Back Issue #125 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

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MATT WAGNER’s MAGE and

IN-DEPTH HISTORIES of

GRENDEL COLLEEN DORAN’s A Distant Soil • STAN SAKAI’s Usagi Yojimbo • STEVE PURCELL’s Sam & Max: Freelance Police • JAMES DEAN SMITH’s Boris the Bear • LARRY WELZ’s Cherry Poptart

Volume 1, Number 125 February 2021 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Matt Wagner COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Roger Ash Mark Ciemioch Shaun Clancy Colleen Doran Grand Comics Database Allan Harvey Heritage Comics Auctions Dave Lemieux Bernie Mireault Arnold Pander Jacob Pander Amanda Powers Tom Powers Rose Rummel-Eury Stan Sakai Tim Sale Diana Schutz James Dean Smith Jerry Smith John K. Snyder III Lynne Twining Brennan Wagner Larry Welz VERY SPECIAL THANKS Matt Wagner

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BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 INTERVIEW: Vivat Grendel! Matt Wagner and the Devil. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Our cover artist opens up about his cyclical, long-running series; featuring additional interviews with Grendel editor Diana Schutz and Grendel artists The Pander Brothers, Bernie Mireault, Tim Sale, and John K. Snyder III FLASHBACK: Usagi Yojimbo: Stan Sakai’s Samurai Rabbit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The story of the perennially popular Bushido bunny INTERVIEW: Bear Necessities: Boris the Bear’s James Dean Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Cartoonist Smith’s Boris was “Deadpool” before there was a Deadpool BEYOND CAPES: Going the Distants: Colleen Doran’s A Distant Soil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 The writer/artist discusses the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of her space opera INTERVIEW: Sam & Max: Freelance Police’s Steve Purcell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The Oscar-winning artist takes us on a road trip with his funny animal agents of chaos FLASHBACK: Mage: The Hero Uncovered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 A behind-the-scenes analysis of Matt Wagner’s Arthurian trilogy INTERVIEW: Cheryl Blossom vs. Cherry Poptart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Is the sexy Cherry a clone of an Archie character? We ask Larry Welz BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Reader reactions

BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $90 Economy US, $137 International, $36 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Matt Wagner. Grendel TM & © Matt Wagner. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective creators or companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2021 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

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Grendel. His very name forever echoes in any Grendel fan’s heart and soul. To read any story arc from Matt Wagner’s Grendel cycle is to initiate one’s first step toward falling in love with this darkly complex saga that has forever changed the landscape of independent comics. Since 1982, when the seductively villainous Hunter Rose debuted in Comico Primer #2, to the present day, with the cybernetic Grendel Prime’s galaxy-spanning quest to find a new home for humanity in Grendel: Devil’s Odyssey, Wagner and company have been entertaining and challenging their loyal readership. As one of the many devout Grendel fans, I am thrilled to share my interviews with Matt Wagner, his long-time editor Diana Schutz, and artistic collaborators The Pander Brothers, Bernie Mireault, Tim Sale, and John K. Snyder III.

INTERVIEW WITH MATT WAGNER

The Devil, You Say! A Hunter Rose Grendel commissioned illo by and courtesy of Matt Wagner. Grendel TM & © Matt Wagner.

To m P o w e r s

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INFLUENCES AND ORIGINS

TOM POWERS: Matt, what literary works—for example, Beowulf and John Gardner’s novel Grendel—inspired the character of Grendel? MATT WAGNER: Grendel’s origin was a confluence of many sources. Like a lot of comic fans, I grew up loving heroic fantasy; I loved classic mythology, and I loved superheroes, those legends’ modern equivalent—clear morality tales where good triumphed over evil and the dragons were always slain. But then, again like so many others, during my teen years, things took a turn towards the dark side. As I grew a bit older, all I had to do was look around me to realize that the good guys didn’t always win and the bad guys didn’t always get their just comeuppance. Somehow, those heroic tales that I’d grown up loving now seemed a bit hollow and echoed with a reality that didn’t seem quite true, however much I might’ve wanted that to be the case. You mentioned Beowulf, and, yeah, I was familiar with that uber-myth of European culture, but I was even more influenced by (again, as you mentioned) John Gardner’s 1971 novel Grendel, which I’d discovered in my school’s library around the time I was 12 or 13. Grendel recounts the familiar tale of Beowulf but with a startling twist; it was told from the POV of

Grendel TM & © Matt Wagner.

the loner-villain and was sympathetic to the title character’s monstrous actions as a desperate and understandable response to humanity’s violent tribalism. I’d never read anything like this, a story that turned the traditional roles of hero and villain on its collective heads and, obviously, the impression stuck… the name, particularly. Shortly after that, I also discovered the many works of Michael Moorcock, particularly the Elric saga, which presented an even more complicated version of good and evil and featured a main character who was both likable and contemptible all at the same time. Elric was the physical and philosophical opposite of most fantasy heroes of that day; he was slender, weak and pale, dependent on dark magic, drugs, and soul-stealing for the source of his strength. As a character, Elric was morally ambiguous, often aiming to do the right thing but usually ending up destroying most everything he holds dear; it was my first exposure to an antihero. Again, this was a huge upset for my way of thinking to that point… the mere idea that basically good people could do incredibly awful things despite their best intentions. There were other sources that strengthened this view, but I’d say those two sources were the most significant in regard to the development of my Grendel. POWERS: Equally, which comic-book creators influenced you? WAGNER: Well, if you look at those first several appearances of Grendel, you’d think I was an enormous anime fan. In fact, I’d only just discovered the world of Japanese animation, and part of its appeal was that it was foreign and a bit mysterious to me at that point… nowhere near as ubiquitous as it is today. As a result, I attempted to play with those forms and design sense for my first published efforts, but it was obviously only a passing phase. matt wagner As a young comics fan, I consumed Facebook. a lot of different art styles. Of course, in the mid-’70s, it was hard to ignore the massive presence of both Jack Kirby and Neal Adams, but this was also around the same time that the more illustrative efforts of the artists who made up “The Studio” (Wrightson, Windsor-Smith, Kaluta, and Jones) were also becoming a really big deal. And I’ve spoken many other times about how discovering Warren Publications over-sized reprints of Will Eisner’s The Spirit opened my perspective on how varied and inventive a comic narrative could be. But I’d say my two greatest artistic influences during my formative years were probably C. C. Beck and Joe Kubert. During my tween years, DC Comics had recently launched Shazam! as a monthly title, reintroducing the world to Beck and the original Captain Marvel. The bold simplicity of Beck’s style really appealed to me, and I think that’s what initially attracted me to anime as well (minus the giant doe eyes and tiny little mouths). But I think Joe Kubert’s incredible and classic run on Tarzan is where I really learned how to tell a comic story— where to focus the reader’s attention, how to establish an environment, when to let the action overwhelm things, and (again, that simplicity factor) how to draw an entire jungle by only using an effective minimum of lines and detail. It was only after quite a few years as a professional comics creator that I fully realized the enormous effect Joe’s efforts had had on my own storytelling, and, in fact, I tell his son Adam about it nearly every time I see him. Poor guy’s probably sick of hearing about it by now! 4 • BACK ISSUE • Creator-Owned Comics Issue

Of course, as the years have gone by, I’ve continued to absorb and feel the influence of many other classic creators—Alex Toth, Hugo Pratt, Richard Corben, and Moebius, to name just a few—but Beck and Kubert both left an early and indelible stamp on my development as an artist. POWERS: Grendel’s costume has such an iconic design. How did you come up with the distinctive mask and double fork weapon? WAGNER: Here, we need to talk about influences again. As I was developing what would prove to be my first published character and storyline, I had the idea to try doing a story about a supervillain as opposed to a hero. You have to remember that there really weren’t many comics like that around in those days. Both Marvel and DC had a made a few stabs at centering a book or so around their bad guys, but it never seemed to work out. Titles like The Joker or Super-Villain Team-Up never lasted more than a few issues, and I think this was due to the fact that the bad guys always seemed like second-stringers; readers knew they weren’t the real stars of these narratives, only a source of conflict for the heroes. It was around this same time that I discovered two Italian comics antiheroes through a massive resource book that was popular at the time, The World Encyclopedia of Comics. Italy, it turns out, already had a history of successful series about bad guys, specifically Diabolik and Kriminal. Both of these series were even popular enough to have inspired foreign film versions (again, comic-book movies were a rarity at the time), including the incredibly cool Danger: Diabolik directed by horror-film legend Mario Bava. Both characters were gentleman crooks— urbane thieves and gangsters with whom the reader was sympathetic and who maintained their own somewhat twisted codes of honor. Both characters wore dark jumpsuits and masks, and, in fact, Kriminal even wore a full-cover facemask that bore a skull design. So, with these examples in front of me, I set out to design my own uber-villain as the star of my potential series. Like a lot of people, I’ve always had a certain unease about clowns… I never really got the humor supposedly expressed by the crazy fright wigs and outlandish makeup. So my initial mask designs were meant to look like a scary clown… some more obviously so than others. The one I finally settled on still had echoes of that circus lunacy but also evoked other elements as well. To me, the final design of the Grendel mask looks something like a demonic skull in reverse, with the slashes through the eyes evoking both horns and tusks while still retaining the mocking whimsy of a harlequin. I’ve also always been a fan of swords and swordplay in any sort of film or TV depiction and knew that I didn’t want my character to just pack a gun, which seemed too common and ordinary for the sort of romantic, larger-than-life persona I was trying to spawn. Around this time, someone I knew had managed to purchase an antique sword-cane; you twisted a band on the handle and that released the blade that you could then draw from the cane/sheath. Needless to say, that had an incredibly dashing appeal, and so I decided my Grendel would wield something similar. I decided that, in order to stress the diabolic aspects of his character, it should be a fork instead of a simple sword. But having the three blades of a traditional pitchfork pop out of the slim body of a cane seemed like it would look clunky and unbelievable, and so I settled on the twin, slim blades of Grendel’s now fairly iconic weapon.

COMICO THE COMIC COMPANY

POWERS: How did Grendel end up being published by Comico? WAGNER: I always have people asking me how to get into comics, and I always answer that I’m the wrong guy to ask since a large factor in how I got started was sheer luck and happenstance. In the early ’80s, I was attending an art school in Philadelphia, and I got on the elevator one day and noticed a guy wearing a comic-book-themed T-shirt. We struck up a conversation and that guy turned out to be Bill Cucinotta, one of the founders of Comico. The core members of the earliest version of Comico were just a bunch of college pals who had this dream of publishing independent comics—in a day when there really weren’t so many of those yet. These guys were all “city-lads” and knew a whole lot more about the business and production of comics than I ever had exposure to, having grown up pretty rurally. At one point, we all dropped out of school to follow that crazy dream, and Comico’s initial launch featured four black-and-white books, all done by the three original guys in the group and me, Grendel being one of those titles. Admittedly, our first efforts were crude, and the company was fairly disorganized, but that eventually all turned around when Bob Schreck and Diana Schutz signed on to the ranks. But that’s a whole different story in its own right. POWERS: What are your thoughts on the early Grendel appearance in Comico Primer #2 (1982) and the original three-issue run of Grendel (Mar. 1983–Feb. 1984)? In other words, what did you learn from these energetic first efforts with the character? WAGNER: Well, as I said, my initial efforts were admittedly crude but also, as you said, energetic. Of the four premier Comico titles, only Grendel garnered much positive response, and that’s what eventually led to me getting the chance to develop a color

Roots (top) Grendel’s first appearance, from Comico Primer #2 (1982). (bottom) Grendel’s return, the first of a three-issue miniseries, in 1983. Grendel TM & © Matt Wagner.

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Anatomy of a Cover (top left) Snyder’s cover rough for Comico’s Grendel #26 (Dec. 1988). (top right) Inker Jay Geldhof’s inky handprint smears, which became (bottom left) Eppy’s blood smears on the published cover. (bottom right) The motif revisted, for a God and the Devil collected edition. Scans courtesy of John K. Snyder III. TM & © Matt Wagner.

an absurd degree. Thus, the Pope lives in an immense tower that is under a constant state of construction (erection), atop which he’s also secretly building a powerful projectile weapon with which he hopes to hate-f*ck the sun itself… and the whole thing is powered by vast quantities of bananas. Vampire pope indeed! POWERS: We are likewise introduced to the wealthy yet humanitarian aristocrat Orion Assante in this storyline, and we learn that his lovers are his two sisters, Neki and Cesti, who are twins. What does this provocative storytelling choice tell us about Orion? WAGNER: As you said… Orion is an aristocrat. And despite any egalitarian leanings, the Assantes are, like any aristocratic family, fairly insular and tribal. There’s a real clan mentality that pervades that sort of arrangement, and we see that reflected in Orion’s relationship with his sisters. All three of them see absolutely nothing morally wrong with their sexual relationship since it springs from a deep-seated belief that their family and their actions are on the right side of history. And so why shouldn’t they choose to share such intimacy within the confines of their own dynasty? I drew somewhat obvious inspiration for this scenario from the Kennedys—an outwardly liberal political family that consistently supports and defends progressive causes and yet still manages to come off as fairly snooty and entitled. But Orion’s relationship with Cesti and Neki stands in direct contrast to the patriarchy of the Church. Unlike the (supposedly) chaste upper echelons of the all-male Catholic hierarchy, Orion accepts and relishes the female members of his family with a lusty bravado. This is a motif that’s reflected later in his life as well… again, with two women at his side. POWERS: It’s also rather unique that John K. Snyder III and Jay Geldhof, along with Bernie Mireault on inks for four of the issues, were

switching roles for the penciling and inking duties on this story arc. What did you appreciate about this artistic approach? WAGNER: Again, this was an ambitious concept that fell prey to that constant and unforgiving monthly schedule. The original idea was to have John and Jay switch off on the penciling and inking duties since I had plans to switch up the POV for this arc with every third issue. The first two parts would concern the upper-crust political maneuverings and schemes of Orion vs. the Church, and then every third chapter would focus on Eppy’s crazed and destitute reality alongside Pellon Cross’ mercenary efforts. The whole point was to show that the different strata of this future society were not only vastly divergent but also intricately enmeshed. But, best laid plans and all that… again, the monthly grind caught up with us, and Bernie had to step in to add a much-needed hand with the inks. As had happened previously, this option kept us on track for that all-important shipping schedule but with better results than our previous stumbles. In fact, I’ve gotta sing the praises of this creative team. This was a really big project and a very complex narrative scenario, not only featuring a huge cast of characters but also requiring a lot of work in regard to setting, style, technology, and even historical accuracy with all the church reference. John, Jay, and Bernie all contributed to fully fleshing out an intricate world with incredible results, and they deserve a lot of recognition for this arc. Of course, John and I have gone on to collaborate on several other projects together over the years, most notably our revamp of Dr. Midnite for DC Comics and a run on Zorro that led to the creation of Lady Zorro. To this day, he’s one of my dearest friends.

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Who Knows What Evil? Another madefor-Matt-Wagner crossover. Grendel TM & © Matt Wagner. The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

Hunter obviously abhors pedophiles. But, of course, he’d also view any sort of mob mentality as artless and brutish. So when he happens upon a group of his minions about to execute a fellow gangster for being gay (inspired, in great part, by the Vito character from The Sopranos), he dismisses their petty vitriol as being ill-informed and an utter waste of his time. If that same mobster had stolen from or crossed Grendel’s orders in any way… that’d be a different situation and outcome altogether. But punishing someone for whom they choose as a sex partner is the same to Hunter as condemning someone over the color of their hair or (to quote an infamous deleted scene from Kubrick’s Spartacus) whether they prefer oysters to mussels. It conveys nothing about a person’s strength of character, and so he’d never consider it as a factor in whether that person lives or dies. So, in that story, he’s not really granting mercy… he’s merely curtailing actions by his underlings that he considers extraneous and stupid. And that

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might be a pretty dark way to express the “It Gets Better” message… but, hey, it’s Grendel. POWERS: Three years later, with the three-issue Grendel vs. Shadow series (Sept.–Nov. 2014), you bring Hunter Rose into The Shadow’s world of 1930s New York City. What was your motivation for this dynamic pairing? WAGNER: It was a big personal thrill for me to have Hunter face off with the Master of Darkness since I’ve been a huge Shadow fan since I was a young comics reader. I first discovered The Shadow via the series DC Comics published in the ’70s, a short and incredible run written by Denny O’Neil and featuring spectacular art from Michael Wm. Kaluta. Around the same time, you could find quite a few of The Shadow’s radio adventures available on LP vinyl, and the original pulp novels were also being reprinted in paperback form with equally spectacular cover art from the legendary Jim Steranko. So I had a lot of Shadow adventures available to me just when I was at a ripe age for those tales to make an indelible impression. Over the many years of my career, I’ve been lucky enough to get the chance to contribute to the various mythos of some of my favorite characters from my childhood, and, for a long time, The Shadow was kind of the final grail on my bucket list of such wanna-do characters. But then I finally got the chance to work on The Shadow by writing and providing cover art for The Shadow: Year One for Dynamite Entertainment. When Dynamite’s editor-in-chief, Joe Rybandt, suggested a Grendel/Shadow crossover to me, I almost knocked him over by bellowing, “YES!!” Following the two successful Batman/Grendel crossovers, I’d been approached many times over the years by various creators and publishers with all sorts of offers to do the same thing with a litany of other characters. But these proposals never really appealed to me considering the fact that I’d already had my character crossover with f*cking Batman… twice! Any other character crossover would seem like something of a letdown after that… except for one. Again, I was a huge Shadow fan as a kid, so both of these character crossovers were something of a professional dream-come-true for me. POWERS: Why is The Shadow’s time period of the 1930s so appropriate in connecting with the Art Deco aesthetics of the Hunter Rose era of Grendel? WAGNER: Hunter has always seemed like a man born outside of the right time period. You get the feeling he’d be more at home in an era where style and elegance were in full swing. In fact, even beyond its Art Deco stylings, Devil by the Deed feels a bit ambiguous in regard to its time frame; it’s supposed to be set in the ’80s, yet it has a flavor reminiscent of the ’30s. It actually predates the aesthetic of TV’s animated Batman Adventures in that regard. So the chance to have him fully inhabit a world where jazz, literature, tuxedos, and gowns were the societal norms really fit Hunter like one of his fine white gloves. It also gave me the opportunity to play with his latent emotions in a way that I couldn’t do in a modern timeframe. Hunter’s love affair with Jocasta stands as an emotional monolith in his psyche… he can’t ever get over her loss. But by placing him in a time period before she was even born, I was able to crack the shell of his outward supremacy and make him vulnerable to romantic feelings that he’d long thought buried. And it was great fun to have my seemingly invincible villain be almost defeated by this brash and independent woman whom he thought he loved, a fiery “daughter of crime.” It acted

Mark Ciemioch

A samurai wandering from village to village, helping the needy. A ronin who conducts himself with honor. When it comes to the pursuit of justice for the vulnerable, he is fearless. His heart has known love and loss, but his best friend regularly leaves him holding the check. He is Miyamoto Usagi, and he is a rabbit. To comic readers, Miyamoto is known as the hero of Usagi Yojimbo, one of the longest-running creator-owned comic series in history. Created by writer, artist, and letterer Stan Sakai, Usagi has been in publication for more than three decades between multiple publishers, and even appeared in popular cartoon shows and sold millions of toys. But through all of those years and hundreds of issues, Sakai remains the primary creator of Usagi Yojimbo. stan sakai According to Stan Sakai, “[Usagi] is what a warrior should be. He has Emi Fujii. honor, but because he’s a masterless samurai, he’s a bit of a rogue. He has a streak of independence in him. Unlike real samurai, he straddles the Japanese caste system. He flows freely to interact with farmers and peasants to artisans, and that makes for good stories. That’s why I can do stories about crafts like pottery making, or social structure. I can tell a range of stories because he’s such an individual type of character.” BACK ISSUE interviewed Sakai about his career and memories of working on Usagi in March 2020. Let’s go back a few decades (and a few centuries, to feudal Japan) to learn more about the beginnings of Sakai and his iconic hero, Miyamoto Usagi.

Hare on Horseback A 1988 hand-colored Usagi Yojimbo specialty illustration by Stan Sakai. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). Usagi Yojimbo TM & © Stan Sakai.

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ORIGINS

Born in 1953, Stan Sakai spent his childhood in Hawaii, where he lived amongst a Japanese-American population that celebrated the culture. In his neighborhood, there was a movie theater that screened films by Akira Kurosawa, the great Japanese filmmaker behind such epics as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Throne of Blood, and more. Many of these films starred Toshiro Mifune, the intense, charismatic actor who became one of Japan’s most iconic movie stars. Mifune was as adept as playing men of honor as characters of ill repute, along with every personality in-between. Many of these samurai movies made a distinct impression of the young Sakai, and he would spend all day every Saturday watching films at the theater. Meanwhile, young Sakai was also starting to enjoy comic books as well. The first comic he recalls was an adaptation of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty film. He enjoyed many of the DC Comics books of the late 1950s and early ’60s, but when the Marvel Age of Comics began in the early 1960s, it opened a new world for Sakai. “I remember buying Fantastic Four #2 off the stands,” Sakai says. “I fell in love with the Marvel style of storytelling. I bought both DC and Marvel back then because you could do that when comics were a dime. It was affordable, even for kids.” Sakai was fascinated by artists like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, creators who not only laid the foundation of the Marvel Universe but also became two of the most influential and celebrated figures in the history of the medium. “Kirby, I loved because he was just so dynamic, but Ditko was just plain weird,” Sakai says. “The way his characters moved, his compositions, and his imagination were very different. That appealed to me, his entire style.” The art that Sakai absorbed in his youth became a considerable influence on him, but pursuing a creative career was not something he thought about until he was a high school student. “Back in the day, I never imagined the way comic books worked,” Sakai says. “There were no conventions or magazines about comics. There were fanzines, but they were amateur publishing books. They did not have the fan base that you do now, so it was hard to find out how comics were created. It was in high school that I realized that people actually make them: Writers, artists, letterers, [etc.]. It was such a revelation to me that maybe I could do this.” Along with his friends Gary Kato and Dennis Fujitake, Sakai started developing his own comics. All three would become comic-book professionals in the future. “It became our training ground,” Sakai says. “It was all hand-drawn and put together. We’d pass them onto others. It wasn’t too much later that after high school and I was in university, that I started doing artwork professionally for newspapers and magazines. I graduated from college with a fine arts degree, and I started pursuing art professionally.”

Sakai then moved to Southern California, where he met and befriended several other comics professionals, including Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Scott Shaw!, and even Kirby, living in the area at the time. Sakai continued doing freelance art, while he also taught a class on calligraphy at his church. He mentioned it to Aragonés, who told Sakai he was interested in having him do the lettering for his new book, Groo the Wanderer. “I had never lettered a comic book professionally, but fortunately at that time, there was a magazine at that time called Comic Scene,” Sakai says. “Each issue focused on another aspect of comic-book creation. That very month, Todd Klein wrote an article, ‘How I Letter Comics.’ I pretty much followed what Todd told me to do, and I adapted his methods. Eventually, I started doing my own lettering [apart from Groo].” Sakai landed several more lettering assignments, including comic strips syndicated by the Los Angeles Times. His work was getting noticed, and after a recommendation from Shaw!, Sakai got a phone call every comics fan dreams they could receive. “I picked up the phone one day: ‘Hi, this is Stan Lee, and I’m looking for Stan Sakai!’” the artist relates. Lee was looking for a new letterer on his daily Spider-Man newspaper strip, and Sakai picked up that baton for 25 years. The working relationship grew to a personal one, as the two Stans would meet every few weeks to exchange work and talk about life. “When my daughter Hanna was four months old, she went to her first convention, and Stan just happened to be there, so she took a picture with Stan,” Sakai recalls. “The next time I went to see him, I gave him a copy of the picture, and he was very appreciative. Then the next time I went to see him, there was a framed picture of Stan and Hanna next to a picture of Stan and President [Ronald] Reagan, so that was funny. He was a neat guy.”

Ronin Rabbit (left) Courtesy of Stan Sakai, some of the artist’s earliest character sketches. (right) Usagi Yojimbo’s premiere, in Albedo Anthropomorphics #2 (Nov. 1984). TM & © Stan Sakai.

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“The Winds Howl” Sakai’s creative calligraphy is on display in this Usagi vs. Shingen battle page from Usagi Yojimbo #14 (Jan. 1989). TM & © Stan Sakai.

influenced by movies than by comic books. I love that you can change the layout and size of panels, but as far as storytelling goes, I refer a lot to cinema.” Also, Sakai’s skills as a letterer supplement the pages and give the story the unified cohesion of one artist. In the duel between Usagi and Shingen, Sakai includes the trademark martial-arts battle cry, “Hiiiiyaaaaa,” across the panels as the opponents cross swords. At the same time, the sounds of the waterfall, “Kshaaaaaa,” hangs in the background with a different, narrower font. Sound-effect lettering is as important as the dialogue balloons in Usagi Yojimbo. “I still do lettering by hand,” Sakai says. “I love it because it’s part of the process where I don’t have to think as much. It’s more mechanical for me. I use a different skill set with Groo, as far as the size of my lettering and the types of pens I use. It’s very different than what I use with Usagi and even Spider-Man. For me, the lettering style and techniques are very different according to what projects I’m working on right now.”

TURTLE POWER

Just as “The Dragon Bellow Conspiracy” was concluding, Usagi made a different appearance. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles title was the most important independentcomic-book success story of the 1980s. By the end of the decade, the half-shelled martial-arts heroes created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird [see BACK ISSUE #22— ed.] had become a pop-culture phenomenon with a syndicated animated series and Playmates toy line.

Having two animal-based sword-wielding warrior properties at the same time was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so in the third season of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show, Usagi made his first appearance on Oct. 12, 1989 episode, “Usagi Yojimbo.” An action figure of the Ronin Rabbit joined the TMNT toy line that same month (see sidebar for a summary of all of Usagi’s animated antics). The seeds of the Usagi/TNMT crossover came together nearly five years earlier, as both properties debuted in comics in 1984. Sakai was impressed with the Turtles book by Eastman and Laird and sent them a fan letter expressing his love for their work. Shortly after that, the Turtles creators sent one back praising Sakai and Usagi. As Casablanca’s Rick Blaine might say, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, even though they lived on separate coasts. “We met at the San Diego Comic-Con, and we became fast friends,” Sakai says. “It was at one of the cons when I was sitting with Peter Laird, and he just continued on page 37

“Turtle Soup and Rabbit Stew” Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Leonardo drops in on the Bushido bunny in Mirage Studios’ Turtle Soup #1, from 1987. The Turtles and Usagi would cross over many additional times. TMNT TM & © Viacom Overseas Holdings, C.V. Usagi Yojimbo TM & © Stan Sakai.

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Leo lands in Usagi’s universe, and teams with the samurai along with Gen, Tomoe Ame, and Lord Noriyuki to defeat a kidnapping plot by Lord Hebi. Following their encounter, Usagi helps Leo travel back to the Battle Nexus, wherein part two, they team up to reunite the Turtle family and defeat the merged Drako/Ninja being. The animation and style of the second Turtles series feel of its era. Still, Usagi resembles more of the character comic readers would recognize than the 1989 version, who is a comic character. Also, it’s nice to see more of his world incorporated into the TMNT mythology… but sit tight, the best is yet to come. The Heroes in a Half-Shell entered into the computer animation world for their 2012 Nickelodeon series. In the fifth and final season, Usagi (Yuki Matsuzaki) finally debuted in “Yojimbo,” premiering on July 23, 2017. What’s unique about the first episode is that Sakai wrote it. The visual language and tone of these episodes match wonderfully with Sakai’s style in the comics and introduces Jei to animation with a sequence inspired by his first appearance in Usagi Yojimbo #10 (Aug. 1988). Usagi volunteers to help guide a young, bratty boy Kintaro to a faraway temple for safety, as the boy is considered the Golden Child. Jei wants the boy for himself and uses his sorcery to summon the Turtles to this dimension, sending them off to hunt down Usagi. Their first meeting begins in conflict, but Usagi can defend himself long enough for the Turtles to overcome their mind control. In the second episode, “Osoroshi no Tabi,” (July 30, 2017), Usagi and the Turtles journey through a haunted forest encountering spirits, menacing beings, and their distrust of each other. The conclusion occurs in “Kagayake! Kintaro” (Aug. 6, 2017), which sees the heroes reach the Temple, only to find a trap laid by Jei. During the battle, Kintaro’s abilities manifest, helping to turn the tide against Jei. The final encounter between Usagi and Jei is epic, as they duel over Kintaro. The child bites Jei, distracting him long enough for Usagi to deliver the final blow and knock the villain off a bridge to his death, complete with the trademark Sakai death skull bubble. Miyamoto Usagi has become a vital element of the TMNT mythology with his appearances in several cartoon series. Watching all the Usagi episodes in a row gives fans an appreciation of the evolution of the Turtles, and how each appearance from the rabbit samurai connects more deeply to Sakai’s vision. The Nickelodeon series is the best translation for the comic fans of Usagi, and Sakai’s artwork appears as an Easter egg during a flashback scene as well. If the Turtles return with another animated series, it’s very possible that Usagi will appear as well. But who knows, maybe one day the Turtles will make a guest appearance in an Usagi Yojimbo animated series! [Editor’s note: As this issue was entering production, on July 15, 2020 the news broke that Stan Sakai is involved with the development of a new Usagi animated series, Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles, to stream on Netflix. The showrunners and executive producers are Candie and Doug Langdale.]

Cartoonist Crossover (top) Stan, holding the first-ever Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles drawing, and TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman. (bottom) Stan and TMNT’s Peter Laird before a wall of Turtles actions figures. Photos courtesy of Stan Sakai.

continued from page 35

said, ‘We’re expanding the Turtle line with other creators, and would you like Usagi to be part of the Turtles? We’ll make a toy and put him in the TV series.’ I said, ‘Sure, that would be great.’ That started the official collaboration with the Turtles.” Comics being comics, it wasn’t long before the characters met in an official story. In Mirage’s Turtle Soup #1 (Sept. 1987), Usagi encounters Leonardo after a time-travel incident (again, comics being comics). It was a brief story, but Leonardo returned to Usagi’s time again in Shell Shock #1 (Dec. 1989). They and the fans enjoyed these collaborations between the creators, and Usagi and the Turtles would continue to cross over with each other with comics, cartoons, and toys in the following decades. Following Usagi’s appearances in the cartoon series, Sakai says the awareness of the character skyrocketed with new audiences. “It was great, and I loved that,” he says. “People became acquainted with Usagi, and they had never thought of checking out the comic book before he appeared in the Turtles. I take it as a terrific example of brand awareness, particularly with the toys, which I think sold 2.2 million units. It created huge brand awareness, and the last time Usagi appeared with the Turtles was a couple of years ago. It was a three-part story that I had a hand in writing the first part, and I loved the process of working with the studio.” Creator-Owned Comics Issue • BACK ISSUE • 37

Of Course, You Know This Means War interview by

Shaun Clancy

transcribed by Rose Rummel-Eury

While old-school anthropomorphic characters like Yogi Bear and Tom and Jerry were aging out of the limelight in the mid-1980s, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book became a surprise indie smash (and soon, a multimedia sensation that continues to thrive). TMNT’s success birthed a black-and-white comics boom where frenetic funny animals including black-belt hamsters and kung-fu kangaroos ran amok in comic shops.

Enter Boris the Bear, a bad-ass bruin that Rambo-ed over spoofs of numerous comic-book characters in hilarious comics stories produced by cartoonist James Dean Smith. Boris the Bear became a hit comic book… but before long disappeared from the stands. In this exclusive interview with BACK ISSUE’s Shaun Clancy, Smith relives the rise and fall of the furry, fiery, funny fan-favorite of the Big ’80s. – Michael Eury, editor

James Dean Smith’s original color cover artwork to Boris the Bear #1 (Aug. 1986). All original artwork accompanying this article courtesy of Shaun Clancy. Boris the Bear TM & © James Dean Smith.

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Bruin What Comes Naturally (top left) James Dean Smith’s first Boris the Bear illustration, from 1984. (top right) Original Smith cover art to Boris the Bear #2 (Sept. 1986), a Transformers takeoff. (inset) The proud creator in 1986, holding a copy of issue #2. TM & © James Dean Smith.

SHAUN CLANCY: Did your parents name you after James Dean, the famous actor? JAMES DEAN SMITH: Well, they told me no. I’m named after my dad’s brother. I get asked that all the time! “Are you named after the actor?” “Well, no.” But if it’s really good-looking lady, I go, “Well, yeah.” [laughter] CLANCY: Where were you born, and do you have any siblings? SMITH: In Merced, California, at Castle Air Force Base in 1955. Just a sister, a couple years younger than I am. CLANCY: Were you collecting comics on the Air Force base? SMITH: No, I wasn’t then. We moved to Michigan in 1960. My dad was transferred to Kincheloe Air Force Base, which doesn’t exist anymore. I remember when he came through the door with a stack of comics. I’d never seen one before. He had an airman on his staff that had a footlocker in the barracks, which could only hold so much. He found out my dad had a kid and so he gave him a stack of comics. There was one of the first Hulk books with Jack Kirby, Sgt. Rock with a nice Joe Kubert cover… he had everything—Sad Sack, Archie… I remember looking at the Hulk—it was one of the first one on the stack. So, every day, I was bugging my dad, “Did you get more comics? Did you get more comics?” He’d come through every couple of weeks with a big stack and I’d just devour those suckers. I’m not sure if I was really reading them because I was about five, so I was just starting to read a little bit. Mostly I was just looking at the pictures and it’s been a love affair ever since. CLANCY: Did you follow the funnies in the newspaper?

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SMITH: A little bit. It wasn’t until we got to Hawaii that I saw Prince Valiant. I was a huge fan and loved Hal Foster’s work. We’d throw the Sunday funnies away, and I’d think, “I really wish I had that.” Then, I figured out, “Gee, I should cut it out and save it!” so I started doing that and I still have them from 1967 or 1968. CLANCY: You transferred to Hawaii? SMITH: Yes. We transferred there in 1966 and came back to Oregon in 1970. I still collected comics over there and wish I still had them. CLANCY: Your dad was career Air Force? SMITH: Yeah, he got out after 21 years and then he went into the electrical business and did pretty well at that, too. CLANCY: At what point did you start to draw? SMITH: I’d been drawing since I was a little kid. I took some art classes in college—but that was more watercolors and oil painting, not in what I’m doing, which is cartooning. CLANCY: Were you thinking of doing a daily strip, a comic book, or both? SMITH: It didn’t really dawn on me that I could do something like that. At that time, I’d look at the comics and think they were so far beyond me. I kept it in the back of my head. I had little cartoon characters and would make my own little comics using animals—even back then—like rabbits and dogs and whatnot for my superheroes, rather than people. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been more into the animal kind of thing. CLANCY: It was also the height of fanzines, fan groups, and conventions. Did you ever attend any in the late 1960s and 1970s?

Burying the Competition (top left) Jim Smith’s original cover artwork to Boris the Bear #8 (Mar. 1987), including among its throng a riff on Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo. (top right) An unused alternate cover originally produced for issue #8. (bottom) Paul Gulacy’s Boris the Bear #12 (Oct. 1987) back cover, spoofing James Bond. Scan courtesy of Dave Lemieux. Boris the Bear TM & © James Dean Smith.

of his mind. He started to do comic-book publishing and did Dark Horse Presents. Then he talked to me about Boris, but I didn’t realize at the time, he just wanted to do a one-shot. I did that and we made pretty good money. I talked him into doing another issue and we ended up doing a contract that up to issue #12. The first issue was a lot of fun because I’d never done a comic book before. It sold about 80,000 copies and I convinced him to do another, but things after that kind of went south. I had to leave. I had no choice—he left me no choice, but I don’t want to get into that. CLANCY: How much of the book were you doing? SMITH: He and I were co-plotting all the issues, and I was doing the artwork and all the inking. I think John Workman did the first issue with the lettering, and then I think it was David Jackson, who took over the lettering through issues #12. There might have been someone in between, but I’d have to check. I was doing all the pencils and inking and Gary Martin did three or four pages of inks in issue #3. The rest of the time I was doing my own stuff. CLANCY: Was it a monthly book, or bimonthly? SMITH: It was monthly, but sometimes it was difficult to coordinate a certain person’s time to sit and talk with me to plot the book. A lot of times I’d go home with no plot and no way to work. CLANCY: Did you edit your own book? SMITH: No, no. He had his own editor there. I didn’t have anything to do with that. I’d work out a plot and do quick sketches while we talked and then go home and work on the pages from that. 46 • BACK ISSUE • Creator-Owned Comics Issue

Allan Harvey

The story of a young girl who discovers she was born heir to a vast alien empire and is in fact one of the most powerful psionic weapons in the universe, A Distant Soil first flowed from the pen of writer/artist Colleen Doran when she was herself a teenager, not much older than her heroine. But even at that tender age, Doran had been drawing, and dreaming of a life as an artist, for some considerable time: at age five, Walt Disney came calling… “I don’t really remember that much about it,” says Doran. “There was a contest to draw a Valentine’s Day card for Mickey Mouse, so I did, and I remember winning and being very happy, and people asking, ‘Did your mother draw that for you?’ and being really offended by that, and it just set me off for the rest of my life! [laughs] Because, forever and ever, when you’re an artist and you do something, people are, like, ‘Did you really do that? Did you copy that?’ Oh, so irritating, it drove me nuts! It actually hampered my growth as an artist, I think, because I was so angry about it, so neurotic about being accused of copying things, I wouldn’t use reference. I was well into my professional years before I would use reference. It was ridiculous.” As a young child she regularly read comics and newspaper strips. She was especially fond of Aquaman, and a voracious collector of the Prince Valiant Sunday strips. Each week she would dutifully clip them out and save them in a special box. Unfortunately, relates Doran, “When I was about ten years old, we moved out of the city into a tiny town, and my parents threw away my comics. So, I didn’t see any comics again for a while; you could not buy them where I lived. “And then I got pneumonia when I was 12. I was very, very sick, and had to be hospitalized. Someone gave me this big box of comics, and I was, like, ‘Oh, my God!’ Up until then I thought it would be nice to work for Disney; I thought that’s what colleen doran artists got to do. The idea of actually being a cartoonist and drawing comic books didn’t occur to me until I got that big box, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is what I want to do,’ and I just went for it. I mean, I certainly had my dreams of maybe being an astronaut, and, as a practical matter, I thought I was going to be a doctor, but what I really wanted to do was be a cartoonist. And, 24/7, it was comics, comics, comics, from then on in. “I started sending out samples right away. I was sending out samples and getting rejection letters at 12; it was very funny. [laughs]”

Girl with the Power! Liana Scott, the mysterious girl at the heart of A Distant Soil, lets rip with the psionic abilities that mark her out as a much sought-after weapon and brings down her pursuers, much to her own amazement. Brent, Galahad, and Chris look on in wonderment. From A Distant Soil #10 (Dec. 1994). All art and captions accompanying this article are courtesy of Allan Harvey. A Distant Soil TM & © Colleen Doran.

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Rockin’ the ’70s! Jason Scott in his early superhero form, drawn in the days when Colleen was a regular contributor to fanzines and APAs and Jason was hanging with the likes of Aquaman and the Teen Titans. Dave Cockrum and his revolutionary designs for the Legion of Super-Heroes was clearly a big influence on the young artist. As A Distant Soil developed into space opera over time, the superhero trappings were left behind. © Colleen Doran.

Teen Spirit! Amazingly, this page of a Legend of King Arthur strip was drawn by Colleen Doran when she was just 13 years old. Her interest in Arthurian legends goes back to her childhood and eventually resulted in Sir Galahad joining the cast of A Distant Soil years later. © Colleen Doran.

INSPIRATIONS

With Doran barely into adolescence, the ideas that would eventually develop into her magnum opus, A Distant Soil, were already percolating through her mind, colliding and coalescing to form ever grander and more complex plots from the unlikeliest of sources. “It started because I was doing Aquaman fanfic. I was designing characters and whatnot, and I basically came up with this Mary-Sue character that could communicate with land animals, and she got to be Aquaman’s girlfriend. Believe it or not, she ended up morphing into Liana from A Distant Soil. It seems like a stretch, but it was the idea of having mind powers and so on. “Originally, A Distant Soil was a superhero yarn. In fact, there were characters from the Teen Titans in it. I was just coming up with my own characters and doing this fanfic. As I went along, I realized I was shedding trappings of the superhero stuff and taking it more and more into space opera. Eventually, everyone lost their costumes, and suddenly it was just a space opera. It was me playing with the characters, over and over, until it became something else.”

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Comics weren’t the only influence on the nascent series. Young Doran’s television habit also played its part, with cartoons such as Super Friends and The Space Sentinels adding to the mix. “The Space Sentinels was a very early influence on A Distant Soil. There was a lady in there, Astra, who could change into animals. That’s pretty much where Bast came from. There was a character called Mercury; he was Asian. That’s where Brent came from, although I ended up basing him on one of my high school classmates. And the character Hercules, that’s where Galahad came from. I was a big King Arthur fan, of course, but that kind of look, that’s where some of those A Distant Soil characters came from. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what happened.” Doran was also picking up ideas from one of the best: the legendary Jack Kirby. Kirby had recently returned to Marvel Comics, following a stint at DC, and was writing and drawing a series that closely hewed to notions of alien visitations in the distant past. Ideas that were at the time promoted in books such as Chariot of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken. “Jack Kirby’s Eternals. I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. Things like the Deviants, that’s where all that Variant stuff came from in A Distant Soil. Now, of course, my art doesn’t look a thing like Kirby’s, but his wild ideas were a big influence on me. It’s all that stuff that was in the zeitgeist then. I had all these books, Mysteries of the Unexplained, and Ancient Pyramids, all that kind of stuff. We all know it’s bullcrap, but it was popular then.

“There was also that British TV show, The Tomorrow People, with all the psychic kids. That was definitely in my head when I was working on this stuff. “Every time you found something, no matter what it was, if it was the worst TV show in the world, if it was geek-oriented, you just glommed onto it like it was wonderful. We would watch anything. We watched The Man from Atlantis, which was terrible. The Phoenix, which was terrible. And I know The Phoenix was an influence on A Distant Soil as well. “A Distant Soil is just a melting pot of ’70s pop culture or geek culture that congealed and became this weird comic book thing some kid was doing in the middle of nowhere. [laughs]”

The Gang’s All Here A character sheet showing various A Distant Soil characters early on, during the WaRP Graphics era. This series is distinguished by its being drawn in a laborious tonal pencil technique, which meant each page could take days to complete. Eventually, the decision was made to move the series to a more conventional inked style. The prominent presence of Dacia here reveals her original importance in the storyline, but she would be played down in later iterations. A Distant Soil TM & © Colleen Doran.

FALSE STARTS

Out of this mélange came more concrete ideas, and Doran began to submit drawings of early versions of her characters to various fanzines. “I remember doing some fanzine stuff really early on, 1979, 1980. Any time I would get a chance to work on a zine, I would just be drawing my characters. I’d do pinups of them, or little two- or three-page stories with them, where they’d be standing around talking. I’d just send them out. Nobody would know who they were, but I would know, and it made me happy to draw them.” This activity eventually drew the attention of the editors at book publisher Donning, and through them Doran was put in contact with WaRP Graphics, which had been publishing ElfQuest. Not yet out of her teens, Doran was finally was able to bring her story into the world. Following a preview in ElfQuest #16 (June 1983), the original A Distant Soil series ran for nine issues (a tenth remains unpublished) between 1983 and 1986, and is distinguished by its mostly being drawn in an unusual, and painstaking, tonal pencil style. It was not a happy experience for Doran and these days she prefers not to talk about it, considering the series an abortive “first go.” Soon after, she found herself back with Donning and offered it a whole new version of A Distant Soil to be published through its Starblaze imprint. Doran started over from scratch for a projected series of oversize graphic novels, in color for the first time, and while the story was basically the same, the art and dialogue were completely new. Unfortunately, although it promised much, within two years this new start was dead: Donning closed and sold off Starblaze. Before the imprint folded in 1989, however, Doran was able to complete two books— Immigrant Song and Knights of the Angel—which together comprise roughly the first act of the overall narrative.

ARIA PRESS

At this point, with two failed attempts behind them, most creatives would have given up, but Doran, disappointed as she undoubtedly was, was made of sterner stuff: if she was going to tell her story, she was going to have to do it on her own. By the early 1990s, only a very few pioneering comics creators had been brave enough to even attempt casting aside the perceived shackles of the large publishers and go it alone. Dave Sim (Cerebus the Aardvark) is a name that instantly springs to mind when considering self-publishers; Jeff Smith (Bone), another. Doran boldly chose to join these rarefied ranks by setting up her own publishing company, Aria Press. “The word ‘aria’ means ‘solo, with accompaniment,’ so I thought that would be a good word to describe the company, because it acknowledges that you’re doing stuff alone, but that you’re never entirely on your own; you always have people helping you.”

Typewriter at the Ready On only a very few occasions has Colleen written a full script for herself to draw. This is the first page of the script for Knights of the Angel, the second—and final—graphic novel of the Donning series, from 1989. TM & © Colleen Doran.

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Michael Eury

If you put a gun to my head—which both Sam & Max would not hesitate to do—and force me to categorize Sam & Max: Freelance Police, I guess I’d brand it “Funny Animals.” But not the kind of huggable funny animals that greet vacationing families at major amusement parks or hawk sugar-laced breakfast cereals and auto insurance in TV commercials. Sam & Max, as is the tradition of funny-animal cartoons and comics, display human characteristics. In their case, though, they’re the kind of humans you’d probably divert eye contact from, or cross the street to avoid if you saw them strolling in your direction. ’Cause when these private investigators are on a case, stuff breaks—laws, glass, limbs (tree and human), the fourth wall, and most of all, your funny bone. Sam is a dog. A six-foot-tall, talking Irish Wolfhound. He’s the straight man of our duo, except he’s not a man, although he dresses like one, in a Kolchak-worthy crumpled suit, tie, and fedora. Sam is a walking encyclopedia of obscure knowledge. I’d really like to see him on Jeopardy. Max is a rabbit. I think. No, make that a lagomorph. He’s a frenetic, three-foot agent of chaos with an off-kilter, toothy grin so insidious it would purse the Joker’s ruby lips. Max carries a concealed weapon, but since he’s buck-naked Sam wonders where he packs the thing. When together on a case—which might involve combatting a coven of devil worshippers to prairie-dog-looting pirates to Moon-invading giant cockroaches to brain-infesting earwigs— Sam & Max are relentless pursuers of justice. As long as they get to wreck stuff along the way. In Sam’s black-and-white police car (a customized DeSoto Adventurer), Sam & Max’s travels have taken them everywhere from road trips to intergalactic journeys, and from comic books to video games to television animation. Driving them on their wild rides isn’t Sam, however, it’s Steve Purcell. A cartoonistturned-game designer-turned animator, Purcell—after stints at LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic—landed at Pixar, where he remains today. As one of the main creators of Pixar’s 2012 hit Brave, Steve and his colleagues are 2013 Academy Award winners for that film. He is also, along with his longtime pals Arthur Adams and Mike Mignola, the inventor of what should be the national pastime, steve purcell fizzball, a game whose objective is to whack a tossed beer can with a stick or 2007 photo by Jeffrey Pidgeon. axe handle. I had the pleasure of working with Steve Purcell—twice!—in 1988 as his editor at Comico the Comic Company on the one-shots Gumby’s Winter Fun Special, written by Steve and illustrated by Arthur Adams (see BACK ISSUE #85), and Sam & Max: Freelance Police Special, written and drawn by Steve, with colors by Rick Taylor. And rarely was work ever that much fun. Steve’s scripts, dripping with sardonic comments and utterly insane plots and characters, were LOL-worthy long before “laugh out loud” became an acronym. As I pen this intro in the spring of 2020, we’re all in lockdown from the coronavirus pandemic and could use a good laugh. Fortunately for me, rereading Sam & Max comics has lifted my spirits. Steve has taken the time during this extraordinary period to answer my questions via email, so let’s kick back and learn a little about Sam & Max, shall we? – Michael Eury

Just an Ordinary Day Sam & Max 2017 postcard image. Unless otherwise noted, all images accompanying this interview are courtesy of Steve Purcell. Sam & Max: Freelance Police TM & © Steve Purcell.

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Arrested Development (top) Steve Purcell’s Freelance Police badge. Jealous? (bottom) The boys and a rat on the run. Max’s teeth are scary, aren’t they? Sam & Max: Freelance Police TM & © Steve Purcell.

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MICHAEL EURY: What kind of training or certification does one have to go through to become a freelance police officer? STEVE PURCELL: I was both shocked and delighted when I realized that anyone could order an authentic police badge with whatever they wanted printed on it. When I was living in Oakland, I flipped through a glossy catalog and picked out a likely-looking design, ordered it with “Freelance Police” embossed, and added the special wallet with a little window pocket holding a slip of paper with Miranda Rights printed on it. Picked it up at this ancient metal workshop in an industrial neighborhood. I think the preparation to become a freelance “cop” is not much more that that. EURY: It’s an oft-told tale that has been etched onto stone tablets and scratched onto bathroom walls, but legend has it that Sam & Max were inspired by a dog and rabbit combo that your younger brother Dave came up with. Tell me that story. PURCELL: Me and my kid brother David were always making little books and comics. He had different characters he would return to like Moo-Hoo Man. Sam & Max were detective animals and that happened to be the subject of one of his unfinished comics he left lying around. For some reason I finished drawing his comic in a parody of the way a kid draws, and had them commenting on how they drawn wrong, as well as forgetting which character they were. On top of that, they happily committed horrific violence on their enemies. Eventually David lost interest in Sam & Max and I started to make stories out of them, using their parody personas. EURY: Were the names “Sam” and “Max” in reference to anyone specific, or just pulled from a hat? PURCELL: Those were the names he gave them. I kept the names and the detective premise and out of the mean parody the characters sort of revealed who they wanted to be over time. He eventually gave them to me for my birthday one year with an “official” document. EURY: Like a lot of fans, I discovered Sam & Max in 1987 in their one-shot comic book from Fishwrap Productions, but some West Coast readers encountered them earlier as a comic strip in the newsletter of the California College of Arts and Craft. When did Sam & Max make their actual first appearance, and how did those early strips differ from the Sam & Max comics, games, and cartoons we’d later get to know? PURCELL: West Coast readers would have been the handful of art students who picked up that school paper every week, including Mike Mignola, who I hadn’t met yet. I’d call the Fishwrap edition the actual first appearance. When Fish Police creator Steve Moncuse asked me if I wanted to do a comic for him to publish, I gave myself four months to write and draw a 32-page book. Up until then I had only done the school strip and one-off sketches and a few ugly one-pagers for my own amusement. When I sat down to do the comic I had to decide what style I would use, since I had cobbled all that other stuff together with not a lot of thought. So I would call that first book more thoughtful than anything that came before it and the baseline for everything after. EURY: How did Sam & Max transition from a comic strip in a newsletter to an actual comic book? PURCELL: I had dabbled with a few other strips before Sam & Max. Donut Driver, about my adventures delivering donuts to mini-marts in Sacramento, How to Make a Sled Kite Out of the School Paper, Spontaneous Human Combustion, and mean parodies of another cartoonists’ Moebius-like sci-fi strip. At some point I thought I’d try a Sam & Max and I slapped it together the night before it was due. A few more followed. All of those pieces were one-offs, and so for the book, for the first time I needed a story that could go on for a stretch. I started to think of things that I was interested in at the time and stringing them together like story cards. I knew I needed to help the audience understand who the characters are, so there’s kind of a day-in-the-life portion at the beginning. I also decided I wanted to interrupt the story with

In 1984, readers were introduced to Kevin Matchstick and Mirth, the hero and titular character of Matt Wagner’s Mage. It was the start of a heroic trilogy: The Hero Discovered, The Hero Defined, and The Hero Denied, which concluded in 2019, 35 years after the story had begun. Along the way it gained many fans and much critical success. In the introduction to Mage: The Hero Discovered vol. 1 from the Donning Company/Starblaze Graphics (1987), Wagner wrote, “My view on heroes (or should we say activists?) and their commitments to both themselves and others is the voice and conception behind what I see as the Mage trilogy—The Hero Discovered, The Hero Defined, and The Hero Denied.” So from the beginning, the subtitles of each series were in place. One can’t help but wonder how close the final story came to Wagner’s original intent. “I can’t really say, because I didn’t have it all planned out,” reveals Wagner to BACK ISSUE. “And of course, I never expected it to take as long as it did. My initial plan was to move on with it pretty quick, and then Comico’s bankruptcy interrupted all that. In the end, I’m glad it did take that long, because it enabled me to live more of my life and figure out

64 • BACK ISSUE • Creator-Owned Comics Issue

Roger Ash

how to mythologize it as the various three stages of a hero’s journey. “In fact, when the second one finally came around, I fell into a real Zen approach to it all. I didn’t do any layouts. I tried not to figure things out. I tried to just let the story take me where it was gonna go. That’s not to say I didn’t have some idea about where I wanted to go; I did. But I would just sit down with blank pages and start drawing. In between the second and third one, I tried real hard not to think about Mage at all. I tried to not lock down any ideas that might become stale over time. I wanted to wait and again let my life roll by and then figure out what it was. And of course, in the third one I had kids and that became kind of a necessity, too: to let them grow up and see what sort of people they were going to become before I tried to depict them in my allegory that is Mage. “I will say I’m extremely happy with how it ended up. I keep telling people that I feel like I stuck the landing. It worked out exactly the way it was supposed to work out, but I truthfully tried not to think about how it was gonna work out. If you put it in a musical sense, it’d be almost like jamming. You just come up with a theme and a riff and you follow it.”

THE HERO DISCOVERED

The Hero Discovered draws heavily from Arthurian legend as Kevin is the latest incarnation of the Pendragon (though this is not something he knows or easily accepts when it’s revealed) and Mirth is of the line of Merlin. The comic also draws heavily from Wagner’s own life as Kevin is modeled after him, though it didn’t begin that way. “It was almost accidental,” Wagner says. “I was living in Philadelphia at the time, which is how I hooked up with the guys who formed Comico; we all went to the same art school together. One day I was down at the waterfront in Philly just doing some drawings. One was of me, but it was kind of a different version of me than I’d ever drawn. It had a certain world-weariness to it. The other one was a character that eventually evolved into Mirth. “I had initially started a different version of Mage way back when, long before I was even close to being ready to attempt something like that skill-wise. It was much more ordinary. It was set in the future and there was a mutant plague, and there was this guy who fought mutants and he called himself ‘The Dragon’ and he had a cape. Just very typical comics. Then DC announced they were going to do Camelot 3000, and it was supposed to be the return of King Arthur. I thought, ‘Oh, well. The hell with that. There goes that idea.’ And then it came out. It was certainly very professional and beautiful, but it just didn’t resonate with me storywise because there wasn’t that much new to it aside from them fighting aliens. It was very superhero-y. King Arthur was almost wearing a Superman costume. He was wearing red, yellow, and blue with a cape. It didn’t speak to me. I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know anybody like this. I don’t know people who walk around with armor and carry swords.’ I was looking for a more personal approach to comics at that time. I finally realized that if I’m going to retell this myth, I’m going to have to personalize it. I have to bring it down to my level. And the people I knew were just dudes in T-shirts running around in the alleyways. Nobody had any swords, but I knew one guy who used to keep a baseball bat under the seat of his car, just in case. So I ended up making Kevin look like me. I didn’t quite realize how purposeful I was making that at the time, in an autobiographical way. It just seemed to make sense. It was only later that I realized that this was me examining my life through these

larger-than-life allegories. Truthfully, it was only later that I realized IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, it’s not uncommon for comics creators to have an TO alterORDER ego. Charles CLICK THE LINK THIS Schulz was Charlie Brown. ISSUE Dave Stevens was Rocketeer Cliff IN PRINT ORthe DIGITAL FORMAT! Secord. I always tell people that Jeff Smith is Bone. Whether you see the resemblance or not, he is. Neil Gaiman and Morpheus. Mike Allred and Madman. The list goes on and on and on. I just kind of by happenstance stumbled into a formula that works for a creator. And I was lucky in that regard.” But basing a comic around Arthurian legend meant doing research. “I did a lot of research into Arthurian myth, but I didn’t do a lot of research into the classic hero’s journey,” Wagner continues. “So, for instance, I didn’t know anything about Joseph Campbell’s work, who codified that mythological aspect in a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was only after I finished Mage that I read that book and I realized, ‘Holy sh*t! Here it is again. This stuff must be hardwired, because I just kind of stumbled into these archetypes.’ When I read the breakdown of the first stage of the hero’s journey in that book, it was like reading a plot-point-by-plotpoint summation of the first Mage series. As a ISSUE result, #125 in the second BACK CREATOR-OWNED COMICS! Featuring in-depth histories and third one I paid closer attention to the stages that Campbell of MATT WAGNER’s Mage and Grendel. Plus other indie describes. But again, the first sensations one was very intuitive. of the Bronze Age, including COLLEEN DORAN’s A Distant STAN SAKAI’s STEVEversions PURCELL’s “As far as the Arthurian stuff, of Soil, course thereUsagi areYojimbo, so many Sam & Max, JAMES DEAN SMITH’s Borisjust the Bear, and LARRY of the King Arthur myths andWELZ’s legends that I basically took the Cherry Poptart! With a fabulous Grendel cover by sh*t I liked and distilled it down into the stuff that made sense to MATT WAGNER. me. I was determined at the beginning my Merlin (84-pagethat FULL-COLOR magazine)character $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 was not going to look like a traditional Merlin. He wasn’t going to have a big white beard. He wasn’t gonna be old. He was going to https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_54&products_id=1552 be the antithesis of that. “When I first approached the Arthurian myths, I saw a little more glory in them. In fact, what they’re really about is how Arthur fails. Camelot doesn’t last. In fact, the most famous source of Arthurian myths, Le Morte d’Arthur, means The Death of Arthur. I tapped into a slightly more cynical and darker aspect of it than I think I initially would have approached it with.” But if Kevin is the central character in the series, why call it Mage? Wagner replies, “Because the Mage signifies change. In Arthurian myths, it’s when Merlin comes into Arthur’s life that he becomes the king. I wanted to portray this magical element as the catalyst

Revelations (left) Kevin Matchstick’s first encounter with Mirth, in Mage #1. (right) Shortly in that same issue, Kevin discovers that he can pack a wallop in his Grackleflint fight. TM & © Matt Wagner.

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