Marvel’s Folly of 1972
The chaotic “Marvel-ous” night Stan Lee and the Bullpen stumbled on stage at Carnegie Hall
by JON B. COOKE
Gerry Conway, who had joined the ranks of Marvel Comics after selling his first script to the publisher in 1970, was recently telling a story about his now ex-wife. “Carla was Stan’s secretary, and she had a legal background of her own, growing up with lawyers,” he said. “And Stan asked her to go through some paperwork that he inherited when he became publisher, and one of the papers was this contract. She said, ‘Y’know, Stan, there’s no performance guarantee in this contract. [The licensor] has these rights for five years, whether he does anything with them or not!’ Stan blew up! By this point, he was in charge of the company, the publisher, the guy who was supposed to make money for the company. And he was ham-strung for any possibility for selling these characters to TV for cartoons… songs… nothing! It was all controlled by this one guy.”1 The only projects to come out of the agreement was a “Rockomic” record album and “A Marvel-ous Evening with Stan Lee,” a multi-media event held on Jan. 5,1972, at a prestigious Manhattan setting.
A live show devoted to Lee wasn’t a bad idea, Conway said. “On its face, it made kind of sense, because Stan, at that point, was becoming a pop culture figure. He wasn’t yet the Stan Lee of the [Marvel Cinematic Universe] days, but he had been written up in a number of articles and was well-known by college students.”2 In fact, only months prior, Marvel made it onto the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, proof that Lee’s company was hip and charting high in the zeitgeist of American youth. “And there was a big Marvel fan base, and the idea of some kind of live performance made perfect sense, and doing it at Carnegie Hall was a natural to feed Stan’s ego. And it would have been great if there had actually been anyone involved who had any theatrical or producer experience, and if there had been any way to actually create a cohesive whole out of a bunch of random things that got thrown together. Like a lot of Stan’s work, he needed strong collaborators, for someone to give shape to the material to the ideas that Stan had. And there was no one, as far as I am aware, who had, even remotely, a part of that.”3
Actually, the shaggy-maned 28-year-old who signed with Marvel was a seasoned producer by the time he put on the Carnegie show. In fact, he had learned on the job as concert promoter for national acts playing Madison Square Garden, including The Doors, Janis Joplin, and The Band, and as onetime stage manager of fabled rock venue Fillmore East. The dude could also boast a long association with theatre, albeit mostly of the amateur variety. His name: Stephen Howard Lemberg.
“MORE IN THEM THAN MEETS THE EYE”
The origin story of “A Marvel-ous Night…” is a little hazy, either starting in a buddy’s pad or at a bookstore. One 1971 newspaper article shared about Steve Lemberg:
A friend of his is a comic book freak. He spends some time at his friend’s apartment reading comic books. “I realized there is more in them than meets the eye,” he says. “I decided they would make really good theater.”4
An issue of Cash Box relayed a different version of the tale: “He got the idea for the whole Marvel project while browsing in a San Francisco book shop. ‘I saw these comics while I was just hanging out there and I bought a few, and then it came to me.’”5
The initial notion was for him to license Marvel characters for radio serials only. In their book, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book [2003], Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon described the negotiations between Lemberg and Charles “Chip” Goodman, who was representing Marvel while his father, publisher Martin Goodman, was out of town:
In 1971, rock promoter Steve Lemberg sat down with Chip to negotiate for the radio rights to several Marvel characters. Lemberg was only interested in radio serials, but then a strange thing happened. “I just kept asking for more rights,” Lemberg recalls. “Every time I asked for something, they gave it to me. I’d say, ‘Does anyone have the rights to do movies?’ They’d say, ‘No,’ because at the time no one really wanted to do movies. And I’d say, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a few hundred dollars… for
Top: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Go to 881 Seventh Avenue in midtown N.Y.C., between West 56th and 57th Streets! Above: Ad in The New York Times and The Village Voice, in December 1971. Our own Glenn Whitmore added colors at Ye Ed’s request..
up front
Characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Color
COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2023 • #31 3
by Glenn Whitmore.
Above: The Man himself in 2012, posing with the Carnegie Hall show poster before it was auctioned. Below: At the Carnegie Hall show, Stan and his wife and daughter recited stanzas from his epic poem, God Woke, which was eventually published with illustrations by Mariano Nicieza in a limited edition book. Published by William Shatner’s imprint, God Woke was adapted as a graphic novel in 2016, with the assist of writer Fabian Nicieza. Inset bottom right: From the “Best Bets” section of New York Magazine, Jan. 3, 1972, plugging the event. Comment on the magician’s monkey was derived from a mention in a New York Daily News article.
those rights, too.’” Lemberg says he walked away with an exclusive option to license the majority of the company’s heroes — including Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four — for motion pictures, television, and radio. The total price: $2,500, plus an annual fee to renew his option.6
Lemberg utilized his company, National Copacetic, Ltd., for the licensing deal, and, in later years, he told Sean Howe, “I owned more rights to Marvel than Marvel had. The only decision that Chip ever made was to give me all the rights to his comic books. They gave me a 20-page contract with interlocking rights and options; I could do anything I wanted. I could make movies, records, anything. It was really a trip.”7
(In comparison, since Iron Man was released in 2008, the MCU films have (as of June 2022) thus far generated $26.6 billion in box office receipts, making it the highest grossing movie franchise of all time. This does not include the books, the toys, the clothing, and all of the myriad licensing revenue, as well as the original source from whence all of this intellectual property sprang, the Marvel Comics Group.)
In late 1971, Lemberg told a reporter that he had spent eight months pursuing the licensing arrangement with Marvel and its corporate owner, Perfect Film and Chemical. “He borrows on everything he owns, sells stock, accepts help from his parents. It has cost him $80,000 so far,” related an article.8
Lemberg’s plans were wildly grandiose, to say the least. One was to conquer the radio airwaves, both AM and FM, by embracing the logic of “Youngsters are geared to listening to three-minute [vinyl] records,” he told The Daily News. “That’s why I’m using five-minute serials.”9 With a target date of late February to start, he was planning a radio series starring Thor,*
*As for choosing the Kirby-Lee version of the Norse mythological god of thunder, Lemberg told Broadcasting magazine, “I chose Thor for the first series for a couple of reasons. First of all, Thor is the prettiest of all the Marvel characters. And there is a lot of love interest that runs through the comic. The language in the strip also lends itself well to dramatization. And, because it all takes place in space, that lends itself to the use of electronic music and the like for backgrounds.”13
four five-minute episodes a day, five days a week, to be broadcast on as many as 400 commercial and college stations.
For the Thor series, Lemberg projected 65 episodes to start and estimated the overall investment at more than $100,000 (costing $1,500–2,000 per episode). Plans were to follow Thor with a series starring T’Challa, the Black Panther. “Because T’Challa is Black and lives in Harlem,” Lemberg told media trade magazine Broadcasting, “that will give me a chance to use some R&B for the music.”10
Aiming for the early months of 1973, Lemberg was forecasting an investment of $2.5 million into an arena show that would tour the country, “a combination circus, light show, and rock ’n’ roll concert spotlighting comic characters,”11 described as presenting a storyline “about the end of the universe.”12
Also set for ’73, the young producer envisioned a fulllength feature film, The Silver Surfer, to star Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson (who had, at that point, a single movie role to his credit). Also in the planning stages were individual movies to feature Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the thunder god.
Additionally, Lemberg spoke of plans for a giant trade paperback, as large as The Whole Earth Catalog (11" x 14") that will “stretch [the] comic form to its limits,” which he planned to sell for less than $10. Estimated release date: Christmas 1972.14
And there also was a proposed TV special featuring French film director Alain Resnais, as well as a line of half-music, half-dramatic record albums, the first to star Spider-Man.
The cocky, self-assured Lemberg, described as “a fellow with long, curly black hair and a black, bushy moustache,” boasted to a journalist, “I figure within the next five years, my company should make — and it’s a conservative estimate —some $50 million.”15 But, to accomplish this stratospheric goal ($361 million in 2023 dollars), the confident young man needed promotional help. Apparently, devising global conquest by way of the Marvel universe was too big a job for just one person.
ENTER THE METALLIC MAMA
Ten years older than Lemberg, Barbara Gittler preferred to think of herself as the “Jewish Mother” of the Manhattan society of specialized agencies that found work for advertising professionals — Madison Avenue “mad men” headhunters, if you will. “But not only is Barbara a Jewish mother,” New York Magazine explained in 1968, “she is a Jewish mother who understands pot.”16 She also was a member of the “Metallic Mamas,” which New York described as “a group of hungry ladies who look like you could be their lunch.”17
By the time Gittler, the mother of three young kids, met Lemberg, she’d already established Barbara Gittler Associates, which then signed to handle National Copacetic’s dealings in-
#31 • Summer 2023 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR
4
The Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. God Woke TM & © the estate of Stan Lee.
The pair realized they also needed a press agent for the show and enlisted the services of Abby Hirsch, who shared about her experiences with the two in a 1974 memoir, The Great Carmen Miranda Look-alike Contest and Other Bold-Faced Lies. Hirsch described the “couple of hustlers”18 thusly:
Still in his twenties, a one-time production manager for Fillmore East, Steve combined the qualities of a friendly St. Bernard and a snake-oil salesman. His girlfriend/partner Barbara was a Jules Feiffer creation come to life, a gaunt woman with stick-straight salt-and-pepper hair. Even at the time, she was a bit long in tooth to qualify for the Pepsi generation.19
Hirsch, the onetime “publicity girl” of Valley of the Dolls author Jacqueline Susann, confessed, “When I worked on ‘A Marvel-ous Evening with Stan Lee,’ shame dogged my every step. In between blushes, however, there were a lot of laughs.”20
The publicist’s first challenge, Lemberg explained to her, was to hype the Carnegie Hall event, which he described as “an evening of light entertainment with audience participation.” Then Gittler chimed in on the discussion:
“This is very heavy,” Barbara told me, lighting one of an unending chain of cigarettes and taking a deep drag. “Stan Lee’s creations are human beings, throbbing with life, aching with pain. Iron Man has a heart condition. Spider-Man has a junkie roommate. Ben Grimm is an outsider because of his bad skin. Thor, in his mortal state, is very vulnerable.”
“That’s just part of the story,” Steve added. “Stan Lee might be the Homer of this generation. His Silver Surfer is the new Messiah sent by a far-reaching cosmic power with the potential to solve modern man’s dilemma: yet he is rejected by those whom he would save. Stan Lee is defining our culture. He is a Maker of Myths.”21
(Meanwhile, over on the West Coast, Lee’s ex-myth-making partner, Jack Kirby, now creating legends for Marvel’s rival, had skewered “Stan the Man” in a savage caricature named “Funky Flashman,” within the pages of Mister Miracle #6. That had gone on sale November 11, less than a week after Lee posed with Lemberg examining a copy of Thor for a Newsday photographer. Lee biographer Abraham Reisman described the brutal portrayal: “Funky loves himself even more than he hates doing real work, and he tries to get [Mister Miracle] on his side by showering him with insincere, alliterative compliments, while repeatedly showing cowardice in the face of battle.”22 Reportedly, Stan was “kind of hurt” after seeing the comic book.)23
STAGING THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
“Kirby-esque” might be a perfect description for Steve Lemberg’s vision of the one-nighter scheduled for 8:00 p.m., Wednesday night, January 5th. “The center of the Carnegie stage will be a giant Mylar throne,” Lemberg disclosed to Cash Box, a music biz trade magazine, “around which will weave the weird and wonderful works of Peter Nevard, who will create a cacophony of Asgardian effects with film, slides, and lighting. Magician Crozier has devised some never-before-seen illusions for the show, which will be the most elaborate production ever staged at Carnegie Hall. Two Marvel artists, John Bessman [sic] and Herb Trimbe [sic], who originated the Fantastic Four and the Hulk, will animate a fight sequence on the spot. Eddie Carmel,
the nine-foot, eight-inch man, will improvise poetry dedicated to his Marvel heroes and in the lobby the audience will be surrounded by 128 huge panels, an exhibit created by Stan Lee to show the evolution of the comic book.”24
Lee, who hit it off on a personal level with fellow self-promoter Lemberg, had signed on as creative consultant for the many National Copacetic plans, and he likely suggested certain people to participate in the show. Among them was probably Federico Fellini, the avant-garde Italian film director, who had visited the offices of Magazine Management for an hour in late 1965. Lee had thereafter professed that Fellini was a fan of Marvel Comics and so, among a breath-taking list of celebrities tied to the show that Lemberg and Gittler rattled off to their PR person, there was the director’s name. But, when Hirsch by chance encountered the revered filmmaker at Sardi’s restaurant a day after she had sent out a press release announcing his participation, Fellini hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was talking about when she casually mentioned the upcoming show. She soon realized, “Most of the people they had mentioned hadn’t been signed. A lot of them hadn’t been approached. And a good many of those who hadn’t yet been approached hadn’t even bothered to respond to invitations….”25
Still, there were a couple of impressive names among those who did sign up, including noted “new journalism” author Tom Wolfe and French film director Alain Resnais, both actual real-life fans of Marvel Comics, as well as funnyman Chuck McCann and actor René Auberjonois (who would later achieve a measure of fame playing the alien, Odo, on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). Two other featured performers have their own fascinating backstories worth examining here.
MIRACLE MONGER EXTRAORDINAIRE
Besides Stan Lee, perhaps the one person to appear more frequently on stage in the final production was Australian Geoff Crozier, who had been twice named “Top Magician of the Year” back in his home country. After arriving in the United States in September 1971, he practiced in a tiny shed on Staten Island, a New York City borough, where he worked out some spectacular tricks for his onstage debut at Carnegie Hall.
The eccentric 24-year-old, who would go on to make a name for himself as a flamboyant performer in New York City’s rock scene, was discovered by The Daily News to be living in a 10-foot square shack with “a friendly mutt named Schroeder, an
wonderful.”
Below: News item appearing in the June 1972 cover-dated Marvel comics mentioning the event.
COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2023 • #31 Thor , Marvel Bullpen Bulletins TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
Above: Stan Lee (left) and producer-promoter Steve Lemberg, who told the authors of Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book [2003], “If you’re going to produce things, you want them to be right. You’d have to be nuts not to utilize Stan, because he’s the brains behind Marvel… I thought he was
5
BEACH BUMMED
What became of the ambitious Thor radio serial scheduled to follow the show is a tale lost to the ages, but the duo’s greatest success — both aesthetically and critically — lay ahead that same year, 1972, a project far more focused and rewarding called Spider-Man: From Beyond the Grave, for all practical purposes a compelling radio drama on vinyl interspersed with catchy pop songs. But the Lemberg-Gittler production released in the fall wasn’t the first notion they had about pressing vinyl records featuring the House of Ideas. In the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page written at the end of January, Stan Lee wrote in his “Soapbox” column about the “thousands of angry letters”90 received from readers who wrote “to castigate us for not printing announcements of our Carnegie Hall show right here in our mags, so you could have known about it ahead of time.”91 Lee then hyped a live LP record they were considering: “But don’t lose faith, Believer! All is not lost. Luckily, a recording was made of the whole senses-shattering spectacle, and we’re gonna try to turn it into an album, which we’ll offer for sale as soon as we can work out all the dazzling details. So, if you can bear the suspense, watch this space in the months to come — save your
pennies — and tune up the ol’ turntable, ’cause the best is yet to be!”92
Alas, no audio recording of the show has emerged, and unfortunately there also was minimal photographic evidence of “A Marvel-ous Night…,” a fact Roy Thomas rightly laments. “The most idiotic thing Lemberg did was not allow the public to take photos,” he said. “But not to take much of any himself or authorize any… There’s a bit of film of a couple of the things Stan did — reading his poem with his wife and daughter, and some footage with that real-life ‘world’s tallest man,’ etc. — but I don’t think there’s even an audio recording of our band or the rest of the show... or, if there is, I don’t recall ever seeing/hearing it.”93
As for Lee, obviously disappointed with the inaugural National Copacetic/ Marvel production — and perhaps exhausted considering how much time he spent on stage — he went on a Florida vacation soon after the show. It was likely an eventful holiday, during which Lee joined Marvel publisher Martin Goodman for a seaside interview with The Palm Beach Post. In that article,94 he again griped about the cancellation of The Silver Surfer, something Lee had done during the Alain Resnais segment of the Carnegie Hall show, about how young kids didn’t seem to cotton to the character like the older readers did. Goodman chimed in to suggest young ones didn’t like surfing.95 (It’s speculated that, during this visit, Goodman informed Lee he was retiring as publisher, the catalyst for a chain of events that would ultimately lead to another great 1970s Marvel-related debacle, the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard Comics line.)
By spring, Stan Lee was promoted to become Marvel Comics president and publisher. But, in a power-play intended to blunt Lee’s rise, Goodman’s second son, Chip (described by one author as a “chubby, balding hipster in rose-colored glasses”)96 was anointed Lee’s boss, while père Goodman basked in the Florida sun in his “red golf pant surrounded by huge splashes of modern art,”97 reclining in retirement with his companions, a toy poodle and a Yorkshire terrier.
“CRAWL LIKE A SPIDER, LOVE LIKE A MAN”
The Amazing Spider-Man: From Beyond the Grave record album debuting in Oct. 1972 was a far more successful Lemberg/Gittler production than the Carnegie Hall travesty of the prior winter. With effective story, lyrics, and music created by Steve Lemberg and with Barbara Gittler serving as producer, the “Rockomic,”* intended to be first in a series of many with each devoted to a different Marvel character, was overseen by the watchful eye of Buddah Records exec Neil Bogart (only months away from forming Casablanca and signing Kiss to a record deal).
Befitting Buddah’s fame (infamy?) as the predominate bubblegum music factory, Ron Dante, lead singer of The Archies (of “Sugar, Sugar” notoriety), was the lone singer on the LP. “I did the vocals for the album all in one night at a *Billboard described Buddah’s “Rockomic” experiment as an attempt to “combine rock music with episodic narratives featuring prominent comic book heroes.”98
#31 • Summer 2023 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR
12
Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Lizard, Vulture, Green Goblin, Kingpin, and Aunt May TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
Old Friends, New Horizons
A conversation about the launch of the Frank Miller Presents line with publisher Dan DiDio
Interview Conducted by GREG BIGA
[Beginning in August of 2022, Frank Miller Presents has been publishing new works written or inspired by Frank Miller. The industry legend has partnered with former DC Comics executive Dan DiDio and his brand CEO Silenn Thomas, as well as Philip Tan, Alex Sinclair, John Workman, and several other members of a creative collective, to launch this brand-new comics company. It’s a unique collaboration and venture into the ever-changing world of comic book publishing. Dan DiDio takes time leading into that launch (as well as bringing us up to speed after the first six months of publishing) to talk us through his first energy-filled project following his exit from DC. He also shares some insight on his first prose novel. GB]
This spread: Above is the Frank Miller Presents logo sporting the trademark FM fedora in rainy milieu. Inset right is cover art for the debut issue of Ronin: Book II, Frank’s follow-up to his 1980s classic saga. This version is written by FM and drawn by artists Phillip Tan and Daniel Henriques. On opposite page is Dan DiDio and Frank Miller outside Manhattan’s Society of Illustrators Museum of Illustration, in early Sept. 2022. Below, pic of Dan with his caricature by Art Balthazar that appeared in Tiny Titans #13 [Apr. 2009], inscribed to manservant Alfred Pennyworth!
Comic Book Creator: When this process with Frank started to get underway you were under contract. This is something that couldn’t be in conversation at all about, correct?
Dan DiDio: Exactly. As a matter of fact, that’s one of the reasons why because I was still in the contract. For an extended period of time I was kind of sitting on my hands. So that’s why, when I was helping people, it was all gratis, because, first of all, I was under contract. So, it was more personal health than anything. And it wasn’t that much. It was just some conversations here and there. So, it wasn’t until my time with DC officially ended, that I really wanted to return calls. But as I got through it I just kept everybody in abeyance until I was able to discuss things, you know.
CBC: So, with Frank, obviously, for people who know his stuff, it’s easy to sit back and say, ‘If I’m going to partner with somebody who’s got living legend status, but who also has properties that really could be put to use in the current medium,’ he’s a name that is automatically going to come up. How and when did this process start? Dan: Frank was interested in doing Ronin. I guess he was in discussions with DC, something along those lines. He asked me if I wanted to be the Ronin editor. I said I don’t think DC would love that idea. But if you do this on your own, I’ll be more than happy to work with you in finding ways to get it published. That’s how I started and it just blossomed from there. It’s interesting because we have a lot of respect for each other. He’s one of the people that I just love to sit and talk comics with. That’s what we do. I mean, realistically, we used to spend hours, even when I used to
go back to New York, I’d stop by and visit, see how he’s doing, see how he’s feeling, and just see how he’s going. And we used to sit there and just spend a couple of hours a day just talking comics, and having fun doing it, you know. And then, when it actually came time to actually do something, it just seemed to make the most sense to find a way for us to work together. Because there wasn’t overlapping skill sets, you know. I mean, his creative craft is spectacular, I have organizational business skills that are pretty good with some creativity, that I can help be able to have a strong creative conversation with him. So, it was a nice pairing that came together.
And honestly, Frank doesn’t need to do this. But part of him and part of what he feels is part of his own personal legacy is to put his money where his mouth is. All his conversations about the yeses and noes of what it takes to publish, he’s actually going to put that forward for himself. And when we approached this, the first thing he said to me was, “I can’t become what I’ve railed against my entire career,” meaning publishers that abuse timelines, or abused creative environments. So, we had a pact about how we would approach things creatively. And how, more importantly, we have to make sure that there’s a level of fairness delivered to the people that are participating in our process. Even if it might be a detriment to the profit line or the profit margins, you know. We’re not going to make choices that are built on profitability more so than what we believe is important to the craft and the creativity of the process.
40
II TM &
Ronin: Book
© Frank
Miller.
#31 • Summer 2023 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR
Photo courtesy of Dan Didio.
CBC: And, as you’re building that, how did the company process start coming together? Because obviously it’s not just the two of you and talent. How are you making that happen?
Dan: It’s because ultimately, he’s already worked with publishers. He has a very long and healthy relationship with Dark Horse, with so many of the properties… worked at DC… worked at Marvel. Yes, he had to end both. This was the last step. It wasn’t just about getting something published; it’s actually publishing it yourself, which is two different things. And when you sit and have a day long conversation about barcodes, you realize it really is two different things.
CBC: Sure. So, is this like a full-staff? How does this process work?
Dan: Yeah, there’s three. [laughs] I created what I call production cells. Each book has a production cell, a team that’s responsible for the creation of the book. And I manage the coordination of that. Frank is overseeing all the creative of all that. So, he literally signs off on every single property. We had a couple of creative mandates that we have put in place, which is interesting. We’re only having one variant cover per book. As much as a lot of retailers already contacted me for custom covers, and things like that, I had to just graciously explain that that’s not available. We want people to read the interior of the material, not the exterior. And that’s important to us, we want these books to be read.
Our goal is not to start off with a big bang of sales, but hopefully grow sales because people get excited and jump on board, rather than pick something up and disappear. We’re also working on color plans, we’re going with unsaturated colors, we feel the books are too saturated these days, just looks like people are just filling paint on it and the books, you can see the pages soaked in so much ink that they it turns into mud on a page and we’re trying to be much more clearer and have much more definition in our art, so it feels stronger.
We’re opening up with bigger panels. Ronin’s told in double-page spreads, just to make sure the art really comes to life. So we’re doing a lot of things really to bring back what we believe are the strengths of the medium, which is art, spectacle and characterization, and things of that nature that we think are what are supposed to bring people to buy comics, not just the potential of a movie being made of it to increase its collectability. Or by overstocking on variant covers in an artificial attempt to drive a sales numbers by selling the same book, many times to one person instead of many books to many people.
CBC: Based off of what you’re saying here, what is different between this and what you just recently were a part of at DC? What’s the difference between this ideology and what you were part of previously?
Dan: When you’re over a company [DC], you have a profit threshold that you’re always trying to achieve. And then, once you achieve it, new numbers are given that’s higher that you now have to achieve. So, you can’t really rest on your success. You’re constantly having to build on it. And it’s an interesting thought, because ultimately, you’re driven quarter by quarter, by your quarter numbers, and all that. If you see sales drop, the easiest solution to sales slipping is not finding a way to make the book better and get people more excited about the property, is to throw another cover on it with the hope that the collectability factor sells X-number of more copies to artificially inflate the sales.
41 C OMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2023 • #31
Photo courtesy of Dan DiDio.
Top:
Above:
And variant covers are an interesting conversation because variants started as a promotional tool for people to sample the first issue with the hope that they stick with the series ongoing. But, when the second issue came out, they dropped precipitously from the first one, then they started putting variant covers on those issues to artificially lift that number. And then what happens now you’re on that slippery slope that you can’t get off this variant cover trend. Because once you do, your sales will be so depressed, that it’ll impact your overall budget number for the year or the quarter. So, for us, our goal is to believe in the product. We’re not watching the numbers as tightly as we are watching the product and making sure that our belief in the product goes out there with the hope that other people get excited about what we’re creating. And that creates the excitement and ultimate sales for the books that we’ve built.
CBC: And Frank’s got final say on the creative aspect. Is that correct?
Dan: One hundred percent.
CBC: With this being true, how much is he giving to that? Is it hands on saying, “This is gonna be what I want with my name on,” or is he actually providing stories and breakdowns as well?
he’s doing that same layout for Milo Manara, but we are feeling that Manara is going to have a little more latitude on how he interprets them based on his storytelling. On Sin City 1858, Frank is writing and has full control over that. On Pandora, Frank set the initial conceit, set some of the initial character designs, and then handed the book off to the writing team, and to the artist. And they’re the ones that are flexing their discretion. And he’s given them enough latitude for them to take it in whatever direction they want, as long as it sticks to the original conceit of what the book is about.
And then, with Ancient Enemies, which is a book and concept that I created, but I created it as a world that’s going to be full of all new characters. It takes place in this world and Frank contributed to that story. He created a brand-new character, which will now be part of that Ancient Enemies story.
CBC: You have somebody who is, for lack of a better word, a living legend. How is his outlook on everything? I mean, is this somebody who was great just putting himself on the couch until this conversation got him going? Or was he just thirsty for something?
Below:
Dan: It’s both. For his books he’s doing the layouts. I mean, right now his full involvement is on four titles. So, if you look at Ronin II, he’s doing full layouts and dialogue on that, and Philip Tan is doing the art from his layouts, and Phil’s been extraordinarily loyal to the layouts. So, it feels very much stylistically on how Frank tells the story. So, Ronin II is his book. On Sin City,
Dan: Yeah, I got there just at the right moment. They didn’t get picked up for the second season of Cursed, which was a series that he was involved in, in regards to doing the designs and creating some of the story, which is the Netflix series. So, I was able to pop in there. I was talking to him about a couple of things, I gave him a hand on a couple of things that he was trying to organize, and then, ultimately, during that time, that’s when the other conversations started taking place.
CBC: So, right place, right time, and this is a guy who just can’t turn it off, basically.
Dan: Honestly, one of the conceits of FMP Frank Miller Presents, is that this company is not for sale — ever. This isn’t being created to be sold, this is a place for creative output. So, as long as he must have output to create books, he has a place that he will always be able to go to here. And he can do whatever types of books he wants.
CBC: Wonderful. I think you remember that Mike Deodato and I get along really well and, when this was announced, he was like, “Ah, Axel will never let me do it. But, oh my god, I want to draw Sin City for Frank”.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. We chatted that up a little bit, and there was a conversation around the Sin City property, for instance. Sin City is Frank’s baby. The fact that he’s letting Milo Manara draw it is only because he has such respect and admiration for Manara’s work and he
#31 • Summer 2023 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR 42 All TM & ©
Inc.
Frank Miller,
Banner logo for FMP.
Ashcan edition promoting FMP’s two inaugural books, Ancient Enemies and Ronin II, went to shops in August 2022.
Spread from Frank’s six-part mini-series, Ronin: Book II, written by FM and drawn by Phillip Tan and Daniel Henriques.
An Interview with Graham Nolan of Compass Comics
From my perspective, Graham Nolan, born in Jersey, raised on Long Island and the Space Coast, and trained in Dover, I could tell the artist has a very tidy office. I could plainly see that as I interviewed him twice in one week this past winter, a conversation conducted via a Zoom-like “videotelephony” software program.
Maybe he cleaned it up for the chat but, after spending three or so hours learning about him, I’m inclined to believe he’s a remarkably organized person.
Graham’s career also indicates a pragmatic and methodical creator, one with a keen eye on advancement and heart yearning to take on a challenge. And you’ll learn that for
Comic Book Creator: You live near Buffalo. What happened with the big storm?
Graham Nolan: Well, I live in Buffalo because my wife is from this area, and we settled here rather than in “my” Florida, but I’ve been trying to get back there ever since. [laughs] As far as the storm goes, it was bad, it was heavy, but we didn’t get it where I’m at as bad as the city did. I’m about 20 minutes south and east of Buffalo, and that’s the snow belt, so typically we get more snow than they do, but this time it hit the city a lot worse than us, and that’s why 40 someodd people ended up dying.
CBC: One of the most interesting little facts I just learned was you very specifically wanted to work on Detective Comics, but not only because it was Batman, but it was because your dad was a detective.
Graham: Yeah, my dad was a homicide detective on Long Island. My whole family was in law enforcement, and Detective Comics was the first Batman comic I ever bought, it was the masthead of DC Comics, that’s where “DC” comes from — “Detective Comics.” At one point, Chuck [Dixon] and I were offered
yourself reading this transcript, as you discover the man completed three years of studies in two while at the Kubert School, steadily advanced at DC Comics to become an important Batman artist, produced for numerous years daily and Sunday newspaper strips, and now completely navigates his own future by creating exciting and fun comics for his own company, Compass Comics, by appealing directly to his audience, one that crowdfunds his output, which includes Joe Frankenstein.
My first question refers to a savage winter storm the city of Buffalo suffered in December, when nearly 50 people died. Graham lives only 20 miles east of New York’s second largest city. — Jon
B.
Cooke
Batman, which always sells better than Detective, but both of us wanted to stay on Detective just because of its history.
CBC: You were born on Long Island?
Graham: Technically, I was born in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. My dad at that time was working for U.S. Steel, and we were right across the Hudson. It sits right on the bluff, but I was only there for a few months before we went back to Long Island, where he was from Long Beach.
CBC: I was talking to Greg Goldstein…
Graham: Oh, yeah!
CBC: And he, out of the blue, mentioned a bar that you’re somehow connected with…?
Graham: Nolan’s Pub! It’s still there. Yeah, my dad opened up the pub and then decided to go into the police department and had to sell the pub because of a conflict of interest. So, I think around 1964, he sold it and the new owners kept the name, and it’s been that name ever since, Nolan’s Pub. It’s a typical “lifeguard and cop bar” on the east side of Long Beach…
#31 • Summer 2023 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR 50
CBC: “Lifeguard and cop bar”? [chuckles] Are there a lot of “lifeguard and cop” bars?
Graham: Well, in Long Beach, there is, because, you know, it’s a barrier island. When he was a young man, he was a captain of the lifeguards, too, so there was a lot of connections, a lot of cops and firemen were lifeguards, and so there’s a lot of that cross-over.
CBC: Right. You said he worked in U.S. Steel? What was he doing there?
Graham: He was in sales for U.S. Steel for a very short period of time. After he and my mom were married, he had gotten out of college and somehow got involved in sales for U.S. Steel, but it wasn’t working out for him, and I don’t think my mom cared for the lifestyle. So they went back to Long Beach, he opened Nolan’s Pub, and then decided, well, he’s going to get into the police department. His father, my grandfather, was a former chief of police there, so it wasn’t too hard to get into the police academy, and then he went from his tin shield to his gold shield, and then he retired from an injury, and then we moved to Florida.
CBC: What year did he retire?
Graham: Well, he was on medical leave for a few years, so we moved to Florida in 1974, so he retired probably in ’74
CBC: That must have been a big change going to Florida.
Graham: It really was. It was a culture change, because the Florida of 1974 was not the Florida of 2022. There was a lot more podunk there, particularly where we were… I shouldn’t say that, I should say my mom and dad were very bright, educated people, so when we decided to move to Florida, first thing, they looked into was the schools and culture, and stuff like that. So they settled on the Space Coast because of the Air Force base there and its connection to the Kennedy Space Center. So there were a lot of engineers and scientists living on the Space Coast, and so they would demand better schools and on.
CBC: Is that the east coast?
Graham: Right, it’s about halfway down the east coast. Where I lived was just south of Cape Canaveral. It’s Cape Canaveral, Titusville, Cocoa Beach, Satellite Beach, and Indian Harbour Beach, where I grew up.
CBC: Did you witness the launching of the U.S. Space Shuttle?
Graham: Oh, yeah! Yup, I saw STS 1 go up and I saw it on the launchpad, too.
CBC: Wow! That must have been impressive.
Graham: It was, and when they brought it out from Edwards Air Force Base,
Conducted by Jon B.
we were cleaning our pool in the back yard, and we heard this noise and the 747 flew over our house with the shuttle on top of it, piggyback! It came further south of Canaveral and banked around to land at the Canaveral Air Force Base.
CBC: Were you disappointed that the Apollo program was over by the time you moved there?
Graham: Yeah, I was. They’d been talking about the space transport system for a while, but it was constantly being pushed back and, finally in 1981, I think it was ’81 when they finally launched the first one, but they were talking about it in ’77, so it was a long wait. But, prior to that, I saw lots of stuff go up, like satellite launches, either Apollo-Soyuz or the International Space Station launch, you know, the first part of that. We could see the launches from our backyard or go down to the beach, which is like four blocks away, and watch it there.
CBC: Wow!
Graham: That’s why I’m a space junkie. Growing up there, I always like science fiction and all that, but then when we moved down there and I grew up on the Space Coast, and I knew a lot of my friends’ dads that worked for [Harris Corp] or at Rockwell International and all these other subcontractors on the base. You just get caught up in the culture and stuff. And it was really cool.
CBC: Very nice. Did you have siblings?
Graham: Yeah, I have a brother and a sister, both younger. I’m the oldest.
CBC: You’re born in 1962, so you must have been really young when the Adam West Batman show came on.
Graham: Yes. I was four.
CBC: Did you watch it first run?
Graham: I did watch it first run, though I don’t know if I watched first season or if I caught it in the second or third season, but… yeah, definitely. I call it first run stuff. When Topps had the Batman cards, I remember getting those. I had the Corgi Batmobile and the Batboat. I had a birthday party. I’ll see if I can find that photograph and throw it into the file for you, so you can use it… It was a Batman birthday party and I had bats on the cake and a bat phone, and all that.
CBC: Were you indulged as a child?
Graham: No, not at all, but that stuff was cheap…
CBC: Your mom was a schoolteacher?
Graham: Right. Elementary school. She taught in Bethpage, on Long Island.
CBC: I read an article from a Florida newspaper, about when you’re on vacation down there and she talked you into coming in and giving a talk to a bunch of kids.
Transcribed by Tom Pairan
51 C OMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2023 • #31
•
Cooke
Above: Talent Showcase #16 [Apr. 1985],
Graham: Right, and she became a teacher after years of not teaching, just being a homemaker. They paid them so poorly down there, and she had a lot of years in between, and she had to take remedial courses and all that stuff, and she ended up getting her teaching degree down there and teaching at Ocean Breeze Elementary School. And, in the first year, she became a “Teacher of the Year.”
CBC: Wow. Was it a happy childhood?
Graham: Happy-ish. My brother and I, we made things happen, and my mom made sure we were happy, but there was troubles in the marriage. My dad was drinking. A lot of cops, Irish cops, have developed drinking problems and we were no different, and so it made for sometimes a hostile environment, which kind of pushed us towards comics as a release. It was monsters and magazines, and stuff like that… a fantasy world to escape to.
CBC: Was it abusive against you or was it just a hostile environment?
Graham: Just a hostile environment, when the parents are constantly fighting, that trickles down to the kids, the yelling, the arguing, it’s a toxic environment as opposed to a really hostile scene…
CBC: Did they get divorced?
Graham: Eventually, yeah. I was 18 when they finally divorced and, quite honestly, probably should have been sooner, I would have probably worked out better.
CBC: When did drawing come into play for you?
Graham: I don’t know the beginnings of the actual drawing, but I do know when comics came into the play of drawing, and that was in 1974, when my sixth-grade teacher brought in comic books for the class to read during recess. My brother
and I both had some comics, but we don’t remember where we got them — if they were handed down by friends or bought by parents, just to “shut us up” type of thing, but when the teacher brought that stuff in, that was a whole new world. They were brand-new, right off the stands, and they were exciting! They had these characters, which I knew from other media, like Batman, Superman, Aquaman… It was a Justice League of America comic in particular that did it for me, and that’s when I got hooked, and then we started going to the local luncheonette, where there was a spinner rack, and they sold the comics and we started buying our own. And we were off to the races!
CBC: You said it was 1974? So it was right when you moved to Florida or before?
Graham: Yeah, this was like around March of ’74, maybe even into ’73 ,when he brought the comics in. But the first comics that I looked at had a cover date of July of ’74, which means they were sold in March, so when I backdate like that, it looks like February/March is when we first started buying them.
CBC: So did you have any familiarity with Florida when you moved there or was it a whole new world?
Graham: It was a whole new world. The only thing that was familiar was the beach, because I lived three blocks from the ocean in Long Beach, Long Island, which, again, is a barrier island, and when we moved down there and moved to Indian Harbour Beach, also a barrier island, and we were maybe an extra block or two from the beach then, so the beach culture resonated with me, but the other culture did not.
CBC: What, the “cracker” culture?
Graham: Yeah, pretty much, yes. The racism, which I hadn’t seen at that point, there was some things that people were unafraid of saying that hit us…
CBC: The “word”?
Graham: Yeah, the “word” got used just like any other adjective. In Long Island, we were in Nassau County, very liberal, and it still is.
CBC: So, with the anxiety of living in a new place, since you just discovered comics, wee they something to embrace when you were down there?
Graham: Oh, absolutely. It was a saving grace for us was finding the new place to get our comics to take us to these fantasy worlds, away from the noise and the nonsense. We went into it hard.
CBC: Where did you buy your comics?
Graham: At the 7-11s down there.
CBC: You keep saying “we”; is this your brother and you?
Graham: Right, my brother was with me and we were into comics together for a while, and then he got out of them eventually, went down his own path, but I stayed.
CBC: What’s his name?
Graham: Chris, Christopher Nolan. [laughs] But not the one you usually think of with that name.
CBC: Was Chris creative?
Graham: He liked to draw, but he really didn’t have a proficiency at it, but he is creative, much more musical than I. He eventually learned to play guitar and sing and played in bands and stuff, and still does.
CBC: When did you recognize artistic styles and who did you embrace most of all, early on?
Graham: That’s easy: it was John Romita, Sr. His work was very recognizable to me, because he was doing covers for Amazing Spider-Man and, at that time, he was art director at Marvel, so he was doing a lot of covers, particularly inking over Gil Kane, who tended to be the mainstay cover artist for Marvel, like Nick Cardy was over at DC, and I love the slickness of his
52 #31 • Summer 2023 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR
Above: Very young Graham Nolan posing for his Kubert School ID card back in the early 1980s. Previous spread: Graham Nolan’s official photo portrait as the president of Compass Comics, Inc., found on his LinkedIn page, and his company logo.
TM & © DC
with art by Gray Morrow, whom Graham met as a young professional and learned a lesson on being “aged out” in the business. Below: A pair of panels of Graham’s art from “The Rest Is — Herstory, “ in that same issue.
Talent Showcase
Comics.
work, I loved how he drew the heroic characters and the pretty women and stuff like that. So yeah, definitely Romita was one of the first guys whose work I recognize. Kirby, of course, is unmistakable and… well, I wrote that thing for you for Kirby’s 100th birthday [Kirby100], about his horror stuff was the first stuff that I ever saw from Fear #2 [Jan. 1971], and so Kirby’s power and the stuff I saw to first and early on.
CBC: Were you buying back issues?
Graham: There was no place to find back issues back then, not where I was in Long Beach, when we got to Florida, we found some places that had back issues, and we started buying stuff.
CBC: Is that the way you got Monsters on the Prowl and Where Creatures Roam, and that stuff?
Graham: Like the Fear comic. That’s one of those ones that I had where I don’t know where I got it from, but I do have it. So I got that off the stands when it came out in ’71, so that was right on that cusp of when I was starting to discover comics too, when I think about it.
CBC: You said you were into the monster movies too, right?
Graham: Monster movies came first.
CBC: Can you tell me what was it about the appeal of Jack’s monsters?
Graham: With Kirby, it’s all about power. And the way he drew these creatures were scary-looking, the proportions on them, they were big and heavy, and I don’t mean just like the kaiju-style, the ones taller than a building, even the ones that were human-sized, they had a lot of energy and a lot of power. And they look like juggernauts that you couldn’t stop. And the way he portrayed the protagonist also kind of enhanced that, that they always look like they knew they couldn’t beat this thing…
CBC: Did you copy them?
Graham: I’m sure I did. I would just open up and start drawing Batman by Dick Sprang, or Superman by Curt Swan, or John Romita’s Captain America. Because that was another comic that I had, Captain America #114 [June 1969]. So it was right after Kirby and the Steranko run, and then Buscema took over for #115 [July ’69], I think the Colan came in… Romita did that one issue, #114, and Sharon is going on a suicide mission because she thinks Steve is dead, that Hydra had killed him, and so she’s gonna go on the suicide mission for Fury, and they released the Walking Stiletto against her, the “robot that can’t be stopped,” and she’s about to go down… Cap’s shield comes flying in and smashes into the face of this robot, and then there’s this close up shot of a her going, “It can’t be… It can’t be!” But it is! Captain America! And then there’s a splash shot of Cap and Bucky running towards the reader, and Cap is leaning over and he’s catching the shield, as it is slung back to him, and he catches the shield backhand, and Rick Jones/Bucky is in the background, running towards the reader… I tried to draw that thing a million times, there’s such great foreshortening of Romita’s drawing of Cap’s leg coming forward, the twist in the body, the catching the backhand, catching the shield. I never got it right… I never could get it right.
CBC: Johnny’s not easy to imitate.
Graham: He’s so good.
CBC: JR Senior, he loved Jack’s stuff (and so does Junior!). And he wasn’t doing that much at the time because he was so busy as art director, but he did do the daily Spider-Man strip. Did you…
Graham: Our paper started that from the first one… Actually, my brother and I cut them out of the newspaper, and I still have them in a folder.
CBC: So do I! I pasted mine all up in a scrapbook.
Graham: Our newspaper colored them and it looks like shit. It was a two-color process… The Sundays, of course, were colored by the syndicate and those look great, but the dailies in color, not so much. I wish I had them in black-&-white.
CBC: But Johnny was really rockin’.
Graham: Oh yeah. That era is gorgeous art-wise, Romita but the stories of that time are just hard. Their polemics on race… and Sam Wilson becomes this really unlikable character, and Cap is not Captain America, it’s like he’s not even a super-soldier; it’s just like a good athlete type of thing. Sometimes they go off model like that, particularly in that era, and that stuff used to drive me nuts, even as a kid.
CBC: How did you recognize the quintessential Captain America?
Graham: Because of #114. That was 1969. That was, like I said, it was Stan and Steranko, and before that Stan and Kirby. Yes, he was the man-out-oftime type of thing, but he was clearly this great, great character who wasn’t always so conflicted, and then by the
Above: Graham’s first pro art appeared in New Talent Showcase #14 [Feb. 1985]. Inset left: NTS editor Sal Amendola reveals that Graham’s three-page story (below) was the result of a debate the young artist had with Kubert School classmates.
53 C OMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2023 • #31
New Talent Showcase TM & © DC Comics.
Above: Promotional poster of the Dynamic Duo, penciled by Graham, inks by Ray McCarthy, circa 1996.
Below: While we predict more creative greatness from Graham in future years, the artist will most likely always be best-known for co-creating (with writer Chuck Dixon) Bane, the Batman villain who broke the Caped Crusader’s back in the 1990s “Knightfall” storyline. The character was, in part, inspired by fabled pulp hero Doc Savage, the “Man of Bronze,” whose adventures Graham loved reading as a teen. This is Graham’s style guide for an action figure.
known, I probably would have gone into other profession!
[laughter] But it was a passion, a love that I had from that age onward and continues to this day.
CBC: Personally, it’s a big decision to become an artist. I remember coming to the crossroad. I wanted to be a cartoonist as a kid, but I recognized quickly it’s a solitary life and, frankly, for me, it was to hang with girls or spend my teen years solitary drawing, staying up all night. Drawing and drawing, and drawing and drawing… It can be lonely, and girls, well, not so lonely. Did you just have a certain fortitude and able to divide the time, so you didn’t see it as a solitary thing necessarily?
Graham: No, I liked the solitude because it took me out of some of the drama that was going on in the household, so I could focus in on that, and it was a creative outlet as well. There are plenty of times where like my buddies and I would go out to the clubs or something like that and, if it was a dull night, I leave, come home and do some drawing while they’d still be there striking out. [laughter] “I’m wasting my time. There’s nothing here. I’m gonna go home and try and work on my career. Good luck, boys!”
CBC: Were you a personable guy, were you able to talk to girls? You had a sister, right?
Graham: I was a shy kid, unsure of myself in my place in the world, that kind of stuff. So I tended to have a lot of girls who were friends. I was “That Guy.” They loved me because they could talk to me and all that stuff, but I didn’t have a lot of girlfriends.
CBC: Did you perceive it as kind of a nerdy thing? When you were getting into comics, were you comfortable…
Graham: At that time, it certainly was nerdy. There was a stigma about it. If you were into comics, you were a nerd, like, “Ohh, Star Trek conventions, the goofy people with the ears and all that kind of stuff!” That’s how it was perceived. Today, it’s the in-thing and cool thing to be in nerd culture. Yeah, it was embarrassing at times, but I had a goal, a plan, and a dream, and so there was the fandom aspect of it that I enjoyed, but there was also the business end of it that I was trying to embrace and become a part of. So I could balance that nerd exclusion from the fact that, you know what? I’m going to have a good career at some point.”
CBC: To what do you attribute that fortitude, that self-assurance?
Graham: Tenaciousness. It’s part of my nature.
CBC: Where do you think you picked that up in your life? Was it your father or your mother…?
Graham: I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know. Scrappy Irish, I guess.
CBC: You come from a family of police officers, right? Was that ever an option for you or going into the military? We weren’t at war by the time…
Graham: My dad discouraged me from going into the police department. When we moved in ’74, New York was a morass of crime and drugs. So he did not want that for me. He wanted me to do something else, but he was not happy when I made the announcement that I wanted to draw comics. Now, my mom, who was a teacher and artistic, she was supportive. “Okay, alright, he’s young. Let’s see where this goes.” But my dad, he couldn’t get it. He says, “You’ve got two cousins who graduated from Pratt Institute in New York, and one was flipping pizzas and the other one was laying brick. If you don’t wanna go to college, why don’t you take up a trade?” That was his worldview. You take up a trade or get into working for somebody like the police department, fire department, whatever. The idea of going into an artistic business or even one of entrepreneurship, I think seemed foreign to him. But I’m tenacious and, if I have a goal, I won’t let anybody stand in my way to do what I want to do. And, if it fails, that’s fine. I fail on my own terms, but I won’t not do something just because somebody else doesn’t think it’s right.
CBC: So that must have been really frustrating, not getting your way, so to speak, when you couldn’t afford to go back to the Kubert School after that first year.
Graham: It was devastating, because everybody I was in school with, was now going to be a year ahead of me, if I got to go back, so they were going to be progressing and I was stagnant. The other thing, too, was my brother was leaving for college, so I was stuck at the house at the height of the problems and of the divorce. So, it was a really tough year and, when I was able to go back, the guys I was in class with were now third-year students, and I’m a second-year. But I did get to meet some great guys and start some great friendships. The first-year guys I went to school with were Adam and Andy Kubert, Ron Wagner, and Lee Weeks. My second year, I was with Bart Sears, Mark Pennington, and they’re all friends still, so it was a good crop of students, as well, that came in those couple of years.
CBC: And during the off-year, what were you doing?
Graham: I was working, saving money, and taking art courses at a local community college.
CBC: What were you doing for a job?
Graham: At that time, I was working construction, doing labor work in the hot summers of Florida, digging ditches, laying pipes, building docks, and stuff like that.
CBC: It was the pay good?
58 #31 • Summer 2023 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR
& ©
Batman, Robin, Bane TM
DC Comics.
Graham: Well, again, it’s a learning experience. Certainly, when you go to a school like that, you’re assessing everybody. How do you stack up against everybody else that’s there? And I stacked up good with those who were there, so I knew I was going to do pretty well at the school, and then there’s people you looked at, you’re like, “They’re not going to make it.” Every once in a while, some guy will really improve and they’d be, “Holy sh*t, he really progressed in a year!” But, by and large, you pretty much get that assessment down and it usually holds true.
My thing has always been storytelling and my weakness was the actual draftsmanship, which was okay, but it wasn’t great. So that took a lot of years before it really got locked down, but my storytelling was always there, it was honed better, but that was something that came much more naturally to me.
CBC: Is there any way for us uninitiated to be told what it is about comic book storytelling, which makes it intuitive? Is there a formula for it? What is it?
Graham: Well, it’s complicated. There’s no one way to describe it. What’s the best way to tell that story? If you give a script to five different guys, even if it’s a full script — “this is panel one, blah, blah, blah, this is panel two” — what’s within those panels are going to be different; how those panels are laid out are going to be different for each one of those people.
They’re going to each tell the story through their own prism and it’ll have varying degrees of success. But, for me, I think storytelling came naturally because I like movies and, I think, when you like movies, you start to deconstruct them, and you’re in the beginning stages of learning why angles were chosen and understand why did that scene resonate. Why did that director have that camera back when he did or why did he go in close?
It’s that kind of stuff that I did naturally, even as I was learning to draw, so that when I started going to the Kubert School and learning some of the techniques that Joe would teach, that stuff was very easily translatable for me.
CBC: Where’d you get that level of concentration? Creative often suffer attention deficit disorder and you’re able to focus on storytelling at such a young age. Are you kind of an old soul?
Graham: I am definitely an old soul. When I was a kid was an old soul because I loved stuff that took place in the 1940s, I loved black-&-white movies, I loved the old comics, too, I loved old music. So definitely, I was an old soul, but some of it is not necessarily conscious; it’s subconscious as I absorb this stuff, I call it my mental library, and these books get checked into my library, and sometimes I don’t even know they’re in there, but they are… They become absorbed because I notice it, but I might not consciously notice why Hitchcock framed it that way or why that scene resonated with me, but it just does and it’s in there, and that can just be how you’re wired, it might be a natural thing for me, as opposed to a learned thing.
CBC: To grow up in a dysfunctional situation and you having your brain is wired in a certain way of being able to focus on one thing, despite chaotic stuff going on around you, there’s another response for a lot of other people, a much more self-destructive response of escape, of wanting to go out. I would say that in retrospect, I kinda went that way and it took me a time to go through my own stage of recovery with that. Do you feel like you might have dodged a bullet there that you had, that maybe comics didn’t save your life, but gave you a life in a sense that it was something that you could zero in on, that had substance, and it helped save you while all this chaos is going on around you? Was there no risk of seeking out alcohol, for instance? You come from a cop family, so to speak, and the Irish are known to drink, you know…
Graham: Yeah, we’re a hot-blooded, passionate people. And yes, I think that’s a good assessment. I think that’s true. I think it did in some ways, save me. The other aspect was my mom. My mom made sure that her kids knew they were loved, even though there was all the stuff going on in the household, she tried to get us involved and interested and supported our interests, and stuff like that, even if my dad was going off the rails, so I think a lot of it has to fall on my mom for keeping the family together, for keeping the focus not on the negative, but on the positive.
CBC: Were you estranged from your father? Did you reconcile?
Graham: Yes and yes. There was a period where we were estranged, where I had had it with his behavior and we had some blow-ups and stuff, and I said, “That’s it, we’re done.” And then, when my mom died at 60 from lung cancer, that sort of brought us together, and we ended up burying the hatchet there and re-exploring our relationship again.
CBC: You just turned 60, correct?
Graham: Yes, I’ll be 61 in March.
CBC: Except maybe for cigar smoking, you have a pretty healthy life, correct?
Graham: Oh, yeah. I exercise, I eat well. Sure, I’ve got my vices. I like my bourbon, like craft beer, and I like cigars, but I
60 #31 • Summer 2023 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR
Batman, Bane TM & © DC Comics.
Photo courtesy of Graham Nolan.
Above: Spectacular Bill Sienkiewicz inks grace Graham’s pencils on this Detective Comics #701 [Sept. 1996] cover. Below: Perennial creative partners Graham Nolan and Chuck Dixon in a circa 2015 pic. Mr. Dixon, by the way, is the single most prolific comic book writer of all time!
don’t over-indulge in any of them.
CBC: How many children do you have?
Graham: I have three daughters.
CBC: Three daughters! Yeah, I got three sons.
Graham: We should have gotten together earlier.
CBC: I always like to say I cried with happiness when my first was a boy and I cried with sadness when my last was a boy, just I wanted that one princess.
Graham: I know. And I wanted one son. What are you gonna do? God gives you what you can handle. I figured, if I had sons, I’d be butting heads with him with them. With daughters, my wife butts heads with them! [laughter]
CBC: can be the good guy…
Graham:
CBC: Did you become friends with Joe, Joe Kubert?
graduating high school, my mom was still there, and so I went down for that, then my buddies who are still all there. We all went out to a nightclub and I met her there.
CBC: What was it that attracted you to each other, do you think?
Graham: It’s funny because it was my buddy that was dancing with her and he was getting nowhere, and he said, “You know, you have to meet a friend of mine. I think you’d like him.” Clearly they were not simpatico, and she’s like, “Oh, don’t.
Below: Maybe Ye Ed’s favorite Compass Comics property is the irresistible Monster Island, the saga of two jet pilots stranded on an archipelago inhabited by creatures exiled there from throughout the galaxy! Creator Graham Nolan says he was inspired by the great kaiju Toho movie, Destroy All Monsters!
Career-spanning interview with Bane’s co-creator GRAHAM NOLAN! Plus, STAN LEE’s Carnegie Hall debacle of 1972, the Golden Age Quality Comics’ work of FRANK BORTH (Phantom Lady, Spider Widow), and GREG BIGA talks with ex-DC Comics co-publisher DAN DIDIO on his current career as writer/creator on the FRANK MILLER PRESENTS comics line, as well as that new comics line’s publisher!
Graham: Yeah, as friends as you can be, I guess. The National Cartoonist Society gave him a special Reuben Award in 2013, I believe it was, and the Ruebens are held in Jersey City, so I made sure that I went to that to see him and say hello, and he remembered me, and we got some pictures together and stuff, and that was great.
COMIC BOOK CREATOR #31
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_132&products_id=1756
CBC: Did you look at him a little bit like a father figure? I mean, he’s always naturally a paternal kind of guy.
Graham: No, not as a father figure, but certainly as an influence as to how to approach storytelling in the business of comics.
CBC: In retrospect, was going to the Kubert School, which in some ways can be looked at as a vocational school, a technical school, a trade school. Did you maybe miss something as far as the creative side of things, exploring like you would have in another art school… a typical art school, shall we say.
Graham: No. We would have had to do science and other stuff that would have taken me away from the things I needed to focus on and learn. The intensity of the Kubert School, the fact that you’re not doing that other stuff to make grades for other things, makes you focus on the stuff you do need. And their whole idea was to have placement, is to have these people go through the school and find work within the business in some form, which is why they taught you everything from paste-up in mechanicals (which doesn’t exist anymore) to lettering, to the color processes, to the writing… well, not so much the writing… they could have had a stronger presence on the writing, but it was an art school. And then, of course, the narrative art itself, you were doing a lot of work every night, so through repetition and through that constant workload, I couldn’t help but get better.
CBC: It’s a three-year school at the time. You only did two years, you ran out of money for the second year…
Graham: I did two years in three years. I was there ’81–’82. Then, for ’82–’83, I was home. And in ’83–’84, I was back at the Kubert School. So that was it.
CBC: So you’re out, you’re out of the Kubert School. You said you stayed in the Jersey area. Where did you stay? Where’d you live?
Graham: I was in Dover for a little bit, and then I rented a house with some other ex-Kubies a little bit further west of Route 80 and then when I got married in ’85. We got an apartment in Hackettstown, which is a little further west, on Route 80.
CBC: Were you 23 when you got married?
Graham: Yes, I was 23.
CBC: How’d you meet Juli?
Graham: We were down in Florida. Her sister was at FIT, the Florida Institute of Technology, at that time and my sister was
COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2023 • #31 Monster Island TM & © Compass Comics, Inc.
61 IF
YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!
by JON B. COOKE
