Back Issue #51 by TwoMorrows Publishing

ALL-INTERVIEW ISSUE: “Pro2Pro” with SIMONSON & LARSEN, MOENCH & WEIN, and letterers KLEIN & CHIANG • JOHN OSTRANDER and color artist ADRIENNE ROY’s final interview

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STEVE ENGLEHART discusses his Bronze Age series, including his collaboration with

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MARSHALL ROGERS

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

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“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.!

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(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!

(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Wild West” issue! Jonah Hex examined with FLEISHER, DeZUNIGA, DOMINGUEZ, GARCIA-LOPEZ, GIFFEN, HANNIGAN, plus TRUMAN’s Scout, TRIMPE’s Rawhide Kid, AYERS’ Ghost Rider, DC’s Weird Westerns, the Vigilante’s 1970s revival, and more! Art and commentary by ADAMS, APARO, DIXON, EVANS, KUNKEL, MORROW, NICIEZA, and more. Cover by DeZUNIGA!

(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!

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(NOW 8x/YEAR, WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Greatest Stories Never Told!” How Savage Empire became The Warlord, the aborted FF graphic novel “Fathers and Sons,” BYRNE’s Last Galactus Story, Star*Reach’s Batman, Aquaman II, 1984 Black Canary miniseries, Captain America: The Musical, Miracleman: Triumphant, unpublished issues of The Cat and Warlock, BLEVINS, DEODATO, FRADON, SEKOWSKY, WEISS, MIKE GRELL cover!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Thrilling Days of Yesteryear!” The final DAVE STEVENS interview, Rocketeer film discussion with DANNY BILSON and PAUL DeMEO, The Phantom, Indiana Jones, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ heroes, Dominic Fortune, Sherlock Holmes, Man-God, Miracle Squad, 3-D Man, Justice, Inc., APARO, CHAYKIN, CLAREMONT, MILLER, VERHEIDEN, and more, Rocketeer cover by DAVE STEVENS!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “Dead Heroes”! JIM (“Death of Captain Marvel”) STARLIN interview, Deadman after Neal Adams, Jason Todd Robin, the death and resurrection of the Flash, Elektra, the many deaths of Aunt May, art by and/or commentary from APARO, BATES, CONWAY, GARCIA-LOPEZ, GEOFF JOHNS, MILLER, WOLFMAN, and a cosmically cool cover by JIM STARLIN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “1970s Time Capsule”! Examines relevance in comics, Planet of the Apes, DC Salutes the Bicentennial, Richard Dragon–Kung-Fu Fighter, FOOM, Amazing World of DC, Fast Willie Jackson, Marvel Comics calendars, art and commentary from ADAMS, BRUNNER, GIORDANO, LARKIN, LEVITZ, MAGGIN, MOENCH, O’NEIL, PLOOG, STERANKO, cover by BUCKLER and BEATTY!

Special 50th Anniversary FULL-COLOR issue ($8.95 price) on “Batman in the Bronze Age!” O’NEIL, ADAMS, and LEVITZ roundtable, praise for “unsung” Batman creators JIM APARO, DAVID V. REED, BOB BROWN, ERNIE CHAN, and JOHN CALNAN, Joker’s Daughter, Batman Family, Nocturna, Dark Knight, art and commentary from BYRNE, COLAN, CONWAY, MOENCH, MILLER, NEWTON, WEIN, and more. APARO cover!

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Volume 1, Number 51 September 2011 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, and Beyond!

The Retro Comics Experience!

EDITOR Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks COVER ARTIST Marshall Rogers COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Richard Arndt Al Bigley Jon B. Cooke DC Comics Mark DiFruscio Steve Englehart Grand Comic-Book Database Robert Greenberger David Hamilton Karl Heitmueller Heritage Comics Auctions Erik Larsen Doug Moench Brian K. Morris John Ostrander Robby Reed Ari Shapiro Walter Simonson Roy Thomas Anthony Tollin Emmanuel Tosi Len Wein Eddy Zeno

BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 INTERVIEW: Steve Englehart, Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Continued from the pages of our sister magazine, Alter Ego #103, the popular writer discusses his jump from Marvel to DC Comics PRO2PRO: Walter Simonson and Erik Larsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Two comics giants share an incisive dialogue in the original Pro2Pro interview, conducted at the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con INTERVIEW: John Ostrander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 Curt Swan biographer Eddy Zeno explores the rich tapestry of theater and comics from the career of the prolific Star Wars and Suicide Squad scribe PRINCE STREET NEWS: Superman’s New Costume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Cartoonist Karl Heitmueller sets his fashion sights on the Man of Steel’s new look INTERVIEW: Adrienne Roy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Bob Greenberger conducts the final interview with the talented color artist whose palette enriched hundreds of Batman and Detective Comics issues PRO2PRO: Len Wein Interviews Doug Moench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 Recorded at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, a conversation between two of the medium’s most enduring wordsmiths PRO2PRO: The Letterers Column: Janice Chiang and Todd Klein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Two lettering legends reflect on their long careers and talk about surviving professionally in the digital age BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 Reader feedback on issues #47 and 48 REMEMBERING GENE COLAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Collector Emmanuel Tosi shares with BACK ISSUE what may be Gentleman Gene’s final illustration 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. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-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 Marshall Rogers. Batman TM & © DC Comics. 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. All-Interview Issue

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Michael Eury

This editorial begins with a confession: When publisher John Morrow and I were first developing BACK ISSUE back in 2003, I disliked Q&A interviews in print. My preference was (and still is) having creators’ quotes appear within articles. Interviews, I thought, work best on video or on a live panel. If you look back to our earliest issues, discounting our Pro2Pro two-creator interviews, the first time we featured a single-creator interview was in issue #10, a chat with Howard Chaykin (more on him later). My bias against interviews wasn’t necessarily a matter of personal preference: Other magazines and blogs frequently featured them, and I wanted BACK ISSUE to stand out. Also, from day one I intended to differentiate BACK ISSUE from its TwoMorrows predecessor, Comic Book Artist, by having BI be about the comics themselves, where CBA, as evidenced by its name, usually covered the people behind the comics. In the near ten years (!) since, however, interviews have grown on me. They are the closest thing a print (and digital) magazine can provide to a live conversation, and no forum other than a guest editorial better allows an individual writer or artist’s voice to be “heard.” Also, the number of comics-based publications featuring interviews has dwindled, making print interviews less common in the marketplace. And so this issue, we present an entire issue dedicated to interviews, both Pro2Pros and up-close-and-personal dialogues. Truth is, this is our first hodgepodge issue: Our previous 50 issues have been carefully constructed around editorial themes, and most of the interviews in this edition were on hold, waiting for the right theme to allow them to be published. The idea of an all-interview issue arose when Anthony Tollin contacted me late last year with the unfortunate news of the terminal cancer of Adrienne Roy, his former wife. Adrienne was the color artist for countless DC comics for decades and had witnessed many innovations, and her observations would be of value to readers, Anthony argued (although I really didn’t need convincing). Sadly, Adrienne Roy did not live long enough to see this interview appear in print, and we dedicate this issue to her memory.

ADRIENNE ROY

June 29, 1953–December 14, 2010

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Each of the other interviews in this issue offer perspectives that Bronze and Modern Age comics readers will find intriguing—and how often do you find Steve Englehart, John Ostrander, Doug Moench and Len Wein, and letterers Janice Chiang and Todd Klein together in one publication? And the biggest kick of the issue is a 1993 Pro2Pro interview between Walter Simonson and Erik Larsen! You’ll be surprised at some of their prescient comments, and will enjoy seeing how things in comic books have and haven’t changed in the ensuing 18 years! But it’s not all talk this issue! We’re proud to feature a two-page comic strip called “Prince Street News” by Karl Heitmueller. If you grew up with comics of the 1970s and 1980s, you should appreciate this feature—and in this premiere BI outing, Karl peeks into Superman’s closet to evaluate his new duds. If you want to see more of “Prince Street News,” let us know.

ABOUT OUR COVER Marshall Rogers died much too young, in March of 2007. This issue we feature a moody Batman cover that was a black-and-white illustration commissioned by Ari Shapiro, who kindly shared it with us for publication. Rogers produced this shortly before his unexpected passing, and it is in all likelihood his last Batman illo. And what an amazing one it is! We’re honored to share it with you, with Glenn Whitmore’s colors, as our cover.

BACK ISSUE WRITERS’ NEW BOOKS The work of two of our own can be found in recently released books: • Philip Schweier’s aforementioned interview with Howard Chaykin is included in the book Howard Chaykin Conversations, a 304-page hardcover published by University Press of Mississippi and listing for $40.00. It’s a collection of interviews with the American Flagg! creator, edited by Brannon Costello. • Mark Arnold’s two-volume If You’re Cracked, You’re Happy! from Bear Manor Media is touted as “A History of the World’s 2nd Greatest Humor Magazine!” These softcover trades reflect Mark’s unparalleled research into each and every issue of Cracked— he digs deep into the magazine’s long journey, bolstered by lots of B&W art and photos. Mark’s research is so exhaustive, he even includes a quote from yours truly, whose Cracked contribution is limited to a single 1990s entry. Both volumes include extensive indexes and retail for $34.95 each.

Steve Englehart was one of the bright lights among the writers breaking into the comics field in the 1970s. He worked on such titles as The Avengers, Captain America, Incredible Hulk, The Defenders, Master of Kung Fu, Batman in Detective Comics, Justice League of America, and Mister Miracle, among others. The portion of this interview covering his 1972–1975 comics career appeared in editor Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego #103. We resume with Steve’s comments on his departure from Marvel. – Richard Arndt

DEAD DREAMS

Richard J. Arndt

RICHARD ARNDT: When Roy Thomas left as Marvel’s editor—he was editor-in-chief toward the end of his run—there seemed to be a round robin of editors, who came in and left rather rapidly, sometimes in less than a year. You left Marvel, sometime in 1976, also rather abruptly. I don’t think I’d seen any writer leave all their books quite that abruptly in comics before. I mean, they may have, but it may have been outside my experience. I’ve never understood the reason why you left. I’m not certain that it’s any of my business why, but I’m going to ask the question anyway and you can feel free to tell me to mind my own business. STEVE ENGLEHART: Well, I’ve told the story before, so it’s not a secret. Roy, from what I understand, preferred the creative side of life to being a full-time editor. He didn’t like the structural and time demands that came in with the job of being the editor[-in-chief]. There were group editors at DC, but at Marvel Roy was the main editor for the entire line. When he left, Len Wein came in, but I think Len also didn’t like the responsibilities of editing an entire line of comics, the difficulties of being editor. Marv Wolfman followed him and then Gerry Conway followed him. Gerry is a highly respected TV guy these days, but we were all young then and when he came in he said, “I’ve got all the power now so I want to write The Avengers.” He’d just come off the Justice League over at DC so that may have had something to do with it. He called up me and said, “I’m taking The Avengers away from you.” He also called up Steve Gerber and said he was taking The Defenders away from him. That was not how Marvel had been run in all the time I was there. It pissed us off and it pissed off people who were just standing on the sidelines. I said, “This was not the way things were supposed to operate. You can’t take my book.” He said that yes, he could, and he did. So I said that I’m outta here. I had signed up for a particular approach to the world and, in retrospect, having done this sort of thing for a long time I know that people can play that sort of thing in different ways, but that was the way I chose to play it. I said I was outta there.

Next Stop: Fourth World After leaving Marvel Comics in 1976, writer Steve Englehart was lured to DC Comics by publisher Jenette Kahn, taking over Justice League of America and Batman in Detective Comics for a memorable year’s worth of stories in each. Among his other DC assignments: a revival of Jack Kirby’s Mister Miracle, with his Batman partner, Marshall Rogers. Cover to issue #19 (Sept. 1977). TM & © DC Comics.

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Beginnings: Art assistant to Neal Adams on “The Soft, Sweet Lips of Hell!” in Vampirella #10 (Mar. 1971) / “Iron Man: D.O.A.” in Amazing Adventures #12 (May 1972)

Milestones: The Defenders / Captain America / The Incredible Hulk / Vampirella magazine (writing under the pseudonym “Chad Archer”) / The Avengers / Super-Villain Team-Up / Detective Comics / Justice League of America / Mister Miracle / Coyote / Green Lantern / Green Lantern Corps / Millennium / West Coast Avengers / Fantastic Four (writing under the pseudonym “John Harkness”) / X-O Manowar / The Avengers: Celestial Quest / Batman: Dark Detective

Works in Progress: The Plain Man / The Box Man / The Clock Man—continuing the story started in his first novel, The Point Man, published by Tor Books

Cyberspace: steveenglehart.com

steve englehart

That’s It … I’m Outta Here! Doctor Strange #18, Captain Marvel #46, and Avengers #151— all cover-dated Sept. 1976—featured a disgruntled and disappointed Englehart’s last tales on those series. Cover art by Gene Colan and Al Milgrom (Doc Strange), Milgrom (Capt. Marvel), and Jack Kirby and Dan Adkins (Avengers). © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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I can remember standing to one side of myself, watching myself say, “I quit.” It was really stark, because all I ever wanted to do was write Marvel comics. Here I was, writing them—and then suddenly I wasn’t. Without overselling it by any means, there’s a part of me that knows why Captain America would quit when the reality that he believed in turned out to not be what it was supposed to be. So I went away. I was suddenly unemployed. My wife had traveled around Europe for a year before we met and I always thought that sounded really cool. I figured that I was unemployed and there was no better time to travel around Europe for a while. We started making arrangements to do that and then I got a call from [DC Comics publisher] Jenette Kahn, who had just taken over the reins at DC from Carmine Infantino, and she said, “We need you to come over here and fix all our characters.” I thought I had about a year before we could go to Europe and so that’s how I went to DC and ended up revamping the Justice League. I also got the chance to write Batman [in Detective Comics]. [Editor’s note: For an in-depth discussion about his Justice League of America stint, please see the Englehart interview in BACK ISSUE #45.] People ask me how come I only wrote the Justice League and Batman for a year, and it was because it was always only supposed to be a year. DC knew that going in. I was going to do a year’s worth of stuff and then I was off to Europe. So that’s the story of why I left Marvel. ARNDT: The last three titles of your last three Marvel comics you wrote all seem to point out reasons as to why you would leave. I was wondering if that was a coincidence, or that you actually put those titles in that way on purpose. ENGLEHART: I remember that “The Dream is Dead” was the title for my last Dr. Strange [#18, Sept. 1976], and that was definitely there for a reason. I forget what the other two titles were. ARNDT: Captain Marvel’s was “Only One Can Win” [#46, Sept. 1976] and The Avengers’ was “At Last … the Decision” [#151, Sept. 1976]. ENGLEHART: I think the Avengers title referred to the fact that the Avengers were having another membership shake-up, and that title probably fit with what they were doing. I had put that newest version of the team together. In fact, I’d brought Wonder Man back from the dead. I’d had a lot of plans for Wonder Man. I’m not sure about the Captain Marvel title. Maybe it meant something, but I don’t really remember. But the Dr. Strange title was definitely a comment from me directly. I felt that I’d established some sort of relationship with the readers, and I suppose I could have given an interview to let them know the reasons, but inside the office there really wasn’t any way to say, “I’m quitting because Marvel’s policy has been changed drastically.” I wanted to say goodbye to the readers.

I still did my professional best to finish off those get me. I was unemployed! I had lunch with her and she final scripts. Dr. Strange was not at the end of its story discussed how she wanted me to fix all their characters. arc, but I didn’t use the opportunity to kill I said, okay, that I could do that, but that I also everybody or anything like that. I left the wanted to write Batman because I’d always book all set so that it could be published liked the character. the following month with the new team When I started to work out the who took over after I left, but the Justice League, I said to myself that title “The Dream is Dead” reflected I’ve got to give each one of the my last message on the book. A League members characterization goodbye to the fans. and I’ve got to include all of them in ARNDT: Just as a message to the a story. They’ve got to have good original fans, what was your intended supervillains to fight. I very quickly ending to that “Dr. Strange meets Ben realized that that was simply not Franklin” tale that was interrupted possible with only 17 pages, which by your leaving? was the industry standard at the time, ENGLEHART: I was obviously playing to work with. There were no rules Dick Dillin around with the fact that Dr. Strange where I came from, so I suggested a didn’t have enough time for his monthly book that was doubleother-dimensional girlfriend, Clea. That was going to sized. Fortunately, Justice League was drawn by Dick lead wherever it was going to lead. Soap-opera stuff like Dillin, who could do that many pages. that I basically let write itself. Somebody would make a decision that would lead to the next step, and we’d see what happens. But in the mystical side of things, Strange and Clea were going to come back to the present— this was in 1976—and discover that Stygero was still alive and he was getting his natural power from American patriotism. He was feeding off all the psychic energy that was coming into America. Thus, he’d never died. That’s basically all I remember of the storyline. This was to be my Bicentennial story. I rarely sat down and wrote out an outline that said, I’m taking Strange to 1776 and here’s what I’m going to do in each issue. I figured out the plot to an issue, to see how that went, and the decisions I made writing that issue would help me figure out how the next issue’s story would go. A lot of time, over the years, when I’ve left series, people go, “Did you have a real plan for what was going to happen next?” I guess, vaguely, but I myself wouldn’t have found out what it was until I wrote it. If I didn’t write it, I wouldn’t know how something was supposed to go. Still, that’s the direction I was moving in on Dr. Strange. It was to be a Bicentennial story.

Giant-Sized Justice Dick Dillin and Jack Abel’s cover to the Englehart-penned Justice League of America #146 (Sept. 1977). (Dillin devotees, you’re gonna love BACK ISSUE #58, starring the Bronze Age JLA!) TM & © DC Comics.

DOUBLE-SIZED DILLIN DOINGS ARNDT: When you went to DC, they were doing the regular Justice League title almost as a Giant-Size book. Each issue had about 33–35 pages of new material. ENGLEHART: Actually, I created that version. It had been a regular book. Jenette wanted me to come in and basically do whatever I did for all the DC characters. DC was really moribund at that point. Everybody who was a big star who’d worked for DC had largely gone to Marvel. Neal Adams had gone over to Marvel. Gil Kane, Mike Friedrich, and Bob Brown had gone over to Marvel. Gardner Fox had gone over to Marvel. People were bailing on DC. Marvel was really where all the action was at. Marvel had the better books, the more fun books. DC was just stuck and didn’t really know how to get unstuck. They had been convinced for so long that they were the number #1 comic company that when they became number #2, they didn’t really have any plan of what they were supposed to do about it. They got rid of [publisher] Carmine Infantino, who I always liked, and brought in Jenette, because you always fire the coach when the team is losing. The first thing she tried to do was to try to hire John Buscema and to try to hire me. She couldn’t get John Buscema, but she could

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The Definitive Batman (below) Detail from the cover of Detective Comics #476 (Mar.–Apr. 1978), illustrated by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin. (right) The cover to Detective Comics #475. TM & © DC Comics.

When I inquired of DC years later why they’ve That first Green Lantern tale is also clearly two 17-page never reprinted that stuff, they said it’s because stories stuck together, but after that, all the Justice League nobody wanted to see Dick Dillin artwork. You can issues I worked on were intended and appeared as take that for what it’s worth. To me, it’s proof that double-length stories. I accomplished what I set out to do. corporate policy is not always the best judge of what I got to give each Justice League characters an in-depth fans may want to see. characterization and still keep the team functioning ARNDT: It does seem odd, since they’re reprinting and the action continuing. the 1960s material in the Showcase ARNDT: Those early Justice League tales Presents format. There’s plenty of that you wrote are clearly highly regarded. Dick Dillin artwork in the later years The Manhunters story was adapted for of that. the Justice League animated series. ENGLEHART: Well, me and DC ENGLEHART: Yes, it was the first have our issues, too. In any event, episode. Dick Dillin was the perfect artist for BATMAN WITH MARSHALL that format. If I was going to write ROGERS the Justice League, it made sense to ARNDT: They also adapted part of do it with the Justice League artist. your famous Batman run, although in Either Mike Sekowsky or Dick Dillin that one, they combined the first half had been the main artists since of your “Laughing Fish” story with day one. I was very happy to work the second half of the Denny O’Neilmarshall rogers with Dick Dillin. Plus, Dick Dillin scripted “The Joker’s Five-Way was old-school. If you said to him, Revenge.” Had you already headed “Dick, we’re going to double the workload on your book,” he would just say, “Okay, for Europe when your Batman stories began to appear? ENGLEHART: No, The first issue or so appeared when send me the script.” So I came up with the idea of doing a double-sized I was in the States. Those were penciled by Walt monthly edition of the Justice League. That was all Simonson. He was the original penciler I was supposed cool. But, for whatever reason, they decided to start to work with. Getting Walt to do that book was a big the double-sized issues a month before I was slated to deal, too, because DC just didn’t have artists of that begin. Trouble with that was, they only had one regular stature in their bullpen at the time. I knew Walt was 17-page story in place, so they came to me to ask if I into illustrating the Batman, but one way or another could write a one-shot 17-page story to accompany he only had time to do rough penciling. Al Milgrom that story and fill out the book. So I ended up writing finished the pencils and inked those issues. It’s a bit a 17-page story that came directly in front of the like what I was saying earlier [in Alter Ego #103], issue I was actually supposed to have started the about Tom Sutton, in a strange way. I don’t mean to book on. My first JLA story was intended to be compare the two in any way, but I personally was the Green Lantern-gets-captured-by-the- very serious about the Batman. I really knew what I Manhunters story.

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wanted to do with that character, and with Walt just doing layouts with Al Milgrom’s finishes, the art did not appear, to me, anyway, as serious as I hoped my scripts were. It was perfectly acceptable art, but it didn’t have the gravity, in my mind, with what I was trying to do and wanting to see. I was still in the mode where it never would have occurred to me to go to Julie Schwartz and say get rid of anybody, let alone someone of the talent of Walt Simonson. So I didn’t do that. I think that Walt had time problems with the book, though. I had done Walt’s stories Marvel-style, where I’d written out a plot and Walt had drawn it and then I dialogued it, but when I realized that I wasn’t seeing what I wanted to see in the artwork, I switched over to writing full scripts, which was DC’s preferred style, anyway. I could pace it better that way. I could make sure that it had the kind of rhythm that I thought the story should have. By that time I was coming up on my European departure date, so I started writing scripts faster than one a month so that I could get the whole story sequence done before I left. I was fairly far ahead of the art, so I didn’t actually see Marshall Rogers’ artwork on those later scripts until I was out of the country. I had finished the scripts—there they were—and they could have been drawn by anybody. It’s perfectly true that if anybody but Marshall and his inker, Terry Austin, had done those issues, it would be doubtful that those stories would be remembered so well today. Maybe they would, but I don’t know. Somehow, DC got these two young guys, Rogers and Austin, to do the art. Remember, these two were not established stars at the time. They were both two guys who were really just breaking into the industry. The amazing thing about that whole situation—and it’s something I was completely unaware of—was that Marshall and Terry were both brought into Joe Orlando’s office—Joe was the art director at DC then—and just got reamed up one side and down the other for this “terrible artwork” they’d delivered. In retrospect, that kind of reaction causes modern-day readers to say, “What the hell are you talking about?,” but in 1977, I don’t know if it was a motivational tool or if Joe Orlando really didn’t like what they were doing. They say that they really took a beating over the editorial reaction to their artwork on the five or six Batman stories of mine they illustrated. On the other hand, I was in Europe and I got a package one day. DC had sent over a collection of all the books and that was the first time I saw Marshall and Terry’s work. I was thrilled! I thought it was fabulous! Comics is a funny business. [laughs] ARNDT: One of the things I liked about Marshall Rogers’ work is that the faces—not of his main villains, but the faces of his small-time crooks and background characters—looked a great deal like faces from the 1940s. They didn’t look contemporary, and looked a little weird.

Boom Tube Buddies (top) A plate from Marshall Rogers’ Batman Portfolio. (bottom) Circa 1977, Steve Englehart with “Mister Miracle,” “Big Barda,” and “Darkseid” at a comic-shop appearance. Photo courtesy of Steve Engelhart and Jon B. Cooke. All-Interview Issue

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The Great Harkness Saga (left) Englehart’s Mister Miracle #20 (Oct. 1977) featured Marshall Rogers inappropriately inked by Vince Colletta. (right) While Rogers solo-illustrated this MM #22 (Feb. 1978) cover, Steve’s dissatisfaction with his own script led him to use the pen name “John Harkness” for the issue. TM & © DC Comics.

ENGLEHART: I wanted to go back to that sort of art style and Marshall picked up on that. I’d seen various reprints of the 1940s Batman stories, and those early strips were very dark and kind of pulpy. That was the ambiance that I wanted to capture. I asked Julie Schwartz if he could get me stats of the back issues, and they sent someone back to the library where DC keeps everything and the guy made Xeroxes of the first year or so of Detective Comics and Batman. My asking for that is, as far as I can tell, the whole beginning of the Archives and Masterworks series. But it was something I was pushing the whole time—that I wanted that early pulp influence on the book. ARNDT: Walt Simonson always looks best when he does his own inking. He has a very stylized approach, and it seems to be difficult for some inkers to match the level of the work he can do solo. ENGLEHART: Perhaps. I have great faith in Terry Austin. I think Terry can ink just about anybody well. He’s got all that juicy black-line work that I was talking about earlier. I think Terry could have done a nice job on Walt. But, as it happens, he did a real nice job on Marshall. ARNDT: Marshall was also drawing Mister Miracle at the same time, from your scripts. ENGLEHART: Right. That was not one of the original titles I was supposed to do, but I did it because I had

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some free time before I left for Europe. They basically wanted me to revive Mister Miracle. I didn’t do that many issues. I hadn’t been a big fan of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World books. As a writer, I really was put off by his lack of writing skills. Years later, after this time period, I was asked to write a Captain Victory and when I went back and read [Kirby’s] Captain Victory, although I’d been put off again by the ham-fisted scripting, I discovered that there were really good concepts in the book, just as there had been in the Fourth World books, but they’d been completely obliterated by Kirby’s lack of writing skills. It’s not real news that Kirby had great concepts. It’s also not news that he couldn’t write! Stan Lee or Joe Simon or someone was needed to get the best out of the whole package. So, with Mister Miracle and the whole Fourth World, I had been really looking forward to them when they were announced and I was really disappointed in them when they first came out. It just didn’t hold up. But when DC asked me to revive him, I went back and re-read all those Mister Miracles and developed an idea of what I could do with the character and some cool things for him to do. I only did it for a few issues, though. I was just filling in until they could find a permanent writer. I myself had no long-term plans for him. That was Marshall inked by Vince Colletta.

ARNDT: One of the reasons I think Vinnie Colletta gets COLLETTA “GETS IT DONE” ARNDT: A couple of issues were inked by Colletta, a bad rap today is that his pages seem to be hard to reproduce if you don’t have the original film or but the last issue was inked by Rick Bryant and artwork. Scanning from old comics pages looked really nice. makes his little featherlike thin ink lines ENGLEHART: Yeah, I liked Vinnie as a drop out or appear broken, and the art person, but it was always explained to page as a whole suffers. You lose a lot me that he was the editor’s best of his detail and it just doesn’t look friend because if a book came in late good, regardless of what it looked and needed to go out tomorrow, like originally. You really have to then Vinnie could get it done. It look at the original comic to see the might not be right, but it would be art the way it first appeared, and done. That’s an important skill in a that’s becoming more and more periodical. Vinnie gets a lot of flak expensive as the years go by. nowadays, but he was important for [Editor’s note: Robert L. Bryant, what he was needed for. Jr.’s biography of comics’ most ARNDT: If there’s a person who’s vince colletta controversial inker, The Thin gotten less respect than Don Heck in Black Line: Perspectives on Vince the comics field, it would have to be Vinnie Colletta. I have to admit that I didn’t like Don Colletta, is available from TwoMorrows at Heck all that well when I was a youngster, but looking http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page= product_info&products_id=899.] at his work today, he’s pretty good. ENGLEHART: That’s what I’m saying—over the years, people have gotten reputations that are completely the opposite way from the way they were regarded during their most productive periods. I tend to like everybody. If you’re a professional in comics it’s because you’ve earned it. I don’t think I’m a Pollyanna about it, but I just appreciated Don Heck for being Don Heck! I didn’t say, “Well, he’s not Jack Kirby” because, let’s face it, who is, except Jack Kirby? It’s the same with all these guys. Everybody says Vinnie Colletta erases things, blah, blah, blah… ARNDT: He does have a terrible reputation, but I remember his inking on Jack Kirby on Thor and I liked that book. Yes, it’s Jack Kirby and that’s a big reason why anybody likes it, but Colletta’s inking is quite elegant and brings a real sense of the mythic to the book. The only other inker I think who approached that on Thor was Bill Everett, and that was a totally different approach. ENGLEHART: Vinnie made the book seem more god-like and more airy than most of the Kirby inkers could have done. Joe Sinnott did a beautiful job on Fantastic Four, but he would have been all wrong if he’d used the same approach on Thor. It would have looked like just another superhero book and Thor couldn’t look that way. It had to be bigger than life. It couldn’t look modern. It had to look timeless and otherworldly and Vinnie delivered that.

Somewhere Under the Rainbow (Bridge) Englehart and interviewer Rich Ardnt believe that the often-criticized Vince Colletta delivered the goods when inking Jack Kirby on Thor—and judging from this awesome original cover art to Thor #145 (Oct. 1967), we’re inclined to agree! Plus it reminds us that 2011’s Thor movie wasn’t the first time the Thunder God was banished to Terra Firma! Art scan courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com). (above) Colletta portrait by Mike Netzer. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Boney Battle Weird War Tales #73 (Mar. 1979) was the third of three WWT issues written by Englehart (the others were #50 and 60). Cover by George Evans. TM & © DC Comics.

Before we leave Mister Miracle, I’d like to ask why you used the “John Harkness” pseudonym for your last issue, the one with Bryant’s inking? ENGLEHART: John Harkness was the pseudonym I used when I didn’t feel that stuff was up to my usual standards. As Steve Englehart, I was shooting for a certain level of quality. If, for whatever reason, I failed to get to that level, then I didn’t want to put my name on it. I’d written the first three issues of the revival and they were good, but DC came to me literally 24 hours before I was to leave the US and said they needed another Mister Miracle script. I wrote that script overnight—just banged it out. I thought it wasn’t up to the standard of the first three scripts, so it was credited to John Harkness. ARNDT: Well, I beg to differ, but I’ve got to confess that I think that particular issue is the best of the four. ENGLEHART: There you go.

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AFTER DC ARNDT: You also worked on several other books just before you left. You did three issues of Weird War Tales stories. It was an anthology book, but your stories were full-length tales. ENGLEHART: I wrote those toward the start of the DC period. Easing in, I guess. They may have been published toward the end of my initial DC run, but they were written toward the start. ARNDT: Another was an issue of the Star*Reach independent comics that Mike Friedrich published and edited. Your story was called “Skywalker” and featured a modern-day sorceress. It’s a pretty darn good story. ENGLEHART: I live in the San Francisco Bay area, and so does Mike Friedrich. I knew him when we were both in New York. He was already in California when I moved back. There was the whole underground comix scene in San Francisco, and those of us in the mainstream comics scene were glad to mingle with them. Mike had the idea of doing what he called “ground-level” comics, which would be a meeting of the underground and the overground comics scenes. I dialogued “Skywalker.” I think the story was done before Luke Skywalker was out. Mike Vosburg had already drawn the story from his own plot. I just dialogued it. It was fun. I liked the story and the concept. [Editor’s note: Star*Reach #7 (below), featuring Vosburg and Englehart’s “Skywalker,” was cover-dated Jan. 1977. Star Wars, introducing Luke Skywalker, premiered in movie theaters on May 30, 1977.] ARNDT: You’d worked with Mike Vosburg before. You did a couple of issues [#6 and 7] of a DC title called Starfire… ENGLEHART: Again, I had a little extra time and they needed a couple of issues written. That is where I first worked with Mike Vosburg. I liked working with him. He had nice, clean lines and was a good storyteller. [Editor’s note: Starfire—a sword-and-sorcery heroine not to be confused with the member of the New Teen Titans with the same name—is one of the “Liberated Ladies” spotlighted in BACK ISSUE #54!]

Personal Appearance A late-1970s comics-shop stopover by Englehart. For the benefit of our younger readers, that device by Steve’s right thigh is a cassette recorder. Courtesy of Steve Englehart and Jon B. Cooke. ARNDT: Mike Friedrich talked to me about a Batman miniseries that he was supposed to do in 1979 or 1980 as a joint Star*Reach/DC production with you and Marshall. ENGLEHART: Yes. Within a very short time after those Batman issues that Marshall and I did came out, they became the definitive version of the 1970s Batman. It would become the linchpin of everything that Batman was going to be in the 1980s. But DC, for some reason, didn’t ask us to do any more Batman stories. We thought that we should keep doing them. Mike had had some success with Star*Reach, particularly in attracting interesting artists to do interesting stories that didn’t really fit in the mainstream comics of the time. We discussed with Mike Friedrich and DC the notion of doing an independent, ground-level Englehart/Rogers graphic novel about the Batman. The deal that Paul Levitz offered, however, had its limits. We could only print 10,000 copies. We knew we could sell more than 10,000 copies because, in those days, mainstream comics generally sold half a million copies. Independent comics were on the verge of selling 100,000 or so. Today, 10,000 copies would be doing pretty good, but back then it was a deal-stopper, especially for such a big project. We could never actually work out the details to suit everybody. All I really remember about the actual story was that it was to deal with Batman on a dirigible. ARNDT: Friedrich told me that he wanted to publish the book in black and white and that DC wanted the book to

be color. He’d found that color was very expensive when he tried it on the one-shot titles Cody Starbuck and Parsifal, particularly for a small company. He simply couldn’t afford to publish a color Batman book. ENGLEHART: Could be. There may have been different reasons that caused everybody to abandon the project. ARNDT: Did Marshall Rogers’ 1980 Batman portfolio have anything to do with this project? It came out almost exactly the same time as the Batman book was being planned. ENGLEHART: Probably. I don’t know if any of the drawings in the portfolio were based on the story we wanted to tell, though. [Editor’s note: For more on the unrealized DC/Star*Reach Batman project, see BI #46.] ARNDT: Well, I know we’re coming to the end of the time period we wanted to cover. What are you doing today? ENGLEHART: Now I’m not doing comics anymore— it’s all novels. Whatever I’ve learned along the way is in The Point Man and The Long Man, and 2011 will see the publication of The Plain Man. ARNDT: I wanted to say before we conclude this interview that this has been a lot of fun for me. I’ve been an admirer of yours for a great many years and have enjoyed your work ever since you started out in the business. Thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate it. ENGLEHART: You’re welcome. I’ve tried to entertain people. I hope I’ve succeeded.

Englehart’s Novels (inset top) Richard Corben produced the original cover for Steve’s The Point Man for its original release in 1980. (main image) The Point Man’s 2009 re-release, accompanying (inset bottom) the release of The Long Man that same year. Englehart’s The Plain Man is due for release in August 2011. Covers courtesy of Richard Arndt and Roy Thomas.

RICHARD ARNDT is a librarian and comics fan from Elko, Nevada. You can see more of his interviews and many checklists at www.enjolrasworld.com (then look for Richard's pages).

All-Interview Issue

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audio-recorded by

David Hamilton

conducted August 22, 1993 and transcribed by Brian K. Morris

Top Cop and Thunder God Our interviewees’ signature characters, Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon and Walter Simonson’s Thor, mean business in this art montage. Thor © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. Savage Dragon © 2011 Erik Larsen.

Editor’s note: At the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con, Walter Simonson—a fan-favorite still basking in the glow of his lauded Thor and Fantastic Four work at Marvel—and Erik Larsen—a newer fan-favorite then enjoying success as one of the co-founders of Image Comics, where his Savage Dragon was a big hit—went one-on-one in a panel interview recorded by David “Hambone” Hamilton. Thanks to BACK ISSUE and the trusty ear of Brian K. Morris, who transcribed this nearly 20-year-old tape, you don’t need a “Time Scope” (more on that later) to enjoy this blast from the past.

“LEARN WHILE YOU EARN” WALTER SIMONSON: Erik, how did you start in comics? ERIK LARSEN: How did I get started in comics? SIMONSON: Sure. LARSEN: Gee whiz, Walt. [Walt laughs uproariously] That’s a very good question. I must say, that’s very perceptive of you to think of that.

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SIMONSON: [Walt laughs again] LARSEN: Published my own fanzine about 11 years ago with a couple other friends, and we just got our act together, or tried to. I had this “Dragon” thing that I wanted to send to Charlton Bullseye, but they had too much stuff. They advised me to send it to everybody I could think of because they thought it was professional enough to do so. SIMONSON: Did you write and draw it? LARSEN: I wrote and drew it and inked it, lettered it. SIMONSON: All right, an all-arounder! LARSEN: All around everything. [laughs] It was interesting, in retrospect. I still got a copy of that somewhere. SIMONSON: Ah, keep those copies, kids. A valuable collector’s item. [chuckles] LARSEN: The three of us that were going to the comic-book store at the time all published this thing. It was, like, a 72-page monsters comic book that we

put out. We sent around to The Buyer’s Guide and all those, some people who reviewed it actually wanted to try to start up their own comic-book companies. This guy named Gary Carlson called me up and got ahold of me, and we did some stuff for a comic called Megaton with him. And then the way comics is, one job just sort of leads to another and leads to another. I ended up working at Americomics for a little while, [chuckles again] work I’m especially proud of. SIMONSON: What were you doing there? LARSEN: Superhero stuff. I was doing a book called Sentinels of Justice and doing a terrible job on it [Walt chuckles again], just awful. SIMONSON: Were you writing that stuff, too, or was somebody else writing it? LARSEN: At that time, somebody else was writing it. Then the stuff for Megaton, I ended up doing work for four issues of that. The first two, I was plotting on it and adding a lot of dialogue. And then the other two, I just wrote myself. I guess I’ve always known what I wanted to do. This is like getting the people out of the way to let me do it. SIMONSON: Hmm, delicately played. [laughter] So what happened next? LARSEN: I was a penciler, and I ran into [Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim] Shooter at a Chicago convention and showed him the stuff that I’d been doing—not the Americomics stuff, but some of the stuff for Megaton. He saw it and said, “How would you like to do a job for Marvel Fanfare?” I didn’t know that meant, “How would you like to do an inventory job that’s going to sit around for a long time, we’ll give to Vinnie Colletta to ink, we’ll have John Romita redraw all the faces, and have it show up three years from now to embarrass you?” I thought it actually meant Marvel Fanfare. [chuckles again] SIMONSON: Mmmm… LARSEN: So I suggested to him, “Why don’t we plot it tomorrow?” He was sort of taken aback by that. He said, “Okay, why not?” [Walt laughs] So we did. SIMONSON: Who ended up scripting it? LARSEN: Stan Lee. SIMONSON: No kidding? LARSEN: So I was sort of subbing for Jack Kirby here. SIMONSON: Right. You could do worse. LARSEN: [chuckles] It’s good work if you can get it! SIMONSON: Well, I never had Stan Lee script my stuff! And so you started working for Marvel after that? LARSEN: Not even! It was like that job didn’t lead to a lot of other stuff and I ended up doing five issues of DNAgents and was just skipping around. I did a fill-in for Amazing Spider-Man fairly early on, and some DC stuff, and then I went right into doing The Doom Patrol for a year or so. And then from that, I popped over to Marvel and did The Punisher and then Marvel Comics Presents and then Amazing Spider-Man until I got good and tired of that. And then I was going to go off and do Nova, my big favorite. SIMONSON: Marvel’s old Nova character? LARSEN: Yeah, A Man Called—or whatever it is. And that didn’t happen. SIMONSON: I did “What If Nova Were a Woman” one time, or something like that. That was a long time ago. LARSEN: I remember it. SIMONSON: I hardly do. [laughter] LARSEN: Yeah, What If! #13, inked by Bob Wiacek. Back when he was using a brush. SIMONSON: Right, that’s before he inked Smitty, Paul Smith. Because that was when I thought Bob’s stuff really took off and he went ballistic.

Beginnings: “Cyrano’s Army” in Weird War Tales #10 (Jan. 1973)

Milestones: Creator of Beta Ray Bill / Manhunter in Detective Comics / Batman in Detective Comics / Metal Men / Hercules Unbound / Alien / The Mighty Thor / X-Factor / Star Slammers / Uncanny X-Men/New Teen Titans / Fantastic Four / Orion / Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer

Works in Progress: Thor Omnibus / 2011–2012 Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide cover

Cyberspace: Official Walter Simonson page on Facebook

walter simonson Photo by Nightscream.

Beginnings: Series “Vanguard” in Megaton (Nov. 1983, Megaton Comics)

Milestones: Creator of the Savage Dragon and Image Comics co-founder / Sentinels of Justice / DNAgents / Doom Patrol / Amazing Spider-Man / The Savage Dragon / Fantastic Four / The Defenders / Creepy / Nova / Aquaman

Works in Progress: Savage Dragon / Herculean

Cyberspace: www.savagedragon.com

erik larsen Photo by Happypeepeehead.

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TM & © DC Comics.

LARSEN: That’s when he switched over from brush to pen. SIMONSON: Also, he had worked for a while out of Neal Adams’ Continuity Studios and so he was kind of inking in the rendering style. And Paul, as I remember, came out of animation. He wasn’t real young—he wasn’t like a 19-yearold coming out of comics—I believe he’d been animation, so his work was very linear and not a rendering kind of drawing. Bob began doing the line work on Paul’s stuff and it turned out that Bob had a beautiful ink line and he really just took off after that. By the time Bob and I did X-Factor together, his stuff had become so different and so beautiful. It was just great. Before that, we’d teamed up on an issue of the X-Men. Paul, at that time, could do one book in a month and he was asked to draw a double-sized issue. My wife [Louise Jones Simonson] gave it to him; she was X-Men editor at the time—so Paul was automatically a month behind. [laughs] So they asked me if I could do a fill-in to buy back a month, and Bob inked that and did a nice job. Bob was a little speedy at the time. We were a little pressed for time, so that was kind of a zip job. I kind of like goofy stuff in comics. I’m a little retro in that regard, maybe, but [in my X-Men issue], when Binary and Rogue were fighting, at one point, Rogue clocked Binary

and I had blown right out of the atmosphere. There’s a shot of Binary turning around at the Moon and coming back down to Earth. [Erik laughs] I’m not sure how hard you’d have to hit somebody to send them to the Moon, but I thought, “Well, it looked kind of cool.” [laughs] I guess she flew really fast. I thought, “Well, probably this isn’t really how it would work, but who cares? It’s comic books.” I was just thinking about all of the Honeymooners “to the moon” stuff with Jackie Gleason: “Well, okay. This is my chance to go, ‘BAM! To the moon!’” [laughs] So, we need another question now. LARSEN: Okay, now how did you get started? I can do this too. That was easy. SIMONSON: Well, it was easier back then, because there were a lot fewer companies. Actually, there were two companies when I got into comics. It was Marvel and DC, and that was it. LARSEN: If you’re doing superhero stuff, anyway. SIMONSON: Yes, which is what I wanted to do, exactly. And also, there were no faxes, there were no modems, there were no FedEx drop boxes, which meant that if you wanted to do comics, you moved to New York. So I think the generation I came in with and the guys right after me like Terry Austin and Bob Wiacek, we were probably about the last generation of guys in comics to actually move to the city to get work.

Erik’s Early Efforts (left) Larsen, inked by Mike DeCarlo, from Secret Origins #13 (Apr. 1987). (below) Erik’s “Marvel Fanfare thing” saw print with a Frenz/Milgrom cover in Thor #385. (above left) By ’88 he was making a name for himself on Doom Patrol. Secret Origins TM & © DC Comics. Thor © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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I moved to New York in ’72. I had just gotten out of art school. I’d done a comic in art school, a version of Star Slammers, as a degree project. It was about 50 pages long. I used about the last half of that story as my portfolio. A friend of mine who’d just come down from Rhode Island, where I was living, had gotten work as a writer in the beginning of the summer—Gerry Boudreau was his name. Gerry wrote comics for a while and then dropped out of the field, but he got me an appointment with Archie Goodwin up at DC. I showed my stuff to Archie and Archie looked at it and said, “This is nice, but what else can you do?,” because it was all science-fiction stuff, the common wisdom being that science fiction didn’t sell in comic books. So I wasn’t liable to get any work out of this and thought, “Hell, no, I’m doomed! I’ll starve on the streets.” I ended up, by accident really, talking to Carmine Infantino, who was the editorial director or publisher or whatever. He was head honcho of DC at the time and Carmine liked the work I was doing a lot. It was very design-y and Carmine himself had a very strong sense of design. He has a real sense of negative space and stuff and the work I showed him appealed to him. So he called in three of his editors and made them all give me a job and I walked out of his office with three jobs. [Erik laughs] One of them was from Archie and one from Joe Orlando and one from Julie Schwartz, and I did the ones for Archie and for Joe. I think the one for Julie, we kind of let drop quietly. I don’t think I was doing work at the time that was really what Julie was looking for, and the story that I was offered was something about how all Kryptonians came to wear headbands, which wasn’t the kind of story I wanted to do. So I did a story for Archie and a story for Joe. They were all short story backups in titles. By the time I’d done that, Archie was actually interested in feeding me these little, short, backup jobs in war comics. That was where you got your training like you do in the independents or Americomics and even Marvel Fanfare now. Basically, you make a few bucks and it’s “earn while you learn.” LARSEN: My Fanfare thing didn’t actually show up in Fanfare, it showed up in Thor. SIMONSON: Oh, really? LARSEN: Yeah, issue #385 (Nov. 1987). Ron Frenz and Al Milgrom cover. SIMONSON: And Erik Larsen inside. LARSEN: Erik “Larson”—my name is misspelled.

MANHUNTER MAKES A MARK SIMONSON: Oops! But the backups, I mean, the mystery books, House of Mystery and stuff like that and the war books, the backup stories were where you did your apprenticeship. You could earn enough money to just keep going, get better, and I did that for Archie for a bit. Then I did the “Manhunter” series with Archie, who was the editor of Detective Comics at the time. He wanted to create a new character as the backup for Detective that would be a contrast to Batman. So where Batman would be dark and ramble around the city and stuff, Manhunter would be brighter and ramble around the world. And where Batman didn’t really use weaponry other than gimmicks and such, maybe Manhunter would use guns or different knives and whatever. They’re both martial-artists, kind of. Batman was a martial artist, depending on who was drawing him at the time, and so we made Manhunter a deliberate martial artist, and we worked in ninjas. I’ll have to tell one of my favorite all-time stories from working in the business. I saw a letter to Archie when he was working at Marvel, when he was working for Epic, many years later. Apparently, after Frank Miller had been doing Daredevil for a while, running the Hand and all that martial-arts stuff, Archie got a letter from somebody who had come across our Manhunter story in reprint and he wanted to know how it was that we had been able to steal Frank Miller’s ninja idea ten years before Frank did it! And I didn’t have a good answer, you know? It was a “Time Scope” … I turned my Time Scope on in ’73, I looked forward to the future about ten years, and said, “Oh, I can swipe this.” [Erik laughs] Well, maybe ninjas didn’t belong to one guy, but it was funny. It was just a funny letter, the idea that you could, well … “How could you steal this stuff ten years in advance?” And it was a very straight letter. But the ninja stuff and the martial arts and weaponry in Manhunter, it really defined contrast with the Batman. It worked out very well. There was no fandom the way there is now. There weren’t comics shops, there was no Direct Market, but there was really a tight professional community and Manhunter was very well received in the professional community. I didn’t really have to look for work after that. I mean, that was really kind of my breakthrough series even though it only ran seven episodes. LARSEN: I remember just the last episode because I was swiping from it when I was ten. [Walt laughs uproariously] I did that. I was doing my little hand-drawn Dragon comics. I remember looking at one of those

Walt’s BreakOut Series (left) A paneldrenched Manhunter page from Chapter 5, originally published in Detective Comics #441 (June–July 1974). (right) Cover to the 1984 Manhunter reprint one-shot. TM & © DC Comics.

All-Interview Issue

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Uneasy Allies While Amazing Spider-Man wasn’t a favorite project of Larsen’s, his work on the title certainly juiced a lot of readers! Double-page spread pages 2 and 3 from issue #335, scripted by David Michelinie and inked by Terry Austin. Original art courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

pages that had 13 panels on it, all of the odd shapes [chuckles], and I was going to do my panel layout the same way. SIMONSON: [chuckles] Well, we were trying to cram a lot in. Archie was very influenced by the Eisner Spirit, the kind of density of those short stories which, at the time, I hadn’t seen very many of. We were trying to do a 20-page comic in eight pages, which is what dictated the multiple-panel format that we developed in that strip. LARSEN: Now, it’s a lot of the opposite of that now. People are trying to do eight-page stories as an entire print run. [chuckling] SIMONSON: Yeah, yeah, it was kind of a neo-direction for the time. But it was fun. That was when ACBA—the Academy of Comic Book Arts—was still active. Out of the seven stories, Manhunter won six awards over a two-year period. Not for each story, but they had a Best Writer Award, and Jim Starlin and I split the Best New Talent Award. We tied that year, ’73, I think. Archie won Best Writer two years in a row, really on the strength of Manhunter work, and one of the stories won Best Short Story one year, one of the stories won Best Short Story the next year, and the last story, which was long, won Best Full-Length Story for the year. I wish they had one more award—seven stories, seven awards. We didn’t quite make it, but six wasn’t so bad … I don’t want to be too greedy! LARSEN: Too bad the letterer didn’t win an award… SIMONSON: Really! But it worked out very well. Manhunter established me as a professional. I never really had to go out and scramble for work after that. I was able to kind of take work that was offered along the way, do the jobs I wanted to do.

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BREAKING IN, NOW VERSUS THEN LARSEN: That’s the nice thing about just getting that first big job or whatever. That story I did with Thor versus the Hulk is what it was. Once I’d done that, I was pretty much, “This is what I do.” Bringing those Xeroxes around and having an editor say, “Oh, I recognize those characters. Sure, I can see giving you work.” So that one helped out a lot. SIMONSON: I don’t know how it works now, but it probably works quite the same way, more or less. I presume you work your way up through the independents and then into Marvel or DC or off to Image or whatever. LARSEN: Or off to Image, yeah, or however it works. SIMONSON: I’m just glad I’ve already broken in, so I don’t have to do this all over again now. LARSEN: I think it’s a lot easier now. SIMONSON: Think so? LARSEN: Oh, yeah. SIMONSON: There’s certainly a lot more stuff, I guess. LARSEN: A lot more people getting work. SIMONSON: I guess, but it seems there’s a lot more people looking for work, too. That’s why I don’t know how the balance is struck now. LARSEN: Yeah, that’s true. There’s a lot more people, I guess. I don’t know why that is. I think that maybe before, nobody really thought of comic books as a decent way to make a living. Back when I got into the business, I never even considered that people might actually make some decent money doing this sort of thing. But now, I guess, the word’s out that, “Hey, if you do this stuff, you can actually do all right.”

SIMONSON: I think that’s part of it, and maybe the audience is larger. Certainly, I’m teaching a course at the School of Visual Arts in New York now. It’s called “The Graphic Novel for Illustrators,” or something. It’s really about doing comic books. I’m teaching storytelling. I’m kind of a retro guy, but there, I had I guess close to 20 kids last year and one of them is doing professional work right now. It was not because of me. He was doing it last year. He’s really, really good. John Paul Leon, he’s doing Static for Milestone and he was a junior in college last year and he’s got a lot of the stuff squared away already. So he’s a senior this year and off and running. He could just leave school and do comic books, but he still wants to finish up and wants to learn some stuff, but he’s quite good and I had other guys who were quite good as well. Interestingly enough, a lot of the students I had who were quite good would not be mainstream. Out of a class of 20 or so, I had maybe five guys or six guys who were tracking mainstream comics. One guy who was really straight-ahead Marvel superhero–type stuff, and then several other guys like John Paul whose work is already very individual. Yet the other guys I have whose work was really good are doing independent kind of work you’d expect to see out of Fantagraphics or something like that. LARSEN: You can start out, have storytelling and anatomy and perspective under control—the basics. SIMONSON: Oh, yeah. It wasn’t like there wasn’t stuff to teach [John Paul]—and I didn’t want to nudge them off, [saying,] “Well, you’d better start doing Erik Larsen Spider-Man–type stuff.” LARSEN: “His hands are the size of their head, don’t you know that?” SIMONSON: Their work was really good, but you kind of think, “Jeez, will these guys make a living doing this?” And you don’t know, so I tried to cover some of that in the class, explaining the options. LARSEN: Do you take a responsibility there? Sort of like, “Gee, if I push him the wrong way, I’m going

to end up sending him on the street with a hat in front of him.” [chuckles] SIMONSON: Well, I don’t know. If he does end up like that, maybe I will feel responsible. More, I feel that my job is to 1) try and push them as artists in the stuff that they do, and 2) try and let them know as much as I can what their choices as an artist are going to mean in terms of making a living and in terms of their lives. I mean, when a guy like John Paul is doing very individual art, but recognizable mainstream art, he’s going to get work. If he weren’t getting work from Milestone, he could go off and work for anybody right now without batting an eye. These other guys couldn’t. They don’t have the same options, but their work is not less than his for not being in that style. At the same time, because of the nature of the marketplace, they’re not going to have the same kind of options [John Paul Leon’s] got. Now, it may end up being they’ll become the next Matt Groening and The Simpsons and make billions, if suddenly it takes off. I had friends—a lot of guest lecturers—come in, guys who were real mainstream—Mark Gruenwald and some of the Milestone guys came by, and Jon J Muth came by; Peter Kuper, who does very individualistic, kind of Saul Steinbergy– type work In Peter’s case, he’s made some decisions about what he wants to do as an artist. It precludes him doing a mainstream Spider-Man tomorrow. It’s not what he wants

All-Interview Issue

In the Brood (above) The X-Men and the Legion of Super-Heroes—all sporting costumes designed by Dave Cockrum—tangle with Brood aliens in this 2004 specialty piece by Simonson. (above left) A much quieter dragon snoozes in this mid-1970 sketch by Walter. Both images courtesy of Heritage. X-Men © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. Legion TM & © DC Comics.

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Men of Steel Bronze Age DC readers were blown away by Walter Simonson’s brief but unforgettable mid-1970s stint on Metal Men. Behold: Walter’s cover to issue #46 (Oct.–Nov. 1976), pitting Doc Magnus’ robots against the menace of Eclipso, and a 1975 sketch (courtesy of Heritage) of the team’s hothead, Mercury. TM & © DC Comics.

to do. At the same time, it also means that in order to do comics, he’s trying to make a living doing editorial drawings for The New York Review of Books and things of that sort where you can make a commercial living doing the kind of work he wants to do, and then do the comics on the side. And if they don’t make a zillion dollars, that’s the way it’s going to be. But he can still do the art he wants to do. So I had Peter Kuper come in and talk to the kids about stuff like that. In the class, I’m trying to push them to get better. I don’t try to push them to develop in a particular direction. That’s hard because you’ve got your own view about what stuff should look like, so you’re trying to sort of balance between getting those heads smaller or getting their own style done better. But it’s fun. It’s really kind of challenging. Class starts again in another, what, three or four weeks, something like that, so I’ll go back to it again with a new batch. LARSEN: So this will be the second time teaching, then? SIMONSON: Yeah, this will be the second. Last year was a two-semester course. This is my second year teaching, but when I started out doing comics—man, there weren’t degrees, let alone courses or anything of that sort. So I guess I kind of wondered about getting into the business now because all of a sudden, we’re training a whole

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bunch of guys to be our competition. I’m thinking, “Well, maybe it will keep me on my toes. [chuckles] Guess I’d better keep learning, too.” LARSEN: No, I think the heads need to be a little bit bigger than that. [Walt laughs] What are you doing with five fingers? Don’t you know the standard’s four? SIMONSON: That’s right! That’s right! Big feet! Big feet! Get some big feet on this guy. Narrow down the shoulders and widen up that waist. [Erik chuckles] I don’t know. I don’t know whether it’s harder or easier to get in today. I mean, there are a lot more places to do comics now than there were when I started out. But at the same time, there are a lot more guys that want to do comics. LARSEN: Yeah, that’s true. SIMONSON: So I don’t know what the balance is— I don’t have a balance worked out for that, but I’m just happy I’ve got a job.

SWIPING LARSEN: I get a ton of samples in the mail, as it is now, from people who say, “Here’s my stuff.” And most of the stuff we get is oriented toward what we do [at Image]. SIMONSON: Sure. LARSEN: So I see a lot of art—young Rob Liefelds and young Jim Lees and everybody else. SIMONSON: Sure. Well, there is an Image look. Your styles are different, but with as many differences as there are among you guys individually, there is an overall direction to the stuff, and certainly kids like that Image style. I remember seeing samples at Marvel back in the early ’70s. You’d see, oh, a lot of Jack Kirby clones and John Buscema clones and John Romita–type guys and whatnot. LARSEN: Yeah, yeah. SIMONSON: And then, for some years you’d see all the John Byrne clones and the George Pérez clones. And the amazing thing about that is that, somehow, when kids emulate somebody’s work, they always pick up on the mannerisms but don’t get the structure that makes them

work. Like the John Byrne clones—when they show a head in profile, somehow the mouth opens in a slit back to the ear. It always goes back to about here [gesturing to face], so you think the jaw would just fall off. And guys who were doing George Pérez—they always had torsos that were eight miles long, the shoulders were up here, the head’s on top, but the legs are way down there. You’ve got this long, huge expanse from chest to belt to crotch that was really funny. I think Neal Adams used to say that when you swiped other people, you always swipe their worst characteristics and mannerisms without really understanding their structure. LARSEN: Well, Neal has also said that your style is what you do wrong, which is the things that you draw that are different from reality is what makes your style, the way that you draw the mouth and it doesn’t look quite the way it’s supposed to. SIMONSON: You balance it in the work that you do, so it works in the context of your stuff. But if you copy it without understanding how it’s built in, you start getting some pretty wonky drawing. LARSEN: I’m never comfortable doing swipes of anything, anyway. SIMONSON: I think I borrowed pretty heavily once from a figure that Jeff Jones had done. That was in Manhunter, because, back then, I didn’t think that I drew women very well. I had to draw a woman in one shot and I believe I leaned heavily on one of Jeff’s drawings at the time. I think, looking back at it now, I was so lousy at swiping or it was just so

poorly done anyway, you wouldn’t be able to tell. [laughs] LARSEN: I think the only times I’ve ever done anything like that was when an editor really wanted me to do like an homage cover of some sort. SIMONSON: Right. Well, it’s funny. Doing tip-of-the-hat covers has recently become much more prevalent. I did it once. I did it my second issue of Thor, the second time I was doing the book. There was a Hercules/Thor cover right in the middle of my favorite run of Thor, from Journey into Mystery #116 up to about #139 and 140. That was the work I was trying to emulate—the Trial of the Gods and Destroyer and the Absorbing Man’s return and Thor/Hercules and the Netherworld with Pluto. That is really my favorite run in that book. And so I did that one cover of Beta Ray Bill facing off with Thor in a tip of the hat to Jack, but there are so, so many tips of the hat these days that I think, if I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn’t do it that same way again. DAVID HAMILTON: Erik, your tip of the hat was to the Ditko Spider-Man. LARSEN: That wasn’t even a tip of the hat. I did a couple of cover sketches for that issue, one of them was a tip of the hat to that Spider-Man Annual. And then I didn’t actually do that. No, I never actually got to do that. Actually, the editor called me up and asked me, that I did two cover sketches. One was a tip of the hat and the other one was the one that you inked, Walt. HAMILTON: [Amazing Spider-Man] #337, right? LARSEN: #337, yeah. SIMONSON: I remember. All the heads.

All-Interview Issue

What Might Have Been For “The Return of the Sinister Six,” Erik Larsen originally wanted to draw a cover homage to Steve Ditko’s 1964 Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (left), but an editorial directive led him onto a different path for issue #337’s cover— which was inked by Walter Simonson! Hoo-boy! © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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WRITER/ARTISTS HAMILTON: You both write your own stuff, too. How was the transition from just penciling, occasionally inking, and then going into doing your own writing? SIMONSON: [to Larsen] Well, you wrote from the beginning. LARSEN: I wrote from the beginning. Actually, early on, when I was first starting out and sending stuff around, when I talked to [editors] cat yronwode and Dean Mullaney fairly early on, and cat was really encouraging me to not draw at all and to just go into writing and just do sort of an Archie Goodwin–type thing and just use that as a way of presenting the story stuff. And I’d always wanted to just do the drawing part of it and I always wrote my own stuff because I couldn’t get anybody else to do it. And I guess a lot of the reasons that people end up writing is the frustration of working with somebody else who you perceive as not being on the stick, or doing the job the way you’d like to have it done. I guess I’ve always

been particular about a lot of things. There’s a lot of different things that go on in comics that I go, “No, that’s not the way you’re supposed to be doing this.” You know, different rules that I’ve got in my own head about breaking panel borders and whatever that nobody else seems to be following. [Walt laughs] SIMONSON: You know, I sort of backed into writing. That’s the way I do stuff mostly. I kind of back into it, rather than jump into it. I wrote the Star Slammers as a senior thesis and I wrote the dialogue. But when I got into comics, I really had no desire to write. I think I didn’t feel confident enough to write. LARSEN: What was the first thing you actually wrote? Was it Thor? SIMONSON: No, the first thing I wrote was [Marvel Comics’] Battlestar Galactica #19. LARSEN: Battlestar Galactica? SIMONSON: Yep. But during the first seven years or so I was in comics—I tried to work with good writers, and I think I succeeded. I don’t think I had a dog among them. I was able to work with guys whose work I admired. LARSEN: Congratulations. [laughs] SIMONSON: Well … thank you. I worked at it. I mean, it’s more interesting to draw if you’ve got writing you like and you want to work from, and my work is better as a result of that. LARSEN: Mm-mm. SIMONSON: This is not to say I didn’t have differences of opinions with writers, or that I wouldn’t have done different stuff myself, or that we weren’t at loggerheads once in a while. But mostly, I helped plot a lot of the stories I didn’t write. In some cases, my contribution was, oh, maybe as big as 5%. In other cases, I probably put in half of what was going down in terms of the plot. My early work was with Archie [Goodwin], and, I think, by the end of Manhunter, I was maybe adding a nickel’s worth of plot. We’d sort of discuss the stuff. I’m not sure I was helping Archie [chuckles] in any measurable sense, but I certainly learned from him about pacing and story structure. I really learned what stories were from Archie. I worked with other writers for a long time. Then, around ’79, when I was penciling Battlestar Galactica, I was helping to plot that one a fair amount. Roger McKenzie was the writer. Then Roger left the book and, as it happens, nepotism reared its ugly head. My wife was the editor and she’d been encouraging me to do a little writing from time to time and I really hadn’t. But when Roger left the book I did a little writing at the end of one of the issues, maybe #16, and then I think there were a couple of fill-ins. Issue #19 (Sept. 1980) was the first issue that I did completely on my own—“The Daring Return of the Space Cowboy”—where we brought back Starbuck, who’d been gone for a while from the strip. I plotted and wrote that. But the book was dying—it was selling four copies a month [chuckles]—so out of the last five Galacticas, I ended up writing and drawing four of them. And that was really my first crack at writing. After that, around 1980, Raiders of the Lost Ark was about to come out and Marvel had the rights to do the

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adaptation. Archie was supposed to write it and he didn’t have the time. He had liked the stuff I’d done on Galactica, so he asked if I’d be interested in writing the adaptation. Writing an adaptation is a lot easier, in a way, than writing a comic from scratch. You have the script and the art and I had John Buscema drawing it, so it’s like the story’s all there. I just took his drawings and plugged the words in as I went along. So I ended up writing the three-issue adaptation. Back then, Marvel was just starting their graphic novel line. I wanted to do a Star Slammers graphic novel. So I got that squared away. I was a little late on the shipment of the issue. It was supposed to be Marvel Graphic Novel #4, but we had to make it #6 because it wasn’t quite done by my deadline, so it came out about a month after it was supposed to. But I did get it finished. I worked on it about five months, and while I was working on that, Mark Gruenwald asked me if I’d be interested in taking over Thor, writing as well as drawing it. And of the Marvel characters, Thor was, and I guess remains, my favorite. I was a Norse mythology fan long before I discovered Marvel Comics and Thor. [Editor’s note: Simonson’s Thor is the cover feature of BACK ISSUE #53.]

UNFINISHED BUSINESS? LARSEN: When you were writing Thor, did you pretty much do everything you wanted to do with the book? Or did you leave with some things unresolved? SIMONSON: I did a lot of the major stuff I wanted to do. The whole Surtur story was one that I had actually come up about 13 years earlier when I was in art school, and I had actually drawn about 30 pages of the climax. I inked in Rapidograph the climactic fight between Thor and Surtur, in ’69 and ’70. And I got to a point where I did not like my own inking. LARSEN: So I imagine you were, when you actually did that story, you were probably swiping quite heavily from yourself, 13 years earlier. [chuckles] SIMONSON: Deliberately so. I went back and I used as many of the panels in the actual battle between Thor and Surtur from the comic I’d done earlier. I started with Surtur

arriving in Asgard, disposing of Heimdall and fighting Thor, disposing of Thor, and then facing Odin. And somewhere in the middle of the Odin fight in my original version, I’d become dissatisfied with the way I was inking. They weren’t good enough. And so I’d quit inking, thinking, “Well, I’ll work on my inking and when I’m good enough to ink, I’ll go back and finish the job.” I didn’t think it would take 13 years to become good enough to ink. I went back to the original comic—which I still have in a spiral-bound drawing pad—and I took as many layouts from that as I could manage. I couldn’t use them all, but that was my tip of the hat to the kid that I had been 13 years before. I was really burning with a white heat through that stuff. There are a lot of panels that are virtually identical. In at least one or two cases, I did a better job 13 years earlier than I did on this one. But most of the modern stuff was better. Originally, the story that I had done featured the Odinsword. By the time I was doing my story, the Odinsword had been destroyed—in Thor #300, I think it was. So when I went back and had Surtur forge his own sword, I was just making the Odinsword over again. Some of the tales were different, because I had to make accommodations for the Marvel continuity that had gone by. But it was actually very satisfying to be able to go back and do that stuff, to actually do the entire story, start to finish, and work it all out in a way that I enjoyed.

All-Interview Issue

Space Mercenaries (left) The cover to and (above) an interior page from Walter’s Star Slammers, originally published in 1983 as Marvel Graphic Novel #6. Simonson continued the series in a mid-1990s four-issue miniseries from Bravura, followed by a Dark Horse one-shot. © Walter Simonson.

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Who’s Your Daddy? Odin, that’s who! (left) The Norse patriarch shows Surtur a thing or two in this exciting Simonson-produced page 3 from Thor #352 (Feb. 1985), and sees that Beta Ray Bill is hammered on the cover to #339 (Jan. 1984). © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Save your old ideas, kids! You may be able to recycle them later. [laughs] LARSEN: Yeah, I’m doing the same thing now. I created the Dragon back in … I don’t know, ’72 or ’71, you know. He looked a little different. He had bell-bottom pants on and a cape [Walt laughs uproariously]. SIMONSON: Gee, I think he should have bell-bottoms now. That would really set him apart from the general run. But I have other Thor ideas—other plots that I hadn’t done when I got off the book, and other ideas in general. Whenever I get ideas, I write them down, put them in a file, and the file grows and grows and grows. From time to time, I go back and mine it for storylines. In the case of Thor, I have a lot of ideas I never used. LARSEN: Is there ever a chance of you going back to Thor, or is it something that you don’t even want to do now? SIMONSON: I’m of the Sean Connery persuasion— never say “never” again. Certainly, I have no interest in doing it right now. I really left Marvel about two years ago, more or less, to do other things. You see, I took it on the lam. LAM, Life After Marvel. So I took it on the lam

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and actually, it’s worked out rather well and I’ve done work that I really wanted to do and enjoyed. I don’t know now that I would really want to go back on Thor. A lot of time has already gone by since I was doing that book. It was ten years ago this year when I started Thor, in ’83. I did it for three and a half years. It hasn’t been that long since I’ve been off it, but it’s been ten years since I started it. It’s like Manhunter. Some people say, “You gonna do some more Manhunter?” Well, I’m so different, I think, as an artist now, than I was 20 years ago when I was doing Manhunter, that whatever I would do now, people who read Manhunter would expect it to be the same, because that stuff is fixed in time. But, as an artist, I’m not fixed in time and the work I would do now would not be the same as the work I did. It may be better, it might be worse, but it would be different. LARSEN: And probably not 13 panels a page. SIMONSON: Probably not—nahh, I dunno … I don’t know that I could go back. If I did a Manhunter that wasn’t 13 panels a page, there’d be a lot of people who wouldn’t be happy because that was really the look of those stories. That developed out of the way we solved a certain set of problems and, if I’m not solving those same problems, in the same way, the stories won’t come out the same. And that would probably disappoint the audience. And yet, I have no interest in doing exactly what I did back then. I like the stories we did. We did a real closed-end series and I feel that even if somebody else does Manhunter … if it’s not me and Archie, it won’t count. Only the two of us can screw it up and I don’t want to screw it up. I like the stuff as it stands and I feel if we went back and did a bad job or just a job that was even good, but wasn’t what the audience was looking for, that could screw it up. I’m proud of that particular work and I don’t want to screw it up. If I went back and did Thor again, I’d probably try some other approach to the material than what I did at the time. I don’t know what that would be, I don’t know if I

Action Comics Really, you’d have to search far and wide to find a more kickbutt artist than Erik Larsen. Don’t believe us? Here’s proof: (left) his cover to The Savage Dragon #1 (July 1992), first of the three-issue miniseries that predated the Savage Dragon monthly; and (right) the Larsen/Klaus Janson cover to Thor #27 (Sept. 2000), part of the 1998 Thunder God reboot. Savage Dragon TM & © Erik Larsen. Thor © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

could do it. Who knows, maybe in a few years I’ll say, “Gee, the old Thor stories are pretty cool. I’ll go back to do some more of that stuff.” I have no idea. I don’t want to burn any bridges, because you never know. HAMILTON: What about you, Erik? Would you ever go back to Amazing Spider-Man? LARSEN: Actually, Spider-Man was never a book that I ever wanted to do. [Walt laughs] I had absolutely no desire to do that book at all. I’d read that stuff as a kid because I read every Marvel Comic as a kid. But I said, “Boy, I really don’t want to draw [Spider-Man].” I wanted to do The Hulk, I wanted to do The Fantastic Four, I wanted to do the guys who were these huge figures pounding the piss out of each other or knocking each other through walls, the big, explosive stuff. But Spider-Man … he can punch somebody, but it’s not like that other stuff. SIMONSON: Right. LARSEN: So I wouldn’t have assigned me that book. SIMONSON: [laughs] Well, you didn’t turn it down. You got the offer, right? LARSEN: I didn’t turn it down. I got the offer. It was like, “Jeez, I guess this is better than unemployment. I’ll take it.” SIMONSON: Probably true. LARSEN: [chuckles] Yeah, I don’t have a real desire to go back and do it again. I think the audience that sees that stuff or was reading that stuff would probably like to see me do it again, so if there’s an opportunity to do like … The Dragon Meets Spider-Man, I’d jump on that in a second, just because it would be a kick to get those characters together or do something like that. SIMONSON: Would you go back and do The Hulk or something like that if you got a shot at it? LARSEN: Nahhh, probably not. A lot of that stuff, I just thought it through to the point of having it out of my system, actually. It’s almost as though I’ve done the work, just like Nova. I talked through that one so much and I actually drew and wrote a story for Marvel Comics Presents, a five-part story with Nova, that it never got finished, it never came out. Tom DeFalco wanted to revive Nova in New Warriors, so [my] story—suddenly it couldn’t happen, so that it just got nixed. But the unfortunate thing was, I’d quit Punisher to go and write this little thing for Marvel Comics Presents. SIMONSON: Oops! [chuckles]

LARSEN: “Oh, okay. I guess I’m unemployed now. What’s out there?” And I did some more stuff for Marvel Comics Presents at that time, but … oh, well. A lot of the stuff for Nova, most of what I worked out, was not the superhero part of it, anyway. It was all the other characters. I’m just more interested in the soap-opera aspect of it and less interested in the superhero aspect, of that project in particular. SIMONSON: With Thor, I don’t know, if I had a shot… I can conceive of a circumstance where I might go back and do it, but I don’t know that I ever will. It’ll depend on what else happens as time goes by. LARSEN: Are there other characters at Marvel that you’d like to do? SIMONSON: There’s nobody else. I liked Iron Man when I was reading comics. My favorite books when I was reading Marvels were Thor, Spidey, Iron Man, and the FF, but I read them all. But when I was reading them all, there were only 11 titles a month, so it wasn’t a big deal. I was a major Gene Colan Iron Man fan, and certainly, if I went back and did Iron Man, that’s the Iron Man I would do, at least visually. LARSEN: Yeah. SIMONSON: Visually, Iron Man’s costume has largely been a series of rococo variations on the outfit that Gene did, and his had a certain elegance that I find kind of lacking in the visuals these days. But now, we’re kind of into more elaborate armor with lots of little pockets. LARSEN: That’s it. Pockets, but nothing in them. SIMONSON: Yeah, [laughs] kind of like Batman’s Utility Belt gone berserk! I don’t know, but there again, I mean, hey, if I do Star Slammers and go bankrupt, I’ll be looking for work, so [chuckles] Iron Man would look pretty good to me about that time.

BUILDING A UNIVERSE LARSEN: Since I was growing up, I’ve been drawing comics for myself. I’ve created a lot of characters and I’ve been filling in sketchbooks with characters and drawing like that ever since. I counted the other day and I’ve got about 140 of these guys sitting here, and what am I doing? I’m doing a solo book. [Walt laughs] SIMONSON: Isn’t it time for “Team Savage Dragon”? [laughter] LARSEN: Yeah, well, that’s why the spinoff stuff has kind of been coming around. I really want to do the Dragon book, but if I don’t do something with these other characters, nothing will ever happen with them, so I’m

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bringing some of that stuff into the Dragon book and spinning it off into titles of their own that I’m involved in, and co-plotting and scripting and working with other people to get those books out there. SIMONSON: I kind of work the other way around. I had some kids in my class—there were several of them who had put together their own set of worlds with hundreds of characters. All drawn up, all the little outfits— it’s unbelievable, really. And yet in my own case, I have almost nothing like that—I start from having a story idea, and then I find the characters to fill it. So, this Star Slammers story I’ve got coming up— I’ve got the basic idea, about the first Slammer ever captured. His enemies captured him, but after he’s ruined their operation, and they’re pissed! [chuckles] So this guy’s alone in the middle of a lot of really angry people. I tend to start from the other side where I find a story I want to do first, and then I start finding the characters that will make the story run, rather than having, you know, 8,000 characters that I start with. Vaughn Bodé was like you, Erik, I think. Vaughn had zillions of characters, and he had a lot of stories as well. I don’t know which came first, but Jiminy Christmas, the stuff he turned out in the time he was working was just great! Man, even the unfinished ideas, just dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of finished and unfinished and partially finished and somewhat realized and partially realized and totally complete characters and ideas and worlds and cities and all sorts of stuff. It’s that kind of the imagination that blows me away. LARSEN: Do you do a sketchbook at all? Do you do other drawings, other than the ones that you see in print? SIMONSON: Somewhat. I’m not prolific, although I do. I do a lot of preliminary drawing in the work that I do, drawing that never actually sees print, a lot of it I don’t save, either. The sketchbooks I’ve got, the few I keep, are mostly life, landscape stuff. I didn’t bring it along this trip, actually. I should have, but I didn’t think about that. Crap! But what I do is, if I go somewhere, I use these little, small sketchbooks you can pick up, little black, bound guys. I’ll do a shot of a corner of a bridge, and the railroad station I’m hanging out at, or the people sitting in the chairs just, you know, hanging around. That’s the kind of stuff I do for sketches, mostly to keep my eye facile and my hand loose, and to do stuff I don’t normally do. And that’s pencil sketches and tone drawings and stuff like that. I’m very linear, with some tone added. I do pictures of where I’m at—hotels I’ve stayed in, lobbies, people walking by, seashores, buildings I’m in, and, if I’m in towns where there’s interesting architecture, shots of buildings, things of that sort. I get enough big guys punching holes in walls so I don’t have to do that in a sketchbook. [chuckles] HAMILTON: Bill Stout does reams of that kind of stuff,

Characters Galore Not only has Erik Larsen populated the Savage Dragon universe with scores of characters like Mighty Man (above left, issue #86), he’s gueststarred other creators’ heroes, such as Mike Allred’s the Atomics! At left is original art to an unpublished version of the cover to Dragon #84 (Feb. 2001, art courtesy of Heritage), with the published version at the top left. Savage Dragon TM & © Erik Larsen. The Atomics TM & © Mike Allred.

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when he goes on trips around the world—sitting around, drawing people, chairs, architecture. SIMONSON: You’re right. You’ve got to stay in practice to keep honed. I don’t do nearly as much of it as I ought to, but when I do, that’s what I do and it’s fun. It’s also challenging. It’s so different from what I normally do. LARSEN: Gee, I don’t do any of that stuff! [Walt laughs] I’m just pathetic. SIMONSON: Well, I don’t have a hundred thousand characters, either, so just do what you do, that’s all. LARSEN: I never kept a sketchbook all the time I was doing the stuff at Marvel or DC. I always tried to. I would start a sketchbook, and would get about ten pages into it, and the pages just yellowed and the binding started cracking. And that’s pretty much it because I never really wanted to do that. It wasn’t like, “I’ve got work to do. I don’t have the time to work on this other stuff.” And most of my best art was on the backs of the pages that I was turning in, rather than the front. SIMONSON: I used to look at John Buscema’s pages. When his art would come into the office, you’d look at the back of the pages. He did the niftiest drawings on the back of the pages. He had all these shots of boxers and stuff he probably got off of TV—these elegant drawings, people’s faces and characters and old men and all this great stuff, on the backs of the pages. I guess he did this just to stay loose and keep his interest, but he’d knock out that stuff and it looked great. We used to Xerox those and save them because they were pretty cool. LARSEN: After my house burned down, I started keeping a sketchbook to try and mentally replace some of the stuff and some of the characters, and it’s like, “Well, what did that look like?” And surprisingly, I don’t even really know what the Dragon looked like originally. I got pretty close, I think, but I’m not really sure how his cape attached to near his shoulders. And I had kept all that stuff, and it’s gone. I wouldn’t loan it out to anybody else, so nobody has copies of it. SIMONSON: If my house burned down, I’d be in much the same situation because I’ve kept all the stuff that I’ve done. So, if that all went away, it would all just be gone. There’s nowhere else there are copies, really, or anything like that.

particularly well. It’s much more difficult to do this sort of thing in other mediums. SIMONSON: And it may be that in a few more years, with the computer stuff and the advances in memory and computer programming and whatnot, we may be able to do this stuff in movies and we’ll all be dinosaurs, heading for extinction. LARSEN: That’s right. SIMONSON: But for now, comics is the one place where you can do that sort of stuff persuasively. Also, it’s the one place where it’s done with a straight face. One of the things that I find very important, is that you can be just as silly or as loony as you want in superhero comics and as long as you can keep a straight face, it can be effective. I mean, the DNAliens and The New Gods? Oh, come on! They were great! It was wonderful because all that stuff was done deadpan and it was not done in any way that condescended to the material. So often, comic books or superheroes are done in some other medium, in some way that condescends, that presumes, “Well, aren’t we clever? Look, isn’t this stupid? Nudge nudge, wink wink.” LARSEN: Yeah.

Getcher Kirby Right Chere! We’re certain that Jack Kirby smiled down upon Walter Simonson’s version of the King’s Big Barda— knocking a certain Amazon Princess nearly out of her tiara—on this cover to Mister Miracle #6 (Sept. 1996). TM & © DC Comics.

JACK KIRBY AND COMIC-BOOK MOVIES HAMILTON: You should both say something about Kirby. SIMONSON: What was that name again? [chuckles] HAMILTON: Jack. LARSEN: Jack Kirby. SIMONSON: [slowly] Jack … Kirby? HAMILTON: Well, how about, “A seminal figure in American comics, a man who created a visual vocabulary in comics that was so powerful, it blew all the other venues of comics out the window”? LARSEN: So powerful, that the rest of us were gesture drawings compared from his work. HAMILTON: That’s right, that’s right. SIMONSON: Jack was—he is a genius in comics. [Editor’s note: At the time of this interview, Jack Kirby was still alive. He died on February 6, 1994.] Jack’s visual vocabulary was so powerful that you just couldn’t match it. So he was, and remains, a profound influence on my work. LARSEN: Ditto. [laughs] I mean, what can I say? I can’t top that! Which actually brings it around to just the whole superhero thing and why superheroes are popular in comic books as opposed to a lot of other things. It’s like this is the one thing that our medium can do

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Comics Movies Then and Now In this 1993 interview, Walter voiced his disappointment over the 1966 Modesty Blaise movie (left)— but nearly two decades later, movie special effects have caught up with (and in some cases, surpassed) comics, delivering dazzlers like 2011’s Thor, which pleased fans and average Joes alike! Modesty Blaise © 1966 20th Century Fox. Thor © 2011 Marvel Studios.

SIMONSON: The first Superman movie—the best stuff for me was the beginning and the Smallville sequences, the first day and night in Metropolis, all of which was done really straight. I’m a big Gene Hackman fan, and I think Ned Beatty is a fabulous actor, but my feeling is when they got into that campy stuff where the characters were a lot more broadly played, the movie was not anywhere near as effective as it had been. LARSEN: I thought that Gene Hackman, in particular, looked exactly like what I pictured Lex Luthor looking like—it was like, “Wow, look at that! Gene Hackman as drawn by Curt Swan!” SIMONSON: Yeah, that’s why I was so annoyed when they kind of did the broad stuff, because it looked so right. There was another movie from much earlier—they did a movie of Modesty Blaise, which is a newspaper strip. LARSEN: I never saw it. SIMONSON: They did it in the late ’60s. Joseph Losey directed it. Monica Vitti played Modesty Blaise. And the plot actually not very different from the first Modesty Blaise novel. I don’t know whether the novel came from the movie or whether the novel was first and the movie was second. It had a good cast. Dirk Bogarde played Gabriel. Terence Stamp played Willie Garvin. It was after the James Bond stuff had gotten rolling, which was really straight in the beginning. I think that, too, became less effective as it was more broadly played.

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My hang-up is, they did such of a broad job, it’s really sort of awful to watch. And yet, it’s a very straight comic strip. In the movie, Modesty had blonde hair—she wore a wig through most of the scenes, which is not what Modesty looks like. But there’s one shot of her in which she wore black and had black hair and she’s a dead ringer for Modesty Blaise. And because of that one shot, I’m so angry about the rest of the movie. Terence Stamp’s great. He was a great Willie Garvin. So they had this great cast that could have done this dead-on Modesty Blaise, a real adventure strip, and they, you know, sort of blew it away by just, “Well, aren’t we clever? Isn’t this funny?” Stupid jokes. LARSEN: Yeah, I don’t really know why they feel like they have to do that in comics movies. SIMONSON: I don’t understand why is that people, when they go and make these movies, feel like they have to treat the material like that. I expect people who’ve made movies up until pretty recently are probably people who never really read comics, so they’re not into what comics are about. “Well, comics are on pulp paper, they’re silly, they’re guys in tights, they look ridiculous, we’ll just have to make this something that adults can relate to,” or whatever. You know, it’ll be interesting to see what happens because, now, there are a lot of people who are around my age—maybe a bit younger, or a little older—who are doing movies. They will have a much greater familiarity with comic books. And certainly, it seems to me that movies that

Two Big Books (left) Walter’s seminal Thor has been given a deluxe presentation in the 1192-page hardcover The Mighty Thor by Walter Simonson Omnibus, tipping the scales at eight pounds! (right) While it may weigh a lot less, Erik’s “Golden Age-sized” 48-page one-shot Herculian packs quite a wallop! Thor TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. Herculean © Erik Larsen.

have been done that have been very referential to comics, like Star Wars— there’s a lot of comic books in Star Wars—have been really effective. LARSEN: Robocop is one of the best superhero comic books ever done, on film. SIMONSON: Robocop or the Terminator films. The Terminator films are a lot of fun and they have a lot of what makes comics work well in them without being condescending to the material or being priggish about it or go laughing it off or whatever. It’s straight adventure stuff. So it maybe we’re going to get some people who are in positions of power in the movie industry who are familiar enough with comics to try to take it in that direction. I have no idea, I’m not connected to the movies at all, but there will be a generation of guys who know the material. LARSEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. SIMONSON: They read Marvel Comics when I read them and the ones after that. They’re directors and writers, producers and journalists, and they’re a lot more conversant with the characters and stories and understand more what they’re about. LARSEN: There’s people who are wanting to do licensing stuff now that the Image comics have taken off and is going great guns. And the people that I generally talk to are people that are coming to me who have read Savage Dragon and I know they converse with me about the character and the things that he’s done—“Where are you going with this?” SIMONSON: Yeah, these guys are paying attention. LARSEN: How’d this happen, you know? [Walt laughs] And it’d be interesting if any of these books ends up going into something, either Saturday morning or syndication or a movie or something to see how close it can keep a handle on it. SIMONSON: Yeah. HAMILTON: We’re finally getting this close to finally seeing done right Kirby on screen. For me, about the only time that I’ve seen a translation of Kirby that worked was the most static, but the most enjoyable and faithful, and that was the old Marvel Super Heroes cartoon which is basically just a camera going past a Kirby panel in a magazine. But the voices, whoever they chose to do the voices who I’ve never heard before or since, had these Lawrence Olivier doing Thor or something [chuckles] and they used the dialogue work back

then. And apparently, they had Kirby come in and finish it, you know, take out and add things to it. But that, for me, when I talk to people about animation and comics-to-animation or to film, I always go to that. And everybody hates it for the most part, but I say that was the most faithful. It had the power, it had movement, and it was faithful to the characters. They didn’t have to change anything. They had the origin issues, they would show it whether it was Captain America or if it was Sub-Mariner or the Hulk. SIMONSON: But actually, some stuff that’s rather similar, in tone and in power—at least it seems so to me—is some of the Japanese animation stuff where they really go off on these flights of fantasy with fantastic stories. LARSEN: Those, the Japanese stuff, and the Chinese action movies, those things, it’s like you go and you see a Spider-Man in the TV show and just watch it. It’s so ponderously slow, these brawls, and then you go and watch a Jackie Chan film and it’s like this is explosive stuff. Just put Jackie Chan in a Spider-Man costume and let him go wild! HAMILTON: Right. LARSEN: That’s the Ditko Spider-Man right there! You don’t even need the superpowers, you don’t even really particularly need any special effects. SIMONSON: There’s some Hong Kong director whose name I don’t know [Editor’s note: Siu-Tung Ching] who did a series of movies, Chinese Ghost Story One, Two, and Three, and some other ones. Those are ghost stories, they’re not superhero stories, but the way they’re filmed, the way the action is done. They’re really superhero stuff on film in a way I’d never seen in this country. LARSEN: I guess the directors are really trying to dwell on the fact that somebody’s swinging, rather than the effect. After watching Superman II, where these guys are punching each other and then they drift across the city until they hit something: “Well, you know, it’s a special effect here that we want to show, but it’s like we sped that thing out, that you could really see them fly and they’d go in through a building and they’d come back.” SIMONSON: That’d be nice. It would be nice to see some of that stuff actually make it into film and be treated in a way that would be appropriate for the material. Maybe we’ll live that long!

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It was the 27th year of MidSouthCon, a science-fiction convention in Memphis, Tennessee, that began adding programming for comic-book fans in the early 2000s. By mid-decade, the organizers went after a major creator each year as their Comics Guest of Honor. John Ostrander held that tribute when the following interview was conducted on March 22, 2009. This introduction does not have to highlight Mr. Ostrander’s achievements for two reasons. The first reason is because he beautifully covered his own career up to the time that this discussion took place. The second reason is because the guy mines his material so well that the interview is not out of date. For example, when we talked in 2009, he had been working for Dark Horse Comics on different Star Wars titles for several years. As of June 2011, he is preparing a new Star Wars comic for release by Dark Horse this December. Besides his reliable timeliness with miniseries, he often stays on long-running books to the ends of their runs, and that is meant only in a positive way. The ability to so fully develop his characters while guiding their sagas to inevitable conclusions is rare in the field. We’re more interesting for the people we know, and John did a wonderful job of demonstrating that truth. Whether besting his mischievous brother in church, collaborating on comic books with his two great loves, or expressing his admiration for a certain legendary Batman writer and editor, John was generous and welcomed us into his world. There was magic in the room and those in attendance knew it. Thanks, John. – Eddy Zeno

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All covers TM & © their respective copyright holders.

EARLY DAYS EDDY ZENO: Tell me about when you started reading comics. JOHN OSTRANDER: I read everything that I could find. I finished all the Sherlock Holmes stories by the time I was ten. My mother believed Dr. Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent, so I was not allowed to read superhero comics which meant, of course, that they were all the more desirable and had to be read on the sly over at friends’ houses. So that’s how I got warped towards comic books. In high school I went to an audition—I was at a boys’ Catholic high school, which meant all-boys. The girl that I was interested in was attending an all-girls’ high school. In order to get somewhere in her vicinity I learned that they were doing auditions for a play and they needed guys because, of course, they had no guys. So I went over and I auditioned. Because they only had a smattering of people, I got cast into one of the parts. The first time on stage, I found out I was actually good at something outside of reading. So I did that and my family was very impressed. I have a twin brother, by the way, who looks and acts and sounds nothing like me, my brother Joe. I’m the flaming Liberal, he’s the arch Conservative in the family, so there are certain topics we don’t talk about and other things we do. When he calls me on the phone, we do dueling Elmer Fudds. [doing Elmer Fudd impression] “Be vewwy, vewwy quiet. We’re hunting wabbits, huh-huh-huh-huh-huh!” [audience laughs] We’ve learned that Elmer Fudd, by the way, is remarkably skilled and does a lot of different musicals and stuff like that. He has an affinity for Lerner and Lowe. “It’s twue, it’s twue! … the cwimate must be wuther dwull to you, [sings] ahh-hummm.” [audience laughs again] I could do Elmer Fudd all afternoon. So my family came for the first time to show my brother, who is not noted for his tact—I learned tact

Eddy Zeno

conducted March 22, 2009 and transcribed by Brian K. Morris

from watching my brother, who got into trouble with everything and I’m, “Oh, no. I don’t have to do that.” The family gag was if Joe does something wrong, sooner or later, you’ll find out because he’ll tell you. John, on the other hand, will wait until he thinks that you’re old enough to find out about certain things and then maybe he’ll vent about it. Do I have time to do a quick story? ZENO: Oh, yes. OSTRANDER: Because we lived across the street from the Catholic Church, me and my brother were altar boys and we always got assigned the six o’clock mass. For those of you who don’t know, there are certain rituals that are done in particular—this was before Vatican II, so this is all in Latin, facing the altar, and with altar boys, there’s the book side and there’s the bell side and the bell side was the glamour side. That’s the kid who got to ring the bells at certain times during the thing. And the poor book guy just got stuck as a mule. He had to grab the book up in its heavy stand and come down and take it up the other side. So he did the grunt labor and the bell side guy got all the glory of ringing the bells. And because of ritual, the patterns were set. You need to know this because this defines my brother’s and my relationship. All week long, Joe had taken the bell side. He just muscled in—he’s three minutes older, he never listens, so he took that. From the moment you step out from like a side room, he gets set. So I positioned myself. On the last day I was going to ring the bells, by gum, by God, by gosh. And just before we were to go up there, Joe said, “John, the Father wants to see you.” I went, “Oh, yeah?” And so I went back. The Father goes, “What are you doing?” We’re supposed to go out and Joe starts taking my place. I go, “But! But!” and Joe’s giggling, and out we go. The other part: When you’re on the book side, you’re kneeling by the bells but you don’t get to ring them and then you switch sides as part of the doo-dah. So while I was there, I started a little experiment. I discovered that there’s a triangle set of bells held by nuts at the top. They weren’t tightly fastened so I just started to unfasten them down to one last quarter-turn and left them that way. I went over to the book side— Joe’s by the bell side. Joe’s a mighty bell-ringer and he’d go Ring-A-Ding-A-Ding-A-Ding, Ring-A-Ding-A-Ding-ADing, going overhead. So it’s in the middle of the big high set. He starts ringing and he goes Ring-A-Ding-ADing-A-Ding, Ring-A-Ding-A-Ding-A-Ding, Ring-A-Dingpingpingpingping [audience laughs] all over the sacristy. He’s just got one little bell that goes ding-ding-ding-ding. [audience laughs again] And I’m on the other side, going [snickers loudly]. [audience laughs once more] Joe gets up, genuflects in the middle, and then goes around, picking up the pieces of the bells while I’m going [snickers loudly again]. I never admitted to it until our 21st birthday [audience laughs and moans], so I guess I’m a sneak. VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Not even in confession, eh? OSTRANDER: I didn’t go there to sin; it was righteous retribution. [audience laughs] God approves of that. My God did. My God thought it was hysterical. And I will say my brother hung onto it because my Aunt [Helen] still lived in the same parish when she died and she had her funeral there. We were supposed to get up and talk about my aunt. My brother brings this up and tells this story from the front of the church and says, “We all know who God’s going to hit on the way out.” [audience chuckles] I say, “What’s this got to do with my aunt?” But it’s just Joe. He can’t let go. Aunt Helen lived to be 101 years old. Her father lived to be a hundred years old. She was my father’s

Beginnings: “Sargon, Mistress of War” for Warp #1 (Mar. 1983)

Milestones: Co-creator of Amanda Waller and Oracle (repurposing Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon) / GrimJack / Legends / Suicide Squad / Firestorm / Manhunter / Deadshot / Wasteland / The Spectre / Hawkworld / Martian Manhunter / Punisher / The Kents / Heroes for Hire / Blaze of Glory / misc. Batman projects / misc. Star Wars series for Dark Horse Comics

Works in Progress: Star Wars / Secret Six

Cyberspace: John Ostrander Fan Page on Facebook

john ostrander

Friends and Family (top) (left to right) Timothy Truman, Jan Duursema, Tom Mandrake, John Ostrander, and Kim Yale. (bottom) John’s Aunt Helen. All-Interview Issue

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Stage Plays (top) College-aged Ostrander (right) with Mike SaaD in Waiting for Godot. (bottom) First Comics brought Stuart Gordon and Bury St. Edmund’s sci-fi play Warp to comic books, home of John’s first scripting gig, the Sargon backup. Seen here is Frank Brunner’s original cover art to #6 (Sept. 1983), courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions.

sister and she was a party girl. At her 90th birthday, everyone knew what to bring her, which was either cartons of cigarettes or bottles of Seagram’s 7, which was her brand. [audience chuckles] When we cleaned out her apartment, she still had about seven gallons left but I know she received a lot more. She had a drink every day and a cigarette. When she died, she died in her own apartment. I think it was too early in the day to have a glass of whiskey, but she had just started watching TV. She had a lovely hundredth birthday and her father before her gave me one of the life lessons that I’ve kept a long time, because once they reach this hundred, they get all the telegrams and stuff from all the high muckety-mucks and stuff like that, like the president and the governor and the mayor and senator. He also got a new color TV that day, because his favorite thing in the world was watching the Chicago Cubs. He goes, “Well, that’s quite nice, that’s quite nice.” When he also got a card signed by the broadcaster of the team and all of the Cubs, he went, [emphatically] “Well, isn’t that somethin’?” He and I once talked about my theatre … the only time we talked about my being in theatre because he was a blue-collar plumber, he says to me, “Theatre. Theatre. Hmm, well … that’s a good trade, don’t you know? God knows I couldn’t do it. Then again, lots of them would be lost with a wrench in their hands, so I figure it all evens up.” And that’s part of my approach to life. No one’s better than someone else. It all evens out. I do writing, it doesn’t make me better or worse than anyone else. It just all evens out.

“AN OVERAGE MICKEY ROONEY” ZENO: [shows a slide of John as a thespian] OSTRANDER: All right, this is from my theatre days in college. This is Waiting for Godot and I’m the guy on the right. That’s back when I had hair [audience chuckles again] and something of a jawline. So there’s a guy there, Mike SaaD, who’s a very good actor. He’s now out on the West Coast. I trained at Loyola University and had a bunch of really good teachers at that time. Dennis Zacek, who directed this play, later became the head of a small theatre in Chicago that won a Tony Award for, like regional theatres and stuff. He’s still there. In my theatre career in Chicago, I was an actor, director, playwright, very bad producer—I was an overage Mickey Rooney. I’d go, “Gee, kids! Let’s get together and put on a show.” I’d put my money into it, forget to do the proper PR, and then wonder why no one would show up. Play writing is what actually led me into comics. My friend Mike Gold, who is an old friend of mine, he was in love with this play, Bloody Bess, that I co-wrote with my friend Bill Norris and was done at the Organic Theatre. The Organic Theatre was run by Stuart Gordon, who, later on, has gone on to make films like Re-Animator, for those of you who are aware of that. People who were in it included people like Joey Mantegna, the actor who’s gone on and done a lot of things; Meshach Taylor, who did other things, as well [Editor’s note: Such as TV’s Designing Women.]—a number of really good people came out of the Organic Theatre at the time. One example: Late in the run, I was playing a small bit part in Bloody Bess and I got slung in the air with my heels up in the air. The play starts with the pirates taking this merchant ship and the merchant captain defends himself. “You may kill me now, but my words, my words…” And one pirate goes, “Your words?,” and then they do a single slash across the throat to release the blood bag and there’s all this blood that comes out and goes into a bucket. That’s the scenario. At this point in the run of the play, I was playing the merchant guy who gets slung up. And my co-writer, Bill Norris, was playing the guy who slits the throat. So I’m doing my bit and I have my heels up in the air and I’m going, “But my words, my words, they shall live!” He starts sawing on my throat with this knife, going, “Your words, you fat turkey? Your words?” So I’m just going, “Mmm, mmm, mmm!” and people say it was a lovely, realistic death moment. I’m just trying to keep from laughing. Anyway, Mike Gold was a big fan of the play, he knew I was a big fan of comics, and so he decided to see whether or not I could actually work in the field. He gave me my first shot in comics, in the back pages of Warp! And then, from there, the rest is hysteria, I guess.

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stay as a backup series for a while. Fan reaction was so WELCOME TO CYNOSURE ZENO: All right, you mentioned getting started at First strong from his first appearance that, within six months, he went into his own series. We ran it there for many, Comics with Mike Gold. OSTRANDER: Yeah. There’s a character called Sargon, many years until First Comics itself folded. Then he went into hiatus, a legal hiatus, because of the Mistress of War, and I did a backup feature of her. question of rights. We finally got the rights Mike suggested it and he kept on making issue resolved and then we did the first new me go over it over and over my plot and series in 20 years, GrimJack: Killer Instinct, my script and re-do it until finally, he which has since been gathered into says, “Okay, it’s accepted. We’re going a trade paperback as well. [Editor’s to put it in the back of the first issue.” note: GrimJack was covered way I’m like, “Gee, that’s great. Do I get back in BACK ISSUE #9.] paid for this?” He says, “Yes, you ZENO: You’re good friends with sap!” [chuckles] So starting with Mike Gold. the very first issue of Warp! I did a OSTRANDER: Yep, Mike’s a really three-part backup story of Sargon good, old buddy and as he gets in three different issues. And that’s older, he actually looks more and how I launched my career. more like Julie Schwartz [Eddy Following this comes GrimJack, mike gold laughs], which he would take as a who’s probably the cornerstone of my high compliment because Julie career. GrimJack, I originally created Schwartz was one of the all-time to be a prose character, set in a post–nuclear war Chicago setting. At the time, Warp had created a reality great editors of comics. He’s a good friend and he gets and this city called Cynosure, which was the city at the me into more things, sometimes. He’s the one who middle of the interdimensional nexus. All dimensions brought me to DC to do the crossover series Legends, eventually wind up in Cynosure. You cross the street which I plotted and then Len Wein dialogued. and the laws of physics change. You’re in a different dimension and they’re going to trash it at the end of the thing. I said, “No way.” I know they’re looking to start more series so I proposed GrimJack, but I shifted it to the Cynosure site. GrimJack is one part sword and sorcery, one part hardboiled detective, set in a science-fiction setting where guns work here, magic works there, and swords and a bad attitude work everywhere. He was originally supposed to go into the back of Starslayer, which was the first full-length comic that I was writing. I took it over from Mike Grell and GrimJack was going to

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Burn, Baby, Burn! (below) Original cover art by John Byrne to issue #4 (Feb. 1987) of DC’s Crisis follow-up, Legends, which was plotted by Ostrander. Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com). (left) Cover to Ostrander and Tim Truman’s GrimJack #1 (Aug. 1984). Legends TM & © DC Comics. GrimJack © 2011 NightSky GrimJack Rights and Production Vehicle, LLC.

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“This Wheel’s on Fire!” From Heritage’s archives, page 5 of GrimJack #15 (Oct. 1985, cover seen in inset) shows Tim Truman’s wizardry with blacks. Script by Ostrander. GrimJack © 2011 NightSky GrimJack Rights and Production Vehicle, LLC.

Legends was the follow-up to Crisis on Infinite THANAGAR OR BUST Earths. The idea was to make it shorter and to tear it ZENO: You did Hawkworld at DC with Tim. apart to launch three new series. One was the new OSTRANDER: Tim recreated Hawkman over at Justice League, which became Justice League DC, revamping and re-inventing, when DC International, which Keith Giffen and was doing that a lot. Then it was decided [Kevin] Maguire did; then there was the that Hawkworld would be made into a new Flash series; and then the third continuing series. Tim didn’t want to one was Suicide Squad, the new series write it and eventually, I was asked if I created at that point. I would do the writing on the ZENO: Please talk about Tim Truman. Hawkworld ongoing series. OSTRANDER: Tim Truman is my artist It created controversy at the on GrimJack. There are those who claim time because it directly contradicted that Tim and I were separated at birth. continuity. I, at the time, said, “We don’t My quick Tim Truman impersonation is, have to do that. We can do these “Hrmmm.” [audience laughs] stories without messing up continuity.” Tim is one of the great collaboraBut the editorial decision was, “No, Tim Truman tors/storytellers I’ve ever met. He’s a we’re going to take it up as if this is fine, fine artist. He’s currently writing his first time on Earth.” I tried, as best Conan for Dark Horse and his art I could, to reconcile the continuity style, I think, has only improved over the years. and did a fair job on it. But what the series, though, A good, good, dear, close friend as well. really became about were these two interplanetary policemen, Hawkman and Hawkwoman, who then come to Earth and somebody once wrote—and accurately—was that the subtext of Hawkworld was actually civics and how does the political process work? Because Hawkman and Hawkwoman—the first time that they read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, they’re flabbergasted. They look at the people and say, “Do you really mean this? Because if you do, you’re one of the most dangerous species in the galaxy.” So that was part of the underlying themes that we wanted to get to. ZENO: With you and Tim Truman, what is it like with two writers working together? Or did he just stay out of the way on this? OSTRANDER: Tim, in terms of Hawkworld, kept things out of the way. But Tim, in terms of doing GrimJack and stuff like that, Tim will come up with ideas and pop them in. Tim himself is an excellent writer and so, any idea that he has, I’m more than willing to go into. Although once, that backfired on him horribly because he was also doing Starslayer at one point and he was getting antsy. Tim sometimes gets a little antsy if he stays too long in one place, in one series. And he really wanted to devote more time to GrimJack and to projects that he wanted to launch. So they told me, “Go talk to him and see what he wants to do so we can keep him on Starslayer a little bit longer.” So I went up to his house in Lake Geneva and we sat and talked. I said, “Well, Tim, what do you want to do next in Starslayer?” He goes, [imitates Tim Truman] “Hrmmmn, Ah see the Golden Moby, the whale that swam the timestream.” [Eddy chuckles] I said, “Okay…” So we started that and Tim designed a giant catfish as the Golden Moby, the whale that swam the timestream, and then promptly left in the middle of the two-parter, leaving me to deal with this Golden Moby, the whale who swam the timestream concept [audience laughs]. I think that’s just karma, like every once in a while, karma—or coyote—bites me in the ass. I love Tim anyway. [audience chuckles again]

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KIM YALE

“I Vant to Drink Your Diet Coke”

ZENO: That’s a good attitude. So let’s talk about your collaborating with Kim Yale. OSTRANDER: All right. Kim and I met as a result of Doctor Who. I was writing a Doctor Who play at the time, trying to get it produced. We got that close in Chicago. Kim was a big Doctor Who fan. I met with John Nathan-Turner and Terry Nation at one big convention and Kim was along. I thought she was Terry Nation’s secretary. She had a slight British accent. That’s because wherever Kim went, she’d absorb whatever she was doing and she had a British accent if she was around someone who was British. Kim and I knew each other for a long time. She was married when I first met her. She ultimately became divorced and we were friends. Ultimately, one day, she wrote me a nice letter about a GrimJack story that I’d written. It was very touching and it had to deal with her brother who died, and stuff. So I called her and said, “Well, why didn’t you just call me?” And she said, “No, I felt it needed to be in a letter.” So we went out. We went talking over coffee and walked down by the lakefront in Evanston, which was very nice. And I decided that the big moon was out and what this woman really needed was a big kiss. So I kissed her, which amazed her because she thought I was gay. [audience laughs uproariously] The reason she thought I was gay was that, first of all, I lived with a male roommate, which was true. Secondly, I came from theater and, as far as she was concerned, if you were in theater—which she was, too—you were gay until proven otherwise. And thirdly, I had never responded to any of her flirting—Kim was a terrific flirt. That’s because she was married at the time! I said, “You’re married!” And she said, “Well, yeah, but it’s just flirting.” So we became a couple and she had a bunch of admirers, the guys I called a “harem.” One day, we went playing volleyball, which we used to do, and then we were going to meet for dinner. And I was waiting and waiting and waiting. I called her house and she wasn’t there, so I finally tried calling her parents’ house, although her parents were out of town. She was there, checking in on the cats and she was just waiting. I said, “Are you going to show up?” She said, “Yeah.” She’d gotten scared at that point because our relationship was getting very close and that’s “Aah!” scaring her a little bit. And then I said, “Look, if you really want to get rid of me, you’re going to have to work a lot harder than that. Standing me up just pisses me off. Then you’ve got to deal with that. But if you think you’re going to get rid of me, no, no. You’ve got to work a lot harder than that.” She never did. ZENO: Very good. OSTRANDER: And we became married. We co-wrote on Suicide Squad and on Manhunter. About 12 years ago, she died from breast cancer. She fought a real hard fight. She wrote a wonderful series of columns at the time for The Comic Buyer’s Guide as best she could, talking about her illness and how she felt at the time. Those are remarkable columns. ZENO: That’s right. I remember that. OSTRANDER: She left an imprint on everyone that knew her in comics because she had a smile and a radiance that could fill the room. I’m sort of outgoing— Kim was really outgoing. If she’d been here for the Memphis Fan Force, I’d have gone to bed and she’d be dancing with all of you and danced you into the grave and probably drunk you under the table. [audience laughs]

(below) John Ostrander and wife Kim Yale as a vampire couple at a 1991 Halloween masquerade party at the home of then-DC Comics editor Michael Eury and his wife Rose in Brooklyn, New York. (left) Kim at work.

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GOING THE DISTANCE ZENO: I do want to talk for a minute about long series runs. You mentioned Tim Truman gets antsy. But you—I don’t know anybody in comics who stays with something and is so creative for so long on a series. I mean, they have to run you off, don’t they? OSTRANDER: Yeah, they basically have to cancel the book! There are very few books where I’ve actually walked off. I walked off Firestorm after issue #100 because I really was out of story with that. ZENO: After #100? OSTRANDER: Well, I didn’t write all of them, but I had a long run on it. ZENO: It is amazing. I don’t know anybody else who does that or can do that now. OSTRANDER: Jan [Duursema] and I were just figuring that this year marks about ten years that we’ve worked on Star Wars together. ZENO: Yes, one of your medium-length series at this point. OSTRANDER: So far. Yeah, the current storyline that we’re on is up to issue #40 already. And we still feel we’re just getting started. ZENO: Please get into Suicide Squad, because the advantages of staying on a series are that things generate. And again, you were working with Kim. Did she start as your editor? OSTRANDER: No, Kim was my co-writer. Actually, I began Suicide Squad without her. After we’d gotten married, then she wanted to get into writing more. I talked DC into letting her become my co-writer on Suicide Squad and the bulk of the series, really. I think I did the first year and a half, two years on it. But the rest of the series was basically Kim and I on it together. And I’m very proud of Suicide Squad. I wanted to do a regular series and originally, I wanted to do Challengers of the Unknown, but somebody else named Jeph Loeb had already tied it up. Bob Greenberger, who was the editor, said, “Well, what about Suicide Squad?” And I said, “Suicide Squad? What a stupid name. Who in their right minds would belong to something that calls itself ‘Suicide

Squad’?” And as I started to play with the concept, the answer came to me: those who have no other choice. I said, “Well, who doesn’t have any other choice? Prisoners.” Then I went, “Hmm…” And the short form of the description of Suicide Squad is “Dirty Dozen, Mission: Impossible, and supervillains.” I wanted to also use the idea, by spotlighting the villains in Suicide Squad, to show how dangerous they could be. I mean, if we only ever see them as beaten, then the superheroes are just beating on patsies for the most part. But if we could show them as being actually dangerous individuals on their own, then when they return—if you read Suicide Squad, and then see the characters in the other series, you go, “Hmm, these are actually pretty dangerous people.” And we also created the character of Amanda Waller—a.k.a. “the Wall”—whose main “superhero” ability is her attitude. There was no one like her. As she recently described herself in the most recent miniseries, she says, “I’m black, middle-aged, and menopausal, and you do not want to mess with me.” [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #26 for an in-depth, art-packed exploration of Suicide Squad.] ZENO: [chuckles] She’s a great character. OSTRANDER: Yeah, she is. There’s no one like her before and no one since.

ORACLE ZENO: Out of issue #23 of Suicide Squad came the character Oracle. Please talk a little bit about the character you made out of Batgirl— who she became after she was shot. OSTRANDER: We disliked [Batman: The] Killing Joke immensely, Kim and I both, mainly because we felt that it just trampled all over a good character for no good reason, which was Barbara Gordon. We also said she would be dead, first of all, from that gunshot [from the Joker] one way or another. And secondly, we said, why we should deal with the repercussions. She should be crippled by it at—if you take a look at how she’s shot, there’s no way that it hadn’t hit her spinal cord. So we said, “All right.” And what DC didn’t have at the time was an information broker. We knew if we did this right, she would become in big demand because as a plot-writing device, she simplifies things for other writers a lot. If your character needs to know something, call Oracle. She’ll find it out for you or she’ll already know. And when we first created Oracle in Suicide Squad, we didn’t tell people right away that she was Barbara Gordon. We waited and then finally, we let it out that Barbara Gordon was Oracle, and she’s become much more important to the DC Universe as Oracle, I think, than she ever was as Batgirl. ZENO: Very true. The tale “Born of Hope” is one of three stories by three different writers in Batman Chronicles #5, and I just found it recently. I didn’t know what I was missing. I saw a couple of things on the Internet about people raving about this story. I’m a physical therapist, so I’ve worked with spinal-cord injury patients. And this is an amazing story I would recommend for anyone on how Barbara Gordon finds her new life and it isn’t easy. This is maybe a 15-, 16-page story that takes her through that first year after being shot. Did both of you write it? OSTRANDER: Yes. It was actually Kim’s last story, a good portion of that. And she was adamant, in fact, that one of the pages be about how difficult it’d be just to move from the wheelchair into the car. ZENO: It’s beautifully drawn, too, by Brian Stelfreeze. OSTRANDER: Yes.

Final Flight Tim Truman original painting cover for Hawkworld #32 (Mar. 1993), the last issue of the series. Courtesy of Heritage. (inset) Amanda Waller vs. Granny Goodness in Suicide Squad #34. TM & © DC Comics.

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ZENO: It shows her getting into the car, it’s perfect. It’s dead-on accurate. OSTRANDER: Yeah, and we wanted to show how someone who’s in a wheelchair can still be a hero. And it’s not just through her computers. She learns a little bit of a physical martial art that she can do from the wheelchair so she won’t feel like a victim anymore. That’s really what the story’s about—not feeling like a victim and reclaiming that part. That’s what makes her heroic and unique. ZENO: And there are a lot of tears to get there, and it’s wonderfully done. On that note, she became a character in a television series [Birds of Prey] and this is where we get to ask the comic-book writer [jokingly] how many millions of dollars you made from that in your royalties? OSTRANDER: None. Barbara Gordon already existed. Because she’s an existing character in the DCU, I have no claim on her, even though I recreated her as Oracle. If I’d created an entirely new character and called her Oracle, I would have participation. For instance, if they actually make the Suicide Squad movie that they’re talking about and use Amanda Waller, I have participation in the use of Amanda Waller because she was a new character I created. ZENO: Let’s hope that happens. [Editor’s note: Since this interview, Pam Grier played Amanda Waller in episodes of TV’s Smallville in 2010, and Angela Bassett portrayed her on screen in 2011’s Green Lantern.] OSTRANDER: It’s the same amount of money that I get in royalties from Star Wars. [audience chuckles] Because it all belongs to Uncle George [Lucas]. But I knew that going in, so I cannot gripe. I can, but I don’t, because there’s no point to it.

MARY MITCHELL ZENO: Please talk about how all of you were working together at one point—Mary [Mary Mitchell, John’s current wife], Kim, and yourself. OSTRANDER: I met Mary at a comic-book convention. I usually don’t advise going to comic book conventions to meet people, but every once in a while that happens: I met Kim at one, I met Mary at another. [Mary] was about 19 at the time; she was an artist. If you try to show me your portfolio, I’m going to weasel out of it if I can because I’ll tell you, “I’m just a writer. I really don’t know what I’m looking at.” Or I’ll say, “See that guy down there? I can’t give you work, but that guy’s an editor or an art director and they can. So yes, I could look at it, but you’d be better off showing it to them.” And Mary, when I first met her, just glided through all of that. She’d go, “That’s okay. I want you to look at it.” “No, that’s all right.” “No, I’d prefer you.” She’s pretty, blonde, 19 years old, and draws. I said all right and I started looking through her portfolio and by page three, I’m grabbing the guy next to me, going, “Look at this! Would you look at this? Look at this! She should be working right now!” And I later found out I terrified Mary because she’s very shy. I grabbed her portfolio, grabbed her, and I started taking her around to every editor and art director I could find. I had found somebody. She was

Batgirl Beyond (above) Page 14 from Batman Chronicles #5 (Summer 1996), illustrated by Brian Stelfreeze and Karl Story, featuring Ostrander and Kim Yale’s “Oracle: Year One.” (left) John and second wife Mary Mitchell. Batman Chronicles TM & © DC Comics.

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Parting Ways Jim Corrigan says goodbye to the Ghostly Guardian in The Spectre #62 (Feb. 1998). Script by John Ostrander, art by Tom Mandrake.

my discovery. I was so excited. But I found out later on that she didn’t really know who I was. She promised her parents that she would show her portfolio to professionals and the reason she chose me was because there was this little kid in front of me and I was being nice to him. You know, kidding around and getting the little kid to smile. And she thought, “Well, if he can be nice to a kid, maybe he’ll be nice to me, too.” She hates getting her picture taken. She’ll put up with it, but … Mary came to the East Coast to live, ran into some hard times. She was running through a bunch of emotional things and Kim and I got very worried about her. So when we bought our house in Jersey, we had lots of extra room so we said, “If you need a safe place for right now, why don’t you come live with us until you get sorted out?” So she came down, started getting herself sorted out. She found a therapist who helped her a lot. Then when Kim got diagnosed with cancer, Mary just responded magnificently. She and Kim were best friends, like sisters. Kim was sometimes her mentor. Kim meant the world to her, I think, as Kim did to me,

TM & © DC Comics.

and she stuck through it all the way to the end. She was there when Kim died. I told her she could stay in the house if she wanted if it didn’t weird her out because again, we were just friends. We stayed that way for a couple years after Kim died, literally just friends. I was very careful not even to accidentally touch her because I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable. So we were watching TV one night and she turned off the TV and turned around and said, “We’ve got to talk.” I said, “Okay, about what?” And she said how her feelings had been changing. I went, “Ohh.” So in terms of my finding someone after Kim died, well, we became closer, we entered into this relationship. And she’s now going to pick me up tonight and she said she misses me… [audience chuckles] ZENO: Very nice. So about Gotham Nights, you did two miniseries where Mary was the artist, if you would talk a little bit about that. She’s a great storyteller— her people, wonderful; her architecture, outstanding. OSTRANDER: She has a definite sense of place. Her people live in real locales. She always thinks about the details that are in rooms, the buildings themselves, any city that she’s in—has a real feel for it. Anton Furst, of course, designed the first Batman film with Michael Keaton and they had these tremendous, tremendous architectural drawings from Furst for the cityscapes. Mary took off on that and then built some of her own. And so she had a very real Gotham City. For the second one, I had her design an amusement park that was just off from Gotham. Mary’s a fan of roller coasters and it shows in that.

BATMAN, THE SPECTRE, AND MARTIAN MANHUNTER ZENO: Anyway, you’ve said for personal reasons, that Gotham Nights was one of your favorites to work on. OSTRANDER: Yeah. Well, again, because this, at the time, again, Mary and I were just friends, but I got a chance to see her blossom out into this wonderful, wonderful storyteller. Particularly, the first Gotham Nights series, I heartily recommend it if you haven’t read it yet. She does wonderful storytelling effects in it. Batman is simply a character in the series. We focus on the other characters who live in Gotham for whom Batman is a part of the landscape, but not the central part of it. ZENO: I really cared about those characters. You did a great job. So if you’d talk for a minute about your editor on that series. OSTRANDER: Denny O’Neil, one of the great comic-book writers of our time, a pretty good editor, too. And he gave us wide latitude in terms of doing it. Denny’s an old friend. Denny did Green Lantern/Green Arrow, which brought social relevance into comics in a way that some had seen before, but not quite as well as Denny was doing it, and [he] really influenced them. The idea that you could write about important things but, first, you have to tell a story. Because, as Denny said, if you’re not telling them a story, then you’re picking their pocket. ZENO: And you did a four-issue series, “Grotesk,” in

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Batman. You also did the one-shot Seduction of the Gun. Was Denny O’Neil the editor on both of those? OSTRANDER: No, “Grotesk” came later and Tom Mandrake and I did that. Seduction of the Gun began because the son of one of the Warner Bros. [DC Comics’ parent company] higher executives was gunned down. He went outside to use a pay phone because his own phone wasn’t working. When he was just talking on the phone, someone came up and shot him in the back of the head for no reason. So people were reacting to it. They asked me to write about guns being in society—they figured Batman would be a good choice. One of the things that happened, as far as my research, was that I learned that in the State of Virginia at the time, gangs from New York were going down and buying cases of guns that then showed up on the New York streets and in the gangs. I mentioned that in the story for about four or five pages. The governor of Virginia at the time, Governor Wilder, was trying to pass a modest gun-control bill which would have said you can buy one gun a month. In other words, you could belong to the “Gun of the Month Club” and still be legal. And people said, “You have no chance of getting this through. This is Virginia, for God’s sakes. Only Texas would be harder.” So someone on the staff saw Seduction of the Gun and gave it to him, and then they bought a couple of cases of it, put one on every legislator’s seat, and then also showed it to the newspapers and the media and said, “Look, even Batman is talking about how Virginia is supplying guns and it became a big thing.” So eventually, the bill was passed and the editor, Denny O’Neil, and his wife and Kim and I were invited to the signing of the bill down in Richmond, Virginia. I have no ego involved. I was just glad to be there. But I asked, “Okay, were we really important? Did we really play a part or is this just a part of the PR for it?” “No, you played a big role in terms of getting this legislation passed.” ZENO: Now, if you would talk about The Spectre for a minute. OSTRANDER: The Spectre was with Tom Mandrake, who is just a

phenomenal, phenomenal artist. His style is unique. The only one in the field you can liken him to is probably Gene Colan. We took The Spectre, after we did Firestorm, and everybody told us, “No, you can’t do more than six issues. He’s too powerful. You either have to de-power him or you’re going to wind up doing a formula.” And we said, “No, we know how to do it. Just give him to us.” It wasn’t that we downgraded Spectre’s powers at all, we simply redefined Jim Corrigan and went back to the basics of who he was. When he died, he was a plainclothes policeman in the ’30s in Gotham City. He was a tough-nosed guy, and so a lot of what the Spectre becomes is because of Corrigan’s own viewpoint. They finally let us wind up the series as we wanted to, which ended with Jim Corrigan giving up the role and just passing on because he’s finally able to let go of his anger and his outrage. He no longer had it so he was no longer the vessel for it. ZENO: I do want you to briefly comment on the Martian Manhunter series, another long one that you were able to complete. There’s the pace and feel of an alien mind—a sense of patience—that he is more patient than any human being and he just watches things. If you might talk for a moment about how you got into his mind. OSTRANDER: The Martian Manhunter, too often, has been sort of like “the green Superman.” His powers are very similar, so we wanted to define what makes him different and what makes him different is that Superman, Kal-El, came to Earth as a baby so he’s raised, essentially as a child, as an American. His values are American. J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, comes to Earth fully formed and from a society. So we wanted to show you that society. We wanted to show you what their values were and because he has a different body from us, as well, for however human he looks, he is, in fact, alien. He’s much more alien, really, than Superman, although there are similarities. And so we really wanted to fill that in. We felt it was like a tapestry. We wanted to give it a texture, unlike The Spectre, which had a definite conclusion. We knew he was going to go on and so we wanted to give you this sense of who he was and the culture that he came from.

Across the DC Universe (left) Ostrander and Mandrake transformed one-time Superman clone J’Onn J’Onzz into a unique and interesting character. Cover to Martian Manhunter #25 (Dec. 2000). (right) The concluding chapter of Ostrander and Mandrake’s “Grotesk” appeared in Batman #662 (Mar. 2007), with a cover by Gregory Lauren. TM & © DC Comics.

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THE WILD, WILD WEST ZENO: Very good. Let’s skip to your Westerns. OSTRANDER: I’m very proud of these, particularly. The Kents was the first one. I tried for years to get DC to do a Western and [editor] Pete Tomasi finally said, “What do you really want to do?” And I said, “You aren’t going to be able to get it through, but I hope to do a Western.” And he said, “No, I think I can.” Paul Levitz agreed to it and offered either three or four Prestige books or a 12-issue miniseries. I took that because I wanted to show how the Kents came to be in Kansas in the first place, because everyone came from somewhere. That resulted in my research into pre–Civil War Kansas, Civil War Kansas, and then the post–war, the Cowtown Era. How much of our mythology of the West actually comes from those eras and those times? I wanted to work as much actual history into the story as I could. So it’s about how the Kents get to be there and Clark Kent is who he is because of the values that were given to him and I wanted to show where those values came from. Thus, having done it at DC, then, of course—Johnny Ego that I can be—I wanted to go do it at Marvel just to prove I could. [audience chuckles] So I had an editor over there who was open to it and I said, “You aren’t going to do anything with the Western heroes—let me kill them off. Let me do the last ride of the Marvel Western Heroes,” and that was Blaze of Glory. That’s much more of a movie Western than an historical Western, although there’s specific history in it that I tried to keep true to. ZENO: There is. OSTRANDER: But we sort of redefined what the Western heroes were to begin with. My artist, Leonardo Manco, decided he was going to redesign all of them, which is pretty cool, actually. He came

up with great designs and we wound up with what I thought was very different, but if you like Westerns at all, both of them are in trade format. So is the sequel to Blaze of Glory, which is Apache Skies, and I recommend all of those. I’m very proud of those and I’d love to do another Western any time. ZENO: And even though they’re very different, Blaze of Glory is shorter and more fictiony, I guess, but it is a sequel of sorts. It takes place in the 1880s. It takes us through history 20 years after The Kents and you can tell there’s a connection of some sort there. OSTRANDER: Yeah, just in the feel of the Westerns, or the West is closing down. ZENO: Well, another reason is a theme of many of your comics, and that’s the plight of minorities, like the African Americans in the Western series. OSTRANDER: Yeah, a lot of them, because of the opposition that they faced even out West, eventually returned home. But others stayed and settled where they were and they became the Exodusters. That’s the actual term for them. ZENO: And without beating this over the head, you attack racism in these comics and do a great job. Cabrini-Green [in several of John’s titles that are set in modern times, like Suicide Squad], for instance, is a real neighborhood. OSTRANDER: Yeah, absolutely. In Chicago. Less so now, but it was certainly there when I started. That’s where Amanda Waller came from, what were originally the projects and so I wanted to get into a bit of that.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU ZENO: Let’s go a little bit into Star Wars, which you’ve gotten to talk about a lot this weekend. OSTRANDER: Tim [Truman] actually got me into the Star Wars comics. He was writing the Star Wars comics at the time but was taking a break to do something else. I was brought in to do one arc. Jan [Duursema] and I did it together. It was the first Quinlan Voss story, which is “Twilight,” and then we gradually wormed our way back in as Tim went on to do other things and decided not to return. I became the regular scripter on the series and we convinced them to let us bring in our characters and do other things with it. And finally, after that was closing down, they said, “Well, what do you want to do next in Star Wars?” I said, “I want to dropkick this about a hundred years down the timeline and come up with a whole new batch—a new Skywalker, a new Empire, a new Sith, and Lucas Film Licensing, to my amazement, said yes, that we could do that. We’d spent a number of years at that point earning their trust but they certainly let us continue. [Editor’s note: Dark Horse Comics’ successful Star Wars comics franchise is our cover feature in BACK ISSUE #55, coming in March 2012!] ZENO: You’ve just written a Doctor Who comic. OSTRANDER: Yeah, it’s coming out in June [2009]. It’s Doctor Who: Autopia from IDW. I’m doing a single issue, a one-shot, on the tenth Doctor. I’ve had a lot of fun writing it. I’m a big Doctor Who fan and I think it’s very true to the character. I’m also doing a—God help me—an article in the book SuperVillains and Philosophy, which tries to look at philosophy as it appears in supervillains. Basically, I take a look at what are the philosophical basics and any shortcomings of Suicide Squad.

“I hope to do a Western.” Set within the DC and Marvel Universes, respectively, Ostrander’s (left) The Kents and (inset) Blaze of Glory were favorites of John’s. Kents TM & © DC Comics. Blaze of Glory © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Creative Force

ZENO: Excellent. Another thing: you love quotes. There are quotes at the front of many of your stories. For instance, “Twenty minutes in the future.” If you would talk about that. OSTRANDER: Yeah, I don’t necessarily always want to go back to what I’ve done. I want to go on to what the next story is but everything has to come from something as well. Everything has to be grounded in a reality, in a truth. And as I was talking to the class yesterday [John taught a writing class at the con], it’s a truth that we share. Stories are something that we share constantly with one another. It is the atoms of our social existence and we are all storytellers. We all use stories in our everyday lives in order to communicate, in order to entertain, in order to explain ourselves and the world around us to each other. So we are all storytellers. I just happen to get paid to do it. ZENO: We’re almost out of time. [to audience] Any questions? MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: You’ve worked with a lot of women. How is that different from working with Tim and Tom? OSTRANDER: Jan is actually tougher. She can kick my ass easily. [audience laughs] I’m serious! She’s studying martial arts. True, she can probably kick the ass of almost anyone here in the room. So I pick my arguments carefully with Jan. Other than that—my work with Kim—she brought something different to the story that I didn’t have at the time. With Mary, she brings her own sensibilities and, yes, sometimes maybe there’s a female element. But they are all artists, first and foremost, and I think when you get right down to it, the artistry transcends gender … race. It doesn’t matter what else you are, it’s our humanity. It’s a common humanity that we all share, that unites us. I’m very fortunate to work, almost without exception, with very talented collaborators. Of course, I’m very, very grateful.

Among Ostrander’s many Star Wars series for Dark Horse Comics: (left) Legacy: War #1 (Dec. 2010), with Jan Duursema; (right) the forthcoming (Dec. 2011) Star Wars: Agent of the Empire #1, with Stéphane Roux; and (inset) another Duursema partnership, Star Wars #34 (a.k.a. Star Wars: Darkness #3), from 2011; cover by Jon Foster.

ANOTHER MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: You mentioned that you came this close to doing a Doctor Who script or a play. Do you think if this comic book goes well, you might try again? OSTRANDER: I don’t know. Also I would assume that the play—I think it’s outdated now, given where they’ve taken the Doctor. So I don’t know if it’d be applicable. On the other hand, would I love to see it up on stage someday? Yeah, you bet. But I don’t know how far I can pursue it these days. ZENO: Anything else? OSTRANDER: One last thing I want to say is, I’m very grateful to the fans, who have been my entire career. As I’ve talked to some of you here, I’m very conscious that when someone picks up something that I write, they’re paying real money for it, okay? And these days, money gets harder to come by and you could be spending it on so much else, even within comics. So anytime anybody picks up something of mine and spends the money to do it, I’m thankful and I try to make sure that every issue, no matter what I’m doing, deserves your money. Otherwise, I feel that I’m picking your pocket, and I will never be a thief. So I just want to thank you all who have bought my books and enabled me to have a career in something that I love so much. I will never, ever take you for granted. That’s a promise.

With gratitude to MidSouthCon Co-Chairbeing Eric Groff and Programmer Carlin Stuart for supporting the interview’s publication and for granting me the honor of interrogating Mr. O. Many thanks to Brian Morris for his transcription of same. EDDY ZENO is the author of the must-have volume Curt Swan: A Life in Comics (Vanguard Productions, 2002).

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Colorful Personality

Robert Greenberger conducted August 18, 2010 and transcribed by Brian K. Morris

A pair of photographs of Adrienne Roy, courtesy of Anthony Tollin: (center top) Adrienne at her desk, circa 1978, during her first year in the DC Comics bullpen, and (center bottom) one of her last portraits, circa 2009–2010, taken by daughter Katrina. Also seen are four covers representing the versatility of her color résumé: New Teen Titans #1, Night Force #1, Outsiders #12, and Slash Maraud #1. Covers TM & © DC Comics.

Batman benefitted in the 1970s and 1980s from a consistency in editorial control as Julius Schwartz helmed Batman and Detective Comics before ceding them to Paul Levitz, who added The Brave and the Bold to his portfolio and then handed the series over to Dick Giordano, followed by Len Wein. But what few recognize is that someone who was there during this period and well beyond was colorist Adrienne Roy, who handled a record number of stories featuring the Dynamic Duo. She was not a one-trick pony, as evidenced by her dynamic work over George Pérez’s New Teen Titans and Gene Colan’s Night Force. Adrienne Roy was never a flashy colorist or a personality heard in fanzines or seen at many conventions. Instead, she chose to let her work speak for itself, as she dedicated herself to the craft while also indulging in other creative pursuits. Time, though, was not kind to Adrienne, as computerized coloring led to fewer assignments. By 2000 she was largely out of work. Adrienne trained herself on the computer and explored other options before family issues kept her away from comics. Then her body betrayed her and she spent the last few years battling cancer. In the summer of 2010, Adrienne was told that she had a matter of months to live, and she 42 • BACK ISSUE • All-Interview Issue

wanted her story told. I was honored to be approached to conduct her career interview, covering her life and work in comics. She managed to read and comment on the transcription before she grew too ill to continue. Her longtime collaborator and former husband Anthony Tollin worked with Adrienne to stir her dimming memories and get the facts right. What follows is the conversation she and I had along with additional materials and corrections from Anthony. In the summer of 1980, I was a temp at DC Comics and Adrienne worked there at a spare table in a bullpen area that contained the photocopier I used throughout the day. She couldn’t have been friendlier and more gracious, teaching me what she herself had learned only a few years earlier. I was happy to have her color comics for me when I later became a staff editor. And, as fate decreed, I also hired her for her last color assignment, a commercial job for Microsoft where her traditional training came in handy, making a Dick Giordano comic strip look like a 1960s romance comic. As always, she delivered on time and exceeded my expectations. Adrienne leaves behind a body of work that speaks for itself and still has many admirers among editors, creators, and fans. – Robert Greenberger

DISCOVERING FANDOM ROBERT GREENBERGER: Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell me about being raised in New Jersey, and how you discovered art. ADRIENNE ROY: [laughs] Gee, I don’t know. I was kind of a loner. I guess that was it. I’m just kind of a loner. I liked doing things that other kids didn’t do. I liked looking at bugs and walking around the trails by the house by myself. I didn’t like playing with dolls. I just wasn’t typical and I certainly didn’t want to be fitted into any kind of a mold. So what happened was, my parents knew of a stationery store in the next town over that sold piles of this yellow scrap paper. It looked like 8 x 10 scrap paper and they used to give me that to draw on and I would just fill it up. [chuckles] I just liked to draw and I kept at it. And I remember them enrolling me in an art school at kind of a children’s art school at the Montclair Art School—Montclair Museum, I’m sorry, Montclair Art Museum in the next town. And I kept at it from there. When I got out of high school, I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do. I remember laying off for about a year and a half and then my dad encouraged me to take a couple of courses at the local college and I wound up becoming completely enrolled as an art student at William Patterson in Wayne, New Jersey, and I did a lot of painting there. In fact, I had a pretty broad art career. My explorations were very broad. I did photography and painting and they wanted you to take all the basics, so I had some two- and three-dimensional design work, but a lot of painting. I went to be a fine artist and that’s what my degree was in, alternately, when I went back to finish up later in life because I left. This is kind of interesting: I started discovering comic conventions. I think my first one, though, was … hmm, I guess my first convention was a Star Trek convention and I had no idea what a convention was. And when I

finally started going to these things, I thought they were phenomenal. Robert Lansing was one of the guests. He’d been the guest star in the Star Trek episode “Assignment Earth,” and he invited a group of us up to his room and entertained us with stories about Hollywood. I mean, especially for a loner kid that didn’t have any friends, it was just amazing. And so I started going to these conventions by myself and as I was growing up I went to—let me see, what was it now?—it was a Famous Monsters of Filmland convention. Oh, and I should add too that about this time, I’d also discovered comics. GREENBERGER: Well, I figured that reading comics must have led to your going to the conventions. ROY: No, it didn’t. [chuckles] GREENBERGER: So, what comic books did you read as a kid? ROY: What did I read? I read Tomb of Dracula and I liked Sub-Mariner and let me see, I think those were the two that I collected. I had eclectic tastes, what can I say? From time to time, I’d pick up other issues of other superheroes. I remember, oh, I loved the Conan series. There was John Buscema with Marv Wolfman. He was the writer on that, wasn’t he? All-Interview Issue

Fandom Fury (above) Adrienne’s first comic-book byline was in the letters column of Marvel’s Sgt. Fury #100 (July 1972), as she writes of attending Stan Lee’s Carnegie Hall show. (left) Anthony Tollin and Adrienne Roy at a science-fiction costume dance, circa 1990. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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The Shadow or Bust! (right) Adrienne’s 1975 Shadow sculpture graced the front cover of Walter B. Gibson’s The Shadow Scrapbook (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979). The Shadow © Condé Nast Publications.

GREENBERGER: No, it was Roy Thomas. ROY: Roy, Roy, thank you. That’s right, yeah. I had the complete Conan series, too, I remember that. I was already a Conan fan from reading the Lancer paperbacks with the [Frank] Frazetta covers. So I was coming in to comics from a completely different viewpoint, and so I didn’t know that there were comic conventions, though I’d previously attended the “Stan Lee and Friends” night at Carnegie Hall. That was interesting. And then I discovered conventions. There was a Star Trek convention and Dark Shadows. I used to come into the city and hang out outside the Dark Shadows studio on school holidays, back when was in junior high, and even got onto the Collinwood set once. I went to those and then this Famous Monsters of Filmland convention where I met Tony [Tollin], this odd guy, and I’d never dated before in my life. GREENBERGER: Really? ROY: And here was this guy following me around. [laughs] He was following me around and I guess we were in a film room and he just started talking to me and he wound up getting my telephone number. And he said he tried for six months to take me out and I was kind of shy. I used to hide behind pillars when I saw him at conventions, hoping he wouldn’t notice me. But after a while, I finally agreed to go out on a date after we were shared dinner at fan Patia Sternberg’s divorce banquet. The next week I made the trip into the city to go out on a date with him and he was quite smitten. I was still kind of confused, but I wound up marrying him. ANTHONY TOLLIN ADDS: Adrienne came into town for that first date to see a film society showing of Metropolis or Nosferatu, but the print hadn’t arrived so we went down to St. Mark’s Place to see an Alfred Hitchcock double feature. Near the end of the second film, Adrienne realized that she’d missed the last bus back to New Jersey. Since I believed that I should at least escort my date to her bus, I ended up waiting with her through the next morning, first at Nathan’s and then at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. During our eight-hour wait for the next bus, I learned that Adrienne was an amateur filmmaker who’d already directed her own stop-action animation film and a remake of Edison’s 1910 Frankenstein film (then a lost film, but Adrienne had copied the original written treatment at the Museum of Modern Art and filmed her own 8mm film as a college project). She had also gone on several fossil digs. Adrienne had done a lot of really interesting things, and we had a lot of common interests, including comics, science fiction, art, horror movies, and classic films, and I knew that night that I wanted to share Adrienne’s life. A month later we were engaged, and a little over a year later we were married. GREENBERGER: Back to the conventions for a second—in addition to meeting Tony, back then, the male/female ratio at cons was pretty skewed towards the men. Did it bother you at all that you were one of the few females wandering around these shows? ROY: I have to tell you the truth, I didn’t notice that. [laughs] But yeah, as a matter of fact, there weren’t that many women. I know, yeah. It was funny. I thought the conventions were great, although I have to say, I think Star Trek there, it was a little more evenly spread out. GREENBERGER: Well, yes. ROY: But with the Famous Monsters of Filmland, I was a vampire/Dracula fan so I had to go to that, and that was heavily male-attended.

Mentors Watching over Adrienne’s shoulder were (center) DC production director Jack Adler, seen here in a 1974 trade-journal photo, and (left) DC president Sol Harrison, from a 1978 DC video tour. Photos courtesy of Al Bigley and Robby Reed, respectively. Under Sol’s supervision, in 1978 Adrienne colored the wraparound cover to All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-55 (page 46). Art by Mike Grell. TM & © DC Comics.

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Contrasts (left) A black-andwhite self portrait, circa 1975, for a college photography class. (right) DC Special Series #8, Adrienne’s first coloring assignment, featuring an oddball Brave and Bold team-up. TM & © DC Comics.

BREAKING IN AT DC GREENBERGER: When you were dating Tony, just before you got married, were you working professionally yet? ROY: No, no, I wasn’t. [chuckles] GREENBERGER: At one point, he was on staff at DC, though. ROY: He was on staff at DC, and I moved to New York City with him and we got an apartment together. We returned from our honeymoon in Minnesota and immediately went to Phil Seuling’s July 4th [1976] comic convention during the Bicentennial weekend, and we ran into one of Tony’s DC Comics coworkers, who asked if Tony’s job was affected by the “shake-up in the production department.” Well, we were initially concerned until we learned that Carl Gafford was moving to the West Coast and that Tony was being promoted to assistant production manager. And I remember I had to get a job. I remember running around—oh, good grief, I tried answering phones for a kind of a nature shop that sold seashells and things. And I tried getting a job—oh, it was not good. I was feeling very defeated, but Tony had started getting freelance coloring assignments and I would assist him on Justice League and Green Lantern. A year later, I returned from a fossil-dig vacation in Florida and Tony grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Jack [Adler, DC’s production director] talked to me. He wants to give you a tryout as a color artist.” And I said, “What???” And he said, “I said you could.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “Well, you’re an art student. You know art and he said he’ll teach you anything you need to know.” And I said, “What?” [laughs] GREENBERGER: Obviously, Tony was doing some coloring by that point. Were you at all fascinated at how comics were being produced? Or was it a just hobby off to the side that you didn’t pay attention to? ROY: Yeah, it was. He did a lot of darkroom work so it really wasn’t something I could relate to as easily, although I remember making a couple of trips to the office and just seeing where he worked. But it never occurred to me that there was coloring that had to be done for a comic book. I just didn’t think of it that way. And since then, I’ve met other people who had no idea that what they’re looking at, that somebody had to plot the colors for. So, yeah, when he sprung that on me—I thought it was wonderful, but I just got swept up in it and Jack sat me down. He said, “Well, look, look, look, we’ll start you off on the back-page stuff and see how good you are and we’ll work and see how we can work you in.” GREENBERGER: Tell me about Jack Adler. What kind of guy was he back in the ’70s?

ROY: I don’t know, he was kind of a funny, crazy guy. He was enthusiastic about the business, he really was. And whenever he saw anything he liked, he didn’t repress anything. And he explained coloring very well to me. I thought that I kind of got the idea that what needed to be done was—especially with the fairly simple format of printing that they had—that you had to make sure that there was contrast and you had to make the characters important, because the most important thing on the page were the costumed characters and you couldn’t have anything conflicting with that. But I liked Jack as a person. I thought that he was just a pleasant guy and he just explained things easily to me and he just kind of told me the basics and then let me go [on my own]. And then when I brought it back to him, he said, “This is great. This is wonderful. I think she’s got it. I think we’ve got our new colorist,” or something. And then he’d give me more. [chuckles] It was funny because it was almost like gluttony. If there was an empty page in front of me, I almost couldn’t color it fast enough. I wanted to see it colored. It was like begging to be colored. GREENBERGER: Were you doing this at the bullpen or did you take it home and work? ROY: In the early days, I took things home to work and yeah, I remember doing that in the early days and then Tony would help me. He would review what I had done and say, “Yeah, you might do this,” or, “I think you might add a little of that.” He would critique it a bit, but everything I did, [DC] seemed to like, which was a great instructing tool because the more “Yeah, give us more of this” and “Yes, we like this, now don’t do any more of that,” you would learn to tweak things. GREENBERGER: From what Tony tells me, your first assignment was an odd team-up between Batman, Deadman, and Sgt. Rock, [Adrienne laughs] which was part of the DC Special Series [issue #8, 1978, featuring The Brave and the Bold]. But there, you’ve got three distinctive characters and looks. Do you remember if that was a daunting challenge as a first full book assignment? ROY: Well, let me see. I knew Batman. I did like the Deadman character and I remember collecting a couple of those issues that he was in, so I was familiar with him. Sgt. Rock, not so much. But I grew up with—oh, dear, what was the popular Army guy, when they first introduced action figures…? GREENBERGER: You mean G.I. Joe. ROY: G.I. Joe … yeah, of course. So I don’t think it was a challenge,

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A Grell of a Job! Coloring the character-drenched wraparound cover to All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-55 was a career breakthrough for Adrienne. Art by Mike Grell. TM & © DC Comics.

because I just saw it as something new and exciting, and “Here it is, go for it,” and I did. GREENBERGER: So you would color the pages, you’d bring them in to Jack. Did you have to take them to the editors and get feedback or did somebody else do that? ROY: Actually, I’m trying to remember what happened in the early days, because I remember Tony would hand-mark my coloring for me after I did it, hand-code it [for color separations]. I don’t know if they thought I was not capable of it or they didn’t let colorists hand-mark their coloring because they thought that someone in production should do it to interpret the colors. GREENBERGER: Okay. ANTHONY TOLLIN ADDS: Jack Adler insisted Adrienne color the Brave and Bold DC Special by herself, under a one-week deadline with no input from me. Her third assignment was the second issue of Doorway to Nightmare with Madame Xanadu. After Adrienne delivered her third assignment, Jack Adler called me into his office and told me that Adrienne was going to become DC’s best colorist—and he was right! Within another month or so, most of the editors were requesting Adrienne on their top books, especially Paul Levitz and Julius Schwartz. Adrienne also got [former production director and then-president] Sol Harrison’s seal of approval. Even as president, Sol had continued coloring the giant-sized tabloid specials, but after enlisting Adrienne to assist him on Mike Grell’s wraparound Legion of Super-Heroes tabloid cover, he bequeathed the tabloid edition cover coloring assignment to Adrienne. So Adrienne was personally trained as a colorist by Jack Adler and Sol Harrison, both of whom had worked on Action Comics #1 back in 1938.

COLLEAGUES AND CONTEMPORARIES ROY: And I’m trying to remember whether he brought those early books around to the editors for me, but I remember later on, I took my own work around to the editors. GREENBERGER: Early on, the other colorists of the day would have been guys like Jerry Serpe— ROY: Serpe, right. GREENBERGER: —and Bob LeRose— ROY: LeRose, uh-huh. GREENBERGER: —Gene D’Angelo, Tatjana Wood … did you get to know them as you were learning? ROY: Oh, sure. Bob LeRose was always helpful. I mean, he was in production anyway, so he was there to help and give advice. And I don’t know, they all offered encouragement. I remember meeting Tatjana. GREENBERGER: She was always interesting to talk to. 46 • BACK ISSUE • All-Interview Issue

ROY: Yeah, she was such a sweetheart and kind of motherly, almost. GREENBERGER: Right. In Tatjana’s case, beyond coloring the comics, she was also into fiber arts—she was doing tapestries. ROY: Right. I think I went to her apartment and saw the weaving that she did. GREENBERGER: Right. ROY: That was pretty interesting. GREENBERGER: As a fine artist, I figured you would have commonalities with her. ROY: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Well, the problem with the coloring, unfortunately, was that it did take all of my creative skill out of me to the point of where after I got through coloring, that was it. And all those years, I didn’t do any other art except coloring. I was pretty devoted to DC and it did take up a lot of time. I remember working at home a lot, on weekends, particularly. There was this one point where I was working at home, we had this apartment in New York City and my drawing table was facing a window, and I was looking out the window onto the New York skyline. There was an apartment across from me and I was working and my light went out. And I looked up at the guy across the way in the apartment, you know, just down from me. I could see into his window, I guess he was working at his window, too, and he’s like looking at me like, “What’s going on?” And that was the Great Blackout. GREENBERGER: Oh, the ’77 Blackout, sure. Gosh! ROY: Yeah, the ’77 Blackout. That was just a year after Tony and I were married, and I’d just started working at DC. We went outside and walked around, and people were directing traffic and it was kind of carnival–like. It was not a bad deal at all. People knew if they had any perishable food, they had to sell it as fast as possible so everybody turned into a street vendor. All the shops opened up and it was kind of interesting. I had to stop coloring that night. [chuckles] [Editor’s note: Elsewhere in New York City, this Blackout, which put Manhattan in the dark from July 13 through July 14, 1977, sparked looting and riots.]

METHODS GREENBERGER: These days, the current readers of BACK ISSUE and the like know about digital color, so the way you worked back then will seem positively archaic to them. But as I understand it, you would show up at DC and you’d fill up your bottles with the dyes provided by the company. ROY: Right. They had these large bottles of Dr. Martin’s dyes.

GREENBERGER: Did they only have large bottles of the cyan, magenta, and yellow, that you mixed up to create the 64 options of colors you had available back in the day? ROY: Yes, pretty much, although they had some other peculiar colors that I’d experiment with from time to time to find out exactly what they were. But yes, they had these big bottles and we had these wonderful little sets of glass bottles and each color had a white, medium, and dark to make it very simple. I mean, the grid pattern that kind of represented the kind of intensity of color that the eye saw and how it mixed on the page was what you ultimately got in the printing. The cyan and the magenta and yellow, we’d dilute ourselves, exactly. And then Jack, coming in from his photography angle, had discovered that we could use a drop of something called “Photoflow” to keep the colors flowing better on the page, so we used that, too, when we had to do full-process coloring—jobs that would actually be reproduced directly from the color art, although I guess we could have even just used a little drop of dish soap. And I worked with these sable brushes the company provided. I think they were a #7 sable brush and when I got all through with a page, sometimes I would change my mind as far as the color was concerned or sometimes, I wanted it to look neat for the editor so I would go back through with a Q-Tip and some bleach and bleach out the little drips that were anywhere around, just to make the page look neater. In the early days, we used real photo paper, Agfa Gaevert photo paper, that Jack had, just a special matte paper from Germany. It was rather expensive and I remember the day they came in and said, “Look, we’re going to switch here. We have to do this as a cost-cutting measure. We’re going to get your coloring on copy paper,” and it was never as good. Sometimes, the copies were terrible, but from that point on, we colored on the copy paper. GREENBERGER: They provided you the comics to color, they provided you the dyes, the brushes. You went home, you colored. How much time were you usually given to turn around a story? Because back then, stories were 17 to 20 pages long. ROY: Right, let me see. I don’t know, it seems to me that I had a week to color a story, but I usually colored at least two comics each week. I would get into the office— when I developed this method of working at the office— I would get into the office around 3:00 in the afternoon as the work day was kind of winding down and it was getting quiet. And I would get into the bullpen and I would get a story—yeah, 17 pages long. And I would see the editor about the story and discuss what needed to be discussed about it, and I’d start working on it. Then people would start to leave the office and it would get quieter. Tex Blaisdell would still be in the bullpen. GREENBERGER: Tex was an editor for about ten minutes there. I forgot about that. ROY: [laughs] There were a couple other inkers that would be in the bullpen with me, and sometimes Bill Draut, Ric Estrada, or George Evans would work there, too. Ben Oda would come pick up lettering assignments in the late afternoon, and would frequently work with me in the bullpen late into the night. We had the radio on and I just kept on working. I had this one desk there that was my favorite desk and I just used it. Nobody said I couldn’t, you know. Nobody said, “Well, you can’t be here” or “You have to move over there.” I was told that the bullpen was actually available for my use and so I kept on working

and it would get later and later. And I realized at some point, if I left the building, I couldn’t get back in. I know that, but I’d just stick with the book. And it was quiet and about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, I’d finish the story. GREENBERGER: Wow! ROY: And it was nice because I’d had the flow. I mean, just like reading a comic-book story, I colored it with that kind of a flow. I experienced the story during that point in time as a whole, as an entity. I wasn’t laboring over it. And I would pack up and leave the building and at that point. The hospitals were doing their shift changes and the bakeries were opening up and it was kind of a magical time in the city—oh, they were dressing the windows on Fifth Avenue—and then I’d walk home. And I did that for quite a while. GREENBERGER: You’d pick up a job and talk to the editor. Were there often color notes back then? These days, there’s a lot of back-and-forth between the artists and the colorists. But back then, what was it like? ROY: Back then, there wasn’t too much. I was told that the costumes were important, trademarked, or copyrighted, whatever they were. The costumes could not be changed, only under circumstances, special lighting circumstances. But otherwise, there weren’t too many color notes at all. I got into color notes with later issues of Batman— let me see now, I’m trying to think—any kind of special issues I would do. I mean, I was always willing to listen. There was no problem, especially if somebody wanted a special lighting effect, I was all for that, because if it had meant anything in the story, I certainly needed a clue so I could do it. GREENBERGER: Well, of course. Did you work by sitting down and actually reading through the story and making notes to yourself, or did you just go with the flow? ROY: I went with the flow. I’d read the story first and get a few good impressions. Especially if the story had a lot of complicated art to it, I would have to plot out how to make it interesting, how to make it not the same from beginning to end, sometimes, by using

Wild in the Streets While Adrienne’s ability to work was compromised by the Blackout of 1977 (bottom photo), across town (top photo) rioting and looting was common. The incident made the cover of Time magazine (above). Time © 2011 Time Inc.

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Coloring the Titans The original color guide, with codes marked for color separations, to the New Teen Titans preview comic that was inserted into DC Comics Presents #26. Signed by artists George Pérez and Dick Giordano and colorist Adrienne Roy. TM & © DC Comics.

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lighting effects to separate out fragments of the story, because sometimes the reader, you know, the reader kind of gets into a zone where they’re almost hypnotized. And unless you do something interesting with the artwork or the coloring, they’re not going to quite know that something different is going on or it’s a different time of the day or the characters have actually changed the scene or it’s years later or whatever transition it was—you have to make sure that that’s really obvious. And sometimes, they don’t always read that, so you have to actually show it in the art sometimes with different types of coloring.

TAKING UP RESIDENCE IN GOTHAM CITY GREENBERGER: Were you able to lobby for assignments? Did you have any say in what you were given? Were you able to express preferences on characters or editors or artists? ROY: Well, to put it truthfully, they liked my coloring to the point where they just kept on handing me work. I didn’t lobby for anything. I mean, I just was grateful for whatever I got. And finally, there was Paul Levitz and he said, “I want Adrienne to color the Batman books,” so I wound up getting all the Batman books. GREENBERGER: Which at the time were Batman, Detective, and The Brave and the Bold. That was the first time they were all united under one editor. ROY: And I don’t know if he wanted it that way for simplicity of editorial control or my reputation had caught up with me and he did get the idea that I was good. [chuckles] GREENBERGER: But he was there with you—he was there all that time. ROY: Right. GREENBERGER: So you must have gotten to know him. ROY: Yes, I did, I did. GREENBERGER: So that happened around ’78. You had been coloring just about two years.

ROY: Mm-mm, I remember doing the O.S.S., the G.I. Combat issues, a lot of different assignments. It’s funny, I should have reviewed the list of comics that I have [chuckles], but, yeah. And then, Paul just said, “I’ve got the Batman books and I want Adrienne to color them.” I actually began my run on Detective Comics when Julie Schwartz was still editing the Batman books. GREENBERGER: What’s interesting in looking at your coloring at the time is that ’79 to ’82, you worked n every genre that DC had. ROY: Say that again? Every? GREENBERGER: Every genre. You did war, you did mystery, you did science fiction, you did superheroes, [Adrienne chuckles] whereas later, it became only the Batman titles and Titans. Did you like that kind of variety? ROY: Yeah, I did. I liked the variety, but I enjoyed Batman. I enjoyed the character. It was just fine that I wound up being the Batman colorist. It didn’t bother me at all. And, of course, the Batman and Teen Titans books were DC’s bestselling titles. GREENBERGER: What is it about Batman and his world that appeals to you so much? ROY: Just that he’s not a typical superhero. Maybe that has a lot to do with it. When you think of superheroes, they usually wear bright colors and jump around a lot during the day and rescue people and they’re pretty high-profile, and Batman was never like that. And it was actually challenging to color him, because here’s a dark figure at night and you had to make him look good and still be visible. I liked the challenge of that. GREENBERGER: Of the Batman characters beyond the Batman, did you have any favorites that you looked forward to coloring? ROY: Let me see … I always liked the Joker, and the Penguin wasn’t a bad character either. Oh, and we shouldn’t forget that I did Warlock. GREENBERGER: No, Warlord. ROY: Warlord, and was it “Arab”? No, it was Warlord and Arak. [laughs] GREENBERGER: Yes. And no, I haven’t forgotten. We’re talking Batman at the moment. We’re going to get to the other stuff. ROY: Oh, okay, okay. GREENBERGER: But you know, with Batman, when you took over with Paul, the books were definitely coalescing with the continuity between Batman and Detective for the first time were integrated on a regular basis, plus all the team-ups in The Brave and the Bold. Did that make it a little tougher for you in taking notes of that when you colored Batman, you could remember what was going on in Detective two weeks later? ROY: Yeah, it was a little hard to juggle, I remember that. At times, Tony was my extra brain. [chuckles] If there was a problem there, he was able to scramble for me, because sometimes I’m kind of an art-head. Yeah, there were times when I needed to keep notes and just somehow I missed doing that, but he would fill in for me and help me out on those occasions and somehow get the information I needed. GREENBERGER: One of the nice things about your lengthy run on Batman and Detective is the fact that you got to work with such a wonderful array of artists. Were there some artist who were easier to color than others? ROY: Mm, oh, dear. No, and this is why I don’t know why Tony got me these three books from Teen Titans when I can’t remember any of the people. [chuckles]

“Unsolved Cases of the Batman” The first outing on a Batman solo story (and the first of many) by penciler Don Newton (with inker Dave Hunt) and colorist Adrienne Roy, from the “Unsolved Cases” backup feature in Batman #305 (Nov. 1978). Both Newton and Roy had already worked on Batman in team-ups in The Brave and the Bold, but this was their first Batman solo story for editor Julie Schwartz. (This and a few other backup stories colored by Adrienne early in her career were not factored into the total of 189 issues of Batman to which she contributed.) TM & © DC Comics.

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Batman’s Origin Retold From the classic “The Curse of Crime Alley,” in Detective #483 (Apr.–May 1979). By Denny O’Neil, Don Newton, Dan Adkins, and Adrienne Roy. TM & © DC Comics.

GREENBERGER: For example, I know you loved coloring Don Newton. ROY: Don Newton, yes! GREENBERGER: Don Newton in Batman, at the same time you were coloring Gene Colan in Detective. And I’m sure those are very different artists to color. ROY: Mm-mm, yes, very much so. GREENBERGER: Was one easier than the other? And if so, why? ROY: Well, Don Newton spotted his blacks in an amazing way. Let me see, how can I describe it? He left out details and would show you bits and pieces of things that would enhance who whole idea of the story’s happening at night. Gene Colan used a lot more detail. I needed to use a lot more contrast to make sure that Batman showed up and that the story flowed and had the qualities that I wanted. Yeah, they were quite different. GREENBERGER: And after Don’s unfortunate passing, you then worked with guys like Tom Mandrake and Jim Aparo. ROY: Mm-mm. God, I remember Jim Aparo, wow, yeah. He liked the anatomical-superheroes-hurling-through-space kind of a thing. It was interesting because the artists each had their own style and it added to that quality that made each of the stories different. Of course, if you’re going to emphasize the figures like Aparo did, then the backgrounds become as significant and use more gray tones and muted colors because the backgrounds are only mere details that don’t even require people to look too hard at them as you’re trying to follow the figure. GREENBERGER: Paul Levitz gave way to Dick Giordano, who gave way to Len Wein as the Batman editor, and then Len to Denny O’Neil. Throughout all of this, you were the constant, you were the colorist. Did each editor have something different they wanted from you as the colorist or did they just leave you alone? ROY: They pretty much left me alone. Denny was a little different. I remember discussing stories with him a bit more intently, but yeah, they pretty much left me alone. There were times when they would point out things: “Well, this doesn’t look right to me,” or, “Change this one panel.” But basically, they were happy with my work. They left me alone. GREENBERGER: So from what we can tell, you did 189 issues of Batman and 202 issues of Detective, which has got to be a record for any colorist.

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[Adrienne chuckles] And it sounds like it was more accident than design. ROY: Yeah, I mean, I certainly didn’t beg for the book. I just kind of stumbled around and wound up there. GREENBERGER: Did you ever tire of coloring Batman? ROY: I think I had moments. I guess with any job you say, “My gosh, I need a break,” or, “I should be doing something else,” but not really, not really [for me], because I became a Batman fan. Just like any fan, each story excited me and it was like I couldn’t wait for the next one. Yeah, it was just one leading on to another. It was, I don’t know, in a negative way, I could say it was a treadmill and in a positive way, you could just say it was just like any fan waiting for the next issue. It was exciting.

SAVAGE WORLDS OF GREEN GREENBERGER: At the same time you were doing Batman, you did color other series—both Warlord and Arak that you mentioned, that’s more of the sword-and-sorcery realm, a lot more flesh being shown in the outfits they wore. Did you have to alter your coloring approach to do those different eras? ROY: Yes, because they were in a natural setting. GREENBERGER: Right. ROY: And you had to keep from making every page look the same. A lot of times, they were in the woods for a long period of time [laughs]. It was constant green and sometimes, you’d have green panels on top of green panels. So I used tricks, sometimes, like using an odd color—especially with a closeup of a head—just to break up that, those panels. But you know, it’s almost like you’re asking me, did I change my style because of the characters? And if you want to consider coloring art, then I can say, I changed my approach to the story by my handling of the way you’d see it laid out as coloring. GREENBERGER: Right. ROY: But I don’t think I ever changed my coloring style. So I guess somebody who’s looking at an Arak story would know that I had colored it and compare it to a Batman story and still see that there were similarities in my approach. GREENBERGER: How did Roy Thomas work with you as an editor on Arak and then, Jonni Thunder? He always struck me as somebody who always had a lot of notes. ROY: Yes, he did. And [his notes] were always taped, stapled, to the

coloring pages, and I think what I usually did was go through the book and make sure that whatever he requested—I’d almost do those pages first, just to make sure he got his needs met. There were certain times when he called for a particular look to a scene. I’d follow along and be able to do it, no problem.

Watching the Detectives The 50th anniversary edition of Detective Comics (#572, Mar. 1987) featured Batman and Robin, the Elongated Man, Slam Bradley, and Sherlock Holmes, courtesy of writer Mike W. Barr, artists Alan Davis and Paul Neary, and colorist Adrienne Roy. The Shadow himself was an unseen participant in the production of the book, according to Anthony Tollin, who explains, “Fighting a deadline, Adrienne and I colored the comic on ‘The Shadow’s’ kitchen table, while staying with our friends John and Ann Archer in their Thousand Oaks home after I directed John in a 1986 Shadow radio cast reunion (that recreated a script by Golden Age Green Lantern comics scribe Alfred Bester).” In the first photo, Ann Archer watches as Adrienne Roy colors Batman pages from Detective #572 on the Archer kitchen table. Photo

TITANS TOGETHER! GREENBERGER: You and Len Wein must have gotten along on the Batman stuff because during that time, he also invited you to do The New Teen Titans with Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. Do you remember how that came about? ROY: [chuckles] Yeah, I remember they were talking to me, [and] they were a little concerned about my workload at the time. I first learned that Len and Marv wanted me for the New Teen Titans comic while we were returning on a train from Birmingham to London in 1979. A bunch of us from DC—Tony and me, Paul Levitz, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman—had flown over to England for the World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton, and stayed for another week to attend a British comic-book convention. Len wanted me to color Pérez on Justice League, too, but I didn’t want to give up one of the Batman assignments so I just did the New Teen Titans book. And I remember going back and being handed the first issue [of Titans] for coloring, and I think George Pérez was sitting there in the bullpen, too. I think I accidentally opened my mouth and said something about, “Boy, there sure is a lot of detail in this!” [laughter] And he made a joke about it. He said, “Yeah, I love that detail. Love it, love it!” And he put in more bricks, you know, but it was funny. Oh, and I remember on The New Teen Titans, I had to go back and do research with Nelson Bridwell there and pull out some old issues from one place to another to get some information. I came across the original Teen Titans, and I said, “My God, what is this Teen Titans thing?” It alarmed me because I remembered what I had seen of The Teen Titans with this bizarre slang and these little kids. GREENBERGER: Oh, yeah, but it had gorgeous Nick Cardy artwork, which was also some of the best-colored comics back then. You don’t want to lose sight of that. ROY: No, no, but yeah, it did seem kind of outdated. The writing was cute, in a way, for the way adults thought children talked—teens talked. Maybe they thought the teens should be younger. I don’t know what it was, but it was not as appealing, it needed something. And so, when I saw [The New Teen Titans], I said, “Well, these are older teens and this is really interesting.” GREENBERGER: With George’s pages, you saw new characters. Did you get to design the color schemes for them, such as Starfire? ROY: Starfire, let me see … they wanted an alien look for her. I’m trying to remember whether I came up with her coloring or not. I remember that kind of a purpley-gray little, little … I don’t know, bathing suit she wore, I don’t know what else to call it. GREENBERGER: Yeah, we all remember it. ROY: And the orange, they wanted a different skin color, and I think I may have suggested the red-brown hair. GREENBERGER: Red with the gold skin, so sure. ROY: The gold skin, right. And Raven was kind of obvious. She had to have a dark blue costume of some sort. GREENBERGER: Mm-mm. ROY: So Cyborg, he was the metal man and putting him in a color other than metallic chrome would have ruined the look of the character, so it was pretty obvious, you know? NOTE FROM ANTHONY TOLLIN: As I recall, I think Len had already had the basic color schemes in mind for the initial Titan costumes.

by John Archer. Adrienne sees double in the second photo as she poses between former radio Shadow (and movie star) John Archer and a movie prop of his younger self. Photo by Anthony Tollin. Detective Comics TM & © DC Comics.

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Wedding Guest Making a cameo appearance in Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (Feb. 1985), Adrienne Roy talks with Wonder Woman at Donna Troy’s wedding. By Wolfman/Pérez/Giordano and DeCarlo/Roy. TM & © DC Comics.

GREENBERGER: Of course. You were working on Detective with Gene Colan and Marv on Titans, and the next thing I know, you’re working with Marv and Gene on Night Force. That was something otherworldly and real-worldly at the same time. Did that pose any creative challenges for you? ROY: No. Remember, I got into fandom as a vampire/Dracula collector, and I had a whole collection of Tomb of Dracula, so I was very familiar with Gene Colan’s work and loved it. GREENBERGER: It must have been fun working on that book. ROY: Oh, yes, yes! That was just perfect for me. I was all for that!

NEW FORMATS, NEW RULES GREENBERGER: In the later 1980s, DC had introduced the “New Format” Mando paper, which was one of the formats that used the enhanced color palette with the 70% tone. ROY: Oh, yeah! GREENBERGER: On the Mando books, you and I actually worked together on The Spectre with Gene Colan. ROY: Right. GREENBERGER: How was it adapting to suddenly having this extra range of tones in your palette, so to speak? Was it a tough adaptation? Were you thrilled to have the extra colors to play with? ROY: It was a little tough. It was a little tough because it was obvious that things were changing in the printing business, but it was almost too little, that the most important thing was being able to do that shading. There was a point where I was allowed to do shading—and I don’t know if it was connected with this … Mando, you’re calling it? GREENBERGER: Yeah. It was the slightly heavier, whiter paper, but not as heavy and white as the Baxter paper, like on Camelot 3000. It was called the “New Format” because [then-production director] Bob Rozakis was into minimalist labeling. ROY: Right. I don’t remember using the 70% value that much. But what I was hungriest for was the shading that we were allowed. There were some books the company had that obviously had a following, so they could put their money into them. They said, “Okay, you can do shading on one page,” or, “You can do shading on five pages in this issue.” GREENBERGER: Tell us what you mean about “shading”? I’m not quite sure I’m following the approach you’re talking about. Are you talking about the surprints and the red-lining [for color holds, where a color was selected to replace the line art’s black outline] and all the stuff that came in the ’80s? ROY: No. When I say “shading,” there was, at some point—and this must have been the separation houses doing this—where they could go in and airbrush a particular page at the separation house. This was an extra step that they needed to be paid for, but it was especially nice for special effects. And when I say “shading,” I mean most of the coloring 52 • BACK ISSUE • All-Interview Issue

I did. All the coloring I did until the digital age was flat. Maybe we need to talk to Tony about how this occurred. But when I say “shading,” I’m talking about some panels where there was an object or a cloud or a face, whatever, that had started off with one color on one side and it changed in intensity or value from one end to the other. GREENBERGER: As the technology was improving in the 1980s, Murphy Anderson came in as a separator and he added 70% tones. And we could do red-lining and surprinting, and that was a bit of a change that was allowing you to do different things that you couldn’t have previously. Was it an exciting time for you as an artist, in that sense? ROY: Oh, yeah, because it meant that I was challenged more. It was almost like someone was looking over my shoulder and saying, “Look, you’ve got these new tools. You’d better be using them and using them effectively.” The surprints were really quite nice to have because up to that point, the comics were so linear. Everything was outlined and to actually have color without an outline was amazing. It just made a particular panel or a scene stand out and it was especially good for special effects for visionary scenes where you wanted something lighter that didn’t have any heaviness of linework in it. GREENBERGER: Okay, 1982 or so was when Jack Adler left DC’s staff. Bob Rozakis took over as production director, and it was sometime in that age when editorial took over the color assignments. Did that change life at all, having Bob in place and getting work from the editors directly, rather than production? ROY: Yes, it did. The business changed. It was less production–centered. Around that time, Tony had left his staff job and we were both working at home as freelancers under exclusive contracts. We’d always helped each other out when one of us had tight deadlines, but after Tony left his staff job in 1981 we pretty much operated as a coloring shop. We’d often split a book in two and we’d each work on the pages until we got tired of those scenes. There was always a lot of little stuff— wastebaskets and ashtrays and other things—that we’d leave for last. Then we’d trade pages and so the new pages would be fresh for both of us. I probably did at least a third of the work on Tony’s assignments, and vice versa. ANTHONY TOLLIN ADDS: Working as a team allowed us to whip through deadlines while still devoting adequate time to the assignments. Colorists were at the end of the line in the production of the comics, the last work that got done before the books went off to the printer, which means whether a delay or missed deadline was due to a writer, penciler, or inker, it was the always the colorist who had to burn the midnight oil to get the finished book out in time. Obviously, if a batch of Adrienne’s books arrived really late, I dropped what I was doing so we could get the hottest books out first, then we’d move on to not-so-hot deadlines. I remember that during our busiest week, I colored a couple covers and together we turned out 167 pages of interior coloring including a Batman Annual, issues of Green Lantern and New Teen Titans, and a couple other books. We only slept four hours a night that week. We certainly didn’t enjoy working 20-hour days, but such was often necessary when a lot of really hot books came in all at once, especially during the Spring and Summer months when there were lots of extra annuals and specials. I had more of a technical background, having worked with Jack Adler on color separations, so I often planned surprints and technical things involving separations. Also, Adrienne and I felt that the Baxter comics tended to have a Day-Glo look since the ink sat on the surface of the page rather than being absorbed into the pulp paper, so we’d trade in the 100% color values of red, blue, and yellow for 10% and 20% gray tones so we could mute the tones.

There were a few assignments that we’d do largely solo. Adrienne worked solo on Paul Gulacy’s Slash Maraud, and later on Kelley Jones’ Batman stories and Manhunter by Vince Giarrano. And I was somewhat possessive on The Shadow Strikes, Ambush Bug, and The Phantom. I also usually coded the books, especially on the Baxter paper comics when we had more tones to work with. GREENBERGER: Mm-mm. ROY: [With these changes,] I needed to keep in touch with the editors more and I found out that as time went on that I actually had to lobby for work, because it seemed like I was responsible. Suddenly, I felt like the support of the production was no longer with me, that I was kind of standing alone as a freelancer and I didn’t quite know how to handle that. It was a little difficult. GREENBERGER: So creatively, the ’80s was a really good era. But professionally, it became more difficult. And also during that period, you also were coloring, for a brief time, The World’s Greatest Heroes comic strip. ROY: Right, I remember that. I also colored the Batman Sunday strips that were drawn by Marshall Rogers and later Carmine Infantino. GREENBERGER: Was coloring for newspapers any different than coloring for comic books? Did you have the same 64-color palette to work from? ROY: I’m trying to think … I think I did. I remember the panels being so simplistic, it was almost maddening. And what bothered me, too, was that a lot of times, they were shrunk quite small. Seeing such brilliant colors in a panel like that, it would have been nice to have had the more delicate look of shading that I see in the comic strips today, but no, there weren’t any particular demands. I remember that the panels were scrutinized more, that things had to be just right. There was a lot more discussion about color over a simple couple-panel page than an entire comic book, and I guess I know it had to go through extra hands. But yeah, that was it. It was just somehow, that it was impressed upon me that this was special and important and had to be just right.

ATARI COMICS AND NON-COMICS WORKS GREENBERGER: The other interesting thing you did back then was, in the early ’80s, when DC started doing comic books for packaging with the Atari video games, you did the Atari Force books and the two Swordquest—no, three Swordquest books that George Pérez drew. Again, did you have to modify how you colored the pages, knowing that they were going to be at a smaller size? ROY: Well, that’s the problem with George. [chuckles] You know, I’d colored the initial presentation art that helped sell the project to Atari. There were 17 presentation pieces that had to be colored that afternoon and evening for a meeting the next morning. They paid $50 each, so I made $850 that day, not counting the comic pages I colored that morning.

The art hadn’t been completed on the first Swordquest book when Tony and I left for a ten-day vacation to England, but we were assured that DC would hold the job until I got back. However, Bob Rozakis decided it couldn’t wait and gave it to Carl Gafford to color. My first day back I learned that the commercial-rate job had already been completed. However, a day or two later a secretary left the coloring on a taxi, and so it had to be recolored. I was asked if I could color the George Pérez art in a week. I said I could, but just to demonstrate that they should have held it for me in the first place, I delivered the entire 44-page story two days later (with two sleepless nights and help from Tony). GREENBERGER: That was with Ross Andru on Atari Force, who was, in his own way, a noodly artist. ROY: Right, right. You know, I didn’t modify my coloring at all really. I think I just thought, “Well, you know, regardless of the size, the characters still need to stand out and the story still needs to look good.” But, yeah, I remember the very first presentations for the Atari Force and it was pretty exciting, that was. And somehow, it was a different realm. Oh, yeah, this was for commercial art. This was manufacturing, it was a different—who did I work with on those, on the Atari Force? GREENBERGER: Dick was the editor. ROY: Dick Giordano, of course. GREENBERGER: Dick was originally hired [back to DC] for the Atari titles and a handful of comics. ROY: Yes, he was the one, right. And he kind of made that point to me, that this is not comics, this was a completely different realm that had to do with manufacture and advertising and promoting these games. So yeah, it was interesting, but no, I didn’t change my coloring at all for it. GREENBERGER: My research shows that you did about a dozen issues, about a year’s worth, of P.S. Magazine for Murphy Anderson… ROY: Yes, I did. I colored a year or two of the Army’s P.S. Magazine [“the preventive maintenance monthly”] for Murphy Anderson, which featured a bikini-clad hostess named Connie Rodd teaching soldiers how to keep their rifles and tanks from jamming, via comic-strip lessons.

True Taxicab Tale In 1982, as part of its nascent premium comics line for Atari video games, DC Comics produced Swordquest #1 (written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway and drawn by George Pérez and Dick Giordano). Says Anthony Tollin, “The book was to be held for Adrienne until we got back from a ten-day trip to England (none of the inked art was in before we left), but [production director] Bob Rozakis felt it couldn’t wait and gave it to Carl Gafford to color. We arrived home to learn that the book had been colored … and then a day later a DC secretary left it in a taxicab. Adrienne was asked if she could color the 48-page story in a week—but she did it in two days because she wanted to demonstrate that DC should have waited for her return (as she’d been told would happen).” © 1982 Atari.

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GREENBERGER: Do you remember when that was? ROY: No, I couldn’t tell you when, I couldn’t tell you when. I know it was in the early days. [ANTHONY TOLLIN NOTES: Circa 1978–1979.] GREENBERGER: Do you remember why it was only about a year? ROY: I believe the contract was given to someone else. The government was just kind of fickle. GREENBERGER: So you were there for Murphy’s last year [on P.S.] before it went to the Kubert School. ROY: Mm-mm. GREENBERGER: Okay, that explains it. And did you have to do anything different for Army coloring? ROY: Yeah, there was a different style of coloring for that and Jack [Adler] had developed this. It had to do with there was a way of doing shading. Jack had figured this out and we had to work with the separation house to accomplish this, but it meant that we could actually do shading on these P.S. books and they came out quite nice. It was a special touch. Let me see … it involved using grays in some particular way, I mean, actually having a mask for the separator to use. GREENBERGER: You mean k-tones? ROY: Yeah. That would already be pre-shaded so that they could use it and match it to what I had colored. Again, I think maybe Tony would be the best person to explain the process to you. But, yeah, we used shading on those books, and this was way before digital coloring. ANTHONY TOLLIN ADDS: Jack Adler had developed a special look for the P.S. coloring. He’d suggest two families of colors for each eight-page section, and told me to keep those two colors as the dominant ones in the story. GREENBERGER: While we’re away from the comics themselves, I’m given the impression you also did some sort of a Green Hornet cover painting for an album? ROY: Yeah. I’m not sure, but Tony got this assignment somehow, and they just needed a painting of the Green Hornet and I remember having [Tony] sit and pose [chuckles] with kind of a mask on and getting that hat right and doing a cover painting. And now the problem was that the photographer for the artwork said, “Oh, it’s got holes in it,” and I don’t know, I think what happened was that his lights were bouncing against the canvas. I don’t know whether I should have sprayed that canvas with a matte spray or whether that was his job or we should have used a piece of frosted glass in front of it when he photographed it, but there was a problem with that, with photographing that. That’s all I remember from that, but I also did a painting for a Sherlock Holmes record album. These jobs were both in the year before I started coloring for DC. GREENBERGER: My notes also say you did two album covers for the Fuzztones. Any recollection of how that came about?

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ROY: Well, I was friends with this fun lady, a good friend of mine, her name now is Renee Laigo, but at the time, she had invented this— [chuckles] she and her brother, she and her brother and a good friend had invented these interesting names for them. She was Renee Poolé and her friend also, and her brother, had a band together—Deb O’Nair and Rudi Protrudi. And Deb O’Nair and Rudi Protrudi, the band that they were in was the Fuzztones, and Rudi met me and invited me to do their album covers. And he did the artwork, and he was very much influenced by the old EC look, so he wanted that. I mean, there was this one in particular that I remember now, where all the band members were zombies and they’re in a swamp and they’re all lurching towards the viewer. And so I colored it like an EC comic and it looked quite nice.

THE ADVENT OF DIGITAL COLORING GREENBERGER: Okay, back to the comics themselves. The 1990s were an odd decade for you because the work started to dry up. ROY: Mm-mm. GREENBERGER: As the ’90s progressed, it was basically the Batman titles and Titans for you, and then Titans went away for a while and you were down to just Robin by 1997. And then it was like all gone by 2000. Any idea what happened, in your opinion? ROY: Okay, well, that was kind of interesting. The whole industry, the printing industry, was changing and at one point, I was asked to go into a room with this guy in a suit and he said, “Okay, sit down here at this computer,” and I’d never sat in front of a computer in my life. And he said, “Okay, here you go.” And he showed me some basic things with the keyboard and he just—I don’t know what. He said, “Okay, show me what you can do,” and he stepped out, and I’m alone with this thing, and I didn’t want to touch any of the buttons because I was afraid of it. [chuckles] I didn’t know. I’d turn it off or do something and when he came back, he said, “So what did you do?” And I said, “I … I don’t know how to work one of these things.” And he seemed very disappointed and that was it. And there was talk about putting a computer in my—Tony’s and my house, and also Tom Ziuko’s. The company was going to put a computer with that and we were going to do computer coloring, and that went away. I don’t know, they changed their minds.

Back to School Three interrelated pieces of Photoshop art done by Adrienne circa 1998 for a college Photoshop class when she was working on skills for computer coloring.

Toasting Margots (left to right) Margot Avery, Anthony Tollin, Margot Stevenson (Orson Welles’ “lovely Margot Lane” in 1938), and Adrienne Roy toast Lamont Cranston after attending the world premiere of the film The Shadow in 1994. They thought it was too much of an expense. I’m not sure what was going on with the Ziukos [Tom and his then-girlfriend colorist Nansi Hoolihan] at the time. I remember offering to learn how to color [on computer]. Who was I talking to at DC? GREENBERGER: Well, Bob Rozakis was the big proponent of that, and then DC put in the coloring operation and started with Danny Vozzo. And then we put in the whole coloring department that Eric Kachelhoffer ran. So maybe one of those guys offered to help you? ROY: Somebody. I remember just saying, “Look, do you want me to learn computer coloring, digital coloring?” And I was told this person—and I can’t remember who it was, but they said, “Don’t bother because DC sends all their coloring to Ireland [Grafascan] and Canada [Digital Chameleon] where it’s done cheap.” Then that was it. That was it. It was like, “Don’t bother,” so I didn’t bother. And at that point, yeah, a lot of the coloring was done out of house. I remember the Chameleon— GREENBERGER: Yeah, Digital Chameleon in Canada. ROY: —Digital Chameleon, right. And so there wasn’t, you know, any competing against that. But now, it’s changed. It’s become very— people realize that you actually do need an artist to do coloring, having this whole technician thing. And that one became very difficult. That was one of the toughest things, especially with the Robin issue. I remember—this is so difficult and at times, so embarrassing—with Denny O’Neil, for some reason, there was not good communication between what I wanted and what I colored and marking these books up in minute detail and then not getting the colors that were intended when the book was finally printed. Actually, I went back to college and graduated Magna Cum Laude … straight As throughout including my computer-graphics classes. I’d taken the computer classes because I really wanted to do computer separations because I was very frustrated with the quality of separations my stories were getting. But Mark Chiarello [DC’s color editor] told me I shouldn’t bother learning computer graphics because he wouldn’t give me separation assignments anyway because I was only a “colorist,” and he’d only be giving computer separation assignments to real “illustrators.” And it really hurt that I was taken off the Batman books the month before the books got enhanced paper and separations. Chiarello wouldn’t even let me color the final issue of a continued story, and I was really unhappy that after coloring Batman and Detective Comics continuously for 17 years he wouldn’t allow me a single issue to demonstrate what I could do with the better separations and paper. ANTHONY TOLLIN ADDS: Things had become progressively difficult for Adrienne after Chiarello was put in charge of coloring. I remember bringing in one of Adrienne’s coloring jobs, an issue of Detective Comics drawn by Norm Breyfogle, and assistant editor Jordan Gorfinkel said, “I love it when Adrienne does these teal green skies! Ask her to do more.” Then I brought the same story to Chiarello who said,“Tell Adrienne to stop doing teal green skies. Jordan Gorfinkel hates them.” I said that Jordan had just told me that he loved them, and Mark still insisted that Jordan didn’t like them. I ended up going back and forth between Jordan’s and Mark’s offices three times that day, with Jordan asking for more use of the teal skies and Chiarello insisting that Jordan hated the teal skies. Adrienne and I requested a meeting with the Bat-editors and Mark so it could be clarified what was actually wanted, but we never got it and a few months later Chiarello removed Adrienne from the Batman titles, a move she never recovered from professionally (and one that took a number of years for her to recover from personally). Denny O’Neil took Adrienne out to lunch and said, “I’m sorry, Adrienne, this is not my choice. I always thought I was in charge of the books I edited and it turns out that’s no longer the case.”

GREENBERGER: Mm-mm. ROY: And I just wished that I could have sat down and done it myself, but I kind of became disheartened at that point. GREENBERGER: Okay, one more question before we move away from comics. Joe Staton wanted me to double-check with you on a story to see whether or not it’s true. Apparently, there was a time you refused to be evacuated from during a flood until you finished coloring an issue of Batman. Is that an accurate story? ROY: [laughs] Well, all right. Let me see … my office was upstairs. We had a lovely house in Fairfield, New Jersey, on the banks of the Passaic River. And we bought it in April—no, we bought it in the Fall of the year earlier and exactly six months later, in April of the next year, it started to rain. And we’d been told the house was built in the ’30s, it was on higher ground, it was okay. I’d never been through a flood. I had no concept of what it meant to be through a flood and I kept on coloring. And we did notice that the water was getting higher and higher and in fact, it had breached our— the final step because we had steps going down to the river there in the back, and that it was getting closer and closer to the house. And I was coloring, yeah, and I remember there was a point—yeah, I guess it just got too late. It got too late and I remember going downstairs in my boots and the water going into my boots because I realized the sump pumps were underwater and the water was coming in through the windows. And I said, “Well, I’d better unplug these sump pumps. They’re not working, they’re not going to work any more,” never occurring to me that if the water is coming in through the windows, the entire basement will fill up eventually. And yeah, we went to bed and I actually think I had finished the Batman story. I actually think I finished it. And we’d set the alarm for the next day so I could get up and get to the office. [laughs] And of course, ultimately, the basement’s going to fill up with water, so the electrical box would be underwater, too, and nothing would work and we were in a house and we got this knock on the door. And the house was surrounded by water and there was a neighbor with a boat, and my dad was very concerned at the other end of the street there and he’d asked this neighbor person who had the boat, he said, “Could you please go down and get my daughter and her husband?” [chuckles] And I remember leaving this with very little. I did have that Batman story and Tony said he’d bring it in that day for me. And we left and we were at my dad’s house that day, but, yeah, that was quite a flood. In fact, what happened was that the rain, they’d had a drought and they’d held the waters in the reservoirs to the point where the reservoirs were chock full. And when they realized that the ground was saturated and the reservoir was about to burst, they decided, “Well, now is the time to open the reservoir.” So in addition to the flooding, they had more flooding so it was a double impact and very bad for a low-lying area.

BEST IN SHOW, AND BABY MAKES THREE GREENBERGER: Before we move into the last decade or so, let’s back up just a little bit. You and Tony got married in the ’70s, but you and he did not have your daughter Katrina until ’86. ROY: Mm-mm. Katrina was born in December of 1987. GREENBERGER: Before Katrina, though, there were the dachshunds. ROY: Yes. GREENBERGER: Which one of you was interested in raising the dogs?

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ROY: I wanted a dog and I started talking about all sorts of different types of dogs. And before I had any other say in the matter, my ex, my Tony [chuckles], that was my ex, said, “Oh, my parents want to buy us a dachshund as a housewarming gift, because they feel a dog helps make a house a home,” and he whisked me off to see this breeder and I guess we wound up getting a dachshund. I didn’t know anything about dog showing or breeding or anything, but I said, “Is this puppy a nice puppy? I mean, could we actually show this puppy if we wanted to?” And they said, “Yeah, you could, you could.” Yeah, well, that first puppy went on to become the 19th “dual champion” dachshund, a champion show dog and also a field champion hunting dog. I guess I needed a hobby, so it became a hobby or a mania. I had no idea how deeply you could get involved in this kind of thing. GREENBERGER: Were you breeding them or just raising them? ROY: Well, when you show a dog, it gets awards. And if you show a dog enough, and it accrues enough awards—quality awards—from the judges, then you can work your dog towards a championship. And when a dog becomes a champion, it is kind of a way of saying enough judges have agreed that this dog is a fine example of the breed and deserves to be bred because the whole point of these breed clubs is to preserve bloodlines, to preserve the look of these different dog breeds. Otherwise, I mean, it would be very easy for us to wind up with mutts. Very easy. Or very ugly-looking dogs, whatever. [laughs] Bad-looking boxers and badlooking pugs. But that’s the whole point of the dog breeds, that they’re preserving these breeds because a dog is genetically just a dog. There is all the breeds, they can be bred interchangeably because they’re actually one species. And now your eyes are glazing over. I’m sorry! [laughs] GREENBERGER: Not quite. Now how long, for how many years, were you actually actively working on this? ROY: Oh, probably about seven years, ten years. GREENBERGER: And then along came Katrina. ROY: Along came Katrina! Yeah, I was pregnant and I remember working all through that time. I didn’t have too much trouble being pregnant. In fact, I enjoyed my pregnancy. I didn’t realize that you get all sorts of energy from it. You know, your heart gets stronger, your body is pumped up, the blood is circulating freely and preparing to take care of this, this individual that you’re going to have for nine months as it gets larger and larger. And so anyway, there was a time when I was coloring, and it was

The World’s Youngest Comics Pro (top) Future Ambush Bug colorist Katrina Tollin with Batman colorist and proud mother, Adrienne Roy. Katrina became the youngest ever comic-book professional (sorry, Joe Kubert!) when she colored two pages of 1992’s Ambush Bug Nothing Special (earning her own paycheck) when she was only four years old. Katrina’s byline was scribbled onto this page by ye editor, who also happened to edit this Ambush Bug one-shot. TM & © DC Comics.

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Batman, I was coloring Batman and I was working and I realized that something was about to happen. [Bob laughs] And yeah, I was going into labor and Tony said, “If she can talk, [let her work, but] if she can’t talk, you should bring her in.” And, oh, he wanted me to lie down and go to sleep at one point! It was ridiculous! And yeah—I’d selected a midwife. I didn’t want to go to a hospital or have a doctor so we went to a birthing center and Tony had my finished book. I remember he promised to bring it in, but we got there barely in time and [chuckles] and she came, gosh, within an hour and a half, I guess, of my arriving there. GREENBERGER: Oh, wow! ROY: And he had the book, I think he promised to mark up my Batman book for me. And Tony brought it in and he came back later, but he was there for the birthing. But, yeah, I was coloring. Even when I was in labor, I was working. [chuckles] GREENBERGER: Dedicated. You and Tony worked out of the house and suddenly, there’s a third person to take care of. Was it difficult for the two of you to get the work done and go into the offices and raise a child? ROY: Well, Tony became the one who did most of the runs into the office. And the problem was those deadlines. Dammit, I’d swear it was— you’d never realize you need another 15 minutes until 15 minutes before the last bus leaves into New York City, you know what I mean? It’s the time it took just to go into New York City to get the work in on time. So, yeah—the deadlines became a bit of a problem then, but Tony was the best one for cracking the whip on that because he was more disciplined with deadlines than I was, because he’d grown up in a newspapering family where his father was an Associated Press editor and his maternal grandparents edited and published a weekly newspaper, so he’d grown in a family that was very aware of publishing deadlines. But then there came a point, ultimately, I thought Katrina could be with me and there would be no problem. But when she got to the toddler stage, I realized that she needed to go to a nursery school, and we found one close by. That worked out because it gave me the freedom I needed to get these books done. GREENBERGER: During this period, at some point, I gather around the same time you got into coloring, you also got interested in body art, because you had that gorgeous dragon tattoo on your back that apparently won you an award in 1982. What was the fascination there? ROY: I think it was just an absent comment I made to Tony when we were dating, actually, the day we became engaged. I just said, “You know, I think I’d like to get something crazy like get a tattoo.” And it turned out that he’d really liked the look of small tattoos on some of the models in his college life-drawing classes. My first tattoo was a small “cosmic bat,” and this was at a time when nobody thought of getting a tattoo. It was interesting. This was just at the earliest rumblings of interest in tattooing. Later, we found this amazing artist that decided to come to New York City and he got a loft—it was illegal at the time—but he, Bob Roberts, got a loft and he was working out of this loft and I described [the tattoo]. I said I wanted a large dragon on my back. This was just after a convention, and Bob Roberts had drawn out this dragon or started to draw out this dragon. There were a couple other noteworthy tattooists crashing at Bob’s loft that night—Ed Hardy and Jack Rudy and Zeke Owens were also there. I think Tony could remember a couple of the other big names that were there in the studio that just tweaked the dragon a little bit. Ed Hardy was the quintessential dragon artist, though. He had published a book on tattoo dragon flash that a lot of artists used. He had worked with Bob Roberts for a while, and so I’m sure my dragon is a derivative of an Ed Hardy design, but my artist was Bob Roberts. [chuckles] GREENBERGER: Cool! You’ve had these other interests, so as the coloring dried up around 2000, I guess you found yourself in a position

where you had to reinvent yourself. So talk to me about the last ten years. What have you been going through? ROY: Oh, well, let me see … well, Tony and I and Katrina had moved to Texas, and I had realized at that point that I didn’t want to be married anymore and I really needed … I don’t know. I mean, it was a midlife crisis and a life crisis. Call it whatever you will, but I had a kind of a breakdown at that point, after we got to Texas. And I knew something had to happen and I persuaded my dad to finance a neon school for me. And I didn’t realize this, but one of my cousins was actually in neon and he worked in Newton in—oh, dear. What’s the state directly above Texas? [chuckles] GREENBERGER: Oklahoma? ROY: Oklahoma, Oklahoma—Newton, Oklahoma. And so I went there and I saw his work and I saw his studio and I said, “Yes, Dad. I’m still interested.” So my father financed this school for me and I went to learn neon and I did. It’s a very interesting, exciting field. I thought it was a good marriage of art and technology because I somehow wanted a craft that would last me as long as I could produce, my age wouldn’t matter. And unfortunately, as I was going through the course, I found out I had astigmatism and I couldn’t do a very good job of bending the larger pieces of glass, which was part of the requirement. But at that point, I couldn’t back out so I went ahead with the class and finished and got my certification and I said, “All right, the next apprenticeship that you get for”—oh, and this happened to be in Massachusetts … no, pardon me, Maryland, I was taking this course—“the next apprenticeship you get in Atlanta, Georgia, I will take.” And what happened was that I had become involved with people on the Internet and I felt I had friends in Atlanta, Georgia, and I thought, “Well, all right. Maybe I should go there.” I don’t know what the deal was with divorce. I couldn’t say the word “divorce,” I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, I didn’t know how to pursue it, I didn’t know how to talk to go up to Tony and say, “I want a divorce.” But that’s exactly what I wanted and I didn’t know how to get there, so this was a kind of roundabout way of doing it. How do you leave a marriage? So I wound up in Georgia for what, a year and a half, and I worked at this sign company and as an assistant to a master neon artist. I did a lot of the electrical work, which involves vacuuming out these tubes of glass and filling them with either neon gas or argon gas and mercury. The neon gas makes that brilliant pink neon, what people think of as the quintessential neon. It’s a pink color and any of the other colors that you see that people talk about as being neon are these tubes of glass with the argon gas and the mercury. And the combination of the argon and the mercury produces a brilliant white light, but the tubes that they’re in are coated with a florescent coating on the inside of the color of your desire. So any of the other colors that you’ve looked at are kind of a manufactured look/color. The only pure neon is the one in that pink, that pink look. So I went to Georgia and I did that and then I wound up leaving the sign company. I photographed school children for a portrait company, I worked in an import company with furniture, I—what else did I do?

At the Mouse House Adrienne and Tony (sporting a Disney Comics T-shirt!) relax during a trip to Disneyland, circa 1990. Photo courtesy of Anthony Tollin. All-Interview Issue

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Adrienne Roy’s Last Coloring Assignment Avalanche Comics Entertainment, fronted by Jordan B. Gorfinkel, was contracted last year by Microsoft to produce a 26-week daily comic strip for IT developers. Artist Dick Giordano and colorist Adrienne Roy were hired to produce a flashback sequence designed to evoke a 1960s romance comic. This is one of Dick’s last works (Jonah Hex #51 being the final) and Adrienne’s last professional coloring assignment. Courtesy of Bob Greenberger. © Avalanche Comics Entertainment.

Oh, I worked in a library, I dressed up—in the last costume I wore was this great big monster costume for Where the Wild Things Are and I loved that. GREENBERGER: Right. ROY: I did puppet shows. This was part of this division of this library. And at some point, it was just time for me to go back to Texas and get my divorce and I did. And I got that. With Tony, it was a painful split of all of our stuff. It was just the comics and everything else. And as a matter of fact, I don’t think I have a single comic here. He has all the comics, because I was traveling for a few years and didn’t have a long-term apartment or address. Even if I wanted to review my books, I couldn’t. So then, after that, I took care of my father until he passed and while I was taking care of my father, I became certified as a hypnotist and started doing hypnosis work. GREENBERGER: Right. ROY: And then my father was getting ill so I stopped that and took care of my father’s estate and came back here to Texas to Austin and reopened a hypnosis business, only to find out it wasn’t doing quite as well as I would have liked. And the decision was then made that I really needed to go back to coloring. And then I got cancer. And there you have it. GREENBERGER: Does that mean that the Dick Giordano strip that you colored for me and Microsoft was the last coloring you did? ROY: Yeah, that was the last coloring I did. GREENBERGER: Okay, and here we are. ROY: Here we are. GREENBERGER: So Katrina is now an adult? ROY: Yes, she’s a remarkable woman. GREENBERGER: She’d been a fire-twirling–type person. I’m told it was the Polynesian “poi” style. What is she doing now? ROY: Yes, she was a semi-professional fire performer for a while. It’s funny—it’s not what she’s involved with now. She is on a journalist’s track at her college and she wants to finish that degree, although since I was diagnosed with cancer, she is somewhat interested in

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the medical field and thinks that might be an important option for her. But she wants to finish out the journalism degree and see where that brings her. GREENBERGER: That’s cool. Good. To bring this to a close, you know, I know the Batman artists that you most enjoyed were Alan Davis, Norm Breyfogle, and Don Newton. Were there other artists that you particularly enjoyed coloring? We touched on George Pérez and Gene Colan. But there was Ernie Colón, there was Dick Giordano, Curt Swan, Mike Grell— ROY: I enjoyed working with Mike Grell, because of the fantasy elements of his work. He had such a variety of characters in his stories. And he had a fluidity of style that I liked. GREENBERGER: Are there any characters or creators that you have not worked with that you wish you had? ROY: You know, truthfully, Bob, my life has been so full. It’s funny, if you’re busy, and you’re happy … do you need to look anyplace else? [chokes up] Because I really didn’t need to look anyplace else. I was very happy. I never wanted to color anything else during my peak because I was happy—probably the happiest in my entire life. If you’re happy, you don’t need to look elsewhere, you have it already. And that’s where I was and that’s why I never desired any other book to color. I had some of the most remarkable books to color that DC ever produced. What more could I want? ROBERT GREENBERGER is a longtime comics historian and former staffer at DC Comics and Marvel Comics. A fulltime freelance writer and editor, his recent works have included The Essential Superman Encyclopedia (with Martin Pasko) and The Spider-Man Vault (with Peter David). He continues to write reviews for ComicMix.com and more about Bob can be found at BobGreenberger.com.

Mark DiFruscio

audio-recorded on July 25, 2009

Whenever two extremely prolific and highly regarded comics creators sit down together for an in-depth, one-on-one conversation, a certain frisson typically results. The unique interaction between seasoned professionals discussing their careers, their influences, and their craft is precisely what makes the “Pro2Pro” feature such a popular mainstay of BACK ISSUE. In the case of Len Wein and Doug Moench, the two pros sitting down together have spent almost four decades working on many of the highest-profile books in the industry. While Len Wein is perhaps best known for co-creating Swamp Thing and Wolverine, Doug Moench is equally well known for his long and extremely popular runs on Master of Kung Fu and Batman, as well as for co-creating Moon Knight. During the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, Wein interviewed Moench in the hour-long “Spotlight on Doug Moench” panel, wherein the pair covered a vast array of topics… – Mark DiFruscio

FORBIDDEN GLIMPSES LEN WEIN: I guess we’ll start with the obvious question: What made you decide to become a writer? DOUG MOENCH: Um, I never did decide. It just happened … it was just something that I naturally enjoyed doing. Almost like automatic writing. I just found myself suddenly writing things that sometimes added up to something, and sometimes didn’t. That’s from a very young age. I think my first coherently written thing— actually, I drew it, too— was a comic strip in my 2nd grade school newspaper called My Dog Sandy. And my dog Sandy was constantly saving my butt from one thing or another. I guess, I don’t remember, but I must’ve had a thrill seeing it in print. I remember much later, the first time I saw something in print, and that definitely was a thrill. But back then it was just fun, surprising, almost mysterious. How about you?

Dark Knights vs. Wolf-Men Doug Moench introduced one of his signature characters, Moon Knight, in the pages of Werewolf by Night #32 (Aug. 1975). Cover by Gil Kane and Al Milgrom. Coincidentally, his interviewer, writer Len Wein, pitted DC’s Caped Crusader against a werewolf in Batman #255 (Mar.–Apr. 1974). Cover detail (seen in inset) by Neal Adams. Werewolf by Night and Moon Knight TM & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. Batman TM & © DC Comics.

All-Interview Issue

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Beginnings: “Eye of the Beholder” in Teen Titans #18 (Dec. 1968)

Milestones: Co-creator of Swamp Thing, Human Target, Wolverine, new X-Men, and Lucius Fox / writer: Phantom Stranger / Human Target in Action Comics / Star Trek (Gold Key and DC) / Justice League of America / Swamp Thing / Marvel Team-Up / Incredible Hulk / Amazing Spider-Man / Thor / Fantastic Four / Batman / Superman / Green Lantern / Blue Beetle / editor: former Marvel editor-in-chief and editor of numerous DC titles including Batman, New Teen Titans, Who’s Who, and Watchmen / TV writer: many animation credits including X-Men, Batman, and Ben 10

Works in Progress: DC Universe: Legacies / DC Retroactive: Batman—The ’70s / DC Retroactive: Green Lantern—The ’80s

Cyberspace: lenweinblogspot.com and Len Wein Fan Page on Facebook

len wein

Beginnings: “Snow Job” in Eerie #29 (Sept. 1970)

Milestones: Co-creator of Deathlok, Moon Knight, and the Black Mask / Creepy / Psycho / Planet of the Apes / Deathlok in Astonishing Tales / Werewolf by Night / Rampaging Hulk / Doc Savage (B&W magazine) / Godzilla / Master of Kung Fu / Deadly Hands of Kung Fu / Moon Knight / Thor / numerous Batman projects / Aztec Ace / Six from Sirius / The Spectre / Slash Maraud / James Bond: Serpent’s Tooth / Batman vs. Predator II / Catwoman / S.C.I.-Spy / TV writer: Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures

Works in Progress: Batman: Unseen trade paperback / Showcase Presents: Doc Savage

Cyberspace: obscenenewg.com/doug/

doug moench

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WEIN: I actually wanted to be an artist. All of my training was as an artist. I was a comic-book fan, seven years old. I was sick in the hospital as a kid, and my dad brought me a stack of comic books— MOENCH: Yeah, same deal. Same deal here. WEIN: —and my 9th grade art teacher said, “You actually can draw.” So I said, I’m going to be a comicbook artist. And you can see how successful that all worked out for me. [laughter] MOENCH: Now, when I was sick, my mother brought me comics. A hundred comic books for a dollar—with the covers ripped off. Where they ripped off the publishers with phony returns. They would just rip off the logo, and send it in, like they were sending in the whole book, but they weren’t. Saving postage, supposedly. And then they sold [the coverless comic books instead of destroying them]. Did we ever find out who was behind the “hundred-for-a-dollar” plastic pack scam? WEIN: I think those who found out ended up in the river. [laughter] MOENCH: I thought it was a great deal. And, you know, a hundred of them. So it had just about everything. WEIN: What was the first book you read? What was the stuff you read that made you go, “Oh, I like this…”? MOENCH: Well, that would’ve been before I was real sick. [Maybe] Atomic Mouse or something like that. And I remember forbidden glimpses (or at least I’ve convinced myself that I had) of the very end of EC. I’m not sure if that’s an objective memory or if I just retroactively implanted it. But I do convince myself that I remember reading them at the corner store, and then buying something else because I knew my parents wouldn’t go for EC. What was your first? WEIN: It was with Detective Comics… MOENCH: Really? Oh, and you know what came right after that—my mother was born and raised in Scotland, and there was a fellow Scotswoman who lived way on the Southside of Chicago. And they used to visit back and forth, and when she would come to our place she would always bring me a brand-new Tomahawk. Which convinced me that horses were blue. Remember that? They colored all the horses blue? What else could you use? WEIN: They didn’t have grey-tones. So … you had no actual training as a writer? MOENCH: No, no, not really. I have no idea how that grade-school thing came about, because no one else in the class was doing that kind of thing. They were all helping the teacher write or gather news of the class, you know, going on a trip or whatever. But no one else had the separate thing. So apparently a teacher must have corralled me or convinced me to do this. Or maybe I just did it on my own and showed it to the teacher and she said, “Oh you can put it in the newspaper.” I don’t know. But I remember in high school I wrote some story, it was about racism. And I showed that to my high school English teacher and she liked it and she said, “Oh, you have to take this down to the [school] literary magazine right now.” And later on, whenever anybody met me, and they found out who I was, and they had read that story, they’d say, “I thought you were Black!” WEIN: Well, you used to be. MOENCH: Yeah, well, [there is] that. [But] that should’ve probably given me a clue that I should do more of this. But I didn’t until … uh, I don’t know, maybe two years out of high school, or a year and half out of college. WEIN: Were you part of any sort of organized comics fandom? MOENCH: Well, what happened was, I had been writing letters to the editor, and one of these things got published

Blue Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away As a young comic-book reader, Doug Moench was puzzled by the navy-blue coloring on horses in DC’s Tomahawk. Cover to issue #84 (Jan.–Feb. 1963) by Bob Brown. TM & © DC Comics.

in Spider-Man. And back then they would just have your name, and then Chicago, Illinois, or San Diego, California. But they wouldn’t do the whole address. [Editor’s note: Actually, full addresses were listed in the earliest Marvel lettercols. The practice of omitting the mailing address came later.] And there was a fellow in Chicago named Don Glut who scoured the Marvel letters pages for anybody who lived in Chicago. Then he would look them up in the phone book and give them a call and hit them up for a contribution to help pay for the rental fee [to rent] these serials: Captain Marvel and Spy-Smasher and so on. And he asked me if I would kick in 50 cents or whatever, a dollar. WEIN: He’s still asking me… MOENCH: Yeah, he’s the biggest cheapskate in the business. [laughter] But he’s a great guy. He’s also the author of The Dinosaur Dictionary, on sale in museum bookshops across the land. He’s become quite the expert on paleontology. Anyway, so he and I started hanging out. [And] when we would hang out we would sometimes spontaneously write things without knowing what we were doing, and then show them to each other. And I always thought mine were way better than his, even though he was like three or four years older. I was, like, 14 or whatever. But one day he told me he sold a story to Warren [Publishing, producer of Creepy and other black-andwhite horror magazines]. And I just thought, “hey, if he can do it, I can do it.”And I was right.

WORKING FOR WARREN

“The Light of Marvel Brilliance”

WEIN: How long were you at Warren for? MOENCH: Up until Marv [Wolfman] talked me into going to Marvel. Let’s see, Warren was maybe ’69 or ’70, something like that. And then Marv and Roy Thomas called me [to Marvel] in ’72, I guess. So I was only there for two years. It seemed like forever. WEIN: Well, working for [Jim] Warren could seem like forever. MOENCH: Yeah well, he was quite a piece of work. For a while, [Warren] bought everything I wrote, especially in the beginning when it was [editor] Archie Goodwin who bought it. Then there was this guy, his name was John Cochran, and apparently the number of writers had multiplied and he [as editor] could no longer buy everything. So he would, every once in a while, turn one down. Then there was this outfit called Skywald. They had [magazines titled] Nightmare and Psycho … and I figured, “Well, if Warren can’t use this then I’ll send it to them.”

All-Interview Issue

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So then they bought it at Skywald, and Jim Warren pitched a fit! [He] said I was being disloyal to Warren Comics and so on. And I said, “No, you’re being disloyal to me, you’re not buying what I’m doing for you.” And he said, “Well, we’re buying all we can. You’ve got three stories in every issue as it is.” And I said, “I understand. I didn’t complain. You’re the one complaining. The only way you have a legitimate beef is if you want me to write only for you, then you have to buy everything I write. And you can’t do that…” And we were writing letters back and forth. And the final one— it got so heated—he started calling me, like, a terrorist. [laughter] Really ridiculous stuff. And I finally got so fed up, my last letter to him was, “Dear Jim, f--- you!” And I thought, “Well, okay, that’s the end of that.” And then my doorbell rang at midnight. This was back when Special Delivery was really special. They actually sent a guy from the Post Office to your address at any hour of the day or night. And it was a great big box from Captain Company, which was Jim Warren’s outfit. He sold all these books and model kits and posters and whatnot. It was filled with all these presents for me, with a little note about how wonderful I am. I thought, “Wow, I could’ve cut to the chase a lot sooner!” [laughter] And he gave me a big raise. And I mean, a big raise. You know, relatively speaking, for Warren. WEIN: Back then … initially I think they paid $25 bucks a story? MOENCH: Absolutely. When this happened, he started giving me $35 dollars a page. WEIN: Wow. I wish I had told him to go f--- himself! [laughter] MOENCH: Yeah, who knew? That’s how crazy that guy was. Or is. WEIN: Is. He still is. I assume, at that point, you went back to working for Warren? MOENCH: Yes, yes I did. And at this same time I started working at the Chicago Sun-Times. Just in a menial job at first. But it eventually led to feature articles in Sunday Supplement Magazine that the Sun-Times put out. And it suddenly felt like, “Uh, well, maybe Warren is not the most reliable guy. Even though he sent me a big box of gifts and gave me this

raise and everything, maybe I could make it working for a newspaper.” And that’s when Marv called me. [He] said, “Roy Thomas wants another writer and I told him about you,” because Marv had been my next-to-last editor at Warren and then he had gone to Marvel. And then there was one more editor. I guess it was Bill DuBay at the time. WEIN: And I think Louise Simonson was [at Warren during that period]? MOENCH: Yeah. I did work for Louise way later. But that was after I had been at Marvel for a long time. WEIN: Louise was great. She could get you to do all kinds of stories. MOENCH: Oh absolutely, yeah. I really like her a lot. WEIN: My favorite was she would always call me up and go, “Hi, Len, I’ve got a story for you, but I can’t afford your rates.” And I’d go, “I’m busy.” And she’d go, “Well I guess I’ll have to find somebody else to work with John Severin…” She kept offering me artists I’d kill to work with so I would work for her. MOENCH: Not only that, eventually she matched the Marvel and DC rates. So you didn’t have to worry at a certain point.

MOENCH TAKES MANHATTAN WEIN: So you get a call from Marv, going, “Hi, we’d like you here at Marvel.” [Was it specifically for] the black-and-white line? The color line? Which ones? As I recall you did the backbone of the black-and-white line. MOENCH: That’s how it evolved. But it was just [that] they needed another writer. Mostly because of the nascent and burgeoning blackand-white line. But it was never put to me that way: just black-and-white or [just] color. They just said, “We need a writer.” And here’s how naive I was and how cocky I was. See, I had actually gotten nominated for a Chicago newspaper award. Anyway, this is how naive I was. I said, “Well, I don’t know if I like New York. How about if I come for two weeks and try you out?” And thinking about this now, it’s like, why didn’t Roy say, “Yeah, go to hell, you cheap punk!” But he didn’t. He said, “Well, all right. We’ll put you up somewhere for two weeks and see how it goes.” And of course at the end of the two weeks—while I had a lot of misgivings about New York, I thought it really smelled bad—I loved all the bookstores. There were more bookstores per square foot in Manhattan than there are in Chicago by far. But Chicago is so much prettier. And it has grass in front of the apartment buildings, and trees growing. WEIN: But New York is open all night. MOENCH: Yes, that’s the other thing. There’s all these restaurants and bookstores and Broadway, and this, that, and the other. Yeah, if you want a hardcore city, it’s hard to beat Manhattan. But it really did stink to me. And I guess I’m not that big on the smell of roasting chestnuts—those guys on the street corner. The thing that really got me though, was this Stygian sight of smoke—actually, steam—rising from the manholes. That never happens in Chicago. I always felt like these things are gonna blow any second. WEIN: So far you’ve used “nascent” and “Stygian.” [Is it] any wonder why you became a writer? [laughter] MOENCH: Anyway, so you know, it worked out. Then I had just met the lovely young woman who would eventually become my wife. But we had just met. It was like, “Oh, jeez, how do I—? If I go to New York we’ll never find out if this would have led to anything.” And she, I think very graciously, said, “Well, how about I come with you, and if it works out it works out, and if it doesn’t, no hard feelings?” Great, huh? No drawback to that. WEIN: Very ’70s.

The Baron of B&Ws Moench’s script credits for Warren and Skywald black-and-white horror mags led to numerous assignments for Marvel’s line of B&Ws. In this Warren issue, Creepy #37 (Jan. 1971), Doug scripted the sevenpager “Coffin Curse,” illustrated by Don Brown. © 1971 Warren Publications.

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MOENCH: And it worked out. [But] the other thing was that it wasn’t so much that [Marvel] wanted a writer. They wanted an editor as well as a writer. So the deal was, I had to come and work on staff as what they called an “assistant editor”—but it was really just proofreading for eight hours a day. So I did that. And they were giving me all this writing because Len Wein could only do six pages a day, right? WEIN: Well, I only type with my thumbs. [laughter] MOENCH: Anyway, they kept giving me more and more writing. Then after about a month and a half, I think, or maybe two months, Roy called me into his office. And I thought, “Am I gonna get fired here? What’s going on?” And he said, “We need more writing from you.” And I said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me. I’m already doing more than any other writer by far. Plus I’m doing eight hours of proofreading. If you want any more writing from me I’m gonna have to stay home.” [And Roy said:] “Yeah, I thought you would say that. All right, stay another week to train your replacement and then go home.” WEIN: Who was your replacement? MOENCH: David Anthony Kraft. And there sure wasn’t much to train. Probably the big thing was—here’s a real good tip—instead of sending every little thing back to the Bullpen [for corrections], you can use this Exacto blade to scrape off things and then touch it up yourself, and save you some trouble. WEIN: What was your first assignment? MOENCH: At the end of my two-week trial of New York City and Marvel Comics, I said, “Okay, I guess I can handle this. I’ll move to Manhattan and work here. The problem is, I don’t have the money to make the move, to put down a deposit.” Manhattan rents were five times as much as Chicago was, or three times as much. And Roy said, “All right, how much do you need?” [Whatever] it was, he said, “Okay, voucher as many stories for black-and-white titles as you need to cover that amount—you know, seven pages, for whatever it was per page—and fill in a title. And then move here. And then once you’re here, you’re gonna have to write all those stories.” [laughter] So I just sat down and made up titles: 15 stories, seven pages, eight pages, nine pages, whatever, 12 pages. [And then] I got paid in advance. And then when I made the move, I realized, “Now I’ve gotta actually write all these stories—the money’s already spent!”

MONSTERS AND MASTER WEIN: So you started [at Marvel] with mystery stories? MOENCH: Yeah. The first things for Marvel would’ve been those black-and-white things. And then there was an issue of the color comic of Ghost Rider, the current Ghost Rider with the flaming skull, the motorcycle guy. [Editor’s note: Moench scripted Marv Wolfman’s plot for Ghost Rider #5, Apr. 1974.] There used to be—I don’t know how many of you people know—there was a Western Ghost Rider, which I thought was really cool. The motorcycle one’s cool, too. And then, I guess the first color series was “Man-Wolf” [in Creatures on the Loose]. Then they wanted me to do Werewolf by Night, and I said, “Hey, enough with the werewolves and man-wolves!” And, by the way, talking about Marv Wolfman being the editor at Warren: Before I met Marv, the first

time I saw his name matched up with some little horror story or whatnot, I was convinced that was a phony name—Marv Wolf-Man! WEIN: Well, it is actually a phony name. His real name is Marv Frankenstein. [laughter] MOENCH: So, you know, [I told Marvel,] “Enough with the ‘wolf’ stuff.” I always liked writing in the first person, so I went with Werewolf by Night and dropped Man-Wolf, and then there was—in who knows what order— Planet of the Apes … all those Dracula stories, Zombie stories, “Gabriel the Devil Hunter” [from Haunt of Horror], rip-offs of The Exorcist—on and on like that. And then Master of Kung Fu, Doc Savage—I really liked the Doc Savage black-and-white magazine. I loved doing that. And working with [Mike] Ploog on Planet of the Apes was something else. And Master of Kung Fu… WEIN: Yeah, you threw away Master of Kung Fu. That’s arguably your most famous work. MOENCH: Yeah, I can’t tell if it’s that or Moon Knight or maybe, “you’re the guy who did all the Batman stuff.” It’s either Master of Kung Fu, Moon Knight, or Batman. WEIN: Those are three nice things to be associated with. How long was your run [on Master of Kung Fu]? MOENCH: It was over a hundred monthly issues. And there were several annuals and, I think, six or eight Giant-Size. And then there was a black-and-white

All-Interview Issue

“I really liked the Doc Savage black-and-white magazine.” Ken Barr’s painted cover to Marvel’s B&W Doc Savage #6 (Oct. 1976), written by Doug Moench. (inset) Those stories were reprinted by DC in July 2011’s Showcase Presents: Doc Savage. Doc Savage TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers Inc.

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monthly Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. So it probably added up to about 130, 140, or 150 issues. And it was almost exactly ten years. WEIN: Now you worked for a long period of that time with artist Paul Gulacy. Did you start with [artist] Jim Starlin and then go to Paul Gulacy? MOENCH: No, [writer Steve Englehart] was the one who did the Starlin issues [of Master of Kung Fu]. My first issue was with Paul Gulacy. WEIN: [Englehart] didn’t do it very long. MOENCH: Not long at all. [And] Starlin, I think, only did four. I think Englehart did five. So he did four with Starlin and then one with Gulacy. And then I came in and went almost all the way through to the end. They wanted to keep it going after I quit Marvel, and I think they did two or three issues, but Denny O’Neil later told me, he said, “No one but you could write it. No one could figure out how to do it.” I said, “Englehart wrote it.” He said, “Well, you know what I mean. Nobody could do it.”

So they just decided to cancel it. He said the same thing about Moon Knight. They kept that going for another three or four issues. He said nobody got a handle on how to do it. Now apparently somebody else is doing it. WEIN: That’s because they don’t have to do it like you anymore. A lot of time has passed. So, how many years were you at Marvel? MOENCH: About ten. I got Master of Kung Fu almost right away, and I was on that for ten years. It was like one month more than ten years or something like that. So that’s pretty much how long I was there.

HOLLYWOOD CALLING WEIN: What’s this I hear about you and Paramount [Pictures]? I actually don’t remember this. Tell us more… MOENCH: [Animator/film director] Ralph Bakshi had been doing animated stuff, and he was just finishing the [Frank] Frazetta movie Fire and Ice [1983]. First of all, he called [Jim] Steranko—this is the story he gave me— [Bakshi] said, “Who’s the best writer in comics right now?” Steranko supposedly said I was because he liked Master of Kung Fu. So Bakshi went out and bought all of the comics on the rack, or whatever, and read them and he said, “Yeah, I agree with Steranko. So I want you to come out [and work for me].” You know, when the phone rang, it was his assistant, and she literally said, “This is Hollywood calling.” [laughter] She literally said that. WEIN: Apparently the sign has its own phone. [laughs] MOENCH: “This is Hollywood calling. Please hold for Mr. Bakshi.” And he came on and he said, “This is Ralph Bakshi and I’m doing my first live-action picture and I want you to write it. So talk to my girl and be out here Monday.” And first, when she came back on the phone, I said, “No, no, no. I’m not going to be out there Monday. Tell him to forget that.” So he called me back. And I think [by the] third time he called me, he talked me into it. But anyway, when I went out there, it was right after they had wrapped Fire and Ice [1983], and the meeting was just me and him in this giant animation studio with no one there, and all of these animators’ desks. And on every desk, every single one of them— I’m telling you, it had to be over one hundred, if not hundreds—an exquisite Frank Frazetta drawing. He called them “sketches,” but you’ve seen Frazetta’s sketches. And because he was sitting around getting paid by Paramount, or whoever put that picture out, he had nothing to do but [work on] these very finished, exquisite sketches. I have no idea what happened to all those things… But anyways, Bakshi had talked Paramount and [Italian film producer] Dino de Laurentiis into doing his first liveaction picture, and it was going to be this thing called Red Sonja [1985]. So I wrote, like, three versions of Red Sonja before giving up. [I could tell you] stories about Dino de Laurentiis for hours, but I won’t. I ended up quitting—

Nobody Does It Better Bond influences run amok on page 23 from Master of Kung Fu #47 (Dec. 1976), by the fabulous Doug Moench/Paul Gulacy team and inker Pablo Marcos. Original art page courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). For more on Doug and Paul’s partnership, see BACK ISSUE #26. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Sword and Drudgery (right) Moench’s multiple drafts of a Red Sonja screenplay didn’t end up in the 1985’s filmed version, but the writer instead took away some engaging stories about producer Dino de Laurentiis! (below) Moench and Wein at the Comic-Con panel, 2009. Photo by Mark DiFruscio. © 1985 Dino de Laurentiis Company and Famous Films.

quitting Dino, but not quitting Bakshi. And if Bakshi wouldn’t go along with what Dino wanted me to do, and if I refused to do it, and Bakshi wouldn’t go along with the new writer—[ultimately] Bakshi lost his chance at it, too. Later on, you know, Bakshi ran into Dino, and Dino said to him, [with Italian accent] “Oh, all the troubles we had on Red Sonja, I figure out the problem. Problem was … Schwarzenegger!” And I said, “What was that supposed to mean?” And Bakshi had taken it to mean that if one of us had just thought that we should put [Arnold] Schwarzenegger into Red Sonja as the male character, all of our problems would’ve been solved. But then, that’s crazy. First of all, [Dino] can’t read English. So my scripts were being translated into Italian. I’ll give you one example—we’d have to get up at like seven in the morning on Sundays and go to Dino de Laurentiis’ pink bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. This is surreal… First thing in the morning? Come on. And we’d get in there [and Dino would say], “Pancetta and coffee for my good friend, Doug.” And then he’d say, “Very good script, Doug. But we must not have vampires in our movie!” And I’d say, “Vampires?! What are you talking about? There are no vampires in the screenplay I’ve written, Dino.” “Ah, we must not have vampires.” And this would go on. [And I’d say,] “You must have read the wrong screenplay. Do you have someone else working on it?” “No! Only you on Red Sonja!” And then he would start talking about it and I’d realize what he was talking about. I did a little, brief riff on—I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart… WEIN: The leeches! MOENCH: Yes. I had Red Sonja going through a swamp and she comes out and there are dozens of leeches on her legs. This is what the screenplay says. And she’s going, “Ah, ah, ah!” as she peels them off. It’s just a little throwaway thing at the end of this—you know, it’s a big fight in the swamp and she gets out and there are leeches on her, and that’s that… It’s the kind of thing that would’ve gotten edited out, but I thought it might be cute. And so I’m suddenly realizing that Dino has no idea whether I can write. How can he possibly judge what I’m writing if he is getting Italian translations of Red Sonja with dozens of tiny vampires [sucking on her legs]? I mean, so much for my subtle turns of phrase … that was like the beginning of the end [in Hollywood] for me. This is madness.

Dino was great when he just put together the money for a movie. He would get movies like Serpico [1973]—a bunch of really good movies like that. And then there were the movies where he wanted to be creatively, personally involved. And they were things like The White Buffalo [1977], Orca: The Killer Whale [1977], and that campy Flash Gordon [1980], just god-awful movies. Oh, this is the worst thing—my favorite movie of all time is the original King Kong [1933]. So it was rather uncomfortable when Dino at one point said to me, “My good friend, Doug, have you seen my King Kong?” And he had made this remake of King Kong [in 1976] that I thought was just god-awful. And I had to say, “Uh, yeah, I saw it, Dino.” And he says, “I tell you secret … that not real ape!” [laughter] Then I said, “Yeah, I know. That was Rick Baker in an ape suit.” “No! No Rick Baker! Carlo Rambaldi, Carlo Rambaldi! No Rick Baker!” Now, he paid Carlo Rambaldi something like three million dollars to build this full-sized, gigantic, robotic King Kong [that] was so bad that— it wasn’t Carlo Rambaldi’s fault, nobody could’ve built a full-sized robotic King Kong at that time, or even now—[but it was] so bad it made the final movie for, I think, three-and-a-half seconds, in a long-shot. And the rest of it was indeed Rick Baker in an ape suit. But he wanted his fellow Italian, Carlo Rambaldi, to get the credit. And he was just delusional. WEIN: He was also famous for saying, “At the end of my King Kong, everybody going to cry!” He was right, but not for the reasons he thought. [laughter] MOENCH: It was tough… How did we get onto this? WEIN: Paramount… How long were you out there? MOENCH: Well, I was out there, I think originally for—it was odd, it was like one week, then it was like three weeks, then it was like a couple of months. Then I would come back. And, by the way, I kept up a full, humungous load of comic-book work. All-Interview Issue

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Doug’s Other Partner Besides Paul Gulacy, Moench is best known for his many Batman collaborations with artist Kelley Jones. This original page is from this dynamic duo’s 1993 Elseworlds one-shot, Batman: Dark Joker—The Wild. Inks by John Beatty. Art courtesy of Heritage. TM & © DC Comics.

WEIN: That was going to be my next question. MOENCH: I almost killed myself. I was only getting, like, three hours of sleep. But I never blew a deadline and I managed to write three versions of this screenplay before quitting. And I think eventually it stretched into about nine months total, because I would do some of it in my home, and then have to go out to Hollywood for a while. Then back and forth. And then I got roped into doing development work for Paramount TV and Feature Films. And then, later on, Bakshi hired me to be the story editor and head writer on of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures [1987–1988].

BIG DARKNESS, SOON COME WEIN: So you were at DC during all of this? MOENCH: It was right after my son was born, and it was right after I went from Marvel to DC. Then, “This is Hollywood calling. Please hold for Mr. Bakshi.” All at the same time. Crazy stuff. DC was very afraid, but they could never nail me because I made every deadline. I think they thought I was going to go full-time Hollywood and just abruptly quit and leave them in a lurch. But I had no intention of that. I really enjoy comics. WEIN: What did you start with at DC? MOENCH: The very first thing, I guess—the first thing that [thenmanaging editor] Dick Giordano gave me was Batman and Detective. You were the editor at the time. The two were intertwined, you know, back and forth. I guess Marvel had been the first company to pioneer 66 • BACK ISSUE • All-Interview Issue

that kind of thing, and you wisely realized that’s the way to do it. And I agreed, and I thought that might be interesting, doing a Batman every two weeks. But I don’t think that I actually did Batman and Detective first [in this manner,] because Gerry Conway was the previous writer, and he was still going to do it [for] maybe three or four months after I came [over to DC]. WEIN: That’s how I remember it. MOENCH: Yeah, so I think the very first stuff I did was World’s Finest with Superman and Batman, and, I don’t know … maybe Arion, the Atlantis thing with Jan Duursema? WEIN: What were your regular titles at DC? MOENCH: Oh, wow … Batman, Detective, World’s Finest, Spectre, C.O.P.S., Xenobrood, Lords of the Ultra-Realm, Arion—there’s more, but I can’t remember. WEIN: What happened that made you leave DC? MOENCH: Supposedly nothing happened. They said they wanted to do the books the way I had suggested doing them years earlier. I had not used Hill Street Blues or Law & Order as the model, but I said, “How about if we do Batman for a while sort of like a combination of 87th Precinct and these new serial-killer novels that are really hot?” [But] I was told at the time, “Oh, no, no, we can’t do that. We’ve got to have the Joker and Two-Face and all of that.” And so, okay, I did what they wanted. And then I hear in a roundabout way that, well, they want to change the writers on all of the Batman books and do them like Hill Street Blues … okay. But [writer Alan Grant and I] were told, “Don’t worry, we can do the Batman special projects and graphic novels and so on.” Which I did, Alan not so much. I did do that for a while. But at a certain point, I had been wanting to try novels, which I’m working on some now. But I’m also back doing some comics. And then the real world intruded with the 2000 [U.S. presidential] election. I know this sounds juvenile or immature—[but] I was very surprised at my reaction to the Supreme Court stealing the election [in selecting George W. Bush over Al Gore in the contested election]. I’m very convinced that that’s what they did. And it really threw me. I thought I was such a cynical, sophisticate, and above all of that. That I wouldn’t care. You know, “It doesn’t matter who’s president.” But it really did bother me. And I remember my son saying, “Come on, Dad. It’s not the end of the world.” And I said, “It is the end of the world as we’ve known it.” And he said, “Oh, you’re just exaggerating.” And I said, and I remember this, “Derek … Big Darkness, Soon Come.” And I was utterly convinced that this was something really, really bad. And I was kind of obsessed through the whole Bush Administration with “Bush Derangement Syndrome” as they call it. Really, really thrown for a loop. Now, even though I’m not sure it’s that much different, it does seem at least like … we’re not being controlled by fire-breathing demons from Hell. [laughter] And maybe I’m ready for the real world to step aside, and [to] get back into a little more fantasy/make-believe again. MARK DiFRUSCIO is a freelance writer living in San Diego. He would like to thank Len Wein and Doug Moench for their candor and good humor during the above panel.

Call them the underdogs of the industry. Letterers are talented artists, but unlike pencilers or inkers, they do not bask in the glory of recognition and they are often at their best when they do not stand out (if you’re noticing the lettering too much, it slows you down from progressing through the story). Fifty-one issues in, it’s never too late to innovate! The following is a first for BACK ISSUE: a roundtable discussion in which two of the industry’s best and most prolific lettering veterans discuss their craft, their profession, and their memories. A legend among letterers, Janice Chiang is a familiar name to any avid comics reader during the 1980s. She broke into comics in the mid-1970s, when she began freelancing for Marvel Comics, and she continues to letter to this day. (And contrary to an erroneous credit on her Wikipedia profile, she did not do any work as a colorist!) For 25 years, Chiang has lived in Woodstock, New York, with her husband, Danny Louie. Their son, Calvin Louie, is something of a legacy, working in comics for Radical Publishing in Los Angeles. The award-winning Todd Klein has lettered some of the seminal cornerstone titles of comicdom, including Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. He is as active today as ever and has won more awards than any other letterer. Klein resides in New Jersey with his wife, Ellen Smiga-Klein. (Full disclosure: Klein’s interview responses here are a combination of fresh quotes he gave exclusively to BACK ISSUE via email and excerpts from detailed passages he had posted at his blog, kleinletters.com/Blog/, which Todd directed me for certain questions rather than risk repetitive-stress injuries.) – Michael Aushenker

MICHAEL AUSHENKER: Todd, you wrote an interesting statement in your bio material: “I bothered enough editors long enough to be offered a regular writing assignment on The Omega Men, which I wrote for its final year and a half. While a great learning experience, and a lot of fun, I found writing much harder than lettering, and since the mid-1980s I’ve stuck mainly to the latter.” Would you ever want to tackle writing again? TODD KLEIN: I’m still writing. Have a look at my blog and you’ll see that, though I do write very little fiction. If poetry counts, I recently wrote the verse on my signed print with Mark Buckingham. Writing comics was fun, but required more time and effort for me than lettering, which I think I have a natural ability for. AUSHENKER: Janice, you’ve worked with so many luminaries in the comics industry. And yet, because of the assembly-line nature of American comics, you probably have yet to meet many of your collaborators! JANICE CHIANG: I recently teamed up with Danny Fingeroth on a short story for a collection named Yiddishland, where the theme is about cantors who ventured into vaudeville. I’ve lettered many projects, so I know the majority of freelancers by name only. I thought, “Oh, so that’s Mike Vosburg! He sounds like a really nice guy.” I had met Rich Buckler while waiting in line at the Big Apple Comic Con in October 2009. We had teamed on some books back in 1975, when I was working in the Marvel Bullpen. Rich said he remembered me … nice to find a living witness of my first staff job in Marvel. AUSHENKER: Todd, what steps did you take to adjust to the digital revolution in the ’90s and make the leap from hand-lettering to digital lettering based on fonts you created by hand? KLEIN: When I began in the comics business in 1977, all the elements on a page of comics were done by

All-Interview Issue

A BACK ISSUE Exclusive We extend our deepest gratitude to the talented and wonderful Janice Chiang (left, shown here with cartoonist Bob Camp) for lettering this article’s title header. Thank you, Janice! (right) From production artist to letterer, Todd Klein at work at DC Comics, 1978. Photo by Jack Adler. Courtesy of Todd Klein.

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Beginnings: Mid-1970s work at Marvel Comics

Milestones: Conan the Barbarian / Dazzler / Ka-Zar the Savage / Defenders / Transformers / Visionaries / ROM: Spaceknight / ElfQuest / Hawk & Dove (1980s miniseries, Rob Liefeld’s first DC Comics work) / Alpha Flight / Iron Man / Ghost Rider / Impulse / Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Random House projects Kagetora (vols. 2–5), Suzuka (vols. 1–3), and Air Gear (vol. 1–4) / Secret Identities / Smurfs / Chamber of Commerce of Greater Harlem “Harlem Week” campaigns / plus numerous lettering assignments for Dark Horse, Scholastic, Acclaim, DC’s CMX, and Tokyo Pop

Works in Progress: Archie Loves Betty / Archie Loves Veronica / Smurfs (Papercutz)

janice chiang

Beginnings: Staff production artist at DC Comics (hired during the summer of 1977)

Milestones: Firestorm / Swamp Thing / Ronin / Batman: The Dark Knight Returns / Watchmen / Batman: Year One (Batman #404–407) / Omega Men (letterer and writer) / Suicide Squad / The Spectre / Sandman / The Invisibles / Deathblow / Captain America / Earth X / Tom Strong / Justice / Multiple Eisner and Harvey Awards / Numerous logo and letters-column header designs

Works in Progress: Fables / Jack of Fables / House of Mystery / Batwoman / The Unwritten / League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century / I, Zombie / Joe the Barbarian / Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom / What If? #200 / Mata Hari / ManThing / S.H.I.E.L.D. / Shame

Cyberspace: http://kleinletters.com/

todd klein

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hand. Today, it’s possible for all of them to be done on a computer, though much of the artwork is still done by hand first, then scanned onto a computer. The evolution of desktop publishing, powered by inexpensive but powerful desktop and laptop computers, especially those made by Apple, began in the 1980s, and started having an impact on comics lettering soon after, though the effects were gradual. The first place I recall seeing computer-generated lettering was in the work of writer/artist John Byrne, who made fonts from existing lettering to save time for himself. Unfortunately, Byrne made the mistake of using existing lettering by other people without always getting their permission first, as in this case where the lettering came from artist Dave Gibbons. Another early user of computer lettering was David Cody Weiss. But computer lettering really started making an impact with the availability of the first commercial comic-book font, Whizbang, which I believe I first saw advertised in The Comics Buyer’s Guide around 1990. It’s still available, though for a time was so prevalent that readers complained about many books having the same look. In the early 1990s, Richard Starkings and his partner John Gaushell began created comic-book fonts and started Comicraft, which has become the major source of comics fonts, though they have competition from others such as Blambot. Richard was the first to not only promote his fonts by lettering with them himself (and soon developed a staff to help him), but also selling fonts commercially on his company’s website, and has been very successful doing so. At first, computer lettering was always printed out and pasted onto the comics artwork, but after a few years, as comics coloring moved into desktop publishing, digital lettering files began to be used in a more effective way by combining them directly with digital art files, eliminating the physical paste-up stage altogether. When I saw this happening in the early ’90s, I realized it would be the way of the future. I had met Richard Starkings and John Gaushell in San Diego in 1993, and in 1994 asked them to help me get started with computer lettering by creating a few fonts for me from my hand lettering. I bought my first Mac computer in late 1994, and started learning how to make it all work, and how to make fonts myself. The fonts Comicraft made for me worked well, and I used them as a template to make more, including some sound-effects fonts. There will always be something missing from computer lettering that I feel I can only capture with hand lettering: a freshness, roughness, variety of letterforms made up on the spot. Computer lettering has its limits, but when done well can certainly do an admirable job, and it provides a lot of technical shortcuts. WildStorm was ahead of the curve there. Marvel came around a few years later. DC held to traditional production methods the longest, but now nearly all lettering is digitally applied. By 1995, the revolution had begun. It was a gradual process over many years, and it wasn’t painful at all. I enjoyed learning new things and expanding my area of expertise. AUSHENKER: Janice, what are some misconceptions about letterers? CHIANG: People think we’re just copying words and we can’t think for ourselves. It goes back to how I approach lettering. My background is fine arts. My fonts … they don’t look like anyone else’s. I studied at Hunter College. We were a very creative family. My mother could look at a dress and sew that dress. She could see a sweater and knit it. My father could build things. A big promotion by the age of 12 for me was to use a circular saw. My father

had so much faith in us that we could do the process. I learned how to do crafts at age five, how to do create something out of nothing. AUSHENKER: Where is your family from? CHIANG: I’m the first generation born here. My parents grew up in China. My mother’s name was Hop Kun. My father’s name was Bay Doc. My father came to New York when he was 13-and-a-half. In 1892, after Chinese came to build the Transcontinental Railroad, there was an economic crisis. A lot of scapegoating went on with the immigrants. The Manchus were in control of China. The immigrants had to wear a long braid to differentiate them from the Manchus—a lot of Chinese had long braids. My father was sponsored as a paper son [a fake relative] with a Chinese laundry or restaurant business. He did hand laundry. My mom and dad ran a business at home. They were really accessible. Basically, where we lived, on East Elmhurst in Queens, my dad converted the garage attached to our apartment building into a hand-laundry storefront. I had two older sisters and a younger brother. One of my sisters is Fay Chiang, a well-known poet. As far as the immigration experience, China was not a friend to this count until an open-door policy in 1962. It was not comfortable being Asian. You would keep a low profile. Look like what they did to the Japanese[-American] people [in California during World War II]. Basically, all of us connected with the fine arts. The creativity in the family home situation fit into writing and artwork. My sisters, Fay and Jean, were at Hunter College, already studying fine arts. So I was the third Chiang in there. When we went to Hunter, Fay was in the anti-war movement. She was bringing literature in the house from progressive thinkers, from the Black Panthers. It gave me a broad view of what was going on. What really got me angry was when they murdered [African-American activist] Fred Hampton. It made me question, “What’s this democracy and who are we helping?” AUSHENKER: Sounds like you’re politically active. CHIANG: I became active in the anti-war movement [during the Vietnam War era]. A lot of students were active. They were killing people who looked like us over there. Fay started organizing ethnic studies and we were very active in the Asian-American organization. Like what’s going on right now in Arizona—if you look Latino, you’re going to be stopped. We were all there [at Hunter] at the same time. Basement Workshop, an Asian-American multi-arts organization, was taking up community issues, civil-rights issues. Larry Hama was part of that organization. He’s an artist and musician. That’s how I got into comics. Larry’s sort of my big brother and mentor. His mom is really talented. She worked at a dress shop. The clientele brought the couture clothing and she would copy it. Larry told me, “I love hanging around women! They smell nice and they’re creative.” AUSHENKER: So that’s why Larry was off to a red-tag sale when I caught him for a phone interview [in January 2010]! [Writer’s note: see BACK ISSUE #43.] CHIANG: When he was 12, he got a subscription to Vogue. I’ve known Larry since I was 13 1/2. They would do these Asian arts festivals that were held to celebrate the August moon. This was back in 1972. The great thing about New York City is that it’s multiethnic. AUSHENKER: How did a fine arts major such as yourself start on a path to lettering? CHIANG: I never finished Hunter College—I just left. Basically, I made a lot of decisions that were unconventional. Struggle is a big part of my life. You see something and you move forward rather than stand there and be scared. Larry Hama’s partner, Ralph Reese, taught me how to letter. They were working together under the name of Crusty Bunkers [the gang of inkers at Neal Adams’ Continuity Studios]. I’d go there, and Ralph would show me a few things and then I’d go home and work on it. Different kinds of lettering, and somehow it evolved. AUSHENKER: Which letterers were you studying at the time? CHIANG: The big-name letterer I really liked was Joe Rosen. The others were a little clumsy. I loved Joe Rosen’s hand because he had an interplay of thick and thin lines. I don’t like blocky, one-dimensional strokes. That goes back to my background. My father taught me how to use a calligraphy brush. AUSHENKER: Were you already reading comics?

Chiang’s Comics Cronies (top) Janice (right) reunites with former Marvel colleagues Eliot R. Brown (left) and Howard Mackie. (center) Larry Hama and “nice-smelling” Janice. (bottom) Janice and Mark Texiera. The pair worked together on Ghost Rider in the early 1990s. Photos courtesy of Janice Chiang. All-Interview Issue

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CHIANG: No! [laughs] I read books! I sort of stumbled onto comics. I tell my comics editors, “Just remember that my mother didn’t raise me to letter comics!” [laughs] At Neal’s studio, there were some things floating around that were pitched to me. Neal called me over to Marvel Bullpen. He contacted Danny Crespi. He was a letterer, too. His daughter, Susan Crespi, is the production manager now at Marvel. Thanks to Neal, I was in the Bullpen at Marvel, doing lettering corrections. AUSHENKER: What was the Marvel Bullpen like in 1975 when you came aboard? CHIANG: The Bullpen was one big, open area. Freelancers would come in and drop off their art. I was younger than most people there. I was 19. AUSHENKER: This must have been a great place to learn. CHIANG: I was fixing letterers: Jean Simek, Annette Kiwecki, Sam Rosen. I didn’t keep track on whose work I was on. John Verpoorten was my supervisor.

Sam Rosen, Artie Simek, their sound effects were really square, not too many curves. But with Neal Adams, Walt [Simonson], Bernie [Wrightson], the lettering got looser in the mid-’70s … but then there was permission to use a more calligraphic style. In the ’80s, there was a loosening under [Marvel editor-in-chief] Jim Shooter’s editorial hand. A hand-letterer used elliptical templates to make balloons that sort of killed the organic balloons. For digital lettering, I pull out the corners of the balloon shapes and make them more organic. It’s interesting to see the letterers I can tell at what point they started reading comics by the kinds of balloons. AUSHENKER: Who were the Bullpen peers that you socialized with? CHIANG: I didn’t hang out with comics people. Working at the Bullpen taught me that I worked better by working by myself. I worked there for three months, and then I left the comics industry, going back to the community organizing. I worked on how to get the word out if there’s a demonstration by creating graphics. I did that for a couple of years. Once you know time/date/place, you’re off and running. I would do artwork, I learned to silk-screen. Back then, you were a rebel, a mover and shaker, a revolutionary. That’s why it’s appropriate that my son is working at Radical Publishing. [laughs] [Writer’s note: Calvin is the assistant director of production at Radical.] AUSHENKER: Todd, whose lettering inspired you? KLEIN: Gaspar Saladino, John Workman, Jr., Ben Oda, and John Costanza, as well as Marvel Comics letterers Tom Orzechowski, Jim Novak, and Joe Rosen. I can’t say any letterer inspired me to become one. I did want to get into comics in some capacity, and once I was hired by DC to work in their production department, I tried various kinds of freelance jobs to supplement my income, and lettering seemed the best and most natural fit for me, so I pursued it with the most energy. AUSHENKER: Can you share an anecdote or two of working on your first full-fledged assignment, Gerry Conway’s Firestorm #1? KLEIN: I don’t remember much about it … I was a risky choice, and I don’t know why they gave me the assignment. I got on well with editor/artist Al Milgrom, so maybe he asked for me, I don’t know. AUSHENKER: Which books reflected your first digital work, when you left hand-lettering behind? KLEIN: The first book that I fully computer lettered was Deathblow #20 (Oct. 1995), for Jim Lee’s WildStorm Productions. The last book I hand-lettered was Nexus #99–102 (2007–2009), self-published by Steve Rude. AUSHENKER: Which projects were among your most creative and/or creatively stifling? KLEIN: The most creative and most freedom I’ve enjoyed on a series would probably include Starstruck, Sandman, and the America’s Best Comics titles. They were also the most challenging. Any that might have been creatively stifling are now forgotten.

“Lettering: Is It Art?” In the hands of Todd Klein, it certainly is, as this 1993 sampler of his work shows. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions. (inset above) Todd’s first lettering assignment, DC’s Firestorm #1 (Mar. 1978). Lettering Sampler © 1993 Todd Klein.

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AUSHENKER: Is there a difference in difficulty to the superhero stuff as opposed to, say, the Disney books you did for Gladstone? KLEIN: Every project has its own particular challenges and requirements … generally, they all draw on the same skills. I have no genre preference. AUSHENKER: Janice, is there a difference lettering for Archie or The Smurfs, compared to the superhero stuff? CHIANG: Not really, it takes a lot of engagement. The stories are really funny, working on two levels for the kids and for the adults—I’m laughing while I’m lettering. The only difference is scale—the lettering is larger. AUSHENKER: When you were hand-lettering, Todd, what kind of tools did you use and for which elements? KLEIN: Pens for lettering fall into two categories: technical drawing pens and dip (or nib) pens. For tech pens, I prefer Faber-Castell TG1 pens. Unfortunately, these are no longer available in the US, but can be found online from vendors in the United Kingdom and Europe. An alternative in the US is the Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph. These pens come in sizes measured in millimeters and (points). I use four sizes almost exclusively: 0.35mm (0) for smallest work and touch-ups, 0.50mm (2) for regular letters, 0.70mm (2.5) for bold italic letters and 1.00mm (3.5 or 4) for extra bold. Dip-pen points and holders are made by Speedball/ Hunt (once each rivals, now co-owned). For regular lettering, I prefer a Speedball C-6 wedge-shaped point, and a B-6 round point for bold letters (though I often do the bold letters with a Tech Pen instead). B-5, B-4, B-3, B-2, etc. are successively larger round points that are useful for larger solid letters. Some hand-letterers prefer the Hunt #107 wedge-shaped point, which takes a smaller pen holder. For ink, you need a waterproof black ink that is as thick as possible, and will hold up to erasing, yet still flow through pen points. My current favorite is Calli Jet Black #010, but (Speedball) Super Black India is also very good.…

From Barbarian to Armored Avenger

Even if you plan to work mostly with computer lettering, I’d still recommend learning to hand-letter, as it will teach you many things that will be useful with computer lettering as well. [Besides,] if you decide to create your own comic-book fonts, you’ll need to have some hand-lettering skills to make the letters. AUSHENKER: Janice, what are your hand-lettering tools of the trade? CHIANG: I use a Crowquill, Speedball C6, inside the balloon lettering; B6 to outline balloons, and bold lettering; a B5.5 for borders and sound-effects lettering; and a Crowquill for balloon points and for touch-ups. AUSHENKER: What were those days like as the industry went through that seismic shift from manual to digital? CHIANG: In 1996, the hand letterers had no work. I just sat down and drew the letter forms, balloons, and sound effects. I created a glossary for myself. I have a basic working for 40 original styles that came from drawing them from pen and ink. But for what I handle in general is about 8 to 10. You don’t want to make things too complicated to stop [the flow for the reader].

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(left) Janice Chiang’s lettering career started with Conan #130 (Jan. 1982). Cover by Gil Kane. (above) Later work such as Iron Man allowed her to expand her skills with sound effects. Page 19 from issue #216 (Mar. 1987), by David Michelinie and Bob Layton. •

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Working with Bill Mantlo Chiang’s lettering on page 13 of ROM: Spaceknight #50 (Jan. 1984). (inset) Among Janice’s recent assignments is the Smurfs series from Papercutz. ROM © 1984 Parker Brothers. Smurfs TM & © Studio Peyo.

Marvel, at the time, decided to not use hand lettering anymore and to move into digital lettering. I was really happy when Chris Eliopoulos took it on. He started from the bottom up. He paid his dues. AUSHENKER: Janice, in the early ’70s, you were at the Marvel Bullpen. You left and you met your husband Danny while you were politically active with Asian-American causes. So what happened next? How did you get back into comics? CHIANG: I spent five years in Chinatown. For a period, I worked in auto factories for Cadillac and at the GM plant. I worked at a Ford plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, on and off over those five years. In 1980, my son Calvin was born and now I was thinking, “How am I gonna raise him?” So I said, “Let me see if they would remember me over at Marvel.” Luckily, the Bullpen was intact: Danny Crespi, Morie Kuromoto, and Jack Abel were there. And Marie Severin. Mary MacPherson was the front-desk person answering the phone. This time, when I got to Marvel, Louise Jones [Simonson] was an editor there. I was so happy to see a woman there. This was so nice. Louise gave me my first book, a Conan issue drawn by John Buscema. AUSHENKER: Do you remember which issue it was?

CHIANG: I have no idea, but it scared me. I thought to myself, “Take a deep breath! Sit down!” Once it’s on paper for posterity, I was really nervous. I’d pencil it and come back and ink. It took so long. It took two hours for one page. I thought to myself, “This is ridiculous!” [Editor’s note: According to the Grand Comic-Book Database (www.comics.org), Janice’s first Conan lettering credit was issue #130, Jan. 1982.] AUSHENKER: Janice, can you discuss working on the licensed toy books ROM: Spaceknight and Transformers? Since these books featured robots, were they more of a challenge, lettering-wise? (I’m assuming you sometimes lettered in different “voices” for these books.) Was that a pain in the ass? CHIANG: Oh, no, it was the fun part. AUSHENKER: You worked on quite a few titles written by Bill Mantlo. What was he like? CHIANG: He was a very sweet guy, very energetic, very curious. Comics people, they originate from their love of comics, or they’re intellectuals where their scope is really broad. Bill was one of them. So was Walt Simonson. AUSHENKER: Where were you physically doing the Marvel lettering work? CHIANG: I lived in Jersey City [Writer’s note: before moving to Woodstock with her husband Danny]. I do a lot of weights. It takes a lot of will power to make me sit still. AUSHENKER: Do you and Danny have other children? CHIANG: No, one is enough! [laughs] AUSHENKER: Todd, among the first Eisner Awards you won were for a handful of books based on Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko characters such as The Demon and Shade the Changing Man. Can you talk about a few classic comics/artists you enjoyed growing up? KLEIN: I was originally a DC fan. I didn’t have a comics shop near where I lived, so only had the chance to buy comics occasionally, but enjoyed [the characters] Superman, Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern, among others, and Justice League of America was the only comic I ever subscribed to. On a visit to New York around 1963, I was given some early Marvel comics—Fantastic Four, [Amazing] Spider-Man—and was instantly enthralled. From then on, I searched out and loved the early Marvel comics, which replaced DC as my favorite publisher. Kirby and Ditko were my favorite Marvel artists, and I got to work with Ditko as a letterer a few times, and Kirby as a logo designer once, all thrilling experiences. AUSHENKER: Todd, can you talk about working at DC in the early ’80s, during the era of Joe Orlando, Dick Giordano, etc.? During that time, you were designing some of the logos you created in the 1980s for the

Let’s Do the Time Warp Again The telescoping logo for DC’s sci-fi title Time Warp was challenging for Klein. TM & © DC Comics.

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various DC and Marvel books? Which were among the ones you’re most proud of? Which were challenging because of the work or deadlines? KLEIN: [The logo for] Time Warp. Joe Orlando had an idea for that unusually twisted logo, and had sketched it out roughly on a small piece of paper. He brought it in to me and asked if I’d develop it into a full logo design, which I was happy to do. Getting the telescoping to work was a challenge, but one I enjoyed, and Joe was delighted with what I did, as I recall. The tagline along the bottom was kind of an afterthought, and I think the logo would have been better without it, but Joe was trying to give readers some idea of what the science-fiction anthology might have inside. That was, I think, the only time I worked with Joe from a logo idea of his, and it was a great experience. AUSHENKER: Please tell us about your experiences working on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. KLEIN: I had heard some impressive things about this British comics writer in the early 1980s from folks at DC, but the first thing I actually read by Alan was his script for Saga of the Swamp Thing #22, which I was given to letter by the editor in 1983. Needless to say, I was blown away, not only by the amount of detail and thought that the script contained, but by a writer who had the ability to take an existing DC character which I loved, and which he also obviously had great respect for, and in a few pages make it something uniquely his own that I loved even more. This was writing talent that I had rarely encountered in the comics world! In the course of lettering that story, I became a lifelong Alan Moore fan. I only wish I could have lettered more of those great Swamp Thing stories, but John Costanza had the gig, and did a fine job with it, so I had to settle for simply reading them. I did get to letter a few other Alan Moore stories for DC: a Green Arrow backup two-parter in Detective Comics #549-550, with nice art by Klaus Janson, and

two Omega Men backups, for issues #26 and 27. The weird thing about those two was that I had just become the regular writer of the main [Omega Men] feature, so in effect, Alan was writing backups for my stories, a most absurdly unusual circumstance! Of course, his backups were terrific, better than what I was doing in the front of the book… But my favorite DC story of his that I was privileged to letter was the two-part “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” that ran in the last two Julie Schwartz-edited Superman books, Action Comics #583 and Superman #423 (Sept 1986). This was a wonderfully written and loving tribute to the Superman that Alan (and I) had grown up with, that was shortly to be swept away in a revamp by John Byrne, hence the assignment. Certainly the best Superman story ever, in my opinion, and what a thrill to work with Alan and artists Curt Swan and George Pérez. AUSHENKER: Did you ever meet Alan Moore? KLEIN: My one and only meeting with Alan happened around [1986], when he made a visit to the DC offices. Perhaps his only one. I got a chance to chat with him

Alan Moore and Todd Klein, Writer (left) Klein was mesmerized by the British writer after lettering Moore’s script for Saga of the Swamp Thing #22 (Mar. 1984). Cover by Tom Yeates. (below) Original cover art by Shawn McManus to Omega Men #27 (June 1985). Its Vega backup was scripted by Moore. TM & © DC Comics.

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First Batman, Last Superman Among Klein’s lettering achievements: the narrative captions in “Batman: Year One” and the two-part swan song for the Silver Age Superman, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”

for a few minutes, and told him how much I enjoyed his work. I like to think we made a connection, but it’s hard to say. A few years later, Alan severed all ties to DC in a dispute over rights and licensing money for some of the wonderful work he had done for DC, especially Watchmen, which remains one of his best works, and one of the most acclaimed works in comics. I did production work on many of the issues, and even got to letter one page of it: the inserted Black Freighter comics page, with art by Joe Orlando. AUSHENKER: What about Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One? KLEIN: Aside from designing the logo from Frank’s thumbnail sketch, I was simply the letterer, working mainly with artist David Mazzuchelli. From Frank’s script direction, I came up with the caption styles for Batman and Gordon’s narration, an early example of that sort of

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thing. I recall Mazzuchelli wasn’t always that thrilled with what I did, and looking back at it now, I can see why, it’s not my best work, though I was proud of it at the time. AUSHENKER: Janice, how did you adapt to the digital turnover in how comics are lettered? CHIANG: In terms of going from lettering to digital lettering, it was not difficult. What was difficult was that nobody would show me. This was in 1996. Marvel did a lockout on hand-letterers in ’96. That whole year, I didn’t letter a comic. John Babcock, he pulled aside a bunch of us traditional hand-letterers: Jack Novelli, Bill Felix, Mike Higgins—at John’s house. He said to us, “You guys need to see how this works.” When I was doing hand-lettering very intensely, I’d gauge how long it’d take, when to take a break. It’s a different temp today. With digital, you get first stage, second stage… AUSHENKER: So, is your life is easier now because of digital? CHIANG: Not necessarily. When I hand-letter now, once it’s on the page, it doesn’t move. Sometimes I get the wrong dimensions or a font file that has problems. Whenever you’re involved with teamwork, people have to find their rhythm. After 30 years in this industry, I’ve seen everything. AUSHENKER: How is your digital lettering different? CHIANG: If you look any of my work, it’s as if I handlettered it. Not one sound effect is repeated. I’ve learned to use Illustrator as if I’m hand lettering. But I find it very straitjacketing to use InDesign, as in the manga translation industry. I feel so much freedom using Illustrator to create sound effects. That’s the fun of it. It’s acceptable but quite mundane. Every job brings new challenges. I went to Parsons to take classes that showed us all the filters in Illustrator. AUSHENKER: What is the trick to being a great letterer, Janice?

Archie Loves Betty, Michael Likes Janice (left) One of the current Archie Comics titles lettered by Janice Chiang. (right) Michael Aushenker and Janice Chiang show off some of Michael’s comics work. Archie Loves Betty © 2011 Archie Publications.

CHIANG: You don’t want to overwhelm the art, you want to enhance it. Basically, we’re like the soundtrack to a comic … you can’t really notice it, but it enhances. It’s subtle. AUSHENKER: Todd, can you talk about your collaborations with Neil Gaiman on the various Sandman books? What are some of the creative requirements specific to this genre of fantasy comics? KLEIN: Neil and I were first brought together by DC editor Karen Berger, when she offered me two projects to letter: a three-issue painted miniseries, Black Orchid, and the first issue of an ongoing monthly comic, Sandman. I was offered both at the same time, probably late fall of 1987, had room on my schedule, and accepted the assignments, though I hadn’t heard of Neil at the time. As I recall, some of Dave McKean’s painted art was already in Karen’s hands for Black Orchid, so I started on that first. One request I remember from Dave and Neil, conveyed by Karen, was that I letter small on this job. They had tried another letterer, and thought his samples too large. As Dave’s art was oversized, considerably bigger than the comics pages I was used to working on, this was no problem, I simply lettered at my usual size and the result looked small. Since these were painted pages, the lettering was done on vellum overlays, and the caption/balloon coloring was put in later, not by me. AUSHENKER: Janice, what was your “drug” of choice while working on those Marvel Comics, your “little helper” that kept you company while you lettered? CHIANG: My drug of choice was the Walkman. Now I’ve got my iPod. Music is a big part of my family. My husband’s music collection goes back to the ’20s. Coffee. Food. In our house, we cook from scratch. AUSHENKER: What kind of music are you listening to while lettering? CHIANG: Jazz fusion. Pat Matheny. Al Jarreau. AUSHENKER: Are you a movie fan? CHIANG: My favorite movies are Old Yeller and The Color Purple. AUSHENKER: The digital revolution has had a profound effect on our industry. How difficult was it for you to transition from hand-lettering to digital in the early 1990s? CHIANG: I picked it up pretty easily. Jim Starlin called me from San Diego in ’92. He said, “Hurry! Get your lettering in digital form.” But at the time, I couldn’t drop it. Strategically, it was the right thing to do. I said that to my son [Calvin] before he went to Rhode Island School of Design. The main thing is to pick something you have the passion for that will engage you creatively. One of the books that left an impression on me was The Art of Mastery by George Leonard. I gave Calvin this book when he was ten years old, to help him gain some perspective of what is conditional, subjective, and what he could truly control on his path to whatever he decided to master. I said to him, “Whatever you’re doing—even the mundane, folding laundry, cooking—do it with passion.” I’ve been

lifting weights for 30 years. There’s always a different way to do things. For anyone in the industry, there’s a time when there’s a lot of work and there are fallow points. You have to be ready to change of style or methodology. AUSHENKER: Todd, you’ve won so many awards for lettering. I believe more Eisners and Harveys for lettering than any other letterer. KLEIN: …I’m still surprised any time I’m nominated or awarded for anything. When I look at my own work, I tend to see the flaws, and things I wish I’d done better. AUSHENKER: What are your feelings about seeing specific comic books you’ve worked on—Batman, Watchmen, Hellblazer (Constantine), Jonah Hex, Green Lantern—become big-budget Hollywood movies? KLEIN: It is a bit surreal, but I (and many others) always felt the best of comics deserved a wider audience, and the movies do provide that in some ways. Not a lot of people are motivated by a film to read the original comics, but at least the public awareness and respect for the medium is raised some. AUSHENKER: Janice, you attended the first ever Asian-American Comic Convention in New York City a couple years ago, where Larry Hama was the first honoree. How was that experience? CHIANG: I attended the Asian-American Comic Book Convention [in July 2009] in support of Secret Identities [Editor’s note: an Asian-American superhero comic anthology. For details, visit http://www.secretidentities.org]. I found out about [the convention] by Googling. I showed up and they introduced me. [The books’ creators] were like, “Oh, my God! We should have called and asked you to letter!” The Secret Identities project has allowed me to introduce myself to a new grouping of younger comic creators … a lot of these creators are my son’s age [30]. I feel the same kind of relationship. There’s no “You’re over the hill,” there’s no dissing. People know that as you stay with your art [in the Asian culture], you master it. AUSHENKER: How does your husband handle your lettering career? CHIANG: Pretty well, I suppose. We celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary last year. That’s me, constant and faithful. AUSHENKER: As dependable as you are as a letterer… CHIANG: I sound like a dog! Old Yeller! [laughs] MICHAEL AUSHENKER is the cartoonist behind Cartoon Flophouse humor comics and has contributed to Heavy Metal and Gumby Comics. Visit CartoonFlophouse.com.

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SCORPION SPIN-OFFS I loved BACK ISSUE #47: An Aparo, Boyette, and Newton Phantom article? YES!! The first-ever overview of Justice, Inc.? Great! Howard Chaykin’s Dominic Fortune? YES!! Plus The Rocketeer? Rapture! Joy!! However, everybody seems to forget that Chaykin spun off two characters from his 1975 Atlas Scorpion character: Dominic Fortune for Marvel and Reuben Youngblood for Warren. Youngblood appeared in two issues of Eerie: #72 (Feb. 1976), with a script by Budd Lewis and art by Chaykin and Bernie Wrightson, and a second story by Lewis, Chaykin, and some possible inks by Walt Simonson (plus an extra page added by Lee Elias in 1981) in Eerie #127 (Dec. 1981), a story that had been written and illustrated years earlier—probably in late 1975 or early 1976. The Scorpion, Dominic Fortune, and Reuben Youngblood—all the same guy. – Rich Arndt

BARRY ALLEN IS BACK BACK ISSUE #48 was really great! While I never followed Jim Starlin’s work much, I always appreciated his art, and like this cover as well as the interior art. Thanks for putting it in the glossy full-color pages—his quality work deserved full color! I was interested in coverage of “deaths” that tend to be reversed; I think comics readers have been duped enough to recognize it’s more hype than true, serious changes. The May Parker article pointed out that while her health made for great drama, her death, if it stuck, would seriously change Peter’s character and future storylines too much. I was very pleased to read more about my favorite character, Barry Allen, and how things came about. I had been away from comics but heard of his death and after some effort I had the Crisis on Infinite Earth

series and felt like at least there’s some closure and he died in a way consistent with the heroic way he lived. One of the things that made him my favorite was he was willing to do anything to keep people safe and bring justice to criminals. I heard of his return— sounded like another previous “return” that turned out to be Professor Zoom—so I haven’t checked it out. As with the comment by Starlin, I may be sufficiently removed from the modern characters, so I would have a lot of catching up to do. I did like the Brave and Bold “Fast Friends” miniseries and other attempts to relive the Silver Age comics, but not sure I could get into the newer ones. I’m looking forward to issue #50 with the classy Aparo cover, and focus on some of Batman’s best times. And #49 will be interesting, celebrating the Bicentennial (has it REALLY been 35 years?!!!). Thanks for keeping up the great work on your magazine. – Paul Green Paul, Barry Allen did indeed return a few years ago, in the pages of Final Crisis, followed by the amazing The Flash: Rebirth series. And regarding “catching up” with your old favorites, since DC Comics is in the process of a line-wide relaunch of 52 titles, now everybody’s got the chance to start reading from the “beginning.” – M.E.

APOLLO’S CREED That was a great “chat” with Jim Starlin that Shaun Clancy had [in BI #48]! Thank you so much for printing it. Shaun asked a number of interesting questions and I really appreciated Mr. Starlin’s willingness to be so forthcoming. I especially loved hearing their thoughts about some of the current books being published. I, too, found most of DC’s last few “event” books to be needlessly complicated and ultimately nonsensical. The only thing I wished Shaun had spoken to Starlin about was his stellar work on the Legion of Super-Heroes, specifically Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #239, where Ultra Boy was framed for murder. That issue was supposed to lead into another Legion tabloid edition that, from what I’ve read, was instead extremely curtailed and stuffed into the two-part Superboy and the Legion #250–251. Those two issues were ultimately credited to “Steve Apollo,” but, of course, it was Jim Starlin. Did Shaun forget about this particular stint or did Jim decline to discuss it? Those three books remain a highlight among my childhood and I hope Mr. Starlin knows how many people think fondly of that work. Any chance of a follow-up with Jim Starlin about this? I’d love some clarification of how his original story changed and any look at some of the unpublished artwork would be especially appreciated. – Daniel Brozak

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Daniel, your query piqued my curiosity, as I also fondly remember Starlin’s few Legion tales. I brought this up with Shaun Clancy, and Shaun contacted Jim Starlin, who sent the following response:

“The follow-up story to #239 was originally supposed to be a 64-page story that was eventually cut down to 48, if memory serves me well. DC was about to implode. Paul Levitz had to chop the story for economical reasons and that left nothing but a big, long fight, which I found unsatisfying. I asked to have my name removed from the story and Paul agreed to let me. The Legion is not a series I have fond memories of, nor any real hostile ones either. It was just a money job and that’s about it.” From ye editor’s perspective, a “money job” for Jim Starlin is still a gem for readers! In case you’re unfamiliar with Jim’s LSH, on this page you’ll find the original art to his wraparound cover for Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #239, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). Wow! – M.E.

ANDRU AND GIACOIA, NOT BUSCEMA AND SINNOTT Hi, Michael! Say, I wanted to point out an error in BACK ISSUE #48. I turned to page 18 and was happy to see a page of classic Ross Andru art, apparently inked by Frank Giacoia, from What If?

#15. I checked the blurb to make sure it was Giacoia, and was surprised to find the page credited to John Buscema and Joe Sinnott! What happened? Well, it appears that whoever made the art attribution just looked at the splash page of What If? #15. John Buscema and Joe Sinnott illustrated the framing sequence at the beginning and end of the issue, but the majority of the issue consisted of mini-stories illustrated by a variety of artists. The Peter Parker as Nova story was indeed illustrated by Ross Andru and Frank Giacoia, not John Buscema and Joe Sinnott. Incidentally, BACK ISSUE is my favorite TwoMorrows publication, so I’ll take the opportunity to thank you for the great work! – Steven Tice You’re welcome, Steven! And ye editor— who writes BI’s captions, except under special circumstances—made that goof re the What If? page. Your theory was right: I looked at the issue’s main credits when penning the caption, but, for Heaven’s sake, the art is clearly the work of Andru and Giacoia! My apologies, and my thanks to you for catching this goof. – M.E.

All-Interview Issue

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Just outside Artist’s Alley for these debuts:

We are proud, Jason—proud to explore comics history while remembering the fun of comics, and proud that we’re still going strong in a market where an issue #50 is a rarity. You’re right that the full-color BACK ISSUE #50 was intended to test the waters about color publication, but for the time being our norm is to continue the 16 pages of color that started back in #40, with full-color digital editions. I agree that there’s a certain, well, charm about B&W, especially in our representation of line art and pencil art, but think that with recent issues we’ve established a strong balance between color and black and white. – M.E.

THAT’S RIGHT, WE SAID BOY WONDER! Regarding “Jason Todd, the Second Robin” (BI #48), I say again that the true creator of Nightwing was no one working in comics then or now, but was Jerry Siegel, the co-creator of Superman, who coined the name for the crimefighting role that Superman used when in the bottle city of Kandor. Though I had nothing to do with the “creation” of the Jason Todd incarnation of Robin, I had some interest, as a lifelong Bat-fan, occasional Bat-scripter, and editor/writer of Batman and the Outsiders, in the ongoing debate of what to do about

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resolving the conflicting versions of Robin—mature college student or spunky pre-teen? My solution, which I told to then-editor Len Wein, was: “College student Dick Grayson returns to Wayne Manor for the summer, reuniting Batman and Robin as the Dynamic Duo for the issues of Batman and Detective Comics on sale in June, July, and August. Then, in the issue of Batman on sale in September, Bruce Wayne enthusiastically awakens Dick: ‘Rise and shine, chum! You’re in the sixth grade!’ Dick pops his head out from under the covers and he’s twelve years old, and remains so from that moment on. And you never look back, you never acknowledge it, and you certainly never explain it. Problem solved.” Len grinned and said he liked the idea, “but the fans would never let us get away with it.” Not just the fans. One of the writers regularly connected with Robin heard about my idea and began throwing his feces around the office like a Capuchin monkey. Continuity: threat or menace? – Mike W. Barr Mike, you are indeed right that Jerry Siegel created Nightwing (a.k.a. Superman, in his role as the senior member of the Bottle City of Kandor’s Dynamic Duo, along with sidekick Flamebird, actually Jimmy Olsen). Mike’s “again” remark reminds ye ed that a few years back, when writing the history of Robin/Nightwing for The Superhero Book (from Visible Ink Press), I forgot to mention that

MORE COLOR COMMENTARY I just wanted to follow up on my earlier letter (my first to your magazine, as I’d just started reading it at that time) and wanted to compliment your fine publication once again. The themes over the last year have been chosen well, and even the themed issues that I didn’t think I’d end up enjoying as much (my own personal preferences, of course), I ended up digesting wordfor-word. The analysis, interviews—all brilliantly written. I’m also excited about your upcoming “Death” issue (#48) and the anniversary 50th issue—I can’t wait to see what goodies you have in store! As for my main reason for writing, you sent out the call for readers’ opinions on the addition of color to the magazine, and I’m one who will go firmly in the camp that I really don’t believe that it is needed. At first, I thought the eight pages of color were a nice bonus, though not always chosen appropriately in certain issues, but the more I saw of the color in comparison to the black and white pages, the stronger I felt that the magazine loses some of its appeal. Now I realize that the digital editions are all in color, which is fine, but the reason black and white feels right for the printed magazine has to do with the period that it covers. I may be a bit younger than some of the other readers (born at the very end of the 1970s), but the 1970s and 1980s, which this magazine covers, is very nostalgic for me. I adored this period of comics, and at times, it even reminds me of the black-and-white fanzines that you would find during the same periods. Seeing black-and-white photos of our favorite creators just provides a historical flavor, as does seeing the articles and attached art with it. Could some of the art look amazing blown up and in color? Of course, but you can often find the covers and some interior art online and in color. What matters the most is the quality of the articles and the feel of the magazine, an atmosphere that I think is unique to that of any other publication out today. With that said, I know that #50 will be a full-color issue, and it’s a good chance to experiment further and see if this is the direction the magazine would like to go, but in my opinion, an anniversary issue should be the only time that color should be reserved for this magazine. And with the page count having decreased a bit, and the price having gone up, if it helps save some money for the company, then that can only be a good thing! Just my opinion, of course, and I still think greatly about the quality of this magazine. After nearly fifty issues, the entire staff should be proud of themselves. Can’t wait for the next fifty! – Jason Snyder

there as well. In my (and Jason Todd-Robin article writer Chris Franklin’s) defense, Dick Grayson has become so identified as Nightwing that it’s easy to overlook that earlier Silver Age version (which I still adore, nonetheless). While back in the 1980s I might’ve cried foul over your proposed de-aging of Dick Grayson, today I like that idea immensely and wish it would’ve been done. Coincidentally, in the early 1990s when I was a DC editor, during an editorial planning meeting for Armageddon 2001 I suggested that Dick Grayson be de-aged to ten, returning to his intended role of the Boy Wonder, with no memories of his previous “older” life—while others around him, including his gal Starfire, remembered him as a young adult. While nobody hurled feces my way, I do recall a few “Are you crazy?” glares being shot across the table at me. – M.E.

IN DEFENSE OF NEW COMICS

As a comic-shop owner, seller, and fan of BACK ISSUE, I was rather disturbed by Shaun Clancy’s comments on new comics. In the interview with Jim Starlin, Mr. Clancy includes his response to asking if Mr. Starlin reads new comics. It is a bashing of new comics, which reflects on the stores that work hard to sell them. In Mr. Clancy’s short bio at the end of the interview, another comment is made about his three-year-old son ripping up new comics and throwing them across the room because he cannot find a better use for them. I feel if I am going to buy BACK ISSUE for myself and extra copies for sale, that sit on a shelf with new comics, negative opinions of an interviewer should be kept at a minimum. Oh, by the way, how does Mr. Clancy feel about his comments reflecting on Jim Starlin’s latest effort and new comic, Breed III? Selling new and BACK ISSUE comics, and knowing there is good and bad in both. – Richard Trinkle, Heroes and Villains, Hampton, VA I personally responded to Richard’s letter and we enjoyed a dialogue as a result, but this is an important topic that I felt needed to be shared with our readership. In Shaun Clancy’s defense, he certainly wasn’t the first interviewer (or interviewee) in BACK ISSUE’s pages to bash contemporary comics. I encourage free speech and individuals’ voices in BI and only in extreme cases do I step in to suggest (or enforce) that a remark be deleted or rewritten. But Richard Trinkle is absolutely right. Since BI looks over its shoulder to the past, it might be tempting to think we exist in our own pocket universe, where yesteryear rules supreme. But in reality we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the latest editions of Flashpoint, Deadpool Team-Up, and Walking Dead and should be good neighbors to our marketplace companions and their publishers and creators. Also, from Day One I intended BACK ISSUE to be positive in tone, and while we still maintain that attitude overall your letter is a welcome reminder that we could do better at being civil. Next issue: Mystery Comics of the Bronze Age! All-new interviews with artists BERNIE WRIGHTSON, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GERRY TALAOC, and DC mystery writer LORE SHOBERG—and MARK EVANIER and DAN SPIEGLE discuss Scooby-Doo. Plus: DC’s Horror Hosts and Ghosts, Charlton Comics’ chiller anthologies, and damsels of darkness Black Orchid and Madame Xanadu. Featuring art and/or commentary by TONY DeZUNIGA, MICHAEL Wm. KALUTA, VAL MAYERIK, DAVID MICHELINIE, MATT WAGNER, and more, with a rarely seen House of Mystery painting by Wrightson as the cover. Don’t ask, just BI it! See you in thirty! Michael Eury, Editor

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 (emailed 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 emailing 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. Send ad copy and check/money order (US funds), Visa, or Mastercard to: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 Phone: 919/449-0344 • FAX 919/449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

All-Interview Issue

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Remembering Gene Colan I received the sad news of the death of Gene Colan (September 1, 1926– June 23, 2011) while I was doing final proofs for BACK ISSUE #50, which contained examples of Gentleman Gene’s Batman art. We’ve frequently spotlighted Mr. Colan’s work in these pages, including his Tomb of Dracula cover for BI #6, and while I was searching for a way to remember this great talent in this issue… …on Sunday, July 3, I received the following email from BACK ISSUE reader Emmanuel Tosi, who pays Gentleman Gene a heartfelt tribute through his words and the artwork he shares with us. – Michael Eury, editor

Dear Michael, This is Emmanuel from France, one of your French readers (Are we several? I’d like to know!!!) [Editor’s note: French BI readers are encouraged to contact Emmanuel at stephanie.tosi@freesbee.fr.] Just a few words on recently passed GENE COLAN… What can I say? Some fellows “shaped” our childhood, helped us to dream, to imagine we were “big guys,” saving girls from villains.

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Gene was one of those precious “dream makers”—but always with shadowy atmosphere … fear … and darkness!!! I loved his Daredevil and Black Widow stories (and the villains Stilt-Man, Gladiator, Man-Bull, the Owl—gosh!!!) … and his Dr. Strange … and Iron Man. I will miss him so much! Please allow me to show you his last (or maybe one of his last!) commission from 2011: Thanks to Cliff Meth, Gene Colan’s close friend, I was able to commission from the “Shadow Master” a piece of art with Daredevil and Black Widow, on a rooftop, not fighting but in a romantic embrace. I proposed the heroes would look at their “creator” (Gene himself), through a window, while drawing them—romantic, nostalgic, this is the homage I was dreaming about! I received it in April 2011, so close to Gene Colan’s end. He drew it at 84, with a sole, valid eye. He was always incredibly gifted! I am so happy to have asked for it. It will be on my wall and in my heart all my life. Farewell, Master Gene! – Emmanuel “the French Collector” Tosi

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BACK ISSUE #52

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• Digital Editions available: $2.95-$3.95! • Back Issue & Alter Ego now with color! • Lower international shipping rates!

Bronze Age Mystery Comics! Interviews with BERNIE WRIGHTSON, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GERRY TALAOC, DC mystery writer LORE SHOBERG, MARK EVANIER and DAN SPIEGLE discuss Scooby-Doo, Charlton chiller anthologies, Black Orchid, Madame Xanadu art and commentary by TONY DeZUNIGA, MIKE KALUTA, VAL MAYERIK, DAVID MICHELINIE, MATT WAGNER, and a rare cover painting by WRIGHTSON!

“Gods!” Takes an in-depth look at WALTER SIMONSON’s Thor, the Thunder God in the Bronze Age, “Pro2Pro” interview with TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ, Hercules: Prince of Power, Moondragon, Three Ways to End the New Gods Saga, exclusive interview with fantasy writer MICHAEL MOORCOCK, art and commentary by GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, BOB LAYTON, and more, with a swingin’ Thor cover by SIMONSON!

“Liberated Ladies” eyeing female characters that broke barriers in the Bronze Age: Big Barda, Valkyrie, Ms. Marvel, Phoenix, Savage She-Hulk, and the sword-wielding Starfire. Plus a “Pro2Pro” interview with JILL THOMPSON, GAIL SIMONE, and BARBARA KESEL, art and commentary by JOHN BYRNE, GEORGE PEREZ, JACK KIRBY, MIKE VOSBURG, and more, with a new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

ORDER AT: www.twomorrows.com

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95 • Ships Oct. 2011

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THE BEST IN COMICS AND LEGO MAGAZINES!

ALTER EGO #105

ALTER EGO #106

ALTER EGO #107

ALTER EGO #108

DRAW! #22

See comic art and script BEFORE and AFTER the Comics Code changes, with art by SIMON & KIRBY, DITKO, BUSCEMA, SINNOTT, GOULD, COLE, STERANKO, KRIGSTEIN, O’NEIL, GLANZMAN, ORLANDO, WILLIAMSON, HEATH, and others! Plus: FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, JIM AMASH interviews Timely/Atlas artist CAL MASSEY, and a new cover by JOSH MEDORS!

DICK GIORDANO through the 1960s—from freelance years and Charlton “Action-Heroes” to his first stint at DC! Art by DITKO, APARO, BOYETTE, MORISI, McLAUGHLIN, GIL KANE, and others, Dick’s final convention panel with STEVE SKEATES and ROY THOMAS, JIM AMASH interviews Charlton artist TONY TALLARICO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and ROY ALD, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, GIORDANO cover, and more!

Big BATMAN issue, with an unused Golden Age cover by DICK SPRANG! SHEL DORF interviews SPRANG and JIM MOONEY, with rare and unseen Batman art by BOB KANE, JERRY ROBINSON, WIN MORTIMER, SHELLY MOLDOFF, CHARLES PARIS, and others! Part II of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art! DEWEY CASSELL spotlights Golden Age artist MIKE PEPPE, with art by TOTH, ANDRU, TUSKA, CELARDO, & LUBBERS, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, cover by EVERETT & BURGOS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, and PATRICK OLIFFE demos how he produces Spider-Girl, Mighty Samson, and digital comics. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95 • Ships Oct. 2011

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LEE & KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS (KIRBY COLLECTOR #58)

Special double-size book examines the first decade of the FANTASTIC FOUR, and the events that put into motion the Marvel Age of Comics! New interviews with STAN LEE, FLO STEINBERG, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, and others, with a wealth of historical information and Kirby artwork!

(128-page tabloid trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships Nov. 2011 (Subscribers: counts as two issues)

KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

BRICKJOURNAL #17

BRICKJOURNAL #18

BRICKJOURNAL #19

“Kirby Vault!” Rarities from the “King” of comics: Personal correspondence, private photos, collages, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers the questions YOU’D ask in ‘69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, and more!

LEGO SPACE WAR issue! A STARFIGHTER BUILDING LESSON by Peter Reid, WHY SPACE MARINES ARE SO POPULAR by Mark Stafford, a trip behind the scenes of LEGO’S NEW ALIEN CONQUEST SETS that hit store shelves earlier this year, plus JARED K. BURKS’ column on MINIFIGURE CUSTOMIZATION, building tips, event reports, our step-by-step “YOU CAN BUILD IT” INSTRUCTIONS, and more!

Go to Japan with articles on two JAPANESE LEGO FAN EVENTS, plus take a look at JAPAN’S SACRED LEGO LAND, Nasu Highland Park—the site of the BrickFan events and a pilgrimage site for many Japanese LEGO fans. Also, a feature on JAPAN’S TV CHAMPIONSHIP OF LEGO, a look at the CLICKBRICK LEGO SHOPS in Japan, plus how to get into TECHNIC BUILDING, LEGO EDUCATION, and more!

LEGO EVENTS ISSUE covering our own BRICKMAGIC FESTIVAL, BRICKWORLD, BRICKFAIR, BRICKCON, plus other events outside the US. There’s full event details, plus interviews with the winners of the BRICKMAGIC CHALLENGE competition, complete with instructions to build award winning models. Also JARED K. BURKS’ regular column on minifigure customizing, building tips, and more!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Feb. 2012

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Nov. 2011

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SUMMER 2011 EDITION Hype and hullabaloo from the company celebrating the art & history of comics, LEGO®, and other fun stuff

Big Book Update You can always check our website for updated release dates of items you see listed in our full Catalog, but here’s some more specifics on some of our most highly anticipated new items: LOU SCHEIMER: CREATING THE FILMATION GENERATION We’re close to finished with this one, and hope to have it out by the end of 2011. Stay tuned! MODERN MASTERS: DARWYN COOKE Perhaps the most asked-about book we ever announced but haven’t yet produced, this was originally scheduled to ship a couple of years ago. We’re happy to announce that, as of this writing, we’ve just completed the last of the interviews with DARWYN for the book, and are close to announcing the new release date for it. Watch our home page for ordering info! THE QUALITY COMPANION Co-authors MIKE KOOIMAN and JIM AMASH are working feverishly to make the planned October release date for this look at the history of the classic Golden Age comics publisher! MATT BAKER: THE ART OF GLAMOUR This lavish book is progressing nicely as ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON’s schedule has cleared up, and you should see it out for the holidays! Please stay tuned to our website (www.twomorrows.com) for current release dates on all our upcoming items, and thanks for your patience.

by publisher John Morrow

THE LATEST & GREATEST!

By now you’ve seen ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL, the 100th issue of ROY THOMAS’ acclaimed magazine, which we produced as a double-size BOOK instead of the usual magazine format (complete with extra color pages). You’ve also encountered BACK ISSUE #50, which for the first time presented all 80 pages in FULL-COLOR (with a corresponding $1 cover price increase, but no extra cost for subscribers). We’ll be adding more color pages to our mags (with some issues completely full-color) over the next year, as the subject matter (and reader preference) demands. Speaking of Roy Thomas, he and Bill Schelly are working on a follow-up to their book ALTER EGO: BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE. It’ll feature the “Best of the Rest” of the original 1960s and ‘70s run of A/E, and should be out in 2012 from TwoMorrows. KEITH VERONESE lets you get PLUGGED IN, in our new book on comics greats who work in the video game industry. It features GERRY CONWAY, ROY THOMAS (him again!), and ELLIOT S! MAGGIN candidly talking about the early days of Atari along with comics pros JIMMY PALMIOTTI, CHRIS BACHALO, MIKE DEODATO, JOSHUA ORTEGA, and RICK REMENDER discussing their work on the current generation video game hits! There are interComics Professionals Working in the Video Game Industry views with other artists and writers who made the leap to working in video games full time, including an in-depth interview with TRENT KANIUGA (CreeD) about working as one of the architects of the long awaited Diablo III! Look for PLUGGED IN in early 2012.

New (& Old) Digital Editions Coming! Back for a limited time:

We’ve made available economically-priced Digital Editions of most of the back issues of our mags, but haven’t gotten to the first 49 issues of ALTER EGO yet. Going back and recreating each issue in digital form is taking more time than we anticipated when we produced our 2011 Catalog, but we should have those final ones posted later this year, so stay tuned! Also coming soon are new and improved Digital Editions of sold-out books in our Catalog, like TRUE BRIT, MR. MONSTER VOLUME ZERO, and others. We’re working on adding additional pages and MORE COLOR than in the original print versions, and those should be up soon as well. And now available are Digital Editions of two sold-out MODERN MASTERS volumes, on ARTHUR ADAMS and WALTER SIMONSON! Stay tuned for even more in the coming months.

www.twomorrows.com has FULL-COLOR DIGITAL EDITIONS of our magazines for $2.95-3.95! Print subscribers get the digital edition FREE, before print copies hit stores!

A distributor just discovered a couple of boxes of two of our sold-out books: THE ART OF GEORGE TUSKA by DEWEY CASSELL and the acclaimed JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION by MICHAEL EURY. If you missed either, now’s your LAST CHANCE to order the print editions, available at www.twomorrows.com.

2011 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

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TwoMorrows News Today

EISNER DOC ON DVD & BLU-RAY NOW! Our old buddy JON B. COOKE and his brother ANDY of Montilla Productions have produced the award-winning documentary WILL EISNER: PORTRAIT OF A SEQUENTIAL ARTIST. It’s the definitive look at the life and art of the godfather of the American comic book, which premiered at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival. It includes interviews with KURT VONNEGUT, MICHAEL CHABON, JULES FEIFFER, ART SPIEGELMAN, FRANK MILLER, STAN LEE, GIL KANE as well as the never-before-heard “Shop Talk” audio tapes featuring JACK KIRBY, HARVEY KURTZMAN, MILTON CANIFF, NEAL ADAMS, JOE KUBERT and others! It’s 96 minutes with plenty of bonus features, and TwoMorrows is proud to be able to offer it to our customers! The DVD is only $20, while the Blu-ray is $26, and both are available now at our website.

Pros@Cons! In 2011-2012, you can find us exhibiting at these conventions: COMIC-CON INTERNATIONAL (San Diego, CA, July) BRICKFAIR (Washington, DC, August) BRICKCON (Seattle, WA, October) NEW YORK COMICON (New York City, October) In 2012: WONDERCON (San Francisco, CA) HEROES CON (Charlotte, NC) BRICKMAGIC (our own event!) (in both Raleigh, NC and Orlando, FL) BRICKWORLD (Chicago, IL)

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

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BACK ISSUE! (8 issues)

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DRAW! (4 issues)

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ALTER EGO (8 issues)

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BRICKJOURNAL (6 issues)

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For the latest news from TwoMorrows Publishing, log on to www.twomorrows.com/tnt To get e-mail updates of what’s new from TwoMorrows, sign up for our mailing list! http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/twomorrows ®

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