Back Issue #158 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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MR. A

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HEY, MISTER ISSUE!

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LEN WEIN’s life as writer/editor from creating Swamp Thing and Wolverine, to MOORE and GIBBONS’ Watchmen, and more! Plus the sad demise of WILL EISNER’s P*S Army Preventive Maintenance magazine, interview with romance and pin-up artist JAY SCOTT PIKE, more of STEVE WILLIS, and SHAUN CLANCY reveals the saga of ADRIAN LOPEZ’s Harpoon/Apple Pie humor mags! FRANK CHO cover!

PAT BRODERICK discusses his career, from the Crusty Bunkers to unforgettable work on Firestorm, Micronauts, Captain Marvel, and more! Plus JACK KIRBY’s humiliating return to Marvel in the ’70s, the 1940s KKK-crushing district attorney FIGHTING LAWYER, profile of PAUL BUHLE, SHARY FLENNIKEN interview, 1972 heroes by WRIGHTSON, REESE, WINDSOR-SMITH, and others for Esquire magazine, and more!

Informative conversation with “Big” JOHN BUSCEMA and a biographical essay about the Marvel legend by JON B. COOKE, including an awesome art gallery. Plus we share about the life and tragic fate of BILL MANTLO (co-creator of Rocket Raccoon and Cloak and Dagger), inside comics printer Eastern Color Printing by SHAUN CLANCY, more with SHARY FLENNIKEN, chat with RIC ESTRADA, and more!

CARMINE INFANTINO radio interview by KEN GALE and ED MENJE, JON B. COOKE on Carmine’s stint as DC editorial director/ publisher, ROBERT KANIGHER’s 1989 conversation with STEVE WHITAKER and TIM BATEMAN, World War 3 Illustrated with PETER KUPER and SETH TOBOCMAN, DAVE COCKRUM’s Aurora model kit pamphlets, GLEN CADIGAN’s interview with horror comics writer JOE HILL, and more!

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Volume 1, Number 158 April 20225 EDITOR EMERITUS Michael Eury

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Roger Ash PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks COVER ARTIST Mr. Freeze by Ed McGuinness COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Kevin Sharp SPECIAL THANKS Mark Arnold Jarrod Buttery Dewey Cassell Gerry Conway Grand Comics Database Heritage Comics Auctions Keith Dallas Michael T. Gilbert Heritage Auctions Kelley Jones Paul Kupperberg Ian Millsted Doug Moench Dean Motter Diana Schutz Philip Schweier Bryan D. Stroud Roy Thomas Steven Thompson John Wells Joshua Winchester

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BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Roger Ash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Mr. Freeze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 DC Comics’ villain steps into the spotlight WHAT THE-?!: Mr. Natural . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Robert Crumb’s guru for the ages FLASHBACK: Mr. Fantastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 An examination of the leader of the Fantastic Four FLASHBACK: Mr. A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Steve Ditko’s hero with a twist PRINCE STREET NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Meet The Honorifics FLASHBACK: Mr. Jupiter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The mysterious benefactor of the Teen Titans FLASHBACK: Mr. Weatherbee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 The much maligned principal of Archie and the gang FLASHBACK: Mr. Monster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Celebrate 40 years of the monster hunter FLASHBACK: Mr. X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Discover the enigmatic denizen of Radiant City BACK TALK: Reader Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 BACK ISSUE™ issue 158, April 2025 (ISSN 1932-6904) is published monthly (except Jan., March, May, and Nov.) by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage paid at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Back Issue, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor Emeritus. Roger Ash, Editor-In-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Roger Ash, Editor, 2715 Birchwood Pass, Apt. 7, Cross Plains, WI 53528. Email: rogerash@hotmail. com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $102 Economy US, $155 International, $39 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover artwork by Ed McGuinness. Mr. Freeze TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All editorial matter © 2025 TwoMorrows and Roger Ash. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1

by R

Photo credit: Jesse Chieffo.

This is an interesting issue for me as it’s the first one that I approve before it goes to print. Editor-In-Chief Michael Eury came up with the theme, story ideas, and assigned writers. Glenn Whitmore (colorist) and Michael Kronenberg (designer) did their usual bang-up job on the cover. The writers wrote some excellent articles, which I then proofread. The edited articles and accompanying art were sent to designer Richard Fowlks so he could work his magic. The whole thing was sent to TwoMorrows to put together the magazine you now hold in your hands or read digitally on a screen. It takes a whole crew of us to bring this to you and I wanted to thank them for all they do. I’m also glad that everyone has welcomed me as part of the team. I’m really excited by this issue as it’s the kind of magazine that we hope to bring to you time after time. It includes characters from major publishers, independent publishers, and even an Underground Comix icon. The articles are well-written, informative, and engaging. I also learned things. I honestly had no idea who Mr. Jupiter was until I read the article. I learned things in articles about characters I thought I knew well, like Mr. Fantastic. Another thing that I enjoy about this issue is that the theme surprised me. Who would have thought that there would be enough characters with “Mister” in their name to fill a magazine? Yet, when I sit and think about it, I realize it makes sense. It’s fun to be caught offguard like that. Deciding on a theme and stories to go with it is, at the moment, a part of the job I adore. Sometimes, it starts with looking at my bookshelf and saying, “Hey! BACK ISSUE hasn’t covered that yet. What themes would it fit? What other stories would work with those themes?” I’ll often develop two or three themes that way. Finally, there’s what I call the “time machine factor.” I start reading these articles and I’m transported back to my parents’ house. I’m sitting on the couch or curled up in bed reading the latest Fantastic Four by John Byrne or the newest adventure of Mr. Monster, and absolutely loving them. I hope we’re able to bring all of that to you. Time start up your time machine.

oger Ash

2 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

Ice water in his veins: The life and crimes of

by B r y a n

D. Stroud

Perhaps unique to this issue’s theme, the character profiled here was a Mr. not once, but twice. The first time the frozen felon appeared was in the pages of Batman #121 (February 1959) in the Dave Wood scripted “The Ice Crimes of Mr. Zero.” Additional credits include a cover by Curt Swan with Stan Kaye inks and Ira Schnapp lettering. Interiors were done by Sheldon Moldoff with Charles Paris inks and all under the editorial supervision of Whitney Ellsworth. Cold themed criminals were nothing new at the time. There were a number of them in the Golden and Silver Ages of National/DC Comics, almost inevitably armed with some sort of ice-emitting weapon. Included in that roster are the Blue Snowman from Sensation Comics #59 (1946), the Icicle in All-American Comics #90 (October 1947), Minister Blizzard in Wonder Woman #29 (1948), Captain Cold from Showcase #8 (June 1957), and, interestingly enough, a story from Blackhawk #117 (October 1957) featuring “The Fantastic Mr. Freeze,” who turned out to be a robot wielding an instant freezing ice machine. Our first glimpse of Mr. Zero inside the issue is of a bald man in a smoking jacket who doesn’t appear all that menacing, but he has entombed the Dynamic Duo of Batman and Robin in blocks of solid ice and his headquarters appears to be something along the lines of a deep freeze. As the story unfolds, Zero is seen in action wearing a reasonable facsimile of a space suit with a bubble helmet and an apparatus strapped to his back. He and his gang are robbing a jewelry exchange, and he uses a one-two punch of a modified blowtorch followed by ice gas to cause the vault to crack, allowing them to steal all the “ice” they can manage. Despite the arrival of Batman and Robin, Zero’s use of his device to turn the street into a skating rink allows him to escape justice. A little later in the story, the villain recounts his origin to a new recruit. He explains he was the victim of an accident while experimenting with his newly invented ice gun. The container holding his freezing solution burst and saturated him, resulting in his being unable to breathe at normal temperatures. “Thus was Mr. Zero born! I perfected an air-conditioned costume to help me commit my crimes… and built this hidden, refrigerated mountain lair!”

THE COMING OF MR. FREEZE

The ominous Mr. Freeze dominates the art from the cover of The New 52’s Batman Annual #1 (2012). (inset) Our first look at Mr. Zero on the cover of Batman #121 TM & © DC Comics.

More ice and cold gimmicks are deployed throughout the story until the final showdown when Mr. Zero is exposed to steam from a broken pipe that appears to have restored him to normal. Based on the sequence of events, it would appear that Mr. Zero was yet another in a long line of throwaway villains for Batman and Robin to tackle. He wasn’t even given an alter ego in this debut tale, but the chilly chilblain would return to vex Batman. First, however, he would undergo a slight transformation on the small “Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3

screen when he became Mr. Freeze on the Batman television series in 1966. Freeze would appear three times, portrayed by three different actors and with the ensuing Batmania that followed the popularity of the series, Mr. Zero was back with a new name and a somewhat modified outfit, this time resembling a stouter diving suit. “Mr. Freeze’s Chilling Deathtrap!” was printed in Detective Comics #373 (March 1968) and was written by Gardner Fox with interiors produced by Chic Stone and Sid Greene under an Irv Novick cover. The splash page fills the reader in as to whom we’re dealing with: “It’s chill-thrill time again as the refrigerated rogue— Mr. Zero—blasts out of his deep-freeze hide-out to taunt Batman and Robin with his tricky temperature tactics! Bolder and colder than ever—and with a new name to match—he zeroes in his prey and the frigid fate he has finalized for them!” As if that intro wasn’t enough to tip readers to the influence of the TV show, a line uttered by Robin later in the story left no doubt: “Mr. Freeze! That sounds like a campy name dreamed up for a villain in a television program!” Ultimately, a new name and suit, along with a Cryothermal gun added to his arsenal, did not help the frozen fiend prevail over the World’s Greatest Detective, and Mr. Freeze went into cold storage following this second and final appearance in the Silver Age. A little over a decade later, Mr. Freeze returned in Batman #308 (February 1979) in a Len Wein story titled “There’ll be a Cold Time in the Old Town Tonight.” After another uniform makeover, Freeze looks vaguely like Captain Cold minus the parka hood and his cold gun resembles Captain Cold’s sidearm, too, unlike the spray assembly he’d been wielding before. Another change is his seeming shift from simple thief to entrepreneur, trading “immortality” in a cryogenic deep freeze to a millionaire in return for part of his fortune. Unfortunately, the process has created an ice zombie instead, and he is once again defeated by Batman. A few years later, Freeze showed up to bedevil both Batman and Superman in the pages of World’s Finest Comics #275 (January 1982), but it bears noting that just a month prior based on sale dates, writer Alan Brennert gave a nod to Mr. Zero in The Brave and the Bold #182 (January 1982) as the Earth 2 Robin uses Mr. Zero’s freeze gun from the artifacts in the Batcave to foil a Batman robot controlled by Professor Hugo Strange.

(top row) An ice cream truck is the perfect transportation for a cold villain. (2nd row left) Mr. Zero becomes Mr. Freeze on the cover of Detective Comics #373. (2nd row right) Eli Wallach as Mr. Freeze from the Batman TV series. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (3rd row) The dialog in Detective Comics #373 shows the influence of the TV show as the Dynamic Duo take on Mr. Freeze. (bottom left) Mr. Freeze, Fashionista? His costume changes yet again in Batman #308. (bottom right) Robin pulls a familiar weapon from cold storage in The Brave and the Bold #182. TM & © DC Comics.

4 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

A CHAT WITH MR. KUPPERBERG

Back now to World’s Finest and the Paul Kupperberg story “Summer Nights Winter Days!” Illustrated by Rich Buckler and Frank McLaughlin with Len Wein serving as editor, it’s June and Metropolis is suffering a heat wave while Gotham City “…not a dozen miles…” from Metropolis is in a deep freeze. It seems Mr. Freeze is busily creating paul kupperberg an arctic habitat for himself by turning Gotham City into his private winter wonder- © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. land. Freeze has discovered a way to siphon off the heat byproducts to Metropolis and therefore BACK ISSUE: Do you recall any plotting sessions involves both heroes. To no one’s surprise, the with Len? criminal is once again “put on ice,” and things are KUPPERBERG: We must have, even if it was just restored to normal in both locations. “You got any ideas?” This is total guesswork, but Scripter Paul Kupperberg graciously shared his I’m thinking Len must have thrown out Mr. Freeze recollections of this story with BACK ISSUE in a as the villain, because I don’t think he’d have been short Q&A. the kind of character that would be on my radar. Then, once we’d established it would be Freeze, BACK ISSUE: Do you remember how the assignment I began to think of what would work well and came about? decided to pit ice against fire. Back in those days, PAUL KUPPERBERG: Not really. In those days, I thanks to the Atlas of the DC Universe, we knew was one of those guys who was always around that Gotham City and Metropolis were across the office and when somebody needed a fill-in or the bay from each other, so it was easy to link up a story in a hurry, they’d maybe see me walking Superman and Batman. It was one of the few down the hall and go, “Get in here!” Literally, I times I got to write Batman. I had dialogued some picked up half my assignments that way in those issues of Detective or Batman for Gerry Conway, days. I remember it was a cool story. Rich Buckler but I don’t think I ever wrote Batman on his own drew it and Frank McLaughlin inked it. and I think that was the only time, in that story. It was a good enough story for the time, BACK ISSUE: Did you have to do any research into but it was another in a long list of assignments. the character prior to scripting? Motivation in a lot of the early stories tended to be KUPPERBERG: I was pretty well up to date with skimpy, so I tried to do something at least a little all the characters in the DC Universe in those days. different. Because again, I might be called upon at any moment to write any character. They might need a THE DEATH AND ANIMATED LIFE OF fill-in on dialogue for some book or an emergency MR. FREEZE fill-in story. Whatever it is, if I’m walking down Following what amounted to a bit part in the hall and called into an editor’s office, it was Gerry Conway’s “All my Enemies Against Me” in important to be ready. Detective Comics #526 (May 1983), Mr. Freeze I did remember that first Batman appearance also was the featured villain in Doug Moench’s of Mr. Zero, and then in the 1966 Batman series… “The Glacier Under Gotham!” appearing in I think back then he was a C list Batman villain, Batman #375 (September 1984). Then, in and I don’t think anybody bothered to give him 1991, it appeared the frozen felon was done much thought or personality. Kind of one-dimen- for good. Legend has it that Batman editor sional. I think there were references to an origin, Denny O’Neil had so little love for the character, but I can’t even think of it. that he decided to have him killed off by the

(left) Things look bad for Mr. Freeze, but he’s got an ace up his sleeve in World’s Finest Comics #275. (right) Batman and Superman join forces against Mr. Freeze in WFC #275. TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 5

paul dini Comiquero.com.

Mr. Freeze as he appeared in Batman: The Animated Series. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

Joker in Robin II: The Joker’s Wild! (December 1991). However, Mr. Freeze would once again enjoy a renaissance in a medium outside comic book continuity the very next year when he showed up in animated form in season 1 of Batman: The Animated Series. “Heart of Ice,” aired on September 7, 1992, and was written by Paul Dini and directed by Bruce Timm. Dini created an entirely new and tragic backstory for Freeze and gave him the alter ego of Dr. Victor Fries (pronounced “freeze”), a gifted scientist holding a fascination with cryogenics. His fixation is driven in large measure by the fact that his beloved wife, Nora, is afflicted with a terrible and incurable disease. He places his bride into cryogenic sleep, storing Nora’s body in a reinforced chamber to allow him time to develop a cure, but his employer, displaying classic corporate heartlessness when discovering Victor’s use of company resources, stops Fries cold in his tracks and he ends up exposed to cold substances that alter him into the persona of Mr. Freeze. In addition to the revamped origin story, a new look was designed for the villain by none other than Mike Mignola. Mike offered that it was a quick turnaround: “Honestly, I don’t have much to say about Mr. Freeze—I doubt I spent more than 20 minutes on that. As I recall, I had some old book on the history of DC Comics and there was an old drawing of Mr. Freeze there (that) looked very simple (could have been from the ‘50s or early ‘60s), and I just pretty much copied it. I might have done something with the goggles or eyebrows, but that’s probably it.” Simple or not, both story and design breathed new life into the character, making him more relatable, even sympathetic, despite an anecdote on the Internet Movie Database website attributed to Bruce Timm where it’s noted that he originated the idea that Mr. Freeze had barely escaped dying in a cryogenic experiment gone wrong, and 6 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

considers himself dead. As a result, he doesn’t that old Outer Limits episode: “Nightmare.” They fear death and has no emotions. sound real metallic and hollow. I even played that Additional information on this groundbreaking for him at the recording session and explained that and game-changing episode found on Looper. was what I wanted it to sound like. It drove the com revealed that “Heart of Ice” was the first guys crazy doing it.” episode of the series directed by Bruce One of Timm’s first choices for Mr. Timm as well as the first one written Freeze was Anthony Hopkins, and by Paul Dini, and that Dini felt the Bruce shared one other anecdote episode’s success was a mix of on the website regarding his duties aesthetic excellence, a sense of in directing “Heart of Ice” with romantic sadness that appealed to the complication of being behind the viewers, and Timm’s masterschedule: “I didn’t have a storyful direction. It even received an board team, so I got Doug Murphy, Emmy award. Phillip Norwood, Joe Denton, Per Looper.com, Bruce Timm Mark Wallace, Curt Geda, and noted that he had difficulty getting Lorenzo Martinez. I took anyvoice actor Michael Ansara to play one who had two days available, it “flat” for the role of Mr. Freeze. using people from other crews bruce timm “He was acting too much. It was that had down time. They did a Courtesy of Comic Vine. really frustrating for him. He had very good job, and I didn’t have never done cartoons before, and an actor’s first to change a whole lot.” natural instinct is to act. He kept giving these line The success of “Heart of Ice” led to an encore in readings with all this inflection in them. I kept season 3, episode 10 with “Deep Freeze,” written telling them that it had to be less, a lot less – like a by Dini and Timm and later still, a direct to video robot. He kept saying it sounded so flat. Everybody feature in 1998 titled Batman and Mr. Freeze: else was looking at me, too and was asking if I was SubZero, wherein our chilly villain has relocated sure. To them it sounded flat. I think it really sells to the arctic and is still consumed with saving his it. I wanted his voice to sound like the Ebonites in wife, Nora.

(top left) A Batman: the Animated Series “Heart of Ice” serigraph cel, signed by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini. (top right) Victor and Nora Fries from Batman and Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero. Victor’s evolution continued in The New Batman Adventures episode (bottom left) “Cold Comfort” and (bottom right) Batman Beyond’s “Meltdown” episode. TM & © DC Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 7

MR. FREEZE RETURNS TO COMICS

Mr. Freeze and Batman face off in Batman #525, written by Doug Moench and art by Kelley Jones and John Beatty.

KELLEY JONES: When I got the assignment, they’d already had a few things in mind, and that was fine, but Doug (Moench) had said, “What villains would you like to do? Is there anyone in the rogue’s gallery?” So, I told him some and I was very excited to do the Scarecrow and I wanted to do Killer Croc and I wanted to put Swamp Thing in it. Swamp Thing, in those days, was under the control of Vertigo and Karen Berger’s group, and they didn’t really share characters then. The DCU and Vertigo stayed separate. That’s just the way they did it. I really wanted to do Killer Croc and Doug had this great idea, but he said “You want to do Swamp Thing, but we can’t get it.” So, I kelley jones called Denny (O’Neil) and said to Gage Skidmore. him, “If I can call Karen and get it, I’ll do the asking, because I had worked for her, but can we do it?” He said, “I don’t know, there’s this big thing, and I certainly wouldn’t be against it, but don’t get your heart set.” So, I called up Karen and said, “I’m doing Batman now,” and she said, “I know.” “Would it be okay if we borrowed Swamp Thing?” Halfway through the question, she said, “Yes, go ahead. Use it. You and Doug? That would be great.” I said it would be a horror story. It would be in the swamp; it wouldn’t be in Gotham City or anything. She said, “Go ahead and do it.” Then I called up Denny and he said, “Really? She said that’s okay?” “Yeah.” And out of that, the next one I wanted was Mr. Freeze. I don’t know much about the lore of Batman. I know what I

The changes brought about in “Heart of Ice” became the new canon for Mr. Freeze and the comic stories soon began to reflect this evolution, but in a Doug Moench authored story in Batman #525 (December 1995) titled “Frozen Assets,” a somewhat different take on Mr. Freeze was shown. While Doug was unavailable for this essay, artist Kelley Jones provided plenty of information about this fascinating story for BACK ISSUE. BACK ISSUE: How did the assignment come about, or was it just part of the regular run during your tenure?

TM & © DC Comics.

8 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

Kelley Jones’s designs made for a decidedly creepy take on Mr. Freeze for Batman #525. TM & © DC Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 9

Reders got a chill down their collective spines when reading Moench/Jones’ Batman #525. TM & © DC Comics.

used to love to read. I loved Neal Adams’ stuff and Marshall Rogers and those things. I would read the standout things, but I didn’t really know the lore of Batman and I didn’t know Denny O’Neil could not stand Mr. Freeze. And that’s an understatement. He detested Mr. Freeze. So, Doug, again, knowing all this, said, “He’s not going to approve that.” I said, “But I have this great idea. You can write whatever you want, Doug, but we really specialize on him freezing people. Not just being cold himself, but as a criminal. A horror, film noir take,” which is what I was doing on Batman. “That’s just really frightening to me, and I see him like in a black and white movie. He would be like an old ‘40s serial black and white character.” Doug says, “Hey, it all sounds great to me, but Denny’s going to say no.” So, I called Denny and I’m halfway through the question of, “Hey, I would really like to…” “No! No Mr. Freeze. Mr. Freeze is stupid.” He never liked Mr. Freeze since the ’66 Batman TV show and he just thought him a ludicrous character. While I didn’t say it, I thought, “Well, that’s funny. They’re ALL ludicrous characters.” Think about it. A penguin? So, I kind of went through

10 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

what I wanted to do. “He’ll be really scary, Denny, and it will be great. I see it this certain way…” And he’s still saying, “No, Kelley, no.” So, I said “Okay,” and about 30 minutes later, he calls me again. He says, “Okay. You really seem to care about this, and you did get us Swamp Thing. I can’t see him the way you’re talking as being kind of cool. Can you send me an idea of what you have in mind?” I said, “Yeah,” because I’d already drawn my idea. And I never do that. I’m a designon-the-page artist, because I just like the energy. It’s already in my head, so let’s just draw. Let’s get on it. It’s like not reading the rules to Monopoly. Let’s just roll dice and play! Because I don’t like to waste time. Especially on a monthly, because you can spend all your time researching and designing and blow your deadline. So, I sat down, I drew it out, and FedEx’d it to him, because you couldn’t scan back then. He got it and he said, “Okay, I really like this design. I do like it.” I said, “Well, I see this 3-part thing…” And he goes, “No, no, no, no, no. No 3-part thing.” So, I said, “Really, Denny, it’s up to Doug, but I see him freezing people and he’s stealing diamonds and you can put something together with that.” I just thought the look of it sounded cool.

Then Doug writes this 2-parter and Denny goes, “No, no, no, no, no. No 2-parter. You get one shot at it. One issue.” And I said, “Okay,” and Doug went back and trimmed it all out and wrote it for a single issue and then Denny wonderfully said, “That’s the end of you asking for anything for the rest of the year. You’re done now. You got Swamp Thing, which was cool, and you got Mr. Freeze. After that, it’s whatever fits within what we do in the office.” I said, “No sweat.” What happened was, you do it, and I immensely loved that issue, as far as drawing it. Everything you hope for doesn’t happen that often, but every once in a while, something in your head comes out on paper, and it’s what you wanted. From Doug, to me, to John Beatty, it came out. It was really what I wanted. A scary Mr. Freeze. Now because I didn’t know the lore of Batman, I didn’t realize a lot of fans didn’t care for Mr. Freeze, either. (Laughter.) But they loved it. It really went over well. So much so, that they were in production of Batman & Robin, the movie with Mr. Freeze in it, and they switched their design to that armor suit and recast it from Patrick Stewart to Arnold Schwarzenegger. So, I apologize to people on all of this. (Laughter.) I had nothing to do with it, but they saw that issue and it knocked them out. Bruce Timm really liked it and said how much he really dug that design, because I had him uplit inside his helmet and I had him in this more maneuverable armor, but different. I didn’t want it shiny, I wanted it black. I wanted the light to come from him, not on him. And I wanted him to look cold. So, where he’s exposed, you can see frozen flesh. Not just in a big diving suit. You could see his frozen arms in the clear parts of it. Clearly, I’m overthinking all this, but when you spend 22 pages, which is essentially a

month, you spend a lot of time with these guys and you get to like them. So, it took off, had a life of its own and, all of a sudden, Mr. Freeze is in a lot more stuff and a lot of other writers and artists are requesting to use Mr. Freeze. It’s one of those things where Denny called me later and said, “You know, one of the reasons I hired you was that you’re different, but what I didn’t know is that you cared this much.” I said, “Denny, I honestly don’t know how things work, and I don’t understand the politics of it all.” I love comics, but I wasn’t a DC guy, I was a Marvel guy, so I didn’t know all this stuff. He said, “You’ve brought a lot to this and there’s a lot of passion here. This isn’t just some self-aggrandizing thing, you really wanted to do something kind of different and you did.” So, he always trusted me after that, and that was early on in the run, but he really trusted me after that, because I came from outside. Doing Elseworlds Batman and the covers didn’t really count as doing issues, it’s just covers, so when I got to doing the Batman book itself, I think a couple of things happened. I was on time, I was doing an extraordinary amount of detail, but I was always on time. John was doing a great job on inking, so they would look at the black and whites and really liked them, and they realized something different was going on and it was a good different, not a bad different. (chuckle.)

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze in the movie Batman & Robin. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 11

So, at that point, I felt very comfortable. You know it’s odd, but it never really made me feel like, okay, now I understand it. It made me realize there’s a lot of potholes here that I don’t see. A lot of traps. But I didn’t know any of that stuff. Maybe I was naïve. My whole career has been, I didn’t know there was a rule, and I didn’t know you couldn’t do this or that. I just loved old comics and I loved to draw that way and I didn’t know any of the rules of comics or art. And that’s why things like Mr. Freeze were always important to me, because that’s an actual issue proving everything where all the problems and politics and reasons it shouldn’t work, and yet it worked. Ignorance is a very misunderstood virtue. If you don’t know, anything is possible. BACK ISSUE: Did anything influence the environment suit? JONES: I went with armor as opposed to a hazmat suit so that it couldn’t be easily torn or broken. Because he would die. So, I had it to where it would be impregnable. Then he could go about his business. Do his thing and not worry about that. For the character himself to confidently go out into the world and wreak havoc, he had to know that he didn’t have an Achilles heel. What I was probably thinking of more than the suit, was that I wanted something to uplight it. So, the closest that I’d seen was David Lynch’s Dune. The Sardaukar are lit from the inside. That probably didn’t make sense, but for the camera it looked good. I remembered that effect and thought it was really eerie, because it distorted their features, this strong uplight that you couldn’t really see and, in Lynch’s mind, they were pumping drugs into those things and it was just like freon to keep Mr. Freeze cold. So, I was thinking of the Sardaukar from Lynch’s Dune. BACK ISSUE: Another unique thing you pulled off in the story was the juxtaposed realistic and caricature characters. Much like Nick Cardy’s work on Bat-Lash. JONES: That was all intended. When doing Batman, I wanted a mixture of the realistic and the fantastic, because it’s a comic book and I don’t want to let go of comic book tropes. Realistic is great, but interesting is better, and I wanted interesting. I wanted something that was eccentric. Doug and Denny and Alan Grant, they would always say to me, “You’re very eccentric.” And they weren’t talking about my art. They were talking about me. I’m not eccentric. We’re all in comics. Who’s eccentric? I can point to 50 guys I think are strange. They said, “You have a certain something and it comes through in what you do.” That took me by surprise. I’d go home from these things and tell my wife, “They mean this as a compliment, but am I

The original art for an amazing pin-up of Batman and Mr. Freeze by James Stokoe from Batman: Black and White #5. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

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eccentric?” “Oh, yeah. You’re eccentric. They’re right.” She let that out really quick like she’d been holding it back. (Laughter.) So, those elements were in my comics, and I’d be struck any day. If you’re going to freeze people and break them into parts, I think it would be much worse if they were hyper-realistically done. But if they’re more of a caricature, then it just becomes like another crazy Batman villain. So instead of him being worse than a serial killer, you had the caricature. I remember comics when I was young would have certain elements that were unique to the creators. Swamp Thing had that. It was just unique to those creators. It wasn’t even their skills. The creators came through in their work. Not self-refencing themselves, but just coming through with what they love. And that was kind of what it was for me. I was very much into film noir anyway, so when I got Batman, I loved horror and I loved film noir and I hadn’t really seen that exploited in Batman. So, it was just a take. Everyone thinks it was calculated on my part. No. It was just the way it came out. Doug saw that and took advantage of it. Denny liked it. They hired me for that, and no one ever said that. It wasn’t, “You do it this way and that’s why we want you.” It was after the fact that they would tell me that. But that’s just what I thought. I figured, “Well, I’m a comic book fan. If someone new is coming on, I don’t want them to do what the last guy did. I want to see something different.” All my favorite books were like that anyway. I just think that realism is already being accom-

plished in novels or films or television. So, comic books are the place I like to really go off and take advantage of those things. I like to be able to do that and, as long as I’m doing comics, that’s what I’ll always do. Not because that’s my plan, it’s just what happens. It will happen when I’m reading a script. “Oh, this would be good,” or, “That’s not interesting enough.” That’s usually my more straight work, and then I’ll do something strange and it becomes interesting to me. Whether audiences find it that way, I don’t know. But the fact is that this stuff has lasted so long and, in my eyes, it isn’t dated. That’s why it’s still around. BACK ISSUE: How did you do the silhouette kind of face on Freeze in your Kings of Fear mini-series? JONES: If you’re talking about the fight sequence, it’s a process of removal. You have to draw everything and then remove stuff and be

Batman finds Mr. Freeze yet again in Michael Lark’s original art from Gotham Central #2. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 13

Tim Sale’s original art for the cover of Batman: Dark Victory #10 featuring a very moody Mr. Freeze. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

left with the shape. Then you have to make the judgment as to whether that shape makes sense to you. Would your eye fill it all in? And then you understand it. That’s a messing with light thing. I always like to mess with light and I always figured that’s the thing with Batman. You wouldn’t really see him clearly, if you are the one who is the focus of his ire. He would just be this silhouette shape, come in, threaten you, and if you still resisted, knock your head in. Regular people give up. The crazy Arkham people never give up. That’s why they’re in Arkham. They’re crazy. They keep fighting. So, I just wanted to get that across, but when the light goes out, they’re all afraid of him again. They need light to deal with him, because they still don’t know who he is. They know one another, but not him. It’s a great thing. I never want to give that up. I’ve never seen Batman as anything other than meting out justice. It’s not about his emotions or this or that, it’s about meting out justice. It’s his focus. He’s like a crazy prosecutor. He’s going out there and he won’t stop. Nothing gets in his way.

BACK ISSUE: Does Mr. Freeze have properties that set him apart from other cold villains? JONES: One is that, like all great villains, he’s born of tragedy. He’s missing the forest for the trees, but he’s still locked into that loop of the tragedy of his wife. That’s like a Universal monster, with the exception of Dracula. All of them are born of tragedy. There’s a sadness to them. So, when they’re being monsters, you kind of understand them even though they’re being horrific. That’s what makes Batman’s rogues gallery so good is that they’re all born from tragedy. BACK ISSUE: The sympathetic monster. JONES: Batman is born from tragedy, so they all have that in common. That’s the binder of Gotham City. Gotham is a living thing to me and what it does is it puts people through tragedy and loss. One of the first things I told Doug is that my Gotham is going to be anachronistic at times and you might be going along and there’s a steam train or a windmill because to me, Gotham was Dutch. Like New York was first. So, there might be an old windmill left over. Anything to make it different that would not make it strange that weirdos were running around the city like this. You have a guy dressed up like a bat and you think it’s perfectly normal because the city’s weird anyway. Some parts are like Prague and other parts are like New York. At a certain point Doug would say, “Cobblestones, Kelley. Why are there cobblestones?” Because it looks good! (chuckle.) It’s a part of Gotham that goes back to 1758 and they just never got around to it. BACK ISSUE: Were there any challenges in working on Freeze? JONES: I think that the main challenge was telling the story, his personal stuff, with his eyes. Because I didn’t have his face really because he’s uplit. And being in all that armor, he’s always just going to be standing there. So, his eyes were the thing that I always had to get across. What his emotions were. He wasn’t a black and white villain to me. There was this thing in him, and it was only through his eyes that I could get that across. Those are the things that strike you when you’re working. It’s not at the beginning. Once you start a project, these little problems come up, like how do I convey emotion? Usually, my characters do a lot of acting in what they do. They’re always doing something. And Freeze was different. I decided I wasn’t going to sweat it. It’s going to be his eyes. I’ll just work on that. BACK ISSUE: It sounds like there were no issues with Doug’s scripts. JONES: No. Doug’s scripts were incredibly visual. I found that Doug never took the same ground twice. He’d just tell you something and go. We don’t flashback, we just go. You know it or you don’t. That created a terrific pacing. You got to know Doug’s characters through their actions. Not because he would tell you what they’re doing; he let me do that, and he was just saying what was on their mind. To me that made for a pretty enjoyable book. At least it was enjoyable to draw.

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I tend to like the looser writers who give you the thing and you run with it. I also enjoy those who leave the door open to whatever may happen. A more organic type of thing. Doug would sometimes do, “Page 7. Fight scene.” And then you get to choreograph it. BACK ISSUE: Any other anecdotes on the character? JONES: I found that if there’s something I like about Mr. Freeze, even with the puns and Doug’s double meanings, it still held my initial notion that he’s a frightening character. It was frightening to be him, and it was frightening to be around him. That was the first thought in my head when I was asked what villains I wanted to do. I just thought that cold is awful to me, so that would be a good character to tackle. I’m asked about that issue quite frequently and I’m glad it’s still of interest.

THE FUTURE OF FREEZE

By all appearances, Mr. Freeze’s fortunes had risen since he was the featured villain in the 1997 film release Batman & Robin, oortrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The story even incorporated elements from “Heart of Ice.” Per Looper.com, this pleased Paul Dini, who was quoted as saying, “I was actually quite happy to see certain elements

of Mr. Freeze’s origin used in the movie. I wish the entire picture had been as powerful as those few moments that focused on Victor and Nora, but I think pretty much all the moviegoers and fans would have liked that, too.” Unfortunately, the movie was not well received, often going deeply into unappreciated camp territory and the end result was that the Batman movie franchise went into the cooler for the next eight years until the Christopher Nolan trilogy handily revived it. Despite the odd misstep and some massive alterations over the years, Mr. Freeze has certainly proven his resilience in an often-crowded Batman rogues’ gallery. He continues to be a much more fully realized villain who poses a major threat when he’s on the loose and will doubtless continue to plague Gotham City, and its guardian, in the future. Perhaps a fitting end note comes from the recent Batman: One Bad Day – Mr. Freeze from 2023 with an unforgettable notation by writer Gerry Duggan: “Some of Batman’s villains have a bad day…some have long emergencies that end in tragedy. He was a man of science who refused to accept the cards that life had dealt him. In the end, he was a man born not of cruelty or accident, but of heartbreak.”

(left) The cover to Batman Arkham: Mister Freeze by Brian Stelfreeze. (right) Matteo Scalera’s cover for Batman: One Bad Day – Mr. Freeze. TM & © DC Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 15

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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Baba Ram Dass, Maharaj Ji, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh… It seemed like anybody who was anybody back in the late 1960s/early 1970s followed the teachings of one guru or another. Shel Silverstein even parodied the trend in a line he wrote for the Dr. Hook song, “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” – “I got a genuine Indian Guru, who’s teachin’ me a better way.” In the end, many of these revered spiritual leaders turned out to have feet of clay, something R. Crumb predicted way back in 1967, before the Beatles ever even went to India, when he created his own guru character, the “spiritually arrogant” Mr. Natural. Mr. Natural first appeared locally in San Francisco in issues of the counter-culture newspapers Yarrowstalks and Yellow Dog. In 1970, Chicago Daily News columnist John Bell summed up the character succinctly when he wrote, “Perhaps the heaviest of the underground heroes is the mystical Mr. Natural (a creation of top-dog underground cartoonist Robert Crumb), Mr. Natural trucks around in tunic and knee-length white beard, a philosophical scold to the world. Mr. Natural frequently is consulted by such hungup antiheros as Flakey Foont, who confesses his inadequacies and then demands a formula for instant nirvana only to be rebuffed for insisting on the impossible.” Just looking at Mr. Natural, you might easily think him a vintage comic strip character. He dresses in a formless yellow smock like the Yellow Kid, has a long white beard like OG Wattasnozzle, and wears great big shoes like Slap Happy from the Sparky Watts strip. Clearly an old-fashioned character, right? But then you’d never find ********* or ******** in a classic newspaper strip. And certainly, he wouldn’t be **********************!!! Horrors! The Ralph Bakshi movie, Fritz the Cat, made Crumb’s freaky feline more of a household name, but there’s no question that Mr. Natural was really the artist’s major character. Like most of Crumb’s best-known creations, Mr. Natural was a means of spilling the artist’s Id out in public.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 17

(left) Robert Crumb at a 2010 signing in Chestertown, Maryland. (right) Mr. Natural gives Flakey Foont the boot on the cover of Mr. Natural #1. Mr. Natural ©2025 Robert Crumb. Photo by Rutkowski Photography.

WHO IS MR. NATURAL?

• In 1953, he returned to the U.S. and became depressed. It’s impossible to come up with any sort of coherent time- • In 1955, he renounced all worldly goods and pleasures and retreated to Death Valley. line for the character of Mr. Natural as his strips appeared all over in early comix. They were printed out of order, • In 1960, a fan club was formed for him in California. continuity (not that there ever was much) changed on a • In 1965, he began lecturing on college campuses. whim, and there were plenty of random illustrations of the • By 1966, he was recognized as a “powerful, spiritual force.” character. Crumb himself offered up some spurious background in a THE EARLY ADVENTURES OF MR. NATURAL three-page illustrated text piece he called The Origins of Mr. “Mr. Natural, the Zen Master,” in Yarrowstalks #3 (1967) was one of the character’s first appearances in print. Natural. In it we are told: It’s a rather primitive-looking single page strip Whole decades of his past are entirely missing. credited only to “R.C.” A man asks Mr. Natural for His birthplace and birthdate are entirely un“The Answer” and in the sixth and final panel known. is told what he can go do to himself. Although • His father was reportedly still alive. Crumb’s greeting card work that pre-dated • His name is Fred Natural. this is much more polished, this strip looks • The earliest photo of him was taken in South dashed off. Much improved is “The Man from Dakota in 1908. Afghanistan,” which appeared in The East • From 1921 to 1929, he was in Chicago. Village Other that same year and presented our • In 1921, he worked at a drugstore which “hero” being accosted in his Saturday night may have been a front for a speakeasy. bath by the artist’s generic everyman char• In 1923, as Dr. Von Naturlich, he traveled acter, Flakey Foont, forever seeking instant around promoting a “wonder elixir.” enlightenment. • Convicted of fraud, he spent six months Robert Crumb In Zap Comics #1 (1968), the second in jail. Zap Comix #7 Self-portrait. © Robert Crumb. issue of that title (long story there), Crumb, • As Mr. Natural the Magnificent, he about six years into his long and successful greeting card performed a magic act in Vaudeville. career and reportedly two years after discovering LSD, • In 1926, he toured as bandleader with a small dance band. let his freak flag fly to give us 28 pages of random sub• By 1928, he was living in a mansion in a Chicago suburb, consciousness spills that may or may not have made more with servants. sense if you, too, were on some sort of trip at the time… • He was living on Skid Row after gifting his fortune to a and I don’t mean Greyhound. homeless man he had just met. “Mr. Natural Encounters Flakey Foont” takes up 20 extra• In 1936, he was drinking, working odd jobs on the West tiny, sparsely-illustrated panels on one page in which the Coast, and traveling in freight cars. questionable guru and Mr. Foont argue nearly the entire time. • By 1940, he was rumored to be with a “tough twerp” from Just a few pages later—now at full-size—we get “Mr. Natural Tulsa named Judy. Visits the City,” in which the same pair continue their argument, • In WWII, he claimed to be traveling through Asia and the albeit this time a little easier to follow as they discuss everything Middle East. from sanity to sandwiches. • He worked as a taxi driver in Afghanistan. 18 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 19

(top) Mr. Natural spreads his philosophy on the cover of East Village Other V.3 #47. (bottom left) Mr. Natural coming to the Village Voice was a big deal, as can be seen in this promotional poster. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (bottom right) Mr. Natural whizzes past on the cover of Mr. Natural #2. Mr. Natural ©2025 Robert Crumb.

20 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

Zap #0 (Was this the first Zero comic book?), compiled in 1967 but not published until after Zap #1, offers us “Mr. Natural in Death Valley,” a 5-page piece, also with Flakey. Right up front, we’re told that “the great man” is “an ex-taxicab driver from Afghanistan.” “I groove in this desert,” he says. Starting with Zap #2 (1968) the rest of the Zap crew— Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, and S. Clay Wilson— begin to arrive and we’re left with less Crumb going forward. Mr. Natural, though, is center stage on the cover of R. Crumb’s Head Comix, the oversized paperback published by Viking Press in 1968 in an attempt at reflected glory from growing mainstream interest in the underground. A reprint of “The Man from Afghanistan” heralds four more stories with Mr. Natural, three one-pagers all from The East Village Other and, the six-page Zap story, “Mr. Natural Visits the City.” The groovy guru would pop up frequently in other underground comix including Your Hytone Comix (1971), Uneeda Comix (1973), even in Last Gasp’s ecologically-minded Slow Death Funnies #1 (1970). Mr. Natural became popular enough that Crumb’s fellow underground artist, Skip Williamson, parodied him (as Melvin Natural) and Flakey Foont (as Funky Feet) in a three-page section of the full-color underground Mad parody issue of Bijou Funnies, #8 (1973). There were also three issues of his own eponymous title, two of which came out around 1971. The third and final issue was released in 1977. That last issue reprinted, for the first time in book form, the longest stretch of continuity the character had ever had.

MR. NATURAL HITS THE MAINSTREAM

For ten months during the bicentennial year of 1976, Mr. Natural held forth in a regular weekly slot in New York’s Village Voice. Crumb had been forced to take the mainstream gig after prolonged battles with the IRS reportedly left him pretty close to broke. Heavily promoted with posters and a large illustrated cover blurb, the strip offered Crumb a regular paycheck, said to have been $200 per week, but he ultimately chose to discontinue the run, even offering one final strip in which he explained that he just wasn’t cut out for a regular gig. The Voice strips—reprinted again in The Complete Crumb Comics Volume Eleven (1995), were sequential. It was a supposedly retired Mr. Natural (aka Fred), wearing striped pants this time out (or nothing at all in a few uncensored strips!), who interacts early on with a new, young, eager wannabe disciple named Billy Bob. Billy Bob is described as “the most devoted of all the Mr. Natural fans.” In the series, besides Billy Bob, Mr. Natural meets with an old ex-Communist professor friend, cooks some boiled cabbage, falls down a shaft where he encounters a literal demon, loses his clothes, and decides to start a commune with Flakey and his wife, who end up having him committed, and then essentially take over the strip. It would be ten years before Crumb brought the character back in the pages of titles such as Hup and Mystic Funnies.

MR. NATURAL CAMEOS

To date, the character’s only animated appearance has been, believe it or not, in a mainstream Disney movie! Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) is packed with in-jokes and cameos and, at one point, Mr. Natural pops right out of a door for just a couple of seconds—just long enough for kids to shrug him off and for parents—and ex-hippie grandparents coerced into watching— to think they were having flashbacks! Another cameo appearance had occurred more than half a century earlier. Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman had employed Crumb on his Help! magazine for Warren Publishing in the early 1960s. In the July 1970 issue of Playboy, Little Annie Fanny, the long-running, fully-painted strip by Kurtzman and his longtime artistic collaborator Will Elder, has our buxom heroine involved with an underground press newspaper, The East Village Mother (as opposed to the real-life East Village Other). In a large panel on page one, we see a double page spread of underground comix in the paper, including a Freak Brothers strip by Gilbert Shelton and a Crumb strip featuring his stereotyped black character Angelfood *******, here attempting to get a job as a Playboy Bunny. “Mistah Natchul” as she calls him in her “Beulah” accent, accompanies her, referring to her as his “client.” At the bottom of the page, both are kicked out of the Chicago Playboy Mansion.

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MR. NATURAL MARCHES ON

In his Introduction to Volume Seven of Fantagraphics’ series, The Complete Crumb Comics (1991), Crumb writes, “1970 – The peak, the high-water mark of the hippy lifestyle as a popular fashion among the youth of America… The counterculture rebellion had penetrated deep into every college campus and every high school. Even the redneck kids were getting in on it. It looked like too much fun to resist… all that loose sex and dope. And underground comix were right in there, an intrinsic part of the scene, and accoutrement of the lifestyle. Kids got high and grooved on their li’l pile of Zap Comix, got their yuks on Mr. Natural, the Checkered Demon and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. We were heroes, man!” It goes without saying that Mr. Natural appears throughout the 17 volumes of The Complete Crumb Comics, most prominently in Volumes Four and Seven. The former re-presents his earliest appearances, the latter most of his best-known appearances, including the controversial “On the Bum Again” which we can’t even write about here. In 1995, Fantagraphics published The Book of Mr. Natural. While not a complete collection, the volume, subtitled, “Profane Tales of That Old Mystical Madcap,” did compile many of the old fraud’s longer adventures including a number of then-recent ones with Crumb’s later character, Devil Girl. Over the years, there have been Mr. Natural posters, postcards, ads, greeting cards, pinback buttons, and sculpted figurines in the likeness of the (allegedly) great man. Although seemingly unrelated and purely coincidental, in 1974 the pre-disco Bee Gees even produced an album, a tour, and a minor hit recording, all called Mr. Natural. Despite his haphazard history, his controversies, his falling in and out of favor with his creator, and the character’s own self-proclaimed con artist tendencies, one actually can get some enlightenment from reading Mr. Natural strips—mainly: There are no easy answers. We’re all in the same boat. Find something good to enjoy in every day. THINK! And finally, don’t let others take advantage of you. All valid lessons more than ever these days. Thank you, Mr. Natural. Thank you, Mr. Crumb. STEVEN THOMPSON has been writing about comics, movies, TV, and radio since 1988. He has worked in various capacities on more than 150 books and magazines to date. He currently writes a regular column in Comic Book Creator from TwoMorrows and maintains multiple online blogs.

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It can be argued that, in the Marvel Universe, there are certain people that Get Things Done. As a tactical leader, few can match Steve Rogers. Faced with a supernatural problem, Stephen Strange is usually one’s first port of call. For problems that require a little… extra… Logan is needed front and center. For everything else, there’s Reed Richards. BACK ISSUE’s mandate is a focus on the Bronze Age of Comics—particularly the ’70s and ’80s. However, when considering “the smartest man on Earth,” one cannot ignore…

THE WAY IT BEGAN

The first illustration on the first page of the first issue of the Marvel Age of Comics is of Dr. Reed Richards. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby—in Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961)—introduce us to a mature, serious, gentleman (Reed), a tough guy (Ben Grimm), a beautiful blonde (Susan Storm), and her younger brother (Johnny Storm). Reed’s title, “Doctor,” immediately suggests a scientific background. We then meet an Invisible Girl, a monstrous “Thing,” and by J a rrod Buttery a Human Torch. As the National Guard fires a missile at the flying Human Torch, an elasticated pair of arms snakes into the sky to grab the missile. We are asked, “Who are all four of these strange and astonishing humans?” Flashback: and we experience one of the all-time great origin stories. Reed Richards seems lost in thought; his hair is greying at the temples; he’s holding a pipe. Ben Grimm shouts, “If you want to fly to the stars, then you pilot the ship! Count me out! You know we haven’t done stan lee enough research into the effect of cosmic rays! Gage Skidmore. They might kill us all out in space!” Sue interjects: “Ben, we’ve got to take that chance… unless we want the commies to beat us to it! I… I never thought that you would be a coward!” She has played her hand well. Ben is adamant that: “Nobody calls me a coward! Get the ship! I’ll fly her no matter what happens!” During the drive to the spaceport on the outskirts of town, Reed states: “Susan, Ben and I know what we’re doing… but you… and Johnny…” Interrupting, Sue again asserts her authority: “Don’t say it, Reed! I’m your fiancée! Where you go, I go!” (And Johnny tells us that he’s tagging along with sis!) It would be rare to find someone (especially someone reading this magazine) who doesn’t know what happens next. Our foursome blast off towards outer space. However, the ship’s shielding is insufficient. They’re bombarded by cosmic rays. As they lose control of the ship, the automatic pilot brings them back to Earth. Emerging from the wrecked spacecraft, Sue discovers she can turn invisible; Ben transforms into a “Thing”; Reed’s entire body becomes elasticated, and—bursting into flame—Johnny is now a Human Torch. They all realize that they’re more than just human. They have more power than any humans have ever possessed, and they must use that power to help mankind. As Reed takes the name Mister Fantastic, “So was born the Fantastic Four—and from that moment on, the world would never again be the same!” While the origin is well-known, readers may not be familiar with the immediate aftermath. In 2006, Joe Casey wrote the six-issue miniseries Fantastic Four: First Family (with gorgeous art by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine). Issue #1 (May 2006) opens with the USAF investigating Reed’s rocket crash. Our Reed Richards is looking truly “Fantastic” in this Jack foursome are transported under quarantine to a classified, Kirby pinup from Fantastic Four Annual #2. government-sponsored containment center. Fortunately, General Walter Montgomery, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of TM & © Marvel Comics. “Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 23

(top left) Readers’ first view of Mr. Fantastic, and the rest of the Fantastic Four, from the cover of the first issue. (top right) Fantastic Four: First Family #1 reveals what happened immediately after the original Fantastic Four #1. (bottom) Fantastic Four #8 features Reed’s first attempt to return Ben Grimm to his human form. TM & © Marvel Comics.

Staff, has been a friend of Reed’s for nearly ten years. When a powerful inmate runs rogue, our foursome assist. Montgomery consequently vouches for Reed and his colleagues. Montgomery shares Reed’s idea for the team to be based in Manhattan. The proposal is couched as a “mutually-beneficial relationship which could be of great use in certain emergency situations.” The Joint Chiefs are skeptical—until nuclear bases around the world begin disappearing into the earth. Reed assembles his team, investigates, and informs Montgomery about the Mole Man. Convinced, Montgomery subsequently tells Reed: “About your housing problem… we found a possible location. It’s at 42nd and Madison. Built in the forties by the Leland Baxter Paper Company.” In Fantastic Four #1, we are explicitly told that the current location is Central City. By issue #3, our foursome are living in New York City. Issue #6 specifies the Baxter Building. Alicia Masters is introduced in issue #8, wherein Reed first attempts to transform the Thing back into Ben Grimm. The transformation works—but only for a few minutes—and Ben assumes that Alicia prefers the Thing. Reed’s next cure for Ben—in issue #11 (Feb. 1963)—lasts a few pages longer, as Reed relates how he and Ben first met as roommates at State U: “I was a millionaire’s son and he was from the wrong side of the tracks.” Reed and Ben remember that, almost immediately after graduation, Ben became a fighter pilot over Okinawa and Guadalcanal, and Reed was behind the lines with the Office of Strategic Services, during WWII. Reed also reminisces about, “The girl I had left behind.” The Battle of Guadalcanal was fought between August 1942 and February 1943. If Reed and Ben graduated from university when they were 21, and went straight into the military—twenty years prior—it would now put them around forty. At the time of FF #11, Stan would have been 41 and Jack would have been 46. Be that as it may, in the letters page of issue #11, Stan writes: “Mr. Fantastic and Ben Grimm are both in their late thirties, having graduated college when they were very 24 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

young. Sue Storm is in her twenties, and Johnny was just seventeen.” But in the issue itself, Reed reminds Sue: “It’s always been you, since we were kids together living next door to each other!”

RETROACTIVE CONTINUITY

That’s a lot of trivia and several inconsistencies. However, as has often been stated, no one imagined that this cheap, disposable entertainment would be remembered—much less revered—for years. John Byrne, who would write and draw the Fantastic Four in the 1980s, spoke with Jim Salicrup in Comics Interview #25 (1985): “When you look at the Marvel of old, when it was Timely and all that, it used to go away every five years, and I’m firmly convinced that if Stan and Jack had known they were creating something that was going to be here twenty, twenty-five—hopefully thirty, forty years later—they would not have tied those characters into historical events. They would not have said Reed had been in World War II. We reach a point when we have to start fudging around.” And that’s okay. When characters have been around for over 60 years—but they’re still essentially the same age—then adjustments HAVE to be made. In 2004 Marvel launched an additional, in-continuity series under the “Marvel Knights” imprint, simply titled 4. For convenience, it’s often referred to as Marvel Knights: Fantastic Four. Without any hullabaloo, issue #4 (May 2004) casually featured Reed Richards reminiscing about his grandfather— John Richards—who enlisted at age 19 and parachuted into Normandy on June 6, 1944. D-Day. Reed muses: “From pictures, and what I remember about him… there’s a lot of my grandfather in me—in my looks. Years later, after John Richards had left the army— and started a business—and made a fortune—and retired— and became a widower—he still talked about the war. After retiring, my grandfather lived with my parents and me in California. Growing up, I learned most of my life-lessons from him. Lessons in humility… and responsibility. John Richards saw most of his friends die in the war. Then he saw his wife die of cancer. Despite all this, his heart never hardened. He was the most selfless, forgiving man I knew, and he taught me to be the same way.” Beautiful work from writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. From Marvel’s earliest days, Stan was keen to establish a shared universe. The FF meet the Incredible Hulk in issue #12 (Mar. 1963), the Amazing Ant-Man in issue #16 (July 1963), and Colonel Nick Fury (of the CIA) in issue 21 (Dec. 1963). Reed exclaims: “Nick Fury! I haven’t seen you since the end of the war!” and they reminisce about ‘Massacre Mountain’. Three months prior, “Midnight on Massacre Mountain” was published in Sgt. Fury #3 (Sep. 1963). Therein, Sergeant Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos are assigned to Italy where they meet jack kirby Major Richards of the O.S.S. An Editor’s Note tells us that today, Major Richards is better known as Mister Fantastic, leader of the worldfamous Fantastic Four. Byrne explains to Salicrup (in 1985) that the Fantastic Four have only been around for seven years: “Because if we don’t do that, these characters are going to get unmanageably old. And there’s no way to get around that. Reed was, according to Stan, in his late thirties, now he’s forty. So we can see little Reed crawling around on Massacre Mountain there with Sgt Fury, [laughs] ‘Wow, this guy is really smart,

(top) It’s not much of a surprise if it’s on the cover. The FF meet other denizens of the Marvel Universe, including Ant-Man. (bottom) The original art for a Mr. Fantastic feature page by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers from Fantastic Four #16. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © Marvel Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 25

Reed has Sue on his mind on the splash page from Fantastic Four #27 by Jack Kirby and George Roussos (as George Bell). Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © Marvel Comics.

he’s in the OSS and he’s eighteen months old,’ [laughs].” Pointedly, Byrne draws exactly 40 candles on Reed’s birthday cake in FF #271 (Oct. 1984). Jonathan Hickman wrote Fantastic Four from issue #570 (Oct. 2009) to issue #611 (Dec. 2012). He went on to revolutionize Avengers and then X-Men. Interviewed on the Cerebro podcast, Hickman states: “I try to explain this to the writers, about continuity, and how it works. Newer writers, they think that they write something in a comic book, and that comic book gets drawn and then printed and shipped and published and all of that kind of stuff, and they think that they’ve done something that’s become canon. That’s not how any of this works. There’s 60 years of contradictions in the Marvel Universe. Continuity is what people remember and what sticks.” When Aguirre-Sacasa established that Reed looks like his grandfather, he was subtly updating continuity such that it was Reed’s grandfather— John Richards—who served in WWII. Continuity is what sticks.

EARLY YEARS

Established in arch-enemy Doctor Doom’s very first appearance, in Fantastic Four #5 (July 1962), is the fact that Reed and Doom attended university together. It could be argued that one of the most portentous panels in the history of the Marvel Universe is presented in Fantastic Four Annual #2 (Oct. 1964). “The Fantastic Origin of Doctor Doom” shows how Reed visited Doom’s room during those university days and spied some papers. As Doom appears, Reed tells him: “Listen, fella… you’d better double-check some of those equations! You’re off a few decimals in some places, and that could mean…” but a furious Doom kicks Reed out. Again, as most readers will know, Doom’s experiment to contact the Nether World ended… poorly. The resultant explosion scarred Doom’s face and he was expelled from State U. Victor von Doom’s fundamental character trait is his ego. He simply can not contemplate the possibility that he might be wrong. About anything. Therefore, Reed must have sabotaged the experiment, and—for two men who could have— should have—been friends, a lifelong enmity is born. In the same issue, Doom encounters the time-traveler Rama-Tut, who is escaping from his own encounter with the FF in issue #19 (Oct. 1963), and who would later call himself Kang the Conqueror. Rama-Tut explains: “I come from the future, from the 25th Century, where I was a master criminal! I have committed crimes in many centuries… using the time machine which I stole… which was supposed to have been invented by my ancestor, Doctor Doom!!” Doom and Rama-Tut postulate that, not only might they be related, but—due to time travel—they might actually be the same person! This is a subplot that would fester for decades… Returning to the FF, while Reed, Sue, and Johnny can turn their powers on and off, Ben is stuck as the Thing. Except during the first few years of Fantastic Four and—frankly—whenever it’s required by the plot. Early on, Ben Grimm spontaneously reverts to his human form in issues #2, 4, 9, and 19. Reed, on the other hand, attempts to “cure” Ben in issues #8, 11, 16, 17, 25, 32, 68, 78 and more. In fact, in FF #66 (Sep. 1967), Reed tells Sue that he’s created countless serums—but none of them would have been permanent. He didn’t want to disappoint Ben and thus never told him. “But someday I’ll find the right one! I’ll never rest until I do!” Reed and Sue publicly announce their engagement in issue #36 (Mar. 1965) and marry in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (Oct. 1965). Sue’s pregnancy is announced in Annual #5 (Nov. 1967) and their son is born in Annual #6 (Nov. 1968).

BRONZE AGE

If the Bronze Age is arbitrarily chosen as beginning at the 1970s, it is fitting that Fantastic Four #94 (Jan. 1970) reveals the name of Reed and Sue’s son: Franklin Benjamin Richards. (Franklin Storm was Sue and Johnny’s father—killed by the Skrulls in FF #32.) The besotted parents have engaged the services of a child-rearing specialist—a governess, a nanny—and so we 26 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

(top left) Doom’s origin, and Reed’s part in it, is revealed in Fantastic Four Annual #2. (top right) Reed and Sue tie the knot in Fantastic Four Annual #2, with the heroes of the Marvel Universe in attendance. (bottom) Another attempt to “cure” Ben Grimm from Fantastic Four #78. TM & © Marvel Comics.

meet Agatha Harkness, a witch who single-handedly repels an attacking Frightful Four. In the same month, Reed cures the Incredible Hulk! Sort of. Blanketing the mass media with news of a cure, Reed entices Bruce Banner to New York. Banner provides some input and the resultant “cure” allows Banner to turn into the Hulk and back at will—all while retaining Banner’s intellect—in Incredible Hulk #123 (Jan. 1970). This is undone by the Leader. 1970 is the final year of the 1960s but, for argument’s sake, let’s think of it as the start of a new decade and a new beginning. Stan and Jack continued to produce Fantastic Four up until issue #102 (Sep. 1970). Jack Kirby then left Marvel for DC, whereupon John Romita continued the art duties—in the middle of a story where Magneto blackmails Namor, the Sub-Mariner, into attacking New York. Reed develops an Electronic Converter which totally negates Magneto’s powers. If only Reed had lent it to the X-Men… In issue #105 (Dec. 1970), Reed commences yet another cure for Ben but is interrupted by “The Monster in the Streets!” John Buscema commences as regular artist with FF #107 (Feb. 1971), wherein Reed’s “cure” gives Ben the ability to turn into the Thing and back at will. Sue voices some concerns but Reed replies, “Tell me about it later, Sue! I’ve got work to do! In fact, why don’t you visit Agatha Harkness and see how our son is doing?” When Sue asks why he’s trying to get rid of her, Reed barks, “Please dear— don’t go feminine on me just now! I haven’t the time—or the patience! Can’t you see I’m involved in something important?” The world’s smartest man? Not always. Sue does go to visit Franklin. Intending to surprise him, she arrives invisible—but Franklin simply knows she’s there. In another subplot, Ben becomes increasingly tactless and belligerent (which is saying something). However, when he tells Alicia that he can now do lots better, we all realize that something is seriously wrong. The Thing runs amok, just as the Hulk shows up. In the heat of battle, Ben is distracted by Alicia—just as the Hulk lands a killing blow! Ben is presumed dead until Reed manages to revive him in issue #113 (Aug. 1971). The madness passes, Ben smashes Reed’s “cure device” and declares, “I’m done messin’ “Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 27

(left) Mr. Fantastic in action from Fantastic Four #88, with art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (right) Look at all the Reed’s on the cover of Fantastic Four #110 by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott. TM & © Marvel Comics.

around with tryin’ to change myself.” Hugging Alicia, he admits, “I never hadda chance to realize before how much I like bein’ the blue-eyed, blushin’ Thing. ‘N since my sweet patootie likes me this way—then that’s it.” With no time to relax, the Watcher appears, warning: “From beyond the stars shall come the Over-Mind—and he shall crush the universe!” Possessing the mental power of a billion brains, the Over-Mind takes control of Reed Richards—turning Reed against his teammates. The Over-Mind physically defeats Ben and Johnny and—in desperation—Sue appeals to the one man who may be able to devise a response: Doctor Doom. With Doom’s (and the Stranger’s) help, the Over-Mind is defeated in issue #116 (Nov. 1971). Simultaneously, as a mind-controlled Reed attempts to strangle Sue, his love for her breaks his brainwashing. Fantastic Four #118 (Jan. 1972) contains a short side-story (written by Archie Goodwin) where Ben inadvertently teleports to a parallel universe. On this Alternate-Earth (Earth-A or Earth-721), only Reed and Ben took the initial space-flight. They were bombarded by cosmic rays but Ben became an elasticated, flaming Mister Fantastic (and subsequently wedded Sue) while Reed turned into a Thing. The Hulk is gassed by the army, captured, and put on trial (by scripter Gary Friedrich) in Incredible Hulk #152-153 (June-July 1972). Charged with

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conspiracy against the United States, the Hulk faces the death penalty! Despite being defended by Matt Murdock (Daredevil), things do not look good for ol’ Greenskin. Reed Richards sneaks into the courtroom and convinces the judge that his Nega-Gamma invention can revert the Hulk to Bruce Banner. Conversely, the device empowers the Hulk, who breaks free and escapes. Murdock quietly thanks Reed.

TO LOVE, HONOR, AND DESTROY

Roy Thomas took over as scripter of Fantastic Four with issue #126 (Sep. 1972), with a retelling of FF #1. As today’s FF go in search of the Mole Man in issue #127, there are some obvious strains behind the scenes, as Reed tells an irate Sue: “Look—I’d just feel better if you’d have stayed behind with little Franklin, that’s all.” Then, in the following issue, he orders Sue to stay with an injured Ben because there’s danger up ahead. Sue rightly tells Reed, “I’ve faced danger as often as you have, Mister Fantastic!” Things deteriorate in issue #129 (Dec. 1972) as Reed informs Sue she’ll have to go pick up Franklin by herself because he’s got work to do in the lab. A furious Sue retorts: “And naturally that comes before your duties as a husband, let alone a father! Well, don’t worry Mister Fantastic… I’ll go pick up our son alone. In fact, from now on, I may just

Reed in action from Fantastic Four #115 by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) Roy Thomas joins the fun as writer with issue #126. TM & © Marvel Comics.

do a lot of things alone!” And when the Frightful Four storm the Baxter Building in the following issue, Reed shouts: “Sue! I didn’t free you so you could get into this fray! Grab Franklin and get out of here—now! I won’t let the mother of my child…” but he is cut short by the Wizard. As the Frightful Four make a strategic withdrawal, Sue tells Reed, “In the heat of battle, you didn’t think of me as a member of the team—not even as a wife—only as ‘the mother of your child’! I won’t accept that, Reed. Not now—not ever! So until you feel you can treat me as an equal, I’ve made up my mind. I’m taking little Franklin… and I’m leaving! Leaving you—leaving the FF.” Petulantly, Reed snaps: “Good! At least that way, our son will get a little attention!” Once again, the ‘world’s smartest man’ proves he’s fallible. BACK ISSUE asked Thomas about this scene. Does fallibility promote three-dimensionality? Is conflict the heart of drama? Is that what Thomas was striving for? “Yes. I felt Mr. Fantastic would be an oldfashioned father. And, while he certainly had no right to order Sue about, the fact remains that I feel he was right in his concern for their son. We are what we are.” Medusa, of the Inhumans, joins the FF in issue #132 (Mar. 1973), replacing Sue. Reed manages to “cure” Ben, for a few seconds, in issue #133—just long enough to distract a fighting-mad Thundra—in a tale plotted by Thomas but scripted She needs me! Nothing else matters but that… I have to go to by Gerry Conway. her, I have to find out what’s wrong before she…” whereupon Conway becomes scripter with FF #134 (May 1973), as we Medusa clonks him on the head. find Sue is staying with friends on a ranch in rural Pennsylvania. Interlude: Triton of the Inhumans rushes a seriously injured As Sue muses that it’s been almost ten years since she rode a Namor to the Baxter Building, in Sub-Mariner #67 (Nov. 1973). horse, Franklin sits and watches some ants… who are marching Namor has been exposed to nerve gas and can no longer in circles… almost as if they were following orders… breathe air. Despite his own crises, Reed (and John Romita) When Johnny’s friend, Wyatt Wingfoot, requests designs a life-saving costume for Namor. help in FF #138 (Sep. 1973), Johnny, Ben, an Maybe the interruption is what Reed needed. Medusa accompany him to Oklahoma—but Reed He calms down and apologizes to Ben for not insists on staying in New York: “I want to be here being much of a teammate. He slips into in case my wife comes back.” In the next issue, analytical mode while searching for Sue and in his lab, Reed mopes, “It’s useless. I’m no closFranklin (who have vanished), and detects antier to an answer now than I was at the beginmatter particles. Reed, Ben, Medusa, and ning. All this work… the endless experiments… Johnny discover that Annihilus has breached and what have I accomplished? I’ve lost my the Negative Zone portal! wife… my child… everything that matters to me. Immediately prior to Franklin’s birth, Sue And for what? A frustrating series of failures. I’ve experienced pregnancy complications due to accomplished nothing… nothing!” He’s not quite her cosmically-irradiated blood. Reed deterright. In the background, an emergency light on mined that an anti-matter element—found gerry conway the Negative Zone portal starts flashing… and in in the Negative Zone—a parallel anti-matter Pennsylvania, Franklin starts screaming… universe—could save Sue and her unborn In the following issue, Sue contacts Reed: “It’s Franklin. child (Annual #6). Reed siphoned anti-matter energy from the Something’s happening to him… He’s been acting terribly Cosmic Control Rod that belonged to Annihilus, and used it to odd. I’m worried about him…” The video screen drops out and save Sue and Franklin. But now Annihilus wants the untapped Reed becomes frenzied: “I have to find her… have to help her, energy stored within Franklin. before it’s too late!” One knows things are grim when Ben “The End of the Fantastic Four” occurs in issue #141 becomes the voice of reason, but when he tells a flailing Reed to (Dec. 1973). As the FF are transported to the Negative Zone, slow down, Reed screams, “You don’t understand… it was Sue! Annihilus blasts Reed, stating, “Reed Richards is not harmed, “Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 29

(top) Things aren’t well between Reed and Sue in this scene from Fantastic Four #129. (middle) To save Franklin, Reed faces Annihilus in issue #141. (bottom) Elastile dysfuntion? What a lousy time for your powers to give out. From Fantastic Four #178. TM & © Marvel Comics.

only stunned. For a time, however, he will find it impossible to use his unique powers… and in a short while, that loss will last forever!” Annihilus attempts to reclaim the energy from Franklin but the FF fight back. Escaping the Negative Zone, Reed realizes that Annihilus’ tampering has unlocked Franklin’s dormant powers: “His energies are building to critical mass!” shouts Reed. “If they continue to build, he’ll let loose a blast of psychic force—a blast strong enough to kill every living creature in the solar system!” Seeing no alternative, Reed zaps Franklin—his own son—with an experimental energy weapon, shutting down Franklin’s mind. Interviewed in BI #74 (Aug. 2014), Conway stated: “What that story was a metaphor for, was here is a man who basically put his own vision of what is right for the world over his own personal family’s good. Now, he may have felt like he had no choice, but ultimately, what he was doing was the classical male thing of taking a unilateral male step—without really consulting with the wife.” Sue leaves with a comatose Franklin. Johnny and Ben follow. Only Medusa stays with Reed—who berates himself as never before. Ben and Johnny slowly return but Medusa is summoned back to the Inhumans for “Project Revival,” in FF #145 (Apr. 1974). Then all are stunned when Sue starts divorce proceedings in FF #147 (June 1974). And just when we think Reed can’t get any lower, the issue climaxes with Sue declaring, “I love the Sub-Mariner, and I’m going to stay with him… Forever!” Reed is inconsolable but snaps into action when the Frightful Four attack, in FF #148 (July 1974). However, things go from bad to worse when, at the end of the issue, the Sub-Mariner—alongside Sue—declares war on the Surface World! Everything comes to a head in FF #149 (Aug. 1974). Sue doubts Reed’s commitment: “He was always so distant. He never seemed to care whether I was alive—or dead! Yet… the way he’s fighting Namor…” As Reed and Namor prepare for the final confrontation, Sue realizes that it’s Reed she loves. She rushes to Reed and Namor leaves with a grin. Namor tells his second-in-command—who is Triton in disguise—that, “Project Revival was a complete success! None of them suspected it was all an act on my part—that I never intended to destroy New York—or truly invade the Surface World.” Triton radios Medusa, who agrees that the Inhumans’ subterfuge was worth it to reunite Reed and Sue. But wait: there’s more! As the Fantastic Four and the Avengers travel to the Inhumans’ city of Attilan, for the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver, they are attacked by the murderous robot, Ultron. As Ultron unleashes a wave of psychic force, he stirs Franklin’s mind— which strikes out in defense—deactivating Ultron and waking Franklin from his coma. Fantastic Four #150 (Sep. 1974) lives up to its blurb as “Possibly the greatest one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary issue EVER!” 30 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

X-AMINATIONS

Conway left Fantastic Four a few issues later. Today, he tells BI: “I’ve always seen Reed as a tough character to write—in the real world he’d be an obnoxious, arrogant, irredeemable, sexist prick with a god complex, but we’re supposed to accept his flaws because he means well and he’s dedicated to restoring his best (and apparently only) friend to a human state.” Marvel’s mutant speedster, Quicksilver, has always had a reputation for arrogance. In a character-defining conversation in X-Factor #87 (Feb. 1993), scripter Peter David has Quicksilver asking Marvel’s resident psychiatrist, Doctor Leonard Samson: “Have you ever stood in line at a banking machine behind a person who didn’t know how to use it?” Quicksilver goes on to say, “Now, imagine, Doctor, that everyone you work with, everywhere you go… your entire world… is filled with people who can’t work cash machines.” Reed Richards cannot outrun Quicksilver (few people can) but Reed can certainly outthink almost anyone. And thus, it’s not inconceivable to imagine the frustration encountered—through no fault of his own—when Reed’s mind is moving faster than everyone else’s in the room. Speaking with BI, Thomas states: “I always thought Gerry did a fine job with the FF. Maybe, like me (since FF was my favorite Marvel comic for years, and the Thing always my favorite Marvel hero), he just measured himself against Stan... not to mention the combo of Stan and Jack... and in that arena, everybody since has been found wanting.” Thomas returned as scripter and soon followed up on one of Conway’s subplots. Reed stretches under a door in FF #157 (Apr. 1975) and admits some difficulty. Four issues later, Reed laments, “I’m losing my elasticity… my power to stretch and retract fully! I’m becoming like a rubber band… that’s been stretched out of shape one time too many!” And in issue #178 (Jan. 1977), he loses his stretching abilities completely. Prior to that, Thomas brings back rocky Reed Richards from Earth-A—in FF #160 (July 1975)—as both Earths weather attack from Xemu of the Fifth Dimension. Thomas features another attempt to cure the Hulk in FF #166 (Jan. 1976). Things go awry but—due to extended exposure to the Hulk’s gamma-irradiated body—Ben is cured! Reed hires Luke Cage to temporarily replace Ben in the team, while Reed builds a Thing-exoskeleton for the nowhuman Ben. An energy blast from Galactus turns Ben back into the Thing in issue #175 (Oct. 1976). In Fantastic Four #177 (Dec. 1976), the Frightful Four find a new member in the Brute—who happens to be the Reed Richards from Counter-Earth! Did Thomas have a ‘thing’ for alternate-Reeds? “I don’t think I had a ‘thing’ about them... didn’t

even think about the similarity between the two alternate Reeds. Hey, I should’ve had the two of THEM fight it out!” Regardless, with our Reed losing his powers, it was the perfect opportunity for Brute-Reed to take his place. Thomas explains Reed’s power loss as: “Just a plot device to put characters through their paces and give them obstacles to overcome, as when I had Ben have to wear an exo-skeleton to perform as the Thing.” “What If Spider-Man had Joined the Fantastic Four?” is the question asked in What If? #1 (Feb. 1977), written by Thomas. In this particular alternate universe, when Spidey joins the team, Sue is pushed even further into the background—until she turns to Namor. The direct sequel in What If? #21 (June 1980) shows a ruthless Reed—obsessed with reclaiming the woman who has been “stolen” from him—declaring war on Namor and Atlantis. “What If Susan Richards Died in Childbirth?” in What If? #42 (Dec. 1983) portrays an empty Reed Richards, crushed by despair, as he devotes himself to vengeance against Annihilus—whom he blames for Sue’s death. The terrifying reality of these stories is that they’re all too credible. It is very easy to believe that the world’s smartest man could turn to cold amorality without the presence of the woman he loves. Nowhere is this more apparent than on Earth-1610—the Ultimate Universe— where, beset by tragedy and rejected by Sue, Reed Richards—step-by-step—becomes the villainous Maker. Alternately, we have What If? #36 (Dec. 1982) chronicling “What If the Fantastic Four had not Gained their Powers?” by John Byrne. Therein, Reed heeds Ben and improves his rocket’s shielding.

(inset) Reed Richards looks like he’s feeling anything but fantastic on the cover of What If? #42. (right) Reed is delivered the news of Sue’s passing. TM & © Marvel Comics.

roy thomas © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 31

A dynamic unpublished cover for Fantastic Four #187 by George Perez and Pablo Marcos. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © Marvel Comics.

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(top left) Mr. Fantastic faces Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four #200. (top right) Marv Wolfman’s space epic begins. (bottom left) Direct from the FF animated series, H.E.R.B.I.E. makes his way to comics. John Byrne began doing breakdowns on this issue. (bottom right) It’s a battle for the ages as Galactus goes against the Sphinx! TM & © Marvel Comics.

They return to Earth safely—but powerless. The Mole Man soon arrives but our heroes use their acumen and inherent heroism to save the day—as the Watcher declares, “Truly can it be said that it is the man, not the powers, that make the hero.” And let’s not forget What If? #11 (Oct. 1978) where Stan Lee becomes Mister Fantastic and Jack Kirby becomes the Thing! Thomas left Fantastic Four in 1977, but tells BI: “Reed Richards was a real contradiction: the stretching powers of the half-humorous Plastic Man, joined with the persona of the pipe-smoking scientist. I just think Stan erred when he let Jack keep making Reed and Johnny more and more muscular in their costumes... but the die was cast, so I didn’t try to reverse things when I became editor.”

FOUR NO MORE

Len Wein commenced scripting with FF #184 (July 1977). When Sue tells Reed that Agatha Harkness has disappeared with Franklin, Reed says, “Maybe you three should go without me. Minus my powers, I’d only get in your way.” Sue responds: “Listen, Mister… if your stretching powers were all you contributed to the FF, we could replace you with a rubber band… but that’s not true… and you know it!” Indeed, Reed tracks Franklin to the town of New Salem, where the team encounters Nicholas Scratch and Salem’s Seven. Returning home, Reed is possessed by the disembodied Molecule Man. After practically wrecking half the city, Reed regains control of his body—but without his powers he claims he’s a liability. He resigns from the FF and Sue follows. It’s the end of the team—again—in FF #188 (Nov. 1977). Marv Wolfman inherited scripting duties with issue #195 (June 1978). In BI #74, Wolfman states: “The FF was to me that group and I thought they broke up far too much over the years, so I wanted to restore them. And I wanted to make Reed the real leader and show how good he was, so that also meant a final confrontation between him and Doom.” Wolfman (and a behind-the-scenes Doctor Doom) sends Reed into space, in FF #197 (Aug. 1978), where he is repowered by cosmic rays, leading into the double-sized Fantastic Four #200 (Nov. 1978). Wolfman previously told BI: “I felt this had to be an ultimate type of issue between these two long-time combatants. Usually the stories ended on a tie or Doom merely escapes. I wanted a real ending... for the time being of course.”

And that’s what we got: Reed on his own fighting Doom; no teammates; no gadgets; no tricks. Simply one of the most brutal hand-to-hand brawls of the time—with Reed using his powers in ways that had rarely been highlighted—and emerging as the definitive victor. If the FF have two primary antagonists, they would probably be Doom and Galactus. And so, after an earthbound epic, Wolfman gave us a space saga. Adora, Suzerain of Xandar in the Andromeda Galaxy, teleports into the Baxter Building in FF #204 (Mar. 1979). Her homeworld is being devastated by Skrulls and she needs help. Reed, Sue, and Ben accompany Adora back to Xandar (Johnny follows later) but they are captured by Skrulls and sentenced to death. Our threesome are zapped by a metabolic booster and told they will die of old age within three days.

marv wolfman Scott Edelman.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 33

(left) John Byrne and Joe Sinnott present a beautiful splash page from issue #215. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www. ha.com). (right) Blastarr stretches Reed to his limits on the Ron Wilson/Joe Rubinstein cover of Fantastic Four #215. TM & © Marvel Comics.

Going from bad to worse, Earth-villain, the Also unsurprisingly, Galactus defeats the Sphinx, absorbs the limitless power of Xandar’s Sphinx, in FF #213 (Dec. 1979). Nobody outfights living computers, and vows to return to Galactus—not even Reed Richards—but Reed Earth as its destroyer. Reed surmises can outthink Galactus. (“Not chess, Mr that the only being powerful enough Spock. Poker.”) Once again, Earth’s to stand against the Sphinx is smartest man bluffs the World(Spoiler Alert!) Galactus. The FF Devourer. Galactus leaves. Reed rehave less than three days to find verses the effect of the Skrull Aging Galactus, and persuade him to Ray. The Fantastic Four are reborn. fight for Earth, before Reed, Sue, Reed physically defeated Doom and Ben die of old age. and intellectually defeated Galactus. Reed designs a robotic comWolfman tells BI: “It was very conputer—H.E.R.B.I.E.—to help search scious to use all of Reed’s strengths for Galactus; and find him they to their fullest. Why would he do, in FF #210 (Nov. 1979). hold back when fighting someUnsurprisingly, Galactus has no one like Galactus? Also, by john byrne interest in opposing the Sphinx— showing all he can do you are until Reed frees Galactus from his © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. showing readers why he earns vow to never again attack the Earth. Galactus the name Mister Fantastic.” is intrigued. He bids the FF procure him a new After a standalone FF #219 (June 1980), Doug herald (Terrax) and then the septet journey to Moench continues as scripter with issue #222 face the Sphinx. (Sep.1980)—teamed with penciler Bill Sienkiewicz. Moench tells BI: “Fantastic Four was my favorite comic. I wrote it for a year. I felt it was all wrong. It was my favorite comic as a reader; I’m not sure it was my favorite as a writer. I want to work with Bill Sienkiewicz at every opportunity EXCEPT Fantastic Four—I think he’s not right. I would write these Fantastic Four things; I would try to make them quintessentially Fantastic Four, and in my head I’d be seeing Jack Kirby. And then I would get the penciled pages with Bill’s stuff and it’s just totally wrong for Fantastic Four. But it was still fun working with Bill.” Interviewed in Tom DeFalco’s book Comics Creators on Fantastic Four (Titan Books, 2005), Moench opines: “Reed is the father figure and

34 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

the smart guy, the conscience and moral center of the group. One of my all-time favorite comics was Plastic Man by Jack Cole, and I recall wanting to make Reed more like Plas and do more creative stretchable stuff with him. My only criticism of Stan and Jack is that they didn’t use Mr. Fantastic as well as Jack Cole used Plastic Man.”

BACK TO THE BASICS

John Byrne’s much-celebrated five-year run as writer/artist commenced with Fantastic Four #232 (July 1981)—and has been discussed at length in BI #38 (Feb. 2010) and #74 (Aug. 2014). Mid-run, Byrne told Salicrup: “I had a very clear idea of who I wanted these people to get back to being, and I felt that they had become somewhat homogenized. Like caricatures—instead of reacting like people, they would have these stock reactions, all reacting in the same way. And I wanted to look back and remember the way Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had evolved the characters, remembering that when I had read the book as a kid, I never really liked Reed that much because he always seemed like such a cocky son-of-a… you know, he always had an answer and was never surprised by anything. And I thought, ‘Let’s get back to that. I’ll try to make him somebody I like in the process.’ In researching it, I discovered that the whole thing of Reed never being surprised by anything goes right back to issue #1. They go to Monster Island and are attacked by a giant three-headed creature which Reed lassoes and throws out to sea, and then says, ‘I had heard there was a giant three-headed creature guarding this island.’ [Laughter.] And I thought, ‘Whoa, this guy knows everything there is to know!’ And that’s the way I’m trying to play him, but I’m also trying to humanize him. “In the Fantastic Four, I think the super powers are less important than the people, so I like to set up an ordinary dayto-day situation that they might find themselves involved in. When since he tried to cure Ben and you’ve got the greatest scientific so—in FF #238 (Jan. 1982)—Reed mind on Earth and all that kind tries again… and fails again… as of stuff, ordinary day-to-day Ben’s exterior devolves into the situations can be pretty outlandish. “dinosaur-hide” appearance of And then you introduce some the first few issues of Fantastic Four element where they need to use their (before Ben became all rocky). Reed powers. And Reed, for example, is despondent: “It should not is really easy to do, ‘cause I figure have failed… no, it could not the whole Baxter Building was doug moench have failed!” And he’s correct. built to his scale, so that all you In FF #245 (Aug. 1982) we find need for Reed is him leaning over a microscope while adjusting a dial—but the dial Franklin accidentally aged to adulthood, with all is in the next room. And he’s instantly using his of his potential psionic powers but none of the powers, you can tell what he’s doing, and he’s not experience or maturity. Franklin moves to “cure” battling a super villain in order to introduce the Ben but pauses, and—instead—reverts Ben to his rocky state, before Franklin himself reverts to using of his powers. “We put Central City in California and that childhood with no memory of what occurred. establishes an important part of Reed’s history. Before doing so, Franklin telepathically informs Obviously, Reed is a Californian. It establishes his father what he discovered in Ben’s mind: that something important. It’s an automatic growth Ben has a deep-rooted fear that Alicia loves him that’s built into these characters, they started out only as the Thing. “So long as he loves her, his mind will reject all cures.” in a fictional setting and turned into a real one.” Between all this, Galactus returns, pursuing Byrne is adept at highlighting the personalities and abilities of all the four but there are several a rebelling Terrax. Severely weakened, Galactus stories that are Reed-specific. It’s been a while informs that he has no choice but to drain Earth’s

A wonderful family moment from Fantastic Four #222, part of the Moench/ Sienkiewicz run. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © Marvel Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 35

(top) John Byrne’s well-regarded Fantastic Four run begins with issue #232. (bottom) John Byrne’s spot-on rendition of the Fantastic Four as seen in a pin-up from issue #250. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © Marvel Comics.

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energies—but he is opposed by the combined efforts of the FF, the Avengers, and Doctor Strange. Galactus is on the verge of death but Reed declares that they cannot just stand by and let a sentient being die. And so, Reed constructs a device to temporarily re-energize the World-Devourer. Gratefully, Galactus leaves (with a replacement Herald), promising never to attack Earth again, in FF #244 (July 1982). This doesn’t go down well with everybody. In Uncanny X-Men #167 (Mar. 1983), Lilandra—Majestrix of the alien Shi’ar—visits Reed (via hologram) and tells him he will be held accountable if Galactus consumes an inhabited world. And so, after Galactus destroys the Skrull Homeworld in FF #257 (Aug. 1983), Reed is put on interstellar trial. In DeFalco’s book, Byrne states: “That story only happened because after Reed saved Galactus’s life, Chris Claremont did a scene in X-Men where Lilandra appears in Reed and Sue’s bedroom and tells Reed that he would be held responsible if Galactus ever ate another planet. Chris did not clear this scene with the FF office and the first time I saw it was when it was published. I was furious and I felt that I had been totally bushwhacked by this scene. I went to Shooter and complained. I didn’t want Reed being held responsible for Galactus. Was Lilandra supposed to come down and kick Reed’s butt the next time I did a Galactus story? Shooter just told me to go make a story out of it. I didn’t want to, but I did anyway.” FF #262 (Jan. 1984) reveals that Galactus has a place in the universe—a purpose—and Reed is exonerated. Between all that, the FF explore the Negative Zone. In FF #254 (May 1983), Reed and Sue spend some time together and, in issue #257 (Aug. 1983) it is revealed that Sue is pregnant. But Reed is transported to an alien planet again! Along with Ben and Johnny. And the X-Men, Avengers, SpiderMan, Hulk, and most of Marvel’s premier villains, to fight in Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1 (May 1984). Featuring a cast of dozens, not everyone receives… shall we say… equivalent characterization. But Reed is one of the key figures throughout. When the Molecule Man drops an entire mountain on our heroes, who MacGyvers an escape? Reed. When the enigmatic Beyonder strands everyone on the alien planet, who gets everyone home? Reed. When Ben decides to stay on the alien planet, who replaces him in the FF? She-Hulk. And when Spider-Man suspects that there might be something… peculiar… about his spiffy black costume that he acquired on the alien planet, who does he turn to for help? That would be Reed, in Amazing Spider-Man #258 (Nov. 1984). “Home are the Heroes” in FF #265 (Apr. 1984), but— as with Franklin—Sue is experiencing severe pregnancy complications. The Fantastic Four face the greatest tragedy of their career as Sue loses the baby in issue #267 (June 1984). Nearly twenty years later (our time), as our heroes are in battle with the cosmic being Abraxas, in Fantastic Four (Vol. 3) #49 (Jan. 2002), Franklin telepathically tells Sue: “That baby you said was lost wasn’t lost at all. I went back… I saved her, sent her someplace else…” Franklin uses his powers to assist Galactus in defeating Abraxas. The Watcher tells us that Franklin’s cosmic powers are exhausted… “And there is yet one final gift…” Sue is suddenly heavily pregnant. Franklin has returned his unborn sibling. And, in Fantastic Four (Vol. 3) #54 (June 2002), while Reed is trapped elsewhere, Doom assists in the difficult delivery as Sue gives birth to her daughter. Sue agrees to Doom naming the child Valeria. To this day, Sue and Reed adore their two children.

WHO IS REED RICHARDS?

Back to the ‘80s and, in Amazing Heroes #39 (Jan. 1985), Byrne tells Peter Sanderson: “For #272 and #273, the working title is ‘Who Is Reed Richards?’ Because we don’t know. We know very little about Reed before the formation of the Fantastic Four. The whole premise of the story is that when Reed was corked into that mind-sapping machine in the Negative Zone, it drained off part of his memories, stuff he doesn’t think about often. Now he’s finding bits and pieces gone from his memory. It starts out with his saying to Sue, ‘I can’t remember my mother’s eyes.’ He can clearly remember his mother’s face, except for her eyes. The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that things like that are gone. So we go, basically, on a quest for Reed Richards’ youth, and who he is, and where his money comes from, and what happened to his father, and why this ferociously careful man, who won’t do anything without checking it 53 times, took his fiancée and her kid brother up in a rocket with him back in issue one.” Fantastic Four #271 provides many of the answers. As Reed searches for his missing memories, he relates a flashback—told in funky 1960s retro-style—of a tale from just before FF #1. Driving home, he and Sue encounter a UFO and its giant inhabitant, Gormuu, here to conquer Earth! Reed dispatches the abominable alien, but the experience convinces Reed that space must be explored quickly and he must hurry his planned rocket launch… Reed also reminds Sue that his mother died when he was seven years old and that his father

departed for parts unknown—leaving Reed two billion dollars (most of which Reed spent on his rocket project)—some three years before said rocket flight. Reed and the team subsequently visit the Richards Family Estate in California. Accessing his father’s lab, Reed discovers a time machine (which must’ve been built before Doom built his time machine), but Reed explains that attempts to time-travel result in sideways jumps to alternate universes. The team follow the original coordinates and arrive on Other-Earth—a war-torn landscape populated by cowboys on flying metallic steeds. Byrne tells Salicrup, “I think that’s probably the weakest story that I’ve done so far. That was in transition between editors. It’s just not a good story.” However, we DO get to meet Reed’s father—Nathaniel Richards— and his wife from that world, Cassandra, and their infant son, Arthur. Nathaniel remains on Other-Earth when our FF return home. As icing

(left) Reed goes on trial in Fantastic Four #262 for allowing Galactus to live. (right) Things get weird for Reed in Fantastic Four #255 as Marvel’s First Family travels through the Negative Zone. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © Marvel Comics.

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 37

on the cake, it’s shown that—centuries later, on Other-Earth—one of Nathaniel’s descendants (also named Nathaniel) discovers his ancestor’s time machine, remodels it into the image of a Sphinx (pandering to the superstitious beliefs of people in bygone days), and time-travels back to ancient Egypt—in an almost panel-by-panel retelling of the origin of Rama-Tut in FF #19. Years later, in FF #377 (June 1993), we meet Huntara who claims to be Nathaniel’s daughter (and thus Reed’s half-sister). In 2009, Marvel printed the 1939 Daily Bugle newspaper facsimile, “dated” Friday, October 13, 1939. Birth notices therein include: “Major John Richards and his wife Laura proudly announce the birth of their son, Nathaniel, weighing 7 pounds 11 ounces. Fingers crossed for a fantastic future.” Reed’s father has become an important part of FF mythology, but what about Reed’s mother? Years later, as Reed is presumed dead, lawyer Jennifer Walters (She-Hulk) assembles friends and family for the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Reed Richards, in Fantastic Four Unplugged #2 (Oct. 1995). Reed leaves a scrapbook to his father. A couple of blurry photos hint at Reed’s mother. The back of the issue contains “The Richards Family Tree” where Reed’s mother is named Evelyn. For some reason, she doesn’t look much like the preceding photos. A decade later, Marvel Knights: Fantastic Four #17 (June 2005) contains a flashback to Reed’s youth, as he asks his parents why time only flows in one direction. In just three pages, we see that Evelyn Richards is an intelligent, beautiful, caring woman—a scientist in her own right, but a mother first. Much later again, writer Dan Slott definitively states that Reed has the same genetic code—the same bloodline—as Rama-Tut (and Kang, and others) in Fantastic Four (Vol. 6) #35 (Nov. 2021). A recorded message from Nathaniel states that he had many secret dalliances, and that Reed has another half-sister. We meet marine biologist Joanna Jeffers, in issue #46 (Oct. 2022) where she and Reed bond over the fact that their father was a #$%& [sic]. Back to Byrne and, in FF #291 (June 1986) as Reed is presumed dead (not for the first or last time), Sue thinks back to their first meeting: “Suddenly she is once again twelve years old and meeting for the first time the shy, bookish college freshman who has taken a room at her Aunt’s Manhattan boarding house. She feels once again the unmistakable pangs of first love, a love that will burn true and sure through all the years that follow.”

(top) Reed learns some disturbing things about his family in Fantastic Four #273. (bottom left) The Richards family tree is is expanded upon in Fantastic Four Unplugged #2. (bottom right) Mr. Fantastic is in the spotlight on the cover of Marvel Knights: Fantastic Four #4. TM & © Marvel Comics.

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This was deliberately retconned in Fantastic Four (Vol. 4) #4 (Apr. 2013) such that Reed and Sue are much closer in age (she is an undergraduate and he is a graduate). This time, Reed thinks back to their first meeting, and muses: “I loved you from the moment I saw you.” Editor Tom Brevoort explained the change in issue #9 (Aug. 2013). “While it’s always our intention to respect the continuity and the past, especially with so many stories told over such a long period of time, there are going to be instances where what worked in 1985, or 1975, or 1965, doesn’t work as well in 2013. Looking back on that [1986] story, when Matt [Fraction] and I were doing research, that sequence struck the both of us, in 21st century terms, as being more than a little bit creepy. So, we made a conscious decision to modify and update it somewhat, keeping the essence of the situation the same (Reed meets Sue while he’s in college, and boarding at Sue’s Aunt’s house) but discarding the inappropriateness of a college-age man eyeing a twelve-year-old girl.” Continuity is what sticks. We could easily fill this entire magazine with information and exploits concerning Reed but this article is about the Bronze Age—and we’re almost out of space. Interpolating: After She-Hulk is exposed to a massive amount of radiation from the damaged nuclear reactor of a crashed S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier—while battling an intrusion of sentient cockroaches—in Marvel Graphic Novel #18: The Sensational She-Hulk (Jan. 1985), to whom does she turn to for a health-check? When Surtur’s demons invade NYC through a Doom Tube (yes, really), who discerns its operation and shuts it down, in Thor #352

(Feb. 1985)? When Kitty Pryde’s intangibility powers are scrambled, and she risks fading into nothingness, whom do the X-Men turn to for help in Fantastic Four Vs X-Men #1 (Feb. 1987)? Extrapolating: Roger Stern wrote Fantastic Four for several issues after Byrne’s departure. Steve Englehart took over (1987) and removed Reed and Sue from the book to raise Franklin. Noting that Reed and Sue were available, Walt Simonson put them into The Avengers. Editorial decreed that Reed and Sue must return to the FF—a decision which pleased neither writer, leading to their departures. Amusingly, Simonson later began writing Fantastic Four (1989) and—instead of having Reed and Sue in the Avengers—he borrowed Iron Man and Thor, put them in the FF, and did the stories he originally intended. Tom DeFalco took over as scripter (1991) and “killed” Reed and Doom (they eventually returned, two years later).

(left) Jonathaan Hickman launched his run on Fantastic Four with issue #570. (right) Original art by Dale Eaglesham of some of the Council of Reeds from Fantastic Four #571. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © Marvel Comics.

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(top) Boys!! He is NOT a chew toy!!! Fantastic Four #22 (2024). (bottom) Reed and his family, from the 1969 Marvelmania poster. Art by Jack Kirby. TM & © Marvel Comics.

Among many, many excellent writers and stories, this article will highlight two more. Mark Waid wrote a revelatory scene as Reed tells Valeria a bedtime story, in Fantastic Four (Vol. 3) #60 (Oct. 2002): “Once upon a time, there was a very arrogant man who did something very stupid. Without proper preparation or shielding, he took his friends through a wave of radiation that made them all something other than human. His guilt was unbearable… and deserved. These were the people he loved, and he’d destroyed their lives. Thanks to him, they were fated to be freaks… lab specimens or worse… unless he changed that fate somehow. Unless he made the world see them for what they were: three of the best and bravest people anyone could hope to meet. So he refused to let them operate in secret. He gave them a home in a city of eight million. And he gave them costumes. And a flying car. And encouraged them to parade around with some pretty outlandish names. ‘Mr. Fantastic.’ Does that sound like something anyone would really want to call themselves? No. But that’s the kind of thing that made headlines. And t-shirts. And action figures. He knew that would keep people from fearing them. You see, glamour and fame weren’t options. They were necessities. Because maybe by turning his friends into celebrities… he could be forgiven for taking their normal lives away. Someday.” Mentioned above, Jonathan Hickman wrote Fantastic Four from issue #570. In his first arc—“Solve Everything”—Reed is invited to join the Council of Reeds. As the name suggests, it’s a proactive congress of Reeds from across the multiverse. Our Reed agrees to join… until he is told… “The cost of solving everything is everything. The work will consume you. How can we think about little things like our personal lives when the fate of all we know lies in the balance? Susan will stop understanding. Her patience will run out as she’s forced to raise the family all alone... Doesn’t she deserve better? Ben and Johnny will get angry and eventually move on… Your children will resent you because you work too much and love too little… All you will have left is this. It’s the price, Reed. It always gets paid.” And our Reed turns his back. He walks away. Our Reed remembers being a teenager and having a conversation with his father. Nathaniel tells him: “As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that I do not have the character to be both good and great at the same time. But you do, Reed… And as such, all of my hopes and desires rest in you becoming what I am not. When you grow up, I expect more. Son… I expect better. I want you to be a better friend than I was. Be a better husband. Be a better father… Reed… be a better man.” Our Reed Richards may sometimes be a bit oldfashioned, a bit curt, a bit frustrated at a world that moves far too slowly for him; but despite occasional failures, he tries his best. He will do anything for his family. He is the best man he can be. He is... Mister Fantastic. The author would like to express his sincere gratitude to Gerry Conway, Doug Moench, Roy Thomas, and Marv Wolfman for their invaluable help. Jarrod Buttery lives in Western Australia and has penned over two dozen articles for BACK ISSUE. He is looking forward to seeing Pedro Pascal as Mister Fantastic.

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by I a

n Millsted

“IF THIS IS THE KIND OF DISCUSSION YOU SCUM WANT…YOU’LL GET IT” – MR. A

There was only one Steve Ditko. In terms of art style, political philosophy, and how he conducted himself in the comics industry, Ditko was his own person in a way to which others might aspire, but few will duplicate. This is best exemplified in the creation and storylines of Mr. A, a costumed hero Ditko created that first saw publication in 1967. Mr. A was a personal project for Ditko, in which he was significantly invested. It was a relatively early example of a creator owned ongoing character and Ditko chose to script the stories himself, which he rarely did with his work for the main commercial publishers. It was also work which he chose to communicate about. It is widely reported that Ditko didn’t give interviews and preferred not to talk about his comics work, but this is not entirely borne out by the facts. Yes, Ditko was cautious about public appearances but where he was able to retain control of the process, he both wrote and spoke for the record. And Mr. A was a subject he was willing to expand on. In the 1989 video (anyone remember VHS?), Masters of Comic Book Art, which was presented by Harlan Ellison, a range of famous comics creators are interviewed. The exception is Steve Ditko, who instead of a traditional, on-camera interview, offers an audioonly commentary on the creation of Mr. A. This is, at the time of writing, fairly easily accessible on YouTube. In this monologue, Ditko states quite clearly that Mr. A is based on two things: Ayn Rand’s theory of justice and Aristotle’s law of identity. The latter, which was an influence on Rand, is the belief that a thing is what it is. Once

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(left) A 1991 image of Mr. A surrounded by four villains. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (right) The cover to the first Mr. A comic, though he had appeared many times before this. Mr. A ©2025 Steve Ditko.

something is named and defined it is just that. The opportunity for Ditko to develop Mr. A This is summed up in the statement A equals A, arose when Wally Wood decided to publish his own from which we can see the direct line to the magazine. witzend is sometimes described as an appellation of Mr. A as a comics character. underground magazine and sometimes as Rand’s theory of justice states that a fanzine; although it had elements of freedom is essential for humans to both, neither is a true description. flourish, and such freedom can be witzend was a brave attempt to impinged on, or limited by, regulapublish a magazine in which talented tion. Therefore, regulation should creators could present their work be avoided in order to maximize and retain ownership thereof, freedom. Mr. A, as we will see, in a manner which was virtually is intended to embody those unknown in the American comics philosophical positions. Ditko was industry (although quite common in also one of the first comics profesUS comic strips and European comics). sionals who had grown up reading Wood invited Ditko to be part of them and observed, approvingly, the initiative and Ditko responded steve ditko that “early comic book heroes with the first appearance of Mr. A were not about life as it is.” He in witzend #3 (1967). was knowingly building a perfect hero in an unThe first Mr. A story is five pages long, untitled realistic setting. “Resentment against the perfect (apart from the series heading Mr. A), and prehero is resentment of A is A,” he declared. sented in black and white. These five pages alone inform the reader of anything they really need to know about the ideas behind Mr. A. It is certainly uncompromising stuff. It starts with a fedora-wearing man speaking dialogue straight to ‘camera’, almost in the manner of a Rod Serling introduction to an episode of The Twilight Zone. The reader is likely to assume, correctly, that this figure is Mr. A. The rest of the page introduces the plot and two of the main characters. Two youths are trying to avoid the police, having broken into, and stolen from, a jewelry store. The store owner has informed the police that one of the youths is Angel, who appears to be known to the officer. When the officer spots Angel, Angel brutally attacks and injures him with a length of pipe. The subsequent police search for Angel, which constitutes the ten panels on the second page, shows a range of views from people who know Angel. Most of these are examples of Ditko’s criticism of what he perceives of as faulty

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thinking – people who fail to accept that A equals A. Angel’s mother accuses the police of lying, saying Angel is a good boy. His father calls the police cowards for seeking to arrest kids instead of “grown-up criminals.” At the local welfare center, what looks like a minister of religion says it is all the fault of the environment, while an attractive woman says that Angel is “sensitive” and “good at heart.” The negative portrayal of the minister sets a trend, in line with the atheist viewpoint of Ayn Rand. A third person at the welfare center, a slim man in suit and tie, takes a different view. “Baloney,” he says, “It’s not what a person sees that determines his character … it’s the thinking he does, or fails to do, about what he sees!” This character is not named at this point. Next, we see the police talking to a suspected local fence, Morg, who, naturally, denies everything. The police depart and a lackey arrives with a calling card he has been given. The card is divided into two halves, one solid white and the other solid black. It is the calling card of Mr. A, who is clearly already known to the criminal fraternity. The reader will discern that this is not going to be an origin story (or ‘legend’ as Ditko termed them). In the final panel of page two, Mr. A enters fully formed. He looks like a 1950s American male, dressed in a twopiece suit and a fedora hat. There is a face, but it is somewhat plain in visage, suggestive of a mask. In this story he doesn’t wear a tie. On the third page he asks a presumed hoodlum for the whereabouts of Angel. At the first negative

So what is the root of all evil? (left) Mr. A holds court in the splash page to a story from witzend #4. (top right) A single page Mr. A image which appeared in Comic Crusader #4. (bottom right) He’s at it again in another one-page story from Eon #3. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). Mr. A ©2025 Steve Ditko.

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response he strikes the figure hard. Morg’s gang attempts to fight Mr. A, but quickly loses in an action-packed, if brief, fight scene. During the fight, the reader learns that the mask of Mr. A is actually a form of armor and encompasses his whole head. Eventually, Mr. A gets someone to reveal where Angel is hiding. The fourth page shows Miss Kinder, the attractive blonde seen earlier, seeking out Angel in his hideout. She falls for Angel’s denials of his crime until the accomplice also arrives and gives the game away. Miss Kinder, who seems to be his teacher, is depicted in a tight jacket and skirt combo with a heavier bustline than Ditko had drawn for any female characters in Amazing Spider-Man. It doesn’t stop Miss Kinder from being stabbed by Angel. Finally, Mr. A arrives and Ditko sets up a final page dilemma in which Angel falls from a roof and is hanging onto a

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flagpole for dear life. Miss Kinder appeals to Mr. A to save Angel. He states he has only time to save one of them and offers her the choice. She finds it unfair that she has to make a choice. It is an interesting variation on the philosopher Philippa Foot’s trolley problem. There are several points of interest here. Firstly, despite the serious wound, Mr. A yacks on for three panels before taking any action to save Miss Kinder! Secondly, the moral dilemma is given a Randian twist wherein it is one of the potential victims themselves who has to make the choice of who lives and dies. This asks for what Rand and Ditko would see as a morally self-interested motivation. Oh, and if you hadn’t guessed, Angel falls to his death. Mr. A’s final words are “Even if you weren’t hurt, I wouldn’t have saved Angel!”

In Masters of Comic Book Art, Ditko states that modern superheroes are “rich in superpowers but bankrupt in reasoning powers.” Mr. A is certainly in contrast to the super-heroes of the day. The Flash, Superman, Spider-Man, etc., would have tried, and probably succeeded, in saving Angel. Mr. A is not rich in superpowers. There are no obvious special powers exhibited in this story. He appears to be a tough guy with a protective mask. This first story was produced by Ditko when he was at, or just coming off, a creative and commercial peak. His runs on Amazing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange had been successes on both counts. He had been drawing highly regarded contributions to Creepy and Eerie, mostly from great scripts by Archie Goodwin. Ditko was a prolific artist and the decision to do Mr. A probably didn’t take him away from other work for too long. Mr. A never had a regular comic magazine at any time but continued to appear irregularly in a range of comics, fanzines, and small press magazines right up to the death of Steve Ditko. As well as further stories, there were single page posters and illustrations that Ditko provided, often for no fee, to various publishers. This article will not list these. The comics which have been published as Mr. A comics have actually been part of wider series and the numbering appears somewhat eccentric at first glance. There have also been several collected editions, although none of these, so far, have collected the stories in a systematic, chronological manner. It is also not always clear that the order of publication is the same as the order in which they were produced by Ditko, due

(top) This cover to Mr. A #21 was first published in pink on the cover of Sense of Wonder #6. (bottom) The opening and closing page from the Mr. A story in Sense of Wonder #11. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). Mr. A ©2025 Steve Ditko.

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to the nature of small press magazines and fanzines where there were often delays in going to press. In some cases, Ditko produced the work months, if not years, before publication. For some, all of this adds to the fun of reading Mr. A, as it becomes something of a hunt for rare objects.

“ONLY FOOLS WILL TELL YOU THAT MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL!” – MR. A

The second Mr. A story appeared in witzend #4 (1968), and it was in this episode that more of the background of the character is developed. Rex Graine, the man who is Mr. A, is shown for the first time. He is an investigative reporter for the Daily Crusader newspaper. He is shown to be immune to attempts to bribe him or to give in to violence. Also shown is Graine changing into the Mr. A costume, confirming that the mask is armored, and the gloves possibly contain armored vices. The brutality is still there – Mr. A gets someone to talk by stomping on their windpipe. The increase to ten pages allowed for a more developed plot and range of characters. The art is still Ditko at full throttle. In 1969, the story “What happens to a man when he refuses to uphold the good?” was serialized over two issues of Comic Crusader. Each episode was four pages long. In #6 (June 1969), Rex Graine is hired by a group of eminent citizens who are seeking to clean up their city. Graine is hired as a private investigator. He takes the job on the understanding that “everyone will be treated

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according to the facts uncovered – no evasions.” Of course, as soon as Graine brings in his report, the citizens start to quibble. Graine has identified not just the crime bosses but also the middlemen, altogether too many for them to comprehend, especially when the list includes friends of theirs. Given that Graine’s day job is as a reporter for the Daily Crusader, they try to put pressure on his employer, now Henry Rath – the brother of Graine’s previous employer – and someone less sympathetic to Graine’s motivations. The first episode does not actually feature Mr. A, just Rex Graine in his civilian identity. Only towards the end of the second episode, in Comic Crusader #7 (Fall 1969), does Mr. A appear. The climax has Mr. A presenting the main antagonist an image of how corrupt he has become. An interesting aspect of this is the extent to which this is meant to be a psychological image created in the antagonist’s own mind, or if Mr. A is exhibiting some kind of extra power here. Either way, there is an irony here that this happens while Mr. A delivers a monologue on the perils of creating a fake world. Where many of the Mr. A stories are quite dense in terms of panels per page and word count, the five-page untitled story published in Graphic Illusions (also known as Eon 4) (Summer 1971 but with a 1969 copyright date on the splash page) used fewer, but larger, panels. This is also pure Mr. A with no Rex Graine. There is also very little plot. Someone who is accused of compromising is confronted by Mr. A. We don’t know what he did

or how he came to this point. Mr. A tosses his calling card, which grows to fill the floor space and the anonymous figure starts to sink into the half that is plain black. Ditko’s art benefits from the larger panels, but polemic alone does not make for a story. Martin Greim, the editor of Comic Crusader, secured a further Mr. A story in 1972. According to the appendix in Avenging World, published by Robin Snyder and Rodney Schroeter in 2021, this story was originally intended for a school magazine but that never happened. Instead, the untitled story was published in Comic Crusader #13 (1972). The eight pages are clearly designed to have been serialized, one page at a time, and don’t flow as well when published as a piece. A hit and run is witnessed by Rex Graine, but no one else. He subsequently escapes justice in the courts. There is a digression from the main plot in which Ditko expresses his critical views of dictatorships being allowed to have membership in the United Nations. However, the main focus is not on the hit and run driver, but on the lawyer who defended him in court, Lyner. This proves to be the start of a descent into corruption by Lyner which ultimately ends in him killing himself. “A man’s actions are life-serving or death-serving,” concludes Mr. A, without batting an eyelid (which the mask makes impossible, anyway). Also in 1972, Mr. A appeared in another publication, the fanzine Sense of Wonder #11, published and edited by Bill Schelly. In 1969, Schelly had obtained a Mr. A cover from Ditko but had chosen to print that issue’s cover on pink paper. Ditko was not happy and expressed his reasons in a letter to Schelly. In his memoir, Sense of Wonder: My Life in Comic Fandom – The Whole Story (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Schelly gave an account of how this happened. “I scored a real publishing coup: I was able to feature one of the earliest and best of the Mr. A stories that Steve Ditko was doing at the time.” He explains how he had been in touch with Larry Herndon about contributing to Star-Studded Comics. Herndon explained that they already had too much inventory. Knowing that Sense of Wonder was printed in photo-offset, Herndon asked if he wanted to print a Mr. A story they had. The story had been produced in 1969 and Ditko was, apparently, keen for it so see print sooner rather

than later. “That’s why I have Larry Herndon to thank for giving me the opportunity to debut the six-page Mr. A story title ‘The Defenders’ – that, and Ditko’s apparently forgiving nature, since surely he remembered the pink Mr. A cover on Sense of Wonder #6 that had upset him.” Schelly printed 500 copies which sold out within three months (contributions from Frank Frazetta, Dave Cockrum, and others no doubt helped). Around the same time, the six-page story, “When is a man to be judged evil?” was published in The Collector #26 (Summer 1972). This one is copyrighted 1972 which suggests it was produced close to publication. This story offers something different from previous Mr. A stories in that it includes the prospect of redemption. A criminal, Ike Kolb, goes to prison for unspecified crimes and blames Rex Graine for his incarceration. When he is released, he is met by Graine who tells him that he now has a clean slate. Kolb takes the opportunity and goes straight. This is a less brutal Mr. A than has hitherto been seen. 1973 was the year when a Mr. A title was published. This was in magazine format and ran to 40 pages, published by Comic Art Publishers. Most of the content is reprints, but the lead story is a new nine-page Mr. A story, “Right to Kill”. Rex Graine does not appear here as the story goes straight to Mr. A in a kidnap rescue story. One of the three kidnappers has moral qualms about some of the actions proposed by his colleagues. To Mr. A and Ditko, this matters not a jot. They all receive the same punishment in a story promoting the idea that there are no shades of gray. The second Mr. A magazine is, confusingly, identified as #4 (1975). This is due to the numbering being part of a wider series of Ditko-related material. Two new Mr. A stories are presented, each sixteen pages long. The first, “Count Rogue,” is, perhaps, closer to the super-hero form of the day with a named antagonist. Indeed, it is the Count who dominates the early part of the story. Count Rogue is a sophisticated thief targeting high society events. One of the criticisms of Mr. A is that the stories don’t really work dramatically, and “Count Rogue” is a good example of this. The potential mystery of who Rogue is, is blown early on. There is no mystery or suspense. Instead Ditko is “Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 47

presenting morality tales based on his views of such things. However, there is more background development than usual. The longer story gives space to show more of the cast at the Daily Crusader, for example, and there is a TV producer character who has a hint of being a Stan Lee parody. At the end, Rex Graine gets offered the job of a TV news anchor. The second story in the magazine is “Good, Evil, Compromise, Corruption”. This is mainly a variation on the old impersonation story in which Mr. A is the one to be impersonated in an attempt at discrediting him. There is also another swipe at the United Nations being a tool for dictatorships. Again, the extra length helps. The next new Mr. A story appeared in Comic Crusader Storybook (1977). The main point of interest was Ditko’s choice to present the whole story in just pictures with no text or dialogue. “Deaths Vs Love-Song” therefore presents something of an interesting contrast to the more typical Mr. A story. After this, apart from reprints, there was a break of many years before Mr. A reappeared. Information presented in the comics and magazines of Robin Snyder suggest that Ditko was still doing Mr. A stories but, for a variety of reasons, they didn’t get published. The new start came with the publication of a series of ‘Steve Ditko Packages’ by Robin Snyder. The fourth one of these, Steve Ditko’s 176 Page Package (2000) featured a range of new material by Ditko including the longest Mr. A story yet. “Mr. A Faces the Knifer” runs to thirty pages. There is noticeably less monologue and more action in this tale and the Knifer is a decently challenging adversary for Mr. A. Thereafter, all new Ditko stories come in comics published by Robin Snyder with Steve Ditko. Ditko Continued (January 2009) contains eight new pages of Mr. A. Oh No! Not Again, Ditko (March 2009) followed soon after. Then came the second Mr. A series. As before, the numbering is confusing Mr. A landed the cover to any newcomers. The Robin Snyder Mr. A series is, like the to Fantagraphics’ earlier one, part of a wider series 1985 release of The of Ditko projects and the numbers reflect that wider sequence. Ditko Collection Hence, after reprinting the two (1966-1973) Vol. 1. magazine issues in comic format, the next issue is #15 (NovemMr. A ©2025 Steve Ditko. ber 2014). The lead story, “The Best Deal”, is set early in the Mr. A chronology, probably prior to the first appearance. This is supported by a more action-oriented episode, “Exploder”, complete with an enemy in a full armored suit. The cover is one of the stronger examples from the late period Mr. A. The next issue was #18 (Spring 2016), which again contained over thirty pages of new Mr. A adventures. Issue #21 (Spring 2017) reduced the page count of new content to twenty pages, while #24 (Autumn 2017) is all-reprint. After this, the numbering system changed with the next issue being #7 (2018), reflecting that this was the seventh Mr. A starring comic book that they had 48 • BACK ISSUE • “Hey, Mister!” Issue

released. This contained one new ten-page story and supporting reprint material. Issue 8 (Spring 2018) was the final Mr. A comic book and was all-reprint. Steve Ditko died in June 2018. Mr. A was as creator owned a property as is likely to be found, and it seems unlikely in the extreme that Ditko’s estate would ever sanction the use of the character by any other hands.

“I WON’T REPEAT THE QUESTION.” – MR. A

However, two significant variations on Mr. A do exist and one of them was also a Ditko creation. Around the same time that Ditko developed Mr. A, he also created The Question for Charlton Comics. The Question, as a series and character, debuted in Blue Beetle #1 (June 1967) and has many similarities. Vic Sage is a journalist, although for television rather than newspapers, and uses his position to campaign against crime and corruption. He also adopts the secret hero identity of The Question in which he uses a mask to give himself a blank, featureless face. Apart from gases he uses to mask his entrances and exits, as well as to facilitate a quick change back to civilian identity, there are no extra powers displayed. The character is as uncompromising as Mr. A in terms of an absolutist approach to morality, but the violence is toned down and the situations are not as starkly portrayed. There is also a potential love interest, which Mr. A never seemed to have the time or inclination for. Ditko’s version of The Question lasted only as far as 1968, but the character has been revived several times since, most notably in the late 1980s by writer Denny O’Neill, but, apart from the visual look, the character is very different. In 1986, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons produced Watchmen for which re-worked versions of Charlton characters were created. Their variation on The Question was Rorschach. In the television documentary In Search of Steve Ditko (2007, BBC), Moore recounts a second-hand story of Ditko describing Rorschach as “like Mr. A, but insane.” It is interesting to note that Rorschach became many readers favorite character in the Watchmen series (and subsequent film), and is clearly the most commercially successful of the three variants. Ditko himself noted “too many wanted the flawed hero, the anti-hero, the NO black-and-white identifications” (essay “The Fixed Negative” 2013). Ditko created a hero he saw as without flaws. Moore created a character with flaws but who he did not want to be seen as a hero, and yet many people chose to see Rorschach as that anyway. (More recently, a third variation, Even Steven, has appeared in Impossible Jones by Karl Kesel and David Hahn. – Ed.) In my role as a teacher of politics, I have, for several years, taught a module on political ideologies which, in the subsection on conservatism, require reference to Ayn Rand (and yes, I know that Rand refused to be described as a conservative). In Britain, Ayn Rand is much less well known than in the U.S. and my students usually come to the concept of objectivism fresh. Somewhere in there I try and drop in a mention

(top) A 1976 specialty illustration drawn by Steve Ditko for San Diego Comic-Con. (middle) The first appearance of The Question from the cover of Blue Beetle #1. (bottom left and right) Modern Mr. A cyphers Rorshach and Even Steven. Mr. A ©2025 Steve Ditko.

of Steve Ditko, just because. Did Ditko hope that Mr. A would convert readers to Objectivism? If so, I’m not sure it succeeded, but if anyone reading this was, get in touch via the letters page. I don’t personally share Ditko’s political philosophy, but I welcome him having made the effort to insert such ideas into comics. I have no interest in living in an echo chamber. There will never be another Steve Ditko and there will never be another Mr. A, but the extant work is still with us. Ian Millsted is a writer and teacher living in Bristol, England where it has been raining too much at the time of writing.

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by D e w e y

Cassell

From their first appearance in The Brave and the Bold #54 in 1964, it seemed as if writer Bob Haney wasn’t sure what to do with the team of superhero sidekicks called the Teen Titans. The initial roster included Robin, Kid Flash, and Speedy, later joined by Wonder Girl and Aqualad. The premise had merit, and subsequent appearances in The Brave and the Bold #60 and Showcase #59 were sufficiently well received to earn them their own title, but the adversaries they faced in Teen Titans ran the gamut from a killer robot to the Mad Mod to a caveman, not to mention a number of stories that leaned heavily into the supernatural. In fact, at times it seemed as if they fought amongst themselves almost as often as they faced a villain of any note. The artwork by Nick Cardy was exceptional, but the hip dialogue intended to resonate with a youthful audience frequently seemed forced. So, after four years, DC Comics decided to try a different tack. It began in issue #25, when the Teen Titans go out in civilian garb for a night on the town and bob haney meet Lilith, an attractive dancer at a club. She exhibits extra sensory perception (ESP), revealing that she knows who they are and wants to join the Titans. When they turn her down, she makes an ominous premonition about them “opening the door for death.” Later that evening, the Titans, joined by Hawk and Dove, fail to stop the shooting of a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is speaking at a rally. Although none of them pulled the trigger, the implication is that the aggressive use of their powers escalated the situation. When the victim later dies in the hospital, the young heroes are confronted by the Justice League, who condemn their actions and demand the Titans discipline themselves or they will do so. As they despondently wander the streets, they run into Lilith again, along with a man described as “a friend of Bruce Wayne” and “the richest man in the world,” Mr. Loren Jupiter. He offers all of them, including Lilith, an opportunity to join a secret government project to prepare teenagers to “cope with the world they will inherit.” They accept with the self-imposed condition that they will not use their powers or wear their uniforms. The only holdout is Robin, who tells Mr. Jupiter and his teammates that he has decided to go to college. (It is worth noting that Robin was not present at the shooting, having left to alert the police to the volatile situation.) And so begins an odd chapter in the history of the Teen Titans.

OK, Mr. Jupiter wasn’t really on the cover of Time, but maybe he should have been. Art from Teen Titans #38. TM & © DC Comics.

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nick cardy © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons.

The Titans’ worst nightmare comes to pass on this original splash page from Teen Titans #25. Art by Nick Cardy. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.

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Why the sudden shift in the Titans storyline? Noted historians Keith Dallas and John Wells, authors of the 1965–1969 volume of American Comic Book Chronicles, provide some insight, “… in 1969, what [comics’ movers and shakers knew] was that the old ways weren’t working anymore. What was selling was material that seemed relevant to a young readership whose passions ran the gamut from the death toll in Vietnam to whether the Beatles would break up. For DC Comics, 1969 and 1970 augured its ‘relevancy’ period. Many of DC’s super-hero titles steered away from the standard ‘super-hero/super-villain conflict’ in favor of stories that promoted some cultural or social message. [But] I really don’t know how much understanding DC’s editors had of late 1960s/early 1970s cultural movements. (We ARE talking about middle-aged white men, after all.) The changes you’re noticing are reactions to ‘slumping sales figures.’” And there was a precedent. In 1968, Wonder Woman gave up her abilities to remain in “man’s world” rather than join her fellow Amazons when they left for another dimension so they could “rest and renew their powers.” The now powerless Diana Prince acquired a mentor named I Ching, who trained Diana in martial arts. Her subsequent adventures focused more on espionage rather than heroics, while wearing a pantsuit instead of the traditional red, white, and blue costume. John Wells adds, “The Teen Titans makeover was a direct response to the 1968 Wonder Woman revamp. Sales shot up so much after its new look that Mike Sekowsky was immediately tasked with doing the same thing on Metal Men, giving them human identities and hiding their powers. Teen Titans followed suit in the hopes that it would also repeat Wonder Woman’s success. Basically, someone seems to have speculated that readers were drawn to ‘the New Wonder Woman’ because she had no powers or costume. Obviously, there was more to it than that.” Editor Dick Giordano tasked Robert Kanigher with writing the new Teen Titans. Why Robin was initially left out is anyone’s guess, although two reasonable explanations come to mind. One is that Robin was featured regularly in Detective Comics, alternating appearances with Batgirl (and somerobert kanigher times teaming up.) Not that DC was particularly concerned about continuity, but it would have made it challenging to explain if Robin had shed his fighting togs in Teen Titans. Alternatively – or perhaps, in addition – Robin had long been the de facto leader

Events in (top left) Teen Titans #25 led to the first appearance of the world’s richest man, Mr. Jupiter. (top right) The titans follow Mr. Jupiter’s lead in issue #26. (middle and bottom) Mr. Jupiter lays out the ground rules for his tutelage in Teen Titans #25. TM & © DC Comics.

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Mr. Jupiter was used by writers to establish the premise of each issue. Such as when the Titans went to space (top left, Teen Titans #26), or acclaimated caveman Gnarrk to the modern world (top center, TT #33), explored the crypt of Romeo and Juliet (top right, TT #35), investigated the kidnapping of a young reporter (bottom left, TT #37), uncovered a remote Native American tribe (bottom center, TT #39), and sought out the Loch Ness Monster (bottom right, TT #40). TM & © DC Comics.

of the Titans. His absence left a void that was filled a token nod to social relevancy, after which they by Mr. Jupiter. moved on to the next hot topic of the day, the Mr. Jupiter himself was something of an enigma. space race. The contrived storyline to get the Issue #25 marked his first appearance, cut out Titans into space mirrored a similar issue of of whole cloth. There is no prior mention of Challengers of the Unknown from the same time the character in any DC comic book. It seems period. Although certainly intended to pay odd that Bruce Wayne wouldn’t have homage to the achievements of NASA and commented at some point that he take advantage of its popularity, the knew the richest man in the world, unintended result was to suggest that further suggesting that the editorianyone could be an astronaut. al decision to pursue this storyline For reasons unknown, Robert may have been an abrupt one. Kanigher left the Teen Titans at this Ironically, in the following juncture and Steve Skeates took issue, the first task the remaining over writing their adventures with Titans, Lilith, Hawk, and Dove issue #28. Skeates’ first story sees are given, after trading their a brief appearance by Robin and costumes in for uniforms akin to the the return of Aqualad, who had not Challengers of the Unknown, is a been around for the Titans’ crisis deadly survival course intended of conscience. When Donna to test reflex reaction. Passing Troy’s former roommate Sharon steve skeates through laser beams, fire, and a witnesses something that puts her Photo courtesy of Dewey Cassell. wind tunnel, they are each given in danger, the Titans are slow to a penny by Mr. Jupiter and told to go to Hell’s respond and Aqualad serves as the voice of reason, Corner and find jobs and a place to live. accusing them of copping out and undoubtedly The pennies lead them into a conflict with a echoing the thoughts of readers at the time when white gang in Hell’s Corner. As they attempt to he says, “You guys can stay here and stew in your subdue the gang without using their powers, the own self-pity.” It is worth noting that the Titans Titans are aided by an African-American character started to wear their costumes again in this story. named Mal Duncan. The Titans do manage to find Skeates remained on the title until the middle of jobs and a place to live, experiencing life in the issue #32, at which point Bob Haney returned. inner city for a total of ten days, at which point the Aqualad stayed with the Titans only long enough group convinces Mal to become a Teen Titan. Their to wrap up the story involving Sharon. Hawk and first mission together? Training to become astro- Dove departed not long after. nauts. The storyline never returns to Hell’s Corner. So, where was Mr. Jupiter while all this was In retrospect, it seems as if the Hell’s Corner going on? Largely in the background. In fact, story, which took up less than one issue, was simply Mr. Jupiter does not appear at all in some issues

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and in others is only mentioned in passing. When he is involved in the story, it typically results in putting the Titans into danger. For example, when Mr. Jupiter’s time machine goes awry, Mal is transported back to caveman days. When Kid Flash attempts to rescue him, they unintentionally alter history. In an effort to correct their error, they end up returning to the present day with a caveman in tow. Since the caveman can’t be returned to his own time, Mr. Jupiter tasks the Titans with fixing his mistake, bypassing thousands of years of evolution to “civilize” their guest, with the help of Robin, who began to appear in stories more regularly. Similarly, when the Titans (except Mal) accompany Mr. Jupiter to Verona, Italy for the opening of a new laboratory, they become involved in a diamond smuggling operation and family feud reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. Kid Flash is stabbed and the Titans are trapped in a crypt. Or the time the Titans travel out west with Mr. Jupiter to do a geological survey for his mineral holdings, where they get shot at by a gang of bank robbers and attacked and imprisoned by a tribe of American Indians. Somewhere along the way, the whole idea of the Titans being trained to “cope with the world they will inherit” gets lost. Unlike I Ching, who serves as a teacher and advisor to Wonder Woman, Mr. Jupiter doesn’t seem to do or say much that is useful or constructive. In fact, it appears that the Titans do just as well in the stories in which Mr. Jupiter doesn’t appear at all. And from the very beginning of their involvement with Mr. Jupiter in Hell’s Corner and most of the other stories that followed, the Titans still coped with the problems they faced by fighting, even if they didn’t use their powers. Even Dove succumbed to the use of violence. It suggested that either they learned nothing from the events that set this path in motion, or perhaps came to accept that they were not to blame for what happened in the first place. While the presence of Mr. Jupiter may not have served the intended purpose, the introduction of Mal may have gotten closer to the mark of social relevance. The character is portrayed in a way that is largely respectful of African-Americans. It depicts him striving to prove himself and doubting his own self-worth, but then clearly pulling his own weight, even though he has no special abilities. The stories also show him being sensitive to words and actions that appear racist, whether intended or not. He exhibits characteristics and emotions that likely resonated with at least some African-American readers at the time. In 1973, DC restored Wonder Woman’s powers and traditional costume. Just a few months earlier, issue #41 of Teen Titans marked the last that included Mr. Jupiter. Ironically, it was the first story that provided any real background on the character. There was no explanation for his subsequent departure, but the title only lasted for two more issues before being put on the shelf for over three years. In fairness, there were likely other contributing factors to the Titans’ demise. Before Mr. Jupiter first appeared, DC had been using an ever-changing roster of pencilers on the book, while having Nick Cardy ink all their work. The approach was likely intended to provide some consistency in appearance,

but in reality, Cardy was largely faithful to the penciled art, resulting in a frequently shifting style of drawing in the book. However, just as this was not the end of the Teen Titans, it was also not the end of Mr. Jupiter. The character returned with a new Teen Titans series launched in late 1996, in which it is revealed that Lilith is his daughter. The new series lasted for 24 issues. Perhaps he was simply a Mister ahead of his time.

Mr. Jupiter’s mysterious background was explored in Teen Titans #41. TM & © DC Comics.

I am deeply indebted to comic historians Keith Dallas and John Wells for the insight they provided, as well as the excerpts from The American Comic Book Chronicles, an exceptional series available from TwoMorrows Publishing. [Dewey Cassell (a.k.a. Mr. Pluto) is the twice Eisner Award-nominated author/ co-author of four books and over 50 magazine articles.]

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 57

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by M a r k

Arnold

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Mr. Weatherbee is the principal of Riverdale High School, where Archie Andrews is a student. To most Riverdale students and staff, he is commonly called Mr. Weatherbee, due to his authority position, or more informally as The Bee. Weatherbee is a heavyset, mostly serious man who generally dresses in a threepiece green suit, and wears pince-nez eyeglasses on the tip of his lengthy nose that is similar in style to Jughead’s or Miss Grundy’s. He also wears a miniature toupee that easily flies off whenever Weatherbee is angered or jostled. Mr. Weatherbee’s first tentative appearance is generally considered to be in Pep Comics #25 (March 1942), as a passenger of a taxi driven by Archie in a story called “Archie’s Taxi Service”, written and drawn by Bob Montana. In the story, the passenger grumbles about Archie’s poor driving and remarks to himself how his head mastership at Riverdale High School will prevent ne’er-dowells like Archie. The next day at school, the man that Archie drove around again runs into Archie. Archie then discovers that this man is actually the new school principal. Grand Comics Database, however, states that this Riverdale High School Principal is probably NOT THE Mr. Weatherbee, as this character is not named, and he is not overweight. Regardless, this story IS the very first appearance of Archie’s jalopy and the first mention of a high school principal. It has become a classic of sorts, being reprinted many times in various anniversary collections. The first definitive appearance of Mr. Weatherbee is in Jackpot Comics #5 (Spring 1942), where he is named, and has his customary belly. This story is also written and drawn by Bob Montana and also stars

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the other Archie regulars, Jughead, Reggie, and Veronica. In this story, Archie becomes a member of the Philomathean Club, but is banned from the class boat ride for injuring Mr. Weatherbee. Jughead persuades Archie to go anyway, but he has to go to great lengths to avoid Weatherbee. As with “Archie’s Taxi Service”, “Trip to Bear Mountain” has also been reprinted numerous times in various Archie anniversary collections. In fact, it has been reprinted more often due to the visual design of the definitive Weatherbee. Despite the inaugural story in which it implies that Mr. Weatherbee joined Riverdale High School while Archie was a student, Weatherbee is also shown in Little Archie stories as having previously been the principal of Riverdale Elementary School during the gang’s grade school years. Weatherbee eventually transferred to Riverdale High School at about the same time Archie started high school, as shown in a 2008 storyline, which is somewhat strange as many stories show Weatherbee trying to avoid being around Archie as much as possible. In a typical Archie story, Archie usually means well when he is working alongside of Mr. Weatherbee no matter what the age, but chaos usually ensues by the end of the story driving him a little bit nuts in a similar manner as when Archie is around Veronica’s father, Hiram Lodge. The other students are also trying Mr. Weatherbee’s sanity and patience, but usually for different reasons. As a result, many times Weatherbee goes out of his

way to avoid Archie and his gang, but usually gets caught up in the middle of whatever project they are currently working on. Weatherbee can’t even escape the gang during the summer months as Archie and crew usually go to summer camp which is consistently headed up by Weatherbee and Miss Grundy and some of the other Riverdale High School faculty. Though Weatherbee is usually portrayed as a single bachelor, there have been more than one occasion where he has been paired up with Geraldine Grundy. There are even fantasy stories where Weatherbee and Grundy tie the knot. Other than a niece named Wendy Weatherbee, who is the daughter of Mr. Weatherbee’s twin brother, Tony, Mr. Weatherbee doesn’t tend to have a huge number of relatives, or at least ones who are commonly referred to. Archie and his gang and the faculty are considered to be Mr. Weatherbee’s “family.” Mr. Weatherbee’s first name is eventually revealed as being Waldo. However, in one story in Archie at Riverdale High #6 (April 1973), called “That Human Touch”, the gang discovers that Mr. Weatherbee had a wild streak while he was in high school, being referred to as “Wild Willie.” Later reprints replaced “William” with “Waldo” and “Wild Willie” with “Wild Wally” to make the story more consistent with Waldo’s established first name. Mr. Weatherbee has always been connected in some way to having previously served in the

(left) Archie gets off on the wrong foot in Mr. Weatherbee’s first appearance in Jackpot Comics #5. Mr. Weatherbee sticks his foot in his mouth while proselytizing to Miss Grundy in Archie’s Joke Book #66. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). ©2025 Archie Comics.

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(opposite page, top left) Mr. Weatherbee gets his own pin up courtesy of Dan DeCarlo and Rudy Lapwick in Laugh Comics #232. (top right) Mr. Weatherbee and Archie get along... about as well as usual in this image by Harry Lucey and Marty Epp from Pep #173. (bottom left) Mr. Weatherbee shows off his dance moves on this cover to Laugh Comics Digest #6 by Dan DeCarlo. (bottom right) Mr. Weatherbee, sportsman, by Joe Edwards from Archie and Me #44. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). ©2025 Archie Comics.

United States military. However, as time has gone on, that military service has switched from having been during World War II to the Korean War to the Vietnam War, and varies as to which branch of the military he served in. In print, Mr. Weatherbee has appeared in virtually every comic book that has also starred Archie and the gang. He was regularly featured in every issue of Archie and Me, which ran from October 1964 through issue #161 (February 1986). After Archie and Me was canceled, five more Archie and Me issues were released through the Archie Giant series from issue #578 (November 1987) through #626 (November 1991). Weatherbee also became part of a superhero team for the short-lived Faculty Funnies that lasted from June 1989 through issue #5 (May 1990). The only comic book that actually starred Mr. Weatherbee was 1980’s Archie and Mr. Weatherbee, published by Spire Christian Comics, later reprinted by New Barbour Comics Group. Mr. Weatherbee has appeared in most Archie media adaptations to date. In the various animated series produced by Filmation during the 1960s and 1970s, Weatherbee was voiced by Dallas McKennon, who also voiced Archie in those various series. In a 1964 liveaction Archie sitcom pilot, Weatherbee was portrayed by Roland Winters. In the 1976 ABC Saturday Comedy Special and the 1978 Archie TV-Movie called The Archie Situation Comedy Musical Variety Show, Weatherbee was portrayed by Byron Webster. In 1990s Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again, David Doyle portrayed him. Weatherbee also appears in Archie’s Weird Mysteries (1999-2000), voiced by Tony Wike, and in The CW TV series Riverdale (2017-2023), Mr. Weatherbee was portrayed by Peter James Bryant. As long as Archie Andrews is in high school, it is guaranteed that he will continue to torment and annoy Principal Weatherbee. Mark Arnold is a Pop Culture Historian. He hosts his own Fun Ideas Podcast and is also the author of over 17 books on various subjects covering Cracked and MAD magazines, Dennis the Menace, Underdog, Pink Panther, and Harvey Comics. He is currently working on books about TV Animation Studios and on Marvel’s Crazy magazine.

Mr. Weatherbee as he appeared in (top) Filmation’s The Archie Show and (middle) Archie’s Weird Mysteries. (bottom left) David Doyle played Mr. Weatherbee in Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again. (bottom right) Peter James Bryant portrayed Mr. Weatherbee in The CW series Riverdale. ©2025 Archie Comics.

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A great thing about comic books is that in addition to the enduring stories, artwork, and history associated with the industry, there is also a sense of joy when significant celebratory occasions for characters come around. Fans worldwide can bask in the excitement that their favorite fictional figures have made it another year and will (hopefully) continue ever into eternity. One such fellow comes from the costume crimefighter crowd. He is not a member of the Justice League, the Avengers, the X-Men, or even the Justice Society, though he’s made a lot of big splashes over the years thanks in no small part to the efforts of his chief bottlewasher, scribe, and artist. But who is this fierce foe of fiends and felons? What name does this individual go by? He is known to those who have found his ribald tales of danger and daring as Doctor Strongfort Stearn, aka Mr. Monster. And good old Doc has now been in the public eye and imagination for forty fabulous years. Mr. Monster has had a crazy history over the decades. From an obscure Canadian character created during the latter part of the Golden Age to become a darling of the indie scene in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and into the New Millennium, this costumed monster masher has taken on some bizarre and wacky villains and even had the likes of Alan Moore play around with him. While other characters who take on all manner of nightmarish creatures tend to have an extra edge (Blade being a dhampir, for example), our man Strongfort tends to rely on his impressive mental/physical capabilities and not being afraid to pump a few rounds of hot lead into the bad guys as well. In celebration of Doc reaching such a milestone, I sat down to chat with the man behind the hero, beloved writer/artist michael t. gilbert Michael T. Gilbert. JOSHUA WINCHESTER: Before we get into your history with Mr. Monster, let’s briefly discuss you. Where did your journey to becoming a comics professional begin? MICHAEL T. GILBERT: I began when I was about seven in the late ‘50s, and my grandmother gave me my first comic (a Jimmy Olsen!). That inspired me to try drawing my own crude versions of Superman, which led to my current obsession with drawing comic books. My first published work was the cover of my Hebrew School literary magazine, The Torah Is Light, in 1965 when I was 14. WINCHESTER: Which specific writers or artists influenced your work during the start of your career? GILBERT: Early on, I’d have to say, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, first on the Marvel horror comics and later the superhero titles. A little later, I stumbled upon Will Eisner’s Spirit, which was, and remains, among my greatest influences. Also, writer Al Feldstein and the EC artists. And, of course, the early Harvey Kurtzman MAD comics (which I read in Ballantine paperback reprints in the late ‘50s) taught me much about my own approach to humor.

Dave Stevens’ stunning cover for Mr. Monster #2 was repurposed into an equally stunning poster. Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert.

WINCHESTER: Did you pick up a pen and pencil and forge ahead? GILBERT: When I was a kid, I just kept drawing pictures of superheroes and sci-fi scenes. I made my first attempts at a “Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 65

(top) Stephen R. Bissette’s cover to Mr. Monster #3. (inset) The comic that introduced Mr. Monster to Gilbert, Super Duper Comics #3. (bottom) An original page from “The Riddle of the Recalcitrant Refuse”, written by Alan Moore with art by Michael T. Gilbert and William MessnerLoebs from Mr. Monster #3. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert.

comic book story in 1966 (I was about 15) featuring a vampire superhero, Mr. V. WINCHESTER: How did you first encounter Mr. Monster? GILBERT: As I’ve related in the past, I found an old coverless Golden Age comic at a NY Comic Con in 1971. I later discovered it was a 1947 Canadian title called Super Duper Comics #3. The lead feature was a monster-fighter named Mr. Monster. This comic was the sole color Mr. Monster story before the company (Canadian publisher Bell) folded in 1947. I was so taken by the character that I reinvented him in 1983, and my first new Mr. Monster story saw print in the summer of 1984 in Pacific Comics’ Vanguard Illustrated #7. WINCHESTER: How difficult was it to pick up a character who had only been around briefly and completely revamp him into the hero we know today? GILBERT: That was the easy part. Since there was only one complete 8-page story featuring the Golden Age Mr. Monster, I was free to do whatever I wanted. But he had a cool name, costume, and single-minded purpose: to kill monsters. Mr. Monster creator Fred Kelly handled his Mr. Monster straight, but I added a lot of humor and satire to mine. WINCHESTER: In the beginning, at Eclipse Comics, you worked with various creative personalities on each book during the initial run. For example, Bill MessnerLoebs was the penciler for issue one, while on the other side of the table, Alan Moore did the script for issue three. Why was that the case? GILBERT: I’d never done my own comic on a steady schedule and needed all the help I could get. Plus, it was exciting to collaborate with some of my favorite creators. WINCHESTER: Because he is such a public figure in comics and literature, what was it like working with Alan Moore on a Mr. Monster comic? GILBERT: A dream come true. He was great to chat with on the phone (though the phone bills to England weren’t so great!). Alan was friendly and enthusiastic and came up with a great story that I illustrated. WINCHESTER: With the second run of books, you got experimental with the different art styles (using 3D art in the first issue) and even reprinted works by past professionals, including Jack Cole (of Plastic Man fame) and Dick Briefer. How well did that experiment work? GILBERT: You’re referring to my Mr. Monster SuperDuper Specials featuring Golden Age reprints. I’m very proud of those, and we put out very affordable reprints of rare comics like Jack Cole’s True Crime comics, Basil Wolverton’s Weird Tales of the Future, and Bob Powell’s Vic Torry and his

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Flying Saucer. I’ve continued that today with deluxe hardcover books like Jerry Grandenetti’s Secret Files of Dr. Drew for Dark Horse and, more recently, the Tops book I did for Fantagraphics, reprinting extremely rare comics edited by Charles Biro. WINCHESTER: During his time at Eclipse, you got to do a crossover between Airboy and Mr. Monster. It’s a fun and pure story about overcoming life’s struggles and pursuing one’s dreams and passions. Where did that come from? GILBERT: It started out with a plan for a Mr. Monster/Swamp Thing team-up. It was the first contract actually signed between DC and an independent comic company. Alan Moore and I were plotting the story together, and the Mr. Monster art would have been drawn by me and Bill Loebs, with the Swamp Thing sequences by Steve Bissette and John Totleben. Unfortunately, Alan got into a fight with DC and vowed never to work with them again, so our crossover was killed. However, editors at Eclipse suggested that we could cash in on the publicity if I wrote a Mr. Monster/ Heap crossover instead. Eclipse had revived the old Hillman characters The Heap and Airboy from the 1940s. The Heap was a plant-based monster who was the inspiration for both DC’s Swamp Thing and Marvel’s Man-Thing.

(top) The creepy cover for Mr. Monster’s Super Duper Special #1. (bottom left) One of Gilbert’s new pages for Mr. Monster’s Super Duper Special #2, featuring a comely portrait of Kelly. (bottom right) Mr. Monster even appeared in three dimensions in Mr. Monster’s Triple Threat 3-D, featuring 3-D effects by Ray Zone. Art scans courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert.

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So, I came up with a story based on that about a Golden Age cartoonist whose creations came back to haunt him. I wrote the script, laid it out, and sent it to Eclipse. Unfortunately, it came near the end of my time at Eclipse. Things got toxic after I told them I would be leaving once my contract was up. After that, they insisted I change it from a Mr. Monster/ Heap story (co-starring Airboy) to a Mr. Monster/ Airboy story (co-starring The Heap). Again, this was after the story was completely written. But by jiggling things around, I was still able to make it work with relatively few changes. At the time, their revived Airboy comic was the editor’s pet project and one of their better sellers. The story itself was inspired by Wally Wood and Bill Everett, gigantic talents who struggled with alcoholism. Wood (and Plastic Man creator Jack Cole) eventually committed suicide because of their personal demons. However, Everett (who created the Sub-Mariner back in the ‘30s) was a rare success story in that he joined AA near the end of his life and got sober. These three were the inspiration for my cartoonist, Everett Coleman. Mark Pacella and Ken Hooper did the finishes for the story, and overall, I was happy with it in spite of the editorial interference. But the editorial changes bugged me for decades. Finally, in 2023, I bit the bullet and revised my story, reworking it as originally planned, with The Heap as the main character. I also recolored the entire story in Photoshop. I’m much happier with it now that it looks and reads as I originally envisioned. And they say, “You can’t go home again.” Ha! I’m planning to run it in the Eclipse volume of my proposed Complete Mr. Monster Library book series. WINCHESTER: Let’s focus on the third Mr. Monster series. First and foremost, you jumped publishers and were now putting out Doc’s adventures through Dark Horse Comics. Why the change? GILBERT: Mike Richardson had started Dark Horse comics a year earlier. He told me he was a huge Mr. Monster fan and said if I ever wanted to change publishers, he’d love to have Doc onboard. Sales were tanking at Eclipse, and they were beginning to fail. This was partly because their big cash cow was Alan Moore’s Miracleman, and Alan wasn’t delivering scripts on time. For that matter, neither was I. So, things were getting very unpleasant at Eclipse, and I decided to change publishers. Additionally, I had been living in California, where Eclipse had been publishing. By 1987, my wife and I had planned to move to Eugene, Oregon, a couple of hours from Portland, where Dark Horse

(top left) Mr. Monster crosses over in the AirboyMr. Monster Special. (bottom) The Heap helps save the day on this page by Michael T. Gilbert, Mark Pacella, and Ken Hooper. (top right) Mr. Monster comes to Dark Horse. The first issue features a cover by Gilbert and Dave Dorman, and the first part of the “Origins” storyline. Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert.

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was located. It seemed to make sense. And creatively, I was ready for a change, too. WINCHESTER: Second, this run was a single storyline across multiple issues. It also establishes a definitive background for the character. It ties it back into the original two issues that Fred Kelly penned during the 1940s. What impact did that make on the overall history of the character? GILBERT: That was the 8-issue Mr. Monster: Origins, which I plotted out while working on the AirboyMr. Monster Special for Eclipse. I’d read Moore and Gibbon’s Watchmen and Miller’s Dark Knight and was inspired to experiment with a more serious Mr. Monster story. This was the follow-up. This story still had humor, but I wanted to play it straight mostly, rather than laughs this time. It took almost four years to finish the 200-page story (while still working on other projects to keep a cash flow). I consider this the definitive “real” origin, but when doing my more humorous Mr. Monster stories, I feel free to do my usual goofy faux Mr. Monster origin panels at the beginning. I consider the Origins story a separate universe of sorts. WINCHESTER: I want to take a moment to talk about the original Fred Kelly comics. I noticed that the origin series’ interior pages are all black and white. Was this an intentional homage to the “Canadian Whites” of the Golden Age? GILBERT: And I also wanted it to stand out from the rest of the book. My story was “real,” and that blackand-white segment was supposedly just an old comic book story. WINCHESTER: Moving into the late ‘80s and ‘90s, you produced a variety of Mr. Monster comics for Dark Horse, Tundra, and even Image Comics. Which books from this era do you most fondly remember and why? GILBERT: Well, first, my Mr. Monster: Origins story I did for Dark Horse. I’m proud of how that turned out, especially after I did a big editing job and some new art and story when Graphitti let me put it together as the graphic novel. And I’m proud of the Mr. Monster Attacks! mini-series I did for Tundra. They gave me an excellent page rate, total freedom, outstanding printing, and the opportunity to work with some great cartoonists. WINCHESTER: In my research, I noticed that you wrote a three-part Mr. Monster story for Penthouse MAX. How on Earth did you pull this off? GILBERT: It was a five-chapter “Mr. Monster vs. the Nazis From Mars” story I did with George Freeman. I’d previously created some Mr. Monster stories for Dave Elliot’s A-1 comic anthology. Dave later became one of the editors at Penthouse MAX and invited me to do a Mr. Monster story for him (without the X-rated sex of the other offerings in the book). The pay was great, Dave gave me complete freedom, and the story turned out terrific. WINCHESTER: As the New Millennium rolled along, a variety of Mr. Monster books emerged. One particular run is the three-issue mini-series that focused, more or less, solely on Kelly. Where did the idea for this series come from? GILBERT: The three-issue Kelly mini-series was one of the projects I completed at Tundra. Unfortunately,

(top) Mr. Monster as drawn by Simon Bisley in a story originally published in Blast! #1 and reprinted in Mr. Monster Attacks #3. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (bottom) Doc Stearn comes to Image with Mr. Monster’s Gal Friday… Kelly. Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert.

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GILBERT: Well, I’m delighted, of course. And I think, “My! What remarkable taste these people have!” WINCHESTER: Over the course of 40 years, are there any specific issues or runs that are your favorites? GILBERT: I’ll always be fond of the ten Eclipse issues (plus the Airboy-Mr. Monster special). You never forget your first love. WINCHESTER: Where do you see Mr. Monster and his world in the next ten years? GILBERT: I’ve done a few new Mr. Monster stories in preparation for the Complete Mr. Monster Library. With any luck, we’ll see those five volumes in print. After that, I’d love to do more new Mr. Monster stories. Time will tell…

(left) A Michael T. Gilbert and Bernie Wrightson cover rough and (inset) the final cover for Amazing Heroes #194. Cover rough courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www. ha.com). (right) Mr. Monster was even published by TwoMorrows! This collection of stories is still available digitally. Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert.

they folded before it was published, and I later took it to Image. It was initially planned as a color book, but we printed it in black & white to save money. However, I’ve been working on a proposed Complete Mr. Monster Library book series and have had all the stories newly colored. WINCHESTER: What was the ultimate focus of the Kelly mini-series? GILBERT: Being silly! It was also a tribute to the very popular girls’ comics of the ‘50s, such as Little Lulu, Archie and Veronica, Mary Marvel, and sappy love comics—the kind they don’t make anymore. WINCHESTER: As comic books have gained renewed interest thanks to the influence of Hollywood and the convention scene, how ready do you think the world is for Mr. Monster cartoons or even a movie? GILBERT: Depends on how it was done, of course. But I’m more interested in my comics than in movies and such. In my experience, that way lies madness… WINCHESTER: What runs through your mind when you attend these conventions and fans come over to talk about how much they love your work and your character?

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Time will undoubtedly tell, indeed. I have been a fan of Michael’s work and Mr. Monster’s comics for years, and I walked away from this conversation feeling more enlightened about the history of this hero and the behind-the-scenes action that goes with working on such a figure for decades. Who would have thought the different books could be stepping stones to reintroduce more obscure works from past professionals? Or even have a single story become a stark reminder of what can happen if we let life beat us down and lose our way while pursuing creative expression through art. Indeed, these comics are not just an entertaining diversion from the humdrum of everyday life, they can also be a source of inspiration for anyone who picks up a book with Michael T. Gilbert’s name on it. And so it is with a tip of the cap and hearty huzzah that we say Happy 40th Anniversary to Mr. Monster. And three cheers for Michael T. Gilbert for 40 years of delightful art, sensational stories, and above all else, for giving the world a hero who is there when the ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night come out to play. Never fear, dear readers, because Mr. Monster will always be there. Righting wrongs, saving the day, and keeping the world safe for future comic book fans.

In the early-mid 1980s, the growing direct market and the advent of creator-owner properties led to more innovative storytelling. From the imagination of illustrator/designer Dean Motter stepped Mister X–an alphabet soup of film noir, German Expressionism, Will Eisner, and the Bauhaus art movement. Bald, bespectacled, briefcase in hand, of indeterminate age and not especially tall, he is far from the typical comic book protagonist, and his stories far from the familiar superhero fare. Mister X prowls the dark streets of Radiant City, a post-modern metropolis that owes more to Fritz Lang than Clark Kent. This utopian dream was designed to enhance the residents’ state of mind using the radical concept of “psychetecture,” theoretically elevating people’s moods through the size and shape of a building or room. But something went terribly wrong. The urban environment of feng shui on a massive scale led to an epidemic of sleepwalkers, narcoleptics, and insomniacs, earning the city the epithet Somnopolis. As mania and mass psychoses prevailed, Radiant City descended into crime and corruption. The city of dreams had become the city of nightmares. Was it too late to awaken it? The enigmatic Mister X is the city’s self-appointed savior. Recognizing the Sisyphean nature of his mission, he remains awake 24 hours a day by means of “insomnalin,” a drug he’s engineered. To most of Radiant City’s residents, he is little more than an urban legend–or perhaps just another delusional citizen with a savior complex.

FOUNDATIONS

Motter was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but grew up in Toronto. His parents were both artists, leading him to pursue a career as a graphic artist. As an illustrator for children’s books, he brought his comic book fandom background. “I had contacts in Toronto, and was connected to the comic book world, and I moonlighted doing comics, and there was this huge crossover into the dean motter music business. So, my careers © Facebook. criss-crossed from children’s books, to comic books, to commercial art.” Motter went from working at his kitchen table to having a studio with an assistant. As his workload increased, CBS Records offered him a full-time art director position, creating album covers. Later, when the company was forced to eliminate its graphics department, Motter by P h i l i p S c h w e i e r remained available, but without an exclusive contract, other record companies approached him to create posters for shows and events, and advertising material. Detail from Dean Motter’s cover to Mister X #1. You can “I became–I wouldn’t say the best in the business, but certainly the busiest,” Motter says. “I loved it. immediately see how important design is to the series. All art pages It was glorious time.” He earned two Juno awards– in this article are courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). the Canadian analog to the Grammy–for his designs in 1983 and ‘84. ©2025 Dean Motter. “Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 71

(top) Dean Motter’s original cover art for the Motörhead album, The Watcher. (bottom) Mister X startles Mercedes on this page by Jaime Hernandez from Mister X #1. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). ©2025 Dean Motter.

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Recalling a college course on theoretical architecture, and inspired by his love for the film Metropolis (1927), Motter’s influences began to coalesce into a noir tale set in the future envisioned by the 1939 World’s Fair. The idea percolated for several years, fueled by a story published in Heavy Metal. “The Long Tomorrow,” by Moebius and Dan O’Bannon was a pastiche of a Humphrey Bogart movie set in the far future on a distant planet. Motter believed if he could do The Maltese Falcon set in Metropolis, it would be a great detective story.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

“Once I decided to do Mister X, I realized I couldn’t do it,” Motter admits. “I didn’t have the time or the money. I could write it, and design it, but there was no possible way I could illustrate it. It was a 24/7 project back in those days.” Motter’s studio mate, comic artist/illustrator Paul Rivoche, came on board. “Paul is a genius,” he proclaims. “Paul did some of my best album covers that I was designer/art director on. He originated some brilliant illustrations and others that were collages of images (ala Hipgnosis), where we did a collage of images, and he was able to retouch them with an airbrush to make them flawless, so you’d never know this yacht was sitting in a swimming pool in Vancouver when the background was Toronto. He was brilliant. To this day, he’s brilliant.” Motter and Rivoche spent a year comparing notes and developing imagery for Mister X. “He (Paul) was instrumental,” says Motter. “He was the hero of the whole thing.” Motter compares Rivoche to Ralph McQuarrie, who provided visualizations when George Lucas was developing Star Wars in the 1970s. “McQuarrie made Star Wars visually iconic, and to this day, that’s one way I regard Paul. He made all those things we’re talking about, this mixture of Art Deco with film noir and retro-futurism that we had in our heads, and were trying to convey. Paul did it. He put it all together.” However, they hit a creative stalemate when it came to the story’s protagonist. “Paul had a much more traditional perspective on the story and character. I wanted to be an iconoclast, I didn’t want my character to be a detective in the city,” he says, “I wanted something else.” According to Motter, the most divisive element was the idea their protagonist was addicted to a drug that kept him awake 24/7. “That whole side of his character fascinated me, and Paul hated it. He didn’t like the hero who’s failed and is trying to redeem himself, and I don’t blame him. That’s a difficult archetype, but I don’t know if I succeeded in playing that card.” The property found a home with Canadian comics publisher Vortex Comics, scheduled for bi-monthly release beginning June 1984. However, the fork in the creative road led to an impasse, and Rivoche stepped away. “Paul contemplated, I contemplated, and that’s when Ken Steacy intervened,” explains Motter. As another studio mate, Steacy was more neutral, suggesting the project pass to a third person to break the logjam. According to Motter, Steacy was instrumental in recruiting the Hernandez brothers, who produced the first four issues. They missed the deadlines for all but the first, which Vortex Comics publisher Bill Marks

accepted as a necessary consequence of producing a quality comic. Many of the covers of the original run are credited to Rivoche or Motter. Howard Chaykin, Bill Sienkiewicz, Maurice Vellekoop, Mike Kaluta, and Dave McKean also supplied covers for the series. Their collective reputations for remaining outside mainstream comics reinforced the independent nature of the series as a whole.

SECRET IDENTITIES

In issue #3 (Dec. 1984) Mister X is revealed to be Walter Eichmann, one of Radiant City’s original architects. Before the city’s completion, the pressure of the ambitious project, combined with frequent disagreements with his collaborator, relationship. “They had the idea of exploiting her, contributed to an emotional collapse. Eichmann the idea that Mister X had a girlfriend, broke up with her, yet still has to go to her house to eat seeks refuge at the Ninth Academy, a and wash his clothes.” government-run think tank and hospital While at the Ninth Academy, resort. Here, he meets Mercedes, a Eichmann learns Radiant City’s young patient whose drug-addled psychetecture has been comproparents committed her for having mised, contributing to psychological a social conscience. Calling him disorders among its residents. This “Santos,” after her father, she leads to all manner of corruption later becomes his long-suffering and vice, presided over by resident sometimes-girlfriend. crime lord Arnold Zamora. DeterMercedes is one of Motter’s mined to set things right, Eichmann favorite supporting characters. “She anonymously returns to Radiant was originally conceived by me as City. Frequent encounters with a waitress in a donut shop who his wealthy ex-wife Consuelo, and paul rivoche liked Mister X, who was a regular Katsuda, his former attorney, lead customer. They somehow had a © CGC Comics Blog. to his exposure. Escaping from relationship, and then they broke up, but like many boyfriends and girlfriends that the Ninth Academy, Mercedes follows him, and she and Katsuda begrudgingly become Mister X/ break up, they still had a relationship.” Motter credits the Hernandez brothers for Santos/Eichmann’s allies against Zamora and his creating the three-dimensional dynamics of their cronies in city hall.

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Payment delays from Vortex led to the Hernandez brothers’ departure after Mister X #4 (May 1985). Motter took over writing, with art by Ty Templeton and Klaus Schoenfeld for #5 (Aug. 1985). Entitled “The Bizarre Death of Walter Eichmann,” Mister X’s original identity became more ambiguous, as a man claiming to be Eichmann is gunned down on the street, along with his ex-wife Consuelo. So, if Mister X isn’t Eichmann, who is he? The answer (for now) is Pierre Radiquet, a biochemist Eichmann supposedly met at the Ninth Academy. Their mutual resemblance enabled them to trade identities, but even that explanation turned fluid as the series continued. Though perhaps confusing to some readers, Mister’s X’s enigmatic nature was always Motter’s intent. “I wanted from the very beginning this idea that this man who had come back to the city for some unknown purpose in the initial issues, that he was the architect of the city. But then he was Radiquet, the chemist that created this drug to keep himself awake long enough to repair the city. Yes, he’s all these people. We’ll never know who he is.”

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Whatever he was before is now gone. He is now and forever Mister X, his very name suggesting anonymity. However, this lack of definition also contributed to the schism between Motter and Rivoche. “Paul was very frustrated by the fact that Mister X didn’t have a clear previous identity, an origin story. He was too ambiguous, and Paul was very uncomfortable with that. I don’t blame him but that isn’t where I was going with the character. The whole ambiguity of his identity, I was passionate about that. So, I was grateful that before he left the project, he continued as letterer and colorist for a while, until Debra Marks took over.” Canadian cartoonist Seth illustrated issues #6-13 (Dec. 1985-June 1988). His style, though different from that of the Hernandez brothers, suited the material perfectly. His work is highly nostalgic, especially for an early-to-mid-20th Century setting. As layers of Mister X’s persona are peeled away, in issue #9 (Dec. 1986), Mister X is identified as Pelham Welles, heir to the Friedkin Pharmaceuticals fortune–AND Radiquet, one of Friedkin’s top researchers. Younger brother Whitney Welles explains that Radiquet tested several of his developing drugs on himself, until his mind deteriorated and he was committed to the Ninth Academy. To conceal his absence, Whitney convinced his brother Pelham to assume Radiquet’s identity. From Radiant City’s underworld to its towers of power brokers, supporting characters of varying morality find themselves on a collision course. The concluding installment promised to rock Radiant City to its foundations. Sadly, that promise would be a long time coming. Motter submitted a single draft of the finale, coupled with adequate fill-in artwork by Rodney Dunn, resulting in a lackluster conclusion. In Mister X: The Archives, published in 2008, Motter prefaces the final chapter explaining that after issue #13, he was “becoming fatigued by the enterprise and other opportunities beckoned.” As a result, Motter revised Mister X #14 (Aug. 1988) himself for the collected edition.

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

In 1988, Motter developed The Prisoner for DC Comics. “I could no longer afford to work on Mister X,” explains Motter. “The economics, the sales and the marketing, and the publisher could no longer support my involvement.” But Vortex was not yet finished with Mister X. In April 1988, it launched a second 13-issue blackand-white series written by Jeffrey Morgan, a close friend of Motter’s. “Jeffrey is a wonderful writer, he did a wonderful job. He didn’t take it anywhere near where I would’ve taken it, but at that point, when you sell your house to someone, you don’t have a say in what they do with it.” Shane Oakley penciled the first six issues in a mid-1980s New Wave style reminiscent of underground “comix.” This radical departure in illustrative style distanced the story decades away from Motter’s original “World of Tomorrow” designs. Entitled “The Brides of Mister X,” the six-chapter arc features the return of Mercedes and Katsuda, and introduces a female gun-for-hire named Bride. She becomes an ally as well, and a potential rival to Mercedes. “Limbo Boxcars” (Mister X, #7 and 8, Oct. and Nov. 1989) is a two-chapter story. Pencils are credited to D’Israeli (Matt Brooker, a British comic artist), with inks by Diti Katona. Though this would be Katona’s only contribution to the series, D’Israeli remained on the series until its final issue, #13 (July 1991). During this time, Vortex also published a Mister X Special (1990), a one-shot story by Pete Milligan, with art by Brett Ewins. It’s set outside the continuity of “Volume II.” Mister X #13, features “The Radiant City Story, Reel 1,” credited in print to William R. Webb. According to Motter, this was a pseudonym for Seth, who he says was cultivating his own remarkable career. Art was supplied by D’Israeli, with Ken Holewczynski inking. By the early ‘90s, the boom of independent comic publishers had diminished considerably, and Vortex suffered. The company’s publishing schedule became erratic, its last comic (Nocturnal Emissions #4) released in March 1994. While Motter worked for DC Comics from 1993 to 1997, supervising the corporate and licensing designs for its properties, Mister X lay dormant. In 1996, the license for Mister X was transferred to Caliber Comics. New Worlds #1, a 64-page anthology series, republished “Reel 1,” followed by two subsequent installments, then a fourth written by Ian Edginton. Motter says it strayed far from his initial concepts, “But it was its own thing. To this day, I’ve been trying to get Dark Horse to re-publish the Caliber books in a single volume. I haven’t had any success but some day, I hope to.”

(top left) Brendan McCarthy’s cover to issue #1 of the second Mister X series. (top right) The cover to Caliber’s Mister X #2. (bottom) Brett Ewin’s take on Mister X from the Mister X Special. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). ©2025 Dean Motter.

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Mister X continued as a lead feature in New RENOVATION Worlds for its six-issue run, after which Caliber In 2006, Dark Horse Comics editor Diana Schutz followed up with a Mister X series written by was planning an anthology of crime fiction Deborah Marks. Art for the first three comics, published in 2009 under the title issues is credited to Gene Gonzalez, Noir. “I’d been editing Sin City for about who was later joined by Jay Geldhof. ten years, and I loved the crime genre The final chapter, published in in comics. Still do,” she explains. December 1996, featured artwork She had known Motter since by John Lucas. 1987, when he illustrated a 16It is here that the saga of page Grendel story by Matt Wagner Mister X abruptly stops. Not ends, for The Comico Collection, a slipbut stops. The last chapter consists cased set of back issue comics. She of 32 pages, with no firm resolution encouraged Motter to revive the to the story. Readers experienced character for the Noir collection. the literary equivalent being “Diana was instrumental in trapped indefinitely in an elevator getting me in the door,” Motter diana schutz between floors. Like most inderecalls. “Once I’d done ‘The Yacht pendent publishers of the era, on the Styx’ for Noir, she said, Caliber Comics’ fortunes dwindled and the ‘Let’s do more Mister X.’ She championed freeing company eventually folded. up the license form Vortex. So, we brought it to Dark Horse, and it’s a wonderful book.” This led to a lengthy partnership between Dark Horse and Motter, during which he floated the idea of launching a new series, beginning with an archive edition to re-introduce the character. Schutz recalls the necessary pitch work at Dark Horse to get the Mister X Archives approved, but her workload at the time prevented her from taking on another project. “I would have loved to edit that collection myself, especially as I’d been a fan of the original Vortex series–which is exactly what we were reprinting in that hardcover. The book went to Dave Marshall, who had by then graduated from being my assistant editor to my associate editor.” In November 2008–25 years after the debut of Mister X–Dark Horse Comics published Mister X: The Archives, a fully re-mastered hardcover collection totaling 384 pages. Though it provided ample foundation, it was not required reading for Mister X: Condemned, an entirely new four-issue miniseries launched a month later. The new story revolves around the Radiant City’s leaders’ efforts to rescue the city by destroying it. Demolishing the very buildings that have driven the citizens mad is counter to Mister X’s architectural rescue mission– especially when he learns there is a much more nefarious plot underway in the mayor’s office. Also returning are Mister X’s sort-of girlfriend, Mercedes, still struggling with her personal life, and Katsuda, ever protective of Mister X’s legal (if not lawful) interests. In 2011, Dark Horse Comics collected Mister X, Vol. II, into a 320-page hardcover titled Mister X: The Brides of Mister X. It also included Mister X Special #1, and stories from A1 #2, Comic Book Artist Vol. 2 #6, and ArtReview #27–28. Once more, this paved the way for fresh material, beginning with “Hard Candy,” a three-chapter story published in Dark Horse Presents #12-14 (May-July, 2012). Mister X is asked to find the kidnapped heiress to a pharmaceutical fortune. Unlikely to be distracted from his mission to save Radiant City, he is tempted with the offer of an unlimited supply of drugs to play with. In 2013, all three segments were released in a single issue.

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X-istential subsequents series. (top left) The cover for Mister X: Condemned #1. (top right) Mister X returns in Dark Horse Presents #12. (bottom left) Mister X: Razed Expectations #1, featuring “Xmas in Somnopolis.” (bottom right) Mister X: Pokerface and Other Stories contains the first part of a new Mister X story that remains unfinished. ©2025 Dean Motter.

A three-issue limited series–Eviction–was released the same year, detailing the aftermath of Condemned and the power grabs after the mayoral administration collapsed under its own corruption. The series was collected in a single volume–Eviction & Other Stories–that included Hard Candy. Motter maintained pace, contributing the three-part “Frozen Assets” storyline to Dark Horse Presents #33-35 (Feb.-April 2014). A four-issue limited series, Razed Expectations, followed in February 2015. All seven installments were combined in a collected volume–Razed–released the following November, which also included what is perhaps Motter’s favorite Mister X story. “Xmas in Somnopolis” featured both Hanukah and Christmas themed mysteries, limited to a black, white, and red color palette. Motter intended it as a tribute to both Walt Kelly and Will Eisner. “I knew Ty Templeton was as much a Pogo fan as I was, so I reached out to commission a cover. And he did his usual superlative job.” Though some stories were brief interludes, they’re a delightful stew of different approaches and storytelling within Radiant City. Motter likes to think the character and the concept just needed time for the audience to catch up to it. “The whole thing is with Mister X and the character and the concept, the stories began to write themselves. Many authors will tell you that when you’ve created a character and written them long enough, suddenly the characters will tell you where you ought to go. It’s not by design and I don’t think I’m a genius, but I did encounter that many times.” In July 2016, Dark Horse Comics published Mister X: The Modern Age, a 368-page trade paperback collecting all the Mister X tales published by Dark Horse comics, as well as previously unpublished behind-the-scenes material.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

Motter has completed the first issue of a new series, entitled Excavations, which reveals another of Mister X’s previous identities. He selfpublished it through Lulu.com as part of a book called Pokerface and Other Stories. “Pokerface” was a Mister X serial that ran in Dark Horse Presents but has never been included in a collection. Motter collected it into a Lulu edition, adding the first chapter of Excavations. “I was very, very happy with the way it came out, and I was saddened that it just didn’t seem affordable to finish. So, it remains incomplete.”

Motter had to stop producing new material for economic reasons. “Until the economics of the situation changes, I don’t know that I can afford to do it,” he says. “Dark Horse needs a commitment of at least four issues, and can only project sales to a certain number. At this time, that number isn’t high enough to generate a decent sized advance for the amount of work involved.” Motter is frustrated with how the market has evolved since the 1980s. “The idea of making comics into magazines and selling them in stores–that whole model that I was operating under no longer exists,” he says. “That speaks to my age, and my experience, and to a whole host of conditions that make a return of the Mister X comic very difficult.” He also cites changes in technology. “Back then, I had to go to a special art store to buy my special paper, and now I don’t have any paper in my home. I have a computer, and a tablet. I rarely use it to draw one single image that has “Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 77

been published. To me, it’s like using a ballpoint pen and drawing on a piece of glass. “But I make do. I draw it, and then scan it into the computer and I goof on it. If they told me back in college that’s how I’d be working… but here we are.” Otherwise, Motter remains semi-retired. In March 2024, Dark Horse published Whistleblowers: Four Who Fought to Expose the Holocaust to America, a collection of four stories by Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. Illustrated by Motter, he says the involvement of Amazon and Dark Horse

makes it more widely available than the original comics, which were distributed through various Holocaust venues. “They (Dark Horse) know if I want to take up Mister X again, they’re ready to publish it,” says Motter. “If the mood strikes me, and money isn’t as much of an issue, I may.” If not, Mister X remains a source of pride for Motter. “It had a great run. I am pleased with it.” PHILIP SCHWEIER is a lifelong comic-book nerd, and frequently contributes to BACK ISSUE magazine and ComicBookBin.com. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

A TALE OF THREE CITIES While Mister X makes his home in Radiant City, two additional post-modern towns–Terminal City and Electra City–occupy his world, featured in ancillary projects also created by Dean Motter. Beginning in May 1996, DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint published the Mister X-adjacent Terminal City. Wonderfully irreverent, funny, and exciting, it also presented a future that could have been. “Terminal City is probably–even beyond Mister X–the zenith of my creative work,” says Motter. Illustrated by Michael Lark, the nine-issue limited series is equal parts Damon Runyon, Alfred Hitchcock, and Quentin Tarantino. Crime and theatre collide when an ancient artifact is discovered in Terminal City’s Herculean Arms, a residential hotel that is home to crime lords, con men, and washed-up daredevils. Terminal City was re-published in trade paperback format the following year, perhaps as a prelude to the five-issue sequel, subtitled Aerial Graffiti (Nov. 1997-March 1998). Despite Motter and Lark’s return collaboration, it was less successful, perhaps due to less effort in promoting and marketing. “I think they must’ve assumed it had a following, but the sales on the second series weren’t quite as good,” says Motter. “So, when I proposed a third series, they took a pass on that, and that was it.”

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Both series were nominated for several Eisner and Harvey awards during their 1996–1998 run. In 2012, Dark Horse Comics added The Compleat Terminal City–both series in a single volume–to its Mister X revival. Motter wrote and illustrated Electropolis, a four-issue series published by Image Comics from May 2001 to August 2002. It is an old-fashioned, hard-boiled detective yarn set in Electra City, another neighbor to Mister X’s stomping grounds. Following the alleged suicide of low-rent detective Jacob S. Ladder, his reprogrammed robot janitor Menlo Park took over the agency. Several years later, femme fatale Tess LaCoyle turns to Park and his partner Anesta Robbins for protection from prison escapee Boris St. Elmo, whom she helped convict for his complicity in Ladder’s mysterious death. Park and Robbins re-open the case, and the potential scandal behind it. As their investigation ensues, they become trapped in a mire of nebulous morality between crime lord Alfred MacGuffin and police detective Johnny Picasso. The story features Motter’s signature puns, cultural sub-references, and affectionate nods to film noir. And it includes a key cameo by Mister X. Dark Horse Comics collected the series into a single volume in 2009, and a larger format edition has been available through Lulu.com. Menlo Park, Anesta Robbins and Electra City also feature in the 2015 Mister X series, Razed Expectations, published by Dark Horse.

AN ODD LETTER

One nice thing about Not-Ready-For-Primetime-DC-Heroes: I don’t feel quite as ignorant not knowing much about most of them. I’d heard of some, but would Send your comments to: quickly be heading home Email: rogerash@hotmail.com with consolation prizes if (subject: BACK ISSUE) quizzed on them. Postal mail: Roger Ash, Editor BACK ISSUE Had a good time 2715 Birchwood Pass Apt. 7 going through; learning Cross Plains, WI 53528 plenty and seeing vintage covers new to me. Find BACK ISSUE on Even had some laughs. None more so than this: In the Elongated Man article, regarding the Flash, it said, “...editor Julius Schwartz wanted to feature a super-stretchy character similar to Plastic Man.” That stopped me, momentarily, wondering why not use the actual character, which DC acquired in 1956? Burst out laughing, seconds later, at the next sentence: “Schwartz was unaware that DC owned the rights to Plastic Man, along with some other Quality Comics characters they had purchased several years earlier.” Now that’s fast service in answering my question! Also enjoyed the cover where Elongated Man and Plas are tied in knots. All they need is a follow-up with Elastic Lad, Mr. Fantastic, and Stretch Armstrong. Liked the exploration of “Jason’s Quest”. I’d heard of it, at the end of the Showcase run, but knew nothing of it. Seems to be a product of the times, like Easy Rider and Then Came Bronson, that cycling, cross-country, would be mind-expanding or at least very dramatic. Not my fantasy. How would I afford gas without a job? How would I shower (unless staying on the cycle while at a car wash)? I laughed at the cover of Showcase #88, with all the faces. I thought it was reminiscent of GL/GA #86. Yet, it came first. Great minds thinking alike? I’d heard of, but never seen, Zardoz. I’d seen, but never read, Vartox. That, fifty years later, explains the “unique” costume. Especially enjoy your cover galleries. Yes, I have to use a magnifying glass but it’s definitely worth the effort. This issue, you included some cool Gil Kane covers I’d not seen previously. Really appreciated your Terry’s Toon this issue. So many characters to identify! I’d give myself a 40% score, so hope you grade on the curve. It was fun seeing how eclectic he went. I laughed aloud at the little Mr. Mind and cracked up, on a second go through, at seeing the Joker Fish. It was in the margin, so I missed it initially. With last issue and now here, nice to see him back in print. Loved the Black Canary drawing by Alex Toth. An unexpected surprise. As she was fully dressed, I thought her pose was more classy or playful than exploitive. Finally, the one article I was most interested in was Steve Ditko’s Odd Man. I thought it a tremendous loss to see it a casualty of the ‘78 DC Implosion.

And it didn’t have to be. They could have easily kept Shade and him around, as back-ups, until conditions improved. As usual, in a panic, they ditched most everything but the mainstream JLA characters. Since Odd Man didn’t make it to print for a while, they could have sold it back to Steve. Let him debut it elsewhere. From the sound of it, even in the character’s belated debut, they tampered extensively. Why? Who better understood an unseen character such that they needed to fix it? Or at least invite Steve back to continue. Here, they tinkered with a new character and then unceremoniously dropped him. How is that a gain? Charlton had a similar situation but acted with far more class. Steve had done two episodes of Kill-Joy, in ‘73 and ‘74. When they weren’t planning on publishing more, they reverted the rights to him. It became his copyright. He did return to do a new story at least once. Who knows, maybe that was why he was open to doing self-copyright characters, like Mocker and Missing Man, for other companies but as his copyright characters. An interruption or cancelation didn’t mean the end of his exploring them. This situation with Odd Man was like cancelling a play just before curtain time on opening night. A shame and a waste. Joe Frank Glad you enjoyed the issue, Joe. If we can inform while having fun, we’re doing something right.

A FIGURE OF BEAUTY

“Black Canary In The Bronze Age”: I’m glad John Wells’ article stopped short of The Longbow Hunters. Whatever mischaracterization befell her beforehand, it doesn’t compare to her treatment in that mini-series. “Jimmy Olsen: Man of Action”: I thought Jimmy’s tenure as Mr. Action lasted well into his Superman Family days, not just 5 issues. “Who is NUBIA?”: So, no mention of the 12” Nubia action figure that was released with the other 12” Wonder Woman figures by Mego in 1977? “Friends Forever: The Bromance of Vartox and Superman”: Ironic that Superman would befrenemies with a Sean Connery knockoff considering that Christopher Reeve reached out to Sean Connery for advice on how not to get typecast as a fictional character. More useless trivia: Burt Reynolds was considered for both Zardoz and Superman! Delmo (The Saint) Walters Jr. Thanks for bringing the Nubia figure to our attention, Delmo. It’s a hoot! Next issue: It’s the 40th Anniversary of DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths and we’re going all out and devoting our entire issue to it! Featuring MARV WOLFMAN, GEORGE PÉREZ, MIKE W. BARR, STEVE ENGLEHART, ROBERT GREENBERGER, PAUL LEVITZ, ELLIOT S! MAGGIN, DOUG MOENCH, JERRY ORDWAY, ROY THOMAS, MARK WAID, and more! Re-presenting the cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths Index #1 by Pérez. Don’t ask-just BI it! Roger Ash, editor

“Hey, Mister!” Issue • BACK ISSUE • 79

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by ROGER ASH, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between two professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comics-based media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), ER EISN RD and more! ! AWA NER

EISNER AWARD Winner! Best Comics-Related Journalism

WIN

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BACK ISSUE #147

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BACK ISSUE #144

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BRONZE AGE SAVAGE LANDS, starring Ka-Zar in the 1970s! Plus: Turok—Dinosaur Hunter, DON GLUT’s Dagar and Tragg, Annihilus and the Negative Zone, Planet of Vampires, Pat Mills’s Flesh (from 2000AD), and WALTER SIMONSON and MIKE MIGNOLA’s Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure. With CONWAY, GULACY, HAMA, NICIEZA, SEARS, THOMAS, and more! JOHN BUSCEMA cover!

SPIDER-ROGUES ISSUE! Villain histories of Dr. Octopus, Lizard, Kingpin, Spidey’s mob foes, the Jackal and Carrion, Tarantula, Puma, plus the rehabilitation of Sandman! Featuring the work of ANDRU, SAL BUSCEMA, CONWAY, DeFALCO, GIL KANE, McFARLANE, MILLER, POLLARD, JOHN ROMITA JR. & SR., STERN, THOMAS, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and more! DUSTY ABELL cover!

MEN WITHOUT FEAR, featuring Daredevil’s swinging ’70s adventures! Plus: Challengers of the Unknown in the Bronze Age, JEPH LOEB interview about his Challs and DD projects with TIM SALE, Sinestro and Mr. Fear histories, superheroes with disabilities, and... Who Is Hal Jordan? Featuring CONWAY, ENGLEHART, McKENZIE, ROZAKIS, STATON, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, & more! GENE COLAN cover!

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BACK ISSUE #149

BACK ISSUE #151

BACK ISSUE #152

Great Hera, it’s the 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF BACK ISSUE, featuring a tribute to the late, great GEORGE PÉREZ! Wonder Woman: The George Pérez Years, Pérez’s 20 Greatest Hits of the Bronze Age, Pérez’s fanzine days, a Pérez remembrance by MARV WOLFMAN, a Wonder Woman interview with MINDY NEWELL, and more! With a stunning Wonder Woman cover by Pérez!

DC SUPER-STARS OF SPACE! Adam Strange in the Bronze Age (with RICHARD BRUNING & ANDY KUBERT), From Beyond the Unknown, the Fabulous World of Krypton, Vartox, a Mongul history, the Omega Men, and more! Featuring CARY BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, DAN JURGENS, CURT SWAN, PETER J. TOMASI, MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Cover by CARMINE INFANTINO & MURPHY ANDERSON!

’80s INDIE HEROES: The American, Aztec Ace, Dynamo Joe, Evangeline, Journey, Megaton Man, Trekker, Whisper, and Zot! Featuring CHUCK DIXON, PHIL FOGLIO, STEVEN GRANT, RICH LARSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS, DOUG MOENCH, RON RANDALL, DON SIMPSON, MARK VERHEIDEN, CHRIS WARNER & more superstar creators. Cover by NORM BREYFOGLE!

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES! A who’s who of artists of NEIL GAIMAN’s The Sandman plus a GAIMAN interview, Sandman Mystery Theatre’s MATT WAGNER and STEVEN T. SEAGLE, Dr. Strange’s nemesis Nightmare, Marvel’s Sleepwalker, Casper’s horse Nightmare, with SHELLY BOND, BOB BUDIANSKY, STEVE ENGLEHART, ALISA KWITNEY, and others! KELLEY JONES cover.

MARVELMANIA ISSUE! SAL BUSCEMA’s Avengers, FABIAN NICIEZA’s Captain America, and KURT BUSIEK and ALEX ROSS’s Marvels turns 30! Plus: Marvelmania International, Marvel Age, Marvel Classics, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Marvel Novels, and Marvel Value Stamps. Featuring JACK KIRBY, KEVIN MAGUIRE, ROY THOMAS, and more! SAL BUSCEMA cover.

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BACK ISSUE #153

BACK ISSUE #154

BACK ISSUE #155

BACK ISSUE #156

BACK ISSUE #157

BIG BABY ISSUE! X-Babies, the last days of Sugar and Spike, FF’s Franklin Richards, Superbaby vs. Luthor, Dennis the Menace Bonus Magazine, Baby Snoots, Marvel and Harvey kid humor comics, & more! With ARTHUR ADAMS, CARY BATES, JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, SCOTT LOBDELL, SHELDON MAYER, CURT SWAN, ROY THOMAS, and other grownup creators. Cover by ARTHUR ADAMS.

BRONZE AGE NOT-READY-FORPRIMETIME DC HEROES! Black Canary, Elongated Man, Lilith, Metamorpho, Nubia, Odd Man, Ultraa of Earth-Prime, Vartox, and Jimmy Olsen as Mr. Action! Plus: Jason’s Quest! Featuring MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, STEVE DITKO, BOB HANEY, DENNY O’NEIL, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MARK WAID, and more ready-for-primetime talent. Retro cover by NICK CARDY.

THIS ISSUE IS HAUNTED! House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Unexpected, Marvel’s failed horror anthologies, Haunted Tank, Eerie Publications, House II adaptation, Elvira’s House of Mystery, and more wth NEAL ADAMS, MIKE W. BARR, DICK GIORDANO, SAM GLANZMAN, ROBERT KANIGHER, JOE ORLANDO, STERANKO, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and others. Unused cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ & WRIGHTSON.

BRONZE AGE GRAPHIC NOVELS! 1980s GNs from Marvel, DC, and First Comics, Conan GNs, and DC’s Sci-Fi GN series! With BRENT ANDERSON, JOHN BYRNE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, JACK KIRBY, DON MCGREGOR, BOB McLEOD, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, JIM STARLIN, ROY THOMAS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. WRIGHTSON cover.

KEITH GIFFEN TRIBUTE ISSUE! Starstudded celebration of the prolific writer/ artist of Legion of Super-Heroes, Rocket Raccoon, Guardians of the Galaxy, Justice League, Lobo, Blue Beetle, and others! With CARY BATES, TOM BIERBAUM, J.M. DeMATTEIS, DAN DIDIO, ROBERT LOREN FLEMING, CULLY HAMNER, SCOTT KOBLISH, PAUL LEVITZ, KEVIN MAGUIRE, BART SEARS, MARK WAID, and more!

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ROGER HILL’s conversation with diabolical DON HECK, severed hand films, pre-Code comic book terrors, the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s Quatermass, a Killer “B” movie classic, plus horror-inspired covers of the Shadow’s own comic book, and more! Start the ghoul-year with retro-horror done right by FORSHAW, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, RICHARD HAND, VON SHOLLY, and editor PETER NORMANTON.

See MARS ATTACKS banned cards, model kits, comics, and a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! Also, the chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN, terrifying puppets from film, and more comic books they’d prefer you forget! Plus, more Hammer Time, JUSTIN MARRIOT on obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, another Killer “B” film, and more to satiate your sinister side!

Get ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Spend Hammer Time with the “Brides of Dracula”, and 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, chill to pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS, see a Killer “B” movie, and more by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

SKULL & BONES ISSUE! Ghost Rider from comics to movies, skeleton covers from Atlas Digests and pre-Code horror comics, HY FLEISHMAN’s 1950s skeleton covers and stories, Disney’s skeletons, ’70s Pirates of the Caribbean models and Last Gasp’s Skull Comics, the films of William Castle, and Killer B films: House on Haunted Hill, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, plus our Hammertime section!

ZOMBIE ISSUE! The films White Zombie and I Walked With A Zombie, GEORGE ROMERO and LUCIO FULCI’s zombie apocalypses, zombie pre-Code comics, BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s undead creations, horror comics of Brazil, the contributions of black stars of classic horror cinema, Hammer’s The Plague of Zombies, Fantaco’s Night of the Living Dead, France’s Revenant, and more!

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BRICKJOURNAL #90

ALTER EGO #193

ALTER EGO #194

ALTER EGO #195

ALTER EGO #196

THE BIG ISSUE! We get on board MARK STAFFA’s giant (working!) steam engine, and show PAUL HETHERINGTON’s colossal LEGO creations, including the biggest version of It’s A Small World you’ll see outside of Disneyland! Plus BRICKNERD, BANTHA BRICKS: Fans of LEGO Star Wars, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!

An abridgment of EDDY ZENO’s “Drawn to Greatness” book, showcasing Superman artists who followed JOE SHUSTER: WAYNE BORING, PAUL CASSIDY, FRED RAY, JACK BURNLEY, WIN MORTIMER, and others. With appreciations by ORDWAY, KUPPERBERG, ISABELLA, JURGENS, WAID, MACCHIO, NEARY, NOWLAN, EURY, THOMAS, and more! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

ROY THOMAS celebrates 60 years in comics! Career-spanning interview by ALEX GRAND, e-mails to Roy from STAN LEE, the history of Wolverine’s creation, RT’s 1960s fan-letters to JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and his top dozen stories compiled by JOHN CIMINO! With art by BUSCEMA, KANE, ADAMS, WINDSOR-SMITH, COLAN, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and cover by TONY GRAY!

NEAL ADAMS REVISITED! Interviews by ALEX GRAND and BILL FIELD, as well as EMILIO SOLTERA—and an overview of Neal’s merchandising art for Marvel and DC Comics and in other fields, conducted by JAMES ROSEN! Plus Adams art, as inked by PALMER, GIORDANO, VERPOORTEN, ROUSSOS, SINNOTT, DEZUNIGA, and others! With FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

Concluding our presentation of EDDY ZENO’s book on the early SUPERMAN artists from ALTER EGO #193—with a focus on style-setting WAYNE BORING and classic cover illustrator WINSLOW MORTIMER! Featuring a fabulous, previously unprinted cover by BORING! Also: FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS.

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #38 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #39 KIRBY COLLECTOR #93

KIRBY COLLECTOR #94

KIRBY COLLECTOR #95

RICK VEITCH discusses his career from undergrounds and the Kubert School; the ’80s with 1941, Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal; to Swamp Thing, The One, Brat Pack, and Maximortal! Plus TOM VEITCH’s history of ’70s underground horror comix, part one of a look at cartoonist ERROL McCARTHY, the story behind Studio Zero— the ’70s collective of artists STARLIN, BRUNNER, WEISS, and others, and more!

THOMAS YEATES career-spanning interview about the Kubert School, Swamp Thing, Eclipse Comics, and adventure strips Zorro, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant! GREG POTTER discusses his ’70s Warren horror comics and ’80s reboot of Wonder Woman with GEORGE PÉREZ, WARREN KREMER is celebrated by MARK ARNOLD, plus part one of a look at the work of STEVE WILLIS, part two of ERROL McCARTHY, and more!

SUPPORTING PLAYERS! Almost-major villains like Kanto the Assassin and Diablo, Rodney Rumpkin, Mr. Little, the Falcon, Randu Singh, and others take center stage! Plus: 1970 interview with Jack by SHEL DORF, MARK EVANIER’s 2024 Kirby Tribute Panel from Comic-Con, neverreprinted Simon & Kirby story, pencil art gallery, and more! Unused Mister Miracle cover inked by MIKE ROYER!

SPACE RACES! Jack’s depictions of cosmic gods and life on other planets, including: how Ego, Tana Nile, and the Recorder took Thor to strange new worlds, OMAC’s space age future, time travelers in Kirby’s work, favorite Kirby sci-fi tropes in his stories, plus: a 1967 LEE/KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, never-reprinted Simon & Kirby story, robotic pencil art gallery, cover inked by TERRY AUSTIN!

MADNESS! Kirby’s most deranged work: Dingbats, Goody Rickels, Destroyer Duck, the Goozlebobber, Not Brand Echh, and wild animation concepts! Plus, a 1980s Kirby interview by JAMES VAN HISE, a look at Jack’s psychedelic coloring, Kirby’s depictions of Dr. Strange, Forever People art gallery, MARK EVANIER, a crazy 1950s Simon & Kirby story, behind an unused Machine Man cover inked by STEVE LEIALOHA!

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AMERICAN COMIC BOOK RETROFAN #38 CHRONICLES: 1945-49 Tune in to Saturday morning super-heroes

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RETROFAN #40

RETROFAN #41

Can your mind stand the shocking truth of… ED WOOD CAST CONFESSIONS? Plus: Ideal Toys’ Zeroids, television Tarzan RON ELY, Planters® Peanuts’ Mr. Peanut, CHARLES ADDAMS, TV’s The Fugitive, the forgotten 1981 Spider-Man cartoon, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, ED CATTO, and MARK VOGER.

Here comes TV’s Dennis the Menace, with stars JAY NORTH, GLORIA HENRY, and JEANNIE RUSSELL! Plus: Hogan’s Heroes turns 60, TV Western Have Gun–Will Travel, Big Little Books, The Incredible Hulk in animation, MICKY DOLENZ as Circus Boy, and more! Featuring columns by ED CATTO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER.

We kick off with TV’s original Kung Fu starring DAVID CARRADINE, a NANCY DREW history, Disney animator FLOYD NORMAN, TOM CORBETT: SPACE CADET, collectible ’60s and ’70s cereal premiums, in search of SAM GOODY, and more! Featuring columns and contributions by HERBIE J PILATO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER, and editor ED CATTO!

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BACK ISSUE #160

MARVEL COMICS IN THE EARLY 1960s

Issue-by-issue entries on Marvel’s 1961– 1965 output, when gunfighters traveled the West and monsters roamed the Earth! (224-page TRADE PAPERBACK) $29.95 (Digital Edition) $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-126-4

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Alter Ego (Six print issues) Back Issue (Eight print issues) BrickJournal (Four print issues) Comic Book Creator (Six print issues) Cryptology (Six print issues) Jack Kirby Collector (Four print issues) RetroFan (Six print issues)

BACK ISSUE #161

BACK ISSUE #162

SUMMER FUN ISSUE! Marvel’s Superhero Swimsuit Editions, Betty and Veronica swimsuit gallery, DC’s Strange Sports Stories, the DC/Marvel softball rivalry, San Diego Comic-Con history, Impossible Man Summer Vacation Specials, DC Slurpee cups, DC/Whitman variants, and more! Featuring BATES, DeCARLO, HUGHES, JIM LEE, LOPRESTI, MAGGIN, ROZAKIS, STELFREEZE, and more! GUICE cover.

MUTANT MAYHEM ISSUE! BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH’s Weapon X Wolverine, the romance of Havok and Polaris, Rogue and Nightcrawler limited series, Brood and Arcade villain histories, “Mutant Massacre” crossover, and more! With JON BOGDANOVE, JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, LOUISE SIMONSON, MIKE WIERINGO, and more! WINDSOR-SMITH cover.

BACK ISSUE GOES MAD! Things get crazy this issue as we cover Madman, Batman: Mad Love, MAD superhero movie parodies, the Mad Hatter, Madballs, and more! Featuring the work of MICHAEL ALLRED, BRUCE TIMM, PAUL DINI, GERRY CONWAY, DOUG MOENCH, MIKE W. BARR, JEPH LOEB, and others. Madman cover by MICHAEL ALLRED! Edited by ROGER ASH.

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Covers the aftermath of WWII, when comics shifted from super-heroes to crime, romance, and western comics, BILL GAINES plotted a new course for EC Comics, and SIEGEL & SHUSTER sued for rights to Superman! By RICHARD ARNDT, KURT MITCHELL, and KEITH DALLAS.

RETROFAN #39

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Mod Squad, Hanna-Barbera cartoonists, Jesus Christ Superstar, Mr. Potato Head, ‘Old Yeller” actress BEVERLY WASHBURN, Flying Nun collectibles, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

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THE CRAZY COOL CULTURE WE GREW UP WITH

Dear TwoMorrows customers, Diamond Comic Distributors has filed for bankruptcy without paying for our December and January magazines and books, leaving us with enormous losses—and we still have to cover our expenses on those items, and keep producing your favorite publications. Until payments from our new distributors begin in a few months, we’re staying afloat with webstore sales. So here are some ways you can help: 1) Order something at www.twomorrows.com! Anything you purchase directly from us—print or digital—will help us stay in business, and avoid disruptions to our upcoming releases. NOW WITH LOWER INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING PRICES! Download our new 74-page 2025 interactive catalog for easy ordering at: https://shorturl.at/gA9Fv and don’t miss: • Full 8-volume sets of American Comic Book Chronicles hardcovers at 30% off! • Ultimate bundles with most older issues of our magazines at 50% off, and more! 2) Subscribe or renew! Now with NEW LOWER INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES! Single magazines ship worldwide for $5 each (pay just $15.95 per issue postpaid worldwide)! Comics shops could miss some items during our switch to Lunar Distribution, and new tariffs may result in price increases. Save by pre-ordering new items and subscribe or renew your subscription.

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3) Tell your comics shop to switch their Diamond orders to Lunar Distribution! Diamond has cancelled orders for all our future products, so ask your local comics shop to order through Lunar Distribution, or you can order them from our website. Look for these new TwoMorrows items in the March issue of Lunar’s Next Phase catalog (#39): • Alter Ego #193 • Back Issue #159 • BrickJournal #89 • Cryptology #3 • Comic Book Creator #38 • Jack Kirby Collector #93 • RetroFan #38

• Alter Ego #194 • Back Issue #160 • BrickJournal #90 • Comic Book Creator #39 • Cryptology #4 • Retrofan #39 • Marshall Rogers: Brightest Days & Darkest Knights (hardcover)

4) Tell bookstores to order our books through SCB Distributors & Turnaround Distribution! Our new bookstore distributor (SCB Distributors) services stores in the US and Canada, and the UK via Turnaround Distribution in London. And our new books will be available on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk giving you even more options for purchasing our books worldwide. With the help of loyal readers like you, TwoMorrows Publishing will get through this, and emerge even stronger. Thank you for your many years of support. TwoMorrows’ fans are the best!

John Morrow, publisher TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 • USA (919)449-0344 • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • web: www.twomorrows.com