Back Issue #46

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Aquaman II • Black Canary miniseries • Cat #5 • FF Graphic Novel • Miracleman Triumphant • Star*Reach Batman • Warlock #16 & more

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Warlord TM & © DC Comics. Savage Empire TM & © Mike Grell. All Rights Reserved.

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Before the Warlord, there was

MIKE GRELL’S SAVAGE EMPIRE

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

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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 to www.twomorrows.com for other issues, and an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE!

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“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!

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“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!

“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, Marvel’s post-STAN LEE editors-in-chief on 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,” new cover by JIM STARLIN!

“Villains!” MIKE ZECK and J.M. DeMATTEIS discuss “Kraven’s Last Hunt”, history of the Hobgoblin is exposed, the Joker’s short-lived series, 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!

“Monsters!” Frankenstein in Comics timeline and a look at BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s and Marvel’s versions, histories of Vampirella and Morbius, ISABELLA and AYERS discuss It the Living Colossus, REDONDO’s Swamp Thing, Man-Bat, monster art gallery, interview with TONY DeZUNIGA, art and commentary from ARTHUR ADAMS, COLÓN, KALUTA, NEBRES, PLOOG, SUTTON, VEITCH, and a painted cover by EARL NOREM!

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“Comics Go to War!” KUBERT/KANIGHER’s Sgt. Rock, EVANIER and SPIEGLE’s Blackhawk, GEORGE PRATT’s Enemy Ace, plus Unknown Soldier, Wonder Woman’s return to WWII, the Invaders, Combat Kelly, Vietnam Journal, Sad Sack, the Joe Kubert School, art and commentary from AYERS, HEATH, KIRBY, ROBBINS, ROMITA SR., SINNOTT, and the return of GERRY TALAOC! JOE KUBERT cover!

“Family!” JOHN BYRNE’s Fantastic Four, SIMONSON, BRIGMAN, and BOGDANOVE on Power Pack, LEVITZ and STATON on the Huntress, Henry Pym’s “son” Ultron, Wonder Twins, Commissioner Gordon & Batgirl’s relationship, and Return of the New Gods.

With art and commentary from BUCKLER, BUSIEK, FRADON, HECK, INFANTINO, NEWTON, and WOLFMAN, and a Norman Rockwell-inspired BYRNE cover!

“April Fools”! GIFFEN and LOREN FLEMING on Ambush Bug, BYRNE’s She-Hulk, interviews with HEMBECK, ALAN KUPPERBERG, Flaming Carrot’s BOB BURDEN, and DAVID CHELSEA, Spider-Ham, Forbush-Man, Reid Fleming, MAD in the 1970s, art and commentary from DICK DeBARTOLO, TOM DeFALCO, AL FELDSTEIN, AL JAFFEE, STAN LEE, DAVE SIM, and a Spider-Ham cover by MIKE WIERINGO, inked by KARL KESEL!

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Cat People!” Catwoman, Black Cat, Hellcat, Vixen, Atlas’ Tiger-Man and Cougar, White Tiger and the Sons of the Tiger, Wildcat, Thundercats, Josie and the Pussycats, and the Badger! With art and commentary from BOLLAND, BRENNERT, COLON, CONWAY, DITKO, GOLDBERG, LEVITZ, MILGROM, MST3000’s MIKE NELSON, and more. Cover

by JOE STATON and FREDDY LOPEZ, JR.!

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Red, White, and Blue” issue! Captain America and the Red Skull, CHAYKIN’s American Flagg, THOMAS and COLAN’s Wonder Woman, Freedom Fighters, and Team America! With art and commentary from JOHN BYRNE, STEVE ENGLEHART, ROGER STERN, CURT SWAN, MARK WAID, LEN WEIN, MIKE ZECK, and more.

Cover by HOWARD CHAYKIN!

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Volume 1, Number 46 February 2011 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, and Beyond!

The Retro Comics Experience!

EDITOR Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The Lady and the Cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Ramona Fradon recalls what went wrong with the unpublished fifth issue of Marvel’s The Cat

COVER ARTIST Mike Grell

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Whatever Happened to Warlock #16? . . . . . . . . .8 Alan Weiss and Jim Starlin reveal the tale of this comic-book cosmic oddity

COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Oh, Say, Can You Sing…?: The Mystery of the Captain America Musical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 The Star-Spangled Sentinel—live, on stage???

PROOFREADER Rob Smentek

OFF MY CHEST: From Savage Empire to The Warlord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Mike Grell discusses Travis Morgan’s journey into print—and reminds us of his aborted Swamp Angel series

SPECIAL THANKS Bob Anderson Bret Blevins Tom Breevort Fred Burke Mike Burkey Jarrod Buttery John Byrne Dewey Cassell DC Comics Jon B. Cooke and Comic Book Artist Mike Deodato Steve Englehart Danny Fingeroth Tom Fleming Jim Ford Ramona Fradon Mike Friedrich Grand Comic-Book Database Bob Greenberger Mike Grell Heritage Auction Galleries Jonathan Hickman Phil Jimenez Barbara Kesel Sean Kleefeld Michael Kronenberg Alan Kupperberg Paul Kupperberg Andy Mangels Jim Manner

Allen Milgrom Jason Temujin Minor Jerome K. Moore George Pratt Richard A. Scott Jim Starlin Larry Talbot Roy Thomas Dan Thorsland Keith Veronese Jim Warden Len Wein Greg Weisman Alan Weiss Brett Weiss Pauline Weiss John Wells

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: How the Batman Nearly Stepped Out of the Mainstream and into Independent Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers almost took DC’s Dark Detective to Mike Friedrich’s indy house GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Fantastic Four: Fathers and Sons . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Danny Fingeroth and Al Milgrom open the vault with the scoop on this unfinished FF graphic novel GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Opening the Box: Pandora Pann’s Lost Adventures . .37 Who closed on the lid on this Len Wein/Ross Andru title?

ROUGH STUFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Six pages of previously unpublished art GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Failure to Launch: The Black Canary Miniseries That Never Took Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Greg Weisman blows the whistle on his unpublished collaboration with Mike Sekowsky GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The Aquaman Sequel That Wasn’t . . . . . . . . . . . .53 This anticipated follow-up to the Pozner/Hamilton miniseries was deep-sixed GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The Last Galactus Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 There was more to this story than appeared in John Byrne’s celebrated FF spin-off GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The Wolf Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Dark Horse’s Universal Monsters one-shots had one conspicuously missing monster…

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Miracleman Triumphant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 Fred Burke, Mike Deodato, and Jason Temujin Minor lament this Eclipse Comics casualty BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Reader feedback BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. E-mail: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard US, $85 Canada, $107 Surface International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office.

Cover art by Mike Grell. The Warlord TM & © DC Comics. Savage Empire TM & © Mike Grell. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2011 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING. Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

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by

Michael Eury

Some readers of BACK ISSUE #43 got a few unexpected “Greatest stages and had some internal editorial resistance since they involved Stories Never Told”—incomplete and missing articles, and duplicated other editors’ characters, but the initial concept for Justice League pages! This was an unfortunate printer’s error, beyond our control, 3000 would have included a mix of descendants of original JLA which omitted a signature (a page grouping) and duplicated another members, Jo Nah (the adult Ultra Boy), an alien Captain Marvel, signature in its place. Fortunately, this only affected part of the print and a still-living Martian Manhunter. run. If you purchased one of these misprinted copies, please contact I was ribbed by some editors when they learned, back in early TwoMorrows at twomorrow@aol.com with your name, mailing address, 1992, that I had placed an editorial development “reserve” on Uncle and e-mail address, and you’ll receive a replacement copy.

Sam. The character was considered anachronistic. (DC’s recent This issue, we take a look at unpublished projects, aborted concepts, Freedom Fighters miniseries and ongoing series have proved those and lost issues as we dedicate most of our pages to one of our hecklers wrong.) I’d approached Matt Wagner about writing an Uncle departments: “Greatest Stories Never Told.” Our theme evokes some Sam mini, and his brief outline involved Ol’ Red, White, and Blue’s personal recollections, if you’ll allow me antithesis, Amerika. Knowing Matt’s a moment of self-indulgence to add unique voice, this one boggles the mind. these GSNT footnotes.

Too bad it didn’t happen.

In 1987–1988, when I was writing I dropped the ball on all of these “Peter Porker: The Spectacular Spider-Ham” projects when I left the company in backup stories for Marvel Tales, editor August 1992, and apologize to any writer, Jim Salicrup and I talked about Marvel artist, or fellow editor I disappointed by publishing a funny-animal super-team leaving those series hanging. book featuring Spider-Ham, Captain More “Greatest Stories Never Told” Americat, Mighty Mouse (who was on occurred at Dark Horse Comics in the Saturday morning TV at the time in mid-1990s, where I landed after DC. Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures), I was group editor of licensed titles when Underdog, and Courageous Cat and the Star Trek franchise was up for grabs.

Minute Mouse. The licensing lunacy Since Dark Horse was the comic-book attached to such a gathering quickly home of many of Hollywood’s most dissuaded us from anything other than a popular sci-fi series—Star Wars, Predator, few phone chats about it. and Aliens among them—the crew of the During my stint (1989–1992) as a Enterprise would have been in good DC Comics editor, I was planning a few company there. I lobbied for a Star Wars/ series that never saw the light of day.

Star Trek crossover to launch the company’s One was a miniseries titled Legionnaires, ST titles (just imagine a Kirk vs. Darth to be written and illustrated by Steve Vader phaser/light saber battle!), but the Lightle. Lightle’s Legionnaires, which was franchise went elsewhere. Another offbeat being developed before the Chris editorial suggestion, which I made only Sprouse-drawn Legionnaires monthly half-jokingly, was a tongue-in-cheek series, ran out of steam when I took a one-shot, Predator on Gilligan’s Island, sidestep to become then-editorial but my bosses didn’t take it seriously. director Dick Giordano’s assistant, and (Heck, I’d still shell out five bucks to read unfortunately withered away after that. that.) And in 1996, while writing the ’toon As a writer, I proposed a monthly tie-in The Adventures of the Mask, I pitched series titled Shazam!: The Word of Power, an “animated” Batman/Mask DC/Dark to be penciled by Joe Phillips and edited Batman and Clayface TM & © DC Comics. The Mask TM & © Dark Horse Comics. Horse crossover involving Clayface’s

by Mike Gold (this proposal was covered by Dan Johnson a few years attempts to obtain Stanley Ipkiss’ mask that might have gone the distance back in Alter Ego). My take on Captain Marvel was inspired by Tom had I not developed cold feet about writing Batman. Artist Dev Madan Hanks’ performance as an “adult” in the movie Big, but it was was on board and drew the promo image seen on this page. sidelined first by John Byrne’s jettisoned Shazam! series, then by Jerry Thanks for your patience while I detoured off of Memory Lane Ordway’s Power of Shazam!, and also by my own inadequacies as a and down Could’a/Should’a/Would’a Street. I look back at those neo-writer taking on a major character. projects with a twinge of regret. That’s a sentiment shared by During my last year at DC I returned to being the Legion editor, several of the creators who participate in this issue. As you’ll discover launching the aforementioned Legionnaires monthly to stand while reading these “Greatest Stories Never Told,” there are myriad alongside the “Five Year Gap” adult Legion of Super-Heroes title (if reasons why promised projects go unrealized. Often they’re painful ones, you weren’t reading Legion back then, this was an interesting but as editorial decisions, deadline disasters, and economic downturns convoluted period of LSH history). I had hoped to add two other dash dreams, causing hard work to be shelved. While these comics series to DC’s “futureverse,” predating Marvel’s 2099 brand: Batman never came to pass, for a moment, at least, we—and their artists and 3000 and Justice League 3000. These never went past the talking writers—can vicariously enjoy what might have been.

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by

Dewey Cassell

When you think of “The Greatest Stories Never Told,” it leads you to ponder “what if?” What if the sales figures on Marvel Comics’ The Cat had been better?

What if the fifth issue of The Cat had been finished?

What if Ramona Fradon had become a regular at Marvel, instead of returning to DC Comics? As it was, she didn’t stand a chance—Fradon, that is. The Cat would find another life with Marvel—two, in fact— as Tigra and Hellcat. But after The Cat and one issue of Fantastic Four, Fradon never worked for Marvel again.

What if the gifted artist who brought Aquaman and TM Metamorpho and the Super Friends to life for DC had found her niche at Marvel?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning. This “greatest story never told” is as much about Ramona Fradon as it is about The Cat. And Fradon found her way into comics through love. She explains, “I went to art school at the Art Students League and studied fine arts, but spent a lot of time doing figure drawing.

When I got out of school, I had no idea what I was going to do and I happened to marry a cartoonist [for The New Yorker, Dana Fradon]. So, he and a friend of his [letterer George Ward] kind of steered me into doing some samples and taking them around. Which I did and I got jobs wherever I went. I had never thought of becoming a cartoonist up until that point.”

Ramona Fradon found a home at DC ramona fradon Comics. Starting in 1950, she illustrated a variety of features for DC over the next decade, including Westerns and detective stories, but she is perhaps best known for her Aquaman stories in Adventure Comics, where she is credited with co-creating the character Aqualad. When her daughter was born, Fradon left comics, returning briefly in the mid-1960s to co-create Metamorpho with writer Bob Haney. She then retired from comics in 1965 to raise her daughter.

In 1973, Marvel Comics editor Roy Thomas contacted Fradon and lured her out of retirement.

Marvel had recently launched several new comic books designed to attract more female readers, including Night Nurse, Shanna the She-Devil, and The Cat. With the latter title in particular, Marvel was striving to use a female creative team. Marie Severin had started out illustrating The Cat, but she was going to be leaving the title, so Thomas wanted Fradon to take up the reins on the fledgling female

Pensive Pussycat Detail from the splash page of the unpublished The Cat #5. Unless otherwise noted, scans in this article are courtesy of Dewey Cassell. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Fabulous Fradon (left) An undated sketch of the artist and the Cat, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (right) Greer Nelson springs into action on the Fradonpenciled page 2 of The Cat #5. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

superheroine. Thomas recalls, “I was a big fan of Ramona’s work. I don’t recall the precise circumstances of how I located her, alas… but I thought it would be a good idea from a potential publicity viewpoint to have a woman artist on the mag… and I liked the idea of having Ramona draw for Marvel anyway, so it was a perfect fit. I was delighted when she accepted.” Severin and Fradon had several things in common, not the least of which was having achieved prominence in a field traditionally reserved for men, and they became friends later in life. As Fradon notes, “It’s funny; Marie and I both worked on The Cat. And then she was working on Sub-Mariner and I was working on Aquaman. There was some sort of a thing going on there.”

The first issue of The Cat introduced a shy, insecure young woman, Greer Nelson, whose husband was a policeman killed in the line of duty. Greer encountered an old professor named Dr. Joanne Tumolo, who encouraged her to participate in an experiment to heighten the natural abilities of women, including the “sixth sense” of intuition. But it turned out that the experiment was being funded by a madman with plans to create an army of superwomen.

Dr. Tumolo stole one of the costumes created for the recruits and gave it to Greer, who donned it and defeated the villain. In subsequent issues, the Cat went on to battle the Owl, Commander Kraken, and the Man-Bull. The Cat also joined Spider-Man to fight a female villain named Man-Killer in issue #8 of Marvel Team-Up.

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For Fradon, working for Marvel proved to be something of a culture shock, in more ways than one.

She recalls, “I worked at home. I would just go in once in a while. I must say I was really shocked when I went to Marvel after having worked at DC all those years.

By then, the ’60s had done their work. Everything was so different up there. It was totally free-form.

There didn’t seem to be any organization or order to the Marvel offices. It looked like mayhem to me.

They didn’t have any offices. It was all just cubicles and there were papers all over the place and it just seemed like total confusion. It was hard for me to adapt to that. I guess by that time I was getting too old to fit into the kind of hippie atmosphere there.”

But it wasn’t just the atmosphere in the Marvel offices that was a difficult adjustment. Fradon found it hard to adapt to the “Marvel method” of comic-book production. At DC Comics, artists were presented with a full script, describing in detail what was to appear in each panel of the story. But at Marvel, Stan Lee had introduced the “Marvel method” years before, in which the writer provided only a synopsis or plot for the story—sometimes as little as one paragraph— and the artist was expected to extrapolate the idea into a complete story. The writer would then take the penciled pages and pen the dialogue based on the artist’s rendition. It required the artist to interject many of the details into the story, essentially writing as well as drawing it. The only real requirement was that you include a lot of action. Fradon remarks, “If you go back and look at some of those stories, you’ll see that there’s like five pages in the middle where everybody is

Cat Walk Two lettered and two unlettered penciled pages from The Cat #5: (top) pages 5 and 6, and (bottom) pages 10 and 11. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Altered States (left) Fradon’s original penciled version of page 12 of The Cat #5 was replaced with (right) this reworked version, one of the lost issue’s pages that was inked

by Jim Mooney. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

smashing everybody else. People who really liked doing that kind of thing, it suited them perfectly, but that was not something that interested me particularly.

I always liked stories where people were interacting, not by punching each other, but in a normal kind of way.” Many of her contemporaries found it a challenge as well, particularly the pacing. Gene Colan tells how he once drew a seven-page car-chase sequence in an issue of Daredevil and then had to cram the rest of the story into the few remaining pages.

For her part, Fradon did a wonderful job of rendering the fifth issue of The Cat, beginning with a creative redesign of the character’s costume. (No one recalls at this point whether she was encouraged to redesign the costume or she simply took the initiative to do so, but the mask, in particular, differs from the previous issues and from later incarnations of the character.)

The story, which was written by Linda Fite (who wrote

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the first four issues as well), opens with the Cat in a pensive mood, standing atop a building surveying the skyline. Her alter ego, Greer Nelson, then pays a visit to a mysterious woman named Graymalkin in an old mansion, only to be drugged and tossed into a dungeon.

Graymalkin turns out to be leader of a cult of witchcraft and sorcery. Greer is joined by another captive named Lakuya, but she manages to escape, dons her Cat costume, and returns to the mansion to battle a coven of witches and demons in an effort to rescue Lakuya from a bizarre ritual. In the end, Greer learns that the creatures were all the by-product of some elaborate electronic system, which she destroys. Lakuya survives, but Graymalkin manages to escape.

Fradon felt like it was not her best work. She observes, “When I look at the drawings I did then, I think I missed the mark, too. I was having a hard time getting my energy behind it. It had been so long since I had drawn. You really have to be in a groove to get the action and the energy into the drawing. Some of it was nicely drawn, but it just didn’t have any energy, so I can see why they weren’t that impressed with my work.” Margin notes on the artwork do suggest some editorial changes. One comment about the Cat reads, “She looks too damn calm. Please add more tension and show more expression.” There is another note in the margin about the villain which says she should be “more like one of Kirby’s sorceresses—unconventional, more wild. (Cover up her hair if you want to.)” But the artwork Fradon did was creative and compelling, very consistent with the work that had been done by the previous artists on the book. The truth is that the fate of The Cat was already sealed by the time Ramona Fradon finished her pencils. The book was canceled due to lack of sales on the early issues, and the fifth issue was shelved.

Much, if not all, of the original art from the Fradon Cat story has survived. The story was fully penciled and lettered, and at least partially inked.

It appears that Marvel may have pulled the plug while Jim Mooney was still inking the story, leaving some pages in an unfinished state. One page is also marked “omitted” in the top margin, with a note to John Verpoorten that reads, “This page can be omitted if necessary for new schedule-thing. It’s excessive, anyway.” (Marvel had cut back on the page count of its comic books during this time period.) It is also worth noting that the top margin of the splash page of the Fradon Cat story indicates it was originally planned for issue #4. Why it was bumped in the schedule is uncertain, although the stories were largely stand-alone, so it did not affect continuity.

As of this writing, the Fradon Cat story has never been published in its entirety.

Asked if Marvel would have given Ramona Fradon more work, Roy Thomas replies, “Yes, but I believe our communication kinda broke down, and I don’t believe she thought we wanted her to do any more.”

After her brief tenure at Marvel, Fradon returned “home” to DC Comics, where she drew stories for House of Mystery, Freedom Fighters, and almost the entire run of Super Friends. In 1980, Dale Messick retired and Fradon took over illustrating the newspaper strip Brenda Starr, which she drew until retiring for

good in 1995. Although her work on the strip is fondly remembered by fans, Fradon preferred comic books. She comments, “It actually was more fun doing the comics, because you’re confined to those three panels and everything is reproduced so small that there’s no satisfaction in seeing it in print. It’s a whole different approach to comics, especially a feature like Brenda Starr, which ended up being mostly closeups. There was very little action.

That can get pretty boring.”

With the smooth lines and dramatic realism that marked her drawing style, one can’t help but wonder what The Amazing Spider-Man or The Mighty Thor might have looked like, rendered by Ramona Fradon. If the fifth issue of The Cat is any indication, it would have been a brighter, more entertaining Marvel Universe.

Signed, Sealed, Undelivered Pages 16 (left) and 19 of The Cat #5, with creative-team signatures. The Cat’s new mask is clearly visible here. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Thanks to Ramona Fradon and Roy Thomas for the interviews. For more on the Cat, and her later incarnation Tigra, see issue #17 of BACK ISSUE, available from TwoMorrows.

DEWEY CASSELL is a frequent contributor to BACK ISSUE and author of the sold-out book The Art of George Tuska. He is currently working on a book about Marie Severin.

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Alan Weiss is pretty tired of answering the questions and insinuations.

No, he wasn’t absentminded or irresponsible.

No, he wasn’t drunk and forgetful.

And no, he wasn’t high on drugs.

If none of those is the answer, then what befell the preliminary layouts for Warlock #16?

Artist Weiss knows the answer, but remains secretive out of respect for a friend. He would rather let the person responsible for the oversight remain unnamed and to continue deflecting blame rather than bring shame on a friend.

“It’s not a complex story, but no one seems to want to remember it,” Weiss says. “Everybody just seems to want to keep asking me how could I lose those pages.”

The last known place for the early drafts of what was to be Warlock issue #16 was the back seat of a taxi cab in New York City. Their fate, however, is misunderstood by many people, and is also partly a secret…

Jim Starlin was a popular artist in the comic-book industry when he was given free reign over Warlock, and he didn’t mind experimenting or having fun.

He handpicked the character because Warlock wasn’t limited by a detailed or convoluted history within the Marvel Universe. [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #34 for a Warlock history.]

“I could pretty well do whatever I wanted with him,” Starlin says. “Roy [Thomas] and other writers had finished off the ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ storyline they’d been running [in earlier Warlock stories in Strange Tales], so there weren’t any real problems taking Warlock where I wanted.”

Jim Starlin took over the character in a four-issue run in Strange Tales, running from issue #178 (cover-dated Feb. 1975) to issue 181 (Aug. 1975).

He enjoyed the responsibility of writing on the title, and was joined in the artistic duties by notables such as Al Milgrom.

Warlock’s popularity launched him back into his own title in late 1975. Starlin’s story didn’t begin with issue #1, but picked up on issue #9 after the title had been canceled two years earlier after an eight-issue stint. Steve Leialoha shared inking and drawing duties with Starlin for much of the run.

More Than a “Minor” Incident… …all of Alan Weiss’ penciled pages to Warlock #16 disappeared! Detail from the splash page.

All pencil scans in this article courtesy of Jon B. Cooke and Comic Book Artist. Thanks, Jon! © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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®

by

Jim Manner

Starlin pulled in his friend and former roommate, contending with problems stemming from his Alan Weiss, for issue #16, which was intended to be battle with the Star-Thief, a being spawned by the the final issue of the series. The early pencils for the consciousness of an incurable invalid on Earth who issue were completed after Starlin and Weiss discussed was permanently hospitalized and under the care the story plot—a very casual conversation of a personal nurse. The invalid—trapped between the old friends: within his own body—opened his mind “What do you want to write?” Alan to new and great levels of power and Weiss asked him. became the cosmic being known as “What do you want to draw?” the Star-Thief; his name was Jim Starlin responded. inspired by his goal of obliterating Weiss penciled out the story every star from the heavens to within “Studio Zero” in Oakland, take revenge on an uncaring California—a studio named because mankind that wouldn’t find a way it was Apartment 0, in the basement to cure him. His wanted to instill of an apartment building. The pages in mankind the same fear and began their ill-fated journey to New isolation that haunted him his York City when Alan and Jim began entire life. driving across the country to New York Warlock challenged the Starjim starlin City in a moving van with Starlin’s Thief, who toyed with the cosmic Volkswagen in the back of the truck. superhero by challenging him Weiss had to complete the journey by plane, and after with a series of elemental tests—battles with arriving in New York City, he hailed a taxi cab to Al creatures based on fire, water, air, and earth. Warlock Milgrom’s home. Upon arrival, he was climbing out of was forced to find new ways to fight an opponent the taxi when a mutual friend appeared and offered to help carry up Weiss’ belongings.

“I’ll take the heavy stuff. You take everything else,” Weiss told him.

The items that were left in the back seat of the taxi cab included the preliminary pages for Warlock #16. They were protected inside what appeared to be a 15 inch by 17 inch cardboard sleeve—proving to be inconspicuous fodder within one of New York City’s many dingy taxi cabs and easily overlooked by unfamiliar eyes.

“Later, I asked him where the pages were,” Weiss says. “He said, ‘What pages?’”

The reality of what had happened wasn‘t enjoyable.

The pages weren’t to be found, and Weiss had to come to grips with the fact that all of his artistic efforts were being driven aimlessly and unescorted through the streets of New York City in the back seat of one of countless taxi cabs (a recent estimate puts the number of taxi cabs in New York City in excess of 13,000), or perhaps had already been thrown out as trash by a cabbie trying to finish his shift.

“Under other circumstances, I would have broken down in tears or strangled this guy,” says Weiss, always referring to his friend in a thirdperson reference and never by name. “I’m not going to tell you who it was because I don’t want to embarrass him, but I’ll tell you that it wasn’t Al Milgrom. Everyone wants to think it was him, but it wasn’t.”

The layouts weren’t completely lost. Weiss had made photocopies of the pages and could have redrawn them.

“I almost reconstituted the job twice,” Weiss says. “Milgrom was going to put the story in [the anthology title] Marvel Fanfare, and that came close to happening, but other projects came up.”

Starlin and Weiss intended issue #16 to be a story in which Warlock would be slapped out of space by the “hand of God,” causing him to fall to a planet where the people—diminutive creatures based on a variation of a hobbit—were deeply into materialism.

The story built off developments from issues #14 and 15. In those issues, Warlock was still

Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

Warlock’s Big Fall Adam Warlock tumbles onto a world of materialistic mini-people. Story

by Jim Starlin, pencil art by Alan Weiss. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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because his soul gem was powerless against the Issue #15 had arrived on the comic spinner spiritless creations of the Star-Thief. racks with a cover that boasted “Warlock: During the battle, Warlock was forced to wrestle Unleashed—At Last,” but the title should have been with the question of “What is reality?” By the end “Warlock: Canceled.” Readers were given no clues of the story, some readers might allow the of the title’s demise, and the letters page story to raise the same question, gave no indication that the bimonthly because Warlock was unable to defeat title was being shelved. To the the Star-Thief on his own. The real contrary, readers were told to “be hero was the male nurse who had here with us next issue for one of been “possessed” by the Starthe greatest surprise thrillers of all!

Thief—he was able to temporarily See you back here in sixty!” break free of the Star-Thief’s The greatest surprise for control and realized the only way Warlock fans was that the comic to save humanity and perhaps the had been scrapped. entire universe was to kill the Jim Starlin attributes the comic’s comatose body of the Star-Thief. demise to a shortage of paper that Hospital staff members burst into was driving up costs for the the room after hearing the sound industry. The book was selling well, alan weiss of a discharging gun (you weren‘t he said, but Marvel was forced to supposed to ask why a nurse was cancel some titles to save money. carrying a gun, obviously), and carried away the Starlin says that he had quit working for nurse after disbelieving his explanation and tale of Marvel before the title was canceled, however, the “Star-Thief.”

Warlock #15 (Nov. 1976) opens with the fallout of the previous issue, in which Warlock had grown to galactic proportions after traveling through a black hole. He was unable to return to Earth, which was now described as being no bigger than his fingernail.

After a brief interlude that featured the return of Starlin’s favorite nemesis, Thanos, Warlock’s problematic stature is either forgotten or conveniently overlooked because he stumbles across similarly sized beings—an “aged humanoid from a small spacecraft” who is being accosted by an intergalactic loan collector who looks more like a piece of asparagus or a Veggie Tales character turned bad. The scene becomes a familiar opportunity for Jim Starlin to speak out against the ills of society as he lashes out at the “passionless dealers of dollars and cents” as the cosmic repo man tries to confiscate the man’s space shuttle because he failed to repay a loan.

Issue #15 lays the groundwork for later Marvel storylines: Warlock makes a connection with the soul gem he is forced to wear on his forehead and confronts the reality that he is as much its prisoner as he is its master. He also learns that the soul gem is one of six such gems—a tasty tidbit dropped in 1976 that won’t be fully developed until 1991 in the “Infinity Gauntlet” event, when Thanos combines the power of all the gems.

Warlock also is trying to make sense of his life’s purpose and striving to create a legacy for himself as he stares down the apparently inevitable fate that he will die within a year—knowledge he gained during his earlier battle with Magus and Thanos in issues #11 to 13.

Warlock had even less time than a year, however.

Warlock Goes Gulliver This lost issue is also our loss, since Alan Weiss’ wonderful art for this story went unfinished and unpublished. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Old Flame (opposite page) Weiss based the pint-sized pretty gal in Warlock #16 on an old girlfriend. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

and that development overshadowed any reaction he might have had by the company’s decision to stop the title.

“Disagreements with editorial—Gerry Conway— had prompted me to quit Marvel before Warlock was canceled (because of a lack of paper for printing, not poor sales),” Starlin says.

Alan Weiss is unsure why the title was canceled, but thinks it was a question of revenue.

“I think it just ran its run and it wasn’t selling well, but I’m really not sure,” Weiss says. “That’s not to say the book wasn’t popular. It had a very solid fan base. Sometimes the executive decisions don’t match reality.”

Weiss remembers Starlin being disappointed by leaving the character.

“Jim had been able to develop Warlock into something better than he had been before, and the title was doing better than it had done,” Weiss says. “I just felt what Jim did with Warlock was really strong and different from a lot of the other material out at the time. He really developed Warlock into a deeper and more developed character than he had been before.”

The cancellation of the comic also was disappointing for Weiss. The issue was a fun project for him that interwove visual references to classic images such as the Thinker statue by Auguste Rodin with literary allusions to Gulliver’s Travels, as well as a depiction of Warlock as, according to the artist, a type of “muscular cosmic Hamlet.”

The issue also had a personal connection.

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Warlock #16 was going to introduce a “little girl who wants to go to the stars” and who was “elegantly sweet in her innocence,” Weiss says. The girl—clad in striped leggings and a stocking cap—was based on a former girlfriend of Alan Weiss.

Despite the book’s cancellation in 1976, fans would get a sense of closure to the Warlock storyline in the following year, when Starlin would bring back his familiar characters in Avengers Annual #7 (Jan. 1977) and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2 (Dec. 1977).

The story intended for Warlock #16, however, remains unfinished and unpublished.

Weiss fears he will still be dogged by questions of what happened to that story and contend with accusations that he lost it.

“For everyone who asks, I have to tell them that I was not drunk, I was not stoned, and I wasn’t asleep,” he laughs. “No, I didn’t lose those pages.

“Maybe one day we will still redo that issue,” Weiss says. “Maybe one day we will reconstitute the story and it will be better than what we originally envisioned.”

JIM MANNER is a mild-mannered editor who works for a daily newspaper in Virginia. When he's not working, he can usually be found riding his Harley as part of a motorcycle ministry.

®

by

Andy Mangels

Marvel fans reading their March 1986 cover-dated comics were greeted by an unusual image: Captain America with a top hat and cane, soft-shoeing his way across a stage. “Cap’s Gonna Star in a Broadway Show… and maybe YOU can star WITH him!” promised the ad, which then invited girls between the ages of ten and fourteen to send photos and background info to a New York casting representative.

Other than this advertisement, little was heard again of the planned Captain America musical. But at this writing, only a few weeks before Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is set to open on Broadway (by the time you read this, the success of that show will be known), BACK ISSUE has delved into the history of this most patriotic Greatest Story Never Told...

Although the show was optioned in 1983, the first public news about the Captain America musical appears to have been on April 5, 1985, when the New York Times announced that production for a $4 million show was underway. Production was headed by Shari Upbin, working with Marvel Comics and its president, James Galton. Songwriters Norman Sachs and Mel Mandel, whose only prior major show was My Old Friends in 1979, were credited with the music, lyrics, and book (script), while producer Philip Rose was also slated to direct. Rose was known mostly for his racially and socially conscious productions such as A Raisin in the Sun, The Owl and the Pussycat, Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, Purlie, and Shenandoah. Plans were announced to open the show out of town in Fall 1985 and then on Broadway by year’s end. On the short-list to play the lead were John Cullum, Ken Howard, Richard Kiley, and Hal Linden, while the female lead was discussed as being open for Linda Lavin or Cloris Leachman.

A brief discussion of the storyline revealed that a paunchy Captain America would be facing a midlife crisis because he felt unnecessary, especially when the woman he loved, Sharon Phillips, was set to become president of the United States! “This is essentially a love story about a man who’s always been strong, independent—even macho—and a sensitive, assertive, bright and political woman,” Mandel would later tell Geoff Gehman for The Morning Call newspaper in its March 27, 1988 edition. But when Sharon is captured by

You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’ In case you think this article is a hoax, here it is—the 1986 Marvel Comics house ad that informed fans of the Captain America musical. © 2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Could’ve Been the Captain Hal Linden, star of the classic sitcom Barney Miller, was considered to play the StarSpangled Avenger. Still from ABC’s 1979 The Hal Linden Special, co-starring (left to right) Linda Lavin (another Cap musical possibility), Cathryn Damon, and Bonnie Franklin. © 1979 American Broadcasting Company.

terrorists—led by cosmetic tycoon Jay Peters, who is marketing a brainwashing facial cleanser—and held hostage at the Lincoln Memorial, the patriotic hero earns his shield once again in the name of love and the flag.

By August 12, 1985, Upbin had brought aboard Nelle Nugent and Elizabeth I. McCann—whose McCannNugent Productions had produced or co-produced such Broadway hits as Dracula, The Elephant Man, and Amadeus—to serve as general managers for Captain America. By the 23rd of August, more news was starting to leak out in the New York Times. John Cullum (a 1975 and 1978 Tony winner for Shenendoah and On the Twentieth Century) was to take the lead role, and the show was now scheduled to open on Broadway in March 1986.

The Times article also profiled dancer Lara Teeter, a Tony Award-nominated star of the show On Your Toes, whose hopes of becoming a choreographer were about to come true courtesy of a Marvel superhero. Producer Upbin had asked Teeter for suggestions for a choreographer, and had been surprised when the man suggested himself. Upbin agreed to give him a shot, and Teeter choreographed two numbers, “Fly the Flag” and “In the Gym,” utilizing 30 volunteer dancer friends. When the dances were presented to the producers and lara teeter backers in June 1985 at a Manhattan dance studio, Teeter was hired.

In a bid to recognize their hero’s comic-book origins, Upbin hired scenic designer Clarke Dunham to put together a series of elaborate sequences utilizing hydraulics, black lights, lasers and projections, plus mirrors and pantomime to create a three-dimensional transformation of Steve Rogers into Captain America, “Both Ways” as well as a showdown with the hero and Jay Peters “If I Could Fall in Love (reprise)” beneath the Lincoln Memorial.

Late in 1985, a workshop reading was presented of “Number One” Captain America, featuring an abbreviated version of the “Ruthless” script, with 18 songs accompanied on piano, and a few “Marvin Mittleman” numbers featuring the full cast of dancers. Such work“For All the Wrong Reasons” shops were a common practice to lure in financial backers “Fly the Flag” and garner early press buzz. The Drama League of New York offered Upbin and her crew a chance to really hit the “Captain America (reprise)” backers in their pocketbooks on January 27, 1986, at their ACT TWO black-tie dinner benefit at the Hotel Pierre; songs from the forthcoming shows Captain America and Back On the Town “The First Presidential” were given choice spots within the evening’s retrospective “He’s My Hero” on five decades of the Great White Way’s musical history.

“For All the Wrong Reasons About the same time, the producers and Marvel (reprise)” collaborated on the full-page advertisement that “If You’re a Dreamer” ran in Marvel Comics books cover-dated March 1986.

The ads were step one of the investment strategy, “Fly the Flag (reprise)” designed not just to help find a talented girl, but to show planning to potential money-lenders.

THE SONGS OF CAPTAIN AMERICA With book, music, and lyrics by Mel Mandel and Norman Sachs, the following represents the version of the show that was in the 1985 Workshop presentation. A previously mentioned song, “At the Gym,” was apparently cut.

ACT ONE “Captain America” “Nobody Asked Me to Lead a Parade This Year” “A Beautiful Girl” “If I Could Fall in Love” “Matter of Principle”

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OTHER SUPERHEROES ON THE MUSICAL STAGE Few superheroes have ever had official licensed stage musicals of their adventures:

music and lyrics by Tom Merriman, book by Rodger Hess and Gene Patrick • See BACK ISSUE #3 for more on these shows!

It’s A Bird ... It’s A Plane ... It’s Superman

Batman: The Musical

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

music by Charles Strouse and lyrics

by Lee Adams, book by David Newman and Robert Benton • Broadway, March 29–July 17, 1966 (three Tony Award nominations) St. Louis Municipal Opera (revival, 1967) • Kansas City Starlight Theatre (revival, 1967) • ABC-TV special (February 1, 1975) • Goodspeed Opera House, East Haddam, Connecticut (revival, June –July 3, 1992) • Los Angeles, Reprise! Marvelous Musical Mondays program (concert version May 14, 2007) • New York City, York Theatre’s “Musicals at MUFTI” (concert version June 15–17, 2007)

• Dallas Theater Center (revised version, June 18–July 25, 2010, new book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa) • and others

Bugs Bunny Meets the Super-Heroes (touring show 1977) Bugs Bunny in Space (touring show 1978)

Bugs Bunny Sports Spectacular

music and lyrics by Jim Steinman, book by David Ives • worked on in 2002, ultimately canceled • visit the Batman: The Musical memorial site, Dark Knight of the Soul http://www.freewebs.com/ batman_themusical

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark music and lyrics by Bono and the Edge, book by Julie Taymor and Glen Berger • Foxwoods Theatre on Broadway (As of this writing, scheduled to preview on November 14, 2010 and open on December 21, 2010.)

(touring show 1979)

According to Carole Goul’s article “Betting On a Broadway rented several mansions for private affairs. In February 1986, Dream,” appearing in The New York Times on February 16, 1986, Teeter did a huge backers’ presentation at Oklahoma City the Captain America budget was set at $3.75 million, less than University (his alma mater), narrating and performing alongside six the average large musical price of $4–5 million. Successful shows other actors and dancers. For the effort, only two Oklahoma buyers rewarded their backers nicely (Annie had cost $800,000 to mount purchased $75,000 units of investment in the show. and went on to earn $16.6 million by that time), but less But Captain America didn’t open in March 1986, nor any time successful shows were more common, with only 25 percent of that year. Despite the advertisements in Marvel’s books, no auditions musicals actually turning a profit for their investors. for the role of “Mister” were ever held. Over 900 dancers Still, Upbin planned to chase investors in an interesting auditioned, but none were hired permanently by Teeter. way. “You’re selling a dream,” she told Carole Goul A publicity photo of Cullum in costume appeared in for the Times. “It’s a glamour investment, not like Crain’s New York Business, and psychic Cindy Adams oil or gas or real estate.” predicted a 1986 Tony for Cullum, but progress The producers also planned a series of seemed slow. In April 1986, Cullum sang “Nobody “backer’s auditions” in various cities with Asked Me to Lead a Parade This Year” at a Lincoln big-money theater types and other producers Center’s Avery Fisher Hall benefit co-produced by and Broadway enthusiasts to line up a limited Joel Silberman (who coincidentally was Captain number of investors, preferably to the tune of America’s musical director). In June, after not being $75,000 each. In the abbreviated auditions, paid much for the enormous amount of work he had John Cullum would portray Captain America, put into the show, Teeter made the decision to singing “Fly the Flag,” and working with a leave the project. “I had to move on, for the young, tomboyish girl named “Mister” to win sake of my sanity,” he told Geoff Gehman of The john cullum not only the stage heart of the woman he loved, Morning Call newspaper. but also the financial backing of viewers.

On December 26, 1986, Upbin told Enid Behind the scenes, Captain America also represented a first for Nemy of the New York Times that she was talking to several large those taking part in its financial future; it was the first Broadway corporations about backing the venture, and that “the project is still show contracted under a new deal between the Dramatists Guild very much alive.” She scouted theaters such as Manhattan’s Mark and the League of American Theaters and Producers. The deal Hellinger and tried to woo the participation of fitness magnate Jake allowed for higher advances for composers and playwrights, with “Body by Jake” Stanfield, but a second planned opening for Spring lesser royalties in the “back-end,” thus meaning investors had a 1987 didn’t materialize either. quicker opportunity to recoup the costs. Upbin ran preview programs And then, a deal was struck with the Pennsylvania Stage Company at the hot spot Players’ Club, at the celebrity-heavy Sardi’s, and (PSC) to open a scaled-back $260,000 version in Allentown, Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

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Pennsylvania, in February 1988. PSC producing director Gregory Hurst had been by Captain America’s side at the beginning, even attending the 1983 Marvel pitch meeting, but he had dropped out shortly therafter; Upbin had stepped in following his departure.

After a staged reading for PSC in 1987 by designer Dunham, producer Upbin soldiered on for a PSC opening, working with Mandel, Sachs, and Rose to rework and cut the story. But according to a March 27, 1988 story in Allentown’s The Morning Call, investors were more than a bit worried that the show was “too cute,” that it contained too much satire (purposefully so due to Mandel’s past experience writing for NBC’s satirical That Was the Week That Was), that the producers were inexperienced, and that patriotism just wasn’t all that fashionable any longer.

Marvel’s president James Galton wasn’t bothered by the satire or the politics, or even the out-of-shape hero, telling The Morning Call that “we poke fun at ourselves all the time… All of our heroes have had feet of clay… They have human foibles, and the aging process is one of those.”

The Allentown show’s smaller budget meant smaller sets, and less elaborate costumes, special effects, and lighting. Already having spent $500,000 on a Broadway show that went nowhere, Upbin agreed to bring in $200,000 of the Captain America budget, with PSC contributing $60,000. Local costumer Barbara Forbes agreed to design costumes, and designer Clarke Dunham signed on for a siginficant pay cut. PSC booked the show for the fourth production of its 1987–1988 season, set to open February 10, 1988 and close March 6th. Blazing Saddles star Cleavon Little agreed to take the villainous role of Jay Peters. Things were looking up…

Then, Black Monday hit the stock market on October 19, 1987, and investors evaporated as their finances disappeared. PSC’s deadline to raise the $200,000 stake was November 1st, and when it became clear Upbin wouldn’t be able to deliver, the show was moved to the open seventh slot in the season, to run May 25–June 19. Upbin had a reprieve until January 1, 1988 to raise the funds.

As the new year opened, the flag fell for the final time. Upbin had reportedly raised about $125,000, but had been unable to generate the full amount, and PSC canceled the show from its schedule.

In February or March 1988, Upbin canceled her own option to stay on for any further development of Captain America; Philip Rose announced his plans to continue trying to rework the show— possibly for the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey—but nothing more became of it.

Scenic designer Clarke Dunham defended the musical in The Morning Call: “It’s not just one of the better musicals; it’s one of the best musicals to come along in the last several years.” But Broadway musicals are a notoriously fickle business at the best of times— only about 25 percent of them make money for their investors— and the late 1980s was hardly a financially prosperous era.

In the end, Upbin told The Morning Call that Captain America “was a dream I lived through that became a little more than a nightmare.” But could that dream ever see a resurrection? Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark survived its torturous process getting to the Great White Way, and Marvel’s feature film of Captain America: The First Avenger is set for release on July 22, 2011. Once upon a time in the comics, a frozen patriotic champion was unthawed for a new time and new heroic deeds. But if the musical version of Captain America never gets a second act, at least you now know the secrets behind the red, white, and blue Greatest Story Never Told.

Showtune-loving ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today bestselling author and co-author of almost 20 books, including the recent Iron Man: Beneath The Armor, and a lot of comic books. Additionally, he has scripted, directed, and produced Special Features for over 40 DVD releases. His moustache is infamous. www.AndyMangels.com

®

by

Mike Grell

Jason Cord of the Savage Empire Travis Morgan’s predecessor, from the Mike Grell Warriors portfolio, produced in 1980 by Oracle Enterprises.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

Savage Empire TM & © Mike Grell.

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Travis Morgan is dead.

Yes, I really killed him off. I planned it from the start and plotted his death with the patience of Michael Corleone.

The Warlord had its genesis as a comic strip called Savage Empire, which I created while attending the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and moonlighting as a commercial artist for a couple of local ad agencies.

I love the comic-strip medium and always hoped to have my own syndicated feature. Savage Empire was born of my admiration for Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan, combined with my fascination with archaeology and lost civilizations.

Savage Empire is the story of archaeologist Jason Cord, who, while exploring the ruins of the ancient city of Akrotiri buried for thousands of years under volcanic ash, stumbles on a portal to the past and is cast back in time to the lost continent of Atlantis.

It has all the elements of high adventure: lost cities, dangerous jungles, strange beasts of myth and legend, beautiful warrior women, evil wizards, and a modern-day protagonist trying to survive in a savage, primitive world.

I had completed a couple weeks of daily continuity and half a dozen Sunday pages along with a detailed outline for the first year’s storyline and, in the summer of 1973, boldly set out for the New York where I was sure Savage Empire would be snapped up by the first syndicate editor I showed it to.

Except I couldn’t even get an appointment to show it! Former Tarzan artist John Celardo, now a syndicate editor, declared, “Adventure strips are dead.”

[Humor strips] Peanuts, Beetle Bailey, The Wizard of ID, and Funky Winkerbean had driven the nails in the coffin.

Fortunately, I had scheduled my New York trip to coincide with the New York Comicon, where I met a lot of great people, passed up the opportunity to buy Frank Frazetta’s original painting of Death Dealer for $3,500 (the fellow who was offering it for sale pointed out that it had been designed as a book cover and recommended I improve the composition by cutting several inches off the top before framing), and left a copy of my portfolio containing Savage Empire with DC Comics’ [thenpresident] Sol Harrison. I also had the great good fortune to run into Batman artist Irv Novick and Allan Asherman, who was Joe Kubert’s assistant at the time. Both offered encouragement, but Irv cut to the chase: “You need to get your carcass up to Julie Schwartz’s office.” That’s how I wound up in comic books.

Not long afterward, while I was working on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and doing various backup features like “Green Arrow,” “Aquaman,”

Enter the Savage Empire (above left) Mike Grell’s one-page promo for Savage Empire, courtesy of Tom Fleming (www.fanfare-se.com). (left) Grell in his Florence, Wisconsin, studio, circa 1978. Photo by Bob Anderson.

Courtesy of www.mikegrell.com.

Savage Empire TM & © Mike Grell.

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and “Green Lantern,” word circulated that a new company, Atlas Comics, was looking for new features and offering $100 per page—more than double what I was earning at DC. I went to speak to their editor, Jeff Rovin, and pitched him Savage Empire. Jeff was excited about the project and said Atlas would love to publish it. I explained to him that I had a commitment to DC and didn’t want to jeopardize that relationship until I had at least a couple of issues of Savage Empire in the can. He said, “No problem.”

It was about a 20-minute walk across town to DC’s offices, and when I walked in [publisher] Carmine Infantino was waiting for me in the hallway. He said Jeff Rovin had just phoned and told him that he had me tied up for two books a month. Carmine, of course, wanted to know why I hadn’t brought the concept to DC, and I explained to him that I honestly didn’t think DC would be that interested because they hadn’t had any success with fantasy/adventure, non-superhero kind of stuff. And he said, “Well, why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

Every now and then you get lucky, and my lucky moment came as we walked into Carmine’s office. The phone rang and he excused himself to take the call, and in that same moment it dawned on me that there was no way he was going to buy it, not in the form that it was. So while Carmine was on the phone for about two or three minutes, I completely revised the concept from The Savage Empire into The Warlord.

The story of an archaeologist who stumbles through a time portal and winds up in Atlantis became the story of a US spy pilot whose SR-71 is damaged while on a mission over Russia and plunges through an opening at the North Pole into the world at the center of the Earth, where creatures from mythology and Earth’s ancient past co-exist amid fantastic cities and leftovers of the civilization of Atlantis. Aside from certain rough story elements, about the only thing that I kept in there was the name of the villain, Deimos, named for one of the moons of Mars—Deimos and Phobos: Terror and Fear. I was going to change it to “Phobos,” but it was just such a cool name and I had discovered the Comics Code Authority forbade the use of the word “terror,” so I decided to keep it as it was.

I basically BS’d my way through the pitch, drawing on many sources, including my own US Air Force experiences to lend a note of authenticity to the character’s background. Choosing the new setting was easy—as a kid, one of my favorite books (and movies) was Jules Verne’s 1864 classic A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Before the turn of the 20th Century, there were over 50 different titles written on the “Hollow Earth” theory and I drew on several of those that I had at my disposal, including The Smokey God and The Hollow Earth and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series. The Warlord’s lost world of Skartaris is named for the mountain peak Scartaris in A Journey to the Center of the Earth, whose shadow points the way down into the volcano

Tough as Nails (right) Tahnee, the Tara prototype, in a magnificent portrait by Grell. © 2011 Mike Grell.

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Lost World (opposite) This Savage Empire page was among Grell’s samples for the strip that saw print in October 1975 in the Chicago Star.

Courtesy of Tom Fleming. (below) Warlord’s first DC Comics appearance.

Savage Empire TM & © Mike Grell. The Warlord TM & © DC Comics.

and shows the expedition the proper pathway to the center of the Earth. The city of Shamballah [was inspired] from Three Dog Night’s song “The Road to Shambhala,” which, in turn came from the fabled Golden City of Chambhalla that lies buried somewhere in a hollow mountain in Tibet and formed the basis for James Hilton’s novel The Lost Horizon, the story of Shangri-La. Carmine told me to run it past editor Joe Orlando— if Joe liked it, Carmine would guarantee me a one-year run on the book. I thought that was a lot better than a crapshoot with Atlas and it turned out to be so, because Atlas wasn’t around for very long.

Joe turned out to be a harder sell than Carmine, but I stayed with him and eventually he realized I could hold my own. Every question he asked, I had a ready answer for—except one: “What’s the character’s name?” “Henry Morgan.” I pulled the name out of thin air. “I’ll call him Morgan the Raider, after the pirate.” Joe didn’t like it. There was a comedian named Henry Morgan on TV’s What’s My Line? and an actor who had started as Henry and later became Harry Morgan of M.A.S.H. fame. So I named him after my brother’s son, Travis.

When Jason Met Tahnee (above) This Savage Empire original page, courtesy of Tom Fleming, shows the storytelling influences of adventure strips like Prince Valiant upon Mike Grell. (left) Warlord #1.

Savage Empire TM & © Mike Grell.

The Warlord TM & © DC Comics.

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Swamp Angel is based on a combination of fact and fancy, lies and legend, and the kind of stories you hear at family gatherings when you’re a kid and the grownups think you’re not listening. It’s the story of three generations of two immigrant families and is based on my own family history… sort of.

The first-generation story is mostly true. My Italian grandfather came to America to work in the iron mines of the Midwest. He became a master mechanic and opened the first automobile dealership in the county. My English grandfather dreamed of becoming a cowboy. He had an 8th-grade education, but spoke five languages.

He bought a book on how to build musical instruments, made a violin, and taught himself to play Mozart. He also hated Italians and Catholics. Both men were involved in rum-running during prohibition and later became sheriff and constable, and that’s how the two very different sides of the family got together.

The second-generation story is half truth. My father was a sax player before WWII, but somewhere in the midst of five major campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operation he won a chestful of medals, but lost the music. My mother grew up in the middle of the northwoods, living on a bit of land between two swamps, and they called her “Swamp Angel" because she was the prettiest girl for miles around. Growing up during the Great Depression was a daily battle for survival and in her later years, whenever The Waltons theme would begin to play on TV she would shout, “The Waltons were rich!”

The third-generation story is mostly BS, but it encompasses the McCarthy era, the rise of rock and roll, and the Vietnam War and ties the past to the future with enough truth to be interesting (my brother did marry the ex-wife of a Chicago Mafioso), but not enough to be incriminating… just in case the statute of limitations hasn’t expired.

I pitched the story to DC Comics as a graphic novel project, and Jenette Kahn liked it because it broke the mold of standard comic books. I already had film interest in the story and was in negotiations with a producer for a feature film. DC approved the series and we decided it would be best to wait until the film was in production before going ahead. As anyone who has ever dealt with Hollywood can attest, it can take awhile to get its wheels in motion. We waited… and waited… and waited. It turns out the producer was waiting for the graphic novel—the graphic novel hinged on the movie deal, which hinged on the graphic novel, and the whole thing became a snake eating its own tail.

Eventually, patience ran out on all sides. I had already written the scripts and began work on the art, but we had missed the crest of the wave and, sadly, the project was abandoned… but not entirely.

If there’s one thing I learned from my mother, it’s not to throw anything away—you never know when it might come in handy. I’m currently working on a prose novel that tells the whole story of Swamp Angel, including—since the first generation is long gone— where the bodies are buried.

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In addition to Savage Empire/ The Warlord, writer/artist MIKE GRELL is the creator of Starslayer, Jon Sable Freelance, and Shaman’s Tears. At DC Comics, he’s best known for Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Green Lantern/ Green Arrow, and Green Arrow.

Visit www.mikegrell.com.

Photo courtesy of Comic-Con.

SWAMP ANGEL: THE UNTOLD STORY by Mike Grell

The Warlord made his debut in First Issue Special #8 (Nov. 1975) and was the only feature of that title to go on to its own series… for three whole issues. Despite his guarantee of a one-year run, Carmine canceled The Warlord after issue #3 and the first I heard about it was when I read through the proofs and saw the words “THE END” on the last page.

Fortunately, Jenette Kahn replaced Carmine very shortly after that and it turned out that Jenette had been a big fan of The Warlord, and immediately had it put back on the schedule. When the DC Implosion struck, The Warlord not only survived the cut, but was made a monthly title.

One day in 1978 or ’79, a large package came from DC—my original SAVAGE EMPIRE portfolio that I had left with Sol Harrison in 1973. Attached was a form-letter rejection slip that read: “We’re sorry, but this material does not suit our current publishing needs.”

At that time [I received the rejection package], The Warlord was DC’s top-selling title.

After I left The Warlord in the early ’80s, I always had the nagging desire to go back and finish what I had begun. When the 25th anniversary rolled around in 2000, I wrote a proposal for a miniseries which was approved and awaiting scheduling when the editor, Archie Goodwin, died, leaving editorial decisions in the hands of someone who stalled for five months and then shot the project down with an offhand dismissal.

Ten more years passed, during which a reboot of the title failed rather miserably. When the 35th Anniversary was coming around I spoke with [DC executive editor] Dan DiDio and told him of my original plan and the miniseries proposal. I wanted to bring the character full circle and end the way I had always intended—with Morgan’s death. Being a big Hal Foster fan, I knew that he had always wanted to kill off Prince Valiant and turn the story over to his son.

Unfortunately, the syndicate wouldn’t hear such a thing as killing the hero, but I always thought it was a brilliant idea and planned it for Morgan right from the beginning (if you look back at the first issues of The Warlord, you’ll see the plot threads I planted so long ago have finally been completed). It embodies the archetypal tale of the son fulfilling the dream of the father and symbolizes my generation that was so full of dreams of a better world and yet left our children with a terrible mess to clean up.

So, Travis Morgan is dead and his son has inherited the mess his father left behind. Do I have an idea of how that’s supposed to happen? Of course… but that’ll have to wait for the 50th anniversary of The Warlord.

Meanwhile, I learned a long time ago that the world is a circle and, sooner or later, things have a way of coming back around. I’m currently working on the first of a four-book series of novels about a modernday man cast back into an ancient world of wonders and high adventure.

It’s called “Savage Empire.”

by

Michael Kronenberg

It is arguably believed that from 1977 to 1978, Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and Terry Austin transformed six issues of Detective Comics into the definitive version of the Batman. Those stories have been reprinted numerous times and even spawned a sequel 27 years later titled Dark Detective. Earlier, in 1974, former DC Comics writer Mike Friedrich (Justice League of America, World’s Finest, and “Robin” backups) launched Star*Reach, a black-andwhite comic-book anthology that would bridge the gap between the counterculture’s underground comics and mainstream publishers Marvel and DC. Star*Reach published mature, genre stories by some of the best upand-coming talents in the business. Star*Reach became the precursor to the rise of the graphic novel and independent comics in the 1980s. And in 1978, Englehart, Rogers, and Friedrich planned to team up for an unprecedented, adult version of Batman to appear in a Star*Reach publication.

In a letter written in 1978, Star*Reach publisher Mike Friedrich wrote to his one-time mentor and editor at DC Comics, Julius Schwartz: “Finger and Kane. Broome and Infantino. O’Neil and Adams. Englehart and Rogers.

THE BATMAN LIVES AGAIN! (And you can quote me.)”

Friedrich was very impressed with the Englehart/Rogers version of the Batman, saying, “I remember enjoying it thoroughly. The use of repressed intense romantic emotion on the part of Batman was a signature contribution to the evolution of the character. The romantic side of the character had never been explored to this degree before. Englehart was a key player in helping to turn Batman from a character popular with children into one popular with young adults.”

Friedrich made an attempt to bring Englehart, Rogers, and Austin together for a mature version of Batman to appear as a Star*Reach publication. Friedrich recollects, “I was inspired by the first Eclipse graphic novel Sabre (1978), by Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy.

It occurred to me that the recently ended Englehart/ Rogers ‘Batman’ would be a good concept in this format. DC Comics, at the time, was totally ignoring the comic-shop market and readers. I knew this was a frustration to then-junior executive Paul Levitz.

I contacted Paul and asked if the rights were available.

He indicated they were. We progressed to the point of a licensing agreement draft when the deal fell apart.

“The problem proved not to be with DC, but with the talent,” Friedrich continues. “While Sabre had been in black and white, Englehart and Rogers only wanted to do their story if it was in color. I didn’t have the money to invest in this level of production, so it died.

Reach for the Stars, Batman!

Marshall Rogers’ beautifully painted rendition of Batman and the Joker’s confrontation from the classic two-part Detective Comics story “The Laughing Fish.” Plate from Rogers’ The Batman portfolio (Sal Quartuccio Publishing, 1981).

TM & © DC Comics.

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Another Rogers Portfolio Plate This image depicts the Darknight Detective overlooking Gotham City and the Wayne Foundation penthouse. Note the Creeper atop a water tower on the lower right.

TM & © DC Comics.

“Hindsight being what it is, a color Englehart/ generated the wave that would lead to more adult comics Rogers Batman project would have set the comic-book and movies, but it was still the early days and DC, characmarket on its ear, like the Marvel Graphic Novel series I teristically, hadn’t realized it yet, so they didn’t feel the helped market a couple of years later did. But at the need to keep it from us or to keep it in-house. time, it was an untested concept and I didn’t have the “It was a single graphic album, probably 48 pages— knowledge or experience to jump to the next level.” though it would probably have led to more albums in The project actually got far enough to be time,” Englehart says. “The few things I remember announced in an issue of The Comics Journal in 1979, about it—as a stillborn idea that hasn’t been brought sparking excitement and curiosity from the comics back to my attention until now—is that the climax was industry. This would have been a giant step going to be on a dirigible crossing the Atlantic. for DC toward pulling in Star*Reach’s Both Marshall and I were very excited by more mature comics audience, who the visuals that could come from that. were just beginning to converge on The climax of the action would have had comic shops instead of newsstands the Batman, cape billowing, on the top to purchase their books. of the dirigible for a final battle with Writer Steve Englehart offers his the villain. And, of course, this would recollection about the publishing have been the follow-up to Silver St. side of the Star*Reach/Batman colCloud. She would not have appeared, laboration: “Mike [Friedrich] was since her breakup with Bruce was looking at the publishing side and recent then, but the effect of the Marshall [Rogers] and I were looking breakup on Bruce, as he lived for at the creative, because the reason days on the dirigible among the rich Marshall and I didn’t go forward was and famous, which was also her mike friedrich the print run. Paul Levitz agreed to milieu, with dozens of couples let us do the book so long as we sold around him, and his being unable to only 10,000 copies of it, and in those days, 10,000 was leave, was what I wanted to see out of him. Ironically, an absurdly low number. Books got canceled at that rough emotional road is what I explored in Dark Marvel if they fell below 350,000, so 10,000 meant Detective II [the planned sequel to 2005’s Dark very few people, relatively, would see it. Color was not Detective], which also was never published.” a big deal to me, but it might have been for Marshall.”

Asked what member of Batman’s rogues’ gallery he Steve adds: “The interesting thing is, DC on their end had chosen to face the Caped Crusader in the story, had no problem allowing Star*Reach to license the Englehart responds, “I was leaning toward the Penguin, Batman. My decision to make the Batman an adult had as someone else at home in rich surroundings, and as the

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A Batman/ Star*Reach Inspiration?

A plate from Marshall Rogers’ portfolio titled Strange. Steve Englehart believes that some of Rogers’ preliminary ideas for the Batman/ Star*Reach book were in this portfolio’s imagery. © 1979 Marshall Rogers.

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Master of Rooftop Imagery The film noir–like cover envelope for Marshall Rogers’ 1981 portfolio The Batman.

TM & © DC Comics.

number-two villain as a follow-on to number one, the Joker, but I hadn’t actually decided for certain.”

Had Marshall Rogers (who died tragically in 2007) done any preliminaries or sketches for the book?

Englehart says, “Marshall did a portfolio called Strange in 1979 that had Batman-esque plates, sans Batman.

It’s always been my understanding that some of his ideas were in there.” It is also worth noting that in 1981, courtesy of Sal Quartuccio Publishing, Marshall Rogers released The Batman, a color portfolio consisting of four plates (if you purchased the signed edition of the portfolio, you received a fifth plate) that allowed Rogers to illustrate Batman and his world unencumbered by comic-book panels. It is quite possible that the scenes and iconic imagery that Rogers created for this portfolio had also been intended for the Star*Reach project.

About his own files for the unpublished Star*Reach project, Englehart reflects, “If this had been in a computer era, I’d have whatever docs I generated on disc somewhere, but since it wasn’t, I don’t. Any paperwork I had is either gone or deeply buried, but I’m sure I hadn’t started scripting. My memory is Marshall, Mike, and I were waiting to see what kind of deal we could make, and when we had problems with the deal, that was the end of it.”

With all of the critical success that Englehart, Rogers, and Austin received for their late-1970s run in Detective Comics, why then did it take so long (Dark Detective was published in 2005) for the three of them to reunite and work on Batman again? Steve says, “This, unfortunately,

is an old story. DC likes to pretend that the Batman that spawned the movies, animation, shift to adult comics, and so on, sprang from the corporate brow of DC. They have never given Marshall, Terry, or me any official credit for it. In the late ’70s, as I mentioned, they didn’t see the Batman as any big deal, so they were okay with our putting out a limited-edition book with him, but as the first movie began to build toward becoming a reality in the early ’80s, they began the above policy. It didn’t go so well at first—they had to bring me in to work on the first movie because it was, in fact, based on my stuff, and because, as [DC publisher] Jenette Kahn said, nobody else could quite capture what I’d done—but once I’d finished that task, I (and Marshall and Terry) didn’t hear from them again about the Batman until Batman Begins. At that point, the new boss, Dan DiDio, decided to have us add to the extra Batman product DC wanted to put out; thus, Dark Detective. But somebody evidently talked to Dan about that, because they were very reluctant to approve Dark Detective II, dragged their feet as much as possible while we were doing it, and when Marshall died, Terry got a call from an editor saying, ‘We’ve been looking for an excuse to cancel this project, and Marshall’s death gives it to us.’”

Marshall Rogers did complete the art for one issue of Dark Detective II before he died. So why has DC allowed the project to gather dust, instead of finding a replacement artist for the remaining issues, publishing the series as a memoriam to Rogers’ legacy as one of Batman’s greatest artists? Englehart has his opinion: “Two reasons. One is the above; the other is, DC the publishing company did not want to publish my story because DC the movie company wanted to use it in the Dark Knight film—which it did, without ever telling me, let alone paying me for movie work. (They did pay comic rates for it.) I found out when I bought a ticket and sat in the theater, a year later.

“If they had published [Dark Detective II] with a new artist, I know Walt Simonson was the readers’ choice (similar style, and Marshall’s predecessor in Detective Comics), and Paul Gulacy (similar style) asked for it.

Both would have been great with me, and it would have been, oddly enough, much like the situation with Heath Ledger: a tribute to a fallen star. The whole thing would have sold through the roof. But then the connection between Dark Detective II and The Dark Knight would have been obvious.” Steve Englehart documents the similarities between director Chris Nolan’s Batman movies and his own Dark Detective sequels on his website www.steveenglehart.com.

Since Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986), Batman comics have continued to be geared toward a more mature audience. But in 1978, the prospect of a Batman graphic novel outside of the Comics Code Authority and specifically targeted toward adults was a tantalizing prospect for fandom. Mike Friedrich, Steve Englehart, and Marshall Rogers attempted to make this happen, and unfortunately it became another “Greatest Story Never Told.”

Portions of this article were originally published in the TwoMorrows’ book The Batcave Companion.

MICHAEL KRONENBERG is a graphic designer whose clients include Marvel Comics, TwoMorrows Publishing, Russ Cochran Publishing, and the Film Noir Foundation. He is the co-author of The Batcave Companion.

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®

by

Jarrod Buttery

The irony has not escaped me that I write this whilst sat beside my son’s hospital bed. He’s asleep, and fine, but I’m staying the night and there’s work to be done.

BACK ISSUE’s current theme of “The Greatest Stories Never Told” has piqued a recollection from over 20 years ago and the pages of Marvel Age. During the 1980s, Marvel Age was a fascinating and invaluable tool for behind-the-scenes and up-and-coming information about Marvel Comics. Particularly enjoyable were the Marvel Age Annuals, highlighting plots and projects for each forthcoming year. Within the 1988 Annual was a promotion for the Fantastic Four: Fathers and Sons graphic novel (GN), written by Danny Fingeroth and penciled by Mark Bright. However, after 22 years, the GN has never been published and very few people are even aware of its existence. BACK ISSUE now brings you the inside story.

Danny Fingeroth’s name initially elicits thoughts of Spider-Man. Fingeroth edited Spidey’s books from 1983–1985 and again from 1991–1995. However, he always harbored a fascination with Marvel’s First Family. “I started reading Marvel comics with Fantastic Four #4 (May 1962), and that series was always my favorite as a kid,” reveals Fingeroth. “I love those characters and their interpersonal dynamics, as well as the ease with which the stories could move from the mundane to the cosmic to all points in between.

And the Thing reminded me of my father.”

Indeed, Fingeroth almost became the FF’s scripter: “I also came close to being the book’s regular writer for five minutes in the 1980s. Then-FF editor Don Daley loved my take on the characters, but it didn’t come to pass.” Instead, Fingeroth developed an idea for an original graphic novel. Despite ushering in the Marvel Age of Comics, long being Marvel’s flagship title, and always recognized as Marvel’s First Family, the Fantastic Four have received little in the way of premier events or showcase publications. Fingeroth’s Fathers and Sons would have been the FF’s first original graphic novel.

First Family Page 4 of Fingeroth and Milgrom’s Fathers and Sons shows the one thing that takes Reed Richards’ mind off of science. Courtesy of Danny Fingeroth. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Plot Pages Courtesy of Danny Fingeroth, the author’s first two pages of plot for the Fathers and Sons graphic novel, for pages 1 through 5 of the graphic novel. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

from page one) and inked quite a few. I scripted FINGEROTH’S FANTASTIC FAMILY FOCUS Fingeroth was an established writer and was clearly the entire thing (it was done plot-first) and most or interested in the characters. As an example, his “The Day all of it was lettered by Janice Chiang.”

As the GN’s antagonists, the Thinker and After,” published in Marvel Fanfare #46 (Oct. 1989), revealed the reaction of Ben Grimm’s then-girlfriend Quasimodo have a relationship unlike most of the FF’s to Ben’s transformation—a plot point that turned up other adversaries. Based upon the information in Marvel Age, and Fingeroth’s other FF stories in the first Fantastic Four film. “It was this (and the title!), the story is about weird sense of déjá vu when I saw the relationships. “I was aiming for it on movie,” admits Fingeroth. “Again, in multiple levels,” says Fingeroth. researching for my story, it seemed that, “The title ‘Fathers and Sons’ really at the time, no one had addressed says it all. The story dealt with specifically how Ben dealt with Reed and his dad, Franklin and being the Thing in the first few Reed, the Vision and his sons, the days after his original transformation.

Thinker as Quasimodo’s ‘father,’ It seemed like a logical space in his Ben’s regret over not having children, saga that could yield an interesting etc. Superhero comics are as story. I was as shocked as anybody much—ideally, more—about the when the FF office approved it— relationships than about the establishing an early girlfriend physical conflict. If you don’t for [Ben]—in a backup story, but danny fingeroth care about the relationships once they approved it, I didn’t between the characters, then question it.”

For the GN, Mark Bright was the original artist their conflicts (expressed in superhero stories and Ralph Macchio was the editor. “I remember as battles) have no emotional resonance.

[Ralph] applauding after I finished delivering the Relationships is the name of the game.”

Asked if he had any personal connections to the pitch for the graphic novel,” states Fingeroth.

“Mark did a dozen or so (beautiful) pages and then story, Fingeroth generously volunteers, “My sons stopped work on the project. It then went to Al weren’t born when I wrote the story, but I’ve always Milgrom, who laid out all 78 pages (he started over been a sucker for stories about fathers and sons, so

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this was a natural for me.” Appropriately, as the GN MILGROM’S MARVELOUS MASTERPIECES opens, it’s Father’s Day. The Vision and the Scarlet Al Milgrom remembers the project: “It involved the FF, Witch—with their newborn twin sons—are invited to but also the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, who had brunch, while Reed (of course) works in the lab, had twin babies. Originally the penciler on it was preparing to teleport a gift to the alternate dimension Mark Bright, who is a very talented artist, and he did where his father lives. Suddenly, Quasimodo attacks, the first ten or 11 pages. But then Mark got very boasting that he will succeed where his busy with other assignments (I think he did “father” has always failed—in the a run on Iron Man) and he put the GN destruction of the Fantastic Four. aside. I’m sure he meant to continue The evolved, upgraded, living with it at some point or another, but computer proves a formidable wasn’t getting around to it, and threat. The stakes are escalated Danny and Ralph wanted to get the when Quasimodo kidnaps Franklin story finished and published. At the and flees. “If I’m remembering time, I had been taken off my various correctly, this was when Franklin pencilling assignments—I don’t had little control over his remember exactly how we got put powers,” recalls Fingeroth. “During together on this, Danny and I had Quasimodo’s attack, Franklin starts worked together—we were friends— to lose control and threatens all of and I said I’d be happy to take over existence (as he was prone to do the reins of the GN. However, al milgrom during that era)...”

I thought it’d be strange to have The existing pages next treat ten pages by Mark, and then the us to Al Milgrom’s gorgeous recap of Quasimodo’s rest of it by me, so I asked if I could re-pencil the first origin, before Quas subsequently attacks the ten pages, and they gave me the go-ahead to do Thinker. Barely escaping, and with alternatives that. I took a quick glance at Mark’s pages then tried evaporating, the Thinker turns to the FF. Amidst this not to look at them for fear of mimicking what he unlikely team-up, we discover the Thinker’s never- had done. I saw them, returned them, and, when I before-revealed origin, and his reasons for tinkering got the plot from Danny, I went ahead and did my with artificially created life. own version.

I Think I Love You (left) Milgrom’s lettered breakdowns to page 41, with Fingeroth’s suggested art correction. (right) The “Dad” Thinker, on the layouts for page 44. Courtesy of Al Milgrom. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Quasidadio Al Milgrom’s breakdowns for pages 48 (left) and 49 reveal the graphic novel’s most unlikely father figure, Quasimodo. Courtesy of Al Milgrom. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

“So I did that, I penciled them, and I roughed out the entire 70-some pages, then I started tightening it up and inking it. But I was busy, too—I was probably still doing some penciling and I was doing a lot of inking, and the stuff I was doing outside of the graphic novel was generally stuff that had fairly urgent deadlines— as Marvel’s deadlines were always urgent—and so I would pick away at the GN in dribs and drabs. At some point, Tom DeFalco, the editor-in-chief at the time, said, ‘Look, Al, are you gonna finish that graphic novel? We’re having some kind of an anniversary for the FF [their 30th, in 1991]. We’re doing a whole bunch of things to commemorate the origin of the FF and we’d like to publish it this year.’ And I said, ‘Okay, Tom, no problem!’

And I got to approximately 30 pages and every time I thought I’d be able to ink another five or ten pages I got sidetracked with other deadlines, so basically—mea culpa—I never did get the job finished. And the year of the FF passed and I still hadn’t finished it. Then they changed the whole idea that the Scarlet Witch had these babies so it became a story that would’ve been completely out of touch with the continuity at the time.”

Milgrom continues, “Steve Englehart came up with Wanda’s children, which I believe was negated later

by John Byrne when he wrote Avengers West Coast.

John decided that the babies were the result of a hysterical pregnancy and birth by the Scarlet Witch.

Her magic made these babies up out of whole cloth— they were not real babies—they were magic babies that eventually disappeared [in Avengers West Coast #52, Dec. 1989]. And this is probably why we never continued

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going into the GN because it was a storyline that had already been reversed. We reached a dead end.

“I’m not sure that we couldn’t have still gone ahead and published it, but certainly there was no immediacy to it, and I never did get around to finishing it. The first 30 pages of inks that I turned in, I never got back, so they’re still either floating around the Marvel offices (and they’ve moved their offices two or three times since then) or they were thrown out. I still have the other 40-some pages of layouts that I did, and photocopies of some of the finished artwork for the first 30 pages.

“It’s a shame—I always hate to see art go to waste, and that’s part of the reason that in Marvel Fanfare I used a lot of inventory material that had been clogging up the drawers, but it does happen from time to time—more than you might think, actually.”

Fingeroth echoes Milgrom’s regrets: “Marvel probably literally wrote it off as a business expense years ago.

A company like Marvel generates so much material, much of it doesn’t see print. One of my first assignments when I joined staff back in the late ’70s was to catalogue drawers full of completed, paid for, but never-published material. Still, for a 78-page story to never have seen print seems like a waste on many levels. [Comics blogger] Sean Kleefeld tried to convince Marvel to finish and print the book back in 2002. I’d still love to see it see print, although, of course, it’s decades out of date at this point. Maybe with the current nostalgia for ’70s/’80s/’90s continuity, there’d be more interest in it than there was earlier this decade.”

INSPIRED INTERNET INNOVATIONS “Well, I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised Danny remembered that since, ultimately, nothing came of it to my knowledge,” remarks Sean Kleefeld. “The short version is that I’d been running a (now defunct) FF-centered website for several years when I heard about Danny’s aborted book.

We chatted via e-mail and he sent hard copies of some of Al Milgrom’s art, and portions of his script.

My idea was to pass the whole bundle around online as a complete unit to help generate interest for the book. It seemed absurd to me that Marvel had already paid for all this work and chose not to publish it. Anyway, I tried spreading the word on various message boards and through some of the Marvel editors (notably Tom Brevoort, who was editing the FF book then) but I simply couldn’t drum up enough interest to get anywhere with it. I’d still love to see the whole thing printed!”

Tom Brevoort kindly replied to BACK ISSUE’s query: “While I’ve heard of this project years ago, I’ve never seen it, nor does Marvel still have any of the materials from it in our possession. So it seems unlikely to see print.” And current FF scribe Jonathan Hickman had never heard of it: “Sorry, man… absolutely waaaaayy outside of my knowledge base.”

Counting Their Blessings

To quote a certain Time Lord: “As long as something can be remembered, it can come back.”

Fingeroth attests, “Between me, Al, and Janice Chiang, I’m sure we could reconstruct the book.”

Clearly Fathers and Sons would have to be marketed as a flashback or untold tale, but it certainly could be published—the story’s there, all the hard work has been done. Even Wanda’s children are back in continuity and enjoying popularity within the Young Avengers. And to top it off, 2011 marks 50 years since Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961).

So, how about it, BACK ISSUE readers and FF fans?

Who wants to see a nostalgic, relationship-oriented, completely original Fantastic Four graphic novel?

Who’s curious about the Thinker’s origin? Who’d like to see Wiccan and Speed as babies? Who’d enjoy something special—a Greatest Story Never Told—for the 50th Anniversary of the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!?

The final page of Fathers and Sons, in script (left, courtesy of Danny Fingeroth) and layout (right, courtesy of Al Milgrom) form. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

The author would like to express his extreme gratitude toward the fantastically generous Danny Fingeroth and Al Milgrom.

Thanks also to Tom Brevoort, Jonathan Hickman, and Sean Kleefeld.

JARROD BUTTERY lives in Perth, Western Australia. To placate his son’s mutant powers, and thus safeguard all of existence, he’s sincerely hoping that Fathers and Sons might finally see print in 2011.

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FANTASTIC FOUR: FATHERS AND SONS— A SNEAK PEEK

The Beta Version (right) One of the penciled Fathers and Sons pages by the graphic novel’s original artist, Mark Bright. (opposite) Al Milgrom’s awesome Thing splash would have opened the story.

Both images courtesy of Danny Fingeroth. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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We Are Family (page 34) Milgrom channels Kirby in this flashback on page 27.

Courtesy of Danny Fingeroth. (page 35) Thanks to Franklin Richards, Quasimodo discovers his soft side on page 28.

Courtesy of Al Milgrom. (this page) Milgrom’s breakdowns and Fingeroth’s script to the GN’s penultimate page © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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by

Andy Mangels

TM & © DC Comics.

Four years after the dreaded “DC Implosion,” during which DC Comics shuttered a significant amount of projects, the company finally began to expand again.

Buoyed by success stories such as New Teen Titans, and keeping an eye on the burgeoning independent comic market and the rise of more and more retail comics stores, DC planned a diverse slate of six titles to roll out in 1982. Although DC’s mystery/horror line was axed, the new books promised not only mystery and horror, but also superheroic action and science fiction.

It also promised not one, but two new titles aimed at the fantasy market, both with female leads!

Leading off in February 1982 was Saga of the Swamp Thing, followed in March by The Fury of Firestorm and in July by the debut of the horror title Dark Force (later retitled Night Force). August would welcome the debut of Camelot 3000, with September offering Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, and October winding up with the final new title, Pandora Pan. Those dates were moved around as 1981 drew to a close, with Night Force moving to May, Amethyst crystalizing in June, Pandora Pann (now with an added “n”) following in July, and Camelot 3000 flashing forward to September.

Pandora Pann was to be written by writer/editor Len Wein, and drawn by artist Ross Andru, a DC and Marvel mainstay. Editor Karen Berger was appointed to shepherd the series. A 16-page preview of the series was announced to appear free in Saga of the Swamp Thing #5 (Sept. 1982).

The original Greek myth of Pandora was an alternate take on the Biblical “Eve and the apple” tale; in it, Pandora, the first woman, was molded out of clay by Hephaestus in order to punish mankind for Prometheus’ theft of fire. Seductive and deceitful, Pandora was also curious, and she opened a godly jar (later altered in Latin translations to mean “Pandora’s box”) that contained in it all the evils of mankind. Pandora closed the jar again, holding within it one last item: Hope.

According to The Comic Reader #197 (Dec. 1981), the Pandora Pann lead character was “the assistant of an archaeologist who unwittingly opens Pandora’s Box and spends the rest of her time trying to retrieve the evil she has unleashed by doing so.”

In a brief e-mail interview for BACK ISSUE, Wein gave some answers about the planned series: “I believe I came up with the name first, and developed the character out of that. I believe that Pandora and her male partner (whose name completely escapes me at this point) were a pair of archaeologists, who accidentally unearthed Pandora’s other box, releasing new evils into the world, and would spend the rest of the series tracking them down and putting them back.”

One piece of preview art appeared for the series (by Ross Andru and possibly inker Frank Giacoia), showing Pandora Pann and a male character astride a motorcycle of some sort, rocketing toward the mouth of a beast. When questioned about whether the series would have been a mix of fantasy and technology, Wein says, “Since it was set in the present, absolutely.”

He also reveals that the series would have tied in to DC continuity in the same manner as Gemworld and

Skartaris. Of creating the series, Wein notes that Berger had minor input: “Very little.

She was to be my editor, after DC decreed no writer could edit himself any longer.”

In spring 1982, Pandora Pann was announced as canceled in the pages of magazines The Comic Reader, Amazing Heroes, and The Comics Journal. In its news section, Amazing Heroes #11 (May 1982) charitably stated that the cancellation was due to “scheduling problems on the part of its creators,” while The Comic Reader #201 (May 1982) was a bit more pointed, noting that the axe fell due to “Len Wein’s inability to find time to write it.”

Today, Wein agrees with the Comic Reader assessment: “It was me. I simply ran out of time.” The original story had 15 pages drawn by Andru (presumably the preview story), but Wein lost his copies in a 2009 fire at his home, and the disposition of Andru’s pages remains unknown.

Taking the place of Pandora Pann on the DC publishing schedule was Arion, Lord of Atlantis, another new fantasy series that had been previewed in Warlord, written by Paul Kupperberg and drawn by Jan Duursema.

These days, Karen Berger is still in charge of DC’s Vertigo imprint (a line she founded in 1993), and Ross Andru passed away in November 1993. Wein is still writing comics today, as well as stories for animation. Look for his tales in the DC Universe: Legacies series, and for his Human Target miniseries in trade paperback, as well as his scripts for episodes of the Ben 10: Ultimate Alien TV series.

As for Pandora Pann, her tale is most likely lost to the ages. But teaming with the last survivor of her jar, fans can hold Hope that one day, they may yet read her stories.

ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today bestselling author and co-author of almost 20 books, including the recent Iron Man: Beneath The Armor, and a lot of comic books. Additionally, he has scripted, directed, and produced Special Features for over 40 DVD releases. His moustache is infamous. www.AndyMangels.com.

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Psssst! Hey, you ... c’mere! Keep it quiet—I’ve got some incredible art here I’d like to share with you that no one’s supposed to see. It’s unpublished and rejected material that —wait, what? We’re doing an entire issue based on this stuff? Oh, well, in that case… call your friends, shout it from the rooftops, and everyone gather ’round— you’re gonna love this stuff!

Our first two pages are both rejected covers—Ms. Marvel #4 by John Buscema, and Hot Wheels #1 by Alex Toth. Wow—could you have rejected these…? (Hot Wheels cover courtesy of Mike Burkey at romitaman.com.)

To m Z i u k o

© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

by

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© 2011 Mattel, Inc.

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This beautiful spread is concept art for DC Comics’ neverpublished 1980s creation Zero-Man— illustrated by the masterful Gil Kane, and written by Len Wein. The story was set in a dystopian future (is there any other kind?)— truly a shame the series never came to fruition.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Here’s an unused, alternate cover layout for a recent Deathlok compilation volume by the incredibly talented and prolific Rich Buckler, evoking the scene from the original Deathlok cover from Astonishing Tales #25. Visit Rich at www.bucklercomicart.com, and watch for his upcoming new series The Dark Wraith, colored by yours truly. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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We close with something a little more lighthearted.

In the past, editors of anthology titles would assign extra material to writers and artists, stockpiling inventory pages in case a deadline was missed, or if they needed pages in order to fill out a book. Such is the case with this page—done during the 1970s for Joe Simon, most likely for one of the DC romance titles he was editing at the time. It was never published, and was eventually written off. Artwork by the wonderfully versatile Craig Flessel.

(Special thanks go out to Alan Kupperberg and Bob Greenberger for their behind-thescenes assistance, and for allowing me to pick their brains. Mmmm… brains—tasty!)

TM & © DC Comics.

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by

John Wells

In 1984, Black Canary had seen better days. She and most of her Justice League teammates were virtually evicted from the team in favor of an X-Men/Teen Titans mix of newcomers and hangers-on. And while her boyfriend Green Arrow forged on in a Detective Comics backup strip, the heroine with the blonde wig and sonic scream was conspicuously absent.

Created in 1947, Black Canary began as a co-star in the “Johnny Thunder” strip before starring in her own series in the last 13 issues of Flash Comics. Revived in 1963, the female martial artist was back to being a co-star, whether with the Justice Society, Starman, or the Justice League of America, a team she joined in 1969 to fill the token female role recently vacated by Wonder Woman. In the League, Black Canary struck up a romance with Green Arrow and the two were by one another’s side more often than not, whether in JLA, Green Lantern, or the Ace Archer’s own feature. Despite relatively few solo outings during the 1970s, the heroine’s prominence in multiple series easily made her DC’s most-recognized non-derivative costumed heroine after Wonder Woman.

By the mid-1980s, that no longer seemed to count for much. Dinah (Black Canary) Lance was virtually homeless while a new crop of heroines that included the likes of Starfire, Raven, Firebrand, Katana, and Vixen were at the forefront of DC’s team books.

DC’s hallways also had their share of newcomers, among them Greg Weisman. The 19-year-old college student had “started freelancing for DC in ’83” and fallen under the watchful eye of DC executive editor Dick Giordano. Pressed by his new mentor on what character he’d like to write, Weisman enthusiastically answered “Black Canary.”

“I never felt Black Canary really got her due,” Weisman told BACK ISSUE on May 14, 2010. “At most, she was sort of Green Arrow’s girlfriend or a member of the League, and even Green Arrow wasn’t getting that much attention back in those days. So I said, ‘Green Arrow and Black Canary have been boyfriend/ girlfriend for a hell of a long time. What if we took them to the next level, sort of did a miniseries about their relationship.’ It was really Black Canary’s story,

Claws of the Catman Black Canary vs. a strangely garbed Catman on page 9 of issue #1 of her aborted miniseries. Pencils by Mike Sekowsky.

All pencil scans courtesy of Paul Kupperberg.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The Men Behind the Canary (left) A Black Canary plot page by writer Greg Weisman (photo inset). Courtesy of Paul Kupperberg. (right) “Big Mike” Sekowsky sketching a Diana Prince lookalike in a late-1960s Wonder Woman promo photo.

Courtesy of Roy Thomas and Alter Ego. Photo © 1974 DC Comics.

but it involved Green Arrow as well. Dick really liked that and snapped that “if marriage is what she wants, idea so we planned a four-issue miniseries.” Its overall maybe she should look for another guy.” theme and title would be “Commitment.” Despite his Spoiling for a fight, Dinah changed to Black Canary responsibilities on the executive level, Giordano and roared into Star City on her motorcycle. She soon demonstrated his own commitment to the project and found an outlet for her hostility in the form of Catman its youthful writer by personally editing it. and the Cheetah, then in the midst of a jewelry-store Weisman broke down the beats of the story in a robbery. Suffering severe dementia and fascinated with one-page synopsis, each paragraph representing a the pretty baubles, the Cheetah nonetheless inspired single issue. That page has been lost to devotion and tenderness from her feline partner. history but, through the foresight of longtime All of which was irrelevant to Black Canary, DC writer and editor Paul Kupperberg, who tackled Catman and was rewarded the plot and pencils for Black Canary with claw marks on her faces. #1 have survived.

Elsewhere, the elderly owners of a Written on July 15, 1984, small grocery store were being Weisman’s detailed five-page plot accosted by thugs. As the husband contrasted the fractious relationship and wife worried about each other’s of Dinah (Black Canary) Lance and welfare, Green Arrow rushed in Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen against a and made quick work of the brutes. variety of other couples. From Star In contrast to the sober Canary, the City mayor Annie Chung and her Ace Archer had been bursting with loving husband Tri to the supervillain wisecracks during the brief fight but odd couple of Catman and the the sight of the old couple’s mutual greg weisman Cheetah, it seemed as if everyone was love left him silently troubled. luckier at love than Black Canary.

“By the end of this store robbery,” Arguing with Ollie over his repeated postponement Weisman asserted in his plot, “a small crowd should of a mutual vacation, Dinah was also upset over his have gathered, a group of bystanders who just happen response when she was recently shot. Green Arrow to be in groups of two, that is in couples. This must be steadfastly searched for the shooter, but never visited subtle!! It will be an unstated device throughout the her in the hospital. “Every time they start to get really entire miniseries: anytime there are scenes with people close,” the plot contended, “he backs up and cools in the background who don’t particularly have anything off the relationship.” Not quite grasping her point, to do with the story; those people should be in couples: Ollie imagined that she wanted a marriage proposal newlyweds, fiancés, the long married, boys and girls

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going steady, etc. The characters and readers should have the vague impression that the entire world has already been paired off, and that they only have to wait for BC and GA to join the club.”

When the Catman/Black Canary fight knocked the Cheetah’s stolen pendant down a storm drain, the villainess went wild and beat the heroine into unconsciousness.

The scene shifted momentarily to a warehouse where a man named Justin King conferred with Deathstroke the Terminator, who’d phoned in a death threat to Mayor Chung at the beginning of the story.

In the climax, Black Canary regained consciousness on a rooftop and used her sonic scream on Catman as he tried to throw her to her death. Cheetah gently cradled him before lunging at the Canary. The villainess was knocked unconscious, but Catman carried her to freedom. Black Canary begged him to get her mental help but he refused, insisting that they were in love and had a commitment to each other.

As the story ended, Dinah was frustrated not only over the escape but the fact that even costumed criminals had a stronger relationship than she did.

Cue title: “Cats and the Canary.”

As noted, Weisman’s story intended to make good use of three established villains. Catman had been an early-1960s Batman menace with a “cape of nine lives” who was revived in recent years and sustained ugly facial scars at one point. The Cheetah was a new incarnation of a 1940s Wonder Woman adversary whom Gerry Conway had recreated as a raving madwoman prone to hissing like a cat.

And Deathstroke the Terminator was a costumed mercenary introduced in Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s New Teen Titans and finally brought to justice in 1984’s “Judas Contract” storyline.

Weisman was quickly disabused of the notion that he could use Deathstroke, a character from what was then DC’s hottest comic. “So we switched it briefly to an original character named Lady Skull that I created.

And then, again, later, someone said, ‘Well, you can’t use Terminator, but you can use Ravager.’ His son, I guess. And I was like, ‘But I thought Ravager was dead.’ And I cannot remember what the solution was, but we made a big deal in the dialogue of the first issue about how Ravager was back from the dead.

And I know there was an answer to that question but I have no memory at all of what that answer was.”

The writer had better luck making a connection to DC’s revolutionary new writer Alan Moore.

Already creating a sensation with his thoughtful, sophisticated work on Swamp Thing, Moore was being tapped to write a variety of one-off stories featuring other DC characters. Among these was “Night Olympics,” a Green Arrow two-parter illustrated by Klaus Janson that involved Black Canary being shot by

Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

Cat Fight (left) Sekowsky renders Weisman’s lover spat between Black Canary and Green Arrow (or Dinah and Oliver) of page 5 of issue #1, and (below) an action-packed tussle with Catman on page 8.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Catman Unmasked Pages 10 (left) and 11 of Black Canary #1, revealing Catman’s hideous facial features. Art by Mike Sekowsky.

TM & © DC Comics.

a crossbow-wielding assailant. In mid-1984, the story was still unpublished [it appeared in Detective Comics #549–550 in early 1985] but Weisman is certain he was aware of it, having either seen the plot or learned that Black Canary would be wounded.

“I thought, clearly, I could use this notion that Green Arrow, hot for vengeance, went searching for the shooter, but spent almost no time with Dinah when she was in the hospital, that any time he was feeling too close or too emotionally tied to her, he found a way to back off. And so to me, that was something I could use. I used the continuity that was existing or would exist by the time we were published.”

Moore’s plots also influenced the young writer in another way. “Back then, we all—or most of us—were taught to write what was, even though we were at DC, ‘Marvel style.’ You’d write the plot first and get the art back, and then write the dialogue off the art that you had received.” In the meantime, Weisman “saw the detail [Moore] put into his full scripts and although I don’t think

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I’m quite that detailed, let alone that good, it still really inspired me to say, ‘Yeah, I want to be this specific.’

“And so I look at that [original] plot which is, like, five pages long for 23 pages, suggestions of where the panels break and that kind of thing. And first off, I think there’s some good stuff there. I really do, although I clearly had a weird notion of how much could fit on one page. When I made those little slash marks for the panel breaks, did I even count how many panels I was putting on every page? There are, like, eight panels on one page and they’re all big stuff, so it was a little weird to look at years later. But that was some of the first comics that I ever wrote. So I wrote the first two issues, Marvel styleplots, and I had also written this one-sheet which sort of summed up all four issues on one page. And Dick hired Mike Sekowsky to do the art for this.”

A mainstay of the comic-book industry since the early 1940s, Sekowsky was best known for having penciled Justice League of America for its first nine years of existence (1960–1968) and for inaugurating a radical revamp of Wonder Woman that transformed her into stylish adventurer Diana Prince (1968–1971).

Like many of his generation, the artist had fallen out of favor but Giordano was determined to find work for him when the opportunity arose.

Sekowsky drew the pages at what can be charitably described as a leisurely pace, but the end result was 23 pages of clear, dynamic storytelling and the artist’s distinctive kinetic rendition of the human figure. At the same time, there were a number of details that were distracting to the regular DC reader. Zatanna (seen in a one-panel flashback) was clad in her 1960s costume while Catman and the Cheetah were dressed as life-size cats, looking nothing like their official incarnations.

Thanks to a general communications breakdown, no one

at DC provided Sekowsky with any visual reference, nor did he request any. Weisman adds, “Mike [also] didn’t get reference on the new ’80s, thankfully long-gone Black Canary costume, didn’t know that Black Canary had switched costumes and no one bothered to tell him.”

Nor was the artist informed that Lady Skull was now the Ravager. He drew the villainess with a skull mask, a cape, and buccaneer, looking quite a bit like Infinity, Inc. bad guy Mister Bones (also introduced in 1985). Weisman recalls that the costume was close to what he’d described but not exact.

When he dialogued the issue in August of 1985, the writer requested that each of the errors be corrected in the inking stage. “Both Catman (CM) and Cheetah have been drawn incorrectly throughout the issue,” he wrote at one point. “Let’s get some references (Who’s Who vol. 4 is great for both of them) and correct things, including their claws, which should not be bulky and obvious. However, I do like the idea that CM’s face has begun to deteriorate even more, perhaps from using his possibly magic, but torn, cape. For reader identification, I think we should use his correct costume, with the small change that his cowl covers his whole face (like the Black Panther).”

Weisman concedes that “between all of the sort of errors and the way, to an extent—he ignored some of the things that I had asked for,” those initial pencils were a blow. “And also, I think probably—and this isn’t, per se, fair—but my best defense in all this… but otherwise, I know I sound like a jerk—is that I really was young. I mean, I was 19, 20 years old tops when this

stuff was going on. Even later, once I started working at DC and I was 21, 22 years old, I was just a kid and it felt like this was my big chance and that this guy wasn’t helping me out as much as I’d hoped he would.

“And I think that part of it was that Sekowsky’s style by the mid-late ’80s just felt dated,” Weisman continues. “And I was too young to appreciate it on its own merits. And part of it was also, it was just pencils.

We never got to the inking stages, so it was very loose and you throw all of that together and I wasn’t thrilled with what I’d gotten back.

“I never met [Sekowsky]. I never met him in person.

Dick would send stuff off and it’s interesting to see my notes on the art on those dialogue passes I did.

First off, I can’t imagine I was writing that stuff to Mike.

It’s so rude. Looking at those notes objectively now, all these years later, I still think I was basically right about the requests I was making, although again, the way I phrased it is so obnoxious that I just cringe.”

Unaware of what was to come, Weisman wrote another detailed five-page Marvel-style plot for the second issue and Giordano relayed it to Sekowsky—who lost it! Perhaps fearing some sort of repercussions, he told no one and referred instead to the single paragraph synopsis of the issue that the writer had penned earlier.

“He decided to draw 23 pages off of one paragraph of plot,” Weisman reveals. “So by the time we received the art for issue two, it bore absolutely no resemblance to what the story was supposed to have been, other than the basic ‘Yeah, here’s the villain, here’s the hero’ kind of thing.

Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

Lethal Ladies (left) Sekowsky’s unique take on Wonder Woman villainess the Cheetah, on page 16 of Black Canary #1, and (right) page 17, revealing Lady Skull.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Big Mike Draws Big Mouth Sekowsky-style perspective and fight scenes grace page 19 of the canned first issue, along with an ear-splitting Canary Cry. TM & © DC Comics.

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“And so Dick sort of wanted to pay Mike for the work; obviously, he didn’t want to pay to do issue #2 twice.

He said to me, ‘Well, look, can you cut-and-paste panels to make this thing work so that we only need a few pages redone as possible?’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t even know how or where to start on this. It just bears no resemblance to the actual plot that I wrote and that we sent to Mike.’

“And all of these things caused tremendous delay, as you can imagine,” says Weisman. “Delays, because Mike was taking quite a bit of time to do the work and delays because then we were trying to get fixes on the work and trying to make decisions about how we were going to go about this. And so this became something that kept going and going and going without really getting settled, without getting fixed.”

This was all the more frustrating because the miniseries was meant to be a turning point for its star.

“The basic premise was one that would get Black Canary and Green Arrow, Dinah and Oliver, to finally sort of confirm their commitment to each other instead of casually dating as they had been for at least a decade or more prior to the miniseries. It was going to give them a commitment to each other. I don’t recall whether or not they actually got married, but I remember they took that next step and got, at the very least, engaged by the end of the miniseries.”

By this point, it was 1986 and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight was on the horizon. Chatting with friend and editor Mike Gold about returning to DC for a project of his own, writer/artist Mike Grell conceded that he’d like to work on Batman himself but knew he’d face comparisons to Miller’s sure-to-be seminal work. Gold suggested that Grell do something with Green Arrow, whom he’d illustrated in the mid-1970s at the start of his comics career. In no time at all, plans were afoot for a deluxe three-issue miniseries

called Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters that was ultimately published in 1987.

Weisman recalls that, when informed of the stalled Black Canary miniseries, Grell expressed a desire that Dinah and Ollie not be engaged and definitely not be married. Although he no longer remembers the incident, Grell confirmed to BACK ISSUE that he “was determined that they not be married because, historically, the moment a pair of action heroes gets married two things happen: She becomes relegated to housewife/motherly chores and the sexual tension goes out of the relationship.

(Take a look at TV shows like Moonlighting and Remington Steele, for example.) Then, at the point where folks realize the story has become boring, the wife is killed off in an effort to stave off cancellation. I wanted to keep the tension in the relationship, so I put Ollie in his midlife crisis where he thinks it’s time to settle down and get married. Dinah is the one who says no. Essentially, they’re a couple who had been together for longer than some marriages last, they had a deeply romantic and very sexual relationship, and, most important, they were equals and I didn’t want to screw that up.”

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Cheetah Gets Her Kicks A well-aimed karate chop ends the cat fight between Black Canary and Cheetah. Pages 20 and 21.

TM & © DC Comics.

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See Ya Later, Black Canary Page 22 of issue #1.

One can only wonder, if a tighter editorial rein had been kept on this project, what would the finished art have looked like?

Weisman notes, “I don’t think it’s a difficult equation, and I can’t even be too upset about it. When you look at Mike Grell vs. Greg Weisman/Mike Sekowsky back in 1986, it’s not much of a question who you’re going to run with. It was a pretty easy decision on DC’s part, even Dick’s part, to just scrap Black Canary.

“If the miniseries had been done on any kind of reasonable schedule, we would have been long done by the time Mike [Grell] came in,” Weisman says.

“He could have still done pretty much what he wanted with those two characters, but we would have been out and that would have been my big, sort of, premiere comic book that really brought Black Canary into her own.” Instead, it was his run on Captain Atom in collaboration with veteran writer Cary Bates that Weisman became best known for at DC. “I have a tremendous affection and affinity for these characters and my very checkered history at DC is such that I wound up writing a ton of stuff that just never got published. That’s true, even to this day,”

TM & © DC Comics.

the writer points out. “Just a year ago, I wrote a Red Tornado miniseries that didn’t get published. It seems to be that I must have done something to offend the DC gods back in the early ’80s and never quite recovered from it.”

Reflecting on that ill-fated first project, Weisman adds, “Mike [Sekowsky] was kind of a project of Dick’s and I’m sure in a very different way, I was a project of Dick’s. He was always very kind to me, believed in me, and was always, in his way, trying to sort of get me going in the business. He eventually gave me a job on staff starting in 1985 as an editorial assistant, which is another word for ‘Xerox Boy,’ though promoting me rather quickly to an assistant editor, which was a junior editor position, and then later to an associate editor before I finally left. And so Dick was really trying to help Mike, I think, on one end of the age spectrum and me on the other end. It wasn’t exactly a match made in Heaven in particular, also because Dick, as great as he was, was also incredibly and legitimately busy.

[With Dick] being a hands-on editor of the book, I think things sort of fell through the cracks here and there.”

Moving to the animation field, Weisman found the success he never achieved at DC and racked up scores of credits as a writer, editor, and producer over the past two decades. Among the highlights are Gargoyles (which he created), The Batman, The Spectacular Spider-Man, and 2010’s Young Justice.

“Black Canary and Green Arrow both have significant supporting roles in that,” Weisman says proudly.

“It’s fun for me to be working with these characters again. We’re having a great time in the DC Universe on this series! One of the things that’s very gratifying for me is to bring in all these characters that I really loved and wanted to use again and haven’t really been able to do with DC itself. I’m having a little better luck, with DC’s cooperation, through Warner Brothers.”

Weisman reveals, “Black Canary’s always been my favorite character and over the years I’ve pitched doing the basic idea for a miniseries. Again, nobody really ever went for it. And then, of course, I left DC and people have done all sorts of things with both Green Arrow and Black Canary ever since, most of which I haven’t seen.

But it was interesting to me that it was only three years ago that they finally married off these two characters.

It’s something like, I don’t know, 20 more years that they were just dating before they got to the point that I wanted to do with them back in 1984.

“The epilogue to all this is that not too long ago, I got to write one of the DC Showcase short films for Warner Brothers Animation. They’d done the Spectre and Jonah Hex and I got to do a Green Arrow one, ‘Can’t Live Without You’ [attached to 2010’s Superman/ Batman: Apocalypse main feature]. Black Canary’s in it as well and he finally proposes to her and she accepts.

So it’s very satisfying for me because I finally got to do something that I’ve wanted to do since 1984, if not earlier.

It’s very cool.”

JOHN WELLS, the so-called Mark Waid of Earth-Two, is a comics historian specializing in DC Comics.

He’s written for a variety of publications over the past quartercentury ranging from the Comics Buyer’s Guide to Alter Ego. John recently co-authored The Essential Wonder Woman Encyclopedia with Phil Jimenez.

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®

by

Richard A. Scott

The years 1986–1987 were very big years for comics in general. During this time DC Comics published Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Charlton Comics– inspired Watchmen. There were also the revamps for most of the stable of DC characters after the universe-shaking events of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

A lot was going on at DC. Then, from out of the blue (literally), came another unexpected hit, the Aquaman four-issue miniseries (Feb. 1986–May 1986), by writer Neal Pozner, penciler Craig Hamilton, and inker Steve Montano. Aquaman was one of the most popular DC books that year.

However, what began as a strong outing for the 1986 Aquaman miniseries then took an unfortunate downturn for its intended 1987 follow-up series.

SOME BACKGROUND Neal Pozner and Craig Hamilton had introduced some radical, but very appropriate, concepts to the Aquaman mythos in the first Aquaman miniseries, giving the Sea King a new outfit inspired by art nouveau artist Leon Bakst’s Russian ballet Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes.

Pozner also gave Arthur (Aquaman) Curry a change in attitude, allowing for further growth of his character.

Pozner’s brilliant master stroke, however, was adding necessary depth to Atlantean lore, which was sorely lacking before this juncture. It seems rather astounding that there was little backstory for Atlantis before this.

Pozner made a point of integrating several different Atlantises from DC’s cosmology. It took several years before these concepts were expanded upon

For Atlantis!

Aquaman and Mera rally the citizenry of the underwater civilization on page 11 of the unpublished Aquaman II #2.

Art by Craig Hamilton, with art restoration

by Richard A. Scott.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Underwater Ballet Neal Pozner’s original design and notes for Aquaman’s 1980s uniform. Ballet costumes by Leon Bakst (see inset for example) inspired the color scheme.

Aquaman TM & © DC Comics.

by writer Peter David in the 1990 miniseries Atlantis Chronicles and later by writer/artist Phil Jimenez (Neal Pozner’s life partner, before Neal’s passing) in his Tempest miniseries of late 1997. Pozner also wisely decided to utilize concepts from Paul Kupperberg and Jan Duursema’s Arion, Lord of Atlantis series, which had started in 1982 as a Warlord backup before graduating to its own title. In fact, Neal had researched the entire history of Aquaman going all the way back to his beginnings starting in the early 1940s in More Fun Comics and Adventure Comics.

(The first Silver Age Aquaman story occurred in Adventure Comics #260, May 1959.)

Unfortunately, all this would end up being for naught. Pozner himself mentioned in the first miniseries’ letters column that he wasn’t necessarily a writer. (From 1983 to 1986 he was a design director for DC Comics and more of an idea man. More information detailing this phase of Pozner’s career is in the letters columns of the miniseries.) Pozner did manage to outline and script the first two issues of the second Aquaman series before he strayed from writing it.

AQUAMAN II ISSUE #1 The second miniseries would have taken place mere minutes after the first miniseries ended and would have spotlighted the Aqua-family, expanding Mera’s and Aqualad’s roles in Aquaverse. (Incidentally, Pozner regarded Mera’s abilities as being stronger than Aquaman’s.) While the first series largely

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focused upon Aquaman and the Ocean Master (Orm), as well as Atlantean subtext intended to be explored in the second series, Aquaman II would have had Arthur interacting with his supporting cast after the first series’ dramatic changes had occurred.

The merman Ronal, Lori Lemaris’ husband, would have appeared, as would Makaira, wife of Vulko. A new character named Tawna was intended to replace Aquagirl as Aqualad’s girlfriend. The Sunderland Corporation of Swamp Thing fame were the second series’ antagonists. Sunderland’s purpose is to get rid of things that they don’t need—such as Luciteencased copies of DC titles Prez #1 and Brother Power the Geek, the video game Donkey Kong, and Sunderburgers, making Atlantis the surface world’s dumping ground—and to get Atlantean technology by hook or by crook. Atlantean religious extremists led by Claudius protest the presence of the Sunderland Corporation. Their goal is to try and resurrect the deity Poseidon to punish both Sunderland and those Atlanteans who have lost their way from their god.

Makaira is ruling in King Vulko’s stead due to the harm inflicted to Vulko by Orm in the last series. Culture shock has befallen the realm, since Atlanteans have been isolationists for two eons.

During all of this, Arthur is forced to deal with his feelings of love for his wife Mera and his attraction to Nuada from the first series. He also doesn’t wish to backslide on the emotional growth that he has gained in the process. Mera would be dealing with

Porpoise Playtime Hamilton beautifully conveys Aquaman’s kinship with sea creatures on page 2.

Art restoration by Richard A. Scott.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Four Pages from Aquaman II #1 (top left) Craig Hamilton drew upon Lucille Ball for his take on Mera, as seen on page 4. (top right) On page 5, Aqualad laments the death of his sweetheart Tula, a.k.a. Aquagirl, and Makaira, Vulko’s wife, is introduced. (bottom) Pages 9 and 10 show Aqualad’s mind being taken off of Tula by new love interest Tawna. (opposite page left) Aquaman in his traditional gear, in a color commission

by Hamilton.

TM & © DC Comics.

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the ramifications of Aquaman’s changes as well.

Upon returning to New Venice, then Aquaman’s base on the surface world, Arthur discovers that Mera has singlehandedly saved the whole town. At the same time, we also witness Aqualad contending with Tula’s death (which occurred in the Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries). Tawna is introduced and helps Aqualad deal with Tula’s passing.

Aquaman’s temper at this point was to be more even-keeled; this would have been a carryover from the first miniseries. After catching up with Mera, Aquaman realizes that he has forgotten about the Atlantean armada! He rushes to aid them to return back to the domed underwater city. There are dealings with Sunderland’s presence in Atlantis. Claudius riles up the masses against Sunderland. Poseidon’s statue, the oldest structure in Atlantis, collapses.

AQUAMAN II ISSUE #2 Aquaman and Mera dialogue over the events of the first miniseries. Aqualad and Tawna have a misadventure. Vulko gets delicate surgery from Ronal.

Ronal turns to alcohol to cope with the death of his wife Lori Lemaris (who died in Crisis) and the destruction of the city of Poseidonis.

The Sunderland Corporation invites Aquaman to visit their location on land. This necessitates a return to the hero’s old togs, which are equipped to help Aquaman stave off dehydration. (It was always intended by the creative team for Arthur to return to his orange-and-green uniform, as the camouflage suit he wore in the first mini had served its purpose.) My favorite scene in issue #2’s script has Superman arriving to give Arthur his old outfit.

After Supes leaves, Aquaman changes behind a hot dog stand with a curious little kid looking on. He leaves with the blue suit under his belt. (I can just see how Craig would’ve drawn this.) Aquaman arrives at the Sunderland complex only to be tested by them, since Sunderland regards him as a problem.

The results of these tests measure Arthur’s land-bound powers. Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, the Sunderland test administers, are reminiscent of the sadistic Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd from the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever as they test Arthur. Escaping their traps is the plot device to carry Aquaman into the third issue.

WATERLOGGED SEQUEL

Colorful Crusader

“DC did want me back for the second miniseries,” says artist Craig Hamilton. Aquaman is Hamilton’s favorite superhero, and his passion showed in the first Aquaman series. Only 20 years old at that time, he was experiencing great artistic growth in an incredibly short amount of time.

Unfortunately, only two months into the production of the second series, Hamilton had only four or five pages drawn, stating that he was “exhausted.”

As seen in the examples accompanying this article, Hamilton’s Aquaman II pages are great, the drawing and storytelling being so much better than the first miniseries, but Craig just couldn’t complete the job, forcing DC to can the second series.

Hamilton admits to his part of the blame for not being able to follow through with a second series: “I just didn’t have the deadline aspect down.”

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(above) An unused (but signed) version of the cover to issue #2 of the 1986 Aquaman miniseries. Pencils by Craig Hamilton, inks

by Rick Bryant, and colors by Lurene Haines.

Courtesy of Jim Warden and Craig Hamilton.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Waterworld (opposite) Fans thirsty for more of Craig Hamilton’s ’80s Aquaman have commissioned specialty illustrations from the artist, like this one.

TM & © DC Comics.

For comparison, for the first series, he drew all four issues in nine months’ time, but on the second was feeling the artistic pressure to improve his artwork.

(In 1986 the industry was heavily changing, due in part to better reproduction and printing techniques.

Comics art was also starting to gravitate toward more elaborate stylings, to take advantage of these changes.) Aquaman II was very much an enfant terrible when it came to Hamilton’s fledgling comics career. Of the eight pages produced by Craig for the second miniseries, three were inked on overlays

by George Pratt of Enemy Ace: Idyll fame. Today only the first original-art page is in Hamilton’s possession.

(Perhaps some of our BI readers can help locate these pages?)

Two of Hamilton’s major goals in the storytelling of Aquaman II was to try to repair the marriage of Arthur and Mera and for them to have a second child.

Craig begged Neal Pozner to add that pregnancy at some point, but the two existing scripts do not contain anything indicating this.

There has been no evidence as to whether or not inker Steve Montano would have been brought back to the second series. (Steve Montano declined to be interviewed, although attempts were made.) Hamilton mentions that if he could have gotten Jerome K. Moore as his inker, he would have done so.

Joe Orlando, best known as an EC Comics artist and a DC editor and executive, would have been brought back as the colorist. Hamilton feels that Orlando’s coloring work at the time was very different than anybody else’s, nicely complementing his work. Craig was very happy with Orlando’s colors on the first miniseries.

Barbara Randall [Kesel], the editor for the second miniseries, confirms that Neal Pozner wrote a quick outline and two scripts for the sequel, for penciler Craig Hamilton. When Hamilton’s output slowed, Randall hired Jerome K. Moore to produce some of those pages in Craig’s style, reportedly a very difficult process for Moore.

These efforts would end up being moot with the arrival of Aquaman Special #1 (June 1988), by writers Gary Cohn and Dan Mishkin and artists George Freeman and Mark Pacella. Aquaman Special took off in a different direction with Arthur Curry returning to Atlantis to rule again; in the process, he is shown as becoming mentally unhinged. In this story, the Aries, Leo, and Gemini zodiac crystals that were lost at the end of the first Aquaman mini are discovered by antagonist Vladimir Magnus, who uses an “Etheric enhancer” to revitalize the crystals. Aquaman Special also featured the DC-mandated return of the Sea King’s orange-andgreen original costume. The changes in the Aquaman Special dashed any hopes of a Pozner/Hamilton follow-up miniseries, as did the mini’s delays.

The original miniseries and the Aquaman Special have subsequently been written out of post-Crisis continuity (this being a common occurrence at DC—remember Hawkman?). This decision was regrettable, since the Aquaman miniseries had been embraced by fandom. It wasn’t until later that Aquaman once again saw a resurgence in popularity in Peter David’s run of Aquaman vol. 5 (Sept. 1994–Jan. 2001), when the Sea King gained his harpoon hand.

Unfortunately, we may never know what was intended for the third and fourth issues of Aquaman II. They were probably never plotted or scripted and the outcome of the series is unknown. Barbara Kesel, Craig Hamilton, and Phil Jimenez don’t know of the existence of any further Aquaman II materials from Neal Pozner (unless someone makes a lucky find).

One Last Look (above) Hamilton recreated his Aquaman #1 cover in this gorgeous montage painting.

TM & © DC Comics.

Thanks go out to John Schwirian of the Aquaman Shrine (www. aquamanshrine. com) for Pozner’s script copies, Craig Hamilton for the art scans and info he provided (see his gallery at comicartfans.com), and Andy Mangels for materials. Thanks also to Jerome K. Moore, Barbara Kesel, and George Pratt for info, and to Phil Jimenez for his help.

Comic artist and writer RICHARD A. SCOTT is currently writing for several TwoMorrows publications. Visit his website at: http://home. wavecable. com/ ~richardscott/.

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by

Jim Ford

“…A Handful of Colorful Beads” (right) Some unknown force, mightier than even Galactus, has realigned the stars of the galaxy in Epic Illustrated #32 (Oct. 1985). Art by John Byrne and Terry Austin. (below) Galactus falls to Earth in Fantastic Four #243 (June 1982). © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Galactus is the last survivor of a collapsed universe.

He was reborn during the “big bang” as the Devourer of Worlds. In Fantastic Four #50 (May 1966), the Watcher Uatu explained, “Galactus is not evil! He is above good… or evil! He does what he must… for he is Galactus!” John Byrne examined the true nature of Galactus throughout his period as both writer and artist of the Fantastic Four from #232 (July 1981) through 293 (Aug. 1986). How could a being that kills countless other sentient beings not be evil? The culmination of Byrne’s exploration into what greater purpose Galactus serves was “The Last Galactus Story.”

The story was serialized for nine consecutive chapters in Epic Illustrated, “the Marvel Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction,” beginning in October 1984.

Byrne was skillfully assisted by inker Terry Austin, letterer Jim Novak, and colorist Glynis Wein.

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“The Last Galactus Story,” and really, the last story of the Marvel Universe, begins like this…

Nova, the fiery herald of Galactus, soars through the tumultuous space between dying stars. The delicate balance of an entire galaxy has been shattered by some unknown force and she is there to determine its cause. Amongst the interstellar debris, Nova finds a sole planet that was once inhabited. Proud cities, now clearly lifeless, rise from the deserts. Millions of spaceships line gantries preparing for departure, but none have escaped. Within one city, she finds a central structure and enters down into the ancient, haunting corridors of darkness. Inside a chamber guarded by an immense door built to withstand the ages, she finds speaker-stones. Touching them reveals the story, through telepathic imagery, of a race of explorers who discovered a threat within the center of

their galaxy. They quickly built a fleet of spaceships to 244 (July 1982), Terrax held the island of to transport every living thing from the planet, but Manhattan high above the Earth and threatened the vanished before they could depart.

Fantastic Four to do his bidding: kill Galactus or the city of Galactus summons Nova to his side before she can New York would fall to its destruction. His gambit investigate further. From inside his world ship he discovers failed, and Galactus siphoned the Power Cosmic from that this is not the only devastated galaxy. Destruction Terrax, leaving him for dead. This pittance was not stretches from near the point of universal origin enough to fully replenish Galactus, though, and the outward toward the Milky Way galaxy. The fate Fantastic Four, with the help of their allies, of one planet in particular concerns Nova defeated him. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic and she races ahead to the planet Earth. of the Fantastic Four, made the decision She finds it inevitably altered from to save the life of the near-dead what she remembers. Humans no Galactus, reasoning that he would do longer walk its surface, and continental the same for any other living thing if drift has even changed the shape of it were within his means. the land. It has been one hundred Later, having consumed all the million years since she left Earth and uninhabited worlds Nova had found she is now stricken by a longing for for him, Galactus was dying in FF her lost home and the life she left; #257 (Aug. 1983). He was visited by for she was once an Earth woman the embodiment of Death, who named Frankie Raye. assured him that his hunger has a Frankie was introduced in FF greater purpose. Galactus, Death john byrne #164 (Nov. 1975), appearing only said, is as a gardener who must briefly as an acquaintance of the weed the universe so that the strong Human Torch. Byrne reintroduced her, and in FF #238 may flourish. Galactus then went on to devour the (Jan. 1982), she discovered she had flaming powers Skrull homeworld in that same issue. similar to the Torch’s. Though the Human Torch took Richards was held responsible for the atrocities to training her, Frankie was reckless with her powers, Galactus committed against the Skrulls at an intergalactic quick to judgment, and sometimes ruthless. trial. Richards argued that, logically, Galactus serves a Galactus transformed Frankie Raye into Nova after greater good within the universe. No lesser beings his herald Terrax had treacherously betrayed him. than Odin the All-Father, Galactus himself, and the With his energies nearly depleted, Galactus followed embodiment of Eternity bore witness at the “Trial of Terrax to Earth, the only world that had ever successfully Reed Richards” in FF #262 (Jan. 1984). These beings resisted him. Within the pages of FF #242 (May 1982) each testified that Galactus tested the species of the Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

Time is On His Side Time accomplishes what Galactus could not. With the Fantastic Four long dead, Galactus is finally free to devour the Earth in Epic Illustrated #30 (June 1985). © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Death Pays a Visit (right) Death comes a’calling to both Galactus and the Skrull homeworld in Fantastic Four #257 (Aug. 1983, cover by Byrne). (below) Galactus learns the fate of the missing galaxy and ponders its meaning in Epic Illustrated (EI) #31 and 32, respectively. (opposite) Galactus approaches the machine protecting the galaxy’s inhabited planets in EI #32. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

universe, making the survivors stronger. Those found wanting, perished. Until the time a world stood up to destroy Galactus, he would continue to try the species of the universe. Eternity left no doubt in the minds of those present that Galactus is vital to the existence of the universe.

“The Last Galactus Story” continues as Galactus follows Nova to Earth. He asks her news of the men who live there, those men he called friends. They are, of course, long dead. He is saddened to recall how brief their lives were, but now, no longer burdened by his oath to spare the Earth from his hunger, he is free to feed on his most coveted of planets. As Galactus sinks beneath the surface of the boiling Earth, it explodes around him.

Nova escapes into space with a single surviving city and the planet’s only other survivor, a robot named Shakespeare, who carries within his memory banks all the works of the Bard. The Earth, as Galactus had always suspected, had been the richest planet in the universe.

Replenished, he returns his attention to the Milky Way galaxy. He leaves his ship to penetrate the black nebula shroud that hides the core of the galaxy. Astonishingly, in an awesome display of power, unprecedented and unimaginable even by him, some force has aligned the stars of the Milky Way galaxy into a tunnel of light. At the center of the tunnel, a gigantic machine protects the inhabited planets and holds them in place.

Elsewhere within the black nebula, Nova finds a spaceship a billion miles across, powered by a black hole large enough to swallow the entire galaxy. She soars into its depths, and without warning, is attacked. Galactus, concerned for the safety of his herald, rushes to her side,

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Somebody’s Watchin’ Me A Watcher confronts Galactus in Epic Illustrated #34 (Feb. 1986). (below right) “The Trial of Reed Richards” in Fantastic Four #262 (Jan. 1984, cover by Byrne). © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

heedless of the trap sprung for him. The master of the ship, who has destroyed so many galaxies in his wake, steps forward to reveal himself. He is a Watcher, and claims to have created Galactus himself.

And there, the “The Last Galactus Story” ends with the cancellation of Epic Illustrated after 36 issues. The final chapter appeared in February 1986. Epic Illustrated had been a comics anthology magazine modeled after the successful Heavy Metal magazine. Unlike Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated had employed mostly American creators and had occasionally featured Marvel characters that fit into the science-fiction and fantasy themes.

THE STORY COMPLETED John Byrne maintains a significant presence on the Web at www.byrnerobotics.com, where amongst lively and provocative debates on comics, scans of penciled artwork, and an enormous collection of published and commissioned artwork, can be found a Frequently Asked Questions section where Byrne has discussed his past work. Under the section “Questions about

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Aborted Storylines,” in a post dated February 15, 2005, Byrne wrote that, “At the virtual End of the Universe, Galactus is confronted by a Watcher.

This Watcher turns out to be the same one who witnessed the ‘birth’ of Galactus in our universe.

The Watcher (not Uatu) was eventually driven mad by the accumulated guilt he feels for the acts of Galactus.

He has been trying to move galaxies to somewhere Galactus cannot find them, but has been destroying them in the process. Galactus and the Watcher battle—a huge cosmic confrontation that stretches over centuries, as the universe falls into near total entropy. Finally, to defeat the Watcher, Galactus sucks all the remaining energy out of the Universe. Nothing is left but Galactus and his loyal herald, Nova. Realizing at last what his purpose is, Galactus cracks the seal on his suit, starts to remove his helmet, and in that instant all the energy he has absorbed explodes out of him.

He becomes the ‘big bang’ of the next universe, and when the smoke clears, we see Nova has been reborn, as that universe’s Galactus.”

In this same post, Byrne continued the story behind the story: “Incidentally, back when I was first approached about Marvel’s ‘The End’ project, I was asked to think about ‘last issues’ for the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. One of the things that occurred to me was using this as a way to finally finish the Last Galactus Story.

“Goes like this: One day, out of a clear blue sky, literally, Nova falls into the heart of Manhattan. The FF go to investigate. They find her, and after a bit of trouble deciphering what she is saying they realize she has come from billions of years in the future.

Reed’s ‘universal translator’ was having problems with her speech because she was speaking English, but English distorted by billions of years. Anyway,

she finally tells them what’s going on with Galactus and the rogue Watcher, and the FF race off to use their captured version of Doctor Doom’s time machine to speed to the future and try to help Galactus. (Reed, you see, being Reed, has already figured out what Galactus’ purpose is in the scheme of things.)

“Uh oh! Using Doom’s time machine alerts the good Doctor to what they are up to, and he goes after them. Pretty quickly he figures out what is going on, and realizes this is a perfect opportunity to steal the power of Galactus for himself. The universe may die in the meanwhile? What cares he?

“So, of course, the FF end up battling Doom, who is doing all kinds of things to try to get Galactus’ power, while Galactus is busy himself dealing with the rogue Watcher. Finally the good guys—which includes Galactus in this case—win, but Ben and Nova both die heroically in the process. Galactus wonders what it was all about, what it was all for. Reed tells him. Galactus understands. The FF (what’s left of them) start to head back to their time machine with Doom as their prisoner.

Galactus calls after them. ‘Leave him!’ Moment of tension, but Reed agrees. The FF return to the present, and just as they wink out they see Galactus open the seals on his armor and begin to release all his stored energy.

“The three are back on Earth, in the present.

They mourn Ben, but they resolve to continue to fight the good fight, in his honor. The Fantastic Four are no more, but the Three shall fight on! Sue wonders what Galactus wanted Doom for.

“Cut to somewhere, somewhen else. Energies roil.

A Universe is aborning, and at its heart we see a great cosmic ‘egg’ akin to the one that once gave birth to Galactus. It opens, and Galactus rises from its midst— but when he turns to us, we see he now has the face/mask of Doctor Doom. Like a certain other human

we all know, Doom is about to learn that ‘with great power must come great responsibility.’”

“The Last Galactus Story” was the final step in conceptualizing the reason why Galactus exists in the Marvel Universe. Galactus must be, as the Watcher suggests, a force of nature if he is above both good and evil. Byrne used Reed Richards, and a host of cosmic enitities, to explain how Galactus serves the “greater good” by ridding the universe of degenerate species. Perhaps not entirely satisfied with this justification, Byrne continued to probe the question of why Galactus must exist. The eloquent solution is that he is the progenitor of the next universe as he was the progeny of the last. “The Last Galactus Story” told a story essential to the understanding of the Marvel Universe and its truth should not be lost.

The Hand of Galactus (left) Frankie Raye is remade into Nova, the herald of Galactus, in FF #244 (July 1982, cover

by Byrne). (above) Nova heads home in EI #28 (Feb. 1985). Originalart page penciled by John Byrne and signed by inker Terry Austin.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions.

JIM FORD is married and has two great boys, one of whom wants to be Superman when he grows up.

Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Far too many articles on Universal’s The Wolfman begin with the original film’s infamous, oft-quoted aphorism: “Even the man who’s pure of heart and says his prayers at night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

So I’ll not do that here. Rather, I’ll begin with: Thanks to such popular titles as Marvel Zombies, The Walking Dead, and 30 Days of Night, horror comics have enjoyed a monster-sized resurgence in recent years. However, the genre was at a lull in 1991, when Dark Horse Comics bucked current trends and released four square-bound movie adaptations based on classic films starring Universal’s beloved monsters.

Included in the series of one-shots were comics based on Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). The inside back cover of The Mummy made the tantalizing promise that The Wolf Man

by Bret Blevins was coming soon. Unfortunately, that issue never saw the light of day (or the dark of night, for that matter).

When asked about the cancellation of The Wolf Man, writer/artist Blevins, who received the bad news by phone from editor Dan Thorsland, was disappointed, but not terribly shocked.

“I was having a great deal of fun, and it was a nice change from the superhero work I had been doing for years,” Blevins says, “but I had been around long enough by then to roll with the vicissitudes of comic-book publishing. I wasn’t surprised, especially— the venture of adapting the Universal films seemed an oddity in the marketplace at the time.”

Directed by George Waggner from a script by Curt Siodmak, The Wolf Man feature film hit theaters in 1941. It starred Lon Chaney, Jr. as Larry Talbot (the sympathetic title character), Evelyn Ankers as Gwen Conliffe (the beautiful love interest), and Claude Rains as Sir John Talbot (the concerned father).

The movie was remade in 2010 by Joe Johnston (from a screenplay by David Self and Andrew Kevin Walker), but it’s the original that remains near and dear to the hearts of most monster fans, including baby boomer Blevins, who grew up watching the Universal horror classics at every opportunity. “I am still a fan, and always watch a few every Halloween,” Blevins said. “My favorites are probably The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

Elaborating on his interest in horror in general, Blevins says, “I was born in 1960, so I was barely in time to be aware of the monster fad that culminated in television shows like The Munsters and The Addams

Bad Moon Rising Courtesy of Bret Blevins, the artist’s roughs for one of Universal’s most memorable monsters, the Wolf Man. © 2011 Universal.

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by

Brett Weiss

Talbot and Company Blevins’ headshot models of stars Chaney, Rains, Ankers, and Maria Ouspenskaya (Maleva the gypsy). © 2011 Universal.

Family, the daytime horror soap opera Dark Shadows, and various other theatrical and made-for-television films or series. I even had a subscription to Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland for a couple of years around 1970, along with a newsprint tabloid format magazine called The Monster Times. There was also a resurgence of horror comic books featuring the classic monsters in the early ’70s, which had a big influence on me.”

When initially approached by Dark Horse about the proposed Universal comic books, Blevins was torn between two monsters: the Invisible Man and the Wolfman.

“I originally intended to do The Invisible Man,” Blevins, said, “because I was fond of both the film and the novel, but especially because of the challenges of drawing a character who wasn’t there— the storytelling problems intrigued me. I ended up in favor of The Wolf Man, though, because of the greater variety of visual material: the Wolf Man himself, the fairy-tale designs of the village and castle/ mansion, the gypsy camp, the misty forest, the action sequences, and so on. Larry Talbot is also a much more sympathetic character than Griffin [the Invisible Man].”

By the time Dark Horse pulled the plug on the Universal books, Blevins had already invested a lot of time into The Wolf Man. Given the confines of the “done in one” (to use a term coined by Comics Buyer’s Guide senior editor Maggie Thompson) illustrated-fiction format, there were naturally (or should that be supernaturally?) going to be some differences between the comic book and the film.

“I was about halfway through the adaptation of the script when the book was canceled,” Blevins says. “As I recall, the main differences were related to length. I couldn’t include every scene from the film, so I was combining information into succinct sequences, rewriting dialogue, and compressing/restaging scenes to suggest elements of the story and characterization I didn’t have room to transpose verbatim from the source.”

When asked what he used for reference material, Blevins ruminates on the comparatively primitive resources at his disposal. “At that time all I had was a VHS tape of the film—there was no Internet or the precise freeze frame capabilities of DVDs. I’m sure I was able to find a few stills in books I had, and Dark Horse may even have sent me a few, I don’t recall. But mostly I worked through the material by stopping and starting/rewinding/pausing the videotape.”

For a while, Blevins was hopeful that The Wolf Man comic book would eventually be released. “I was offered a kill fee,” Blevins says, “but I remember there was a chance the project might be revived at some point later on—a few months or a year, so I opted to wait and see if it would return. I had plenty of other work available, so it wasn’t a hardship.”

During the past few years, Blevins, a consummate professional, has been busier than ever.

“In late 2007,” Blevins explains, “I began working on a project with my terrifyingly talented friend Rick Remender for IDW called Legion of the Supernatural that fans of the Universal monsters would

especially enjoy. It centers on a team of the classic monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, Mummy, and other creatures.

Rick’s script is brilliant fun, exploding with character conflict, action, mood, and rich visuals in every scene—and I mean every scene.”

But then real-life horror reared its ugly head.

“Unfortunately,” Blevins says, “my wife was diagnosed with a serious illness in January 2008, and as a result I was unable to continue working on the book. Thankfully she is still with us and is still fighting her disease, and we are coping with our situation as best we can. If she continues to be stable I hope to return to the project.”

Despite his wife’s health problems, Blevins continues plying his craft. “I’m up to my neck in storyboards for Cartoon Network and book illustration work for Disney,” Blevins says. “I hope to get back to comics someday, but I don’t know when that will work out.”

While the Universal comics from Dark Horse made an impression on Bret Blevins, Dan Thorsland, who was the editor on the books, barely remembers anything about the project.

“Honestly,” Thorsland says, I can’t remember why we didn’t do a Wolf Man in that run. Most of the deals with Universal were locked in before I started work on the books, and Wolfie wasn’t one of them.

I was moving onto handling the Star Wars franchise and don’t recall anything regarding Wolf or Bret, but that may just be my dim memory of that project. Other than the Art Adams Creature from the Black Lagoon, I don’t remember much of that run.”

Today, each of the four Universal Monsters Dark Horse books is readily available through online stores, usually below cover price.

Each book offers some degree of entertainment value, such as Dracula actually showing fang penetration, which the 1931 film had shied away from. The best of the lot is The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which is the most complete adaptation. Also, not only is it drawn by Art Adams, it boasts inks by Terry Austin.

It’s a shame Dark Horse didn’t stick with the Universal project long enough to release The Wolf Man. Based on Bret Blevins’ preliminary sketches, it would’ve made for a very nice-looking book.

Fans of the reluctant werewolf will have to be content with the recently released Special Edition DVD of the movie classic, which, among other features, contains comments on the film by comic-book artist Kerry Gammill (Bela Lugosi’s Tales from the Grave).

And, of course, it includes the famous tagline (altogether now): “Even the man who’s pure of heart and says his prayers at night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

BRETT WEISS is the author of Classic Home Video Games, 1985-1988 (McFarland, 2009).

To catch up with Brett, check out his blog: brettweisswords.blogspot.com.

Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

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DRAW! (edited by top comics artist MIKE MANLEY) is the professional “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling. NOTE: Contains nudity for purposes of figure drawing.

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Interview and sketchbook by MIKE WIERINGO, BRIAN BENDIS and MIKE OEMING show how they create the series “Powers”, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw great hands”, “The illusion of depth in design” by PAUL RIVOCHE, must-have art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, links, a color section and more! OEMING cover!

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RON GARNEY interview, step-by-step demo, and cover, GRAHAM NOLAN on creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN and other pros discuss lettering, “Draping The Human Figure, Part Two” by BRET BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ with more Adobe Illustrator tips, interview with Banana Tail creator MARK McKENNA, links, a color section and more!

STEVE RUDE demonstrates his approach to comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS on Flash animation, political cartoonist JIM BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits, plus DRAW!’s regular instructors BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on “Drawing On LIfe”, more Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and more! New RUDE cover!

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K e i t h Ve r o n e s e

Miracleman Triumphant was to be Eclipse Comics’ spin-off Miracleman title, filling the ten-year gap in history between the Golden Age and Silver Age storylines and fitting between issues #22 and 23 of the regular series. Miracleman Triumphant, however, simply wasn’t, as the title was canceled prior to the release of the first issue due to Eclipse’s financial troubles and eventual bankruptcy. The majority of issue #1 was finished and ready to be published in 1994, with a script by Fred Burke, pencils by Mike Deodato, and inks by Jason Temujin Minor. This series was one of the first US penciling jobs for Mike Deodato, then a little-known Brazilian artist who later exploded onto the scene with his work on DC’s Wonder Woman.

The storyline, save for the time period and the solicitation details, until now was a complete unknown.

Per Advance Comics, the solicitation stated: The first issue of an all-new companion Miracleman series! With Neil Gaiman’s Miracleman series officially on a three-times-a-year schedule, Eclipse proudly introduces an all-new companion title which will be published bi-monthly to start, and monthly after the second issue.

Neil Gaiman is consulting with writer Fred Burke (Tapping the Vein, Hyperkind) to insure that this new series fits into overall Miracleman continuity.

THE STORY Miracleman Triumphant #1, entitled “Oracles,” begins where Miracleman #22 leaves off, focusing on the aftermath of the annual Carnival memorializing Kid Miracleman’s slaughter of London in Miracleman #15.

The opening pages were to show Miracleman, disguised as an ordinary human, surveying the closing moments of the Carnival, wondering to himself if the changes he has brought to the world were the right ones. While ruminating, he stumbles onto a flier advertising a family of fortune-tellers and, interested in their opinion, seeks them out.

Meanwhile, Miraclewoman is welcoming guests to a party at the home of the Miracle Family, Olympus. She is under the guise of her alter ego, Avril Lear, in order to entertain and converse with Miracleman’s ex-wife, Liz Moran, at the party. Liz believes that she is invited to celebrate the release of her book, Winter’s Tale, a story that makes up a portion of Miracleman #20. Liz soon stumbles upon the true identity of Avril, and lashes out in anger at Miraclewoman, Miracleman’s current lover and companion in remaking the Earth in their image.

This confrontation leads to the two being separated

by Liz and Miracleman’s child, the ethereal Winter.

Miraclewoman admits to inviting Liz out of a desire to befriend her lover’s ex-wife and to involve her

Miracleman Triumphant House ad for Miracleman Triumphant, printed in Advance Comics.

Marvelman TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Miracleman “#23A” (left) The first page of the script for Miracleman Triumphant #1. It is numbered Miracleman #23A, possibly denoting that the series was not titled at the time the script was written. Courtesy of Fred Burke. (right) Page 7 of Miracleman Triumphant #1, recapping the events of Miracleman #15.

Courtesy of Jason Temujin Minor.

Marvelman TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

with their menagerie of friends at Olympus. Liz has become reticent of her husband’s work to change the world, and this feeling grows as the guest of honor for the party is revealed, a recently revived and rehabilitated Emil Gargunza. Gargunza kidnapped Liz in Miracleman #4 in the hope of transferring his consciousness into the then-unborn Winter. Liz confronts Miraclewoman for allowing the revival of Gargunza, the former arch-enemy of the Miracle Family, also pointing out that Avril Lear was sexually assaulted by him.

Gargunza, joined by a bevy of Andy Warhol clones, reveals his gift to the partygoers, a flock of Winter clones. The Winter clones fly above the crowd, with the true Winter in their midst, and Gargunza reveals a hidden device that sends Miracledog into a rage, causing him to attack the clones. Amidst the confusion, Gargunza utters the secret word “Lolita,” turning Miraclewoman back into Avril, and bringing to light memories of the horrors she suffered at his hands.

Gargunza chokes Avril, but is rescued by Liz. Liz says her goodbye to Winter, who warps her back home to San Francisco.

Miracleman, absent from the party, is told by the fortune-tellers to reach out to North America for answers to his questions about his world-changing initiatives. The fortune-tellers also suggest a companion, Jason Oakey, a child that Miracleman met early in his adventures. Miracleman returns to Olympus with Winter and reminisces about Liz Moran, part of a life and a love now lost, and a desire to visit America.

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AFTER THE FIRST ISSUE “The story arc would have taken Miracleman and Jason from the east to west coasts of the United States, battling Gargunza along the way,” says writer Fred Burke.

“The series was about imperfection, the tragic nobility of mortality as reflected in Liz, Jason, and Gargunza, and whether or not Mike (Miracleman) should have his day.” The “Jason” referred to by Burke as Miracleman’s traveling companion is Jason Oakey, a child Miracleman stumbled across in the forest during Miracleman #4 in the chapter “One of Those Quiet Moments,” a story wherein Jason asked Miracleman to make him his sidekick and to protect him from a then-inevitable nuclear war. The series was to have strong ties to the original Miracleman title, with Jason Minor, the inker, “appreciating that it seemed to focus more on the Liz character and her dealing with the fact that her husband and child are now gods.”

THE STATE OF THE SERIES At least a few pages from Miracleman Triumphant were in transit from Mike Deodato at the time of cancellation, as some pages of original art from the issue exist in pencil only form while some are in finished pen-and-ink form. Since information on the production of the comic is scant, I looked to writer Fred Burke, penciler Mike Deodato, and inker Jason Temujin Minor for more information.

When asked about how he got the job inking Miracleman Triumphant, Jason Temujin Minor remarks, “Miracleman was the only job I ever got by going to a convention and shopping my portfolio around. I met

Standing Guard Painting produced for Miracleman Triumphant by the artist Hector, a frequent cover artist for Eclipse Comics at the time.

The exact intended use for this art is unknown; however, it is believed to be intended for use as a pinup or a back cover. Courtesy of Keith Veronese.

Marvelman TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Triumphant Returns (left) Page 13 of Miracleman Triumphant #1.

Liz Moran confronts Miraclewoman in front of the guests at Olympus. Courtesy of Keith Veronese. (right) Page 14 of Miracleman Triumphant #,1 featuring the return of Dr. Gargunza.

Courtesy of Jason Temujin Minor.

Marvelman TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

cat yronwode (editor of Eclipse Comics) at a convention in Oakland, California. She liked my work and told me they were working on a new Miracleman book that she wanted me to ink. I left that convention doubting that I would hear anything more from it, but cat called me and that was it.” He continues, “For me, I think the Alan Moore issues [of Miracleman] were some of the best storytelling in comics and I was looking forward to Neil Gaiman’s run. I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t working on the main title, but being a very big fan, I was delighted to get the job.”

As for Fred Burke’s connection to the series, the author says, “I had been writing and editing for Eclipse for many years, so when the opportunity [to write Miracleman Triumphant] arose, I was quick to say, ‘Me! Me!’” Deodato remarks, “I got the assignment through [my agent at] Glass House Graphics. I didn’t speak English at the time, so I had no contact at all with editors or authors. They made it clear that this was a spin-off of the main title, but it was still Miracleman, and it was still me drawing superheroes in the American market, so I was in heaven.”

In regard to Deodato’s penciling chores, the artist receives high praise from Minor, who says, “Once I saw Mike Deodato’s pencils and read the script, I was even more excited. I was told that this was one of Mike’s first American projects and people were trying to get him to ‘Americanize’ his style. I don’t know if that was true or not, but I liked his work immensely as it was, even more than the later work I saw from him.”

Also giving praise to Deodato was author Burke,

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saying, “It’s a real bummer that the Deodato pages didn’t see print—they were truly amazing.”

The inked pages for this series are phenomenal and you will see several scattered throughout this article.

When I asked Minor if there was a concerted effort to keep the unusual panel layouts that John Totleben had started on the book or if this was this just a manifestation of part of Deodato’s early style, Minor replied, “I can’t speak for Mike about what his intentions were.

My opinion from looking at his pages is that he was trying very hard to honor much of what Totleben did on the book. Totleben was probably my number-one influence and I loved his work on Miracleman. For the first part of my career, I tried to mimic Totleben’s inking style. By the time I started work on Miracleman Triumphant, I was starting to develop more of my own style. However, I sure tried to bring a lot of the Totleben style to the inks and actually took a lot of liberties with Mike’s pencils, like choosing to use a stippling technique in some areas instead of straight inking or using the Xeroxes of Campbell’s soup cans for the shots with the Warhols.

I don’t know how Mike felt about these liberties, but I hope he liked them. Nevertheless, I think we both were very conscious of the work that came before us.”

Deodato remarks about what he learned about his craft while working on the series, saying, “When I began doing American comics such as Lost in Space, they were photo-based and sort of stiff. Doing superheroes loosened me up. My style today incorporates all the action and power that I learned doing superheroes, with the referencing I did in my earliest works.”

Miracleman Interrupted (top left) Gargunza executes his plan for Miracledog on page 18 of Miracleman Triumphant #1. Courtesy of Jason Temujin Minor. (top right) Page 19 of Miracleman Triumphant #1. This page is only partially inked, as it was the page Minor was working on when he received the call from cat yronwode signaling the end of Eclipse Comics. Courtesy of Jason Temujin Minor. (left) Miracleman #4 (Dec. 1985), page 10, featuring Miracleman and Jason Oakey, who, according to Miracleman Triumphant writer Fred Burke, would have been integral to later issues of that miniseries. Originally printed in the UK in Warrior #14 and later reprinted in the US by Eclipse Comics in Miracleman #4.

Art by Alan Davis and story by Alan Moore.

Marvelman TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Kid Marvelman at Marvel Comics Original art for the Marvelman Family’s Finest #2’s (Aug. 2010) variant cover

by Mike Perkins, featuring Kid Marvelman. From the collection of Keith Veronese.

Marvelman TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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ECLIPSE’S END Eclipse Comics’ financial troubles became too much to handle in the summer of 1994, causing the company to cease operations and file for bankruptcy. Recalling that time period and the closing of Eclipse, Minor remarks, “cat [yronwode] told me. I was half way through inking a page—I think I had two panels done and one started when I got the call. Truthfully, I don’t remember much of the discussion. I do remember that cat sounded upset, so it wasn’t like I could be angry about it. It just was what it was, and it sucked.

I remember that the conversation felt less like I was being fired by my boss and more like I was commiserating with a colleague. I asked her if she wanted me to send in the last batch of pages. She said that I might as well hold on to them because I wasn’t going to get paid for that batch. I hung up with her and stared at the page I was working on, trying to work myself up to start looking for another job. I considered finishing the page just to finish it, in case cat somehow worked things out. I took a break to think it over and never went back to the page. To this day it sits in my drawer half inked.” Burke recollects and replies in a very similar tone, saying, “Despondent hardly begins to describe my reaction to the Eclipse bankruptcy. I was so in love with the characters and the creators. It was like my whole world was ending.” When asked if he would like another shot at the character if legal matters are settled, Minor replies, “I would love to if the opportunity was there. If Neil [Gaiman] ever gets it resolved, then hell, yes, I’d be on board.”

THE FUTURE OF MIRACLEMAN At the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics Joe Quesada announced that Marvel with the aid of Neil Gaiman, had purchased the rights to Marvelman, the template for Miracleman, from its creator, Mick Anglo.

To date, Marvel has reintroduced comics fans to the Marvelman mythos, beginning with the documentary-style Marvelman Primer in the Summer of 2010 and a series of reprints of 1950s and 1960s issues in the six-issue limited series Marvelman Family’s Finest featuring classic adventures of Marvelman, Young Marvelman, Kid Marvelman, and Young Nastyman.

What Marvel Comics has in store regarding new adventures of Marvelman or the integration of Marvelman into current Marvel continuity is unknown, but Marvel indeed does have plans for a current interpretation of the character. Quesada said at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con: “I’m excited to see this character not just at Marvel, but the continued adventures of Marvelman.” Over a year has passed since Quesada’s announcement, however, and no new Marvelman-related material has surfaced. Additionally, questions remain as to whether Marvel Comics’ ownership of Marvelman extends to reprint rights regarding Miracleman material in Eclipse’s back catalog. A bright spot, however, is present, as Miracleman #25, the third issue of the Silver Age story arc by Mark Buckingham and Neil Gaiman, was finished at the time of Eclipse’s dissolution. Inked pages and the cover of the issue have surfaced, with several printed in Kimota: The Miracleman Companion by George Khoury, soon to be reprinted with additional material by TwoMorrows Publishing. The continuation of the Silver Age story arc and its inevitable lead-in to the Dark Age would be a natural next step, regardless of entanglements with former Eclipse properties.

Special thanks to Fred Burke, the author of Miracleman Triumphant #1, who was kind enough to give me a copy of the script for Miracleman Triumphant #1. Special thanks as well to inker Jason Temujin Minor, who provided a wealth of background material for the series and scans of inked artwork. Fred Burke is currently the VP of Technology for Lowry Digital, which recently worked on James Cameron’s Avatar. Jason Temujin Minor works in the video-game field as lead character artist for Star Wars: The Old Republic, released in the spring of 2011 from BioWare. Mike Deodato pencils Dark Avengers for Marvel Comics.

Oh, You Nasty Boy! Original art for the Marvelman Family’s Finest #5 (Nov. 2010) variant cover by Khoi Pham, featuring a Young Marvelman adversary (and counterpart of Black Adam), Young Nastyman.

From the collection of Keith Veronese.

KEITH VERONESE should be working on his Ph. D. dissertation in Biophysical Chemistry, but instead, he wrote this article. He is also compiling a book for TwoMorrows Publishing about comic-book writers and artists who moonlight in the video-game industry and has a novel to be released in 2011.

He likes fake mustaches.

Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

Marvelman TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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BACK ISSUE • 75

Edited by ROY THOMAS The greatest ‘zine of the 1960s is back, ALL-NEW, and focusing on GOLDEN AND SILVER AGE comics and creators with ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, UNSEEN ART, P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America, featuring the archives of C.C. BECK and recollections by Fawcett artist MARCUS SWAYZE), Michael T. Gilbert’s MR. MONSTER, and more!

2010 EISNER AWARD Nominee Best Comics-Related Periodical

Other issues available, & an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all issues at HALF-PRICE!

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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!

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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!

HARVEY COMICS’ PRE-CODE HORROR! Interviews with SID JACOBSON, WARREN KREMER, and HOWARD NOSTRAND, plus artist KEN SELIG talks to JIM AMASH! MR. MONSTER presents the wit and wisdom (and worse) of DR. FREDRIC WERTHAM, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with C.C. BECK & MARC SWAYZE, & more!

SIMON & KIRBY and NOSTRAND cover!

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BIG MARVEL ISSUE! Salutes to legends SINNOTT and AYERS—plus STAN LEE, TUSKA, EVERETT, MARTIN GOODMAN, and others! A look at the “Marvel SuperHeroes” TV animation of 1966! 1940s Timely writer and editor LEON LAZARUS interviewed by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, the 1960s fandom creations of STEVE GERBER, and more! JACK KIRBY holiday cover!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL! Big FCA section with Golden Age artists MARC SWAYZE & EMILIO SQUEGLIO, and interviews with the FAWCETT FAMILY! Plus Part II of “The MAD Four-Color Wannabes of the 1950s,” more on DR. LAURETTA BENDER and the teenage creations of STEVE GERBER, artist JACK KATZ spills Golden Age secrets to JIM AMASH, and more! New cover by ORDWAY and SQUEGLIO!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY, PART 3! DC’s Sword of Sorcery by O’NEIL, CHAYKIN, & SIMONSON and Claw by MICHELINIE & CHAN, Hercules by GLANZMAN, Dagar

by GLUT & SANTOS, Marvel S&S art by BUSCEMA, KANE, KAYANAN, WRIGHTSON, et al., and JACK KATZ on his classic First Kingdom! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER’s fan-creations (part 3), and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo—1961 to 1985!” with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, ANDERSON, DELBO, ANDRU, BUCKLER, APARO, GRANDENETTI, and DILLIN, interview with Golden/Silver Age DC editor GEORGE KASHDAN, plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and a new cover by INFANTINO and AMASH!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo Companion, Part II!” More on the 19631985 series that changed comics forever!

The Huntress, Power Girl, Dr. Fate, Freedom Fighters, and more, with art by ADAMS, APARO, AYERS, BUCKLER, GIFFEN, INFANTINO, KANE, NOVICK, SCHAFFENBERGER, SIMONSON, STATON, SWAN, TUSKA, our GEORGE KASHDAN interview Part 2, FCA, and more! STATON & GIORDANO cover!

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Marv would have to say about this book during this period, especially in the context of the successful New Teen Titans book running concurrently, and Crisis just around the corner.

As always, BACK ISSUE is a fascinating read! Much thanks for hours of enjoyment!

– Scott Millen

Send your comments to: E-mail: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor • BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE • Concord, NC 28025

Find BACK ISSUE on

You’re right, Scott—the Wolfman/Kane Superman run in Action was amazing! There’s a Superman issue of BI in the early planning stages. We’ll try to include it there. (Gee, the thought of a Kane Superman cover for the issue just came to mind…)

– M.E.

HAPPY HEX, LOVABLE HULK

I’ve recently been going back and rereading Marv Wolfman’s amazing and underrated run on Action Comics from 1982–1983. This is the place where the Omega Men started gaining a foothold in the DC Universe, for instance, and Gil Kane did some incredible work.

I’d really be curious to hear what

Mr. Ayers’ letter has inspired us to share with readers his 1983 commissioned illustration of the “real” Ghost Rider and El Diablo (courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions). Wow! – M.E.

Ghost Rider TM & © Marvel Entertainment, Inc. El Diablo TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

WANTS TO SEE WOLFMAN IN ACTION

BACK ISSUE magazine #42 just arrived in today’s mail… featuring Jonah Hex and, on pages 60 and 61, the feature with the real Ghost Rider (mine).

It’s a terrific article [about the original Ghost Rider], well written, and the selection of the two illos are super-fantastic.

I know now why I didn’t get assigned to do the current Jonah Hex [series] or the [new] Westerns. I would never draw such a horrible Jonah—after all, [writer Michael] Fleisher had him marry Mei Ling and they became parents! (I worked on enough of Kirby’s monsters, making them lovable. I even think of him as the LOVABLE Hulk!)

– Dick Ayers

Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

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BACK ISSUE • 77

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS I just saw the new digital edition of BACK ISSUE and noticed the “corrections” section at the top of the Back Talk feature. In the spirit of accuracy there were two captions in [my] Contest of Champions article that could use an errata. On page 10 in BACK ISSUE #41, that original-art page was a published one and on page 17 the two original-art pages were also published as well. I thought I should bring it up, though, just to be accurate.

– Dan Tandarich While I continue to love what you do, I’d like to correct an error in Philip Schweier’s “Flagg! Unfurled” feature in BACK ISSUE #41.

He accurately states that “American Flagg! went on to win a number of awards including seven Eagle Awards,” but then adds, “from the British magazine Comics International.”

I founded the Eagles in 1976 with then Comic Medium News editor/publisher Richard Burton. That was 14 years before ever CI existed.

No big deal. I was associated with that magazine throughout its nigh-on-two-decade run but its connection with the Eagles was by association rather than by any actual involvement. Maybe Philip just couldn’t believe I’m as old as I am, and telescoped my career!

Keep on choogling.

– Mike Conroy

Thank you, Peter. Our orders have remained consistent during market downturns, so hopefully there won’t be “something” coming along to change that.

That’s a great story, by the way—thanks for sharing it.

And we’ll betcha it won’t be long before you’re back in our pages again!

– M.E.

GOT A CRUSH ON A SHE-DEVIL… AND WEEZIE, TOO Michael, I thoroughly enjoyed BI #43, not least because I have, for three decades, carried on a secret affair with Shanna the SheDevil. So secret, in fact, even she doesn’t know about it.

I was lucky enough back in 1981 to buy Ka-Zar the Savage #1 off the shelf in my local newsagents—no mean piece of luck for a young lad in Wales, UK. I was grabbed primarily by the powerful cover (good editorial decision, then, to go with that one rather than the unpublished version!), but the contents were a revelation. Sharp, adult script, sharp, expressive art. To this day, I still think the first 16 or so issues of this book are up there with the best material Marvel ever published—that it hasn’t been collected in a TPB is a scandal. It was years ahead of its time.

I loved that book—it was serious and funny, utterly compelling. The cover to #5 is a work of supreme emotion and Brent

78 • BACK ISSUE • Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MORE ON MARVEL’S STAMPED COMPS Suddenly I’m in two issues of BACK ISSUE in a row. Makes me feel almost—notable.

But in issue #43 (Shanna, et al) in a picture caption attached to the Bruce Jones/Brent Anderson [Ka-Zar the Savage] article, there was Brent’s recollection of the “Not To Be Sold” stamp on the Marvel comp issues. I was hanging around the Marvel offices while that was going on, and here’s how it got explained to me: What was happening was not freelancers profiting from reselling their comps, but that comics were being stolen out of the comp bundles before they got to the freelancers. By stamping them “Not To Be Sold,” Marvel was able to track down who was selling them to dealers. (It was a LOT of books.)

They found out, the perp (somebody on the office staff far removed from editorial) got caught, and the stamp went away.

I remember being told who it was, but I no longer remember.

Now, of course, that may not be any more the true story than Brent’s—but that’s what got floated around the office.

Nice magazine you’ve got there, Michael—it’d be a shame if something happened to it.

– Peter B. Gillis

Anderson’s work during his run was stunning. I even scrawled a handwritten missive to “Through the Grapevine,” the letters page, and, to my shock and delight, issue #26 from May 1983 printed it, including my sage assessment of Bruce Jones as “a very, very good writer.” That somebody took the time to read my awful handwriting and transcribe it was a surprise that makes me glow to this day, because, as your excellent feature reflects, the fans really, really got into this book.

When the direct sales kicked in, I ordered it from purveyors I sought out (no comic-book shops in Wales then!).The editorials after the direct sales started featured photo strips with the beautiful Weezie [Louise Jones Simonson] (with whom I also fell in love) and the bearded Chris Claremont (not so much with the falling in love, there) and it was a riot. There was even a cut-out and make-yourself model Zabu, whose head is still on my shelf.

Backup strips illustrated by Gil Kane and Val Mayerik were mini classics in their own right.

Like Mike Aragona, I, too, was inspired to read Dante after learning of him in the Belasco Saga. Of course, I bought Brent’s Ka-Zar Portfolio—each print worthy of framing. A few years ago I managed to buy an unused Ron Frenz cover, featuring the lovely Shanna.

And a couple of years ago, to my great delight, I bumped into Weezie and Walt [Simonson] at a comics convention over here.

I expressed my enduring love for the pretty girl in the photo editorials and Walt explained I was “now scaring him.”

Ka-Zar the Savage was a book that stayed with you. Thirty years later BACK ISSUE brought a big smile to my face. Just hope Weezie doesn’t tell Shanna. Or my wife.

– John Roche

Simone revealed with offhanded glee that she had had Wonder Woman break Grendel’s neck in a recent issue of Secret Six. What?!?

First of all, it takes a lot of gall to have your character kill off somebody else’s arch-enemy and to top it off have them do it in an issue of what isn’t even their own comic. I mean, it’s like having Aquaman drown the Joker in an issue of Teen Titans!

And second, what is it with Wonder Woman breaking people’s necks all of a sudden? Sure, she’s an Amazon, but that doesn’t mean she’s Xena the Warrior Princess!

According to her creator, Charles Moulton, her people had been at peace for thousands of years and only practiced their martial skills as a way of keeping fit, and their princess, Diana, was sent from Paradise Island as an ambassador to the world of men to teach them to use love rather than hate to mend their warring ways, and this was during World War II when America was fighting an allout war against Hitler and the Nazis. Now she’s been turned into a barbarian in a bustier (although admittedly she looks better in hers than Beowulf did in his!) because apparently today’s readers will only accept someone as a “hero” if they’re willing to be a ruthless killer, which in her case is like going to Scandinavia to try and convince the people who came up with the Nobel Peace Prize and the Volvo that they should go back to being Vikings!

Ah, well, sorry for going off on a bit of rant there. Enjoyed the issue and, as always, am looking forward to the next.

– Jeff Taylor

WONDER WHY THERE WAS A RAWHIDE KID MINISERIES? Hello, Michael!

First off, kudos to all involved for the work BACK ISSUE and Alter Ego are doing in keeping the rich history of comics alive. Those efforts are much appreciated by those of us who really care.

Three subjects in recent issues of BI especially caught my eye, because of my own (very) minor contributions to the genres in question.

Who among us old timers doesn’t love a good, old-fashioned jungle adventure (BI #43)? My one and only crack at this came in the one and only issue of a little-seen comic entitled Dino-Betty (1993) from small indie publisher Conquest Press.

That same issue of BI carried comments from old hand Mike W. Barr regarding Harvey Comics’ Black Cat. I had the privilege of helping Alan Harvey in his attempt to revive her and other Harvey characters back in 1995. The lead story in the first new issue featuring Black Cat was written by Mark Evanier and illustrated by the legendary Murphy Anderson. My meager contribution came in the form of a backup story (drawn by Andrew Pepoy) that revived and revised one of Harvey’s more obscure Golden Age characters: Shock Gibson. Again, alas, only the one issue ever appeared.

Finally, having grown up in a Golden Age of Western movies and television shows, I particularly enjoyed BI #42’s “Wild West” issue. It was truly an act of love that led me to write my own Western one-shot Pistolero from Malibu Comics back in the 1980s.

I also have an anecdote in regard to the 1985 Rawhide Kid miniseries that was profiled in that issue, which you and your readers might find interesting.

Back in the ’80s, I had the pleasure of striking up an acquaintance with the late Carol Kalish. She and I carried on more than one lively discussion while standing in the lobbies of various convention hotels, and at the time of her tragic passing were exploring the possibility of letting me do some scripting for the line of Biblical adaptations she was slated to edit for Marvel.

Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

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BACK ISSUE • 79

© 1995 Harvey Entertainment.

TM & © DC Comics.

BIG BEOWULF BUFF I was a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs growing up, thanks to KVOS Bellingham showing the Tarzan movies all the time (God bless US border stations!) and the Ron Ely TV series, and got into barbarian books thanks to Lin Carter and Michael Moorcock (not so much Robert E. Howard himself, though for some reason, probably because he didn’t offer the magnificently monster-filled wild flights of fantasy that Burroughs, Carter, and Moorcock whisked me away on as a young reader in those pre-Harry Potter days). So I enjoyed the heck out of your “Born to be Wild”-themed BACK ISSUE #43.

The stuff on Ka-Zar, Shanna, and Rima the Jungle Girl was quite fascinating, as was the article on Korg: 70,000 B.C., although I see that there was no mention of the fact that the show’s makers made no secret of the fact that the title caveman was named after the Japanese maker of electronic musical equipment, something I came across in an obscure little newspaper story from those distant days before the late, lamented Starlog magazine.

Also enjoyed the look at Claw the Unconquered, one of the better Conan imitators who, to be honest, I quite prefer to the original, mainly because it was so wonderfully bizarre.

And speaking of bizarre… an overflowing barrel full of thanks for daring to cover DC’s version of Beowulf, which is probably one of the all-time great guilty pleasures of my childhood.

I downright loved that book, even though I knew even back then it didn’t make a lick of sense. I mean, take that minotaur skull he wore as a helmet… I grew up in the Canadian equivalent of cowboy country, and I saw enough cow skulls to know that there was no way that something like that could ever be worn on a human head. And don’t get me started on the infeasibility of that strapless cast iron “bustier” he wore as armor!

And the book had “first comic series” written all over it with young writer Michael Uslan’s obvious desire to stick in everything he could think of just in case he never got a chance to do another one, giving Beowulf a delightful “Oh, why not?” bursting at the seams feel not seen since the origin of the original Marvel Boy back in the Golden Age where Simon & Kirby made the title teenage hero the reincarnation of the mummy of Hercules of Valhalla!

But, by Wyrd, I loved the noble red-haired barbarian hero with his almost-insane courage and over-the-top lust for fame and glory which now seems strangely honest and pure in our age of reality television.

And Grendel, ah, Grendel… there was a savage and scaly swamp monster that lived up to the name “monster.” No brooding attempts to win reader sympathy here, instead a simple allconsuming hatred for humanity whose sheer viciousness an alienated teenager could thrill to vicariously while still looking forward to the much-awaited final battle where the hero killed the cannibalistic creature (and how did DC get away with that little quirk in the still Comic Code-controlled ’70s?).

You know, it is rather embarrassing to admit now, but way back when I was a kid this comic actually inspired me to write my own stories about Grendel as a wolf-pelt and chainmail-clad barbarian hero with his adventures taking place before he was mutated into a malevolent monster, complete with a magic sword called Skyfang and a mysterious mother known as the Werewolf of the Sea (what can I say… I was a teenager in the ’70s and the world hadn’t even heard of Matt Wagner yet!).

Yeah, I really loved the Beowulf comic… which is why I was more than a little annoyed by the sidebar story where writer Gail

© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

During the course of one of our conversations, I asked her why Marvel was even bothering to do a Rawhide Kid series, given that even then interest in such titles had waned significantly. She gave me two reasons: First, it was a way of rewarding scripter Bill Mantlo for a job well done. It was a project he wanted to do, and Marvel felt he had worked diligently and well for them on his many other assignments and deserved to be rewarded with a project of his choosing.

Secondly, and I think I’m coming close to an exact quote here, Carol declared: “And we’re Marvel—so we can’t lose money on it.”

Her comment did not come from hubris—at that time it was a simple statement of fact.

I wish the same could be said as confidently today, not only for Marvel but for DC and all the independent publishers as well.

Keep up the good work.

– R. A. Jones Nice to hear from you, R. A. We appreciate the positive feedback—and the great Carol Kalish anecdote.

– M.E.

MORE SINGLE-CHARACTER ISSUES! I just received BACK ISSUE #44, and I think it’s one of the best issues you’ve ever done (and that’s saying something). I really like the idea of single-character issues.

– Matthew Sunrich Our next single-character issue is our Golden Anniversary issue, BI #50, themed “Batman in the Bronze Age.” I won’t share the cover image yet but will reveal that it features a rarely seen Batman and Robin illo by Jim Aparo!

And as noted earlier, a Superman issue is being planned—plus issues on the Avengers and the Justice League of America. Oh, yeah, plus our All-Prez issue.

(Before you start your hate mail, yes, I’m joking about that last one.)

– M.E.

THE ORIGINAL ENDING OF THE SPIDER-CLONE SAGA Just finished reading issue #44, and wanted to point out one small item that was overlooked in the Pro2Pro Roundtable, that being that Gerry Conway resolved the Spider-Clone Saga way back in 1988 when he revealed that Professor Miles Warren had lied about perfecting the process of cloning at all, instead engineering a genetic virus capable of transforming individuals of similar age and genotype on a cellular level into near duplicates. He subjected his lab assistant, Anthony Serba, to this process, transforming him into the Spider-Man clone and student, Joyce Delaney, who was transformed into the Gwen Stacy clone.

– jrnewto@fastmail.fm Next issue: “Thrilling Days of Yesteryear”! The final interview with the late, great DAVE STEVENS headlines our issue, loaded with Stevens art and photographs.

Also, the film version of Stevens’ Rocketeer is discussed in a Pro2Pro interview with DANNY BILSON and PAUL DeMEO. Plus: The Phantom at Charlton and DC Comics, Dominic Fortune, Man-God, Miracle Squad, and Justice, Inc. With art by and/ or commentary from JIM APARO, HOWARD CHAYKIN, TONY DeZUNIGA, JACK KIRBY, LUKE McDONNELL, MARK VERHEIDEN, and more. And featuring a Rocketeer cover by DAVE STEVENS and LAURA MARTIN! Don’t ask, just BI it! See you in sixty!

Michael Eury, editor The Rocketeer TM & © the Rocketeer Trust. BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows.

80 • BACK ISSUE • Greatest Stories Never Told Issue

S U B M IS S IO N G U ID E L IN E S BACK ISSUE is on the lookout for the following comics-related material from the 1970s and 1980s: Unpublished artwork and covers Original artwork and covers Penciled artwork Character designs, model sheets, etc.

Original sketches and/or convention sketches Original scripts Photos Little-seen fanzine material Other rarities Creators and collectors of 1970s/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).

Submit artwork as (listed in order of preference): Scanned images: 300dpi TIF (preferred) or JPEG (e-mailed or on CD, or to our FTP site; please inquire) Clear color or black-and-white photocopies 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@gmail.com or by sending a SASE to the address below.

Please allow 6–8 weeks for a response to your proposals.

Artwork submissions and SASEs for writers’ guidelines should be sent to: Michael Eury, Editor BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE Concord, NC 28025

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!, 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 camera-ready 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.

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2011 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

Media Mail

WHE N YO ORD U ONL ER INE! BRICKJOURNAL #12

1st Class Canada 1st Class Priority US Intl.

Intl.

Digital Only $15.80

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$50

$68

$65*

$72

$150

BACK ISSUE! (8 issues)

$60

$80

$85*

$107**

$155

$23.60

DRAW! (4 issues)

$30

$40

$43*

$54 **

$78

$11.80

ALTER EGO (8 issues)

$60

$80

$85*

$107**

$155

$23.60

BRICKJOURNAL (6 issues)

$57

$72

$75*

$86 ***

$128

$23.70

BRICKJOURNAL #13

“Back To School” issue, with a look at school sculptures by NATHAN SAWAYA, builder MARCOS BESSA'S creations, ANGUS MACLANE'S CUBEDUDES, a Nepali Diorama by JORDAN SCHWARTZ, instructions to build a school bus for your LEGO town, minifigure customizations, how a Power Miners model became one for Atlantis, building standards, and more!

Special EVENT ISSUE with reports from BRICKMAGIC (the newest US LEGO fan festival, organized by BrickJournal), BRICKWORLD (one of the oldest US LEGO fan events), and others! Plus: STEP-BYSTEP INSTRUCTIONS, spotlights on builders and minifigure customization, a look at 3-D PHOTOGRAPHY with LEGO models, & more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 Ships January 2011

* Save $1 per issue **Save $4 per issue ***Save $5 per issue

ALTER EGO #97

ALTER EGO #98

ALTER EGO #99

DRAW! #20

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) The non-EC Horror Comics of the 1950s! From Menace and House of Mystery to The Thing!, we present vintage art and artifacts

by EVERETT, BRIEFER, DITKO, MANEELY, COLAN , MESKIN, MOLDOFF, HEATH, POWELL, COLE, SIMON & KIRBY, FUJITANI, and others, plus FCA , MR. MONSTER and more, behind a creepy, eerie cover by BILL EVERETT!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) Spotlight on Superman’s first editor WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, longtime Krypto-editor MORT WEISINGER remembered by his daughter, an interview with Superman writer ALVIN SCHWARTZ, art by JOE SHUSTER, WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, AL PLASTINO, and NEAL ADAMS, plus MR. MONSTER, FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA), and a new cover by JERRY ORDWAY!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) GEORGE TUSKA showcase issue on his career at Lev Gleason, Marvel, and in comics strips through the early 1970s—CRIME DOES NOT PAY, BUCK ROGERS, IRON MAN, AVENGERS, HERO FOR HIRE, and more! Interview with 1950s Timely/Marvel editor AL SULMAN (“personal associate of STAN LEE!”), MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and more!

WALTER SIMONSON interview and demo, Rough Stuff’s BOB McLEOD gives a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, Write Now’s DANNY FINGEROTH spotlights writer/artist AL JAFFEE, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the best art supplies and tool technology, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS offer “Comic Art Bootcamp” lessons, plus Web links, comic and book reviews, and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Ships February 2011

TwoMorrows.

Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) ®

BACK ISSUE #43

BACK ISSUE #44

BACK ISSUE #45

KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Jungle and barbarian” issue! Shanna the She-Devil feature and gallery, JONES and ANDERSON on Ka-Zar, LARRY HAMA interview, Beowulf, Claw the Unconquered, Korg 70,000 B.C., Red Sonja, Rima the Jungle Girl, art and commentary by AZZARELLO, BOYETTE, CHAN, GULACY, KUBERT, MICHELINIE, REDONDO, ROY THOMAS, WINDSOR-SMITH, cover by FRANK CHO!

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Spider-Man in the Bronze Age!” Drug issues, resurrection of Green Goblin and Gwen Stacy, Marvel Team-Up, Spectacular Spider-Man, Spidey Super Stories, CBS and Japanese TV shows, Clone Saga, CONWAY, ANDRU, BAGLEY, SAL BUSCEMA, DeFALCO, FINGEROTH, GIL KANE, STAN LEE, LEIBER, MOONEY, ROMITA SR., SALICRUP, SAVIUK, STERN, cover by BOB LARKIN!

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Odd Couples!” O’NEIL and ADAMS’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Englehart’s Justice League of America, Daredevil and Black Widow, Power Man and Iron Fist, Vision and Scarlet Witch, Cloak and Dagger, and… Aquaman and Deadman (?!). With AUSTIN, COLAN, CONWAY, COWAN, DILLIN, HOWELL, LEONARDI, SKEATES, and more. New cover by NEAL ADAMS!

“Kirby Goes To Hollywood!” SERGIO ARAGONÉS and MELL LAZARUS recall Kirby’s BOB NEWHART TV show cameo, comparing the recent STAR WARS films to New Gods, RUBY & SPEARS interviewed, Jack’s encounters with FRANK ZAPPA, PAUL McCARTNEY, and JOHN LENNON, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a Golden Age Kirby story, and more! Kirby cover inked by PAUL SMITH!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 US • Now shipping!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 US Now shipping!

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com www.twomorrows.com

All characters TM & ©2010 their respective owners.

ALTER EGO #96

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) Focus on Archie’s 1960s MIGHTY CRUSADERS, with vintage art and artifacts by JERRY SIEGEL, PAUL REINMAN, SIMON & KIRBY, JOHN ROSENBERGER, tributes to the Crusaders by BOB FUJITANE, GEORGE TUSKA, BOB LAYTON, and others!

Interview with MELL LAZARUS, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more! Cover by MIKE MACHLAN!

NEW BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS!

NOW G! IN SHIPP

S IN SHIPB E F .!

CARMINE INFANTINO

PENCILER, PUBLISHER, PROVOCATEUR CARMINE INFANTINO is the artistic and publishing visionary whose mark on the comic book industry pushed conventional boundaries. As a penciler and cover artist, he was a major force in defining the Silver Age of comics, co-creating the modern Flash and resuscitating the Batman franchise in the 1960s. As art director and publisher, he steered DC Comics through the late 1960s and 1970s, one of the most creative and fertile periods in their long history. Join historian and inker JIM AMASH (Alter Ego magazine, Archie Comics) and ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON (Modern Masters book series) as they document the life and career of Carmine Infantino, in the most candid and thorough interview this controversial living legend has ever given, lavishly illustrated with the incredible images that made him a star. CARMINE INFANTINO: PENCILER, PUBLISHER, PROVOCATEUR shines a light on the artist’s life, career, and contemporaries, and uncovers details about the comics industry never made public until now. The hardcover edition includes a dust jacket, custom endleaves, plus a 16-PAGE FULL-COLOR SECTION not found in the softcover edition. New Infantino cover inked by TERRY AUSTIN!

(224-page softcover) $26.95 • (240-page hardcover with COLOR) $46.95

THE STAN LEE UNIVERSE

Looks at the life and career of comics’ most controversial inker, known for the atmospheric feel he gave his work, and the shortcuts he took. With commentary by Colletta’s friends, family, and co-workers.

Face front, true believers! THE STAN LEE UNIVERSE is the ultimate repository of interviews with and mementos about Marvel Comics’ fearless leader! From his Soapbox to the box office, the Smilin’ One literally changed the face of comic books and pop culture, and this tome presents numerous rare and unpublished interviews with Stan, plus interviews with top luminaries of the comics industry, including JOHN ROMITA SR. & JR., TODD McFARLANE, ROY THOMAS, DENNIS O’NEIL, GENE COLAN, AL JAFFEE, LARRY LIEBER, JERRY ROBINSON, and MICHAEL USLAN discussing his vital importance to the field he helped shape. And as a bonus, direct from Stan’s personal archives, you’ll see rare photos, sample scripts and plots, and many other unseen items, such as: PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE between Stan and such prominent figures as: JAMES CAMERON, OLIVER STONE, RAY BRADBURY, DENIS KITCHEN, ALAIN RESNAIS and (Sinatra lyricist and pal) SAMMY CAHN! Transcripts of 1960s RADIO INTERVIEWS with Stan during the early Marvel era (one co-featuring JACK KIRBY, and one with Stan debating Dr. Fredric Wertham’s partner in psychological innovation and hating comics)! Rarely seen art by legends including KIRBY, JOHN ROMITA SR. and JOE MANEELY! Plot, script, and balloon placements from the 1978 SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, including comprehensive notes from Lee and Kirby about the story. Notes by RICHARD CORBEN and WILL EISNER for Marvel projects that never came to be! Pages from a SILVER SURFER screenplay done by Stan for ROGER CORMAN! Notes and thumbnail sketches by JOHN BUSCEMA from HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY, and more! Excelsior! (Co-edited by ROY THOMAS and DANNY FINGEROTH.) Hardcover includes a deluxe dust jacket, plus 16 EXTRA FULL-COLOR PAGES of rare Archive Material!

(112-page softcover) $14.95

(176-page softcover with COLOR) $26.95 • (192-page hardcover with COLOR) $39.95

OW AND PNING: SHIP

THE THIN BLACK LINE:

VINCE COLLETTA

FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG, CALL, WRITE, E-MAIL, OR LOG ONTO www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com