Back Issue #3 by TwoMorrows Publishing

T H E U LT I M AT E C O M I C S E X P E R I E N C E !

00 4 Ap r i l 2

N$5o..935 PR O 2 P

O O'NEIL, ADAMS, ENGLEHART, ROGERS, STARLIN, and BOLLAND reveal the Joker's journey from clown to killer!

EV ER T SN

pla

S T ORIE

n/ fe / Gif teis a t e’ s M E ir D gu Ma STICE U E! J GU LEA

D OL sti c man in t he mo vies !

GREATE ve twel nists o o t c ar t u c e! loos

RO H ST U F UG

MYY OOFFFF M

F ST CHE

with mark r! evanie

Bugs Bunny Meets The Supe rHeroes!

AT TH-H W

LAUGHING MATTERS: GIFFEN! MAGUIRE! BOLLAND! EVANIER!

The g n i t ra th e Ce leb mic s of day! Co o t T s & Be ’80s, , s 0 ’7

A plea from the publisher of this fine digital periodical: TwoMorrows, we’re on the Honor System with our Digital Editions. We don’t add Digital Rights Management features to them to stop piracy; they’re clunky and cumbersome, and make readers jump through hoops to view content they’ve paid for. And studies show such features don’t do much to stop piracy anyway. So we don’t include DRM in our downloads.

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TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

The Ultimate Comics Experience!

Volume 1, Number 3 April 2004 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, and Today!

BWAH-HA-HA! It’s our

It’s our “Laug hing Matters” issue!

yeah, yeah. EDITORIAL ...............................................................................................................................................................2 Laughter is the best medicine, so sez yer editor!

EDITOR Michael Eury

ha ha hee h ee

PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Robert Clark

PRO2PRO: KEITH GIFFEN AND J.M. DEMATTEIS ................................................................3 The plotter and dialoguer discuss their sitcom-esque Justice League— PRO2PRO PART TWO: KEVIN MAGUIRE ..................................................................................24 —and so does the penciler—

PROOFREADER Eric Nolen-Weathington

PRO2PRO PART THREE: ANDY HELFER .....................................................................................29 —and their original editor, too!

SCANNING AND IMAGE MANIPULATION Rich Fowlks

THE GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: PLASTIC MAN: BOUNCED OFF THE SCREEN.......................................................................36 Two attempts to bring Plas to the big screen have gone PLOP! Plus: Before he was governor, Ahnold was almost Sgt Rock

COVER ARTIST Brian Bolland

ROUGH STUFF: 12 CARTOONISTS CUT LOOSE ................................................................46 Pencil art by Aragonés, Byrne, Gilbert, Bros. Hernandez, Hughes, Johnson, Kirby, Manley, Mignola, Semeiks, and Shaw!

TRANSCRIBER Brian K. Morris CONTRIBUTORS Neal Adams Jason Allin Sergio Aragonés Kyle Baker Brian Bolland Norm Breyfogle John Byrne J.M. DeMatteis Lee Elias Steve Engelhart Michael Eury Mark Evanier Ramona Fradon Keith Giffen Michael T. Gilbert David Hamilton Andrew Helfer Hernandez Bros.

Adam Hughes Dan Johnson Dave Johnson Jack Kirby John Lustig Kevin Maguire Andy Mangels Mike Manley Darrell McNeil Mike Mignola Dennis O’Neil Mike Ploog Steve Purcell Marshall Rogers Peter Sanderson Val Semeiks Scott Shaw! Jim Starlin

BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: THE JOKER REBORN ...........................................................58 With recollections from the writers and artists responsible for the transformation WHAT THE—?!: BUGS BUNNY MEETS THE SUPER-HEROES .................................76 This isn’t an April Fool’s joke—it’s the real deal! OFF MY CHEST: GUEST EDITORIAL BY MARK EVANIER ...........................................82 Why writing “funnybooks” is no joke, with a special cartoon from John Lustig BACK IN PRINT: THREE MUST-HAVE BOOKS ABOUT COMICS ..........................85 Arlen Schumer’s The Silver Age of Comic Books, Mike Conroy’s 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes, and The Will Eisner Sketchbook Plus: NEW IN PRINT: Plastic Man–Kyle Baker gets into shape(s) BACK TALK ...........................................................................................................................................................88 Darrell McNeil talks Space Ghost II, plus reader feedback on issue #1

SPECIAL THANKS Laura Bartroff Spencer Beck Jerry Boyd Kevin Boyd Mark Cannon Dewey Cassell Joey Cavalieri Dale Coe Mike Conroy Don Corn Ken Danker Steve Donnelly John Fleskes

Shane Foley Robert Greenberger Heritage Comics Jerry Hillegas Movie Poop Shoot John Petty Adam Philips Joe Pruett Rose Rummel-Eury Larry Shell Rick Taylor Tropic Comics

BACK ISSUE™ is published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. BACK ISSUE Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 5060A Foothills Dr., Lake Oswego, OR 97034. Email: euryman@msn.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $30 Standard US, $48 First Class US, $60 Canada, $66 Surface International, $90 Airmail International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. The Joker, Justice League, Plastic Man, Superman, Batman, Robin, Black Canary, Guy Gardner, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, the Creeper, and all other related characters TM & © 2004 DC Comics. Captain America, She-Hulk, Rocket Raccoon, and the Cat TM & © 2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. Groo TM & © 2004 Sergio Aragones. Sam & Max: Freelance Police TM & © 2004 Steve Purcell. Earth Boys TM & © 2004 Dave Johnson. Normalman TM & © 2004 Jim Valentino. Conan TM & © 2004 Conan Properties International, LLC. The Spirit TM & © 2004 Will Eisner. Space Ghost TM & © 2004 Hanna-Barbera. All editorial matter © 2004 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

in... c’mon L a u • g hPHONE i n g M919/449-0344 a t t e r s • B•A FAX C K 919/449-0327 I S S rUeEad•in’1s TWOMORROWS HAS MOVED! NEW ADDRESS: 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 fine!

Bwah-Ha-Ha! SAM AND MAX, LIVE! The cartoon on this page was

Caricatured (and quite well) are yours truly as Sam (the dog) and my buddy Rick Taylor as Max (the bunny)—and yes, I did make the mistake of wearing a stupid Panama hat to the San Diego con of ’88, and yes again, Rick has that much energy.

Bwah-Ha-Ha! 17 YEARS IN THE MAKING! On November 21, 2003,

at the Wizardworld Texas show, Marv Wolfman and George Pérez announced that they were reuniting to complete the long-dormant New Teen Titans: Games “Laughter is the best medicine.”

graphic novel for DC Comics. You’ll recall that in the

Someone—it might’ve been me, or maybe it was former

Wolfman/Pérez “Pro2Pro” interview in BACK ISSUE #1,

surgeon general C. Everett Koop, or was it singer/actor

George remarked that it was unlikely that he’d ever

Harry Connick, Jr.? I really don’t remember—once

complete Games. Lucky for us he changed his mind.

said that. But from the looks of many comic-book fans,

Bwah-Ha-Ha!

they need a major dosage.

former Jack Kirby protégé Mark Evanier, informs us that

ninjas, vigilantes, and constipated bad asses have

the hand-colored guides for the covers of Superman’s

taken comics hostage. Comics coloring is dark, and

Pal Jimmy Olsen #133 and Forever People #1 depicted

the storylines are darker. And most comics readers

on our first issue’s back cover were probably not the

have forgotten how to laugh.

work of the King—although the mystery now is, who

No, I’m not some old fart who’s whining a tired “In my day. . . ” story. I’m just a guy who believes that you need the light to appreciate the dark, and there ain’t much light these days in comics. You might argue that this is a reflection of a more cynical world. Were that true, then there’d be little comedy on television, and sitcoms and cartoons remain TV staples. Same with movies: Comedies are churned out by the chuckleload.

teehe e. . . snort

NO LAUGHING MATTER! This issue’s guest columnist,

For the past 20 years, serial killers, psychotics,

colored them? Does anyone know?

Bwah-Ha-Ha! BACK ISSUE’S PALS ’n’ GALS!

In BACK ISSUE #1

we inadvertently forgot to thank Spencer Beck, Jon Mankuta, Marcus Medes, and Vu Nguyen (webmaster of the ultra-cool Pérez site, www.george-perez.com) for their Pérez art contributions. Thanks, guys!

Bwah-Ha-Ha-Uh Oh!

So why are there so few humorous comic books?

BACK ISSUE #1 ERRATA! A few errors snuck into last

In this issue, some clever contributors offer their

issue’s Comico story at the 11th hour. To set the record

theories. Maybe you have your own. Write us and

straight, the following are not copyrighted properties

share them, won’t you?

of Comico: E-Man © Joe Staton, Grendel © Matt Wagner,

And while most of our features this ish spotlight

Gumby © Art Clokey, Justice Machine © Michael

comics’ lighter side, our inaugural “Bring on the

Gustovich, Star Blazers © Westchester Films, Inc., and

Bad Guys” column targets the gruesome, grinning

Trollords © Paul Fricke and Scott Beaderstadt.

gargoyle who’s given Batman the what-for since 1940: Michael Eury, editor

the Joker!

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Remembering the Super-Hero Comic About Nothing:

Giffen and DeMatteis Talk Justice League Dan Johnso

ed by and transcrib An interview 30, 2003, on October . d is te rr uc o nd co .M by Brian K

I was a teenaged comic-book fan the year that it really mattered to be a comic-book fan: 1986. That was the year Frank Miller gave Batman his “edge” back in The Dark Knight Returns. That was the year Alan Moore forever changed the way super-heroes interacted within their fictional world (and with each other) in Watchmen. That was the year Howard Chaykin took the Shadow back to his ultra-violent roots in a DC miniseries. Indeed, to be hip at DC in 1986, you had to be downright depressing at times. In 1987, an old favorite of mine from when I

interview

was just a kid (all of five years before) was getting a relaunch, and I was excited about it. Justice League was coming back! That book had THE Batman in it, so it had to be pretty bad to the bone (yeah, I really talked like that back then). I missed the first issue, so when I saw the second, it was a must-read. And at the time, I don’t think I was more disappointed with a comic book in my entire life. This wasn’t dark! This wasn’t edgy! I wasn’t depressed

Test-Market Variant This alternate cover for July 1987’s Justice League #3 was used in a regional

at all! And where was Superman? Where was the

newsstand distribution experiment. In addition

Flash? Where was the Green Lantern (note I said

to its different DC “bullet,” it features a rarity:

THE Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, not this schmoe

DC’s Captain Marvel being identified by name

with the Moe Howard haircut). I made up my mind

on the cover. Courtesy of Adam Philips.

that Justice League wasn’t for me, not now, not ever.

uh-hu h. . . yeah. . .i se e

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I promptly forgot about the book and went off searching more “adult” material. I was doing just that a few months later when I stumbled across Justice League’s seventh issue and its first annual. #7 had a familiar face in it (although very briefly), Superman, and the annual had the League dog-piling on the Martian Manhunter. A little voice said, “Buy these books.” When I read them, something beautiful happened. That time, finally, I got the joke. Justice League was funny as hell, and the characters were very real and loaded with personality that I had missed the first time (maybe it was because no one had shot anyone or had hinted to sexual deviance in the second issue). Did I say Justice League was not for me (never was, never would be)? I changed my mind that day and realized that depressing may have been hip at DC, but cool was not caring if you were hip or not. That is Keith Giffen and J.M. (Marc) DeMatteis in a nutshell (both then and now). All they wanted out of Justice League was to have fun. Thankfully enough people who were tired of dark and dreary comics back in the day were willing to support one of the most light-hearted (and perhaps one of the best super-hero) comic books of the 1980s. BACK ISSUE recently caught version of Justice League, and their take on it

Trendsetting Cover Pose

today (the wonderful Formerly Known as the

Kevin Maguire and Terry Austin’s cover to

Justice League and the upcoming I Can’t Believe

Justice League #1 (1987) has been frequently

It’s Not the Justice League miniseries). Also, we

imitated—even by Kevin himself, as seen in the

got a chance to talk with (in separate sidebar

cover to Formerly Known as the Justice League #1,

interviews) their partner-in-crime, original JL artist

inked by Joe Rubinstein.

up with Keith and Marc to discuss their 1980s’

Kevin Maguire, and their old boss who kept the original circus train on track, editor Andy Helfer. –Dan Johnson

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DAN JOHNSON: How did you guys get involved with

After Conway left the book, I actually wrote three or

Justice League back in ‘87?

four issues before they cancelled it. There was a three-

KEITH GIFFEN: Well, Marc, I want to hear your story

part story where I got to kill Vibe and all those people.

for the first time, because I have no idea how I wound

GIFFEN: Cool. I had no idea you were a part of Justice

up hooked up with you.

League Detroit.

J.M. DeMATTEIS: Really? I know that I’d been after

DeMATTEIS: But that was kind of like this little interim

[editor] Andy Helfer for a year [to do] Justice League

gig. Andy said, “Conway started it, could you fill-in

before they finally cancelled Justice League Detroit [the nickname for writer Gerry Conway’s Detroit-based previous version of the JLA], and they decided to give me a shot. Look, I respect Gerry Conway. I liked Gerry Conway. I mean, I was respective of his talent, but I’d poke my head into Andy’s office and go, “Isn’t it time to fire Conway now?” I did this about a year. Every time I saw him, I asked about it until it was put up or shut up. It was really that simple.

dialogue in the last couple of issues and write that last storyline for me?” Well, I did that. And then I was busy doing other stuff, and the relaunch of the Justice League came up and Andy basically said, “Do you want to dialogue?” and I went, “No.” And he said, “Well, Keith’s plotting it, but he doesn’t have a lot of confidence that he can actually dialogue it.” And Keith had actually dialogued the first issue, hadn’t you?

Beginnings :

“The Swor d and the S tar” backup Marvel Pre in view #7 (197 6)

Beginnings :

Milestones : In

First sale: “T he Lady Kill er Craves B in House of lood!” Mystery #2 82 (1980) First in prin t: “The Blood Boat” in Weird War Tales #70 (1 97

dustry high lights: Legion of S uper-Heroe s (two separa memorable te but stints) / Ju stice League Personal hi / Lobo ghlights: A mbush Bug / Mars Atta cks! Works in P ro g re ss: I Can’t Belie ve It’s Not th e Justice Le Thanos / To ague / yko Pop’s B attle Vixen I.D.W.’s Com s/ mon Foe an d Gut Wrenc her

Milestones : M

oonshadow / Blood: A Ta Vampire / A le / Greenbe mazing Spi rg the der-Man / Ju Seekers in stice League to the Myste / ry / Brookly n Dreams

Works in P ro

Ambush Bu g©

gress: I Can’t Belie ve It’s Not th e Justice Le CrossGen’s ague / Abadazad / episodes of Network’s Cartoon Justice Leag ue / Keith G iffen and I have anot her project up our sleeves (can ’t talk about it yet)

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GIFFEN: Not really, no. DeMATTEIS: Well, there were a lot of words there. GIFFEN: I did my usual little scribbled plot. DeMATTEIS: What I remember—now we can contradict each other—there was a lot more in that first issue. There was, for me, it was practically a finished dialogue job. [Andy said] “Well, Keith’s not happy with it, I’m not happy with it. Would you at least look it over?” I looked it over and it was a great story and my first response was, “[Keith] doesn’t need me.” But Andy is kind of like the male comic-book editor equivalent of an old Jewish mother. He will needle you, and then pinch your cheeks, and do everything he can to get what is needed. GIFFEN: (groans, in a Helfer impression) “Keith, you’re

“My usual little scribbled plot.”

that?

Keith Giffen draws

DeMATTEIS: So I read the thing. I remember reading it

his plots in the form

on an airplane, and I said, “This is great.” Andy finally

of mini-comics. Editors

convinced me to do it. I figured I’d do this one issue and

and pencilers see Keith’s work in this format, but it never appears in print this way—until now. This is the opening page from May 1987’s Justice League #1, courtesy of Andrew Helfer. © 2004 DC Comics.

killing me here! Arrgh!” How many times did you hear

that would be the end of it. I don’t remember there being a great sense of commitment on my part. GIFFEN: There wasn’t a great sense of commitment on anybody’s part. We all thought we were going to get fired. DeMATTEIS: I thought, “Keith knew what he’s doing. What the hell did he need me for?” So I basically did a rewrite on his script. I don’t feel like I did anything that phenomenally major with it, you know? And then he said, “What about the next one?” Now the next one, of course, that was when Keith kind of backed up to the way he used to work, where there would be a couple of balloons in each panel—he drew these little comic books, like mini-sized comic books—and the basic dialogue to indicate the direction of the story would be in there, but that left all this room for me to play and bring a lot of stuff to the table, and goof around with the characters and even the characterizations. And if Keith put in one joke, then I’d add eight more jokes to that panel, or 12 more jokes to that panel.

“We all thought we were going to get fired.” DC’s top brass had cold feet about this oddball take on their flagship super-team. From Justice League #1. Courtesy of Kevin Boyd.

GIFFEN: We were big fans of “more is less.” DeMATTEIS: And I still am. We’re doing this miniseries, the new one, and [then-editor] Dan Raspler called me up and he had counted the balloons on one page and

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many balloons on one page. GIFFEN: I guess we broke a record. I think on one page, we’re close to—oh, God, what was that number? Something like, 32. DeMATTEIS: I think Dan said 36. GIFFEN: Why not? DeMATTEIS: The problem that I had within the first few issues [of the 1980s’ JL]—and it sounds really funny— was that it was too easy and I was having too much fun. And I was locked into this idea of, (whispers dramatically) “But my writing is supposed to be this struggling, and stretching, and going deep in it,” and I was having fun and it was easy, so I thought there must be something wrong. Why are they paying me? I’m having fun, you know? And there was a point around issue #4 or #5 when I actually quit the book. GIFFEN: I had no idea. DeMATTEIS: It was for 20 minutes or something. They were going to get Mike Carlin to come in and take over it. And then, I guess either I thought about it again, or Andy convinced me, and I suddenly thought, “Oh, wait. I’m having fun and they’re paying me. And the book is a hit. What am I doing?” So then I stuck around and the next thing I knew it was five years later. GIFFEN: It was weird because here was Justice League in the middle of Dark Knight and Watchmen and deconstruct-

“Grim was the thing.”

ing super-heroes. At Marvel, they were doing The Punisher.

Mike Zeck’s awe-inspiring pencils for the cover of

Everything was grim and gritty.

November 1987’s Amazing

DeMATTEIS: I was doing it, too. That’s around the time I wrote “Kraven’s Last Hunt” [a six-parter that started in

Spider-Man #294, part five

Amazing Spider-Man #293]. Grim was the thing.

of Marc DeMatteis’ six-part

GIFFEN: When Andy first mentioned your name, the first

“Kraven’s Last Hunt.”

thing I thought was you’d be so diametrically opposed

Courtesy of David Hamilton.

to what I was trying to do here because your body of

The inset depicts the

work doesn’t exactly say, “Ha, ha,” you know? Although,

final version.

like you mentioned before, you’d showed more than a

few funny moments. But that’s interesting, Marc. I never knew any of this. Okay, we wound up on Justice League book. We really thought we’d get killed, we thought the book would die. I was ready to go show my portfolio to L a u g h i n g

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people and they’re doing Kevin. He really created something new with the way he dealt with that aspect of comic-book storytelling in that book. When you look at the early issues, he was still developing his storytelling and anatomy skills. And over the course of time, he just kept getting better and better and better. But the facial thing, he had that going right out of the gate, and that was really such an important factor in the book taking off, because [with] a different artist we would have lost that. GIFFEN: Keep in mind that the best issues of Justice League, at least as far as Marc and I are concerned, are the ones where nothing really happens. “Moving Day,” “The French Lesson,” “Justice League Antarctica”—the ones where they just basically sit around and bounce off

Mug Master

of one another.

A sample of

DeMATTEIS: I’ve always felt this, and I’ve felt this going

Kevin Maguire’s

through the miniseries as well, whenever we have a

ability to draw

storyline that leans more toward the heroics, the less I

expressive faces,

like it—“Oh, God, it’s a super-hero story. I can’t stand it.”

from July 2003’s

Remember the Despero story?

Formerly Known

GIFFEN: Oh, Lord. You know, it was kind of interesting—

as the Justice

for me, at least—to have my story come back totally

League #1.

unrecognizable. I don’t know what Adam [Hughes] was

Courtesy of

Marvel. I thought we were doomed because of our silly

Kevin Boyd.

little sitcom of a book. And Andy comes up with, “Hey, let’s use an artist no one’s ever heard of.” That was the

first time anyone had seen Kevin Maguire. DeMATTEIS: Hadn’t he been working in the Marvel production department? GIFFEN: Yeah. I think he got the job on the basis of—

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doing. But the Despero storyline was one that Andy really thought we needed and that was the knockdown, dragout, super-hero/super-villain fight, and it kind of was. But if you remember, Marc, we had Blue Beetle running around, out of breath to get to the fight. (laughs) DeMATTEIS: That was when all the Blue Beetle fat jokes started. I kept throwing in all these lines about him going,

and I’m sure Kevin would be better at recollecting

“Oh, my God. I shouldn’t have eaten so many cookies.”

this—a shot of Batman and Clint Eastwood, and Andy

(laughs) One thing about that story, even then, I was

going, “Trust me. He can do it, he can do it, he can do

writing that as a satire. All the Despero dialogue was kind

it, man.” And it turned out, “Yeah, boy, can he.”

of like a satire on the Frank Miller kind of thing, and also

DeMATTEIS: Ultimately, [we knew that] this book lived

on my own Kraven—intent, brooding, inner dialogue,

or died on how these characters reacted to each other.

you know?

GIFFEN: Uh-huh. The book really lived and died on the

GIFFEN: Everyone was expecting a Manga Khan moment

moments between dialogue when the expression on the

to begin.

face, or the reaction, had to carry the moment. Nobody,

JOHNSON: When Justice League came out, it was on the

nobody does it better than Kevin.

heels of Dark Knight, and Watchmen, and all. Most of

DeMATTEIS: I’m staring at the optimum amount of

the industry seemed to be going towards this “it’s got to

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be grim, it’s got to be dark attitude.” What was the reaction of DC when you said, “This is what we want to do with Justice League?” GIFFEN: We didn’t tell them we were doing it. (laughs) We didn’t go, “We’re going to make a sitcom.” I didn’t think it was a deliberate decision, although I recall Andy saying, “Let’s get tongue-in-cheek a little bit here.” Oh, no. This book just came out. DeMATTEIS: Keith, since I wasn’t around for [the first] part of it, did you have this vision in your head of doing it this way? Did you and Andy cook it up together? I really don’t know.

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GIFFEN: I remember Andy saying, “Maybe we should try a lighter touch on this.” Andy was very much into the characters. You know, he’s got that kind of wry attitude, even when it comes to editing. I don’t think he meant for it to veer off to the extent that it did. DeMATTEIS: Well, because if someone suggested something to Keith then, like, (sweetly) “Put a little flower on the lawn,” Keith would put a forest on it. (laughs) So if Andy said, “Let’s give it a light touch,” Keith’s just going to go totally, totally off the deep end. GIFFEN: It was kind of fun. I don’t think it really clicked in my head until “Moving Day” [issue #8], when I suddenly realized what the book was about. It was about what happens when they’re not in front of the cameras, when they’re not on. It’s what happens the panel after the last panel in the issue, and that’s when it all really came together. At least for me, the first couple of issues were feeling out the characters and if you read them now, they’re much closer to the straight super-heroes of the world. It took a little while to figure out what was going on. If I remember correctly, “Moving Day” was not only the introduction of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold as a bizarre team, but it was also the first time “Bwah-hah-hah!” was used in the book, remember? DeMATTEIS: Keith and I have this disagreement about “Bwah-hah-hah!” He thinks I invented it, and I’m sure he invented it. GIFFEN: It would be very easy to find out, because Andy

When Titles Change

Helfer has every plot we’ve ever done. All we’d have to

Page seven of issue #7, where Justice League became

do is go and look and see if it arrived at the plot first or

Justice League International. The series was retitled

the dialogue first. But you know what? We don’t give

yet again with issue #26, becoming Justice League

a damn.

America. Courtesy of Kevin Boyd.

DeMATTEIS: Here’s what I suspect happened, probably Keith had a “Bwah-hah-hah!” thrown in there some-

where and I went, “Oh, I like that,” and I proceeded to beat it into the ground. If he’ll put in one line about something, and I think it’s funny, I’m gonna, like, develop it and use it a hundred times over the next 40 issues. GIFFEN: You know, I still don’t know where the Oreo

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DeMATTEIS: Who remembers?

Maybe It’s the Creamy Filling

GIFFEN: I have no idea.

J’onn J’onnz’s love for

DeMATTEIS: It could have been a joke in a line of

Oreos was one of the many

dialogue. A lot of times what would happen is I might

character nuances added by

throw in a line of dialogue, which Keith would see. That’s

the JL creative team.

what happened with the Blue Beetle thing. I made some

thing came from [Martian Manhunter’s cookie cravings].

jokes in the dialogue about Blue Beetle being out of shape and gaining weight. Then the next thing I know, there’s an issue that comes in where he’s spilling out of his costume. So we would bounce off each other that way. JOHNSON: When the book was getting started, how did they determine which characters would be in the new Justice League?

Andy said, “Look, here’re some characters they don’t

GIFFEN: Whichever ones happened to be in the Justice

care if we use.” That’s really what it came down to. I

League at the end of the Legends miniseries.

mean, I don’t think [then-Batman editor] Denny O’Neil

JOHNSON: Did you say, “Well, we want to use Superman,”

ever got over resenting the fact that Batman was in

and have DC come back and say, “No, you guys can’t

this book.

use Superman”?

DeMATTEIS: And the thing was, he was always in

GIFFEN: Oh, we got tons of that. I found out midway

character.

through that Captain Marvel was “on loan.” We were

GIFFEN: Maybe I’m wrong, but I think we had fun with

having a lot of fun with him. It was a blow [to lose him].

the characters, but it was always done with affection. It

But basically, we were a repository for every character

was not mean-spirited.

nobody gave a damn about. People got really, really

DeMATTEIS: No, it wasn’t. The thing about that book,

nervous up at DC when they heard their character was

for me, was that I had tremendous affection for these

going to drop into Justice League. Pérez yanked Wonder

characters. To me, they were—and I’ve said this many

Woman out of Justice League Europe so fast. I think she

times—far more real than most of these so-called “real-

appeared for two panels, then bang, she’s gone.

istic” characters in comics. They’re the ones that reminded

DeMATTEIS: But it’s always fun using the obscure

me of my friends, growing up in Brooklyn, hanging out

characters. It’s much more fun to develop Fire and Ice

on a Saturday night, a joke every ten seconds flying back

and Beetle and Booster.

and forth between us. I totally believed in these guys

GIFFEN: It’s funny how few people remember where Fire

because of this, because of a sense of humor. And beneath

and Ice came from: Green Fury and Ice Maiden.

that, there was enough of a psychological reality to

DeMATTEIS: She was called Green Fury?

totally buy these guys. And I always feel if I was going to

GIFFEN: She was called Green Fury when she first

hang out with [a team of super-heroes], do I want to

showed up. She was a human Bic lighter.

hang out with the X-Men or do I want to hang out with

JOHNSON: The whole Global Guardians idea, where

these guys? I’d hang out with these guys any day and

Fire and Ice originated, was a Super Friends backup

therefore, they’re far more real to me than any other

feature wasn’t it?

characters I can think of in comics.

GIFFEN: I don’t know what it came from. All it was,

GIFFEN: They did stuff that we could all relate to. And

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a lot of the Justice League came out of sitting around in the aftermath of conventions with fellow comic-book professionals who are a very witty, lively, funny bunch. The fact that it so rarely translates to their work astonishes me. DeMATTEIS: And that’s one of the things that this book did for me. I think Keith, basically, gave me the freedom to be a total idiot. I always was a total idiot, but it wasn’t always reflected in my work. GIFFEN: I just outed you. (laughs) DeMATTEIS: That’s right, you outed me as an idiot. (laughs) GIFFEN: I’ve always been there. Actually, I think I was still reeling from Ambush Bug ending when Justice League came along. So I think we did everything in Justice League, but break the fourth wall. DeMATTEIS: Yeah, yeah. I appreciated that because when I got the first couple of scripts, I thought, “I get what the tone of this is,” and now I’m being given permission to just do what I call “neo-Vaudeville.” You know, do my neo-Vaudeville shtick and have some fun, and be as silly as I want. And the great thing about having Andy there for both of us, I think Andy was always there to back us up on everything. Keith would walk in with the most absurd plot on the planet, and maybe Andy would whittle it down to making it slightly less ludicrous. And if I just filled the page with about 250,000 jokes too many, Andy always knew where to whittle it down and cut it back, and kind of keep us just from going over the line. Andy was a very important component of the book. He wasn’t just the editor. I always thought of him as a real part of the creative team. He was not only an editor, but a creator. GIFFEN: The other thing with Andy, too, he only turned

“The BAT-ty Bunch”

down one story I ever did.

With Ann B. Davis as Andy Helfer.

JOHNSON: Oh? Which one was that?

GIFFEN: I’ve got to do it eventually, in fact just recently [in the upcoming I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League], but way back I said, “I want to send the Justice League to Hell.” And my whole idea was the Justice League goes to Hell and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold wind up play-

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ing Twister with the Devil for the souls of the Justice League. (laughs) And Andy said, “No, that’s too far— nobody will buy it.” Two months later, Bill and Ted’s sequel came out, (laughs) where Bill and Ted play Twister with the Devil for their souls. But that was the one time that Andy didn’t [go for a plot]. Look, how many other editors can you walk in on and go, “Yeah, Mr. Nebula, he’s a cosmic interior decorator who redoes your planet, whether you want him to or not”? How many other editors are going to go, “Good idea. Run with it”? (laughs) “Oh, yeah. He wears a big Galactus helmet, but it’s wicker!” (laughs) “Okay.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Andy was a major part of the book, obviously. Not only in defending us, but seeing through the flak that hit us. And also in curbing some of my more outrageous tendencies. DeMATTEIS: Kevin Maguire got us started, but we had a lot of artists come through there, you know. Between Justice League, Justice League Europe, and Justice League Quarterly, which was always, what, about 40 new issues each year we were doing. You know, the amount of material we were cranking out, and Andy was always

Big Belly Burger

finding new artists and developing them, and nine out

Original Justice League editor Andy Helfer

of ten times, you’d find them sitting in his office drawing

was the inspiration for the icon of this

the damn pages. He could make sure he could get it out of them.

DC Universe fast-food joint. From Formerly Known as the Justice League #1.

GIFFEN: I don’t think people realize how many very

Courtesy of Kevin Boyd.

popular artists broke in on Justice League: Kevin Maguire,

Bart Sears over in Justice League Europe, Adam Hughes was pulled out of the independent market. DeMATTEIS: That’s true, a lot of them. GIFFEN: Oh, yeah! Actually, I maintain we stayed on the book ten issues too long. DeMATTEIS: Yes, I agree. JOHNSON: What brought about you guys leaving the book? Were you burned out? DeMATTEIS: I got burned out first because I was doing Justice League and Justice League Europe and Justice

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League Quarterly. I was also doing a Mister Miracle spinoff and Justice League spinoff miniseries. I did the Martian Manhunter miniseries, and God knows what else. So then, I don’t know, five or six issues into Justice League Europe, I said, “I can’t see both these books any more because I had Justice League coming out of my ears, and Keith continued to do everything right to the end. GIFFEN: My take on it was it reached a point wherein I knew that there were so many more Justice League stories to be told, but there were no more I wanted to tell. DeMATTEIS: The fun of the book for me was that I wouldn’t know what was going on until the little plot that Keith drew. This little mini-comic book would arrive in, I guess it was the mail in those days. GIFFEN: FedEx or the mail, or something. DeMATTEIS: It would always be fun because I would just discover [the story] as I went along. It gave me lots of room to try things that had nothing to do with anything else because I didn’t really know what was happening. But in “Breakdowns” [a multi-parter starting in JLA #53], I remember, with every issue, I had no clue what was happening. I think it crossed over into Justice League Europe, so I’m writing my half of this multi-part classic that went on for, like, 150 parts. GIFFEN: It was disastrous. DeMATTEIS: I had no idea what the story was about and I still can’t tell you what it was about. GIFFEN: I had a basic idea. Andy was building up towards the shift of the teams which was coming. It

Turning Point By Justice League #5, the creative team began to hit their stride.

seems like “Breakdowns” is something I have a vague recollection of because simply my head wasn’t there, my heart wasn’t there, I really wasn’t all that interested in it. I really think around issue #50, we should have taken a

deep bow and left. DeMATTEIS: We did some good stuff after that. I remember the “Aliens’ Night Out” story was right before “Breakdowns.” GIFFEN: Okay, yeah, yeah. Let me go back. I was,

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maybe, up ‘til “Breakdowns” because “Breakdowns”

these stories. And Kevin drew his character right out of

was just a disaster.

the The Omen. He swears he didn’t. To this day, he

DeMATTEIS: I remember, often, there were a lot of new

swears [Max] wasn’t meant to be Sam O’Neill, but I

and different artists coming through and it was right

remember walking in and going, “Look, it’s Sam O’Neill.”

around the time when the Image style was still pretty

(laughs)

hip. And I remember sitting there, trying to understand

DeMATTEIS: It’s all right, Kevin. We know.

the story anyway with a piece of artwork by I don’t

JOHNSON: How about one of my favorite Justice League

remember who, and turning the page every way I

creations, G’nort, the [dog] Green Lantern?

possibly could to try to understand what was drawn on

DeMATTEIS: G’nort is one of my favorites, too. It was

the page because I had no clue. I couldn’t tell what these

one of the rare times I can remember, Keith, that I went

figures were doing. So between being confused by the

out to [a story conference] lunch with you and Andy.

story and being confused by the art, I don’t have really

GIFFEN: I remember G’nort as being yours. You were the

fond memories of that [storyline]. But that’s about the

one who blipped it out at the table.

only thing in all the five years of stuff that we did that I

DeMATTEIS: Maybe so, because we were looking for

have even the most negative feeling about. Everything

some other kind of Green Lantern character who would

else was nothing but fun from the get-go.

be a totally goofy thing. The first thing was someone

GIFFEN: Yeah, I’ll buy that. And there was the occasion-

suggested a sort of dumb Sylvester Stallone and we realized

al stumbling point like. . . the worst point of Justice

we had one, Guy Gardner. I said, “What about someone

League for me was getting to issue #11 of Justice League

like Ed Norton, you know, from The Honeymooners?” And

and realizing next issue was the big “Who is Maxwell

that’s where the G’nort part came from.

Lord?” issue and we didn’t know who he was yet. To

GIFFEN: Again, whenever I think of G’nort, I just think,

make it worse, we’d been dropping hints for issues who

basically, Marc came up with that one and I just sort of ran

Maxwell Lord was. Finally Andy sat down and looked at

with the ball and dropped him in the plot. I remember

me and asked, “Who is Maxwell Lord?” And I was like,

the first time we used him, I did the plot and sat back to

“I have no idea.” We had to sit down and figure it out

find out what the character was and let Marc run with

and go back and fit in every single, little clue.

him. We started getting stuff like “Ring-dingy” in there

DeMATTEIS: As I recall, it was really after that, because

and all of the Ed Norton-isms came through, then he

once we had that whole sort of mystery stuff out of the

became real easy.

way, was when we relaxed even more. We didn’t have

DeMATTEIS: He kind of became, to me, the bastard

any kind of backstory to worry about [after that]. We

child of Ed Norton and Woody Allen. (laughs)

just had the characters to play with and have fun with.

GIFFEN: He kind of became, for me, the epitome of

JOHNSON: What about some of the characters you came

everything I loathed about the super-heroes in one

up with yourselves? How did the idea for Max Lord

package. G’nort is the kind of a guy—you know, I love

come up?

the fact that Superman, he’s got all of these adventures,

GIFFEN: Andy said we needed a motivator and Andy

and he’s saved the world countless times, and he’s gone

came up with the idea that he should [appear to be]

up against just the most evil sons of bitches you’ve ever

manipulative, that we should not be sure whose side he’s

see, but if Lois kisses him on the cheek, he turns into the

on until we had some kind of epiphany down the road.

vulture from the Bugs Bunny cartoon. (Keith laughs like

That was all we knew about him as we started telling

Beaky Buzzard) (laughs) G’nort was pretty much all that.

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JOHNSON: Let’s talk about two characters that have become prominent in the new miniseries, Manga Khan and L-Ron. GIFFEN: Manga Khan was basically my swipe at [former DC president] Jenette Kahn. (laughs) DeMATTEIS: I never even knew that. (laughs) GIFFEN: That’s where it came from. And also, I believe, William Shatner yelling, “Khan!” might have had something to do with it, from that horrifying Star Trek movie. Again, my timing may be off, but I do know it came out of Jenette Kahn. DeMATTEIS: We’re learning so much. GIFFEN: I originally pictured [Manga Khan’s operation as] being the Home Shopping Network, but somewhere along the line, it became this weird barter system, and I think it might have been Marc writing a different story over the top. DeMATTEIS: No, I don’t think so. I think that was what was in the plot, but who the hell knows. All I remember is four or fives pages, the beginning of the book, really before the joke was exposed of what would seem like this very serious Galactus-y kind of character. GIFFEN: And it was also, by the way, a little bit nerve-

1-800-SUPER-FRIENDS

wracking because it is our first run without Kevin. Steve

Page 3 from issue #1 of Formerly Known as the Justice League #1.

Leialoha came on board to help out.

Courtesy of Kevin Boyd.

DeMATTEIS: Yeah. And so I’m thinking, “Okay, we’ve got this kind of Galactus thing,” and so I decided we had

to kind of do a Stan Lee parody, so then the captions got very dramatic and of course that’s where the whole Manga Khan character came up. He was making this way, sort

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DeMATTEIS: That’s right. That’s very much like that

of mid-Sixties, Stan Lee impassioned, long speeches.

character. I never thought of that before. I love that.

Now, I’m a big fan of Stan Lee and passionate, long

I’d write a monthly G’nort series if I could. (laughs)

speeches, but it’s great fun to make fun of him, too.

GIFFEN: I don’t think I could handle that.

And this, of course, being Justice League, everyone

DeMATTEIS: I remember having a conversation with

around [Manga Khan] was aware of the fact that he

[former DC group editor] Mike Gold, saying I wanted

did this and it annoyed everybody.

to do a Dark G’nort book.(laughs) Instead of Dark Knight,

GIFFEN: L-Ron came pretty much out of the dialogue.

Dark G’nort. No one went for that. I think they thought

I know for a fact that L-Ron was something I just picked

I was making a joke, but I was dead serious. (laughs)

up the ball and ran with.

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DeMATTEIS: But I loved Manga. Manga Khan is back in the miniseries, and I had so much fun with him. Now he’s on medication, so it helps him a little bit. JOHNSON: In your original Justice League, you can see little jabs here and there, like you were taking shots at Marvel. GIFFEN: I never went out to say, “Today I’m going to parody Captain America.” I thought General Glory and Ernie were cool characters. DeMATTEIS: Yeah. It just kind of happened naturally because we grew up immersed in that material. To this day, I still revere Stan Lee, so there was not an iota of anything negative in what we were doing. We were just having fun. It was something that happened organically. GIFFEN: You see something in there and all of these people are saying, “Oh, they’re making fun of the Silver Surfer with the Scarlet Skier.” Kind of, yeah, but it was never, “Okay, this year we’ll parody the Silver Surfer.” I never saw such things as a parody. DeMATTEIS: No, I never did either. I totally believed those characters. In a parody book, they’re caricatures.

Stan the Man’s Flash

I thought of them as three-dimensional, full-blooded

From Just Imagine: Stan Lee

characters.

Creating The Flash. This Maguire-

GIFFEN: I’m going to sound rather egotistical here, but

penciled page was lost during

I think the pets of the Justice League—General Glory’s

shipping and inked from a

dog and Power Girl’s cat—have more personality than

photocopy, but the original

the average super-hero in his own book, especially

was later located.

Power Girl’s cat.

Courtesy of Larry Shell.

DeMATTEIS: What ever happened to that Power Girl’s

cat spinoff book that we were going to do? GIFFEN: I don’t know. They took one look at it and went, “Eeyahh, no.” (laughs) JOHNSON: I guess “taking shots” is the wrong term, but you guys were just kind of having fun with the characters. DeMATTEIS: Anyone that stepped into that book was going to be treated that way. I loved when we used Hawkman, because he totally didn’t get it. He was the ultimate straight man, because he had no sense of humor. But we weren’t making fun of Hawkman. That was what

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his character was and it really made sense that in the context of these other idiots, that this is the way he would react. GIFFEN: No, I thought that the Hawkman-Shiera relationship there was probably the closest to real married life. She was getting it [the joke] and she loved the fact that her husband wasn’t. DeMATTEIS: Yeah. GIFFEN: We had basically put in this unwritten deal and that was if the character walks into our book, we’re going to have some fun with the character. But when we return the character to you, when they leave the JLI Embassy, we will return them to you in the same condition you gave them to us in. We will not disrespect the characters. And I don’t think we ever did. JOHNSON: You won’t scratch them up, or ding them up. You’ll return them in the same condition as you got them. DeMATTEIS: We’re not going to do anything like warp their origin, or totally transform their psychology. GIFFEN: Or make fun of them so badly that they can not be taken seriously at all. DeMATTEIS: And we never did that. (laughs) Other people may disagree with us, but we don’t think we did. GIFFEN: I don’t think we did. I approached all the stuff we did with affection. I liked these characters. I really liked Fire and Ice and Guy Gardner. And in the current series, I think Sue Dibny [wife of the Elongated Man] is the breakaway character. DeMATTEIS: Yeah. She’s more developed in this series than she’s ever been. GIFFEN: It’s just a matter of getting into the characters’ heads and figuring out who they are. Too many superhero books, they’re so busy rushing toward the big fight that everything else falls by the wayside. You have no idea how much I keep trying to put off the big fight. Now when they get there, once they start fighting— DeMATTEIS: That’s when I go to sleep. GIFFEN: Yeah. (laughs) DeMATTEIS: I always give [Keith], at least, minimum,

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minimum 50 percent of the credit for the writing, and probably 75 percent is more like it. But just in setting

GIFFEN: That last little caption, below Mary Marvel’s

up the relationships, in seeing things in these characters

foot. . .

in the way that they relate to each other that no one

DeMATTEIS: No, they didn’t yank that out. That was

else ever sees. And they’re totally natural, and totally

self-censorship.

real, and I go, “Oh, I understand that! Now I can start

GIFFEN: (shocked) You took it out?

to play with it,” and that’s the great fun of it. I don’t

DeMATTEIS: Yes, I took it out.

have to do a lot of thinking. Keith thinks (laughs) and I just go.

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DeMATTEIS: Forget it. I don’t even want to get into what

DeMATTEIS: But it is thinking, it’s intuitive thinking.

the joke was. Sometimes, I spend more time working on

You’re looking at these characters and you’re seeing

a credit gag than dialoguing the issue.

things that other people haven’t seen and putting it on

JOHNSON: Now you’ve got my curiosity up.

the page and I get to go, “Oh, cool.”

•

GIFFEN: I was going to send you a bottle of champagne if that had seen print.

GIFFEN: I’ve never really heard it called that before. . .

2 0

DeMATTEIS: They did?

DeMATTEIS: I remember when Andy, sometimes, would

GIFFEN: I just see them as characters, instead of just

change some of the jokes in the credit because I would

seeing them as costumes. I like Ted and Beatriz a lot

spend hours working for nothing but gags in the credits.

more than I like [Blue] Beetle and Fire.

And in the first issue of Formerly, I was making a lot of

JOHNSON: It’s very interesting that you refer to the

fun of us. And in the couple of last lines, I turned it into

characters by their real names and not their costumed

something else and it really ended up I wasn’t just

names, and I think makes them realistic on the page.

making fun of us, I was making fun of another creator

GIFFEN: It just makes sense to me. I don’t think if

by doing this gag, which was not meant in a mean way.

you’re wearing a costume, I can’t see you walking up

But the way it read was as if I was making fun of this

to somebody and going, (cheerfully) “Hi, I’m the Crimson

other guy, and I have no qualms about making fun of

Avenger.” It would stick in your throat. You know, it’s

us as a bunch of tired old hacks who kind of resurrect

kind of like a session with another costumed guy, you

our former glory. But I felt really bad doing it about

walk up and go “Hi, I’m Jim.” (to Marc) By the way,

somebody else and I took it out.

did you put the “Richard Willing” gag in?

JOHNSON: How did Formerly Known As the Justice

DeMATTEIS: I did. I think I changed his last name.

League come about?

GIFFEN: Okay.

GIFFEN: I didn’t generate the idea. I had been asked

DeMATTEIS: I think he became “Richard Hertz.” I went

more than once if I was interested in going back, and

back to my old junior high school days.

trying to lead the characters, and I always turned it down

GIFFEN: The guy we’re talking about is basically a guy

because I didn’t want to go back and just do the same

who introduces himself to the Justice League as, “Hi.

thing over again. I bore easy.

Richard. Richard Willing. My friends call me ‘Dick.’” Now,

DeMATTEIS: Wasn’t there one point where we were

it’s “Dick Hertz.” (laughs) I’m wondering if it’ll get through.

going to do something [with the Justice League]

By the way, there was one bit of censorship in the first

because Andy wanted to do it?

issue of [Formerly Known as the] Justice League, and it

GIFFEN: I couldn’t get a handle on it.

wasn’t my fault. They yanked out your credit box.

DeMATTEIS: But also, I recall DC wasn’t that interested.

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GIFFEN: Well, not actually. DC would have let us do it [then], but DC wasn’t interested this time. Nobody at DC thought this was going to sell. I got that from somebody at DC who told me that who should know. They all thought, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll get these two old, crotchety bastards a shot at it and it’ll go away.” Which I can understand; it’s not like they have some kind of track record to reference. Nobody thought it was going to sell. And finally, Dan Raspler was responsible for Formerly Known as the Justice League. I give Dan Raspler full credit because he was the guy that sat me down and said, “You guys, you’ve got to go back and do it. You’ve got to find a way to making this work.” And I think I sat down and said, “We’re going to do 1-800-SUPER-FRIENDS.” (laughs) “You can’t use Super Friends!” “Why not?” “We might have plans for Super Friends. We might want to turn it into a successful franchise.” “Hey, too late! We already did it!” (laughs) Everything just fell into place, and a new angle came up because I wasn’t interested in going back to the characters and replaying old gags. Beetle with a heart condition—at first I was pissed off, but now I thank Chuck Dixon for throwing that in the mix. DeMATTEIS: Except it’s a running gag that’s still running in the second issue. GIFFEN: (laughs) Yeah, exactly. And Booster married to Maris. I guess once I realized that, I could do something kind of different with the characters, have a little bit of fun, and it’s not going back and tilling the same old

Seems Like Old Times

ground.

Cover art to Formerly Known as

DeMATTEIS: Right. GIFFEN: Everything else just fell into place. DeMATTEIS: And basically, Raspler just called me up

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and said, “You want to do this?” And I went, “Yeah.”

embarrassed and hope that these guys would have stayed

That was the extent of the drama, for me.

in retirement. But it didn’t turn out that way. The ridicu-

JOHNSON: The response has been very good. I know

lous thing was, it’s almost scary how quickly we fell back

at my local store, it seems to be selling well there.

into the old rhythms and just rolled along.

DeMATTEIS: It has been very good. It’s surprisingly

GIFFEN: You call it “rhythms,” I call them “bad habits.”

good because a lot people that didn’t even read the

(laughs)

book the first time around are picking it up and they

JOHNSON: The last thing I want to ask about is the next

get it.

miniseries, I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League.

GIFFEN: What’s amazing, too, is that we pulled a hat

You said that you were able to use the “Hell” plotline that

trick. The first reason is it not only sold out, but sold

was originally shot down. But what else can the fans

through. I mean, you think about it, all comics sell out

expect to see in this one?

because they print for the direct-sales market. But selling

DeMATTEIS: Guy Gardner.

through, blowing out of stores and the first issue showing

JOHNSON: Guy Gardner’s good.

up on eBay for ten bucks a book. And then Wizard getting

GIFFEN: He’s just the most requested, demanded—

behind it. These guys didn’t even know our names.

DeMATTEIS: Oh, and I have to say, and I’ll give most of

JOHNSON: You’re kidding me. I kind of find it hard

my credit or blame to Keith, Guy is more disgusting and

that Wizard wouldn’t even know who you guys are.

despicable than ever, although at the same time, more

DeMATTEIS: I think he’s overstating something to

vulnerable than we’ve ever seen him. I mean a really

make a point.

repulsive, repulsive Guy Gardner, and yet we see aspects

GIFFEN: I’m sure if you said, “Keith Giffen” [to Wizard],

of him that we’ve never really seen before.

they’ll go, “Uhhhhhh... Yeah, didn’t he used to do

GIFFEN: Yeah, he actually crosses the line in this one, I

comics?” We’re not the red-hot, super-top-ten creator

think. Yeah, he does something that even when I put it

guys, and they responded so well to this. I get calls from

down in the plot, I thought, “Boy, maybe I should take

Wizard, every so often, just to tell me how much they

this out.” But I think you’re right, there’s a vulnerability

love the latest issue. I don’t know if you know this, Marc,

to him, but it’s Guy. It’s not that tattooed meathead that’s

but we’re the sweetheart of Wizard editorial.

been walking around calling himself “Guy.” It’s Guy with

DeMATTEIS: Well, I had someone send me a recent issue because there was an article about this and the book I’m

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doing at CrossGen. I was flipping through the book and

JOHNSON: Cool.

there were, in different articles, four or five references,

GIFFEN: And Kevin actually managed to come up with

very positive references, on the Justice League book, which

a visual for Guy that captures all of that Moe Howard

I think is interesting.

ambience he had without looking really, really stupid

GIFFEN: Maybe lightning does strike twice. I think the

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the red hair and the power ring, and here he is, and there

and dated.

book is genuine, and we’re having fun doing it.

DeMATTEIS: Actually, I haven’t seen any of the artwork.

DeMATTEIS: I was concerned, going in. You know, could

GIFFEN: Oh, he’s worked the haircut around to the

we do this again? And should we do this again? As much

point where he looks really kick-ass effective. He doesn’t

as I really wanted to work with Keith and Kevin again, my

even need a costume.

nightmare was these television reunion movies, like

DeMATTEIS: Oh, good.

Return to Mayberry or The Brady Bunch Grows Up, and are

GIFFEN: And it’s really dynamite-looking stuff. It’s cer-

we doing, essentially, the equivalent of the television

tainly a lot more “out there” than the first one.

reunion movie that you’re going to watch and be really

DeMATTEIS: Yeah, I think it is. It takes them to some

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strange places in the course of this story. GIFFEN: I just like the “Hell” story, and I always wanted

He’s Baaaack!

to do kind of an Authority, dark, alternate kind of place,

Green Lantern Guy Gardner—in

and I found out that I really can’t. It keeps veering off

all his demented glory—returns

into some extraordinarily strange territories.

in this spring’s I Can’t Believe It’s

DeMATTEIS: Keith does not put any filters in place when

Not the Justice League miniseries.

he’s writing.

GIFFEN: In the plot, there is this long conversation where L-Ron had talked Ralph [Dibny, the Elongated Man] into believing his marriage with Sue was bestiality because he’s not quite human. And at one point, Fire is getting all pissed off because at one point, Mary Marvel walks up to her, [asking] “What’s bestiality?” [And Fire goes]

sixth issue. A lot of the old favorites show up—Batman,

(excited) “Here, see? You soiled her!” And it went on and

J’onn [J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter]. And do you know

on and on and on and on. I took that out.

how long I’ve waited to call Wonder Woman a “bitch”?

DeMATTEIS: There were a couple of jokes in the second

I remember Alan Moore doing this story where he likened

series where I kind of went, “Oh, my God! I can’t put

[the Justice League of America] to the “Overpeople,”

this in!” So I have to find something that gets the flavor

removed and on the moon and everyone said, “Oh, how

of this demented, quasi-pornographic humor (laughs)

weird. That’ll never happen.” But that’s pretty much what

without going over the line.

they turned into.

GIFFEN: Yeah, cause we really veer into weird territory.

DeMATTEIS: That’s true.

DeMATTEIS: The second series is a little different, and I

GIFFEN: And I also liked the fact that the scene in #5

think a lot of it has to do with Guy’s presence, because

between Batman and [Martian] Manhunter worked,

he’s far more over the edge than he ever was.

that Batman can speak volumes by leaving an Oreo on

GIFFEN: And he lends a whole different dramatic core

Manhunter’s chair.

to the group because he is such a viciously unlikable

DeMATTEIS: Which, of course, I get the feeling if you’re

character. You know, Booster was the dumb, fun guy

someone who didn’t read the first series, you’re kind of

for the first [miniseries], but Booster pretty much gets

scratching your head but I liked that gag. I thought it

a break in the second one because Guy is back. (laughs)

was great.

DeMATTEIS: And Booster, in the course of the story,

GIFFEN: Yeah, it’s just our way of saying, “We’re going

actually begins to find his missing brain cells and begins

back.” Well, we’ll see what happens. Oh, by the way, the

to get a brain again.

idea to keep changing the name of the series is [editor]

GIFFEN: That was one of my favorite things about the

Mike Carlin’s. I thought that was a really great idea.

way Formerly Known as the Justice League started falling

JOHNSON: Well, say the second miniseries comes out,

together. First of all, the fact that Mary Marvel fit into

it’s a big hit. Any chance of a third Justice League

the Ice role so perfectly. And yet, she wasn’t Ice.

miniseries? (long pause)

DeMATTEIS: Yeah, great character.

GIFFEN: That question is best directed at DC. No comment.

GIFFEN: And also, the Beetle-Booster dynamic—one’s

DeMATTEIS: I will say this: I love working with Keith,

trying to mature and the other one’s going backwards.

and I love working with Kevin, and I will be happy to

DeMATTEIS: Right.

work with them on just about anything.

GIFFEN: And I really think it all came together in the

GIFFEN: The madness will continue. L a u g h i n g

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Remembering the Super-Hero Comic About Nothing:

Artist Kevin Maguire Talks Justice League hnson

by Dan Jo ribed An interview , and transc er 30, 2003 . ob ct O on d is te rr uc o nd M co . by Brian K

In the Mighty Marvel Manner Can you name the Marvel characters that inspired

Justice League #2’s Blue Jay, Wandjina, and Silver Sorceress?

DAN JOHNSON: How did you get involved with the Justice League series back in the ‘80s? KEVIN MAGUIRE: I was a “Romita Raider” [production artist] at Marvel doing art corrections, and Kurt Busiek was trying to get a book launched at DC called Wild Card. Andy Helfer was the editor, and we actually did the first issue. It never was inked. It was just 22 penciled pages,

interview

the project. But upon seeing that, I was offered Silver Surfer at Marvel and on account of that, Andy offered me Justice League. [Marvel editor/writer] Fabian Nicieza, he was one of the keys. He assumed it was going to be Superman, Batman, and Aquaman, and all that. He was, “Oh, you get to do all those characters. That would be such a great thing to do.” JOHNSON: What were your thoughts when you first saw what Keith and Marc were cooking up with the direction of Justice League? MAGUIRE: I felt my career was over. JOHNSON: That’s exactly what they were thinking too.

JL #1 Revisted Kevin combined a number of comics faves in this commissioned drawing. Courtesy of Spencer Beck.

MAGUIRE: When I was waiting for it to come out, I was walking down the street with one of the assistant editors and said, “That’s it, it’s over, man. No one’s going to like this.”

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JOHNSON: What did you think when it became such a big success and such a hit for DC?

MAGUIRE: Well . . . um . . . the word I’m groping for . . . a relief? JOHNSON: One of the things that worked for Justice League was your artwork—the character stances, the facial expressions. At the time, you didn’t get a lot of that in comics. Which artists inspired that? MAGUIRE: When I look back at the first year or so, and I just cower, because being a perfectionist, I look back and there’s, like, “Aw, that’s terrible. It’s terrible, it’s terrible, it’s terrible.” I don’t know that there was one particular artist that was inspiring, beyond Chuck Jones, because it’s all about character animation for me. JOHNSON: As I understand it, originally, Keith did the breakdowns for the pages, right? MAGUIRE: Yeah. JOHNSON: What was the ratio there as far as what Keith said absolutely had to be on the page and what he said, “We’ll let Kevin do this. Let Kevin fill in these pages”? MAGUIRE: Keith didn’t even care. That was just the easy way for Keith to plot, as opposed to actually typing it out. For him, it was ideas of what they were supposed to be doing, and it wasn’t necessarily to guide me along, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Andy Helfer’s thought, me being the new guy. I stuck kind of close to it, but I didn’t have to. There were times when I would completely change it around and it was all very casual, especially on Keith’s part. JOHNSON: What was your take on the working relationship with Keith and Marc? MAGUIRE: There really wasn’t a lot of interaction. It was mostly through Helfer, so everything sort of filtered

Maguire’s Dark Knight

through him. You know, it wasn’t like the three of us were in the same room. There wasn’t any animosity at

A commissioned Batman illustration by Kevin Maguire.

all. It was all good.

Courtesy of Kevin Boyd.

JOHNSON: Why did you eventually leave Justice League?

MAGUIRE: Because I’m not a monthly guy.

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JOHNSON: I think you definitely left an impression on the book, and I think, for the longest time there, until the time that Keith and Marc left, it seemed like a lot of the artists were trying to copy that feel. MAGUIRE: That’s flattering. I honestly didn’t pay too much attention after I left, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Andy was sort of trying to create a sense of consistency, as opposed to, like, going to a [radically different] Bill Sienkiewicz style, or something. Then maybe a lot of it had to do with the way Keith plots, where they all get the layouts. So maybe there’s some consistency there. JOHNSON: How did you come to be involved with Formerly Known as the Justice League? MAGUIRE: Just a random call from Dan Raspler, saying, “I was talking to Keith, and talking to Marc, and they said they’d be up to it if you’d be up for it.” I was supposed to do this miniseries at Marvel, but the writer just, for like, literally months, was not handing in a plot. And I’m sitting around waiting for something to do and I just called Raspler and I said, “You

Fastest Girl Alive

know, if you can get this together in the next couple

An inked page from Just Imagine: Stan Lee

of weeks, I’m on because I have nothing to do.” So he

Creating The Flash. Courtesy of Larry Shell.

called Keith, and being the machine that Keith is, he

knew what he was going to do and he just knocked it out. It took off kind of quickly. JOHNSON: It seems like you guys had just picked up where you left off at. MAGUIRE: Or either that we just haven’t grown at all. JOHNSON: In talking with Keith, he absolutely refused to call any of the characters by their super-hero names and always referred to them by their first names, or real names. I think that shows a comfort with the characters, and an ability to kind of draw things out from those characters that a lot of other writers couldn’t do. Was this a project you were comfortable coming back to after all these years?

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Star-Spangled Sentinel One of Maguire’s post-Justice League projects was the 1991-1992 Marvel miniseries, The Adventures of Captain America. From issue #1, with inks by Terry Austin. Courtesy of Steve Donnelly. © 2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Maguire’s First Return to JLA Before Formerly Known as the Justice League, Kevin teamed with writer Fabian Nicieza on the two-issue “Elseworlds” series, JLA: Created Equal (2000). Courtesy of Heritage Comics. © 2004 DC Comics.

MAGUIRE: Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah, you know, it’s fun.

MAGUIRE: So, you know, now we have Dr. Smith back.

I mean, it’s like every page is its own individual challenge.

JOHNSON: If DC is smart—and hopefully, they will

It’s a piece of cake coming back to it.

be—and they realize that there is a demand for a third

JOHNSON: What can you tell me about the upcoming

miniseries, would you be back on board for that?

miniseries, I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League?

MAGUIRE: As long as it’s set in outer space. I don’t

MAGUIRE: Just two words: Guy Gardner. Not having

want to draw any more strip malls. Yeah, put ‘em on a

him in this group is kind of like Lost in Space without

cosmic odyssey. Send them away on a space mission,

Dr. Smith.

let them deal with all of DC’s space characters. We’ll see.

JOHNSON: Interesting analogy.

Who knows?

the Remembering the Nothing: Super-Hero Comic About Nothing:

Series Editor Andy Helfer Talks Justice League an Johnson

interview

by D transcribed An interview 2003, and December 1, on . d is te rr uc o cond .M by Brian K

DAN JOHNSON: According to Keith, Marc, and Kevin, you were more than just the editor on Justice League. The consensus seems to be that if it had not been for you, there would not have been a Justice League. Keith and Marc also mentioned that you really helped keep a lot of the early negativity away from them. For example, Keith, Marc, and Kevin were all convinced that once the book came out, they were going to be shown the door at DC Comics.

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ANDY HELFER: I suppose the thing that occurred to me at the time was that everything DC was producing, the words “grim and gritty” were all pervasive at DC. The Dark Knight, coupled with Watchmen, brought in this whole grim and gritty [movement]. My feeling was that everything that came after [those books] had the same tone. You’re always looking for a way to make your thing stand apart from the other stuff. One of the things I had been doing was Justice League of America with Gerry Conway, and then DeMatteis wrote the last few issues when Conway quit to do television work. I was not happy with [the book] because it was grim and gritty. We didn’t have our hearts in it. There’s a very thin line between “grim and gritty” and “stupid,” and I think we stepped over that line a couple of times. It occurred to me that the super-heroes were kind of a fraternity, and it occurred to me that super-heroes had

Andy Helfer

images to uphold to the world. But what about when

This Kevin Maguire-drawn

they’re just with each other? Do they let their hair down?

caricature of editor Helfer saw print

Do they take their masks off? Do they act like normal

in the 1989 trade paperback,

people with all the silliness and stupidness? I thought,

Justice League: A New Beginning.

“Yes.” Being a super-hero was a pretty big responsibility. It’s like being a movie star, you have to act a certain way in public, but when you’re in private, you can do what the hell you want to do. What I was interested in doing was trying to figure out the dynamics and get to the point where you had a group of heroes who would be just normal people, except for the costumes and powers. I talked to Keith about it and he tried to write the first issue, and it just came out a little stilted. So I called up Marc and I said, “Marc, I know you can be funny, I want you to be funny.” Marc was very reluctant to do that, he felt he couldn’t do it. He didn’t think he could pull it off, but he did.

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JOHNSON: What was DC’s reaction when you presented this to them? HELFER: Comics is basically throwing Jell-O against the wall. In mainstream comics, you throw Jell-O against the wall, and see if it sticks. That’s what the job is. You’re throwing different flavors of Jell-O against the wall and

argue about, then they want it. People were really pre-

if the cherry Jell-O sticks, then you say, “Okay, the cherry

disposed against it internally, and when it started coming

Jell-O is sticking. So keep on throwing cherry Jell-O. Don’t

out, externally. Back in the day, when you would get 20

throw any other kind of Jell-O because the cherry Jell-O

pieces of mail a day, we would get a lot of hate mail. I

is sticking.” Now the cherry Jell-O sticks once, or twice,

think a book like this succeeded despite the beliefs, or

or three times; there’s nothing inherent in the cherry

wishes, of many people. I don’t think it was a book that

Jell-O that makes it stick. But that’s something that catches

was seen as being in the DC mode.

the eye and the mind of people in the business. They

JOHNSON: When do you think things started turning

hook onto the cherry, and Justice League was not cherry

around for the book?

Jell-O. This was tapioca pudding, and they did not think

HELFER: I think it was fairly quickly. If my memory serves,

it would stick. I worked on the book as long as I could

the sales of the book had bottomed out with the second

in secret and I suppose, on some level, and this is prob-

or third issue. With either the third or fourth issue,

ably hearsay, or maybe the truth, I probably held on to

the numbers started rising, and that’s rare. Frankly, it’s

things long enough that there really wasn’t much of a

all but impossible to see that today. Books do not rise

choice once I showed the book to people. It was too close

[in sales] after the second or third issue. I guess it was

to release to say, “Trash it and start again.”

DC’s best selling book for two or three years, perhaps

I know that people at DC were not happy with it—it was a risk. The thing that I had the most difficult time

even more. [Sales] started coming up very quickly, so we knew it was good then.

convincing people was that it was different than some-

The other thing you know its doing well is when people

thing like Ambush Bug, which mocked the whole idea of

start asking you to do another book just like it. One of

super-heroes. This was not disrespectful towards super-

the reasons the book stayed good for as long as it did is

heroes, I don’t think. It provided a humanity to the heroes

that I resisted the request to add books to the franchise

that perhaps was not really explored before and it pre-

for a long time, like two years. Ultimately, I knew this

sented them in a human light, which I think people liked.

couldn’t be a franchise because it would exhaust the

On the other hand, I also think people hated it. The thing

people that were doing it. I tried for the longest time to

is, you can either love something or hate something.

do a Blue and Gold [Blue Beetle and Booster Gold] series

Those are two very good reactions, because as a publisher,

and I just couldn’t make it work. DC wanted a Blue and

“love” or “hate” are two things that people buy. What

Gold book, but I resisted it because I felt, in the end, a

people don’t buy is “bored.” If it’s something they can

Blue and Gold series would only hurt the main book.

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Really, Justice League was something unique to Keith and Marc, and to a slight degree Kevin. As long we kept that a secret, that it was unique to them, the book would prosper, but once you started putting out the stuff that wasn’t as good, you ran into problems. It was hard to keep the quality up. JOHNSON: Something will have to give. You can only dilute what you have just so far. HELFER: The first person to take off, at least partially, was Marc [on Justice League Europe]. We got Gerry Jones [to replace him]. Gerry, who I will say is the best manga translator in the United States, I think he does a great job on the Dragonball books, he does a great job with that, but he wasn’t Marc. Marc would just ramble. He would just write, and write, and write. If you published all of Marc’s dialogue, Kevin would have the easiest job in the world because he never would have to draw anything, it would all just be dialogue. One of the things I did was I edited by taking out. I would say, 30 to 40 percent of the dialogue of every page, I would edit it out. That’s a broad estimate, but at least 20, up to 40. Because of that, I think you got the best gags. In the new series, there is so much dialogue because the editors did not edit, not knowing I cut so much of [Marc’s] stuff out, they just left it all there. [Justice League letterer] Bob Lappan made all of Marc’s dialogue fit. He’s a good letterer and a smart letterer. Bob was the “unknown” editor of this book. On occasion, Bob would often feel as if the wrong word was used in a situation. What he would do is, in the margin, outside the art area, he would letter the word that he thought was the right word. If you wanted to use it, you could stat it and paste it over the word that Marc did use. I would say nine times out of ten, that [suggested] word was the right

Madcap JLA The wacky JL creative team drives Helfer

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of preference for me because he has a very unique let-

to insanity in this illo (right), featuring former JL

tering style. [Also], back then you had to hand-letter

assistant editor Kevin Dooley as Andy’s keeper.

everything in, it was surprising how few letterers actually

Courtesy of Adam Hughes.

read the books. Bob was very diligent and he was another

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word. I used Bob for many years. He was the letterer

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pair of eyes before the book went out. I always appre-

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ciated him. I’ve worked with letterers who changed scripts

Ouch! Batman has had enough of Guy Gardner’s lip. From September 1987’s Justice League #5.

and letterers who left out things, it ran the whole gamut. In my experience, he was the only letterer who really read the book.

JOHNSON: You mentioned the reaction you got from the fans, the numerous hate letters, but what about the other editors at DC? I’ve heard that some editors were reluctant to let Keith and Marc play around with their characters. HELFER: I remember a couple of things. One, we had to get rid of Shazam [Captain Marvel]. . . JOHNSON: You only had him for the first six issues. HELFER: Yeah, and that was some kind of contractual thing. I don’t remember what it was. As far as Superman goes, we used Superman every once in a blue moon. The only character I really every had any real problem with was Batman. I always felt that I never made Batman look like anything other than Batman. You could say, “Well, Batman wouldn’t be there.” You could say that, but the job is to be there. How you act once you’re there, that’s what’s true to the character or not true to the character. If [you’re Batman] and someone flicks your bat ears, that’s okay. But if you flick your bat ears, that’s not okay. He was the straight man in the silly situations.

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We had a lot of problems with

this character out of the book, I’m not going to do him anymore.”

Batman in terms

Then Justice League came and I told Keith, “Keith, I got

of his presence.

a character for you, Guy Gardner! He’s a Green Lantern,

There were friendly arguments between Denny [O’Neil]

but Steve doesn’t want him, so let’s use him.” So we

and me. I always thought Batman was important because

worked him in and he became the hit of the book. By

he was one of the big guys. And we wanted to have

the fifth issue, I was getting calls from Englehart saying

that fight with Guy Gardner and Batman. I think that

he wanted the character back. I told him, “You can’t just

fight between Batman and Guy Gardner, that one panel

have him back. You gave him up.” [Steve said], “But I

fight, was where [the book] really took off. That one gag

want him, I created him.” I said, “Nah, you didn’t create

just got the audience crazy, I don’t know why.

him and you didn’t want him.” That was the beginning of

If there is one thing I have done, it’s the Guy Gardner

my arguments with Steve Englehart, but that was that. [Guy]

character, pushing for that character. Guy Gardner comes

was the star of Justice League, I think. He’s a character

from Green Lantern and he had been in a coma for 20

who was unique to the book. An asshole in the real world

years’ worth of books when I was doing Green Lantern

is just an asshole. But an asshole among this particular

with [writer] Steve Englehart. I said [to Englehart], “Let’s

group of characters makes for an interesting thing.

bring Guy Gardner back, only lets bring him back as a

JOHNSON: Keith and Marc had described the book as

nut. Let’s bring him back as some kind of guy with

having been made up of characters like that, super-heroes

delusions, because he’s been in a coma for twenty years.”

that no one else was doing or wanted to do at that time

Steve reluctantly brought him back and I thought there

(but which they really were able to tap into and just do

was a great character there. He wasn’t the Punisher and

some great material with).

he wasn’t Superman, he was his own character. So I

HELFER: The whole point was to avoid, with the

pushed Steve to do it, and Steve didn’t want to do it,

exception of Batman, conflict with people. We didn’t

he hated the character. I remember I would say to him,

want to have a lot of, “Yeah, you can use him, but

“Steve, I don’t care what you do, I just want him in

what are you going to do with him?” We didn’t want to

every issue.” So Steve would do a one page scene with

get into the whole continuity thing. It was just too

the character and I would put him on the cover. [Steve]

stifling. It still is. With the exception of Batman, there

would get pissed with me and finally he said, “I want

was no question about anything.

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No, That’s Not Sylvester Stallone When the Plastic Man animated series (see sidebar) was syndicated in the early 1980s, 130 live-action intros, inter-show shots, and outros were filmed with this unidentified actor in the red stretchy tights. Photo courtesy of Andy Mangels.

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i wan t my.. . .. . y m t i wan

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Michael E

ury

In 1990, DC Comics’ then-president Jenette Kahn announced to the DC editorial staff (of which I was a member) that Plastic Man was in development as a movie. Cinema giant Warner Bros. had recently replaced Warner Publishing as DC’s parent company, and the ink was still drying on the Time-Warner merger. DC was now deemed, by Kahn’s own admission, the WB’s “garden” of film and television ideas, as evidenced by director Tim Burton’s blockbuster movie Batman (1989) and the CBS-TV weekly drama, The Flash (1990–1991). That came as no surprise to the editors. What was shocking, at least for me, was Jenette’s revelation that Paul Reubens—better known as Pee-wee Herman—was being considered for the role of Plastic Man. “He’s too short,” scoffed one editor. “He’s Pee-wee, not Plastic Man!” chimed another. Most of the editors liked Reubens as Pee-wee, but thought he was wrong for a super-hero, even a goofy one (although he did play The Spleen in 1999’s super-hero satire Mystery Men). I recommended Jim Carrey as Plas, drawing blank stares from most of my colleagues. When I identified Carrey as “the white guy from In Living Color,” the proverbial light bulb of recognition was switched on, and some of the editors in this pre-Ace Ventura/The Mask/Dumb and Dumber reality nodded in agreement. Sure, Reubens boasted the Pee-wee clout at the time, but Carrey, who had been performing comical acts of contortionism on the standup circuit for years, had the rubbery body and face to truly become the “Pliable Pretzel” even without the benefit of special effects (the guy used to dislocate his shoulder and let his arm wag loosely on stage!). But the WB was banking on Reubens.

PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE

Springing onto Saturday Morning TV His amorphous antics made Plas an animated

Screenwriter Charles Gale (whose credits include 1991’s Ernest Scared Stupid,

hit in 1979 in The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure

starring Jim Varney, another malleable madman who could have pulled off the

Show. Courtesy of Andy Mangels.

Plastic Man role), completed a second draft of his screenplay for Plastic Man on

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February 16, 1989. Set in 1941, before America’s involvement in World War II, Gale’s Plastic Man introduces ne’er-do-well mechanic, Neil “Eel” O’Brien, who works by day in a garage owned by mobster Ace Morgan and by night as one of Morgan’s thugs. Mrs. Rafferty, who runs the boarding house where O’Brien lives, knew Eel’s late mother and has faith that he will one day realize his potential, despite the protestations of other tenants, fearful of his rumored criminal tendencies. O’Brien’s girlfriend, Cookie Williams, is a chanteuse in a swing club and regards Eel as a loser, dumping him for a sophisticate named Peter Roepell, who has promised to make her a star. Eel doesn’t trust Roepell, and is convinced this guy is no good. As if Eel has any right to judge. Late that night, O’Brien and his fellow

mechanics Nickels and Tonto pull a heist for Morgan, robbing a pharmacy’s safe. Eel, wearing tinted goggles, drills into the safe but inadvertently ignites some experimental chemicals and is swallowed in a “ball of fire and smoke.” His clothes are tattered, revealing red long johns underneath that are, like Eel himself, doused in a chemical bath from the explosion. The crooks vamoose, and when Eel awakens the next morning, he’s in for a surprise. His fingers are limp like “an empty glove.” A series of slapstick scenes follow where stymied O’Brien’s wrist plops, his arm oozes, and his neck elongates, with observers narrowly missing each episode. Eel returns to the scene of his crime for help. Pharmacist William Ogilvie, a German defector, is incensed upon discovering the thief responsible for trashing his lab the previous night, and is then intrigued when he spies Eel’s supple condition. The solution responsible for O’Brien’s metamorphosis, created by Ogilvie in a top-secret experiment for the United States Army, is a synthetic rubber. Ogilvie becomes Eel’s mentor, keeping the elastic man within arm’s reach (and studying his pliable properties) while frequently providing a voice of altruism to the mechanic/crook from the wrong side of the tracks. O’Brien ultimately makes his first public appearance in his now-stretchable red underwear and goggles to rescue—now here’s an original idea—a baby who

I Know You’re Plastic, But What Am I?

has crawled onto an eighth-floor ledge. Onlookers gasp stereotypically:

Paul Reubens, at the height of his Pee-wee’s Playhouse popularity, was pegged as Plas by Warner Bros.

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SPECTATORS

Look at that guy! . . . How does he do that?

. . . It’s impossible! . . .It’s like he’s some

sort of---plastic man!

A reporter is on the scene, who exclaims:

Holy moley!

REPORTER

I’ve just stumbled on the biggest

story of the century!

As Plastic Man, Eel stretches to the baby’s rescue, gets a kiss on the cheek from the child’s grateful mother, and earns his first headline: “Plastic Man Saves Infant!” Plastic Man springs briskly from that point, with Eel reluctantly protecting Ogilvie and two other German defectors (who are also creating weapons for the U.S.) from a band of Nazi spies led by—surprise!—none other than Roepell. Suspicions confirmed, Eel! O’Brien now has to save his estranged girlfriend from an Axis antagonist—which he does, finally accepting (to one of the German scientists) his fantastic fate:

EEL

The way I look at it, the world kinda

needs a Plastic Man. And anyway, ya were

right, there’s some things about being

plastic that are a lot of fun.

Gale’s screenplay is serviceable, and well crafted, but despite clever displays of Plastic Man’s powers (Plas as an awning, Plas splattered flat against a wall, and, of course, Plas as a fire hydrant, effects that were probably beyond the scope of filmmakers of the time), the script is pedestrian, reading like a Disney Channel telefilm. The characters are stereotyped and, well, plastic: Roepell has a pet snake, Cookie spouts hackneyed “Joisey”-speak, and Eel O’Brien is flat and tiresome— way too dull to be a super-hero, but played too straight for super-hero satire. The title page of Gale’s screenplay acknowledges, “Based on Characters Created by Jack Cole.” That should have read “Character,” as the Cole-created Plastic Man supporting cast—rotund sidekick Woozy Winks and FBI Chief

Live-Action Plas

Branner—is nowhere to be found. Nor is the frenetic mobster-turned-oddball

Toronto actor Jason Allin stretches his

super-hero immortalized in 1940s’ issues of Quality Comics’ Police Comics and

acting chops as Plas on his ultra-fun

Plastic Man by Cole and Cole imitators Alex Kotzky and John Spranger (and

Plastic Man site: www.plasticman.ca/.

reprinted chronologically in DC’s wonderful Plastic Man Archives series). Cole’s

Image courtesy of Jason Allin.

all in one package. Gale’s Plastic Man simply has no bounce.

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But it wasn’t the script that ultimately deflated Gale’s Plastic Man. On July 26, 1991, Sarasota, Florida, police arrested Paul Reubens in an adult theater for allegedly exposing himself. Reubens later bargained with authorities and, after performing public-service announcements as community-service penance, his record was wiped clean. The media backlash surrounding his arrest, however, fueled the quick and painful demise of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and Plastic Man, the movie, also quietly melted into oblivion.

THE MATRIX MAKERS TAKE A SHOT Just a few weeks before Reubens’ arrest, on July 3, 1991, director James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day opened in the United States. Moviegoers were dazzled by actress Linda “Sarah Connors” Hamilton’s perfectly chiseled biceps. Equally amazing were the then-revolutionary, computer-generated morphing effects of Robert Patrick’s T-1000 character. T-1000 oozed, dripped, and bubbled—just like Plastic Man! These SFX came with quite a price tag: T2 was Hollywood’s first movie to cost $100 million to produce (star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s take was a “mere” $15 mil, by the way). But as with any new technology, improvements were made and costs diminished within a few short years. Enter sibling neo-scribes Larry and Andy Wachowski, who, on March 17, 1995, submitted to Warner Bros. their screenplay titled Plastic Man. At

“The Hamsters of Doom”. . . . . .one of several Plas tales reprinted in this DC “lost” Plastic Man Annual, published in late November 2003.

the time, the Wachowskis’ first film, the Sylvester Stallone/Antonio Banderas vehicle Assassins, was months away from its October 6, 1995 U.S. release, and the movie that would put them on the map—The Matrix—was years from realization. This Plastic Man script is marvelous. With the opening scene, the Wachowskis’

flair for captivating imagery and evocative descriptions instantly grasps the reader (viewer) by the neck and refuses to let go:

INT. CAGE

We are a lab mouse. Our world is a cage; the laboratory beyond the wire

mesh has the sprawling limitlessness of a universe

with dark endless voids and immense technological

instruments gleaming with celestial light.

The Wachowskis’ screenplay transforms DC Comics’ Eel O’Brien, gangster, into Daniel “Eel” (although he’s never called that nickname outside of his introductory description) O’Brien, “an environmentalist, almost like an Earth First-er type guy,” Larry Wachowski revealed to radio program Movie Poop Shoot reporter

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Josh Horowitz in an October 1996 interview. When we first see O’Brien, he has just been freed from prison and is reunited with former girlfriend Dr. Susan Bright, a scientist who has created a process to polymerize organic and inorganic matter, including the caged rodent from the

Box Office

Bounce

as political polar opposites. In an early scene, O’Brien forces an altercation with a

What if a Plastic Man movie had been produced decades ago? Z Who would have been tapped to ht star? Z Here’s a look at what mig : have been (and what still may be)

litterbug he passes:

1940s

opening. Bright is in the employ of chemical king Icarus Argon, a former bodybuilder who’s been reduced to a withered husk, and his self-absorbed trophy bride Poppy (picture Paris Hilton, all grown up and married). Through their actions and exposition, O’Brien and Argon are deftly characterized

LITTERBUG Look, asshole, I don’t got time for this.

Z Bud Abbott as Plastic Man Z Lou Costello as Woozy Winks

If you got a problem, you

better take care of it yourself. O’BRIEN

Oh no, no, no.

No can do.

You

enjoyed a tasty beverage and thus

this receptacle becomes your

1950s Z James Stewart as Plastic Man Z Ernest Borgnine as Woozy Winks

1960s

responsibility and I don’t care if

Z Don Knotts as Plastic Man Z Buddy Hackett as Woozy Winks

Valdez! You’ve got to learn to take

1970s

it’s a Styrofoam cup or the Exxon responsibility!

LITTERBUG

What are you going to do? Make me

throw it out?

O’BRIEN

I’ll do whatever I have to do. O’Brien gets the crap kicked out of him, but before long sneaks into Argon’s lab to sabotage his girlfriend’s project, and is caught by Argon’s goons. Argon himself decides to test Dr. Bright’s polymerization solution on a human subject—O’Brien—

ARGON

For every environmentalist, anti-

industrialist, animal activist that has shoved their myopic,

protectionist cause-of-the-month

crap down my throat, I shove this

Z Burt Reynolds as Plastic Man Z Dom DeLuise as Woozy Winks

1980s Z Steve Martin as Plastic Man Z John Candy as Woozy Winks

1990s Z Jim Carrey as Plastic Man Z Chris Farley as Woozy Winks (and the spinoff TV series, starring Michael Richards as Plastic Man and Jason Alexander as Woozy Winks)

Today Z Adam Sandler as Plastic Man Z Jack Black as Woozy Winks

down yours!

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—and in a particularly gruesome, most definitely PG-13 scene, he injects a “gleaming stainless steel hypodermic needle” into O’Brien’s neck. O’Brien is transmogrified, soon discovering, to his dismay, his new elasticity. “The funny scene we thought of that was kind of the start of it all,” Larry Wachowski told Horowitz, “was, like, he goes to the bathroom after he becomes Plastic Man and his urine is no longer bio-degradable, so he, like, wants to kill himself.” O’Brien doesn’t commit suicide, of course, and resigns himself to his flexible fate once he and Susan Bright discover Argon’s motive: to become a plastic man himself, with tons of ecological raping and pillaging along the way:

Look up.

ARGON

Look above you, Susan, and

tell me what you see.

She looks up through the glass roof of the conservatory at the soot-stained sky. Pollution?

SUSAN ARGON

Do you know what I see? making his own clouds.

I see man

coloring his own sky, and like this

garden it is a sight that makes my

heart sing.

Sporting a red, stretchy suit made for him by Susan (but no goggles, incidentally), O’Brien uses his super-powers in an effort to stop Argon in a variety of sequences cleverly envisioned by the Wachowskis. As an example, as Plastic Man is infiltrating Argon’s compound:

The security man is a hundred feet away, but before

he can even get his gun out –-

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O’Brien’s arm shoots down the hall, a huge hand

reaching –-

Covering the security man’s entire head before he

is able to scream.

The hand is like a

plastic bag over his head that he can’t

get free of until he finally blacks out. O’Brien lays him

down gently. His arm snaps back and he

tip-toes away.

Argon achieves his goal and becomes an evil plastic man, regaining his former musculature (and then some). The inevitable Plastic Man vs. Plastic Man struggle is the film’s climax, and it works surprisingly well—the freshness of the Wachowskis’ take on this elongating super-hero makes this familiar conflict seem surprisingly new. Theirs is a smart, and subtly funny (although only occasionally so), screenplay that can be read online at http://sfy.iv.ru/sfy.html?script=plastic_man. And given the era the screenplay was produced, it’s easy to imagine Jim Carrey (or, as at least one online reviewer noted, Bruce Campbell) in the lead.

SAME NAME, DIFFERENT CHARACTER I can only find one problem with Larry and Andy Wachowski’s Plastic Man: It

Not Playing

ain’t Plastic Man.

at a Theater Near You

I can certainly relate to Eel—

BACK ISSUE’s own Rich Fowlks used Photoshop to create

excuse me, Daniel—O’Brien’s environ-

this faux movie poster with editor Michael Eury’s dream cast

mental beliefs: I haven’t owned a car

for a 1996 Plastic Man movie. Nice job, Rich!

since 1989, and eat organically grown

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PL-As Seen On

TV DC’s Pliable Pretzel may not be a movie star, but he’s certainly no stranger to television:

Z 1967-68 Zh

Plastic Man—along wit n— Metamorpho and Wonder Woma ted is in development for an anima TV series during the heyday of ns the Filmation Studio’s DC cartoo n (including The Batman/Superma Hour and Aquaman). Production designs are rumored to exist (we’re looking for ’em!) but no d. episodes were produced or aire

73 Z Z Sept 22, 19 rs on the “Professor

Plastic Man guest sta of HannaGoodfellow’s G.E.E.C.” episode the show’s Barbera’s Super Friends during episode first season. This is the second produced but the third aired.

Z Z 1979-80 stic Man

Ruby-Spears’ The Pla Comedy/Adventure Show airs on also ABC-TV. This animated anthology features “Mighty Man and Yukk,” .” Plas is “Fangface,” and “Rickety Rocket friend aided in his adventures by his girl aiian Penny and by a tousle-haired Haw sidekick named Hula Hula.

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spring Animated Off

Comics.

Z 1980 -81 SZis retitled The

Ruby-Spears’ TPMC/A Show. Plastic Man/Baby Plas Comedy oduce Plas and Penny, now married, intr boy, Baby their bouncing (literally!) baby Plas” Plas. “Plastic Family” and “Baby episodes are included.

Z Z 1981-82 Ma n cartoons move

Ruby-Spears’ Plastic Sales, with into syndication via Arlington TV outros. live-action intros, segments, and

compelling. But this ain’t Plastic Man. The Plastic Man in both Gale’s and the Wachowski Bros.’ scripts bears no more resemblance to DC Comics’ Plastic Man than Ralph Macchio’s Karate Kid does to the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Karate Kid. The screenwriters took the character’s name and powers, and essentially changed everything else. The end result in both efforts just ain’t Plastic Man. In 1990 I penned an “Inside DC” (at that time the company’s house column) feature called “Screaming at the Screen,” where I asserted that any film interpretation of a comic-book super-hero is better than no film interpretation at all. Fourteen years later, I’ve changed my mind. Why adapt a character to a different medium when the magic that made the character unique is jettisoned? Despite the fact that I’m editing a magazine called BACK ISSUE, I’m not exclusively mired in the past. I’m more adaptable than most. I believe that characters that endure do so by adjusting to the times. Case in point: TV’s Smallville. While fully contemporary and packaged as a teen-oriented show, it’s still, fundamentally, the tale of the last son of Krypton, his struggle to adapt to his Earth environment, and his relationship with his Earth family and friends—just like those Silver and Bronze Age Superboy comics. Hopefully, the Wachowskis’ script will become a movie some day—but call it Eco-Man, or Enviro-Man, Polymerization Man, or, for Jack Cole’s sake, even the all-new Toxic Avenger. But without humor, both broad and subversive, and without portly sidekick Woozy Winks, it just ain’t Plastic Man. If you can’t use those properties, then don’t use Plastic Man. Incidentally, there’s still some buzz that the Wachowski’s Plastic Man may reach the screen. Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment has been attached to this project for years, and in April of 2002, the “king of pop” Michael Jackson reportedly included a project called Plastic Man (a super-hero movie, or a behind-the-scenes look at his own rhinoplasty?) in a package of movies intended for production in a proposed, and presumably aborted, merger between his Neverland Films and MDP Worldwide. Given Jackson’s recent legal problems that make Paul Reubens’ former difficulties look like a cakewalk, don’t hold your breath over that one. With America’s current obsession with gangsters (can you say Sopranos?), as well as with comic-book-inspired movies, a SFX-laden Plastic Man movie featuring mobster-turned-hero Eel O’Brien seems a no-brainer. But I’d rather occasionally read an old Plastic Man comic than see a bad, or an unauthentic, Plastic Man movie. So as far as Plastic Man’s jump to live-action cinema is concerned, his box-office debut remains a greatest story never told. NEXT ISSUE: Writer Len Wein envisioned Wolverine as a teenager. So what happened? Find out in our next “Greatest Stories Never Told.”

Sgt. Rock: The Movie Maybe you’ve heard chatter about a Sgt. Rock movie from superstar producer Joel Silver (Predator, Die Hard, The Matrix, Gothika). Screenwriters David Peoples (Ladyhawke, Twelve Monkeys) and Ebbe Roe Smith (Fletch Lives, Turner & Hooch) have been attached, as has director John McTiernan (Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, The Thomas Crown Affair). And so has Arnold Schwarzenegger. As Sgt. Rock. Yes, DC Comics’ Sgt. Frank Rock, a born-and-bred American soldier fighting Nazis on the frontlines of World War II. Portrayed by an actor with a thick Austrian accent. Sgt. Rock has marched in and out of the development trenches since the late 1980s, but with the United States’ current wave of military patriotism, don’t be surprised if it’s taken off the back burner and paraded onto the frontlines. Whether “Ahnold” will sidestep his California gubernatorial duties to don the stars and bars remains to be seen, but if you think that Schwarzenegger as Sgt. Rock is an April Fool’s prank, feast your eyes on this promotional pinback, produced around 1990, to hype a movie that (as of yet) has never happened. (And thanks to DC Comics’ Adam Philips and Bob Greenberger for being good soljers and digging this rarity out of a foxhole!) L a u g h i n g

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produce and free-range meats. The character of O’Brien, and his mission, are

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feature amilton

Dave Johnson’s truly wacky space “dudes”—Earth Boys—published in various issues of Dark Horse’s Dark Horse Presents. Here: A penciled page by David, and one of eight unpublished pages (pencils, inks, and zip-a-tone effects by Johnson).

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EARTH BOYS • DAVE JOHNSON

b y David H

GROO • SERGIO ARAGONéS

Sergio Aragonés (the guy waving “madly” in this self-portrait from 1977) drew these sketches on the back of the original art for his cover for Mark Evanier’s newest collection of columns, Superheroes in My Pants (due out in May ’04, from TwoMorrows, of course!).

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it almost seems as though these images follow one another perfectly. But that might just be me. (Yet, considering that these covers are marked #1 and #4—yep, it is just me; or is it?)

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L O B O • VA L S E M E I K S

Depending on what order you, the viewer, absorb these two gems—well,

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Two covers by Val Semeiks, for DC Comics’ Lobo series.

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JAIME & GILBERT HERNANDEZ • AMAZING HEROES

Various commissioned-art pieces created by Jaime and Gilbert (aka “Beto”) Hernandez, for the long-out-of-print Amazing Heroes, during the summer of 1985! The Alan Moore illo was drawn for an interview piece for David A. Kraft’s Comics Interview—circa 1988—only Gilbert knows the full title and meaning of that publication that Alan is zapping/holding. (He’s invited to drop us a note of explanation.)

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this has got to be the most dynamic illustration of Steve Ditko’s creation the Creeper that I’ve ever seen. (Note: First time ever reproduced at original size, folks!).

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T H E C R E E P E R • M I C H A E L T. G I L B E R T

letters pages (circa 1985), and that it was penciled and inked on tissue paper (I think!). Regardless,

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I don’t remember why I asked Michael T. Gilbert to draw this; I know I used it for the Amazing Heroes

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SUPER-ANIMAL SQUAD • S C O T T S H AW !

Scott Shaw!’s sample page (1 of 2) for DC Comics’ Super-Animal Squad (aka Just’a Lotta Animals), a proposed spinoff of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew (a series that should’ve had a much longer run). Mr. Shaw!, among other things, is one of the biggest (sorry, Scott) reasons to attend the San Diego Comic Con. . . since its very beginnings (circa 1971), his slide ’n’ talk (comic covers) show is both totally informative and fall-down hilarious! A well-established highlight of Shel Dorf’s brainchild—go this year, people!

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over the last quarter century—period! Here is a (in the circa mid-1990s’ words of one Pam Morrow, wife of publisher John Morrow) “Way Cool”* example of Mike’s rough pencil stuff from Marvel Comics’ third issue of Rocket Raccoon (page 15), July 1985. Hell, the boy was fantastic (so sez Hellboy and me, Mr. Hambone).

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ROCKET RACCOON • M I K E M I G N O L A

aracters, Inc.

the most underrated artist/illustrator/storyteller that the American comic industry has produced

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collaborated to create yyyy before she and John e of Pamela’s was waayyy never!—though she * This “Way Cool” languag was never a “Valley Girl”— . And check this out: Pam their best work: Lily Morrow ’t know this for a fact)! her childhood (but I don Frank Zappa fan during very well may’ve been a

Mike Mignola is, and has forever been (in my anything-but-humble opinion),

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N O R M A L M A N • J I M VA L E N T I N O

Before Jim Valentino and friends created Image Comics (etc., etc.), Jim produced a series of pieces revolving around his normalman. Here’s the cover rough (stuff!) for the second issue of the excruciatingly average (not!) character of the same name. This “must-have double-bag issue” can probably be found at your local comics shop in the back-issue section. Seek it out. . . NOW! (Pay whatever they ask!)

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it tore down and fully broke the Fourth Wall (she spoke to us, the readers, from time to time). One of John’s best efforts in the world of comics (issue #4, page 19). 5 4

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SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK • J O H N B Y R N E

did something else unique, beyond merging humor with solid super-hero storytelling—

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John Byrne’s Sensational She-Hulk, as written and drawn, was truly sensational. This pencil page only begins to scratch the surface of fun of this series. Byrne’s She-Hulk series

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DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET • J A C K K I R B Y

A page from Jack “King” Kirby’s short-lived “Dingbats of Danger Street” kid gang series (this is from the unpublished issue #3, page 20, drawn in 1974). Here’re both the pencils and the finishes (inks and lettering by D. Bruce Berry.) This last page really makes you want to pick up the never-produced fourth issue in 30 days, doesn’t it?!? (Well, what are ya waiting for? Write DC Comics and demand that they collect and publish all of this series—now!) D C

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His Cap’n Omerica splash just screams with Jack Kirby’s Not Brand Echh contributions during the mid-1960s (with a tip of the hat to Marie Severin). By the way, Marvel Comics Group—what the heck happened with to What The - -?!, anyway?!?

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WHAT THE - - ?! • M I K E M A N L E Y

when this pencil piece was not used by Marvel Comics, circa 1980-something.

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“What The - -?!” (the series)—yeah, that’s probably what Mike Manley said

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JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA • A D A M H U G H E S

Adam Hughes does justice to one of DC Comics’ oldest group series— Justice League America (#51, page 14). This early example of Hughes’ storytelling abilities is quite a contrast to his illustrations in the world of painted covers in comics. Courtesy of the artist.

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THE JOKER REBORN: From CLOWN PRINCE of Crime to

Homicidal

Maniac

anderson by Peter S

Imagine that you are in the year 1966 and someone asked you who the Joker was. Whether you were a comics fan or not, the image you would probably come up with is that of actor Cesar Romero, disguised in a green wig and whiteface makeup, laughing merrily as he concocts a new way to trick his enemies, Batman and Robin, on one of America’s most popular new television series. Through the Batman television series of the mid-1960s, the idea of “camp” humor went mainstream. The show made affectionate but condescending fun of super-hero comics through deadpan presentations of absurd dialogue and ludicrous situations. The Joker turned up on the show on a regular basis, and seemed a rather likable arch criminal. Just let him rob banks and he’d be happy. Oh, sure, he wanted to kill Batman and Robin, but nobody else, and he never succeeded in harming anyone. But was he really anyone’s favorite villain on the show? Weren’t Frank Gorshin’s

As Seen

giggling Riddler and Burgess Meredith’s quacking Penguin

on BAT-TV

both funnier and nastier? The TV show Joker was a rather

Latin lover Cesar

pleasant chap who came in third compared to those two.

Romero (left) hopped

The Joker wasn’t always like that, however. When he

from the big screen

made his debut, in the very first issue of Batman, in 1940, the Joker was not funny at

to the boob tube

all. He was a cold-blooded serial killer who, when readers first saw him, was not even

on ABC-TV’s Batman

smiling. This grim-faced figure, with his eerily chalk-white skin and green hair,

(1966–1968).

looked like death warmed over, and when he did smile, it was a macabre sight. In the course of this first story, the Joker commits a series of murders, daringly warning the victims and the police ahead of time of his intentions. He will predict 5 8

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that his intended target will die at the stroke of mid-

derive from an early talkie, The Bat Whispers, which

night. Somehow, no matter what precautions are

was in turn based on a stage melodrama, The Bat. As

taken—a locked room, or a police guard—the Joker’s

you might expect from the title, this film, with its

prophecy comes true, and the victim, poisoned, falls

mysterious figure garbed as a bat, was one of the

dead, his features paralyzed in a ghastly grin that imi-

inspirations for Batman himself. But the “Bat” in this

tates the Joker’s own.

movie is actually the villain, who, as the Joker would,

The man who originated the idea for the Joker

sends his victims warnings, mysteriously

was Jerry Robinson, who was then Bob Kane’s assis-

murders them at the time he predicted, and leaves

tant on the art for Batman; that first Joker story was

behind a calling card. The Bat leaves cards with a bat

drawn by Kane, inked by Robinson, and written by Bill

insignia; the Joker would leave Joker playing cards.

Finger, the unsung hero in co-creating so much of the

(The Bat Whispers was also issued on DVD some

Batman mythos.

years back.)

In part, the Joker’s face is inspired by the tradi-

Throughout the Golden and Silver Ages of comics,

tional Joker imagery on playing cards. But Robinson

the Joker never had a true origin story: We never

was also inspired by a 1928 silent film called The

learned his real name or saw what he looked like with-

Man Who Laughs, adapted from a novel by the great

out the garish, clown-like coloring on his face and

19th century French author Victor Hugo (best known

hands. Indeed, early Batman readers must have

for Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame).

assumed he was wearing makeup like an actual circus

The principal character, Gwynplaine, played by

clown.

Conrad Veidt, is disfigured in such a way that he

The closest the Joker came to an origin story was

appears always to be smiling. Certain stills from the

“The Man Behind the Red Hood” (Detective Comics

film make Gwynplaine look menacing indeed, the

#168, February 1951), the tale of a criminal, garbed in a

image of the Joker come to life. Today Veidt is proba-

hood that completely concealed his face, whom

bly best known to film buffs for playing the mur-

Batman had failed to capture early in his career. In

dering somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

this story, the Red Hood returns years later, and

and Nazi Germany’s Major Strasser in Casablanca. So

Batman captures and unmasks him only to discover

one might expect that Gwynplaine, the inspiration

he is the Joker. Then it is revealed that the Joker used

for the Joker, is also a villain. But, in fact,

to be a criminal gang leader whose sole departure from

Gwynplaine comes off in the movie as a figure of

convention was to wear a red hood to conceal his iden-

pathos; like Canio in Pagliacci, he is the archetypal

tity. In his clash with Batman, the Red Hood fell into a

Chilling Inspiration

sad clown. In fact, this role was originally intended

pool of chemical wastes, which permanently dyed his

The Man Who Laughs,

for Lon Chaney, Sr., who played similar melancholy

skin white, his lips bright red, and his hair green.

a Joker template.

clowns in Laugh, Clown, Laugh and He Who Gets

Seeing his garish new appearance, the Red Hood

Slapped. (Readers who saw the Cartoon Network

created a new criminal persona for himself, the

Justice League two-parter featuring the Joker will

Joker.

now understand why his front organization was

The enormous success of the Batman TV show of the

dubbed “Gwynplaine Entertainment.”) For years it

1960s pumped up the sales of the comics, and since

was rare to see screenings of The Man Who Laughs, but

the show used costumed criminals every week, edi-

it is now available on DVD from Kino International; the

tor Julius Schwartz put villains like the Joker and the

green tint on the cover picture of Veidt may make

Penguin into the comics more frequently than he

you wonder if someone at Kino also knows about

had before. But the camp treatment of Batman was

the film’s link with the Joker.

really no more than a single joke that quickly wore

The Joker’s modus operandi in this first story seems to

J-man ’s da bomb ! ohoho ...hoh . hah.. haha

out its welcome. Speaking of the TV show, longtime

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rogues’ gallery of costumed villains in these new adventures. But longtime comics readers know that concepts essential to a long-running series may be discarded, but they eventually, inevitably work their way back. The Joker was an essential part of the Batman mythos, and soon Schwartz would find the means to fit the “Clown Prince of Crime” into Batman’s once more grim and somber world. As with Batman, the key would be to return the Joker to the original concept back when he made his debut in 1940.

“THE JOKER’S FIVE-WAY REVENGE” The story that set the Joker on his new path was

Mad Cow

Batman writer and editor Denny O’Neil observes,

“The Joker’s Happy

“I’ve never put down the television show anything

Victims,” (above

more than to say it was not at the time to my taste. I

right) a miniature

think it was right for the time. Yeah, absolutely. I think

Batman comic

it dated very quickly, and I think the really good stuff

produced in 1966

doesn’t date.” The fad ended, the show was cancelled

and distributed as

with its third season, and super-hero comics sales collapsed.

a giveaway inside

cover dated September 1973, and written and drawn by the now legendary team of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” has a plot somewhat reminiscent of Finger’s original Joker tale. The Joker is out to murder, one by one, five people who crossed him in the past. Of course, for decades the

Julie Schwartz had already successfully revitalized

Kellogg’s Pop Tarts

“The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge,” in Batman #251,

Joker had never actually succeeded in killing anyone

the Batman series in the early 1960s, discarding

breakfast treats,

dated, more juvenile concepts like Batwoman,

exemplifies the

Bathound, and Bat-Mite, and taking a more serious,

silliness of the

realistic approach in both the stories and artwork.

Silver Age Joker.

Now, with plummeting sales, Schwartz found him-

Art by Carmine

self faced with the challenge of revamping the con-

Infantino and

cept again, and yet again he succeeded brilliantly.

Murphy Anderson.

This time he and his writers, now including Denny

O’Neil and Frank Robbins, went not only for a more adult approach to the series, but one far darker in tone than the frivolous television series. Robin was packed off to college, and Batman returned to his roots from the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was again “the” Batman, the lone, driven avenger, prowling a world that combined film noir with Gothic horror. This is the version of Batman that we see not only in the comics, but in film and television today. Perhaps to make it clear that the comics were divorcing themselves from the television version, Schwartz initially did not use any of Batman’s

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of this new Joker story very differently. “Well, it sort of came about as kind of an agreement between Julie in the comics. But

Schwartz, Denny O’Neil, and myself.” recalls Neal

in this story he

Adams. “What had happened was I came into it

did—this Joker

when the Batman television show was on. And it was

wasn’t just playing

sort of a satire, a comedy. And I came in with the phi-

games anymore.

losophy that I’m going to do a darker, more real

The Joker’s ultimate

Batman. The editor, Julie Schwartz, didn’t want me to

target is, of course,

work on Batman because of whatever contractual

Batman himself.

arrangements they had with Bob Kane and his ghosts

The story climaxes

[“ghost,” or mimicking, artists] at the time. So I did

with the Joker

The Brave and the Bold,” which was a series that teamed

entrapping Batman

Batman up with a different hero each issue. Adams

in a tank with a

had such success drawing his version of Batman in

man-eating shark.

Brave and the Bold that Schwartz changed his mind and

As the Joker notes,

asked him to work on Batman’s own series.

and as Adams shows

“It seemed as though when I started to do it that

us so well, he and

people were taking my rap seriously, and I wanted

the shark have the

to do serious Batman stories,” Adams says. But then

same sinister, toothy

he discovered that people thought, as Adams puts it,

grin. Who’s laugh-

“you wouldn’t want to do the Joker and Two-Face,

ing now?

they’re too cartoony.” The idea was that the costumed

Back to Basics

After over 30 years, Denny O’Neil understandably

villains like the Joker were too associated with “the

Goodbye, Clown

does not recall exactly how the decision to do the

‘cartoonishness’ of the television show. And of course,

story that became “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge”

I said, ‘No, no, the characters are great. I mean, I’m not

came about. “I wasn’t taking notes. I was just work-

a big fan of the Penguin, but the Joker is a fantastic

ing week to week. In those days we didn’t even have

character if taken a little more seriously. The Joker is a

contracts or steady assignments. I would go in on a

serious character and a good character. I don’t con-

Thursday, stick my head in Julie’s office, and he

sider him a cartoon even though he acts like a car-

would give me an assignment. It so happened that

toon, and I’d love to do a more serious, more deadly

164 of those were Batman assignments, but I was

Joker.’ Once I said that, Denny and Julie were off and

never the Batman writer.”

doing the Joker.”

Did editor Julius Schwartz propose the idea of doing

O’Neil came up with a Joker story that was consid-

a Joker story, or did O’Neil suggest it to him? “Lord

erably more serious than Adams had expected. “The

knows,” O’Neil replies. Was Neal Adams involved in

Joker went around killing people, which I perhaps

the plotting? “To the best of my memory, I wrote a

thought was a little bit heavy-handed,” Adams says.

script with no discussions with Neal. There was not

“But, by golly, it turned out to be pretty good.

in those days that much interaction” between the writer and artist. In fact, O’Neil does not recall even

“So,” Adams sums up, “my contribution was more like a coachman: Go!”

knowing who would end up drawing the story. “I

“Gee, I have no idea at this point, so many years

think that Neal did a brilliant job, but it was a script

later, where the actual plot came from,” O’Neil says.

that was done without really thinking about who was

“Probably out of my head. I don’t remember Julie

going to do the art, because in those days you never

having much to do with it, though I wouldn’t say he

knew, or if you thought you knew, it might change.”

didn’t. We worked so closely in those days. Neither of

Neal Adams agrees that he did not have any input

us thought that people would be asking us questions

into the plot, but otherwise he remembers the origin

(laughs) about it 20 [years later]. We knew the stuff

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wasn’t fish wrapping, [as] the earlier generations

a little bit braver, let’s

might have thought of it. But I don’t know that we

go for it, let’s go for the

were taking it all that seriously, and I don’t know that

gusto.’”

that was a bad attitude.”

Adams had started

But certainly O’Neil can reconstruct his overall

reading stories with the

method of constructing the story. “It was just a ques-

Joker in the 1950s. “My

tion of trying to do my basic trick when I begin to

memory of the Joker is

work with an established character that I think has

very clear, though it

lost its way. [It] is to go back and try to look at the

may be marred, and

essence of it and see what made this popular in the

that is that the Joker is

first place; what makes this guy a hero, what makes

this character who was

this guy a villain, and then use that as the corner-

disfigured and couldn’t

stone of the story.

stop smiling, which I

“So,” O’Neil says, evoking his thought process, “the Joker—clowns—people are frightened of clowns—trickster—irrationality. Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I now know that the Joker is probably the best embodiment of the trickster motif in all of modern fiction, though Hannibal Lecter might be a close second.” (This, as O’Neil agrees, at least is true of sinister versions of the trickster archetype, as opposed to more positive and comedic ones like Bugs Bunny.)

believe was based on The Man Who Laughs.” Adams, though, had not seen this film, and had heard about it from a friend. But Adams has another, more personal inspiration

for

the

Joker’s face. “I grew up in Coney Island, and at Coney Island we had Steeplechase the Funny Place,

O’Neil thinks that it was probably then that he looked up the original Joker stories in DC’s library. “Those stories would have been available to me, and, knowing myself, almost certainly I did. I believe in doing your homework.” He was particularly struck by Bill Finger’s original Joker story in Batman #1. “That first story in particular, in which he is a very cunning, maniacal killer. . . seemed to me a lot better than the sort of watered-down later versions. I mean,

and Steeplechase the Funny Place had this big Joker face. And I thought, ‘Well, it’s the Joker card, and it’s

The O’Neil/Adams

Steeplechase the Funny Place that inspired Bob

Joker of “Five-Way

Kane.’”

Cesar Romero a

icatured face that Bob Kane and others had given the

distant memory.

Joker into his own, more realistic art style. “To make

Courtesy of

that old-style Joker face, it almost takes a cartoon. So

Shane Foley.

I felt, why don’t I take my memory of the Joker and my reference of the Joker from the various guys who

much of a dramatic situation because there’s so very

had done it, including Jerry Robinson and Dick

little at stake, and it diminishes Batman, going after

Sprang, take those two as my models and then try to

a guy who really isn’t all that dangerous or all that

make a Joker that was like those, that would emulate those, but was on a real face, so I could contort a real

“I didn’t quite get the violent Joker,” Adams says.

face and make it those faces. So that was my goal, to

“My suspicion is that Denny went back to the original

find a way to do that. And gee, I think I succeeded.”

source and picked that up, and that was a surprise to

In The Man Who Laughs, Gwynplaine’s smile was

me. Yes, I wanted to do the Joker, and yes, I wanted

literally carved into his face. In the comics, though,

him to be bad, but Denny made him real bad. In fact,

the Joker was fully capable of other facial expressions;

I questioned the deadliness of what was going on,

in fact, he is grimly frowning when he is first shown

but he insisted that ‘No, this is the way the Joker was

in Batman #1. So it is interesting that Neal Adams and

at the beginning,’ and my feeling was, ‘Y’know, we’ve

another celebrated Joker artist, Marshall Rogers, each

come to a new time, we’re out of the ’50s, we can be

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Revenge” made

Adams’ task was to find a way to translate the car-

Batman against a guy who plays pranks? That’s not

much of a menace.”

No Joke

came to believe that the Joker, like Gwynplaine,

back to a variation on his traditional outfit and has

could not stop smiling.

worn it ever since. O’Neil notes out how important

“The thing about the Joker is that he was a regular

the visual image of the Joker is to the character. “The

guy and he went through this experience that he can

best of the Batman villains are very close to the Dick

never change,” Adams says. “He can’t wipe that smile

Tracy-style villains,” he points out. “It’s also a trick

off his face. One of the things that bothers me about

that moviemakers use. Fellini said somewhere that if

many, many artists’ renditions of the Joker—and I’m

you want to put a certain type on the screen, you

talking about good artists—is they have the Joker

don’t want to spend a lot of time with the backstory

frown. Well, he can’t frown. According to the rules as

of somebody who’s a very minor character, but you

I understand them, he can’t wipe that smile off his

want to say everything there is to say about them—

face so he can’t frown.

you put a sexy blonde in a low-cut dress on the

“It would just be real cool to have a smiling Joker

screen and let the stereotype work for you. So with

no matter what emotion he’s expressing—anger or

these kinds of villains, it’s sort of taking their twisted

sadness or pathos,” Adams asserts. “To have that

psyche and figuring out a physical manifestation of

smile on his face to me is what the Joker is all about.

that. It’s a trick that Chester Gould used a lot and I

I’d like to see that more. I think that is almost key to

think that the best of the Batman villains do exactly

the character. If you don’t have to have a smile on

that, as opposed to have some extraordinary power.”

your face, you can put makeup on it, you can color

As far as O’Neil is concerned, the Joker not only

your hair another color. You’re not really so terrible.

lacks any super powers, but he is nowhere near a

But if you can’t stop smiling, that’s terrible.”

physical match for Batman:

For decades, the Joker had worn a garish purple suit in 1940s’ style, complete with padded shoulders, that was adapted for the TV version. But in “Five-Way

“Actually, I think I could probably take the Joker in a fight.” So what makes the Joker such a threat to

Revenge,” the “new” Joker dressed in normal, con-

Batman? O’Neil contends, “I always figured that the

temporary clothes. He was a costumed villain with-

Joker was a little smarter than Batman. But I was just

out an actual costume. “I’m sure it was Neal’s idea,”

following another rule of writing melodrama: You

O’Neil says.

always give the villain an edge. That makes the hero

Indeed it was. “I would have to say bringing back

more heroic when he triumphs.”

a zoot suit didn’t really strike me,” Adams laughs.

Adams has his own theory as to why the Joker

“Remember, I grew up in Coney Island. There’s a lot

is such a great opponent for Batman: “I think that

of Coney Island in the Joker. And you don’t have to

the interesting thing about the Joker is that he is,

put those big shoulders on to still get that carny feel.”

in fact, nuttier than Batman. And that makes Batman

But while the Joker’s 1940s’ zoot suit was over a

sane. When Batman is facing other, more logical vil-

quarter of a century out of style, Adams realized why

lains, who have rationality behind what they do, like

the 1940s artists gave him that look in the first place.

Ra’s al Ghul, they almost make Batman seem nuts,

“Of course, in those days a zoot suit was stylish; it was

because he wants to get revenge. But the Joker does

part of being hip and being cool. And I felt that the

just the opposite: he makes Batman seem very sane,

Joker needed to be cool. The way he dressed did have

compared to the Joker, and the Joker seems totally

a style. It wasn’t a funny costume—it was a style. I

loopy.”

thought

that

was

very

important

for

the

Adams thinks the Batman and the Joker are both

Joker.” Adams says, “You can make somebody dress

crazy, but O’Neil disagrees, saying, “They’re polar

really sharply but at the same time slim him down

opposites. Batman is rational, Joker is totally chaotic.

and make him really cool,” and that’s what he tried

One of the best bits that has been done recently was

to do with the Joker. But this was one innovation in “Five-Way Revenge” that did not last. The Joker quickly went

to have Harley Quinn go crazy [as] the psychiatrist who is trying to figure him out. “Take the most psychotic person you’ve ever

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heard of and multiply it by ten. I think he is so psy-

awarded his own comic-book series in 1975. Batman

chotic that no psychiatrist in the world would have a

editor Julius Schwartz was in charge, and Denny

handle on him, would be able to begin to figure

O’Neil wrote several of the scripts. The Joker was now

him out.”

the protagonist, pitted against both super-heroes and

O’Neil continues, “Batman is dark colors, nocturnal;

rival villains. But this was an idea that was at least

the Joker is bright colors, clownish. Batman is law

two decades ahead of its time. Perhaps it had not

and order; the Joker is anarchy. Batman is tough, but

entirely sunk in on the Powers That Be (or Were) at

the Joker has a brilliantly insane mind. As I said, he’s

DC that the Joker was no longer the merry prankster

probably smarter than Batman. So, another principle

of old.

of writing: Pick somebody who is the opposite of your hero.”

“Today we could do that,” Denny O’Neil asserts, “but back then, remember, people were paying atten-

O’Neil admits that the Joker of “Five-Way Revenge”

tion to the [Comics] Code. And basically that said,

was not as irrational as he became later on. “Yeah, I

stripped of its poetry, that the heroes had to be

was working on it at that point. It was the first time

heroic and villainy always had to be punished. So

I’d ever dealt with that character.” As we will see, it

from the get-go I wondered, how on earth are we

was another writer who took the next step. Asked

going to do a monthly series about this maniacal

what he thinks are the best Joker stories he himself

killer and make him acceptable as the title character

has written, Denny O’Neil has an interesting

of a series?

answer. “‘The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge’ certainly

“Now, when things are a lot looser, a writer with

worked, and for the 50th issue of Legends of the Dark

a really dark sense of humor might be able to do a

Knight, I recast the first [Joker] story that Bill Finger

Joker comic book. But it was a nice try; it was an

wrote, with all due acknowledgement that Bill was

interesting attempt to do something. But I wonder

virtually the co-writer of that, and came up with all

if the people who created that title had any idea of

the MacGuffins. But I thought it worked, that amplifi-

the difficulties. I doubt it, because back then people

cation of that story, the modernization and updating.

didn’t seem to think about characterization

I think those two are probably the best. None of the

much.” The audience apparently saw the flaw in the

others stand out in my memory.” And so that is yet

reasoning behind the series, too, and The Joker was

another tribute to the power of Bill Finger’s very first

cancelled in 1976, after nine issues.

Joker story.

had tremendous influence on later writers and artists

ENGLEHART AND ROGERS’ DETECTIVE COMICS

on the series. They were the writer and artist who most

Bill Finger’s Joker in Batman #1 was coldly cunning

powerfully set the style for the Batman stories that

and calculating. Even as the Joker became more of a

followed, in comics, movies, and television over the

merry prankster over the decades, his plans, however

next 30-plus years.

fantastical—starting an underworld newspaper,

Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ work on the Batman

As one of those successors, Steve Englehart,

devising his own utility belt—had rational purposes

observes, “Neal Adams’ Batman, and Denny, having

and a certain logic. The O’Neil-Adams Joker was a

written them—those things are firmly in my brain as

killer once more, but a rational one. This was about

being a wonderful thing. If they hadn’t done such

to change, courtesy of another classic writer/artist

a good job. . . I don’t know if I would have been as

team who took O’Neil and Adams’ work with the

interested in doing the Batman.”

Joker to the next level. They were Steve Englehart and

THE JOKER, THE SERIES The Joker’s popularity was such that he actually was

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Marshall Rogers, who, in the 1970s, together created Batman stories for six issues of Detective Comics, culminating with the Joker two-parter in issues #475

and #476. Yes, it was merely six issues, and yet they

some point about The Man Who Laughs being the

stand as the greatest six-issue run in Batman’s

inspiration for the Joker.

history, the “definitive Batman” that summed up

Englehart did not just want to copy what Kane

the first nearly 40 years of the character’s history.

and Finger had done in their early Batman stories.

Having made a great reputation for his innovative

“I said, that’s the essence; now I have to build

work at Marvel on Avengers, Captain America, and

something out of it that will work in this modern

Doctor Strange, Steve Englehart intended to spend a

day and age.”

year writing DC characters he loved before leaving

This applied to the Joker as well. Finger’s Joker

comics behind. He ended up writing Justice League of

and O’Neil’s Joker had been killers, but they were

America and Mister Miracle at DC. “But I wanted to do

cunning, rational masterminds. Englehart saw the

the Batman, too. I told [DC publisher Jenette Kahn]

potential to take the Joker concept further. “My sense

going in that I was only going to be there for a year,

of it was if you really got to the essence of the Joker,

’cause I was going to get out of comics forever (laughs) at that point. And so I knew I could do one year of Batman, and it was going to be the essence of Batman. I was going to do everything with it that I could possibly get into it.” And how could Englehart do what he calls “the definitive Batman” without doing his greatest foe? “Yeah, it was always going to end up with the Joker as the ultimate [villain], at the end of it.” Befitting his mission to capture Batman’s “essence,” Englehart set about doing his research. Back then there were no archive editions of Golden Age stories, but he learned about DC’s remarkably complete library. “I said I want to get Xeroxes of the early years of Detective Comics and of Batman, which, of course, even then cost a fortune. I would never have been able to buy them or find them anyplace else. And so somebody went to the library and

he still had another dimension to go, which was to become completely insane. I saw the potential and I thought it was perfectly legitimate to go there. “I thought, I can be true to what this character was set out to be, but I can do stuff with it now that they didn’t do then. Whether they couldn’t or didn’t think of it, I don’t know. “And how exactly I figured out some completely insane plot about laughing fish, that’s sort of lost in the mist of time.” So, in “The Laughing Fish” [Detective Comics #475, February 1978], the Joker strides into a government office and shows off what we might now call a feat of genetic engineering. He has somehow managed to develop living fish with mouths set into a smile like his own: Joker-fish. Now the Joker wants to copyright the fish, to make sure that no one tries to copy his brilliant achievement.

Xeroxed all of these early Batman stories. Denny

Now actually, I suppose that nowadays there really

O’Neil in fact thought that was a good idea, and he

is a question about how genetic engineers can register

had a second set sent over to him at that time. I was

new breeds of plants or animals as their own dis-

able to really immerse myself in Bob Kane and Bill

coveries; perhaps the patent office would be more

Finger’s original idea. I was back in that 1939/

appropriate. But in “The Laughing Fish,” the staffers

1940/1941 era of the Batman, really trying to figure

in the government office can do no more than

out who is this guy, who would he be if he existed.

explain to the Joker that there is no provision in the

“And the Joker in those days was this homicidal

His Own Magazine

law for copyrighting one’s visage, even on a fish.

maniac. He was not the funny clown; he was not the

Outraged, the Joker launches a campaign of murder

guy with the Ha-Ha-Hacienda, and all that kind of

right out of Finger’s first Joker story: Once again there

stuff. He was this crazed creature of the night in his

are the warnings, the unpreventable murders

own way. And so, yeah, that’s the guy that I wanted

by Joker venom, and the corpses with the evil grins.

to do. To me, a year before any of this came out, I was

Times have changed, however, and now the Joker

thinking this is who the Joker really is, and who the

commandeers television instead of radio to issue his

Batman really is.” By the way, Englehart also read at

threats of murder. “That’s the essence of what I

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thought the Joker ought to do,” says Englehart; “He’s not rational.” In those same issues, at one point, one of the Joker’s henchmen annoys his boss, so the Joker abruptly pushes him into oncoming traffic, killing him on a whim. This brief incident was a shocker, a signal to the reader that this was not just a murderous Joker, but an utterly unpredictable one, with no loyalty even to his own men, capable of doing anything, and willing to kill just to give himself a good laugh. Some comics professionals assert that Batman and the Joker embody two different sorts of craziness, but not Steve Englehart. “That’s a thing that always drove me nuts, so to speak, when people would say,

cool with the whole thing,” Englehart reports. “He was

Batman by Rogers

well, of course, Batman’s insane. No, he’s not. The

there to back me up, basically. Julie was interested

Marshall Rogers

Joker’s insane. The Batman’s the guy who’s against

in getting the best comic possible, and to his credit,

commissioned logo

the guy who’s insane.

having done it one way for a long time, he was

art from 1991.

“My sense is that Batman is very tightly wound, that he devoted himself at a young age to an obsession.

willing to let me try it my way. Apparently he liked what I was doing.”

But he gets it: He is just this side of irrationality. He

A veteran of comics from the Golden and Silver

understands that if he goes over that line, he

Ages, Schwartz was still moving ahead with the

becomes less effective, and he wants to be effective.

times in the 1970s. “I think that’s true of some

So he holds himself tightly or loosely as the situation

people, and Julie is certainly one of them, who are

demands, but he does not let himself slip off into

sort of eternally youthful,” Englehart says. “Julie is

madness. And of course the world the Batman

always enthusiastic about cool stuff. I admire that;

inhabits is crazy a lot of the time. You could just kind

it’s something I’ve tried to emulate as well. There’s

of go with it and end up being a crazed vigilante. But

no reason to get stuck in any particular era, and Julie

he’s not the Punisher or he’s not Wolverine—he’s the

was always of whatever era he was in.”

Batman. His sense is to be the most effective crime-

It wasn’t just Schwartz who proved an ideal

fighter he can be, so he’s not going to let himself go.”

collaborator for those six amazing issues. “Everyone

Once again, editor Julius Schwartz provided

involved in that project was right on the peak of

positive support for new innovations. “Julie was a

their creative abilities,” says Englehart. That included,

great editor,” enthuses Englehart. “What I’d always

of course, penciler Marshall Rogers, whom Englehart

heard about Julie was that he was real hands-on, and

never even met until after he drew those stories.

all the stories about how he’d call the writer in and

Englehart’s Detective run had actually started with

say, ‘Okay, here’s what this month’s story is,’ or

two issues that were drawn by Walter Simonson

‘Here’s the concept,’ and then he and the writer

and inked by

Al Milgrom, in which Englehart

would sit in the office and the writer would come up

introduced his new leading lady, Silver St. Cloud,

with something to fit what Julie had in mind. And

and the corrupt politician Boss Thorne. Schwartz

that worried me when I went over there, because

needed to find a new art team for Englehart’s

that was not the way I was used to working at

remaining issues.

Marvel.” Englehart voiced his worries to publisher

As for Englehart, he was already gone, not just

Jenette Kahn, who he presumes then spoke to

from DC but from the United States. “I wrote all

Schwartz. But there was no problem. “Julie was very

these scripts in advance and then left the country,”

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Englehart says. “I knew I was only going to be there

Conrad Veidt [as the

for a year. I cranked out everything I could crank out

Man Who L a u g h s ] ,

and then left.” Englehart had no say in who the artist

who was credited to

would be. “In those days you worked with whoever

be Robinson’s model

you were given. You didn’t really say, I want to work

for the Joker. I had that

with this guy, or come in with a package.”

photo hanging over my

Enter Marshall Rogers, who reminisces, “Well, it was a

desk during the whole

proverbial right place at the right time.” Rogers had

time I was working on

done two or three backup stories for Detective involving

the job.”

a villain called the Calculator, who battled various DC

Studying the early

heroes. “Then that small series was to culminate in a

Joker stories, Rogers

full issue story of Batman teaming up with all the

decided that the artists

heroes who had fought the Calculator. And since I

had drawn not what he calls the “plasticized” figure

was the last artist to do the backup, Julie Schwartz

the Joker had become in later, “but a real person with

gave me a shot at doing the full-length story. Right

a grotesque face. So that’s what I wanted to bring to the

time, right place.” Fans responded positively to

character,” Rogers says, asserting that he wanted to

Rogers’ work. “So I was offered the chance to be the

bring back “the human horror that was under that

regular artist on the Detective title, which I jumped at.”

white face, and I did want to bring back.”

Reading Englehart’s scripts, Rogers recognized

Like Adams, Rogers was under the impression that

exactly what Englehart was getting at: “I felt he had

the Joker’s smile was permanently fixed on his face.

Double Trouble Joker vs. Two-Face, from The Joker #1,

gone back to the essence

Indeed, Rogers says it was “very difficult, having

of what the Batman was

him always smile all the time.” During the interview

about.” And like Englehart,

it was pointed out to Rogers that even in Batman #1

Rogers too started to

the Joker does not continually smile. “I’m thinking

research the early Batman.

back to other stories that impressed me as a kid,”

“So I was going back to

Rogers mused, “and he wasn’t always smiling, come

look at a lot of the original

to think of it, but it was what had stayed with me

material that was done by

from all my childhood reading.” It seems the image

Kane back in the ’40s and

of the Joker’s grin is so powerful that people assume

getting inspiration from

that it never changes.

that. And when I got the

There is another influence on Rogers’ depiction of

first Joker script, I imme-

the Joker that has often been noted over the years.

diately went back to the

Rogers explains that he always had a mirror in front

Jerry Robinson stuff.

of his desk while working. “Because on a comic-book

“And coincidentally,

deadline you don’t all the time have the luxury of

one of DC’s fan publica-

having models pose for you, so I became my own

tions [Amazing World of

model for anything that was needed at the time, and

DC Comics #4] had done

I would try to compensate as needs required. But

an article just prior to my

for the Joker, I guess a lot of compensation wasn’t

going to work on the

needed, because many people have mentioned that

May 1975. Art by Irv Novick and

Joker story about Jerry

they see a similarity between me and the Joker.”

Dick Giordano.

R o b i n s o n ’s e f f o r t s i n

Englehart certainly agrees. “Well, Marshall looks

creating the character. . .

like that, so what’re you going to do? Marshall’s got

and in the article was

the eyes and the grin and so forth. But it was the

a photo (above right) of

Joker; he wasn’t drawing himself.”

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“Batman and Superman were some of my first read-

in his motivation, and I just visualized that motiva-

ing experiences,” Rogers says, and as an adult, he kept

tion for the reader. But if the motivation hadn’t been

going back to reading Batman, always wanting to see

there, the character wouldn’t have been the same.”

something in the character that he had really never

Marshall Rogers’ work on these stories was inked

seen. “So when I got a chance to work on the char-

by another newcomer in comics, Terry Austin;

acter, a lot of what I wanted to see in the Batman and

Englehart had never met him either before he left the

in the Batman’s world is what I brought to the pages

country. It was Austin’s work on the Englehart-Rogers

I did.”

Detective and the Chris Claremont-John Byrne X-Men

Impressed with Englehart’s conception of the

in the 1970s that established him as one of the finest

Joker, Rogers says, “The thing that I did want to do as

Aparo Gets in on the Joke-r

inkers in comic books. Keep in mind that while

a storyteller was to try to keep what Steve had writ-

Rogers and Austin were working on the artwork,

ten as intact as I could, because he did write a very

Steve Englehart was long gone from the United States.

Artist Jim Aparo’s

maniacal character, and I tried to bring that across.”

interpretation of the

Rogers explains that “the Joker, even when I was

Joker continued the

young, seemed to be the Batman’s perfect counter-

visual reinvention of

point. And it never seemed to come to any fruition in

the villain started by

the earlier stories that I had read.” Rogers agrees with Englehart’s basic conceptions

The Brave and the

of both the Batman and the Joker. “I do see the Batman as a single-minded character, [striving] to bring some peace and rest to a world that goes crazy

– March 1974) and

around him, to paraphrase some of Steve’s work in

#118 (April 1975).

our job. I consider the Joker to be the one who tries

Courtesy of

to make the Batman’s world go crazy. They each have

Mark Cannon.

an objective that clashes, is the best way I can put it.” Englehart’s vision of the Batman and the Joker

made it possible for Rogers to realize his own conceptions of the characters. “If I hadn’t had the material that I was working with—the Englehart stories—I wouldn’t have done the type of

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script I write. The fact that it looked fabulous in fabulous on the page. “And so it wasn’t till like eight months until I got a package from Julie that had print versions of some of this stuff and saw it for the first time. I looked at that stuff and I said, ‘Thank you, God,’ in effect. God is saying, ‘Okay, thank you for your career in comics, here’s your going-away present.’” Even today, Rogers has nothing but high praise for his many collaborators on the product, from Schwartz to letterer John Workman. “Marshall’s stuff was really, really nice, and Terry’s inks were perfect: that nice black juicy line. There wasn’t anything about those books that rang false. I think everybody involved was operating right on the beam, at the peak of their creative powers.”

work that I did on the

The combination of murderousness and utter

Batman myself. If I was

irrationality in Englehart and Rogers’ Joker has

given a humorous Joker, I

influenced writers and artists of the character right

would

have

through the present day. Jim Starlin counts “The

strained

been

cona

Laughing Fish” cover, with Rogers’ Joker holding two

humorous character, and I

grinning fish like guns, as “one of my favorite covers.”

couldn’t

6 8

when I wrote it,” Englehart explains. “I knew what it looked like in my head, which is true of every my head didn’t mean it was necessarily going to look

Neal Adams. From Bold #111 (February

“And so I had no idea what it was going to look like

have

being

brought

Indeed, Englehart and Rogers’ Joker tale is such a

across the insanity and the

landmark that two decades later, “The Laughing Fish” was

type of character you did

adapted into an episode of Batman: The Animated

see” in the Englehart stories.

Series. Most of the episode is a very faithful adaptation

Rogers says that Englehart’s

of Englehart’s story. There are two major changes.

Joker’s “character was based

One is the addition of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s

popular costumed female sidekick, co-created by Paul Dini. The other is the inclusion of the death trap from that other landmark Joker story, O’Neil’s “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge”: the water tank with the giant shark. Englehart and Rogers have each seen the animated adaptation of their story and are justifiably pleased.

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS The most influential Batman story of the last 20 years is surely Frank Miller’s landmark 1986 miniseries, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which presents a fifty-something Batman in a Gotham City turned into a nightmare of contemporary urban crime and blight. Not surprisingly, Miller not only redefined Batman in this series, but his arch-nemesis, the Joker, as well. At the start of The Dark Knight Returns, Bruce Wayne, having retired as a costumed crime-fighter years ago, is a hollow shell of a man, possibly an alcoholic, and possibly with a death wish. Similarly, when we first see the Joker in The Dark Knight Returns, he is not even recognizable. His white skin looks sallow, and his face sags with depression. But once the Joker hears that Batman is back in action, Miller gives us an extreme closeup of the Joker’s mouth, as it twists into the familiar grin. There is one more thing, too: The Joker says the word “Darling.” With that one word, Miller indicated that the Joker’s murderous obsession with Batman had a homoerotic side. Writer Grant Morrison picked up on this and created controversy at DC when he tried, unsuccessfully, to put the Joker in drag in his graphic novel Arkham Asylum. Commenting on Miller’s Joker, Denny O’Neil, who edited The Dark Knight Returns, says, “Batman and the Joker at this point are classic characters. I’ve seen

interpretation. He certainly did it well. O’Neil also

Laughing Fish Revisted

points out that The Dark Knight Returns and its version of the Joker are not in continuity.

Marshall Rogers’

O’Neil interprets the Joker quite differently. “There’s a lot of reasons why I wouldn’t make the

recreation of the

Joker gay, and one of them is to not play into that old

cover to February

stereotype of the villainous homosexual. But para-

1978’s Detective #475.

mount is that that’s not the way I see him. I think the

maybe ten productions of Hamlet in my life. Richard

Courtesy of Ken Danker

Joker is so screwed up that anything as normal as sex

Burton’s was real different from Mel Gibson’s, which

(www.monstercollectibles.

is beyond him.”

was real different from Laurence Olivier’s. After a while,

com).

Perhaps what really put an end to the interpreta-

it becomes a matter of interpretation. There’s no right

tion of the Joker as gay was the introduction of

way to do it. There is only the way that works here

Harley Quinn, the Joker’s girlfriend, in the 1990s,

and now for this project. So I think that Frank’s inter-

first in Batman: The Animated Series and later in the

pretation of the Joker is perfectly valid—it’s Frank’s

canonical comics. “I applaud the efforts of the people

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who created Harley Quinn,”

great success in the early 1980s with the Camelot

O’Neil says, “but I really can’t

3000 maxiseries for DC. Bolland recalls that some-

see the Joker having a girl-

one, possibly Dick Giordano, asked him what he

friend.

wanted to do next for DC. “So I thought, ‘Aim high.

They

did

well,

because the Joker is obviously

I’d like to draw my favorite character and have it

just using this woman. There

written by my favorite and best writer, Alan Moore.’”

may never have been any kind

Bolland thinks that it was Len Wein, Camelot’s

of consummation. I think of

editor, who pitched the idea to DC, and eventually

the Joker as asexual.”

Denny O’Neil became the project’s editor.

One of the most haunting

“Alan seemed quite happy to write about any

images in Dark Knight is the

character I wanted,” Bolland recalls. “I told him I was

sight of the empty costume of

particularly interested in the Joker. In fact, it could be

the second Robin, Jason Todd,

about the Joker, and Batman could be a remote and

who, it appeared, had died.

shadowy background character. That seemed to fire

Readers speculated that in the

his imagination, and he was off and running.

Dark Knight continuity, Todd had

been

murdered,

and

hypothesized further, with no real evidence, that it was the Joker who killed him. Since Dark Knight portrayed an older Batman, the series was considered by many to be the future of the present-day Batman in the regular continuity. That interpretation doesn’t work: Ronald Reagan is president in Dark Knight, for one thing. It makes more sense to see Dark Knight as

’Tec Team Reunited

depicting an alternate reality of the 1980s whose

Rogers and Austin’s

Silver Age heroes, including Batman, are middle-

recreation of the

aged. Nonetheless, the shot of Jason’s old costume

cover to March 1978’s

would set wheels in motion for Batman’s canonical future.

Detective #476. Courtesy of Ken Danker

BATMAN: THE KillIng Joke

collectibles.com).

Probably the most disturbing tale in the Joker’s history remains Batman: The Killing Joke, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Brian Bolland, and first published by DC in 1988. It is also noteworthy for the new possible origin that Moore devised for the Joker. It was in the mid-1980s that DC began rebooting the continuity of its series, deleting decades of past stories from the canon. Moore, however, did not discard “The Man Behind the Red Hood,” but instead elaborated upon it in a way that radically reinterpreted the events of the original story. The Killing Joke project originated not with Moore, however, but with Brian Bolland, who had had a

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had no input into the story. “He’s a great writer and I didn’t feel it was my place to interfere in his work any more than I’d expect him to tell me how to draw it.” So Bolland was as startled by the story that Moore devised as readers probably were. The Joker and his accomplishes invade the home of Barbara Gordon, who is not only Commissioner Gordon’s daughter but the super-heroine Batgirl. But she never gets the chance to change into her heroic identity in this story. The Joker shoots her, leaving her crippled for life, and then humiliates her by stripping her naked and taking photographs of her. Later on, the Joker captures her father and strips him nude as well. ”I was quite surprised by the darkness and sheer nastiness of the

(www.monster

Apart from asking Moore to do the Joker, Bolland

M a t t e r s

story. Denny had upped the ante in his stories with Neal Adams and Marshall Rogers [presumably Bolland means the Englehart stories here], but I was a bit taken aback by what happened to Barbara. Alan only rang me once while he was writing the story. He said he’d got himself into a really dark place with the story. I just provided a sympathetic ear while he talked and somehow thought the whole thing through. “It was only later I learned that he’d had a falling out with DC about Watchmen and, given the chance, he would possibly have flung this script out the window and washed his hands of DC for good. “I sometimes wonder whether the violence he perpetrated on a couple of well-loved DC characters was an expression of his disgruntlement with DC at

the time, or whether it was that

Now the story follows the familiar path laid out by

he’d really got into the brain of

“The Man Behind the Red Hood.” Batman, too, is

the Joker.”

taken in by the ploy and singles out the Red Hood,

The Joker’s brand of voyeurism inspired The Killing Joke’s

Joker, this time laughing madly. The shock of his

memorable cover, showing him

transformation, it seems, drove the comedian over

aiming his camera out towards

the edge into insanity.

the viewer.

who falls into the chemical wastes and rises as the

“I’d seen the ‘Red Hood’ story,” Bolland explains,

“When I do covers I’m less

“and the period feel seemed to enhance the strange-

interested in design and compo-

ness of it all.” But he had another, more surprising

sition and more interested in

model for this sequence as well: “I’d recently seen

the significance of what you’re

[director David Lynch’s film] Eraserhead and I was

seeing,” Bolland admits. “I

very impressed with the weirdness of the locations

never had any doubt what I

and the black-and white photography,” Bolland says.

wanted on the cover. I thought

“In Killing Joke, I wanted to create confusion as to

arresting

whether this story was happening now or in some

image: the Joker looking suit-

strange other-time. I gave very specific instructions

ably scary and Jokerish. But it’s

to colorist John Higgins about doing all these scenes

not until you read the story that the full impact of

in almost black-and-white with just odd details

what it signifies hits you and you’re thrown into the

breaking out in color. . . but somehow all that got

role of the victim.

lost. If I’d been the writer I wouldn’t have done the

needed

“As for the look of the Joker’s face, I have to say it

Joker’s origin,” Bolland says. “I think the Joker and

was the Adams interpretation that I was trying to

Batman are archetypes, and the more you personalize

draw, with a bit of the Jerry Robinson and Dick

them and psychoanalyze them and make them

Sprang versions thrown in.” By now it should not

specific, the less effective they are.”

surprise this magazine’s readers when Bolland reveals

The same archetypes were there in Judge Dredd, the

that “at some point I went to see The Man Who

British comic-book series which helped make

Laughs, the silent movie with Conrad Veidt, which I

Bolland’s reputation as a comics artist. On the one

thought was superb.”

hand you have the cold, rigid figure of what’s right,

Moore has the Joker tell a story which may—or

and on the other hand you have the vast, yawning,

may not—be the full tale of his origin, elaborating on

murderous madness that was the whole of Mega City

“The Man Behind the Red Hood” but giving it an

and its inhabitants. The murderous madness was

unexpected new twist. According to the Joker, he was

always bound to be the more interesting and the

once a small-time comedian, down on his luck, wor-

more alluring.

ried about how to support himself and his wife. At

“But I think Alan did the origin story very well,”

last we are shown the future Joker’s unaltered face,

he adds, “and I think it was crucial that the Joker’s

and he looks very much like a sad sack. In desperate

real name was never given.

need of money, the comedian becomes involved with

“For a long time I hoped to try to write a kind of

a gang of thieves. Their gimmick is to dress up a

sequel to The Killing Joke where the Penguin asks the

stooge in the Red Hood costume and pretend that he

Joker if that story’s true, and the Joker says, ‘Ah, that

is their boss; the idea is that the police will concen-

old chestnut! The truth is, I was stolen by gypsies’—

trate on the colorfully masked leader and pay less

that being the origin of the Man Who Laughs—or

attention to the real thieves. Protesting and fright-

something like that, just so you know that you can

ened, the comedian is forced to wear the Red Hood

never believe anything he says.”

and is dragged along on a raid of a chemical plant.

Perhaps the most controversial part of The Killing

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Joke was its ending. Batman has captured the Joker,

just about every page that

but as the police arrive, they laugh together over the

I’d like to go back and

absurdity of their lives. In this story Moore has

redraw. No one asked me

explicitly drawn a parallel between Batman’s life and

about that tilted logo box

the Joker’s. In each man’s case, just one bad day was

on the front, and every

enough to radically alter the course of his life: In

time I see it I want to

Batman’s case it was the shooting of his parents,

straighten it up. And (I’m

while in the Joker’s case it was the disastrous end of

very sorry, John) I hated

his day as the Red Hood.

the color. So all things

They may be enemies and opposites, but in this regard they are alike. The mutual laughter affirms the

considered, I try never to look at it.”

link between them; Batman even reaches out to the

Yet whatever its creators

Joker. There were, however, readers who found it

may think of it, it is

shocking that Batman would laugh along with his

unlikely that comics afi-

enemy, as if it were all a game, just after the Joker had

cionados will ever dismiss

so brutalized Barbara. “I’m just as much in the dark

The Killing Joke. Steve

about the end of the story as everyone else is,”

Englehart and Jim Starlin

Bolland admits. “If you see Batman as representing

like the story, and so does

the good and the proper, and Joker representing

Denny O’Neil. “Yeah, I

chaos and madness, it seems appropriate to end with

think it’s brilliant,” O’Neil

Batman acknowledging those characteristics inside of

says. “When I took over

himself. There’s a closeness between the two men, a

editing the Batman job,

bond that’s almost stronger than [the one] with all

that was in the house and

the good people in this story, and this final scene

had been in the house for

somehow represents the two men recognizing a sort

a while. I think the first

of common ground between them.”

week I read it and told my

Asked to do an interview for this article, Alan

bosses, well, either we do

Moore himself politely declined, stating that he does

this as Alan wrote it, or we

not care much for his 1980s’ super-hero stories. He

don’t do it. But this is

explained that he basically did The Killing Joke simply

nothing

would

as a favor to Brian Bolland.

want

water

Bolland takes a more mixed view of the project.

down,

nothing

“Alan has created some of the best bits of writing in

would

want

comics and this isn’t one of the best of them, but it’s

change.”

not bad. He (I think) considers DC’s trumpeting of

O’Neil concludes,

this as a graphic novel or even as something special

“It’s an extremely well-

devalues the whole idea of graphic novels. Well, I’m

made story on every

inclined to agree with him.

level.”

“Nonetheless,” Bolland states, “When I decided I wanted to do it, I was in a position to try to create the very best possible thing I could—something that would be a high watermark in terms of what I’ve done in my career. For two years it was my baby, so it

BATMAN: A DeatH In The FAMilY Even more notorious in its day than The Killing

pains me quite a bit to have it dismissed. “Still,” Bolland adds, “That’s not to say I’m not

Joke was the storyline

critical of the look of the thing. There’s something on

“A Death in the Family,”

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“I was particularly interested in the Joker.” Artist Brian Bolland’s desire to draw the Joker launched The Killing Joke in 1988, which ventured into territory that was taboo during the 1970s’ run of DC’s The Joker series. Courtesy of Shane Foley. © 2004 DC Comics.

which ran in Batman #426–429, cover dated late 1988 and early 1989, written by Jim Starlin and illustrated by Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo. But first we must set the scene: The original Robin, Dick Grayson, was in college in the early 1970s and in the 1980s starred in one of DC’s top titles, The New Teen Titans. He had outgrown the role of Batman’s apprentice and adopted a new costumed identity, Nightwing. Batman took on a new Robin, Jason Todd. Different writers handled Jason differently, but the conventional wisdom decreed that Jason was an obnoxious character, something of a brat. This culminated in a publicity stunt that attracted considerable mainstream media attention. DC announced that readers could phone in to decide whether or not Jason would live or die in “A Death in the Family.” As if Batman readers were spectators in a gladiatorial arena, they voted thumbs down. And of course, who was more appropriate for the role of Robin’s killer than Batman’s archenemy, the Joker? Denny O’Neil, who was the editor of Batman at that time, agrees and says, “That was almost entirely the writer’s idea. That was [writer] Jim Starlin. And he really took the Joker to an extreme. I don’t think anybody has written, before or since, the Joker as such a total monster. Jim suggested it, and I go down in infamy as the one who thought of the stunt.” Starlin says he sees the Joker as completely insane: “That was the charm of him, that he was such a

set up in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank

maniacal lunatic that most of his plots even back

Miller. He had a display case where Robin’s costume

when I was reading him in the 1950s [were] all

was in there, and makes some reference to the Joker,

If Only This Were a Color Mag. . .

towards some goal that only he could conceive of.

so it obviously had to be the Joker who killed him.”

This stunning British

He’s just kind of unique in his insanity.” Starlin was

However, when asked if Jason’s death was derived

fanzine cover by

fully in favor of O’Neil’s turning the Joker back into

from Dark Knight, Denny O’Neil laughs, “No. Not for

Brian Bolland, reported

a serial killer. “I thought it was all in keeping with the

one second. I never considered those stories [Dark

to have been produced

character. He was quite maniacal and homicidal back

Knight] to be in continuity.”

in the 1980s, appears

when he first started off in the early ’40s.” Starlin

Shortly after Jason’s demise, Starlin had the Joker

in BACK ISSUE courtesy

sums it up: “He was the Batman’s ultimate villain;

turn up at the United Nations, wearing a traditional

there’s nobody else who even comes close.”

of John Fleskes (www.

Arabian headdress, as the official ambassador for a

As for just why Batman and the Joker make perfect

fleskpublications.com).

radical Arab state. This was the 1980s, shortly after

enemies, Starlin says, “Well, they’re both crazy in

the long-running crisis in which the Muslim funda-

their own different ways. The both of them are

mentalist regime of Iran, headed by the Ayatollah

maybe flip sides of the same coin.”

Khomeini, held the staff of the United States embassy

By making the Joker into Robin’s killer, Starlin sees

in Iran hostage for months. It was Khomeini that

himself as following Miller’s lead: “That was sort of

Starlin had in mind when he aligned the Joker with

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Arab radicals. “The Ayatollah was a strange enough

cept in the public mind was the Adam West TV show,

character in where he was taking his country from

the funny, camp Batman. I did this guy who had an

what I was reading at that time. He was definitely in

adult relationship with a beautiful woman and a

the Joker’s league, I figured. Of course, now, looking

complex storyline. What Uslan wanted to do was

back on this story, the idea of the Joker in the role of

make the movie out of my stuff. He bought the rights

a mad Arab terrorist—who used a bomb to kill Jason

and somewhere along the line he went into partner-

Todd—may make readers think not of the late

ship with Warners. They had a series of guys writing

Ayatollah but of Osama bin Laden and his suicide

more scripts based on my stuff. When I got involved,

bombers.”

they gave me copies of these things. They all have

By the way, for those who may not know, Batman

Silver St. Cloud, they all have Boss Thorne, and they

found yet a third Robin, Tim Drake, and this one not

all have that version of the Joker, that version of the

only won over the readers but went on to star in

Batman, and so forth.”

his own Robin series. So it looks like this Robin has

The Batman movie spent a decade in develop-

survived the Joker’s particular brand of downsizing

ment, but without producing a script that was satis-

kid sidekicks.

factory to Warners. Englehart recalls, “They came to me, ten years later, and said, ‘People have been trying

The BATMAN MoviE

to adapt your stuff for years and they can’t get it

The climactic appearance of the Joker in the 1980s is,

right. So we want you to come in and write treat-

of course, Jack Nicholson’s incarnation of the charac-

ments so that somebody can write the screenplay.’ I

ter in director Tim Burton’s first Batman movie in

said, ‘Can I write the screenplay?’ And they said, ‘No.

1989. It was this portrayal that introduced the new,

Must have a Hollywood guy, but we need you to tell

irrational, murderous Joker to the general public

him what to write.’” Englehart wrote treatments of

beyond comics fandom, finally supplanting the

the plot that ran from 15 to 20 pages.

image of the Joker depicted by Cesar Romero.

“A Death in the Family” Chapters three and four, from Batman #428 and #429 (January 1989). Cover art by Mike Mignola.

Whether or not Tim Burton or screenwriter Sam Hamm knew about The Man Who Laughs, I do not

Batman movie. But elements of Englehart’s work can

know. But in the Batman movie, like Gwynplaine

still be seen in the film. The heroine is now photo-

before him, the Joker is disfigured with a permanent

journalist Vicki Vale, but like Silver St. Cloud she dis-

grin. This enables Burton to have the Joker at times

covers Batman’s secret identity, and, whether by

use makeup to make his hair and skin appear to be

coincidence or not, Kim Basinger, who played Vicki,

their original colors. And yet, even with the makeup,

looks more like Silver than the redheaded Vale.

Nicholson’s fixed grin remains unchanged, somehow

Englehart points out that his movie treatment ended

looking even more inhuman on a normal face.

with Batman and the Joker battling atop a tower,

Toward the end of the movie, Nicholson’s Joker, as

if in a casual afterthought, shoots his main hench-

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Ultimately, it was Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren who are credited with the screenplay for the 1989

complete with an approaching helicopter, paralleling the climax atop the cathedral in the actual film.

man dead for no reason. This may remind comics

As far as Nicholson goes, Englehart exults, “I

readers of how Steve Englehart had the Joker abrupt-

thought Nicholson played my Joker. So naturally I’m

ly shove one of his accomplices into traffic. This is no

going to like that. I thought that was cool. Probably

coincidence. In the 1970s, movie producer (and

Peter O’Toole looked more like the Joker, but Jack

sometime comics professional) Michael Uslan pur-

Nicholson’s crazy! (laughs)”

chased the film rights to Batman. The writer of this

Denny O’Neil is likewise pleased by Nicholson’s

article recalls hearing Uslan speak at a New York

incarnation of the Clown Prince of Crime. “I thought

comics convention during this time, declaring that

of all the Batman movies, the first one came closest to

he wanted to base a movie version of Batman on the

what I thought a Batman movie should be,” he says.

work of O’Neil and Adams and Englehart and Rogers.

“The script—at least the Sam Hamm version—was

“Before that,” Steve Englehart explains, “the con-

really pretty good. It was a case where Nicholson

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A Day at the Beach The Joker obviously has no regrets about killing Jason Todd in this 1990 commissioned sketch by Norm Breyfogle. Courtesy of Jerry Hillegas and Don Corn (check out Don’s amazing sketch gallery at www.geocities.com/ltcfan/sketch.html). © 2004 DC Comics.

brought a lot to the role. There were lines when you

Englehart and Rogers, and others over those years,

read them on the page, they just sort of lay there, and

but was even clearly identifiable as Bill Finger’s co-

when he said them, they really came alive. Again, I

creation from 1940. With Tim Burton’s movie, this

thought that was kind of the Joker that Neal and I

revitalized Joker reached an audience far greater than

did, with appropriate alterations necessitated by the

the readership of comics. When the general public

change in media, and I thought the actor did a fine

thinks of the Joker, they are now more likely to see

job. I basically had no quarrel with it. It was a great

Jack Nicholson’s version in their mind than Cesar

bit of casting.”

Romero’s.

The Batman movies have their own continuity,

The Joker’s history was far from finished in 1989.

based upon but distinct from the comics, and in the

The next decade would see the brilliantly entertain-

film it is the Joker who murders Bruce Wayne’s par-

ing, yet sinister version of the character on Warners’

ents, and he even gets a name, Jack Napier (jack-

Batman animated series, as voiced by Mark Hamill, as

anapes, get it?). Commenting on this, O’Neil prefers

well as the introduction of his popular sidekick

that the Joker not have an origin: “In my handling of

Harley Quinn.

the Joker as a writer, I don’t think he should have a backstory. He should be almost a force of nature.”

As reconceptualized in the 1970s and 1980s, the Joker remains a powerful and enduring part of

By the end of the 1989 Batman movie, the Joker

Batman’s mythology, both in the comics and in ani-

lies dead. But Jack Nicholson’s Joker was the culmi-

mation. Those two decades, thanks to the work of so

nation of a process of rebirth for the character that

many brilliant writers and artists, remain the greatest

had taken nearly two decades. The movie’s Joker not

sustained creative period in the Joker’s history.

only reflected the work of O’Neil and Adams,

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The comic-book world is full of stories and characters strange enough to give most mental hospital workers pause, and yet occasionally, something entirely too bizarre or strange will pop up in the four-color pages of history. All too often, these oddities will be some encroachment of the outside world coming to mingle with the comic-book realm, a confluence so out of the ordinary that those looking in from a distance can only gasp ...

BUGS BUNNY MEETS THE SUPER-HEROES

gels y Man by And

Long before DC Comics released the Superman and Bugs Bunny mini-series in 2000, or Duck Dodgers became Green Loontern in 2003, millions of children worldwide already knew that the Looney Tunes cast and DC’s pantheon of heroes and villains were old friends. And in 1976, while the term “corporate synergy” wasn’t an everyday part of the business-person’s lexicon, that melding of properties led to five theme shows that mixed Catwoman and Sylvester the Cat alongside Tweety Bird and Robin. Showman Rodger Hess was working for Licensing Company of America (LCA, a sister company of Warner Brothers) in the 1970s, managing such Warner properties as the Looney Tunes cartoon stars and DC’s comic book heroes. “My background had always been in the entertainment business,” says Hess. “I had an idea and I went to the Powers That Be at LCA and asked them if they would give me money to construct costumes of the Warner Brothers characters: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, etc.” In 1974, using these characters—and voice tracks recorded by Mel Blanc—Hess produced a number of small shopping-center and state-fair shows, at which actors wore the costumes and did song-and-dance-and-joke routines.

casting crawl

BEHIND THE MASKS . . . Because cast lists changed for Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes , and actors doubled on characters, ISSUE have been able to assemble for a cast and character list: BUGS BUNNY: Donna Tchapraste, Ros Dun . . . BATMAN/FOGHORN

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was quickly set, though this

One of the 20–25-minute segments was The Batman & Robin Safety Show. “The super-heroes were interest in teaching the boys and girls safety,” says director/

time, Hess asked Gene Patrick

choreographer/early Bugs Bunny actress Donna Tchapraste. “That was pretty

to help him write the new

trendy at the time. Robin was going to plug the toaster in and Batman would run

show. Patrick was the enter-

out and say, ‘Stop! You should never plug in an old worn cord!’ Or he was going

tainment director for Marriott’s

to drink something awful. The villains were only there by imagination. There was

Great America, and Hess had

Dr. Danger and that was really a cartoon cut-out.

already licensed them the Warner Brothers characters.

“Bugs Bunny was going to the fairs, and Batman and Robin had quite a good career in the shopping malls,” says Tchapraste. “You have to think back in time

“I got acquainted with Roger

because shopping malls didn’t really exist. They were growing, and it turned to be

when I was working for

a good marketing ploy for entertainment to go to the mall. All of those little shows

Marriott Corporation,” says

were developed in the smaller settings.” Larger character shows such as Disney on

Patrick. We were just begin-

Parade had played stadiums in the 1960s and

ning to plan the theme parks

early 1970s, but the House of Mouse was dormant

and all that stuff. Rodger liked what we were doing. He had

on stage, developing Disney on Ice. Sesame Street Live and other shows had yet to be planned. The time was right for something new.

seen what we were doing even pre-opening. I had built a pretty strong relationship with Mel Blanc, and did a lot of recording and writing for him. Rodger asked me to help him and work on his show for a bit. I helped him lay it out and write the first draft script and

Color the Criminals

pull it together. I remember writing a very lengthy first-draft script from a treatment.”

An unidentified artist drew

For Bugs Bunny Follies II, Patrick and Hess crafted a story that

these coloring pages for

not only incorporated the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes characters,

the show’s program. Courtesy of Andy Mangels.

but other heroes and villains from DC Comics’ pantheon as well. “I spent a lot of time trying to think of theatrical reasons why Bugs Bunny would ever know any of the [super-heroes],” says Patrick. “I do recall that I managed to come up with some scenarios

to cause them to meet. Some of it was pretty out of left field. That was the biggest challenge. When was the last time Bugs Bunny was on Krypton?”

In 1976, a decision was made to change

Still, some stylistic differences were in the brewing, common

the format; that strategy would prove beneficial

enough in stage production. “It was Rodger’s show, and he had his

for almost a full decade to come. Tchapraste (now Donna Emerson) recalls that

take on what it ought to be, and I had mine,” says Patrick. “He really

the genesis of a show-to-be was very spontaneous. “As a choreographer I could

saw it as a kid’s show and I saw it a little bit different than that. The kids will go

create things on my feet and we eventually became involved with the Marriott

look at the characters doing things, including just standing there, but we have to

Corporation. We went to a business theatre meeting where we thought we were

be careful not to make it an ordeal for the parents. So my shows were considerably

going to be going there to perform our small show, and we found out that we had

more hip for the parents. The shows came down on two planes all the time. I tried

to create a whole show on the spot. I think that was my audition piece for Rodger.

to inject a little bit of that into Rodger’s thing. His take was very much a kid’s show,

It was very spontaneous. We needed it right then and there. From that business

like we’d do Barney today. When I went off on my own, I did things a bit different.

meeting we created a new show.” Associate producer Jamey Cohan explains further,

If you saw one of mine, they were little theatrical musical comedies, where the kids

noting that, “We took ‘The Tweety & Sylvester Show,’ ‘The Bugs Bunny & Porky

get off on the characters bouncing around stage, and the adult audience laughs

Show,’ and ‘The Batman & Robin Safety Show’ and we put all these little 20–25

at the jokes that the kids don’t get.”*

shows together almost like an Ed Sullivan show.” The new vaudevillian-style revue,

Patrick brought onboard musician and lyricist Tom Merriman to help create

Bugs Bunny Follies, had an emcee who introduced the acts. “It was very successful,

new songs. Merriman was a composer/arranger who had worked solo (and with

and toured the country playing arenas and large auditoriums,” says Hess. After Madison Square Garden bought into Rodger Hess Productions—as a bid to get involved in the touring show business—a sequel to Bugs Bunny Follies

Patrick) on a lot of show music at the MGM Grand, the Hilton, the Flamingo, and other Vegas shows, as well as for lots of television and radio jingles. For Bugs Bunny Follies, Merriman wrote such songs as “What’s Up Doc” and “Pig O’ My Heart”

* In later years, Patrick would write, direct, and produce over a dozen other Warner characters stage shows for Marriott’s Great America, mostly with Bugs Bunny. He never again worked with DC super-heroes though. In one of his shows, The Bugs Bunny Story, he established the rascally rodent’s past, including his parents Harry and Edith and his little sister Debbie. In one scene in which Dad called Bugs into the room, Patrick left the name intentionally blank to see if Mel Blanc would fill in Bugs’ real first name on the fly in the recording studio. “He didn’t even blink an eye,” Patrick says. “He just said, ‘Hey, Benjamin, is that you?’”

assembling a look at this cast (and that of later shows with the same characters) is difficult, but in various interviews, here’s the best we here at BACK LEGHORN: Shakespearean actor Doug Boyles, W. W. Smith, Bill Covington, Joe Douquette, James Rebhorn . . . Robin/Sylvester the Cat: Uriel Menson, L a u g h i n g

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for the Looneys, while Batman, Robin, and new addition Wonder Woman got to croon “Going to a Party.” A villainous quartet of Penguin, Joker, Catwoman, and Riddler got their own solo number, “Bad Old Days.” Hess explains that, “I could not use Superman because the movie had not come out yet and they were holding him in reserve.” Because all of the Looney Tunes character voices had to be recorded by Mel Blanc, Merriman had to pre-record a guide for the voice-acting legend. “I’d do a piano rough and then I’d sing it to a click track. And then we’d go out there and work with Mel, who would follow the click track and rough vocal. Then we’d take that back and put all the instruments around it. He was an incredibly quick study and I was always amazed. As he got older, he couldn’t do the voices quite as quickly as I’m sure he did in his earlier days. So we had to speed up Bugs. We had a formula where we had a certain amount we sped up the tape a bit. If we had several different characters in the same song, he’d do one character and then he’d come back and he’d drop in the others.” The 1977 sequel show was dubbed Bugs Bunny Follies II, but Hess soon saw the flaw there. “It was not successful,” deadpans Hess, “and somebody said that the problem was that people didn’t realize it was a different show.” The newly christened Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes turned the fortunes of the show around, and it moved forward. Though simple, the exact plot of Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes is barely remembered almost three decades later, though it definitely involved a birthday. Tchapraste thinks the event was Porky Pig’s birthday, “and the villains wanted to spoil the fun. The Riddler was going to ruin the party with his camera by doing something as sinister as getting people all wet. He had a squirt-gun camera. Joker had sneezing powder.” Hess adds that, “If the villains were successful, there would never be any more birthday parties, birthday cakes, etc.” Actor Steve Cochran remembers that Bugs Bunny Follies actually had Porky’s birthday as one of its plots, and that it was Speedy Gonzalez’s surprise birthday around which the plot of Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes revolved. “I was Joker and Wile E. Coyote,” says Cochran, “and the villains were trying to destroy Speedy Gonzalez’s birthday. The villains sang ‘Bad Old Days,’ and then the heroes came in and there was a big fight sequence with strobe lights and everything. Of course at the end, Speedy got his surprise birthday party.” Cochran recalls the show fondly, but the doubling-up as both Wile E. and the

Super-Hero Sing-a-Lo

ng In these photos, Ba tman, Robin, and Wo nder Woman perform “Going to a Party,” while the Joker, Catwoman, Penguin, and the Rid dler belt out “Bad Old Days.” No photographer credit ed. Courtesy of An dy Mangels. © 1977 Warner Bros.,

Joker was straining. As Wile E., he wore a large headpiece, but because the Joker required so much makeup, he had to wear the Joker “face” under the Wile E. head. “Joker wears a lot of clown makeup and the inside of my (Wile E.) head was rather disgusting,” Cochran says, laughing. “There were costume changes throughout the show. The costume was like wearing a skintight shag carpet and I probably had about four costume changes. Probably a little more than that. There were only 11 of us in the show, but it may have appeared that there were 25 or 30 people in the cast. Everyone doubled except for Bugs, and even she did one number at the top

Inc. and DC Comics

of the second act as a chorus girl but then she had to immediately get off-stage and back into the head.” As the program for Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes shows, no credits for actors involved were given. “They had to give you credit but they didn’t want to ruin the disguise for the children,” says Davis. “I worked for a lot of other shows like Disney and Hanna-Barbera, and they had a ‘Meet and Greet’ with the audience afterwards, but the Bugs Bunny shows didn’t.” To meet Actor’s Equity rules, cast members were listed on a board out in the lobby, discreetly placed where adults

Robert Kellett . . . Wonder Woman/ Road Runner: Charmian Clark, Bonnie ??? . . . Joker/Wile E. Coyote: Steve Cochran, Jimmy May, Joe Romagnoli . . . Sam: Joannie ???, Lori Lynott, Genie Davis . . . Tweety Bird/Dance Captain: Lori Lynott . . . Porky Pig: Genie Davis . . . Doc: Steve Cochran . . . ?????:

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might be more likely to see it than their young charges. Often, fliers were inserted into the programs as well, which was useful if the cast changed, or an understudy had to assume the role for a performance. Without her own voice and working with dancing and pantomime-style acting,

dimension to the production.” Tchapraste remembers that, “We had just opened Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes and we decided on our way back to the hotel that we were going to do a show in outer space.” Indeed, with both Bugs Bunny Follies and Bugs Bunny

“What I tried to bring out was what Porky characterized,” Genie Davis recalls. “Each

Meets the Super-Heroes touring the country to packed audiences, Hess decided to

of us as the Warner characters had to characterize some aspect of humanity. Here

add two further shows to freshen the repertoire. Utilizing elements of the other

you had the little stutterer who could barely get his thought across, so I had to give

two shows—and parts of the upcoming new production—Bugs Bunny Circus debuted

it a beauty and innocence and at the same time give the world an acceptance of

in 1978 in Mexico City, and toured Mexico and South America, mainly Venezuela,

that kind of person out there. The same thing happened for the tougher (villain)

and Argentina. “When I did it in foreign countries, I was able to use the voices

characters.”

of the actors who did the voices in those countries,” says Hess. “We did the

The emcee for the evening was known as “Doc” (as in “What’s up, Doc?”).

show in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.”

“A lot of them had their own personality,” says Davis, “but the main thing was

The third English show, also debuting in 1978, was Bugs Bunny in Space. It

that they could say ‘Daffy, what happened to you? You tripped over the whatever,’

utilized the same cast as the others, though it substituted Cheetah for Catwoman,

instead of having the whole audience watch that an animal character dropped a

and added Antwerp (a renamed Marvin the Martian) and a few other minor char-

prop for example and couldn’t see inside the head to pick it up. It wasn’t that

acters. Hess recalls that, “the villains took Bugs Bunny’s carrots and they put them

Wonder Woman would have to run over and say ‘Well, here Daffy.’ It was mag-

all on Planet X. Bugs and Daffy and Porky were going to go out and find Planet X

nificently put together because you had the security of a human being from the

and Antwerp. Act one was getting ready to go to outer space and they arrived there.

top of the show to the end of the show who could correct problems discreetly.”

The villains had a laboratory on Planet X and when the good guys arrived they

Cochran remembers more than a few such blunders, but one in particular

found the laboratory and the carrots were in the safe. Wonder Woman had to

which wasn’t very discreet sticks in his mind. “Frank (Stancati) and I in our

circle in all the villains because Batman and Robin were detained.” Hess also

costumes had the only full-body mobility where the arms and legs were our own. The others had little arms or sight limitations or the head was too big to help. The girl who played Porky Pig, her chin came down to just below the actresses’ hips, and then the pig body, and then the crotch was low to mid-thigh. So you get a sense as to how (little) leg movement she’d have. She always seemed to find the cracks in the floor or something to trip over, and the Pig would go down. It was Frank’s and mine’s responsibility, since we had full-body movement to assist the other characters to get up again. Frank’s costume, Daffy’s mouth, was essentially a megaphone that went just above his eyes to just below his chin and it went out from there, so Frank and I are dancing together, and the Pig comes out and she falls. Frank says ‘Aw s**t, the f***ing pig is down again!’ This was really loud with the megaphone of his. All the kids in the first few rows could have heard it. We would have to roll the pig literally off-stage because the way the head was, she couldn’t sit up. It was absolutely ridiculous.” Cochran would later move into the role of Doc the emcee. “Mel Blanc had prerecorded all of the lines for the Looney Tunes characters. There was a tape and the only live voices were Doc, the villains, and the super-heroes. All the character voices were done with Mel’s voice and we had to basically pantomime to his voice. The emcee had a start and stop button on his microphone so he would say his line, hit the start button, allow the character to speak for his line, turn his voice off at the end of the line, turn it on, turn it off. It got a little crazy, especially when the tape jammed or the stop button didn’t work and the voices run on and on and on.” Associate Producer Cohan also recalls the technical glitches. “This was before cassettes, let alone CDs. The tape would break, so those were some uncomfortable moments occasionally. We always had backup tape players sitting side by side, running concurrently, but you still had to make the changeover.” With the Wonder Woman TV series and Super Friends cartoons on the air, and Looney Tunes and Batman reruns in constant rotation, the audience for Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes was primed. Tchapraste believes the live super-heroes were a major part of its appeal. “They gave a wonderful musical comedy song and dance to it, whereas the cartoon characters moved around and did their bit, because it was all canned, you were just watching something from beginning to end. The humans, Batman and Robin, would really just sparkle. They gave a wonderful

Program Highlights

Comics

Riddler/Speedy Gonzalez: Jim Morlock, Robert Weber, Robert Hoshour . . . Penguin/Daffy Duck: Frank Stancati . . . Catwoman and/or Cheetah/Yosemite Steven Wayne . . . Note: Chief O’Hara, Tazmanian Devil, and Antwerp (a renamed Marvin the Martian) also made cameo appearances in some productions.

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tions, and more. “I remember writing the press releases because I knew the characters so well because we had done all these small shows with Bugs Bunny,” Cohan says. “I set up interviews with Mel Blanc for radio in all the towns that we would go into. The radio stations loved Mel Blanc. It was a real coup for them. Some of the [show] actors we would use in the small shows also. As part of the promotions for these shows we had the ACU (the Advance Character Unit), so if we were coming into town in the beginning of February, two-to-three weeks prior to that, the Advance Character Unit would go in and do appearances in malls and TV stations to promote the fact that the show was coming to town. There would always be a non-costumed person with them who could act as a spokesman. We did continue to do the malls and the parks, but we’d have to stay out of the way of the show so there wasn’t a conflict.” Speaking of conflicts, other live actors were also doing live appearances as DC characters at the time, mainly Adam West and Burt Ward, who would appear at boat shows and other venues (Lynda Carter made a few appearances as Wonder Woman, and the Shazam! TV cast also met the public a few times). “We did Batman and Robin without Burt and Adam because it wouldn’t be economically feasible to do them in the touring shows or the smaller shows,” says Cohan. “We did the costumed characters [instead]. Surprisingly, it was never a problem. They were Batman and Robin to the kids. We did the same thing with Wonder Woman and Catwoman. We did personal appearances with them and it was not a problem. When Adam and Burt did do car shows, or Lynda Carter, whenever they appeared in costume, it had to be through us because our company held the live costumed character appearance rights. So we were able to control it so there wouldn’t be recalls that, “Porky was really lonely out there on Planet X and he had a telephone where he could call Petunia.” Genie Davis recalls of the show that “Daffy Duck had a cute number,” but she remembers more of her time as Cheetah. “I’m a ballet dancer and [I was wearing] a yellow unitard with spots and a long tail. It was wonderful to dance that part because it was before Cats came on Broadway, so it was interesting to see how she choreographed. There were all these catlike movements that you could do as a human—whiskers and ears and tail—and yet still she had to be sensual but she had to be catlike. I enjoyed that. It was a lot of fun.” Hess’ fifth—and final—of the set was 1979’s Bugs Bunny Sports Spectacular. Hess says that, “The villains were competing against Bugs Bunny and the other characters, and [if the heroes] lost, there would be no more carrots for Bugs Bunny.” Tchapraste recalls the plot and staging a bit more fully. “Bugs Bunny Sports Spectacular was based on the Olympics. The stage had sports columns with the Looney characters in statues on the top instead of athletes. The Warner characters were setting out to be in the Olympic games. The villains were also out to be in the Olympic games but they wanted to win by cheating. Batman was in a boxing match against Riddler, and Foghorn Leghorn was the referee. It was really an unusual piece of staging because they would have to stop and hold like a still comic [panel] to get the riddle out. Sylvester had a race against Catwoman, and Robin and Batman were there at the finish line. Daffy had a swimming match against the Joker, and the Penguin in a car in the shape of a turtle had a marathon between Bugs Bunny. . . like the tortoise and the hare but it was full of evil-doing, because it wasn’t a tortoise it was the Penguin in a car.” Davis played Catwoman in this production, and recalls the message, as summed up at the end of the show. “The finale song was ‘Doing Your Best,’ and basically what it was all about was that it doesn’t matter whether you win the race or you lose, but if you do your own best then that wins the day.” With four shows now touring the country—plus one in South America—a lot of behind-the-scenes scheduling had to be set. Cohan was the man in charge of that aspect, dealing with production work and scheduling, bills, auditions, promo-

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any conflicts. We really did all the booking for Adam and Burt, and they did the most appearances.” Sadly, little evidence of the five Bugs Bunny shows exists today. Videos of the performances don’t exist, except for one. “The last show is on a video,” says Tchapraste, “and it was made so that we could do a commercial. [The show was] pre-technology. The technology was still being developed.” Hess didn’t do a lot of new licensing for the shows, though he did create posters and program books specific to each show. The program book is mostly a coloring and activity book, with a center insert of color photos and song and credit list. “We specifically created pennants [with the super-heroes and villains],” says Hess, “and there were some items that were unique to the shows, but the rest of the items were licensed merchandise that people could have bought at a retail level.” By the turn of the decade, the Bugs Bunny shows were touring the globe (the series finally ended in Venezuela in 1983), but those behind the scenes were beginning to move on. Hess became a successful Broadway producer of musicals such as 1776, Annie, Jelly’s Last Jam, and the recently-closed Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks (with comic fan and cartoon Joker Mark Hamill in the lead); Hess also produced the Nintendo World Championships. Tchapraste became Donna Emerson when she married one of the co-owners of the company which provided the scenery for the Bugs Bunny shows, and has since taught dance in New York. Davis also teaches dance and has choreographed shows for Shari Lewis and stage shows for animated hits Cayou and Arthur. Cochran works for Theatreworks USA, a company that works with kids’ shows and rehearsal studios for Broadway. Patrick went on to write for over a dozen other Bugs Bunny stage shows for Marriott’s theme parks, often utilizing Merriman, who himself worked for PBS on Wishbone and other shows. Cohan still works in theatre in the Big Apple, while others in the Bugs Bunny family have become Broadway players or Hollywood stars. Not all of the stars are entirely forthright about their credits however, as the lack of internet information about the shows demonstrates. “I used a lot of people and then they moved on to Broadway and the last thing they want anyone to know is that they ran around the country playing Wile E. Coyote. None of them

(list it on their résumé),” Hess says. “When I see them I always kiddingly get pissed off at them for not using the job I gave them as a credit. But I understand.” Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes might seem an odd idea to today’s readers, but the show’s 1970’s timing made it a hit. “It was very unique, and I think that had an appeal to a number of actors that would come for the auditions,” says Tchapraste. “The work was good, the shows were darling, and they were little musical comedies. It worked just marvelously [for] small people and teenagers alike. We weren’t into high-tech stuff yet, and all of the scenes had a comic book setting, and I think that was some of the appeal for the actors. It was a stepping ground. We were an Actor’s Equity company, and from there they could continue their careers. Rodger would look for really good people so there would be a better draw.” Hess admits that the story was simplistic for each show, but notes that they did their best to teach kids good values while entertaining them. “It was a story. The music forwarded the plot. It was audience participation. Parents stick cotton in your ears and check your brains at the door ’cause the kids are going to scream their heads off. The one thing they did do was they absolutely held the attention of children. They were riveted. The threat at the top of the show meant that the kids had to pay attention of their favorite cartoon characters would become victims of some dastardly deed by some venomous villain.” Davis recalls her Bugs Bunny time fondly. “There was always some cute, sincere moral for children to walk away with, and for parents to say ‘Ha, that worked for us.’ Those shows played to huge children’s audiences. Children all over the country got to see these live characters. And you couldn’t blow it and take your head off, no matter how hot and sweaty and blind you were. The deal was you don’t ruin it for the children. I was dance captain for eight tours. I really felt my responsibility was to teach the kids and the cast—if you’re Yosemite Sam, you’re rough, you’re tough, and you have a heart of gold. The main thing was to have the children comprehend the balance of all the characters because they all represented people in the real world. That would then help them go away and cope with everything they faced, whether it was a wise guy like Bugs Bunny himself, or a little doll like Porky Pig. The idea was that it would give a lot of comprehension for different characters in the world, but it was also pure entertainment because there was a lot of singing and dancing.” Proud of his past accomplishments with Bugs Bunny Meets the SuperHeroes and the others, Hess says, “I loved that. I’ve been doing Broadway shows since then, but all my background and my reputation stems from the fact that I did these Bugs Bunny shows and the fact that I did them all around the world attracted other people to ask me to produce their shows in foreign countries. That was a very important part of my life.” “They were great shows for kids,” says Tchapraste. “If you had heard the audience roar, it was remarkable.” And among those kids, probably more than a few new comic book readers were created.

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COMIC BOOKS: WITH THE EMPHASIS ON THE FIRST TWO SYLLABLES The Harvey Awards have it backwards. They give out trophies for Best Writer and Best Artist and Best Whatever. . . . . . and then almost as afterthought, they present either Sergio Aragonés or Evan Dorkin with one called “Special Award for Humor.” It should be the other way around: The main awards should go to the folks who craft the funny funnybooks. The serious ones should be treated as the departures from the norm. These are COMIC books, people. You know what the word “comic”

guest editorial by mark evanier

means? Well, don’t just sit there with your finger up your nose to the

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second joint. Look it up. You’ll see it has to do with comedy. With being funny. With making people laugh. Nothing in Webster’s about angst-ridden super-heroes, violent fantasies, or women who show lots of cleavage and occasional lesbian tendencies. I mean, they don’t call them Serious Books. You don’t say, “I’m going to stop off at the Serious Shop and pick up the new Batman.” Jack Kirby was not the King of the Seriouses. Comic books. With the emphasis on the first two syllables. There’s a story in the theater—one of those that gets told about different people at different times. Maybe it was Edmund Gwenn, maybe it was Edward G. Robinson, but a famous actor was on his deathbed, moments from the Final Curtain. He and everyone around him knew that the end was imminent when someone leaned over him and asked, “Is dying hard?” The old man who might have been Edmund Gwenn paused, groped for the words and finally said, “Yes. . . “. . . but not as hard as playing comedy.” He could have been talking about writing comedy, too. It’s hard. I don’t mean “hard” the way chopping lumber all day or digging anthracite is hard. But it’s generally harder than writing the non-funny stuff.

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For a time, DC Comics had two pay scales for its writers. Comedy features like Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis paid a few dollars more per page than Superman and Batman. Because they were more difficult to do. I’ve written both and don’t mean to put down either. Both have their challenges. Both have their rewards for both writer and reader, But I think over the years, funny comics have too often been consigned to the kiddy ghetto, and it’s time we stopped doing that. True Story: Back when I was primarily writing Daffy Duck and Donald Duck and other things that went quack in the night, I was invited to be Guest of Honor at a small convention and asked to do a panel about my work. After I agreed, the con organizer stressed, “Of course, I mean your work on super-hero and mystery comics.” I said, “Well, why don’t I just take questions and I’ll talk about whatever the audience, assuming there is one, wants me to talk about?” He replied—and this, along with his low standard for Guests of Honor, probably explains why his con was a flop— “I don’t run cons for children who read Bugs Bunny. I run cons for adults who read the more realistic comics. . . ” I couldn’t help but ask: “What, to you, is a realistic comic?” He said, “Oh, Superman, Mighty Thor. . . ” Yeah, right. A man from the planet Krypton leaping tall buildings is realistic. The God of Thunder descending the Rainbow Bridge from Asgard to Earth is realistic. But a talking rabbit? Well, that’s fiction. Actually, at the time, market research showed, the audience for Superman wasn’t much older than the audience for Super Goof. A matter of months was all. I wasn’t offended for myself. I got my invite and my free hotel room and a

Mark Evanier’s first two collections of his acclaimed POV columns (Comic Books And Other Necessities Of Life and Wertham Was Right!) are currently available from TwoMorrows, with a third volume (Superheroes In My Pants) due out in May. He also recently penned the book MAD Art, spotlighting the artists who’ve done work on the fabled humor mag.

per diem that barely bought gum. But I was offended on behalf of the folks who do funny comics and nothing else. They deserve better. And they’ll probably get it, though maybe not in our lifetimes. I think Mr. Kurtzman’s MAD and Mr. Barks’ Uncle Scrooge will outlive any super-hero comics done anywhere by anyone. MAD, including much of the post-Kurtzman era, especially seems to hold up. It’s already amusing folks who don’t get all the antiquated references or even know the material being parodied. Barks also speaks to succeeding generations, plus he translates well. Comedy usually does because Funny is a kind of universal language. As Will Rogers used to say, a laugh sounds the same anywhere. (Or did I say that? I keep getting us confused. Oh, wait. I’ve met plenty of people I didn’t like so it must have been Will Rogers.) There have been other comics I thought were very funny. Never laughed as hard in my life as the first time I read “National Gorilla Suit Day” in the second Don Martin MAD paperback. To me, that’s still the funniest thing ever done in comic format. I’m not sure if you’d call it a comic book or a comic strip or what, but it’s comics and it made me laugh ’til I moistened my undies. And I’ve laughed at Sheldon Mayer’s work, especially on Three Mouseketeers, Scribbly and Sugar & Spike. And at Nelson Bridwell’s original Inferior Five. And at

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Jack Cole’s Plastic Man. And at The Fox and the Crow by James F. Davis and Cecil Beard. And though this is blasphemy to some, I enjoyed and laughed at a lot of non-Barks funny-animal comics, particularly in the Dell/Gold Key Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera comics. Also, a man named Sergio Aragonés has reportedly drawn some humorous pictures and there have been loads of undergrounds and small press books and. . . Well, it’s not a long list, at least insofar as mainstream comic-book publishers is concerned. But it is a list and the reason it’s not longer is because so few of them have even attempted funny comics, especially in recent years. Somehow, a lot of them got it into their heads that “comic” meant “grim,” and laughing at a graphic story was something for the kiddos. I think that’s wrong. I think we should stop treating those comics as if they’re the aberrations. And if, like that con organizer, we’re going to use realism as a benchmark for maturity, then the funny ones have it all over the non-funny ones. . . because life is funny. At least, mine is. Most of the time.

bonus

If yours isn’t, perhaps you’re missing the punch lines, overlooking all the delicious ironies and lapsed logic in which the real world abounds. Human beings are hilarious and I don’t mean that in a bad way. We say outrageous things, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. We do absurd things—again, often by design. The lesser tragedies are best handled with a chuckle, a wry smile and sometimes, if you’re fortunate, a laughout-loud sensibility. To whatever extent it’s possible, you should try to approach the biggies that way, as well. I guess that’s why as I get older, I sometimes feel out of sync with the content of the mainstream American comic book. You see, I view reality as a series of funny incidents interrupted by the occasional uncharacteristic moment of pain and horror. And in too many comic books, it’s other way around. My world is a lot more like an issue of Fox and Crow than it is like a copy

This cartoon com es

of X-Men. And am I ever glad.

Normally, this is where I add the disclaimer citing that the views of the guest columnist do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of BACK ISSUE, but in good conscience, I can’t do that, ’cause I agree with every word Mark said. —the other M.E.

The Last Laugh!

to us from John Lustig of Disney comics , Comics’ Buyer’s Guide, and Last Kiss (www .lastkisscomics.co m) fame. It’s a reworking of a Lee Elias-drawn panel from Harvey Com ics’ Witches Tales #8 (1952). The art is courte sy of Heritage Co mics.

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Three Must-Have Books about Comics book reviews

Michael Eu

While this trio of terrific tomes has little to do with this issue’s “Laughing Matters” theme, each book is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. Arlen Schumer’s The Silver Age of Comic Book Art is a feast for the eyes. At 9" x 13"—just a hair smaller than those tabloid-sized treasuries that DC and Marvel published in the 1970s, as well as TwoMorrows’ own The Jack Kirby Collector—each page of The Silver Age explodes with brilliant color and flashy graphics. Schumer is an acclaimed advertising artist who incorporates comics-inspired elements into his work. He’s also renowned as a historian of comic-book art, and expertly infuses his bold design sense and his knowledge of the comics medium into The Silver Age, a frenetically visual examination of the work of eight masters: Carmine Infantino, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Gene Colan, Jim Steranko, and Neal Adams.

The Silver Age of Comic Book Art by Arlen Schumer Collectors Press, Inc. • 2003 • softcover • 176 pages, color • $29.95

500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes by Mike Conroy Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. • 2003 • softcover • 376 pages, color • $18.95

The Will Eisner Sketchbook by Will Eisner Dark Horse Books • 2003 • hardcover • 200 pages, b&w • $49.95

um-d andy. .. i see e ye ca ndy

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The Silver Age wastes little space on text—Schumer allows the artwork to do the speaking through enormous images enhanced by the artists’ anecdotes and by his own commentary, mostly conveyed in a comic-book lettering font. An increasing number of books published within the past few years have verbally touted the impact of comics luminaries, but Schumer’s The Silver Age shoves it right into your face, big and bold, with its celebration of the giants of an era who cornered the market on excitement. (A deluxe hardcover edition, with 16 extra pages, is available for $49.95.) Measuring 7" x 7", Mike Conroy’s 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes is as small as The Silver Age is large, but it’s certainly not short on content. Journalist Conroy is the founder of the comics industry’s coveted Eagle Award, and is the news editor © 2004 DC Co mics.

of the U.K. trade periodical Comics International. In 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes, his research of the history of the comics industry, its trends, and its social ramifications is impeccable. But this is no plodding scholarly treatise: 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes is abundantly illustrated, with hundreds of cover reproductions and additional artwork, and succinct dossiers of 500 influential characters. Conroy’s survey cov-

ers the gamut from iconic staples (Superman, Batman, Hulk, Spider-Man) to esoteric heroes (John Constantine, Asskickers of the Fantastic, Bat Lash, Grimjack). 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes benefits from its author’s British heritage: The book discards the myopic blinders worn by most American publications and explores comics as a global medium, including heroes like Astro Boy, Judge Dredd, Marshal Law, and Blueberry into its eclectic, fascinating mix. The Barron’s edition of 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes is an American reissue of Conroy’s book, which was originally published in the U.K. in 2002. Last fall, while in the office of Dark Horse Comics editor Diana Schutz, I asked Di about which of her upcoming projects she was most excited. With an ear-to-ear grin she placed a ream of illustration paper into my lap. These were original sketches by the legendary Will Eisner, penciled roughs of everything from Spirit magazine covers to Eisner’s graphic novels ranging from A Contract with God (1978) to Minor Miracles (2000). Examining these drafts was a rare treat, but after gingerly handling many of the pages I got a bit nervous—after all, this was comics history in my hands! This history has been collected into The Will Eisner Sketchbook, a 9" x 12" showcase of Eisner’s magnificent rough stuff. Edited by Schutz, the ner. © 2004 Will Eis

Eisner Sketchbook is printed on 100 lb. archival-quality paper. The paper stock is

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might smudge it with your touch. Eisner’s cinematic

the volume was the collection of cover roughs for, in

storytelling is fully evidenced in his preliminary

Eisner’s own words, “a try-out for a Spirit coloring book

pages, and his Spirit covers—in some cases offering

published by the late Phil Seuling in the seventies”

multiple proposed versions of the same shot—display

(see sample; buy an extra copy of BACK ISSUE

the imaginative staging and incorporation of the logo

#3 and color to your heart’s content!).

into the art that made Will Eisner a star.

The Silver Age of Comic Books, 500 Great

Each of the 11 different sections opens with

Comic Book Action Heroes, and The Will Eisner

introductory remarks by Eisner himself, offering

Sketchbook come highly recommended to

insight into the history of his work. For me, a find in

readers of BACK ISSUE.

but the momentum of Baker’s

Girls are examples of bringing

storytelling is so

animated cartoons to super-hero

vigorous, the

comic books. But writer/artist

klunkers barely

Kyle Baker’s new Plastic Man

have time to regis-

monthly series is the first time a

ter. His Plastic Man

super-hero comic book has ever

springs from panel

become an animated cartoon—

to panel with unin-

on paper.

hibited verve, from

Kyle Baker is a vastly talented

morphing his eyes into running faucets in mock crying to

cartoonist who has illustrated

mimicking cowardly canine Scooby-Doo when entering a

everything from graphic novels

creepy room.

(Why I Hate Saturn) to super-hero

Baker also realizes the importance of Plas’ sidekick Woozy

comics (Marvel’s Truth: Red, White, and Black), with a stint in

Winks. In previous interpretations of Plastic Man, Woozy has

television animation at Warner Bros. thrown in for good measure.

been the comic relief to Plas’ (slightly off-center) straight-man

And that animation stint has shaped (pun intended) Baker’s

status. Baker shows us a different side of Woozy (although, Kyle,

interpretation of Plastic Man, the pliable DC super-hero, as a

we could do without that topless shot of him on the cover of

crime-fighting cartoon character. Baker’s Plastic Man is the

issue #6): His Woozy Winks emerges as more of the straight

super-hero equivalent of Roger Rabbit, a ’toon interacting with

man to the utterly out-of-control Plas.

the “real” world. Plas takes blows from 2 x 4s, sledgehammers,

If you’re looking for a deep, introspective dissemination of a

and bombs, all in a comical fashion, but bounces back by the

tormented, mutated soul, then Plastic Man is not for you. But if

next panel.

you want a funnybook that’s truly

Baker renders Plastic Man in a color-rich, whimsical art style that makes each panel feel like an animation cel. Each of the

funny, then add Plastic Man to your reading (and viewing) list.

characters, good guy and bad, looks buffoonish (except for women), further cultivating this cartoon reality. But Plastic Man’s environment, his own private “Toon Town,” exists squarely inside the DC Universe, as readers of DC’s JLA series—which features Plas, based upon the theory of “What if

Fruitcake and Beefcake Kyle Baker’s cover (right)

Jim Carrey was part of the Justice League?”—certainly know. It’s

to Plastic Man #6, available

to DC’s credit to publish this uniquely different Plastic Man title

in May. Thanks to DC’s

within their standard continuity. Baker also writes the series, put, in true ’toon form, allows the pictures to tell more of the story than the words. His dialogue is sharp, character- (not joke-) driven, and sometimes subversive, moving along at a whirlwind pace. Occasionally, a line falls flat,

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New Comics. Classic Appeal.

DC’s Justice League Adventures, Teen Titans GO!, and Powerpuff

NEW In Print!

Kyle Baker Gets into Shape(s): DC’s New Plastic Man

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Send your comments to: Email: euryman@msn.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) No attachments, please!

I want to let you know that I am very pleased to offer BACK ISSUE in my comic-book store. The market was in need of this type of magazine. I have been looking for a replacement for Amazing Heroes and have found it in your publication. The following are suggestions on topics that I think would be of interest to those fans that collected comics in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s: 1) Hero histories of Kamandi, the Atomic Knights, the DC mystery hosts (Cain, Abel, Eve, etc.), Jonah Hex, the Doom Patrol (original and second group), and Adam Strange. 2) Creator profiles on Gerry Conway, Cary Bates, Elliot Maggin, and Mike Grell. 3) A checklist or study of DC 80-Page Giants, 100-Page Super Specs, the DC Dollar Comics, and Digest Books. 4) A publishing history of Atlas Comics of the 1970s. Although short-lived, there were some different types of titles that came from this company. 5) Team-up books: The Brave and the Bold, DC Comics Presents, Marvel Team-Up, and Marvel Two-in-One all had great stories and concepts. A checklist of these series would be great. – Christopher Burns The Book Rack, Rochester, NY The comparison to the lamented Amazing Heroes is appreciated, Christopher. While some of your requests predate our ’70s/’80s focus, a few of your wishes will become reality (we’re covering mystery comics in issue #6 and team-ups in #7). And check out The Jack Kirby Collector #40 for a Kamandi spotlight! – M.E. This issue of BACK ISSUE is dedicated to the memory of the father of the Silver Age of Comics, legendary DC Comics editor Julius “Julie” Schwartz, 1915–2004. A tribute to Julie will appear in our next issue. 8 8

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next issue

Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor • BACK ISSUE 5060A Foothills Drive • Lake Oswego, OR 97034

BACK ISSUE #4 • PRO2PRO INTERVIEWS: JOHN BYRNE and CHRIS CLAREMONT on WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN, and WALTER SIMONSON and JOE CASEY on the 20th anniversary of Walter’s run on THOR! • GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Wolverine’s creator LEN WEIN on the TEEN WOLVERINE you never saw! Plus, unseen Wolverine art by DAVE COCKRUM! • ROUGH STUFF: Wolverine’s 30th anniversary is celebrated with pencil artwork by JOHN BUSCEMA, JIM LEE, ADAM HUGHES, ROB LIEFELD, MARC SILVESTRI, & others! • PLUS: Special features highlighting the PUNISHER’s 30th birthday and the 20th anniversary of SECRET WARS, & MORE! NEW JOHN BYRNE COVER! SHIPS IN MAY! 100 PAGES, $8 US POSTPAID SUBSCRIBE: Six-issues: $30 Standard, $48 First Class (Canada: $60, Elsewhere: $66 Surface, $90 Airmail).

BEST-LAID PLANS DEPT.: In researching my “Greatest Stories Never Told” Space Ghost II article for BACK ISSUE #2, I made numerous attempts to reach my former colleague, Darrell McNeil—co-writer of Comico’s aborted Space Ghost sequel—with no success. The deadline loomed, and I had to proceed with the piece, writing exclusively from co-plotter/artist Steve “the Dude” Rude’s recollections. As luck would have it, two days before BACK ISSUE #2 was shipped to the printer, I got a call from Darrell—a welcomed connection with an old pal, but too late to include his commentary into the article! Mr. McNeil took the time to pen the following recollections (edited slightly for space considerations) of the Space Ghost sequel that never was. . .

I’ve been a professional animator since 1976, my first pro deed being my pitching seven animation concepts to Hanna-Barbera’s directors of development (after personal encouragement from Messrs. Hanna and Barbera) and selling three of them to H-B (not bad for an 18 year old!). It was, among other things, the original 1966 Space Ghost series that made me want to be an animator and, in 1980, I was one of the layout artists on the new Space Stars show with Space Ghost and Herculoids, where I got to work alongside Jack Kirby, Mike Sekowsky, and Mike Royer. How cool was that? Re: the Space Ghost [Comico] deal. Everybody in comics back then who knew the Dude knew what a Ghost freak he was. We worked out the initial plot for the first Space Ghost together, instigated by my desire to tie both SG TV series together by having a mystery from the old show (SG being pulled into the Saucer Crab ship) with the Space Ghost doppelganger from one of my episodes, “Space Spectre.” Although I did get a “plot assist” credit (which, unfortunately, denied letterer Carrie Spiegle of her credit, so I wanna note that here), the execution of said plot, writing-wise, left mundo mucho to be desired. But. . . not my script, not my deal, dem’s the breaks! After the special did well, [Comico] let Dude know they wouldn’t mind a sequel. And, as I recall it (with the aid of my “SuperMemory Weaseltron”), things went kinda like this. . . Soon after he got the okay, Dude called me. [I asked,] “So, is the previous writer writing this deal?” “No,” sez he. “Am I writing this one?” “Yeah,” sez he, “Whatcha got?” What I had was a concept based on my previous night’s viewing of a classic H-B Fantastic Four episode, “The Terrible Tribunal,” which featured Reed Richards’ capture and trial by a group of the FF’s old villains. I verbally tossed that concept, “Ghost”-isized, to Dude, along with as many plot points as I could vamp up, to be topped with the SG/Herculoids confrontation, itself based on a sequence I laid out for one of our “Space Stars Finale” team-up segments. After about four hours of non-stop back ’n’ forth, Dude hung up, sayin’ he had to go back to crankin’ on Nexus and that we’d talk the next week. Well, this was on a Sunday. . . and three days later, I received in the mail the four pages mentioned in Dude’s account [in BACK ISSUE #2], with a note adding that after we got off the phone he was so excited he couldn’t go back to Nexus. . . he had to write down our flying thoughts onto paper. I took that and wrote the 12-page outline, which went to Dude. . . and the rest is non-history. – Darrell McNeil

Thanks, Darrell, for your take on this greatest story never told.

A Rude Drawing

Incidentally, Darrell McNeil is currently developing a pair of direct-

A Steve Rude-drawn Space Ghost convention illo

to-video animation projects, Rainbow Girl and The Adventures of

from 1997, courtesy of Jerry Boyd.

Artemis, and is working on an upcoming kid’s toon that’s hush-hush at this writing. Also, Darrell notes that there may be an important

announcement soon regarding the hard-to-find book he authored a few years back, Alex Toth: By Design. BACK ISSUE will keep you posted. – M.E.

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Questions? Comments? Exaltations? Send 'em to euryman@msn.com. Thanks for helping make BACK ISSUE the ultimate comics experience!

ON S U B M I S SEI S GUIDELIN BACK ISSUE is on the lookout for the following comics-related material from the 1970s and 1980s:

ISSUE onto the scene, and to say that it’s nice to see your byline again, Michael. It’s been a while since you printed all those letters of mine! This first issue was every bit as enjoyable as I’d anticipated. I’m used to good reading from TwoMorrows and

Unpublished artwork Original artwork Penciled artwork Character designs, model sheets, etc. Original scripts

Photos Original sketches and/or convention sketches Rare fanzine material Other rarities

Creators and collectors of 1970s and 1980s comics artwork are invited to share your goodies with other fans! Contributors will be acknowledged in print and receive complimentary copies (and the editor’s gratitude).

I particularly found the Tarzan essay

Submit artwork as (listed in order of preference):

interesting. Though not complete, my

Scanned images: 300dpi TIF (preferred) or JPEG

DC Tarzan collection has remained in

Clear color or black-and-white photocopies

my home while other runs have been

BACK ISSUE is also open to pitches from writers for article ideas appropriate for our recurring and/or rotating departments. Request a copy of the BACK ISSUE Writers’ Bible by e-mailing euryman@msn.com or by sending a SASE to the address below. Artwork submissions and SASEs for writers’ guidelines should be sent to: Michael Eury, Editor BACK ISSUE 5060A Foothills Dr. Lake Oswego, OR 97034

(e-mailed or on CD, or to our FTP site; please inquire)

sacrificed to the great “make room” god. Kubert’s jungle lord remains unmatched. A lot of the Pérez artwork from the JLA/Avengers no-show I’d seen before, but there was new (to me) material here, too. A timely and informative piece. I haven’t finished reading this issue yet—I like to take my time with this sort of magazine, but I wanted to pass on my initial thoughts. Here’s to a good, long run for BACK ISSUE. Cheers! – Dale Coe Your feedback is appreciated, Dale—good to hear from you. Dale was kind enough to share with us this thank-you card that DC sent to letter writers back in the 1970s. And speaking of letters, we received an overwhelming amount of mail about BACK ISSUE #1—thanks to everyone who took the time to write. Most of the commentary has been supportive of our efforts, and your content recommendations for future issues are duly noted. Incidentally, a few readers remarked negatively about the use of “pull quotes” (isolated quotes offset in word balloons) in #1’s “Pro2Pro,” and you’ll observe that those have been eliminated. We’re tweaking editorial and design elements as we go along, with the goal of producing the best magazine we possibly can. Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, Michael Eury

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Advertise In BACK ISSUE! FULL-PAGE: 7.5" Wide x 10" Tall • $300 HALF-PAGE: 7.5" Wide x 4.875" Tall • $175 QUARTER-PAGE: 3.75" Wide x 4.875" Tall • $100 Prepay for two ads in Alter Ego, DRAW!, Write Now!, Back Issue, or any combination and save: TWO FULL-PAGE ADS: $500 ($100 savings) TWO HALF-PAGE ADS: $300 ($50 savings) TWO QUARTER-PAGE ADS: $175 ($25 savings) These rates are for black-&-white ads, supplied on-disk (TIF, EPS, or Quark Xpress files acceptable) or as cameraready art. Typesetting service available at 20% mark-up. Due to our already low ad rates, no agency discounts apply. Sorry, display ads not available for the Jack Kirby Collector. Send ad copy and check/money order (US funds), Visa, or Mastercard to: TwoMorrows 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 Phone: 919/449-0344 • FAX 919/449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

BOOKS by BACK ISSUE’s editor MICHAEL EURY

KRYPTON COMPANION Unlocks the secrets of Superman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, when kryptonite came in multiple colors and super-pets scampered across the skies! Writer/editor MICHAEL EURY explores the legacy of classic editors MORT WEISINGER and JULIUS SCHWARTZ through all-new interviews with NEAL ADAMS, MURPHY ANDERSON, CARY BATES, NICK CARDY, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, KEITH GIFFEN, ELLIOT S! MAGGIN, JIM MOONEY, DENNIS O’NEIL, BOB OKSNER, MARTIN PASKO, BOB ROZAKIS, JIM SHOOTER, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and other fan favorites! Plus: Super-artist CURT SWAN’s 1987 essay “Drawing Superman,” JERRY SIEGEL’s “lost” imaginary story “The Death of Clark Kent,” MARK WAID’s tribute to Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and rare and previously unpublished artwork by WAYNE BORING, ALAN DAVIS, ADAM HUGHES, PAUL SMITH, BRUCE TIMM, and other Super-stars. Bonus: A roundtable discussion with modern-day creators examining Superman’s influential past! Cover by DAVE GIBBONS!

JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION A comprehensive examination of the Silver Age JLA written by MICHAEL EURY (co-author of THE SUPERHERO BOOK). It traces the JLA’s development, history, imitators, and early fandom through vintage and all-new interviews with the series’ creators, an issue-by-issue index of the JLA’s 1960-1972 adventures, classic and never-before-published artwork, and other fun and fascinating features. Contributors include DENNY O’NEIL, MURPHY ANDERSON, JOE GIELLA, MIKE FRIEDRICH, NEAL ADAMS, ALEX ROSS, CARMINE INFANTINO, NICK CARDY, and many, many others. Plus: An exclusive interview with STAN LEE, who answers the question, “Did the JLA really inspire the creation of Marvel’s Fantastic Four?” With an all-new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

BATCAVE COMPANION The writer/editor of the critically acclaimed KRYPTON COMPANION and the designer of the eye-popping SPIES, VIXENS, AND MASTERS OF KUNG FU: THE ART OF PAUL GULACY team up to explore the Silver and Bronze Ages of Batman comic books in THE BATCAVE COMPANION! Two distinct sections of this book examine the Dark Knight’s progression from his campy “New Look” of the mid-1960s to his “creature of the night” reinvention of the 1970s. Features include issue-by-issue indexes, interviews with CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE GIELLA, DENNIS O’NEIL, and NEAL ADAMS, and guest essays by MIKE W. BARR and WILL MURRAY. Contributors include SHELDON MOLDOFF, LEN WEIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, and TERRY AUSTIN, with a special tribute to the late MARSHALL ROGERS. With its incisive introduction by DENNIS O’NEIL and its iconic cover painting by NEAL ADAMS, THE BATCAVE COMPANION is a musthave for every comics fan! By MICHAEL EURY and MICHAEL KRONENBERG. (240-page trade paperback) $26.95 US • ISBN: 9781893905788 • Diamond Order Code: NOV068368

(224-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905481 Diamond Order Code: MAY053052

(240-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905610 Diamond Order Code: MAY063443

COMICS GONE APE!

DICK GIORDANO: CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

The missing link to primates in comics, spotlighting a barrel of simian superstars like Beppo, BrainiApe, the Gibbon, Gleek, Gorilla Man, Grease Monkey, King Kong, Konga, Mojo Jojo, Sky Ape, and Titano! It’s loaded with rare and classic artwork, cover galleries, and interviews with artists & writers including ARTHUR ADAMS (Monkeyman and O’Brien), FRANK CHO, CARMINE INFANTINO (Detective Chimp, Grodd), JOE KUBERT (Tor, Tarzan), TONY MILLIONAIRE (Sock Monkey), DOUG MOENCH (Planet of the Apes), and BOB OKSNER (Angel and the Ape)! All-new cover by ARTHUR ADAMS, and written by MICHAEL EURY.

MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality! Covers his career as illustrator, inker, and editor, peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS on his career milestones! Lavishly illustrated with RARE AND NEVER SEEN comics, merchandising, and advertising art (includes a color section)! Also includes an extensive index of his published work, comments and tributes by NEAL ADAMS, DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO and others, plus a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS and Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905627 Diamond Order Code: FEB073814

(176-pg. Paperback with COLOR) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905276 Diamond Order Code: STAR20439

CAPTAIN ACTION: THE ORIGINAL SUPER-HERO ACTION FIGURE (Hardcover 2nd Edition)

CAPTAIN ACTION was introduced in 1966 in the wake of the Batman TV show craze, and later received his own DC comic book with art by WALLY WOOD and GIL KANE. Able to assume the identities of 13 famous super-heroes, his initial career was short-lived, but continuing interest in the hero has led to two different returns to toy-store shelves. Lavishly illustrated with over 200 toy photos, this FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER SECOND EDITION chronicles the history of this quick-changing champion, including photos of virtually EVERY CAPTAIN ACTION PRODUCT ever released, spotlights on his allies ACTION BOY and the SUPER QUEENS and his arch enemy DR. EVIL, an examination of his comic-book appearances, and “Action facts” that even the most diehard Captain Action fan won’t know! The original softcover edition has been sold out for years, but this revised, full-color hardcover second edition includes behind-the-scenes coverage of CAPTAIN ACTION’S TRIUMPHANT 2008 RETURN to comics shelves in his new series from Moonstone Books, and spotlights the new wave of Captain Action collectibles. Written by MICHAEL EURY. (176-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490175 • Diamond Code: APR091003

THE

BATCAVE C O M P A N I O N NOW SHIPPING! Batman. Is he the campy Caped Crusader? Or the grim Gotham Guardian? Both, as The Batcave Companion reveals. On the brink of cancellation in 1963, Batman was rescued by DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz, who, abetted by several talented writers and artists, gave the hero a much-needed “New Look” which soon catapulted Batman to multimedia stardom. In the next decade, when Batman required another fresh start, Schwartz once again led a team of creators that returned the hero to his “creature of the night” roots. Writers Michael Eury (The Krypton Companion, The Justice League Companion) and Michael Kronenberg (Spies, Vixens, and Masters of Kung Fu: The Art of Paul Gulacy) unearth the stories behind the stories of both Batman’s “New Look” and Bronze Age (1970s) comic-book eras through incisive essays, invaluable issue-by-issue indexes, and insightful commentary from many of the visionaries responsible for and inspired by Batman’s 1960s and 1970s adventures: Neal Adams, Michael Allred, Terry Austin, Mike W. Barr, Steve Englehart, Mike Friedrich, Mike Grell, Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella, Adam Hughes, Sheldon Moldoff, Will Murray, Dennis O’Neil, Bob Rozakis, Mark Waid, Len Wein, and Bernie Wrightson. Featuring 240 art- and info-packed pages, The Batcave Companion is a must-have examination of two of the most influential periods in Batman’s 70-year history.

Written by Back Issue’s

MICHAEL EURY & MICHAEL KRONENBERG ISBN 978-1-893905-78-8 $26.95 in the U.S. plus shipping Batman, Robin, and all related characters and indicia are TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows Publishing 2009 Update WINTER/SPRING

Supplement to the 2008 TwoMorrows Preview Catalog

ORDER AT: www.twomorrows.com

SAVE

BATCAVE COMPANION

IT’S FINALLY HERE! The writer/editor of the critically acclaimed KRYPTON COMPANION and the designer of the eye-popping SPIES, VIXENS, AND MASTERS OF KUNG FU: THE ART OF PAUL GULACY team up to explore the Silver and Bronze Ages of Batman comic books in THE BATCAVE COMPANION! Two distinct sections of this book examine the Dark Knight’s progression from his campy “New Look” of the mid-1960s to his “creature of the night” reinvention of the 1970s. Features include issue-byissue indexes, interviews with CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE GIELLA, DENNIS O’NEIL, and NEAL ADAMS, and guest essays by MIKE W. BARR and WILL MURRAY. Contributors include SHELDON MOLDOFF, LEN WEIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, and TERRY AUSTIN, with a special tribute to the late MARSHALL ROGERS. With its incisive introduction by DENNIS O’NEIL and its iconic cover painting by NEAL ADAMS, THE BATCAVE COMPANION is a must-have for every comics fan! By MICHAEL EURY and MICHAEL KRONENBERG.

WHE % N YO ORD U ONL ER INE!

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95 US • ISBN: 9781893905788 • Diamond Order Code: NOV068368 • Ships April 2009

COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION Comic book podcasts have taken the Internet by storm, and now TwoMorrows offers you the chance to go behind the scenes of ten of today's top comic book podcasts via all-new interviews with the casts of AROUND COMICS, WORD BALLOON, QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK, COMIC BOOK QUEERS, iFANBOY, THE CRANKCAST, THE COLLECTED COMICS LIBRARY, THE PIPELINE PODCAST, COMIC GEEK SPEAK, and TwoMorrows’ own TUNE-IN PODCAST! Also featured are new interviews about podcasting and comics on the Internet with creators MATT FRACTION, TIM SEELEY, and GENE COLAN. You'll also find a handy guide of what you’ll need to start your own podcast, an index of more than thirty great comic book podcasts, numerous photos of your favorite podcasters, and original art from COLAN, SEELEY, DC's MIKE NORTON, and many more! By ERIC HOUSTON, with a spectacular new cover by MIKE MANLEY. (128-page trade paperback) $15.95 • ISBN: 9781605490182 • Ships May 2009

ALL-STAR COMPANION Volume 4 The epic series of ALL-STAR COMPANIONS goes out with a bang, featuring: Colossal coverage of the Golden Age ALL-STAR COMICS! Sensational secrets of the JUNIOR JUSTICE SOCIETY! An index of the complete solo adventures of all 18 original JSAers in their own features, from 1940 to 1951! The JSA's earliest imitators (Seven Soldiers of Victory, All Winners Squad, Marvel Family, and International Crime Patrol)! INFINITY, INC. on Earth-Two and after! And the 1980s SECRET ORIGINS series! With rare art by ALEX ROSS, TODD McFARLANE, JERRY ORDWAY, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE KUBERT, ALEX TOTH, GIL KANE, MURPHY ANDERSON, IRWIN HASEN, MORT MESKIN, GENE COLAN, WAYNE BORING, GEORGE TUSKA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, GEORGE FREEMAN, DON NEWTON, JACK BURNLEY, MIKE MACHLAN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DICK DILLIN, and others. Edited by ROY THOMAS.

CAPTAIN ACTION: THE ORIGINAL SUPERHERO ACTION FIGURE

(240-page trade paperback) $27.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490045 Ships June 2009

(Hardcover 2nd Edition)

CAPTAIN ACTION was introduced in 1966 in the wake of the Batman TV show craze, and later received his own DC comic book with art by WALLY WOOD and GIL KANE. Able to assume the identities of 13 famous super-heroes, his initial career was short-lived, but continuing interest in the hero has led to two different returns to toy-store shelves. Lavishly illustrated with over 200 toy photos, this FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER SECOND EDITION chronicles the history of this quick-changing champion, including photos of virtually EVERY CAPTAIN ACTION PRODUCT ever released, spotlights on his allies ACTION BOY and the SUPER QUEENS and his arch enemy DR. EVIL, an examination of his comic-book appearances, and “Action facts” that even the most diehard Captain Action fan won’t know! The original softcover edition has been sold out for years, but this revised, full-color hardcover second edition includes behind-the-scenes coverage of CAPTAIN ACTION’S TRIUMPHANT 2008 RETURN to comics shelves in his new series from Moonstone Books, and spotlights the new wave of Captain Action collectibles. Written by MICHAEL EURY. (176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490175 • Ships July 2009

MARVEL COMICS IN THE 1960s: An Issue-By-Issue Field Guide

The comic book industry experienced an unexpected flowering in the early 1960s, compliments of Marvel Comics, and this book presents a step-by-step look at how a company that had the reputation of being one of the least creative in a generally moribund industry, emerged as one of the most dynamic, slightly irreverent and downright original contributions to an era when pop-culture emerged as the dominant force in the artistic life of America. In scores of handy, easy to reference entries, MARVEL COMICS IN THE 1960s takes the reader from the legendary company’s first fumbling beginnings as helmed by savvy editor/writer STAN LEE (aided by such artists as JACK KIRBY and STEVE DITKO), to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity. With the history of Marvel Comics in the 1960s divided into four distinct phases, author PIERRE COMTOIS explains just how Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and others created a line of comic books that, while grounded in the traditional elements of panel-to-panel storytelling, broke through the juvenile mindset of a low brow industry and provided a tapestry of full blown pop culture icons. (224-page trade paperback) $27.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490168 • Ships July 2009

GRAILPAGES:

Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors GRAILPAGES brings to light the burgeoning hobby of collecting the original, hand-drawn art that is used to create comic books! Beginning more as a novelty, the hobby of collecting original comic art has expanded to a point where some of the seminal pages commonly run more than $10,000 each. Author STEVEN ALAN PAYNE lets you meet collectors from around the globe and hear their passion in their own words, as they detail collections ranging from a few key pages, to broad, encompassing collections of literally hundreds of pages of original comic art by such artists as JACK KIRBY, JOHN ROMITA SR., and others! Balancing out the narratives are incisive interviews with industry pros, including writers GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, and ROY THOMAS, and exclusive perspectives from Silver Age artists DICK GIORDANO, BOB McLEOD, ERNIE CHAN, TONY DeZUNIGA, and the unparalleled great, GENE COLAN! Completing the book is a diverse sampling of breathtakingly beautiful original comic art, some lavishly presented in full-page spreads, including pages not seen publicly for decades. Fans of comic art, comic books, and pop culture will find in GRAILPAGES an appreciation for a uniquely American form of art! (128-page trade paperback) $15.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490151 Diamond Order Code: JAN094470 • Ships March 2009

MAGAZINES

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

BRICKJOURNAL magazine is the ultimate resource for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages, spotlighting the LEGO Community with contributions and how-to articles by top builders worldwide, new product intros, and more. Edited by JOE MENO. ALTER EGO focuses on Golden and Silver Age comics and creators with articles, interviews and unseen art, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Mr. Monster & more. Edited by ROY THOMAS.

BRICKJOURNAL #3

BRICKJOURNAL #4

BRICKJOURNAL #5

BRICKJOURNAL #6

Event Reports from BRICKWORLD, FIRST LEGO LEAGUE WORLD FESTIVAL and PIECE OF PEACE (Japan), spotlight on our cover model builder BRYCE McGLONE, and interviews with ARTHUR GUGICK and STEVEN CANVIN of LEGO MINDSTORMS to see where LEGO ROBOTICS is going! There’s also STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS, TECHNIQUES, & more!

Interviews with LEGO BUILDERS including BREANN SLEDGE (BIONICLE BUILDER), Event Reports from BRICKFAIR and BRICKCON, plus reports on new MINDSTORMS PROJECTS, STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS and TECHNIQUES for all skill levels, NEW SET REVIEWS, and a report on constructing the Chinese Olympic Village in LEGO!

Features event reports from around the world, and the MINDSTORMS 10TH ANNIVERSARY at LEGO HEADQUARTERS! Plus an interview with the head of the LEGO GROUP’S 3D DEPARTMENT, a glimpse at the LEGO Group's past with the DIRECTOR OF LEGO'S IDEA HOUSE, instructions and spotlights on builders, and an idea section for Pirate builders!

Spotlight on CLASSIC SPACE SETS and a look at new ones with LEGO SET DESIGNERS, BRANDON GRIFFITH shows his STAR TREK MODELS, plus take a tour of the DUTCH MOONBASE with MIKE VAN LEEUWEN and MARCO BAAS. There's also coverage of BRICKFEST 2009 and FIRST LEGO LEAGUE'S WORLD FESTIVAL and photos from TOY FAIR NEW YORK!

(80-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 US Diamond Order Code: JUN084415

(80-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 US Diamond Order Code: SEP084428

(80-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 US Diamond Order Code: DEC084408 Ships March 2009

(80-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 US Ships June 2009

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through a variety of recurring (and rotating) departments, plus rare and unpublished art. Edited by MICHAEL EURY. DRAW! is the professional “How-To” magazine on cartooning and animation, featuring in-depth interviews and step-bystep demonstrations from top comics professionals. Edited by MIKE MANLEY. ROUGH STUFF features never-seen pencil pages, sketches, layouts, roughs, and unused inked pages from throughout comics history, plus columns, critiques, and more! Edited by BOB McLEOD. WRITE NOW! features writing tips from pros on both sides of the desk, interviews, sample scripts, reviews, exclusive Nuts & Bolts tutorials, and more! Edited by DANNY FINGEROTH.

ALTER EGO #81

ALTER EGO #82

ALTER EGO #83

ALTER EGO #84

New FRANK BRUNNER Man-Thing cover, a look at the late-’60s horror comic WEB OF HORROR with early work by BRUNNER, WRIGHTSON, WINDSOR-SMITH, SIMONSON, & CHAYKIN, interview with comics & fine artist EVERETT RAYMOND KINTSLER, ROY THOMAS’ 1971 origin synopsis for the FIRST MAN-THING STORY, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

MLJ ISSUE! Golden Age MLJ index illustrated with vintage images of The Shield, Hangman, Mr. Justice, Black Hood, by IRV NOVICK, JACK COLE, CHARLES BIRO, MORT MESKIN, GIL KANE, & others—behind a marvelous MLJ-heroes cover by BOB McLEOD! Plus interviews with IRV NOVICK and JOE EDWARDS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

SWORD & SORCERY PART 2! Cover by ARTHUR SUYDAM, in-depth art-filled look at Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, DC’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dagar the Invincible, Ironjaw & Wulf, and Arak, Son of Thunder, plus the never-seen Valda the Iron Maiden by TODD McFARLANE! Plus JOE EDWARDS (Part 2), FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

Unseen JIM APARO cover, STEVE SKEATES discusses his early comics work, art & artifacts by ADKINS, APARO, ARAGONÉS, BOYETTE, DITKO, GIORDANO, KANE, KELLER, MORISI, ORLANDO, SEKOWSKY, STONE, THOMAS, WOOD, and the great WARREN SAVIN! Plus writer CHARLES SINCLAIR on his partnership with Batman co-creator BILL FINGER, FCA, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Diamond Order Code: AUG084454

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Diamond Order Code: OCT084483

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Diamond Order Code: NOV084368

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Diamond Order Code: JAN094555 Ships March 2009

C o l l e c t o r

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine celebrates his life and career through INTERVIEWS WITH KIRBY and his contemporaries, FEATURE ARTICLES, RARE AND UNSEEN KIRBY ART, and more. Edited by JOHN MORROW.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PRINT EDITION, AND GET THE DIGITAL EDITION FREE, BEFORE THE PRINT ISSUE HITS STORES!

BACK ISSUE #29

BACK ISSUE #30

BACK ISSUE #31

BACK ISSUE #32

“Mutants” issue! CLAREMONT, BYRNE, SMITH, and ROMITA, JR.’s X-Men work, NOCENTI and ARTHUR ADAMS’ Longshot, McLEOD and SIENKIEWICZ’s New Mutants, the UK’s CAPTAIN BRITAIN series, lost Angel stories, Beast’s tenure with the Avengers, the return of the original X-Men in X-Factor, the revelation of Nightcrawler’s “original” father, a history of DC’s mutant, Captain Comet, and more! Cover by DAVE COCKRUM!

“Saturday Morning Heroes!” Interviews with TV Captain Marvels JACKSON BOSTWICK and JOHN DAVEY, MAGGIN and SAVIUK’s lost Superman/”Captain Thunder” sequel, Space Ghost interviews with GARY OWENS and STEVE RUDE, MARV WOLFMAN guest editorial, Super Friends, unproduced fourth wave Super Powers action figures, Astro Boy, ADAM HUGHES tribute to DAVE STEVENS, and a new cover by ALEX ROSS!

“STEVE GERBER Salute!” In-depth look at his Howard the Duck, Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, Defenders, Metal Men, Mister Miracle, Thundarr the Barbarian, and more! Plus: Creators pay tribute to Steve Gerber, featuring art by and commentary from BRUNNER, BUCKLER, COLAN, GOLDEN, STAN LEE, LEVITZ, MAYERIK, MOONEY, PLOOG, SIMONSON, and others. Cover painting by FRANK BRUNNER!

“Tech, Data, and Hardware!” The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and GREENBERGER on DC’s Who’s Who, SAVIUK, STATON, and VAN SCIVER on Drawing Green Lantern, ED HANNIGAN Art Gallery, history of Rom: Spaceknight, story of BILL MANTLO, Dial H for Hero, Richie Rich’s Inventions, and a Spider-Mobile schematic cover by ELIOT BROWN and DUSTY ABELL!

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DRAW! #17

DRAW! #18

ROUGH STUFF #10

ROUGH STUFF #11

ROUGH STUFF #12

Interview with Scott Pilgrim’s creator and artist BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY on how he creates the acclaimed series, plus learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS works on his series. Also, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Features an in-depth interview and demo by R.M. GUERA (the artist of Vertigo’s Scalped), behind-the-scenes in the Batcave with Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the new hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

Interview with RON GARNEY, with copious examples of sketchwork and comments. Also features on ANDY SMITH, MICHAEL JASON PAZ, and MATT HALEY, showing how their work evolves, excerpts from a new book on ALEX RAYMOND, secrets of teaching comic art by pro inker BOB McLEOD, new cover by GARNEY and McLEOD, newcomer critique, and more!

New cover by GREG HORN, plus interviews with HORN and TOM YEATES on how they produce their stellar work. Also features on GENE HA, JIMMY CHEUNG, and MIKE PERKINS, showing their sketchwork and commentary, tips on collecting sketches and commissions from artists, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, and more!

Interview and cover by comic painter CHRIS MOELLER, features on New Zealand comic artist COLIN WILSON, G.I. Joe artist JEREMY DALE, and fan favorite TERRY DODSON, plus "GOOD GIRL ART" (a new article about everyone's favorite collectible art) by ROBERT PLUNKETT, a "Rough Critique" of an aspiring artist's work, and more!

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ALTER EGO #85

ALTER EGO #86

ALTER EGO #87

ALTER EGO #88

WRITE NOW! #20

Captain Marvel and Superman’s battles explored (in cosmic space, candy stories, and in court, with art by WALLY WOOD, CURT SWAN, and GIL KANE), an in-depth interview with Golden Age great LILY RENÉE, overview of CENTAUR COMICS (home of BILL EVERETT’s Amazing-Man and others), FCA, MR. MONSTER, new RICH BUCKLER cover, and more!

Spotlighting the Frantic Four-Color MAD WANNABES of 1953-55 that copied HARVEY KURTZMAN’S EC smash (see Captain Marble, Mighty Moose, Drag-ula, Prince Scallion, and more) with art by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT & MAURER, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, EVERETT, COLAN, and many others, plus Part 1 of a talk with Golden/ Silver Age artist FRANK BOLLE, and more!

The sensational 1954-1963 saga of Great Britain’s MARVELMAN (decades before he metamorphosed into Miracleman), plus an interview with writer/artist/co-creator MICK ANGLO, and rare Marvelman/ Miracleman work by ALAN DAVIS, ALAN MOORE, a new RICK VEITCH cover, plus FRANK BOLLE, Part 2, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

First-ever in-depth look at National/DC’s founder MAJOR MALCOLM WHEELERNICHOLSON, and early editors WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, VIN SULLIVAN, and MORT WEISINGER, with rare art and artifacts by SIEGEL & SHUSTER, BOB KANE, CREIG FLESSEL, FRED GUARDINEER, GARDNER FOX, SHELDON MOLDOFF, and others, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

Focus on THE SPIRIT movie, showing how FRANK MILLER transformed WILL EISNER’s comics into the smash-hit film, with interviews with key players behind the making of the movie, a look at what made Eisner’s comics so special, and more. Plus: an interview with COLLEEN DORAN, writer ALEX GRECIAN on how to get a pitch green lighted, script and art examples, and more!

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BACK ISSUE #33

BACK ISSUE #34

BACK ISSUE #35

KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

KIRBY COLLECTOR #53

“Teen Heroes!” Teen Titans in the 1970s & 1980s, with CARDY, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, PÉREZ, TUSKA, and WOLFMAN, BARON and GUICE on the Flash, interviews with TV Billy Batson MICHAEL GRAY and writer STEVE SKEATES, NICIEZA and BAGLEY’s New Warriors, Legion of Super-Heroes 1970s art gallery, James Bond Jr., and… the Archies! New Teen Titans cover by GEORGE PÉREZ and colored by GENE HA!

“New World Order!” Adam Warlock examined with JIM STARLIN and ROY THOMAS, the history of Miracleman with ALAN DAVIS & GARRY LEACH, JIM SHOOTER interview, roundtable with Marvel’s post-STAN LEE editors-in-chief on the New Universe, Logan’s Run, Star Hunters, BOB WIACEK on Star Wars and Star-Lord, DICK GIORDANO revisits Crisis on Infinite Earths and “The Post-Crisis DC Universe You Didn’t See,” and a new cover by JIM STARLIN!

“Villains!” MIKE ZECK and J.M. DeMATTEIS discuss “Kraven’s Last Hunt” in a “Pro2Pro” interview, the history of the Hobgoblin is exposed, the Joker’s short-lived series, looks back at Secret Society of Super-Villains and Kobra, a Magneto biography, Luthor and Brainiac’s malevolent makeovers, interview with Secret Society artist MIKE VOSBURG, plus contributions from BYRNE, CONWAY, FRENZ, NOVICK, ROMITA JR., STERN, WOLFMAN, and a cover by MIKE ZECK!

Spotlights Kirby’s most obscure work, like an UNUSED THOR STORY, his BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, and see original unaltered versions of pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and more, including a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING (with lots of surprises)! Color Kirby covers inked by DON HECK and PAUL SMITH!

Spotlights THE MAGIC OF STAN & JACK! There’s a new interview with STAN LEE, a walking tour of New York showing where Lee & Kirby lived and worked, a re-evaluation of the “Lost” FF #108 story (including a missing page that just surfaced), “What If Jack Hadn’t Left Marvel In 1970?”, plus MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, behind a color Kirby cover inked by GEORGE PÉREZ!

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NEW MODERN MASTERS VOLUMES Each book contains RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct from the artist’s files, a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW, DELUXE SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more!

Volume 19: MIKE PLOOG

Volume 20: KYLE BAKER

Volume 21: CHRIS SPROUSE

Volume 22: MARK BUCKINGHAM

Volume 23: DARWYN COOKE

by Eric Nolen-Weathington & Roger Ash (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781605490076 Diamond Order Code: SEP084304 Now shipping

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AGE OF TV HEROES Examines the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes! FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER features the in-depth stories of the actors and behind-thescene players that made the classic super-hero television programs we all grew up with. Included are new and exclusive interviews and commentary from ADAM WEST (Batman), LYNDA CARTER (Wonder Woman), PATRICK WARBURTON (The Tick), NICHOLAS HAMMOND (Spider-Man), WILLIAM KATT (The Greatest American Hero), JACK LARSON (The Adventures of Superman), JOHN WESLEY SHIPP (The Flash), JACKSON BOSTWICK (Shazam!), and many more! Written by JASON HOFIUS and GEORGE KHOURY, with a new cover by superstar painter ALEX ROSS! (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490106 Diamond Order Code: SEP084302 Rescheduled for July 2009

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EXTRAORDINARY WORKS KIRBY FIVE-OH! OF ALAN MOORE: LIMITED HARDCOVER Indispensable Edition Limited to 500 copies, KIRBY FIVE-OH! The definitive biography of the co-creator of WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA finally returns to print in a NEW EXPANDED AND UPDATED VERSION! Features an extensive series of interviews with MOORE about his entire career, including a new interview covering his work since the sold-out 2003 edition of this book was published. Includes RARE STRIPS, SCRIPTS, ART, and private PHOTOS of the author, plus a series of tribute comic strips by many of Moore’s closest collaborators, a COLOR SECTION featuring a RARE MOORE STORY (remastered, and starring MR. MONSTER), and more! Edited by GEORGE KHOURY, with a cover by DAVE McKEAN! (240-page trade paperback) $29.95 US ISBN: 9781605490090 Diamond Order Code: OCT084400 Limited Hardcover Signed by Alan Moore (100 hardcover copies) $49.95 US Only available from TwoMorrows!

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BRICKJOURNAL (4 issues)

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LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION covers the best of everything from Jack Kirby’s 50-year career in comics, including his 50 BEST STORIES, BEST COVERS, BEST EXAMPLES OF UNUSED KIRBY ART, BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS, and profiles of, and commentary by, 50 PEOPLE INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s PENCIL ART, a DELUXE COLOR SECTION, a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER! Includes a full-color wrapped hardcover, and an individuallynumbered extra Kirby pencil art plate not included in the softcover edition! It’s ONLY AVAILABLE FROM TWOMORROWS, and is not sold in stores! Edited by JOHN MORROW.

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30, with looks at Jack’s 1970s and ‘80s work, plus a two-part focus on how widespread Kirby’s influence is! Features rare interviews with KIRBY himself, plus Watchmen’s ALAN MOORE and DAVE GIBBONS, NEIL GAIMAN, Bone’s JEFF SMITH, MARK HAMILL, and others! See page after page of rare Kirby art, including a NEW SPECIAL SECTION with over 30 PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED, and more! (288-page trade paperback) $29.95 US ISBN: 9781605490120 Diamond Order Code: DEC084286 Ships February 2009

(168-page Limited Edition Hardcover) (500 hardcover copies) $34.95 US Only available from TwoMorrows!

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Subscriptions will start with the next available issue, but CURRENT AND OLDER ISSUES MUST BE PURCHASED AT THE BACK ISSUE PRICE (new issues ship in bulk, and we pass the savings on in our subscription rates). In the US, we generally ship back issues and books by MEDIA MAIL.

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR Volume 7

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TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

“HOW-TO” MAGAZINES Spinning off from the pages of BACK ISSUE! magazine comes ROUGH STUFF, celebrating the ART of creating comics! Edited by famed inker BOB McLEOD, each issue spotlights NEVER-BEFORE PUBLISHED penciled pages, preliminary sketches, detailed layouts, and even unused inked versions from artists throughout comics history. Included is commentary on the art, discussing what went right and wrong with it, and background information to put it all into historical perspective. Plus, before-and-after comparisons let you see firsthand how an image changes from initial concept to published version. So don’t miss this amazing magazine, featuring galleries of NEVER-BEFORE SEEN art, from some of your favorite series of all time, and the top pros in the industry!

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ROUGH STUFF #1 Our debut issue features galleries of UNSEEN ART by a who’s who of Modern Masters including: ALAN DAVIS, GEORGE PÉREZ, BRUCE TIMM, KEVIN NOWLAN, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, ARTHUR ADAMS, JOHN BYRNE, and WALTER SIMONSON, plus a KEVIN NOWLAN interview, art critiques, and a new BRUCE TIMM COVER!

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The follow-up to our smash first issue features more galleries of UNSEEN ART by top industry professionals, including: BRIAN APTHORP, FRANK BRUNNER, PAUL GULACY, JERRY ORDWAY, ALEX TOTH, and MATT WAGNER, plus a PAUL GULACY interview, a look at art of the pros BEFORE they were pros, and a new GULACY “HEX” COVER!

Still more galleries of UNPUBLISHED ART by MIKE ALLRED, JOHN BUSCEMA, YANICK PAQUETTE, JOHN ROMITA JR., P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and LEE WEEKS, plus a JOHN ROMITA JR. interview, looks at the process of creating a cover (with BILL SIENKIEWICZ and JOHN ROMITA JR.), and a new ROMITA JR. COVER, plus a FREE DRAW #13 PREVIEW!

More NEVER-PUBLISHED galleries (with detailed artist commentaries) by MICHAEL KALUTA, ANDREW “Starman” ROBINSON, GENE COLAN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, and STEVE BISSETTE, plus interview and art by JOHN TOTLEBEN, a look at the Wonder Woman Day charity auction (with rare art), art critiques, before-&-after art comparisons, and a FREE WRITE NOW #15 PREVIEW!

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NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED galleries (complete with extensive commentaries by the artists) by PAUL SMITH, GIL KANE, CULLY HAMNER, DALE KEOWN, and ASHLEY WOOD, plus a feature interview and art by STEVE RUDE, an examination of JOHN ALBANO and TONY DeZUNIGA’s work on Jonah Hex, new STEVE RUDE COVER, plus a FREE BACK ISSUE #23 PREVIEW!

Features a new interview and cover by BRIAN STELFREEZE, interview with BUTCH GUICE, extensive art galleries/commentary by IAN CHURCHILL, DAVE COCKRUM, and COLLEEN DORAN, MIKE GAGNON looks at independent comics, with art and comments by ANDREW BARR, BRANDON GRAHAM, and ASAF HANUKA! Includes a FREE ALTER EGO #73 PREVIEW!

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Features an in-depth interview and cover by TIM TOWNSEND, CRAIG HAMILTON, DAN JURGENS, and HOWARD PORTER offer preliminary art and commentaries, MARIE SEVERIN career retrospective, graphic novels feature with art and comments by DAWN BROWN, TOMER HANUKA, BEN TEMPLESMITH, and LANCE TOOKS, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV073966

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ROUGH STUFF #8 Features an in-depth interview and cover painting by the extraordinary MIKE MAYHEW, preliminary and unpublished art by ALEX HORLEY, TONY DeZUNIGA, NICK CARDY, and RAFAEL KAYANAN (including commentary by each artist), a look at the great Belgian comic book artists, a “Rough Critique” of MIKE MURDOCK’s work, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB084188

Editor and pro inker BOB McLEOD features four interviews this issue: ROB HAYNES (interviewed by fellow professional TIM TOWNSEND), JOE JUSKO, MEL RUBI, and SCOTT WILLIAMS, with a new painted cover by JUSKO, and an article by McLEOD examining "Inkers: Who needs ’em?" along with other features, including a Rough Critique of RUDY VASQUEZ! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY084263

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THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE! 6-ISSUE SUBS: $44 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($60 First Class, $70 Canada, $105 1st Class Intl., $115 Priority Intl.).

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“PRO2PRO” interview between GEORGE PÉREZ & MARV WOLFMAN (with UNSEEN PÉREZ ART), “ROUGH STUFF” featuring JACK KIRBY’s PENCIL ART, “GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD” on the first JLA/AVENGERS, “BEYOND CAPES” on DC and Marvel’s TARZAN (with KUBERT and BUSCEMA ART), “OFF MY CHEST” editorial by INFANTINO, and more! PÉREZ cover!

“PRO2PRO” between ADAM HUGHES and MIKE W. BARR (with UNSEEN HUGHES ART) and MATT WAGNER and DIANA SCHUTZ, “ROUGH STUFF” HUGHES PENCIL ART, STEVE RUDE’s unseen SPACE GHOST/HERCULOIDS team-up, Bruce Jones’ ALIEN WORLDS and TWISTED TALES, “OFF MY CHEST” by MIKE W. BARR on the DC IMPLOSION, and more! HUGHES cover!

“PRO2PRO” between KEITH GIFFEN, J.M. DeMATTEIS and KEVIN MAGUIRE on their JLA WORK, “ROUGH STUFF” PENCIL ART by ARAGONÉS, HERNANDEZ BROS., MIGNOLA, BYRNE, KIRBY, HUGHES, details on two unknown PLASTIC MAN movies, Joker’s history with O’NEIL, ADAMS, ENGLEHART, ROGERS and BOLLAND, editorial by MARK EVANIER, and more! BOLLAND cover!

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“PRO2PRO” between JOHN BYRNE and CHRIS CLAREMONT on their X-MEN WORK and WALT SIMONSON and JOE CASEY on Walter’s THOR, WOLVERINE PENCIL ART by BUSCEMA, LEE, COCKRUM, BYRNE, and GIL KANE, LEN WEIN’S TEEN WOLVERINE, PUNISHER’S 30TH and SECRET WARS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARIES (with UNSEEN ZECK ART), and more! BYRNE cover!

Wonder Woman TV series in-depth, LYNDA CARTER INTERVIEW, WONDER WOMAN TV ART GALLERY, Marvel’s TV Hulk, SpiderMan, Captain America, and Dr. Strange, LOU FERRIGNO INTERVIEW, super-hero cartoons you didn’t see, pencil gallery by JERRY ORDWAY, STAR TREK in comics, and ROMITA SR. editorial on Marvel’s movies! Covers by ALEX ROSS and ADAM HUGHES!

TOMB OF DRACULA revealed with GENE COLAN and MARV WOLFMAN, LEN WEIN & BERNIE WRIGHTSON on Swamp Thing’s roots, STEVE BISSETTE & RICK VEITCH on their Swamp work, pencil art by BRUNNER, PLOOG, BISSETTE, COLAN, WRIGHTSON, and SMITH, editorial by ROY THOMAS, PREZ, GODZILLA comics (with TRIMPE art), CHARLTON horror, & more! COLAN cover!

History of BRAVE AND BOLD, JIM APARO interview, tribute to BOB HANEY, FANTASTIC FOUR ROUNDTABLE with STAN LEE, MARK WAID, and others, EVANIER and MEUGNIOT on DNAgents, pencil art by ROSS, TOTH, COCKRUM, HECK, ROBBINS, NEWTON, and BYRNE, DENNY O’NEIL editorial, a tour of METROPOLIS, IL, and more! SWAN/ANDERSON cover!

DENNY O’NEIL and Justice League Unlimited voice actor PHIL LaMARR discuss GL JOHN STEWART, NEW X-MEN pencil art by NEAL ADAMS, ARTHUR ADAMS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, ALAN DAVIS, JIM LEE, ADAM HUGHES, STORM’s 30-year history, animated TV’s black heroes (with TOTH art), ISABELLA and TREVOR VON EEDEN on BLACK LIGHTNING, and more! KYLE BAKER cover!

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MIKE BARON and STEVE RUDE on NEXUS past and present, a colossal GIL KANE pencil art gallery, a look at Marvel’s STAR WARS comics, secrets of DC’s unseen CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS SEQUEL, TIM TRUMAN on his GRIMJACK SERIES, MIKE GOLD editorial, THANOS history, TIME WARP revisited, and more! All-new STEVE RUDE COVER!

NEAL ADAMS and DENNY O’NEIL on RA’S AL GHUL’s history (with Adams art), O’Neil and MICHAEL KALUTA on THE SHADOW, MIKE GRELL on JON SABLE FREELANCE, HOWIE CHAYKIN interview, DOC SAVAGE in comics, BATMAN ART GALLERY by PAUL SMITH, SIENKIEWICZ, SIMONSON, BOLLAND, HANNIGAN, MAZZUCCHELLI, and others! New cover by ADAMS!

ROY THOMAS, KURT BUSIEK, and JOE JUSKO on CONAN (with art by JOHN BUSCEMA, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, NEAL ADAMS, JUSKO, and others), SERGIO ARAGONÉS and MARK EVANIER on GROO, DC’s never-published KING ARTHUR, pencil art gallery by KIRBY, PÉREZ, MOEBIUS, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, BOLLAND, and others, and a new BUSCEMA/JUSKO Conan cover!

‘70s and ‘80s character revamps with DAVE GIBBONS, ROY THOMAS and KURT BUSIEK, TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ on Spider-Man’s 1980s “black” costume change, DENNY O’NEIL on Superman’s 1970 revamp, JOHN BYRNE’s aborted SHAZAM! series detailed, pencil art gallery with FRANK MILLER, LEE WEEKS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, CHARLES VESS, and more!

CARDY interview, ENGLEHART and MOENCH on kung-fu comics, “Pro2Pro” with STATON and CUTI on Charlton’s E-Man, pencil art gallery featuring MILLER, KUBERT, GIORDANO, SWAN, GIL KANE, COLAN, COCKRUM, and others, EISNER’s A Contract with God; “The Death of Romance (Comics)” (with art by ROMITA, SR. and TOTH), and more!

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BACK ISSUE #17

BACK ISSUE #18

DAVE COCKRUM and MIKE GRELL go “Pro2Pro” on the Legion, pencil art gallery by BUSCEMA, BYRNE, MILLER, STARLIN, McFARLANE, ROMITA JR., SIENKIEWICZ, looks at Hercules Unbound, Hex, Killraven, Kamandi, MARS, Planet of the Apes, art and interviews with GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, KIRBY, WILLIAMSON, and more! New MIKE GRELL/BOB McLEOD cover!

“Weird Heroes” of the 1970s and ‘80s! MIKE PLOOG discusses Ghost Rider, MATT WAGNER revisits The Demon, JOE KUBERT dusts off Ragman, GENE COLAN “Rough Stuff” pencil gallery, GARCÍALÓPEZ recalls Deadman, DC’s unpublished Gorilla Grodd series, PERLIN, CONWAY, and MOENCH on Werewolf by Night, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

“Toy Stories!” Behind the Scenes of Marvel’s G.I. JOE™ and TRANSFORMERS with PAUL LEVITZ and GEORGE TUSKA, “Rough Stuff” MIKE ZECK pencil gallery, ARTHUR ADAMS on Gumby, HE-MAN, ROM, MICRONAUTS, SUPER POWERS, SUPER-HERO CARS, art by HAMA, SAL BUSCEMA, GUICE, GOLDEN, KIRBY, TRIMPE, and new ZECK sketch cover!

“Super Girls!” Supergirl retrospective with art by STELFREEZE, HAMNER, SpiderWoman, Flare, Tigra, DC’s unused Double Comics with unseen BARRETTO and INFANTINO art, WOLFMAN and JIMENEZ on Donna Troy, female comics pros, art by SEKOWSKY, OKSNER, PÉREZ, HUGHES, GIORDANO, plus a COLOR GALLERY and COVER by BRUCE TIMM!

“Big, Green Issue!” Tour of NEAL ADAMS’ studio (with interview and art gallery), DAVE GIBBONS “Rough Stuff” pencil art spotlight, interviews with MIKE GRELL (on Green Arrow), PETER DAVID (on Incredible Hulk), a “Pro2Pro” chat between GERRY CONWAY and JOHN ROMITA, SR. (on the Green Goblin), and more. New cover by NEAL ADAMS!

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BACK ISSUE #19

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“Unsung Heroes!” DON NEWTON spotlight, STEVE GERBER and GENE COLAN on Howard the Duck, MIKE CARLIN and DANNY FINGEROTH on Marvel’s Assistant Editors’ Month, the unrealized Unlimited Powers TV show, TONY ISABELLA’s aborted plans for The Champions, MARK GRUENWALD tribute, art by SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, and more! NEWTON/ RUBINSTEIN cover!

“Secret Identities!” Histories of characters with unusual alter egos: Firestorm, Moon Knight, the Question, and the “real-life” Human Fly! STEVE ENGLEHART and SAL BUSCEMA on Captain America, JERRY ORDWAY interview and cover, Superman roundtable with SIENKIEWICZ, NOWLAN, MOENCH, COWAN, MAGGIN, O’NEIL, MILGROM, CONWAY, ROBBINS, SWAN, plus FREE ALTER EGO #64 PREVIEW!

“The Devil You Say!” issue! A look at Daredevil in the 1980s and 1990s with interviews and art by KLAUS JANSON, JOHN ROMITA JR., and FRANK MILLER, MIKE MIGNOLA Hellboy interview, DAN MISHKIN and GARY COHN on Blue Devil, COLLEEN DORAN’s unpublished X-Men spin-off “Fallen Angels”, Son of Satan, Stig’s Inferno, DC’s Plop!, JACK KIRBY’s Devil Dinosaur, and cover by MIKE ZECK!

“Dynamic Duos!’ “Pro2Pro” interviews with Batman’s ALAN GRANT and NORM BREYFOGLE and the Legion’s PAUL LEVITZ and KEITH GIFFEN, a “Backstage Pass” to Dark Horse Comics, Robin’s history, EASTMAN and LAIRD’s Ninja Turtles, histories of duos Robin and Batgirl, Captain America and the Falcon, and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, “Zot!” interview with SCOTT McCLOUD, and a new BREYFOGLE cover!

“Comics Go Hollywood!” Spider-Man roundtable with STAN LEE, JOHN ROMITA, SR., JIM SHOOTER, ERIK LARSEN, and others, STAR TREK comics writers’ roundtable Part 1, Gladstone’s Disney comics line, behindthe-scenes at TV’s ISIS and THE FLASH (plus an interview with Flash’s JOHN WESLEY SHIPP), TV tie-in comics, bonus 8-page color ADAM HUGHES ART GALLERY and cover, plus a FREE WRITE NOW #16 PREVIEW!

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“Magic” issue! MICHAEL GOLDEN interview, GENE COLAN, PAUL SMITH, and FRANK BRUNNER on drawing Dr. Strange, Mystic Art Gallery with CARL POTTS & KEVIN NOWLAN, BILL WILLINGHAM’s Elementals, Zatanna history, Dr. Fate’s revival, a “Greatest Stories Never Told” look at Peter Pan, tribute to the late MARSHALL ROGERS, a new GOLDEN cover, plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #6 PREVIEW!

“Men of Steel!’ BOB LAYTON and DAVID MICHELINIE on Iron Man, RICH BUCKLER on Deathlok, MIKE GRELL on Warlord, JOHN BYRNE on ROG 2000, Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, Machine Man, the World’s Greatest Super-Heroes comic strip, DC’s Steel, art by KIRBY, HECK, WINDSOR-SMITH, TUSKA, LAYTON cover, and bonus “Men of Steel” art gallery! Includes a FREE DRAW! #15 PREVIEW!

“Spies and Tough Guys!’ PAUL GULACY and DOUG MOENCH in an art-packed “Pro2Pro” on Master of Kung Fu and their unrealized Shang-Chi/Nick Fury crossover, Suicide Squad spotlight, Ms. Tree, CHUCK DIXON and TIM TRUMAN’s Airboy, James Bond and Mr. T in comic books, Sgt. Rock’s oddball super-hero team-ups, Nathaniel Dusk, JOE KUBERT’s unpublished The Redeemer, and a new GULACY cover!

“Comic Book Royalty!” The ’70s/’80s careers of Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner explored, BARR and BOLLAND discuss CAMELOT 3000, comics pros tell “Why JACK KIRBY Was King,” “Dr. Doom: Monarch or Menace?” DON McGREGOR’s Black Panther; an exclusive ALAN WEISS art gallery; spotlights on ARION, LORD OF ATLANTIS; NIGHT FORCE; and more! New cover by NICK CARDY!

“Heroes Behaving Badly!” Hulk vs. Thing tirades with RON WILSON, HERB TRIMPE, and JIM SHOOTER; CARY BATES and CARMINE INFANTINO on “Trial of the Flash”; JOHN BYRNE’s heroes who cross the line; Teen Titan Terra, Kid Miracleman, Mark Shaw Manhunter, and others who went bad, featuring LAYTON, MICHELINIE, WOLFMAN, and PÉREZ, and more! New cover by DARWYN COOKE!

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NEW STUFF FROM TWOMORROWS!

ALTER EGO #85

WRITE NOW! #20

ROUGH STUFF #12

DRAW! #17

BRICKJOURNAL #5

Go behind the pages of the hit series of graphic novels starring Scott Pilgrim with his creator and artist, BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY, to see how he creates the acclaimed series! Then, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS works on the series, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US (Digital Edition) $2.95 Diamond Order Code: MAR094514 Now shipping!

(80-page magazine) $6.95 US (Digital Edition) $2.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC084398 FINAL ISSUE! Now shipping!

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(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 US • (Digital Edition) $2.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC084377 Now shipping!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE:

BATCAVE COMPANION

Spotlights Kirby’s most obscure work, like an UNUSED THOR STORY, BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, unaltered versions of pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, & DESTROYER DUCK, a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING, unseen Kirby covers & more! (84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 US Diamond Order Code: DEC084397 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Now shipping!

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR VOL. 7 Reprints KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30 plus over 30 pieces of Kirby art never published! (288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490120 Now shipping!

GRAILPAGES

The definitive autobiographical book on ALAN MOORE in a NEW EXPANDED AND UPDATED VERSION! Includes new interviews covering his work since the original 2003 edition of the book. From SWAMP THING, V FOR VENDETTA, WATCHMEN, and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and beyond – all are discussed by Alan. Plus, there’s RARE STRIPS, SCRIPTS, ARTWORK, and PHOTOGRAPHS, tribute comic strips by NEIL GAIMAN and other of Moore’s closest collaborators, a COLOR SECTION featuring the RARE MOORE STORY “The Riddle of the Recalcitrant Refuse” (newly remastered, and starring MR. MONSTER), and more! Edited by GEORGE KHOURY, with a cover by DAVE McKEAN!

Explore the Silver and Bronze Ages of Batman comic books in THE BATCAVE COMPANION! Two distinct sections of this book examine the Dark Knight’s progression from his campy “New Look” of the mid-1960s to his “creature of the night” reinvention of the 1970s. Features include issue-by-issue indexes, interviews with CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE GIELLA, DENNIS O’NEIL, and NEAL ADAMS, and guest essays by MIKE W. BARR and WILL MURRAY. Contributors include SHELDON MOLDOFF, LEN WEIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, and TERRY AUSTIN, with a special tribute to the late MARSHALL ROGERS. With its incisive introduction by DENNIS O’NEIL and its iconic cover painting by NEAL ADAMS, THE BATCAVE COMPANION is a must-have for every comics fan! By MICHAEL EURY and MICHAEL KRONENBERG.

(240-page trade paperback) $29.95 US ISBN: 9781605490090 Diamond Order Code: JAN088702 Now shipping!

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95 US ISBN: 9781893905788 Diamond Order Code: NOV068368 Now shipping!

Indispensable Edition

Go to www.twomorrows.com for FULL-COLOR downloadable PDF versions of our magazines for only $2.95! Subscribers to the print edition get the digital edition FREE, weeks before it hits stores!

2009 SUBSCRIPTION RATES:

Media Mail

Original Comic Book Art & The Collectors Examines the hobby of collecting original comic book art, letting you meet collectors from around the globe as they detail collections ranging from a few key pages, to hundreds of pages of original comic art by JACK KIRBY, JOHN ROMITA SR., and others! Features interviews with industry pros, including writers GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, and ROY THOMAS, and exclusive perspectives from Silver Age artists DICK GIORDANO, BOB McLEOD, ERNIE CHAN, TONY DeZUNIGA, and the unparalleled great, GENE COLAN! Completing the book is a diverse sampling of breathtakingly beautiful original comic art, some lavishly presented in full-page spreads, including pages not seen publicly for decades. Written by STEVEN ALAN PAYNE. (128-page trade paperback) $15.95 US ISBN: 9781605490151 Diamond Order Code: JAN094470 Now shipping!

VOLUME 20: KYLE BAKER

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490083 Now shipping!

VOLUME 21: CHRIS SPROUSE

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95 US • ISBN: 97801605490137 Ships May 2009 Each features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated with rare art from the artist’s files, plus huge sketchbook section, including unseen and unused art!

1st Class Canada 1st Class Priority US Intl. Intl.

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$50

$60

$84

$136

BACK ISSUE! (6 issues)

$44

$60

$70

$105

$115

DRAW! (4 issues)

$30

$40

$47

$70

$77

ALTER EGO (12 issues) Six-issue subs are half-price!

$88

$120

$140

$210

$230

BRICKJOURNAL (4 issues)

$38

$48

$55

$78

$85

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