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THE AMERICAN
MEGATON MAN
A Z TEC ACE
TREKKER
DYNAMO JOE
ZOT!
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The American © Mark Verheiden. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez. Megaton Man © Donald Simpson. Trekker © Ron Randall. Whisper © Steven Grant and Rich Larson. Zot! © Silver Linings. All Rights Reserved.
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WORKING WITH DITKO
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KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID
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Volume 1, Number 149 February 2024 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow
Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!
DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks COVER ARTIST Norm Breyfogle (Originally produced as the cover of First Comics’ Whisper #4, Dec. 1986. Art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions.) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Kevin Sharp SPECIAL THANKS Heidi MacDonald G. K. Abraham Don Markstein’s Chuck Austen Toonapedia Dell Barras Scott McCloud Kurt Busiek William MessnerJarrod Buttery Loebs Ed Catto Doug Moench Comic Connect Luigi Novi Dan Day Cecil Disharoon Amanda Powers Tom Powers Chuck Dixon Ron Randall Ben Dunn Reading Is Fun. Matt Feazell Not Mental Phil Foglio Doug Rice Stephan Friedt Don Simpson Alex Grand Jim Thompson Steven Grant Mark Verheiden Bob Harrison Heritage Auctions Chris Warner Marv Wolfman Dan Johnson Thomas Yeates Mike Jones Catherine Yronwode Todd Klein Rich Larson
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IN MEMORIAM: John Romita, Sr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 INTERVIEW: Megaton Man’s Don Simpson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The writer-artist discusses his durable, influential megahero BACKSTAGE PASS: Whisper, Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Artists Rich Larson and Dell Barras recall Steven Grant’s lady ninja INTERVIEW: Journey’s William Messner-Loebs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Explore the American Frontier with the talented visionary BEYOND CAPES: Dynamo Joe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Big bots, the way you like ’em, courtesy of Doug Rice and friends FLASHBACK: Evangeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Say your prayers, ’cause here comes comics’ nun with a gun! BEYOND CAPES: Aztec Ace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 The indies’ ace time-traveler, with Moench, Day, and Yeates PRO2PRO: The American’s Mark Verheiden and Chris Warner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Creating a fresh take on the patriotic superhero trope INTERVIEW: Trekker’s Ron Randall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 The futuristic bounty hunter’s story, through the eyes of her creator BACKSTAGE PASS: The Zot! Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Scott McCloud and his collaborators look back at this crowd-pleasing comic BACK TALK: Reader Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 BACK ISSUE™ issue 149, February 2024 (ISSN 1932-6904) is published monthly (except Jan., March, May, and Oct.) 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-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: $97 Economy US, $147 International, $39 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover artwork by Norm Breyfogle. The American © Mark Verheiden. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez. Dynamo Joe © Dour Rice. Megaton Man © Donald E. Simpson. Trekker © Ron Randall. Whisper © Steven Grant and Rich Larson. Zot! © Silver Linings. All Rights Reserved. All editorial matter © 2024 TwoMorrows and Michael Eury. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING
’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1
Illustrator. Inker. Innovator. Icon.
2 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
Art atop page is from the cover of the 1993 Marvel Super Hero Calendar. Pencils by John Romita, Sr., inks by Joe Sinnott. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions. All comic books and characters shown TM & © Marvel, except Conan the Barbarian, TM & © Conan Properties International, LLC.
IN MEMORIAM
JOHN ROMITA, Sr. (1930–2023)
interview by
To m P o w e r s
Megaton Man is one of those characters that everyone always remembers once he or she has encountered his wildly brilliant metaadventures that offer Don Simpson’s incisive commentary on the monolithic universes of DC and Marvel Comics. But the saga of Megaton Man— which began in 1984 with Kitchen Sink Press, continued through Don’s self-publishing efforts via Bizarre Heroes, and is rising stronger than ever through his recent work with the character in X-Amount of Comics: 1963 (WhenElse?!) Annual— is one that serves as a great inspiration to any aspiring creator who wishes to forge an original path in an often corporate-dominated comic-book industry. It is thereby my distinct pleasure to share with BACK ISSUE the following conversation I had with Don concerning the four-decade story of the indomitable Man of Molecules. – Tom Powers TOM POWERS: When you were creating Megaton Man #1 (Nov. 1984), you were in your early 20s. Could you please talk about what went into making this historic comic? (On your blog, you discuss having to wash dishes in order to support yourself while putting this issue together.) DON SIMPSON: I’d been drawing since I was five; I was just one of those kids who never stopped. At the age of ten, the summer of 1972, I discovered comics and fell in love with them. I’d gotten some free DC and other comics in second grade, but when I began buying them myself, I gravitated toward Marvel. There were older kids in the neighborhood who had stacks of stuff dating back to the mid-’60s, so I could get my hands on that. MAD magazine was an influence, Dr. Seuss before that. Doonesbury and Funky Winkerbean and Peanuts were in the newspaper. Nick Meglin and
Shouldering the Burden Don Simpson’s Megaton Man #1 (Nov. 1984), published by Kitchen Sink Press. TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
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Thirty Years Ago Megaton Man creator Donald Simpson working on Image Comics’ Splitting Image #2 (Apr. 1993), with the house ad for 1963 and pages from the Savage Dragon team-up nearby. Special thanks to Dandy Don for kindly providing the images accompanying this interview.
Jack Davis did a paperback called Superfan, a sports-superhero parody [see BI #142—ed.]. I probably haven’t spoken adequately about that as an influence on my work. Davis was on every cover of Time magazine when I was a kid, and our family subscribed. There were lots of influences, lots of great how-to books at the library. Dave Breger wrote books on being a gag cartoonist; there were other books on newspaper strips, collections of editorial cartoons, Charles Addams and Peter Arno books. How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way came out before I was a junior in high school. I spent all that summer of 1978 copying drawings from Burne Hogarth’s Dynamic Anatomy. To say nothing of the influence of comedy—TV, films, Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, Mort Sahl comedy records, Bill Cosby comedy records. Science-fiction films were beginning to have convincing special effects: Star Wars, Close Encounters, Alien. Of course, Adam West’s Batman and the George Reeves Superman, cartoons, Planet of the Apes, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Six Million Dollar Man, the classic monster movies, The Wizard of Oz—all that and more. POWERS: How did you successfully pitch this book to Kitchen Sink Press? SIMPSON: The first issue of Megaton Man took 13 months; I had dropped out of art school. I was living in midtown Detroit, near the University-Cultural Center—Wayne State University, the library main branch, the Detroit Institute of Arts. There were art-supply stores, used bookstores, porn shops—all the wonders of urban bohemia. I was washing dishes at Union Street on Woodward, as you mention, and inking pages at night. I went to the photocopy place in the basement of one of the Wayne State buildings—it’s a Barnes and Noble now. I mailed copies to Fantagraphics, Aardvark-Vanaheim, Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, First, Eclipse, Pacific Comics—I have rejection letters from a number of defunct publishers. Fantagraphics turned me down twice—long, haranguing letters from Gary Groth: “You’re wasting your time on this superhero parody crap!” But I was trying to get all that out of my system, all the Burne Hogarth, Jack Kirby, hyper-masculine exaggeration. Kitchen Sink, of all places, picked it up. I had sent Denis [Kitchen, publisher] something while I was still in high school, something I thought was “underground.” He had kind words but advised me not to run away from home to join the circus. A few years later, I think what he saw in Megaton Man, honestly, was a plausible color title to join The Spirit in color and, later, a revived Death Rattle in color. I don’t think he wanted to be in color comics, but he kind of had to, to keep Will Eisner. Cat Yronwode at Eclipse had published John Law: Detective in color not long before, and sold something like 80,000 copies. [Editor’s note: See BI #141 for more about John Law.] It was the 4 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
original version of a story Eisner had later converted into a Spirit story, “Bring in Sand Serif.” He just drew a mask on the character and made it a Spirit story. But he kept stats of the original in his files, and since it fell outside his contract with Kitchen Sink, Cat offered to publish it in color. Denis didn’t want to risk it, so Cat made a bundle. After that, it didn’t take much to realize The Spirit would have to be in color if Denis wanted to hang onto Eisner. It never sold like that John Law issue, but it had to be done. As a superhero parody, Megaton Man was a natural for color, although I had used a lot of Zip-a-Tone in the first issue. It got to the point that Megaton Man was the only profitable book in color; The Spirit and Death Rattle both ended up losing money, the former because of Will’s royalty arrangement, and the latter because, to attract name pros, Denis had to offer a higher page rate. After the color line ended, I did Border Worlds in black and white. POWERS: Since Megaton Man is filled with many great characters that serve as homages to Silver Age characters, how did the comics that you read when you were growing up influence these clever choices? SIMPSON: One of the first comics I over possessed was a coverless copy of Not Brand Echh #12 (Feb. 1969), which was an odd way to start. Marvel was making fun of itself, and I didn’t know who half the characters were. Later, when I started reading “straight” Marvel comics, there were lots of reprints of the origin stories in treasuries and Origins of Marvel Comics, so I could grasp the mythology pretty quickly. I was really parodying the stuff I liked as a reader from those days. When Megaton Man appeared, people thought I was making fun of the current industry, but all they were doing was repeating the old tropes. I threw in a few references to mutants and Secret Wars, and people thought I was commenting on current events. I really wasn’t; I wasn’t really following the new stuff. But you didn’t have to. You read one, you’ve read ’em all. But it seemed natural to have a sense of humor about superheroes. Before very long (after becoming a reader), Howard the Duck came along; it was hip to be satirical. By the early ’80s, superheroes had lost all sense of humor. I suppose that made it seem so radical to make fun of them. But I don’t think I could have matched the humorlessness of straight superheroes of the time. Things have gotten sillier recently, with Batman ’66, but at the time, the industry was ashamed of Adam West and any connotation of humor. I don’t think I would approach straight superheroes much differently; that much is probably apparent in Bizarre Heroes, so humor was just my way to approach the mythology while having fun. POWERS: Both the cover and page 29 of Megaton Man #4 (June 1985) present Megaton Man on a crimefighting date with Stella Starlight (a.k.a. the See-Thru Girl). In particular, they are featured against black-and-yellow crossword-puzzle buildings that are similar to the ones that later form a backdrop for Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre’s romantic storyline in Watchmen #4 (Dec. 1986). Could you please comment on these similarities (which you have brought up on your blog and Facebook page)?
SIMPSON: That’s what I’m talking about. I was doing Watchmen before Watchmen. Keep in mind I was making all this stuff up as I went along; I never had a master plan. Because I was being published by a legacy underground publisher, and because I was doing comedy, ostensibly—and because Megaton Man was $2.00 when Marvel and DC comics were 60 cents—I felt I could push things a little more over the PG line. We weren’t subject to the Comics Code. So, I had nudity—the See-Thru Girl, for starters. She could turn naked with but a thought! And Megaton Man—basically a Superman parody visiting the Marvel Universe—he has this fling with the eye candy of the Fantastic Four—my Megatropolis Quartet. Superman meeting the FF was a Not Brand Echh trope. And the way I write stories… I should back up for a moment. I made them up as I went along. I was just trying to think, “What would be funny?” So, at the end of issue #1, the See-Thru Girl and Pammy—the hero’s two love interests—leave town. They split. I had nothing planned after that. And I mailed off my photocopies, and I have a publisher in Wisconsin asking me, “Can you do this bimonthly?” Sure! But I had not built a world. So, what happens next? Well, the girls are off to Ann Arbor, and Megaton Man joins the Megatropolis Quartet—but there’s this friction, because Rex Rigid, the scientist-husband of the See-Thru Girl, knows there’s been some hanky-panky, and he’s a malevolent sort. So, Megaton Man thinks Rex is trying to kill him when he’s being turned into Captain Megaton Man. My point is that I was always coming up with something funny, then taking it seriously, and asking, “What happens next?” In this case, wouldn’t it be funny if the See-Thru Girl goes off to college, trying to forget her failed marriage to a mad scientist three times her age and trying to forget her fling with the Man of Molecules—but then she realizes she’s pregnant? So, I’m just making up stuff that I think is funny, but subconsciously, it’s going to a very f***ed-up place. And of course, Alan Moore is going to rip that off and go to town [laughter]. When I met him, I had just completed Megaton Man #6 (Oct. 1985), which did a spoof of Swamp Thing. I have this character—not even a character, really—a sawdust dummy that gets soaked in Megasoldier serum. Megaton Man, when he needs to ditch his day job as Trent Phloog, cub reporter at The Manhattan Project, puts this sawdust dummy in his chair at his desk, and he runs off and does his Megaton Man thing. And one day, the evildoers who want to kill Megaton Man assassinate the sawdust dummy instead. The dummy ends up in the swamp, and I try to ink like John Totleben, and the captions read, “But he isn’t Trent Phloog. He never will be Trent Phloog. He never was Trent Phloog.” So, I’m carrying these photocopies in my portfolio, and I’m walking through the dealers’ room in San Diego [Comic-Con], 1985, to and from Artists’ Alley, and I run into Alan Moore. And I show him this page. He reads it out loud and says, “Brilliant writing!” That evening, DC hosted a party down by the bay, and I’m at a table with Alan and Maggie Thompson, and Alan says to me, “By the way, I’m ripping off Megaton Man—not really.” And he explains that Dr. Manhattan is his take on a nuclearpowered character. And sure enough, a year later, Watchmen #4 has my “on patrol” scene with Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl going on patrol—really, just an excuse to hook up, and Dave Gibbons has the crossword-puzzle skyline and everything. Now, I was very flattered. But of course, it’s the curse of the clown to not be taken seriously, whereas the Shakespearean
dramatist is creating High Art. But, whatever. I thought it was all friendly back-and-forth plagiarism—I mean, discourse! But I ran across the fifth issue of Megaton Man recently— very dark for a superhero parody, because in a flashback, Rex is slapping around Stella, the See-Thru Girl, because he knows she’s been cheating on him. And he’s very menacing. And she beats him up right back. And I thought, “Wow—people are always talking about Alan Moore’s influence, but I think he may have picked up a thing or two from me!” POWERS: With Megaton Man #5 (Aug. 1985), you begin an interesting subplot of sending journalist Pamela Jointly and Stella back to college in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (Likewise, Trent eventually becomes their roommate, but they run the household.) How do these storylines provide commentary upon their DC and Marvel counterparts, Lois Lane and Susan Storm Richards (or the traditional role of the female sidekick in general), in regard to their agency—or lack thereof? SIMPSON: Again, I was just following the logic of the last joke I made. So, Megaton Man loses his power at the end of issue #10 (June 1986), the end of the series, and he’s just a civilian again, wearing this baggy costume that no longer fits him, because he had huge muscles before. But they’re gone. And he realizes the loves of his life—if he could make up his mind—are also gone, and one of them is going to have his kid. So, he’s off to Ann Arbor. Now, I did seven issues of Border Worlds and started freelancing for DC on Wasteland. But eventually I started to wonder, “Whatever became of Trent and Stella and Pammy?” The influences were really Doonesbury and The Big Chill more than Marvel and DC, as well as my own life living with roommates in Detroit and knowing lots of creative types in bohemia. I was an art-school dropout by this point, but I knew a lot of college students my age, musicians, actors, and so on. We
We’re Sure it Won’t Bomb Original presentation cover for the Megaton Man #1 pitch, from 1983. TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
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would always go out to Ann Arbor to see classic and foreign cinema at the various film series all over campus. Borders started there as one store. It was a kind of cultural mecca, and I felt kind of left out by being an undiscovered genius cartoonist instead of going to college. Big regret. Anyway, the situation of the communal house in Ann Arbor in The Return of Megaton Man was my fantasy about all of that. Trent goes after Stella, who is over him, but pregnant as can be and could use a hand around the house. Pammy, the “Lois Lane” controversial columnist and arch-critic of Megaton Man, teaches journalism, and Clarissa, a black woman who was just a character I’d created in Megaton Man #4 for Stella to talk to, is now a housemate. So, Trent is shown the sofa and becomes the houseboy. I’m sure Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Jesus Goes to a Faculty Party by Foolbert Sturgeon and Animal House were all influences of what I thought college life was all about. For years, I didn’t know how to describe Trent and Stella’s relationship. They weren’t romantic, but they had this child together. They weren’t married—Stella never even divorced Rex. So, what was this? It was a couple decades before the term “parenting partner” came into use; I had no idea what to call it. I was ahead of my time! We lost a licensing opportunity because of Trent and Stella; Denis likes to remind me all the time. There was a licensor named Al Kahn—years later, he brought Pokémon to America. He thought Megaton Man had a lot of potential. Then he must have read The Return of Megaton Man and concluded it wasn’t family-friendly [laughter]. Now, I don’t think anybody would find it outrageous at all.
It’s About Time You Showed Up (top) Megaton Man returns on the Time Turntable to confront a suspicious Megatropolis Quartet in Megaton Man #1. (bottom) Megaton Man #3 (Apr. 1985). TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
POWERS: Issue #6 likewise starts running your backup feature, “Border Worlds,” which eventually expands into its own series. How did the process of creating Megaton Man lead to this mature-readers science-fiction epic? SIMPSON: I thought I was doing a superhero parody, as I say. I thought my job was to keep making fun of comics and the comics biz. But I didn’t care about what was going on in comics—it was just rehashing the same old same old. And we had gotten some flak from Marvel lawyers, mostly about selling a pinback button, of all things, where Megaton Man is saying, “Are you kidding? I eat X-Men for breakfast!” which was viewed as infringing on Marvel merch or something. I had this science-fiction idea that had been evolving in my imagination since junior high school. I used to design the space station, and the suits, and so forth; they really go back even further, to a comic-strip idea called Jerry’s War I had in grade school. How it turned into a galactic saga is too long a story. Suffice it to say, it was something that had lived in my mind for a while. It was an opportunity to work with a different set of influences—the special-effects movies I named, along with Moëbius, Enki Bilal, Wally Wood, and [Star Wars production designer] Ralph McQuarrie. And when the color line ended, as I said, moody black and white seemed a natural. I always thought of Border Worlds more like a Cinemascope movie, like Woody Allen’s Manhattan, or Metropolis, or Alphaville. Hand lettering always looked a little odd to me on it. It might have been better without words, or conversely, as prose. I still have more ideas for it. POWERS: In Megaton Man #9–10 (Apr.–June 1986), with the culmination of the quest for the Cosmic Cue-Ball plot, you present multiple versions of Megaton Man meeting up and clashing with one another. What was your mindset in regard to the Marvel and DC superhero crossovers of the mid-’80s when you were illustrating this tale?
6 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
That Rex, He’s So Rigid! Megaton Man makes time with the See-Thru Girl, the missus of the Megatropolis Quartet’s big brain, Rex Rigid. Covers to Megaton Man #4 and 5 (June and Aug. 1985). TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
SIMPSON: It’s a trope that if you have one, just multiply it. We used to get coverless comics when we’d visit Santa Claus downtown at Cobo Hall in Detroit in the mid-’60s—”Superman Red and Blue” and weird stuff like that. I never hung onto those comics. But a doppelgänger is always good for a plot after you’ve jumped the shark. I just figured there had to be a Golden Age Megaton Man, a Russian Megaton Man; somebody found the Captain Megaton Man costume, so he was there. Forbidden Frankenstein would have shown up if I’d invented him by then. It must go back to Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood’s [classic MAD parody] Superduperman meeting the Shazam [original Captain Marvel] clone. You know, “We’ve met the enemy, and it is us”—Pogo’s old axiom. I don’t think it had anything to do with Secret Wars or Crisis because, as I said, I wasn’t paying much attention. I knew they were going on, but I didn’t buy them, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at the art. I thought the level of craft had fallen off drastically since the ’60s. Stuff looked atrocious. POWERS: What I notice about the first ten issues of Megaton Man is that, although the comic starts off as a playful, oftentimes sophisticated parody of both Silver Age and Bronze Age versions of Marvel and DC characters, it gradually develops a continuity of its own, which surpasses your initial impetus to be mainly satiric. Could you please explain how Megaton Man and his supporting cast spoke to you as a writer/artist of their narratives? SIMPSON: Editor Dave Schreiner was the first to pick up on it, even before me. I don’t think he was big on Kitchen Sink publishing a superhero parody initially. But he was the first to point out to me that I wasn’t really doing a superhero parody, not like Not Brand Echh or Valentino’s normalman. I was letting the characters develop on their own, and Dave encouraged me to do that more. Denis and the rest of the industry wanted silly fight scenes. But Dave understood that after I introduced a character and had
a few laughs, they become people. Rex Rigid, ostensibly, was the science-wiz group leader, but after a few Liquid Man jokes, he starts to evolve. He ages rapidly; he becomes white-haired, paunchy, out of shape, clearly too old for his trophy wife. Pammy and Preston were never really Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen; Pammy is a cynical columnist looking for scandal, and Preston is the secret agent working for the White House whose job is to keep tabs on Megaton Man—Frank Miller, by the way, had Superman working for the president after me. He also had a character named Nuke Simpson—coincidence. Frank was kind enough to come up to me in Artists’ Alley at a Chicago Con and introduce himself to me. I think it’s a trope that creators are always more interested in the civilian secret identities than they are in the omnipotent crimefighter aspect of a character, because it’s the secret identity—the mild-mannered side—that is the human side. There’s not much to say about godlike omnipotence. In any case, Clarissa and Kozmik Kat are a couple of characters that have really grown in my imagination in recent years. I started writing prose, and now I tend to think of all of my characters by their first names, rather than their megahero names. Yarn Man is Bing Gloom, so I call him Bing. Megaton Man is Trent. That’s where my mind is right now. POWERS: At the beginning of the Return of Megaton Man miniseries in issue #1 (July 1989), we see Trent Phloog living as a normal guy (in other words, with no big chin or disproportionate musculature) after the events of Megaton Man #10. Why did you wish to portray him in this down-to-earth manner? SIMPSON: Part of it was simply autobiography. He looked a lot like me as a civilian—maybe more broad-shouldered and husky than me. But I wanted to be able to identify with him. Megaton Man as a persona was what society expected him to be—toxic masculinity—whereas in reality, he’s a guy who has to work in a used bookstore and sleep on the sofa just to be near the woman who’s having his kid. She was crazy about Megaton Man, but he ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 7
The Not-So-Human Target The sawdust dummy that stands in for Megaton Man’s secret identity (sometimes) is assassinated in Megaton Man #6 (Oct. 1985). TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
blew it, and now he’s just the underemployed schlub, and the women are running the household. Again, this just strikes me as funny, but obviously there’s a serious side to it. And later, all his old colleagues—Yarn Man, Quantum Leaper, Colonel Turtle—show up and razz him for not being Megaton Man anymore. So, it’s really uncomfortable. I’ve never had a child, but I know lots of friends whose lives have changed. They used to be super-cool and stay out late. But then they were hit with responsibilities, life responsibilities. And there are long passages of your life that get eaten up before you know it. One of the things I’ve discovered by writing prose is I had to go back and retroactively world-build. I had to devise timelines and family trees and figure out when characters were born. I can say I understand the world of Megaton Man much better now. That long period in Ann Arbor draws to a close around the time I begin Bizarre Heroes, and I have since created a graphic novel and written a lot of prose material that accounts for the life of Clarissa and more recent events that we haven’t seen in the comics yet. POWERS: I also notice that your art style has changed a bit at this point. How did working on Border Worlds and Wasteland, where you collaborated with Del Close and John Ostrander, contribute to this next step in your evolution as a storyteller? SIMPSON: Everything was very caricatural at first. It was somewhat neurotic. I wanted to make it clear that I was making fun of everything, that I wasn’t falling for the superhero genre or continuity. I thought if I stopped being funny, then it would become a bland superhero comic book. But, as I mentioned, some darker stuff broke through in issue #5, and I actually began drawing Stella, the See-Thru Girl, with much more realistic proportions. The splash of The Return of Megaton Man was a watershed. Civilian Trent is there, still somewhat husky, but Clarissa is drawn very realistically. Some of the characters maintain a caricatural air—Pammy and Preston never get too realistic. But Stella and Clarissa become more realistic. When I turned Clarissa into Ms. Megaton Man, that was very important. She could have been a straight superhero at that point. The Phantom Jungle Girl was another liminal character between serious superheroes and parody—she was realistically drawn, and let’s face it, her name is no more ridiculous than Wonder Woman. In the late ’80s, the Megaton Man series was a series of one-shots. In Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1 (Apr. 1989)—that’s where Clarissa discovers she’s Ms. Megaton Man; Pteranoman #1 (Aug. 1990)—I began to realize that I could still be humorous but draw more realistically, which came naturally to me. I realized in Bizarre Heroes that Megaton Man as a character worked better as a disproportionate character surrounded by more normally proportioned characters. POWERS: On the note of those one-shots that you’ve mentioned, due to budgetary issues, Kitchen Sink Press published Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems, Yarn Man (Oct. 1989), and Pteranoman in black and white. However, in a similar fashion to Border Worlds, black and white adds a different, striking dimension to your artwork. As a storyteller, how did you adjust to—and thrive within—this format? 8 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
SIMPSON: I think I got cleaner; I used a lot less Zip-a-Tone, a lot less detail. I was consciously trying to get my process under control. There’s a six-panel grid I use as my default during this period, just so I could concentrate on what went inside the panels rather than artsy page layouts. I’d done a lot with artful layouts, bleeds, design in Border Worlds. By the late ’80s, I was taking a very conservative approach, trying to be more like John Romita or a daily comic-strip style, almost a pop-art Roy Lichtenstein approach. It was a shift away from the Neal Adams inking and hyperkinetic, overworked early ’80s, and lots of fans didn’t like it. It was like when guitarist Al DiMeola went from his superfast, virtuoso work and slowed down [laughter]. People like that early, neurotic stuff where you’re sweating to prove you have chops. I think it helped a lot. But then Erik Larsen wanted to team up Megaton Man with the Savage Dragon, and he wanted all that detail—so I had to oblige! POWERS: It is also quite satisfying seeing Yarn Man in his own book. Why is he such a great supporting character for Megaton Man? SIMPSON: He’s just a big, grumpy, adorable Muppet, really. When he shows up in Ann Arbor, Clarissa is immediately smitten with him. Again, I was going for the humor. But the implications are disturbing—she’s an undergrad, and he’s a World War II vet who’s at least twice her age, so she gets over him pretty quickly.
I think comics fans respond to patterns and textures. It took a long time before his outfit became standardized. It would be really easy to cosplay— but stifling [laughter]. POWERS: In many ways, Megaton Man, as much as it is a parody of superhero comics in the mid1980s, it is eerily prescient in terms of presenting the overly developed musculature superheroes perpetuated upon comic-book consumers during the Image era of the early 1990s. What did you think about this development? SIMPSON: Again, I was ahead of my time. I was just taking Arnold Schwarzenegger and pushing it a few degrees. The result was absurd. But Pitt came along, the [Savage] Dragon blew up; now every character has this kind of physique—maybe bulkier legs—but still. That’s another reason to just concentrate on character. I mean, how can you get cheap laughs when as soon as you exaggerate things to the next level, it’s just absorbed by the industry?! POWERS: Regarding Image at this time, how did The Savage Dragon vs. The Savage Megaton
Man (Mar. 1993) one-shot come about? Also, can you please discuss your collaborative process with Erik Larsen on this historic team-up? SIMPSON: Gary Groth wanted me to lampoon Image Comics. I’d already drawn “In Pictopia” for him from Alan Moore’s script; I’d adapted King Kong (in issues cover-dated Feb. 1991–Mar. 1992) and drawn several Anton Drek erotic comics. The only problem was, I didn’t have a problem with Image. It just seemed sensible to me that they were getting screwed out of licensing, so they just break off and form their own company. I let it be known that I had turned down Gary, and Larry Marder told Jim Valentino, and soon I got a call from Val and his studio mate, Rob Liefeld, and they wanted me to make fun of Image for Image—very much like Not Brand Echh. So, I set about to do that. Larry was working for Moondog’s, a comic shop chain in Chicago, and they had just bought a piece of the Chicago Comicon and were having the entire Image cohort as guests. Chris Ecker worked for Gary Colabuono (the Moondog) also, and it was his idea for a circus tent, so the Image Tent was born.
Multiple Megaton Men Megaton Men meet in Megaton Man #9 (Kitchen Sink Press, Apr. 1986). One of the few pieces of original art Don parted with, it was re-inked in 2022 for The Complete Megaton Man Universe Vol. I (forthcoming, 2024), from Fantagraphics Underground. TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
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So when I attended, I was still in the old Artists’ Alley inside the hotel, the Ramada O’Hare. And it was a ghost town because all the attendees of the show were lined up outside at the tent. So, somebody sends for me, and I was summoned to the tent. I had drawn about five pages of Splitting Image, and I took those out there with me, and all the artists were cracking up. I didn’t really know them very well—I knew Jim Valentino from his days on normalman, and I knew Marc Silvestri from past Chicago cons when he was drawing Conan. But I didn’t know Todd or the others. Erik just spontaneously suggested a team-up. The remarkable thing was that I actually had to think about it! It was the first day of the show, and when I woke up the second day, I was like, “Am I out of my mind?” And I ran out to the Image Tent without breakfast and started spitballing ideas with Erik. Dave Olbrich was there writing down all the projects, and he announced everything immediately. If it weren’t for that, Erik might have forgotten about it and let it slip through the cracks. We worked back and forth through FedEx. I think it’s easy to discern who was doing the layouts on any given page. I earned more from my half, which came to 12-anda-half pages, than I had ever earned in comics up to that point—and then some. POWERS: I also am impressed by the normalman/ Megaton Man Special (Aug. 1994). What went into making this jam issue for Image work so well with Jim Valentino, Bob Burden, Larry Marder, and others? SIMPSON: That was all Jim Valentino. He went around at shows and got artists to jam on the cover
I Know What Boys Like Female characters take over in the communal Ann Arbor house in this penciled page from Return of Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, July 1988). (inset) Return #1’s cover. TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
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and key pages—Jeff Smith, Mike Allred, and so on. He talked Dallas Fantasy Fair promoter Larry Lankford into flying me, Larry, and Bob down there to do shows in Dallas, Houston, I think a signing at Lone Star, and, in between, we discussed this weird team-up. Later, when he and I got down to work on it, he holed up in the Olcott Hotel in New York City and flew me there too. He had money to burn from Shadowhawk! So, there we were in the hotel room, him sitting on the floor penciling on the coffee table. We went to the Metropolitan Museum across Central Park—it was like five degrees out the whole time—and talked about the story all through the museum. The Northridge earthquake happened during that trip, and I remember him phoning home to his wife and kids a bit concerned. POWERS: Bizarre Heroes impressively expands Megaton Man’s world with your advent of the Fiascoverse (or Megahero Universe). What were your goals in creating and self-publishing this series? SIMPSON: Yes, before even the prose stuff, I knew I wanted a broader range of possibilities. In 1991, I had created this print—a poster, really, of all my characters in a kind of class portrait. It was patterned on the letterhead Jack Kirby and Joe Simon once had for their studio, featuring all their characters: Captain America, the Guardian, and the kid gangs. Jim Steranko had reproduced it in his first History of Comics. So, I put the cast of Megaton Man next to the cast of Border Worlds—I had drawn Bizarre Heroes #1 (May 1990) for Kitchen Sink by this time and the cast of Wendy Whitebread and Forbidden Frankenstein. I just wanted a piece of art that I could sell at shows with all my characters, something for everybody. But as soon as I had drawn it, I began to wonder what stories were possible. Why couldn’t these characters all interact? Simon & Kirby’s characters were created for different publishers, so they could never really team up. But there they were, the Red Skull chatting with some kid sucking a lollipop. Why couldn’t my characters share the same universe? Believe me, it took a long time to wrap my head around that. POWERS: In Bizarre Heroes #4 (Aug. 1994), you present Megaton Man as having to return to high school in order to redo his senior year, and he gains a teenage sidekick, X-Ray Boy. Why did you want to take Trent in this rather unexpected direction? SIMPSON: Again, it just seemed funny to me. Sometimes, the most disturbing ideas, where you’re afraid to go, turn out to be the best. Or at least you can’t resist them; if you do, it’s at your own peril. Once I get an idea like that, I want to see how it plays out, because I have no idea ahead of time.
Team-Ups and Tussles Simpson’s Megaton Man has on occasion butted heads with other indie heroes in these one-shots. Megaton Man TM & © Donald E. Simpson. Other characters © their respective copyright holders.
POWERS: With Megaton Man vs. Forbidden Frankenstein #1 (a.k.a. Bizarre Heroes #16) (Apr. 1996), you are combining two of your properties into one. At this time, why did you want Trent Phloog to meet this character, an “Anton Drek” creation who debuted under Fantagraphics’ Eros Comix label? SIMPSON: Again, that goes back to the Fiascoverse print. That’s what I called it retroactively. I don’t think I knew I would be self-publishing or that I would call my imprint Fiasco. But you can’t help but notice Megaton Man and Forbidden Frankenstein share the same physique. And if you put clothes on Frankenstein, he’s just Frankenstein, so it seemed natural. POWERS: The later issues of Bizarre Heroes show Megaton Man and X-Ray Boy joining such characters as Yarn Man, Kozmik Kat, Cowboy Gorilla, Agent Jerry, Paul Nabisco, and his creation Gower Goose, as they embark upon adventures in a VW van. How, then, did the 1960s underground comics influence this free-spirited storyline, which you would continue delineating in Megaton Man’s online adventures? SIMPSON: Paul first appears as a rebel comic-book writer in The Return of Megaton Man #3 (Sept. 1988), working for Bad Guy, who runs the Gamble Comics Group. Later, I establish that he’s like a grandson or nephew. Paul, even then, I think was a pastiche of Alan Moore and Steve Gerber, the hippie-mystical writer. Nabisco was probably chosen as a last name because of Gerber baby food. Generally, my impression of most of the writers who entered the field in the ’70s was that they were college dropouts who wanted to be the next Stan Lee. They had failed at the counterculture and had read too much Tolkien, or James Blish, or God knows what. And they had some college, and had some pretentions, and they started aping Stan Lee while Stan went off to California to get Hollywood interested in a Hulk TV show or whatever. After I had drawn “In Pictopia” for Anything Goes #2 (Dec. 1986), Gary Groth had another idea from Alan called “Convention Tension.” It was something of a companion piece, although it would have been much longer. Whereas Pictopia was an allegorical place where comic strips and comicbook characters go to die as corporate bulldozers raze the neighborhood, “Convention Tension” was the comic-book convention from hell—in a hotel where every manner of chaos is taking place short of the Image Tent! One of the characters is named Byron Starkwinter, creator of Mookie the Worm. He’s clearly a Gerber satire; he’s one of these wannabe Stan Lees I just described who has taken too many drugs and can’t handle the overnight success and fan adulation that accompanies it. He begins thinking Mookie is real. Paul Nabisco is equal parts Gerber and Alan by way of Byron, which was never produced since Anything Goes came to an end. But Paul has such a vivid, hallucinogenic imagination that everything he writes or dreams up comes true, so I put him in a van with Gower Goose, his most famous cult creation. I always thought of Howard as owing more to underground funny animals like Fritz the Cat than Disney or Hollywood funny animals. This was slightly lost at Marvel because the Marvel artists couldn’t take the time to ink like Crumb or Gilbert Shelton or Skip Williamson. But I tried to give the VW van a kind of rusty, beat-up, underground look.
POWERS: As a follow-up to Bizarre Heroes, you started to publish weekly one-page strips featuring Megaton Man and the rest of the Fiasco Universe characters online (the Megaton Man Weekly Serial, which ran from 1996–2001 and as backups in Savage Dragon). What did you like about utilizing this then-new medium, and how did it evolve the manner in which you told Megaton Man’s and company’s storylines? SIMPSON: Well, that was a natural way to just follow the wandering VW van. I drew the strip for something like five years— it wasn’t always weekly, but it was a pioneering web comic. But all that time they only drive a few miles in the ruins of Detroit! One of the things it taught me was that you have to have something happening in every installment. I drew the strips as half comic-pages. In a comic book, you can just fill panels with pretty art, but in a comic strip—even a web comic—something has to happen. And the story needs to move forward with maybe a little bit of a cliffhanger to keep folks coming back. In the end, the dosage was too slow; it never really gained momentum. But it was a fun experiment. And I got to color it in Photoshop and publish it online without any intermediaries. It was right after the distribution system in the Direct Market collapsed, so it was timely. POWERS: On February 23, 2019, you started to retell Megaton Man’s story online in an underground prose YA novel, The Ms. Megaton Man Maxi-Series, through the eyes of Clarissa James. Why did you wish to revisit the Megaton Man saga via this narrative form, which does not shrink from depicting Clarissa’s sexuality? ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 11
SIMPSON: Even though Megaton Man was being published by a legacy underground comix publisher, it was in color and therefore more expensive, meaning that it was ostensibly trying to reach a broader audience. It was more commercial. But, of course, everything about comics is at cross-purposes; as I said, I felt the need to push the boundaries with nudity and suggestive, scandalous situations—even if they seem fairly mild now. I created several erotic comics under the pseudonym Anton Drek—of course, anybody could tell it was my lettering, my inking, and so on, so it was an open secret. But it allowed people who might otherwise be repulsed to hang out with me at shows. There were folks like Trina Robbins, who literally said she wanted to castrate Anton Drek, yet she had no problem with Don Simpson—very weird phenomenon. But, getting back to Megaton Man, I always tried to keep the strip PG. I might have drawn one or two nudes (as convention sketches for fans) of the See-Thru Girl early on—they’ve never surfaced on the internet—but I decided rather quickly I didn’t want to “exploit” my characters in that way, at least, not those characters. I regarded them as real people at that point and respected their privacy. As I said, the relationship between Trent and Stella mystified me for years. Were they romantic? Did Stella ever invite Trent into her bedroom? I really had no answers for the longest time. I was married for ten years and had a series of relationships over the years, and to make a long story short, people are rather schizophrenic when it comes to sex. I’ve had partners who be-
haved like porn performers without the slightest suggestion yet still maintained afterward, with a straight face, that we were simply “friends” and things had simply gone further than was wise. I mean, the human capacity for denial is truly inexhaustible. I hadn’t really allowed my imagination to go certain places with the characters, but when I decided Clarissa should be the first-person narrator, all bets were off. She was perfect (for the role of narrator) in a way because she had the ideal point of view on the world of megaheroes. She had started out as a civilian when she first met Stella and Trent; later, she becomes a megahero herself. So, she has a unique insight. As far as the sex is concerned, I was recalling a number of young women I knew in Detroit and environs in those days— college age like me, single, exploring their own sexuality, managing alcohol and marijuana and an absence of parental supervision; not necessarily women I was in relationships with, but friends, girlfriends of friends or next-door neighbors in apartments, Wayne State students, waitresses in the restaurant where I washed dishes. And they would talk openly to a certain extent in the right settings—sometimes about their wrong choices. In any case, based on such anecdotal research, if you will, I don’t think Clarissa is at all implausible. She starts out as a very bookish, studious student, shy, introverted. Then she’s living in this house with former megaheroes and a baby on the way. She’s a late bloomer, and she makes some wrong choices, goes a bit overboard. But she’s not the kind of person to beat herself up about it. And while she gets a “reputation” [for promiscuity] in certain circles, she doesn’t define herself that way. She learns the hard way, perhaps, but she moves on. I don’t want to give too much away, but in the case of the prose stories, I wanted to account for the few facts that I’d let slip in the comics. Again, material I’d created for laughs, but how to rationally account for it? It’s actually a bit harrowing, Clarissa’s delayed freshman crisis; she almost completely blows school. Her parents have an intervention. Then she’s got a sister who wants to get in on the act— Avie is arguably more promiscuous than Clarissa. And then the Y+Thems move in down the street. I think on the whole I was trying to describe a young woman at a point in her life where she tries a lot of things and refuses to be ashamed of any of her choices, regardless of what others think of her—which is exaggerated and not really deserved. She has certain experiences, and they are quite vivid to her and meaningful, but, on the whole, she has a rather modest sex life in terms of frequency and diversity of experience. A lot of that material is rather roughdraft and sorely in need of revision. But I don’t think Clarissa’s [mostly serialmonogamous] sex life, in terms of frequency or diversity, is implausible for that time. Clarissa, as I see her later in life, is a much more mature, sober person. She’s going to finish her PhD, but she’s going to take a lot longer than Stella. And she’s going to raise a daughter on her own.
These Heroes Are Bizarre! The Phantom Jungle Girl has always been a liminal character between the more humorous world of Megaton Man and the more dramatic world of Bizarre Heroes. From Pteranoman #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, Aug. 1990, inset). TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
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POWERS: In January 2022, you started to share the 1963 (WhenElse?!) Annual online (which was published in 2023 by Fantagraphics Underground as X-Amount of Comics). Can you please discuss the impetus for this satiric conclusion of the long (and frustratingly) unfinished 1963 Image stories? SIMPSON: I lettered half of the original series—it’s a colorful story that I will share in a text piece for the comic. Steve Bissette later had me draw an N-Man story; this was around 2015. He and I used to chat, and I’d harangue him—“Why don’t you guys finish the damn thing? You’re all grown men.” Spoiler alert, but I don’t think Jim Lee ever intended to draw it, and him luring weak-willed Alan away to write for Alphabet Comics, or whatever it was called, was intentionally malicious, an effort to sabotage Jim Valentino, actually. But the main problem was—and is—weak-willed Alan. He just has no control. People throw money at him, and he’ll forget what he was thinking, mid-sentence, apparently. His fans can’t comprehend this. We’re all engrossed in every story he writes. But he can lose interest without much incentive. I don’t believe there’s any material reason that the annual was never finished except that Alan got bored, and that was because Jim Lee was throwing more money at him. It irks me, personally, when I read in The Guardian the latest write-up depicting Alan as the poster boy for creators’ rights. Apparently, those rights subsist entirely in being a Byron Starkwinter, of being a refuse-nik and an uncooperative ***hole. It does not entail any obligation to fans or retailers who expected an ending and paid good money for six issues that have no conclusion. I think it’s reprehensible. POWERS: On page 57, you have Cyclobster ask Megaton Man if he could join him in an exhibition fight. However, once he finds out that Megaton Man is not the Tick, Cyclobster walks away, leaving Trent sadly grumbling. (In 1986, the comic book The Tick, created by Ben Edlund, debuted.) Suspiciously, the titular character, like Megaton Man, sports a large chin and exaggerated musculature and operates in a world that satirizes DC and Marvel characters. What are your thoughts on these quite obvious similarities occurring between Edlund’s creation and your own? SIMPSON: Exhibition… ha! I’m so funny! [laughter] Being mistaken for the Tick is something of a running gag in Megaton Man by now; I did it in the serial. Of course, there’s a Megaton Man/Tick teamup in War of the Independents #4, which I drew. It never bothered me when the Tick came along; I was into Border Worlds. But when I started publishing Bizarre Heroes in 1994, fans would come up to my table and point at the cover and say, “Tick!” or actually accuse me of ripping off Ben Edlund. I told Ben this, and I thought he was going to cry—he felt such remorse! [laughter] Ben’s actually a big-time Hollywood producer these days. But he’s run into the same problem I had—after you make fun of superheroes for a season or two, you run out of material. I thought it would be funny if he were to license Megaton Man—then it could say, “From the creator of The Tick!” [laughter]
POWERS: Megaton Man, Bizarre Heroes, your one-page strips, and other related Megaton Man works are being reprinted as a two-volume omnibus by Fantagraphics. What would you like Megaton Man readers, both new and old, to take away from this celebration of your life work with the character? SIMPSON: I hope folks can catch up with what I’m doing now, as I hope I have a few good years left. I never saw Megaton Man running 300 issues like Cerebus; I always wanted to try different things. Now, I have an altogether different outlook. I see the characters as a puppet show, and behind them are the ideas I’m trying to communicate. I wasn’t aware what those were, exactly, when I was starting out. But I think in the world we live in today, I want to say a thing or two. In the America I grew up in, we took democracy for granted. We assumed social progress was inevitable. Even when Reagan was elected, we saw it as a temporary setback. Personal freedoms of all sorts
Crisis on Earth-Image Don jams with Erik Larsen for The Savage Dragon vs. The Savage Megaton Man #1 (Image Comics, Mar. 1993). Megaton Man TM & © Donald E. Simpson. Savage Dragon TM & © Erik Larsen.
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Chin Up, Heroes! (left) Pencil and (right) final ink of Megaton Man (almost) meeting the Tick in War of the Independents #4 (Red Anvil Comics, 2017). Megaton Man TM & © Donald E. Simpson. The Tick © Disney.
are under attack merely by people—including the majority on the Supreme Court—who simply find ideas uncomfortable. I don’t have a didactic program for my work, but I hope I’m pushing in the right direction. POWERS: Fantagraphics is likewise publishing your Megaton Man: Return to Megatropolis graphic novel, which you had started in 2002, finished in 2016, and are newly coloring. Could you please discuss the post-9/11 impetus for your efforts with this story and how it affected your initial progress on the book? SIMPSON: The late Batton Lash, for one, was appalled that I would use a tragic event like 9/11 as an excuse to move my characters back to New York, where they started. But they’d been roaming around the Midwest in the Microbus long enough [laughter]! At the time, I was working at Borders—a self-fulfilling prophecy, following in the path of Trent Phloog, married to a PhD in chemistry—and one day it struck me that I could read up on those Schaum’s self-teaching math books and pile up college credits in no time. I only have six months of payments left [laughter]! In any case, I set the work aside and went back to school. A decade later, I had a PhD—I don’t know my own strength, obviously. While I was in it, I thought it would never come. Now it seems
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like no big deal—a doctorate and four bucks gets you a cup of coffee, as they say. After that, I was too old for a postdoc or tenure track and was looking at plenty of adjuncting— which I decided wasn’t worth the time last year. In the meantime, I somehow became “vintage”— or maybe the generation above me is beginning to pass away. But with social media, fans and collectors can find me, and they keep throwing money at me for commissions, so I can’t complain. And Gary Groth, of all things, not only wanted to reprint “In Pictopia”—a thankless task, as it turned out—but also The Compete Megaton Man Universe, in two or more volumes, after nearly 40 years. I was emailing Denis Kitchen the other day, saying that I should be paying Fantagraphics an advance for proofreading 1,300 pages…! POWERS: You mentioned New York. Why was bringing Megaton Man back to Megatropolis (essentially NYC) and focusing on his relationship with the somewhat reunited Megatropolis Quartet and their extended family (via Chuck Roast, the Human Meltdown) the right choice for this narrative? SIMPSON: I have this unbelievably convoluted explanation as to how the same city can be New York and Megatropolis. I’ve hinted at it in prose, and I will be delving into it further in comics and prose. I will make Byron Starkwinter and Paul
Nabisco both envious! But that was what was powerful about the graphic novel: I realized that putting them back in New York suddenly gave them all kinds of story options. The Megaton Mice come back, the Devengers. I’m really looking forward to it. POWERS: By the time of this graphic novel, Simon, Trent’s son with Stella Starlight (now known as the Earth Mother), has grown into an adolescent. Are there any potential plans to continue the Megaton Man dynasty through Simon, who becomes the Junior Meltdown in this story? SIMPSON: I don’t think I’m going to ever make it big in the YA market, but I did teach a class in young adult literature among my adjuncting. The beauty of Harry Potter was how this young character led the reader into this world, and as he’s having all these first-time experiences, so is the reader. I realized I had Simon and his cousin, Geneviève, who could function similarly; they’re both children of two megahero parents, and they live in the Doomsday Factory with all of these mysteries and weird team members. It’s like Harry and Hermione at Hogwarts… without the transphobia. POWERS: Your commitment to telling the continuing satirical adventures of Megaton Man and the evergrowing cast of Fiasco Universe characters feels rejuvenated and stronger than ever, Don. Where you like to go with their future adventures from this exciting point? SIMPSON: There’s always somebody that hasn’t heard the story, so I think one has to be patient and gracious. At shows now, when people bring up the Tick, I just tell them matterof-factly that I was first, and they can google it—
and we have all kinds of amazing conversations. Or they bring up Alan, or Image, or 1963, and I say, “Well, look at this.” Shows are really kind of amazing because, on the one hand, I’m there with all my old stuff, and fans are bringing books up to me to autograph, and they become like teaching moments to talk about new stuff. And I still have photocopies of the next thing I’m working on; I’ll always have photocopies of some next thing. TOM POWERS teaches English at Montgomery County Community College, which is located in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He is also the author of Gender and the Quest in British Science Fiction Television: An Analysis of Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Red Dwarf and Torchwood (McFarland, 2016).
Ticked Off (above) Cyclobster loses interest in a bout with Megaton Man when he realizes he’s not the Tick. From X-Amount of Comics: 1963 (WhenElse?!) Annual (Fantagraphics Underground, 2023). (left) Its cover. TM & © Donald E. Simpson.
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Writer Steven Grant’s ninja character Whisper first saw the light of day in a two-issue run from Capital Comics (Dec. 1983–Mar. 1984). In a “Pro2Pro” interview with Grant and Whisper artist Norm Breyfogle that appeared in BACK ISSUE #49 (Feb. 2017), Grant told me: “I was living in New York and taking a train home to Madison, Wisconsin, where I grew up. I read a cheap paperback, supposedly factual, about ninjas to pass the time. At the time ninjas were just beginning to work their way into the American psyche. I knew that while ‘ninjas’ did exist in feudal Japan—they were essentially messengers for nobles—what we think of a ‘the ninja,’ the black-garbed, shuriken-throwing, virtually unstoppable magical assassins, were the product of nationalistic interwar Japanese pulp fiction. In other words, complete BS. I mean, really, if ninjas as we think of them ever existed, do you really think Japan could’ve lost WWII?” Rich Larson was the artist of Capital’s two issues of Whisper. With the demise of Capital Comics, Whisper moved to First Comics, continuing her story in Whisper Special (Nov. 1985), also illustrated by Larson. From there, she became a part of First’s anthology series First Adventure (Dec. 1985–Apr. steven grant 1986), also with art by Rich Larson for all five issues of its run. [Editor’s note: Joining the “Whisper” feature in all five issues of the First Adventures anthology was “Dynamo Joe,” another of this issue’s indie heroes. Issues #1–4 also included an adventure starring “Blaze Barlow and the Eternity Command.”]
by S t e p h a n
Friedt
RICH LARSON, THE ORIGINAL ARTIST
Rich Larson is probably best known for his collaborations with his art partner Steve Fastner. From the Fastner/Larson bio page on their DeviantArt page: “We’re Steve Fastner (airbrush artist) and Rich Larson (penciler), and we’ve worked together on fantasy and comics-related art since 1976. … Most of our larger paintings are airbrushed by Steve onto art board over Rich’s pencils. More of our work, including some comics, can be seen at fastnerandlarson.com.” [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #83, our “International Heroes” issue, for its Fastner/Larson X-Men vs. Alpha Fight cover and an interview with the artists about their collaboration.] I spoke with Rich Larson via email about the experience of working with Steven Grant as the original Whisper illustrator: STEPHAN FRIEDT: How did you and Steven Grant come together as a team? RICH LARSON: I’m dredging this up from the synaptic depths, so some of the details might not be entirely accurate. In the mid to late ’70s, I was doing stories and covers for Charlton’s ghost comics and had done a few stories for undergrounds like Denis Kitchen’s Bizarre Sex and for “ground level” comics like Sal Q’s Hot Stuf’. I believe Sal put Steven Grant in touch with me, and we did a couple of stories together—the profoundly impenetrable (at least to me) “Nimrod Fusion” for Mike Friedrich’s Imagine and a neat little eco-disaster fable called “The Walls of the City” for Hot Stuf’. 16 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
Making Noise for ‘Whisper’ Duck! Whisper’s got you in her sights! Original art for an early promotional poster for Capital Comics’ Whisper series, and the printed poster. Art by and courtesy of Rich Larson. Whisper © Steven Grant and Rich Larson.
Grand Larson-y (insets) Covers to the two Capital issues, Whisper #1 (Dec. 1983) and #2 (Mar. 1984). Issue #1’s cover by Michael Golden, #2’s by Larson. (main) Capital Comics’ demise kept this dynamite Rich Larson cover art from appearing as the cover of issue #4, which was not published by the company. Instead, this piece surfaced on the intro page of the 1985 Whisper Special. Scan courtesy of the artist. Whisper © Steven Grant and Rich Larson.
I think Steven suggested me as a possible artist when he brought Whisper to Capital Comics, and to this day, I’m not sure why Capital went along with that. I was doing freelance advertising art at the time and had only done short comic stories previously. I ended up wildly underestimating the amount of time it would take to do a full book, and I had to ask Dennis Wolf, on zero notice, if he would be willing to drop whatever he was working on to do the inking and lettering. He was a terrific artist (see Eclipse’s Overload magazine) and he absolutely saved the first issue. Grant was either in Wisconsin or New York City, and I was in Minnesota, so the way we worked together was by full script via mail. I was chronically behind schedule, so I don’t remember much in the way of back-and-forth; luckily Steven put everything necessary to visualize the story into his scripts, so there wasn’t the need for a lot of discussion. FRIEDT: What was the inspiration for your work on Whisper? LARSON: I hate to say it, but Whisper was probably close to the least-inspired published work I’ve ever done. Part of that was because, as primarily a fantasy/horror guy, I just wasn’t a good fit for the material. I was always trying to figure out a look for the art that would complement the story and that I could pull off. The other part was that when I started working on the art for the first issue, I was already in the middle of other things— ad work, mostly. I was trying to do several things at once, and constantly falling behind. Until about the third and fourth issues (which First Comics packaged together as the Whisper Special), when I decided to concentrate on what I FRIEDT: What was your goal in developing the was doing, it was all I could do to just move the character? plot along from A to B. There was no room for LARSON: Although we were credited as coinspiration. But by the third and fourth issues, rich larson creators, the character and story were always what inspired me was the desire to finally bring entirely Steven’s. I had an idea of how he felt a uniform look and a base level of competence to the visuals. (See near the end of the interview for how well about heroes and heroics, and so I tried to keep the overall look as far away as possible from the way those things had traditionally that worked out.) been handled in comics. As far as Alex’s physical appearance was concerned, since her FRIEDT: What influenced you when you worked on the character? early ninjutsu training was to help her recover from childhood Movies? TV? LARSON: Honestly, I was influenced by the desire not to do polio, I wanted to keep her slender and (by comic-book standards) another martial-arts character. The genre has never much reso- almost a bit frail looking—just in case things started going too nated with me, and I don’t think Steven ever mentioned wanting well in her life to suit Steven, and he decided to have her to to pay homage either. My sense was that the rolling dumpster relapse into paralysis. I suppose the costume was a concession fire that Alex’s personal life [Whisper’s real name is Alex Devin— to the superhero genre. The standard issue ninja suit wasn’t ed.] was going to be as a result of becoming a pawn in the battle something I wanted to be drawing Alex in over and over, but between the feds and the Japanese underworld was the main I was also concerned with not ending up with something like attraction and that the ninja aspect was going to be subservient another Elektra. Since Whisper wasn’t going to be doing to that. I think Steven was telegraphing this when, early on, superhero stuff, and Alex wasn’t configured to be eye candy, a major bad guy confides in Alex that there’s no such thing the costume itself had to provide a significant portion of the as a ninja; their existence is just a myth the underworld elites visual interest without being overly “costume-y.” I tried to keep continued to propagate to gain and keep power in the Yakuza. it simple, dramatic, and moderately plausible. And I wanted (Although the character could have been lying through his teeth Alex’s vulnerability to show through. It was nice to see future to throw Alex and the reader off. With Grant, you never know.) Whisper artists continue to go with it. ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 17
FRIEDT: What did you enjoy about working on the character? Was it a challenge to build each issue? LARSON: I was happy with the costume and enjoyed drawing it. Steve crafted a neat escape-from-the-grated-pit sequence for the first Capital issue, and I thought, “Well, this is never going to work,” but it did. The Central Park sequence in the Whisper Special was fun to draw. (By that time, I had come up with a method of inking that I was satisfied with, involving Bristol board, Clearprint vellum, Sprayment, and an art fountain pen. So, yeah, not a natural inker.) What was challenging was that, with the possible exception of the last issues I worked on (numbers #12 and 25 in the First run), my art was not big-time-comic-book-storytelling-ready. And even if it had been, I wasn’t up for the research that would have been necessary to, for example, accurately render the Tokyo and New York locales, the cars, the fashions, the hairstyles—all the little details that would’ve lent credibility to the everyday activity that moved the story along. The second Capital issue, which had Alex returning to New York to start her new job, was especially painful in that regard. It wasn’t visually entertaining. As the story continued to develop and became less about Whisper’s exploits and more about Alex’s personal life, there was a lot of dialogue to provide cover for, and the art wasn’t up to it. FRIEDT: Any regrets or things you wish you could “do over”? LARSON: Well, I regret kind of dropping the ball at a pretty pivotal point in Capital’s existence. For some years after they went under, [Capital publisher] John Davis would stop by the SQP table at Comic-Con during setup to say hi to
[SQP publishers] Sal [Quartuccio] and Bob [Keenan], and he was always cordial. He never said anything like, “You bankrupted us, you son of a bitch!” But I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had. Capital’s first book, Nexus, was wildly popular, and deservedly so. I have to imagine its success gave Capital the incentive to add new series to its lineup, to pay what must have been pretty close to a top dollar and allow creators to keep the rights to their characters—all the independent publisher good stuff. Badger, the second title, was more like existing superhero titles (apart from the being insane part), but it did well also. It wasn’t on the level of Nexus, but not much was at that point. A solid book. Steven brought in Whisper to be the third title in Capital’s lineup, and I’m being charitable to myself when I say that artwise, expectations for the first issue were not met. They were even more not met in the second issue. Reader response was not favorable, and it wasn’t unrealistic to look at Nexus on the one hand and Whisper on the other and come away with the impression that Capital was heading in the wrong direction. In publishing, that kind of impression can be fatal. I’m not saying the quality of the art on the first couple of issues was directly or indirectly responsible for Capital’s demise, and I never heard as much from any of the principals, but again, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. So, with hindsight, probably the do-over would be to politely decline the job. That might not have saved Capital in the long run, but it would have at least saved Les Dorscheid from having to color some pretty bleak pages. FRIEDT: Any great background stories from working on the character? LARSON: “Great” might not be the word, but here you go: I received in the mail a check for my first work on Whisper, looked at it, put it somewhere, and forgot about it for a month. When I remembered about it, I couldn’t find it. I went through every pile of paper—and in an art studio, there are more of those than anything else—on every flat surface. I finally had to call Capital and tell them I’d lost their check. Uncomfortable silence. “You lost a check for $X,XXX?” They stopped payment and sent a new one. I found the old one years later. I used it to bookmark a page in a book about ninjas I was using for reference in the fight scenes. Probably the most successful work I did for Whisper was, as you might guess, not inked by me. In issue #25 (June 1989), Jim Fern’s elegant linework made something as simple as an eye reflected in a rearview mirror significant and impactful, and Alex looked great. Jim went on to do great stuff at Marvel. As a bonus, that book was colored by Bruce Timm, whom I’m told also went on to do something or other. I mentioned that I was starting to be satisfied with the look of the art with the Whisper Special, where I’d found a convoluted inking process I felt was working. Because some time had passed between Capital’s ceasing publication and First picking
Whisper Returns… The lady ninja soon popped up in a new title from First Comics. Whisper #1 (June 1986) (inset) cover and title page (story page 2), with art by Dell Barras. Whisper © Steven Grant and Rich Larson.
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up the character, they wanted a brief introduction that would reacquaint the reader with the storyline. By that time, I was in California doing storyboards at a special-effects company, and my drawing style and inking technique had completely changed again to suit those purposes. Plus, I was drinking a lot of coffee. So, the introduction and the body of the story, which had been done several months earlier, looked like they were done by two entirely different people.
DELL BARRAS, THE ‘FIRST’ ARTIST
Shortly after the female ninja’s last appearance in First Adventures, First Comics gave Whisper her own series. It ran for 37 issues (June 1986– June 1990). Dell Barras was the artist for the first two issues of Whisper. From the Lambiek site: “Dell Barras was born in Manila, Philippines. He started his career in comics in the 1970s, publishing titles such as Ang Taong Isda, Samsona, and Mariela Morena. In 1984, he began working for USA publishers DC Comics and Marvel, on comics like Green Arrow, Batman, Superman, Blue Beetle, The Incredible Hulk, and Conan the Barbarian. For Marvel UK he also worked on Death’s Hero, Motormouth, and Battle Tide. He switched to animation and now works as a storyboard artist and designer.” Dell Barras kindly answered via email a few Whisper questions for BACK ISSUE: STEPHAN FRIEDT: How did you get the Whisper assignment? DELL BARRAS: The publisher, First Comics, contacted me to work on it. Steven Grant gave me full scripts and I was influenced by the superheroes of Marvel, DC, and other comic books.
dell barras FRIEDT: What did you enjoy about working on the character? Was it a challenge to build each issue? BARRAS: It’s the writing! I liked the writer’s treatment of it. I wish I could do it again! FRIEDT: Any great background stories from working on the character? BARRAS: Great characters! Unfortunately, I was replaced after issue #2—I got swamped with work.
Beyond the Norm After joining the series with (top left) issue #3 (Oct. 1986), Norm Breyfogle’s art rapidly matured, as evidenced by (top right) issue #11’s cover. Before long, Breyfogle would begin a celebrated Batman run in Detective Comics. (bottom) Courtesy of the artist, original art to a First house ad announcing Rich Larson’s return to Whisper, for issue #12. Whisper © Steven Grant and Rich Larson.
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The Other Whisper Artists (top left) Whisper #13 (June 1988) cover by Spyder (Neil Hanson). (top right) Whisper #29 (Oct. 1989) cover by Steve Epting. (bottom) Whisper #37 (June 1990)—the final issue in this volume’s run— cover by Vince Giarrano. Whisper © Steven Grant and Rich Larson.
Haunting the wilds of Oregon, now semi-retired so he can devote even more time to uncovering the gems of comic-book history and empty-nesting with his wife, STEPHAN FRIEDT helps with entries at comics.org and comicspriceguide.com, and provides editorial consultation and an occasional writing assist for Defective Comix Studio at defectivecomix.com.
A NEW NORM FOR ‘WHISPER’
Norm Breyfogle (1960–2018) was the next Whisper artist. My bio for Breyfogle, from my interview in BACK ISSUE #94 (Feb. 2017): “‘Discovered’ by Mike Friedrich at the 1984 San Diego Comic-Con Art Show, Norm was soon working for Marvel, DC, and First. Though perhaps best known for his stellar work on Batman through multiple titles, Norm also worked on The Spectre and other DC titles. Norm continued in a variety of venues including working for Speakeasy, Markosia, and Malibu, where he created the character Prime. Norm has also illustrated children’s books, and novels, and worked in illustration for the advertising world. In 2008, Norm made his mark in Archie Comics, and in 2012 he returned to illustrating Batman for Batman Beyond at DC. In 2014, Norm suffered a stroke and was coping with the limitations that resulted, but passed away on September 24, 2018.” Breyfogle would handle the art chores for Whisper #3 (Oct. 1986) through 11 (Feb. 1988). This relatively short two-year run is fondly remembered by many of the fans as a high point in the series. “Basically, the main thing I enjoyed about working on Whisper was that it was my first full-time comics gig,” Norm told me during our BI interview. “However, I also enjoyed the themes and characters in the story; Steven Grant and I seemed and still do seem to share an awful lot of viewpoints on political and social issues.” When asked if there were any challenges for the newbie artist when drawing Whisper, Breyfogle laughed, “Don’t get me started! I was working on this before I owned a computer and before there really existed much of the Internet at all, so I had to find all my visual references in magazines and books at the local library. It was very difficult. It was a gigantic challenge for me to meet the deadlines while penciling, inking, lettering, and painting the covers for the series. I remember thinking how difficult my career path had turned out to be; I have a large Dionysian stripe in me, and that stripe was even more pronounced back in my 20s. But after meeting the deadlines for a year or so, I began feeling good about it all.” Whisper #12 (Apr. 1988) saw the return of Rich Larson on art. Issues #13–24 featured art by Neil Hanson, using the nom de plume of “Spyder.” A North Canadian artist, Hansen has illustrated comics for Marvel (The Punisher and Conan) and Valiant (Turok). For First Comics, again using the pen name “Spyder,” he also worked on Badger and Nexus. Hansen did his own t series called Untamed for Marvel, as well as covers and some scriptwriting work. A revolving door of artists cycled through Whisper for the series’ remaining issues. Rich Larson returned for another single issue, #25. Issues #26–28 featured the artistic talents of Vincent (Vince) Giarrano, an American contemporary realist painter and former comic-book artist. In comics, he’s best remembered for Batman, but has also drawn Dr. Fate, Doom Patrol, The Terminator, and other series. Artist Steve Epting drew Whisper #29–31. Wikipedia notes: “In 1989, Epting read of a contest being conducted by independent comicbook publisher First Comics, with the winner’s story to be published by the company. Although the contest did not actually exist, First declared Epting one of the ‘winners’ and he began drawing for the company. His assignments for First included backup stories for Nexus, guest-artist duties on Dreadstar and Whisper, and two miniseries starring Nexus supporting character Judah Maccabee: Hammer of God and Hammer of God: Sword of Justice.” Issues #32–37, the final issues of the series, would see the return of Vince Giarrano as Whisper artist. Steven Grant provided the scripts for the entire run. In 2006, Grant returned to the character to script a Whisper one-shot, loosely related to the Whisper series published by Capital and First Comics. Published by Boom! Studios, Whisper #1 was illustrated by Jean Dzialowski.
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conducted by
G.K. Abraham
Comics’ Other Wolverine Forget DC’s Tomahawk—William Messner-Loebs’ Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire is your comic-book pathway to the American Frontier. Original artwork from Journey #1 (Mar. 1983), courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). © William Messner-Loebs.
It is only in retrospect that we realize the ’70s and particularly ’80s books that many of us grew up with, that BACK ISSUE magazine is devoted to, are further away and more distant and distinct from kids and young adults today than the World War II comics of the ’40s, the Golden Age of Comics, were to our generation. Most of the books of the ’40s were published during the nascent years of the medium, and that is reflected in the art and storytelling. As much as we may thrill to a Mac Raboy–drawn Captain Marvel, Jr. or Matt Baker Phantom Lady or Simon & Kirby Captain America or Alex Schomburg covers, most Golden Age stories themselves are not going to be confused with great storytelling… whereas the books of the ’80s, spearheaded by creators like Miller and Moore and Moench and Giffen and DeMatteis, showed that the medium had arrived and grown up. These were young men telling personal, sophisticated stories in the medium of the comic book— atypical stories that resonated with them, and therefore resonated with the disaffected youth and young adults who were picking up these books at the time. And the more that storytelling holds up, the books of the ’80s are to some extent the standard by which even modern audiences judge great storytelling. There is a reason Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and Swamp Thing remain perennial bestsellers, and works we revisit over and over again in various mediums. Because the ode of the Hopeful Young Man does not die. It is something we can relate to, especially as our culture gets more unreasoning and arguably barbaric, the visions of these challenging storytellers are ever more unusual and sophisticated. And arguably nothing represents that as well as writer/ artist William Francis Messner-Loebs’ (Bill Loebs, to friends and colleagues; Messner is the family name of his wife and collaborator, Nadine) body of work, specifically his Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire (henceforth Journey). First seen in 1983 in a backup story in Cerebus #48, Journey is a black-&-white feature chronicling the wistful treks of Joshua “Wolverine” MacAlistaire in the American Frontier of the 19th century. Titled “Search,” this first Journey story, which concludes in Cerebus #49, is an adept and assured introduction to the series’ time and place. Loebs’ deft penciling, inking, and panel compositions, and his use of shading, blacks, and negative space, combined with a rich, gripping, and immediately addictive narrative, makes for a smashing conclusion to the first story and a mesmerizing introduction to an immediately iconic character. Soon spinning off into its own title, Journey was originally to be a sixissue miniseries from publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim. Journey ultimately ran 27 issues, through 1986, switching to publisher Fantagraphics Books with its 15th issue. You can find two IDW collections collecting the whole Journey series. Unfortunately, the printing isn’t great on those collections, and you lose much of Bill’s light, detailed linework and subtle shading and shadowing, plus much of his storytelling. The original issues remain the best way to sample this under-championed bit of Americana, this Mark Twain of the comics medium. Journey is a body of work that deserves a remastered hardcover edition, to make accessible to a new generation this important, whimsical, and fun series that is arguably the best comic book ever done about the spirit of the American frontier, tall tales and all. In early 2023 I had the good fortune of interviewing Mr. Loebs about Journey. Hopefully this interview will serve as a primer for the uninitiated and a small impetus toward a remastered, deluxe reprinting of his epic work. – G. K. Abraham
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G. K. ABRAHAM: We’ll start with a question you have been asked before, but one I think we do not get tired of hearing the answer to: How did you get into comics? WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS: A friend of mine suggested we should go to an art fair. It was one of these art fairs in the late 1960s. It was mostly just for show, not a big thing, not a fair with judges and that kinda thing. My friends were all saying you should be doing things that are more commercial like everybody else is doing, and I was [drawing] small children riding on rhinoceroses, a bunch of floating skulls. And I made a $100, so sadly I wasn’t able to take the message my friends were willing to give me. I had been to one comic-book convention at downtown Detroit, at the old Shelby [Hotel]. So I decided to take my cardboard carton full of drawings and lay them out. And various things happened at that convention. I was able to convince one of the bossy guys trying to get us thrown out of the convention, saying there wasn’t a place for us, to back down, which was the only time I was able to do that with some sort of authority figure. [At the convention,] a friend of mine who was coming in from out of town was showing me original Segar artwork. ABRAHAM: E. C. Segar. The creator of Popeye. LOEBS: Yes, And then he also had a collection of Wallace Wood historical posters. Suddenly, all these things I never heard of before. And then a fellow came up and asked me if I wanted to draw a comic book for him. ABRAHAM: And that was Dave Sim? LOEBS: Actually, no, that was many years later. No, this was a really horrible guy. And it turned out that I did do the comic book for him, which was semi-pornographic. But he had a flood in his basement and all that artwork was lost. He eventually did have a comic-book company, Power Comics. All this happened after I homesteaded along the Canadian border for a year. So that was how I broke in. When I first graduated from college, a friend of mine wanted to put together a new magazine about the arts. So that kinda started me thinking about comics again. I picked up the first four issues of Fantastic Four, and the first issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Daredevil—years later, my friends and I were following slavishly the Byrne and Claremont X-Men. I was collecting the old Spirit magazine—my art kinda resembled that. And I was working at an art supply store. And one of the things, I was doing all my drawing with a technical fountain pen. And so the guy who ran that store said, “Do you like using that dead line, or would you like to use something else?” So he talked me into using a Series 7 Sable Windsor Newton. And when I sat down and
Then and Now A 2001 selfcaricature of Messner-Loebs, from the Heritage archives, and (inset) a recent photo of our spotlighted creator.
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started playing with it, I realized that’s how they get that comic-book line. So I was doing that, and I had all these sort of odd comicbook connections. And my friend, Tim Donaho, came back into my life, and he and a couple other friends were there. So I packed up all my art supplies and for three-quarters of a year I got to do a real comic book, which was Night Witch and Blu Bird and a whole bunch of other stories we thought would make us famous. And I met [Justice Machine creator] Mike Gustovich at a convention [up there] and I went back two or three times, trying to break in. And eventually I did. ABRAHAM: So, how did you meet Dave Sim? LOEBS: We went to a convention in Canada. And that’s where I met Dave and Demi [Loubert] Sim. A year after that, they contacted me and wanted me to do unique stories in the back of Cerebus. Which is how I came to do “Welcome to Heaven, Dr. Franklin,” which was really my first professional job, where I was actually paid something, and employed by someone intentionally. [Editor’s note: Messner-Loebs’ “Welcome to Heaven, Dr. Franklin” originally appeared as the backup in 1982’s Cerebus #34–38. About Comics reprinted the stories in a little-seen one-shot released in 2005.] ABRAHAM: What did you think of Dave and Deni Sim when you first met them? [Editor’s note: Cerebus the Aardvark creator Dave Sim and then-wife Deni Sim, now Deni Loubert, were behind the independent comics company Aardvark-Vanaheim in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, the first home of Loebs’ Journey series.] LOEBS: We worshiped them. Unfortunately, we were right there when their breakup came. It was sort of a hard fall to take.
Cover Story (top) Loebs’ Journey often featured wraparound covers, some of a single, expanded scene, and others—like the front and back covers to issue #1, shown here—of two different images. (bottom) MacAlistaire makes a grisly discovery on the cover of Journey #2. Original cover art courtesy of Heritage. © William Messner-Loebs.
ABRAHAM: Because she was actually the publisher of AardvarkVanaheim’s comics? LOEBS: She was the publisher, and he was the editor-in-chief. As their marriage fell apart and other things happened because of that, they changed positions in the company considerably. But that was a long time ago, and Dave and Deni have been extremely helpful as I get things done, and get published and all of that. I think we’ve all sort of kissed and made up at this point. ABRAHAM: I remember reading Deni’s articles in Journey, where she would discuss you and [Messner-Loebs’ wife] Nadine and the glowing praise she had for you both. LOEBS: She was extremely generous. ABRAHAM: You stayed on Journey for three years, I believe, 27 issues. Did you expect to stay on that long or just four issues and done? LOEBS: Six issues. Originally we were thinking it would be a six-issue miniseries, but Deni came to me and wanted it to continue, so that’s what we did. ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 23
‘JOURNEY’ PUBLICATION HISTORY • • • • • • • • • •
Cerebus #48 (Mar. 1983)–49 (Apr. 1983); Aardvark-Vanaheim Journey #1 (Mar. 1983)–14 (Sept. 1984); Aardvark-Vanaheim Journey #15 (Apr. 1985)–27 (Apr. 1986); Fantagraphics Journey Book One: Tall Tales (Jan. 1987): collecting Cerebus #48-49’s backups and Journey #1–4; Fantagraphics Anything Goes! #5 (Oct. 1987): anthology title containing four-page Journey story; Fantagraphics Journey: Wardrums #1 (Sept. 1987)–2 (Oct. 1990): intended to be a six-issue miniseries but only two issues were published; Fantagraphics Journey Book Two: Bad Weather (Nov. 1990): collecting Journey #5–8; Fantagraphics Many Happy Returns (2008): anthology title containing eight-page Journey story; About Comics Journey Vol. 1 (July 2008): collecting Cerebus #48-49’s backups and Journey #1–16; IDW Journey Vol. 2 (2009): collecting Journey #17–27; IDW
ABRAHAM: It’s one of my favorite series. I’m a huge fan of Journey. I’ve heard you say that’s your magnum opus, your favorite project? LOEBS: Well, it certainly is the one I had the most control over. Most of the things I’ve done, I have a lot of liking for. I was on most of the books for quite a while; I always thought I wanted to stay on books as long as I could and tell a complete story. That was sort of the influence of Dave, too. A lot of people would be hired by Marvel or DC, and they’d be on for a relatively short period of time and wouldn’t have a lot of control over their work. When I did Jonny Quest or Flash or Wonder Woman, yes, I had some issues with that. You’re always being pushed around, and you’re always having to do projects like these lunatic crossovers. So you’d find yourself trapped doing these crossovers and so people would get very bitter, because at some point you realize they can put you anywhere and do anything to you, and it’s a big company and you don’t really have a lot of choice. But since I always had Journey in my back pocket, and later, The Maxx, I was kept from a lot of the bitterness that some people felt. That was very handy for me. I had my own thing. I had complete control of Journey, even though I didn’t have a lot of time to do it toward the end.
ABRAHAM: I have a Jonny Quest question for you. You previously said that one of the ways you could get into Jonny Quest’s scientific backdrop was that your father was a NASA rocket engineer. How did that basically dave sim inform the stories you did for Jamie Coville. Jonny Quest? [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #59 for our spotlight on Comico’s Jonny Quest tie-in comic.] LOEBS: I just sort of understood [the setup]… You never really know if someone is a genius or not, but my father certainly was extremely smart… and yet rather limited in the way he would interact with people. Not with me, he was not Lex Luthor. But he didn’t understand people as well as my mother did. He sort of interacted with most people as if we all were pets. My father had to interact with a lot of deni loubert very emotional people who didn’t Meowwcat. reason very well. And I was one of those emotional people. I was always wanting to run off and do other things, and be independent.
Journey’s Behind-the-Scenes Supporters Aardvark-Vanaheim’s Dave Sim and Deni Loubert (Sim) helped Loebs’ Journey find its audience. Journey © William Messner-Loebs.
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ABRAHAM: What was your father’s name? LOEBS: William Loebs, Sr. ABRAHAM: So you’re a chip off the old block. LOEBS: Yes, I am. He would find it amusing beyond all things that I was considered to be the science guy, that everybody at DC would go to. So I sought of understood how science worked, but not as well as he would have liked me to. My Aunt Verna—this goes to show what she was like and what he was like—she told the story. She said [to my dad], “Bill, what is it exactly that you do?” “I could tell you, but you wouldn’t understand it.” She did not take offense at that. And he did not realize he was being offensive.
Meet the Parents Loebs’ renditions of his parents. Art courtesy of and © William Messner-Loebs.
ABRAHAM: Tell me a little bit about your mom. LOEBS: My mom had what they call emotional intelligence. Everyone really admired the fact that I had the mother I did. They were all very envious, all my friends, many of my relatives, because she was so nice and so sweet. She spent hours and hours and hours listening to me talk and having me make up stories for her, that kind of thing. I wrote, I think in the last issue of Jonny Quest I wrote, that she was the reason I was able to become a writer. She was a doctor’s daughter. She was the oldest of the kids, so she would go on his rounds with him. I remember the time we went to see the first Clint Eastwood Western, A Fistful of Dollars (1964). I adored that Western and was so thrilled. But my mother was always a little bit queasy about things and she said, “The trouble with that movie was they got the color of the blood exactly right.” And she remembered that from when she was my grandfather’s nurse. My mother was a big fan of Clint Eastwood from watching Rawhide, although when [Clint] was like slaughtering huge populations of people [in A Fistful of Dollars] she was like, “Whatever happened to nice, young Rowdy Yates?” [Editor’s note: You young’uns that don’t watch MeTV might not know that Yates was Eastwood’s character in the Warner Bros. TV Western Rawhide, which ran from 1959–1965.] She was part of Rowdy Yates fandom, I guess. I was thrilled that this guy I was such a big fan of became not only a popular star, but a worldfamous director. © William Messner-Loebs.
ABRAHAM: So, you’re an Eastwood fan. LOEBS: Yeah. And that was sort of the thing that was cool about him, he was sort of like a Western version of Woody Allen. He would make all these different kinds of movies. And sometimes they would be dramas and sometimes they would be comedies [Every Which Way But Loose, Any Which Way You Can], you never know which direction he
SPOTLIGHT ON ‘JOURNEY’ #6 One of this writer’s favorite issues of Loebs’ series is Journey #6. In this issue, two men, one a loyalist come to subjugate in the name of King George and one a Frontiersman of and from the land, come together to mend their wounds from last issue’s battles primordial—one from a battle against nature, and one in flight from something that may have once been a man. This issue is about the insubstantially of time and perhaps reason, in a place far from the regimented rules of man, shere time and the specific month must be told by the beating of a man’s heart and the nature of the air. Journey #6 displays another great cover by Loebs. Here he makes the iconography of the masthead part of the storytelling of the cover. In this issue’s publisher introduction, Deni Loubert (Deni Sim at the time) expertly remarked on Bill’s cover work. “Before writing this, I took out the last five issues of Journey and laid them out in a row,” she wrote. “If you want to see a short-hand evolution of Wolverine, I’d suggest you give it a try. Bill’s experience in living in ‘the bush’ (a northern Ontario term, if there ever was one!) shows through what scenes he chose to depict on the covers. I see no ‘action shots’ … what you basically see is a man, in the wilderness, carefully contemplating his next move. No rash steps or unwarranted chances are taken. Because that is how you actually survive, by avoiding the conflict if you can, and turning and facing it, if that’s what must be done. But, most of all, you choose your stand and think it through. I think Bill is showing us all some real bases about living through Wolverine. How much we want to take them to heart is up to us.” Journey #6 also sports a truly brilliant three-page strip called “Deadline!” that reveals the creative process behind the series, and especially Nadine Messner-Loebs’ part in it. You truly see why Nadine’s maiden name of Messner became part of Bill’s signature, as with every issue Bill acknowledged Nadine’s part in making the work happen. This is possibly my favorite short autobiographical piece by any comic-book artist. ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 25
Smarter Than the Average Frontiersman Original painted art by William MessnerLoebs, produced for the cover of the collected edition Journey Book One: Tall Tales (Jan. 1987). Courtesy of Heritage. © William Messner-Loebs.
would be going in, which is really the way to do it. Sort of like Hitchcock, you know. One of my favorite movies, conceptually my favorite, is The Bridges of Madison County (1995). They came to [Eastwood] and said, “We want you to be in this movie we are going to make called Bridges of Madison County.” And he didn’t really want to do it. And they said, “You can direct it, too, if you want to.” And that didn’t really seem like too much of an inducement, either… twice the work. “We can’t really pay you your regular rates; it’s been very difficult trying to make this movie, it’s so complicated.” And [Eastwood] said, “Explain to me how you are making it.” “Well, we are going to have to tear down all these antique bridges and then rebuild them.” And Eastwood said, “How much would it cost if we didn’t tear down all the bridges and rebuild them?” [The producer] said, ‘Well, you can’t do that!” And Eastwood said, “Why don’t we see if we can?” And then he said, “I read the book. I’m a little old for this character, but why don’t we get a woman who is closer to my age. Like Meryl Streep, for example. I don’t think she’s making a movie right now.” They said, “Oh, she would be much too old.” And [Eastwood] said, “On the other hand, you would still have me in the movie.” And there’s this long pause. So that is how Meryl Streep got in the movie, and either won or was nominated for an Academy Award. [Editor’s note: Streep was nominated for Best
26 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
Actress, but the Oscar® that year went to Susan Sarandon for Dead Man Walking.] So, you see, he kept having to push at these people so they would make a good movie instead of a mediocre movie. And you really saw how hard it is to make good movies, because people are so keyed into how things have to be done that they get stuck. ABRAHAM: You’re a lot like Clint Eastwood in that regard, always dedicated to producing a good story. Speaking of good stories, what do you consider are some comics that may have slipped through the cracks, that you think the new generation needs to revisit? LOEBS: Nexus was groundbreaking. [Editor’s note: We think so, too, that’s why Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s Nexus was the cover feature of BACK ISSUE #9!] I always recommend almost anything of the early Pogo by Walt Kelly, and any of [Will Eisner’s] The Spirit.
Of Course, You Know This Means War Old Aardvark-Vanaheim “roomies” Wolverine MacAlistaire and Cerebus the Aardvark go at it—kinda—on this original art illustrated in 2022 by Cerebus’ Dave Sim. This was produced as a limited edition print. Journey © William Messner-Loebs. Cerebus © Dave Sim.
There was some very weird stuff DC was publishing for a while, the very, very early Superman. And that whole period where Clark and Lois were like Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, and that’s fun. ABRAHAM: Everyone has differing opinions of Stan Lee. I’m a huge fan, but some people say he did Jack Kirby wrong. What do you think of Stan Lee? LOEBS: I actually interviewed Stan Lee. He was a smart enough guy to be able to answer a question and not answer it at the same time. At that point I had known enough people who were creators [to understand] that sometimes you are just at cross purposes. That’s how I felt about [the Lee/Kirby controversy]. During World War II, this young journalist was interviewing the Pope, and she was yelling at him, asking him why hasn’t he done more to save the Jews. And the Pope said, “Young Lady, are you a Protestant?” And she said, “Yes. How can you tell, because I’ve been raised so poorly? ” And the Pope said, “No, because you think the Pope has much more power than he actually does. I bless you for your tears.” So, everybody thinks everybody else has more power than they really do. ABRAHAM: I want to thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful. LOEBS: Thanks, it was fun.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON JOURNEY
By the time of the Fantagraphics-published Journey #27 (Apr. 1986), the series’ final issue, Bill had been offered the Jonny Quest writing assignment by Comico the Comic Company, and thus planned to continue Journey with Fantagraphics not as an ongoing title but as a six-issue miniseries. While the Journey short story in the fifth issue of Fantagraphics’ six-issue benefit book Anything Goes is a nice epilogue to the series and a rare chance to see interior color Messner-Loebs art on the series, Journey #27 is the proper closure to the Wolverine MacAlistaire story. Although Journey concluded, it opened doors for Bill Loebs, giving him more opportunities including his dream job of writing Jonny Quest for Comico. He soon got his foot in the door at DC Comics, drawing interiors and covers for the horror anthology series Wasteland— which led to even higher exposure work with DC as the writer of Flash and Wonder Woman, among other stories. “William Messner-Loebs is one of those writers whose work should be in everyone’s bookshelf,” praises the YouTube
Channel Near Mint Condition. “From his groundbreaking run on Flash to creating Artemis, one of my favorite characters during his run on Wonder Woman.” But it is Journey that remains for many Loebs’ most singular contribution to the language and the legacy of this medium called comics and graphic literature. I am hard pressed to think of a series that is more uniquely American than Journey in the best, least jingoistic use of that term. Journey is relatable to anyone who has been a fan of the Jeremiah Johnson film or Bob Dylan or Robert Johnson folk songs, or Mark Twain or Percival Everett’s writing. Distilled, Journey is the dream of the American journey, and our desire to not let if fall… to nightmares. Be well, old scouts! G. K. ABRAHAM blogs about comics and pop culture at HeroicTimes.wordpress.com.
’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 27
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by D
The mid-1980s were a great time for animated fare for a lifelong science-fiction fan like me. My local UHF television stations were hitting me where I lived with shows like Voltron, Tranzor Z, and The Transformers. These shows had what I liked: robots. Big, honking robots. I didn’t know it at the time, but the first two shows were also laying the seeds for my love of anime. As these shows were taking over syndicated television, a comicbook series at First Comics was beginning to find an audience that had a hankering for giant robots, too. But where the robots were all the rage on television, there was very little at the local comics shops like Dynamo Joe. Set in the future, Dynamo Joe concerns the adventures of the two-man crew manning a Dynamo Class Robosoldier, a giant robot that was part of a fleet of robots engaged in an intergalactic war against the invading race known as the Mellenares. Dynamo Joe’s crew included pilot Sgt. Elanian Daro, a former captain of the Imperium Officers Corp, and mechanic Pomru Purrwakkawakka, a member of the feline alien race, the Tavitan. The series was high adventure with some humor and a lot of heart, and it stands as one of the best science-fiction comics of the 1980s. The series was inspired by its creator’s love of anime. These days, anime is a worldwide phenomenon, but at the time Dynamo Joe came out, young fans like me were just getting a small taste of the animated magic arriving here from Japan. Doug Rice, though, had been ahead of the curve.
an Johnson
doug rice
COLLEGE DAYS
To get the full story behind Dynamo Joe, we have to discuss the friendship that made the series possible in the first place. Doug Rice and the man who wrote the majority of the Dynamo Joe stories, Phil Foglio, first met through their mutual love of science fiction. “Phil and I go back to college,” recalls Rice. “He was in the DePaul University Society of Science Fiction Freaks and Armchair Speculators and I was with the University of Illinois Circle Campus Science Fiction Group, and each group came to one another’s meetings and we got a chance to socialize, This was when the Chicago science-fiction conventions started up again.” “All of us at the DePaul University Science Fiction Society, all four us, went over to Circle Campus because that group had a real clubhouse and everything,” adds Foglio. “They put out a fanzine, so they obviously knew what the hell they were doing. [We became friends because] Doug was an artist and I was an artist, and from ’74 to ’76, we actually shared an apartment.” Rice and Foglio began attending sci-fi conventions together and entering art shows at these events. It was through these shows they first began to get noticed in the fandom circles and then later began to gain work as professionals. But it was one convention road trip in particular that was the genesis for Dynamo Joe. Thing was, it wasn’t anything that happened at the con that launched destiny into motion. It was a visit to Foglio’s hometown and a chance encounter at a local shop that set things off.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Go, Go, Joe! Get ready for some giant robot action! First Comics’ Dynamo Joe #1 (May 1986). Cover by Doug Rice. Dynamo Joe © Doug Rice.
“I have been a fan of giant robots since 1976 when I was at a Star Trek convention in New York City,” recalls Rice. “It was the big one when they were to announce Star Trek: The Motion Picture, before the NYC fire marshal shut the overcrowded event down before [Gene] Roddenberry even arrived. Phil was going to take me to meet his family.” ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 29
“I grew up in a little town called Hartsdale. It’s right next they had manga, at least, so I was able immerse myself in the door to Scarsdale, which everybody has heard of,” says Foglio. monthly books that were coming out.” “Even back then, Hartsdale had a large Japanese community, For Rice, this local shop not only offered a first glimpse to the and they had Japanese stores.” manga that Japan was producing at the time, but it also afforded “As we were driving through town, there was a shop on the a look at what drove the sales of the books and made them corner,” adds Rice. “It was a Japanese store, a grocery so popular. “These manga came with all kinds of goodies store or general store, whatever, and they had a poster packed in these big plastic bags like posters and other in the window of a giant robot. [It was] from a TV tchotchkes along with the manga, which were the show as it turned out, and I said, ‘Before we leave, size of a small phone book. They really pushed the I want to go to that shop!’” products, and the fans loved it. And giant robots The poster that caught Rice’s eye was an led the way. They were the ones who really did advertisement for a Japanese animated show the merchandising.” called Yūsha Raidīn. [Editor’s note: Yūsha Raidīn, THE FIRST (COMICS) JOB a.k.a. Brave Raideen, originally ran from 1975 After college, both Rice and Foglio put their artistic through 1976 on Nihon Educational Television skills to good use. Rice would come to work for before being internationally syndicated.] “This First Comics, and it was there he got the chance was 1976, and the series had just come out and to pitch Dynamo Joe. “I was offered a chance to was being shown on a Japanese language UHF do the backup feature for a book called Mars channel on the weekends,” says Rice. “I got a phil foglio at First Comics,” says Rice. [Editor’s note: BACK chance to watch the show, and it blew my mind. Alan De Smet. ISSUE took a trip to Mars way back in issue #14.] This was a time when the biggest animated show was Scooby-Doo, so there was nothing like this [on At the time, Rice was doing paste-ups on all the First Comics American television]. It made American cartoons look like they titles, and working on covers, the letters pages, and the advertising were in black and white. The colors were just so vibrant. The action as part of the art staff. “Mars was a science-fiction title and the was incredible, the design work was amazing. Plus the music artists were having a hard time keeping a monthly schedule, and sound effects were over the top. This thing had energy which was imperative back then because you had to make that to spare. It was just wonderful throughout with all the ideas it monthly deadline no matter what. That was the only necessity played with, like using giant kaiju against giant robots and having that kept a small company like First Comics being distributed by the robots transform from one thing to another. It was just done the major comic-book distributors. In order to keep that monthly title going, First decided to take the last eight pages of the book so well. There was a lot of real animation going on there.” This wasn’t exactly Rice’s first exposure to what was called “Japanimation” at the time, and as Rice further notes, “doaga” before World War II. “I was into Astro Boy when in first aired in the US, in 1963, in Chicago on early Sunday mornings,” recalls Rice. “This show vanished abruptly when it was pre-empted by the funeral ceremonies for JFK; gone, never to return.” That early import to the States also had an impact on Foglio, too. “I first discovered what you would call anime back in the ’60s when I discovered Astro Boy on TV and that made a huge impression on me,” says Foglio. “I didn’t know it was a particular style, but there were a lot of other anime shows at that time. There was also Simba, the White Lion and Marine Boy. I was like, ‘This is good stuff! I am all over this!’ But then it kind of went away [for a while]. There just wasn’t that much of it, but it had a profound effect on my developing art style.” Getting the chance to watch Yūsha Raidīn that fateful weekend started Rice down the anime rabbit hole. But what cemented his passion for it was the visit to the store where he had spied that initial poster. “[We went to the store] and Doug picked up a bunch of stuff,” says Foglio. “I thought it was nice, but Doug was instantly smitten with it. It really hit him where he lived. And that began his journey into anime and giant robots in particular.” “I went to that store and inside there were manga and models and posters and I just bought one of everything,” says Rice. “And I became a fan right from that moment on. When I got home to Chicago, I had to hunt around for similar shops and
Robotic Inspirations (top left) Young Doug Rice was captivated by the Japanese import Yūsha Raidīn, a.k.a. Brave Raideen. (top right) Rice’s pre–Dynamo Joe mecha character, Champion: SOLAR 7, in Just Imagine Comics & Stories #7. (bottom left) Dynamo Joe issues #2 and (bottom right) 4. Brave Raideen © Tohokushinsha Film Corporation (TFC). SOLAR 7 and Dynamo Joe © Doug Rice.
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and they were going to give them to someone else to do another storyline, preferably science fiction. I had a stack of ideas, including my giant robot ideas.” While Mars wasn’t long for this world, Dynamo Joe was about to begin life in that book’s final three issues, running as a backup feature in issues #10–12 (Oct.–Dec. 1984).
‘I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER’
With the opportunity to get Dynamo Joe off the ground, Rice joined forces with one of First Comics’ rising stars, writer John Ostrander, and began to work on creating his universe. “I went with a soldier robot and it was about a war in space,” recalls Rice. “I said, ‘We’re going to do this so far in the future, aliens will be involved and robots will be part of an army.’ I got together with John Ostrander and came up with some great visuals for it. John also told me that for this to be pitched properly, I had to write a bible for the storyline immediately.” Rice had an idea that was unlike anything on the comics stands at the time. He just needed to convince the powersthat-be at First how good it was. “ [First Comics was] appalled at the concept. As much as Mars was a science-fiction book, this was a huge storyline and they didn’t know from giant robots. I had to show them some animation from my collection to show them what giant robot shows were like. Perhaps that educated them enough to give Dynamo Joe a shot.”
COLOR SCHEMES
Rice’s love for anime carried over to Dynamo Joe in more than just story content. It also shaped the look of the series in regard to its coloring. “When I first got the book going, I wanted Rick Taylor to be the colorist for the whole series,” says Rice. “He had never colored comic books before and he was not sure what his approach should be. I gave him a grocery bag full of videotapes from Japan of giant robot shows and I said, ‘Just watch these and color the book like these.’ “Most of it was neo-Gigantor stuff from the early 1980s, and [Rick] loved the stuff. He brought that color sense to Dynamo Joe and I think the fans responded to it. Compared to the average American comic books, Dynamo Joe just blows the artwork off the page because of the coloring. It’s very intense and I love it myself.”
STAYING IN THE FIGHT
Even though Dynamo Joe was up and running, Rice found doing the series wasn’t always smooth sailing. “First Comics gave it permission to start, but they were ready to cancel it at any time. They cancelled Mars right away because it leveled off in sales. Once that happens, they assume that is what is going to happen next is, you’re going to go down. But they kept Dynamo Joe around. The mail had been very positive. The word of mouth was getting out there and people seemed to like it, so they decided to keep trying it out. [After Mars was cancelled], they put the series in First Adventures and they put out the Dynamo Joe Special that collected the first three stories that appeared in Mars. “When First Adventures fell after a few issues, Dynamo Joe was the only feature that survived. That was the one fans liked, so First was like, ‘Now we’re going to do a threeparter and see if that works. Then we got the go for issue four and they kept it on from there.’”
WORKING WITH OLD FRIENDS
While Dynamo Joe was finding its legs, Ostrander was finding more and more success in the comic-book industry. He soon departed, but Rice recalls the writer’s contribution to making Dynamo Joe the success it was.
Cool Cats (top) The heavy hitters of Dynamo Joe: Imperium soldier Elanian Daro, mechanic Private Pomru Purrwakawaka (Tabby), and the big guy himself in a 1984 portrait by and courtesy of Doug Rice. (bottom) Doug’s first first illo of DJ’s co-pilot/ engineer, Pvt. Pomru. Both, courtesy of the artist. Dynamo Joe © Doug Rice.
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“I pitched it and First Comics said, ‘Fine, we’ll let you do this if John Ostrander scripts it,” says Rice. “John is a pretty famous writer these days. He’s worked on Star Wars and The Spectre for DC. His most notable work at First Comics was for Grimjack with Tim Truman [see BI #9—ed.]. He was my mentor and he helped with a whole story arc that I could follow over a period of years if necessary. All the elements would be there for a storyline, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and everything would make sense and be tied up. His main contribution was getting me to make a structure for Dynamo Joe, which made the series work for me and everybody else. It laid the groundwork, and all the information you got laid the groundwork for what came later on, and so it was all consistent. That kind of thing really does make a difference.” When Ostrander was unable to continue on the series, Rice sought out the help of his friend who was there with him when his love for giant robots all began. “After the first couple of issues, John was starting to do more work for DC Comics, and that was taking more and more of his time, so Doug asked me if I would like to do the scripting for Dynamo Joe,” recalls Foglio. “Dynamo Joe was really Doug’s baby. He had the idea and he had the story. He would tell me, ‘Okay! This is what is going to happen in this issue!’ He usually had the story broken down, although occasionally I helped breakdown sequences just for pacing and stuff. Occasionally I would say ‘You need a pause here’ or ‘There needs to be some back and forth here to get this point across.’ That was because Doug had this whole story in his head, but the reader doesn’t. It wasn’t too often, because Doug a great storyteller.” While Rice was assembling Dynamo Joe, Foglio had begun making a name for himself as one of the sci-fi genre’s top cartoonists. Previously he had written and drawn What’s New with Phil & Dixie for TSR Games’ Dragon magazine, a humor strip centered around role-playing games. “Phil didn’t just draw, he wrote and whether it was shorts for TSR magazine [sic] or the other work he did, it was brilliant,” says Rice about his old friend and collaborator. “He had a wonderful wit and he was really well read. Phil kept the characters part very much alive. He did things with the characters I probably would not have bothered with, but he made sure there was room there for the characters to grow and to become as popular as they were.”
GET ’ER DUNN!
Owing to the success of Dynamo Joe, Rice and Foglio got the chance to work on a series based on an anime they both appreciated. This opportunity to work on this comic book is what led to them needing to bring in a new artist towards the end of the book’s run. “I got behind on Dynamo Joe during a period when I was doing a miniseries with Phil for Comico based on Star Blazers,” says Rice. [Editor’s note: See BI #59 for the Star Blazers story.] “Frankly, I liked that show enough, I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to do it. I approached my bosses at First and they said, ‘Find someone who can fill-in or we’ll cancel the book.’ I wondered who ben dunn else out there could do this and there League of Comic Geeks. was Ben Dunn.” “Well, it was a while back but if I recall I got a call from First Comics to see if I was interested in doing some fill in issues,” says Dunn. “At
This IS a Big Deal! (top) Pomru seems unimpressed with Doug Rice’s good-girl mock pinup of Dynamo Joe “reporter” Anda Warren. We suspect that some of our readers may show more interest. (bottom) Rare Dynamo Joe promo art. Both, courtesy of the artist. Dynamo Joe © Doug Rice.
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Big Bot Battle Guest-artist Ben Dunn filled in on Dynamo Joe issues #9 and 10 (July and Aug. 1987). This dynamite battle sequence is from page 13 of issue #10. Inks by Brian Thomas. Dynamo Joe © Doug Rice.
the time I was doing Tiger-X and some other stuff for Eternity Comics. Of course I said yes, as I had been buying the series and was a big fan of it. A chance to work on the series was something I could not pass up. I also knew Phil Foglio on a professional basis and had met him on occasion.” Dunn was the right man for to do these fill-in issues of Dynamo Joe as he had a love for giant robots that was as passionate as Rice’s. “I was first exposed to the manga series Mazinger Z when I was visiting Taiwan with my family,” recalls Dunn. “The country was awash with bootleg manga in the 1970s and it was all very cheap, so I was able to indulge my love of giant robot manga like nobody’s business. I brought many of the books back with me and started to incorporate them in my own work.”
TO WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
Part of the success of manga in Japan is the use of anime adaptions to draw more attention to the books they are based on. Dynamo Joe came close to following that pattern for success—at least it seemed that way. “I found out that Hanna-Barbera was interested in [obtaining the rights to] the Dynamo Joe property,” says Rice. “First Comics management said, ‘They made an offer for $2,000 and your cut would be $800 based on your contract, and we think you should take it.’ It turns out what they wanted Dynamo Joe for was to make sure no one else would own the property so it wouldn’t be in competition with the show they were trying to do called GoBots. So GoBots killed any possibility of Dynamo Joe as an animated series.” As a fan, this writer can’t help but wonder how a cartoon based on Dynamo Joe might have kept the series going. But the comic book deserved better than being acquired as a way to keep the competition away. Still, what might have been…! A Dynamo Joe cartoon done right, and appearing with other more adult-oriented fare like Robotech in the mid- to late 1980s, would have made a winning combination in my book.
ALL GOOD THINGS…
Eventually, Dynamo Joe did come to an end, but not before it had racked up an impressive run for an indie book at the time. When it was all said and done, Dynamo Joe appeared in the three final issues of Mars, First Adventures #1–5 (Dec. 1985– Mar. 1986), a Special (Jan. 1987), had a crossover appearance in Grimjack # 30 (Jan. 1987), plus its own series for 15 issues (Mar. 1986–Jan. 1988). Nevertheless, this was an ending that Rice feels didn’t have to be, if First had followed the same formula for success of the source material that inspired Dynamo Joe in the first place. “[First] never understood the potential, and I tried to show them the merchandising that was being done in Japan from the books to the toys, everything they did, and they just didn’t get it,” says Rice. “They were only too happy to cancel the book when the sales leveled off when they changed from regular four color printing to laser printing. It’s funny, when they approached me later about doing Dynamo Joe, I was like, ‘F*** you! You took 20 years out of my life where I was not being productive and you cancelled the book when you should have been trying to do licensing with it.’”
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
Even though the series ended well over 30 years ago, Dynamo Joe remains a project that Rice is passionate about. As he mentioned, there has been interest on the part of First Comics to do a revival. Even Ben Dunn mentioned that he would love to see a revival at his own company, Antarctic Press. But these days, Rice would prefer to be the captain of his own destiny. “I have a local publisher who published my first novel, sort of a vanity press thing, and we’re going to be resurrecting Dynamo Joe in some form or another. We want to do a trade reprint with new material. In order to do that, we have to remove the original coloring from the linework in the comics and recolor them. So, that has to be worked out. Once that [is done], I hope to do a quality, expansive reprint with digital color.” I would like to thank Doug Rice, Phil Foglio, and Ben Dunn for sharing their stories and artwork with me. I would like to encourage all the readers of BACK ISSUE to check out Phil’s website, girlgeniusonline.com/, to read his online comic, Girl Genius, and check out his other projects. Also, Ben Dunn’s personal website at bendunncomics.com, and Antarctic Press’ website at antarctic-press.myshopify.com for latest information on his current releases. DAN JOHNSON is a comics writer and pop culture historian. He is a co-founder, editor, and writer for Empire Comics Lab (empirecomicslab.com) and RedLine Comics Studio. Dan has written for Antarctic Press, Campfire Graphic Novels, Golden Kid Comics, InDELLible Comics, Old School Comics, and ACP Comics, and is a writer for the Dennis the Menace comic strip.
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Although popular in movies and books for many years, nuns were seldom depicted in comics outside of Treasure Chest and Catholic Comics. These wholesome series routinely offered stories where nuns were important characters and sometimes even featured on the covers. One other exception was Dell’s four-issue series The Flying Nun. This was adapted from a 1960s TV show about an order of nuns in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Sister Bertrille, played by Sally Field, was an idealistic nun who could tilt her cornette (headpiece) into the winds in such a way that she could fly. What do The Flying Nun, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeannie have in common? In each of these, the female protagonist had a power or ability that needed to be kept secret from the world at large. The theme of secrecy continued in 1984 with the story of a nun with a secret life. Imagine how jarring it was in when Comico Primer #6 introduced the world to a nun with a gun! Set in a near-future world, readers met a nun who was secretly an assassin for the Catholic Church. Her name was Sister Evangeline.
by E
d Catto
PRIMING THE PUMP
Today it might be called “a soft launch,” but a chuck dixon short feature in Comico Primer #6 (Feb. 1984) Michael Pate. introduced fans to Evangeline and to her creators, Charles Dixon and Judith Hunt. The cover featured Evangeline and summed up the series’ premise with the juxtaposition of a nun praying, complete with stained glass in the background, contrasted with a full-figure illustration of the character in a ready-for-action style jumpsuit, pistol in hand. Editors Matt Wagner [yes—that Matt Wagner!—ed.] and Reggie Byers proudly trumpeted the series in the text page: The big news for this issue is, of course, Evangeline. The exciting tale of how the church handles its future is the brain-child of Charles Dixon and Judith Hunt, a husband and wife team that will be expanding their legend to premier in its own color title in February. This series is sure to be a winner, so watch out for it. This initial short story, evocative of a Spaghetti Western movie, takes place on “The fifth and smallest planet in the Rigel system, a barren dustball, worth only a small profit to the food co-op that owns it.” Cruel men take charge and the situation is dire. The scene shifts to Rome, and specifically, the Vatican. After being informed of the circumstances, the Pope advises his subordinate to “Send Evangeline.” (Foreshadowing future ownership disputes, the bottom of the first page of this story has a hand-lettered note: © Charles Dixon, Judith Hunt + Comico.) Evangeline arrives on the planet in full nun regalia and is initially subservient and docile, as is often the case for comicbook heroes when they maintain in their “secret identity.” The tension soon ratchets up, and she is in full action-movie mode! At the climax of this short story, Evangeline, with rifle in hand, confronts the cruel antagonist. He looks on in horror and stammers, “You were disguised as a nun!” Evenhandedly, Evangeline replies: “No disguise. I am a nun.” The criminal laughs at the absurdity of the situation even as Evangeline shoots him. The last panel of the page shows her praying over his corpse. 34 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
Heeding the Call Evangeline’s first appearance, Primer (a.k.a. Comico Primer) #6 (Feb. 1984). Cover by Judith Hunt. Evangeline © Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt.
PERSONAE DRAMATIS From the outset, Evangeline employed a small cast of recurring characters:
Sister Act Publishers were in the habit of producing comics with nuns long before Evangeline, including (left) Charlton’s Catholic Comics (shown is issue #6, from 1946) and (right) Dell’s TV tie-in The Flying Nun (issue #1, from late 1967). Flying Nun © Sony Pictures Television.
EVANGELINE’S NOVITIATE
Charles Dixon soon became known as Chuck Dixon. As one of the most prolific comic-book writers, Dixon is well known for his work on a wide variety of characters including Batman, the Punisher, and Conan. At this writing, Dixon writes the Levon Cade series of action thrillers and recently published a new novel featuring Conan. At the time of Evangeline’s creation, Dixon was married to the character’s co-creator, artist Judith Hunt. She enjoyed a relatively brief career in comics, and also worked on licensed series like DC’s Robotech Defenders [see BI #137—ed.] and Marvel’s Conan the King. Hunt and Dixon would split up during the Evangeline series. She left the Evangeline series, although Dixon continued scripting. She would soon leave comics altogether for children’s illustration, most notably Highlight’s “Timbertoes” comic strip. In a July 2020 interview on the Comic Book Historians podcast, hosted by Alex Grand and Jim Thompson, Chuck Dixon recalled how Evangeline was created. “I don’t remember the year, sometime in the ’70s, late ’70s,” said Dixon. “It was something that had been kicking around in my mind for a while, and we presented it at a couple of companies. And then this company, Comico, popped up in Norristown, Pennsylvania, which wasn’t that far from where I was living at the time.” Dixon described the premise. “Well, it’s a futuristic story, a science-fiction story, you know, space opera, a planet-hopping thing. It features Evangeline, who is a nun with the church and she’s sort of a spy for the Vatican.” Evangeline had her own literary precedent. “I read a series of paperbacks called The Inquisitor,” continued Dixon. “They were written under a pseudonym by Martin Kruse Smith. And they were about basically a James Bond who works for the Vatican. And he has a sort of dispensation to kill, as long as he does penance afterwards. I mean, it was a great series. It’s a great series. It’s in that men’s-adventure paperback genre. But to me, it’s like literature. Each novel was really terrific, if anyone
Evangeline – a stoic beauty, focused on the job at hand. She’s almost a mix of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock and The Terminator’s Sarah Connor. Tough as nails with an intense, purpose-driven push to move forward. Fans first met Evangeline in full nun habit in Comico Primer #6. During a crisis, she quickly sheds her habit and begins firing her rifle. Seeing this, one incredulous villain assumes she was just pretending to be a nun. She shoots him, emotionlessly, as she explains she is a nun. And after she has killed him, she prays a Latin blessing for his soul. We learned a little bit of her background in two interlude/flashback tales, and there were teases that there were more youthful adventures to be revealed. Cardinal Syn – Like Bond’s M or Batman’s Police Commissioner Gordon, Cardinal Syn is Evangeline’s boss in the Catholic hierarchy. Dixon and Hunt don’t present him as a despicable scheming boss. He is sympathetically presented as a flawed man in a flawed system. He’s passionate about the Church, and will go to any lengths to protect the organization and its members. Of course, the absurdity of having to kill for love or use guns for peace is lost on the characters. Like Charlton’s/DC’s the Peacemaker, Cardinal Syn is too much “in the moment” to ever question his tactics or motives. Johnny Six – We first meet Johnny Six as he reluctantly teams up with the Contessa (one of Evangeline’s frequent disguises) in Comico’s Evangeline #2 aboard about “The Hate Boat.” Johnny Six serves as the audience POV character. He’s enthralled by Evangeline’s beauty but perplexed by her devotion to God and her commitment to abstinence. Evangeline isn’t oblivious to his affections, and she is often kind but firm. It is clear that Johnny Six isn’t the first lovesick man with whom Evangeline must contend. ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 35
wants to try to find them. And so that was a big influence. And then I just sort of transplanted it to space because that was more saleable to comics.” Of the early Evangeline, Dixon explained, “I wrote it. She [Judith Hunt] drew it, and sometimes I provided layouts.”
ONE-TWO PUNCH: THE GUNS OF MARS/THE HATE BOAT
Domini Girl with Machine Gun Dixon and Hunt expertly defined Sister Evangeline on this powerful page from Primer #6, the character’s debut. Evangeline © Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt.
The climax of this story cleverly offers a reversal of the typical secret-identity reveal. Pretending to be a debutante, Evangeline romances and then poisons a despicable man. As he is slowing dying, she explains her personal mission to him, sexily slipping out of her evening gown and into her nun’s habit. She leaves the killer with a cross, admonishing him that he will need it more than she will. The publisher provided something different for retailers, too. In this first issue, the inside back cover trumpets Comico mobiles that retailers could hang from their store’s ceiling to drive fan awareness of Mage and Evangeline. No one was going to leave this issue without fully understanding the concept. The back cover of Evangeline #1 serves up a “mission judith hunt statement” for the series:
Sister Evangeline was given a proper launch with Evangeline #1 and 2 later in the same year, both from Comico. She burst onto the scene with guns blazing. Evangeline toggled between her two personas as gun-toting problemsolver and nun. Paradoxically, there is little on the cover of the “Guns of Mars” to signify it is a #1 issue. This straight-ahead action-thriller is set in a dusty, worn landscape. The heroine seems to be the fish out of water, but in each situation she clearly shows she can take the steps necessary to fulfill the mission.
GOD’S LAW IS HER LAW. They killed innocent women and children. On the lawless wastes of Mars, they went unpunished. Until she arrived. Now she hunts them down… One by one. And sends them to Hell… one by one. EVANGELINE. In “The Hate Boat” in Comico’s Evangeline #2 (June 1984), the heroine first appears “undercover” as the wealthy Contessa Evangelina di Christi, a disguise she will often employ. A mutiny erupts onboard a spaceship, and she must deal with it. The irony of the title “The Hate Boat,” a Love Boat parody, is probably lost upon modern audiences. In this issue, Evangeline is introduced to Johnny Six, who will become an occasional sidekick. An adventurer-outlaw of questionable morals, Johnny quickly falls for the beautiful nun. A recurring subplot of the series involves his struggle to come to terms with the fact that a relationship between the two of them is unobtainable. The letters column debuted in this issue with a clever name: “The Confessional.” Supportive messages of encouragement in this issue included letters from industry professionals Alex Toth, Tim Truman, and Walter Simonson.
STRONG SALES FOR A ‘FORGOTTEN TITLE’
In December 2014, Heidi MacDonald published a story on her award-winning site Comics Beat, reflecting on a 1984 sales chart from the magazine Amazing Heroes that writer Sam Humphries had recently posted at that time (see page 38). In this Top 100 chart, Comico’s Evangeline #1 is listed as #81, beating out long-running titles like The Flash and World’s Finest. Of note, Evangeline also beat out other series with female protagonists, including Wonder Woman and the modern hardboiled detective series Ms. Tree. “It’s still a pretty eye-opening chart, however,“ wrote MacDonald. ”Indie comics routinely sold 50,000 copies, even ones forgotten today, and 36 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
while the ’80s may not have had the artistic wonderland and individual expression we have today, superheroes had far less of a stranglehold than they would have in the ’90s. Of course, that stranglehold was partly the result of the demise of Capital City Distribution, which had a more indie-centric focus. If Capital hadn’t been done in by the distribution wars of the ’90s—leading to its acquisition by Diamond in 1996—we might have had a very different development of comics.”
A DISPUTE DEVELOPS WITH COMICO
The Comics Reader #218 (June 1984) announced that third issue of Evangeline would be published in June 1984. Comics Reader #219, showcasing an Evangeline cover, listed revisions to the third issue: EVANGELINE #3 will be inked by Gerald Forton. Ricardo Villagran inked Judith Hunt’s cover. That issue will also feature a seven-page back-up feature starring Jonny Six and will be drawn by Mike Manley. But this was not meant to be. Dixon and Hunt found themselves in conflict with the publisher. “[Comico] claimed [Evangeline] was work-for-hire and nothing in our contract said that, although in the contract it wasn’t really spelled out, so we had to go to arbitration,” Dixon explained in the Comic Book Historians interview. “And we made our case and we won. We won ownership. Comico was pretty bent out of shape about it, but it’s like this is early on in the creator-owned game, and they didn’t seem to get it. They just seemed to think that they took the risk in publishing, and they were rewarded with sales… We didn’t get lawyers. We just presented the case ourselves. It was in front of arbitration.” The comics press of the day covered the dispute. The “Newswatch” section of The Comics Journal #97 (Apr. 1985) and #103 (Nov.1985) went into great detail.
LODESTONE
In the mid-1980s, publishing entrepreneur David M. Singer embraced a vision of growth for the then emerging direct market. He was involved in what would become a controversial publishing effort with Tower’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents [see BI #94, 143—ed.]. Singer created Deluxe Publishing with great fanfare and a stellar lineup of creators. Lodestone Publishing was an imprint of Deluxe. Lodestone would assume the publishing rights to two notable properties. First was The Futurians, a superhero team created by Dave Cockrum and originally published by Marvel. The other property was Evangeline. Singer explained it all in the text page of Lodestone’s Evangeline Special #1 (1986), and offered a preview for future efforts that never materialized: This issue is Evangeline Special #1. It will be followed in 60 days by the first issue of their regular series, Evangeline #1. Evangeline is the creation of Judith Hunt and Chuck Dixon. Ricardo Villagran, while not a co-creator, is an integral and interchangeable member of the team. Evangeline’s first began as a black & white short feature in Comico Primer #6. It quietly was made into a series called – what else – Evangeline. Evangeline lasted two issues before internal and private problems between the creators and the publishers ended the series. The series was too popular to die, however, and close to a dozen publishers met with Judith Hunt before she decided to go with Lodestone Publishing.
Critical Mass From 1984, Evangeline #1 and 2, with cover art by Judith Hunt. The publisher, Comico the Comic Company of Norristown, Pennsylvania, and co-creators Hunt and Chuck Dixon would engage in an ownership dispute over the character. Evangeline © Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt.
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THE ‘EVANGELINE’ MOVIE THAT NEVER WAS Ain’t It Cool News reported in 1998 that Evangeline was in development. However, with the messy disputes about the property’s ownership, it seems that such a plan was doomed to failure. The site posted this teaser update on June 1, 1998, citing that Evangeline was under development at Universal Studios, with a screenplay penned by Clair Noto. The report is uncredited, denoted that it was written by “staff”: The storyline follows Evangeline, who is a nun with a gun. Really! It’s the future, and Mars is controlled by a tycoon named Pallafox. When some nuns are mysteriously gunned down by killers, the Catholic Church sends out an executioner, the swift hand
of death from the church, to get revenge and make the wrongs right. Along the way, she teams up with JOHNNY SIX, a rebel, and helps out JOE X, a cloned sex slave. Chuck Dixon addressed the possibility of a movie in his Comic Book Historians interview: “A lot of those First [Comics] properties are in question, and Evangeline is one of them. Nothing will ever get done. I mean, it’s like, so many times movie producers have been interested in doing it for a movie or television, and there are so many people that want money from it that it’s not worth doing because everybody wants to be paid.” Due to the low print run on Evangeline #1 and #2, and the high demand for these issues, many comic bookstores now sell these two issues for $5.00 to $10.00 each! As a service to those readers of the Lodestone Evangeline series, we have reprinted the two Comico issues in this special edition. Also, so as not to be just a reprint book, we have had Judith and Charles create new pages which bring the two stories and add additional insights into the characters. And Ricardo has painted a wonderful brand-new wrap-around cover for this issue, based on Judith’s sketches. Publisher Singer continued in the text page to discuss and promote Evangeline by recalling a story of his organization’s views on the property. When I first told our chairman of the board that we were picking up Evangeline as a comic book, he just smiled and said, “That’s nice. I hope it sells and makes us a lot of money.” A month later, he got around to asking me what Evangeline was all about. I said, “She’s a hit nun from outer space!” The look that crossed his face his face in reply cannot be reproduced, but I can swear to the fact that it was a classic. I loved it! Eventually I got serious and explained what Evangeline was all about. The chairman frowned. He was worried. “What if some people take it the wrong way and decide to burn crosses on the lawn?” he asked. I told him, “That would be great. Think of the publicity.” He thought for a moment and replied, “Okay but make sure they only burn it on your lawn!”
Hail Mary! Evangeline #1 ranked No. 81 on Amazing Heroes’ top sellers for comics released in February 1984! Scan courtesy of Ed Catto. Amazing Heroes © Fantagraphics Books.
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Nomadic Nun Comics’ combatready sister found a temporary home in the 1986 one-shot Evangeline Special #1 from Lodestone Publishing. Cover art by Judith Hunt and Ricardo Villagran. Evangeline © Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt.
Chuck Dixon recalled it differently. “Yeah, I don’t remember. Some guy approached us. I don’t know who he was and offered to put them together and like one bumper addition,” recounted Dixon in that Comic Book Historians interview. Lodestone’s Evangeline Special #1 is a hefty comic showcasing the beautiful painted cover Singer referenced. It’s curious that this cover eschews the character’s unique religious background, with the exception of the small cross necklace she wears. Instead, with their faces covered by scarves, both Evangeline and her sometimes sidekick Johnny Six look like extras from a Mad Max movie. The two-part “Guns of Mars/Hate Boat” story is reprinted on inferior paper with garish coloring. But the bridging sequences create a longer story and set up the adventure for issue #1 of the forthcoming First Comics Evangeline series. Lodestone published just three issues of The Futurians and only one issue of Evangeline. After a battle with Parkinson’s disease, Singer passed away in 2013 at age 56.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
“First Comics was putting out some fantastic titles—Grimjack, American Flagg, among others; and they had become known for picking up titles cancelled by other companies—E-Man, Nexus, Badger, and Whisper, to name a few,” recalled the Reading Is Fun. Not Mental blog in April 2020. “So, in 1987, I was thrilled when Dixon and Hunt revived their series at First, beginning with an all-new issue 1.” First’s Evangeline #1 was cover-dated May 1987. The mid-’80s was a time of great optimism for creator-owned properties. “I wanted to go to Eclipse, where we would have remained creator-owned, and then First offered almost exactly the same deal, but no creator ownership,” said Chuck Dixon in the Comic Book Historians interview. “But we were going through the whole divorce thing and I just sort of gave in. I just didn’t want to have any more discussions about it. So, we went with
EVANGELINE’S HYMNAL Musician Matthew Sweet had released two critically acclaimed albums in the early ’90s, but didn’t get the traction or the commercial success he sought. That all changed with the release of his third album, 1991’s Girlfriend, which included the song “Evangeline.” Years later, in the November 2021 of Guitar Player magazine, music journalist Joe Bosso reminded the world that, “Among the album’s many gems is the pop-rock masterpiece ‘Evangeline.’ Although never released as a single, the song became a calling card for the guitarist and a signature tune from his early career. “While playing in drop-D one day, a riff appeared, and Sweet started singing along to it. ‘It all happened pretty easily,’ he says. ‘In that way, it was one of those songs that came out of nowhere.’ Just as quickly, he began to incorporate lyrics inspired by the title character from the comic book Evangeline. ‘She was this scantily clad kind of babe © BMG Music. who’s a warrior on behalf of God, so there was this weird mix of religion, violence, and sexuality,’ he explains. ‘I grew up Roman Catholic, but I was pretty much an atheist by the time I was writing the songs on Girlfriend. I sort of lashed out at God a little bit on the record. In ‘Evangeline,’ the guy is basically saying, ‘Forget about God and come be with me.’” This mirrors the character arc of Johnny Six, who was the proxy hero for every reader who was enamored with Evangeline’s beauty. ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 39
First so we lost all rights to it. You know, it’s tangled up with about a bajillion lawyers that ended up owning everything at First.” Evangeline’s adventures at First Comics were accessible, to the point, and brilliantly urgent. Each adventure bursts with breakneck action that would soon become a trademark of writer Chuck Dixon. The stories hopscotch between Cardinal Syn sending Evangeline on missions and flashback stories that would tease readers with snippets of the past. It is easy to imagine that readers were hungry for more information to understand what forged an orphan girl to become an assassin.
Oh, Heavens! It’s a “Dinosaur Farm” in First Comics’ Evangeline #1 (May 1987)! Cover art by Ricardo Villagran. Evangeline © Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt.
narrative while maintaining a classy design for the main character,” says Harrison. “Evangeline is essentially an action comic, but the protagonist is portrayed with grace and respect by Hunt while also executing the violent tasks required of her circumstances. It is a book of contradictions, and the art fit perfectly with those themes.” Hunt left after four First issues. She would be followed by Cara ShermanTereno, John Statema, and future Tarot creator Jim Balent. When inked by Ricardo Villagran, these issues had a firm cohesion. “And I think it definitely went down in quality, the art suffered. But, yeah, a bunch of guys on it who would later be terrific comic THE ART OF ‘EVANGELINE’ talents, but were, you know, they The series was notable as one were using it as a tryout book,” of the first ongoing series to said Dixon. “At first was I kind of ricardo villagran use painted colors on the covers indifferent to it, and my only help Xenopedia. and interiors. Sharp-eyed fans can was that Ricardo Villagran stayed watch Judith Hunt’s growth in each issue of the on for a while. I think one of the editors kept series. She would soon graduate to book illustration. fighting with me about it. They kept changing Pop Culture Squad’s Bob Harrison fondly remem- editors. That’s always a bad sign when they keep bers the Evangeline series and has thoughts about changing editors. It only ran 12 issues. I think I had Hunt’s artwork. “The thing that always struck me five editors. So, yeah, it was difficult to maintain about Evangeline was an irony of how Judith Hunt the quality. As far as you know, feminist angle, I was able to efficiently provide a dynamic visual never saw it as a feminist comic anyway.”
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I Will Follow You First’s Evangeline #2 (July 1987) revealed the heroine’s origin. Script by Dixon, art by Hunt and Villagran. Evangeline © Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt.
INKING IT UP A LEVEL
All too often, inkers are not recognized for their efforts. The very best inkers serve as collaborators to pencil artists, bringing something new to the party while making the whole affair all the more pleasing and professional. Ricardo Villagrán was always this type of inking collaborator. His work was especially strong on the Evangeline series. He wasn’t a part of every issue, and when we wasn’t he was certainly missed. Although some may argue that Villagrán’s talent and skills can overshadow a penciler, he always brought a polished cohesiveness to each issue. He was strong at rendering the straightforward, and often ignored the flashy. As such his figures, faces, and characters were always spot-on. The landscapes he created were lush in detail, and his backgrounds were smart and solid. Villagrán never was the artist to glamorize the shiny metal of weapons or spaceships. Instead, in an almost workmanlike way, he’d render such objects with a straightforward, working man’s level of professionalism. These aspects of his talents were especially helpful in rendering the tired, scuffed world of Evangeline’s near-future. Born in northern Argentina in 1938, Villagrán would attend a high school devoted to art, Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aries; serve his (mandatory) time in the Argentinian Army; and blossom into a full-time commercial artist and illustrator. His comic-art career truly started in 1969, working for South American publishers, Italy’s Eura, and the UK’s Fleetway. By 1982, Villagrán and his studio had broken into the US comic market. They provided art for major publishers like Marvel, DC, and Archie, and also some of the leading independent publishers of the day: Dark Horse, Comico, and First Comics. Villagrán’s relationship began with Chuck Dixon at a 1983 convention, leading to their collaboration on the Evangeline series. He also became a liaison for other Argentinian artists, introducing Evangeline creators Dixon and Hunt to fellow Argentine Jorge Zaffino, with whom Dixon would later collaborate on their Winter World series. When recalling Evangeline on a 2020 Comic Book Historians podcast, Dixon remembered fighting to keep Villagrán on the series: “I was kind of indifferent to it in the beginning, and my only help was that Ricardo Villagrán stayed on for a while. I think one of the editors kept fighting me about it.”
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS
Throughout this brief series, Dixon never takes the easy way out to portray the Catholic Church as either a totally perfect or an insidiously imperfect organization. For many years, especially in ’40s and ’50s, Catholics and the priests leading the church were portrayed in a positive light. They were often
community leaders fighting for positive things despite the adversity they faced. Pop-culture media would soon shift and portray the Catholic Church as a byzantine conspiratorial organization, pursuing questionable goals while presenting a more genteel public face. Evangeline offers a more nuanced viewpoint. The Catholic Church is intent on positive change and fixing difficult situations. However, the violence and killing that Sister Evangeline employs is clearly at odds with the dictates and mandates that are so central to these religious beliefs. Of particular note is the issue #3’s “Romanov Gold.” The sister is sent on a mission to retrieve Vatican gold. During this adventure, she finds herself allied with a band of outlaws led by a rough character named Bhuto. In this near-future landscape there seems to be some confusion about the details of Catholicism, but Bhuto takes pride in his Catholicism. “Bhuto good Catrick. Bhuto and his people love Catrick ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 41
THE ‘FIRST’ EVANGELINE IN PRINT Long before Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt created the Evangeline comic series, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, a story of two “Cajun” lovers, although they were referred to as Acadians at that time. Longfellow had never even visited Louisiana, but nonetheless this story took on strange life of its own. Subsequent authors wrote more about these young lovers, eventually morphing Evangeline’s name into Emmeline and claiming it was all true.
God,” he explains as a way of solidifying his alliance with Evangeline, although he mangles the word “Catholic.” Bhuto eventually sacrifices himself in order to save Evangeline from a sniper’s bullet. In his dying breath, she cradles him as he seeks validation. “Bhuto good Catrick? Damn right… Bhuto good Catrick.” “Yes, Bhuto… a good Catholic,” whispers Evangeline as he dies in her arms. “A brave Catholic.” The series’ letters column, “The Confessional,” would also engage in discussions of Catholicism, printing several lengthy and thoughtful letters.
THE END TIMES
Issue #12 (Mar. 1989) wraps it all up with Evangeline and Johnny triumphing over the bad guys. Similar to ending of so many Westerns, most notably The Magnificent Seven, they are celebrated by the local townspeople. Johnny reaffirms Evangeline’s purpose with their last dialogue exchange: Courtesy of Heritage.
Johnny Six: That little speech about God’s Law—you really are a nun. Evangeline: Yes, I really am. Johnny Six: Sister Evangeline—pretty name. Evangeline: God’s law and God’s love. They’re everywhere. Johnny Six: But sometimes they need a little help. Evangeline: Exactly. Evangeline, wearing a flower crown, stares dreamily into the sky, as Johnny Six throws away his beer bottle. “Just your luck, Johnny,” he grumbles to himself. “Falling for a woman who’s married… to God, no less.” Evangeline’s story would end there, although it didn’t seem like it needed to. She would be followed by others. Warrior Nun Areala would spawn a franchise that eventually earned a Netflix show. DC’s Huntress would be rebooted as a devout Catholic whose beliefs were often at odds with her superheroic mission. Peacock’s Mrs. Davis showcases a nun, Sister Simone, fighting against A.I. while searching for the Holy Grail. Dixon and Hunt’s Evangeline has not been forgotten. In Gemstone Publishing’s Lost Universe series, J. C. Vaughn and his team explore various universes in comic books. Lost Universe #2 reports thusly on Evangeline: “The world Dixon and Hunt (and later Dixon and other artists) painted was rich, nuanced, and wide open for exploration, a veritable universe of possibilities.” But for the time being, fans (like Johnny Six) of the beautiful blonde nun-assassin will have to moon over their Evangeline comic books and simply wonder, “What if…?”
A Convent of Creators Evangeline’s artist in residence changed at times during the First Comics run, including Jim Balent, who penciled #12 (Mar. 1989), the series’ final issue. Evangeline © Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt.
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ED CATTO is a marketing and startup strategist, with a specialty in pop culture. As founder of Agendae, Ed is dedicated to helping brands and companies innovate and grow. As part of the faculty at Ithaca College’s School of Business, Ed teaches entrepreneurial courses and one unique class focusing on comic conventions and Geek Culture. Ed’s also an illustrator, having won the 2019 and 2021 Pulp Factory Awards, and a retropreneur, rejuvenating brands like Captain Action.
Aztec Ace is a series about time travel and paradoxes. We could very easily take up the rest of this magazine to fully describe the series, but— hopefully—readers might be encouraged to seek out the issues—or the collected edition—and discover it for themselves.
PENNSYLVANIA, 1984
by J a r r o d
Buttery
Writer/creator Doug Moench was interviewed by Bob Greenberger in David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview #10 (Apr. 1984). Moench stated, “Aztec Ace comes from an unwillingness on my part— after what happened with Moon Knight and Weirdworld at Marvel—to give away another creation. Anyway, I’ve had the idea for Aztec Ace for a long time now, stored away until the time—ahem—was right.” Moench kindly spoke with BACK ISSUE: “Aztec Ace? That was the most self-indulgent thing I ever wrote [laughs]! When I quit Marvel and went over to DC, my phone didn’t stop ringing. I don’t know how these people knew about it, but they did. One of the calls was from Dean Mullaney and Cat Yronwode at Eclipse. They wanted to do something with me and wanted to know what ideas I had. I told them about four or five ideas, including my vague concept about time travel. They liked it but I told them, ‘But that’s the most non-commercial idea. That will be the hardest to sell. It’s really just my excuse to write about all of my interests.’ ‘We’ll do it,’ said Dean, and they offered me more money than DC! “Did you know that Steranko named the series? He rang me up. I told him what I was working on and I told him about my time travel book. ‘Sounds great,’ he said, ‘What’s it called?’ I read him some of my potential titles and when I got to ‘Aztec Ace’ he said, ‘Stop! That’s the one!’ And I told him, ‘But that’s the one which least describes what the book’s about! The title has nothing to do with the book!’ ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he replied, ‘it’s catchy.’”
TENOCHTITLAN, 1518
Aztec Ace #1 (Mar. 1984) was written by Moench, penciled by Michael Hernandez, inked by Nestor Redondo, colored by Philip DeWalt and Denis McFarling, and lettered by Adam Kubert (!). Therein we are introduced to Ace and Bridget, in the city-state of Tenochtitlan (in what is now Mexico City), in the year 1518. We
Time Is on My Side From Eclipse Comics and writer Doug Moench, Aztec Ace #1 (Mar. 1984). Cover pencils by Michael Hernandez (Bair) and inks by Thomas Yeates. The “McFarling” in the signature is cover colorist/logo designer Denis McFarling. Unless otherwise noted, art scans illustrating this article are courtesy of Jarrod Buttery. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
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Too Much Time on My Hands Writer Doug Moench was interviewed in David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview #10 (Apr. 1984), where Aztec Ace was previewed. Cover art by Michael Hernandez and Thomas Yeates. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
are reminded, several times during the series, that this is a year before the arrival of Cortés and his conquistadors. We learn (non-linearly) that Ace (whose real name is Caza) is from the 23rd century—hence his access to time travel technology—and that he is merely using 16th century Mexico as a base of operations. Ace has taken it upon himself to protect the timestream from the machinations of someone called Nine Crocodile. Bit-by-bit we discover that “Krok” is trying to disrupt our timestream to benefit his own. Moench admits that he has a mini-tradition of naming characters after foreign comics creators he admires (Phillipe Cazamayou). When asked about Nine Crocodile, he replied, “Oh, that’s just a translation from one of the Aztec gods.” We don’t meet Nine Crocodile until later, but we certainly see a lot of Bridget Kronopoulous in this debut issue. We meet Bridget in the bath— attended by Aztec handmaidens—as Ace walks into the room. There are adult themes in Aztec
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Ace, but nothing gratuitous. Ace muses how he met (will meet…) Bridget in San Francisco, 1940 (four hundred years in the future…). They clicked, he fell for her, and her surname—Kronopoulous— appealed to his belief in synchronicity.
SAN FRANCISCO, 1940
But why was Ace in 1940 San Francisco? The villainous Nine Crocodile is intent on disrupting our timestream. His followers are the Ebonati (dark versions of the Illuminati). Individuals are referred to as Night-Gaunt or Shadow-Knights. Their aim is to disrupt established history by creating paradoxes— nicknamed “doxie-glitches.” Shadow-Knights stole a golden statue of Quetzalcoatl from Tenochtitlan in 1518. Ace theorizes that this small change could set in motion a snowball effect: the Aztec priesthood would interpret the statue’s disappearance as displeasure from the gods. Apart from leading to mass human sacrifices in an attempt to recover favor, the loss would put the Aztecs on edge, more cautious in their dealings with Cortés, and perhaps even repelling the conquistadores—thus “knocking the history of this hemisphere to hell and back again.” Ace tracks the Ebonati to 1940 San Francisco, and recovers the statue, but is significantly outnumbered and on the run. He ducks into an antiques shop owned by Bridget Kronopoulous and asks her to hold the statue for him. Leaving the shop, Ace is set-upon by Shadow-Knights. Fighting them off, he glances through the rear window of Bridget’s shop, where he notices two things: Bridget rummaging for something (a box to hold the statue), and a shadowy-but-familiar figure in the background—a figure that briefly waves at Ace. Backtrack a minute: Almost immediately after Ace leaves Bridget’s shop, Rinaldo enters. Rinaldo is a penny-ante racketeer and a sometime-boyfriend of Bridget’s. He’s a smooth-talker and—seeing the golden statue—takes it from Bridget, pushes a few bucks down the front of her blouse, and orders her to wrap it up. Outside, behind the shop, Ace doug moench takes a few minutes to despatch the Shadow-Knights. Dazed, he sees Rinaldo walk out of the shop carrying a box big enough to hold the statue. Returning to Bridget, she admits that Rinaldo just left with the statue. Ace convinces her to help him get it back and also get out from under Rinaldo’s thumb. When Rinaldo opens his box, he finds a black (not golden) statue. Convinced there’s been a switcheroo, Rinaldo returns to Bridget, who directs him to Ace. Rinaldo pulls a gun on our hero, demanding to know the whereabouts of the real (golden) statue. Ace overpowers Rinaldo. The cops (who had been outside and overheard everything) arrest the racketeer. Ace washes the black paint off of the statue and returns it to Tenochtitlan at the exact instant it was stolen, taking Bridget with him. We’ve missed two things. Ace and Bridget attend a ritualistic Aztec ceremony where the statue is on full display. Suddenly,
the statue comes to life! Quetzalcoatl begins to rip through the Aztecs. Ace immediately realizes that the paradox is not fixed—and it’s all his fault! The statue was only recovered because Rinaldo brought it to Ace. Rinaldo thought the statue was fake, because it was painted black. But how did it come to be painted black? Ace realizes that he did it—but he hasn’t yet done it! He has created a paradox that is manifesting as warped reality—the statue coming to life.
LONDON, 1859
Ace hurries Bridget to his ship, the (egg-shaped) Azure Crosstime Express (A.C.E.), and they launch into the Golden Meld—the vortex that allows travel through time and space. The Azure Crosstime Express is piloted by Tempus Fugit—who manifests as a floating disembodied head modelled after Sigmund Freud. “Head” attaches himself to an android body to perform certain tasks. Returning to 1940 San Francisco, Ace informs Bridget that they have no control over where the ship’s hatch will manifest. On this occasion, it’s a ladies’ restroom. Ace subsequently sneaks into the back of Bridget’s shop, waves at himself through the window, unwraps the statue, paints it black, and re-wraps the statue—without the original Bridget noticing. Paradox averted. However, they are attacked by a massive warship as they leave San Francisco and re-enter the Golden Meld. The Ebonati can track the slug-slime used in Ace’s A.C.E. Hoping that the Ebonati will follow them, and not their ship, Ace and Bridget bail out at the earliest opportunity, emerging atop Big Ben on July 11, 1859—the date of its first chime. Shadow-Knights indeed follow our heroes and manage to jam Big Ben. Ace points out that— according to history—the clock’s first chime struck true. They must ensure that it does to avoid another paradox. Bridget and Ace manage to defeat the Shadow-Knights and repair Big Ben. Ace and Bridget return to the Azure Crosstime Express, but they cannot shake the Ebonati warship. Ace orders Head to cut the ship’s Time mode and travel through Space only. They immediately come upon Five-Worlds. “Five concentric layer-worlds, tucked one inside the other. The ceiling of each studded with artificial suns lighting the layer below. The core is a globe of water plied by gargantuan city-ships crewed by the Ebonati.” The smaller, more-maneuverable Azure Crosstime Express is able to navigate the multiple layers—the Ebonati warship cannot. Our heroes return to Tenochtitlan. All is as it should be. History has been restored. Ace and Bridget retire. Afterwards, Ace develops the munchies. He travels to San Diego, 1996, to buy some Fritos (as one does). He returns to Tenochtitlan to find Bridget’s handmaidens murdered by Benjamin Franklin! And that’s just the gist of Aztec Ace #1.
KANSAS CITY, 1955
With Ace kidnapped at gunpoint by Ben Franklin (actually an Ebonati doppelganger named Quann), Bridget and Head escape in the Azure Crosstime Express in Aztec Ace #2 (Apr. 1984)—but run out of fuel in Kansas,
1955. As previously alluded, Head explains to Bridget that the A.C.E. uses slug-slime as fuel. The original fuel was a synthetic compound that can only be manufactured in the future. Slug-slime is almost identical to this fuel. (It’s normally viscous and malleable but becomes harder when subjected to the rhythmic ripples of a slug’s underbelly, permitting travel over almost any surface.) Bridget leaves the ship to try and find some slugs. In Kansas City. In February. On this occasion, the ship’s hatch manifests in a phone box. And so the comparisons with Doctor Who escalated… Moench admits to BI, “Yeah, Doctor Who kept turning up in the letters page, but I had never seen an episode of Doctor Who! No, I tell a lie, I saw a Doctor Who movie on TV, with Peter Cushing—and the Daleks—when I was about 15 or 16, but I never equated that with Aztec Ace. And then people pointed out that I had Ace coming out of a telephone box but, the thing is, I had him coming out of many small spaces, like phone boxes, manhole covers, and so on. The only similarity is that they’re time travellers, and they try to fix things, but that’s not a unique concept.” Head also explains to Bridget that when Ace built the A.C.E. as a prototype vehicle, it attracted “the murderous attention of Krok and his cronies from the dimension next door.” As Ace fled, the Ebonati commandeered his lab. Krok used Ace’s technology to build improved (rectangular-shaped) Shift-Vehicles to traverse time and space. But back to Ace: The fake-Franklin bustles Ace aboard an Ebonati Shift-Vehicle and they vreeb to Krok’s city-ship on Five-Worlds. Here we meet
It’s Bath Time Readers get an eyeful of Bridget Kronopoulous in Aztec Ace #1. Art by Michael Hernandez and Nestor Redondo. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
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Time Passages Imaginative layouts by penciler Hernandez, inked by Redondo, on pages 34 and 35 of Aztec Ace #1. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
Nine Crocodile, and it’s clear that he and Ace have CAIRO, 2523 BCE history. Ace makes a break for it and disappears Aztec Ace #3 (June 1984) finds Ace and Bridget still into the city-ship. Circling back, Ace overhears separated. In the Shift-Vehicle that he stole from Krok and the fake-Franklin discussing their plan fake-Franklin, Ace discovers an Ebonati plot to raid to sabotage the real Franklin’s mission to secure Cheops’ legacy—and so travels to ancient Egypt. French support for American independence. Ace Meanwhile, after finding one frozen slug, Bridget also bumps into Shakreen and it’s clear and Head manage to extract enough slime to that they also have history. aim for warmer climes. Shakreen is Krok’s wife, and it is This third issue also brought a implied that this is a recent developchange in artists. Moench told Greenment. She is also pregnant, and it’s berger that the book’s original strongly implied that the father of tentative title was Captain Wow. the child may be Ace. “When I ran Captain Wow through Shakreen helps Ace to escape my head, the visuals were always in her personal Shift-Vehicle. Ace an amalgam of Ploog and Holmes, must shut out all thoughts of the Wrightson and Corben. When it two women in his life—the past came time to do it, however, I knew with Shakreen, and the future those guys were all involved with with Bridget—in order to stop their own things. But then a lightfake-Franklin’s sabotage mission. bulb went on over my head and michael hernandez He does so by boarding fakeI remembered my best collaboraLeague of Comic Geeks. Franklin’s privateer. With history tions. Almost every one of them jeopardized, another doxie-glitch manifests was with a new, young artist—someone who was as a sea monster, which Ace provokes into yet to become jaded or burnt out—guys who were attacking the vessel. Fake-Franklin makes a run fresh, vigorous, enthusiastic, ready to conquer for his Shift-Vehicle and Ace follows, despatching worlds. Gulacy, Zeck, Mayerik, Ploog, Gene Day, and the Ebonati doppelganger. Real-Franklin’s mis- so on. Ergo, let’s go for a young guy on Aztec Ace, sion is successful and America wins the someone who’s already good and who’s obviously Revolutionary War. going to get better as we go along. Unfortunately—
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stupidly—it never even occurred to me that a new guy might not be able to meet a monthly deadline.” Mike Hernandez did a beautiful job penciling the first two issues of Aztec Ace, establishing many of the initial visuals. However, when BACK ISSUE mentioned his name to Moench there was a lengthy pause, then a deep sigh: “Mike Hernandez… yeah, that was a big shame. I wanted to find a new guy, and make him the next big thing, but he didn’t seem to take it seriously. He took, like, a year to do two issues. Cat and Dean said that they would publish the book when it was ready but even they saw that that was too long. They wanted to get someone else and they wanted to get, I think, six issues in the can before we published.” BI reached out to Hernandez for comment but received no reply. Dan Day became the regular penciler from issue #3, and he kindly spoke with BACK ISSUE: “Around September 1983, Doug phoned me up and asked if I was interested on working on Aztec Ace. I knew Doug through my older brother, Gene. I was Gene’s assistant and one of my jobs was to read the script… give Gene the idea of what was in the issue… and then find reference for the story. Three days before Gene passed I had just finished the pencils on my first full-length story, called ‘The Champion.’ Gene was going to script it. After we lost Gene, Doug asked me if there was anything he
It’s Day Time (top) The covers of Aztec Ace #2 (Apr. 1984) and 3 (June 1984), both drawn by (bottom) Dan Day, shown here in his studio. Photo courtesy of Dan Day. could do. I asked him if he would be interested in scripting it and he said he would… so I sent him copies of it. A few weeks later, Doug phoned to let me know that he had shown my art to Archie Goodwin at Marvel and that Archie wanted it for Epic Illustrated! [Editor’s note: It saw print in Epic Illustrated #33 (Dec. 1985).] Doug also took the pencils over to DC and got me hired there... which got me the Batman issue [Detective Comics #527 (June 1983)]. “After reading the plot/script, I would break the issue down to panel thumbnails and make a list of the reference I would need—then compile about a foot and a half of reference. Doug’s plot/scripts are
Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 47
A TRIBUTE TO GENE DAY Doug Moench worked with Gene Day for four years on at that time, plus paperbacks, pulps, mags—he had a large Master of Kung Fu until Gene’s death. Moench remembers, collection in his 16-room house! “Oh, that was terrible. Did you hear what happened? “The news of Gene’s death was covered by the local He dropped dead in the street. I used to joke to him, newspapers. I had the privilege of informing Jim Shooter ‘We need to look after ourselves!’ We both lived on coffee, at Marvel, and I believe Dick Giordano at DC, as Gene was and cigarettes, and red meat. I felt terrible” leaving Marvel to work at DC (which Gene was not happy Gene’s brother, Dan Day, informs BACK ISSUE, “I always about doing). Gene was offered the pencils and inks on liked Dave’s [Sim] portrait of Gene [Gene was a mentor Detective Comics. The only cover by Gene of Batman was to Sim]... but Gene’s glasses were always round... ha ha! Detective Comics #527 (June 1983), which he had finished But I have found that many articles have mistakes in the inks on a few days before he died. It also happened them, saying that Gene passed in bed asleep— to be an issue I got to pencil, which was the which he did not—and I have always been hardest work I ever had to do knowing that it surprised that I have never been interviewed would have been Gene’s first Batman story. about his death. He was also offered other work at DC and “Howard Gene Day was born August 13, First Comics. Fantagraphics wanted Gene to 1951, and died September 23, 1982, of an work on The Shadow. aneurysm of the heart. The autopsy report “Marvel and DC sent Gale flowers and stated that when they opened up his chest notes. Artists and writers that he knew there was no heart left—it had exploded. from Toronto and Ottawa came to the wake Gene had passed away while crossing a street (which was held at his home/studio) and early in the morning. funeral. Dave Sim could not make it as he “I was the unlucky person to be first was on his first North American tour, but gene day informed by the police knocking at Gene he phoned (Gene would have understood) 1978 portrait by and © Dave Sim. and his wife’s door (his studio was also and said if Gale ever needed anything, to Courtesy of Dan Day. in the house). I was asked to identify the get in touch with him. body but I refused... his wife identified the body. Gene and “Our parents were both with us then. They took it his wife Gale were engaged for several years and married very hard. Nothing was ever the same after he passed. for, I believe, seven years. They had no kids. She remarried David was 17 and in high school. Our other brother, and had two kids with her second husband, but she is still Joe, was 24. Gene is interred just north of his homereferred to as Gene’s widow. town of Gananoque, Ontario. Our mother only saw his “I first worked for Gene on a Jekyll and Hyde book that tombstone once. She was so shaken up that our dad he penciled and inked (he worked on this during his would never take her back again, and his mother-in-law, honeymoon). I helped fill in the solid blacks but the book I believe, had a hard time going there because Gale’s never came out as far as I know. I was still in high school, name is also on the stone. so it would have been fall 1975. I helped him on-and-off “Gene died September 23, 1982. I remember the day after I finished high school in the winter of 1977. I started very well. It was dark and cool with heavy clouds and full-time with him after his first ink job on Star Wars #18 remained that way for days until the afternoon of the (Dec. 1978), and from there until he passed. I filled in funeral when it became sunny and very humid. I did not blacks, erased and whited out pages, got his mail, made sleep much over those days. September 23, 1982, was his coffee, looked for reference, set up his filing cabinets— the day I lost my older brother, my best friend, my boss. you know, whatever he needed done! September 23, 1982 was my 26th birthday.” “I always drew for fun, but Gene got me hooked on drawing for a living. That first year out of school I was Detail from the original art from Epic Illustrated #33 unemployed over the winter, and he asked if I would like to spend some time at the studio with him. That was when I (Dec. 1985). Story by Moench, pencils by Gene Day, got the drawing bug—and the next summer I sent out my inks by Dan Day. first packages to small press magazines. And Gene always © Marvel. had comics! He had almost every Marvel comic published
48 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
almost short stories in length and feel! Doug and I would talk every six weeks (when I would phone him to let him know when I would be finishing the issue I was working on). We would then talk about the next issue. The covers for issues #2 (which was changed from the original pencils which had Ace much smaller), #3, and the one with Ace and the electrodes [issue #9], were done as poster-shots while I was waiting for the first script to arrive by mail. Most of the conversations with editor Cat Yronwode were about having five or six timeelements in each cover. The cover with Ace with the gun [issue #12] was Cat’s idea as she felt a big figure with a gun would help the book sell more. Doug always felt that the cover is where the artist had the most freedom, at which I always laughed and would say that the splash page is where the artist could express himself—I had three covers turned down!” Moench recalls, “Dan did tons of research. Tons. He had to use ten books for one bloody panel! But he was so enthusiastic and into it. He’d call me up with ideas and we’d chat about the book.”
PADUA, 1609
Aztec Ace #8 (Dec. 1984) sees Bridget and Ace foil an Ebonati plan to bury Galileo’s discoveries. In issue #9 (Jan. 1985) they meet the time-lost Ambrose Bierce, Amelia Earhart, and Glenn Miller on Five-Worlds. Day remembers: “Issue #8—or as I call it #9 (the original pages still have #9 as their number on them)—was brought forward because the editor wanted to go monthly with the book (the issues were previously coming out every six weeks). However, the penciler on that issue [Mike Hernandez] could not make the deadline and so my issue #9 became #8.” Shakreen (with her son) escapes Krok in issue #10 (Feb. 1985) and makes for Tenochtitlan, whilst Jack the Ripper—now identifying as Tezcatlipoca— follows. Forced to choose between rescuing Bridget or Shakreen in issue #11, Ace chooses Bridget and earns Shakreen’s enmity. Ace introduces Bridget to his friend, Puer Artemis, in issue #12 (Apr. 1985). Artemis is a tempath—someone with telepathic empathy for time—and who fled the 23rd century with
Time Warp Original cover art to Aztec Ace #9 (Jan. 1985), penciled by Dan Day and inked by Ron Harris. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
NEW YORK, 1940
Shakreen had given her Shift-Vehicle to Ace in issue #2, leaving her without a personal ship. About to give birth, she knows that a baby born in the Limbo of Five-Worlds will only truly exist in Limbo—it will be a “shadow” in outside realities. In issue #4 (July 1984), Shakreen attempts to leave in an alternative ship but is caught by Nine Crocodile. He detains her until she gives birth and then claims the blank-eyed child as his own. At the end of the issue, Ace departs ancient Egypt, and Bridget and Head leave Kansas. Our lovers reunite at the New York World’s Fair in 1940, in issue #5, and battle a returned Rinaldo— revealed as an Ebonati agent named Red Gaunt. There is also a triceratops because… time travel. Rinaldo calls in reinforcements in issue #6, including a Roman centurion, a Neanderthal, and Jack the Ripper. There is also a futuristic cyborg because… why not? It was mentioned above that we have missed two things. One was the black statue. However, in a series primarily concerned with fixing time paradoxes, how could spiriting Bridget Kronopoulous out of 1940 not create a paradox? The answer is that it eventually will, and the strain on the timestream will get worse the longer it is unresolved. She either has to return to the exact moment that she left (like the Quetzalcoatl statue) or she must die. But there’s a loophole: Ace explains that when a person jumps from normal time into a Shift-Vehicle (as Bridget did when she first joined Ace) there exists a split-instant when two of that person exist. The ‘native-time self’ and the ‘out-of-time self’ coexist and overlap. At that precise instant, Bridget’s ‘native-time self’ must be… terminated. And so, in an act of Murdicide, Bridget shoots her other self in 1940 San Francisco, in Aztec Ace #7 (Oct. 1984). ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 49
If I Could Turn Back Time (top) Aztec Ace #12 (Apr. 1985; cover by Dan Day) revealed (bottom) the Humphrey Bogart lookalike Lou Kinsolving. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
Ace. Artemis tells Ace and Bridget that a 1940s San Francisco cop—Humphrey Bogart dead-ringer Lou Kinsolving—has become obsessed with the murder of Bridget Kronopoulous, to the point where he is neglecting other cases and thus jeopardizing established history. Bridget must appear to Kinsolving and convince him to drop the case, in issue #13 (May 1985).
ACTIUM, 31 BCE
Artemis detects another time-glitch in Aztec Ace #14 (June 1985). The trio travel to ancient Greece to thwart an Ebonati plot to assassinate Octavian (which would facilitate victory for Antony and Cleopatra). This issue was not penciled by Dan Day: “The reason for my not working on issue #14 is because I had been fired after #13 (I was told because I did not have enough reference material). However, the new penciler [Mike Harris] only worked on one issue and said he would not work for Eclipse ever again, so they got back in touch with me and wanted to know if I would do issue #15 (Sept. 1985). Since they owed me about two or three issues in back pay, I said I would pencil it only if they paid me up in full. “Doug told me they wanted to get rid of me at issue #5 or 6, but he would not let them because I promised him when I took the job that I would not leave the book. Cat [Yronwode] told me they got rid of Nestor because his assistant was doing too much of the work. She said, ‘If you hold up the pages at a certain angle you could tell who did what on each page.’ Having Nestor inking over my pencils was like a dream come true. Even now, looking at the originals, I have to say that I was very, very lucky to have worked with such a true master as Nestor Redondo! It’s funny that both he and I were fired from the book. We were nominated for best art team in 1985 for a Kirby Award. No one at Eclipse ever mentioned it, which is why I have always believed that the editors are not always right in their direction.” Thomas Yeates provided finished art for issue #14, behind a gorgeous Cleopatra cover. Yeates kindly shared his memories with BACK ISSUE: “First off it was passing strange, as they say, that my creator-owned comic Timespirits, written by Stephen Perry, came out at the same time as the creator-owned comic Coyote by Steve Englehart and Steve Leialoha, AND Aztec Ace—also creator-owned—and all of them featured American-Indian main characters. “While starting work on Timespirits, I was asked to ink the cover of Aztec Ace #1, maybe by the penciler, Mike Hernandez, whom I’d met in New York, I think. Dean Mullaney, the publisher, had recently moved from Staten Island 50 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? (left) Artist Thomas Yeates and writer Steve Perry’s creatorowned time-travel series Timespirits #1 (Oct. 1984). (right) Yeates’ stunning Cleopatra cover to Aztec Ace #14 (Oct. 1985). Timespirits © Stephen Perry and Thomas Yeates. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
to the Russian River area of Northern California and by sheer ‘No problem.’ He organized a Kickstarter and apparently it was coincidence I moved to that area too, in December of 1983, as paid for in 24 hours! But then it took forever for the book to get both Aztec Ace and Timespirits were getting started. produced and people started contacting me, saying, ‘I sent in my “Being about 20 minutes away from their office, Dean and money, where’s my book?’ and I had nothing to do with it! And his partner/editor Cat Yronwode welcomed me to the area then Drew died of COVID and some other guy—I can’t remember and offered me the use of their copy machine. This proximity his name—phoned me and asked me to help, but I had to tell is probably what led to my later involvement with Aztec Ace him that I had already said that I didn’t want to be involved.” including three covers I did solo [#11, 14, 15], two others I inked over Dan Day [#7, 10], and the few art touch-ups. I also HOLLYWOOD, 1932 Aztec Ace #15 (Sept. 1985) was the final issue of the series. inked the Comics Interview cover over Hernandez. Whilst at the cinema watching The Sign of the Cross, Bridget “What I really want to say about it, though, is how sees herself on-screen! To preserve history, Ace must incredible it looks. The reprint is just a fantastic showtake Bridget back to 1932 and ensure she gets a case of real high-output art labor, and I mean bit part in the film. “The series ended, I was told, labor. I’m sorry my name is so prominent in the because of slipping sales,” states Day. “I enjoyed reprint when I did very little, and the incredible Aztec Ace because of its variety. I still like working inker Nestor Redondo should have gotten more on a lot of different time periods; still have a credit. The wild storyline obviously greatly large reference library—which I’m still adding to inspired Dan Day and the other pencilers to very even at my old age!” high heights of design and drawing. Plus the Moench wrote in his introduction to the coloring, mostly by Phil DeWalt, is terrific. collected edition: “All fun things must eventually “Toward the end of the run, I believe the book end, however, and a fifteen-issue run was was very late—and no wonder when you look already far longer than I’d anticipated for at how much work it took to produce it. So Cat such a dense, self-indulgent, non-commercial, asked me to help out on the Cleopatra issue thomas yeates intelligence-testing, and uninformativelyand I touched up the art a bit, adding black to © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. titled endeavor. At the time, comics sales some areas and maybe re-drawing a few panels. were slumping across the board, even for highly commerDefinitely the big battle on page ten of issue #14 is mine. “Lastly, I want to apologize to writer extraordinaire Doug cial titles. And while Cat and Dean claimed that no one was Moench for not being able to help with the reprint cover actually losing money on Aztec Ace, we were definitely on when he asked me through Drew Ford. Later I tried to get in the verge.” But this wasn’t the last appearance of Ace and Bridget. As touch about some ideas I had but I didn’t hear back. Oh well. Thank you, Drew Ford, your valiant efforts to get the good stuff many publishers were doing, Eclipse released a crossover minireprinted has paid off big time with Aztec Ace. You are missed.” series—Total Eclipse, written by Marv Wolfman—featuring all of Moench, too, was impressed by the collected edition: “Did Eclipse’s characters united against a threat to the entire universe. you see the book? Drew rang me up and wanted to do the [Spoiler: It’s Krok.] The event was covered in Comics Scene #3 reprint. I said that I didn’t want to do any of the work and he said, (May 1988): “The miniseries utilizes Aztec Ace and Miracleman, ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 51
who both make the story flow quite smoothly. Between these two, you can unite all of the other characters. Aztec Ace plays a crucial role, searching time and space for other characters.” Moench tells BI, “Marv is a good guy. He’s a friend. I mean, we don’t call each other and chat, but we catch up when we see each other. I know someone called me about Total Eclipse—I can’t remember if it was Marv, or Dean, or Cat—but I said, ‘Yeah, go ahead and use the characters.’ Y’know, I always credited Marv with getting me work at Marvel—he was the one who called me up and offered me a job.”
Wolfman kindly responded to BI: “My memory is not great, but I worked with Doug when I was an editor at Warren and I liked his work. When I went to Marvel and we were beginning a large number of black-&-white magazines and needed writers I suggested Doug—and Roy [Thomas] told me to get him—which I did, along with a few others writers I worked with at Warren.” However, when asked about Aztec Ace and Total Eclipse, Wolfman admits, “No memory of those books at all. Sorry.”
PENNSYLVANIA, 1992
Also in his introduction to the collected edition, Moench wrote: “[Some years later,] Dean called and asked me to revive Aztec Ace.” Interviewed by Kim Howard Johnson in Comics Scene #26 (May 1992), Moench elaborated: “Back in the original series, I had planned to get to Nine Crocodile’s and Aztec Ace’s origins very early on. But the series got so convoluted, with the time-travel paradoxes and whatnot, that I instead started concentrating on getting a story into each issue. The origin kept getting pushed further back. It was hinted at but never done. I decided to explain and tie up all the loose ends and do a full explanation of Aztec Ace’s origins, and why all of the previous issues happened. It explains why Nine Crocodile is making life hell for our timeline, and it involves something that’s going to happen to his timeline.” Moench tells BI, “The final story was gonna wrap everything up and fill in all the gaps. It was about 80% scripted and then the art started coming in. I have to say that Dean and Cat were not impressed by the art—from the artist that they specifically requested—and they wanted me to tell him that his services were no longer needed, but I couldn’t do that. I had actually met the guy at a convention. He had come up and introduced himself and told me how excited he was to working on Aztec Ace, and how he couldn’t wait to get started. Next I know, Dean and Cat wanted me to fire him! I said I wasn’t gonna do that and so they started looking for somebody else, and they put things on hold, and then the industry hit another downturn and Eclipse went out of business. It was a shame. It never quite worked out.” Asked if there is any chance that—now that the collected edition has demonstrated interest in Aztec Ace—we might ever see this final story, Moench paused and replied, “It’s almost completely scripted; the last few pages just need to be written. It’s all in my study somewhere. I’m gonna ask my son to help me sort through things, and then… who knows? Phone me again in three or four months…” The author would like to express his sincere gratitude to Dan Day, Marv Wolfman, Thomas Yeates, and—of course—Doug Moench, for their invaluable help. Acknowledgements to Bob Greenberger and Kim Howard Johnson.
Time Is Running Out Original cover art to the series’ final issue, Aztec Ace #15 (Sept. 1985), by Yeates. Courtesy of Heritage. Aztec Ace © Doug Moench and Michael Hernandez.
52 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
JARROD BUTTERY lives in Western Australia. He has read many, many comics, but none quite like Aztec Ace. As Moench writes, “All of time and all of space constitutes a rather vast canvas. The biggest ever.” Jarrod hopes this article will inspire others to seek it out.
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“He’s the ultimate American hero, an indestructible symbol of hope and courage for an entire nation, a one-man army standing tall for Freedom, Justice, and the American Way—but what about truth? When reporter Dennis Hough is assigned to cover a story about his boyhood hero, he begins to see the cracks in the legend. Does The American have feet of clay? Or is he himself a victim of a larger conspiracy?” That’s how the back cover blurb summed it up on Dark Horse Comics’ 2005 trade volume collecting the original eight-issue run of The American. Here’s how Don Markstein’s Toonpedia explained The American: “Patriotic-style superheroes, all decked out in red, white, and blue, have been part of the U.S. comic-book scene ever since MLJ Comics introduced The Shield in 1939. From Marvel Comics’ Captain America (1941) to DC’s Steel, The Indestructible Man (1978), all had many points in common, among which was the fact that their patriotism was a simple, straightforward type, unequivocal support of the U.S. government in all its endeavors. It wasn’t until the 1980s that more nuanced forms of patriotism came into vogue, and it became possible to do ‘patriotic’ heroes along the lines of American Flagg and this one… writer Mark Verheiden’s succinctly named The American.” Verheiden would reminisce in the introduction to the collected volume: “The American was created out of real love for the comics medium, because I’ve always loved comics. I’m talking completely, unapologetically, and with fierce devotion. I collected them as a kid, debated them endlessly in amateur press associations (APAs) as a young adult, and then, well, gave up on them as a post-graduate film career beckoned. The late ’70s/early ’80s weren’t exactly ‘prime time’ for mainstream comics, and my passion for the form may have petered out entirely if not a happy confluence of events. “To wit, two old Oregon friends, Mike Richardson and Randy Stradley, decided to start a comic-book company [see BACK ISSUE #22—ed.]. They were going to call it Dark Horse, and to the derisive chuckles of many, their mad master plan was to ‘publish good comics’…. I attended the annual San Diego Comic Convention back in 1986. It was a blast to bask in the creative glow of fans and professionals, and it was also a chance to hear out Mike and Randy’s plans for Dark Horse, which ended with the magic words, ‘Would you like to write something for us?’” The result, as you’re about to read, was The American, from Verheiden and artist Chris Warner, premiering with issue #1 (Aug. 1987). The original series concluded with The American #8 (Feb. 1989). Mark Verheiden (born March 26, 1956) is known more for his television and movie work than he is as a comic-book writer. For TV and film, Mark has a long list of involvement including as a writer and co-executive producer on the second incarnation of Battlestar Galactica and the prequel, Caprica, and as a staff writer and consulting producer for Heroes. Mark wrote the movies Timecop and The Mask, and worked on the Timecop TV series, Smallville, Falling Skies, Constantine, Daredevil, Ash vs. the Evil Dead, and Swamp Thing, among others. His first comics work was Dark Horse’s The American, which would lead to extensive work on Dark Horse’s Aliens and Predator series. They ended up naming a character after Mark in the 2004 Alien vs. Predator movie. At DC, Mark wrote Superman stories for Action Comics Weekly, the Smallville TV tie-in series, and the Phantom 12-issue maxiseries. At Marvel, Mark wrote the 12-issue Stalkers for the Epic line. Chris Warner (born 1955) is a triple threat at Dark Horse Comics as a writer, artist, and editor. At Dark Horse he’s worked on Predator, Alien vs. Predator, Comics’ Greatest World, and Barb Wire. At Marvel, he worked on Alien Legion, Moon Knight, Doctor Strange, and Strange Tales. At DC, Chris penciled Batman #408 with writer Max Allan Collins. I had a chance to talk with Mark and Chris via email about The American… – Stephan Friedt 54 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
by S t e p h a n
Friedt
A Real American Hero Original artwork by Chris Warner for the cover of the 1988 The American trade paperback, which reprinted issues #1–4 of the Dark Horse Comics series. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). The American © Mark Verheiden.
Standing Up for America Warner’s covers to The American #1 (Aug. 1987) through 3 (Dec. 1987), also featuring supporting characters Dennis Hough (#2) and Kid America (#3). The American © Mark Verheiden.
STEPHAN FRIEDT: How did you two get together as a team? What was your collaboration like? Full, detailed scripts? Open-ended directions? MARK VERHEIDEN: As I recollect (a caveat that should apply to all of this!), I attended the 1986 San Diego Comic-Con and spent an evening in the Dark Horse suite (not as fancy as it sounds, back then), where I talked with old buddies Randy Stradley (former roommate, later a Dark Horse exec for many years), Chris, publisher Mike Richardson, and others, and I believe Randy and/or Mike invited me to write something for them. On the drive back to Los Angeles with my then-girlfriend/soon-to-be-wife Sonja, I spewed out most of the idea for The American. I don’t recall if I wrote a treatment or pitch document, but mark verheiden fairly quickly I wrote the first issue and delivered it to Dark Horse, and IMDb.com. Mike and Randy decided to publish it. We looked for an artist for a while (I recall seeing samples from a very young Rob Liefeld!), until Chris Warner stepped in and took the job. Of course, he was amazing, Chris is hands down one of the best action comic artists ever. I think he liked the script, but that’s for him to say. And I wrote full, overdetailed scripts, taking my cues from what I’d heard about Alan Moore’s script style. CHRIS WARNER: Around the time The American surfaced at Dark Horse, I was in the process of becoming the main artist on Batman. I had high hopes for that gig, but it rapidly went sour, and I was very demoralized by the situation. I read the first script of The American and saw that it was the kind of book I really wanted to be drawing. The script was so fully realized, a major departure from the loose, plot-style approach I was used to at Marvel. I ended up getting fired from Batman, deservedly, but the American gig was still open, so I got the part I really wanted. Also, I’d known Mark since high school, so it was fun to be working with an old pal. Sometimes things work out for the better. FRIEDT: What was the inspiration for your work on The American? VERHEIDEN: Well, obviously it appeared to be sort of a riff on the Captain America/Fighting American– type comic-book heroes, but it was really inspired by movies like Rambo 2 and the then-popular Chuck Norris Missing in Action films. Movies where the oneman-army hero re-fought old wars and of course “won.” I thought they were silly and ripe for satire. Also, this was the time of the Iran/Contra debacle, and so my general distrust of government and military leaders (not the soldiers) was pretty high. ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 55
You Want a Piece of Me?? Our hero’s put to the test in The American #3 (Dec. 1987). Signed original art by Warner (with Art Nichols inks) courtesy of Comic Connect (www. comicconnect.com). The American © Mark Verheiden.
WARNER: Since the book was very “real world,” I wanted to get as realistic as I could without taking the heavy photo-realism approach, which I don’t care for. So, I tried to use references judiciously to give the feel of reality while still wanting to have a bit of a superhero comic feel, which is the feel of the story—reality meets artifice. FRIEDT: What influenced you when you worked on the character? …Movies? …TV? VERHEIDEN: Movies, TV, and comics… I had moved to Los Angeles in the ’80s to break into screenwriting, so I was watching/reading a lot. V for Vendetta. Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight, and Paul Chadwick’s Concrete, all inspired me. And I loved a lot of books in the independent comics movement, which was amenable to taking chances on new talent.
WARNER: All those books Mark mentioned were inspirational in that I wanted to break out of the standard superhero bag and do something with some substance. When I got down to working with the script, I wanted to find some kind of visual touchstone for the title character, and I thought of football linebacker Brian Bosworth, “The Boz,” who was a hot media commodity at the time. Big, ruggedly handsome guy, blond, and in a way a media creation like the American. So, while I didn’t use him really as a direct reference, he was useful as visual inspiration. Ironically, in real life the character of the Boz caught up to Bosworth the man, paralleling in a weird way how the myth of The American caught up with the man portraying the myth. Art imitates life imitates art.
FRIEDT: What was your goal in developing the character? VERHEIDEN: I wanted the American character to be a full-blooded chris warner person, haunted by his decisions Xenopedia Fandom. and determined to do what he could to make things right. The reporter character, Dennis Hough, was just as flawed, a down-onhis-luck alcoholic who stumbled into a conspiracy much bigger than he ever imagined. I wanted to dig deep into these guys and play out their story, foibles and all. WARNER: The American needed to feel real, but bigger than life. I’m a sports fan, and that’s how I see a lot of sports stars: real people but otherworldly physically; and again, they are also media creations like the American. FRIEDT: What did you enjoy about working on the character? Was it a challenge to build each issue? VERHEIDEN: After the four-issue origin story, it did become a bit harder. But I had fun trying to work through the puzzle(s). Grant Miehm took over as artist when Chris left, and he did a great job, but sales were diminishing, and I was getting busy with other things. Doug Braithwaite drew the final issue of the regular series, so we went out with an artistic bang. I really enjoyed bringing The American back for the Lost in America miniseries around 1992, where the distraught hero falls prey to a cult of guntoting, ape-mask-wearing lunatics, but despite stellar artwork by Chris Marrinan and color at last, once again sales were not land-office. Aside from a couple of short stories for DH Presents and the A-1 anthology, that, as they say, was that. [Editor’s note: Mark Verheiden informed us, after the interview, that “land-office” is “a geezer expression from the days of the Old West, when real estate deals (or scams) would lead to customers changing the offices to give them money. So NOT land-office is… not great.” Thanks for the clarification, Mark!] WARNER: The challenge of drawing a book outside the mainstream and extremely ambitious, but still having some fun mainstream elements, was gratifying. Hard work, but worth the effort. It’s exciting to work on something that you know will be more than just the ka billionth iteration of some long-past-its-shelf-life character.
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The Last American (Artist) (top) The American was voted “Best New Character” in the 1987 Golden Apple Awards, as touted on the back cover of The American #7. (bottom) Grant Miehm replaced Chris Warner as artist beginning with The American #5, although Warner occasionally continued to contribute to the book— including (inset) his cover to issue #5 (July 1988) and inks over Miehm for the final issue of the series, #8 (Feb. 1989). The American © Mark Verheiden. Concrete © Paul Chadwick.
FRIEDT: Any regrets, or things you wish you could do over? VERHEIDEN: I’m not really a regrets kinda guy… The work was the work, and it was the best we could manage under the circumstances of the time. If someone likes it, fine, if they don’t, fine (but they’re wrong!). WARNER: I’m the kind of “glass-half-empty” artist who can only see what I did wrong, so there are countless things I wish I’d done better. But I did nail it here and there, and overall, I think the series was an amazing ride, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. And as a shout-out here, I loved the ink job that Art Nichols pulled off when he joined the team with the second issue. Really made me look good, no mean feat. FRIEDT: Any great background stories from working on the character? VERHEIDEN: I always liked the name Gleason, who was Hough’s female reporter buddy in the first issue but was murdered. I kinda wish I’d named her “Smith” and kept Gleason for a longer-term character. (Gleason was inspired by comedian Jackie Gleason, of course.) But more germane for me, maybe, is that The American launched my comic-book career, garnering some great reviews and leading to work for DC Comics (The Phantom and others), as well as the first Aliens and Predator books. And those circuitously led into my screenwriting career when I sold The American to producer Joel Silver and Warner Bros. and wrote my first studio script. That one didn’t get made, but I had a toe in the door and kept kickin’… WARNER: I worked a few Easter eggs into the story. My favorite Chinese restaurant was the now-long-gone Golden Dragon in downtown Portland, and I used their cool neon sign in a scene from the first issue, so I got to work that PDX tribute into the mix. I also managed to work myself into the background a couple of times. This was during my Cowpunk rock ’n’ roll days, so I cut a pretty dashing/ ridiculous figure. Another example of artifice. FRIEDT: Are there any famous fans or followers of The American that you are aware of? VERHEIDEN: I was amazed when I got a fan letter from none other than Stan Lee, who was incredibly kind. (It was not wholly spontaneous; my late friend Ted Newsom was working on some TV scripts for Marvel and managed to plop The American on his desk.) Another was from a young David Goyer, who was still in school back then but regardless wanted to take me to lunch, and never one to skip a free lunch, off I went. Transformers producer Don Murphy is a long-time big fan. And while I haven’t done a convention in quite a while, when I did there would always be a few folks bringing copies of the books. People still seem to remember it fondly, all these years later, and that’s really all you can hope for. WARNER: I’m not exactly famous, but I’m a fan. Does that count? ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 57
[Editor’s note: Mercy St. Clair is a resilient bounty hunter—a “trekker” —in a futuristic society in writer/artist Ron Randall’s creator-owned science-fiction comic book, Trekker. Trekker first bowed in a serial that started in Dark Horse Presents #4 (Jan. 1987), followed by Trekker miniseries, specials, and further serializations. Randall’s seminal sci-fi saga was collected in The Trekker Omnibus (2013) and is serialized online at Trekkercomic.com. In the interview that follows, Trekker’s creator speaks with BACK ISSUE interviewer Cecil Disharoon about the origins and development of the character and series.] CECIL DISHAROON: How did Trekker first come to life in your mind? I wonder… That first drawing of her, seen in your Trekker Omnibus—was there a spark-impulse that called, “Hey, Ron, make a retro futuristic world for her”? Or was this sketch the culmination of a search for a lead character for such a world? Did you already want to tell this kind of story, and just didn’t have the lead character? RON RANDALL: It was probably more the latter, I think. I started off with this blank slate of what would I choose, if I were to create my sort of my dream project—the story that I would like to tell the most—what would that look like? I started to think of some of the elements. On that conceptual level, I knew I wanted it to be a science-fiction story, because I had the opportunity to work on a couple of sciencefiction things in comics. When I worked on those, ron randall I knew I was lucky because there weren’t a lot Ocean Yamaha from of science-fiction comics back then, and I really Portland, USA. enjoyed that, because I’ve loved science fiction ever since I was a kid. When I had a chance to try to emulate my some of my art heroes—Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond, that kind of stuff—well, I jumped at the chance, so I knew the basic genre pretty quickly. And I knew, because I came up learning from and working with Joe Kubert, that sort of action-adventure story that had a visceral appeal to it; I knew that was my wheelhouse, too, as opposed to something really sort of esoteric—an abstract piece. So, action-adventure. And I thought, “If it has a character who can roam to a lot of different settings and situations, that brings a lot of environments, a lot of variety, into the stories—good for me, you know, as a creator, to have new meat to chew on from one story to the next.” So, a bounty hunter. There’s the old Wild West sort of thing about an individual character out there, and a variety of different journeys that that character can go on. That became a piece of it, too. DISHAROON: And her gender? RANDALL: I also knew early on I wanted a female lead character, because that wasn’t happening in comics very much. I had a chance to do the backup series in the Warlord comic book at DC for a while a couple years before: The Barren Earth, written by Gary Cohn, who is a writer that isn’t as well-known as I think he should be. Gary dreamed up the basic concept, and he and I developed it. Gary’s vision was much more of an Edgar Rice Burroughs–sort of version of sci-fi, but it had a female lead character. It was so cool to have the female character not be the sidekick, or the love interest, or something like that. She was the central character: she drove the narrative, and that was such a fresh thing to do in comics, [compared to what] I had experienced up until that point. It opens up a different sort of emotional landscape, that you can have your main character explore, than you could generally do with the male character. [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #137 for a Cohn/Randall Pro2Pro interview about their Barren Earth collaboration.] 58 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
interview by
Cecil Disharoon
Have Mercy! Ron Randall’s futuristic bounty hunter Mercy St. Clair takes aim at her audience as Trekker premieres in Dark Horse Presents Vol. 1 #4 (Jan. 1987). Trekker © Ron Randall. Concrete © Paul Chadwick. Mindwalk © Randy Emberlin. Boris the Bear © James Dean Smith.
All those elements were there at the beginning, when I was coming up with Trekker. So, I’d been on a couple of walks, letting some of these things ruminate, and then I said, “Now, it’s time to start putting some stuff down on paper.” I just sort of started pushing the pencil around on the page, gesturing in a rough pose for a character that would try to have a certain sense of attitude. I knew that I wanted a character who dressed appropriately for her job, so there would be a certain amount of gear, pads, straps, and weaponry on her, so that she would look like an action character— like a bounty hunter, as opposed to looking like a chorus girl or something. DISHAROON: Tell me about thinking up her stories— the process of choosing which to tell, and in which order should you create them? How did you decide which episodes were appropriate to the characterization you’ve developed? Or did those aspects “pop out” about Mercy St. Clair as you pondered where in her world she was going? RANDALL: Part of the impetus, when I was coming up with Trekker, was: if I was going to do a story of my own, it’d have to be about something more than just the level that the 12-year-old me loves: you know, swamp monsters and spaceships crash landing on barren foreign planets and raw gun fights—all those cool “swashbuckler-y” adventure resources. I love that stuff, but I knew, for a series to hold my interest, and be able to continue to inspire me to put all the work into it that you have to do to create a comic book, one after another and stuff, there had to be in some way more substance to it than just, “Oh, that’s a cool story idea,” you know? It had to be about something. The thing that you mentioned there is, it’s this young woman’s gradual evolution: as a human being, as a character, her self-discovery. Sort of, “If she can make it this year, she can survive the trip.” And part of it was about the role of violence, and the uses that we put it to, and whether there are alternatives. I don’t have answers, I just ask questions and let the stories take the characters where the story takes them. Then I let the readers and myself included sort of draw our own conclusions from the experiences that we have with those characters, because I came to feel, from very early on: If you’re writing a story and you definitely have like, “I’m gonna deliver the message of this; the moral of the story is this”—that’s not art; to me, that’s propaganda. That’s like writing a persuasive essay. I explore these characters and the richness and the complexity of the complexity of the world and characters. I like to say: Trekker started as a black-&-white comic, and that’s how Mercy saw things, a black&-white view of the world: “I shoot people, I get paid.” On an elemental level, that’s how simple she’d like things. She starts off very much closedin. She has relationships with men—like Paul, a good guy, a cop—but it’s sort of at arm’s length. She’s always got to be in control. DISHAROON: Even with allies like the gangster Lazmuzi, and pacifist Rigel agent, Jason Bolt. Her uncle Alex on the force feeds her tips, but she is independent.
RANDALL: From the very first eight-page chapter, we see Mercy out there being a badass and shooting up the bad guys. Then she goes back to her crappy little apartment that she lives in in the middle of the city, and inside the apartment, there’s this scruffy old pet domesticated fox that she has, named Scuff. I wanted to include that because there was no reason that an implacable killing machine bounty hunter would have a pet fox. The only reason: there is more to her. Right off the bat, there’s more going on underneath the surface than Mercy is aware of, or even cares to.
Deal Me In? Trekker makes a dramatic debut in her premiere story in Dark Horse Presents #4. Story and art by Ron Randall. Trekker © Ron Randall.
DISHAROON: She still wants to nurture something even though her career is no-nonsense: fighting for her life, outnumbered, intricacies, and abilities of her target bounties, possibly fighting to the death, even. RANDALL: Yeah, and that’s the stuff that gets me the most excited about telling the stories! ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 59
Early Appearances (left) Paul Gulacy illustrated the cover of Dark Horse Presents #5 (Feb. 1987), featuring Trekker’s second appearance. (right) In her own magazine! Trekker #1 (May 1987) cover by Randall. Trekker © Ron Randall. Concrete © Paul Chadwick. Roma © John Workman.
‘TREKKER’ PUBLISHING HISTORY • Dark Horse Presents #4 (Jan. 1987)–6 (Apr. 1987), Dark Horse • Trekker #1 (May 1987)–6 (Mar. 1988), Dark Horse • Dark Horse Presents #20 (Aug. 1988)–22 (Sept. 1988), Dark Horse • Trekker Collection (Nov. 1988), Dark Horse • Trekker Color Special (July 1989), Dark Horse • Dark Horse Presents #39 (May 1990)–41 (June 1990), Dark Horse • Decade of Dark Horse #2 (Aug. 1996), Dark Horse • Trekker Special #1 (June 1999), Image • Dark Horse Presents #24 (May 2013)–29 (Oct. 2013), Dark Horse • Trekker Omnibus (August 2013), Dark Horse • Trekker: The Train to Avalon Bay (Apr. 2014), Dark Horse • Trekker: Rites of Passage (Feb. 2017), Dark Horse • Dark Horse Presents #33 (Apr. 2017), Dark Horse • Trekker: Chapeltown (Feb. 2018), Kickstarter-funded • Trekker: The Darkstar Zephyr (Nov. 2018), Kickstarter-funded • Trekker: Battlefields (June 2019), Kickstarter-funded • Trekker: The Complete Journey Vol. 1 (Oct. 2020), Kickstarter-funded • Trekker: Hunter’s Moon (July 2021), Kickstarter-funded • Trekker: Blood in the Wind (2022), Kickstarter-funded Visit Trekkercomic.com for serialized Trekker adventures from Ron Randall. Special thanks to Wikipedia and Grand Comics Database.
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On the 12-year-old level, I love drawing the cool gear, monsters, and the alien worlds, but the thing that keeps it a live process for me—engaged in it and committed to it—is trying to enrich and depict that inner life of the character and make her more believable, someone that we know more about, and care more about. We can get exasperated with her when she does something stupid or cruel or whatever you know. But I would hope that we can identify with her— “Yeah, I’ve done stupid stuff, too,” or “My best friend said that same thing one time”—any of that sort of thing. If you believe in some level that Mercy is a real character, you’re going to want to keep coming back for the next issue to see what she’s doing next, what kind of trouble is she getting into this time, has she learned anything— you know, that sort of stuff. As a storyteller, nothing beats the accomplishment of having a reader have your character come alive in their mind. DISHAROON: I suspect that Trekker’s uniqueness as a solo lead remained a discussion as the original title came out, and even achieved monthly status by issue #5. RANDALL: A lot of female characters that were designed back in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s had a certain look to them, and I wanted Trekker to be attractive, you know, to be sexy—but at the same time, to be a great balance between those things. Every artist likes to draw attractive women as far as I know, but also a believable character, so that I wouldn’t have to apologize to women that looked at the series, thinking, and that I would be able to sort of believe in my own stories that I was telling you know I was trying to create a character and a world that people could look at
and you could buy into it. You wouldn’t have to just suspend disbelief too much… beyond what you do anytime you’re reading a science-fiction action-adventure comic, I guess. DISHAROON: One of my favorites is her return in Dark Horse Comics Presents #20–22, “Vincent’s Share.” Figuring out corners to cut, Mercy’s taken some reckless chances to this point, as when she takes the “bodyguard” job to get fare home. She’s always left with a thing to ponder, an allowance that is her central inner conflict. There’s a genuine payoff to that plot thread. Did you regard this as Trekker’s swan song at the time? RANDALL: I never would accept that I wouldn’t be doing anymore Trekker. My intention never wavered from telling the rest of this story. From pretty much the time I first created Trekker, I resolved to finish it. I distinctly remember sort of saying to myself, by the end of my career, if the one thing that people associate my name with most is Trekker, I will sign that contract in a second! I had a whole story I wanted to tell there… so, yeah, I’ve just been sort of really stubborn about it. Everything’s meant to reach a satisfying resolution, like a novel, or a trilogy of novels— this is a pretty long one. We’re not there yet—and I know where it’s going, and it’s going to take a while to get there. DISHAROON: When did the story of her training (Trekker Color Special, 1989) come to you? RANDALL: I knew we’d started the series kind of in the middle of things. She’s already working as a functioning bounty hunter and she’s set up in the city New Gelaph, with existing relationships. So, after a while, I thought, “Okay, now, let’s go back. Where does she get some of these remarkable abilities?” It was time to create, for lack of a better phrase, her origin story. I called it “Sins of Our Fathers.” I hadn’t had that planned out beforehand, if I remember right, in any meaningful way. So, then it was coming up with an origin story that would make sense, that would fit with the rules that I’d already established for the series.
I often say, if I can get the reader ask one question and one question only, then I’ve won. And that question is, “What happens next?” I get you wanting to turn the page, or pick up the next issue. “What’re the repercussions of that?” “What did Mercy learn from that decision?” “How will this character survive that heartbreak?” DISHAROON: Trekker has had a long revival road. RANDALL: Many developments came about during the long hiatus, where I had to work on other stuff, for DC again (and Marvel), to keep making a living. During all the years when I was only able to work on Trekker sporadically, where there was a 12-year period of time where I didn’t work on Trekker at all—it was a very long hiatus. But anytime I’d be at a convention, it seemed like just about every show, one or two people would at some point in the weekend come up to me and they’d say, “When are you going to do more Trekker?” I would say to them, “The next story is scripted out, or at least the outline’s there. I’m just waiting for a chance to be able to draw it, the time, waiting for the right opportunity.” I blocked out the remaining beats so I could come back and tell the whole story.
Battle Ready A 1995 Trekker illo by Randall, from the archives of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). © Ron Randall.
DISHAROON: I’d like to know about 2013’s big return, the fivepart Train to Avalon Bay. Every character development builds on the next; this story featured the
DISHAROON: You described father-surrogate Angus as “a cantankerous, literally scarred mentor type” and of rival top student Karch as, “she [Mercy] had to have a first love.” Karch seeks to close a long game of vengeance for a shocking decision Angus made in the heat of war. Along with “Vincent’s Share,” it’s one of the series’ most engaging explorations of violence, and the hazards of Mercy’s way of life. RANDALL: I think one of the most compelling concepts you can come up with, is something where you put a character in the moral quandary, you know, where there’s no easy black-&-white, rightand-wrong decision. They have to choose between two evils or whatever you want to call it. Their own values are called into serious question. It’s almost like they’ve got an unsolvable riddle, but they have to make a choice. ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 61
most obvious and lasting change to the status quo yet: Mercy acknowledged and acted upon her feelings for Molly. I feel like, culturally, this adds a very modern touch. RANDALL: I agree, 100%. That was an unintentional benefit of it. No real-world corollary. It just became apparent to me that Mercy was in love with Molly. Sort of the way a character will “tell” you things about them as you write them. Once I knew that, it was just a matter of building the scenes to a point where Mercy could have a revelation—an “Ah-ha!’ moment that feels organic, rather than abrupt or forced. That all came about simply because it seemed the inevitable place for Mercy’s arc to take her. And I have to say I was so thrilled when the reaction I read from readers about that was, “At last!” And I think the series has gained a tremendous amount of energy since that happened. It means the stakes for Mercy are higher than ever. And that’s pretty great material for a storyteller to work with! DISHAROON: Periscope Studios, Trekker Talk, and a social media presence have enhanced the nature of the business side of Trekker. It’s always a challenge to figure out where to put out the word. RANDALL: I guess I would say, of all the different jobs that I have to do to be doing Trekker right now, self-publishing it and all that stuff, the biggest task is to get the word out to people who haven’t heard of Trekker before, or maybe have heard of Trekker, but aren’t aware that I’m running Kickstarters and self-publishing. It seems like every campaign I run, I spend basically 30 days doing nothing but talking about Trekker on Facebook, on Twitter, when I go to conventions—and still, I’ll come down to the last day or two of the show, and people will say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you’re running a campaign,” or “Oh, you’re doing Trekker again.” DISHAROON: We see a new page weekly on Trekker.com. Four decades now into creating Mercy St. Claire’s saga, do modern innovations and cutting-edge tech influence what appears in your retrofuture setting? RANDALL: Compared to the anxiety I felt when I was first approached to develop Trekker, I’ve creatively hit “the sweet spot.” I have enough of the outline of the rest of the series—but enough “blank slates” to contain new influences in the making. That’s my space for customizing new things. I wouldn’t have that freedom if I had the entire series planned out to the Nth degree. This way, I’m still discovering with each new story.
The Continuing Trek Our indie heroine hasn’t slowed down since the Big ’80s, appearing in continuations and collections including (top) 2013’s Trekker Omnibus, 2014’s Trekker: The Train to Avalon Bay, (middle) 2021’s Reckoning on Rigel, and 2022’s Blood in the Wind (bottom). Check out Trekkercomic.com for new Trekker serials! © Ron Randall.
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DISHAROON: I’d love to tell about Trekker’s proliferation of five graphic novels via Kickstarter, including 2022’s Reckoning on Rigel. (This is the planet where she pursues the mystery of her mother, said to be an agent of a theistic counterculture.) RANDALL: It’s not that I haven’t worked hard, but I never lost sight of the fact that I have had a lot of tremendously good, fortunate breaks, or things going my way—meeting the right person at the right time, all that sort of stuff. A lot of stars had to line up very well for me to be in the position that I’m at now. Just like I’m extremely grateful to the readers who remembered it all these years, or have recently discovered it, and go out of their way to support it on the on the crowdfunding Kickstarter campaigns and then keep it going. I can’t do it without them. Songwriter CECIL DISHAROON’s life-uprooting bus ride ended in SDCC International’s neighborhood. Personable meetings with industry legends inspired Integr8d Soul Comics. Those talks continue on Creating Marvels on Podbean. Armed daily with plushies, piano, and spare wits, Cecil tutors ESL students online.
conducted by To m transcribed by
Powers
Amanda Powers
Created by writer/artist Scott McCloud, Zot! tells the story of Zachary T. Paleozogt, who lives in a utopian, futuristic Earth that is forever in the year 1965, and Jenny Weaver, who exists in a decidedly more troubled Earth of the mid-1980s. This story of two dimensionally crossed friends (and potential lovers) takes place over the course of Zot!’s 36-issue Eclipse Comics run, which is uniquely divided into three eras: the first ten color issues (Apr. 1984–July 1985), the “Heroes and Villains” arc that runs from issues #11–27 (Jan. 1987–June 1989), and “The Earth Stories,” which close out the series with issues #28–36 (Sept. 1989–July 1991). To learn more about the behind-the-scenes stories of these groundbreaking tales, I am talking exclusively in this piece with Scott, as well as his old friend Kurt Busiek, artistic collaborators Chuck Austen, Matt Feazell, and Todd Klein, and editor Catherine “Cat” Yronwode. – Tom Powers
Meet Our Boy Hero It’s Zachary T. Paleozogt— a.k.a. the much-easier-toremember Zot! Detail from Scott McCloud’s cover to the collected edition The Original Zot: Book One. Zot! © Silver Linings.
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INTERVIEW WITH
SCOTT McCLOUD Caricature courtesy of and © Scott McCloud.
TOM POWERS: Scott, as both a young writer and visual storyteller in 1984, who, with Zot!’s first ten color issues, started building two worlds— both Zot’s and Jenny’s—what did you learn from this creative experience? SCOTT McCLOUD: I’ve often called them my training wheels. I learned that I don’t have a great gift for color choices. These early issues still look raw to me, and the melodrama was a little uneasy and awkward, but they have a nice explosive quality, and I like that. When I look back at it, the rawness wasn’t all bad. In retrospect, the fact that I was very rough around the edges is a bit charming. I learned my limitations in the market, as a writer and as an artist, and that I had a very uneasy relationship with the superhero genre, that I was struggling for something else. Also, the whole time, I was very immersed in manga, and I was sitting on my hands a little bit, to some extent. In some ways, I was fighting the last war. I was drawing the book that explored things that I had been interested in a few years before. But the stuff that I was interested in right then I didn’t get to explore until a little bit later because I was just fascinated with manga, although there are some weird influences in there like Theodore Deathhead by Pascal Doury, which is an incredibly violent and obscene and formally audacious comic that appeared in Raw magazine. It actually influenced Zot! #4 (July 1984) and Dekko’s breakdown. So I had a lot of very strange influences going into what looked like a cheery superhero comic. POWERS: Yet Zot! #6 (Nov. 1984) hit me hard as a reader when Prince Drufus is shot while heroically protecting Vic Taylor, and you think he’s gonna live, but then he just poignantly succumbs to his injuries at sunset on Sirius IV at the end of that issue. McCLOUD: That’s the point where I was learning to underplay some of the more dramatic elements, and that seemed to benefit that scene a little more than say, the end of issue #4, which is a little ham-handed. The death of Prince Drufus was where you got to see the beginnings of my attempts to really take writing and characterization seriously. But I was also struggling against the format. I was enjoying browsing much longer manga stories (even if I couldn’t read them), and my ideas didn’t always fit into 24 pages, or even less in some cases. POWERS: Why was it a good choice to put Zot! on hiatus and later relaunch it as a black-&-white comic with issue #11 (Jan. 1987)? McCLOUD: Partially—just financially—it wasn’t working out with the color book, which was expensive to produce, and it wasn’t selling terribly well. But the other thing was I was really excited at the prospect of working in black and white. This was during sort of what they called the black-&-white boom, although I came in maybe at the tail end of it. But I looked around, and I saw a lot of black&-white comics that looked like color comics without the color, and I thought I could do better. I thought I could do something that was much more designed for black and white.
Make Way for Zot! (top) Heads up, Jenny—trouble’s coming! Page 4 of Zot! #1. (bottom) He’s crazy! He’s powerful! He’s Dekko! Cliffhanger reveal of Dekko, from the end of Zot! #2 (May 1985). Zot! © Silver Linings.
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And you can see that my artwork changed quite a lot, and it wasn’t that I had become a different artist. It was that I was working in what I considered to be a fundamentally different medium when I switched to black and white, so I wanted to take advantage of all that black and white could do. I write about this a little in Understanding Comics in what’s generally considered to be the weakest chapter of that book, the chapter on color towards the end. But I see black and white as more like language and color comics as having a little more physicality, more a sense of the object and the meaning of things. POWERS: You mentioned manga, which has an amazing influence upon your art for Zot!, especially in the black-&-white issues spanning #11–36. At certain moments, you take the time to present well-detailed pages in each issue. Your meticulous crosshatching is just amazing, especially when you establish scenery such as homes and buildings. So my question is: What did you enjoy about adding this type of storytelling process to the comic? I recall reading in your commentary for the Zot! 1987–1991: The Complete Black and White Collection that it would take you a day to draw some of these pages. McCLOUD: Yeah, well, one or two took more than a day. [Scott’s wife] Ivy made fun of me for a two-page spread that took me three or four days. For the ones with the crosshatching, like in the issue “Autumn” in Zot! #30 (Mar. 1990), those issues were quite late. It took me a very long time, even though they were only 18 pages each. If I remember correctly, that was because of the crosshatching. But, for me, the joy of it was in creating a sense of place. I believe that was something that comics could do and often didn’t do to my satisfaction. I wanted you to feel as if you had just been dropped into another world. Even if that world happens to be our world, I wanted it to be immersive. I wanted it to feel vivid. I wanted it to feel like it just reached out to the edges of the page and beyond. It’s one of the reasons I had so many bleeds. That was something I learned from manga, that when you wanted to feel like you were inside a scene, you would let it bleed out beyond the edges of the page. Things like those very heavily crosshatched pages in “Autumn” took me a very long time. Sometimes, I would even take a very long time just going for four- and five-mile walks with my camera trying to find the right scene to get reference for some of those pages. I can still remember where I was when I took the photos that became the references for those images. POWERS: In Zot! #14 (July 1987), “The Season of Dreams Part II,” a 1988 Eisner-nominated issue, Jenny finds herself in a dream world where Zot is more or less an imaginary figure in her life. This story brings up thoughtful questions of what is real versus fantasy. How did you come up with this ingenious tale? McCLOUD: It’s been too many years for me to correctly remember what the impetus for that particular story was. I do know that I was very fond of Cyborg 009, and there was a scene at the end of one of those issues that was nothing like the “Everybody’s dancing at the end” scene in Zot! #15 (Oct. 1987) but evoked a similar feeling in me. That might have
Reader Engagement (top) McCloud used Zot! #4’s inside front cover for this recap of the new series’ cast. (bottom) The “Zot! Talk” letters column header. Zot! lettercols featured insightful comments from readers and fellow professionals and often featured character popularity polls voted on by fans. Zot! © Silver Linings.
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been one of my early influences because I liked just that sense of something radiating out and affecting the whole world in some metaphysical sort of a way. But my goal often was experiential. It was to put you in the head of the character. I had this theory that there were ten or so principles of manga that really all radiated from one single principle, and that was to make the reader feel like a participant in the story rather than an observer. Psychologically, you wanted to feel like you were participating in the emotional journey of a character rather than watching that character. I was likewise interested in the expressionistic effects and choices of camera angle that could lead to that journey. Seeing things through a person’s point of view—that was very important. I just always wanted for the reader to feel like they were deep in the center of the story rather than on the periphery, rather than sitting in a seat in a theater watching something take place on stage, which is the unconscious orientation of a lot of American comics. I was trying to transcend that if I could, and issue #14 was definitely one of those cases where, at least I hope, some people felt that there was a visceral effect to that story, that it shook them up a little and made them imagine what Jenny was feeling in a much more visceral way. POWERS: With Zot! #17–18 (Feb.–Apr. 1988), Dekko returns in “The Eyes of Dekko,” which is filled with many experimental pages where we see the world from Dekko’s point of view (for example, issue #17, pages 1–3 and 19, as well as pages 13– 21 in issue #18, where Dekko kills his therapist, Dr. Herbert W. Glass, and apparently fulfills his dream for a perfect world). As a student of fine art, how did you approach breaking the traditional forms of comic storytelling to render this abstract approach to presenting Dekko as a formidable—yet sympathetic—villain? McCLOUD: In some ways, the formal principles of comics are maintained throughout that scene. It has a traditional panel structure, and it’s the subject matter that’s sort of confrontational, abstract, and expressionistic. This was also to some extent influenced by Raw, an oversized, avant-garde anthology that was co-edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly during the early to mid-1980s. It experimented with a lot of different styles, and some of those styles really shook me up. I mean, it was almost like a physical thing. This notion that I write about in Understanding Comics is that lines and colors and shapes can affect one emotionally, and they can trigger what we call synesthetic responses, which is that one sense can trigger the sensation of another sense, so I was definitely trying to do that. Also, I just really loved to play with shapes and compositions. At that point, perhaps my favorite fine artist was Wassily Kandinsky, and I was one of those nerds who liked the later Kandinsky. I like the stuff that wasn’t all that rough. I was a little like Dekko myself. I like things tidy. I like things with lots of little, tiny shapes. I did a giant diagram filled with tons and tons of shapes all interconnected like a road network that I called “The Story Machine,” and you would roll dice in order to move through it. So I mean, that’s pretty crazy. Dekko’s particular brand of insanity was something that I realized that I was at least partially tapping into myself in my side work. POWERS: With issue #17, you likewise present a moving splash on page 21, in which Jenny and her friend Woody have a conversation under a tree that is relayed through text. What went into this form-breaking scene?
‘It’s Always Darkest…’ Cover art proof stat of Scott McCloud’s Zot! #6 (Nov. 1984), the death of Drufus issue. Scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). Zot! © Silver Linings.
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McCLOUD: I considered myself to be on the exact opposite side of that formal definition. In other words, for me, comics were all about the verbal and visual interacting and anchoring my storytelling visually. So having too many words on a page was the ultimate sin. But the funny thing is, when you’re a formalist like me, when your life revolves around experiments, then every once in a while, you have to become your opposite number. You have to do something that’s the exact opposite of your own nature. A page full of words was that for me: the opposite of what came naturally. Also, I was struggling against length. I had a lot to say with Jenny and Woody, but I like the idea of compacting the story in that way by just having this little text piece. But you’ll notice that I also tried very hard to lavish a lot of work on the picture that is there on the page, so that didn’t feel as if I was cheating. Although, looking at the page now, the tree bark does not look like real tree bark—one of the many things I would go back and fix if I had a thousand years. POWERS: In Zot! #23–25 (Nov. 1988–Feb. 1989), “The Ghost in the Machine” arc, you present the story of 9-Jack-9 kidnapping Suzy Gallo, who is then rescued by Zot. However, in issue #24 (Dec. 1988), on page 12, Suzy comes across an electrical trap set by 9-Jack-9 and is disintegrated, which leads to Zot having a tear-filled breakdown on a beach and then 9-Jack-9 accidentally murdering his human body in issue #25. What went into creating this shocking and emotionally powerful story? McCLOUD: By then, I had encountered the underplaying of pivotal events in movies and television shows. I’m having trouble
Now in Black and White! (left) After a hiatus spanning nearly a year and a half, Zot!—formerly a color comic— returned with B&W interiors with issue #11 (Jan. 1987). (right) Is Zot for real? Jenny’s wondering on this puzzling cover to issue #14 (July 1987). Zot! © Silver Linings.
remembering exactly what I was watching at the time, but I know I was watching Hill Street Blues oddly enough. I was very interested in taking something of extreme emotional intensity and letting the knowledge of it slip through in a way that was very sudden, very quick. To me, it had more power and felt more vivid to have something terrible like that occur not with a lot of fanfare but with less. I felt as if, when something terrible like that does happen, it often happens in a way where the universe almost doesn’t care, and that’s the worst of all. So that’s the reason why the murder of Suzy was handled that way. Other than that, I was very much following my instincts. As much as my writing and art style was very calculated and very formal, at the same time—at a certain point—you pretty much have to just make it up as you go along. Not everything can be planned, and, to some extent, I followed my instincts in the way that the story turned out in the end.
actually understand sarcasm.” I love that idea of him being unable to unpack sarcasm. It’s an alien concept to him. But also there was that notion of the big family of mankind that perhaps I’ve gotten from things like the Frank Capra movie You Can’t Take It with You—that kind of bohemian idea of all kinds of crazy people all commingling peacefully. I loved that idea. It was a world that I saw as possible and as a potential world for our future. This was before the current age, where many people find that very difficult to imagine, as they perceive real villains, real bad guys, to be in ascendance, and evil could be marching through the world again. And I can’t say I’m not among them. I mean, I do genuinely see why some people are ready to paint the world in a more black-&-white light because it feels that way right now, even when I would try to resist that sense of moral ambiguity that Zot had. I don’t know. I feel like the world has changed a lot since I wrote that story.
POWERS: In Zot! #26 (Apr. 1989), Part 1 of “Ring in the New,” on page 17, during a party being held at Uncle Max’s house, Zot greets Dekko and the remnant of 9-Jack-9 with simple hellos. Since they were not long ago two of his most formidable villains, how did you reach this amazing point where Zot can move on from his conflicts with others unlike, say, either your traditional Marvel or DC superhero, who takes years or decades to reach this point of enlightenment? McCLOUD: It was a little strange. I was in a frame of mind where an evolved character from a world such as Zot’s theoretically would be very blasé about things that tend to send people from our planet into a tailspin. Sex was one of those and the idea of heroes and villains as well. I sort of wanted to undermine that a little, and I liked the idea of Zot being not at all vindictive and actually a little confused at the end of the story with 9-Jack-9 as to why he doesn’t hate him. It’s just that he doesn’t have that in his character. Early on, there’s that moment where somebody says a sarcastic remark, and this might have even been in the original color run, and Zot just says, “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t
POWERS: “The Earth Stories,” which occur in Zot! #28–36, place a strong emphasis on Jenny’s Earth, family, and, friends. Why did you want Zot to exist primarily in this setting for this story arc? McCLOUD: I had managed to get out of my system a lot of my ideas for a superhero setting, and I was ready to write about ordinary people. Also, one of the direct inspirations for “The Earth Stories” was my friend William Messner-Loebs. He had recommended that I read a collection of short stories by Sherwood Anderson called Winesburg, Ohio, and I agreed that it was a terrific book after reading it. I loved the way that Anderson had just shown a series of ordinary people in vignettes in a way that unlocked a lot of the mysteries of the world. By then, I had also read Heartbreak Soup by Gilbert Hernandez, which was partially inspired by One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and Gilbert’s stories, in turn, inspired me. POWERS: With Ronnie’s story “Clash of Titans,” which you delineate in Zot! #31 (May 1990), it seems as if you’re making a strong commentary on comics fans. Am I correct in that assumption? ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 67
No Chat Room Necessary On page 21 of Zot! #17 (Mar. 1988), McCloud uses this conversation-rich layout for its heartto-heart between Jenny and her friend Woody. Scan courtesy of Amanda Powers. Zot! © Silver Linings.
McCLOUD: In many ways, I was making a comment about myself and Kurt Busiek, my friend in junior high and high school, who is one of my collaborators and friends. I had seen up close the portrait of a nerd, and I thought it would be fun to try to portray somebody with enormous compassion who represented someone still very much in the grips of pure superhero fandom, which I wasn’t at the time, but for which I still had a fondness. I still consider superheroes a fun genre with a lot of potential, so Ronnie was my chance to kind of parody that but to serve as more than just a parody, to deeply humanize that sort of aspiring fan and to serve as a tribute to the real passion that a young writer might have. Even for things that we look back on and see as trivial or derivative, that doesn’t mean that the passion isn’t real. I’ve always said that, in my opinion, Ronnie, who aspires to be a comics writer, will succeed. He could be seen as
somebody who’s doomed to fail in comics, but I actually think he’s going to succeed because I just think he wants it that much. POWERS: In the following issue, Zot! #32 (July 1990), which is titled “Invincible,” you present the story of Ronnie’s girlfriend Brandy. What I found particularly interesting in this tale occurs on page 6, when one of her classmates, Gordie, makes a crack about Brandy’s mother, and she just punches him. This is a great character moment for such an ostensibly cheerful character. What did you like about presenting it and telling her story in this issue? McCLOUD: That story might be my favorite maybe in part because Brandy had a lot of superficial similarities to my late wife Ivy. I basically stole a number of things. Yeah, she doesn’t quite look like Ivy, but she has a lot of the bohemian stuff and the speech patterns. The punch paired with the followup is enormously important to me, which is that she has a sense of right and wrong that leads her to punch this friend of hers when the kid makes some crack about her mom, who’s an alcoholic. But then she immediately helps the kid up and patches it up with him. I loved how Ivy would always tell me when I was just being a jerk or whatever. She never held back, but it was always in the spirit of honesty and emotional communication. And so I liked that Brandy had a whole philosophy of life. Even if at times it was superficial, I was so rooting for her. I also liked the ending of that issue more than almost any ending I wrote, maybe with the exception of the very next issue. I like Brandy’s line at the end, which was something that haunted me since I had heard it on a bus once—that comment about how “I think I’ll always look young. I know I always have.” POWERS: Speaking of the next issue, Zot! #33 (Oct. 1990), “Normal” is a powerful, LGBTQIA+-themed issue that tells Terry’s story as she comes to terms with her sexuality, especially with the so-called last page, in which she walks away from Pam, and then, after the letters page, she calls her back. Why was this a vital story to share with Zot! readers? McCLOUD: I wanted each character to have secret desires and a secret inner life. At that point—really, at any point—the idea of blossoming sexuality, especially one that might be problematic for a person and might cause someone problems, there’s no way I was gonna pass up that opportunity. That seemed as natural as anything. Certainly, one of the things that people most fear is not being considered normal, as being marginalized. That was something I’d been planning for Terry for quite some time shortly after introducing the character. I liked the way it turned out in part because I kind of defeated the length problem by having these little, tiny panel sequences of her either having dreams about what she really wanted or imagining what she might do when she saw Pam again. Despite the short length of the story, I was able to give a sense of richness to what Terry wanted, and this actually speaks to my understanding of what stories really are. I believe that stories are the life cycle of a desire, and the story comes to rest when that desire is either fulfilled, or denied, or transformed, and you can see this in the fact that
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very few stories begin with the birth of a character or end with the death of a character, whereas very many stories begin with the gestation and birth of a desire in the heart of one or more characters, and those stories end when that desire comes to rest in some way, shape, or form. This was my opportunity, although I didn’t realize it at the time, until I was done with it all, in which you get to experience exactly what it would be like for Terry to fail in fulfilling her desire and then are able to experience her succeeding. I am a big fan of the ending of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, because they lingered just enough on the falling of the rose petal, so you would really think about what failure would mean before success begins, before the transformation scene into the Prince. It’s so important to understand the stakes of failure for success to mean anything, and somehow, I stumbled on a way to have Terry’s success mean quite a bit more. But it was a split decision, as I write in the collection. I had originally conceived of it as having the unhappy ending, but then I decided that it wasn’t in keeping with the spirit of the book to have no hope at the end. Of course, being the formalist, I came up with a letters page trick. I have heard from people who put down the issue and were so upset at the sad ending that they did not find the happy ending until much later.
POWERS: Zot! #35 (Mar. 1991) presents Zot and Jenny having a long conversation in her bedroom about having sex. Why was this an important story to tell for the penultimate issue of the series? McCLOUD: I was still in the late stages of the kind of permissive attitudes about sex that had blossomed in the 1970s. And I’m sort of a product of that, in the sense of “Why can’t everybody be less possessive?”—or something like that. I didn’t know anything. I was an idiot, basically still a kid. Even though I was married at that point, I was still kind of immature. I just fell in love with the right woman, and we had a great life together, but we were both basically kids. And I was very idealistic about this idea that someday we’ll all just get over ourselves, and sex won’t be a big deal. Looking back, I would have to say that nah, it’s probably always going to be a big deal to people. Certainly, in recent years, we’ve looked at the different attitudes about sex between the two genders, and I’ve gotten an education that a lot of us have received, that those attitudes are rooted somewhat in more than superficial feelings. I sometimes think about the possibility of their conversation being a little more balanced. My attitudes were more represented by Zot’s attitudes, and now I think Zot was naïve to some degree, but it was still worthwhile to just talk about it
Why Can’t We Be Friends? The Understanding Comics auteur’s command of sequential storytelling brings to life this awkward but hopeful exchange between Terry and Pam. From Zot! #33 (Oct. 1990). Scans courtesy of Amanda Powers. Zot! © Silver Linings.
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Let’s Talk About Sex (top) Zot! #31’s (May 1990) “Clash of Titans” offered a wink at comics fandom. (bottom) A frank conversation about sex occurs between Zot and Jenny in the penultimate issue, #35 (Mar. 1991). Zot! © Silver Linings.
because there just wasn’t any conversations about that sort of thing. This was the late 1980s, and we were coming out of the Reagan era, and the “Just say no” attitude towards sex education to me was insane. I still think that’s a crazy way to approach sex education. So, in some ways, that story was perhaps also reacting to that attitude. Can we have an honest conversation about these things? We should be able to—that I actually still believe. POWERS: You’ve talked about Zot’s naïveté. In the final issue, Zot! #36 (July 1991), he’s seriously injured after going into a crack house and trying to talk it out with the drug dealers who ended up shooting him, which really sets up the tension of this issue in thinking that perhaps he’s not going make it. But then Zot pulls through, and the story ends very happily in his world. What were your thoughts in wrapping up the series? McCLOUD: I was following my instinct as much as possible in the way I spun the story, but I knew that one way or another I had to revert to the clash between hope and disillusionment, with Jenny sort of standing in for disillusionment and our world and Zot standing in for idealism and his world. That’s why, in fact, the cover of the Zot! Complete Black and White collection shows Zot and Jenny standing at the threshold between the two worlds, and that pretty much sums up the entire series. For me, that had to be the last conversation for the series, the confrontation between openness and disillusionment, and hope kind of wins out, because it’s Zot! But that’s not necessarily my feeling about our hopes as a species. I’m not so sure. In some ways, I’ve become a little more pessimistic just lately, but that’s why we have fiction. POWERS: In 2000, you created a web comic version of Zot!, and you’ve talked about returning to the series. However, seeing how complex and problematic the world is today, especially for teenagers, do you believe Zot’s and Jenny’s stories would resonate with them? With this thought in mind, are there any concrete future plans for returning to Zot!? McCLOUD: I don’t have concrete plans at the moment, but I’ve actually discussed with my family and a couple of other people the broad strokes of the possibility of returning to that world and those characters, but I will say that my initial impression was that quite a lot of time has passed, and I should probably leave it at that. Nothing is on the schedule. This is partially because some of my dream projects, such as this massive book that I’m working on about visual communication or a secret project that I have coming out in the next year and a half or so. I’m extremely slow, and I’m just working through the list, so it could still take a while before we see Zot! again. But it’s still on my radar. It might be very different. The comic was very different when it came back in black and white after the color issues. It’s just the way I am. I try not to do anything twice, so, if Zot! comes back, it probably won’t be like any of the other incarnations, but it will hopefully still have the same spirit. POWERS: Do you have any closing thoughts regarding your impressive work on Zot!? McCLOUD: The character of Zot just happened to be the top of my sketchbook when I started. At the beginning, I just wanted to make comics. I was so obsessed with the comics form and its potential, and I created this whole world pretty much out of my enthusiasm for the world of comics, and I discovered all of these ideas and characters in the process of doing it. But I am still very much a formalist. I’m very much about the potential of the form, and that did drive me, and it still drives me today to some extent. Every artist is different, and I’m just thrilled to try something new, and that has not changed. Unfortunately, I just got slower. 70 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
INTERVIEW WITH
KURT BUSIEK
Joshin Yamada.
TOM POWERS: Kurt, could you please describe how you served in your role as advisor for Zot! #1–10? KURT BUSIEK: I think I could be described as a sounding board or maybe “creative editor” or something since I didn’t do any of the business stuff. Scott would roughly lay out every issue and script it as well, so what he’d produce was kind of a rough version of story and art. I’d critique that, pointing out anywhere I thought the storytelling was unclear (or could be more effective) and anywhere the script fell flat or was too obvious or any other creative fault like that. Scott and I would hash all that over, and if he found me convincing, he’d make changes. Not always the changes I suggested, but that wasn’t the point of it— I wasn’t telling him what to do, but telling him where it didn’t work for me and why, and he got to choose how to change it or if he should change it at all. Often, my suggestion would make him rethink a sequence in a way that made him rework it more than I’d suggested because he’d be sparked to seeing a new and better way to handle things. So I was essentially a kibitzer—giving Scott feedback and suggestions, but then he could do whatever he wanted with them. I’ll also pat myself on the back a little and mention that I named the book. And I wrote Jenny’s dialogue on the very first page—mainly because I thought that what Scott had wasn’t working, so I rewrote the line as an example of how to approach it, and he liked my version enough to use it. POWERS: What did you appreciate about how Scott evolved his storytelling for Zot! with these issues? BUSIEK: It’s been a very long time, so I’m not sure I remember how his storytelling particularly evolved over that period. But he was always experimenting, wanting the book to be exciting and graphically compelling. At the same time, Scott was interested in character storytelling, so he was balancing quiet, contemplative, or conversational scenes with slam-bang action scenes, and getting control of both, honing his craft by trying to do what the story needed, to be clear and effective in the visual storytelling, but to do it in different ways, depending on what he wanted the reader to get out of a scene. He was always trying to figure out how to do it better and having an enormous amount of fun figuring out what he could do with the form of comics. It was like a storytelling lab as well as much as it was a story he was telling.
I do remember that that first big storyline was intended to go on longer at first, but once Scott showed the Doorway at the Edge of the Universe, it was such a major development and had been introduced in such an impactful scene, that all of a sudden anything that didn’t deal with the door seemed like a digression, and he had to bring that stuff, which had been intended to percolate in the background for a while, to a head much sooner, because he’d put it out there on the table, and it had everyone’s attention. That was a lesson in storytelling and in what to keep in the background and what takes over, whether you intended it to or not.
Calm down, Butch! Original art to page 2 of Zot! #2 (May 1984), including Kurt Busiek’s “consultant” credit. Courtesy of Heritage. Zot! © Silver Linings.
POWERS: Famously, you and Scott grew up together, and you got him into comics. Are there any specific comics that you would argue had a direct influence upon the creation and worldbuilding of Zot!? BUSIEK: I’m tempted to say “everything,” but that’s not what you’re looking for. There were various books and artists whose influence you can see on the surface—C. C. Beck’s Captain Marvel, Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, work like that—but Scott was kind of omnivorous in his comics tastes, reacting to Kirby storytelling and to ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 71
Do You Believe in Magic? Page 1 of Kurt Busiek and Dan Spiegle’s “The Magic Shop” backup, from Zot! #7 (Dec. 1984). The Magic Shop © Kurt Busiek and the Dan Spiegle Estate.
Moebius and Druillet, and Ditko and Starlin and Hergé, and the Hernandez Bros. and Wendy Pini, and more. There was a branch of Books Kinokuniya in Rockefeller Plaza (or very near it) where we’d shop for manga in the very early 1980s, and Scott would get more than I would—I couldn’t name names, but those books were a strong influence, beyond the obvious names like Tezuka. But it’s hard to pick specifics at this late date. I will add that Scott was influenced by much more than comics—he was playing with a lot of ideas he’d encountered in college, from Jungian archetypes to artistic movements and ideas about the future. It was all getting distilled into a superhero/SF idiom, but it was coming from everywhere, all the stuff Scott had been exposed to and was thinking about. POWERS: With “The Magic Shop,” the backup strip you created with the great Dan Spiegle for Zot! #7
(Dec. 1984), you begin an interesting story. Could you please talk about how this backup originated and where you would have liked to have gone with the strip if it had continued? BUSIEK: Initially, it was a schedule thing—Scott was doing 26–28-page stories and having a very hard time meeting the deadlines. So the idea was that if I did a backup series, it’d give the readers value for money while allowing Scott to do shorter lead stories. Cat Yronwode lined up Dan Spiegle, I cooked up a story, and we were off to the races. Unfortunately, it was a very short race. The amount of money it took to hire Dan was enough to wipe out any profit the book was making (or very close to it), so they just couldn’t continue it. So it goes, and so Scott found other ways to try to get some sort of extra value into the book, and the schedule problem never really got solved. As for what “The Magic Shop” was, it was intended to be an Edward Eager–type story of kids having magical adventures. Every month, they’d get a different magical item to borrow and have a short episode about using it, while in the background a story built up about the lead characters becoming friends and reacting to the main leads’ parents’ upcoming divorce and being tempted to use magic to stop it somehow. So it was a coming-of-age story in a couple of ways, with the magical adventures as the way those issues played out. POWERS: What did you think of Scott’s later work on issues #11–36 for this trailblazing comic? BUSIEK: Scott started Zot! as a superhero book because that was the market at the time, and that was the bulk of the comics we saw, as we were getting into them. But over the course of those ten issues, I’d say he realized that he was more and more interested in the characters than the action and in the world on Jenny’s side of things than on Zot’s side. So it was a thrill to watch him steer the book toward what he found most compelling as a creator and how to tell those stories using the framework he’d set up and figuring out how to use the form to make them work. And the audience, while it wasn’t large, responded intensely to the changes, going with him where he wanted to go, rather than demanding more fights and whacka-bam stuff. Plus, of course, as he was figuring out how to use the comics form in different ways, that got him thinking more deeply about how the form works as form, not just as a way to tell those particular stories—what can comics do and why and how did it develop—all of which led Scott into doing Understanding Comics. So he started in one place and wound up somewhere very different, but the process of doing each stage of Zot! was a process of discovery, of leaning into humanity and formalism. None of those later triumphs would have existed without those first ten issues. They were the first steps along the road to everything Scott’s created and everything he’s become as a creator. It was a lot of fun helping him get that ball rolling and seeing where it all went.
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INTERVIEW WITH
CHUCK AUSTEN Gage Skidmore.
TOM POWERS: Chuck, could you please talk about you got involved in providing the finished art for the two-part “Getting to 99” story for Zot! #19–20 (June 1988)? CHUCK AUSTEN: Either Scott or Eclipse called me and said he had requested me. Scott had heard or read somewhere that we were both influenced by a lot of the same creators, especially Japanese creators like Tezuka, and he thought I would be a good fit for what he wanted to do. He was getting married, going on his honeymoon, and had promised his wife he wouldn’t work on anything while they were away—at least that’s what I remember. Scott and I talked at length but mostly about his love of story and media communication, less about the actual books themselves. He sent a tape recording of his thoughts and ideas about media and storytelling, as well as a lecture by someone who taught media, Marshall McLuhan, and the layouts, and I was off. POWERS: As an artist, what did you learn from illustrating over Scott’s layouts? AUSTEN: As much as Scott’s storytelling was so influenced by Japanese creators, Scott had a dynamism very influenced by Kirby, and I learned how to consider that side of superheroics in a way I hadn’t before. I’d loved Kirby as a kid, but as I got older, I turned away from him. Scott showed me how to integrate
99, I’ve Been Waiting So Long Chuck Austen artwork, from Scott McCloud layouts, from Zot! #19. Zot! © Silver Linings.
both artistic loves in a fun and compatible way. I also learned how he focused on emotion, personal connection, and intensity story-wise, something that continued to influence me in my career in animation and still does. He also had begun developing his ideas behind Understanding Comics and had a lot of specific thoughts about visual communication—which is why he was so into McLuhan, who wrote The Gutenberg Galaxy. POWERS: In particular, what did you like about working on these two issues? AUSTEN: Everything. Scott was open to me doing things with pen and ink that I’d always wanted to do, and because he’d figured out all the storytelling ahead of time, it was just fun for me to draw and ink without that added layer of “How do I tell this story?” I loved his writing, his characters, and had been a huge fan of Zot! since the first issue, so it was kind of a dream job. He loved what I did and didn’t change a thing—neither did I from his layouts. The experience could not have been more collaborative and fun. I should also let people know that Mick Gray was my friend and background assistant at the time, and he did most of the inks on those amazing, technical backgrounds. I did all the nature stuff. But Mick was amazing—still is. ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 73
INTERVIEW WITH
MATT FEAZELL Photo courtesy of Matt Feazell.
TOM POWERS: Matt, how did you get involved with the Zot! #10½ (July 1985) minicomic? MATT FEAZELL: I had been trading minicomics with an artist named Scott McLeod. When an artist named Scott McCloud started doing the comic Zot! for Eclipse, I really dug it, and I was buying every issue. I never put the two together. When Scott took a hiatus after Zot! #10, two of the projects he wanted to do were a minicomic and a “maxi” comic—that turned out to be the tabloid-size comic book Destroy!! (Nov. 1986). For his minicomic, he reached out to me with an offer to collaborate on a Zot!/Cynicalman crossover. He sent a script and a layout, and that’s when I realized, “Oh, this is Scott McLeod, and I’ve been trading minicomics with him already! How about that?” So we knew each other already. POWERS: How did you feel working over his layouts for that minicomic and having your original creation Cynicalman meet the Zot! characters? FEAZELL: I tell ya, that was really a great script. It was like a Golden-Age Captain Marvel or Batman comic; two characters meet, the action starts, and then—BAM!—there’s Godzilla!
Conflict, resolution, next conflict, each character does their thing, and it all ties up on page seven. Just marvelous. Scott probably wanted to work out a collaboration where he would draw his characters, and I would draw mine, but I took over and drew the whole thing ’cause when would I ever get another chance like this? POWERS: So this led to you working with Scott on the Zot! #10½ backups from issue #11 onward. Do you have a favorite strip that stands out to you? FEAZELL: The backups were one-pagers through Zot! #22 (Oct. 1988) and then six-pagers from issue #23 (Nov. 1988) onward. There was a four-part continued story in the back of Zot! #17 through 20 about Zot versus the Worker Unit. It expressed a theme that is reoccurring in my own Cynicalman comics about the relationship of work to life. Worker Unit was an all-purpose robot built to do any job. He got turned loose, and wherever there was work to do, he would swoop in and do everybody’s job and then fly away. The authorities were all out to destroy him because he was doing free labor and ruining the economy. Zot tried to capture him, and, after a stupendous fight scene, he just gave Worker Unit his own control box, and the robot flew off into outer space to recharge his solar batteries. He’s still out there, orbiting the Earth, waiting for the moment when there’s the right job to do. Scott gave me free rein on the backups. He didn’t see them till the book came out. My only editor was Cat Yronwode, and she was the greatest. She mostly corrected my spelling and punctuation, and any changes she asked for made it better! POWERS: You also get your own solo issue with Zot! #14½ (Sept. 1987), which is titled “The Adventures of Zot! in Dimension 10½” on the cover. How did this issue come about? FEAZELL: Scott needed a month to catch up on a deadline, so he asked me if I could draw a solo issue to let him get ahead. And I said, “Yeah! You bet!” POWERS: What did you like about working on this issue? FEAZELL: I liked stretching out into a three-tier page with eight panels a page instead of my usual 25. I made a two-page spread with a fight scene, just like a Kirby comic! I thought for sure that it was going to be my only chance to do a 20-page superhero comic. When I started out doing stick-figure comics in junior high, I imagined I was drawing a newsstand comic that would be right up there on the stands with The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk. Now here was the chance! Zot! #14½ is a dream come true for that 13-year-old kid drawing stick-figure superhero comics. POWERS: Is there anything else you’d like to add about contributing to the Zot! mythos by contributing the 10½ backups to the comic over the years? FEAZELL: The great thing about it was having an editor and a regular deadline: six pages a month, every month. It was the largest audience I’d ever had, and that made me more careful about my draftsmanship. I paid attention to how the page looked and asked myself, “Did I use enough solid black?”;
Dimension 10½ Original cover art (courtesy of Heritage) to Zot! #12 (Mar. 1987), co-produced by Scott McCloud (Zot) and Matt Feazell (Dimension 10½ bottom blurb). Zot! © Silver Linings/Matt Feazell.
74 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
Do You Dare Enter Dimension 10½? Original art to Feazell’s “The Adventures of Zot in Dimension 10½” strip from Zot! #21 (Aug. 1988). Courtesy of Heritage. © Silver Linings/Matt Feazell.
“Is it a well-designed page?”; “Is the lettering legible?” Things I never thought about much in the minicomics. All my work looks different after Zot! than before. I really enjoyed working with Scott’s cast of characters. Boy, he had a bunch of great characters, you know? Zot! had a whole ecosystem—Zot had a girlfriend, Jenny; Jenny had her other boyfriend, Woody; Woody was in a gang of kids on Earth; Zot had a kid gang on his world; every villain had a backstory; and
every character had a supporting character. You could pick out any three of them, and a story would tell itself! POWERS: I definitely agree. You and Scott were working together during this magnificent boom of black-&-white comics and were just creating magic in that era. FEAZELL: That was a crazy time. Who knew that would ever happen? Black-&-white comics, you know. Wow! ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 75
INTERVIEW WITH
TODD KLEIN Photo courtesy of Todd Klein.
TOM POWERS: Todd, how did you and Scott McCloud collaborate on creating the iconic logo for Zot!, and what do you think of its lasting import in regard to the comic’s growing success across the mid-to-later ’80s? TODD KLEIN: Scott and I were working in the DC Production Department during the time he was creating and developing Zot! He had his logo idea worked out, and I helped by doing a more polished version that was ready for printing. I don’t recall any details of the process, and I haven’t seen Scott’s original design since then. You’d have to compare that to what I did to see how they might have differed. POWERS: What are your thoughts on contributing the lettering for Zot!’s historic first issue? KLEIN: Scott asked me to letter the first issue, which he would then use to sell the book to a publisher. I loved what he’d created and enjoyed lettering that issue. I think he offered it to DC, but it wasn’t accepted; he would know best, but once he sold it to Eclipse, that meant I couldn’t letter any more issues as it would have been a conflict of interest with DC. I believe Scott left the production staff for that reason as well, but again, he would know best. Scott is a great guy, and a wise thinker about how comics work, as his three books on the subject attest. I enjoyed working with him, and I always enjoy seeing him at conventions or wherever we might meet, which sadly doesn’t happen very often these days. 76 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
A Logo Is Born (left) The first page of a four-page “Behind the Scenes” gallery from Zot! #8 reveals Scott McCloud’s prototypical take on the hero that would become Zot, as well as the evolution of the Zot! logo, its final version executed by legendary letterer and logo designer Todd Klein. (right) Did you know that Todd Klein also lettered Zot! #1? Need proof? Here it is… the issue’s title page. Zot! © Silver Linings.
B.Z. (Before Zot!)
INTERVIEW WITH
Eclipse Comics’ Cat Yronwode and Dean Mullaney, at the 1982 San Diego Comic-Con.
CATHERINE YRONWODE
Photo by and courtesy of Alan Light.
Photo courtesy of Catherine Yronwode.
TOM POWERS: Cat, how did you decide that Zot! would be a good fit for Eclipse Comics, and, as Scott’s editor, what did you appreciate about working on issues #1–10, as he was world-building in these early color issues of the series? CAT YRONWODE: Scott sent in a blind submission, and I liked it a lot. He had the series well plotted out in advance, and he did a great job of fulfilling every aspect of what he had outlined to us for those issues. POWERS: What did you think of Scott’s decision to put Zot! on a brief hiatus in order to bring it back as a black-&-white comic with issue #11? Equally, what did you think of his refinement of the series and how his art style evolved in issues #11–27 (the “Heroes and Villains” arc), and how did you approach editing these important stories? YRONWODE: My memory of that is that sales were low, and he and Dean Mullaney worked out that arrangement. I didn’t like it because I always thought sales should have been higher. I also thought his refinements were okay, but I was much more fond of the color issues due to their greater visual appeal to me. In the conventional sense, I did almost no editing. Scott was a good writer and artist, and he rarely needed or wanted my help. POWERS: Also, what did you appreciate about Matt Feazell’s contributions to the comic via the 10½ backups, as well as Zot! #10½ and Zot! #14½? YRONWODE: I liked Matt’s work, and I found their team-up to be funny and clever. POWERS: Zot! #28–36, “The Earth Stories,” bring Scott’s comic to a new level of realism-based storytelling. What did you think of his further refinement of Zot! by concentrating on Zot adjusting to Jenny’s world and providing an expanded focus on her family and friends? YRONWODE: The idea was better than the execution. The stories were a little squirmy to me, sexually. At that age, I felt no need to hold back on sexuality, and it seemed too manga-esque to have all of the halting and blushing. Not my style. Fans were into it, though. POWERS: When you were promoting Zot! at conventions, what did you appreciate about sharing the comic with both new and old fans? YRONWODE: Showing folks the art—everyone loved it. POWERS: Do you have any other thoughts concerning your time as editor of Zot!? YRONWODE: I enjoyed talking to Scott on the phone. We had some good times.
Farewell The final issue, Zot! #36 (July 1991). Cover art by Scott McCloud. Zot! © Silver Linings.
’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 77
Send your comments to: Email: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief • BACK ISSUE 112 Fairmount Way • New Bern, NC 28562
Find BACK ISSUE on
Several months ago, I was contacted by my friend and former Archie Comics editor Paul Kaminsky (now a senior editor at DC Comics) about supplying them with a quote concerning my relationship with Neal as a neophyte at Continuity Associates. My comment in the wonderful tribute published in various DC comics was edited to a few words, and I wondered if you would be kind enough to indulge me by printing the full version in your letters column responding to this issue devoted to Neal? Thanks for considering this request… I thought that it was important to present a fuller picture of the man beyond his obvious skill with a pencil or brush. – Terry Austin You’re welcome, Terry. We are proud to present your full tribute to Neal Adams, which appears below:
Background art: Undated Batman sketch illo’ed and hand-colored by Neal Adams. Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.
NO RODNEY ALLEN, THIS RIPPY
Although I usually have no problem reading through BACK ISSUE cover to cover even when I’m not interested in some topics, I have to admit that issue #142 tried my patience! Why, for the first time I actually didn’t make it through one of its articles (“It’s Mario Time”). My feeling this issue was that much of its contents would have been more suitable to RetroFan than BACK ISSUE, especially interviews with TV personalities and the aforementioned Mario Brothers feature. However, one article that I managed to finish did leave me with an important question. I speak of the Super Richie piece by Mark Arnold. My question is this: Why was Super Richie called “Rippy”? I’ve scoured the article and unless my aging eyes missed it, I didn’t see any explanation for this name. Could Mark enlighten me? Inquiring minds need to know! – Pierre Comtois Too bad you didn’t think our “Super Issue” was super, Pierre. From the positive earlier letters we received, most readers disagreed with you. And while Super Mario Bros. isn’t my cup of tea either, comic books based on video games were common in the 1980s and 1990s, as it’s within our purview to cover those series here. We reached out to Harvey Comics historian Mark Arnold with your Super Richie question, and he replied: Since the very first Super Richie story called “Crashman and Rippy” came out in 1967, it’s a safe bet that the names were a nod to the Adam West Batman TV series as “Super Richie” is a nod to Superman. Why Cadbury and Richie Rich picked these alter ego names instead of just using their own was never explained in any Super Richie story to my knowledge. If anyone else knows, please let me know. Unfortunately, I can no longer ask the late Warren Kremer, Sid Jacobson, Ernie Colón, or Chris Barat, to shed some light on this. – Mark Arnold
TERRY AUSTIN REMEMBERS NEAL ADAMS
I wanted to congratulate you on the fine job you and your crew did on the issue honoring the memory of Neal Adams [BACK ISSUE #143]! As usual, per any of these subjects that I’m involved with, I turned first to see if I said anything incredibly stupid before devouring the rest of the contents and was relieved to find that I emerged relatively unscathed on that score for a change—my compliments to John Wells for doing a fine job researching and presenting his article on Neal’s little-known artistic assists!
78 • BACK ISSUE • ’80s Indie Heroes Issue
“Let others expound on Neal’s exquisite artwork—my mind turns back to these fond memories of working with Neal (this is where the DC version ends) at Continuity Associates in the 1970s: the mornings that he would announce ‘Put down your pens and brushes, we’re going to the movies,’ and off we’d all trundle to Times Square to catch the first showing of A Boy and His Dog or Alien; the day that he took all of us out-of-towners on an impromptu tour of the WPA murals from the 1930s hidden inside the various buildings around Rockefeller Center; the afternoon he introduced me to Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and his wife Joanne (who had famously served as Joe Shuster’s model for Lois Lane); the day that he sent a young penciling hopeful named Marshall Rogers back to my office because he thought that we would make a good team, artistically; the time I asked Neal if I could buy a particularly lovely piece that he had done and he sadly informed me that I would never be able to afford it, later quietly handing me his pencil layout for the drawing with a big grin on his face…..” – Terry Austin
NEAL ADAMS AND THE KING OF COMICS
Great issue [#143]! Enjoyed it from start to finish (though I disagreed with Neal’s assessment on one matter towards the end). I first encountered him, late ’60s, in The X-Men. What a staggering contrast with Werner Roth and all the other earlier X-Men artists! Neal Adams was both a realist and a stylist. Somehow, I preferred his covers—a single well-composed image— to his stories, where, because of the unusual layouts, I wasn’t always sure of the panel order. He did draw beautifully— no questioning that. Certainly, in 1970, one of the signs a new era was here— the Bronze Age—was the O’Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow. A new feel and look to comics. Increased realism and a contemporary exploration of topical issues versus the traditional hero/villain conflicts, not as a background subplot but as the entire rationale. Instead of a one-time deal, it was the standard operating procedure. A noble experiment. While I love Batman #251, with no reservations, I think Neal’s main contribution there was to give the character a certain feel and operating procedure that harkened back to earlier days, only drawn and staged immensely better. Quality-wise, he prompted production upgrades: halftones, increased color palates, and more. He showed, by example, it could be done. Even more impressive is what he did for others in the comics field: page rate increases, return of art, creators’ rights, etc. He also championed for Siegel and Shuster, as well as helping newcomers, underutilized talent, and comics veterans after the ’78 DC Implosion.
The story I liked best here is how he assisted Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and Terry Austin, who’d go on to do the classic, if short-lived, Detective Comics run. In fast-tracking Terry with Dick Giordano, as his assistant, Neal gave the newbie a chance to quickly advance, in talent and position, to an astoundingly talented embellisher. No question he would have made it in the field, with his ability, but this sure expedited it. I’m thankful for that, as he’s easily one of my favorites. Also enjoyed the overlap in taste with Neal singling out ’50s talent like Kirby/ Wood and the tremendous Mort Drucker (who’s so rarely mentioned). I did laugh at your 20 cover repros referencing/borrowing/stealing Neal’s “Kryptonite Nevermore” cover (see inset). Neal didn’t consider it a classic, but he seems outvoted. The only matter I vigorously disagreed with was Neal contending Kirby at DC should have had an editor. To me, the charm was Jack doing his stories exactly as he wanted them done. No compromises or radical changes from his intentions. No uphill fighting to be credited with his own ideas. I had more disappointment when Jack was forced to go in a different direction on Mister Miracle during the second half of the run. That just gutted it for me. Or when he had to work with outside writers on Sandman, Richard Dragon–Kung Fu Fighter, Justice Inc., etc. Difficult to work up enthusiasm. Plus, if no artist should be his own writer, how do we account for Neal writing and drawing Batman Odyssey? Neal thought Jack was revised on Jimmy Olsen, with outside faces patched on, in retaliation for his near-freedom on the other books. Possible, but unlikely as the changes came immediately, even before the three other titles had been released. As to Jack being a “hothead,” that’s noting the perceived reaction but not the provocation. Jack seems to have initiated his Fourth World characters in private, some years before he departed Marvel. If he could patiently bide his time, that long, he seems more a long-term thinker than an impulsive, fiery guy. Finally, should you revisit Neal in a coming issue, could you do a focus on Continuity? Who labored there and when? Who worked on the various Continuity Comics? What did they offer and why did they fold? I’ve seen so little coverage of it. – Joe Frank Joe, we examined Continuity Comics’ titles back in BACK ISSUE #94—coincidentally themed “Indie Superheroes,” not unlike this issue—under a Neal Adams Ms. Mystic cover. Ye ed would like to see an oral history of Continuity in the 1970s here in BI, although from Neal on down, several of those associates are no longer with us to share their stories. But if we can make this happen in a future issue, we’ll do it! Batman TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
‘TOP OF THE READING LIST’
Some things are worth waiting for. Ever since I learned that you were planning a tribute to the late Neal Adams, I’ve been looking forward to reading it. Not just for the inclusion of the photograph of my badge (or button… you say “potato,” etc.), but for all the articles, tributes, and illustrations. As ever with your publication, there is a wealth of new information to digest, along with a multitude of rarely seen images. Never mind this week’s “must read” comics, BACK ISSUE, as per usual, was top of the reading list. It was all I could do not to devour it in one sitting, but I somehow just about managed it. I’m not going to single anything out— it was excellent from start to finish. Take a bow, Michael, you have done yourself, TwoMorrows, and the comics world proud. – Simon Bullivant P.S. Last word on Neal Adams goes to Karl Heitmueller, Jr.: “He changed comics for the better.” That’s quite an epitaph.
TM & © DC Comics.
That’s kind of you to say, Simon. As proud as I am of BI’s Neal Adams tribute issue, that “bow” is not mine to take alone. So here’s a salute to BI #143’s Michael Kronenberg (Batman interview, cover design), John Wells (“Neal Adams, Under the Radar” article), Karl Heitmueller, Jr. (“Prince Street News”), Rob Kelly (Adams’ Power Records article), and BI interior designer Rich Fowlks—plus our fearless leader, publisher John Morrow—for their parts in making issue #143 so memorable.
GRATEFUL FOR BI
I finally finished the Neal Adams tribute issue last night, and I must compliment you on curating a remarkable overview of his career. Sure, Batman and Green Lantern are must-haves, but the Power Records article was a terrific example of the scope of his work—not just drawing comics, but posters, merchandise, book covers, movie posters, etc. My wife has a board game (Omega Virus), and as soon as she opened it, I saw his work on all the packaging and instruction and materials. Which brings me to the opportunity I enjoyed in 2005 (Jinkies, was it really 18 years ago?!), when I visited Continuity in NYC. I treasure the opportunities BI has offered, and the morning I spent with Neal is a high point. Neal was engaging, and generous, and it was an experience I never expected to have. I’m confident all the BI contributors are grateful to you for such opportunities. I look forward to the George Pérez issue. – Philip Schweier Next issue: It’s our sizzlin’ sesquicentennial edition—BACK ISSUE #150, a special 100-Page Super Spectacular featuring Batmen of the 1970s! Join us as we explore the work of Bronze Age Batman artists BOB BROWN, DICK GIORDANO, IRV NOVICK, FRANK ROBBINS, WALTER SIMONSON, ALEX TOTH, and BERNIE WRIGHTSON. Plus: FRANK MILLER’s first Batman story! Don’t ask—just BI it! See you in sixty! Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, Michael Eury, editor-in-chief ’80s Indie Heroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 79
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IT ROSE FROM THE TOMB An all-new book written by PETER NORMANTON
Rising from the depths of history comes an ALL-NEW examination of the 20th Century’s best horror comics, written by PETER NORMANTON (editor of From The Tomb, the UK’s preeminent magazine on the genre). From the pulps and seminal horror comics of the 1940s, through ones they tried to ban in the 1950s, this tome explores how the genre survived the introduction of the Comics Code, before making its terrifying return during the 1960s and 1970s. Come face-to-face with the early days of ACG’s alarming line, every horror comic from June 1953, hypodermic horrors, DC’s Gothic romance comics, Marvel’s Giant-Size terrors, Skywald and Warren’s chillers, and Atlas Seaboard’s shocking magazines. The 192-page full-color opus exhumes BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s darkest constructs, plus artwork by FRANK FRAZETTA, NEAL ADAMS, MIKE KALUTA, STEVE DITKO, MATT FOX, WARREN KREMER, LEE ELIAS, BILL EVERETT, RUSS HEATH, THE GURCH, and many more. Don’t turn your back on this once-in-a-lifetime spine-chiller—it’s so good, it’s frightening! (192-page SOFTCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-123-3 • SHIPS MARCH 2024!
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BACK ISSUE #152
JOHN ROMITA tribute issue! Podcast recollections recorded shortly after the Jazzy One’s passing by JOHN ROMITA JR., JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, BRIAN PULIDO, ROY THOMAS, JAIMIE JAMESON, JOHN CIMINO, STEVE HOUSTON, & NILE SCALA; DAVID ARMSTRONG’s mini-interview with Romita; John Romita’s ten greatest hits; plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, & more!
MITCH MAGLIO examines vintage jungle comics heroes (Kaänga, Ka-Zar, Sheena, Rulah, Jo-Jo/Congo King, Thun’da, Tarzan) with art by LOU FINE, WILL EISNER, FRANK FRAZETTA, MATT BAKER, BOB POWELL, ALEX SCHOMBURG, and others! Plus: the comicbook career of reallife jungle explorers MARTIN AND OSA JOHNSON, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!
#191 is an FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA) issue! Documenting the influence of MAC RABOY’s Captain Marvel Jr. on the life, career, and look of ELVIS PRESLEY during his stellar career, from the 1950s through the 1970s! Plus: Captain Marvel co-creator BILL PARKER’s complete testimony from the DC vs. Fawcett lawsuit, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and other surprises!
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
KIRBY COLLECTOR #91
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.
30th Anniversary issue, with KIRBY’S GREATEST VICTORIES! Jack gets the girl (wife ROZ), early hits Captain America and Boy Commandos, surviving WWII, romance comics, Captain Victory and the direct market, his original art battle with Marvel, and finally winning credit! Plus MARK EVANIER, a colossal gallery of Kirby’s winningest pencil art, a never-reprinted SIMON & KIRBY story, and more!
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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #34 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #35 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #36
RETROFAN #34
RETROFAN #35
DAN JURGENS talks about Superman, Sun Devils, creating Booster Gold, developing the “Doomsday scenario” with the demise of the Man of Steel, and more! Traverse DON GLUT’s “Glutverse” continuity across Gold Key, Marvel, and DC! Plus RICK ALTERGOTT, we conclude our profiles of MIKE DEODATO, JR. and FRANK BORTH, LINDA SUNSHINE (editor of DC/Marvel hardcover super-hero collections), & more!
An in-depth look at the life and career of writer/editor DENNY O’NEIL, and part one of a career-spanning interview with ARNOLD DRAKE, co-creator of The Doom Patrol and Deadman! Plus the story behind Studio Zero, the ’70s collective of JIM STARLIN, FRANK BRUNNER, ALAN WEISS, and others! Warren horror mag writer/ historian JACK BUTTERWORTH, alternative cartoonist TIM HENSLEY, & more!
TOM PALMER retrospective, career-spanning interview, and tributes compiled by GREG BIGA. LEE MARRS chats about assisting on Little Orphan Annie, work for DC’s Plop! and underground Pudge, Girl Blimp! The start of a multi-part look at the life and career of DAN DIDIO, part two of our ARNOLD DRAKE interview, public service comics produced by students at the CENTER FOR CARTOON STUDIES, & more!
Take a ride with CHiPs’ ERIK ESTRADA and LARRY WILCOX! Plus: an interview with movie Hercules STEVE REEVES, WeirdOhs cartoonist BILL CAMPBELL, Plastic Man on Saturday mornings, TINY TIM, Remo Williams, the search for a Disney artist, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
Saturday morning super-hero Space Ghost, plus The Beatles, The Jackson 5ive, and other real rockers in animation! Also: The Addams Family’s JOHN ASTIN, Mighty Isis co-stars JOANNA PANG and BRIAN CUTLER, TV’s The Name of the Game, on the set of Evil Dead II, classic coffee ads, and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER & MICHAEL EURY.
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New from TwoMorrows!
ALTER EGO #186
ALTER EGO #187
KIRBY COLLECTOR #88
KIRBY COLLECTOR #89
KIRBY COLLECTOR #90
Focuses on great early science-fiction author EDMUND HAMILTON, who went on to an illustrious career at DC Comics, writing Superman, Batman, and especially The Legion of Super-Heroes! Learn all about his encounters with RAY BRADBURY, MORT WEISINGER, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, et al—a panoply of titans! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!
THE COLLECTORS! Fans’ quest for and purchase of Jack’s original art and comics, MARV WOLFMAN shares his (and LEN WEIN’s) interactions with Jack as fans and pros, unseen Kirby memorabilia, an extensive Kirby pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER moderating the 2023 Kirby Tribute Panel from Comic-Con International, plus a deluxe wrap-around Kirby cover with foldout back cover flap, inked by MIKE ROYER!
KIRBY CONSPIRACIES! Darkseid’s Foourth World palace intrigue, the too-many attempted overthrows of Odin, why Stan Lee hated Diablo, Kang contradictions, Simon & Kirby swipes, a never-reprinted S&K story, MARK EVANIER’s WonderCon 2023 Kirby Tribute Panel (with MARV WOLFMAN, PAUL S. LEVINE, and JOHN MORROW), an extensive Kirby pencil art gallery, and more!
WHAT IF KIRBY... hadn’t been stopped by his rejected Spider-Man presentation? DC’s abandonment of the Fourth World? The ill-fated Speak-Out Series? FREDRIC WERTHAM’s anti-comics crusade? The CIA’s involvement with the Lord of Light? Plus a rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other columnists, a classic Simon & Kirby story, pencil art gallery, & more! Cover inks by DAMIAN PICKADOR ZAJKO!
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All characters TM & © their respective owners.
Spotlights ANGELO TORRES, the youngest and last of the fabled EC Comics artists— who went on to a fabulous career as a horror, science-fiction, and humor artist for Timely/Marvel, Warren Publishing, and MAD magazine! It’s a lushly illustrated retrospective of his still-ongoing career— plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more
RETROFAN #32
RETROFAN #33
COMIC BOOK CREATOR #33
BRICKJOURNAL #84
Featuring a profile of The Partridge Family’s heartthrob DAVID CASSIDY, THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN, LEGO blocks, Who Created Mighty Mouse?, BUCKAROO BANZAI turns forty, Planet Patrol, Big Little Books, Disco Fever, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
Meet the Bionic Duo, LEE MAJORS and LINDSAY WAGNER! Plus: Hot Wheels: The Early Years, Fantastic Four cartoons, Modesty Blaise, Hostess snacks, TV Westerns, Movie Icons vs. the Axis Powers, the San Diego Chicken, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
STEVE GERBER biographical essay and collaborator insights, MARY SKRENES on co-creating Omega the Unknown, helping develop Howard the Duck, VAL MAYERIK cover and interview, ROY THOMAS reveals STAN LEE’s unseen EXCELSIOR! COMICS line, LINDA SUNSHINE (editor of early hardcover super-hero collections), more with MIKE DEODATO, and the concluding segment on FRANK BORTH!
STEFAN FORMENTANO masterminds the enormous LEGO city NEW HASHIMA, one of the biggest LEGO Fan community builds ever done! Plus builds by SIMON LIU, BLAKE FOSTER, and others! Also: Nerding Out with 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!
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RETROFAN #31
Magic memories of ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY for the 60th Anniversary of TV’s Bewitched! Plus: The ’70s thriller Time After Time (with NICHOLAS MEYER, MALCOLM McDOWELL, and DAVID WARNER), The Alvin Show, BUFFALO BOB SMITH and Howdy Doody, Peter Gunn, Saturday morning’s Run Joe Run and Big John Little John, a trip to Camp Crystal Lake, and more fun, fab features!