I was sitting there thinking 'Oh God', and saying 'Oh, yeah, it’s great Vinnie'".

In 1978 Marvel decided to appoint Jim Shooter as Editor In Chief and in the following years he helped revitalise the company. Mention Shooters name and you'll also get very mixed results. Some people will tell you what an utter bastard he was, others will praise him. Much like Vinnie there's not a lot of middle ground. However during his time as Marvel EIC creators such as Frank Miller, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Walt Simonson and many others emerged and were encouraged. However there was a downside to this - a lot of creators would leave Marvel for DC during Shooter's reign. Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Steve Gerber - it's a huge list. Shooter also managed to personally alienated several people, such as George Perez, Jim Mooney and Gene Colan. In the mid 1980s Shooter was caught in the middle of a no win battle between Marvel and Jack Kirby regarding the return of Kirby's original artwork. The result was that Marvel lost as much top-line talent as it had originally nurtured, and those losses counted towards the end of Shooter's tenure. However by the time the mid '80s rolled around there was more than one person at Marvel plotting his demise by attempting to undermine his efforts.

It worked, in 1987 Shooter was sacked as EIC from Marvel. He then went on to take control of Valiant Comics and helped make that company a force before again being removed from that position under a cloud of controversy. From there it's been one failed company after another. Despite his best efforts and despite being linked with genuine talent Shooter remains a pariah, an outsider who's name is forever linked with failure. It's not a good legacy to carry and in hindsight it's hardly a fair one. Shooter had his faults, but he also had his talents. As a writer he wasn't that bad and his '70s Avengers run is still looked upon with fondness by those who read and enjoyed it. Be honest now: how many people love what Shooter's replacement Tom DeFalco did with the Fantastic Four during his tenure as Marvel EIC?

This brings us back to Vinnie Colletta. One thing that Vinnie also had that not many others in this industry had (or indeed still have) is loyalty. Shooter and Colletta had forged a friendship and that saw Vinnie given as much work as he wanted throughout Shooters time at Marvel. However once Shooter was gone Vinnie was left out in the cold. To your right is a scan of a letter that Vinnie sent to Marvel after Shooter was sacked (click on it for a larger, clearer view). In it, and I'll post the text at the end of this post*, Vinnie let's lose with the full force of his venom. By the time this letter was written, in late 1987, Vinnie had already decided that his career path and Marvel might be at odds with each other. His workload had been reduced and by 1989 the flow had stopped.

So what did happen? For a fair while now it's been accepted that Vinnie and Marvel parted ways over the above letter but there was clearly more going on behind the scenes, which brings us to the meat of this post - the conversation below.

Late last year I was approached by a person who will remain nameless by their own request. They told me that they had in their possession an unpublished, and indeed unheard since it was recorded, conversation with Vinnie Colletta done days after Shooter's sacking in 1987 in which Vinnie gives his version of the events. I was then asked if I would be interested in transcribing the tape with the view of putting it out there. I immediately lept at the opportunity and was given the following conditions: 1] the person handing me the tape would remain anonymous, and 2] the identity of the person on the tape who isn't Vinnie would also remain anonymous. I agreed (after all just how many interviews with Vinnie actually exist?) and the tape was sent (so don't ask who sent the tape or who's talking, make all the guesses you want, I'll neither confirm no deny any of them). There's been a few edits to the final transcript to remove anything that might identify the other person speaking but other than that this is pure Vinnie - his words haven't been altered. Personally I found it to be totally fascinating and it helps explain the events that led up to Vinnie sending his now (in)famous letter.

So, ten years after the event here it all is. Read, enjoy and, of course, feel free to make all the comments you want.

DISCLAIMER: (due to repeated comments/requests) Now I want to make it clear that it's obvious that this isn't an interview as such. It is a conversation that Vinnie himself originated to air his views and must be taken in that light. The views expressed in the conversation and in the letter are Vinnies, not mine, and I present them as historical artifacts of events that clearly still capture people's interest well after the fact. If anyone from that time wishes to come forward and present their own point of view about all of this, or wishes to have right of reply, then I'll have no problems presenting those views. Indeed you'll get the same amount of space and I'll not edit those views in any way, shape or form. Feel free to email me and we'll work something out.

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INTERVIEWER: Hello?
VINNIE COLLETTA: This is Vincent.
INT: Vincent. How are you doing?
VC: How are you doing?
INT: You know.
VC: Yeah, I know. I spoke to him the other night.
INT: Shooter’s back from L.A.?
VC: Yeah, but he hasn’t called me since. So what’s happening over there?
INT: I have no idea.
VC: Well…
INT: DeFalco is not Acting Editor In Chief; he is Editor-in-Chief.
VC: Yeah, that’s okay.
INT: Is it?
VC: Well, you see, with this bullshit of acting, okay, see you gotta understand one thing; they were stuck with this guy. The talks that I’ve had with Mike Hobson, I’ve had three talks, one lunch and another talk and then four hours in the bar. I knew that Tom was going to take over a long time ago. See the first time I spoke to him because I was trying to get Shooter and him in good graces you know. But it didn’t work because Jim wouldn’t go along with it, you understand? You understand?
INT: Not really.
VC: You see the thing is I sat with Mike…I never talked to you about this so I think I should. I sat with Mike & I said “Ahhh Mike,” well when I ran into him in the hall first of all I said to him “Mike, is there any way I can help?” he says ‘Yes”. He said “let’s go get a drink”. Okay?
INT: Yes.
VC: So we went out, we were there from 5.30 till 9.30-10 o’clock, talking.
INT: So he didn’t really want to get rid of Shooter?
VC: No. You see when you negotiate like this, you have to give up something, and you get back something.
INT: What did he want Shooter to give up?
VC: No, no, I gave up something. I said “Mike, look before we start, okay, I’m not here to praise Shooter, I’m here to see,” I said, “what he did was not acceptable.” I had to give him something, you know? I said, “Those memos – that is not acceptable, but you gotta understand he’s the type of a guy, that to get better books, he will do it to his mother. He is so interested in his books that if somebody in the advertising department doesn’t do it right he’s gonna yell at them, even though it’s not his turf.”
INT: Right.
VC: Okay? “Now, he does not understand,” remember, what I was trying to tell him was that there was no malice behind it, you understand?
INT: Yes.
VC: Okay. I said, “He does not understand corporate, how it operates, how everybody is in charge of their little turf and fuck the other guy.”
INT: Shooter understands that.
VC: No, No, no, I gotta make Hobson think that. I don’t want Hobson…
INT: Did Hobson buy that?
VC: Yes he did, he did, 100 %.
INT: Alright.
VC: So, I said “You gotta understand this, even though he said this to you, if you call him up 3 o’clock in the morning, that you were stuck somewhere, he’d come and get you and help you.” He says, “I know”. “So this is what we’re trying to figure out, like how to get everything nice again because, he did nothing because he dislikes you. He did nothing because he dislikes (Jim) Galton.”
INT: Shooter thinks Mike hates him.
VC: Well, after what he did to Mike, c’mon.
INT: Shooter was trying to get Mike fired or at least removed from Marvel comics. The goal wasn’t necessarily to get Mike fired but he did not want Mike in charge of the comics anymore.
VC: Well, whatever it was, but he told the people of California that Mike was a drunk.
INT: Mike Hobson is not a drunk!
VC: Will you stop this? I’m telling you what he said.
INT: Shooter wouldn’t say that.
VC: “He’s never there when he needs him,” “ He’s out on 3 hour lunches.” He cut Mike a pass.
INT: Not very sporting.
VC: Anyway, the point is…
INT: That’s not the point. That’s bullshit.
VC: What’s bullshit?
INT: Whether Hobson drinks at lunch, how long his lunches are. That’s not going to get anyone fired. Not a Vice President of publishing. It isn’t important if you drink or how long you take your lunch so long as you get your job done. That’s what counts.
VC: You don’t understand, you don’t understand. He made Mike and Galton look bad to the people in California.
INT: Alright.
VC: That’s what I’m getting at.
INT: I see.
VC: Alright. And by doing these things, he’s a part of it, okay? So I said, “Mike, you gotta forget this bullshit,” I said, “You’ll never replace Jim.” He said, “I know.” I says, “Forget the bullshit,” I said, “This is the best man, and I’ve been around longer than you, Mike, in this business. I’ve know them all, from Stan Lee to… Stan Lee is a big piece of shit.” I said. I said, “Now, this man is like a fucking messiah. Now, he’s got weird ways sometimes, but he’s the best man for the job. He’s a fucking computer.” He says, “Tell me about it,” He says, “That man knows everything.” I say, “Right. So we gotta fix this thing up. So tell me what you want me to do. Tell me what you want Jim to do.”
INT: What did Hobson say?
VC: He said, “I want you to see if Jim will sit down with me, promise me that he’ll change his ways. Okay? Try to get along better with the editors.” In other words, turn the other cheek, you understand?
INT: Yes.
VC: “And let me sit in on some of these meetings and get me more involved in it.” I say, “In other words, Mike,” I said, “Look. The reason you haven’t fired him now up to this point is, because you can’t fire him. The people in California won’t let you.” And he admitted it to me, he said, “You’re a smart person.” I said, “That’s right. But since all these guys (a group of editors) came in to lynch him that night, you’ve got enough ammunition now to go to them in California and say, ‘Look, we’re trying to keep him, but everybody, you know, they wanna lynch him,’ And see, you got a lot of ammunition and what do I have to do to keep you from using that ammunition?” He says, “Again, you’re a pretty smart guy,” and I said, “No, you can use this! You can get Jim fired tomorrow by going over there and telling them what happened.”
INT: So they would accept Shooter causing trouble with the higher ups, or dissatisfaction amongst the ranks, but they could not deal with both.
VC: Right. He says, “Get me Shooter, too.” So I went to Jim and I said, “Jim, look. I opened the door, now play the fucking game. Please. For me. For you. For the people who care for you in this place, not the scumbags, the people who care. Because if you go down the drain all of those who care for you will go down the drain with you.” I said, “Play the game. Say that you’re going to change, say okay, you’re going to make an effort to bring them all up.”
INT: What did Shooter say?
VC: “Nope. No, I will not change because what I do is right.” I say, “Jim, I know, okay? Let’s say I agree with you, but until you…”
INT: [interrupts] Shooter did not do everything right.
VC: What?
INT: He obviously did not do everything right.
VC: But he wouldn’t admit that. So I said, “Jim…”
INT: [interrupts] He knows what he did wrong.
VC: He will not admit it. I said, “Jim, look, until you get your new contract, until you’ve started back again you’ve got to do this for me,” and he said, “No.” I said, “Look, I’ve got another meeting with Hobson, I’m going to lunch with him in a couple of days. Now I want a good answer from you.” He says, “They’re lying.” I say, “Jim, they don’t want to get rid of you.”
INT: How is Shooter going to make nice to Higgins and Bob Harras?
VC: It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. What matters is to get back on the saddle and then get rid of these bastards.
INT: The point is that Shooter had already gone over their heads to New World. That was fact, right?
VC: They’re gonna forget that.
INT: Alright. But now he has dissatisfaction amongst the ranks. You know how hard it is to change public opinion?
VC: No, no…the only reason, and let me tell you this, the only reason the ranks did what they did is because he was against the ropes and they know it. In fact they were planning another knockout blow. You didn’t know this did you?
INT: I think I did.
VC: Alright…
INT: Do you want to know how I knew?
VC: …I told Jim. Go ahead.
INT: I didn’t really know. The day before they fired Shooter I saw Bob Harras and Mike Higgins. And they were just sitting back, very smug and self-satisfied. But they didn’t think it was going to happen the next day. They were just expecting his contract not to be renewed. And whether they were planning another event or not, they were very satisfied.
VC: I was told they were, by somebody.
INT: But there was nothing to plan on.
VC: No, no, they were going to come in again…
INT: And ask for what?
VC: …in a big bunch….
INT: And ask for what?
VC: …and ask Mike either they fired him or they’d quit.
INT: Big deal.
VC: But don’t you understand, Mike is looking for ammunition. And they were giving it to him. Okay, under normal circumstances Mike might have said ‘Get lost,’ but he was looking for this. Galton was looking for it. They wanted a reason to fire the guy.
INT: Right, but they didn’t want to fire him?
VC: No. Because of California.
INT: Right.
VC: Okay. Not because they like him. So, that’s what happened. So I went to lunch with Mike and he said, “What did he say?” I don’t want to tell him the truth. I say, “Mike, we’re still talking about it.” He says, “Well, we gotta do something. We can’t stay like this.” So here’s a man who was willing to talk to me for four hours, here’s a man who was willing to go to lunch with me, here’s a man who was willing to see me again…
INT: Because New World didn’t want to fire him?
VC: Right. They didn’t want to fire him.
INT: Then there’s no real interest on Mike’s part. He was only doing it because he felt he had to.
VC: It doesn’t matter!! What matters is he could have got away with it. So, I went back to Jim and I said, “Jim, please. This is me. These bastards are all lying, play the game a little bit because I know that Tom DeFalco is waiting in the wings.” “No, no, no, Tom said he would never…”
INT: [interrupting] DeFalco wasn’t “waiting in the wings.” Obviously he wasn’t going to turn it down.
VC: No, but he was telling everybody he wasn’t going to take it.
INT: Oh, right.
VC: Ahhhhhhh! Listen to what I’m saying.
INT: I would have done the same thing. So would you.
VC: He knew he was getting this job when he rode out to California with Mike. And I told this to Jim. Listen, I never say anything unless I have perfect proof.
INT: Wait a minute, Vin. When were they in California with Mike? Last summer?
VC: No. The last time they were out in California …
INT: DeFalco wasn’t there.
VC: No, Tom was someplace else. And he met with Hobson when they went on that trip to California. Mike went to California. This was about four months, five months ago. This is right after the letters. And the reason also that I know is, when I first talked to Mike I said to him, “Mike, look, one of the reasons why the editors and everyone is shitting in their pants about Shooter being fired is because, who will take his place? Some of them couldn’t care less, they’re just worried about who’s gonna take over.” I says…
INT: [shouts] NO! A few of them were rabble-rousing…
VC: [shouts] HEY C’MON!! I’m telling you what I said!! Don’t argue with me!
INT: And the people that were up against him, half of them were worried about their jobs…
VC: [shouts] RIGHT!
INT: …the other half were just followers.
VC: Right. Hey, don’t argue with me, because let me tell you something. Mike Hobson said I did a terrific job and nobody else would even put their foot out for this guy. He says, “Let me tell you, they respect you for that.” Not one of his friends came forward so don’t tell me…Shooter knows I did a good job. So, I’m negotiating at the same time I’m not sticking up for Shooter. In other words, to make him trust me.
INT: Right.
VC: Okay, so. I said to him, I says, “There were talks of Wolfman coming back.” He says, “Ha ha, forget it.” I said, “There were talks of this guy coming back.” “Forget it.” I said, “Well, what they are afraid of, a little bit, is that DeFalco will take over.” He says, “Why?” “He’s a known prick,” I said. “Weelll he’s mellowed…” Then I knew, okay?
INT: Yes.
VC: Then I knew. Then I knew that DeFalco was already in.
INT: A lot of people don’t like DeFalco.
VC: That’s right.
INT: I don’t know who they are, but I know a few don’t like him.
VC: Awwww, a lot of them. So now I went back to Shooter. Now I know that Shooter is going to lose the game because Shooter won’t play ball.
INT: Right.
VC: Now I’m going to tell you something and I want you to keep it to yourself. Not even to Jim, because Jim and I discussed it already and he understands and he’s says, “You’re right.” I have to get them to be afraid of Shooter, ‘coz I know I lost getting him his job back. I lost it because Jim will not co-operate, okay?
INT: Right. Although, on the day Shooter said he got fired, I understand that he said, “Oh, I’ll be a good boy now.”
VC: No, it was too late. Too late.
INT: I know.
VC: So now I knew I had to save something for him so you know what I did?
INT: What?
VC: I said, “Mike, don’t feel sorry for Shooter.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “He’s got two big offers,” he says, “Really?” I said, “That’s right.” He said, “How do you know?” I said, “Mike, I’ll tell you this, I swear on my kids. He’ll be starting a new company for new people,” and then I told him, I says, “And then there’s a third one,” I say, “(Robert, ‘Bobby’) Sarnoff. (son of ‘General’ David Sarnoff, chairman of RCA) He said to me he’ll call me on the phone because he knows I’m good friends with him and he said, ‘I’d like to chat with Jim.’” He said, “Now I know how you’re not lying, because every time I talk to Sarnoff he uses that word ‘chat’”. So I said “Let me tell you something. You fired this guy; the people in California are going to be pissed off because you’ll have another company for competition.” He says, “Something tells me you’re not lying,” I say, “No, I don’t lie. I never lie.”
INT: So that is why New World made him an offer.
VC: That’s right.
INT: I heard that Shooter said that the offer that Galton made him was a bogus offer and New World made him a better offer.
VC: That’s right. So when I spoke to Jim the other day I said, “Remember what I said?” and he said, “That’s right, that’s why he did it.” “It doesn’t matter why they did it, Jim, it doesn’t matter, but I scared them.” They were afraid, because now New World, he wants to kill DC. They want to bury everybody. And can you imagine if Jim left there and a new company started with Jim? California will be pissed off at Galton and at Hobson. That’s why they made him an offer. That’s between me and you. If Jim tells you that it was because of what I did then fine, but I don’t want you to say anything. So that’s where it’s at now.
INT: What kind of an offer did New World make?
VC: The same thing only bigger. He’d have his own company, his own space, his own people, whatever. I don’t know, he didn’t have time to tell me too much.
INT: Is he going to think about it?
VC: He told me he’s thinking over a few offers, but I told him, “If you’re going to take anything, then take this one. For the simple reason that if you go over to a new company, distributing, this, that, it might fold in no time, you don’t know.” I says, “Here, at least, you got Marvel behind you, but one thing: don’t take space in the building. You don’t wanna see these bastards again.” So this is the way I think, so that’s what we’re going to talk about. So don’t even tell him that we discussed anything, because I just wanted you to feel better about it. That’s why I’m calling. And if you tell him, he’ll say, ‘what the hell are you doing discussing these things behind my back?’
INT: Do you tell him that you are the only friend he has?
VC: I didn’t say that.
INT: Don’t you tell Shooter that? And that everyone hates him?
VC: I didn’t say that.
INT: No?
VC: No. I say I’m the only one who went up there. That’s all. Bob Layton tried to get people to back him and they all turned him down. Including JR. Did you know that?
INT: No.
VC: Right. Shooter knows that because Bob told him. I’ve tried to get people. I’ve tried to get people…
INT: Even if JR went, even if Layton went, even if…
VC: [interrupting] That is not the point.
INT: …they’d just have said, “Of course, they’re Shooter’s friends.”
VC: No, that is not the point. The point is that they said no. That is the point. That’s the difference.
INT: Did you ask anyone to back you and go with you?
VC: Yes.
INT: Did they turn you down?
VC: Every one of them.
INT: Wow.
VC: Including Jim Owsley. Everybody. So then I called Bob (Layton) and said forget about getting people because if only two or three people go up there, then it’s no good. Because Bob and I thought if we did this, hundreds of letters would pour in, right? Nobody. And I don’t say things like, “I’m his only friend.” So don’t say that. I said I’m the only one who went in there and Mike even said it. He said, “Where’s all his friends?” And he says, “Let me tell you, I respect you for doing what you’re doing.” That’s all. That’s all I said. I know he’s got friends, come on. Robbie in the stat room loves him. Don Perlin loves him. Come on! I’m not stupid. I never said that.
INT: All these people, like Ann (Nocenti) and Bob Harras and Mike Higgins, people that had their own intelligence, skills and abilities when they came to Marvel, but it was Shooter who helped them use their talent and gave them positions and authority…
VC: They’re ingrates. They’re fucking cheap ingrates. Period!
INT: I’m not saying that Ann couldn’t have gone to any other company, publishing or whatever and started there…
VC: You don’t know if she could have.
INT: Ann’s very smart, very talented and creative. So she could have gone to any company and worked her way up. But it happened at Marvel and who did it for her? Shooter. She had her own skills and abilities and if she didn’t have them, Shooter would not have promoted her.
VC: He gave her big, money making books. She got a $15,000 incentive last year. He gave her an eleven percent raise.
INT: Right. So how come?
VC: So she winds up making over $60,000.
INT: Not to mention her own freelance writing…
VC: That’s right. So how do you do that to the guy who opened the door for you?
INT: I don’t know. How could you do that?
VC: Because they’re all ingrates. They’re all ingrates.
INT: Bob Harras was nothing when he came to Marvel. He worked at Macys.
VC: Right. Do you know what happened when I went in to see Bob Harras?
INT: No.
VC: After they marched through Shooter, the next day I went in to see Bob. I said, “You know, you’ve gotta remember what Shooter did. Remember all the good things, okay? Now, I know you guys were pissed off at him, maybe you were right. I don’t think it was right the way you did it, like a lynch mob, but maybe it would be nice if you went in there and said, ‘Look, Jim, I’m sorry we did it this way but we wanted to get a point across.’” They practically threw me out of their office.
INT: Really?
VC: I swear to God. Ask Larry (Hama), he was right next to me. He (Bob) said, “You get outta here! He got what he deserved and he’s gonna get more!” He had both of them and you know who was more vicious, well both were vicious and I backed out of that office. I backed outta there. So what I’m saying is, now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what it’s all about. I don’t like to see Jim come in there and get his stuff out. I’d like to see him come in there, maybe at 10 o’clock or so and take some of his stuff. I’m going to suggest this to him. I don’t want him to come in there and everybody laughs up their sleeve.
INT: It doesn’t matter. He’s still going to have to make at least one business hour appearance to talk to personnel and sign final papers and wrap up his affairs with Marvel.
VC: What? Upstairs?
INT: Yeah.
VC: I’m talking about downstairs.
INT: I see.
VC: That’s fine. That’s what I mean. I’m going to suggest that to him because I don’t like to see him ridiculed and these bastards, they’re all like dancing in the aisle from what I hear.
INT: I hear there’s a little smirking going on. And I understand that the week before, they burned something. They burned Shooter in effigy or something like that.
VC: You know, that’s sickening. That’s sickening.
INT: Did he know it was going to be on Wednesday?
VC: No. In fact…
INT: Most people figured it was going to be in June, when his contract expired.
VC: Right. See, what happened, he did another bad thing. He was waiting to see what was going to happen, and don’t say anything about this either. Like I said, the only reason I’m opening up to you is because I know you. I said, “Jim, you’re on pins and needles, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” because Jim listens to me because I’m very objective with him. When I say objective, he was going to fire Tom last year. You didn’t know that did you?
INT: I did not!
VC: Right. And I talked him out of it.
INT: Why would he fire Tom?
VC: Because Tom was jumping on Owsley’s ass and being a bastard, because he’s an evil person and he wouldn’t stop.
INT: I’ve heard another story and I’m really worried about this Tom and Sue (DeFalco’s assistant/lover) business.
VC: Forget this, they’re done.
INT: The problem there will affect what’s going on there. One can see a whole bunch of domestic squabbles going on.
VC: Well anyway. So I said to him, “Here’s what you do Jim, here’s what I’d do. I would go up to Galton tomorrow and say, ‘Okay Jim, my contract is coming up, let’s discuss it’” And then he’s either gotta shit or get off the pot. He’s gotta say that there’ll be no contract, is there?
INT: Is that what Shooter did?
VC: Nope. So he agreed, he said, “You’re right. That’s a good thing to do,” I says, “Then, if you do that, the man’ll say, ‘There’ll be no contract unless you change your ways’”. It’ll be face-to-face. Or he’ll say, “I’m sorry, there will not be any contract, you’re through.” He said it’s a good idea. The next day we had dinner again, and it was on a Saturday and I picked him up in New York because I usually go on weekends and we go to dinner, and I said, “Well, did you do it?” and he said, “No. I got a better idea. I’m going to call the lawyer in California and ask him for a contract.” New World Pictures. I said, “Jim, don’t do that! Don’t do that! You’re throwing salt into the wound! You’re going over this guys head again!” “Nope, nope, I talked to the guy, he sounds like a nice guy…” “Don’t trust him!”
INT: He’s Hollywood, don’t trust him.
VC: So what did he do Monday? He calls up the guy and says to the guy, “Who do I turn to for a contract?” He says, “Me! I’m the lawyer. I’ll get back to you.” So what happens is that the guy tells Rami, Rami tells Galton and says, “Hey, Shooter called us for a contract.” Comes Wednesday he gets fired. Understand?
INT: Yeah. Was it just Galton up there or were there other people in there with him?
VC: I have no idea because I haven’t talked to Jim except for on the phone. He called me on the beeper…
INT: Yeah.
VC: …and I read the beeper and it said, “I’ve been fired”. Jesus Christ! He usually calls me on the beeper because he gets me anywhere I am. He calls me on the beeper and says, “I’ve been fired,” I nearly had a heart attack and I called him straight back. The only thing I can do to stand by him is give him sound advice because sometimes when you’re in the middle you don’t see the truth, you know?
INT: I heard that Higgins went to Hobson right after he and Shooter had it out the first time, then I heard that Higgins was with Dorothy Marcus and Jackie Green of personnel right after that.
VC: Well, you know. Look at me; I’m on everybody’s shit list.
INT: Yeah. You’ve had years of practice.
VC: I know, I know. Let me tell you, I did what anybody should do to someone who was good to me.
INT: The fact that Bob (Layton) didn’t go because he and Mike Hobson have at least a friendly relationship, even while he was a drunk, even while he was a big drunk, I don’t think Hobson ever said to Shooter, “Get rid of Bob.” The fact that Bob would at least go and talk to…
VC: …I’m not questioning that. I not questioning that. Hobson said it to me. He said, “I respect you, you’re the only person who’s at least come forward to try to do something.” You see, the only people Hobson had were the ones who were against him. Never anyone that was with him. So what I’m trying to say is that I don’t know how deep DeFalco was in on this. I have no idea and I’m making no accusations. All I know is that…
INT: I suspect that DeFalco said that if Jim left, he would not immediately pack up his bags and exit behind him.
VC: What?
INT: I think he agreed that if Jim left, he would be willing to stay in charge for a period of time.
VC: Nah, he’s full of it…let me tell you, he’s got the floor plans of that office planned out for a long time. All I can tell you is this. Number one: I’m on the shit-list.
INT: I don’t know about that.
VC: Why not?
INT: Because you’re an artist. Perhaps he likes you, perhaps he doesn’t. But I don’t believe he’s going to stop you from getting work. The editors who have been giving you work, will still give you work. Those who went out of their way to please Shooter and give you work probably won’t give you work anymore.
VC: No, nobody did that.
INT: Okay.
VC: I only took books that were late and nobody else would. I just did a Justice in six days! They had nobody else to do it.
INT: Right.
VC: I’m doing the Spider-Man because each Spider-Man has two or three guys on it. Why? Because you think he likes me? I’m doing the annual because nobody else could do it in the amount of time and everybody fell down on the job and I wound up with it.
INT: You’re inking the Spider-Man Annual with the wedding?
VC: That’s right!
INT: You know the guy who designed the wedding dress? Willi Smith?
VC: Yeah.
INT: He just died.
VC: Oh God.
INT: Yeah, thirty nine years old and he just died. And they mention Mary Jane Watson and the wedding in the obituary.
VC: Yeah, because Mark gave me that. He said, “I know all the work you get is because they need you.” I said, “You know, I’ve never had books of my own.”
INT: You were the regular inker on plenty of books (The Mighty Thor, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle, etc.,).
VC: No, never. Never! Only one, because it was a girl book at the beginning.
INT: Wow! You do great girls.
VC: Never was I on a regular book. Only when they couldn’t get somebody to do it. In other words when I got the job, three guys turned it down already. You understand what I’m saying?
INT: Yes. Well, I don’t think that’s going to change then, so you probably don’t have anything to worry about there.
VC: We’ll see.
INT: You know the editors just trying to kiss ass. They’re trying to play up to DeFalco. The two of you should go out to lunch and talk, and work out whatever you have to work out…
VC: No, no way! And I’m not taking him out to lunch unless he asks me to lunch.
INT: Don’t take him out. He’ll take you out.
VC: Only if he asks me. Let me tell you something. I don’t…I didn’t want that. In fact I might side-step him. I’m not going to go and confront him. No way!
INT: You could stop by and see him and shake the man’s hand.
VC: No, I will not!
INT: Oh, stop being an idiot, Vin.
VC: I will not.
INT: You should tell DeFalco that you hope that whatever it is that he doesn’t like about you, you can work it out, or something like that. You just need to get together with him for a while.
VC: (When I was asked) I said, “I dunno, the guy doesn’t like me, so we’ll see what happens.” That’s all I said. That’s all I said. I didn’t say anymore than that because that’s the last guy, okay. He hates my guts…
INT: Why does DeFalco hate your guts?
VC: Don’t you know what I did?
INT: No.
VC: When Jim gave him the job of Executive Editor, before that, Jim took me to dinner. He said, “Listen. I need an Executive Editor and Tom has been asking me for it, but I want to talk to you first. What do you think of the idea?” I said, “Well, Jim, look, you’re the best guy I’ve ever seen in this business. You’ve got your hand in your pocket all the time to help people and you waver sometimes, but your heart is right there. If somebody breaks a leg then you go and give them money to get it fixed. Tom is not a well liked person. Now, you need an extension of yourself as an assistant. You don’t want somebody doing the opposite of what you do.” He said, “You’re right, I was afraid of that.” He says, “I’ll be right back,” he went to the bathroom, came back and said, “The reason I wanted to talk to you is that I’m afraid of putting Tom there. I’m asking you to be my Executive Editor.” Okay? He asked me to be his Executive Editor. I said, “Jim, if you pick Tom, you’re making a mistake. If you put me there you’re making a bigger mistake. I’m not into that. And not only that these editors aren’t going to accept me.” “No, no no, you’re going to be my Executive Editor.” This was on a Friday. “Monday I’m talking to Mike and that’s it.” I said, “No, I don’t want the job. Please, I’m begging you, I don’t want the job. I can’t take nine-to-five, that’s why I’m a freelancer.” No, I need you.” Saturday he called me twice. Sunday he called me twice and I kept saying, “No. Please Jim, I can’t.” He said, “Alright.” And he made Tom the Executive Editor. So then, after he made him Executive Editor, I got a call from Danny Krespi, he said, “Oh Vinnie, today’s not a good day at Marvel.” I said, “What do you mean? Danny, what are you talking about?” He said, “It was announced today that Tom was going to be the Executive Editor and everyone is very gloomy because he’s not liked.” I said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. Jim’ll straighten him out,” so now Jim called me on a Tuesday and says, “Would you do me a favor?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “Will you take Tom out to lunch and explain to him what people think of him, to straighten him out,” you know, and on and on. I said, “Why the fuck can’t you do that yourself?” He says, “No, no, please do that for me.” He fixed the lunch up for us, so we went to lunch and I said, “Look, Tom, sometimes we don’t realize what we do. Now Jim thinks an awful lot of you to give you this job and Jim is a wonderful man. He’s well liked, especially by the workers.”
INT: At one time.
VC: Right. I don’t mean the editors, I mean the workers around the place.
INT: It’s true. I understand that the production department is really upset.
VC: That’s right
INT: Most of them weren’t hired by Shooter or Danny, they were hired by Anita.
VC: So I said, “Now, you’ve got a very bad reputation for being, you know, not such a nice guy. You gotta change it, because you’ve got a good job now and anything you do reflects on Jim.”
INT: You think he’s changed?
VC: Noooo, worse.
INT: That’s bad.
VC: No, but Shooter knew, wait a minute, let me finish. So he says, “You trying to tell me I’m a prick?”
INT: [laughs].
VC: I says, “Tom, listen, I’m not here to tell you’re a prick. I’m here because I was asked to take you to lunch and to talk to you because I know you. If you are after somebody, you won’t stop until they’re fired. All you’re doing is firing and talking like you’re going to fire them and this and that, and you’ve got to stop that because now everything reflects on Jim.” So we went upstairs and he ran into Jim and, “What did you do? You sicc’ed him onto me! You sicc’ed him onto me!” So what happened was that Jim said to me, “Boy, you were really rough on him.” And I said, “Hey, you wanted him to know the truth, so I gave it to him.” Now, ever since that time, he’s hated my guts. Not only that, but Jim, at least twenty times. He’s said to me, “Vince, you were right about Tom.”
INT: Yeah, but he and Tom have become good friends.
VC: Yes! Yes! In fact only last month he said, “You were always right about Tom.” So in other words I’m always very objective. So when he was after Owsley, he took me and Owsley to dinner, Jim did, and he’d fired Owsley when Jim wasn’t around…
INT: DeFalco didn’t fire Owsley.
VC: He went in and scared him so much the guy couldn’t work, okay?
INT: That’s true. I heard there was a month where he could hardly work at all.**
VC: What happened, I talks to Shooter and I says, “Shooter, Owsley looks up to you. He wears a tie because you wear a tie. He tells me he owes you everything. If you’re going to fire him, then you fire him yourself.” So he hired him back. So then Tom kept bringing stories about Owsley, kept bringing stories about me, unsubstantiated stories, so Jim says, “Look, I don’t wanna hear that shit anymore. You’re always making up stories because you want to get even with guys, okay? Now stop it.” So he thought he’d talked to him. Next day he came in and Tom says, “Hey, I got a way to get Owsley now. We give him lousy books, we’ll see that he does bad and then we’ll fire him.” And Jim says to me, “Vinnie, I can’t believe this guy. Right after I talk to him, he comes in and is giving me ideas on how to get even with Owsley. I can’t believe this guy! I can’t take him anymore, I gotta get rid of him.” I says, “Jim, look. You’re making a mistake getting rid of him.” I says, “Jim, don’t fire Tom. Talk to him, because if you get another guy, it’s going to look bad that you fired your number one guy. Talk to him. Not only that, but if you get another guy you’re going to have to go through the whole thing of teaching him again.” He says, “You’re telling me not to fire him? Here’s a guy who’s after your ass all the time!” I say, “I’m being very objective. I’m telling you this for your own good. If you fire him it’s gonna look bad, number one, and number two, you don’t know who you’re gonna get and you’re gonna waste a lot of time teaching him.” So that’s why he kept him. So since then, Tom has never, ever liked me.
INT: Hmm.
VC: But I didn’t do anything.
INT: We’ll see how it goes.
VC: But I didn’t do anything to him. All I did was say, look, be a nice kid because this man likes you and gave you a job to do, so don’t, because it reflects on him. Of course, he doesn’t like the idea that I was offered the job and turned it down. He didn’t like the idea that the reason he was there was because I had turned it down. But I turned it down because, first of all, I’m honest, I didn’t think I could do the job. Number two, what do I know about writing? I don’t wanna know about that. I just wanna do freelance. Somebody else would have jumped at it, but I said no. I said, “Jim, your editors are never going to accept…” “Oh, I don’t care about my editors.” “No, no, no,” I says, “how can they come to Vince Colletta, the hack? How could they come to Vince Colletta and look up to Vince Colletta?”, in an area of writing which I knew nothing about. I said, “Please, I don’t even wanna be considered for the job.” So this is why Tom has this thing. You could ask Jim this, before this blow up, before he wrote the letter to California, before the company was sold, I said to Jim, “Jim, I don’t like this idea of me and Tom being on the outs all the time. I wanna be friends with him. Why don’t you invite him to dinner, the three of us, and we’ll go right in and discuss it.” He said, “Good idea.” It never happened. I don’t know why. Either he asked him and Tom said no, I don’t know. But then again I said, “Jim, let’s bring him to Jersey and, you know, I want to be friends with the guy; I don’t like going in and not saying hello.” He says, “Okay,” and again it didn’t happen. Now this is the guy, and I wasn’t trying to kiss Tom’s ass, this was before anything happened, so if I did it now, well, now I don’t wanna do it.
INT: How does Shooter feel about Tom staying on?
VC: He doesn’t say much, but he feels there was some sort of betrayal.
INT: Is Shooter going to set up shop in California?
VC: No, I don’t think he’s going to do it in California.
INT: He might.
VC: He might. But what I’m saying is everything is here, you know? All the businesses are here. You understand?
INT: True.
VC: All the artists are here, but anyway, as far as what my future is there at Marvel I don’t know. I’m going to play it day by day. I’m not going to kiss anybody’s ass, if they send it (work) to me, fine. If they don’t, you know.

----------------------------------
NOTES:

Thanks to Alan Kupperberg for allowing me to use his drawing of Vinnie Colletta as it appeared in the book Streetwise (TwoMorrows) when I couldn't find a clear enough photo.

* This is the text of Vinnie's letter as he wrote it, with original spelling and grammer intact:



Marvel Editor-

You are the droppings of the creative world. You were destined to float the cesspool till urine logged and finally sink to the bottom with the rest of the shit but along came Jim Shooter who rolled up his sleeves and rescued you.

He gave you a title, respectability, power and even a credit card that you used and abused. He made you the highest payed Editors in the history of the business. He protected you against all that would tamper with your rights, your power and your pocketbook.

He backed you against all Prima Donna free lancers no matter how big. his pockets were always open to you. No cry of help was too small for him to turn his back on.

As heard in the "Brass: section of the company. "He never asked for anything for himself.always for his men."

The roof over your head, the clothes on your back, the car you drive and the trinkets you buy for your blind wives and girlfriends you owe to the Pittsburgh kid.

For all he did for you.you repayed him by attacking him like a pack of yellow, prickless faggots. Ripping away his flesh from his body and laughing and pounding your chest like conquering ghouls and long after his bones were dry you continued to pour salt on them to squeeze every ounce of pain out of him.

Not the slightest whimper or cry or tear came out of this man. With you still biting at his ankles, he put on his coat and walked away. Displaying more class and poise in defeat than all of you did in victory. Jesus had one Judas. Jim had many, those that speared him and worse, those that watched.

I stuck by him and for that you've nailed me on the same cross. I thank you for that. It's an honor to be crucified with Jim Shooter.a man who none of you will ever be.

Vince Colletta


** Christopher Priest, aka Jim Owsley, has written about his tenure at Marvel here. Priest's account is one of the more graphic and touching around the place and is more than worth the time it takes to read.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Partners For Life - Articles: Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews and testimonials, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself so you can see all of the great stuff that couldn't be fit into the book proper.

Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book. Otherwise enjoy these little pieces and then run out and buy a copy of the book so you can read the rest.

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SUPERMAN vs. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

The following is an article that grew out of a chapter of the book. With everything in this book, the quest for information was almost never-ending. In order to do both Ross and Mike justice, I had to dig and dig deep. What started as a simple chapter ended up as an article all of its own. (Rather than have the original chapter in its diluted format in the book I decided to include the full article that eventually made its way into print.) The original article was printed in Back Issue #11.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

The above quote was all well and good for John Ford, however at times the legend becomes the truth and the discovery of the actual facts become all the more harder. After all, memory is a tenuous thing at best.

In early 2004 Mike Esposito and I were talking about the Andru and Esposito book that I was in the process of preparing. We’d spent a considerable amount of time talking about various aspects of the pair’s career and the artists that Mike had worked with over the years. As is the norm whenever Mike and myself speak, a lot of the conversation was taken up by subjects other than comic books, and it was during one of those conversations that Mike made an off-hand comment about the Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man treasury edition that saw the light of day in 1976. Mike’s comments were about how his art partner, Ross Andru, had made the book into something more than a comic book, and into an experience that was almost cinematic. To me that was an opening to discuss the book and I started by asking if Mike had ever been considered as an inker for the project, considering his history with both Ross and Marvel and DC (at the time very few artists had worked on both Superman and Spider-Man – Ross Andru and Mike Esposito were amongst them). Little did I know that I was about to open a can of worms that would take nearly a year to close.

Mike instantly came back with the following: “I was supposed to ink the first Superman/Spider-Man cross over. However, I got into a big argument with Marv Wolfman, who was the editor at Marvel at the time. They kept changing editors; Roy Thomas was the editor at one stage, then Marv, then Len Wein. I got a call from Sol Harrison at DC and he said, ‘Mike, we want to team you and Ross up together. We’re going to do a cross over with Spider-Man and Superman and since you guys were known as Andru and Esposito up here we figure it’d be perfect for you guys to do it’. And it was all set to go and then Marv Wolfman, and I’m not doing this verbatim, I’m paraphrasing what happened, he called them up and said, “You can’t have both guys”.

“It was like they were trading ball players from one team to another. He said, ‘You can have Ross but you can’t have Mike, or you can have Mike but you can’t have Ross. You can’t have both of them’ So Sol Harrison called me up and he was very apologetic because he really enjoyed the idea of having the two guys from years ago coming together on the project. He said, ‘It looks like you’re not going to do it, I’m sorry Mike. It looks like Dick Giordano is going to be put on it’”.
So far so good? Well, no. For the record, and before we go any further, Mike only has good words to say about Dick, “Dick Giordano did a good job. It’s a very nice book”.

However, this is only the start of the legend/fact part of the story. I then contacted Marv Wolfman and included a copy of Mike’s comments for clarification as the journalist inside of me knows that in order to get all the facts, you have to at least ask anyone and everyone that’s being mentioned in your story. If they tell you to take a hike, well at least you’ve asked, so they can’t then come back at you. So I emailed Marv. I’ve never met Marv, but I have emailed him more than once and he’s always been friendly, courteous and more than helpful, which is why I was taken aback slightly when this reply came in, only a few hours after my email left. Marv’s reply read as follows: “Mike’s quote from Sol is wrong. I was on the Marvel Black and White books at the time, not the colour comics. I had absolutely nothing to do with deciding who was on the Superman/Spider-Man book.

“Len Wein was the editor, as he will tell you because I had to hold him back when he nearly strangled the guy from Cadence Corp. who told us about the team-up and that Len, as the Marvel editor, would not have any say in the matter. I may have later inherited the project when Len left Marvel, but I don't remember. At any rate, I know the team had been selected without us, and that the idea, as little as I remember of it now, was that there would be a Marvel penciller and a DC inker on it so I doubt that Mike would have been considered, despite his years with Ross, because they wanted people from both companies working on each step of it. Gerry Conway was the writer because he had written both Superman and Spider-Man, the only one to do it at that point.”

There was more, but I’ve decided not to let that go to air, so to speak. Marv might have been having a bad day, or perhaps he felt that I, or Mike, were accusing him of something that he’d clearly not done. As it was I emailed an instant apology to Marv as he’d commented that he wished people would get their facts right. I assured him that I was indeed working hard to get the facts down pat, and that I’d not be letting anything go to print without everyone involved giving their side of the story. Marv replied that I perhaps should contact Len Wein and ask for his side of things. I thanked Marv, apologised again, and contacted Len and included everything I’d gathered thus far. Len had a read of it and came back with the following, “I'm pretty much with Marv on this one. I was the Marvel Editor-in-Chief at the time, not Marv, who had nothing at all to do with the Superman/Spider-Man book other than saving then Marvel Publisher Al Landau's life when I threw myself at him, determined to rip out his throat. Landau told me when I complained about losing Ross Andru's pencilling services off the Amazing Spider-Man title for a couple of months, that, despite my position as Marvel E-I-C and also being the current writer on Amazing Spider-Man, what went on in the S/S-M team-up book was, quote, “None of your f*cking business!”

“Nobody in Marvel editorial had anything whatsoever to do with determining who worked on the Superman/Spider-Man book and, to the very best of my memory, Mike Esposito's name never came up. And, frankly, I doubt it would have. As mentioned, the idea was to make this one-shot a true cross-company book. That meant splitting the creative services between the two companies. Thus, the writing came from DC (Gerry Conway), the pencilling from Marvel (Ross Andru), the inking from DC (Dick Giordano), the colouring from Marvel (Glynis Oliver) and the lettering from DC (Gaspar Saladino). Even the cover was laid out by DC's then-publisher, artist Carmine Infantino, pencilled by Ross, and inked by Dick, and coloured by Glynis.

“Despite whatever line of bull Sol Harrison might have fed Mike (Sol had his own agenda at the time, having been passed over for the publisher position), I don't believe for an instant it ever happened. The best I could imagine was Ross (always a wonderful man) suggesting his buddy Mike as inker and being overruled for the reasons mentioned above.

“Also, it should be noted that Mike inked the two issues of Amazing Spider-Man that Ross missed while pencilling the crossover. The fill-in penciller for those issues was Sal Buscema”

I thanked Len and promised that he could have a look at the final draft of this article in case there might be some comments he’d rather not allow see the light of day.

So, there it was. My theory is that Mike had been asked to ink the book by Sol Harrison, and had then been told, again by Sol, that the editors at Marvel had refused to give permission. My best guess is that everyone is right – the events that Mike, Marv and Len recounted all happened. However it more than likely happened like this: Ross Andru is asked to pencil the cross-over and elects Mike as his inker of choice. This wouldn’t have come as a surprise as Mike and Ross went back to when they were kids. They’d published together, they’d drawn and written together, they even got married at roughly the same time. Ross and Mike did pretty much everything together, and Mike’s inks did complement Ross pencils, and Ross must have felt that on a project of such magnitude he might need a sympathetic inker, and, knowing how lucrative a project this would be, wanted to include Mike. So Ross asks Sol Harrison who then calls Mike and tells him how everyone at DC wants to re-unite the Andru/Esposito art team for this book.

Now, as Len recounts, Sol had more than a few hidden agendas at that stage, perhaps Sol did indeed ask the editors at Marvel only to be told no. More likely he didn’t, and was told who the creative team would be: Gerry Conway (at that stage the only man to have written both Superman and Spider-Man for any length of time), Ross Andru (the only man to have drawn both characters at that stage), Dick Giordano (pretty much the pre-eminent inker of any era) and so on, taking people from both Marvel and DC.

Sol probably found himself in a bind. He had made a promise to Mike and now had to break that promise, so he called Mike and gave him the line that Marvel had turned down DC’s request for Andru/Esposito. At that time Andru/Esposito had established themselves as the main art team for the book The Amazing Spider-Man. Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman and Len Wein had all edited the book, albeit Marv only editing the one issue (#150). Gerry Conway had written the book until March 1975 when Len Wein took over, with the one fill in issue, 150, which was written by Archie Goodwin. Other than one issue written by Marv, Len would remain as the writer/editor on the title until Marv replaced him in mid 1978, well after the Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man book had been published. Mike simply has his names mixed up, but he does believe that someone at Marvel had him taken off the book. But at the end of the day it wasn’t Marv Wolfman, and we might never know for sure, but it appears that Sol Harrison in all likelihood pointed the finger at Marv and used him as a scapegoat.

Mike does have regrets about not doing the book, the sheer cool factor of seeing the Andru/Esposito name on one of the biggest projects that either of them would ever be likely to be connected to is one of them. But there’s another: money. In Mike’s own words, “It would have been nostalgic and it would have been a landmark thing for us two guys to come back together to work for DC on Superman, because we had done Superman together in the late ‘60s and we both were doing Spider-Man at the time. Our names were still going together with the old days of Metal Men and Wonder Woman and so on, and now we were finding a new audience with Spider-Man. The book did very well and Ross got a lot of money for it, I think he got around $27,000, which is pretty good as a royalty and later he got more from the reprints”.

A nice tale, with a happy ending? Far from it. Once I had fairly well established who had actually said what and to whom, another spanner was thrown into the works: who actually drew the book?

In the book are the credits. The credits read: Writer: Gerry Conway. Artist: Ross Andru. Inker: Dick Giordano, and so on. The book was edited by the then two editor-in chiefs at the respective companies, Stan Lee and Carmine Infantino. Infantino even laid the cover out for Ross to follow. Again, as simple as it looks, nothing is quite as it appears.

As part of my web-site project I take it upon myself to interview artists. In early 2004 I was flattered when none other than legendary inker, Josef Rubenstein, approached me and asked if I’d like to interview him. I leapt at the chance and placed the call. It was a lovely chat and in the process of the interview we spoke about more than I’d actually use, and one of those subjects was, you guessed it, the Superman/Spider-Man book. I had asked if the rumours were true, that Josef had helped ink the book, along with Terry Austin, and the reply was a resounding yes; “Terry Austin did ALL the backgrounds and I may have done the blacks and touch ups. Terry certainly did the blacks on the backgrounds; I just don’t remember the figure part. It was done same size. That’s the story”.

Then Josef took things one step further by telling me that Ross wasn’t the only penciller on the book and that Neal Adams had also done uncredited work on the book.

No way was I going to allow that one to slide. I sat on it for a while, and had a look at the book. Certainly the book had that glossy Neal Adams like feel to it, but then there’s not that much difference between Ross’ Superman and Neal’s. Plus anyone inked in the Continuity studios at that stage came out looking like Neal Adams – after all the studios did belong to Neal and Dick Giordano, and Dick was the inker on the book.

I ran it past a few people I knew and was told not to be as silly as to believe it. An ex-production staffer at DC at the time told me that there was no way known that Neal could have had anything to do with the book, as the production staff had seen the pages, both before and after inking, and there was no evidence of tampering. I brought it up in an on-line conversation with Mark Evanier, who also told me that it was impossible, as he, too, had seen the original pencilled pages and they were the same as what was published. Mark’s views were, “John Romita did redraw most of the heads of Peter Parker and other supporting Spider-Man characters...even though the Andru versions were good enough to appear for years in the Spider-Man comics. That whole book had a ‘too many cooks’ mentality about it”.

Far from solving a mystery, Mark had opened yet another can of the proverbial. I’d known for a while though that John Romita had re-drawn the Peter Parker heads (you only have to look at them). This was bugging me though, and the question still remained: did Neal Adams re-draw the Superman figures, and if he had, how did he do it? If everyone who’d seen the original pages agreed that there was no way known that Neal could have re-drawn the figures between the pencil and ink stage, then what was the truth?

One thing I’d always been taught when I started working as a journalist at the ABC here in Australia – if you keep going you’ll end up at the end of the line. Don’t bother working your way up the pole to the top, go straight to the top at the first opportunity and don’t bother with the underlings. With that in mind, and it did take me a while to recall it, I decided that there was pretty much only three people who could probably answer the question of who drew the book for me: Ross Andru, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano.

Asking Ross was out of the question, sadly he passed away in 1993. So the next step was going to the two people who might be able to answer me. First stop was Dick Giordano.

I’ve been conducting an interview with Dick for months now, off and on, via email. I decided to sneak the question into the interview because I felt that if he said yes, and elaborated, that Neal had re-drawn some figures, then it’d make the interview all that more interesting – if indeed you can make an interview with Dick more interesting than it’s going to be. So the question was asked and I left it at that.

Dick had been answering my questions when time permitted, so there had been gaps between my questions and his replies of up to a month. So I sat and waited, all the time finding more and more resistance to the idea that Neal had indeed re-drawn the book. I had emailed Neal’s son Joel, who suggested I email Neal – that’s like asking me to email the Pope. I sent the email but deep down I didn’t expect that much of a reply, if any at all. I know that Neal is a very, very busy man, and in the context of things I’m just another person.

Two replies in two days. Vindication. Josef had been right all along. Mark Evanier was wrong – for probably the first time in his life. The people I’d spoken to who’d worked at DC at the time had been wrong. Neal did have a hand in drawing the book.

The first reply I got back was from Dick. It read, “No one asked Neal to re-draw the Superman figures but the pages were sent to me at Continuity and were mostly left on my desk or thereabouts when I went home at night or on weekends and Neal took it upon himself to re-draw the Superman figures without telling me that he was going to do it. I didn't complain but I also never mentioned it to anyone at the time and really never spoke of it until now...mostly out of respect for Ross and his work. Ross was one of the very best storytellers in the business as well as great at composition, layouts and design. But his drawing was a bit quirky and somewhat distorted as a result of an eye problem that affected his perception. He often drew on one side of the paper, then, on a light box, turned it over and re-drew it on the other side, correcting the distortion, then reversed the page again and traced the corrected version from the back side of the art board onto the copy side. This took a great deal of time and slowed him down greatly toward the end of his career. But...

“I loved the distortions! It gave his work a charm and distinction that I always believed was appealing. I learned how to ink his work to minimize the distortion without losing the charm! That became moot, as Neal changed/corrected all the Superman figures to his own frame of reference. I tried in the inking not to lose too much of the Ross Andru look (and to his credit, Neal tried, as well, to retain the ‘look’ mostly correcting anatomy errors in his re-drawing). You really couldn't lose his storytelling or compositions, so in my mind, the result was still Ross Andru at his best!!

“I questioned Neal's son's claim that Neal inked the Superman figure on the cover. He re-drew it and I inked it...and then Neal may have gone back and ‘tightened up’ some of my inks as he often did on my inks on his material. He never much liked my more organic brush inking, preferring the more controlled look of pen inking. Different strokes...”

Then the big one. Dick had confirmed what I had suspected, and what Josef had been telling people all these years, that Neal had re-drawn the Superman figures. Still one problem remained – how did he do it? If people such as Mark Evanier had seen the pages both pre and post inks and were adamant that they’d not been tampered with, then how had Neal done it? I have no reason to doubt Mark’s word – indeed I have the utmost respect for Mark, and many has been the time that I’ve sourced either his work, or the man himself, for clarification. Still Dick had said what he’d said, so how did Neal pencil the book? We all know that Neal is an artistic genius, but this was art beyond art! Then Neal gave me the answer himself.

This is how Neal Adams re-drew the Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man treasury edition. “Dick was given the job to ink Ross on the book.

“When I looked at the first pages I realized Ross had rushed some of the work and Dick, himself, had a lot of pressure deadline-wise. I thought how many times would Supes go up against Spidey? How many shots will this project get? One!

“I knew the strengths and weaknesses of the two artists. I asked Dick if I could tighten up the cover for him in preparation for inking. He said, ‘Long as you don’t, basically, change it.’ I said, ‘Never, I’ll just sorta ink it with a pencil.’ It worked out nicely.

“Then we agreed to ask Ross if I could, because I had more experience with Superman, tighten up the Superman figures in the book. Ross was delighted. Dick and I were delighted. I took great effort to keep the Ross Andru look and quality while I added a bit of anatomy here and there, chiselled a face a bit, and basically inked with a pencil, after which Dick inked with ink. I don’t think you could find a collaboration the like of this one, anywhere. I was the mustard on a ham and swiss.

“The method I used?

“I ran a kneaded eraser over each Superman figure, which lightened the pencil. Then I pencilled new lines over the old and filled in areas that were unfinished, I located the roughed in “S” symbol and made the anatomy more solid. I knew Ross Andru’s style so I kept it Ross as best I could, and Dick blended it with his ink… But if you look real close….

“Ross came up and visited me at the studio after that and we became quite friendly.”

MYSTERY SOLVED!!! Neal didn’t re-draw it as much as he embellished the pencil art – which is why anyone who’s seen the pencilled pages will swear that nothing was erased – because, technically, nothing was erased. This is why Neal Adams is an artistic genius: because the man can find a solution in any given situation.

Next on the list was John Romita. As part of writing the book about Andru & Esposito I found myself on the phone with John late one night, just talking about Ross and Mike as artists and people. In the middle of the conversation, without any prompting John came out with the following: “I think the greatest thing Ross did was the Spider-Man vs Superman cross over. I have told many people at many conventions that I don’t know of anybody who could have done a better job on a huge project like that. It’s high profile, you’re out there exposed, and he did the best job I’ve ever seen on such a big project. That’s one of my favorite books of all time. I did work with him on that book because I was the consultant for Marvel and Stan sort of insisted that every once in a while I touch up a Mary Jane Watson face, or a Peter Parker face. You might find a couple of my faces sticking out like a sore thumb in that book.”

With the art team finally now in place, perhaps the revised credits for the book could now read: Written by Gerry Conway, pencilled by Ross Andru with assists by Neal Adams and John Romita, inked by Dick Giordano with assists by Terry Austin and Josef Rubenstein. In any era those are credits that’d leave any serious comic book fan in awe.

But will it? Unlikely. It leaves us with a landmark book, one that is fondly remembered by all that have read it for the first time – who can go past that incredible double page spread of Supes and Spidey shaking hands? Who’d dare to? When you’re talking iconic images in comic books that surely ranks up there with all of them. The meeting of the two main companies of the day, the first proper superhero cross over (not counting the Rutland crossovers, and the Wizard Of Oz) and the book that blazed a trail that’s still being followed.

And it was so darn big!!!

POSTSCRIPT

A lot of things have happened since this article saw print and more facts have surfaced. Shortly after the article saw the light of day I was emailed a copy of a letter written by Terry Austin in which he expressed his dismay over the article because he'd not been contacted. I immediately contacted Terry (via Michael Eury) and explained that, as he wasn't active at that stage on the internet, contacting him wasn't as easy as I would have liked it to be and that I had indeed attempted to make contact. I drafted a letter of response and partial apology which was printed in Back Issue and Terry sat down and explained his side of the story.

Terry's main problem was that he felt his involvement was downplayed somewhat. He explained that he'd done more inking on this book than virtually anyone else than Dick Giordano but didn't see how Neal Adams could have re-penciled some images. On reflection he stated that it was now obvious to him. One thing he did mention was that the original art pages were done at almost the same size as the printed treasury. He then sent me photocopies of the art, at the original size, to prove his point. Terry mentioned that Bob Wiacek also had a hand in the inking stage. As Terry is loathe to fully go on the record I'm not able to include his actual comments, but perhaps one day.

I thought it might end there, but one Sunday morning, at 6am, the phone rang. On the other end was Neal Adams himself. He'd also read the article and wanted to clarify some points. He reiterated his points, that he had indeed repenciled some of the Superman (DC) figures, but he'd kept the basic designs of Ross Andru intact. Neal did pass a few more comments on about another artist but, again, as he wasn't on the record I won't repeat them here. Still, a phone call from Neal Adams? Colour me amazed!

In 2006 Michael Eury released his excellent Krypton Companion in which he spoke to Gerry Conway about the Superman/Spider-Man book. Conway denied any knowledge of the art situation on the book but did comment that John Romita had often retouched some of Andru's Spider-Man faces. The interesting comment here was that Conway felt that Giordano was heavily influenced by Neal Adams with the result being that almost everything he inked came out looking like Adams. So when Conway saw the end result, "it looked like Neal Adams' drawing, it didn't occur to me it might actually be Neal Adams' drawing."

Mind you as recently as February 2007 Roy Thomas printed a letter from Marv Wolfman in Alter Ego #65 which focused on the Superman/Spider-Man book, which just goes to show that even after over 30 years this is one story that refuses to lie down. One day, when I get the time, I'll sit down and re-write the article with the new information that I've been given and hopefully, FINALLY, put it all down on paper and thus to rest.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Partners For Life - The Interviews: Nic Cuti

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews and testimonials, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself so you can see all of the great stuff that couldn't be fit into the book proper.

Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book. Otherwise enjoy these little pieces and then run out and buy a copy of the book so you can read the rest.

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NIC CUTI

A veteran of the comic book industry, Nic Cuti is the co-creator of E-MAN, along with artist Joe Staton. Nic has worked for the likes of Charlton, Warren, DC and more. He’s written, edited and drawn countless stories during his career, and is probably best known for his work on the many Warren horror books, such as Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella. He also served as the art assistant on Wally Wood's Cannon and Sally Forth, created Moonchild The Starbabe, Captain Cosmos and a host of others.

This interview was conducted via email in March 2005.


DANIEL BEST: When did you first become aware of Andru & Esposito as an art team?
NIC CUTI: When I saw their names on the series “Metal Men”. I never met Mike Esposito but I did have the pleasure of working with Ross Andru at DC Comics. I was the assistant editor on “ATARI FORCE” which Ross illustrated. I also worked with him on a space opera, which, unfortunately, never saw print. I left DC Comics soon after that so I was never able to work with Ross again. I recall him as being a pleasant gentleman with a very good sense of humor and a real delight to work with. I was a great fan of his “Metal Men” series so it was a real honor to finally meet him and work with him.

DB: What was Ross like as a person and also as a professional?
NC: Ross was a true gentleman. He was a thin man with rich black hair and always very pleasant and friendly. His artwork was clean and well drafted especially when it came to mechanical things such as space ships.

DB: You worked with Ross at DC; does anything stand out in your mind from that period?
NC: I do recall Ross being frustrated once. He was developing an adult space opera for, I believe, DC's Vertigo line and somehow he could never settle on exactly what would be considered adult. It was obvious he had changed the artwork several times. Other artists/writers, including myself, had trouble achieving the changeover from what had always been accepted DC art to what was “edgy” and adult. Dick Giordano had mentioned to me that Ross' pages actually seemed heavy with white-out. It's a shame, because I had always believed space opera was Ross' forte.

DB: What did Ross bring to the table as an artist?
NC: Good solid art with clear storytelling ability. In comics, the artist must tell the story along with the writer and Ross could be depended upon to do this very well.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Partners For Life - The Interviews: John Romita

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself so you can see all of the great stuff that couldn't be fit into the book proper.

Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book. Otherwise enjoy these little pieces and then run out and buy a copy of the book so you can read the rest.

------------------------
JOHN ROMITA

John Romita Senior started drawing after spending a year in commercial art. His first jobs were for Stan Lee's Atlas group in 1949. Romita drew mostly horror and romance stories, but also several war, western and crime features for Western Publishing. After the folding of Atlas, he went to National, where he did anonymous romance stories for eight years. He then went back to Stan Lee, this time at Marvel. His first works were inking The Avengers and pencilling Daredevil comics.

His most notable work became the Amazing Spider-Man comic, which he drew from 1966, working closely with both Stan Lee as a writer and Mike Esposito as inker. Under Romita, Lee and Esposito’s guidance, Spider-Man became the quintessential antihero of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He left Spider-Man in the early 1970s, to become an art director at Marvel, working specifically in the Special Projects Department. Romita Sr. was engaged in product illustration and special designs and as Art Director for Marvel Books, the short-lived children's book line. In 1977, he briefly did the artwork of the syndicated Spider-Man newspaper comic.

The following interview was conducted in February, 2005, and was copyedited by John Romita.


DANIEL BEST: You first encountered Andru & Esposito back when they were doing Wonder Woman.
JOHN ROMITA: That was a funny episode. They were getting some flack about the Wonder Woman face. That was such a flattering thing, that they would ask me to help them out with it. I was scared because at the time I really wasn’t that solid in my own estimation. It was such a flattering thing that I think it elevated my ego a great deal. I had mixed emotions when they said that they’d decided not to do it, because I really wanted to see how it’d work but I had my doubts thinking about getting it to fit in to Ross’ style.

DB: Was that the first time you’d encountered them?
JR: No, actually I think it might have been done by phone. I’m not sure if I’d met them before that. I knew about them because as a comic book artist I was very much aware of Andru and Esposito and some of the great things they had done. And I loved that style. Ross’ style was so distinctive. Ross is a very under-appreciated talent. I thought he was a giant talent and people don’t mention him enough. As a colleague, and a guy who was looking at all the good artists trying to get as much information for myself, I always thought of Ross as a very special artist and I’m amazed that people have not remembered his run on Spider-Man as well as they should have.

I don’t think I met them until they were working at Marvel. I was rather one of those guys who were insulated. I never socialized or circulated with pros from other companies, I was just sort of parochialised. I just stayed in my own office and the only contact I usually had was by phone, and then at the occasional convention. I don’t even remember the first time I met them.

DB: Mike inked your first issues of Amazing Spider-Man.
JR: Right! He was my regular inker on the book. I figured that having a guy with his track record was a great boon to me. He wasn’t going to labor over it, he had a nice free style and I don’t think that our styles matched at first, but he made it work. I was very pleased with the stuff.

DB: You also inked Ross when he started on Spider-Man.
JR: I did some covers with Ross. I would do sketches and Ross would do finishes. A lot of times I would ink Ross’ covers when Mike wasn’t available. I worked a few times with Ross and I think the greatest thing Ross did was the treasury Spider-Man vs. Superman cross over. I have told many people at many conventions that I don’t know of anybody who could have done a better job on a huge project like that. It’s high profile, you’re out there exposed, and he did the best job I’ve ever seen on such a big project. That’s one of my favorite books of all time. I did work with him on that book because I was the consultant for Marvel and Stan sort of insisted that every once in a while I’d have to touch up a Mary Jane Watson face, or a Peter Parker face. You might find a couple of my faces sticking out like a sore thumb in that book.

DB: What was Ross like as an artist to ink?
JR: He was very hard to ink. When you’re a penciler and you ink chances are there are certain lines that are not comfortable for you. As a penciler I found him hard to ink. Even Mike has admitted that he had some trouble with Ross too.

First of all physically it was a problem because he used to press very hard on the paper. If the paper was soft that day there’d be a sort of a groove in the paper where the pencil line was. That makes it very hard to ink because if you put your pen there and you’re expecting to make a curve and it comes straight because there’s a groove guiding your pen. Some of it was physical and some of it was stylistic, where your style is to do a certain kind of an arc and his style would be a little bit of a different kind of an arc. All inkers confront that, but a penciler who is an inker also has a harder job on a very distinctive style like Ross’. His expressions were also very subtle. If you didn’t nail the expressions, like all good artists there’s a subtlety in the pencils that you can’t capture in ink. I don’t care who you are. Even a guy like Kubert, his pencils have one thing and his finishes have another. In other words the effect is never quite the same. If they could reproduce from pencils then you’d be surprised at how different some guys work would be.

Ross and Gene Colan were probably the toughest guys to ink for me. Gil Kane presented other problems because he didn’t finish up as well as Ross did. Sometimes a penciler in his haste just sort of suggested things with a faint, little touch, a little shadow here and there, and it’s very difficult to get that in ink. I used to joke around with a lot of pencilers and say “You guys can use grey; we can only use black and white”. Those grays were beautiful to do in the pencils, but tricky to do in ink.

DB: Was there much room to move as an inker when it came to Ross’ pencils?
JR: Not much. The size of his figures was different from mine. Some of the smaller figures were tricky, as they were with other artists. Gil Kane’s small figures used to drive me crazy.

Ross was such a storyteller that he did not dote on the show-off parts of penciling. Some pencilers want to show off, they want to show some glamorous little touches and flourishes, but he was more intent on telling the story, which I always admired. Ross was a storyteller first and a show-off second.

DB: Ross came over to Marvel towards the end of the ‘60s and did a few stories and then went back to DC.
JR: I think that was more an editorial type thing. If an artist and an editor didn’t see eye to eye then there was always a problem. There were editors that I remember who used to come to me and say, “I can’t get an inker to do this kind of work”, like Ross’ and Gene Colans. They would come to me and ask who’s a good inker for this and I would say “You know, you’re going to have a problem getting an inker on that”. There’s a funny illusion; editors would look at Ross’ pencils and see all sorts of things in there that the inker couldn’t see. Even Mike had that trouble. There was one editor who when he was editor-in-chief, asked me if I thought that Mike was losing something from Ross. I’d say “This is a case of you think you’re seeing something in the pencils”, because of that subtlety I was talking about, “but that the inker can’t translate to ink, it’s an impossibility.” You look at those penciled Spider-Man pages and you’ll see some little subtle looks in an eye that can’t be duplicated in ink. That was the problem. If an editor was being a hard-ass about “well the inker’s not following the pencils”, I had to tell more than one editor in the thirty years I was at Marvel that you think you’re seeing something that’s not there. You’re seeing an illusion, which is that nice little grey accent here and there that a penciler slips in there and gets away with murder because he doesn’t have to ink it. I know as a penciler it used to paralyze me. I could have gotten away with a lot of things in pencil for other people to ink, but because I knew how hard it would be to ink, I used to make it extra clear and I lost a lot of time. It would have been better if I was living in a fool’s paradise and just knocked it out and let some poor inker suffer.

DB: When Ross and Mike were given the art chores on Spider-Man, did you feel any sense of history due to their background?
JR: I always thought Andru and Esposito had a special magic. I don’t remember hearing a lot of it, but I think certainly amongst the insiders we all felt that it was a very comfortable feeling to have that team working on the book.

DB: Ross then quit Marvel and went back to DC.
JR: I think Ross always had a dead-line problem like I did. Some editors, if you can’t get it in early, or on time, they don’t care how good you are, especially if the traffic managers and the editor-in-chief all say, “Look, it’s all well and good that this is beautiful stuff, but it’s getting later and later”. So when Ross left Marvel it might have been because he had a deadline problem and it might have been because there were clashes of taste and deadline problems, because editors and pencilers constantly bickered and clashed on styles and things like that.

DB: What were Mike and Ross like as people?
JR: Wonderful guys. Ross was a pro. He and I were sympathetic because he labored over his stuff like I did. Jack Kirby, John Buscema, John Byrne, the work just seemed to flow out of them. I know they worked hard, but I don’t think it was as much a struggle for people like that as it was for me and Ross. We had a kindred kind of a problem; we’d have to pull it out of ourselves surgically. It was very hard so I think, with Ross, that’s the reason why he left. He may have had a personality difference with a couple of editors too, because Ross was very set in his ways. I think he and Mike had many disagreements too. Mike also was a pro, but every now and then I think he’d ask Ross to do something that he didn’t want to do. So I think that Ross’ personality was a little bit rigid and a little bit hard because he knew what his problems were and the editors used to gloss over them and just say, “C’mon, you can knock it out”, and that kind of stuff. So there was always that tension.

As far as people go, the artists and writers got along better with editors at Marvel, although there were a few guys who gave us trouble. Up at DC it was even harder. If Ross could work with the people at DC he could work with the guys at Marvel easier. The DC editors were brutal. Marvel editors were a little more diplomatic. All Bob Kanigher needed was a whip and a chair.

DB: You and Mike have been close for years.
JR: It’s been thirty five years, sure. He worked up at the office with me. I was a freak of the industry because I was working at the office full time and trying to do my deadline stuff between midnight and dawn. So when Mike came up to work in my department, we were doing corrections together, and Mike was also doing freelance so we definitely had a parallel career for quite a while.

DB: You also did a lot of the British Marvels with Mike.
JR: Because Mike was very fast he was always available to do that kind of stuff. He also worked with young pencilers and he was quite helpful. When my son was twenty years old he started doing some of those British splashes and covers and I think Mike was very helpful to him in those days. Mike’s speed was one of the valuable assets that he had, so he was able to work with that. He also did a lot of work on Spidey Super Stories with me. I didn’t pencil a lot of those, but I did do a lot of the covers and Spidey Super Stories was one of my proudest achievements and Mike was a big part of that.

Frank Giacoia was a part of it. We were like the Three Musketeers many times, trying to get a project out at the last minute. Guys like Frank, Mike and I would be working under the gun sometimes through the night. Sometimes Frank would come to my house, or he’d go to Mike’s house, it was a real three ring circus for a while. One time Frank Giacoia and I had to abandon the Marvel offices because of a bomb scare. We took our pages with us because we were so close to the deadline and, believe or not, we sat in a bar on Third Avenue and Frank and I were at a table, he was putting in blacks upside down on the panels on the top of the page and I was doing outlines on the bottom of the page. It was the damnest thing. All the patrons of the bar at lunchtime were standing there watching us work.

DB: I’ve noticed that Mike did a lot of first issues during the ‘70s.
JR: That’s a blessing. I didn’t have the pleasure doing many number ones. My first issue (of Amazing Spider-Man) was 39 and I never really had a chance to do any number ones. It’s one of those breaks that you happen to be there at the right time.

DB: Purely as an artist, how did you see Ross?
JR: I don’t think Ross was as free as he wanted to be. For example, I consider myself much too tight and too rigid. I tried to free up but it was much too hard for me, and with Ross it was the same thing. He was always a little frustrated because he was always too bound by reality. He was trying to do the thing that most comic artists have to do: make the reader forget they’re looking at a drawing. The reason he did that was because his instinct told him that you would believe in his characters more if you believed that this was really happening, and not constantly reminding the readers that this was a drawing. Ross struggled with that the way I did and that’s why I understood Ross from the beginning. Other guys don’t struggle. John Buscema never struggled, it used to just flow out of him and the fact that it was just the most beautiful figure drawing you ever saw was a bonus. We were all different, but every one of us admired the creativity of the other guys.

------------------------

John Romita inked the following book over Ross Andru's pencils:

Amazing Spider-Man
#125 (Inks: John Romita; Tony Mortellaro)
#146
#151
#173 (Cover - pencils by Andru, inks by Romita)

Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man
#nn (partial Romita pencils & inks)

Mike Esposito worked on the following books with John Romita:

Amazing Spider-Man
#39
#40
#41
#46
#47
#48
#49
#50
#51
#52
#53
#54
#55
#56
#57
#58
#59
#60
#61
#62
#63
#64
#66
#83
#125 (Cover art only)

Amazing Spider-Man Annual
#8

A-Team
#3 (Cover art only)

Avengers
#115 (Cover art only)
#116 (Cover art only)
#117 (Cover art only)
#122 (Cover art only)

Frankenstein
#16 (Cover art only)

Iron Man
#64
#65

Marvel Team-Up
#10 (Cover art only)

Spidey Super Stories
#6 (Cover art only)

Sub-Mariner
#65 (Cover art only)
#67 (Cover art only)
#68 (Cover art only)
#72 (Cover art only)

Weird Wonder Tales
#11 (Cover art only)

X-Men: Mutations
#nn

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Partners For Life - The Interviews: Murphy Anderson

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself so you can see all of the great stuff that couldn't be fit into the book proper.

Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book. Otherwise enjoy these little pieces and then run out and buy a copy of the book so you can read the rest.

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MURPHY ANDERSON

Murphy Anderson is one of the all-time great comic artists. His career spans over 50 years, and includes characters as diverse as Hawkman, the Spectre, the Atomic Knights and Buck Rogers. His clean style and detailed brushwork set the tone for many of the DC Comics of the Silver Age. He created the definitive portrayals of the Flash, Adam Strange, Batman, and Superman with his evocative inking.

Even before he became one of comics' greatest artists, Anderson was a science fiction fan; he's a member of First Fandom. He began his career working for the legendary Planet Stories pulp magazine in the 1940s and also applied his talents to its sister publication, Planet Comics. Now, 50 years later, Anderson is still active, painting cover recreations of his classic comics for Diamond Galleries.

This interview was conducted via phone in August 2005.


DANIEL BEST: When did you first meet Ross?
MURPHY ANDERSON: I’ve known Ross since back in the early ‘50s at DC. I was up there when Ross came on board, I think I got there a little earlier than he did, but he worked for Bob Kanigher and I worked for Julie Schwartz.

DB: Did you meet Mike at the same time?
MA: Yes. I knew them from when they were at Standard, not because I worked there but we had common friends and I’d go there and visit them once in a while.

DB: You used to talk to Ross about strange phenomena?
MA: Yes, yes. We both had an interest in the Shaver Mystery. I’d been a big fan of science fiction since the late ‘30s and Amazing Stories was my favorite magazine. When I was in the navy I met Ray Palmer, who was the editor. I was stationed in Chicago and I was only a couple of blocks over from Ziff Davies who published Amazing Stories. It was very popular with Long-John Neville. Long-John used to periodically talk about the Shaver Mystery on his radio show and Ross and I both listened to that. We both talked about it.

As far as working together, I don’t think I ever worked with him. I might have inked a cover or penciled something that Mike might have inked, but I don’t have any recollection of working with Ross.

DB: How did you see Ross as an artist?
MA: I thought he was an excellent artist. Like a lot of artists when he worked at Standard Alex Toth was the big improver at the time and he was very enamored with Alex Toth’s work. So I think Ross was like most of the artists there, this was in the early ‘50s, who came under the edict of trying to work like Alex. Mike Sekowsky, George Tuska, Artie Saff, all these men were trying to adapt to that. With Ross it was natural.

DB: What as Ross like as a person?
MA: A very, very nice man.

DB: Did you have much contact with Mike over the years?
MA: Yes, I’d see him and we’d chat. We never talked as much about the science fiction stuff, it was mostly work. I’d see Ross quite often because Bob Kanigher and Julie Schwartz shared an office and Ross would be working up there. Ross, Mike and Bob worked a lot on different features, not only Wonder Woman, but they did more war stories than super hero stories. When super heroes started coming back Bob Kanigher needed an artist and it was only natural that he turned to Ross.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Partners For Life - The Interviews: Sal Buscema

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself. Perhaps one day I'll be able to produce a 'directors cut' of the book where some of what was left out can be added in. Until then, enjoy! Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book - it'll give the book a more rounded view and show you somewhat of what the original manuscript looked like. Also, keep an eye on Mike Netzer's site. He's preparing an overview of what's happened with the book and I for one am looking forward to reading what he discovers. I've turned over my correspondence and other information, so hopefully he can get to the bottom of it all.

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SAL BUSCEMA

Sal Buscema started at Marvel comics in 1969, inking his brother John on Silver Surfer. From there he became one of the most dependable artists of the 1970s and 1980s, always on time and with solid results. Be it pencilling or inking (although he prefers inking), Sal remains one of the finest talents to emerge from the Marvel stable during the Bronze Age.

In recent times Sal moved from being exclusive at Marvel to freelance status, resulting in him working on the big two at DC: Superman and Batman. Although semi-retired Sal shows no signs of slowing down.

This interview was conducted via phone in March 2005.


DANIEL BEST: You worked fairly closely with Mike at Marvel.
SAL BUSCEMA: Mike inked a lot of my work. To say that we worked fairly closely is not a hundred percent accurate. A lot of the people that worked for Marvel were spread all over the place. Mike was based in New York and I live in Virginia. Consequently, I may have had one or two conversations with Mike on trips to New York, but I don’t ever recall talking to him on the phone. So when you say ‘worked closely together’, physically that’s not the case at all. Mike did ink a lot of my work, especially in the earlier years.

DB: How did you find Mike as an inker?
SB: I think Mike is a good inker. Honestly, and I want to be very candid about this, I was not thrilled about the way he inked my penciling. For some reason, and this is kind of unexplainable, there weren’t too many guys who inked me to my satisfaction, which is one of the reasons why I always lobbied to ink my own pencils. He was a good inker and he did a very, very good job on Ross. I was just not thrilled with what he did on my work, but that was a personal thing with me.

I can’t be anything but candid. I have to answer honestly; I’m not going to gloss over things. I’m going to tell it like it is, as the saying goes.

DB: Mike inked your run of Spectacular Spider-Man at the very start, and then he returned to the title in the late 1980s. Jim Salicrup apparently told Mike to “noodle up” the inks and make them look rough and scratchy.
SB: Maybe that was one of the problems. If you’ve seen any of the pencils that I’ve inked myself you’d see that I have a rather commercial, slick style. A lot of my early commercial art experience was as an illustrator for advertising and graphics and I think that carried over into my comic book illustrations and I think this maybe have been one of the reasons why I wasn’t crazy about what Mike did on my pencils.

DB: In the 1970s it was almost like you and Mike were an art team.
SB: I suppose you could say that. We pencilers are a very jealous lot in that we want the inkers to be very faithful to our pencils. For the most part Mike was (faithful) but perhaps it was a question of styles. It was just a personal thing.

Let me give you an analogy. I’m a great fan of classical music but I’m not a big fan of Bach because Bach is a baroque composer. My personal tastes do not appreciate baroque music. A lot of musicians and people who love classical music will probably think I’m crazy to say this, but I find it boring. However, there’s no question about the fact that Bach was one of the greatest composers who ever lived. It’s just a personal thing with me, but I’m not a big fan of his music. That analogy might explain how I felt about Mike Esposito.

It wasn’t only Mike; there were a lot of other inkers who I did not appreciate on my pencils. I’ve heard it said that I was one of the most cursed pencilers in the industry in that I’ve had a lot of guys inking my work who did not do it how I felt it should have been done. And when I did ink my own work it had a completely different look, yet it looked the way I thought it should look.

DB: Do you think that because you’ve always seen yourself as an inker that you’re more critical towards other inkers?
SB: It’s possible, because I have some very definite ideas about how inking should be done. My personal philosophy and maybe this is because I’ve also been a penciler, is that the inker should be very, very true to the penciler. He should try to put some of himself into the work, but still be as true to the penciler as possible, but there are exceptions. Inking someone like my brother, whose drawing was brilliant, was very, very difficult to follow. That was because his drawing was so excellent. There were inkers who would lose his drawing. It’s difficult to explain because there are so many subtleties to the drawing, especially when you were a master draftsman like John was, to maintain that beautiful drawing in the inking is a very difficult thing to do. There are guys, who could do that, and do it well. Another reason why my brother John always wanted to ink his own work was because he was very jealous of his pencils. He wanted the inker to be very true to them. I don’t agree with the inkers who believe that they have to noodle up, or just change the style of the penciler, unless they are specifically asked to do that by the people who are producing the book.

For instance, I’m doing a book with Ron Frenz who is a brilliant draftsman and just a tremendous talent. I think he’s one of the top five or ten guys in the industry and there is no way I would ever be presumptuous enough to change anything he does, unless he asked me to do so. Otherwise, I follow him quite closely, with the style that I have. I have an inking style and I will follow that penciller right out the window.

DB: You also inked one job with Ross.
SB: Yes and I really struggled with it at first. He wasn’t an easy guy to ink. He was a terrific penciler, a very talented guy. The first three pages I really struggled to find the right way to ink it. Once I got past those pages it seemed to come a little bit better. I was a big fan of Ross Andru. He was a great, great storyteller.

DB: When did you first become aware of Ross and Mike?
SB: I first became aware of Mike when he started inking my work. Before Marvel started sending comic books to the artists I would go out and buy a lot of them just to see what was being done in the industry. In the case of Ross, I was not familiar with his early work; I became familiar with his work when he started penciling Amazing Spider-Man.

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Sal Buscema inked the following book over Ross Andru's pencils:

Marvel Feature
#2

Mike Esposito worked on the following books with Sal Buscema:
Amazing Spider-Man
#154
#155
#181

Captain America
#185
#218
#220
#221
#222
#223
#224
#225
#226
#227
#228

Defenders
#22
#28 (Cover Art)

Incredible Hulk
#229
#231
#232
#235
#236
#239


Marvel Team-Up
#20
#38
#40 (Cover Art and interiors)
#41
#42
#43
#44
#45
#46
#48
#49
#50
#51
#52
#130

Marvel Team-Up Annual
#1

Marvel Two-In One
#5
#7
#8
#17

Master Of Kung Fu
#32
#41

Ms Marvel
#11 (Cover Art)

ROM
#29

Skull the Slayer
#4

Spectacular Spider-Man
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#8
#9
#10
#12
#13
#14
#16
#19
#20
#155
#156
#157
#158
#159

Sub-Mariner
#25
#26 (Cover Art and interiors)
#27 (Cover Art and interiors)
#28 (Cover Art and interiors)
#29 (Cover Art and interiors)
#30 (Cover Art and interiors)
#31