Comic Book Artist #15 by TwoMorrows Publishing

LOVE AND ROCKETEERS! No.15 November November 2001 2001

™

$6.95 In The U.S.

STEVENS • HERNANDEZ BROS. • MOTTER • WAGNER • RIVOCHE • PLUNKETT

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Last-minute bits about the Community of Comic Book Artists, Writers and Editors

Ralph Lives!

Moby Dick Giordano (and a complimentary T-shirt sporting Dick’s cover image—which is seen below)! After the Associate Publisher Gordon H. Wolfe hosted a wonderful authentic Italian dinner, the evening ended with a promise to conduct a long interview with Lew. Any aficionado of Dick’s work—and swell comics in general—ought to check out this handsome book, published by the City of New Bedford to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Herman Melville’s classic book. The 11” wide by 81/2” tall book retails for $12.95 and is available at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Museum Store, 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, MA 02740-6398. For shipping & handling, U.S. orders add $4, Intn’l orders add $7. Wholesale orders contact Via, Inc. by fax at (508) 477-7259. More info, call (508) 997-0046. ISBN #0-97120370-9. Tell ’em that CBA sent ya!

DIRTY DANNY NEEDS YOU My youngest son, six-year-old Daniel Jacob, saw my “Free Dirty Danny!” T-shirt and asked, “Is that me?” While my boy is assuredly not the brazen and audacious cartoonist Danny Hellman, the kid done made me think. As Americans striving to protect our freedoms, aren’t we all Danny Hellman? His legal plight is far too involved to describe in this woefully small space here other than to declare the Dirty One is totally right and litigant Ted Rall is absolutely wrong (with no sense of humor to boot!). We suggest you check out the news archives at The Comics Journal <www.tcj.com> and support Danny’s cause by purchasing the superb 256-page anthology Legal Action Comics, art spiegelman’s “In the Temple of Cartoon Gods…” poster, and Sam Henderson’s “Free Dirty Danny” T-shirt. Visit www.dannyhellman.com and send lots of money to The Dirty Danny Legal Defense Fund, P.O. Box 428, Old Chelsea Station, New York, NY 10113-0428.

The Swampmen are Coming! After working with wunderkind George Khoury on the newcomer’s hit book, Kimota! The Miracleman Companion, Ye Ed asked George to join him on the latest Cooke book project (after the forthcoming Heavy Metallurgy, natch!)—a comprehensive history of all those great muck monsters of the comics entitled Swampmen. So watch out for the Khoury & Cooke team as they examine Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, The Heap, Morlock 2001, The Glob and many others. The duo attended the recent BuffaloCon which featured a Swamp Thing/Miracleman reunion of sorts where they met John Totleben, Tom Yeates and Rick Veitch, great dudes all! Next, mayhap a visit to Northampton, England to meet a certain Mr. Moore? Here’s hopin’!

Dig this: A few issues back my pal David A. Roach (who just happens to be my collaborator on The Warren Companion) speculated in his “Marginalia” column that a credited “Ralph Alphonso” was surely a pseudonym. “Surely not,” my Canadian compatriot Ronn Sutton said, explaining last issue that as a matter of fact, Ralph Alfonso (note correct spelling) is very real, living in British Columbia, and today selling his three CDs, self-publishing books, and producing his fanzine Ralph (Coffee, Jazz & Poetry). Well, Ralph and I hooked up, we traded our respective pubs, and lemme tell you that Ralph is one way-out hip cat! And his stuff just blows this ol’ square dead away! I received two fanzine book collections (reprinting Ralph #1-50 in toto) and a pair of CDs. The design, editorial tone and the fun spirit that emanates from his stuff is a delight. Cool, daddy-o!

Ralph did have a brief career in comics, which he ruminated about in Ralph #42: “In the early ’70s, as a teen, I apprenticed in the world of comic ’zines, hoping one day I’d make a living writing comics and, in fact, in certain comic store dollar bins you can still find Chamber of Chills #1 (Marvel) and an issue of Red Circle Sorcery (Archie) with my stories in them. I got paid $6 a page (actually pretty good money back then) by comics legend Gray Morrow. But, back in 1971, my little emotional mood pieces were not really what anybody wanted and I reluctantly grew up and drifted elsewhere, thinking maybe I’d get back into comics someday.” I heartily recommend all of Ralph’s wares! Contact the Renaissance Man at ralpha6982 @aol.com or write: Box 505, 1288 Broughton, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6G 2B5. As usual, tell ’im that CBA sent ya!

So I get this phone call from my pal Dick Giordano who tells me he was hired by the City of New Bedford to illustrate this part-comic, part-book hybrid, an adaptation of perhaps the greatest American novel, Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Usually the Great Editor/Penciler/Inker resides in Florida but that day he called from his old Stamford, Connecticut home. Knowing that, as a Rhode Islander, I’m plum in the middle between Stamford and New Bedford, Dick asks if I’d like to attend a book signing to be held at the seaport’s renowned Whaling Museum in a kinda journalist capacity. Sure, I sez, eager to do anything to get away from the sweltering 100+ degree early August heatwave! And quicker than you can say, “Call me Ishmael,” Dick shanghai’s me! I’m forced to work the signing table, helping to keep the long line in order! Kidnapped, I was! But, seriously, a swell time was had by all, and I got a chance to meet and spend time with Golden Age Batman artist Lew Sayre Schwartz (who scribed the Melville adaptation) and his lovely wife, and met DC colorist Dan Vozzo (whose hues graced the aforementioned tome) and his charming wife and daughter. Best of all was to receive a gratis copy of the 48-page, full-color softcover book

From left: Jon Cooke, John Totleben, Tom Yeates, Rick Veitch & George Khoury.

NUMBER 15

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CELEBRATING THE LIVES & WORK OF THE GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW Associate Editors CHRIS KNOWLES DAVID A. ROACH CHRISTOPHER IRVING Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW

NOVEMBER 2001

DEPARTMENTS: THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS “Moby” Dick Giordano, Dirty Danny, Ralph and the Swampmen cometh!..........................................................1 EDITOR’S RANT: WHERE DO COMICS FIT IN NOW? What can American comics do in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks? ................................................4 COCHRAN’S CORNER: THE ART OF STRETCH COMEDY A look at art spiegelman & Chip Kidd’s new book Jack Cole and Plastic Man......................................................5 CBA COMMUNIQUES: LETTERS FROM OUR READERS Alex Toth on 1941, Dave Cockrum on David Singer, and John Lustig gets the last word in on First Kiss ............6 FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* Our Man Fred looks at twenty years of Gilbert and Jaime Hernandezes’ Love and Rockets................................11

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $9 postpaid ($11 Canada, $12 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $66 Canada, $72 elsewhere. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2001 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgements: Rocketeer ©2001 Dave Stevens, Luba ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez, Maggie ©2001 Jaime Hernandez. Mr. X ©2001 Vortex Publishing, Inc. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Proofreader ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Cover Art DAVE STEVENS, GILBERT HERNANDEZ & JAIME HERNANDEZ Cover Color HOMER REYES Production JON B. COOKE GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS

LOVE AND ROCKETEERS: THE ’80s VANGUARD DAVE STEVENS INTERVIEW: OF HOLLYWOOD AND HEROES The man behind the Rocketeer on his life in the comics, the movies and the pin-ups ........................................12 MARIO HERNANDEZ INTERVIEW: A LOVE OF COMICS Big brother goes first in our special Hernandez hermanos section ......................................................................34 GILBERT HERNANDEZ INTERVIEW: DOWN PALOMAR WAY Chris Knowles chats with Beto on Heartbreak Soup, Palomar, and a post-punk sensibility ................................44 JAIME HERNANDEZ INTERVIEW: THE MECHANIC OF LOVE Xaime gets the CBA treatment complete with in-depth interview by Chris Knowles and tons o’ rare art............56 MATT WAGNER INTERVIEW: THE ARTIST DEFINED The creator of Mage and Grendel talks to Chris Knowles about a life of independence......................................66 DEAN MOTTER INTERVIEW: MISTER X-MAN The writer/artist/designer on the man behind the City of Dreams, the City of Nightmares ................................76 PAUL RIVOCHE INTERVIEW: THE MISTER X-FILES The renowned designer discusses his involvement in the creation of ’80s icon Mister X ....................................90 SANDY PLUNKETT INTERVIEW: THE BEST ARTIST YOU NEVER HEARD OF Tim Barnes answers the question of who is Sandy Plunkett and how does he do such superb artwork? ..........100 Opposite: Detail of Dave Stevens’ cover art to The Rocketeer: The Official Movie Adaptation. ©2001 Dave Stevens. Top: Four unpublished panels by & ©2001 Jaime Hernandez. Below: Luba at various stages of life by & ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez. All letters of comment, articles and artwork, please mail to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor, Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS SAM GAFFORD Logo Designer/Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song PEACE ON EARTH U2 Visit CBA on our Website at: www.twomorrows.com /comicbookartist/

Contributors Dave Stevens • Gilbert Hernandez Jaime Hernandez • Dean Motter Mario Hernandez • Paul Rivoche Matt Wagner • Sandy Plunkett Alex Toth • Michael T. Gilbert Chris Knowles • Tim Barnes Dean Smith • Jerry K. Boyd Chris Pitzer • Eric Reynolds Kim Thompson & Fantagraphics Arlen Schumer • Fred Hembeck Jon B. Knutson • Brian K. Morris Sam Gafford • Greg Preston J.P. Shannon • Shawna Ervin-Gore Dark Horse • John R. Cochran Scott Saavedra • Bob Beerbohm John Totleben • Larry Ivie dedicated to my sister

Becky Cooke and in memory of

Barbara Knutson Jerry DeFuccio Johnny Craig Chuck Cuidera Barbara Rausch Herbert Block and in celebration of the newborn arrivals of

Lily Morrow and Violet Knowles and to the spirit and everlasting endurance of the birthplace & home of american comic books

The City of

New York N

November 2001

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Editor’s Rant

Where Do Comics Fit In Now? When current events make our “important” concerns trivial EDITOR’S NOTE: As it was for many Americans, it was tough getting back into a proper work routine following the September 11th attacks, and I apologize for the lateness in this issue (which was due that very month). We will do our best to get the following two issues of Comic Book Artist out in very quick order and then we will inaugurate our new monthly schedule. I thank Dave Stevens, Mario, Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez, Dean Motter, Sandy Plunkett, Matt Wagner, Paul Rivoche and all others who helped with this issue for their patience.

GOIN’ MONTHLY! Comic Book Artist is happy to announce that commencing in January 2002, we’ll be increasing our frequency to a 10-times-ayear publication schedule! We’ll be revamping our format a bit— covering individual artists more often and spreading out publisher retrospectives over multiple issues, for instance. To that end, we need help! We’re looking for a PROOFREADER; candidate must have a computer (preferably a Macintosh), a good general knowledge of comics history, and—in addition to excellent spelling and grammar—he or she preferably holds a degree in English or Journalism, though it’s not essential. Contact CBA publisher John Morrow at <twomorrow@aol.com>

Me, I was sitting down in my home-office on the morning of September 11, 2001, starting to tackle the letter column for this issue when a phone call from my wife told me the news of a “terrible accident,” a passenger plane had struck the World Trade Center. I ran down to the TV and witnessed the moment that changed it all for the United States: A second Boeing striking the Towers, instantaneously turning a perceived mishap into an obvious and deliberate terrorist attack, what would turn out to be the bloodiest act of war to strike America in history, with thousands dead, the greatest city in the world permanently scarred, and a world in turmoil. Suddenly comics didn’t seem to matter so much anymore and it has taken a particularly long time to get this issue out, already late when I sat down that beautiful late Summer morning to look over CBA correspondence. It is a strange new world now, one that floods me with emotions I’ve never experienced before. Shock turns to mourning turns to fear turns to anger turns to resolution, and the realization dawns that the world can be a very ugly place indeed, even on a cloudless, crystal blue, gorgeous September morning. Any self-imposed isolation from the world’s problems abruptly ended that Tuesday and that uniquely American sense of entitlement was put to the test. Now we’re part of the real and dangerous planet Earth. So where do comics fit in all this? It’s a tough question to answer as often comics as a relevant form of media seem insignificant and well, irrelevant, lacking in any vitality. The reaction of the industry and many creators has been to produce fundraising comics to support the American Red Cross, 9-11 Fund, the City of New York, and other institutions in need, efforts that are all well and fine, and certainly deserving of support for the good they will undoubtedly do. But what import can sequential art—that unique combination of words and pictures dubbed comic books— bring to better understanding the growing conflict and the roots of the terror that rages in the world? Can comics be relevant? I am firmly convinced that comics, an art form I love to its very essence and one I feel is as valid as any other mode of communication, can play a significant role in

education and superbly able to promote a better understanding of our world, a lofty goal rarely achieved by our medium of choice. My favorite topic of conversation with Will Eisner is the potential of comics as educational and instructional tools and his achievements in that area with P.S. magazine (a monthly how-to manual for U.S. Army mechanics done in comics form, produced by Will for over 20 years) and his American Visuals/Educational Supplements is commendable. And, significantly, numerous creators have made inroads in using comics to inform and enlighten—art spiegelman (Maus), Joe Sacco (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde), Will Eisner (City Life, Last Day in Vietnam), Jack “Jaxon” Jackson (Native American histories) and numerous others, as well as the scholarship and writings of Leonard Rifas, proving that the form is an effective means to convey history as well as current events. We cannot risk being complacent any more, content in our selfabsorption and oblivious to the world’s miseries and consternations. We need to be informed about those who threaten us as well as any new-found allies, and we must constantly remind ourselves why our sacrifices are so important. Comics are well-suited to educate and I sincerely hope the best and brightest of comics seize this opportunity to render true stories of the achievements of those who risked all to help others, the history of world events leading up to the attacks, and examine the strange new lands we will intimately encounter. (Though I do hope the impulse to use comics as propaganda is tempered, and instead used to illuminate universal truths.) The preceding will probably be my last discussion of current events—at least those in the outside, “real” world—for some time. I thought long and hard about CBA’s mission and have concluded that while readers are looking for accurate and engrossing histories of previously overlooked aspects of American comic books, most of you seek refuge from the rigors of everyday life and delve in these pages for the entertainment offered within. To that end, while CBA will not patently ignore the realities of our constantly changing world, we will do our best to provide a form of however fleeting escape to you for your pleasure and respite. But one more comment about the recent atrocities: The first artistic response to the attacks I encountered was the extraordinary cover of The New Yorker’s September 24 edition rendered by art spiegelman. At first glance, it looks to be a solid black cover but upon inspection the subtle outlines of the WTC Twin Towers can be discerned, monolithic silhouettes drawn with only a slight difference in tone from the background. I stood slack-jawed at the magazine racks, and tears welled as I admired this beautifully mournful and respectful comment by an artist who continues to amaze. Thank you, art, and please forgive me for virtually swiping your approach with the graphic below. —Jon B. Cooke, editor

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

Cochran’s Corner

The Art of Stretch Comedy A look at spiegelman & Kidd’s Jack Cole and Plastic Man Jack Cole is one of the giants of comics art and it is a tribute to his work that DC Comics has issued two Archive collections of his seminal creation, Plastic Man. According to a spokesman for the publisher, a third volume is planned, “but not scheduled." Though the Archives commit the sin of reducing the page sizes from their original “Golden Age” appearance under the Quality Comic imprint, nevertheless it is better to have Cole’s wonderful work in print than nothing at all, although it is better still to have those "rare slowburning forest fires of newsprint" that comics historian and innovator art spiegelman writes of in Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits, the Pulitzer Prize cartoonist’s paean to the India Rubber Man (Plas' original name until Cole was talked out of it) and his creator. Spiegelman's book grew out of a long essay in The New Yorker for April 19, 1999, and has been, in the words of the publisher, Chronicle Books, "updated and expanded." It is the second bona fide tome devoted to Plas and his creator, the first being Ron Goulart's Focus on Jack Cole, published by Fantagraphics in 1986. Jack Cole and Plastic Man is hauntingly designed by celebrated graphic designer Chip Kidd, who shares authorship credit with spiegelman. Kidd, an award-winning book designer, is also renowned in the comics field for his Batman Collected (soon to appear as an affordable trade paperback) and for his design of Les Daniels' trio of “Complete Histories,” Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman titles (also from Chronicle). Spiegelman and Kidd's book is an unalloyed joy, a magic act of words and pictures that puts Plas on a pedestal where he belongs and gives us the most comprehensive picture yet of the brilliant and tortured creator who did indeed stretch the form of sequential storytelling. If Cole expanded the bounds of comic art, so to do spiegelman and Kidd stretch the notion of tribute with their innovative use of narrative, art and design. In its way, the book—bound between plastic covers!—is as elastic as Eel O'Brian's alter ego. A panel in which a woman tweaks Plastic Man's nose, thereby pulling it out so that he looks Pinocchio-like, takes two pages, one of which you have to turn, and is juxtaposed with a newspaper clipping of Cole's suicide. As an extra added attraction, three Plastic Man stories are reprinted—"The Eyes Have It" from Police Comics #22, "Sadly-Sadly" from Plastic Man #20 and #22’s "Plague of Plastic People." Plus a non-Plas (though seminal) Cole story is featured, "Murder, Morphine and Me!" from True Crime Comics #1, perhaps the most notorious crime comic story ever. In spiegelman's words, the tale was “enshrined as Exhibit A in Dr. Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, the book that triggered the Senate hearings and thereby toppled the industry." The curved-edged pages of Jack Cole and Plastic Man give it a dog-eared appearance, adding the authentic touch of a well-read, folded-in-theback-pocket, well-loved funnybook, as do the yellowed reproductions of the actual comics pages, no doubt photographed from their original November 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

printings in comics six decades old. Also reprinted are a number of lusciously-rendered gag cartoons Cole did for Playboy after he left comic books and, as spiegelman points out, after the comic book industry left him. Ironically, today DC has the rights to Cole's creation but, as legend has it, the company turned him away when the artist went there in search of work after his stint at Quality Comics ended. Alas, my favorite Cole Playboy cartoon isn't included: A TV cameraman exits the men's room, with his portable camera slung around his neck, the lens aimed directly over his pants zipper. An anguished co-worker races up to him, saying, "John! John! Your creepie-peepie is on!" And a beloved Plas story, "The Menace of Mr. Aqua," from Plastic Man #25, is also among the missing, containing one of the great all-time denouements. Plas has trapped Mr. Aqua, a villain made out of water, in the lab where he was created but when Plas goes to look for him, he can't find him. Our hero sees Woozy drinking right out of a pitcher and exclaims,"Woozy!… You just drank Mr. Aqua!" Cole blew his brains out in his car in 1958 shortly after he had reached Easy Street and joined Playboy's well-compensated stable of gag cartoonists. If the artist had dismissed comic books as being "for the birds," he had helped to give them flight. In his children's book Open Me… I'm a Dog, spiegelman created a book about a canine that was turned into a book by an evil wizard. It even comes with its own leash and the promise,"If you forget to walk me, I promise not to make a mess on the carpet." Jack Cole and Plastic Man also has a life of its own and if it lacks a jar of Silly Putty, it comes with its own flexible cover. Kudos to spiegelman and Kidd. (A personal aside here. Years before the Archives, I sprung for a full-page ad in The Comics Journal urging DC to either reprint Plastic Man and Captain Marvel or pass the rights to do so to someone who would. I have no idea if the ad helped put pressure on DC but I'm glad the Archives exist.)

KUDOS to Joe Desris, who answered my heartfelt plea in CBA #13 for copies of the Win Mortimer Superman daily strip from the ’50s. Desris, who supplied the history of the ’40s Batman daily and Sunday strips for the four-volume Kitchen Sink/DC set and also wrote biographies for the Archive editions of World's Finest, Batman and Superman Action, is a man for all seasons, in my well-thumbed book. Desris also supplied the intros to Batman in Detective Comics, the cover reprint mini-book, and The Golden Age of Batman: The Greatest Covers of Detective Comics from the '30s to the '50s; he is supplying me with several months worth. —John Cochran.

Inset: All aspects of the production design for Jack Cole and Plastic Man are a joy to behold, from the comic-book shape to the (yukyuk!) plastic covers, Chip Kidd just did a marvelous job! Plastic Man ©2001 DC Comics. Below: A rare photo—snapped by Hugh Hefner, no less!— of Jack Cole taken in the last years of his life. From Jack Cole and Plastic Man.

CBA Communiques

Toth on 1941, Cockrum on Singer Plus echoes of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. and other sh*tty complaints!

Above: During a recent visit to the offices of Heavy Metal, honcho Howard Jurowsky was kind enough to give Ye Ed a long-desired copy of 1941, Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch’s absolutely wild adaptation of the notorious Steven Spielberg flick. Thanks, Howard! Alex Toth discusses his near-miss illustrating the project at right. 1941 ©2001 Columbia/Universal.

Joe AlexStaton Toth Hollywood, California Re: Conjecture by John Workman [in CBA #14] about my on/off status on the early “Stealberg” epic, 1941. I was tentatively “on” until its adaptation-script (or, maybe, its actual shooting script?) was received and read here, and that, dear children, is when I bailed!!! Like the movie shot from its pages, it was a flipping trainwreck on all levels! I don’t think I read a third of its phone-bookish page count—trying to give it a fair read—but, nope, it wasn’t my cuppa! So I sent it back, “no thanks,” to Julie Simmons or Workman—can’t recall that now or any phone chat about “why”—the Loony Tunes script was “why”! Plus, I believe, the time factor for it, a booklength bomb, to be done to synch with the release of the movie, was much too tight for me. As for my coloring it, I have no memory of such discussions, but John/Julie could be right (?) if/when time allowed and the work itself inspired extras, like coloring my own doodlings for print, yes, I was up for it. But, again, I don’t recall; in fact, I’ve yet to color—directly—my own work!!! I’ve written reams of margin color notes/requests/pleas to in-house colorists—always ignored—so it’s been frustrating. I’ve done simple vellum-flap color guides on a few story sets, or the odd cover, but not the whole nine yards. I’m not sorry I let go of 1941. Whoever drew the book did well enough on it—a thankless job at best—so huzzahs to him/them, whoever! The job was perfect for a foto-fumetti book if enough production stills were available or the film was “in the can” and available to the Heavy Metal team. Armed with a final shooting script, edited to match the release print and to do frame-lifts on the “moviolas” to fill a book of it (squeeze in all that screaming dialogue and endless booming sound effects, junk-noise, too?), that was the way to go! But ol’ Steve may have not finished final edits? Or he would never allow a bit of its “finish,” let out before its debut date, for such foto/frame-up adaptation purposes? Remember all the hush-hush, secret security, closed-set nonsense that he and pal George Lucas were up to then? Milking pre-release hype to the max, teasing all, public/media, to salivating anticipation, promising big boffo success? Wellll, it worked! Big lousy pix. Billion$ of buck$ later, we know so, decade$ of hit$/mi$$e$ later, yup! I never dug their work. So, no loss, 1941 or anything peripheral to it or them. Nuff said? I think so. Hope this settles the 1941 matter once ’n’ for all! Much ado about nuttin’!!! Jon East via the Internet Just had to drop you a line saying how very much I’m enjoying your work on Comic Book Artist. I’ve been subscribing for a couple of years now and it just gets better and better. The latest Tower issue was superb. I’m a big Marvel Silver and Bronze Age collector and although I always loved Wally Wood (early Daredevil, his “Dr. Doom” strip in early Astonishing Tales), I had no knowledge of his Tower work. You inspired me to pick up some back issues of

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Dynamo… fabulous stuff, thanks. Just one small observation on CBA #14; check out Dan Adkins’ portrayal of Dynamo on page 77. Remind you of anything? If you’ve got it take a look at John Buscema’s Captain America on the cover of Marvel’s Silver Age The Avengers, ish #58. A lovely swipe there from Mr. Adkins, I’m sure you’ll agree. But why? When he’s so able to draw dynamic poses himself? Any answers? [Sure, as an oldtime Avengers fan, I recognized the source of Dan’s Dynamo drawing. As for why, please refer to the Adkins interview in CBA #7 in which the artist states, “I just did it to meet deadlines, it was so hard, without swiping.”—Ye Ed.] Louis Morra via the Internet Manny Stallman was one of the most original and captivating artists to ever work in comics. His art was free and soaring, like his character at Tower, the Raven. Thank you so much for including a special page on Manny in CBA #14. It’s remarkable that Manny got to do the Raven, and it was the perfect meeting of character and style, for him to express himself. You know, it’s the sort of thing you feel when Kirby drew Captain America, or Kane drew Green Lantern—somehow there is the total melding of art, artist and character… into something far greater. The artist’s ideals become expressed. And that will always be one of the remarkable facets of the comic book super-hero, and the real reason why super-heroes, for all their pedantics and stereotypes, captivate us and are far greater than the pulp they’re printed on. They embody ideals. Manny was one of the greats! Even if only through a few Raven stories, he reached the heights. But then again, maybe that’s why he’s one of the greats—in a few brief tales, he scaled Olympus. On a bibliographic note: Your checklist does not mention (to my knowledge) a one-issue Deluxe comic book called Tales of Thunder (listed as March ’85 in Overstreet). Giffen is the only listed artist. Does it exist? [I dunno. Has anybody out there seen it? If so, can ya share a color photocopy of the cover?—Y.E.] Chris Bonham Studio City, California Thank you very much for acknowledging my small contribution to the Warren checklist in your Warren Companion by mentioning me (twice!) on page 4. I picked it up at the San Diego con and it’s the best. I do have one more bit of information for any updates you will make to the Warren checklist: Comix International #4 had two printings which you acknowledged but only listed the contents of one of the printings. The other swaps out two of the stories: “The Power and the Glory” is replaced with “Pure as Snow” by Jack Butterworth/ Felix Mas from Vampirella #35 and the “Hunter” story is replaced with “The Woodlik Inheritance” by Corben from Vampirella #31. All other stories are the same and in the same order. Also there was a typo on the listing of Crandall story for that same issue. The color version of “Tell Tale Heart” first appeared in Creepy #65 (not #77) and the original appeared in Creepy #3 of course. Again great work on a fabulous book. Dan DiDio via the Internet Congratulations on compiling such an entertaining and comprehensive study of Tower Comics and the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. You seemed to cover all the relevant facts about the series, with just one notable exception. In 1996, ABC Children’s Entertainment optioned T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and commissioned Marv Wolfman and Craig Miller to develop the property as a Saturday morning children’s series. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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The basic premise remained the same with the one major change being that the team leader, NoMan, was controlled by the 13-year-old grandson of Dr. Dunn, Wally Crandall. The team, of course, was unaware that the young boy had assumed the role of his respected grandfather. Remember, this was for Saturday morning. Other changes included an African-American woman assuming the helmet of Menthor and a Native American woman as Raven. In this version, the winged Raven was the only member with natural powers. A full bible, pilot outline and some fine designs, by Tom Grummett, were prepared for the series. But before they could get to script, Disney (the new owners of ABC) passed on the property in favor of projects they were developing in their own studio. It was one of my favorite projects and was developed to compete with cartoons like X-Men that were ruling the ratings at the time. But instead of a television series, we have just one more footnote in the troubled history of such a promising project. Michael T. Gilbert Eugene, Oregon One correction: You said that the cover of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #17 might be by Ralph Reese and Wally Wood. I’m pretty sure it’s Ogden Whitney and Wood (or someone imitating Wood). Brent Cleever via the Internet [Re: CBA #14] Fascinating issue. Pangs of guilt generated by learning the personal conditions Gene Colan was experiencing while producing those exquisite renderings we came to take for granted would arrive over the Atlantic every month. Amused to learn that Tony Isabella was responsible for doctoring the reprints in Mighty World of Marvel and SpiderMan Comics Weekly. The highlight must have been when John F. Kennedy was replaced in “Thor vs. Mad Merlin” by a delightful caricature of Richard Nixon. (Perhaps my memory is playing tricks, but I believe Merlin’s thought balloon was altered to say he perceived an aura of goodness protecting the president.) I well remember the Spider-Man mask/paper bag Tony refers to, although the Spider-Man eye-pieces (plastic two-way mirrors) amused me for years. Also enjoyed reading Gary Friedrich’s interview. Again, I was surprised to discover the personal conditions Gary was laboring under during the 1970s. His Captain Britain scripts, with their sardonic humour (STRIKE, the British arm of SHIELD, and the guest shot from then Prime Minister Jaunty Jim Callahagan) and epic Red Skull/ Captain America storyline was always a personal highpoint for me— the one point where Captain Britain seemed like a proper Marvel comic, rather than a patronizing concession. Gary’s candid recollections were much appreciated. For the future, I’m looking forward to many revelations about Atlas/Seaboard comics. Whatever anyone else says about Atlas, I’ll always remember it for Howard Chaykin’s The Scorpion—one of the best comics of the 1970s. [While it may be a wee bit later than originally planned, I hope you will enjoy our next CBA, devoted to those weird and wonderful Atlas/Seaboards.—Y.E.] Steven Thompson via the Internet In spite of your experts, I would absolutely swear that Ralph Reese had a hand in the Andor story in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #15. Note the sometimes angular faces and shorter, skinnier bodies. When Reese is involved in a Wood piece, it often looks as though different actors are playing the parts, as it does here. Frank Plowright via the Internet The two pages of Tomb of Dracula art you wanted identified are actually from different issues. The first is page 2 of #23, and the second page 11 of #24. They’re both from the Sheila Whittier story that ran for about three or four issues at that time. Something that has bothered me about CBA for some while is the editorial tendency to censor swear words. This could be your personal preference, it could be pressure applied from elsewhere, or it could be fear of outside indignation. If it’s either of the first two suggestions, then I won’t change your mind. If it’s the third, let me throw in my November 2001

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own preference. You’re very faithful in your interview transcriptions, incorporating elements most magazines would deem superfluous, yet you censor the language. You’re not selling to a young and impressionable audience (possibly an old and impressionable one) and we all know what the censored words mean. They’re just words. Why not quote them as spoken? The one thought that occurs regarding the sorry mess surrounding the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents over the past 20 or so years is “why”? While I enjoy the comics, they feature a relatively obscure bunch of characters to comic fans, never mind to the outside world, and as such their value as anything other than nostalgic tokens is surely negligible. I obviously can’t speak for John Carbonaro, but if the time and energy he’s invested in the characters over the years had been applied to new creations I’d imagine he’d have been a whole lot more satisfied, have more money, and he’d surely have been equally successful. What’s the point in continuing with attempts to use them when it would seem that a case can still be made for their public domain status? Any film studio investing in the characters, for instance, would surely see it as worthwhile to gamble £50,000 initiating legal action for 100% of the profits. Off the top of my head, I can think of only two characters that have been successfully revived for prolonged periods after decades of dormancy: Captain Marvel and his simulacrum Marvelman/Miracleman. In the first instance the character was one of the top-sellers of its era, with a recognition way beyond comics who retained an influential following. For all that, despite the TV series, Captain Marvel has never recaptured his 1940s success. Marvelman succeeded due to a top notch creative team given considerable editorial freedom, but look at the poisoned chalice the character has become. That Larry Ivie is the Zelig of comics, isn’t he? The selfaggrandizing tone of his essay is remarkable, considering he pretty well credits all the important components of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents to other people. Regarding the remainder of his claims, that he failed to make his mark in comics would be a pointer that they’re exaggerated at the very least. One of the (few) frustrating aspects of CBA is that the non-

Above: One of our favorite—and most consistently contributing— contributors, Jerry K. Boyd sent us this 1986 George Tuska rendition of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, which JKB sez was published in b&-w in a Sal Quartuccio portfolio. Ye Ed had the pleasure of spending time with Sal “Mr. Hot Stuf” Q. in Chicago this year. Characters ©2001 John Carbonaro.

ATLAS/SEABOARD Comic Book Artist is devoting our next issue to those wonderfully wonky comics of Atlas/Seaboard and we need a few more issues to fill out our collection in an effort to bring readers the most concise checklist possible. Can any reader either sell or loan us the following issues? Gothic Romance #1 Police Action (Lomax) #2 Savage Combat Tales #2 & 3 Tiger-Man #3 Vicki #1-4 If you can help, please contact Ye Ed as soon as possible as we hope to have this special issue out very soon after the issue you’re now reading. Call Jon at (401) 783-1669 or e-mail JonBCooke@aol.com. Thanks!—JBC

judgmental policy results in severely conflicting points of view, and at worst can be used as forum for rewriting history. I’ve not seen The Warren Companion yet, and obviously don’t know the circumstances alluded to in your introduction to the Russ Jones interview [in CBA #14]. Considering how he was a key player in the genesis of Warren’s line I’m astonished that at least portions of his interview weren’t included there. This will be all the more important if comments from Larry Ivie are included without contradiction elsewhere. Here I am with moan, moan, moan, again, and it’s about two fine issues that I thoroughly enjoyed. Never let my comments about the odd error overshadow the fact that I think CBA is a great magazine. [The censoring of cuss words is the policy of my esteemed publisher, John Morrow. While we have debated at length about it, I have generally agreed with his edits, as John is intent on making the TwoMorrows family of magazines suitable for all ages. We’ve just replaced the vowels with asterisks and you do know what words they represent, right? As for the “non-judgmental policy” of CBA: Well, I give the comics creators an opportunity to have their say, and if aspects end up being Rashomon-like, I leave it to the reader to make an interpretation of what the “truth” is.—Y.E.]

Above: Ye Ed had a blast working with author George Khoury on the recent TwoMorrows book, Kimota! The Miracleman Companion, a tome Jon considers the best issue of Comic Book Artist never done! Talk about exhaustive! It contains everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the legendary Alan Moore super-hero comic series and it is, in particular, a heartfelt appreciation of artist John Totleben. George and I hooked up in Buffalo (thanks, Eli!) and were delighted to spend time with John, Rick Veitch and Tom Yeates. Miracleman ©2001 Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc., Neil Gaiman & Mark Buckingham. 8

Dave Cockrum via the Internet I was extremely interested to discover, in reading Chris Irving’s “T.H.U.N.D.E.R Strikes Twice” (CBA #14) that John Carbonaro had threatened me as part of a lawsuit against David Singer’s Deluxe Comics. It was news to me, first I ever heard of it. In fact, most of the article was news to me, I had no knowledge of all the maneuvering and double-dealing going on behind the scenes. I should have realized something was going on, though, because although Singer lured my Futurians away from Marvel with promises of fabulous page rates and much higher royalties than Marvel was willing to pay, his checks kept bouncing. It finally got to the point where I simply would not hand over original art to him unless he put the cash in my hand first. The lawsuit also has finally explained to me his disappearance between issues #3 and #4 of Futurians, and why he later “sold” the publishing rights to Malibu, who had the sense to call me and ask permission to publish what became the second Futurians graphic novel. As for the press release mentioning a “future project by Dave and Paty Cockrum,” I can only assume it referred to a back-up strip I had

planned for Futurians, to be written by me and drawn by Paty under the pseudonym of “Wally Bonner” (Blackmane’s civilian identity). Although I never actually established it in the issues of Futurians published to date, Wally Bonner is a comic book artist. Paty’s strip would have depicted Wally’s “work.” Nice to learn some of these things, what, only 20 years late? Bill Pearson via the Internet Finally managed to read the whole issue from cover to cover. Pretty amazing variety of memories, some of which are a bit odd. I even found some comments in my buddy Adkins’ interview that contradict some in mine, and I know both of us were trying to remember things as exactly as possible. (Woody did know Larry Ivie, of course, and when he said to Adkins “Who is Larry Ivie?,” it was meant rhetorically, meaning Larry Ivie doesn’t have any significant professional credits, so why should he have any influence with Harry Shorten) I could clarify a few other things, I suppose, but on the whole, I think most perceptive readers will know who’s giving the straight story and who’s shooting a lot of bull. It must really irritate you, though, to interview two people who both seem candid and yet end up with two different versions of events. Well, I guess even when things are happening, people can have different ideas about a situation. We all see things from our own perspective. People with the biggest egos think everything is revolving around them even when they’re just standing on the sidelines. Anyhow, Jon, you and your crew did a spectacular job, and I compliment you all! By the way, there probably won’t be another occasion to list my credits, but the writing credits you gave for me were not my best work. I wrote all the Flash Gordon stories Reed Crandall illustrated for King Comics, which was a joy because Reed would follow my script exactly, even my suggested layouts. If I said POV from the ground, looking up at, etc., that’s how he’d draw it. If I described an alien animal with six legs and horns and a head like an alligator standing on his two hind legs, that’s what he’d draw! And it would look anatomically logical and real! But the most fun I ever had doing comics were the eight or ten issues of Popeye I did with George Wildman for Western Publishing. I’d give George complete scripts, book-length stories. When he gave me back the pencils, if the copy didn’t quite match the pictures, I could do a last minute rewrite as I lettered the pages! The editors at Western didn’t even ask for an outline of the story, so we turned in complete finished stories. The most satisfying experience I ever had writing comics. As for lettering, I lettered for almost every company, but was primarily with Eclipse throughout their run. I did hundreds of comics for them. Wrote stories for them, too. John Lustig Seattle, Washington Let me start out with the nice stuff first. Mike Barr is to be commended for his concern for creator rights. I will assume that when he wrote his letter (published in CBA #14) his motives were pure and that he sincerely cared that former Charlton creators be treated fairly. Unfortunately, Mike’s letter is based solely on a string of “what ifs” rather than facts. Mike, you say that the discussion in CBA #12 about copyright ownerships to various Charlton properties (including First Kiss—the source of art for my current series). If anyone owns the copyright to the material it is me. However, all evidence [indicates that the original owners of First Kiss] are no longer among the living. By the way, of the former Charlton creators I’ve talked to (Gill and Giordano who worked on First Kiss) and Joe Staton and Robin Snyder (who didn’t work on the series) all of them have enjoyed Last Kiss and have been supportive of my efforts. In fact, Giordano even drew a new six-page story for Last Kiss #2. (Yes, Mike, I did pay Giordano for the story.) This is the first time that I’ve scripted a story for Last Kiss and then had the story drawn. Normally, I take a story from First Kiss, throw out all the old text and totally rewrite it. In addition, I generally spend hours on each story (sometimes on each page) retouching and modifying the art to suit the needs of the new storyline. (So, Mike, you’re wrong when you say that I’m “reprinting” the stories.) (I need to point out here that while First Kiss may be in the public domain, Last Kiss is not. All of my Last Kiss material and the revised artwork is copyrighted.) As my budget will allow, I certainly intend to use new artwork and have already received tentative commitments from Marie Severin and COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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other respected artists who are interested in contributing to Last Kiss. However, the bulk of the material in Last Kiss will continue to be taken from First Kiss stories (and occasionally non-Charlton public domain material) that I’ve rewritten and substantially modified. I am under no legal obligation to pay anyone for the use of this material, Mike. It is, however, the courteous thing to do. Nick Caputo via the Internet I have a few possible corrections for the Tower checklist. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3 has the Thunderbelt pin-up credited to Wood/Adkins, but I suspect Dick Ayers may have penciled that page. The main Dynamo figure, as well as the figure on the bottom left panel look like Ayers figure work to me. I will show him that page at the next New York Con to see if I’m right. The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad pin-up also credited to Wood/Adkins looks like it may have been penciled by Mike Sekowsky. Dynamo #2’s “The Web of Spider” has pencils credited to Chic Stone, but I don’t think that’s correct. Could this have been the work of Jerry Grandenetti? The Red Star pin-up in that issue has a inking credit for Frank McLaughlin with a question mark. I would credit the inking to Mike Esposito. Finally, TA #16 omitted the story “A Slight Case of Combat Fatigue” from the contents. My guess is Adkins/Wood credits. Mike W. Barr via the Internet CBA #14 (the Wood/T.H.U.N.D.E.R. issue) was by and large appreciated; it revealed a lot of facts I hadn’t know about the series. I still recall the day the DC office had a memorial service for Wally Wood. However, since the issue carried a two-page article on Tippy Teen, I would much rather have seen at least as long an article about Undersea Agent rather than that thoroughly self-indulgent Thunderstruck! “article” or the “Don’t Look Back In Anger” whatever-it-was. The latter was especially offensive, both in its concept and execution. (The phrase “pointing verbally” is at best an oxymoron.) I also would like to have known some facts behind the odd T.H.U.N.D.E.R. comic whose cover was printed on page 104. [As for an Undersea Agents article, I would have loved to feature an interview with the late Ray Bailey, and the information on the artist provided by Ron Goulart on page 26’s caption in CBA #14 was all the material I could dig up on Bailey. Another late artist closely associated with UA—and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents—was Gil Kane, and though I asked numerous sources, I just couldn’t find a single reference in any Kane interview on his Tower experience. Finally, while a staple in some other mags on comics, CBA shies from comic synopsis articles. [Sometimes the serendipitous occurs at the otherwise chaotic CBA office (actually a messy studio just off my bedroom), as the next letter writer fulfills one of Mike W. Barr’s requests, a missive I received on the same day as MWB’s e-mail.—Y.E.] James E. Lyle Waynesville, North Carolina It was nice to run into you at WizardWorld Chicago, and thanks for the gratis copy of CBA #14… I would have had to buy it anyway what with it being about my pals, the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents! While I was at the table you apologized that you weren’t able to use any of my own art in the issue, but when I got back to my table, lo and behold, there I was on page 104! Loved the caption [describing the one-shot T.H.U.N.D.E.R.]: “One of the odder incarnations…” indeed! But to clarify some misunderstandings about that particular “one shot”: The book was proposed as a four-issue series (with hopeful continuation) by Michael Sawyer and I sometime in 1985. We, too, were operating under the mistaken notion that David Singer was on the up and up about the Agents being public domain. However when we pitched the series to Rich Buckler at Solson he knew enough to contact John Carbonaro and secure the license for the book for us. This worked out really well, since by the time our first issue was out the case was practically settled. If we hadn’t had the license with John C. the book would never have seen the light of day. Unfortunately Solson didn’t do much else for the series. As I said, the book was supposed to be a four-issue mini-series, and it was prepared with the agreement that it would be printed on high quality paper, in a perfect-bound edition (not unlike The Dark Knight Returns, that it so obviously emulated). Although the book was black-&-white several innovations were designed into it that A) didn’t come off because of the cheap printing, and B) have since become November 2001

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industry standards. For instance, all the interior artwork was designed for “full-bleed.” There was supposed to be a white border reversed out of each page, the mechanical for this was returned to me in the artwork with the annotation “do not shoot!” on it. Also, the “Tombstone” on the cover was not our idea at all. Apparently someone misunderstood what I was trying to communicate in my notes on how the cover design should work. The credits were supposed to reverse out of the black band (lifted from the Watchmen series) and that’s all. Someone in the art department spent a lot of time working on it, but that’s not what we wanted at all. Oh, well. I managed to pencil two issues of the book (and get paid for one) before Solson went under. Apparently someone there knew the axe was about to fall since one day a mysterious package arrived at my studio containing 150 copies of the book. I guess someone felt sorry for us, I still have a few of them in my files. But half of the pencil art from #2 disappeared and I have never seen it since, although I did get a call from an “art director” some time the next year saying he’d seen some of my pencil work at a New York convention and was interested in hiring me based on it. I told him that the art was stolen property and asked who had it. He was not forthcoming after that and I got neither artwork or assignments from him. In 1988, Michael and I almost resold the series. A company called Syncronicity Comics offered to reprint #1 and all the rest of the series if we could secure the rights. We contacted John Carbonaro and he was perfectly willing to let us continue on the license secured by Solson, without paying a penny more. Because of this, we still love John to this day! We could do our series as long as we had it finished by June of 1989 (if memory serves). Unfortunately Syncronicity’s backer pulled out at the last minute. I was still inking pages on the kitchen table of my in-law’s when word came from Maggie Thompson at Comic Buyer’s Guide that the new T.H.U.N.D.E.R. preview had been pulled. (It’s sad when you have to get news about your own publication from a third party.) I still hear from John C. now and then. There’s a whole Dynamo story that I inked for him a couple of years ago that may never see the light of day. Too bad. And there’s a possibility that I might do some more inking for him in the near future, which would be great! Anyway, I realize that this has turned into a history of James Lyle’s involvement with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and that’s not all I intended to say: I really enjoyed the coverage, and in particular the fact that you didn’t leave out Tippy Teen. I really enjoyed Terry Austin’s take on the character. She’s been one of my favorites since I was a child! So I was surprised to learn that Terry didn’t even know about her until a few years ago. Hey, Terry! Wanna do a Tippy comeback with me?

Above: Next issue Comic Book Artist delves into the bittersweet history of Atlas/Seaboard, the shortlived 1970s comics publisher, a company that started with enormous potential and, sadly, crashed and burned as a third-rate Marvel wannabe. We talk to virtually every creator alive who worked for the company and present the definitive retrospective. We’ll try to talk to Frank Thorne, the artist who produced the above promotional drawing (originally seen as the cover for The Comic Reader #119) for the “Son of Dracula” series he drew (exquisitely, by the way!) for the one issue of Fright published by Atlas/Seaboard. But Frank has proven an elusive interview subject in the past, so we make no promises! Son of Dracula ©2001 the respective copyright holder.

John Workman via the Internet I don’t know if I ever told you, but I designed all the logos for the Deluxe run of the characters. That was a weird time. Dave Singer was running around tossing money right and left and looking to the Hollywood gold at the end of the rainbow. He was always looking for ways to inject his right-wing politics into the stories, though he left it out of most of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stuff when he “improved” the writing of those whom he’d hired to actually write the stories. 9

CBA’s Jon Cooke is back in April! Make ready for COMIC BOOK CREATOR, the new voice of the comics medium! TwoMorrows is proud to debut our newest magazine, COMIC BOOK CREATOR, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Behind an ALEX ROSS cover painting, our frantic FIRST ISSUE features an investigation of the oft despicable treatment JACK KIRBY endured from the very business he helped establish. From being cheated out of royalties in the ’40s and bullied in the ’80s by the publisher he made great, to his estate’s current fight for equitable recognition against an entertainment monolith where his characters have generated billions of dollars, we present Kirby’s cautionary tale in the eternal struggle for creator’s rights. Plus, CBC #1 interviews artist ALEX ROSS and writer KURT BUSIEK, spotlights the last years of writer/artist FRANK ROBBINS, remembers comics historian LES DANIELS, sports a color gallery of WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, showcases a joint talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL on their unforgettable collaborations, as well as throws a whole kit’n’caboodle of other creator-centric items atcha! Join us for the start of a new era as TwoMorrows welcomes back former Comic Book Artist editor JON B. COOKE, who helms the all-new, allcolor COMIC BOOK CREATOR!

80 pages • $8.95 All-color • Quarterly Digital Edition: $3.95 COMING THIS JULY: COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2 (double-size Summer Special) Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured through FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, rememberreturns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured through FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembertures: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY ing LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $6.95 • Ships July 2013

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CBA Interview

Of Hollywood & Heroes Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens on his life as an artist Opposite: Dave Stevens poses in his Studio City studio for photographer Greg Preston in a recent picture. Ye Ed had the pleasure of meeting Greg in San Diego this year and we hope to publish a book of Greg’s outstanding portraits of comic book creators and animators someday soon. Courtesy of and ©2001 Greg Preston.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Sam Gafford The sensual art of Dave Stevens burst forth on the world of comics fandom like a buzz bomb during the Spring of 1982 in, of all places, a back-up strip in Starslayer #2, featuring a new character, The Rocketeer. Stevens’ stylings—and his new comics adventurer—were immediate hits and the artist remains very popular even though he has produced a relatively small number of (albeit high-quality) comics pages over the years. Ye Ed was fortunate to interview Dave at the 2001 International Comic Con: San Diego in July with a follow-up talk via phone in August. Dave copyedited the final transcript. Comic Book Artist: Dave, where are you from? Dave Stevens: Lynwood, California, which is basically part of South-Central Los Angeles. CBA: When did you get interested in comics? Dave: About age four, or five. My dad had a box of Disneys and ECs—though not the horror books, unfortunately! Only the tamer ones. He had Stories from the Bible and a couple of the science-fiction titles. He liked Ray Bradbury and also had a couple of hardcover compilations like The Omnibus of Science Fiction, etc. So, I started out with Bradbury, too, as a youngster, along with Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and a handful of others. CBA: Were you into books that featured continuing characters like Sherlock Holmes? Dave: Oh sure, Tarzan and even Tom Swift and The Hardy Boys for a while. And later, in high school I got bitten by the paperback reprints of The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Conan, along with a lot of my friends. CBA: Did you have an interest in previous eras even as a kid? Dave: Yeah, I guess I did. But, you know, as a ’50s kid, I grew up on a daily diet

of early television, watching Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, Hoppy, The Lone Ranger, Betty Boop, Popeye, and scads of old movies. Plus, radio was still pretty vital in most homes. Your Hit Parade was still on, as well as regular radio dramas, and much of the music was still predominantly swing; big bands and crooners played in every household. So, a lot of the aspects of the pre-war years were still very much a part of my daily life. Milk was still delivered door-to-door, Helm’s bakery trucks had regular routes through all the neighborhoods… and WWII was still talked about by most adults, since it had only just ended ten years earlier. So, I think I came by a lot of it honestly. It was just a large part of my early consciousness. And very early on I started collecting records, and by the time I got into high school I was haunting the used record stores looking for old 78s—jazz and old vocalists. Who knows why? But obviously it came from early exposure to the best of it. CBA: Were you cognizant of Hollywood being near? Dave: Not really, it seemed like another world from where I lived, and very exotic, like journeying to Mecca. I saw evidence of it around town, public appearances by local TV celebrities: Jeepers Creepers, Chucko the Clown, Engineer Bill, and Tom Hatton. But, my first real brush with the reality of it was probably when my Scout troop got to visit The Munsters set on the old Universal lot, in 1964. That was pretty amazing! I never wanted to go home again. CBA: So was it ‘30 and ‘40s pop culture material? Dave: Yeah, everyday things I’d been surrounded with. I still have specific memories from as early as ’58, when my younger brother was born. I remember my mom dragging me to a John F. Kennedy rally which would have been, what, 1960? I remember events like that; things that left an impression. They were only worm’s eye views but I do remember them. CBA: Was radio an influence when you were young? Dave: Well, that was at the very tail end of the radio era. There were still a few shows on, like Johnny Dollar and X Minus One, but not much. But, luckily, a lot of them had already made the transition to television—Amos ‘n’ Andy, Burns and Allen—a lot of them had made the switch so I got to see the performers behind the voices. The Great Gildersleeve and people like him were on the box all the time. It was all character driven skits, obviously, with loads of personality and shtick. It was great material and a lot of it still holds up, today. It’s milder, of course, but still extremely funny. It’s nice to pop a tape in once and a while, and remember how well-written those shows were. And much of it was really groundbreaking. CBA: Did you enjoy the Superman TV show? Dave: Oh, sure. We all watched it and Zorro, and tied towels around our necks and jumped off the roof! [laughs] CBA: Did you follow the TV anthology shows? The Twilight Zone, Playhouse 90? Dave: The Twilight Zone, sure, but I preferred The Outer Limits because it seemed more visual, more creature-filled. It appealed to kids, more than adults, I think. CBA: Did films like King Kong have any effect on you? Dave: Oh, tremendously! When I was five, my folks let me stay up and watch Kong because I just lived for dinosaurs. And it was just magical, I was transported. I believed every second of it! That big ape charmed me and terrified me. And the theme of the film, the tortured monster and the beautiful girl… hey, it still works for me! So, I got to experience that one very early, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and a few other genre films that they thought I could handle. But the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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really scary bogey-men, like Frankenstein, Dracula, etc., that were a bit more horrific, visually, I wasn’t allowed to see for another couple of years. CBA: Who was your local horror host? Dave: Jeepers Creepers, at the time. Vampira had only been on for a short time in ‘55, so I missed her show, but Jeepers Creepers was her successor. And then much later, in the early 1970s, there was Seymour. But, the one I was always enthralled by was Zacherley, the Cool Ghoul. He was the East Coast’s horror icon. Unfortunately, we never got his show out here (but I could read about him in Famous Monsters of Filmland!). He looked like sort of an undead foreign dignitary, who probably liked to dig up bodies at night. CBA: When did you first pick up Famous Monsters? Dave: When I was about seven. My folks wouldn’t have let me buy it, but… there was always Grandma! We’d go to her house and pretty much anything went. They spoil you rotten—anything you want—as long as it’s cheap! She was a short bus ride away, and in those days, parents would put their kids on a bus and just send them off! [laughs] I remember my mom walking us up to Gage Avenue one morning, my little brother and I (he was maybe three!) standing at the bus stop, waiting for it to pick us up and take us to our grandma’s. And she told me which stop to get off on, to sit near the front and what to tell the driver. Ah, young parents! CBA: How many brothers and sisters did you have? Dave: One brother, two sisters. My brother builds kit planes for a company in Idaho. He’s like their engineer, the man in charge of prototypes. My sisters are homemakers. My dad was really the only family member who was artistic. He was a doodler, a cartoonist, though he never did it professionally. I think he would have loved working as an animator. I didn’t really know the extent of his interest until a few years ago at my grandmother’s. She pulled out an old sketchbook of his from when he was about eight or nine years old, and it was just filled with cartoon characters. Every page of it! CBA: Was he any good? Dave: He was terrific, and totally self-taught! He could do Popeye with his eyes closed and that’s a tough character to just pull from your head. He taught me to draw my first cartoon characters when I was about four (and I would draw them all over everything). I remember him sculpting Br’er Rabbit one day, at the breakfast table. He was an oil painter, as well. Very, very imaginative, talented guy. CBA: Did you ever know him to approach a studio for work? Dave: No, he only took one semester out of high school, at a local art college and that was it. Then he joined the Air Force. Basically, my mom kept after him until he married her. Then, I guess he figured that he had to get a real job and cartooning just didn’t seem possible to him. So, instead, he got involved in the early days of computers, back when one computer took up an entire room. CBA: Was he successful? Dave: Yeah. He became a systems analyst, and he did that for a number of years. CBA: Is he still alive? Dave: Oh, yeah. He was just here a few weeks ago. CBA: Are you close? Dave: Very. He still has the soul of an artist. I just wish he’d do something with it. But, he abruptly gave it up, forty years ago! Just stopped drawing. I still find that incredibly sad. Occasionally I could nudge him to draw something and it was always brilliant! CBA: Does he follow what you do? Dave: I keep him up to date. I guess he just figured he’d pass it on to me, watch what I did with it, and that was good enough for him; vicariously, I suppose. CBA: So he was always supportive of you? Dave: Oh, yeah. But, my parents really didn’t know what to do with me, vocationally! I remember religiously, watching John Nagy on TV. And doing the old Famous Artists tryout, you know? “Draw the Lumberjack.” I sent it in, filled out the evaluation test they sent me, then the school’s salesmen started calling our house! [laughs] They wanted to sell me the full course! I remember picking up the phone and this guy was just talking a blue streak about test results and could he speak to my father? So I handed my dad the phone and stood by, watching him trying to get a word in. He finally said, “Well, yes—but you see, he’s only 11.” And that was the end of that conversation! [laughs] No sale! I wish though, that my dad had subscribed to the courses. Boy, I could have gone nuts with those books. CBA: You told me you’re currently going to art school full-time; do you think you’re making up for that missed opportunity now? Dave: Well, that is the hope. I never really got an art education after high school. Most people go on to an art college of some kind, but I just went straight into the job market. CBA: How do you look back at that now? Dave: I did what I did out of blind ignorance, and I struggled for several years. I did what I could, but still feel that if I’d had an education and learned how to better use my tools… paint and mixed media, I’d have been much better equipped and November 2001

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ultimately more employable. I could’ve done a lot more than just storyboards or character designs. I could have done finished illustrations. So, in my early days in Hollywood, I just hired out mostly, as a sketch artist. CBA: Did you always look to your childhood for inspiration? Dave: I suppose we all do, to some degree: Mining our personal experiences, and the other art forms we’ve enjoyed over the years: films, books, music. CBA: Did you collect comics when you were young? Dave: Not originally. I had that stack of my dad’s and read those until they fell apart. CBA: Were they Carl Barks? Dave: Some were, and a mixture of other funny animal books. CBA: Did you recognize Carl Barks at all then? Dave: I could recognize “styles.” There were certain artists I liked because they were more expressive or more animated. Above: An early Dave Stevens effort was an underground comix strip satirizing gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in Kitchen Sink’s Fear and Laughter from 1977. Courtesy of J.P. Shannon ©2001 the respective copyright holder.

Inset right: One of Dave Stevens’ first professional assignments was to ink strips for the British comic Tarzan Weekly over the pencils of such artists as Mike Ploog, Will Meugniot, and Danny Bulanadi, illustrating stories by Don Glut and Mark Evanier, among others. These panels are from the June 25, 1977 issue, courtesy of Dean Smith. Tarzan ™ & ©2001 ERB, Inc. 14

CBA: Did you like Floyd Gottfriedson? Dave: Yes, very much. I didn’t know him by name but knew his style. I’d say he was my favorite of the Disney stable. CBA: Did you get any exposure to Floyd’s ‘30s Mickey Mouse newspaper strip work? Dave: Only in reprints, because at the time Disney still repackaged the stuff in odd formats like kids’ primer comics. CBA: Did you see that stuff as being better than his ‘60s stuff? Dave: Yeah, but only because the current material seemed tamer by comparison, you know? Mickey was pretty homogenized by then. The ‘30s strips were a lot zanier and the characters were more distinctively animals. CBA: Do you remember seeing any glamour or cheesecake material at that time? Dave: My first exposure would have been the old Esquire fold-outs by Vargas and Petty. I don’t remember who I saw first but I do recall that I liked Petty girls better, probably because they were more “cartooned,” and more accessible to a young boy. Vargas’s work was much more realistic and softer, not quite so carved out or geometrically shaped. It wasn’t as lively to me. CBA: How old were you? Dave: Probably ten or eleven.

CBA: You didn’t see Playboy? Dave: I did, but only at other people’s homes, my dad wasn’t a “Playboy Man”! CBA: You read them in the woods! [laughs] Dave: [laughs] Yeah, or the cemetery! I’d occasionally find men’s mags in vacant lots, on my way to school, but they were always in tatters! We had a neighborhood deli where a friend of mine and I (we were about seven or eight) would sneak behind the counter when the cashier would go to the back and we’d quickly thumb through the nudist magazines. “Ooh! So that’s what that looks like!” CBA: [laughs] Did you gain any kind of fascination for that kind of material? Dave: Not at all. I was just too young to care! It was furtive and naughty, but that was the only thrill to it—that we were doing something we shouldn’t have. I just wasn’t interested yet. Not until I hit high school, and even then, there wasn’t much available if you were underage. We couldn’t buy that stuff! So most of what I saw was, you know, movie magazines and occasional calendar girls and that was it. You know, we’re talking about the ’60s, here. CBA: Did you draw girls? Dave: I tried but I wasn’t any good at it, so I stuck with heroes and monsters for a long time. I remember I drew my first nude (at the request of a friend) when I was 13 and my dad walked by while I was doing it. He just said, “You know… you’re a little short in the pants to be drawing that kind of stuff, yet.” [laughter] So I learned right away, that if I was going to draw women, I’d have to be discreet about it. My mom soon after, found my Vampirellas and some underground comix in my room. I guess it was pretty shocking for her; the undergrounds in particular! My dad very calmly said, “Look, you’ve got little brothers and sisters around and they cannot see this stuff. Don’t bring anymore of it home.” He didn’t really mind the Warren mags, but drew a line at Zap, Slow Death, and Yellow Dog! CBA: Were there comic book artists that you were particularly drawn to? Like Wally Wood? Dave: I remember my first Marvel—I’d read a few, but the first one I actually bought off the rack was Tales to Astonish #82 (SubMariner vs. Iron Man, started by Gene Colan and finished by Kirby) and it was absolutely amazing. I’d never seen that kind of storytelling and it was so potent, so rock ’em, sock ’em. To me, that was the best stuff my young eyes had ever seen. CBA: This was Kirby and Colan? Dave: Yeah, Colan had drawn the first few pages and Kirby finished it. I could tell the difference between the two but I didn’t care! It was just great storytelling. The very next thing I picked up was an issue of Spider-Man and it was Romita’s second issue. I was, again, just knocked out and then I read that Ditko, another artist, had actually started the series, so I looked around for some of his work, and liked it immediately, but stylistically, his issues of SpiderMan looked to be from 20 years prior. (By comparison to Romita, whose style was very contemporary and of the moment, in the mid-1960s). Kirby’s work was also not quite as contemporary looking. Romita’s work was almost like fashion art, it was very graceful. I appreciated him more than Ditko at the time because Ditko’s fashions looked dated, the hairstyles were old, everything looked like it was still 1940. But he drew a Spider-Man like no one else and his villains were just plain creepy! CBA: Did you like the sensational nature COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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of the Marvel comics? They weren’t sedate like DC. Dave: That’s why I liked them. That’s why I bought them. I’d been a casual reader of Superman, Batman, The Flash, but only if my friends had bought them. I never went out of my way to buy a DC comic, isn’t that odd? To me they seemed kind of flat. Like a soda that had been sitting out for a couple of days. I could not connect with any of those characters at all. They were just bland. The Marvel stuff was wacky and the dialogue was loaded with sarcasm. I think I was the perfect age for it, too—about 12. It just spoke to me as a kid. “Hey, this is cool, hip stuff and it’s all aimed at me.” The characters were young. They were mostly teenagers, they all bickered, and had girl problems! CBA: Did Kirby become increasingly more important to you? Dave: I viewed him as the company quarterback, the banner artist for the Marvel line, but initially I was drawn to the more quirky stylists like Bill Everett, Gene Colan, Ditko. CBA: Did you like heavy rendering? Dave: I liked really individual styles, you know? Guys that I could identify from a single panel or two. Because, to me, it was about personality, charm, and Kirby’s work, while very grandiose and powerful, seemed slightly distant, not as intimate as others. CBA: Visually? Dave: Yeah. Because the characters were all statuesque, squarejawed perfect people. They almost seemed like automatons. Beautiful, but somehow alien to me. So, I connected emotionally with guys like Gene Colan and John Buscema, because they had an earthier approach. Kirby’s world was very idealized and I was looking for more realism, I guess. CBA: Was Mad magazine important to you growing up? Dave: Sure! I read it like everyone else did. It was more expensive so I didn’t buy it as often. It was 35¢ as opposed to 12¢ and in those days none of us had any money! We had to squeeze every penny. CBA: Was there anything of Wally Wood’s that you liked? Dave: Oh, yeah, but again, his straight work was a little remote. His action was just a bit stiff, but I loved his humor work—his Topps bubble-gum creatures—I loved that aspect of him. Dynamo and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were just too cold and emotionless for me. I preferred the guys who cartooned the characters a bit more. CBA: Were you constantly drawing all the time? Did you create characters early on? Dave: Yeah, I would design them and give them flashy names, but I never attempted any stories until I was about 15. I was initially just copying what I saw, and that was good enough for me. CBA: Do you recall any of those characters? Dave: Well, I was really enamored of John Buscema’s work on Sub-Mariner. So, I’d done a character called Manta-Ray, an undersea hero like the Sub-Mariner. It was pretty ridiculous. And I did a twopage story, showing his powers, etc. [laughs] It was very cornball stuff. I remember getting really hung up on the anatomy and scratching my head, looking things up in Andrew Loomis’ Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth in the school library, trying to use real anatomy. Big mistake, there! CBA: Did you ever look at comics at a young age as a viable option career-wise? Dave: Oh, it was all I wanted to do from probably age 12 on. CBA: Were you aware that Western Publishing/Gold Key had a Los Angeles office or did you think comics were all done in New York City? Dave: Well, by that time we were living in the Pacific Northwest, so any publisher seemed a million miles away. My brother and I had asthma as kids and Los Angeles’ air in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s was the worst in the nation, absolutely poisonous. Our doctor told my folks, “You’ve got to get these kids to a dry, hot climate where their lungs can dry out or they’re not going to make it.” So we moved to Idaho and lived there for about three years, then Portland, Oregon, and San Diego, and then I moved to LA. CBA: Your father looked for work in a drier climate? Dave: Yeah, to keep us alive! [laughs] CBA: Did you have a lot of asthma attacks? Dave: Yeah, in those days they didn’t have smog alerts. They didn’t even know enough to give us any warning. We would just collapse on the playground. November 2001

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CBA: Were there a number of traumatic moments? Dave: Ah, I suppose, I remember having attacks and not being able to breathe. I mean, even laughing too hard could bring it on, so I was sick a lot. Once we got into clean air though, our bodies adapted very quickly and we just outgrew it. And I’ve never had to take any medication for it since. CBA: But geez, moving from LA to Idaho? Dave: Oh, it was a good thing! Because it was Idaho in the mid-1960s and there was nothing but farms, rolling hills, and animals! It was a really healthy change on all levels, for a city kid coming from a dirty, congested, urban area. Though culturally there were a lot of things that were suddenly unavailable to me. For instance, there were no such things as newsstands, or corner liquor stores with fully stocked mag racks! CBA: [laughs] Which were very important for a young boy! Dave: Oh, brother—in Boise, in 1965, the closest thing was a hundred-year-old general store. It was that rural, and untouched. If you were diligent you could find one Marvel comic every couple of months but never two consecutive issues of any title. It was frustrating, because most Marvel stories were always “Continued Next Ish”! I never found out how anything ended! I’d just have to tell myself, “Well, someday I’ll get to read it.” And eventually, I’d manage to trade those coveted missing chapters from other guys… but it took years! CBA: What was your first involvement with fandom? Dave: Through the ads in the comics. Robert Bell, Howard Rogofsky, the backissue guys. Then I discovered the Rocket’s Blast Comicollector and started contributing to fanzines in 1969, but ironically those ’zines cost more than the comics and most of them were very crude, by comparison. But that was my training ground, and I read about other young guys like Wrightson and Kaluta getting work published at DC, via their work in the fanzines. So, it was encouraging. I remember Don Newton was one of my favorite fanzine artists. He did a strip in RBCC called “The Savage Land” and he was a real talent! I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t being published professionally and didn’t find out until years later that he was a school teacher, living in Arizona. But anyway, the ’zines plugged

Above: 1976 photo of Dave Stevens in his studio. Below: Another early assignment was “Aurora,” a Moebius-inspired strip produced for a Japanese publisher in the late ’70s. Courtesy of & ©2001 Dave Stevens.

Above: Perhaps to give the HannaBarbera animation studio artists respite from the banal work they suffered, Mike Sekowsky would endlessly tease young Stevens with cartoons that often depicted Dave in obscene ways. Here are three of the very few publishable Sekowsky drawings which were saved by Dave. Art ©2001 Mike Sekowsky. Courtesy of Dave Stevens.

Below: Dave Stevens during his stint as a “Wildey Commando” at Hanna-Barbera animation studio in the late 1970s. The artist labeled this photograph, “in the belly of the beast.” Courtesy of Dave Stevens.

me into this loose association of other kids all over the country who also wanted to do comics, but had no real access to it, you know? All of the publishers were in New York. We didn’t know from West Coast publishers. They weren’t even on our radar. CBA: Did you correspond with other fans? Dave: Yeah, but mostly just letters from ’zine editors. Either they were going to use my drawings or they weren’t. That kind of thing. I didn’t really start corresponding regularly until we moved to San Diego and I was suddenly, completely cut off from my circle of cohorts in Portland. CBA: You moved to Idaho in ‘65? Dave: And then to Portland in ’68. We were there for three years. See, my dad had an epiphany during our last months in Boise, and just walked away from the business world to enroll in seminary school. That was a major adjustment! So… we went to Portland. CBA: Was he very evangelical? Dave: Not too. He was pretty mild, not so dogmatic as you’d expect. But, he had very definite convictions and beliefs and felt sincerely that it was his calling to help people and try to do some

good in the world. So, we lived in student housing for those three years, while he studied, and it was a real test for all of us. We were on the Northeast side of Portland, in a pretty dodgy, old white trash section. But there were a lot of kids there who had comics! So, the sting of our circumstances suddenly didn’t bother me as much. Anyway, I kept in touch with those kids after we left Portland and strangely enough, almost all of them ended up in the industry, and ironically, Dark Horse came out of that as well. CBA: So you knew [Dark Horse publisher] Mike Richardson in high school? Dave: I didn’t know Mike then. He lived in a much better part of town! But I knew most of the other guys who were active in fandom: Chris Warner, Randy Emberlin, Dave Chamberlain, and others. Some of them eventually moved to New York to get work. I didn’t, because by the time I’d graduated high school, I’d just decided, “There’s no way.” CBA: Did you like the West Coast? Dave: It was home. I wasn’t too crazy about San Diego because there were no opportunities for artists of any kind. They had a very small commercial field and it was totally sewn up by a handful of local guys. CBA: Was it a poor town back then? Dave: Well, it was mostly Navy. Downtown was pretty nasty in those days. It was a haven for sailors on leave: Hookers everywhere, winos, strip parlors, pickpockets, junkies. But, in 1972, all I cared about was getting to my first San Diego Comic Con! [laughs] The year before, they’d held it at a local college and it was much smaller. So, that first El Cortez show was my first real convention experience and I remember thinking at the time that it was just enormous! Maybe a couple thousand people at most, but it just blew my teenaged mind! CBA: Did you meet Shel Dorf [the con organizer]? Dave: I met Shel and the other members of the “Five-String Mob”—Scott Shaw!, John Pound, Richard Alf, Barry Alfonso—there was a little clan that was already in place and I eventually just fell into it. And Jack Kirby was there, Forry Ackerman. And the dealer’s room was literally a teeming treasure trove! You could find anything you’d ever wanted, if you had the money. I was just ecstatic to be walking around, talking to collectors, meeting other artists. It was pretty exciting, getting re-connected to fandom. CBA: Do you remember meeting Jack for the first time? Dave: Yep. I don’t know if I should tell this again, [laughs] but I met Jack just as Scott Shaw! was unveiling his parody of a Kirby cover with a giant phallus on it and I witnessed Jack’s utter horror as Scott proudly presented it to him! I don’t think Roz ever saw it. She was standing close by, but I think Jack quickly pulled Scott aside with: “No, no, keep it out of sight!” [laughs] Yeah, that was a moment! CBA: When did you first visit Jack? Dave: I think the following year. CBA: Did you go alone? Dave: Oh no, it was always a group of us from the convention committee. I remember swimming in their pool. They just opened up their home and treated us like family. And boy, they put up with a lot! We’d arrive in the morning and just stay and stay! It was a full day out of Jack’s drawing schedule and he’d just stop work and visit with us. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Dave Stevens and The Masters Top left: A quite young Dave Stevens and Jim Steranko at a 1974 comic convention. Top right: Before he worked for the renowned Magnus Robot Fighter artist Russ Manning, Dave is photographed here with the artist in 1974. Above left: In homage to his Hanna-Barbera boss and friend Doug Wildey, Dave used the famed cartoonist as model for The Rocketeer’s sidekick Peevy (at right). Here’s Dave and Doug inspecting a vintage airplane in 1982. Above: Dave tells us that Doug Wildey, perhaps best known as creator of the Jonny Quest cartoon show, was delighted to be the model for a character in The Rocketeer. Dave and Doug in 1978. Left: Friends Milton Caniff (left) and Doug Wildey share a laugh over the first Rocketeer collection. All photos courtesy of Dave Stevens. Art ©2001 Dave Stevens. November 2001

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CBA: Was [Jack’s youngest daughter] Lisa there? Dave: Yeah, but she was pretty young, maybe nine years old; Neal was still there, as well. We got to see some of the Fourth World stuff as Jack was creating it. And occasionally, he would even include some of us in them! I remember one friend in particular, who was a real squirrely little guy, and Jack turned him into “The Bug.” CBA: Oh yeah? Dave: Yeah, it was hilarious, and I remember thinking it was so cool that Jack actually saw these kids as characters and incorporated them into his stories! CBA: Did you see him as an uncle-type role? Dave: Probably, because he would give us advice and entertain us with wild stories. CBA: War stories? Dave: All kinds of tales, about growing up in New York, about the industry, people he’d known. CBA: Was he honest about his Marvel experience? Dave: Well, it was pretty sugar-coated at the time. I’m sure he didn’t want to shatter our illusions. And yet, he could be pretty frank, when he needed to. CBA: So the only outlet for comics on the West Coast would have been Western/Gold Key? Dave: Yes, and I really had no interest in what they were doing. CBA: So you didn’t like The Twilight Zone and stuff like that? Dave: It was just dry, civilian stuff to me at that age. Remember, at that time, Métal Hurlant was just starting to hit the states, this was ‘74, and that magazine was a real eye-opener for me. It was so different from anything we’d seen here, so weird and beautifully illustrated and it was a slick, glossy magazine. CBA: Did you go down to Richard Kyle’s Long Beach comic shop to get that? Dave: Periodically, but there were a couple of local comic shops that had also started getting the imports in. The European material was a bittersweet discovery for me because, I’d already written off having a career in comics. It just didn’t seem to be in the cards. I wasn’t going to relocate to New York to draw funny books, so I was already looking for something else to do. Production art or advertising and that was it. But, that same year, I visited Russ Manning’s studio. Several of us had gone up there for the day and I got to show Russ my samples. Unfortunately, he was not a fan of the Marvel style at all. And yet it wasn’t that far removed from his own style, really. Some time after that Shel called me and said that Russ was looking for an assistant and he’d had suggested my name but Russ said, “No, no, I don’t want that Marvel look.” So I wrote Russ a note and included a Tarzan drawing that I’d done. Within days, he called and I picked up my first Sunday page on my way back from LA. It happened that fast. That was a surprising career U-turn, ending up in comics after all, albeit in the Sunday pages, which were much different. CBA: What was Russ like? Dave: He was a great guy, very kind and fatherly but also an authoritarian, ruling with an iron fist. Very ethical and he seemed able to juggle a lot of different things at the same time. He did a lot of grade-B horror film art on the side and odd advertising gigs. He was also very active in his community. He was the volunteer fire chief for Mojeska Canyon. I remember being at the drawing table and the 18

alarm would go off and he’d jump up and often wouldn’t be back until late at night. I was expected to stay at my board and work until he got back, too! Quite often, I would finish a page without him being there to correct me and when he’d get back he’d take it and I’d hear that electric eraser just buzzzzzzzzing away. CBA: Did you like each other? Dave: We got along really well. In fact, he insisted that I come up and work in the studio with him, rather than just having me mail the stuff in. So, he must’ve been able to stand me. And I often ate with the family, and played volleyball at the firehouse. CBA: And what were you doing? Dave: Backgrounds and minor figures. He wouldn’t let me do Tarzan for a long time, but eventually I got the green light. CBA: Did he have tight pencils? Dave: Yeah, pretty tight. Not as tight as some of the guys you see today. CBA: Could you identify most of your work on the strip? Dave: I think so. CBA: Was he an influence on you? Dave: Mostly, in terms of inking for reproduction. CBA: There’s a sensuality to his line that’s also in your work. Dave: I guess there are some similarities. He would emphasize the importance of thick and thin lines and how to “weight” a figure… using darker lines on the underside, basic things like that. It was a crash course in practical inking which I was completely unaware of and didn’t understand yet. He was always on me about overfeathering and unnecessary detail because, “It won’t reproduce! Stop it! If it’s not going to reproduce then don’t waste your time!” CBA: Did you like the Magnus, Robot Fighter stuff? Dave: I liked it, but again, when I first saw it, as a young teen, it seemed a bit sterile, a little cold. Beautifully done, but I just craved the more “in your face” Marvel approach at that time, and anything else really paled by comparison. CBA: Did you get rid of your collection? Dave: I stopped buying comics by ‘73. I still picked up a few of the Marvel black-&-white magazines, but not much else. CBA: Really? Not even the Fourth World stuff? Dave: Well, okay, I was picking up Jack’s work and Kubert’s Tarzan, Kaluta’s Shadow and Wrightson’s Swamp Thing. I was just selective. I would only buy the “art” comics. I wouldn’t even look at super-hero stuff at that point. CBA: What about Neal Adams’ work? Dave: I remember being very excited in 1971, when he was doing Green Lantern/Green Arrow. Of course, I loved “Deadman”! I thought it was brilliant work, but within a few years, felt like I’d outgrown the super-hero genre. CBA: You were looking for something more sophisticated? Dave: Just different! Swamp Thing and The Shadow were more baroque, more Gothic to me and I really wanted more of that. I loved Lt. Blueberry and Arzak… CBA: Were you a pack-rat? Dave: Oh, I haunted junk shops and would come home with strange stuff, but I was also particular. I was conscious of quality over quantity early on. I didn’t have the hoarder mentality of rabid collectors. I never had all that many comics. I kept them all in one box. That was it. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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CBA: Were you looking for airplanes particularly? Dave: Well, that started with “Enemy Ace,” really. I picked up my first issue and was hooked, and tried to find every one, thereafter. I just ate them up. It was perfect—very introspective, had a lot of humanity and nobility of spirit. It just dripped with pathos. The character was torn, with angst and sadness, and it seemed very adult in tone. CBA: Was that the caliber of stuff that drew you to it? Dave: Yeah, the other war books I would read occasionally, but “Enemy Ace,” I was just religious about. I really adored it and still do. CBA: Did the repetition of plot bother you? Dave: No, I never viewed it as repetitive. I was impressed by the variety of things they would come up with, within the context of daily battle. I still think it’s the best period strip ever to come out of DC or Marvel. CBA: It came out when there was a lot of ambivalence about war. Were you political at all? Dave: Yeah, I remember doing cartoons of Nixon and Humphrey during the ‘68 election. Because it was topical, I didn’t like either of them. To me they were just mean, cranky old men, stoking the fires of war. I became worried about the draft, like most kids my age, and the lottery. Because I was only a couple years away from that. I even considered (if my number came up, in ‘73) splitting for Canada. I wasn’t going to go to Southeast Asia, that’s for sure! I wasn’t about to lose two years or more of my life, and possibly get my arms or legs blown off and be cheated of my chosen career by some stupid, needless conflict in a country half a world away. CBA: Were you anti-war? Dave: That war, definitely! I’d known people who had lost friends and relatives, and it just seemed a tremendous waste of human life and resources. And we weren’t accomplishing anything over there. Just scorching the earth, year after year. My dad and I had some heated arguments about it, of course, as a lot fathers and sons did. CBA: Was he conservative? Dave: No, but he felt that it was your duty to go if you were called. He didn’t understand that war either. He was probably 35 at the time, and no one had any idea then how corrupt that war really was. CBA: When the invasion of Cambodia occurred in ‘70, do you remember Kent State? Dave: Oh, yeah. I had several friends who attended there. I didn’t know any of the people who were killed, but I knew people who knew them. That was weighing heavily on a lot of us at time. We November 2001

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wondered what we were going to do. So the first of our gang decided to join the Air National Guard because his number was up— it would have been Vietnam otherwise, and so he shipped off to Texas; and the rest of us were thinking of doing likewise. CBA: Do you remember what your number was? Dave: No, it was too long ago. I do remember the draft board calling the house. My number was somewhere in the middle, but it worried me plenty. CBA: Did you have a late-‘60s-early-‘70s exposure to underground comix? Dave: Sure, like everyone else. CBA: Did you like them? Dave: Ah, some. I enjoyed Zap for the strangeness of it and the fact that these guys were doing something totally off the scale,

Opposite page, top: Logo for the character’s first appearance in Starslayer #2. Opposite page, left: Preliminary designs for The Rocketeer’s distinctive helmet. Above: Two chapter headers featuring (thinly-veiled) pulp adventure heroes. Top is the mysterious man who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men (from The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine #2), and above is a certain bronze man (from The Rocketeer Special Edition). Courtesy of & ©2001 Dave Stevens. 19

Opposite page: For his pin-up work, Dave often photographs models to use as reference. Top is Jewel Shepard and, at bottom, a model the artist identifies as Rebecka Smith. Photos by and courtesy of Dave Stevens. 20

psychedelic and loaded with subversive humor. CBA: Were you clued into any particular underground artists? Dave: I loved Crumb because of the nostalgic feel. It was like looking at a filthy Fleischer cartoon on paper. But really strange and really sick! [laughs] I admired his drawing skills, but I got bored with the sickness factor after a while to the point where I just stopped picking the stuff up. Richard Corben was astonishing. He was… semi-underground, I guess? None of the other guys drew as well and nobody could do what he did with an airbrush. Corben was unique. His characters looked like little rubber figures jumping off the page. He did some truly amazing things with color, too. Rowlf was the first book of his that I saw and it was just so well done. Obviously he was really into it. His characters looked like gargoyles and his women were just unreal! They were aliens. [laughs] CBA: How long were you with Russ Manning? Dave: About a year and a half. 1975, ‘76, and part of ‘77. But I only worked in-studio with him, for about eight months in ‘75. Then

I moved to LA and he would actually drive all the way up to give me occasional jobs he needed help on. CBA: Were you guys close? Dave: Yeah, though not like I was with Doug Wildey. But we were on very good terms and he trusted me enough over time, not to look over my shoulder. He knew that I would never let him down on a job or a deadline. CBA: Where did you get this discipline from? Your father? Dave: I suppose, it was probably more out of respect than discipline. I knew what Russ expected of me and I was just not going to mess up. CBA: Were you born with a work ethic? Dave: Probably not. Most artists are intrinsically, lazy bums. CBA: But you were working with Manning very early in your career, and he was an enormously productive artist. Dave: Yeah, we put in some long hours. I’d often be there from nine in the morning until midnight. It was grueling work, but I was 19, and who sleeps at that age? CBA: Was this salary? Dave: No, piecemeal. He would break it down and pro-rate it by the panel. How much work I did on each and that’s how he paid me! [laughs] But he was very fair. He paid me more than I think anybody else would have. I also ended up doing other work, via Russ, for guys like Zeke Zekeley (samples for PS Magazine with Mike Ploog). We didn’t get the gig but we did the presentation art for it. I think the contract went to Murphy Anderson. CBA: Mike Ploog wanted to get the gig? Dave: Yeah, and I was attached as inker. All I recall was that Zeke was calling the shots, and he liked my work. CBA: Who was Zeke Zekeley? Dave: He was a very talented strip artist who started with George McManus. Zeke was George’s assistant [on the newspaper strip Bringing Up Father]. He ghosted the strip for many years and eventually took it over and you couldn’t tell any difference. CBA: Did he do cartoons for advertising? Dave: Yeah, he had offices in Beverly Hills and was obviously quite successful. He was right on Wilshire Boulevard. I met Ploog at Russ’s, when he came in to do a few Tarzan stories. CBA: What was Ploog like? Dave: I remember him as a great big bear of a guy, I liked him a lot. Very easy going. Russ had a problem with his interpretation of Tarzan, though. So, he redrew almost every single panel Mike had drawn! I was inking Mike’s story, which was a “cowboys in Pellucidar” scenario; roping dinosaurs for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and Mike had done a great job on it. But Russ really took issue with the fact that it was a noticeably different version of Tarzan. I thought it was terrific, but it definitely wasn’t Russ’s Tarzan! CBA: So none of that exists anymore? Dave: Oh, it was published. It was done for the European market. These were stand-alone stories. Alex Niño did one or two, Dan Spiegle, and Wildey… CBA: Was it all black-&-white? Dave: No, they were color books. Mike Royer did a couple… CBA: Did you know Bill Stout from early days? Dave: Yeah, I met Bill at an LA mini-con in ‘72 or ‘73 but I had known of him from the fanzines. He’d contributed to a couple of ’zines that I was in—’Nuff Said, The Sentinel, The Collector… CBA: Did you see any progression in your abilities in the early ‘70s? Dave: Only in the inking. During my time with Russ, there was a marked improvement especially with the weight of lines and understanding shapes and gravity. There was some good growth there, but my drafting skills were still very weak. I felt for years that I just didn’t have the chops for penciling. I would occasionally take a night class in life drawing, but if I’d been smart, I’d have been doing that all along. CBA: Russ had the Tarzan strip until? Dave: 1979, I think, then he started the Star Wars strip, immediately after. CBA: Did he take over from Al Williamson? Dave: Oh no, he kicked it off. He was the first artist on it. In fact I believe he quit Tarzan because he wanted that feature. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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CBA: Was Russ satisfied with his life in comics? Dave: I think so. He’d found his niche and seemed quite happy. CBA: He seemed to have his own little world. Dave: Yeah, and it was completely his and he had no challengers. That strip was his for as long as he wanted it. CBA: Did you enjoy it when it went over into the fantastic? Dave: Dinosaurs and giant bugs… what’s not to like? CBA: Did Russ bring you over to Star Wars with him? Dave: Nope, I really had no involvement on that one. Rick Hoberg was assisting him by that time. CBA: Well, because I saw some inking… Dave: That was later, when his health started to fail in 1980. He just wasn’t able to do the work, so Rick and I were asked to ghost about four weeks of dailies and two Sundays, mid-Summer, and it was pretty apparent by that fall, that Russ was in a bad way. CBA: So you were troubleshooting for him? Dave: He requested us. And of course, we both wanted to help out. CBA: When did he pass away? Dave: 1981 or ‘82. Stomach cancer, I think. It was very sad, because he’d always been so robust and vital, and was a great guy. CBA: Was he happy for your success? Dave: Oh, sure. He kept in touch and knew I’d been working in film and animation. I’m sure he took a certain pride in knowing that he’d broken me of some bad habits early on! He was a good teacher and a good man. CBA: His work really looks better as time goes on. It’s so solid. Dave: Yeah, and he was really helpful in getting quite a few of us started. Mike Royer, Bill Stout, myself, Hoberg. He was good at spotting potential. CBA: Was Mike Royer his first assistant? Dave: I think so. He went to work for Russ in ‘68, I think. CBA: There was another older person in the early part of your career, Doug Wildey. When did you first meet him? Dave: Probably 1976, at the first CAPS—Comic Artists Professional Society—meeting in LA. John Pound and I had driven up from San Diego to attend, and it was a Who’s Who of comic artists on the West Coast. It was impressive. Alex Toth was there, Russell Myers, Sergio, a lot of animators. Everyone who was anyone was there, it was a big boy’s club. They would have talks on the state of comics and tips on this or that and they had monthly meetings and a newsletter, you paid dues and had a membership card. I think it still exists today. Anyway, I met Doug there, but I didn’t have much interaction with him. I remembered his signature from the old Jonny Quest show in 1963, because I watched every week. It was very realistically done for those days, like illustrations that moved. Lots of mood and beautifully designed. The characters were drawn as real kids, not cartoon kids. It was like a live action adventure show. Very ambitious. CBA: Except for that damn dog! Dave: Yeah, well, Doug didn’t like the dog either. Doug had designed an ocelot instead, but Joe Barbera said, “No, no, it’s got to be a dog, a funny little dog, like this.” [laughs] Doug hated drawing Bandit. Anyway, I remembered him as the guy responsible for that show and I was so impressed that he was there for that meeting. I was a bit intimidated too, because he could be a very loud, crusty, salty guy. November 2001

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CBA: Barking? Dave: Well, yeah, but it was all bark, no bite, really. He was really a gentle guy once you got to know him but he liked using that bluster. He liked to put you on with it, but he often would rub people the wrong way. He and Toth were always circling each other. [chuckles] There was a grudging admiration, of course. Doug thought the world of Alex and I think Alex mostly just tolerated Doug’s mouthy persona. CBA: Was Doug very opinionated? Dave: Oh, yeah. He wasn’t afraid to mix it up with people. He was a fun guy to have in the room because you never knew what would come out of his mouth next! He was a character, but I didn’t get to know him, like I said, until I went to work for him. This was in the Spring of 1978. He was putting together a crew for a new show at Hanna-Barbera and I thought, “Great! Another Jonny Quest!” I don’t remember my interview at all but he hired me on the spot. I think I was the first of the younger guys that he hired. The rest of the team had been there for years. Guys like Moe Gollub, Jack Manning, Owen Fitzgerald, Dan Noonan. Guys who really knew their stuff and had worked with him on Quest. The rest of the studio referred to us as Wildey’s Commandos or the Dirty Dozen. CBA: But the show wasn’t another Quest? Dave: No, it was an awful Godzilla kiddie project! Doug did what little he could with it but the networks were killing him with censorship and wanting to sweeten it up. Godzilla ended up looking like a big dog—not anything like a prehistoric monster. CBA: What was your opinion of all that Action for Children’s Television stuff? Dave: Oh, I hated it. We grew up with extremely violent, silly cartoons and nothing snapped in us. We didn’t turn into axe murderers. CBA: Not yet! Dave: [laughs] Yeah… but what really got to me was the way they daily nitpicked him to death! Every little thing. You couldn’t even have a gun out of a holster on a security guard. It had to stay in the holster. He couldn’t draw his gun. No punches could connect, no violence, period. And no “bodily fluids,” not even tears! CBA: No body fluids? Not even a tear? Dave: Nothing. If somebody got cut, it was cut out, so you had to get really creative and Doug just hated the restrictions. CBA: Is there anything you can look back at in the Godzilla series as a good experience? Dave: I learned a lot about the process of animation and storyboarding, layout and character design. Doug really just turned me loose. He would give me boards to take home at night to do. He’d give me character models to design. He let me design Godzilla because they rejected his and he just said, “Here, you try it.” We ended up with a very watered down version of what I gave them as a character, but none of us liked it. CBA: Was Mike Sekowsky around? Dave: He came in about a year later, in 1979. He and I really took the piss out of each other, daily. It was deadly. CBA: He busted your balls? Dave: Yeah, but only because he loved me! [laughs] Sekowsky was this great, hulking golem; grumbling, depressed, and always kvetching, but he’d do it in such a hysterical way that he’d have everybody in stitches. This guy had a razor-sharp tongue, and wit to match, but he was so quiet that you’d barely hear it. Some exec would come by and pontificate or pop off and Sekowsky, under his breath, would just lay the guy to waste, and no one would hear it but you. He would do daily cartoons of a lot of us and post them in the hallways. He loved zeroing in on me. And they were filthy! He’d go to great lengths to 21

Above: Dave executed a memorable run of covers for Eclipse in the mid-1980s with perhaps Crossfire #12, featuring the artist’s spot on rendition of Marilyn Monroe, being the best remembered. Here are two preliminary layouts and the final inked job, courtesy of the artist. Crossfire ©2001 Mark Evanier. Art ©2001 Dave Stevens.

Xerox and post them everywhere, before I got in each morning. I’ve still got a big stack of them, inches thick. They were just the rudest things. Anything that I liked, he would seize on it and turn it around into some sick, grotesque cartoon! [laughs] So every morning, I’d be running through the building, tearing these things off the walls before anybody got there. Mike would stand by, chuckling… I’d open the Xerox machine later in the day and he’d have them taped to the lid! He was relentless! CBA: [laughs] Why did he tease you so? Dave: I think because I rose to the bait so well. He couldn’t tease anybody else the same way. I think it gave him great pleasure, having a daily target! I know it did. CBA: And you were just this punk kid? Dave: Yeah, it was because I was the youngest guy there. And then when Heath came in, he started doing the same thing! Only Russ was brutal. His stuff wasn’t even funny! It was just crude! [laughs] I still have some of those, too. CBA: Were they penciled? Dave: Mostly. Mike would start drawing and never draw a false line until he was done. Same with Russ. They never erased. Word balloons, foul dialogue, and everything. CBA: Did you like Mike? Dave: Of course. We worked in the same cubicle together. They moved us around like pegs because they didn’t like the fact that we got so clannish and comfortable. They were always trying to break up Wildey’s team and other producers on other shows were always trying to steal us away. CBA: That’s anti-creative, isn’t it? Dave: Yeah, but that’s the politics of studios. Doug always had the best team. He knew to hire the best guys. CBA: Who else was on the team? Dave: Tony Segroi, Moe Gollub, Dave Hannan, Don

Morgan, Don Rico, Russ, Mike, Rick Hoberg. A bunch of guys you wouldn’t know, who had worked for Western and Dell. And then we had the voice actors: guys like Ted Cassidy were walking through the halls. I remember shaking hands with him and my hand just disappeared up to my arm in his. He provided Godzilla’s roar. We also had the guy who originally did the voice of Popeye, Jack Mercer, and he’d do it for you. And Tex Avery came in and did some work for a while and I just loved him. Great, sweet, little guy, though not in the best of health by then. But boy, what a wit. And he’d do Droopy. He’d just drop into it. “Hello, Dave.” [in Droopy voice] It would just tear you up! [laughs] That was what we came to work for—every day. It was a joy to be there, working with talents like those, in spite of the higher-ups and the junk we were working on. CBA: Did it feel like an enormous waste of talent? Dave: Incredibly so, because there were guys there from the old Terrytoons studios and the Fleischer studio. There were some Disney artists there as well. Some amazingly talented people and they were working on absolute crap. CBA: Were you learning presentation in animation? Dave: Yeah, and the mechanics of storyboarding, camera moves, cutting, and such. That was where Doug really sat me down and gave me some great, invaluable instruction. CBA: Except for some of the fan drawings you had done in the ‘70s, you were not really known at the time? Dave: No, not at all. I was just an anonymous wrist. CBA: Yet, Pacific Comics, when they got together, lined up some dynamite talent. Jack Kirby, the King of Comics, was there at the beginning. Dave: That was primarily because they gave him total carté blanche, to do exactly what he wanted, with no interference. That was the deal. CBA: But you, a virtual unknown in the field, were there, too! Dave: I came into Pacific Comics right after Jack had done his first issue of Captain Victory and Mike Grell had done his first issue of Starslayer. The only reason I was even approached was because Grell’s second issue was shy a few pages and they had to fill those pages with something and they knew that I drew… CBA: Did you frequent the Schanes brothers’ store? Dave: Yeah, I was a customer when I lived in San Diego, five years earlier. So, at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1981, they made the offer: “Do whatever you want, but we need two installments of six pages.” So I said I’d see what I could come up with and went home and started kicking around some ideas. CBA: Did they seek you out or was this a casual conversation? Dave: Just a casual conversation. I think they were trying to decide COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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how best to fill that spot and I was around, so either Steve or Bill mentioned it to me. I really didn’t regard it as anything important at the time; just “filler” material. CBA: Was this your first solo comics work? Dave: No, I had done “Aurora” in 1977, so that was the first solo work. It was for Sanrio Publishing in Japan, so it wasn’t planned to see print here in the States. They had specifically asked me to do it à là Heavy Metal. They wanted it done in Moebius’ style (which is why it’s so over-rendered, compared to my usual approach). But, in the case of Pacific, the Schaneses just told me to bring them something and left it entirely up to me. So, I came up with a promo drawing (which was also used as the first back cover), and wrote it around that image. CBA: Did you come up with the name from the old serial, The Rocketman? Dave: It was my own personal homage to Commando Cody and all the other serial heroes of that era. I’d always been a huge fan of the serials. I loved all those edge-of-your-seat, cliff-hanging chapter plays. CBA: Specifically the Republic stuff? Dave: No, all of it! Even some of the bad ones. CBA: The Sam Katzman Columbia stuff? Dave: Sure. And, I’d always loved the idea of a guy flying like a bird, with just a combustible contraption strapped to his back. The image really appealed to me. But I didn’t want to be stuck doing an exact replication of the serials, with Martians, death-rays, etc. That wasn’t the quite the approach I wanted to take. I wanted to do a real period aviation strip, but with one small element of sciencefiction added: The rocket-pack! So I came up with the outfit and the name. You know, a funny take on the word, racketeer, “The Rocketeer.” I thought it sounded catchy and the drawing seemed to work. I showed it to a couple of friends and they liked it, so I went ahead with it. I thumbnailed around a bit and came up with a threadbare story that didn’t have a whole lot to it, but it was only intended to be filler material. So I just had fun with it. The Schaneses liked it, but nobody made a big deal about it. Well, by the time the second installment came out, it was suddenly a very big deal, because Pacific had gotten a ton of mail over it! CBA: I remember the first time I picked up Pacific Presents #2, going, “Who is this guy?” You came out of nowhere… Dave: In the first issue of Starslayer, they ran a full page ad: “Coming next issue,” so by the time the character appeared, it had already gotten some buzz and people really responded to it. By the time the second chapter came out, Pacific was getting a lot of calls and the immediate thought was that they had a potential cash cow. November 2001

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CBA: Did you do your own lettering? Dave: Yeah, I did everything. I enjoyed doing everything. It was a challenge. CBA: Did you read a lot of Doc Savage and Shadow pulps? Dave: I read a lot of them when I was still in high school. I particularly liked The Shadow. I thought the writing was actually quite good. CBA: Did you enjoy them? Dave: Oh, yeah. But, after I’d read a dozen or so Doc Savages, I thought to myself, “Gee, these are becoming pretty repetitive. But, it was formula pulp-writing. I did like Doc Savage for the character interaction of Monk and Ham. I enjoyed the humor, and the exotic locales, the bizarre situations that they found themselves in. But I preferred The Shadow because it was more realistic, hard-edged, urban crime fiction. With that slight supernatural twist. Very compelling stuff. CBA: Do you think that if Pacific had attached more importance to the back-ups that you would have come up with something different? Dave: I doubt it. I probably would have come up with something at least similar, because I had already done the spoof cover for Bettie Page Comics the year before (in 1980) as a portfolio piece for myself, just for fun with no intention of ever developing it. I’d been playing around with her image for quite a few years prior, just to see how it might look if I ever got the opportunity to do a comic book cover. Obviously, the 1930s was visually the era of choice, for personal taste. The music, clothing styles, the cars… all of that stuff. I’d surrounded myself

Above: As a favor to his friend, writer/editor/artist Bruce Jones, Dave gave permission for his “Aurora” short story to appear in Alien Worlds #2, and the artist also drew a spiffy new cover to boot! Above are his thumbnail (left) and pencil rough. Below is the final cover image. Courtesy of and ©2001 Dave Stevens.

Below: Our hero takes on his rival Marco during unpublished panels from the initial installment of “Cliff’s New York Adventure” in The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine #1. Courtesy of and ©2001 Dave Stevens.

with it all my life. I remember seeing It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World when it opened in Hollywood at the Cinerama dome, and at that time, Old Hollywood was still very much intact. And visually, magical to me—all spires, temples and palm trees—still potent. None of it had been touched, none of it had been bulldozed over yet for parking lots and high-rises. So, I wanted to show some of Old Hollywood in the strip, the kooky architecture. Things like the Bulldog Café. I just filled the strip with imagery that I loved as a kid. My aunt used to eat at the Bulldog. I carried around a kind of visual file in my head, of images and people—Doug Wildey, of course, ended up being the crotchety sidekick, Peevy. I hadn’t even intended to do that, it just happened. Betty just fell into the strip and Doug became Peevy. He didn’t know what to make of it at first. He thought I was making fun and taking shots. But, he quickly saw that

I was sincere about it, and so he actually helped me lay out some of the panel arrangements in the first chapter. CBA: Which panels? Dave: The inside the hanger sequence where they’re hiding the engine in the plane. CBA: Was that typical of Doug to help out? Dave: Absolutely. He wanted me to do the best job that I could. He wanted to help out to make it better. In the final scene, when we see Cliff take off for the first time, Doug gave me a better layout than I had. He said, “Y’know, you could do it like this—and use inserts, rather than just panel, panel, panel. You could do the whole aerial thing as inserts,” à là Kubert, and it worked beautifully. Then, he got more excited and wanted to write his own captions for me! I had to gracefully decline. [laughs] After a while he even started posing as well. I’d give him a cap and glasses. It was great fun for both of us! We had a ball. CBA: You mentioned that you had some candid pictures from those sessions. Dave: He really enjoyed it. Doug was a real ham for the camera— though he would never admit that to anyone! CBA: But he was there, smiling! Dave: Especially after he saw that people were really enjoying the strip and that the character was finding an audience. Because he was suddenly a fictional character! CBA: One aspect of Pacific was that it was famous for creatorowned comics. Did you get a certain profit margin off of sales? Dave: At the time it was a flat rate of $100-$150 per page for everything: Art, story, pencils, lettering, coloring, everything—“in COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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advance against royalties.” And, remember, it was still 1981. Plus, I never viewed it as a job, per se. It was just something I was doing for myself, on my off-hours from advertising. I wasn’t looking at it seriously in any financial sense at all. It was like… bus fare. CBA: But did it start generating money? Dave: No. It never really did for me because I didn’t choose to take it on full-time. I think Pacific expected me to immediately drop everything, hit the board [snaps fingers twice] and commit to it, totally—long term. I said, “Look, I want to do the best job that I can on this, but I already have regular work that pays me very well.” I knew that I couldn’t do comics as my life’s work. I found that out while assisting Russ Manning. It was just not for me. I didn’t have the temperament for one thing. The drudgery, long hours, and the repetition drove me nuts. I gave it a shot and tried to give them what they wanted in a reasonable amount of time but I just wasn’t able to. So, since Pacific couldn’t get a regular, monthly book out of me, they quickly created another character called Cliffhanger written by Bruce Jones and drawn by Al Williamson. Then they had another guy come in and do a book called Crash Ryan which was just a Rocketeer clone. It was strange to see what I’d done being almost copied in a sense by my own publisher trying to tap the same audience for quick sales. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised; that is the nature of publishing. I was too preoccupied with trying to figure out what I was doing, learning on the job, and it didn’t come as naturally to me as it did to a lot of guys—like Gilbert and Jaime—who do it as easily as breathing. I was learning as I did each chapter. How to flesh out the characters a bit more. Layouts, storytelling, spotting blacks… and at the core of it, I’m not a writer. The whole experience was very “seat of the pants” and totally unplanned. I wrote and drew it a page at a time. I’d just sit down and start page one with no idea where I was going! CBA: Not even vaguely? That Doc Savage was going to be in there?

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Dave: No. It just happened, it was sort of linear. You could make sense of it, but there were huge gaping holes all over the place. Coincidence after coincidence. That’s not good writing. CBA: So did you have a problem when you approached the collection? Dave: Nah. I really couldn’t worry about it that much. It was what it was. CBA: But you slipped in a couple of pages to flesh it out? Dave: Yeah. I tried to slip in a couple of bridges so that it felt less disjointed to me; flowed a bit better. But, if I thought about it too much I would have had to redraw and rewrite it entirely, from top to bottom. CBA: Are you generally satisfied with your work the way that it is? Dave: I’m definitely ready to move on after I finish each project. CBA: You don’t want to look at it again? Dave: No, it goes into a drawer and that’s where it stays. CBA: Are you highly critical of your own work? Dave: Well, I do expect a lot of myself. I’m a harsh critic because I know what I’m capable of. I have hit those occasional peaks amongst the valleys, but the peaks are so few— things like genuine flashes of virtuoso brush inking, like I’ve never executed before or since—I can count on one hand the number of jobs where I’ve been able to hit that mark. The same with penciling. Sometimes it just flows, but more often than not, it’s pure physical and spiritual torment just to get something decent on paper. I often get very discouraged with the whole creative process. CBA: What’s the most difficult aspect? Layout? Dave: No. Layouts can be fun, because it’s just arranging and problem-solving. Coming up with the concepts and characters is also fun. Visually styling a series is fun. What is pure, deadly drudgery is the detail and precision of penciling and inking. The inking is quicker, but only if you’ve got it all nailed down in the pencils first. Detail penciling is an absolute bore. I’d rather just lay it out and move on. I don’t ever want to do all that rendering and perspective, or backgrounds… or crowd scenes. Ack! CBA: And yet that was what you were doing. Dave: Yep, I locked myself into that illustrative style very early on

Top: “Monk” gives Betty a compliment in this panel from Pacific Presents #2. Above: Unused layout pencil rough for the same sequence, deemed too rude by Dave Stevens. Inset left: Dave’s pencil rough design for the cover of the first graphic novel collection. All images courtesy and ©2001 Dave Stevens.

Below: Disney publicity shot of Billy Campbell (left) and Dave Stevens admiring a “statue” of Charles “Lucky” Lindbergh on location in Santa Maria during the shooting of The Rocketeer in the early ’90s. Courtesy of Dave Stevens. ©1991 Disney Pictures.

without realizing it, but that was what I loved in other artists’ work. I loved seeing beautifully drawn planes and period cars. So, when I did it, I had to get the details right. If not, people wrote letters! If I made a mistake on the grill of a car or got the rag top wrong. One guy even dressed me down in public: “You’ve got two different GeeBees in here!” [laughs] They would catch me because obviously, they were aviation buffs. They knew the material and these were our readers, the people we were getting the letters from, you know? People my dad’s age! We weren’t getting letters from kids, that’s for sure! CBA: The older guys probably felt that you were their age. Dave: Yes! They thought I was an oldtimer, who’d been doing it for decades. CBA: That’s what I thought. When I first saw your work and then saw your photo, I didn’t think I was looking at the same person. It’s like the first time I learned that Crumb was only in his thirties; I thought this guy’s gotta be 60-years-old and just off his rocker. You were one who I thought would be a lot older than you turned out to be. Dave: The one really gratifying thing about the first installments was, after it first appeared in Starslayer, I got a hand-written letter from Mike Kaluta, who I’d only met once, a few years earlier and it was a fan letter, a rave. “Whatever you do, don’t stop!” It was great. That, from somebody whose work I respected tremendously. CBA: So, from then on, have you always been close with Mike? Dave: Yep. We’ve been great pals ever since, like Mutt ’n’ Jeff. In fact, he came out to LA to visit in 1983 and we hung out, solidifying the friendship. We had originally met in 1977, right after Star Wars was released (at the San Diego Con at the old El Cortez) and compared notes, because Lucas had darned near everyone working on that

film’s ad campaign. And we talked about The Shadow as well, but we hadn’t really connected as one artist to another. I was just another fan at the convention who appreciated his work. So, when I got that letter, it was like saying: “Welcome to the club!” Magic time. I also remember Steranko being in town and stopping by the studio. I had known Jim since about 1974, from doing conventions. He had always been really generous and supportive of my work for years prior, and he knew that I was doing this backup feature; I think we had talked about it. So he saw the first and second chapters and then we sat in an IHOP in Hollywood and talked about it all night. He says, “You know, Dave, I was very disappointed when I saw your “Betty” character. It’s a Frazetta girl. I wanted to see a Stevens girl.” I said, “But, Jim—it’s really Bettie Page, she’s not a Frazetta girl.” But he wasn’t buying it.“Yeah, but this blouse, Dave… come on!” Everybody jumped on the striped blouse because it was a Johnny Comet/Jean Fargo blouse and Frazetta had used that blouse repeatedly, in just about every other strip he ever did! I loved that blouse. It showed the form off, beautifully. I had to use it! Jim also had some interesting suggestions for Cliff’s uniform. He felt it should be more unified, have directional piping and gloves and look more like a complete costume. He objected a bit to the character’s selfish motives as well. He felt that Cliff should be more altruistic, more noble, more heroic. He thought that because of the trappings, he should be more gung-ho, all-American and not quite so self-serving and “small” as I had written him. I took notes and thought, “Okay, maybe I should re-think this.” But ultimately, I felt drawn to the character because of his flaws. He’s unstrung. He’s got faulty priorities. Only two things on his mind: to keep his girlfriend and to keep this amazing machine that he’s “found.” I was approaching it like here’s a guy who’s operating on the fringe, in a rag-tag air circus, barely scraping by. He gets an opportunity that literally drops in his lap and it’s during the Depression. What would you do? You’d maybe try to make a quick buck before turning it in, and impress your sometime-girlfriend! I also gave him the viewpoint of one of those prop-jockeys who knew that every time he went up in the air, he could end up crashing, and he just didn’t care. So I had to keep in mind that he’s a bit of nut, and only a hero by default. He’s just a down-and-out flyer who’s hooked on adrenaline, got major girl troubles, no real prospects, and let’s just see what he makes of this. That, to me, was much more appealing than the tried-and-true hero archetype. CBA: Pretty soon thereafter you were doing a ton of covers for Eclipse. Dave: That just followed a course already set in place before Pacific went under. I guess it started when Bruce Jones had come on board and was producing Alien Worlds. He was only two issues in and some artist had just flaked on him for 12 pages. He had seen “Aurora” and asked if he could use it in a pinch. So, I let him doctor it and rescript it. And I created a new cover for the issue. CBA: Because the rights were owned by you? Dave: Yes, the rights had reverted to me a couple of years earlier, but I had no plans to ever run it in the States. I thought it was pretty stiff, stilted. CBA: So did Bruce rescript it? Dave: Yeah. At this point, looking back at it, I probably should have just left it alone. Not that he did anything wrong; it was just a completely different tone. Anyway, when it came out, apparently the cover really sold the issue, so they asked me to do the next cover as well, and ink the feature story, “Princess Pam.” After that, I sort of became the “cover guy.” Whatever titles they had that really needed a good launch, I did the cover art for. CBA: Was it a good rate for the covers? Dave: I think so. Somewhere between $300 and $500 for an inked drawing. So, I kept doing covers, along with my own feature. By Summer of 1984, they wanted cover art for a Sheena 3-D book, and although nobody knew it at the time, the company would be bankrupt within a couple of months. I remember I had just finished the last issue of Rocketeer, handed it in, then did the Sheena cover. And I waited and never heard anything. So I called and reminded them I hadn’t gotten the original art back yet. There was a hesitation on the other end of the line and it turned out that the original had “disappeared” from the offices the day it was shot, and it’s never been seen since. Someone there had decided to take home a bonus! COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Boy, that one hurt. I was crushed, because I felt it was my best work to date, and I didn’t even have a negative of it. Anyway, they did a quick fade right after that, within a matter of weeks, they were basically gone as a publishing entity. So, even though I did a lot of covers for Eclipse, Pacific was really the starting point for all that. I had no idea that I’d be any good as a cover artist or that anyone would want to see me drawing girls before then. What a concept! CBA: You did that great Crossfire cover. Dave: That was for Mark Evanier, he recruited me because he thought I’d enjoy drawing Marilyn Monroe. It just worked out well. CBA: Then you pretty much abruptly stopped doing covers? Dave: I must have done about a dozen for Eclipse but the last eight or so were to buy my way out of my contract with them because I wanted to take The Rocketeer elsewhere. They had the first rights to any new Rocketeer material. CBA: So you signed what you consider now to be a bad deal? Dave: Just a sloppy deal. And over the months, I found Dean Mullaney to be someone that I could no longer work for. Comico was just coming into their own and they made me an offer that I could live with, so I ended up giving Eclipse the rights to eight new covers—reprints and poster rights for a period of time. CBA: Were you ever privy to any kind of sales figures to issues that featured your covers? Dave: I probably was, but it didn’t mean that much to me at the time. I knew that they made money and that was why I generally never granted any other rights beyond that first usage. And I started producing my own posters of those images soon after. CBA: Did you care for Airboy Comics as a title? Dave: Not particularly, I liked the original Valkyrie and the Airmaidens as characters and I liked some of the old artists that worked on it, guys like Bob Fuji. I’m told that the revival issue that I worked on, #5, is very hard to find these days. CBA: I have that poster on my office wall. Dave: [laughs] But again, the “good girl” art was something that just happened. I wasn’t intentionally trying to revive it. I genuinely missed the old Fiction House look, and Quality—I just loved those great covers. Girls riding airplanes and rockets, all that nonsense. It was great fun, and they were so well-drawn and so unabashed in tone that I wanted to try and bring some of that feeling to the covers I was doing. It was a personal challenge for me. I got a lot of satisfaction from doing those, trying to make each one better. Then, I noticed other publishers starting to feature girl art on their covers, as well. A lot of guys were suddenly drawing Betty Page or Betty-type characters. I thought, “Jeez, I had this territory staked out in my own strip, but I don’t own this likeness and I can’t claim to own it because it’s based ultimately on a real person, so what do you do?” CBA: But you established a relationship with the real Bettie Page, didn’t you? Dave: Yeah, but that was something that came about after she re-emerged to do an interview in a Tennessee newspaper. They ran a story about her on the TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I got a phone number for her brother, Jack Page, who was in Nashville, and I wrote him a letter and sent a check for him to pass along to her. I told him that I used her likeness as a supporting character in a comic and I definitely felt like I owed her something and I wanted to make sure that she got some money because I had no idea what kind of financial shape she was in. This was in 1992. CBA: Was Bettie aware of your appropriation? Dave: No, totally unaware. You know, she was in her seventies and most women her age don’t buy comic books! [laughs] They don’t frequent comic book shops. CBA: Certainly there was a resurgence in interest in Bettie in the ’80s that was spawned by the Rocketeer, right? Dave: Yeah. But again, she was out of the loop completely and never caught wind of any of it until 1992 or ’93. CBA: Did you get to meet her? Dave: Not right then because she had management attached to her almost immediately. It took another year to meet her, and it was right after the LA earthquake in January of 1994. She had to do a signing of some Robert Blue art prints and needed a ride because she didn’t drive. So I was volunteered. And that was my first meeting with Bettie and it was pretty profound. November 2001

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Above: Interestingly, two of comicdom’s finest artists did their renditions of The Rocketeer for Disney’s comic book film adaptations in 1991. Here is a detail of Neal Adams & Continuity’s version for the 3-D comic. Courtesy of Glen Southwick. ©2001 The Walt Disney Company.

Below: For the four-color comic edition adapting The Rocketeer film, artist legend Russ Heath worked with scripter Peter David, art director Mike Royer and editor Len Wein. Courtesy of Glen Southwick. ©2001 The Walt Disney Company.

CBA: Did she like the work? Dave: Oh, yeah, it was all new to her. She’d never heard of it, but she thought it was funny and cute. She got a big kick out of it. CBA: Was there any consideration to use an actress that looked like her for the motion picture? Dave: Well, the problem with the film version of The Rocketeer was that it ended up at Disney and they wanted nothing to do with a female character that was based on a real person for rights reasons. Plus it was a very sexy character and Bettie Page had really caught on in pop culture before we even got into pre-production. So they immediately called for changes in the character. We were still calling her Betty in the first few versions of the script, but by the time we were shooting, the name and appearance had changed, and she wasn’t Betty anymore. CBA: Is she still around? Dave: The real Bettie? Of course! She just turned 79—she’s determined to see 100 and she’s stubborn enough that I’m sure she will. She’s a real ball of fire. I really admire her. She’s been through a lot and still has tremendous faith in humanity. She likes to take people at face value which, in this day and age, is a rare and often dangerous thing. CBA: At what point when you were doing the original story did you consider putting together a graphic novel? Dave: Ah, I don’t remember. The first two filler chapters were just that. Then I did two more installments for Pacific Presents, or maybe three… Pacific didn’t last long enough to publish the final issue and [Rocketeer Special Edition] was picked up by Eclipse and it may have been them suggesting that we combine that issue with the previous material and call it a graphic novel. CBA: Did you chomp at the bit to do that? Did you want to tweak it a little bit? Dave: Yeah. I didn’t want to redraw any of it because I felt that it should stand as it was, but there were a few things that I added here and there to sweeten it and then recolored it. It was nice to have it in

a complete package… and I do remember now, that other publishers had approached me about collecting it. So it wasn’t just Eclipse. CBA: Can you recall specifically what you added? Dave: Oh, a two- or three-page intro, just introducing Cliff and setting the tone for the thing and an occasional added page or expanded page here and there. Not much at all, really. CBA: And you credited Jaime as “Hurricane” Hernandez in there… Dave: [laughs] He came down and spent the weekend at the house, just goofing around, while I was working on the revisions for the graphic novel and I said, “Here, do a couple of these for me!” So he sat down and took a couple of my layouts and did finished pencils on a couple of pages and I think he laid out a page or two and I finished them. Just kind of a give and take that artists do whenever they visit each other. And the results were great. CBA: Did you have a long-lasting relationship with the Hernandez brothers? Dave: Yeah, we met in ’83, at my old studio on La Brea. Bill Marks, the publisher of Mister X and Vortex brought them by one night and we hadn’t previously met, so I guess he kind of used them as bait to get into the studio. We became fast friends and have been ever since. We still get together for breakfast once a week at a local diner. CBA: So you admire their work? Dave: Oh, absolutely. I have from the very beginning. I bought the very first black-&-white issue of Love and Rockets that they self-published. Yeah, I was aware of their work right away and thought it was some of the best being done at the time. Really rich, juicy, character-driven stuff and really fun. CBA: Would you consider Russ Manning an influence on your artistic style? Dave: Not so much, but in terms of ethics and practical working methods, yes, absolutely. CBA: Who would you call your biggest artistic influence? Dave: For comics influence, it would probably be Steranko. Along with him, Frazetta, John Buscema, Eisner, Kubert, Wood, an assortment of the guys that most young artists liked, but primarily Steranko. CBA: I can see a sweetness, a humanitarianism to your work. Dave: That’s just me, I guess. I like quirkiness and whimsy. I like getting into the faces and spirits of characters as I draw them. I enjoy animating a figure or a face with expressiveness, joy, sadness. CBA: As bodacious as you draw women, it’s the eyes that are always the center of attention. It’s the eyes that draw you in. Dave: Again, that’s where my interest lies. I want to know who that person is. It’s not just a body to me. The face is where everything happens. CBA: Were you the model for Cliff Secord? Dave: Not originally. Initially he was a red-haired, freckle-faced guy that I just made up. A real character face. Almost a Sterling Hollaway type. Not quite so adam’s applish, but a bit of a hayseed. I just couldn’t find anyone who looked like that to pose for me. So, out of necessity, because I was doing this stuff on the fly, at night between my commercial jobs, I just had to resort to using a mirror or winging it. The need for speed was there and I just had to get it done. CBA: Do you use photography? Dave: Not initially, and I only did, I think, by the last chapter because I found that I really needed good reference for cars and planes and lighting. So I went around and tried to either shoot or find good photos with information that I could use. Then I did start to shoot some of the good girl covers that I was doing, again, to give me accurate information on drapes, folds, and things like that. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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CBA: But did you use people as models? Was that live or photographs? Dave: A combination of both. Initially, I just tried to make do with my pre-existing scrap files that I had. But when I started doing covers that were designed, I had to do custom shoots with models and that happened pretty quickly. It was fun for everybody. I met a couple of models that I used for several years after that, on a fairly regular basis. CBA: I just got a package from Scott Saavedra and he showed a couple of the panels from the graphic novel and noted, “I was the model for that arm!” [laughter] So I guess you just used whoever you could? Dave: Yeah, pretty much. It’s long ago and hard to remember. We just tried to do the best we could in the time we had. CBA: Was the graphic novel the first time you used art assistants? Dave: No, because I shared a studio with Bill Stout and Richard Hescox from 1980-85, so the whole time I was doing that first series, there were artists around always, coming to visit or sitting around yakking. I remember Hescox roughed out one or two panels. Russ Heath penciled one or two planes for me, just little shots, not full page things. CBA: There was an introduction in the Rocketeer Special Edition [Eclipse, 1984] by Mark Evanier teasing you about how late you were with the book. Dave: [laughs] Mark has known me since 1973 and he enjoys taking the occasional shot, but it’s good-natured. I had asked him to write something for that final Pacific issue (once Eclipse had picked it up), as he’d done for Groo, because both books had sat in the shelf for months during Pacific’s bankruptcy. I felt a humorous explanation was appropriate to let readers know what’d happened. CBA: Was there a lot of criticism of your taking a lot of time completing each issue? Dave: Not initially, because the first installments were done very November 2001

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quickly. The problems came when Pacific insisted on immediately scheduling The Rocketeer as a bi-monthly series. So right away, I got that reputation of being somebody who was either extremely lazy or completely incompetent. As I said earlier, I just had too many other gigs going on at the same time. I was doing storyboards, ad art for films, development art, toy packaging. I had quite a full plate for about five or six years straight. As much time as I tried to give to the comic, it was never enough to put it on any kind of a realistic schedule. So I would plead with them. “Wait until you get the issue in and then schedule it.” But, for solicitation purposes alone, that just never worked. CBA: Obviously, The Rocketeer jumped from company to company for some time. Dave: Only because the companies kept dying! [laughter] CBA: Were you privy at all to why Pacific went under? Dave: At the time, I remember that it just kind of imploded, with a whimper. Apparently, they’d been in trouble financially for some time, because they’d overextended themselves. CBA: Pacific was one publisher that really jump-started the independent movement. It seems a shame. Dave: Well, they tried to become a major player too fast and just didn’t have the experience or the resources to back it up. CBA: That seems to be a continuing syndrome. Do you think that Eclipse suffered from the same problem? Dave: Well, Eclipse suffered an act of God—a major flood! That’s what did them in, I think, more than anything else. I don’t believe they ever quite recovered after that. CBA: You did the Rocketeer Special Edition with Eclipse and that was it? Dave: That, and the softcover collection. CBA: But you did a number of covers for Eclipse as well? Dave: Yeah, but as I said, that was to buy my freedom. CBA: Why Comico?

Above: Sandy Plunkett, whose achievements are celebrated in this very issue, assisted Dave Stevens on some episodes of The Rocketeer and also contributed the above pin-up to The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine #3. Courtesy of Sandy Plunkett. The Rocketeer ©2001 Dave Stevens. Art ©2001 Sandy Plunkett.

Dave: I liked the staff and they had decent production values. They were offering good distribution, good color, and a free hand so it seemed like a good move at the time. CBA: No hassles about scheduling? Dave: Well, Bob Schreck was working for them and we’d known each other for a number of years. He and I agreed that I would do three complete issues before they published the first one. I believe that’s how it went. There were to be six issues total and then they’d collect them as a second graphic novel. But as you may recall, they published the first issue and just as the second issue was at press, they went bust! So there we went again—publisher number three! CBA: Rocketeer Adventure Magazine was a projected six-issue series? Dave: Yeah. CBA: But you only went for three? Dave: Well, they were only physically able to get two out before they folded. The third issue was nearly finished, but unfortunately for me, Comico had (in their bankruptcy proceedings) declared Rocketeer Adventure Magazine as one of their assets which they absolutely did not own. But the “entrepreneur” who came in and assumed all their properties claimed that he owned it and actually solicited for that third issue and beyond, without even contacting me to find out where I stood. I didn’t want to get involved in a lengthy, legal tug-of-war with the guy, so I just put the book away. During that time, I was knee-deep in development on the film anyway, so there was more than enough keeping me occupied, regardless. But, that third book literally sat in a drawer for several years until he finally stopped publishing and went away. CBA: But eventually Rocketeer Adventure Magazine went for three issues, right? Dave: Right. The third was published by Dark Horse in 1995. CBA: So what about the other three installments? Dave: They’d been scripted, but Dark Horse felt that it was too costly a book for them to make profitable, so they weren’t interested in doing any more. Unless I’d be willing to run it in black-&-white, but since I wasn’t—I’d always thought of it as a color series—they passed. CBA: So we could have had three more Rocketeer stories? Dave: Sure, still could. CBA: We’re not even going to get one more Rocketeer story, are we? Dave: Well, there was a scripted three-issue mini-series that I pitched to DC about three years ago, but they weren’t crazy about it because it involved Superman of 1938, and they wanted some major revisions to the storyline and I felt it was good as it was. So, unfortunately, that never went forward either. Too bad for the readers, it would’ve been a fun story to do. CBA: Someone else would do the layouts and you did the finish work? Dave: At the time, I was going to have Kaluta do the breakdowns and I would finish the art. At this point, I’d probably still do the covers and splash pages, but just supervise the rest of it. I definitely would’ve overseen the entire thing to make sure it had the right look. That’s pretty crucial with a book like The Rocketeer. CBA: The second graphic album was produced after the Dark Horse issue?

Dave: Yeah, they collected the Comico issues and the one issue they published. There were some really sloppy production glitches on that collection that, unfortunately, I never got to fix. There were a couple pages that involved new panels that should have been stripped in, but only the dialogue was. Weird little glitches like that, that no one caught. CBA: Was The Rocketeer a good seller? Dave: I recall that the Pacific issues sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 units, which I thought was a good number for 1982. CBA: It’s an incredible number today. Dave: But that’s only what I was told. I don’t know if that’s at all accurate. CBA: Do you ever check out the current value of those issues? Dave: Several of them are hard to find, but I think you can still buy them for pretty modest prices. CBA: Did the graphic novels go into multiple printings? Dave: The first one from Eclipse did and there were several pirated editions as well, that I wasn’t aware of until years later. CBA: Pirated editions? European? Dave: European and domestic. There were several printings of that book that I was never paid for. That’s still a pretty sore subject with me. As for the second collection [New York Adventure], it sold out, but Dark Horse has never printed a second edition. So, at present, I’m discussing repackaging both volumes with a new publisher, but no deal has been made yet. So, we’ll see. CBA: With new art? Dave: Of course, and new covers. CBA: Cool. You did some storyboard work for motion pictures? Dave: Here and there, but I really don’t care for it. It’s mostly all think-work; just a job. You don’t have to be able to draw well at all to do storyboards. And I’m more interested in putting my energies toward images that require a lot more skill and sensitivity. It’s a much more satisfying investment of my time and talents, these days. CBA: Though you worked on some notable pictures like Raiders of the Lost Ark, correct? Dave: Yeah, the first one. I also boarded Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, and there was a Godzilla in 3-D, a feature film that Steve Miner was developing with Doug Wildey and Bill Stout—it was actually Stout’s gig and Doug and I just helped out on it, with a lot of presentation boards. And I did lots of storyboards for television commercials in the ’70s. CBA: What did you do on Thriller? Dave: Shot-for-shot boards. CBA: For the entire video? Dave: Yeah. CBA: Did you get a chance to meet Jackson? Dave: I was only hired because Michael liked my work. If he hadn’t, there’s no way I would have gotten on. CBA: He liked The Rocketeer? Dave: I brought in my portfolio because John Landis had called and asked me to come in. He and I had known each other previously, and while I was there showing him what I had been working on, Michael stopped by and before I knew it he was on the floor, poring through the drawings on his hands and knees, like a little kid. He was more impressed with the more Disneyesque cartoon work I’d done because he loved animation. CBA: He’s not necessarily a comics fan? Dave: No, not really. CBA: Did you contribute any specific designs or was it all storyboards? Dave: All storyboards. John’s very descriptive, and he went through the whole thing with me in his office, shot-by-shot, so I knew what he wanted to see. CBA: Spielberg is known to use boards quite a lot, right? Dave: Oh, yeah. He’s very thorough. I went in to see him on Ron Cobb’s suggestion, just after Steven had completed 1941, which would have been Winter of ‘79. I think I was the first artist he hired for Raiders, and he had me do some large audition drawings of Indy in several key scenes from the script, so I got to style the character a bit. And that was fun. But, again, Steven loved the comics work. He liked the melodramatics of “Aurora” and whatever else I had in my COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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portfolio at the time. He felt I was a good draftsman and was good with characters, so he wanted me on board. It was a short stint— only a couple of months, but it was a good gig while it lasted! CBA: Do you stay in touch with celebrities you worked with? Dave: As much as possible, but this business promotes a kind of unspoken nomadic lifestyle and people tend to drift in and out of each other’s lives at random. We’re almost gypsies, in a way. You can live and work closely with someone for months at a time, then not see them for five or ten years! Then suddenly, you’re in a restaurant together and it’s as if no time has passed. It’s very strange. So some people I have kept in close contact with and others I just see whenever we work together or bump into each other. CBA: Do you still like Hollywood? Dave: Well, it’s a love/hate relationship. I live here. I work here. I’m a big fan of good storytelling and I admire anyone who can spin a good yarn whether it’s on celluloid or paper. So I enjoy the opportunity to work with these guys whenever it comes up. But, the business end of it you can have! CBA: In a perfect world, would you like to be a film director? Dave: In a perfect world, yeah. In the real world, no way. CBA: So you’re still avidly interested in film? Dave: Always will be. It’s the perfect blend of ideas and imagery. CBA: When did the idea of The Rocketeer as a motion picture begin to gel? Dave: Well, believe it or not, from the first character sketches. I always viewed it in my mind’s eye as a film. I never really looked at it as just words and pictures on paper. I saw it and I heard it in my head. So for me, it was always a film. There was never any real big jump there. But, in terms of other people getting involved, Steve Miner was the first to option the property in ’83, and after that, it was in and out of development with different players for the next seven years, until we finally got a green light. CBA: Is there any connection in your mind there that if Raiders is a retro project, why not The Rocketeer? Dave: People have suggested that and while it may sound a bit disingenuous of me to say so now, I never thought of it as the same kind of animal at all. CBA: Did you ever pitch Marvel or DC in an attempt to get work? Dave: Oh, sure. I had tried to get work through Roy Thomas and Mike Friedrich at different times. In fact, Neal Adams had talked to me as early as 1973, at the San Diego Con, and told me that I could make it as an inker then, and tried to hook me up at Marvel. But, at that time, Marvel was having a real work shortage and couldn’t feed their own people enough, so there was no way they were going to send anything out West. I’d had a couple of phone conversations with John Romita Sr., who was art director at the time, and he was very nice, very apologetic, but said essentially that their own employees came first. He said he’d try and do what he could to get me a Western cover to do, but it never worked out. CBA: You didn’t have any work appear in comic books in the States during the ‘70s? Dave: No, no. I helped out occasionally on other artists’ jobs in emergencies, if someone had a deadline and needed a hand. I worked on an early issue of Star Wars before the film came out. Howard Chaykin had done the layouts and the finishes were being done by Rick Hoberg. I inked a few odd pages, just things like that. CBA: Why were the pages out West? Dave: I don’t really remember. CBA: Because Roy Thomas might have been out West? Dave: Probably. I remember that Chaykin was doing the layouts and Steve Leialoha had been doing the finishes. So it may have been for expediency in getting approvals from Lucas. I don’t know. CBA: Did you get to see an early cut of Star Wars? Dave: Interestingly enough, I was on the set when they were filming the final Death Star scenes at Industrial Light & Magic while they were still in a little warehouse in Van Nuys. And that was… what? January of 1976? Something like that. I had gone up there to meet with Charlie Lippincott for some of the advertising art and had to show Lucas my samples. I didn’t get the gig, but they gave me the 50¢ tour and I got to watch some shooting. Incidentally, that was also where I first met Joe Johnston. Who knew that 15 years later, November 2001

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we’d be working together on a project of mine? Strange how things dovetail, huh? Anyway, he was doing boards for some final inserts they were shooting. Then Charlie took me up to the loft and put on a reel of about 10 minutes of highlights, which nobody had seen yet. Holy Moley! I think I was literally drooling by the time it was over! It was like nothing I’d ever seen before! That was visually brand new territory… CBA: Joe Johnston has directed some solid films, including yours! Dave: [laughs] We thought so! We thought we had a hit! CBA: Was he initially attached to the film? Dave: No, originally it was William Dear.

CBA: How did The Rocketeer become a film? Dave: Well, like I said, it went through several hands over the years. First Steve Miner for two years, then in ’85, I got together with the two writers, Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo and believed in them enough to give them a free option for as long as it took to sell it because I really felt they had the right sensibility for it; they came from the same roots as me. They understood what I was reaching for. Within that same year, we met Bill Dear, who was directing Harry and the Hendersons. In fact, Bill sought us out. So, again, another kindred spirit fell in as director and co-writer. Then we just started working on the story. We soon pitched it, literally, to every studio in

Above: A comic we’d all like to see: Mexican wrestler Santo’s own 10¢ title as envisioned by Dave Stevens in this recent fan commission. Courtesy of the artist. Santo ©2001 the respective copyright holder. Art ©2001 Dave Stevens.

Above: Dave Stevens (left) and Bernie Wrightson at Dave’s birthday bash earlier this year. Photo taken by Michael W. Kaluta. Courtesy of Dave Stevens. Below: Unpublished Satanika cover by Dave Stevens. Satanika ©2001 Glenn Danzig. Art ©2001 Dave Stevens. Courtesy of the artist.

town and they all passed on it. This was 1986, long before Batman or Dick Tracy or anything similar. In those days, no studio was interested at all in an expensive comic book movie. We got there about three years too early for our own good! CBA: What was your idea in the mid-’80s of what the budget would be? Dave: Well, at first, the guys and I were thinking of doing it ourselves, as a b-&-w independent, very low-budget, like the old serials. And just making it as fun and quirky as we wanted and loading it with great faces, character actors—and just having a ball. But once Bill Dear got attached, it instantly became much bigger and we started to think that maybe we can try something more ambitious here. Plus, once we started pitching to the studios, we quickly found that no one would even look at a project that cost less than $5,000,000. No one would even talk to us! [laughs] So, we had a lot of interesting meetings with executives who passed on it but gave us some good criticisms. The last studio on the list was Disney. They took one look at it, and said “toys!” So… that’s where we eventually made the deal. We originally signed on as a trilogy at Touchstone, the division of Disney doing more adult-themed films. CBA: Did you have the whole trilogy mapped out? Dave: Not yet, but we were working toward it... but as soon as we all signed on, [Disney executive Jeffrey] Katzenberg pulled a switch and said, “Nope, it’s going to be a Disney release, because Disney needs a live-action hit.” So immediately, Betty and anything else “adult” went right out with the bathwater. They really tried to shoehorn it into a kiddie property so they could sell toys. All they really wanted at the end of the day, was the name. CBA: Did you spark to that? Dave: Not right away. Hey, I thought it’d be great to have one or two merchandised items out there: a model of the Gee Bee, or a Rocketeer figurine, but Disney was looking to generate millions of dollars worth of stuff. That’s what they specialize in: Kiddie toys, plush dolls, apparel. So, when the film didn’t perform in the first couple of weeks like they’d anticipated it should, they lost faith in it, and just blew out all that merchandise to the Midwest. A lot of it was never even seen on the East or West coasts. It ended up in places like Pick ‘n’ Save and 99¢ stores. CBA: Did you have any say on the comic book merchandise that Russ Heath and Neal Adams worked on? Dave: Wherever I could I always suggested the best people I thought would be appropriate, and they listened. Because there were people in Disney publishing who I had known for years, so we agreed on most things.

CBA: Do you think that perhaps your relationship with some of the people within Disney kept some dignity to the project? Dave: Only in as many areas as I was allowed input. CBA: How much interactivity did you have with the actual filmmaking itself? Dave: Well, I was on the set day and night, from pre-production till post! And initially, I had to fight to prove that I was there for the benefit of the film, and not for my own ego. CBA: Besides the whole concept and plot, can you look at the film today and say, “This aspect is better because I was there on the set”? Dave: Oh definitely, quite a bit. But it was only through the good graces of Joe Johnston, along with Ian Bryce, our production manager, and a handful of key crew members that I was able to be involved in the process at all. CBA: Can you tell me a for instance? Dave: Well, certainly, the physical look of the film… I gave the production designer [Jim Bissell] and his two art directors my entire reference library—everything I had: Blueprints for hangers and bleachers, schematics for building the autogyro, photos and drawings of the Bulldog Café, field uniforms for the air circus staff, contacts for the vintage planes we’d need, including securing the Gee Bee itself. Virtually everything of the period I either had or knew where to find it. So they literally just took the reference and built the sets. I remember the helmet was a real problem at first. Disney wanted to change it completely. [Disney executive Michael] Eisner wanted a straight NASA-type helmet. They wanted to update the whole thing anyway, in the beginning. But fortunately for all of us, Joe told them that if they changed the helmet at all, then it was no longer The Rocketeer and he would not be interested in directing. He really stuck to his guns. So they acquiesced and tried to generate a couple of prototype helmets on their own and everyone thought they just looked terrible. I told Joe, “Look, let me get with my sculptor, give us a week and I promise we’ll come up with something you can shoot.” He thought about it for a second and said, “Okay.” That was a major leap of faith too, because we were right down to the wire, due to start shooting in days, and getting the helmet was crucial to the context of the film (not to mention the overall importance of it as a necessary visual to market the film)—it had to be perfect! There was no room for mistakes at all. So I immediately had a cast made of our main stuntman’s head, grabbed my good friend Kent Melton (who had already done the bronze Rocketeer statue) and we proceeded to brainstorm at his studio with my sketches and his expertise and came back with a helmet that really worked, from all angles. We brought it in, showed it to Joe and he smiled and said, “That’s definitely the comic book!” CBA: You said something one doesn’t often hear from people who have had their properties made into films, and that was that you were satisfied with 70% of the film. Dave: Yeah, definitely. That whole first flight sequence where he rescues Malcolm was right out of the comic, and what Joe did with it was breathtaking. I was so proud! And the overall spirit and sweetness of the series is still there, intact. We lost some good character stuff in editing for time, but the tone of it is still what I was trying to project in the comic pages. I also thought Joe’s casting choices were excellent. Eddie Jones’ portrayal of Malcolm was sublime! William Sanderson as Skeets, Ed Lauter, Jon Polito, all the rest of them; they gave great life to those characters. To his credit, Joe did not fill out the cast with a bunch of 90210 kids—Barbie and Ken types. Billy Campbell is a good-looking guy but he also happens to be Cliff! I would never have cast him based on good looks alone, but he came into the audition and just nailed it shut. He was made for it. The part was his. CBA: He did the job? Dave: Boy, did he! But, Joe really had to fight the studio for him, because understandably, they wanted a “name” actor. So Billy was a longshot in many respects, but he really came through, God bless him. I’m glad to see him finally re-emerging again, too. He’s had a good couple of seasons on TV, especially this past year! CBA: What’s he doing now? Dave: Once and Again with Sela Ward on ABC. He’s doing some terrific work. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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CBA: I saw him on [the Showcase mini-series] Tales of the City. Dave: Oh, yeah. He loves to be reminded of that! [laughs] He’s also just finished a film with Jennifer Lopez. He plays an absolutely wicked character. No type-casting there! CBA: Did you ever consider pursuing acting? You have the looks… Dave: [scoffs] No, what are you, nuts? [laughs] Never. I did enough of it in high school to realize that I was much more at home behind the scenes, doing oldage make-up or painting backdrops, or working the light board. The stagecraft of it, I really enjoyed. Being out on the apron was just too traumatic. I found it way too intimidating. I’d much rather watch someone else do it, who really enjoys it. CBA: So you only model for yourself? Dave: Well, Hescox used me for a number of paperback covers, and Stout used me for some of his early comics jobs, but I didn’t exactly volunteer. We were just helping each other out. CBA: What other comic stories have you done? Dave: Not much— a couple of short stories for the anthology titles. CBA: So it was Rocketeer, “Aurora,” some sporadic inking, like this “Princess Pam”… Dave: Yeah, there was another one for Bruce called “Fair Play” in Alien Worlds 3-D. And, I don’t know, one or two other things like Bettie Page Comics, later. CBA: Does it take a long time to ink? Dave: No, actually that’s the fast part. CBA: It’s the breakdowns? Dave: The initial storyboarding and laying-out doesn’t take that long unless I’m undecided on how to play out a scene, or pay it off. That can eat up time. Mostly though, it’s just the drudgery of detail penciling, like I’ve said before. That is the most incredibly dull aspect of producing comics for me. It’s like wading through mud... CBA: It’s interesting that you worked for Russ Manning, worked in a lot of studio environments in animation and you’ve been with a lot of workhorses, and certainly being in San Diego, you’ve been exposed to a lot of artists who have worked in comics who, all their lives, just really put it out. Is that part of the lesson? If you don’t enjoy it, why do it? Dave: I realized that pretty quickly, when I was 19. Quite a rude awakening, too. I knew after my stint with Russ, that particular kind of life was not what I wanted for myself. I’m just glad that I found out early and got out in the mainstream and tried a lot of other things, while I had the enthusiasm and energy. And, ironically, I was able to come back to comics years later and get the chance to produce a small handful of stories; something that I could be proud of, and have it well-received. CBA: You were known for a lot of fan work that you did in the ’70s and you were obviously interested in comics? Dave: Oh, sure, sure. CBA: Did you think, when you were 15, that you wanted to be a comic book artist? Dave: Only ever. CBA: Then by the time you’re 19, you’re like, absolutely not. Dave: But, that was after doing it for a year and realizing it was not fun. The repetition of it was what was killing me. Being strapped to a drawing board for 12 November 2001

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hours a day, seven days a week, for me, was just absolute death, and still is. CBA: Was that part of the appeal of illustration and commercial work? That you weren’t doing the same thing every day? Dave: Every job is different, and I thrive on the variety of it, the range. Of course, you’re not getting to tell a story. Instead, you have to say it all in one single image, but that’s also the challenge of it. It’s a constant test of your abilities as a visual communicator, or whatever you want to call yourself. CBA: You’ve obviously been producing pin-up art for quite some time now. Is it satisfying and can you make a living from that? Dave: Well, it’s not all I’ve done, but it is something I’ve been known for. And, yeah, it can be satisfying in different ways, and it can provide a decent living, but it’s not the end of the rainbow, by any stretch. Pin-up, by it’s very nature, is fairly shallow, innocuous, flirty fluff. So, while I do enjoy it, I also have a lot of other subjects that I devote my energies toward as well. CBA: Do you ever plan to do more comic stories? Dave: I’d like to get the chance to package some more new Rocketeer material. I think there’s still a potential audience for it, and I’ve got plenty of ideas! So, who knows? CBA: You’re best known for the creation of a single character, The Rocketeer. Do you have any more characters you’d like to have realized? Dave: A whole fistful! But not as comics. I’m developing three of them as fairly traditional, straightforward, text-&-picture books. No balloons or multi-paneled pages. Just beautifully realized, single-page illustrations, with accompanying text. I’m just shopping around for a good publisher who’s interested in quality work, and who knows how to market effectively. CBA: You’re finally attending art school now; is it gratifying and what are you learning at this stage? Dave: Hopefully, everything I felt I missed. I’m mostly just looking to broaden my range. I want more facility with paint and a much better understanding of color. It’s amazing how much I was completely unaware of—that I had to have pointed out to me. I’m just taking it all in, as best I can, and there’s so much information to absorb! But, I figure I’m in it for the long haul. I’ll probably be taking classes somewhere, for the rest of my life. CBA: What is in the future for you? Dave: Well, certainly, to keep producing quality art of some kind, that excites and satisfies me. Of course, it’s always preferable to produce it on your own terms rather than on someone else’s. So it’s a balancing act, between making a living and feeling like you’re still contributing something of value that people may respond to. That’s mainly why I’ve been concentrating more and more on oil painting, lately. The act of painting from life shows me how much more my art can become, if I just stick with it and keep learning and studying and moving forward. And, God willing, I hope to be around long enough to eventually achieve some work of that caliber. Above: Our hero, Cliff Secord: The Rocketeer! Courtesy of and ©2001 Dave Stevens. 33

CBA Interview

A Love of Comics Big brother Mario on life with Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez Opposite page: Vootie! Mario Hernandez sent us this recent pic of himself in regal salute.

Right inset: June 1972 photo of The Brothers Hernandez—at least three of them—hanging outside their Oxnard, California home in Mario’s car. In the back seat is Gilbert, in the driver’s seat is Mario, and Jaime rides shotgun in the passenger seat. Courtesy of Mario. Below: Love and Rockets is a sort of music, don’tcha think? Mario renders himself (on drums) with hermanos Jaime (strings) and Gilberto (brass). Courtesy of the artist. ©2001 Mario Hernandez.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson We’re featuring our interview with Mario Hernandez as the kick-off to our special “Los Bros.” section because, well, Mario is not only the biggest brother of an amazingly talented family, but also the sibling who organized the first issue of Love and Rockets, was the third contributor to the mag (albeit an infrequent one), and today writes the serial, “Me for the Unknown” in the current incarnation of L&R. Many thanks to Mario, an engrossing and delightful guy, for this last-minute interview, which took place via phone on October 4, 2001. Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from? Mario Hernandez: From Oxnard, in Southern California. It's about 60 miles from L.A., right between Santa Barbara and L.A. I was born in 1953. CBA: You're the oldest of five. Are your siblings all boys? Mario: We've got a youngest sister—after Ishmael—named Lucinda. My dad finally got the girl he was waiting for. I've got four kids of my own, one son and three girls. CBA: Was it fun to grow up with so many brothers? Mario: It was fun, though we had kind of a Dickensian type of upbringing. We were pretty dirt-poor. My dad was from Mexico, my mom was from a poor part of Texas, and we grew up in our three-bedroom house, which was very small. My mom still lives there. It seems smaller every time I go and look at it! CBA: Did all of you kids have to share rooms?

Mario: We all had to share. There were always two kids in one room, and three in the other. So Gilbert and I were really close, the ones that were always the closest together in age got to share. I couldn't stand any of my littler brothers! CBA: Gilbert was the one closest to your age. Then came Jaime? Mario: There's one in-between Gilbert and Jaime, his name is Richard. After I got married and moved out of the house, Richard moved into the room with Gilbert, and then they got to know each other, and the rest is of history. CBA: What did your father do? Mario: He worked at General Motors, on the line, assembling cars. He was proof to the motto, "Don't buy a car made on Friday or Monday." [laughter] CBA: He was workingclass? Mario: Oh, yeah. After he married my mother and they had me, he had to go back to Mexico because they didn't allow him to stay here until he got his paperwork fixed. When I was three years old, he came out, and then we had Gilbert. CBA: What kind of school did you attend? Was it mixed? Mario: Oh, yeah, we had a very mixed school. There were a lot of Hispanic, black and white, very mixed. We were right near a Naval base, so there were a lot of kids from all over, many with weird accents. There were a lot of Asians, too—Oxnard has a big Japanese and Chinese population that owns a lot of the land. It was a farm community. CBA: And you had TV? Mario: Our saving grace was TV, comics and crummy movies. CBA: [laughs] So you boys were steeped in American pop culture. Mario: Oh, yeah. I confess that we had no taste, we just got into everything and anything… we collected everything, and our mom threw it all out, and we had to re-buy it all! [laughter] The whole sordid story! I read about these guys that their moms threw out their collections; well, we went through that same thing. The only thing she would let us keep were comics, though, because she was a comics fan. She's the one who inspired us to get into doing our own little comics, because she had done a lot of drawing and grew up with Captain Marvel, Superman and all that stuff. She went through all that Golden Age stuff, and it was in the blood. CBA: Besides the obvious fact that your father was Mexican, were you exposed to Mexican pop culture to any degree? Mario: A lot of music—that's where we got the appreciation for it—records, music, the radio. We had this huge radio, an oldCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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fashioned one from the ’30s, that stood about four-foot tall, three-foot wide, and had a huge dial on it. It was in the middle of the living room, and whenever he was around, he would play his Mexican music. We got a good appreciation for a lot of Mexican music, mariachis, you name it. When he wasn't home—because he worked nights—during the day, my mom would play all the British invasion music, all the Top 40 stuff all the time. CBA: Your mom sounds pretty hip! Mario: Well, she is. [laughs] She enjoyed a lot of that stuff, still. That was a lot of really good influence we got through that music. CBA: Did she encourage you creatively? Mario: Yes. In fact, we got into the comics and drawing partially because my dad wanted to keep it quiet! My dad told my mom one day, "Hey, why don't you buy some of those books you like so much and give them to the kids so they can shut up?" It was like four little savages running around! He’d say, "Tear up some paper bags, give them some crayons and let them copy the pictures out of the comics." So, we did that, it just kind of snowballed from there, and we got really hooked. CBA: Looking at Jaime and Gilbert's influences—Dennis the Menace, Archie Comics—you guys were pretty nondiscriminating in your tastes, right? Kiddie stuff, monsters, super-heroes… Mario: Well, sure! We read anything that was comics. I was working on a story recently, telling about how when our local grocery store, where we used to by comics at all the time, closed and we had to go search for comics around town at all the newsstands. There was a route we took, taking us to about five different stores, because the distribution was so bad on a lot of the comics that we bought regularly, so we had to go to several different stores. We pretty much had the lay of the land of downtown, and we just bought comics in every different store, anything we could get our hands on, that we could hoard, anyway. CBA: Did you have a job? Did you deliver newspapers? Mario: Oh, no, we were bums. CBA: How did you get money for comics? Mario: Well, to keep us quiet, we would line up, and my dad would dole out money to us. I thought he was the richest man in the world, because he’d pull out a pocket full of quarters in his hand! My dad was game for anything to get us kids out of the house and out of his hair. CBA: What were your favorite comics? Mario: Early on, I read all the DC stuff—”Legion of Super-Heroes,” Superman, stuff like that. Later on, of course, the Marvel stuff came in, and then it was all over. I had to have everything! I still have all my old comics. I bought Fantastic Four #1 off the stands. I was into the super-heroes as well as the Atlas monsters mixed together. CBA: You were eight years old when you bought FF #1? Mario: Yeah. I started collecting comics when I was around six, seven years old, and fortunately, my mom let me keep them because she was reading them, too! She got into them. As long as we didn't make F's in school, we could keep them. CBA: Did she use comics as bargaining chips… "If you do wrong, I'll take your comics away"? Mario: Oh, sometimes, yeah, but she didn't throw them out. The only things she threw out were cards, and we had collections of all the Mars Attacks! cards, all these things, and they just disappeared! She would never say that she was going to do it, but they'd just be gone, and we could never find them. We went and searched all the trash cans in the alley, looking for these things, [laughter] but she would just totally disappear them. CBA: Were you guys into sports at all? Mario: Not too much. My younger brothers, Richard on down, were all in Little League, but as far as me and November 2001

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Gilbert, no, we avoided that stuff like the plague. [laughs] We weren't that bad at it, we just weren't interested. Especially Gilbert, he wasn't very athletic. CBA: When did you start drawing? Mario: You know, it's weird, because we started doing the super-hero drawings with crayons and stuff, then a couple of years passed, and one day I was turned around, and Gilbert and Jaime were still doing them, and they had stacks of these things they'd been doing every day! Like issue #100 of something! [laughter] That's when we graduated to drawing on typing paper, folding it in half and just making little booklets. Usually, they were just folded in half with a cover and three pages. They were mostly like, "Hey you, come here!" Blam! And that would be it. [laughter] But the covers were very elaborate. CBA: Did you like Jack Kirby's work? Mario: Even in the early monster material from Tales to Astonish and those books! They had these little credits written in those stories—”Stan Lee and Jack Kirby”—so we knew who we were looking for when we'd start getting a little picky about what artists we liked. At the same time, I was cutting out all the newspaper strips, the more serious ones like Kerry Drake, Steve Roper, Judge Parker, Pogo, and all those things. I remember one year, my aunt had been keeping all the comics pages because she wanted to catch up with them, and she gave them all to me, saying, "I can't read them all; here, you can have them." She gave me about three years worth of comics, and I still have them! [laughter] I still have all those pages! I wish I could reprint them or something, because they're turning yellow! Brown, actually! [laughter] CBA: So you're quite a pack rat? Mario: Oh, yeah. I managed to hold on to a lot of other stuff. Plus, in the meantime, buying the Pogo collections and anything we could—Mad pocketbooks, all that we could get our hands on which had some kind of drawings and balloons—we just went after that stuff all the time. CBA: Did you guys have a shared collection or did you each have your own individual ones? Mario: There's big fights about this… [laughs] we started writing our names on the books we individually bought. I still have some of the stuff that has Gilbert's name written on it. Being the oldest, I was mostly the one that kind of held sway over the collection, but only when I lived in the house, of course. CBA: Being the oldest— Mario: Of course, only in the house, of course. CBA: Also having the oldest stuff, right? Mario: Oh, yeah. CBA: So you had the "library" they could all go to for reference. Certainly Gilbert’s “BEM” is influenced by the old Kirby and Ditko monster books. Mario: Oh, yeah, sure. We shoved out all of our clothes hanging in the closet and we used a shelf in the closet where we put everything, you name it— Superman, Hot Stuff, Richie Rich, Archie—everything was just piled in there. All the time, my mom would say, "Each of you get your stack of comics and go sit at the dinner table and eat, as long as you're quiet." So there'd be a line of us standing there, picking out our comics we wanted to read for the evening. It was strange, now that I think back on it! [laughter] CBA: It must have been pretty tough keeping all those boys in line. I have three boys myself, and it's like a madhouse here. Mario: There's a lot of energy going on, even if you're not athletic. 35

Above: Mario had an epiphany to publish the work of his brothers Gilbert and Jaime which resulted in the Hernandez self-published first issue of Love and Rockets #1. Above is the front and (we believe) one of the inside covers (a faux “Johnson & Co.” ad) of that homemade effort. Courtesy of J.P. Shannon. Art ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez.

CBA: Did you draw your own comic books as a kid? Mario: Actually, yeah, I'd do sort of full stories, as good as we could. CBA: Did you jam together? Mario: Sometimes. One of us would do a cover and say, "Here, you can finish the rest of it." As we progressed, I became very envious of Gilbert because he always had the best ideas and made up the greatest villains, monsters and things. He's really got a knack for those things, just pulling these concepts out of a hat. So, we would follow his lead. As the oldest, I was the one they were following, but I was always watching over Gilbert’s shoulder to see what he was doing. Even when we got into high school, we'd draw every day, and we'd have stacks and stacks of stuff. CBA: Did you do your own super-hero knockoffs? Mario: We did a lot of super-hero stuff, mostly when we were younger. Then, it progressed into science-fiction, and when we discovered the Conan books and things like that, it got into barbarians. Then Gilbert and I did some collaborations when we were a little bit older, trying to make a real strip, and we did Star Wars-type stuff. CBA: Did you aspire to making a living as an artist? Mario: I was telling Gilbert this the other day: At one time, I had this dream of us rescuing some comic book company—probably Marvel—by us making up a whole bunch of new super-heroes. Yeah, I figured someday I’d be doing comics professionally. Love and Rockets came about because I had not been doing very much in the comics—I had been collecting, but hadn't done much drawing—and I noticed one day that Jaime and Gilbert were still drawing away and their stuff had advanced so far that I thought, "Hey, this is printable!" [laughs] CBA: Did you reach a stage in your adolescence, when you suddenly realized, "Wait a minute, forget comics! There's girls!"; did you leave comics behind for a period of time? Mario: That's what happened to me, that's what I did. I just

rediscovered these guys, when they were still doing it. They were still drawing, never stopped, and their talent just kept progressing. CBA: When I was 13 years old, I would endlessly draw this superhero stuff, and all of a sudden, I looked at this material and said, "This doesn't mean anything to me anymore." Mario: Exactly, and that's what I mean by we started going off into different tangents. I can remember, even way back, Gilbert was still 20, and he told me, "Comics are supposed to be like people in a village in Mexico or something, and them just telling their stories," and he pretty much was going to do his Palomar stuff, and told me plotlines that he was thinking about doing that ended up being in Love and Rockets, much later on. CBA: I realize this is more a question for Gilbert but with his serial, "Heartbreak Soup"; there hasn’t been that sort of material—a soap opera really—in American comics. Do you know what inspired him? Mario: We were looking at European stuff, as much as we could find. When Heavy Metal came out, that's when we knew, "Yeah, we can do whatever the hell we want." We previously thought you could only do certain types of stuff, and then Heavy Metal freed us up when we saw all this really great European stuff that just said, "Anything goes!" CBA: So it was the American Heavy Metal, or did you see Métal Hurlant at all? Mario: No, we'd seen the old collections, like at obscure comic shops in L.A. We used to drive to L.A. to look at the comics. We used to go down to these collectors' places where they'd sell old Golden Age stuff, and they'd have these foreign books. We'd look through those, and of course, the artwork was incredible, and the stories we could tell were way beyond… even with us having the language problem… we could tell it was something going on with those that American comics were lacking. CBA: Perhaps it's too simplistic to say, but an awful lot of people COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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look at Gilbert and say, "He's the story guy," and they look at Jaime and say, "Man, he's the art guy." When you were looking over your shoulder at Gilbert, and seeing he was an idea guy, did you also see anything special in Jaime at a certain age, a spark? Mario: Well, when he got into junior college. We had been doing some science-fiction, early Maggie type of things that I was inking for him (now that I'm thinking back on this stuff, it's incredible that he let me even touch these things!) [laughs] He had been at this one stage of development in his ability, and then he went to junior college, took life drawing, and his style just blossomed into what it is now. He suddenly got very professional, and it just knocked me out to the point where I was saying, "Let's do something." CBA: There's a touch of the divine in Jaime’s work, perhaps genius going through his work. Mario: Well, I've got to agree with you on that. Both Jaime and Gilbert are true originals. You can't make this stuff up. [laughter] You can't go to school for that. I think they're just so immersed in this pop culture and monster movies and everything, just soaking it up, because that was part of our good times growing up. There's always the downside you don't remember, you want to blot out, but this was some of the good stuff, and we just really soaked it up. I think just through sheer force of learning pacing and storytelling, reading so many comics and kind of experimenting, it turned out the way it did. CBA: I put some certain artists, like Alex Toth, Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles, on a shelf and say, "That's genius!" and then I look at Jaime's work and I suddenly get smacked in the face, realizing that, "Yeah! This guy belongs up with those guys! Jaime fits perfectly! He's got it!" Anyway, you obviously were creatively involved with these guys, you drew some stories, you wrote some stories, and you also made a supreme decision that started this whole thing going. Mario: We printed up all the old black-&-whites—the first issue of Love and Rockets—and we took them out to a convention in L.A., and nobody knew what to make of it. People would say, "This is very nice, but I don't know of anybody that would pick this up." That's what we got, over and over again. CBA: It's a funny decision to make Love and Rockets to begin with, right? It wasn't a fanzine thing. Mario: See, the whole fanzine thing had already passed, it had been years past, but we didn't know it. [laughter] I used to read the old Rocket's Blast/Comicollector, which would include these ads from people selling their fanzines, and they would describe the ’zines as “saddle-stitched binding, offset.” And that’s how I based my criteria for visualizing Love and Rockets. I was in a fanzine mentality, but I didn't realize the age of fanzines had been years gone! I just said, "Yeah, sure, let's do it this way," and we borrowed some money from our younger brother, [laughter] went to a printer— CBA: Were you involved in fandom and fanzines in the late ’60s? Mario: Oh, yeah, Alter Ego and RBCC. Seeing those ’zines was an eye-opener, because I discovered people were doing these in their garages and kitchen tables, doing it for themselves, and because they were comics-related, I was just knocked out! I was searching for fanzines everywhere, because I couldn't get enough! CBA: Did you produce any publications prior to Love and Rockets? Mario: I know Gilbert and Jaime had sent stuff to different fanzines, and had some artwork printed, but nothing other than that. CBA: Were you working at a printing company? Mario: No, I've always been in the trades. I've been a carpenter or a carpet-layer it seems like all my life. CBA: Did you go off into that working class life right after high school, or did you go to college? Mario: No, no college. In fact, I took the same life drawing that Jaime did, and that helped me out a lot, too. I had the same teacher, Bernard Deitz. CBA: Did you two take it simultaneously? Mario: It kind of overlapped—he had taken it, and he was on his way out when I started. We all went as far as high school, and in fact, Gilbert dropped out… nobody could teach him anything anymore. He got totally fed up with school, and never did it again. He's tried it a couple of times, but it still doesn't work, not for him! [laughs] November 2001

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CBA: Do you like working with your hands? Mario: Oh, yeah. I'm very good at it. I'm doing it now! I was working for a contractor for a very long time, and I worked my way up into a desk job, and then they went out of business, so just lately, I've been back putting things together. CBA: You said you stopped drawing when you entered adolescence. Did you pick it up again for that life drawing class? Mario: I picked it up again and kept taking the life drawing class, because that's something I definitely need. One of these days, I need to draw a woman without her looking like a—I don't know what. [laughter] I don't think I'll get to the level of doing "good girl” art! Not like my brothers, but I try. CBA: Your stories have a certain rawness that’s accomplished. Mario: Oh, sure, and the only reason it's very raw is I don't practice it enough! I've got too many kids and not enough time to do the comics as much as I'd like. CBA: How old's your oldest? Mario: She's 23. I started early. CBA: Are you brothers close? Do you see each other a lot? Mario: Oh, yeah. I talk to them all week long on the phone. Whenever I go—in fact, I'm probably going to see them this weekend—I'm driving down to see Mom, and whenever I go down, we always try to see each other. CBA: How far away do you live? Mario: I'm in San Francisco, six hours away. CBA: When you saw Jaime and Gilbert’s work, what did you think? Did you feel they could actually make money at this? Mario: My thinking was, "Maybe we can sell some of these books, and somebody will see it, and maybe a big company will say, ‘Hey, you draw pretty good, here, why don't you work for us?'" I didn't know how it worked. [laughter] I saw it as a portfolio, but I kind of recognized right away that they weren't going to stand for any editing at that time. CBA: [laughs] They weren't the kind to work for Marvel! Mario: And they still don't! [laughter] CBA: Punk music really came on in the ’70s, and there's a real attitude that seemed to spill over into Love and Rockets that went hand-in-hand with what was happening in music at the time. Mario: In Oxnard, there was a really big punk thing, it really took off there. Suburban kids just finally finding something to do that everybody would hate. Since we're so close to L.A., there was a lot of bands coming through, so you could come and go through Los Angeles and actually Oxnard and Washington, D.C. were the last big punk scenes before it kind of faded out, and that's all you heard about, were these two punk scenes that were still going on after everything died down.

Above: As Mario maintained a full-time job to support his life as father and husband, the artist/ writer only contributed to Love and Rockets on a sporadic basis. Here’s his back cover art to L&R #4. ©2001 Mario Hernandez. Below: Mario worked with Gilbert on the Errata Stigmata episodes, a character inspired by (of all things) the Warren Beatty film, Mickey One. Art ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez.

Above: Mario organized the Mister X assignment for Los Bros. and he also contributed to the plotting of the four issues they worked on and some back-up scripting. Above is Jaime’s splash page to #3. ©2001 Vortex Comics, Inc.

Inset: While Fantagraphics took on the publishing chores of Love and Rockets, Mario continued to sell the remaining self-published copies of L&R #1 for a mere (choke!) two bucks apiece! Note the announcement regarding the Mister X work in this card postmarked Feb. 13, 1984. Courtesy of J.P. Shannon. 38

CBA: Is Oxnard suburban? Mario: Yeah, it's pretty much suburbs. It started out back then as very agricultural, and it just grew into this suburban sprawl. CBA: Akin to the beltway around Washington, D.C.? Mario: I don't know. CBA: It's all malls, malls, and more malls. Punk was created out of boredom, right? [laughter] Mario: There you go! Punk was all about doing it yourself. That ties into the comic thing, too. CBA: Could you have been characterized as a hippy back in the day? Mario: Oh, yeah. I was a hippy, a glitter rocker, [laughter] somewhat of a punk rocker, except I was married already. CBA: When were you married? Mario: I got married in '74. I was 21. I felt the need to settle down. CBA: How did you beat the draft?

Mario: I just kind of rope-a-doped, waited it out, and the last draft came around, and my number didn't come up. I was lucky; all my friends joined and went to Germany, and I stayed home on the home front, taking care of the babies. [laughter] I had gotten married. CBA: Doing your thing! [laughter] Obviously, drugs became prevalent by the early 70s. Was that a part of your life at all? Mario: Oh, yeah, because you're in the suburbs, there's nothing to do but drink, take drugs, hang out, drive around, and we were all part of that, sure. I remember Gilbert doing a story about going to a party, and I thought, "Why can't they do comics about people going to a party? I think that would be funny." He would just always come up with stuff like this. CBA: There's a streak of resolute independence about your brothers, and they also teamed, in very short order, with probably the most independent publisher in the business, Gary Groth. You did Love and Rockets #1 in the hopes of maybe getting your brothers a job, but in a sense, they were unemployable, right? Mario: Oh, yeah. It was all timing. For some reason, it was at the right time Gary was ready to publish something, but he didn't know what. I'm sure he'd been wracking his brain, or waiting for something to come across his desk, and it did, and we still have his letter. It starts out, "Holy jumping Jesus!" or something like that. [laughter] "I can't believe you guys did this!" CBA: How many copies were printed of that first issue? Mario: Oh, it was supposed to be 1,000 but [laughs] it was a bit less than that. As a matter of fact, I went looking through the garage the other day, and found that I still have the box with incomplete Love and Rockets pages that are just flat. CBA: Unstapled? Mario: Right, because we ran out of one page. The guy that printed them just didn't care very much. It was just, "Give me my $400." We stapled these things in my living room, with a borrowed stapler. We collated everything, then we discovered, "Hey, there's 800 pages of this one thing, and 700 of the others." [laughter] I still even have letters that came from people who ordered that issue. CBA: How long did it take to pay your brother back? Mario: Oh, gosh, forever. [laughter] In those days, are you kidding? CBA: Do you recall what year that was, or what month it was you printed it? Was it before Reagan? Mario: No, it was Reagan era. In fact, Gilbert was saying he was glad Republicans were back in, because he said that's when creativity takes off. We had some great years during the Reagan and Bush eras. CBA: The times were ready for Love and Rockets. Was it a slow growth? When did you start getting feedback on the first issue? Mario: Well, gosh—I don't know, we got some letters from people saying, "Wow, this is really nice," and they compared it to some other type of stuff. When they started comparing Gilbert to Garcia Marquez, that's when it really was a little too much. [laughter] We had never heard of that book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. We had to go back and read it, [laughter] and go, "Okay!" CBA: You obviously were a family man with a nine-to-five gig—a regular job. Did you realize that perhaps it was going to take a long time to develop your own chops? Mario: Oh, yeah. I'm very grateful to these guys for letting me put some of this fairly crude stuff in there, because their work had become so polished so fast, and I was kind of behind them. I'm still working on it, and I've done some pretty good stuff, but I think it's getting a lot better. I’m proud of the stuff I did for Measles. CBA: Was there sibling rivalry? Obviously, brotherhood is an endless series of lessons about competition. Which one can outdraw the other; which one's smarter than the other; and it can still be very loving. Was it so for you guys? Mario: Well, to me, Gilbert is the Picasso of the group; he can do anything, and has all these ideas that just come out of nowhere. Jaime surprised me, not to belittle his work or anything, but every once in a while, he'll just blow me away. But Gilbert, constantly, will just surprise. Of course, I was very envious of him, because I'm the older brother, dammit! [laughs] But we've never gotten mad about it or anything. We've always admired each other's stuff. I'm not really sure sometimes what they think of my work. Sometimes the only COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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feedback I get on my work is Gilbert saying, "Just keep doing it, don't worry about it." [laughter] I don't know if that means it's good, if they hate it, I don't know. [laughter] CBA: You had the 700 copies of #1; how long did it take to sell them? Mario: We've still got a couple of boxes. We've got maybe a couple of hundred left, and I've got some boxes in the garage. CBA: Of the first printing? Mario: Yeah. CBA: I thought the prices for them went through the roof! Mario: I don't know! I've gone to conventions and comics stores, I've noticed the price has fluctuated for the black-&-white cover #1, anywhere from $200 at the highest, and now it's down to $60. I haven't really checked it lately. We're just holding on to some of them. I've sold some to dealers in the past, chunks of them, but I don't know how they've done with them. I've got some laying around. CBA: I bumped into Love and Rockets pretty late in the game—maybe 1985. I had heard about the book—though I never really trusted the advice I got going into comic shops because I had been steered wrong too often—but I finally picked up #11 and immediately went crazy for “Errata Stigmata.” Mario: The story about her is that we were talking about movies one day, and we were taking about the movie Mickey One, with Warren Beatty. They were showing a commercial for it, and we'd never seen the movie before, but it looked so bizarre to us, and Gilbert said, "We should write a story like that," and I said, "We don't know what the movie's about." So I wrote this story, and then I gave it to Gilbert, and he turned it into “Errata Stigmata,” just twisted it around. The pacing and the actual events are things I wrote, but most of the dialogue and the characters are his. It's pretty—[laughs] it's pretty amazing! I wish I could do that all the time, just hand something over to him and say, "Here, make something fantastic out of this." [laughs] CBA: Did that happen with many other projects? Mario: There were a couple of other things. When we were doing Mister X, when all three of us worked together, our only collaboration as a trio. CBA: It's been said that you were the one who pulled that together. Is that so? Mario: Well, it's kind of a weird thing. We had seen the beautiful posters that Paul Rivoche did for what seemed like a couple of years before the book even came out. We kept seeing these posters, and going, "Wow, we can't wait until this comes out!" One day… I don't know how it happened, I don't know who called… but I think Ken Steacy called Gilbert or Gary, or something like that, they were just trying to find anybody to do the book, I guess, because Paul pulled out, and they had some idea of what they wanted the book to look like. CBA: Allegedly Ken said, "Well, what about these guys?" Mario: We thought, "Well, this is our chance to make some money," because none of us had ever been—[laughs] anywhere near any kind of money, and we thought, "Well, maybe this is our entry to mainstream stuff." So, we decided to do it, and Jaime said he would draw it, and Gilbert said he'd do the dialogue, and I'd do the A-to-B-to-C type of pacing stuff, and we knocked around ideas… that was kind of weird, because Gilbert pretty much knows what he wants out of something, and I'm a little more passive, so it was kind of nice, I could kind of just back off whenever he said, "Eh, that sounds stupid," [laughs] and I'd say, "Okay, what about this?" Sometimes it was just like sitting in the living room, and Gilbert with a pad of paper, and Jaime not even paying attention, and I'd say, "Okay, Mister X—" and Jaime would say, "I want to draw him coming out of a manhole." [laughter] "Okay! And then he gets out of the manhole, and then what happens? Oh, some people drive by, and he goes to a party." [laughter] That kind of thing. But we had the basic bones of the character, and what he was like, that he couldn't sleep, he was on this drug, and the city, and all that stuff… which I found fascinating, and I just wanted to keep going with it, myself. But we ran into some troubles with money and stuff like that, and decided to just call it quits after four issues. We didn't get to kill off all the characters like we wanted to. CBA: You wanted to kill off all the characters? Mario: Our characters, the ones we made up, because Gilbert made up all the women for the series. Maybe you've noticed in all the early things, there was only one woman in the whole thing, and he wanted to put more women in it, because (I guess) Love and Rockets was doing so well, and he likes drawing women characters, so we made up all these women characters, and we wanted to kill them off so they couldn't use them in the continuing issues. But, eh, I guess they used them again, I'm not sure. I didn't pay attention to it after that. CBA: I look at Mister X, and talking to Dean and Paul about it, it seems like perhaps something was missing from the final book. There’s a truly archetypical character quality to Mister X, but it became a comic book that was less about Mister X, more about Mercedes… Mario: We found that Mister X himself was not really that interesting, and it's sort of like The Spirit. Have you noticed that most of The Spirit stories have him in them, but they're not really about him? He's just there to get hit over the head and run around and get kissed and beat up—he's part of the atmosphere, really. If you notice, he really doesn't have that much dialogue in any of the stories. CBA: Mister X just seems to be slipping out of manholes and going to parties (which are also attended by Maggie and Luba). Looking at the poster, there's a promise of drama, menace, suspense that did not necessarily seem realized. Mario: The whole thing about that, too, is that we were humanizing this thing, and Dean Motter… who I think his idea was great and everything… it seemed a little colder, it was more of a cold type of—it was more about the city, and more about things than it was about people. CBA: So you guys brought the humanist element into it? Mario: Right, especially because at the time it came out, Gilbert and Jaime were hitting their stride on the real human parts of “Heartbreak Soup,” and Maggie and Hopey stuff. They were really getting into their characters, and writing stuff that included a lot of inner human feelings. November 2001

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CBA: Getting back to when I got Love and Rockets #11, when my mind exploded, I said, "Oh, this stuff is great!" and I bought as much as I could. I even Xeroxed a story and gave it to my family at Christmas in 1985. I thought, "This is the coolest thing I've encountered this year," and wanted to share it with them. I'm five of six siblings and my oldest sister was touched by Love and Rockets in the same way. Though Becky appreciates them, she does not read comics—only Steve Ditko’s “Doctor Strange” back in the ’60s—but to this day, she's wild for Love and Rockets. Mario: What's funny is, we hear those stories all the time. How many Wolverine stories do you see people Xeroxing and giving out to their friends? [laughter] Not to put down any of that stuff, it's just that—we hear these stories, and I think it's because of the human element in it. CBA: Exactly! It's a connection, and especially, it's female-friendly. You brothers have a sensibility about women that was refreshing in comics. Comics, whether mainstream or undergrounds, tend to objectify and often demean women. Typically, guys who are into collecting comic books aren’t necessarily misogynists, but perhaps they're afraid of women. Mario: Women become the most fearsome people on earth! CBA: Is it the influence of your mother than makes you guys create such wonderful, fully-realized female characters? Mario: I think so, because we were

raised around mostly women—aunts, because my mom has nothing but sisters, so we had a lot of aunts and cousins. I think we were sensitive to women as people. If you see them as people, you have a whole different kind of slant on it. CBA: Women are not things. Mario: Yeah, they're not things and not chips off the old block. They're actual people, and if you treat them that way, it does bring out a humanity. I think my brothers put an understanding into their depiction of women, because they can relate. Women observe a lot, and so did my brothers because they didn't get that many dates. They'd be watching women all the time, and see all these guys making mistakes with women, and just kind of soaking it all in, and somehow, they can understand some of this stuff. CBA: Are you a feminist yourself? Mario: Yeah, much to the chagrin of some of my male friends. [laughter] Everybody is a person, and if you see people as people, and not just as, "Oh, look at this beautiful, voluptuous woman," we’re all better off. I can appreciate beauty, but I also have to understand that she is a person inside that body, you know? CBA: American culture promulgates the objectification of women, and it's ultimately anti-human. Your brothers created, through Love and Rockets, a world unto themselves. You don't really know if Palomar really exists in the real world, but it exists in your heart, you know what I mean? It's like something you hold dear to yourself, but is it a real place? Also, in the world of Mechanics and Locas, with Maggie and Hopey, there are very odd things that happen to take place that are just fantastical and unreal. They are their own worlds, they're not really anchored in America, though certainly anchored in Hispanic culture. It's not the Marvel universe, and it's not the Reagan universe, and it's not the George Bush universe—you know what I mean? I think it's hard for a lot of people not to get caught up in the trappings of American culture, and I probably have a question in here somewhere—[laughs] COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

Mario: You're doing a great job yourself, here. [laughter] I couldn't come up with all that! CBA: Yeah, but I should be the one to ask questions! There is something very comforting about Jaime and Gilbert’s worlds. Did you notice that a lot of women were fans of the book? Mario: Jaime and I were doing an interview one time at a con, and the reporter was asking us questions about the women, and this woman came in and just started talking. She said, "You know, I've discussed this with my friends, and my girlfriends, and we have to know: Who talked? What woman revealed the secrets to you guys?'" [laughter] I just think it's intuition my brothers have. I have discussions with Gilbert about the objectification of women and stuff like that. And also, you can't be afraid to show women in a bad light when they are being bad. CBA: You don't want to idealize? Mario: Exactly! They've got their bad sides and good sides, and if you show both sides in a certain balance, it becomes believable. That's my take on it. CBA: Did you normally jam a lot with your brothers? Mario: No, not really. We did at the beginning, because they would ask me, "Would you write me a story?" and I would, and they ended up doing something else. I think they just needed that kick, or something like that, to say, "Well, this is drek, I can write something better than this." [laughter] Even for that kind of inspiration, I was there for that. I did come up with some ideas that they did use in the book, little things here and there, but mostly, I started stepping back because it started taking on a life of its own, and I couldn't keep up, they were just advancing really fast, and I think what it was is, they finally found their outlet, and they just couldn't want to use it up, you know, with their ideas and all their different emotions they put into it. Because I know them, I can put a lot of their personality in the characters. I'm not sure Jaime would like this, but I see a lot of him in Maggie, that's his character, he put so

November 2001

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much of his own emotional frailties and fears and like that into her character. I don't know, sometimes I can read the dialogue and hear him speaking the words, things she's going through. Gilbert, well, he makes the stuff, he's channeling somebody out there, [laughter] and he writes such great dialogue, I can't keep up with him sometimes. CBA: Was it okay with you that they were passing you by, in essence? Mario: Yeah, well sure. I am the first to admit I'm nowhere near their caliber. Maybe if you give me five, ten years, I can get up there, but no, I am very happy for them, and if they ever stop again, I'd probably go over there and kick them in the butt. [laughter] "No, you're not stopping, no matter what!" I want to see it coming out! CBA: In the early years, were they still living at home? Mario: Yes, they were. I got married and was out of the house. CBA: So when you came by, you weren't coming necessarily to visit, but to perhaps kick their ass to get to work? [laughs] Mario: I was going over all the time, because I love my family and I couldn't stay away. CBA: Did you guys socialize at all? How much of a difference in age was there between you and Jaime? Mario: He's way down the line there, he's 40 now—I'm 48. He was always down the line, but we got to know each other very well as adults. I think they all thought their name was, "Get away from me, you little rat bastard," [laughter] until later on in life. CBA: All little brothers are named that! Mario: Sure, by all their big brothers and sisters. CBA: Is your father still around? Mario: No, in fact he passed away when I was 16. He was my age, he was 48, I believe. So, my mom had all us to raise. It was just us, so the pop culture thing took on even more gravity, because she couldn't watch us all at once, you know? [laughter] She couldn't keep up! To this day, I cringe when I hear The Flintstones jingle, because the TV was on 24 hours a day, it seemed like, [laughter]

Below: At left is Mario’s script page and, right, Gilbert’s final art for the second part of the collaborative serial “Me for the Unknown,” currently appearing in the new comic book-size edition of Love and Rockets. Script ©2001 Mario Hernandez. Art ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez.

Above: Mario and his wife Rebecca in a recent photo. Courtesy of Mario Hernandez.

and there were all these cartoons on, and I remember sitting there reading the dates of the newspaper and listening to the jingle of The Flintstones in the other room, thinking, "This is never gonna end!" [laughter] CBA: Yabba-dabba-do time! [laughter] As the oldest, were you kind of a trouble-maker? Mario: When I was an adolescent—we were pretty surly as adolescents, actually. [laughs] I was always a bit of a bully to those guys, because I was the oldest, but we hung out and we had great times. You know how it is with older brothers, man: It's what they call trickle-down, you'd beat on one, and he beats on the next one down, you know? [laughs] CBA: Did all your brothers get into comics? Mario: Yeah, we all did. They all drew at one time or another, but a couple of them just kind of drifted off, getting into different interests and such. They're in their own little world. Everybody's creative in one way or another, which is really kind of strange. CBA: What does Richard do? Mario: He's a union plumber, but he used to draw comics with us, yeah. He just never stuck with it. He's what we call the "white sheep" of the family. [laughter] He was the one that dressed well, he was in the disco days, had a sports car—he was messed up! CBA: Oh, because he got laid! [laughter] Mario: Exactly, the rest of us were just sitting around. The only way I got laid was, I had to get married! [laughter] CBA: Ishmael? Mario: He's still in his old band, Doctor Know, where he's the bass player. The lead singer is Brandon Cruz from The Courtship of Eddie's Father. [laughter] They're enjoying a big revival now, nostalgia! And they all look like the Three Stooges. [laughs] He works during the day, and they go out on tour all the time. There's a big revival for their music, so they go out and make a buck. My youngest sister is very creative, doing craft stuff. Now, she's doing straight-to-video monster movie make-up every once in a while. So, everybody does something. CBA: Do you draw out of any habit now? Mario: Yeah, I'm working on several projects at once, because I finally found out that's the only way I can work anymore. I work best when somebody asks me to do something. I can't just produce something unless I'm doing several projects at once, because I get bored working with one thing. That's probably why I've never taken it all the way, because Gilbert and Jaime, they've disciplined themselves into doing that every day, sit at the drawing board and not go running around the house, working on the car, [laughs] I'm sure they do every once in a while, but because it's their livelihood, they've got to sit there and actually do it. I guess I've pretty much hidden out in the work-a-day world, so I wouldn't have to sit [laughs] and be a slave to the drawing board. But now that I'm older, it's friendly to me, it doesn't seem forbidding anymore. I've kind of resigned myself to, "Well, I'm just going to draw." There have been times when I've said, "I'm not going to draw anymore, I can't do it, I don't have time, there's too many kids going to school, and I've got to pay for that," but it's like this—like junk, like heroin! It's my new addiction, it's one that stuck with me my whole life, "No, you're going to do this, whether you like it or not."

CBA: Do you get in a state of Zen when you're doing it? Mario: Sometimes I do, yeah. When it's going good, it's wonderful, it's like, "Yes, keep going." Inking, drawing, seeing it appear on the page is really nice. CBA: You say you worked best when people asked you for something. Did you brothers do work to please each other? Or was it just pleasing yourself? Mario: For ourselves, mostly. We have this thing, "This is what I like to see," and we'd do something. Gilbert likes to do the kind of interaction between people type of drawing, he's very into that. Jaime's into some of the same thing, but in a different way, with some goofiness thrown in. I like political stuff, and we do stuff we'd like to read. We wish more people would do that, in order for us to enjoy something. That's where the pleasing thing come in. CBA: What would you like to do? Mario: I'd like to just keep doing these political thrillers. The one I'm writing now for Gilbert to draw, “Me for the Unknown,” which is very timely now. The inspiration for it, surprisingly enough, was the first bombing of the World Trade Center—the terrorist attack in 1993—because I've always been fascinated by people who manage to disappear. You know, the uncle who went out for cigarettes and never came back type of thing? The World Trade Center, I thought, "What would it be like if one of those reported dead actually was alive and began a new life?" There are so many people missing, and I think, what if you manage not to show up for work that day, and you were in a hotel somewhere, with some chippie or something, and all of a sudden, you say, "Hey, I'm dead, now I have a choice! What can I do? I'm so far into debt, I'm this, I'm that, I hate my life—now's the time to move on." I just wonder, were there people that actually did that. I'm sure maybe they haven't some times, in the past. Just to think, like, "Wow, I don't have to go home, I don't have to go back to the drudge," or whatever, and try a whole new life and disappear. The uncle with the cigarettes. CBA: You ‘re writing that serial for the new incarnation of Love and Rockets, right? Mario: Well, yeah, because I'm writing a story, because I don't have time to draw, and Gilbert just said, "Look, I'll draw it if you write it, and I'll just do whatever you want." So I started writing this story about this guy that leaves his life, and he's in a ferry disaster, and leaves his life behind. Now I've got to figure out what do people do when they do that? [laughs] CBA: How many chapters are you into it? Mario: I'm writing chapter four now. CBA: Do you have any idea where it goes? Mario: That's the cool part about it. I've got three different scenarios, it can go either way. Now, with this disaster that's happened [the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001], I've got to kind of take it into a different direction. It was going to get more political and religious, and I thought I'll just get away from that and just take it towards the human part, of what happens to the families that are looking for you? Some people aren't going to give up, they're going to go looking for you. It's happening in my fantasy country—when you don't want to write something real, you make it up. [laughter] I made up a country where you can have anything happen to these people. [laughter] CBA: I had a real good time talking to you, Mario. Thank you. Mario: Well, great, any time to talk about comics—nobody wants to hear from me! [laughter] CBA: Though I realize you haven’t had a lot of work in Love and Rockets, I really wanted to include you in this issue because you’re very important not only as a brother, but also as a catalyst. Mario: Whatever comes out of this would be great, even a little bit of it, if only because I'm my brothers’ biggest fan, and whatever they will do, I will read, even if they were just stomping on a piece of paper or something. It's really nice to see Gilbert and Jaime appreciated. Remember the days when you could buy comics in sequence and you knew it was going to be good? Like when you bought Kirby’s Fourth World stuff, and you knew the next issue was going to be good? That's the kind of touch that Love and Rockets has. Maybe it'll piss you off, but hey, at least it evokes a reaction. That's what it's all about. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

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CBA Interview

Down Palomar Way Gilbert Hernandez on his days with Luba and L&R Opposite page: Another fine portrait by Greg Preston, this one of Gilbert Hernandez, taken in the artist’s studio. Courtesy of and ©2001 Greg Preston. Below: A self-caricature by Gilbert Hernandez detailed from Love and Rockets #40. ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez.

Conducted by Chris Knowles Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Next is our talk with Los Brother Number Two, Gilbert Hernandez, the writer/artist best known for his Palomar stories in Love and Rockets. Beto (as he is also called) has also produced other series such as Birdland, Measles, and New Love, the latter recently collected in the delightful Fantagraphics book, Fear of Comics. Gilbert was interviewed via telephone in January 2000 and he copyedited the final transcript. Chris Knowles: I want to know what you’re reading, drawing, and what you’re listening to in 1975. Gilbert Hernandez: Holy moley! Okay, I was probably just drawing comics for myself. Chris: Were you drawing sci-fi kind of material? I remember from the first Love and Rockets Sketchbook that a lot of the material you guys started out doing was pretty standard fan stuff. Gilbert: Yeah, except when it’s done by us, it’s done good. [laughter] Well, actually, I guess I went through a phase of Flash Gordon-type, romantic science-fiction stories. I was working on an epic at the time… I don’t know what you’d call it… space opera? That type of story. Chris: With female protagonists? Gilbert: It was equal in those days, males and females. It didn’t really have a title. I was sort of feeling it along. I never really got to it, as I matured and lost interest in that sort of material. I kept my notes and stuff. I was doing drawings and writing little parts of stories, but I didn’t have a complete piece. Chris: Just drawing for your own pleasure? Gilbert: Yeah. It was a plan to draw sort of a… to come up with a graphic novel, for lack of a better term in those days. Chris: Did you have visions to work for the big publishers at this point in time? Gilbert: No, not at all, because I didn’t draw their way. [laughs] Chris: Independent from the very start! Gilbert: Not because I was being snotty or anything, it was because I didn’t know how they did it, and I didn’t like the rigid requirements that had to go along with it. Going to conventions and talking to professionals, most of them were… [laughs] A lot of them were sort of snotty and not interested in younger artists who didn’t do what they did. Chris: Were these the fan favorites, or were they the older pros? Gilbert: These were the younger pros, who were just a little bit older than me. I can’t name names, because I really don’t remember who I talked to. Chris: It’s not important… fandom was pretty immature at that point in time.

Gilbert: And that’s okay for them, but I loved comics, but I didn’t really belong with them. But I also didn’t belong with the underground movement, either. Chris: Were you reading undergrounds? Gilbert: Yeah, the ones that came out in the late ’60s: Zap, Freak Brothers, and a few others. Chris: How about Richard Corben? Gilbert: Yeah, I enjoyed Richard Corben, even though I knew it was sort of a limited future to it, as far as emulating it. Chris: So who were you trying to emulate? Were you just drawing in your own style, and just taking it as it comes? Or did you have certain artists in mind that you were trying to model yourself after? Gilbert: At that time, it was mostly Marvel damage in those days, and damage it was. [laughter] It really put a cork up comics’ butt, as far as creativity goes. I’d look at Savage Sword of Conan, [laughs] you know, but I was wanting it to be better, something else. I appreciated they were for older readers, a black-&-white magazine, but even then I just couldn’t relate to it completely. I related to them because they were comics, but not necessarily what they were about. Chris: Did you feel kind of stateless at that time? Did you feel there wasn’t anything out there you could feel any kinship towards? Gilbert: As far as the kind of comics I wanted to do, I enjoyed, I still enjoy Jack Kirby comics and the great cartoonists, but I usually read the comic strips and comic books that were well gone. I’d look at the Kirby comics of the ’60s, I didn’t look to much at the ’70s ones; I didn’t look at comic strips in the paper at the time, I looked at ’30s comic strips. I was just more interested in the quality of that work, which I think for some reason—I blame it on the hippies and the late ’60s, the decline of the mainstream comics. Chris: You blame the hippies for that? Gilbert: [laughs] Well, actually it’s just a joke. It’s that things became self-conscious by then. People became so self-aware of what they were doing. Chris: It was kind of the awkward adolescent phase. Gilbert: If you look at the comics coming out in that time, the mainstream companies and such, they were just trying to keep up with the kids at this stage, and comics became strange and a little embarrassing. Chris: They lost that kind of innocence. Gilbert: Yeah, ’50s and ’60s comic books are pretty goofy and I suppose you can dismiss them, but at the same time, they’re pretty entertaining in a goofy way. They sort of lost that, and now, if anything’s goofy, it’s really self-conscious, like, “Eh, eh? Get it? We’re funny.” Chris: One thing that I always liked to look at was the old ’60s Strange Adventures tales, the guy’s got a planet-head or something, they were just so hemmed in by the Code that they just went totally nuts with the kind of stories they were doing to alleviate the boredom. Gilbert: Actually, my favorite Strange Adventures story is the one where the guy has a computer on his head. It’s similar to the planet on his head guy, but… [laughs] Chris: There was a whole genre of something-head stories. It was like a template or something. Gilbert: I just looked at one of the DC Archives of the Green Lantern, and they had a cover of The Flash where his head grows really big, right? But inside the issue, his head never grows big! So were they thinking they were selling books with the Flash with a big head? That’s really weird! [laughs] COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Chris: DC was notorious for having covers that had nothing to do with the stories. Gilbert: Yeah! I was surprised. I mean, if there’s a gorilla on the cover, they’d have a gorilla inside! But the Flash’s head never grew. Maybe I missed a page. [laughs] Chris: So how old are you in ’75? Gilbert: I was around 18. Chris: Okay, so kind of feeling left out of what’s going on in comics, and pretty much delving into the history, people who are familiar with the exhaustive interviews you’ve done, you were into the old EC material, and stuff like Dennis the Menace, and strange things like Herbie and things like that. Gilbert: Everything. We just read every comic we could get our hands on, except for romance comics, and I’ve never figured out that one, why we never read romance comics. Chris: It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? [laughs] Gilbert: Yeah, it is! Maybe that’s it, I’m trying to fill that void now, I don’t know. Chris: Early on, your work seemed to have a lot of that kind of kitschy, ’50s kind of feel to it, that seems directly derived from those kind of romance things. Gilbert: You’d think so, but we really didn’t read those, so I guess we were going more for old movies and TV shows and Archie comics. Chris: So, you and Mario and Jaime are basically just hanging out, drawing comics for yourself and for each other, and doing complete pages, I assume? Gilbert: No, just a white sheet of typing paper folded over, that was a comic. I wasn’t like these really inspired kids who actually had 24-page comics, and it’d take them a year to draw. I didn’t do that. I got bored quickly. Mine were mostly just for myself. Chris: Were you guys kind of the comic geeks? Or did you guys get out and about and do the normal 18-year-old kind of things? Gilbert: Technically we were comics geeks, because we read comics at home, and that was our world, reading comics. But once we stepped out of the house, there were no more comic books. It was the real world, and we dealt with the world that way. None of my friends in high school—or any time—read comic books. Of course, they knew about comics and stuff, but they never read them and devoured them the way we did. Chris: So it’s like The Double Life of Gilbert Hernandez? Gilbert: It was okay to read comic books in our house, our mother made it okay to read them, we never felt any of this… Chris: You never felt that burning shame. [laughs] Gilbert: Yeah, never felt that burning shame that cartoonists have today, which throws me. People are so self-conscious about feeling that they shouldn’t be enjoying themselves doing comics now, and that throws me, because I didn’t have that shame, it was normal. So, when we left the house, it wasn’t, “Well, you must come into my world of comics!” We didn’t even bother! They’re not into comics and that’s it. Chris: So what were you listening to? Gilbert: In 1975? Probably something not very good. Chris: I always had the impression that you and Jaime were listening to glam at the time, or is that something that came later? Slade and Sweet and… Gilbert: That was actually earlier, that was ‘73, ‘74. In ‘75, it would’ve been groups like Kiss. [laughs] Chris: You were listening to Kiss? Really? Gilbert: Oh, yeah. But what’s odd is that people who like Kiss will say, “Oh, were you into the Kiss Army?” and I’d say, “No, that’s when we quit!” [laughter] Once it got turned into a real bubble-gum thing, that’s when we just thought, “That’s enough.” Chris: It’s like ‘78, and that’s when punk rock—. Gilbert: That’s when you saw eight-year-old kids at a Kiss show, it’s time not to go anymore. That’s how bad rock ’n’ roll got, arena rock in the ’70s. But you know, what else could we do? We had no choice. We had to listen to what was out there. It was quite… just in the nick of time, punk came out. [laughter] For me, it was in the nick of time because I was 21 at the time. I was getting to that point where I was really settling in to my ways, and not opening up to new things. So, when punk came around, I was a little suspicious of it. It wasn’t until I started listening to the records that I thought, “Well, this is nice and fun!” Then it grew on us pretty quick. It didn’t take long. Chris: So that’s a couple of years later. You were getting out of high school in ’75, what were your career goals? Gilbert: I had minor, odd jobs here and there, but I didn’t go to college because I couldn’t stand school, and sure the hell wasn’t going to pay to go to school if I couldn’t stand it. I just had no interest in school, I was pretty much a slacker. I just had no interest in anything but comics and music, so I just sort of messed around for a few years, just making a little bit of money with odd jobs, drawing all the time because that was the only thing that satisfied me. Chris: Now, Jaime did take some art classes, right? The thing that’s interesting about the Love and Rockets Sketchbook—there’s a lot of interesting things—is that November 2001

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Opposite page: Pencil sketches of various citizens of Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez. Striking a defiant pose is the effervescent revolutionary feminist. Vivá lá Luba! Courtesy of the artist. ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez.

the two styles were very similar for quite some time. There wasn’t a real divergence between your individual styles. At what point did you guys start to break apart? Gilbert: When Jaime went to college. He has this innate ability that very few artists have, to be able to draw really well from his subconscious. Somehow, when he went to school, it unleashed that. It’s not necessarily that the school taught him how to do that, it helped him unleash it. Once we started Love and Rockets, we were looking at pages, and I thought, “Wow! I didn’t know Jaime could draw this way.” Mario was surprised, too; we did not know he could draw as well as he does. Chris: Did you regret not going to school when you saw that happen? Gilbert: You know what? I did go later, but it’s in Jaime, it’s not in me. Nobody else in our family draws anywhere near as well as he does. Chris: That’s one thing that I’d like to touch upon. The standard line about Love and Rockets is that Jaime was the better artist, and you were the better writer. I always thought that was absurd. I mean, I always thought that both of you did both things equally well, you just worked in different styles. Gilbert: That’s really kind, but I’d have to agree with the others. [laughter] Jaime has it, Moebius has got it, Jack Kirby had it, Roy Crane had it; they have something we don’t have. [laughter] There’s something that pours from their brain into their arm and no matter how much we learn, we can’t get that. That’s my opinion on it, and Jaime’s got it, and I just don’t have it. So, all my stuff’s pretty labored; it’s difficult for me to draw, and he can close his eyes and do it. Chris: Well, you seem to be so much more prolific than he is. I mean, it kind of makes me wonder whether it really is a struggle for you to draw. Gilbert: Well, I’ve accepted my lot. I’ve accepted being #2, as far as having drawing skill. I know my limits, I know what’s going to be really hard for me to draw, what’s going to be easy, that kind of thing. Chris: So you’re like Avis. [laughter] Gilbert: I’m #2, I just try harder. I can’t please the way Jaime does, I have to please my way, and I have to do it double-strength, so that might be why I’m a little more prolific. Chris: Okay, so let’s go back to the late ’70s. You discovered punk rock, you’re starting to hang out on the scene. What is this doing to your sensibilities, as far as what you want to do with comics? Gilbert: Well, it’s interesting because that was around the same time Star Wars came out, in ‘77, and even though I didn’t

feel it was a great film, I appreciated that it pushed Flash Gordon to the top, and I looked down on the world saying, “Nyah, nyah! See? I was right!” Flash Gordon and this kind of stuff is cool. Then, of course, I got burned-out right away because it became this ridiculous phenomenon and it ruined movies forever and blah, blah, blah. [laughter] But at the time, I was like, “Yes! Flash Gordon wins! It went up against Annie Hall!” The grown-ups have their movie, but the fans had theirs, and I was really happy about that. Chris: It was a whole different period then, when you think back on it, because there were so few sci-fi films, and there were so few adventure films. It was a very grown-up period for movies. Gilbert: Right, this is our movie, and it’s huge! And it got bigger and bigger, and I was like, “Whoa!” I got bored with it really quick. Chris: It was always easy to do. [laughs] Gilbert: Yeah, unfortunately it influenced a lot of my drawing, because that’s when the magazine Heavy Metal came out, as well. Interestingly enough, a lot of things came out in ‘77. Chris: A very important year, in a lot of ways. Watershed. Gilbert: So, it’s Heavy Metal, then the Star Wars phenomenon. I kept in this science-fiction vein with my drawing. It’s fun to draw rocketships, it’s more fun for me to draw a rocket than a Cadillac… it’s more fun for me to draw an alien than a horse… it’s more fun to draw a robot than a stove. It’s my imagination poring forth, but I had no place to put it. Because, as you said, I was into punk, I was aware of the world and the condition of things and had more insight, and it didn’t apply to the science-fiction thing; the Star Wars/Heavy Metal thing just did not apply, but early issues of Love and Rockets have a lot of science-fiction. Chris: Because you hadn’t yet purged that? Gilbert: Yeah, I hadn’t purged that, and it was easy. “What am I going to do? Have this character driving a van or a spaceship?” Well, I’ll draw a spaceship, and nobody can tell me I drew it wrong. [laughter] Very simple reasoning. Chris: So, when does what turned out to be Love and Rockets start to take shape? Gilbert: I was doing stories with whom later became Love and Rockets characters. I did a couple of female characters in sciencefiction stories, but I was more interested in their personal problems, in their personalities. Those stories I worked on for myself, but I also planned to have them actually published one day, hopefully. Chris: Let’s talk about that middle ground, between underground and mainstream—Cerebus, Elfquest, Sabre, First Kingdom—like the kind of material you were doing. Gilbert: I could see, “Well, I don’t have to bend over and do Spider-Man, or I don’t have to go the other way and do some rude underground thing or I don’t have to do a Heavy Metal sciencefiction thing.” I thought, “There’s a new place here, and they’re all different.” I mean, I could tell characterization was most important in those new books. I know I just kept those in mind when I was doing work for myself. It just came like a comet, like a meteor crashing to earth. Mario got some time to print at a college, to get a book printed for free, so we thought, “Well, other guys are doing it!” [laughs] We didn’t know what the hell we were doing! So, we just gathered together what we had. Jaime didn’t have much work at the time, so that’s when he started Maggie and Hopey right away, and I had a backlog of sci-fi stuff ready to go. Chris: You had all the science-fiction stuff you felt obliged to print. Gilbert: Yeah, and I had this story, “BEM,” that was laying around, so I thought, “Well, I’ll put this in.” There was no plan to take over the world with a new kind of comic or anything like that, we just wanted to get in there. We just liked comics, and we wanted people to read ours. That was it. No big plan. Chris: That’s how revolutions start. [laughs] Gilbert: So, luckily, Jaime was in top form with his skill, and he dove in, with a completely new strip featuring Maggie and Hopey. It took me a little while before I got to my Heartbreak Soup stuff because I was using backlog material to fill in the first issue of Love and Rockets, and the response from Jaime’s work was so quick, as soon as the first issue of Love and Rockets came out. First people were raving about his drawing, and then they’re raving about the characters in there. And I thought, “Well, what am I doing this sh*t COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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for? I’ve got my own realistic characters I want to do.” Chris: Are you talking about the first Fantagraphics Love and Rockets, or the first self-published Love and Rockets? Gilbert: Well, I guess I was talking about the Fantagraphics one. Chris: Did the first self-published one ever get to the stands or the shops? Gilbert: In small areas. We were living in Ventura County where there was only one comic store there, Ralph’s Comic Corner. Ralph is a real nice guy, and he said, “Sure, I’ll sell these, whatever, just bring them in.” Chris: Now they’re worth a squedillion dollars. Gilbert: Well, they aren’t anymore. That’s the trouble with reprints, you can’t hoard your comics anymore. Chris: Now, I was always unclear on this: Was the material in the self-published also printed in the Fantagraphics version? Gilbert: Yes, it’s half of the Fantagraphics version. It’s pretty much the same material. Chris: Let’s talk about how the punk rock fit into this whole oeuvre of ours. You’re going to see bands like The Germs, X… Gilbert: The Go-Go’s… believe it or not, the Go-Go’s were a punk band back then. Chris: You’d see bands like The Bags, The Avengers and The Zeroes… Gilbert: Yes, those were the bands to see. Chris: So, this is the first wave of Cali-punk, which is much, much artier and Bohemian than the second wave, which is much more violent and surfer-y. Gilbert: But unfortunately, more significant. [laughter] There’s a Catch-22 there. Anyway, yeah, we still loved comics as a medium, November 2001

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but we were more interested in music and partying. Chris: So you had to figure out how to bridge the twain, so to speak. You had this Bohemian, arty dominion that you were traveling in, and then you had the ultimate in square, geek things, which were comics. Gilbert: We started a punk band, but even then I figured The Clash or The Ramones are just so good, and I thought, “Wow, these guys… I wish I could be them, but I can’t! So I want to be them in a different way.” So, we looked at comics, and put our energies into that, and Jaime directly put the punk stuff in his work, and it was like, “Well, there’s two things that we can be original at,” and that was putting punk in comics because rock ’n’ roll, as far as I’m concerned, was for the most part wretched in comic books. Chris: Like the Alice Cooper comic. [laughter] Gilbert: In Superman comics, some well-meaning 50-year-old guy has to draw The Beatles or something. Chris: And didn’t know what guitar looked like! Gilbert: “What, does it have seven strings?” [laughter] I mean, I love those comics now. 47

Opposite page: Gilbert Hernandez is a master at the depiction of females, both in writing and in art. Here’s some images—featuring a noticeable Alex Toth influence— from Beto’s sketchbook featuring some of his femmes. Courtesy of and ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez. 48

Chris: Because it’s charming and naive. Gilbert: It’s not really their fault, they were just hired to do it. So, we know about music, we’re in bands, we see them all the time, we know what it’s like. Chris: You knew the difference between a Stratocaster and a Les Paul. Gilbert: Right. And the different kinds of rock ’n’ roll, we knew about that. So, let’s do the rock ’n’ roll! And the other half was being Hispanic. We just came out, I guess naively, saying, “We’ll have Hispanic comic book characters.” Chris: There were comic books from Latin America, and you probably didn’t see any of that stuff. Gilbert: Oh, we did, just a little bit. But I wanted to make a mark. I didn’t want to just put out a comic book and everybody ignore it. Chris: You wanted to make a splash. Gilbert: Or at least just get in there, get noticed somehow, get some attention to things. Even if we failed at it, at least we tried, “Hey, look, here’s this comic about punk rock and Hispanics. This is new and different.” Chris: It wasn’t like “El Tigre” or whatever… “The Tarantula.” [laughs] Gilbert: Yeah. The wrestling comics. Well, then we get into Jaime’s wrestling bit. But we took the punk attitude of, “We’re going to do this, and we’re going to show you, and here it is.” Chris: The thing I find really ironic about that is I would say the immediate antecedent of that stuff was underground comics. I think underground comics were so un-hippie and so punk rock, and to bring that back, through punk rock back into comics, it seemed totally natural to me. I mean, I don’t know if you agree with that. Gilbert: It has the same energy in a lot of ways.

Chris: It doesn’t have that physical immediacy, because of course, when you’re drawing comics, you have to be very still! [laughs] Gilbert: You can be in a punk band in a month, and it takes you a few years to be a cartoonist. Chris: It’s a lot harder. Gilbert: We had been drawing since we were kids, so when it came to put out our punk comic, we were ready. Chris: When did you guys start doing the handbills for people like UXA and Middle Class and bands like that? Gilbert: I think it was late ’70s, early ’80s. Chris: How did this come about? Were you just friends with these guys? “Hey, we can draw, let me do your handbill?” Did they ask you? How did this come about? Gilbert: Usually, there were local shows, and they were able to get groups like UXA to play at these shows, and the local bands could open up for them, and asked us to do the flyers. So we didn’t actually do the flyers for Fear or groups like that, we did it for the show that the local bands put on. I never dealt with Fear or any of those bigger bands at the time, though they were on the bills. Chris: Now, say about the time, 1980, ’81, that all the surfers and all the violence and the guns and the skinheads start entering the punk scene, do you guys kind of drift away from it? Gilbert: Well… yeah, I did, because I was getting a little older, and they were getting a little younger, so I backed off. I didn’t like the violence, and I didn’t really like the bands that much. I liked some of them, like Black Flag, but most of them, I thought, were pretty generic, and it wasn’t worth going to see a generic band and getting your ass kicked, you know? You knew where the punk gig was because the police helicopters were flying around it. If you didn’t know where the address was, just follow the police helicopters! COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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[laughter] It got that bad! Forget it, let’s just not go anymore, it was ridiculous! Chris: Now, is it the violence between the audience and the police, or was intramural? I was at the Boston scene at the time and I remember people would come over from LA, and they’d say a lot of these competing factions, like Huntington Beach and Long Beach. Gilbert: They were like gangs. The “locals only” thing. “We came from this beach, so we’re bad!” “Well, we came from this beach, and we’re bad!” That kind of thing. There was also the skinhead guys beating up the long-hairs. It was really negative, and no fun. They were just violent jerks, but we all had to suffer. Jaime and my younger brother were more into that scene, but not into the violence. Chris: Were a lot of Hispanics on the scene? Gilbert: Actually, yes, I guess because being in LA, there was a lot, actually. Chris: So, Love and Rockets didn’t take long to make quite a splash. It got noticed immediately. What did you guys think? Was it, “Okay, here we go!” or did it filter down to you, because you were still relatively isolated? Gilbert: Well, it was a little bit like some of the better punk bands in LA, like X. They kept complaining, “All these great reviews, and we’re still not making any money to make a living!” It was similar for us. But at least we could say, “Well, let’s just do what we want.” Chris: Were you still living at home, I assume? Gilbert: Yeah, I was, because I simply could not afford to do Love and Rockets and have a real job outside of it. At the time, we were very untrained as far as discipline and finishing our work, so it took… the first four issues of Love and Rockets, the 64-page ones, took a year each to do. Chris: Oh, Lord! Gilbert: Yes. So, that’s why we stopped the 64-pages and went down to 32 pages. I asked Gary Groth, “Why in the hell did you ask two untrained cartoonists to do a 64-page comic?” He just said, “Oh, I just liked it thicker, with more art.” [laughs] Chris: So, Love and Rockets is an annual, I guess. [laughs] Gilbert: Yes, it was an annual because we were unskilled to do such long and laborious work! This was not in our talent at the time! It still isn’t! I asked Gary Groth, “Why did we do such long comics when we were unskilled at it?” It wasn’t our strength! He said, “Oh, I just thought it was better that way.” I said, “You mean all this time, all we had to just say was, ‘No, let’s not do it that way’?” He says, “Yeah.” [laughter] Well, in some ways, it helped us to learn. Chris: It was like a baptism of fire, I guess. Gilbert: But I mean, four comics in four years?!? That’s ridiculous! Chris: But it didn’t hurt your rep. Gilbert: In the end, it helped. I mean, it just was a big fat-ass comic book that had all these comics and the readers really responded to that, they really liked having this one issue a year that was really long. Originally, it was supposed to be like summer reading, you know, like when you’re a kid and you get your annual for the summer, the Superman or whatever comic, and that’s what we were thinking of, these 80-Page Giants. [laughter] We were thinking, “Oh, this is nice,” we didn’t realize it was going to get critically accepted.

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Chris: One of the reasons the book was so well received, I guess, is you guys seemed to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. I mean, there was punk rock, there was dinosaurs, there was existentialism, there was surrealism… you guys obviously spent a lot of time in the library! [laughs] Reading up on early 20th century artforms and things like that. There was just so much going on in those stories, there was a lot of… you guys almost seemed like you were putting your dreams on paper. I’m afraid to ask, but was that because you just needed something to take up space? [laughs] Gilbert: Well… yeah! [laughs] Yeah, we had to fill up 64 pages, and we just said, “Well, let’s just dump it all in there.” We didn’t have any particular… we didn’t have an agenda, let’s just put out a funny comic. But the important thing was to be true to ourselves as we were doing it. That was one of the reasons it took the direction it did. Chris: Say, like the first issue, you had that… it almost looks like… I don’t know if you’ll be offended by this, but it almost looks like you were looking at a lot of Jim Starlin or something, you had that kind of slick, fan line. Gilbert: In my work? Chris: Yeah, say in the first issue. Gilbert: Probably, yeah. Like, whatever’s around at the time. I think Warlock was around in ‘74, oh, yeah, I read all that stuff. I’m not embarrassed to say that. I read it all! I looked at all that stuff, you know? Chris: What were you inking with at the time? Gilbert: Oh, it was a Crow Quill. A pen. Chris: So you were working with Crow Quill that early. Gilbert: Early on. I didn’t start using a brush until later, until Love and Rockets #13 or 14. Chris: What about “Errata Stigmata”? That stuff looked like brush to me. Gilbert: Oh, that was probably a Sharpie pen. Chris: Oh, really? [laughs] Gilbert: I’m not kidding you. Whatever. I didn’t have the background to do it “properly.” It was whatever was around the house, whatever was easier to get the thing out quicker, because we’re so slow. So, I’ll pencil an “Errata Stigmata” story, and finish it with a Crow Quill pen, and think, “Well, maybe it’s quicker to use a marker.” It looks awful now, when you look at the originals. Chris: The ink ages so badly. Gilbert: Yeah, and then it fuzzes up. It looks really bad. Chris: So when do you feel the book really took off? Gilbert: #6 and 7, that’s when we started to take off, making some money. But I still played it safe and stayed at home. Chris: Oh, you did? Gilbert: Yeah, I stayed at home for a while. Like I said, “Damn, I’m going to make a living at this!” Chris: The great punk rock cartoonist, living at home. Gilbert: Yeah. Living at home with mom. It was by choice, because I hadn’t outgrown partying excessively and all that stuff,

Top left: Thumbnail script page. Top right: Roughed-out page. Above: Finished page. All from Love and Rockets #3, “Heartbreak Soup,” the 12th page of the first Palomar story. Courtesy of and ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez. 50

and I was focused on doing the comic most of the time. That’s what I did most of the time. Chris: Were you guys still playing… was Nature Boy around at that time? Gilbert: Around that time? No, I was in a couple of bands with Jaime, and they just kept failing apart. [laughs] Chris: It wasn’t meant to be. Gilbert: It wasn’t meant to be because we just didn’t have that drive to lead a band somewhere. I always joined bands and worked with them instead of starting my own band. I just didn’t have that drive, as far as music goes. I didn’t have this Lennon & McCartney/Strummer & Jones thing of forging ahead. You know, we just didn’t have that drive. Chris: I was always trying to form bands, too, but when you’re an artist, you’re so used to doing everything yourself, and getting

everything your own way, and when you’re in a band, you’ve got all these guys who want to do things their way. I mean, I just… even when I was pursuing music seriously, I spent most of my time in my own kind of home studio setup. It’s very difficult to go from total autonomy—especially when you’re doing a book like Love and Rockets, where somebody’s not inking it and lettering it and all that stuff—to being in a band, where you’ve got a whole bunch of wives to contend with, you know? [laughs] Gilbert: And drummers! Chris: Oh, drummers are the worst! Gilbert: For some reason, we never had luck with drummers. I don’t know. I always felt, a lot of times, the drummers we dealt with were frustrated front-men. They hated the fact that there were two or three guys standing in front of them getting the attention, and so they’d try their best to get noticed. Chris: In any event, you guys are the toast of the alternative world. I spoke to Scott McCloud about this, and I gave him a model that there was left field, right field and center field, and books like Zot! and Nexus were in centerfield, and say, Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars is rightfield [laughs], and Love and Rockets was seen to be left field. But it seems that was more just a natural thing. I never got the impression you guys were trying to be willfully obscure, or snobbish. You just did things differently. And that’s just your natural inclination, it wasn’t your idea to set yourself apart, even though a lot of people in the mainstream began to regard you guys that way. Gilbert: They regarded us as the kids that wouldn’t play ball. Yeah, it’s our personalities, and our insistence of using the medium as something better, to do something more truthful and personal. Chris: Let’s look at it this way. It’s October, 1983: When you went into a very well-stocked comics store, with who did you feel kinship? I know there were people later who were inspired by you, but in the early ’80s, did you find anything out in the racks that you allied with? Gilbert: Not necessarily the stories, but seeing Elfquest and Cerebus, seeing that out there was encouragement that it can be done, you can get away from that mainstream stuff. And there was a strong fan base for it. But when I went into the store to buy COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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something, I was interested in two things: RAW magazine… that was the only thing that was anywhere near new kinds of comics, and Steve Ditko Spider-Man reprints. Chris: Marvel Tales at the time was doing those. Gilbert: Yeah, and I didn’t have those, so that’s all I would buy. And RAW came out once a year, so I would buy that once a year, and the rest of the time I would only buy Spider-Man comics, and that was it. Chris: Well, the interesting thing about RAW is that RAW really does… it was that kind of willfully obscure kind of snobbish, elitist kind of mentality. Gilbert: But, like Heavy Metal, I divorced myself from that, and I was more interested in the artists. I always felt the strength of RAW was the contributors, not their attitude. Charles Burns and Jacques Tarde, different artists… I looked at RAW and thought, “Well, I like these artists, but I’m not buying this art school attitude crap”—no pun intended—”from RAW.” Chris: Yeah, so you were interested in guys like Burns and Tarde and stuff like that, and you weren’t necessarily interested in those big, slashing slabs of black ink that always seemed to take up three-quarters of the magazine. [laughs] Gilbert: I wasn’t interested in that at all, but then again, they were serious enough to keep up as much excess, I say, at Heavy Metal, they would just throw in something because it was sexy, or science-fictiony, or obscure or bizarre, but with that fanboy twist to it. Whereas RAW at least, with their elitist attitude, they were at least looking for art somewhere. Chris: They’re trying to do something with the form aside from just spinning the wheels. Gilbert: Right, and the fantastic artists they used. Chris: Now, were you interested in World War III Illustrated? That was about that time as well. Gilbert: No, I didn’t really see many copies of that. Maybe it’s because our local comics store didn’t carry it. I didn’t really see too much of that. Chris: You were more likely to get that at a good record store. Gilbert: I’d seen the stuff, and it was a little too close to undergrounds for me. Underground comics were the same as RAW to me. I liked the artists, but I didn’t like the underground scene, because that seemed like an art scene to me, too. I liked Crumb and a few others, but I didn’t really belong there. Chris: That’s another thing, at the time, Crumb was doing what I think was his best work in Weirdo. I’m still waiting for Fantagraphics to reprint those stories! Gilbert: They’re getting there. Chris: So much of the other stuff he’s done gets a lot more play, but my favorite stuff Crumb ever did was in Weirdo. So, you were probably picking that stuff up as well, plus Peter Bagge was getting stuff in there, and Dennis Worden and a lot of people who ended up at Fantagraphics started out in Weirdo as well, like Mary Fleener. Gilbert: I only got a few issues of Weirdo. At the time, when we were doing Love and Rockets, I wasn’t looking at a lot of comic books, even the good ones. I just wasn’t looking at all. Chris: You were too busy with your own. Gilbert: Exactly. After Love and Rockets was on its way, I started to look at comics again, started getting back issues of Weirdo and such, but I really was focused on Love and Rockets. Once we ended an issue of Love and Rockets, we didn’t take breaks, we just started the next issue. We took our breaks during the process of putting out a book. Like I said, we weren’t trained. Chris: I would say that your drawing style pretty much became fixed at the time, near the “Heartbreak Soup” stuff. That you seemed to find a style that was comfortable for you, and was very naturalistic, and really suited the kind of stories that you were doing, the Palomar stories. Was that just a natural evolution, or were there people you were modeling yourself after? Gilbert: It was a natural evolution. The models I used were classic comic strip artists, where they maintained a style so you would recognize it every time you saw it. I wasn’t thinking about doing all the different wacky styles that I did before I did the Heartbreak Soup stuff. I wanted a continuity in the artwork that the readers would become comfortable with. The Palomar stories, to me, were to November 2001

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become “home” to the reader, like the way old comic strips were to the readers of those. Chris: Gasoline Alley. Gilbert: That’s a perfect example. You open up the paper to see Gasoline Alley every day, and there was a comfort to that, and that’s what I was looking for in the Heartbreak Soup stories, to have that sense of comfort while you’re reading, and then I’d throw in the wacky stuff that went with the stories. Chris: I would venture to guess that your orientation became that you saw yourself as a storyteller, that you were now a storyteller, and that the art was going to be sublimated to the storytelling, or subordinate to it. Gilbert: Right. Since I was so focused on just doing Heartbreak Soup at the time, for many years, I couldn’t see myself doing any other style, and that’s what lot of readers missed, that I drew different ways, especially when they look at the sketchbook and go, “Oh, I didn’t know he drew this way!” [laughs] Chris: But I remember at a point sometime later you discovered George Grosz and seemed to want to incorporate that—maybe not into the Heartbreak Soup, the whole Palomar continuity—but in some of the secondary stories you were doing. Gilbert: Yeah, I’d gotten over my obsession with doing Heartbreak Soup 24-hours a day, and it was time just to break away from doing the same kind of drawing for the rest of my life. Chris: Staying on this topic for a moment, every artist can look at their work and know where they picked things up. I spoke to Steve Rude, and his work is Kirby and Russ Manning. Other artists, some of the older artists I’ve talked to, they say, “Well, I got this from Alex Raymond, and this from Hal Foster, and this from Milt Caniff.” When you look at your style, who do you see as being the building blocks of that style? Gilbert: Wow. If I can count them on one hand—Kurtzman’s there. Ditko’s there. Chris: Caniff? Gilbert: Not directly. I mean, I’m speaking about the ones I think of, that are in my head when I’m drawing. Chris: I was just thinking of some of the impressionistic brushwork. Gilbert: Who’d I say? Kurtzman, Ditko, an Archie artist named Harry Lucey… he’s really a strong influence. Chris: And also on Jaime as well. Gilbert: Right. Owen Fitzgerald, who drew Dennis the Menace comics.

Left and below: Gilbert’s irreverence and affectionate nod to the old Marvel comics pinup pages is evident in these two full-pagers from the writer/ artist’s recent series, New Love, collected in Fear of Comics, a Fantagraphics book. Courtesy of Eric Reynolds & FBI. ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez.

Chris: For Fawcett? Gilbert: Right, for Fawcett. Jack Kirby, of course, even though I don’t draw a lot of dynamic art, Kirby’s always there. He should be in every mainstream artists’ blood, in even a lot of alternative artists. Chris: I’m a huge Ketcham fan. I think the man is one of the greatest geniuses in the history of cartooning, particularly a genius of minimalism. Now, I’m interested that you went to Fitzgerald instead of the source. Gilbert: Ketcham did one panel and Fitzgerald did whole stories. Ketcham is amazing in the way that you can look at the history of comic strips and comic books and there’s only a few guys who can draw people, and he drew people like nobody could draw people. Even with that minimalist style, I mean, the body language, and the folds in the clothes, and the attitude, the way they sat or stood or whatever, is sheer brilliance, and it’s that talent I was talking about that Jaime has that you cannot learn, it’s something he had. Chris: I see tons of Ketcham in Jaime’s work, the giveaway is when he’d do a plaid, and instead of following the folds, he’d just draw a singular plaid over an entire garment. Gilbert: Oh, yeah, simple stuff. Things like that. Mostly, we’re always looking for the essence of people in the drawings. Chris: I’m going to respect your wishes to sell your art ability short and I don’t want to sell Jaime short, but I think you’re a much better caricaturist than he is. Your characters have much more identifiable faces and body types. When I think of the cast at a glance, there’s no mistaking one of the Palomar characters for another. They all have very well-developed appearances. Gilbert: Yeah, I lean more towards the “bigfoot” cartooning, and he leans more towards skilled draftsmanship. The difference between Jaime and a lot of mainstream artists that draw really well, Jaime is just battling every day to bring out the essence of what it is to be a human. Even if he draws really pretty, it’s still a challenge to do that, and that’s why he enjoys Owen Fitzgerald, the Dennis the Menace artist, and Ketcham and Harry Lucey so much, is those guys did it without blinking. Chris: I appreciate your modesty, but there’s certainly so much going on in your work that I see no reason for you to sell yourself short. Gilbert: Well, I’m the Al Feldstein of Love and Rockets. Jaime is the Reed Crandall to my Al Feldstein, you know? Chris: No, I don’t think that’s fair. I’m not going to go into that, because I can see I’m not going to get anywhere with it. So, I would say your work became really the paragon of what this issue is going to be about, which is a new expression in comics. One thing I’ve noticed—and we’ve already discussed this—is when I talk to a lot of other artists,

and I say, “Did you notice things that were going on in the culture, the whole punk rock/underground scene, there was this parallel development going on as well,” and to a person, they were oblivious to it, they just had no idea! I told them that people like Shawn Kerri, there were a lot of people doing work in the punk ’zines that were clearly influenced by what was going on in comics, and the posters and everything like that, and the thing that I’m really surprised at is how isolated that was to people within the industry. Gilbert: That was one of the reasons we didn’t relate to fandom very much. Many weren’t going to open their eyes or ears to what was going on around them, and I thought that was limited and, basically, geeky and dorky. Like I said, we grew up not thinking we’re geeks doing comics, so we’re more open to the world’s influence. Chris: That’s like my friends and I, because we were both the punks and the comics fans in school, and there were enough of us to avoid getting our asses kicked! Gilbert: That was the danger in those days, yeah. Chris: So, you guys are showered with praise from mainstream creators like Alan Moore and Frank Miller and other people like that, they’re huge fans of your work. You guys start to have a very lucrative side business going on with European reprints of your work, and then there are people like Peter Bagge doing Neat Stuff, and Dan Clowes doing Lloyd Llewellyn, and a bunch of other people starting to ooze up to the surface. Did you guys start to socialize with these guys? Did you start to form common cause with them? Gilbert: The interesting thing about hanging out with Clowes and Bagge and Burns and those guys is, basically the left-field cartoonists get along somehow. I don’t know what it is, we just get along. We seem to have the same sort of connections, you know? Our pasts are more similar. Most enjoyed punk rock for a while and other cartoonists were oblivious to that. Chris: That must’ve been frustrating when you went to San Diego, for a while there, at least. [laughs] Gilbert: At first. But we were so happy being in the comics world that we sort of tolerated it. We didn’t expect people to like comics when we were growing up, so we didn’t expect anybody to like rock ’n’ roll when we went to cons! We were already used to keeping our amusements to ourselves, so when we went to a convention and there was no knowledge of the real world there, [laughs] we accepted that. Chris: At some point in time, you’re approached by Vortex to do Mr. X, and that must’ve been a very strange situation for you guys, to take over a book that had been promised for years, and never delivered, and we were teased with some beautiful graphics by Dean Motter and Paul Rivoche, and you guys are contacted to do this. Gilbert: It’s really not as big a deal as it got made out to be. It’s just a simple business/artist conflict, that’s all. Publisher/artist conflict, I should say.

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Chris: So, you guys do that stuff, where you’re writing and Jaime is drawing. Was this an incredibly strange way for you guys to work? Gilbert: Yeah, it was, that’s why the book is an artistic failure. Chris: It’s interesting because it certainly was incredibly influential. Gilbert: Oddly enough, that’s the reason for the Batman cartoons… Chris: And Terminal City, and I think that’s probably the book that a lot of the people who followed in Jaime’s footsteps like Kent McGuire and Adam Hughes and a lot of people who really admired that kind of “good girl” work—that’s probably why they noticed it, because it’s a color book. But it just was a very uncomfortable fit for you guys? Gilbert: Yeah, mostly because we were already hot on doing Love and Rockets, expressing ourselves, blah, blah, blah. Then this offer comes up, and it’s like, “Well, we’re not making any money here, so if we do a color comic, we’ll make a lot of money!” When we started to do it, we were like, “Uh, this is a little harder than we thought!” [laughter] Just because I would write something… see, I’m not used to writing out an entire script, and somebody else drawing it. I usually write a partial script for myself, but I know what they’re talking about, even if I don’t have the words down yet. Whereas Jaime doesn’t know what I’m thinking, so he kind of just winged it. We just kind of winged it because we hadn’t worked that close together ever before. Chris: You just sort of made it up as you went along? Gilbert: We were being polite to each other, but we were driving each other crazy! Jaime wouldn’t draw what I was picturing, and he didn’t want to draw things I was writing. We were so worked up about doing Love and Rockets at the time. We thought Mister X would be a quick little easy adventure, and it wasn’t. Chris: And you never went back. [laughs] Gilbert: No, we didn’t like the process. It had nothing to do with splitting with Vortex or anything like that, it was just, “This sucks; let’s do what we want to do.” We were already spoiled. Chris: Well, you also seemed to take pride in your autonomy. Gilbert: It was like, “Look, we’re doing our own stuff already, and already getting this attention, what do we have to do this crap for?” For money? I never made money on a project, ever. I mean, not real money, not Frank Miller money. Chris: Since Love and Rockets was so hot, were you getting calls from people like Jenette Kahn and Jim Shooter to do some work for them? Gilbert: We didn’t get asked directly, but, well… there’s a history of Love and Rockets where Gary Groth figures a lot into it, and he was always in-between any time there was any interest in Love and Rockets. At the time, Gary Groth, publisher of Love and Rockets and The Comics Journal, was pretty protective of us, and [laughs] November 2001

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whether it was intentional or not, he always seemed to be a factor to make the other side uncomfortable. Chris: Well, he seemed to be such a lightning rod at the time. Gilbert: Right, so a lot of people just wanted to avoid him, and go around him to get to us, but he would always show up somehow. Like I said, I don’t know if it was intentional, or if it was his personality. [laughs] Chris: You must’ve felt a lot of obligation to him, as well, because he really made the whole situation happen. Gilbert: Right. He was always behind us, and he was always fiercely promoting us and backing us up. Chris: So you must’ve felt a certain amount of loyalty as well. Gilbert: Yeah, but we didn’t really feel obliged, we felt it was a natural partnership, really. We just worked that well together. But at the same time, Gary’s personality is such that he’s always getting into tangles. Chris: Looking back on that time, it really seemed a time that— it seems so long ago now in retrospect—but there really was a crusade, “Let’s try to make comics something other than just throwaway geek fodder,” and I’m sure you guys are pretty passionate about that. But certainly, as the decade progressed, that whole feeling really evaporated. How did that affect you guys? You saw a lot of the interesting kind of left-field material was really starting to wither away, and the mainstream was just becoming more and more crass and vulgar and loud, more a parody of itself than ever. Did that

Above: In the final analysis, Gilbert Hernandez will most assuredly be recalled for his plethora of characters that people his tales. Here’s 36 faces to contemplate from his cover art for Love and Rockets #25. ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez.

Opposite page: Many marvel at Maggie and lots love Luba, but Ye Ed’s favorite Love and Rockets character remains Errata Stigmata, a sad and strange girl from the imagination of Gilbert and Mario Hernandez. Sketches courtesy of Gilbert Hernandez. Panel from Love and Rockets Vol. 2, #2. Courtesy of Eric Reynolds & FBI. ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez. 53

Above: Love and Rockets #49, the second-to-last issue of the first run, contains a bunch of esoteric (and some deeply personal) strips by Beto. Here’s one entitled “The Artist.” ©2001 Gilbert Hernandez. Below: Penny Century, Luba, Hopey, Maggie, Izzy and Errata (with some other strange folk) on the run in this Beto/Jaime jam from 1983. Courtesy of J.P. Shannon. ©2001 Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez.

start to affect the way of thinking you had at your work? Did you feel like the Spanish Republicans at the time? Gilbert: [laughs] Jaime and I are pretty self-absorbed when it comes to our work. It was more about that our sales didn’t improve, that our sales actually went down, because of whatever marketing things were going on with the other companies, shelf space in shops, poor distribution. That did sour us a bit, like, “Wait, whoa! You mean, they talked about us for a little while, and talked about the other new comics for a little while, and it was a lot of lip service, because they really wanted big mainstream books to sell?” [laughs] It was a little disillusioning, but I don’t know. Chris: Are you saying that it was disheartening, but it didn’t really affect the course of your work? Gilbert: No, whatever problems I had with my work was my own personality. [laughs] We lost readers starting around #30 of Love and Rockets. I think it was when I started to do “Poison River.” Chris: So we’re talking the late ’80s here. Gilbert: Yeah, late ’80s, when our star began to dim. Yeah, around #29, after I did “Human Diastrophism,” and then I went into doing “Poison River,” and that’s when I started losing readers by the mobs, because I was doing this really complex serial. Chris: Well, I remember being very frustrated by that, [laughs] because you had this long, sprawling story, and the book maybe came out two or three times a year at that point in time. It was frustrating for you as well? Gilbert: Well, frustrating for me, because whatever personality conflicts I was having, I would sit at the board and bust my head open, trying to finish this stuff, and then I’d trash the page and start over. Then I’d cut up

another page and paste it up, all this time-consuming repair work that really wasn’t working. You know what I’m saying? I was trying to fix something that wasn’t working to begin with. Chris: You think maybe you could also look at the fact that you were trying to take the book into a new direction? Gilbert: I always tried to look at it from the readers’ point of view. I remember somebody overheard at a comics store, “Oh, the new Love and Rockets is out,” and somebody else said, “Oh! Really? I didn’t know that still came out.” “Yeah, it’s not very good.” [laughter] It took me a half-year to do that issue, and then they just dismiss it in two seconds. I had to look at that seriously, “I’ve got to get this done, I’ve got to work it out.” And the more I pushed myself to finish it, the harder it became. Chris: Weren’t you also doing the “Love and Rockets” storyline at the same time? You were doing “Poison River” and… Gilbert: ”Love and Rockets,” because I needed the break. Chris: The interesting thing about “Poison River” is that the stories became very dark, almost nihilistic. Pitch-black. You had a lot of extreme violence in this story. Was that a reflection of your state of mind at the time? Gilbert: That’s the only answer I can come up with, and I don’t remember why. Chris: So, you did the “Love and Rockets” storyline, which was a real departure for you, because it was an LA story, and it was a contemporary story. Gilbert: It was my version of a Maggie and Hopey story. I thought, “Well, I have the same punk rock ’n’ roll background, and I’ve never used it in the comic.” Then that became dark and twisted, too. [laughter] Something was going on with me and I really don’t know where it came from. Chris: I think it was just the temper of the times, though, because everything was kind of dark and twisted at the time! Gilbert: It could’ve been that. Chris: You had all those really sick Vertigo books like The Extremist and the Hellraiser books and all that kind of stuff. It seemed across the board in popular culture, there was this kind of rush to become very dark and nihilistic and extreme, and maybe you just picked up on that. Gilbert: I don’t know. I did Birdland after that, to do something very light. That became was really twisted as well… not dark, but really twisted! [laughs] It started out as this light sex romp without violence—that was my plan, to do a real fun sex comic without violence, because for some reason, when you ask a lot of cartoonists to do a sex comic, the violence takes over. Chris: That’s the thing that really bothers me. I always say I like sex and I like violence, but I don’t like sexual violence. Gilbert: Right, unless they really have something to say about it, but usually they don’t. Chris: Yeah, it always seems egregious. Gilbert: Yeah, because they like violence. For some reason, when some people get worked up about sex, they start getting violent thoughts. Chris: I think that says something about the comic book mentality. Also at the time, when all this stuff was happening, it’s almost like you guys were the old-line punk rockers, and then there was a new hardcore movement, because you had people like Julie Doucet and Chester Brown. Gilbert: From what I understand, there’s a lot of those later cartoonists—who are now veterans, of course, but back in the late ’80s, early ’90s, they were new—and they didn’t really like Love and Rockets, because it was too wimpy. Chris: Yummy Fur reminded me a lot of very early Love and Rockets, and Joe Matt’s work was really kind of fun and confessional, sort of like the Crumb stories. Julie Doucet was so obviously crackers that it was fun to read her stuff. But then, it seemed all the stories were just masturbation stories, and I think that was a great metaphor for what they were doing with their work! Gilbert: That’s a good way to put it. Chris: And I think it’s kind of funny, when you think you guys were The Clash and they were Agnostic Front or something, [laughs] and their work has really just disappeared and they don’t do anything anymore, really. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Gilbert: Yeah. Chris: The stuff you guys are doing continues to endure. Gilbert: That’s the most important thing, to just keep going and… it’s not a nice thing to say, but just dust ’em! You know? Chris: Did it feel like a rivalry with them? Gilbert: “Guess what? This is comics, this is not rock ’n’ roll. I can be 80 years old and whip your ass.” Chris: Yeah. Gilbert: Will Eisner’s just about 80, and he can still kick ass! Chris: Yeah! [laughs] Gilbert: Rock ’n’ roll’s different, boxing’s different, basketball’s different, but this is comics. Chris: You’ve got to give the props. Gilbert: If my brain and my hand holds out, I’m going to kick your ass down the stairs, you know what I’m saying? And it’s not about arrogance or ego, it’s about the spirit of competition. Chris: The interesting thing is, though, because that although Love and Rockets as a book sort of ground to a halt, then you did New Love, which was really a throwback to those fun, early Love and Rockets days. Gilbert: Yeah, that was fun. I chose the worst name I possibly could for it. I discovered my name wasn’t strong enough to sell a book, it was Love and Rockets they wanted. Chris: As with anything, most people respond to brand names. Gilbert: So unfortunately, Love and Rockets is such a strong name that five years after Love and Rockets, people are still going, “So, what do you do now? Why did you quit Love and Rockets?” But I understand, because Love and Rockets was the place to get our stuff. Whenever you wanted to read this stuff, you went to Love and Rockets. So, doing all these books all over the place, they just aren’t interested, and also, that readership has gotten older. Chris: So, your post-Love and Rockets material—Girl Crazy and Luba and New Love, which all were really in the same vein as Love and Rockets—didn’t get the response that the original book did, but I would say that’s probably more due to the fact that in the great implosion of the early ’90s that all of your kind of left-field, unorthodox readers left! Left entirely, they just gave up! It was very hard to go into a store when you wanted to find Big Baby or Love and Rockets, or whatever it is, and you’re confronted with an ocean of chromium-plated garbage. Gilbert: Right. Chris: I met you at San Diego a few years back, and I remember telling you how much I really liked New Love, because I think those problems you were having in Love and Rockets were all addressed, and all of a sudden, the stuff was fun to read again. It was presumably fun for you to draw, as well. Gilbert: Yes. Chris: So, what’s next? What do you see in the future? Gilbert: For me, or in comics generally? Chris: Take your pick. As a matter of fact, I’d like to hear your comments on both. Gilbert: I’m continuing the Luba comic book, and I’ll probably be working on a Vertigo book for DC, a mini-series, focusing on those books for a while… there’s two Luba books coming out, actually, there’s Luba and Luba’s Comics and Stories. I’m going to start doing—which is probably going to be the new trend for alternative comic cartoonists—to do short graphic novels. That seems to be the future. Chris: All you have to do is look at a sales chart and see that whole periodical format is failing. Gilbert: It’s exhausting to keep putting out these books, and with only two people reading them, you know? [laughs] Yeah, it seems like the alternative books seem to be withering away. Chris: Maybe it’s a healthy thing in the long run. I think that having to do… I mean, I’ve only done a couple of miniseries, and it drives me out of my mind, I couldn’t imagine doing a continuing series, because it’s so exhausting, it’s so much work! I can’t even imagine doing Love and Rockets, which ran for 10 years! I can’t even imagine it, I just imagine guys like yourselves and guys like Dave Sim, I just don’t know how you can do that. Gilbert: I remember when my older brother Mario came home with the first Fantastic Four comic. So, that is ingrained in me, the November 2001

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periodical, and I know Robert Crumb needs to have a comic book to draw. He can’t do a graphic novel, he has to have a comic book. They may only come out every five years, [laughs] but it’s got to be a comic book. He’s got to be able to hold it, it’s got to feel like a comic book because that’s what he wants. I’m going to make the transition, but I made a conscious decision to make that transition in a year or two, and I’ll be doing a couple of those a year, and that’ll be it. But they’ll be self-contained and complete. You won’t have to worry about, “What happened last issue?” Chris: Yeah, you mentioned the problem you ran into with “Poison River,” this long, sprawling story that kind of got out of control over… I mean, you probably worked on that for almost three years. It must be… maybe after some point, when you want to tell a complex story, to go, “What was I thinking last month when I was working on this?” [laughter] Gilbert: My only fear—and it’s just a fear—is that if I can do one long story and not see the mistakes ahead of time, you know? Whereas with a periodical or a serial, I can see where the things are going, and I can re-route where it’s going. A novel, once that’s out, “Whoops!” [laughs] “That didn’t turn out right, did it?” Chris: Now, we’ve got Hollywood calling again. Gilbert: [laughs] Not really. Well, they’re always sniffing around to do Love and Rockets or something. Chris: Now that the “Latin” thing is big, right?

Gilbert: I wouldn’t mind this “flavor of the month” stuff, this tokenism if they came through on stuff. They just waste a lot of air, you waste a lot of time and energy and a lot of hope, and then either it’s distilled into the most unmitigated crap or [laughs] it doesn’t happen at all, and everybody shrugs their shoulders. Chris: The problem is, it’s so seductive. Gilbert: Oh, it is! There’s that little part in our minds saying, “You know, what if this worked?” [laughs] It happens for some people, I don’t know. Chris: Do you think comics are redeemable? I mean, my story of comics in the ’90s is that they turned back the clock so radically, and cashed in and crashed out. It was almost like a cocaine binge. The entire comics industry’s at the Betty Ford Clinic right now. Do you see a viable future for the medium ? Gilbert: As far as an industry goes? That can always come back, because weirder stuff happens. Things are on their way out, they’re crumbling, there’s only two guys left, they’re toothless and have sticks instead of guns, they’re defending the fort, and then “Boom!” the next week, it’s back and bigger than ever. So I don’t count it out. I see dark days ahead, but I don’t count it out completely, because weirder things have happened for things to come back, for whatever reason.

Above: Gilbert (left) and Jaime Hernandez. Photograph by Carol ???? Courtesy of Jaime Hernandez.

CBA Interview

The Mechanic of Love Jaime Hernandez talks about life with Maggie & Hopey Opposite page: Greg Preston portrait of Jaime Hernandez. Courtesy of and ©2001 Greg Preston. Center inset: Previously unpublished (and self-rejected) Love and Rockets T-shirt design by Jaime. Courtesy of and ©2001 Jaime Hernandez. Below: Self caricature by Jaime from L&R #40. ©2001 Jaime Hernandez.

Conducted by Chris Knowles Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Jaime (pronounced “high-me”) Hernandez is perhaps the finest cartoonist to emerge from American comic books in the 1980s. Add one part Dan DeCarlo, throw in a batch of Alex Toth, with a pinch of Charles Schutz and Hank Ketcham for flavor, mix in a whole lot of personal insight, garnish with a rare respect for women, and you might get an idea of what the creator of Maggie, Hopey, Penny Century and numerous other females is all about. Jaime was interviewed by phone in Jan. 2000 and he copyedited the transcript. Chris Knowles: When I talked to Gilbert last night, the question I started off with was, what were you doing in 1975? How many years younger are you than Gilbert? Jaime Hernandez: A couple. Chris: Okay, so I’m going to start off with you: What were you doing in 1977? Jaime: In 1977, I was a senior in high school, and I had not discovered punk, but I had heard of it. [laughs] Chris: Were you listening to Kiss at the time, like Gilbert was? [laughs] Jaime: In ’75 and ’76, I was… by ’77, they were disappointing me already. I think the “Destroyer” days are gone. Those “Love Gun” days. I just don’t like them that much any more, but I was the biggest Kiss fan in the world in 1975. Chris: Gilbert said that Star Wars had an amazing impression on him in 1975. Jaime: Yeah, I guess I would say not as big on me, but big enough. I saw it later than most people, but I was bowled over, and Star Wars was the thing, and all that stuff. I’d graduated high school and I was thinking about breaking into fanzines. Comic fanzines, little cheap things or just these real small-time publishing things. Chris: Were you submitting any of your work back then? Jaime: That’s when I started. I would say right after I graduated was when I started concentrating on actually using pen and ink to draw with, because it was usually ball-point pen and stuff like that before. Let’s see… I did my first story, I got my first story published in a fanzine called Fandom Circus. Chris: Was anybody involved in that who went on to do other things? Jaime: I was in the second issue; Jerry Ordway was in the first issue. Chris: No kidding? So that’s quite a pedigree. Jaime: The second issue, I think I was with—do you remember the guy, B.C. Boyer? Chris: Yeah, The Masked Man. Jaime: Yeah. I don’t think he does anything any more, but yeah, he was in the same issue. I still didn’t know anybody, all this was through the mail. Chris: Were you guys kind of isolated? Did you go to cons back then?

Jaime: I would say about that time, I had gone to my first or second con. We would drive to LA from Oxnard, it was about an hour away, we’d drive downtown and go to these cons at the Biltmore. Chris: Were these big cons, or were these kind of little shows where they’d be just mostly for sellers? Jaime: It was small shows, but in those days, professionals went. [laughs] Well, anybody who lived in LA, I guess. Chris: There wasn’t the kind of comics community back then in LA, because it was still mostly based in New York. Jaime: There were a few people here, and also because a lot of guys came here to work in animation, so they lived here and they were really transplanted from New York or the Midwest or something. Chris: Did you meet any real big names at any of these shows? Jaime: Well, I kind of tagged along with Gilbert and Mario, who were also breaking into their comics. They were actually working on a big, long comics story. They didn’t know it was called a graphic novel. I just tagged along, and I said, “Well, I’ll do my little fanzines, and maybe one day, I’ll be like the guys.” Chris: Any chance of that material ever getting reprinted, or is it long gone? Jaime: Parts of them have been reprinted, like in our Sketchbook and things like that. If you go to a con and go through the fanzine box from somebody’s table, you might find something I did, but it was all few and far between. I must say, those old fanzine editors were a lot worse than professional editors! [laughs] Chris: They were like little Hitlers? Jaime: Yeah, they really took themselves very seriously! They really treated us like we didn’t exist, you know? They f*cked with the work, they’d mark on it and all this stuff, so I thought, “This was it? This is comics?” [laughs] Chris: It wasn’t a good introduction. Jaime: No, but you know, I didn’t really expect anything. It wasn’t that big a blow. I didn’t expect to be treated like royalty, but at the same time, I knew there was an artistic integrity in me, you know? Chris: Gilbert told me at this point, I guess you took some drawing classes at a community college? Jaime: Yeah, that was from ’78 to ’79. Chris: And he said your work just really took off at that point. Jaime: I went to college because I was being paid, because when my dad died, we had some kind of Social Security deal where, if I took enough credits in college, they would pay me $300 a month, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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and that’s better than working! [laughs] Chris: Nothing wrong with that! Jaime: So I said, “Okay, I’ll go to college, I’ll take dumb classes. Gee, what do I like to do? Oh, art! Okay.” So I took art, and I just happened to be there at a time when there was this great art department of these old men who had been there since the ’50s! Chris: Guys wearing the old Bridgeman/Andrew Loomis kind of style? Jaime: Yeah, and they were all established, real artist guys, like real training. Chris: A lot of them working in Hollywood at the time? Jaime: I don’t know about Hollywood, but I knew there was a teacher there who used to draw Daniel Boone or something like that, the comic strip. There were these very distinguished, old-fashioned kind of guys. My life drawing teacher just happened to turn my art upside-down, I don’t know how he did it to this day. I don’t know how teachers teach. Chris: What Gilbert seemed to think was there was something in you that was waiting to come out, and it was just kind of uncorked at school. Jaime: Yeah, I guess so. Also, that was at the time when we just dove into punk, so I was just really excited about my life again. I mean, I came aback to life… I was dead since sixth grade. I was just a whole new human being again. It was just very exciting; I was just having a blast, you know? Chris: The impression seems to be that you went for the punk thing a lot more than any of your brothers did. Jaime: Me? I would say Gilbert and I and my younger brother, but it ended up me and my younger brother went a lot further. Chris: And his name was? Jaime: He’s Emile, he’s in a punk band. He’s in an old band, doing the old comeback routine. Chris: What’s the name? Jaime: Doctor Know Chris: You got a lot of hand bills for them. So, let me ask you this: I was talking to Steve Rude, and he was telling me he’s well-known for being the big Andrew Loomis freak. Was there a particular book or a great old drawing technique book that you latched onto and didn’t let go of? Jaime: No, you know, most of the stuff I learned was hands-on by doing it in class. Chris: Okay, so it was the school that did it. Jaime: I really liked that book… what was the guy? Jack Hamm. Chris: Oh! [laughs] I’ve got that book right here! You know—just as a little aside here—I knew that about you. I didn’t know that until now, but I remember when I was a kid, I was so into the work you were doing, and I remember I bought that book, and somehow it just clicked… I saw the connection there! [laughs] Jaime: It’s not like I would copy drawings from them, but it was like I would just look at them, like a reference book. Like sitting on the toilet, I would need something to read. [laughs] I would look at them, and enjoy them, and somehow that seeped in or something. I still don’t know how, to this day, exactly how I learned to draw, you know? [laughs] Chris: It just happened. Jaime: Other than drawing over and over, keep drawing. Chris: That’s really the only way it happens. And then, feeding your mind at the same time. Jaime: I’ve never looked at things in a research academic way, I just somehow let November 2001

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Above: It’s not surprising that a rock band in the 1980s stole the name Love and Rockets from the Hernandez Brothers’ comic book, as many readers consider L&R to be the visual equivalent of punk rock. 1980 punk drawing by Jaime. Courtesy of and ©2001 Jaime Hernandez.

it soak into me, and it came out somehow. Chris: I understand you don’t do a lot of photo referencing. Jaime: Oh, I do that on purpose, only because I’ve always hated looking at some comic book and saying, “Oh, I’ve seen that photo before.” [laughs] Chris: What about to draw, like, the way a certain car looks? Jaime: Oh, well, of course. You need that. Most of my cars are made-up, and you can tell. Chris: Some sort of cross between an old Studebaker and an old Edsel or something. [laughter] Jaime: Yeah. That’s why they’re in the far background. [laughs] Chris: But you captured the essence, like a Zen thing. Jaime: That’s what I’m trying, I’m trying to put that across, because I’m really lazy about research. I almost do no research. It shows sometimes. [laughs] It’s… I can’t really explain how I do it, where I get my inspiration, you know? It just soaks into me and comes out of my hand. It’s weird. Chris: So, you were this wild punk rocking kid who was drawing in a style that was so traditional and conservative, really. How did that dichotomy address itself to you? Did that figure in your work? When you were doing the work, you’re drawing in such a style that’s so descriptive, and doesn’t reflect the punk aesthetic. Jaime: What it is, I want the presentation to be clear as possible. I didn’t want to fool anybody… I wasn’t trying to make a fool of anybody, I wasn’t trying to dazzle them with my new groundbreaking work, that I’m going to be the next Warhol. It was pretty much “These stories, this world, these people are interesting enough where they don’t need help, they don’t need any help from stylizing or anything like that.” So, I’d pictured making a movie, a documentary of these people. Chris: So you didn’t need to play with panel arrangements or rendering styles. Jaime: Actually, when I got older, it would bug me when I’d see a comic like that. The frame, to me, is just the frame. It’s the picture you look at, not the panel. Chris: Were you ever tempted to just go to a strict six- or nine-

panel grid? [laughs] Like Ditko? Jaime: That’s basically what I’ve done. I’ve been probably using the same grid, mostly since the sixth issue. Just the basic six-panel or nine-panel, two tiers, three tiers… it’s all been pretty basic and static, just because the whole layout of the panels is not that important to me, it’s the actual pictures you’re reading. Chris: A lot of panels that you would draw, particularly scenes with somebody being pulled over on the side of the road by the cops, or in particular, a lot of the things at night with the lighting, I’d never seen in comics before. I’d never seen that kind of documentary reality on the page. Were these events from your life you were retelling in different ways in the story, or is this something that you just collated, that became so clear to you that when you looked at the panel? There are certain artists I’ve seen, I call this “the vision.” What “the vision” is, I imagine these artists looking at the frame, and seeing somewhere in their mind a scene taking place in front of them. Jack Kirby was the most famous example of this. I was always struck that it was almost like he saw this taking place, not as a drawing, but as reality, and he was tracing it on the page. Was it like that for you? Jaime: Yeah. When I’m picturing a panel, I’m picturing what I saw that day, or I’m picturing what it would look like, and I just translate it to those little lines and blacks and whites, you know? [laughs] I guess I’m always Inset: Early drawing of “Clash” Race Rand by observing. I remember one time I Xaime. Courtesy of told somebody at a convention and ©2001 Jaime once that was asking me, Hernandez. “What should I do about art? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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What should I do?” I’m not a teacher, you know? Chris: You’re an artist. Jaime: Yeah. So, the best thing I could tell him—which I thought was maybe a cheap answer—was, “I’m drawing 24-hours a day, or all the hours I’m awake, I’m drawing. I’m walking down the street, I’m drawing in my head, I’m drawing that street in my head.” I thought the person was going to go, “Oh, you’re so full of sh*t!” [laughs] Adrian Tomine was standing back there, and he goes, “That was great what you said!” And I said, “What did I say?” [laughs] I mean, it’s the truth, but it sounds corny. All day long, I’m observing the way the world looks, and how I translate it into the comics by making it seem real, even if it’s just those stupid lines. [laughs] Chris: Would it be fair to say that you—this is a cliché, but—that you have a photographic memory? Jaime: No, I’ve never… I don’t think so, otherwise I would’ve gotten As in school my whole life. Chris: But as far as your drawing is concerned, maybe not that you could have instant recall of a specific thing, but things that really made an impression on you were “photographically frozen” in your mind. Jaime: I guess so. It’s not exactly like a snapshot in my mind, but it’s just all 3-D in there, you know? When I’m thinking “Hopey’s in front of this apartment house,” and I go, “What kind of apartment house should it be? Maybe it should be one of those I used to see on Third Street, something like that.” That’s pretty much the way I approach it. Chris: Is this a frustrating thing for you? Do you have an image that’s so clear in your mind, when you put pen to paper, it just does not come out? Jaime: Sometimes. Chris: Do you end up tearing a lot of pages up and starting over? Jaime: No, but I’m hoping I’m going to get it the next time. I can get it across enough for the reader to understand, but hopefully, I will learn from this, and it’ll come out better the next time. I don’t worry about it as much as I used to, because I’ve learned to accept my limitations, and not fall back on my limitations, but accept that, “look, man, you ain’t Rembrandt!” [laughs] “Just do your best!” Chris: Well, Rembrandt posed everything. [laughter] Jaime: Right. But just, “Do your best, you ain’t an architect, you’re not going to draw that perfect house, but you’re going to draw a house good enough to make the reader know it’s that house.” Chris: The thing about your backgrounds is they’ve always seemed to be more impressionistic than anything, and the focus seemed to be on what the characters were doing. Was that your main obsession? Jaime: It’s usually because what they’re saying is very important to what’s going on, so the focus will always be on what they’re saying, what their face is saying, and the backgrounds are just so you know where they are. [laughs] It’s also because I like drawing people more than I like drawing buildings! [laughs] Being a storyteller of people, about people, that’s why I focus, they’re always the focus. Chris: The great line that everyone always said about Love and Rockets, and Gilbert actually agreed to, was that you were the better artist and he was the better storyteller, and that seemed a great insult to his drawing and to your writing. I would say that you are as concerned with writing and storytelling as you were with the drawing, and he was as considered with the drawing as he was with the writing, and it’s just that the way he developed is that his drawing became maybe more subordinate to the writing than yours did. I mean, I don’t know if that’s true, but I was always really shocked when it became, “Gilbert’s the better writer,” to some people saying, “Well, Jaime can’t really write.” [laughs] “But his drawings are beautiful.” I mean, did you pay any attention to that kind of stuff? Jaime: Oh, I would hear it, and then I’d say, “Oh, I’ll show you! Wait ‘till you see this next issue!” I was still cocky enough where that stuff doesn’t bother me for long. Chris: I think maybe a lot of people reading Love November 2001

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and Rockets didn’t know what you were talking about, didn’t know the world you were describing, and this gets back to what we were talking about, which was that your drawing style was to service the incredibly exciting and dynamic world, that was far more exciting and real than what was going on in a typical Marvel comic. I think perhaps people didn’t have the frame of reference for it. And to show the universality of the human condition, there were certain scenes in Love and Rockets comics that were torn straight out of my life at the time, because I was hanging around the punk rock scene in Boston in the early ’80s, and I remember hiding in strange places [laughs] and in nightclubs and listening to “Police Story” for the first time, and piling into the car to go to a show—I think maybe the typical comic reviewer or the typical Comics Journal writer didn’t have any background in that. Jaime: They didn’t live it. Chris: You hung in a lot longer in the punk rock scene than Gilbert did and the punk rock scene was getting pretty violent around this time. Was it violent around Oxnard? Or was that just down in Huntington Beach? Jaime: Oh, yeah. I was there at the height of it… I would go to LA after a while, and I’d be watching a band, and all of a sudden, I’d be pushed from behind,

Above: Jaime forwarded an amazing array of unpublished Love and Rockets material, including this false start of a Mechanics episode, from 1983. Many thanks to the artist for his generosity. Inset left: Early Penny Century sketch. Right: Early Hopey drawing. All courtesy and ©2001 Jaime Hernandez.

and I’d look, and there’d be this wall of guys, just because I wasn’t wearing the same boots they were wearing. That’s when it just wasn’t fun anymore, you had to watch your back! Chris: What year was this? Jaime: I would say already by ’80 in LA. Chris: I was under the impression that you stuck in a little longer. Jaime: No, I did, but… Chris: You weren’t in “The Pit.” [laughs] Jaime: I stuck on the rim after that. It just got so clique-y, and it just became high school and I was through with high school. So, I guess I mostly hung out in Oxnard by then, and it was still a small enough scene where friends were friends, and I knew mostly everybody, so there was no threat going on there. Chris: I remember in the early days in Boston, there was one place that was a Karate studio during the day, and it became a place for shows at night, and the cops shut it down every time there was a show! [laughs] Then there was another place that was an eighth-floor loft that was actually the RCYB (Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade)! [laughs] A lot of bands would have to have their lyrics approved. [laughs] At the beginning, if you got knocked down while you were dancing, somebody would pick you up. Then, it got to the point, if you got knocked down while you were dancing, 25 jocks would pile on you and start beating the hell out of you! [laughs] Jaime: Exactly, that’s the same thing that happened here. I just

kind of got on the rim, outside, and just stuck with my friends. By that time, there were enough people in Oxnard that when we would go to LA, I would hang out with them. I was never a popular LA punk, I was there. Chris: You weren’t a scene-maker. Jaime: Yeah. So, while I was having a lot of fun, they couldn’t care less who I was. When it started to become high school, jocks and all this sh*t, I thought that’s what I got away from, that’s what I became a punk for, to get away from that sh*t! So, I just coped with it, because I still loved the lifestyle. I still loved the idea, I loved the whole bit of strength I had that I got from it, I just loved the whole idea! But I had to avoid the whole cliquish jock thing, and after a while, people in Oxnard started getting clique-ish and stuff like that! So, I just said, “F*ck you, I’m going to draw my comics. F*ck you, I’ll leave.” Chris: One of the interesting things that I remember you saying in an earlier interview about the punk mentality influencing your work is that the whole punk cliché was “Do it yourself.” Comics were really something you did do yourself! Nobody was sitting there inking and editing you and changing your work. Jaime: Right. In the beginning, we didn’t know what kind of audience we would have, or if we would have an audience. At the same time, we were like, “Well, f*ck it, we’re going to do it anyway. We knew this was good. We know these stories are worth telling. So, we’ll get there without your help.” I was cocky enough to pull it off! You know, the whole punk do-it-yourself thing was also because it helped me grow up a lot. I mean, it wasn’t just the music scene, it was just… I just saw the world in a big scope for the first time, and I was 18 to 21, those years, so it was just very eye-opening, and I’m glad it happened at that point. Chris: One of the things I always thought was interesting was that there were a lot of kids in the punk scene reading comics, but there really wasn’t a lot of kids in the punk scene drawing them. I guess it was easier and more fun to be in a band; I mean, I remember seeing bands who just recently picked up their instruments play for 2,000 kids at a nightclub in Boston! [laughs] Jaime: Right. [laughs] Chris: Were you guys ever approached by any fanzines, like Maximum Rock and Roll, or Flip Side, or anything like that, to contribute work? Jaime: No. At the time we were invisible. In LA, I was just a kid hanging out from out of town. I didn’t have any connections, I didn’t know anybody in the bands, I just went to go see them and support them. Chris: Around ’84 or ’85, when Love and Rockets was really kicking in, did you start to get a lot of interest from the music world to provide some visuals? Jaime: Just basically local bands doing flyers and record covers. Also by this time, we were so cocky that I didn’t need them anymore. When people did ask, I didn’t need them, I had Love and Rockets, I had my own forum, I didn’t need to have that stepping stone of getting to someplace else. Love and Rockets was the place I was getting to. Chris: Yeah, you were already there. Jaime: Yeah, and call it cocky, but I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years now! [laughs] I mean, it worked! It was kind of payback for being ignored for so long… . which goes back to being a young Mexican-American growing up in Southern California, it’s the same thing, just it was my revenge. Chris: Did you feel you had to develop a second skin, just because of racism or prejudice at the time? Jaime: Okay, this also starts when the comic took off. It didn’t matter if I was a Mexican any more. I had the comic book, and I was going to show the world. Kind of like, “Now you guys can’t ignore me.” It was just a number of things, it was revenge from the school bully back in school, all that. It was just a number of things built up, and when I found my outlet, boy, try and stop me! I still use that attitude now. Chris: So this “comic destroys fascists,” right? [laughs] Jaime: Yeah, and mighty is the sword. While all this anger and revenge is happening, it was most important for me to create great art. It was not so much angry art, the anger just helped me put it out. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Chris: You weren’t Sue Coe, in other words. Jaime: My comics aren’t there, every panel, just going “F*ck you! F*ck you! F*ck you!” It’s more of a feather cutting your face. [laughs] Chris: Well, at the time you and Gilbert being kind of anomalous in a lot of ways, because at the time, you did have people like Sue Coe, you had RAW, which is explicitly political and angry, you had World War III Illustrated, you had a lot of comic work starting to show up in a lot of punk ’zines like Maximum Rock and Roll that was ugly and angry, and it was kind of like while you were putting the punk life on paper, they were trying to put the punk music on paper, it seems. You were never tempted to ever do that kind of stuff. Jaime: No, because there was too much… there was still a lot of beauty there to be in… I don’t know how to explain it. I wasn’t the kind of angry guy that wanted to destroy it, I wanted to create it; I just wanted to… I’m too much of a romantic to destroy anything. I found ways of being angry and portraying beauty at the same time, you know? Chris: Was there a lot of anger in your work? Jaime: Not anger, but… okay, anger is the wrong word, I guess it’s just was going to show you that I’m worth something, that I’m here. Gilbert has said this before, it’s my love letter to the world. Chris: That’s the one thing that I think really set your work apart from a lot of Fantagraphics Books is that there was such a sense of humanity to the material, and that was intentional. Jaime: It was very intentional, because humanity’s the greatest thing in the world, no matter how ugly it gets! [laughs] It’s still… humankind just will endure, that’s the way I looked at it. Chris: One thing I was telling Gilbert that I really appreciated about what he did with the Palomar stories is that growing up I thought everybody living in Central America was living in a grass hut, you know? When he came out with the Palomar stories, it was just incredibly humanizing. I didn’t think I was like Mike Stivic saying, “Oh, I’m relating to the plight of the Mexican-American people,” it was like, “Oh, yeah, I’m reading this comic, and this guy’s talking about my life, it’s just over in LA.” It didn’t occur to me, there was no ethnic separation in the work. Do you understand what I’m saying? Jaime: Yeah. That was partly intentional, that while I was doing all these ethnic people, it was pretty much an international thing. I mean, anybody could relate, that was the point. Chris: Did the success of Love and Rockets put a lot of pressure on you guys, or were you guys just soaking it up? Jaime: Pretty much enjoying the freedom to continue. Chris: At what point did it become financially rewarding? Jaime: Oh, financially? I’d say… early issues, like eight or nine, maybe later than that, 10 or 11 was when I realized, “Hey, I can live off this stuff!” Chris: Was this a living like, you know, the kind of job a young 20-year-old guy would get ? Jaime: Okay, it just afforded me to buy… [laughs] I could afford a new car and I got my own studio apartment. Chris: Was the punk lifestyle continuing? Were you living a Bohemian lifestyle at the time? Jaime: I guess in my mind, but let’s put it this way: I’ve never had a mattress on the floor. I’ve never wanted to live like that. Chris: So it isn’t Kraft Macaroni and Cheese every night. [laughs] Jaime: Oh, sure, there was that! I guess because I’m not a smoker, it wasn’t smoke-filled. I mean, in the morning, I’d throw out the beer bottles, they didn’t lay there for a week. I didn’t want to be distracted by all that stuff, I pretty much wanted to be able to live like a human being, and I’m not saying become normal or anything, but I was never thrilled by decadence. Not in my own surroundings, my small surroundings. I loved experiences with friends, and things like that, and observing friends, my decadent friends, but then I’d go home and I’d be pretty safe. [laughs] Chris: Was it Flaubert who said, “Be staid and conservative in your lifestyle so you can be brave and daring in your art”? Jaime: There you go. Chris: Is that pretty much the general idea? Jaime: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t think too hard about it, it just turned November 2001

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out that way. It was like, “Okay, I’ve got a bed, I can go to sleep any time I want; I don’t want to share the bed, I don’t want to live with five people.” I just always knew I needed my own space. Unless I had a girlfriend or something, or when I got married, and all that. But first, I was pretty much wanting my own thing, apart from the world, to… just have my own space that I was in control of. Chris: Love and Rockets was starting to get popular, and I’m wondering how much interest you’re starting to get from all the publishers and other editors. I mean, we know there was Mr. X. Was there anything that you’d like to say about that experience? Jaime: Mr. X was in a time when we were flying high, so we thought, “Let’s go for it.” It just turned out pretty sour. It was over. Chris: All of a sudden, it wasn’t DIY anymore. Jaime: I kept myself in a position where it still was, where I was still able to have the freedom I… it was just drawing comics, just like Love and Rockets, it just was for somebody else. Chris: But you weren’t writing the stories. Jaime: Right. That’s the part we didn’t like, that it didn’t have that personal Love and Rockets feel. But you know, I had a little fun with it, until it just got ugly with the publisher, and then it also started getting in the way of the Love and Rockets creating part, and after that unfortunate incident, it just made me want to do Love and Rockets more. Do my own thing. Chris: Was it kind of like the guy who cheats on his wife and gets burned, and then becomes the loving, faithful husband? [laughter] Is that what it is?

Above: Jaime calls this “unfinished L&R nonsense.” The last panel was blank so we replaced it with this pin-up shot of our favorite woman wrestler from the Whoa, Nellie! collection (courtesy of Eric Reynolds & FBI). Courtesy of and ©2001 Jaime Hernandez.

Jaime: Gee, I never thought of it that way! [laughs] Chris: Basically, you guys stepped outside the fold, and it didn’t… Jaime: It didn’t work our way, so we went back to our way. Chris: Were people from Marvel and DC calling you, or people from First and Eclipse, other publishers? Your work was seen as the marquee aspect of Love and Rockets. Did they want a little of that magic for themselves? Jaime: What they wanted was Love and Rockets. I don’t think they cared if it was us! [laughs] They just wanted that name. That’s the impression I got from a lot of them, was just kind of like, “Okay, Love and Rockets, we want Love and Rockets. Who are they? Who are these guys?” Chris: Did they call you? Would you get approached at conventions? Jaime: Mostly, at conventions, someone would say, “Have you

ever thought of changing publishers?” Or, “Have you ever thought of this or that?” They would just throw out ideas, and we’d go, “Well, yeah, maybe we’ll talk,” and then when they’d leave, I’d go back to Love and Rockets. [laughs] Chris: So you weren’t having people offering you Wonder Woman or something. Jaime: No. Once in a while, they would say, “Oh, we’d love you to do something,” and I’d go, “Okay, later.” [laughs] Chris: It didn’t even occur to you. Jaime: I didn’t hold my breath, because like I said, I didn’t need them. I wasn’t trying to burn bridges, but it was kind of like, “Look, you like my comic, let me be free to do it!” [laughs] That’s the way I looked at it. Chris: So it wasn’t like, say you were in a parallel situation in Hollywood, if Love and Rockets was this hot indie film, all of a 62

sudden, people would be offering you Pauly Shore vehicles. It wasn’t anything like that. Jaime: No, although I don’t know what people were saying behind our backs. I don’t know. I mean, Hollywood had been beckoning for years, we’d been doing power lunches for longer than I can remember, but nothing ever came out, because they didn’t know what to do with us, kind of like, “I love what you do, but what is this?” [laughs] It’s kind of like, “Well, we’re the only guys who know.” Chris: It’s just good old-fashioned storytelling. Jaime: That’s what confused them, I think. [laughs] No big hook, no big concept behind it. Just really basic storytelling, like you said. Chris: So, some other alternative comix start to trickle in, but don’t really make much of an impression, and then we hit the watershed year of 1986, and a couple of things happened then. One is that Dark Knight and Watchmen show up in the mainstream, and start everybody talking about comics, and simultaneously, you and Gilbert are both doing the best work of your lives. You were doing “The Death of Speedy Ortiz” storyline at that point, and Gilbert was doing “Human Diastrophism.” Now, when “comics got hot,” and it started to get all this press outside, and you started seeing articles in Rolling Stone and Spin and all over the place, what kind of effect did that have on you guys? You guys were mentioned along with a lot of other stuff that really didn’t have a lot to do with what you were doing. Jaime: Yeah. I know I’m going to make a lot of enemies in this interview, but I didn’t see us in the same boat they were. I always thought of us as a separate thing, because I didn’t see us doing the same thing. Chris: Comics will eternally be viewed by the outside world as a genre. Comparing you to Dark Knight was kind of like comparing X to Judas Priest. Jaime: Yes, it was frustrating, because all our careers, we would always be mentioned alongside… Chris: … guys that you really didn’t want to be associated with? Jaime: Not that we had anything against them, we were just saying something else, you know? We were doing something that… it just wasn’t the same thing. I mean, I can look at it and say, “Well, it was all comics, that’s wonderful, let’s have more comics.” But I just had my mind on a different thing. Chris: Well, how did you react? I mean, Frank Miller was a huge fan of yours, Alan Moore was a huge fan of yours—you had sort of the cream of the mainstream crop giving you guys a lot of great lip service. Did that feel strange to you? Was that a strange position for you to be in? Jaime: I’m going to say the first humble thing in this whole interview. [laughter] I was very appreciative, it was very nice. I’ll take it where I can get it, you know? I mean, [laughs] I never close the door on anybody, I never tried to burn bridges… although along the way, a bridge will be burned. [laughs] I guess I’ve always looked at it as between us and them, kind of like, “Okay, we’re going to do ours, and you can go ahead and do yours, and then we’ll see ya.” I don’t know, I don’t mean to make it sound like they don’t count, but I didn’t… we weren’t doing what they were doing! [laughs] Chris: Was there any of that stuff you guys liked? On any level? Jaime: There’s things I liked. I mean, I’m not going to go through any names, because that leaves out somebody else [laughs], but I was mostly into this new alternative boom, because they were speaking my language. Chris: Guys like Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes… fill in the blanks, tell me who. This is when you’re starting to see a real alternative movement, and probably you know lot of guys were taking cues from Love and Rockets. I mean, who was coming up that you really felt like, “Okay, these are our guys.” Jaime: Pretty much the ones you mentioned… there was Chester Brown when he was doing Yummy Fur. Those three guys and a few others… of course, I go blank. There were all kinds out there, not all of them had their own comics, you know. They’d just do short stories in something else, this and that. I really hate leaving names out, but I just go blank every time I’m asked. There were comics out there I’d get really excited by, and I’m not trying to make this an “us vs. them”—us alternatives vs. those alternatives—but these guys really, I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

thought, were really doing something. I thought their comics were speaking the same language ours were; they were reaching, speaking to the world, which is important to me. I usually don’t like it when comics are just geared at one little focal group, focus group. I just thought this stuff was all worthy of the world. Let’s have our comics in China, they’re going to dig it! Chris: You guys were very nicely supplementing your income with overseas reprints of the work. Jaime: That helped pay my rent. Yeah, the reprints helped a lot. Chris: Did you guys do any overseas cons? Jaime: Yeah, we’ve been invited to different countries. That’s how I’ve seen the world, by doing comic book conventions. [laughs] Chris: On somebody else’s dime, I hope, right? Jaime: Yeah, so I’ve traveled pretty inexpensively my whole life. Chris: Did you guys make contacts with people in Europe, and were there people in Europe that you felt kinship towards? Jaime: Oh, sure, sure. I didn’t meet most of them, though, I’ve never met a lot of them. That’s one thing about me, I don’t seek things out when sometimes I should. Chris: So you weren’t forming the next Comic Internationale, right? Jaime: No, I was just doing my own comic in my own little tiny room that was going to flood the world. Chris: Was it frustrating for you, because Love and Rockets was certainly one of the most popular alternative titles, but you weren’t making a down payment on a Jaguar with every issue. Jaime: Yeah. Actually, there were some very low times, I must admit. [laughs] Financially, I mean. Chris: You were always dealing with a pretty small independent publisher who didn’t have a lot of cash flow. Jaime: And we didn’t work very fast. [laughter] I guess that’s a lot of it. Plus, alternative comics never sold those big numbers, you know? Chris: Well, let me ask you a question about not working fast. I have a friend of mine who’s maxim is, “All the best artists are slow.” [laughter] Are you a… Jaime: Lazy fool. [laughs] Chris: Is it laziness? [laughter] Jaime: No, I’m sure laziness comes into a lot of it [laughs], no, but I think mostly I’m a slow starter. Chris: So it’s really getting to the point where you really feel that you’ve got a story to tell, take some time. Jaime: Take some time to start, but once I’m in it, I can whip that thing out so fast. Chris: So you don’t labor over your work. I’m sure there’s a lot of under drawing, particularly with all the subtlety and nuance, but basically the finish is one clean line. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of rendering time involved. Jaime: There’s a lot of work and thought and all this agony and pain that turns into that one perfect little line. [laughs] You know? Chris: Yeah. So all the work is done before you start putting pen to page. Jaime: Yeah, I would say that. Most of it’s just neurosis. [laughs] My brain is scrambled for the longest time until I can find… until it comes through that funnel, and it comes out that nice dream. I’m not a… since I’m self-taught, my approach is self-taught, of actually putting my ideas to paper, and a lot of torture. [laughs] Torture of doing nothing for a long time, or not getting anything down. Chris: That shows to me that you’re thinking like a writer, because writers… say you’re writing a novel, you can write an outline, but when you’re actually writing the words, you’re not doing a lot of prep work on the page. A lot of it is just letting your subconscious do the work. Do you think that’s what’s going on? Jaime: Yeah. Chris: It seems almost like you’re channeling stories. Particularly the fact that you’ve kept with these characters for so long, they’re obviously real to you, and you’re just waiting for them to tell you new stories. Jaime: That’s the problem. [laughs] A lot of time is wasted, which could be remedied, but I don’t know… that could spoil things, like you said earlier. It’s kind of like I’m afraid to fix something that ain’t broken, you know? Who knows? If I changed my approach, maybe it November 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

would be even better, but I’ll stick with the tried-and-true for me, you know? Chris: Do you spend a lot of time when you’re not working on the stories working on a sketchbook? Or do you do any outside work, aside from Penny Century? Jaime: Yeah. Recently, I find myself doing a lot of extra work, and it’s a lot of fun. Chris: Well, it’s kind of a new experience for you. Jaime: Yeah. It’s also to keep my living going. [laughs] Taking on extra stuff, because… Chris: The way the market is. Jaime: My Penny comic barely keeps me going, so I have to do extra stuff. It’s a lot of fun, because for some reason, I just have this new spiritual freedom going on [laughs] where I can do a lot more work than I did.

Chris: I would liken it to the monk who left the cloistered environment to hit the town. [laughter] You did your time for the cause, cloistered away in your little studio, fighting the good fight. [laughs] Jaime: But at the same time, I never want to lose the seriousness of my art, of what I want to tell, and that’s where Penny comes in. Where I can go out now and do a cover for DC or somebody, and then I go, “Okay, now it’s time to get serious,” and I go back to Penny. I’m able to separate that now, when it was really hard for me in the old days. Chris: Let’s talk about how Love and Rockets ended. Gilbert said that he was very frustrated, he was having a very difficult time. Sales were starting to drop, he felt he was going on a lot of blind alleys with some of his stories he was trying to tell, and there was a lot of negativity creeping onto the page. Was it like that for you as well? Jaime: I would say pretty much. I was just going crazy. A lot of it

was just going crazy with continuity. Continuity in the characters and their lives and who they f*cked and who they were married to, who they divorced, all that stuff just built up so much that I didn’t know… after a while, I didn’t know what part the reader wanted and what part the reader needed. Do they care that Maggie was going out with this guy years ago? Or do I just forget about it? It’s just a really hard juggling act, there were just too many balls to juggle by that time, and also, we had been going full strength since 1982. Chris: What was going on in the comics scene was not particularly inspiring, either. You had all these really bad comics selling huge amounts. Jaime: Also, Love and Rockets hit a low as far as, I guess, our popularity. We also were not getting as much feedback as we did in the early days, and I expected that… we ain’t gonna be the “flavor of the month” forever, right? I knew that going in, I’m no dummy. But I wasn’t warned about the silence! [laughs] Just nothing! I’m drawing this comic for who? I wanted to go out of my house and go, “Who’s reading this sh*t? I don’t even know if anybody’s reading the sh*t anymore!” Chris: Was that what brought about the road trip? Jaime: This was after the road trip. Chris: It’s interesting, I talked to Gilbert a lot about how you had a lot of these guys who I would say owed you a tremendous debt for showing the way, they started putting you down, and Gilbert seemed to be pretty bitter about this. You had a lot of these guys who wouldn’t have been doing comics the way they were doing them if it wasn’t for you, and all of a sudden, you guys were the “old guard” who had to be knocked down. Jaime: Right. Chris: Did that contribute to a lot of feelings of malaise as well, or did that just piss you off? Jaime: Well, it was kind of like, “Okay, you can do your comics, but don’t forget where you came from, guys, okay?” I know all of the older cartoonists who have had their day, and then all of a sudden they weren’t the flavor anymore. It’s that frustration like, “Remember me?!? We’re only human!?” [laughs] Yeah, sure, it was kind of like… I remember something about when Gilbert and I had really hit it big, and I think Robert Crumb took some of that a little hard. Chris: Well, he’s bitter about everything! [laughter] Jaime: Well, I remember he used to bug me, calling me the “cute commercial artist 64

that was going to make a million bucks.” Chris: Which was ridiculous to say. Jaime: I just go, “But I love the guy! Tell him! He’s the god, he’s blah blah blah, all this!” They go, “Oh, he just has to be told once in a while,” and I thought, “There it is.” Chris: Something really changed with younger people and younger artists in the ’90s. You’re a bit older than I am, but when I was growing up, we were really interested in chasing down the roots. We weren’t just listening to The Clash, we wanted to listen to Eddie Cochran and old Reggae. We weren’t just reading Frank Miller, we wanted to find out where this all came from. It seems to me that at some point in time, this Stalinist Year-Zero kind of mentality crept into comics. And comics was the exact wrong place for that mentality to creep in, because comics, more than any other art form. really relies on what’s come before. It’s such a difficult artform to master. I think that’s why guys like Joe Matt and Chester Brown ran out of steam so fast, because they had nowhere to go! They had their initial burst of energy and inspiration, and everything was great, but that doesn’t last long. You experienced that for yourself, but you’ve got to have something to draw upon, some roots, something to look towards as a model, and they only had themselves to look at. So, I think that your example was ignored to the detriment of these younger artists. I remember when Adrian Tomine came in, it seemed like he was copping your style without paying his respects. Did you feel slighted by that? Jaime: Before I knew him, of course, I was suspicious. “Who is this new hotshot?” Then, I got to know him, and the guy’s fine. He’s a guy who pays; he claims to want to be the only guy of his generation that actually looks back and appreciates where he came from. He’s always saying that in interviews, the little bugger! [laughs] Chris: So, did you ever get the feeling you were expecting a revolution that never came? Jaime: I guess I was hoping, but a part of me knew it wouldn’t go. It can only get so big, and I know that. I just know we’re working in a medium that’s not… it’s not our turn, we don’t sell a million copies like Donald Duck did or Superman in the 1940s. We’re just at the wrong time. I’m not saying artistically, I’m just saying now, financially and as far as getting attention from the real world, they don’t care. We’re the guys over there. [laughs] We’re the people over there. Oh, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people saying, “Oh, really? Comic books? I didn’t know they still made those!” [laughs] I guess I accepted that early on. I was hoping I’d make a difference, but I can’t hold my breath on this stuff anymore, I can’t excel, I just fall down harder if I do. Chris: The interesting thing is that there was this kind of expectation a few years back that the kind of work that sprung from Love and Rockets, some of the work people like Joe Matt and Adrian Tomine and Evan Dorkin were doing would help break comics into a wider audience, but the thing that I think people didn’t realize is these were marginal personalities doing this work. Maybe if, given a chance, they would have an opportunity to appeal to other weirdo subcultures who might not have read comics, but they weren’t going to see that work being household fixtures. Jaime: But part of me doesn’t want it to be. Chris: It wouldn’t be as fun, would it? Jaime: Since I was a wee baby, I’ve been the underdog and supported the underdog, and I kind of like being those people in the sewers that come up and pick your pocket once in a while. [laughs] I kind of build strength from that, from being second. Chris: I think that’s the thing, I’ve said the best punk rock show I ever went to was in this guy’s basement. Three bands played and there were about 14 kids there, about 12 of which were in the bands! [laughter] That was the most exciting time I’ve ever had! The problem is, you can’t sustain that, you’ve got to go somewhere. Jaime: Sure, and I don’t know if there’s enough people to support it. I’m satisfied. But there’s never been enough, you know? It’s been wonderful and great, but I want the world. I’m just rambling. I kind of like being part of the rebel group, even though there’s a lot of young cartoonists who think I’m in the old, conservative group. Like, “Oh, he draws that too detailed, he can’t be punk. He draws too good.” That’s one thing that bugged me, when that started coming up, that I was too commercial for it to be alternative. Chris: Let’s get back to your drawing. Jaime: Good, so I’ll be humble again. Chris: You’re a very accomplished artist, recognized by your peers. What challenges do you set up for yourself so you can continue? Jaime: Just that hopefully, the next one will be better. [laughs] I know it can’t always be, but I really do try to make my art better every time. It doesn’t always work [laughs], but I just want to be there and get so good that you can’t stand me. Chris: The way you’ve approached that is to get more and more minimal and subtle. I mean, there was the most… I guess Penny Century would be #5, the most recent was #6, where Hopey volunteers at the voting booth. I was just so blown away by that story, the subtlety of gesture, and acting. Is that the challenge? Jaime: Yeah, I guess to make it… I don’t know how to put it. It’s just making that one line fill volumes. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

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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“Avengers Assemble!” Writer ROGER STERN’S acclaimed 1980s Avengers run, West Coast Avengers, early Avengers toys, and histories of Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Wonder Man, with art and commentary from JOHN and SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, BRETT BREEDING, TOM DeFALCO, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB HALL, AL MILGROM, TOM MORGAN, TOM PALMER, JOE SINNOTT, and more. PÉREZ cover!

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“Toon Comics!” History of Space Ghost in comics, Comico’s Jonny Quest and Star Blazers, Marvel’s Hanna-Barbera line and Dennis the Menace, behind the scenes at Marvel Productions, Ltd., and a look at the unpublished Plastic Man comic strip. Art/comments by EVANIER, FOGLIO, HEMPEL and WHEATLEY, MARRS, RUDE, TOTH, WILDEY, and more. All-new painted Space Ghost cover by STEVE RUDE!

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CBA Interview

Conducted by Chris Knowles Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Writer/artist Matt Wagner first came to prominence in the mid-1980s in the pages of Comico’s first color comic, Mage, a hero Matt created. Soon a back-up strip appeared in the same title featuring a character that would prove to be Matt’s longest-lasting and most profitable franchise, Grendel. This interview took place in January 2001 and was copyedited by Matt. Chris Knowles: Let’s start from the beginning, Matt: Where are you originally from? Matt Wagner: The middle of Pennsylvania, near a very small town. The closest landmark town would probably be State College, where the main campus of Penn State is located. Chris: Up in the north country there, with those beautiful pine trees? Matt: Yep. We usually had to cross a mountain to go to our nearest relative. Chris: Where did you get your comics? Matt: Just off the newsstands. My mom was an English teacher. She quit actively teaching when she became a mom, but that’s how I got my first exposure to comics. She didn’t care that I was reading comics, so long as I was reading. Chris: It seems a lot of people who got into comics had teachers for parents. Matt: She thought I’d grow out of them [laughter]… instead of growing into them! Chris: When did you start reading comics? Matt: I was very, very young. In fact, I remember one of my most traumatic punishments when I was a kid was… oh, I forget why, but my parents took my comics away for one or two months, something like that. They took the comics, stuck them on a shelf in the garage which was excruciating because they were in plain sight. I was allowed to see that they were still there, but wasn’t allowed to have them. Chris: What we do with our kids today is take away their video games.

Matt: Same sort of thing, right? I also found comics in those pack deals. My parents frequented lots of county fairs, farmers’ markets, that sort of thing, and you always found those periodical stands that had the packs of four or five comics in it with the covers half ripped off. Chris: The ones that weren’t supposed to be sold! [laughs] Matt: Right. The ones that were cashed in by newsstands as returnables. But I garnered a lot of comics that way. I didn’t love that the covers were half ripped off, but on another level I didn’t care because I was more interested in what was inside. Chris: What kind of stuff were you reading? Matt: Well, there was only Marvel and DC and some Mickey Mouse comics and stuff like that. I was born in ’61, so this is probably mid-’60s, 1965 to ’70, something like that. I mainly liked DCs, for the reason that the stories had endings, whereas in that period, the Marvel stories went on and on and on. I’ve always found it a great irony that I then grew up to write these long, epic storylines that go on and on and on! [laughs] I didn’t like that as a kid. So I enjoyed DCs. And also, DC at that time started doing a lot of those large-sized reprint stuff… the 100-Page Super-Spectaculars, which had lots of reprints of Golden Age stuff, the period my parents grew up in (they were fairly older when they had me). My dad remembers buying the first Action Comics and the first Detective, though he never kept them, of course. So, through them, I had a nostalgia for that period and those kind of stories, and when DC started reprinting those stories, that just clicked with me Big Time. Chris: When did you start drawing? Matt: When I was very young. I don’t remember when, really, but my mom says that when I was three years old, I’d say, “Mommy, draw me a cow,” and I could already draw a cow better than she could. I wasn’t really athletic as a kid, so I drew a whole lot. As a fledgling artist, you tend to copy other people’s work, copy panels out of comics and stuff like that, and at some point, fairly young, I realized I was going to have to stop doing that and try to draw my own drawings. Chris: Did you make up your own characters? Matt: Let’s see, what was the first one? I can’t remember how old I was… sixth grade, maybe fifth… I called him “Granite Man,” who had magic wristbands that made his fists granite-hard. And he could fly! [laughs] Of course, that only makes sense to a kid: Granite fists… and he can fly! Chris: Were you planning on pursuing a career as an artist pretty early on? Matt: Yeah. Also, my parents have a “school memories” book from when I was young and on the back of each page in grade school, it says, “What I want to be when I grow up.” One year I wrote “astronaut,” and every other year I wrote “comic book writer.” I think I assumed whoever wrote comics also drew them as well. Chris: You weren’t reading the credits then, I guess. [laughs]. Matt: Right. Well, a lot of comics didn’t have noticeable credits. Initially, I think the team of Irv Novick and Dick Giordano were the first two names I started recognizing in comics. Chris: They would’ve been doing Batman about the time DC started actually playing up the credits in the books. Did you have a lot of friends you hung out with that read comics? Matt: I had a few, and had more as I got older, of course. My family moved around a few times, too, due to my dad’s job, so I’d COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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get to a different environment, and there’d be other kids that I didn’t know who, yes, were into comics, too. And so then I just made connections that way. Chris: At any point in your school days, did you start getting involved with organized fandom? Matt: No, almost not at all. I had always lived in very rural areas to begin with, and then kind of suburbanally, and then rural again, so I didn’t have access to any organized scene. I knew it was out there, and had been to a couple of conventions when I was about 13 or so, but those were absolute larks as far as me getting to go to them; I didn’t have regular access to go to that sort of thing—stores or shows. Chris: When you were younger, you never got the Comic Buyer’s Guide or any fanzines? Matt: I did get CBG for an extremely short time, and I think the reason it was a short period was because I had to pay for it. [laughs] My parents wouldn’t give me money for it, I had to pay for it. After the first subscription or so, I let it run out. That was in the real early days of CBG, when they were still running big, illustrated covers every issue. Then, my family moved to Virginia, and we were really kind of out in the woods there, and I had to drive an hour, hour and a half, to get to any small little comic book store. I just didn’t have much access to the comics world. Chris: How did you go from being an illustration major to getting interested in comics again? Matt: By moving to Philadelphia and meeting some guys who exposed me to a lot of the renaissance that was going on at that time. Byrne had been making some marks on X-Men, and he did a run on Captain America for a while, and I had seen those kind of briefly, but these guys showed me Frank Miller and… at that point, I was within walking distance of a pretty good comic book store, so I suddenly had access to the early Amazing Heroes and Comics Journals, etc… and it just led me into a whole wider branch of what was available. Chris: Did you hang around South Street a lot? Matt: Yeah, down on South Street. But the store I shopped at… you know Fat Jack’s Comic Crypt? That’s the big chain in Philly, and that was the store we shopped at. I want to backtrack for a second and say another huge influence on me was in the mid-’70s when Warren started reprinting The Spirit. Chris: They always had those great airbrushed covers. Matt: The great airbrushed covers, and the stories were so unusual compared to the contemporary comics at the time. They were tidy eight-page segments, far more cinematic than you saw in newsstand comics. They had such pathos and often focused on the mundane aspects of life rather than the bustling, bursting super-hero books, you know? Often, The Spirit himself would only appear in one panel, usually near the end, but his presence was still felt so strongly throughout the entire story. Chris: The thing that strikes you about that is just that allpervasive mood. Matt: The all-pervasive mood, and The Spirit was such a human character. He got the sh*t beat out of him all the time, you know? I’ll never forget a sequence, a really great story about a sniper, a mass murderer/sniper who’s holed up, and The Spirit busts in to save the day and gets shot in his shins with a machine gun! This storyline continued for several weeks—these eight-page stories were originally released every week as a supplement to the Sunday papers—so that continued for several weeks where he was hobbling around in crutches, and he was going to have to undergo surgery, and they November 2001

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didn’t think they were going to be able to save him, and they were going to have to amputate his legs! Oh, it was a tremendous sequence, and I remember being just so struck by the sense or repercussion and consequence, which you didn’t get in a lot of in contemporary comics at the time, you know? Most of the super-heroes that had that sort of element in their “origin,” like Batman losing his parents, only experienced that kind of trauma in the beginning of their story, and Batman doesn’t suffer a lot after that. I suppose Spider-Man counts as having a fairly consistent tragedy in his stories, but really it’s only recently that they’ve started to explore the sort of dimensions. So that had a big, big influence on me. Chris: I assume that you followed that into the Frank Miller Daredevil material. Matt: Yeah, right, I was going to say that Miller… Miller was just kind of coming

Inset left: Detail of Matt Wagner’s cover art for Grendel: Black, White, & Red #4, an anthology miniseries featuring Wagner-scribed tales illustrated by many of today’s best artists. Courtesy of Shawna Ervin-Gore & Dark Horse Comics. ©2001 Matt Wagner.

Below: A photo of Matt Wagner around the time Mage first started; 1983 or ’84. Courtesy of Matt Wagner.

into his big stride there, and it was like nothing else I’d ever seen. You really cared what happened in the next issue! [laughs] My buddies and I were all so damned poor, we could only afford to buy one copy of things, so we’d chip in and buy one communal copy of the big Bullseye/Elektra fight. [laughs] We drew straws to see who got to read it first! [laughter] Then it was passed around. Chris: So that brought you back into the fold. Matt: Yeah. And much stronger than I had before. Much deeper. Chris: Tell me about these gentlemen you met who were going to start Comico. Matt: The initial line-up of partners, I guess you would call it—I don’t know if they actually were drawn up in contract form at that point—were the two guys that I had went to school with: A fellow named Jerry Giovinco and Bill Cucinotta. Giovinco was high school friends with a fellow named Phil Lasorda, and another guy named Vince Argendezzi. Those were the four guys that showed up in the first issue of Comico Primer, it was their gig and it was their four stories. I forget what Argendezzi’s was even called, but Giovinco did Slaughterman, Cucinotta did Skrog, and Lasorda did Az. Those three characters led to the first batch of individual 67

Above: Mage: The Hero Defined character model sheets drawn by creator Matt Wagner for colorist Jeromy Cox’s reference. Top is Kevin Matchstick; middle is Kirby Hero; bottom is Joe Phat. Courtesy of and ©2001 Matt Wagner.

Comico comics, of which there were four, Grendel being the other. When I first met these guys, they were putting out an in-school newspaper called Duckwork that was a mixture of school news, pop culture reviews, and duck-themed cartoons and humor. My gig was doing duck-based movie power takeoffs— like Raiders of the Lost Duck, Rollerduck, that sort of thing. These guys had been talking about how, “Oh, we’re going to start this publishing company, there’s a New Age coming for independent publishers in the comics field,” and yadda, yadda, yadda, and they eventually dropped out of school to try and start doing so. Well, before you knew it, they got the first issue of Primer out, and then they offered me a chance to be

in the second issue, and that’s where I did the first… oh, how long is it, 15 pages?… Grendel story, in Primer #2. Then, they decided they were going to go with titled books, as opposed to an anthology, and they asked me if I wanted to develop a Grendel continuing series in black-&-white, and it was around then, I think, that I dropped out of school. Chris: I seem to remember the Primer was in early ‘82? Is that about right? Matt: Yes. Again, I think First Comics were around at that point, as well, Eclipse and not much else in the way of… well, there was WaRP and Aardvark, but they were self-publishing one book apiece, so there were not that many publishing houses outside of Marvel and DC, and the direct sales market had just crept up into existence, and they were willing to take on independent publishers where the newsstands weren’t. So we had this opportunity and we slipped in to it. I will say the initial batch of books weren’t very well received when they were actually shipped. Chris: They were quite famously ill-received. Matt: Yeah. Quite. Chris: There was a point, I think, where retailers were just ordering every independent book that came out. Matt: You’ve got to remember, too, that this was in the days when the ordering catalogs were nothing like these large, ornate, full-color affairs you see now. You often had to order books off little more than a tiny little paragraph of text, you usually saw no graphics. [laughs] I think another reason they got ordered, too, was that Giovinco had quite a nice little graphics sense, and so our ads always looked pretty damn good! [laughs] But when the books came in, they didn’t look so damn good. Oh man, it was kind of a desperate time! We’d all quit school, and were really trying to do this, and realizing that we probably weren’t ready for it, weren’t the professionals we’d conceived ourselves to be. [laughs] Of the four books, Grendel was the only one that was modestly received. I won’t even say it was greatly, or even positively received, but it generally got more positive feedback than the other three. Chris: Grendel had some presence, but the first book I remember that had an impact from you was Mage in 1984. Matt: I was just going to let Grendel die away like the other three books had done. This was at a point where Comico decided that black-&-white was just not the way to go, we had to make the jump to full-color to get any sort of attention. They had just signed Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt—who was his wife at the time—to do Evangeline and it was cheaper for them to gang-print two books instead of just one, so they needed another color book, and I was the one who had gotten the most kind of generally good feedback, so they said, “Look, it’s you. Do us a color book.” So, I came up with Mage. Much earlier I had kind of started at one point to develop a story that was about the return of King Arthur, but it was a much more straightforward and kind of traditional comic book sort of approach. I decided I could give that a try, and the only way I could figure out how to do it different was to personalize it. I had been down at the waterfront in Philadelphia just drawing, and I’d done a couple of sketches when the newer version began to gel. One sketch was of this street-performer character who would eventually evolve into Mirth, and the other was just a drawing of me sitting on the dock, and as I said, because it was a pretty lean time—remember, Comico was not being well-received—this drawing had a bit of world-weary cynicism in the posture, and I thought, “That’s my King Arthur, right there.” [laughter] So, that was the way I figured out to do it, was to make it a personalized scene and really kind of downplay the traditional super-heroics. Chris: I remember Comico being sort of the joke of the industry in the early days. Matt: Oh, absolutely, and the amazing thing that made it survive at all was that everything they did looked a little bit better the next time. Evangeline was leaps and strides away from those first three books. Mage certainly hadn’t grown up to what it was going to become, but it certainly looked a lot better than Grendel. Then they signed Bill Willingham, which kind of nailed the traditional super-hero realm, and Willingham was a hot commodity at the time. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Chris: Elementals was pretty popular with the X-Men crowd. Matt: Right, yeah. It was a decent concept for a super-hero book. It was also buoyed by the fact that at some point, the guys from Comico—this will lead us down to the true irony of Comico—the guys of Comico at some point decided, “Look, we don’t know what the f*ck we’re doing; we’re just a bunch of f*cked-up little art students, we have no business sense, we need to get somebody in here who’s more mature than us, and who has some already established relationship with the industry, and who knows more about what he’s doing.” That’s when they hired Bob Schreck. They had known him for several years—and I had known him for only a couple—but the early Comico had been local staples at the Creation Conventions that proliferated the East Coast. Creation at that time was generally being run by Bob, and he always had this big heart and always let the young wanna-be artists in for free. Bob had just had a major falling out with the guys that owned Creation, and we knew he was quitting, and so Comico brought him down to Philly, really schmoozed him, and finally got him! The other advantage to that equation was that Bob had just struck up his romance with Diana Schutz, and she had just started working at Marvel and she absolutely despised it. So, after a week, she called Bob, begging him to get Comico to hire her, too. [laughs] So, they did, and Comico got their business guy and their editor-in-chief in one lucky fell swoop, and those two really kicked the ass of the company into being a much more professional operation. Chris: How was Comico paying the salaries? Matt: Well, I think Elementals had come out at that point… you’ve got to remember, Elementals sold… Jesus, 125,000 copies, 130,000 copies, something like that. Maybe more, I forget. It was a big windfall! Evangeline did pretty well, too. Those black-&-white books had only probably done 2,000 to 3,000 apiece, I bet… I’m really stretching for memory there. Evangeline did around 40,000 to 50,000, and Elementals did 100,000 or something like that. That’s a lot of dough falling into those guys’ laps all of a sudden! Another vital bit of information about Comico was that the money behind it was in fact from the elder brother of Phil Lasorda, a fellow named Dennis Lasorda, who was a physical therapist by trade. Dennis wanted to invest some money, and his younger brother had talked him into the fact that the comics scene was this burgeoning enterprise and opportunity, and he bankrolled the company for years. Those facts together are how they were able to pay Bob and Diana’s salaries. Chris: Was he still bankrolling the company? The operation was not paying for itself when Elementals took off? Matt: I can’t really say for sure. I was never part of the business end of Comico. When I first dropped out of school and started doing Grendel, the book alone was not paying my bills, and the only way I could do that was by drawing a paycheck from the company for working as the office guy. There was the three of them, the owners, Lasorda, Giovinco and Cucinotta, and then there was me, the fourth side of the triangle and I answered phones and did Xeroxes and I think I edited Primer for two or three issues. I only did that for a very short time, and once I started to do Mage, they started giving me more money since it was a color book, and then I was able to quit working at the office. Chris: Was Mage selling well enough for you to make a decent living? Matt: Oh, not initially, no. Again, different scene back in those days, you could sit on books and stockpile them, and there was quite an active reordering scene in those days, unlike now, where it’s kind of strike and destroy. But they were gang-printing it with Elementals, and Elementals was selling so well they were willing to stick with me, since they knew this was a 15-issue series and they had confidence it would catch on eventually. And eventually it did, yes. The last issue of Mage, #15, was the best-selling issue of the run, which is kind of absolutely converse of the way things count down nowadays. [laughs] November 2001

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Chris: Was Comico really starting to make a presence on the convention circuit? Matt: Oh, yeah. Via Bob and Diana, they started going after some licensed properties, and this, too, really swelled their coffers for a while. They went after Robotech, back when anime was just on the upswing, and Robotech sold very well for them. Then they got Jonny Quest and that sold very well… they had a whole string of those. Unfortunately, they started taking on too many books, like most publishers do, they kind of grew too quick, and I think that was the key to their big downfall. Chris: Well, I think that’s the history of the early ’80s comics scene, because First did the same thing. Matt: And, just like First, they moved into newsstand distribution, which turned out to be an absolute disaster. Chris: That’s also what happened to Now, at about the same time. Matt: You just have to print such a huge amount of books, and three-quarters of them are going to come back to you and be destroyed. Chris: So, let’s say it’s ‘84. You’re doing Mage, and are you planning the relaunch of Grendel at this point in time? Matt: Well, yeah. Like I said, I was content to just let Grendel fizzle away, but Mage was really starting to get attention at this point, and everybody suddenly remembered, “Hey, this guy started out by doing a character named Grendel.” And I started to get a lot of feedback from people asking to see the finalization of that tale, which was the Hunter Rose storyline. Chris: How many stories had you done in Primer?

Matt: One in Primer, and then there were three black-&-white issues of Grendel. In ’84, I revamped Grendel as a back-up feature to run in Mage, and that’s what was later collected as “Devil by the Deed,” the first finished Grendel storyline, that of Hunter Rose. Chris: When Grendel was relaunched as a color book, the Pander brothers did the art, right? Matt: Well, that was when it was its own title. But starting with #6 of Mage, it started running as a four-page back-up series that we later collected into a graphic novel. So, Mage was the first 20something pages of the book, and then there was a four-page Grendel back-up, and that’s where I reworked the storyline into being more like an illustrated novel, it’s a sort of a very deco tableaux on every page, and there’s just floating blocks of text telling the story, as opposed to more familiar balloons, captions and such. Chris: Which was a lot different than Mage. Matt: It was a lot different from Mage, yeah. That was great, to be able to exercise two different ends of my creativity. But in ’85, I was sharing a studio with a bunch of guys—Neal Vokes, Willingham was in the studio—and so was Janet Jackson, who knew Dave Sim pretty well, and she told me about Dave’s first cross-country promotional tour that he’d done, and how it really jacked-up the sales of Cerebus, so I decided I had to do that, too. That’s why in ’85, we did a crosscountry Mage tour, which accomplished pretty much what it had done for Cerebus, by getting out and meeting retailers individually, setting a scheme of publicity about the book, and the orders just kept creeping up. It had more recognizability and presence, so that worked. But, man, that was an awfully harsh trip! [laughs] We drove around the country.

Chris: Did you feel like you were a rock star? Matt: I felt like a rock star, and boy, I can’t tell you, driving through Montana, you know? [laughs] “Runnin’ on Empty” is just running through my head! [laughs] It got pretty harsh. We were on the road 48 days, we signed at 26 cities. So, we’d literally sign, hop back in the van, and just start driving that night. Yeah, that’s a harsh way to live. But, that worked quite well for Mage, and I got quite a lot of attention. Chris: Was it exciting ? Matt: Yeah, we got to see a lot of places, went to Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon, we did that tourist stuff. Some of the signings were really great, with huge standing lines waiting to see me. Some of them sucked, with little more than me, the shop owner, and his clerk in attendance. Chris: Did you have a sense of mission at that time? Did you feel like you were part of… Matt: … a fresh and burgeoning pop culture scene that had not been tapped in many a year? Yep. In the same way, I’m sure the ’60s rock musicians felt kind of like what the jazz stars went through around the ’30s, it was kind of coming back around for them again. Whereas I felt that we were like movie directors from the ’20s, that there was this really virgin field, and it was completely undefined as to what it could really achieve, it was only what you decided to make it. Chris: So, what were you inspired by at the time? Matt: I was absorbing a whole lot of every form of pop culture at that point. I was young, out of school, listened to a ton of music, read a ton of books, and I read a lot of comics, but I tried more to COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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incorporate my influences from outside comics into my comics. Somebody at some point—I can’t remember who—told me, “Don’t learn to draw from comics; learn to draw from life and make life into comics.” So, I tried to incorporate reality, especially with Mage, and tried to look for inspiration not in the heroism of comic books, but in the heroism of myth and legendry from the past. I was very, very inspired in those days. And I still feel very inspired. Chris: Do you think of yourself as an ideologue? Matt: Yeah… not so much as the ’80s stars of the time. It seems like there was a lot of fist-pounding in those days, everybody had the “right answer.” Chris: A lot of philosophizing. Matt: Yeah, yeah. Between Alan Moore and Sim and… who else? Chris: Frank. Matt: Frank wasn’t quite as vocal, but he got more so as he’s gone on. Oh, who else was a big mouth in those days? Well, people like Cat Yronwode, and that whole sort of scheme of things, that has kind of disappeared. And The Comics Journal hadn’t quite made itself such a fringe element at that point. Chris: They were still in the midst of it. Matt: Yeah, yeah. And Gary Groth’s opinion could have thundering effects in those days. Now, it doesn’t at all. Chris: I don’t think anything does anymore! [laughs] Matt: Exactly, yeah, it’s only money now. Chris: How did the Grendel series come about when you were working with the Pander brothers? Matt: That’s an interesting point too, and it goes to my state of mind as well. As a matter of fact, we’ve re-released those as a 12issue monthly comic from Dark Horse. They were re-mastered, and re-colored by Jeremy Cox (who colored my latest Mage series). It’s amazing how contemporary they look, just with a recoloring, how that drawing style has really been kind of co-opted. I almost think of that early stuff as kind of proto-Image, due to the long, hard-bodied chicks and stuff busting out of the panels all over the place. Chris: How did you meet the Pander brothers? Matt: Well, I saw their work, strangely enough, here in Portland, Oregon, where I now live, while on the Mage tour. Arnold Pander had worked at the store I appeared at here sometimes as a clerk, and he and his brother had done some super-hero drawings and posted them up in the store, and they just had a funky fashionable quality that you didn’t see in a lot of stuff posted up in stores. Chris: A decadent look? Matt: Yeah, right. I got their name and number off the owner, and it was just around this time, I was finishing up Mage, that Dark Horse—Dark Horse, ha! Excuse me!—Comico wanted to know if I could continue Grendel. They said, “We want to make Grendel one of our flagship books, a monthly that just continues on and on and on.” I had kind of already structured things so that the main character was going to be killed at the end of the storyline that was running in Mage, and so I came up with the idea of making it a generational character, a character that would change its identity, even though the theme and the look of the character remains the same. And again, I was just finishing up Mage, just finishing up Grendel, so I was being lauded with praise all over the place. I mean the year Mage finished up, at the Kirby Awards (as they were called in those days), it ran a close third to the number of nominations that Watchmen and Dark Knight received. And so, I was a young, successful artist—and quite full of myself—yet I also knew that I didn’t want to get trapped into something before my time. I didn’t want to just repeat myself over and over again, which I saw almost every commercial comic book artist doing at the time. I thought the way to conquer that challenge was to… well, first of all, I was A) burned out after doing the 15 issues of Mage and the many pages of Grendel that were included within that, and B) I knew I didn’t want to draw the Grendel monthly. I thought it would really benefit me by working with another artist or group of artists… and that I would then be forced to see through their eyes. I’d be writing for them (which I had never done), and of course, there would be translation differences that would open my eyes to the way other people see things, as opposed to just focusing in on the tricks that I do. I found November 2001

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that really worked, and loved collaborating with them, and I wanted to turn 180° for the next story arc, so I went with Bernie Mireault, who looked nothing like the Panders, he looked like a very… I always called Bernie the “grunge cartoonist.” Chris: How many issues of Grendel did the Pander brothers do altogether and how did they work? Matt: 12. I think they worked on the layouts together with Jacob having a little more of a hand in the layouts. Arnold was more the figure artist, and Jacob was more of a draughtsman so he could take care of a lot of the tech stuff, anything in the background like cars, guns, etc . Chris: When I saw Aeon Flux, it reminded me a lot of their work. Matt: Oh, yeah, most absolutely. I don’t think there’s any denying the effect their stuff seemed to have on the guys that did Flux. It’s even funny how the style the Panders have since evolved into now looks even more like Aeon Flux where everybody’s even more long and distended, and the linework’s a lot wilder and uglier, you know? Chris: I wanted to give props to Jay Geldof, because I think he really made the book in some ways. Matt: He had a lot to do with the way it looked, yeah. The sleekness… Chris: Yeah, I remember seeing the Pander brothers’ work without him inking, and noticing that he really helped smooth them out of their rough edges. Matt: Yeah, they took over more of the inking as the series went on, because they felt very confined by Jay’s stuff over theirs. That was due to their own developing tastes, but for me, it worked storyline-wise, because as Christine becomes more depraved and violent, their harsher linework started appearing, and so that made the transition smoother. Chris: So, at some point, Comico kind of morphs into Dark Horse. Matt: Yeah. [laughs] Well, when Comico went down the tubes… I think Dark Horse filled the niche that Comico left behind. Even hired Bob Schreck early on. Chris: Dark Horse started when Comico was still around, but it was much different. Matt: They started in the same sort of capacity that Comico had. One or two tiny black-&-white books, and the first one was an anthology. The difference was, the guy in charge of Dark Horse— Mike Richardson—was a businessman, he already knew somewhat how to run a business. Regardless of our arthouse inexperience, even the money behind Comico, even Dennis Lasorda obviously didn’t know how to run a business very well, and so they quickly ran themselves into an enormous debt that was only only made worse by the fact that they were extremely protective of their financial records. I now think they were just in some massive state of financial denial—like so many crash-and-burn business ventures of the late ’80s. So, the resultant situation was that Bob and Diana, who were basically in charge of the company in all operating senses, were always kept at arm’s length as far as the books and the numbers, and that’s just an impossible way to run a business! It just can’t happen! Before we knew it, the word was revealed that Comico was nearly a

million dollars in debt with their printer, and then before any of us could make contingency plans, they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which just f*cked my life up royally for years, because both Mage and Grendel were adjudicated assets of the company, so I was not allowed to touch them. The characters were frozen in stasis for years. Now, to the Lasordas credit in a survival sense, they were at least smart and crooked enough to sell the company in Chapter 11 bankruptcy to another guy! A fellow named Andrew Rev, and all I can say about that is, “Why would anyone possibly want to buy a comic book company that’s a million dollars in debt?” [laughs] Chris: Yeah, it’s kind of crazy. Matt: It’s insane! They apparently had just talked him into the fact that they had such viable characters and such viable contacts with talent, and licensable avenues, that he saw that as an easy way in, and when he came into the scene, and it turned out nobody wanted to work with him. The creators had a working relationship with Comico, but he didn’t and he really had no contingency plan for that, so… Chris: How did they become a million dollars in debt? Matt: I attribute it to the newsstands, who probably saw Comico going all down the drain. The company just froze up like a deer in the headlights, as opposed to… well, one level they did the same thing on Mage, much to my benefit. Mage wasn’t selling enough to earn its money back initially, but they stuck with it with a dogged determination that it was going to work. Eventually, it did. They stuck with the newsstand too, and eventually, it didn’t. And it had a much larger repercussions. Chris: Well, it seemed that these companies—Comico, Now and whoever else were trying to get into the newsstand—they were trying to get into the newsstand when that outlet was abandoning comics en masse. Matt: It was misguided. You’ve got to remember, back in the ’80s, we all wanted verification that we were an actual artform, verification that we were an actual industry, and all these independent publishers, that was the only way for them to feel like big shots was to have their sh*t on the newsstand just like Marvel and DC. I think that was the big downfall, that vanity of having to do that. They should’ve just stuck to the direct sales where you ship your product, you get your money, and that’s it! [laughs] Chris: What I’ve been trying to do in a lot of interviews is ask people why this incredibly promising art form that was starting to emerge in the early ’80s just kind of went away, and I think maybe a lot of it has to do with the newsstand, and I’ve spoken to people that said that First had these incredibly large and expensive corporate headquarters. Matt: Yes, yes. Chris: I remember really being excited about some of the stuff that was going on, and it just seems as the decade progressed that things just became kind of polarized, and that really, exciting middle ground vanished. Matt: Well, I think that with the polarizing, yes, there was this vanity we’ve all seen. On one side, it was like “We were just like the big shots,” and that’s what led to the corporate offices and overspending and just over-reaching everybody’s bounds, and then on the other side this polarization led to the Fantagraphics crowd, who were just so ideological and vicious with their

condemnation of any other god-for-f*cking-bid commercial style of the comic art form. I tend to think that sort of elitism is just bad mojo all around. [laughs] It just had such a vitriolic nature to it that… well, people get tired of hearing other people whine, and if most of the noise coming out of the comic book camp is this pissing and moaning, people eventually turn their heads away. Chris: So do you think this negativity that you’re talking about really poisoned the well? Or do you think it was just a death of a thousand cuts? Matt: No, you’re right, it was the death of a thousand cuts, and I certainly don’t want to attribute… I’m not placing the blame for the dissolution of the comic book industry on Fantagraphics head! [laughs] It was certainly the capital mercantile end of things as well— the unscrupulous business practices that were only concerned with market share, Marvel in particular and then the early Image wave in their footsteps. But I think, again, this roiling divisiveness just made both those sides want to hack and slash at each other all the harder. So the big guys tried to do everything they could to stomp out the independent end of things, and the independent end of things just would not acknowledge that commercial narratives had any right to exist whatsoever, you know? Again, instead of being concerned with the market shares of this little microcosm, they should’ve been concerned with making the entire market grow. Comics for everyone and not just the lion’s share of comics for adolescent boys. Nor the intellectual aesthete. Chris: But at that point, the whole existence of the alternative field was based on the fact that the mainstream stuff was selling enough to allow retailers to take a risk on this stuff. Matt: Yeah, right, exactly. And that growth should’ve been cultivated even further. Chris: Let’s take a look at this time period in regards to you. You’re up in Canada, so what’s going on? I lost track of you for a little while there. Matt: Well, I moved up there to be with my soon-to-be wife, and I met Bernie Mireault shortly afterwards. Barb and I had been dating kind of long-distance. So, I met her, I had contact with Bernie shortly before that, and just before I moved up there, I offered him the second Grendel run. Joe Matt was an old college chum and before long he started dating my wife’s youngest sister, and he eventually followed me up north as well and moved in with Bernie, [laughs] shared a place with Bernie. Chris: It was that incestuous, eh? Matt: Very incestuous little scene, yeah. And then, I met Chester Brown and Seth from a couple of trips to Toronto, and so I was doing Grendel at that point, and really changing it time after time after time. Every time we’d do a different storyline, we’d change the artist, tried to change the look and the narrative approach, and because I was up there in Canada, I wasn’t fully unaware of how deeper and deeper in the sh*tter Comico was sinking. Plus, at first in my career I had been in this kind of idealistic group of young creators, and then I kind of turned my head more to business. But in moving to Canada, I got in again with another group of idealistic young creators, and I think I didn’t pay enough attention to my business at that point. Shortly after that was when Comico went down altogether. Chris: How did you recover from that? Matt: Oh, very harshly. [laughs] Very hard indeed. My wife had just gotten a job teaching in California, so we moved out there, we were newly pregnant, and all of a sudden, Comico filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Mage and Grendel were held back from my control whatsoever. Luckily, both Bob and Diana had recently been hired by Dark Horse once they quit Comico… actually, Bob did a short stint with Graphitti Designs and he realized he didn’t want to be involved in comics in a merchandising capacity, and so they both got hired by Dark Horse, and Dark Horse helped me research the legalities of my properties being tied up, with the understanding that if we got them free, I would come and be published at Dark Horse, and eventually, it just got down to the sheer incompetence of Andrew Rev doing things that were soooooo outside the realm of acceptable business practices that I was able to reclaim the characters as my own. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

Chris: He probably didn’t have the resources to do anything. Matt: I assume. Additionally, believe me, the finances at Comico were such a rotten mess when they went down that even the bankruptcy court couldn’t decipher it… it just lingered into nothing in bankruptcy court. It was such a mess that nobody had any idea how any creditor was going to get any portion of what was owed to them. Eventually, I ended up taking Grendel to Dark Horse, and it started out with a very successful relaunch, and my wife and I moved up here to Portland. We’ve been up here since, we’ve built a house and had another kid, and that’s all worked out fine. When it came time for me to do Mage again though, I figured I had learned my lesson the first time around, and I was not going to put all my eggs in one basket, and that’s the reason I went to Image with the Mage sequel. Dark Horse seems perfectly steady, I have no fear of them going bankrupt. But, once bitten, twice shy, I’m just not going to play company boy again. [laughs] Chris: That brings us to the present. Matt: I now have a steady flow of both franchises. I finished up the latest Mage series, but we’re reissuing it in trades. Chris: You’ve also done a lot of work for DC as well. Matt: Yeah, I did a little for DC in the interim there. I just was not quite ready to get back to Mage, a much more personal thing for me, and it’s much more extracting, it takes more out of me. It’s also a fact that the way I create it is a lot freer, and I have to be a lot more joyful than the other stuff I work on. It rags me out all the more as a result. I was just not ready to get back to it yet, and that’s when I got involved with Vertigo, back when that imprint was brand-new, with Sandman Mystery Theater. I fully scripted that title for the first year, and then did the storyline plots for the next four years after that. During that time, we’d done the two Batman/Grendel crossovers as well. That was one of the most utterly frustrating parts of the Comico debacle, the Batman/Grendel project was finished at that point, just ready to go to press… it had been colored, was ready to go, and nobody could get the bankruptcy deals worked out. So it sat on the shelf, finished and ready to print, for something like threeand-a-half years, which was right during the damn salad days of comics, too, when they were selling through the roof, too, and it was just killing me that this book couldn’t come out! That was a house mortgage waiting to happen! [laughs] Eventually, when it did come out, I’d say we were past the absolute peak of modern comic sales by then, but it was still quite a large success. Chris: What do you see what’s going on now, say in the relation of that spirit of ’86? How do you feel about continual contraction of the business, and maybe new opportunities to kind of reinvent the medium? Matt: Well, as you know, the Internet’s changed everything, and will continue to change everything. And, in fact, the industry contraction only applies to the number of books sold, I don’t think it’s contracting in numbers of comics, or people’s ideas of comics. I went to APE (the Alternative Press Expo) in 1998 and I was later talking to Larry Marder who, of course, was president of Image at the time but also still self-published his own Tales of the Beanworld and was there in his Beanworld capacity. I said to him later, “That was kind of neat, to be in a room full of people who don’t give a f*ck what Wizard has to say about them.” Larry says, “Doesn’t give a f*ck what anybody has to say about them.” That was very invigorating to see this entire room full of people who were just on fire for creating comics! Most of them have a day job, most of them aren’t making a ton of dough at it, but just feel absolutely compelled to do this. Chris: That stuff can be really intoxicating, you know? Matt: Very great, very great. It wasn’t all just crude, self-indulgent mini-comics [laughs], for lack of a better description. These guys were producing stuff that was quite realized. Still in growth stages, but far more developed than I would’ve imagined. As far as the commercial end of it… you know, I just tend to think that they themselves, the commercial end—and by that, I obviously mean Marvel and DC, and to some extent, Dark Horse—I just don’t find A) They don’t have any long-range plans, and B) They still think they, the corporation, are too responsible for what comes out. They still November 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

haven’t learned that you have no product if you don’t let your artists be artists, you know? Chris: That’s certainly the case with Marvel and DC at this point. Matt: Certainly. Dark Horse less so, but if you look at the bread and butter of Dark Horse’s stable—the Star Wars stuff—it looks absolutely the same as any Marvel or DC book. Nothing to distinguish it in the least. Chris: I was thinking that comics always seem to come in waves, and we’re really at the end of that direct-market wave. I’m thinking that the only way we’re going to see a new wave is something that’s going to come from the grassroots. Matt: I agree with this absolutely, and the thing that’s going to empower that grassroot is the Internet. I mean, that’s going to be it. Look, the thing that empowered the comics revolution in the ’80s was the formation of the direct sales market, it removed us from the tied-in methods of distribution that were only profitable for the distributor and that led to newsstand distribution. Of course, direct sales really empowered both the publisher and the retailer, so now the retailer could have his own comic book store. The problem was that these then became totally incestuous and totally microcosmic. I mean, who the hell wants to go in comic book stores?—most of

Above: Chris Sprouse gives us his version of Grendel in this final fullpage panel from “Devil’s Domain” in Grendel: Black, White & Red #4. Inks by Jason Martin. Courtesy of Shawna Ervin-Gore and Dark Horse Comics. ©2001 Matt Wagner.

them are these bizarre little dens of societal flotsam. You’d never get a hip chick in one [laughs] unless it’s a comic book store in a hip section of town, you know what I mean? You don’t see any women in there and, trust me, if there ain’t women involved—it just ain’t f*cking cool at all. There are stores in San Francisco, New York, LA where occasionally you might think, “Oh, yeah, look at her!” [laughs] But I mean, you can’t expect an industry like this to survive with just one little cross-section of humanity coming in to these stories. It has to be a continual turnover of the entire population. It has to be like a record store, the Internet, or any other pop culture outlet that you can now find in any damn mall all across the country. It can’t just be restricted to a few big cities. That is, it’s gotta be hip and it’s gotta be sexy if it’s gonna be cool. And believe me, these days most comic stores just ain’t f*cking cool at all. But with the advent of the Internet… well, obviously you’ve talked to Scott McCloud, you’ve heard this argument put forth far more eloquently than I’m doing here. But that’s what’s going to do it. Bob Chapman makes a long argument that comics will survive in their current form, but not as the ends unto their own profitability. In other words, they will be petri dishes where you’ll develop ideas and characters and narratives that will encompass the more complex multi-media aspects of our current life. But, the place it’ll start is in the unfettered freedom of comic

books. Sue Coe makes a great argument that comics are very hard to truly repress because they’re such personal manifestoes—generally produced alone and unrestricted. So, be it the alternative press or whatever… again, nobody’s telling those guys—us guys—what we can’t do, and I don’t think we’d pay attention if anybody did. [laughs] And that’s where the strength is going to come from. Chris: Well, it’s funny, because companies like Comico and as far as all the way up to Malibu and Image, the way that started, the progenitors were Cerebus, Elfquest, First Kingdom, and a thousand other self-produced direct-only comics, and it seems to me that some of the things we’re seeing on Web sites, with Flash and all these little animations, that is the kind of today’s analog. Matt: Yes, I agree. I still think you’re going to see… I don’t think paper comics will be eradicated. But you’re going to see more and more people posting their stuff first on the Web. Chris: And then putting out hard copy versions. Where do you see your place in this? Matt: I don’t know. At this point, I’m speeding in-place is the best description. I’m extremely busy these days, have a lot of work I’m producing, and going to continue to produce, and I have probably projects lined up for the next three to five years. But I also know this enormous change is coming, and I somehow have to integrate myself into that, and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that yet. So that’s what I meant… I’m extremely busy, successful at what I’m doing, but at some level, just running in place. I get this feeling occasionally when I’m painting, or working with an airbrush, like “Why am I working with a damn airbrush in the year 2000?!?” [laughs] I feel like I’m using an antique craft, you know what I mean? So I have to figure out a way to get beyond that. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not computer-literate enough yet. [laughs] I hope to be eventually. Chris: Do you feel like you want to be part of that new future, or are you perfectly happy doing what you’re doing? Matt: I’m perfectly happy doing what I’m doing in a narrative sense. The rest of it, to me, is all just bells and whistles, all just the technicalities of how you’re going to get your ideas out there. So, it’s all just… to me, it’s like learning a new paint trick, but the computer tricks are so much larger and take so much more of a starting over from square one to really learn it. Chris: Is there a <mattwagner.com> yet? Matt: Actually it’s <mattwagnercomics.com> and it’s only recently been put up at that! [laughs] That’s how f*cking backward I am. I’m only now getting a Web site up and running! There have been several unofficial fan sites for a couple years now, but this is the first one with which I'm actively involved. And, even so, it’s slow going. Still, it’s just a matter of time, and again, learning the tricks. I'm not worried about once I learn the tricks, as what I’d do with them. I think on an innate level, I understand what I understand about narrative and drama, and putting these abstract ideas into drama… but again, the way you render that every time is different. Everybody fondly remembers those Mage books, but if you really go back and look at them, those were blue-lined, and a very primitive kind of blue-lining, they’re all out of register, [laughs] you just look at it and go, “Oh, my God! This was state-of-the-art?” That’s why when we re-released all the first series from Image, we recolored them on the computer, and I think it looks far superior. [laughs] I kept the same color themes, and the same color sense, but now everything’s crisp and clean, and it’s got all the great tricks… the magic really glows like magic, the bat looks sparky, electric and powerful. Chris: It’s great. I’m looking forward to seeing that Grendel stuff, definitely. When does that start? Matt: It’s already come out. In fact, the trade paperback collection is due out just before Christmas. Currently on sale is the three issue arc that followed the Christine Spar storyline in the original Grendel Cycle; The Devil Inside, written by myself with art by Bernie Mireault. Shortly after that, the next Grendel: Red, White & Black series will premiere. And we just recently released the Christine Spar action figure through Graphitti Designs. It’s part of the next line of Big Blast action figures, and in fact, I sculpted it myself! So, see, I am moving into new realms. [laughs] COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

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CBA Interview

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Brian K. Morris Dean Motter is a triple-threat comic book guy: Writer, artist and— perhaps most prominently—one of the finest graphic designers to ever work in the field. In the mid-1980s, Dean brought a new design sensibility to comics, a medium long in need of a sophisticated graphic approach. Since introducing Mister X, the creator went on to produce a number of memorable comics including The Prisoner, Terminal City and the current Image title, Electropolis. Interviewed by phone on September 6, 2001, Dean copy-edited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Where were you from originally? Dean Motter: I’m from just outside of Cleveland. We moved to Canada when I was in high school. I decided to go to college there in London, Ontario. CBA: Did you have an artistic interest early on? Dean: Oh, yeah. I learned to draw, quite a bit, from comic books. I had a pretty steady diet of comics based from about the third or fourth grade on. My uncle, who lived with us for a while, and grandmother—and my parents—would buy Batman and other comics for me occasionally. It wasn’t long before I was going down to the corner store, picking up stuff myself, putting my candy money towards comics. CBA: Was it mostly super-hero stuff? Dean: Yeah. At that time, that’s all that was let in the house. Horror comics still had a bad reputation. This is still early ’60s, late ’50s. But they still had a leftover reputation even though they had pretty much cleaned up. So I think it was felt that super-hero fare was harmless enough that it was let in. As a child, I read mostly DC. CBA: Did you start recognizing artists’ styles? Were you particularly clued in to certain ones? Dean: At that time, I especially recognized Dick Sprang and Curt Swan and some of the mainstay, stylistic artists over at DC. I would collect what I could of theirs—well, I wasn’t collecting them, just more or less accumulating them—and when I would sporadically see their artwork, I would buy it. CBA: Were you into the Dell or Disney stuff? Dean: The cartoon stuff didn’t really appeal to me, it seemed too childish. The first material I remember getting outside of the superhero genre was, I guess, the Gold Key and Dell TV adaptations. When Gold Key started publishing Magnus, Robot Fighter and Space Family Robinson, those books started to appeal to me because it wasn’t so much costumed heroes but still had a nice, stylistic flair. I’d always been a fan of Tarzan, The Phantom and Dick Tracy Sunday papers so when I came across Tarzan comic books, that was a bit of an epiphany. CBA: Did you actually draw your own comic stories as a child? Dean: Of course. [laughs] I must have created I don’t know how many Justice Leagues. [laughs] Thousands of characters! But later on in high school, when I first moved to Canada, I came across some fans drawing their own books and publishing them. And I realized I might be able to actually have something published if I worked hard at it. This is when I came across the fan press in a big way. CBA: Did you contribute to fanzines? Dean: After I got out of high school, I did. When I first went to college, there was a fanzine, a sort of a tabloid called Media Five. It was coming out of Ontario and I came across it in what they call “smoke shops” which, basically, was just a corner newsstand (the fanzine had managed to secure some kind of distribution. I think the publisher was probably distributing it himself). So I got in touch with him. His name was Bill Paul and one thing led to another and I soon became the art director, designer, and main illustrator for Media Five for several years. CBA: Media Five contained your first published work? Dean: Yeah. I’d made attempts to get published a couple of times, but this was my early college years and one of my elected thesis projects was to write and illustrate a comic book. So I did a 24-page story called “Andromeda” which eventually formed the basis for the Andromeda comic out of Toronto. But it started out originally as a tabloid that I wrote and drew in college for my senior year. CBA: Did you go to comic conventions at all? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Dean: Yes. I think the first convention I went to was a Star Trek convention in Toronto, during high school. Later on in college, I was really going to Cosmicon, the annual convention held in Toronto at York University. I met a lot of my future colleagues there including Ken Steacy who I continued to work with for several years—and still do occasionally. CBA: Was there quite a creative community in Toronto? Dean: Oh my, yes! One of the earliest comic book shops, the Silver Snail, came out of the backroom of the science-fiction bookstore, Bakka Books. The Silver Snail attracted all kinds of aspiring and working professionals, semi-professionals—people who wanted to break into the business—people who wanted to break into any business—people who had been professional illustrators for years and hadn’t entered the comics realm. It was a focal point for quite a large community. CBA: Did you find yourself hanging out with a lot of these guys? Dean: Oh, yeah and we all had our own peculiar tastes. I was out of college by that time and I had been working in the music industry as a record cover designer for quite a while. First, for CBS Records and then for my own studio, Diagram. I worked for just about every record company that had Canadian records coming out at the time, which was most of them. Comics had become a hobby more than anything else. It was something to do in the afternoon and the evenings and people to hang out with. Occasionally, I would hire some of those comic book artists in Toronto to do album covers. I hired Paul Rivoche a couple times to do jackets and promotions for me. When I was at CBS, he was a fledgling illustrator. I think Paul aspired more to be a paperback illustrator, to do science-fiction covers and he was quite an accomplished airbrush artist at a very early age. A community eventually formed in the city but it had its own cliques. It had a super-hero clique which I wasn’t really part of but it had a science-fiction one of which I was. And we concentrated on that for years. CBA: Were you an avid science-fiction reader? Dean: Not too much as a kid, but in college, I was living on a pretty good diet of a lot of New Wave stuff. J.G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison, and Phillip K. Dick were particular favorites. CBA: What college did you attend? Dean: Fanshawe Community College, an arts and technology college in London, Ontario. I originally took a fine arts course but eventually changed over to electronic media—or new media—course. That curriculum was taught by people who had worked with Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan. I studied holography, geodesics, the emerging videotape medium and all kinds of electronic, New Age, forward-thinking philosophy based on McLuhan and Fuller. I eventually wrote and directed two multimedia plays which were both, actually, just disguised comic books. They were very fantasy-oriented, deriving themselves more from the works of Jack Kirby than the theatre like Pinter, Tharp and Brecht, that I was citing at the time. [laughs] But they were quite successful local productions and very ambitious, inspired by the success of Warp [the 1970s Stuart Gordon/Neal Adams play] on Broadway. I was sure we could do the same thing using college resources and we actually did pretty good. CBA: I assume you developed an interest in Jack Kirby’s work? Dean: I did in college, though not much interest in public school. Actually, my brother was more interested in Kirby at that time because I found Jack’s style to be too exaggerated. When I was in high school, my brother was into Marvel and I was into DC, and we had an ongoing feud for a while. [laughs] He recognized Kirby’s expressionistic quality much before I did. At that time, I was much more of a Neal Adams/Al Williamson/Wally Wood fan and I was much more attuned to trying to keep it real, rendering things as realistically as possible. But when I got to college, my appreciation of art actually matured enough that suddenly my eyes were opened to any number of different things, including Kirby. Probably because I was expected to know something about these things and professing to be a bit of an expert. When I arrived there, my reputation was of a Comic Book Guy. I even drew a comic strip for the school newspaper, and things like that. CBA: What was the strip called? Dean: The first year, I did a take-off of Vaughn Bodé called The Great Transatlantic Balloon Race, The second-year sequence was just called The Funny Pages, made up of different things. CBA: Were you exposed to underground comix at a certain point? Dean: As soon as I became aware of them, I assimilated them as quickly as I could. I was in college so I became exposed to R. Crumb, Robert Williams, Trina Robbins, Vaughn Bodé and all those folks at the same time. I would tend to mimic the artists as carefully as I could and I really didn’t develop my own style, really just imitating others at which I became very adept. I could do really good takes on Neal Adams and Crumb, and eventually a decent Moebius. I was copying and aping not so much the content of their work, but their line styles and things like that. But I had to become a bit of a historian as well. The more I became involved with Marshall McLuhan’s son Eric and later, his father’s work, I was sort of coerced and forced into becoming a bit of a historian on comics for the college, providing a resource for their November 2001

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Above left: Album cover art for The Tenants Visions of Our Future LP. Illustration and design by Dean Motter. If you look real small, you’ll see Mister X in the background. Courtesy of the artist. ©1985 Epic Records. Above right: Triumph Surveilance LP cover. Design and art direction by Dean Motter. Illustration by Paul Rivoche. Courtesy of Dean Motter. ©1986 RCA Records.

Below left: Triumph Thunder Seven LP Cover. Illustration by Dean Motter. Courtesy of the artist. ©1987 RCA Records. Below right: Loverboy LP cover. Art direction and design by Dean Motter. Photograph by Barbara Astman. Courtesy of Dean Motter. ©1981 CBS Records.

New Media department. CBA: Fanshawe was a pretty progressive college that recognized comics as being a valid medium? Dean: It was very progressive, though not by design. More by the fact that it attracted a lot of eccentric professors in the creative arts courses. They were encouraged to develop their own curriculum. So when I went from fine arts and figure drawing, which became pretty avant gardé after a while, over to electronic media, they were already building a multi-track recording studio—one of the first in Canadian colleges—and it also became the first recording arts course in North America. My Communication Arts professors were also part of that revolutionary ’70s special Canadian thinking, where we didn’t have quite as many social barriers to overcome as the American academic community at that time. There wasn’t as much social movement going on in Canada because they weren’t participating in the Vietnam war to any significant degree, as the U.S. did, and the civil issues weren’t as volatile. So Canada had all this creative energy and living so close to the United States, all the angst and the creative forces were spilling over the border but not too many of the causes. They really devoted themselves more to the arts and sciences than social issues. So in a lot of ways, it was hard not to be a progressive college at that time in that part of the country. CBA: Did Canada develop its own specific approach to comics at all? Not a lot of comics were being produced, but was there a unique sensibility? Dean: There was eventually. There was a Canadian history of comics that eventually petered out, a post-war industry. In the years I was working, it was all about imitating American comics, and it wasn’t

until we started publishing Andromeda out of The Silver Snail (where I was the art director and editor), that an aesthetic actually began to emerge from the Canadian books. Was it different? I don’t know. The Canadian super-hero business just never got off the ground. They tried very hard for years to create Canadian equivalents of American super-heroes, and all of it was derivative. But what we were especially keen on doing, was trying to create a legitimacy not just for Canadian comics but comics in general. So we really wanted to create something that we all aspired to; which were comics that everybody could read or comics that adults would read or comics that appealed to the people other than comic book fans. And that’s why we worked pretty specifically in the science-fiction area for a long time. Eventually, we took it into fantasy and other things, but some of our other colleagues working at the time were into a kind of humor like Dave Sim’s— satire—and they were beginning to veer away from super-heroes and, as such, they weren’t operating in the same ghetto that most of the American comics were at the time. They were striving to be literature on their own level a lot earlier than American comics were. CBA: What was the genesis of Andromeda? Dean: Well, the owner of The Silver Snail, Ron Van Leeuwen, was a heavy science-fiction fan. He wanted to develop and publish adaptations of science-fiction stories long before Byron Preiss started doing it. Ron had the money. The Silver Snail was doing well and he started a distribution business, handling pretty much all of the comics distribution in Canada. He was ready to do a fandom press project and thus he founded Andromeda magazine. He bought the title from the fellow that published my thesis in London, Ontario, and we started our first issue with a James Tiptree story. In the following issue, we adapted an Arthur C. Clarke story that Paul Rivoche illustrated. We went on for—I forget how many issues—but it was quite a number. The comic was black-&-white and every issue featured an adaptation of a major author’s story. This was before the authors’ agents thought there was any money to be had. Ron was able to get the rights to specific short stories by a lot of these guys for a song. We had Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Tiptree, and the list went on. I did an adaptation of an A.E. Van Vogt story. It was quite a ride. CBA: Was that comic book-sized or was it 81/2” x 11”? Dean: No, it was comic book-size. CBA: Was Andromeda at the same time that Star*Reach was being published? Dean: Star*Reach had opened the door for an alternative comic that wasn’t underground. Something that the distributors and the stores would carry that wasn’t DC or Marvel or R. Crumb, that there could be something else, and wasn’t a fanzine. CBA: It was distributed through Bud Plant and Phil Seuling? Dean: Yes, it had national distribution. CBA: Can you give us a rough idea of what the print run was? Dean: I don’t know. It was sizeable. It did very well, well enough that Ron started a sister COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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publication that was sword-&-sorcery only. It was called Arik Khan and that was pretty much done by a Filipino artist, Frank Reyes, who had relocated in Toronto. CBA: So your thesis was published? Dean: My thesis was published as a tabloid. They guy who was publishing Media Five offered to publish Andromeda, so he published that and that did well enough, making enough circulation through his distribution network that it saw its way into Toronto while I was still living in London. It sold fairly decently in Toronto. CBA: Did you have a plan to be a professional comic book artist? Dean: No, actually, by the time I left college, I made enough connections in the animation field and had enough background in the music industry that I figured I’d either be in animation or music. I would just do comics for fun, after hours, so that’s what I did. I worked in animation in Toronto for a couple of years then moved into children’s book illustration for a few more years then landed the art directing gig at CBS records. CBA: When did design become important to you? Dean: When I was at CBS Records, I was working very heavily with every kind of medium and audience. My design sense was already pretty developed from college. I had an appreciation for and a command of it, which is why I was able to land the job. I was working at CBS Records when I took over the Andromeda comic book. Like I said, that started as a hobby and I was just going to use basically my resources at CBS to do the production work. Then, I was already past hand-lettering and things like that for most of my work. I got to work with stronger production values than were conventional in most comics at the time. But when I left CBS and started my own design studio, we were still specializing in the music business, but we’d taken over all the Andromeda production work. So it just became melded into our production routine and production values. CBA: Did you perceive that comics had any design sensibility throughout its history up to that time? Dean: I did. The only sense of design that I really noticed, that was profound for me, was Steranko’s work. From the first issue he did of [Nick Fury in] Strange Tales. I followed his career all over, and wherever he landed, he broke some new ground, design-wise. I immediately incorporated it into my own work. [laughs] But he was probably the only real graphic design influence that I was aware of that could have come out of comics. The field was replete with all manner of revolutions in aesthetics but the stuff was pretty invisible to me because it was pretty homogenous. CBA: Throughout other media, through the late ’60s and early ’70s especially, there was a real design revolution that went on. You know, George Lois at Esquire, etc. Were you keeping your eye on that, too? Dean: Yeah. Especially in the late ’70s, because I was working so heavily in music packaging and promotions. That’s really where many of my influences come from outside the comic book universe. Comic books was still kind of an after-hours hobby for me. So with the exception of Steranko, I wasn’t really looking there for any influences other than pop art. But yeah, especially the work that was going on in packaging at the time; most obviously, new packaging. CBA: Did you work closely with the performing artists at CBS? Dean: Yes, there was a range of involvement. There were some performers who just wanted me to produce the album covers, carté blanche, and others who wanted to be fully-involved in all aspects of the design. I had quite a range of experience with quite a number of artists. I must have done close to 300 jackets over that period, and we won Juno Awards—the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys—for several of the covers. So I got to go up on stage and accept the statuettes, and that brought in more business. CBA: Did the American music business harken? Dean: I did several covers for American companies and a lot of times, the American record companies would license or develop Canadian acts and wouldn’t even bother to change packaging. Bands like Loverboy and Triumph, for instance. I did covers for The Nylons and those came out tin the U.S., so I got a certain amount of recognition and some business south of the border. Not a lot because I was competing with people like Kosh or Camouflage and the in-house people like November 2001

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Paula Scherer or John Berg at CBS Records. There were enough independents working that I wasn’t really going to compete very much with American designers, but I did do a few covers for American bands. CBA: Did you consider moving to New York or Los Angeles? Dean: I hadn’t at the time. I figured Toronto was pretty much going to be it. I only moved to New York from Toronto when the music marketing business began to change enough (and I got married to a young lady from New York who I’d been seeing for a while). Two things were happening that began killing the record cover design business and the ability to make a living on it. That was the advent of desktop publishing technology; and the demise of the 12-inch LP vinyl records and, thus, the LP covers. Those things were happening simultaneously, which meant that producing the covers would be much cheaper for the record companies or the artists themselves. At the time, none of the record companies in Canada had an art department. It was cheaper for them to farm the work out and I was able to corner the market for a number of years because I had a set-up that was geared to just that and I had a reputation that I was able to promote. Once the record companies were willing to put their own art departments in place by setting desktop publishing systems and hiring some kid out of design school, they were giving us freelancers less and less work. Also the need for doing big, spectacular designs was getting smaller. More unique designs became the norm. There was a perceived value on the part of the record company executives that since they weren’t paying for a 12-inch image any more, that a little four-inch image should cost a lot less. [laughter] A quarter of the amount. So a $4000 budget suddenly went down to $1000 which meant you did four times as much work to pay the monthly bills. So I decided to jump ship and move to New York City. At that time, I’d just finished The Prisoner comic for DC. [See Dean’s memories of producing that mini-series in CBA #6.] I had enough work coming from DC and Byron Preiss, that freelance work that could actually pay my way for a while. CBA: Did you lament the demise of vinyl records? Dean: Yes, but not just for business reasons. Those LP covers were luxurious compared to the CD covers of today. In my heyday, I was able to fly around the country and learn a whole

Above: Page from “The Sacred & The Profane” by Dean Motter and Ken Steacy, published in Star*Reach #12, 1978. Ken used Dean as the model for chief engineer Victor. Courtesy of Dean Motter. ©2001 Dean Motter & Ken Steacy

Below: Ken Steacy (left) and Dean Motter back in the go-go 1980s. Courtesy of Paul Rivoche.

spectrum of new, complex techniques for compositing photos, a process made much simpler today with the Photoshop software program. Each album cover was an adventure to do, and I miss the graphic presentation of that size. CBA: How extravagant could you get? Could you actually have vinyl pressed in its own colors and booklets? Dean: Oh, yeah! There was the phase in the late ’70s, early ’80s, when picture disks and colored vinyl were all the rage. Since CBS Records had its own pressing plant, and because we were constantly trying to compete with the Americans, we were doing our own Meat Loaf picture disks, etc. The cost of packaging went up, and of course,

Above One of the promotional Mister X posters produced to keep comic readers’ appetites whetted while Dean and Paul worked on the regular series. Illustration by Paul Rivoche. Courtesy of the artist. ©2001 Vortex Comics.

Canadian products always cost more than American but it didn’t seem to hurt. But, yeah, I was given the opportunity to create a lot of things that I didn’t know the first thing about. Previously, I never knew how to do a picture disk, never done die-cuts or sleeves and I had to educate myself rather quickly in foil-stamping, embossing, etc. Fortunately, I was working with a good facility of people that were as anxious to compete with the American market as I was. CBA: What was the genesis of “The Sacred and the Profane”? Dean: Well, that was originally going to be published in Andromeda. Unfortunately, once Andromeda was in its planning stages, there were enough delays in the financing and lining up

enough talent for enough issues that “The Sacred and the Profane” went into this sort of wait-in-the-wings. By that time, Ken Steacy, with whom I was sharing a studio at this time, had already been in touch with Mike Friedrich at Star*Reach. I don’t recall if he already had a story published by Mike or not. I believe he did. Steacy and I had already been working on this concept for Andromeda called “The Sacred and the Profane” which was, sort of, Ken Russell’s The Devils meets 2001: A Space Odyssey. So when he approached Mike Friedrich, Mike said, yeah, he’d run it, and it appeared over a number of Star*Reach issues. We had quite a joy doing it. It was a chance to do something of length and it could be as pretentious as we wanted and actually get it in front of people. The first version we did of it took probably a little over a year to do. Ken was a pretty fast artist. As the writing, we collaborated on the plot and I would produce a script. He’d do the layout. He was eager to become a professional comic book artist and he wanted to produce as much as he could, and show off his chops to his best advantage. CBA: Was the first version in color? Dean: No, it was in black-&-white. This was in Star*Reach, and a couple of years later, when Epic Illustrated was starting up, Ken had already opened doors to Archie Goodwin’s office for both of us. I had a couple of pieces published and he had a couple pieces published. He had the Harlan Ellison adaptation of “Life Hutch” he did for Andromeda picked up by Epic. When he found out what their rates were, he wanted to redo it a bit. After that, Archie wished to reprint “The Sacred and the Profane.” By that time, we’d both grown enough that we really wanted to do it over again. I wanted to write a better script and he wanted to draw better pictures, and since they were offering to colorize it, he particularly wanted to show how his color palette and sensibilities had matured. So Archie said, “Go,” and we produced the second, color version. CBA: Was the advent of Heavy Metal and much higher production values in comics gratifying for you and could you see more possibilities? Dean: Oh, yeah. I was in Canada at the time, we were way ahead of the curve as far as getting the European comics because of we were also part of the Montreal distribution system. So we were getting Métal Hurlant [the French magazine that begat Heavy Metal], Pilote and Fluide Glacial long before anybody in the States was even aware of them. So we were already salivating at the thought of what if we could do comics like this. When we heard Heavy Metal was going to appear, we were pretty ecstatic that Moebius, Druillet and that bunch were seeing the light of day. And, hopefully, the bar for higher production values and a more sophisticated design sense and even better stories would be raised. And it was. CBA: And the content wasn’t just super-heroes. Dean: It wasn’t even the standard science-fiction we were doing. What we were doing was pretty meat-and-potatoes kind of stuff compared to the surrealism and flights of fancy the Europeans were creating. CBA: When did you do the album cover of Megatron Man for Attic Records? Dean: I don’t remember quite what year that was but by then, I was running my own studio. Attic Records was probably the largest independent label in Canada at the time. They were, and still are, one of the more important forces in the Canadian music business, but I was pretty much their designer of record. That was a painting I’d just done just as an airbrush piece for my own sake at the time. And when the a-&-r director at Attic Records saw it, he said, “This would be good for this band I just signed out of San Francisco.” So I said, “Well, I’ll just sell you the one-time reproduction rights to this thing. I don’t even know what it is.” [laughs] And it came out and it didn’t do great sales, or anything, but it got enough representation around the place that I started thinking about what this image was, this art deco thing which I’d already had a “jones” for. It contained a Sterankoinspired character and background and I was trying to get a handle on it. Of course, this was the beginning of the creation of Mister X. CBA: One of the really fascinating aspects of the Mister X series was the concept of psychetecture—the effect of architecture on people’s psychological states. Did you have any interest in architecture? You mentioned studying Buckminster Fuller in college, for instance. Dean: I took a couple of courses on theoretical architecture from COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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various people, though Fuller was probably more ’70s stuff. But there was a guest lecturer series which I was very fond of where we were able to listen to Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei, some of the other big architectural names at the time. Phillip Johnson came. Cesar Pelli came. They all spoke at great length about theoretical architecture and also pulled us into workshops where we discussed architecture. At first, it was just a place to draw some joy from, but after a while I was able to experience this in real life, especially the theoretical stuff. But the architectural aspect of Mister X really came from conversations that I had with artist Paul Rivoche, who was a studio mate of mine. We had been talking about doing a strip for a while. Paul is a very disciplined person. He has a very highly developed sense of structure that runs through all of his work. I was saying, “You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to take the film Metropolis and do a detective story in it and do it as an adventure. Something other than a 1984 story, something where we have a private eye roaming the streets of Metropolis and running into robots, and things like that.” That turned on a lightbulb in both our heads. As we developed the theme of the city, as Paul did more and more studies for the city, it became increasingly apparent that the story was going to have to do with the city itself. It should actually have something to do with Radiant City as a character, and what kind of character would it be? The idea was that the city was a place that eventually drove everybody mad. Basically, it emerged out of the sketches that Paul was doing off of our conversations at that time. CBA: Paul influenced the genesis of Radiant City? Dean: Well, I would say it was equally both of us, but Paul was able to visualize much more quickly and with a much keener eye than I was. My work, I’d have to study, I would have to go to my influences, and torture myself with sketches and research. I didn’t particularly like sketching. I liked to do finished work. I really had to know where I was going and that meant my sketches were a bit tortured, and to this day they still are. But Paul’s sketches were masterpieces. I mean, we would sit down and discuss a building. We’d be sitting outside, in a café, looking at a couple of buildings that we were going to riff on just for a few minutes and we’d just start talking about the vents and the bridges and all the architectural details. And while I was talking about them theoretically, and how they might or might not play into a story, he was already building the drama of those images. CBA: Did you guys actually map out Radiant City? Dean: We attempted to do that at first and then we gave up because it was starting to chew up too much time and we also didn’t really need it; the geography wasn’t as important as the story developed. Originally, we thought that would be a great idea because both Paul and I had done a lot of animation work, especially for Nelvana where Paul had worked and they would spend years mapping things out—on Rock ’n’ Rule and Heavy Metal—things that would never, ever been seen by the public. The work was strictly for the artists. So our instincts were to do a map of Radiant City but eventually, it just became too time-consuming and too over-indulgent on our parts. CBA: You literally started out with a character that just came off the top of your head, the image for the album cover of Megatron Man? Dean: Yeah, just this guy sitting there with this mysterious package November 2001

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on the floor, with this big art deco building in the background. I just played with that image for a while, gave him the round sunglasses so his head would look like a skull, so he’d be like a Grim Reaper character. I was going on a lot of different subliminal directions, but once I said I’d like to do this strip with Paul, we landed on this image. At that time, Bill Marks, the publisher for Vortex Comics, was also managing my studio. When Bill saw what we were up to, he was ready to put his money into developing the project further in an actual series. CBA: Was Bill a comics fan himself? Dean: Yeah, he’d worked out of The Silver Snail as a cashier and salesman. We went back a ways but we didn’t really know each other that well. We just knew each other from visiting each other in the store on Saturdays. But I also knew he had a knack for handling finances, so I eventually hired him to be the studio manager/business manager. Bill came on board and when he saw what our studio was up to, he put his money down. Our studio was shared by a collective of photographers and illustrators and such. We’d also built a recording studio next door that we were affiliated with. So he saw a lot of possibilities there but he was also a comics fan and thought this would

be a great chance. He was already starting to publish his own comic, Vortex. At the time, it was a little anthology. He was paying nickels and dimes—peanuts—to local artists. It was basically a fanzine imitating Andromeda but with lesser content. He was aspiring to do something more significant and he saw what Paul and I were up to being just that. CBA: So how did Mister X develop? When, for instance, did he get a name? Dean: Oh, he got a name fairly early on because we didn’t know what to call him. [laughs] So I just called him “Mister X.” We just called it “The Mister X Project” at first for our own internal purposes at first. [laughs] It stuck. It was another happy accident that came at the right moment. CBA: Paul started drawing the book? Dean: Well, he didn’t start drawing it right away. We spent a good year and-a-half developing the concepts. Once Bill committed to it, he was able to pay Paul a wage to develop the book. Of course, he thought he’d only have to do that for about six months. But as it turned out, Paul was so thorough, and became so passionate about

Above: A portfolio of Mister X Volume One covers with artist credits. From left: #1: Paul Rivoche; #2: Paul Rivoche; #3: Paul Rivoche; #4: Dean Motter. Many thanks to my pal Arlen Schumer for his indispensible loan of his Mister X collection and to Paul Rivoche for last minute scanning help. All covers ©2001 Vortex Comics, Inc.

the project… Paul was so methodical about his work that it stretched out beyond the six months. Bill was happy to do it but that meant we’d already teased the public with a poster and an ad, so we had to create another poster, and then another poster, and then another poster, to stretch the project along as far as keeping it in front of the public. But once we’d developed it to a point where we’re happy with the property and the premise, I started writing it. And that’s where we ran into our first big roadblock. I was writing it more in the “Marvel style” because I was so comfortable working with Paul at the time. I felt I could just give him a plot and say, “Here’s pages one through four, here’s what happens, draw it up and then I’ll dialogue it.” And that’s where the problems came because Paul was not attuned to working that way. He really wanted it spelled out and then it ended up frustrating him too much. He would redo pages over and over again to the point where it became a great impediment to getting the book out of the studio. So he never got more than about nine or ten pages done on the first issue, fully illustrated. CBA: So what was the problem? You just didn’t have time to write full-script? Dean: That was part of it. I was banking on Paul’s ability to wing it, as far as creating a narrative structure. I would give him the plot, give him scenes and say, “Do this, this, and this,” and we’d have fairly thorough story conversations about it. But I really didn’t want to write more than I had to. I didn’t want to have to be writing descriptive text that wasn’t going to be published, you know what I mean? I could just verbalize that to Paul. So that part of the formula just didn’t work out, that part of our chemistry became very frustrating to both of us, and especially to Bill since he was now out of pocket a fair amount of change. We finally hit an impasse where we just didn’t know what to

do. Paul was frustrated, he needed to get on with his life, he couldn’t keep drawing the same eight pages over and over again. Bill couldn’t wait any more and I was looking at my vision go up on blocks for the better part of two years. So right about then, the first issue of Love and Rockets had been published and we all thought it was brilliant. We were all salivating over that, and Ken Steacy, another studio-mate, said, “Well, why don’t you get these guys to finish it? Looks like they have time. This book, Love and Rockets, isn’t going to go anywhere. I bet they’d love to do Mister X because that’s certain to be a commercial success.” So through Ken, Bill contacted the Hernandez brothers and got them on board, and that’s how we solved that part of the problem. CBA: I read some comments from the brothers, who said for that four-issue run, they created virtually all the characters but three. Can you pinpoint the characters you specifically did create? Dean: Well… for instance, Jaime created Mercedes. I mean, in my proposal it says that Mister X had a girlfriend and that everybody in Radiant City was crazy except for her. CBA: Right. [laughs] Because she stayed inside her apartment? Dean: Yeah. Mister X was the craziest of the citizens and she was the only sane one, and that was the springboard that inspired Jaime. He came up with that and brilliantly turned that idea into Mercedes, took her way farther than I had in my original story where I just had her as a mere supporting character. But he managed to turn that around and make her into the main character, and Mister X became the supporting character in his own title, which I thought was brilliant. Jaime also created identities for the villains, for Zamora and his thugs. He managed to build them into characters that could interact a bit more realistically. Let’s see… Patrice, I think she was cut from whole

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cloth by Jaime. I mean, he did that himself. There weren’t really any other characters in the story. All the architects were already designed—Eichman, Reinhardt—and that whole subplot was part of the story they were handed. The transformation of Mister X from one person to another to another to another, which I really got into in later issues, was already part of the plot. So the storyline and what starts where and the environment was pretty much given to them. But Jaime, I think, more than Gilbert, really made it into the kind of story he liked to tell. I think, in the end, he missed the mark on the city because it turned into the kind of city he was familiar with. There was no such thing as a hundred-story skyscraper in his part of town. [laughs] I don’t think Jaime, at that time, could really envision these canyons of concrete, this sort of World’s Fair vision. So everything was low-rise in his world and almost low-tech, always had a more barrio feel to it, which isn’t surprising, but for whatever it was worth, he actually managed to get four issues out. It was quite exciting. CBA: Who coined the phrase “psychetecture”? Dean: I believe I did. I’ve always had puns throughout my work. That was probably one of the first ones and I think I actually came up with back in college when I was studying architecture. I think that was one of those weird words that just appeared in one of my sketchbooks that we later adopted. You know, “architecture = architorture,” “poltercaine,” “insomnalin,” “methusaludes”…. CBA: There seemed to be a big potential for Mister X that perhaps was never fully realized. You had a big marketing build-up by releasing a series of posters and utilized the talents of two of the most cutting-edge creators of the day for the first four issues, but the buzz just as quickly seemed to fade. Did you think the character reached its potential after the Hernandez brothers quit?

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Dean: Well, I think that Seth went a long way to picking up the Gothic imagery of the city that Jaime never got. As Seth’s work became more and more refined, it became more apparent in his work. But he never had his full day in the sun with Mister X, which was a shame. However, I think for the people that read it, they began to appreciate that the place was a giant funhouse, a big laugh-in-thedark. That was said enough in the text and in the action. My regret on the first few issues was that Jaime didn’t have a better command of the kind of architectural world I envisioned. CBA: What was the thinking behind the release of the posters well in advance of the actual series? Dean: We released the first one when we figured we were ready to start drawing the book. Bill wanted to get the first poster out in stores to start the hype. At that time, stores had enough wall space that we could more or less count on it being displayed. When the delays started occurring, we said, “Why don’t we do a run of these posters until the book is done? We’ll just put one out every few months. That way, people won’t forget about it and won’t think it was just another unfulfilled project. Most of the credit for that goes to Bill. It was designed as a stopgap. It was never really designed at the beginning… we never intended to do more than one. CBA: And they were given to stores or were they sold? Dean: They were given. We sent them out as part of the monthly shipments that went out of Andromeda Distribution and Bud Plant at the time. CBA: So the four posters were released to keep up interest while you guys surmounted the difficulties in getting a final first issue out? Dean: That’s what necessitated the second poster, but as soon as we knew there was going to be a second one, we knew there was

Below: From left: #13: Michael W. Kaluta; #14: Dave McKean; The Return of Mister X: Paul Rivoche; Vortex #2: Paul Rivoche. This last entry represents the first appearance of Mister X in comic book form (1983). All covers ©2001 Vortex Comics, Inc.

Above: Unpublished Mister X test page illustrated by Dean Motter. After the Hernadez Brothers left, publisher Bill Marks and Dean briefly toyed with the idea of Dean taking over the book altogether. Though the results were encouraging, Dean says he could not afford the time to maintain his graphic design studio and draw the book simultaneously. Thus they decided on Klaus Schonefeld and Ty Templeton for the art chores on issue #5. Courtesy of Dean Motter. ©2001 Vortex Comics.

going to be a third and fourth because we knew if we were committed to the project, there would have to be at least four posters in this run. We said, “Let’s make it a four-poster run. We’ll just commit to that,” which is what we did. The posters were interesting because we were doing those on a shoestring, and so they would basically be a single image and as simple a use of type and color as possible on that because we didn’t have a lot of money for separations at the time. CBA: Were they two- or three-color separations? Dean: Well, the first two were four-color but we did very little stripping on it, we just did the reverses. In some cases, I would only reverse out of two plates and let the color on the third or fourth plate come through. The third poster, by that time, we really needed to use my best Steranko-lick to create a two-color poster from a b-&-w piece of art that Paul had done. By mixing bright red and deep blue plates, we got something that looked like full-color but wasn’t. And the fourth poster was Jaime’s approach with the same treatment. CBA: They did create quite a buzz, right? Dean: The posters created an enormous buzz. In fact, in Toronto, the local media started to pick up on it. We weren’t lazy about getting it in front of as many people in the newspapers, magazines, and television as we could. So we had enough of a buzz in the comic

book world already, with the posters, but as the first issue approached, that buzz had already filtered to a lot of local media. Nightclubs, restaurants, galleries…. CBA: Did you also want to get some response from the music world? Dean: I made sure that everybody I knew in that business received the posters as they came out and that they had the first couple of issues. We had quite a following in the professional music world. Also, a lot of the people behind the scenes had become fans, partly because I forced it down their throats. A lot of these folks who were locked inside recording studios or in the office towers of Los Angeles and New York. I was making sure they were getting something to read other than Billboard and RPM. So they were very appreciative. They got into it and the more musical references I snuck into the later issues, the more they appreciated it. CBA: Did the falling-out with Paul happen before the first issue came out? Dean: Well, it wasn’t so much a “falling-out.” It’s just that Paul and I realized we couldn’t do this book together because we continued to share a studio, although he did eventually leave. I think that, in the end, he felt the environment had too much baggage with it. As with any large collective, the chemistry began to break down with everybody there. So when we all went our separate ways, we all continued to work together occasionally. Paul and I continued to work together for years after that, doing advertising and promotion work with no problems. CBA: It was just that he was off the assignment for the interior art of Mister X? Dean: There was a certain amount of disappointment on both our parts that I wasn’t able to give him exactly what he needed. He had a fair amount of frustration. At that time, he perhaps felt that, personally, I’d let him down a bit. But it was also reciprocated by the fact that I felt he was being too methodical and was not respecting the deadlines. So there was a little bit of tension between us for a short period of time. Like I said, he continued to do quite a number of projects for some of my larger accounts. CBA: There’s about seven pages of Paul’s unused pages in The Return of Mister X trade paperback [collecting #1-4] that are outstanding. Dean: They are genius at work. CBA: After the Hernandez brothers left, replaced by #6 with a young Seth, the book became for the lack of a better word, a bit crude when he first came on. Did it feel to be a letdown for the book’s potential? Dean: Well, it was for everyone. It was strictly Bill’s decision to bring Seth on board, against my better instincts. We had done #5 with Ty Templeton and Klaus Schonefeld, and the quality of their work was nearly up to snuff. Working with those gentlemen was a joy. They were ready and willing to do anything I said. They didn’t want to do the Hernandez stuff; they really wanted to explore what I really had in mind. Unfortunately, Klaus passed away after #5 and that put the kibosh on. Then Bill had come across Seth. Bill was contractually obligated to keep up the frequency of the issues and he wasn’t prepared for another six-month delay between issues. So, against my better judgement, I acquiesced. This guy was anxious. He could tell a story, was eager to see what he could do. So, yes, the first issue by Seth was a little jarring. CBA: There was a real emphasis on the design package with the first issue. It was very graphically pleasing, startling, I think, in terms of the comic book world, to see something as sophisticatedly laid-out and designed. Your use of a double-page spread for the table of contents was unique in comics. Dean: Well, this was where I would show off what I’d picked up from my music business design experience, where I could treat these comic covers as posters, rather than just covers. You know, take advantage of as much as the print medium had to offer. You don’t have any ads on record jackets so you indulge yourself and every part of the graphic page has to mean something, one way or the other. And that was the sensibility I tried to bring to the comic. This is where I could show them that I could make it look like something other than a comic book and people that don’t read comic books might be inclined to pick it up and spend a little time. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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CBA: Financial problems apparently started developing rather early at Vortex. By Mister X #2, certainly #3, the Hernandez brothers started complaining about not being paid. According to an interview they gave to The Comics Journal, they said they withheld art until they would receive checks for previous issues’ art. Did you encounter money problems? Dean: It became untenable, financially, after a bit, partly because of the amount of capital that had already been invested in projects. The investors Bill had lined up had only seen two issues of comics for nearly three years of investment. So the investment had been pretty much depleted. Bill was now operating out of his pocket and was already “robbing Peter to pay Paul” as far as using money from our studio, which he was operating as a separate business. It became very frustrating. In retrospect, the real problem was everybody was way too young to be operating at that level, financially. I think Bill didn’t have enough business under his belt to be swinging debts around that creatively. And the brothers were just being stubborn and not understanding that they needed to resolve things the business-like way and not strong-arm it. If they had suspended publication for just one time until the finances were regrouped, that would have been much better, contractually. But tempers really flared at that point. He couldn’t pay them if they weren’t producing the book and they weren’t producing the book if he couldn’t pay them and it was just a train wreck when it happened. Thankfully, it didn’t get as dramatic as it could have but it was a hassle all-round. CBA: The brothers didn’t go public with their complaints until after an editorial by you in #5 appeared, which wasn’t very specific why they left the series. In response, they announced it was nonpayment that led them to quit. Where are you standing in all this? Dean: Pretty much standing in the middle. I wanted them to continue but it was becoming apparent that there was a cash flow problem. I was writing the editorials, so Bill said, “I’m going to have to let those guys go so just write something nice about them,” so on the editorial page, as I recall, we said they were moving on to concentrate on Love and Rockets. CBA: You took a diplomatic approach? Dean: Yes. CBA: But Bill said that he had let them go? Or did they quit? Dean: Well, according to Bill, he was forced to let them go. I don’t think it ever came to them saying, “We quit.” I think he said, “If you’re not going to deliver any more pages until I pay you, then I’m not going to pay you until you deliver more pages.” I doubt it was that polite and I’m sure it came to a much more heated conversation than that. CBA: Was a lot of money being put into the production? The book had slick pages, fancy four-color process separations… Dean: There was. Yeah, a lot of money was spent and the investors were expecting that, as was the public, at that point. Since we were competing, essentially, with Heavy Metal, we were competing with an upscale periodical. A lot of money was going into production and that really had to continue as long as possible if we were expected to sustain sales. CBA: Did you sell the rights to the character Mister X outright to Bill? Dean: Yeah. Eventually, I sold the copyright. Well, actually, the copyright was being held by Vortex at the time and being leased on a year-to-year basis. When I was forced to finally close the studio doors and declare bankruptcy, in a certain amount of time, the only way to protect that character, to continue publication, was to sell that asset straight to Vortex. Otherwise, the rights would have been confiscated or they would have just been tied up in court. That was the creative way to get out of that. CBA: Do you miss the character? Dean: Well, yes and no. I mean, he’s going to be appearing in my new series, Electropolis, which is coming out from Image Comics now. He’s been in the background for two issues. So I get to revisit him and I often think that I’d really like to do with that character more what I promised to do. And I’ve attempted to do that, in a sense, with Terminal City, Terminal City: Aerial Graffiti and now Electropolis. They’re all sort of cut from the same cloth, in the same kind of vision of the future. So I feel I have been able to, in some way, continue to present my vision to people. Electropolis is probably closer to Mister X November 2001

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than Terminal City, and is certainly more Gothic and darker. And as I said, Mister X makes an interesting guest appearance in the third and fourth issues. CBA: Does Bill still retain the copyright? Dean: Vortex still owns the copyright but we have a gentleman’s agreement if and when I need to use him, I am able to. CBA: But, basically, only as a supporting character role? Dean: No, he’s the guest-star in #4. We’ll discover who designed Electropolis and who, in fact, designed Terminal City. [chuckles] And he’s already made little cameos in the first two issues, in the background. But in #3 and 4, he becomes a pivotal character so I get to, as I said, revisit him. CBA: Is Vortex still an ongoing concern? Dean: No. It’s still a legal, registered company but they’re not actually publishing. They licensed Mister X to Caliber a few years ago and, sadly, it was pretty lackluster. CBA: You didn’t have any say in it? Dean: No, I didn’t have anything to do with it. It’s just that they licensed the character and it was obviously done by fans of the original series but they didn’t really have the panache or sophistication to continue the character in the proper spirit. It just sort of degenerated

Above: Page from the story “Mister X: Epilogue/Prologue,” written and illustrated by Dean Motter for A-1 magazine (Atomeka Press 1989). This would be the last Mister X story rendered by his creator. Courtesy of Dean Motter. ©2001 Vortex Comics.

Above: Terminal City poster/pin-up. Illustrated by Dean Motter. Originally published in The Vertigo Gallery (DC/Vertigo, 1997) and later reprinted in Vertigo Visions. (Watson-Guptill). Courtesy of the artist. ©2001 Dean Motter.

into more of a Love and Rockets imitation than anything else. CBA: Who coined the word Somnopolis? Dean: That was mine, too. All this nomenclature which I continued in Terminal City and in Electropolis, as well… That all comes out of the same twisted sense of wordplay. It can all probably be traced back to the McLuhans and their championing of James Joyce. CBA: A curious aspect of Mister X was that he was a drug addict. He needed insomnolin to perpetually stay awake. Was that a connection to the go-go ’80s? For instance, I worked in advertising and know the damage that cocaine did to the industry during that decade. Was that aspect of the character a reflection of your real-life experiences? Dean: Oh, yeah, because I was operating in the music business and it was pretty much full-pace all the time. The insomnolin that Mister X took was basically an allusion to heroin because I knew a lot of heroin addicts, including some of the fellows that built my loft studio and I watched what it did to them. And then later on, especially when they had to do cold turkey or go through recovery, it was miserable. Again, I thought this was a perfect analogy to Jekyll and Hyde, to which I was originally alluding. The stuff was initially a formula he was using, it wasn’t a drug. But once I decided it was a drug, this was one of the things that made Paul uncomfortable with the character—making him

a drug addict as opposed to somebody who had to take a secret formula to stay awake at night. The more the addiction aspect crept in, the more it paralleled my first-hand experiences with friends and colleagues in this business, the heroin analogy was there. Later on, I introduced the drug, poltercaine which was the equivalent of cocaine because I noticed that people around me—and myself to a degree, at the time—were using cocaine and they started to become invisible to their friends. They were “on” all the time, losing their bank accounts, losing their money, losing their cars, losing their friends, and they were becoming ghosts. So I thought, “This is the perfect thing. You snort this powder and become a ghost.” That’s great. You could float to the ceiling and no one could see you. And of course, the character at the end of that storyline does too much. He becomes a ghost permanently. Nobody knows what happens to him. [laughs] So yeah, the drug subtext, if you will, was all derived, in one form or another, from my experiences at the time. CBA: Would you like to revive Mister X under your own terms? Dean: At some point, sure. I’m having a lot of fun with the characters from Electropolis. We’re covering a lot of the same territory. But there’s something very archetypical about the way Mister X looks. It would be quite enjoyable to do again, but only with a little more business savvy, shall we say, than I had at my fingertips then. It would be fun but I don’t know. After doing Terminal City and Electropolis, I might end up looking like a one-trick pony. I still have a lot of feeling for him and that represents a wonderful time in my career and a wonderful time in comics. There were so many exciting things happening at that time when we were all trying to divorce ourselves from the super-hero genre. It was the people I consider my contemporaries like Howard Chaykin and Dave Stevens, who were doing it a different way but we were all sort of headed in the same direction; the creation of these anti-heroes and writing our stories with a very cynical eye towards society and life and adventure and love. I have a lot of nostalgia for that period and I’d like to revisit it but it’s a different time now. I don’t know how well it would make the trip. CBA: You said that you were working on good faith with Bill. Did you have your own financial problems with Vortex? Dean: As their financial problems developed, the brothers became more consequential because they were relying on the cash flow for their livelihood. I was still doing this as a sideline at the time and could afford to wait. I made it apparent that I didn’t like waiting but since he was already intimate with my finances through managing my studio, he wasn’t as worried about me as he was about them. For a while there, we were taken for granted but that didn’t last long. He was never out to screw anybody. The only time he got belligerent with anybody was when his back was against the wall and, unfortunately, he had a temper and his diplomatic skills weren’t as refined. So I think when people started screaming at him, sometimes he would scream back rather than negotiate. He was never really out to embezzle or take the money and go to Fiji, or anything. He found himself caught between a rock and a hard place, partly by the business inexperience of creators. We were all a little bit too young to be operating this without adult supervision, shall we say? [chuckles] CBA: You were also involved in other Vortex comics that were coming out? Dean: Well, let’s see: Ty Templeton had Stig’s Inferno coming out at the time. There was Vortex, the anthology. There were two issues of Kelvin Mace which was Klaus Schonefeld’s title. There’s Matt Howarth’s Those Annoying Post Brothers and I was involved in all of them in some form or another, mostly production and design work to much of a degree. With the success of Mister X, the first couple of issues were able to bankroll the launch of other creator-owned books like Stig’s Inferno. But yeah, my involvement was mostly as an art director and editorial consultant. CBA: Did you spend a lot of time on those books? Dean: I’d do logos, covers, the editorial matter, yeah. Basically, I’d handle the packaging to try to give at least the same level of experience as Mister X. But they were all pretty idiosyncratic projects so it was hard to give the line a look. CBA: What happened to Klaus? Dean: Klaus died of an enlarged heart. He was a storyboard artist and was a very fast and very brilliant study. He lived with Ty Templeton and a couple other young turks in this amazing COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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brownstone. They just did the storyboards for Labatts and J. Walter Thompson. He’d always wanted to do comics and he was a brilliant artist but he went out one morning and dropped dead in the street. It was a shock because of all of us that were working, he was probably the most fit, he was the one who looked like Adonis. The girls would fawn over him. He had money, good looks and talent, and we all envied those qualities. CBA: Did he know he had an ailment or was it discovered afterwards? Dean: I don’t know. It never came up and I never found out after. Apparently, it was hereditary. CBA: Did you work on Howard Chaykin’s Black Kiss at all? Dean: Oh, yeah. That was early on. Black Kiss came on just as I was leaving Vortex and Toronto. So I did the initial posters and initial design work. Chaykin had come along and I think I was part of the bait to get him to Vortex because I think he really wanted to do something that had that same polish and that same finish as Mister X and not the pop aspects of American Flagg! I came up with a graphic approach for him for the package, poster, and T-shirt. But by the time the first issue was slated to appear, I was already gone. I eventually designed the anthology, Big Black Kiss, and a limited edition called Hard Black Kiss. So I was able to do the package design and write the introduction. I guess NBM picked it up last year and did their own edition. CBA: Did you do any work with Bob Chapman and Graphitti? Dean: We did the two Mister X T-shirts, the Black Kiss T-shirt, and I did a limited edition seven-color silkscreen Mister X print. I think it’s still available. It was printed overseas, and I did the illustration and it’s a very frameable, art-deco style poster. If you didn’t know who Mister X was or that there was such a comic book, it would still look like something that belonged in your living room. It’s sort of Mister X standing in front of a bullet train, waiting, and Mercedes, coming up behind him, trying to stop him from getting on. It has the tagline “City of Dreams, City of Nightmares.” That was a lot of fun to do. I recently finished doing the design work on the Earth X limited edition collection for Graphitti, of all things. Big red “X,” you know…. CBA: Did you perceive that a minor revolution, of sorts, was taking place back in the 1980s within comics, as far as design goes? Did you admire Neal Pozner and Richard Bruning’s work? Dean: Definitely! Ronin was coming out at the time… well, there was already an uptake in the comics world. They had started using typography instead of sign painters to do their ads, and things like that. I became aware of Neal Pozner when he was working with Frank Miller on Ronin because it was just about the same time as Mister X and I think the packaging of both books was sort of mutually influential. The first issues of both titles came out about the same time and they had very similar static package sensibility. Neal would eventually be the person that hired me at DC. CBA: What were you doing with Byron Preiss? Dean: Art direction, designing most of the book covers, and some of the interior matter. I’d been working for Byron freelance for a number of years before that. When I got to New York, Byron made me an offer and hired me on there full-time. CBA: Was that a satisfying experience, overall? Dean: It was. That’s where I got to meet people like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Wayne Barlowe, Brian Froud, and get to work on projects by all of them. With Harlan Ellison, I did some work on his I, Robot graphic novel. So it was a frustrating experience only that there was such an enormous amount of material that went through there and little time to concentrate on any given project, no matter how deserving. I wanted to spend a lot of time on so many books. So that November 2001

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if I got a Wayne Barlowe book, I wanted to have the chance to work with Wayne and get to know him. Unfortunately, there was only a week or so to spend on any one book, at the most, though their books certainly deserved to be labored over. CBA: Did you meet Michael Lark over there? Dean: As a matter of fact, I did. When I was at DC Comics, I’d seen a submission of his called “Air Wave,” which was a thinly disguised ripoff of Mister X. I mean, even right down to the pages, it would say, “This is the first poster.” [laughs] And it wasn’t that I wasn’t impressed, it was simply that I thought of him as derivative. I didn’t think much more after that. But when I was at Byron’s and we got the rights to do a series of Raymond Chandler comic books, Michael’s name was put forth by Byron. His work had significantly improved and I was eager to work with him. I was editing the Chandler series as well as designing them. Michael’s books are the only ones that have ever been seen. All the other material had to be warehoused because the license to the Chandler estate expired but we had brilliant books by Rian Hughes, Alfredo Alcala, Vidal Centano. We had Steranko lined up to do all the covers. Michael was quite fun to work with. He showed a great amount of worldliness, I felt. I was impressed and we hit it off really well, and we promised to get together again. CBA: And how did Terminal City come about? Dean: Well, at that time, I was working full-time at DC as a director of creative services and Shelly Roeberg took me to lunch one afternoon. She had been a Mister X fan all those years. She was glad we were in the same office and asked if I’d ever considered doing something again. I’d already been toying with this idea of this retired human fly that became a window washer. I said, “I’ve got this idea…” and she said, “Can you do anything like Mister X?” “Well, I could put him in Radiant City.” As we talked, I came up with a proposal which she immediately signed off on. When it came to talent, apparently Mike had already submitted samples to Vertigo a number of times, so they were already familiar with him. When I mentioned his name, it was like a lightbulb because they knew they wanted to work with him, they just didn’t know on what or where. When I said “Michael Lark,” it was immediately a go. Both Terminal City and Aerial Graffiti were very, very satisfying series. CBA: How many issues did they run? Dean: Terminal City ran nine issues and then its sequel, Terminal City: Aerial Graffiti, ran for five. I’m still hoping they’ll collect the second series (though the second series really picked up

where the first one left off). Why the second series didn’t sell better, I don’t know. The first series sold very well. As for Michael and I in the future, well, I’ve already written a Batman graphic novel, a 120-page hardcover called Batman: Nine Lives, an homage to film noir, a coffee table-sized, horizontal landscape book which Michael is illustrating. It is miles ahead of anything he’s done before. I gave him a very difficult script to illustrate but he’s come up with beautiful work. CBA: What is the relationship between Terminal City and Mister X? Is it Radiant City? Dean: Well, in name only. I’ve managed to justify it later on in Electropolis by saying that the three great cities were built next door to each other. CBA: In your mind, is there a location? America, Europe? Dean: No, it’s in Oz. [laughs] Yeah, it’s on the East Coast, somewhere, probably. But it all takes place in that wonderful what if 1999 looked like it was supposed to, in 1939. So it could be San Francisco or Atlantic City or Brasilia. Who knows? CBA: You’re staying busy? Dean: Yeah. I’m writing and drawing Electropolis right now, which is taking up much more time since doing all of it is much more taxing

Above: Dean Motter at the drawing board in 1982. Courtesy of Paul Rivoche.

than I predicted. I’m a lot more over-committed to these things. I’m doing occasional design work for other concerns, other publications and such. A couple years back, I illustrated a children’s book on Superman’s first flight for Scholastic, which is a take from the animated show. CBA: In the final analysis, how would you label yourself? What would you put first: Designer, artist, or writer? You’ve done it all, haven’t you? Dean: Well, I’ve done as much as I wanted to. [laughs] I’d probably have to label myself “designer” first. “Art director” is probably my strongest suit and probably the strongest aspect of my portfolio. “Writer” is everything from Mister X to The Prisoner to this new Batman book and issues of Superman with Star Wars here and there. That would probably be my second thing to put down but I wouldn’t know how to present that to a prospective client. I’m an art director and designer, but I also write. Those categories aren’t usually even in the same department, let alone the same company. CBA: What’s been your most gratifying creative experience? Dean: I think Terminal City. It was such a delight to work with somebody that I have such rapport. Michael was everything I hoped

for in a working partner, doing comics. He and I have been on the same page on so many occasions, it was just a joy to put an idea out there with as few words as possible and have it come back fully realized, exactly the way it had been envisioned. And he’s a wonderful personality to know. That was the thing that came out closest to perfect of anything I’ve ever done, and that’s due, in no small part, to Shelly’s handling of the project. CBA: You said that you guys were too young during the time for Mister X to maybe make the right decisions. In retrospect, would you like to do it over again? Dean: Oh, yeah. Knowing what I know now and how to handle business, how to handle these kind of situations…. None of us had ever produced a full-color regularly-published comic before. The publisher, the artist, the writer, the production staff, even the printers, none of us had ever done this. It was virgin territory for all of us so we all made our share of mistakes even though we had a brilliant property in our hands… that’s why I say we were too inexperienced, from a business point of view, to schedule it properly, to finance it properly, to do all those things. It was our optimism, and probably our youth, that got it off the ground. [chuckles] CBA: Overall, you’re probably known for one single character, Mister X, as is Dave Stevens for the Rocketeer. Dave mentioned a desire to get other characters out of his system. Is that true for you, too? Dean: My range is a lot broader than just that one character. That’s the double-edged sword to all this. I think we all aspire to be as prolific as Jack Kirby and have the range to do that multi-genre, multicharacter kind of stuff but you have to take the good with the bad, I guess. You think of Geof Darrow, and even to a degree with Moebius, we all have our things that we’re known for, our Mount Rushmores, and we all want to prove more. But I’ve returned to this well for the fourth time now and I wasn’t reluctant. Still, it would have been nice to be asked to go somewhere else for a change. CBA: Do you see yourself as part of a generation that changed comics a little bit, that made them more adult, more sophisticated, more mature? Dean: You know, if you had asked me that ten years ago, I’d have probably said no. In looking back on it, I’d say yes. I look back on a handful of us that did work, I think Chaykin is one of the more important ones. I consider myself in there, even though I probably didn’t sell as many copies as nearly everybody else did. But it certainly did change the way things were visualized, especially in the stores. I spent a lot of time in the stores, talking to people about what they were buying. Yeah, I definitely consider myself part of that movement. If you were to list the top 25, I suspect I’d be in there somewhere. I’m not as humble about it now as then but after going to enough conventions and still having people my age and older and younger come up to me, telling me how much Mister X meant to them. So I only did 13 issues but it can’t have been as memorable as 500 issues of Fantastic Four. [laughs] But then I think of how many issues that Dave did of Rocketeer, so… [laughter] CBA: Is design in comics important? Has it been done right? Dean: Well, it certainly is important now. I mean, the cat’s out of the bag. Especially with desktop publishing, you can’t afford to have something that doesn’t appear to be state of the art. I think it’s even more important now because it’s too easy to over-produce or overdesign the material now just because of that very technology. I think when you overdo it and you overshadow the essence of what comics are all about—the imagery—you’re doing a disservice to everybody, but especially to the reader if you’re distracting. CBA: It’s a loss, perhaps, of understanding nuance? Dean: It actually is and I’ve often told the people that I work with that when I’m doing my design work, I really prefer to let the pictures do the talking and should only exist to the degree that it should present the work. Sometimes you need a lot, sometimes you don’t need any, sometimes you just need a bit. And the fact that just about every comic book publisher now has a design staff, where not so long ago, they were lucky if they had staff letterers. Editors had to paste up the word balloons. I think the craft will return, probably over the next few years. The craft of design will return as the people practicing become aware that, in the end, the images are what the people are embracing. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

DIGITAL

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Interview & demo with BILL WRAY, STEPHEN DeSTEFANO interview, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw the human figure in light and shadow,” Photoshop tutorial by CELIA CALLE, inking tips by MIKE MANLEY, reviews of the best art supplies, links, and more!

Interview/demo by DAN BRERETON, ZACH TRENHOLM on caricaturing, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” demo by ALBERTO RUIZ, “The Power of Sketching” by BRET BLEVINS, “Designing with light and shadow” by PAUL RIVOCHE, reviews of art supplies, links, and more!

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Interview & demo by MATT HALEY, TOM BANCROFT & ROB CORLEY on character design, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” by ALBERTO RUIZ, “Draping The Human Figure” by BRET BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION, International Spotlight on JOSÉ LOUIS AGREDA, and more!

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In-depth interviews and demos with DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, and more!

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Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, FRANK MILLER interview, plus MILLER and KLAUS JANSON show their working processes. 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!

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CBA Interview

Rivoche’s Mr. X Files The artist on the up-and-down creation of Mister X Opposite page: Paul Rivoche in 1982, just prior to starting conceptual work on Mister X. Courtesy of Paul Rivoche.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Brian K. Morris Like Sandy Plunkett, Paul Rivoche is often an overlooked commodity in the comic book world. A superb designer and expert artist, Paul has a profound respect for the work of comic book masters (as indicated by Paul’s interview with Alex Toth published in Comic Book Artist #11) and infuses lessons learned into his own work. While his comic book work is sparse, thankfully the artist is increasing his involvement in the field. Much appreciation goes to Paul for sharing so much archival work with CBA. The artist was interviewed by telephone on September 7, 2001 and he copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Paul, where are you from? Paul Rivoche: I was born in Tucson, Arizona, and later grew up in a number of different places. My family moved to New York City, Montreal, then Kingston, and later Ottawa; different experiences, different lengths of time. The longest time we lived in one city was in Ottawa, where I spent my pre-high school and high school years. CBA: When did you start reading comics? Paul: Oh, boy. It would have to be maybe around 1965 or ’66. CBA: What books were you into? Paul: Mostly DC. I remember going to one of those old-type corner stores, and it would be in Montreal, around 1966, ’67, in which case I would have been around seven years old. I remember they had all the racks of comics and I remember being mostly attracted to the DC comics. For whatever reason, I just never really got into Marvel. I remember noticing them but I remember all kinds of DC stuff. “Enemy Ace” in Star Spangled War Stories was a favorite. Stuff like The Hawk and the Dove, Secret Six, all that great stuff. I remember reading some “Legion of Super-Heroes” comics. It’s all mixed up in just wonderful memories of those early days. CBA: Did you start drawing at a young age? Paul: The first memory I have of drawing is going to the YMCA swimming class in Montreal, which didn’t go well. The part that was good was being in the cafeteria afterwards. I must have been six or seven years old, and a kid challenged me to a contest to draw Superman, which I lost because he did a really good Superman. [laughs] So that must have spurred me, somehow, to either just notice comics or be interested in them and then try drawing like them. They fascinated me. I not only read comics but I avidly copied stuff, and I drew my own comics from an early age. My parents were good enough to get me a desk in the corner of our apartment in Montreal. I had my own little oak desk with drawers and a lamp, and I used to sit there with my work, every day after school and industriously draw all these comics. CBA: Were they full stories? Paul: They were my attempt at it. Sometimes, they’d be longer or shorter, like any kid that does this. Sometimes, they were attempted epics that got stopped in mid-stream or abandoned. Some were actually completed but then you notice a definite tail-off towards the end, that I lost interest and just wanted to get it finished. Most of them were in pencil. A lot later, when I started figuring out how the pros did it, I experimented with trying to ink them. But the early ones, they were either done in colored pencil or in pencil, stapled together. CBA: Did you share your homemade comics with your parents or friends? Paul: I think I probably showed them to my parents. I don’t believe they were really all that interested in the sense of constantly looking at what I was doing. And I don’t remember a very strong urge to show anybody, but I do remember a powerful urge to just do them for myself. I was completely fascinated with storytelling, with the medium, the actual combination of words and pictures, the magic in that. I did a lot of early kid writing too. By grade two or three, I was drawing pictures to accompany short stories that I’d written at whatever crude level. I remember my older brother showing a bit of an interest in comics and watching what I was doing, but I don’t remember my parents as being overly interested. But they certainly didn’t discourage my interest in comics. Like I said, they gave me the equipment I needed, a pencil and a place to work, and that made me feel important. CBA: Were you a comics collector? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

November 2001

Paul: I had this huge box of comics by the time I was 11 years old and, to my great trauma, I arrived home one day and my father had thrown them all out! Full of those old comic books, which I endlessly remind him would be worth a lot of money now. [laughs] At least some of them would be. But I lost my whole treasured comic collection. CBA: Was Alex Toth one of the first artists you recognized stylistically? Paul: Yes, when I started collecting again—after the loss of the first collection—it was after that point, which would have been in the ’70s, when I started becoming aware of Alex Toth and Jack Kirby, who were and are the greatest, in my book. Kirby’s stuff had a huge impact on me. CBA: The Fourth World or when he was at Marvel? Paul: The Fourth World stuff. I remember reading a lot of the DCs and I’d seen Alex Toth’s work. I didn’t really focus on his name so much as something about the clarity and strength of his art. I always saved those comics and I have them to this day—his short stories in the back of the different war comics, mostly, and a couple in Adventure Comics. He did a lot of different short stories that made a strong impression on me, and later, when I discovered Jack Kirby’s comics, they also had a huge impact on me in terms of my enthusiasm for comics. Up to that point, I can’t say that I had a focus, a clear goal as a 12-year old kid, like “Hey, I’m gonna be a comic book artist when I grow up.” But as the years went on, as I got a little bit older and like any teenager started thinking about different possibilities for myself and probably worrying about them, as most kids do, it just became clearer and clearer to me that, yeah, I’d have a career in this area, that it was just natural to me. I was somehow compelled to do it. And certainly the inspiration from Alex Toth’s and Jack Kirby’s comics played a large part in that decision to go into this field. CBA: Were you renowned as an artist in high school? Paul: Yeah, I would say I was one of a few people who were known for being good at drawing—every school has them. I had a friendly competition with several other kids, whether it was getting a job doing posters for the school plays or different things like that. There were a bunch of different people. There was me, who, I guess, was the science-fictiony, comic-type guy; the girl who was the horse artist (every school has a horse artist, you know), and others. CBA: Did you look to go to art school after graduating high school? Paul: Not at first. Under the influence of my father, I was convinced not to go into art school but just to go to university proper, and so I did. I enrolled in the University of Toronto, and I would term it disastrous. [laughs] I’d always done well in school so it wasn’t that I couldn’t do the work, but after high school, I’d had enough of structured academics and came to realize that quite quickly. It was the Fall of 1978 and I was 19. I moved to Toronto, which was quite a big change to a kid, to move away and live on my own. And then I found myself in this massive university, going to these classes, lost. After a couple of months, I just realized that it wasn’t for me. Like, “this is not my life” and I left. By that point I had made contact with people like Ron Van Leeuwen (who owns The Silver Snail comic shop here in Toronto) and Dean Motter and they were quite helpful to me. Dean, for example, gave me some of my earliest assignments. He was the art director at CBS Records and I did a bunch of different jobs for him. He got me started, and I’ve thanked him for it. CBA: You guys just met from hanging out at the comic shop? Paul: The way we first met would be through Ken Steacy. I was selling these cheesy science-fiction art paintings at a science-fiction convention at the Royal York Hotel here in Toronto, and Ken Steacy just wandered in and being very friendly, he made my acquaintance. We just struck up a friendship, he introduced me to a number of people including Dean, and I kept in touch with Ken. I saw these guys as an example, a role model, of what was possible for me. They were making a living freelancing though they weren’t really that much older than me. So I thought, “Hey, I want to do that,” and so I made the jump. I left university and I started freelancing. And quite a learning curve it was! CBA: Andromeda was an ongoing comic at the time? Paul: I met Ron when he had only just moved to Toronto. I think he had a comic shop in Ottawa, The Silver Snail, then moved to November 2001

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

Above: Profusely illustrating this interview are dozens of Paul Rivoche concept designs completed in the early 1980s. The artist was exceedingly generous with CBA in sharing this archival material and we express our sincere appreciation. Here’s a July 1983 model sheet depicting Mr. X. Below: Mister X detail by Paul Rivoche. Courtesy of the artist. Mister X ©2001 Vortex Comics, Inc. Art ©2001 Paul Rivoche.

Toronto. Ken Steacy must have taken me to meet Ron who wanted to start publishing this comic, Andromeda, which he did. Even though I was in high school, I did a bunch of stuff for him and I did a longer story called “Exile of the Aeons” and a bunch of different, smaller things, like a business card for the Snail, a poster, and so on. CBA: I’ve seen an issue with a frontispiece by you, and it’s really accomplished for a high schooler. Paul: Thanks. I did all that stuff in my little bedroom in Ottawa, just a shoebox, sweltering in the summer heat—that’s the image I remember. I worked on the comic “Exile of the Aeons” all through the school year. It was a crazy time when I look back. I loved doing it, but it was a pretty intensive period in my life. I was going to high school, doing the homework and essays and so on, I was on the wrestling team with gruelling practices three times a week after school, taking karate lessons a couple of nights a week also, and then slaving away on this comic in between all that! CBA: There’s a well-roundedness about some of you Canadian guys (for lack of a better term). Motter, Steacy and you had your collective feet pretty firmly planted in the commercial world. So were you looking at comics being a complement to your life, as a hobby, or did you think of it as a singular career? Paul: I wasn’t sure. It was quite a bewildering topic and the subject of a lot of concern, even to this day, frankly. Comics are something that I’m personally very devoted to, but it isn’t always easy to make a steady living at them, especially if you’re not interested in doing a lot of mainstream super-hero stuff. I think a lot of these guys like Ken and Dean would probably say the same thing, I imagine. Comics are in my blood, I just love them. I always loved them, growing up. If I won the lottery and didn’t have to work, I’d still draw some comics and be thinking about any or all of this kind of stuff because I just love it. I think as you get older, and you grow up and move away, you have to face, like any other kid does, all those realities. Questions like, how am I going to fit into the outer world—make a good living, but still follow my own interests? So I was fortunate enough to have a concrete example of these guys, Ken and Dean, that were wellrounded commercial artists. I guess they were struggling with the same realities as I was, like if you wanted to be a full-time comic book artist, there was a certain route set out by the industry or by

reality. If you wanted to go another route, you could, maybe, have whatever varying percentage of comics in your mix. So I guess I chose… [sighs] well, I wouldn’t say I chose and designed where my life has led me. A lot of it just happened that way as I tried to find a path, as I tried to get to the goal that I saw off in the distance. But having the example of them as general commercial artists right in front of me, that approach made sense to me and it’s proven to be a good strategy too, to try to be as well-rounded as possible because it makes for better chances of long-term survival in this business. I didn’t want to be a one-note wonder. Ken told me a very instructive story, which really struck home and I honestly remember to this day, where he’d been offered a job as an inker at Marvel Comics a few years before this, when he was 20 or so. It would have involved moving to New York City and just completely committing to that route and he turned it down, to his credit, I think. Because, sure, it was flattering, but he said, “I’m not just an inker. I’ll get locked into that. I don’t want to do just that. I want to learn more and have more varied experiences before considering something like that.” I thought that made perfect sense. Learn more aspects of the craft, have varied commercial art experiences before settling down.

CBA: Do you think there was something special about Toronto regarding the commercial art scene? Paul: I don’t really know—it’s a good question. Personally, at the time, I wasn’t aware of anything special about what any of us were doing. I just fell into this line with this small group of people and it was very exciting. As far as doing varied kinds of work, to me it was just a matter of necessity. You’ve got to make money but you also want to develop as an artist; those are two conflicting realities and they always go hand-in-hand. So if I wanted to make money by strictly producing comics, I would have faced a choice like Ken had: fit in right away, fast, into the established production line, and make maybe decent money but have less freedom to develop, or else go your own way and take your chances. I didn’t want the established route. I was young and energetic and wanted to take more time to develop as an artist and try different stuff. I didn’t want to become just an “inker” or a “penciler” or whatever. I wasn’t that mad about COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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the comics of that period and I’m still not. I certainly couldn’t see how I could make a contribution or fit into that production line. I wanted to learn to develop my own stuff, my own style. I didn’t want to fit into the “Marvel Look”, or any rigidly set “Look” for that matter. So I thought to myself, “I’m going to have to make money somehow, these guys are well-rounded artists... yeah, why not? I’ll follow their example. I’m not above doing advertising work...” or as it turned out, animation work at Nelvana Animation. I adapted myself to the realities of my situation. CBA: What was Nelvana doing at the time? Paul: They were just getting going. They had done a series of TV specials that had done well and were ambitiously doing the feature film Rock and Rule, as it was finally called. I wanted in there as now I needed a steady source of steady work because I was just struggling like crazy, living in the Cockroach Motel [laughs], as we called the apartment I shared with fellow young commercial artist Peter Bielicki. It was around Christmas 1979, I believe, just turning into 1980. One snowy day, in desperation and at the end of my tether in terms of bank account, I happened to wander into The Silver Snail and Ron or one of the guys said, “They’re looking for people at Nelvana Animation—you should go for it.” So I just kept bugging Nelvana until I finally got hired by Frank Nissen, a wonderful artist and designer, who now works for Disney I believe. It took a while to get hired at Nelvana. They didn’t say yes right away, because I was pretty inexperienced, but I guess I had the right kind of enthusiasm. I did what they asked me and just kept at it. Frank said, “Go off and keep sketching, keep showing me your stuff.” He was mad about Moebius. They showed me all this Moebius stuff and I tried to follow that, filling a sketchbook with doodles and designs, and I just kept showing up until they finally said, “Okay, you can be a background designer.” Then I was in the door! It was honestly like heaven—one of the happiest days of my life. CBA: Was the pay good? Paul: It was great. For a kid, and back then, it was $400 a week, and I think they raised it up to $440! It was just like a gold mine. [laughs] I was just euphoric the day I was hired. It was like some kind of drug [laughs] because it was external validation for my struggling, just the biggest boost. I was accepted, validated as an artist, and I had done it on my own. It solved all these problems. I had the money, finally, to survive for at least a couple of years and I was in a community of artists that I could learn from and I did. I had tried going to art college, the Ontario College of Art, for a few months the year after I’d gone to university. But I left that too because it was fart-art mostly—it was just not serious craft training. But my school became Nelvana Animation. People like Frank Nissen, Don Marshall and Louis Kay (a brilliant background painter) were my instructors. I just watched these guys and learned from them and that was better than any art college. CBA: Did you work on any animated series? Paul: Back then they weren’t doing series, but these TV specials. For example, one was called A Cosmic Christmas, and they did a bunch of others. After that they aspired to go the Disney route. It was later that they became the modern Nelvana, becoming a major player in producing series animation. But they only did that after they failed with their feature, Rock and Rule—it was just a disaster. It bombed. I left the company a little while before it was actually released because I knew the ship was sinking. It did so badly, put them in such financial troubles, that even though they were reluctant to become a series producer, they were forced to. So they sort of transmogrified into what they are today. CBA: When you were freelancing for Dean, was that subsequent to Nelvana? Paul: Once I got the Nelvana job, I did less for him, doing only occasional work. I still kept my spot in the studio which I November 2001

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shared with Ken and Dean and a bunch of others. I used to go there at night after work at Nelvana and I used to do various freelance jobs, and it was still pretty intensive, you know. I was just a basket case. [laughs] It was a bit nutty, but I didn’t want to give it up because it was part of my identity to have my own studio spot, separate from Nelvana. CBA: Did you guys look south? Did you aspire to come into America or you were happy where you were? Paul: It never was a priority for me frankly, and not because I have anything against the U.S., like a lot of Canadians do. I was born there, and I love the U.S. But I just never felt the need to actually move there. CBA: And this was just with the advent of FedEx and desktop publishing hadn’t really started yet. Paul: No, it had not. From the mid- to late ’80s, I kept freelancing. I managed to get enough commercial artwork, mostly from Toronto but increasingly, as things went on, I got more and more from the U.S., mostly through having an agent, which helped. As the age of faxes and FedEx came on, I guess my share of U.S. work increased and that always helped, but it wasn’t a huge priority. Now, I do virtually all of my work for the U.S. CBA: Can you outline your remembrance

of the genesis of Mister X? Paul: The genesis of Mister X began around 1980, ’81, when I shared a studio with Ken, Dean and a bunch of other people on Queen Street, here in Toronto. I had noticed that Dean had created this character, Mister X. I guess he got the idea from a song title, or an album and he did some paintings for the initial incarnation of Mister X. You know, a bald character wearing a trenchcoat, sunglasses, with art deco backgrounds. Dean started talking about turning it into a comic and the way I remember it, I had just left Nelvana after a couple of years. My work was mostly done on that failed feature and I was tired of the politics of the place. So I was on a down slope, decided to leave and become a freelancer and I took a real hit, financially. But I knew that ultimately, sooner or later, I’d be a freelancer again anyway, and on the principle that it’s better to jump than be pushed, I left. I was back in the studio with Ken and Dean again, scrambling to get more freelance work and keep going. I loved comics and comics had never left my mind, and Dean had this neat character Mister X. I can’t remember who approached who or how it all happened, but somehow it became, “Paul’s gonna draw it.” So I began working on the design and later, the posters. I was capitalizing, I guess, on my experience at Nelvana. I was really pumped up.

I’d been doing all this intensive design work on the feature, and I kept thinking along those lines when it came to working on Mister X and having to design a “world”—the architecture, the vehicles, the signage, and so on. So even though animation’s not the same as comics, it shares some common things, and it seemed quite natural to jump into this Mister X project. CBA: Did you know Bill Marks? Paul: I didn’t. He just walked into our studio one day, this guy that was younger than us—and we were pretty young! [chuckles] He was this funny, young guy, kind of a wheeler-dealer, I guess you could say, that had worked at The Silver Snail, that was literally downstairs from our studio. CBA: You were there when talk started about starting up Vortex? Paul: Yeah, I think Dean and I were already working on Mister X and then Bill came in and said, “I want to publish; I’ll publish Mister X. You want to do it?” I guess Dean didn’t want to be a publisher, and by then, Andromeda had stopped or Ron was getting out of the publishing business, so that left Bill Marks and Vortex with a natural opportunity. CBA: Was there an emphasis on high quality production at Vortex? A really sophisticated design and high-quality paper and perhaps try to appeal beyond the direct market into maybe the music market? Paul: I remember wanting to do a really high quality product, the best possible, but in terms of actually, consciously saying, “We’ll market to this audience,” I can’t attest to that. I was more focused on the actual comic itself, not so much the marketing. I’m sure Dean was more focused on the type design and look of the package, since he was so used to doing that in his album cover work. CBA: But you did see a lot of potential in Mister X? Paul: Yeah. I just thought we were going to do something different, something that wasn’t like a mainstream super-hero, something that had some real style and quality to it, like European comics that we admired. But if you’re talking about the financial potential or whatever, I didn’t know what to expect. It was all an unknown, rapidly emerging kind of thing to me. It was almost like a snowball that started gathering speed. CBA: So you started with the icon and you guys had to fill him up with substance, with background story? Paul: Yeah. Before we had really gotten too far in actually creating the final thing, it had almost gotten ahead of us; that’s the way I would phrase it. We put out these posters on purpose. I remember talking to Dean saying that we should tease people with the posters. Make them want more, don’t give the whole thing away, and I guess it worked. We did the series of posters and people were going, “Yeah, great. Who’s this Mister X?” And it sort of gathered steam and I think, yeah, there was a high level of expectation out there. CBA: Working at Nelvana, you were hired to do backgrounds. Were you world-creating for Mister X, so to speak? For instance, Radiant City is a character all to itself within the Mister X oeuvre. I was just wondering whether the genesis of that had anything to do with the work you were doing at Nelvana. Paul: I think I plugged some of that in, yeah, sure. The initial name, Radiant City, came from Dean. I always thought it was really cool, the idea he had to do the future as it was thought it was going to be, back in the 1930s or ’40s—the way it was predicted on those great Popular Science covers. He calls it “antique futurism.” What if the art deco sense had remained there but it was just updated and had moved on into the future? So as we embarked on this project, I brought to bear the design methods I’d learned, the way to approach things I’d learned at Nelvana. If you’re given, for example, a room to design, you work it out believably. In animation, you have to work it out, since it has to be three-dimensional because people are moving through the environment. You can’t really cheat as much as you might, say, in some comics, where it’s really not a true threedimensional space the characters are working in. But in animation, the characters have to move around in a space, and you have to define that space clearly so you can board it. You have to think about how the characters are going to interact in it, just like a real film designer, set designer, or production designer would have to think in live action film. So I was exposed to that kind of process, and tried to COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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apply it to Mister X. I was trying to learn as much as I could about it and Mister X presented a natural place to apply what I was learning. I remember clearly having the idea—which later in Mister X was termed “psychetecture,”—that the city itself could influence people. \I remember talking about the idea of (which the Hernandez Brothers used a little bit of) secret tunnel-ways and passageways, and I did this in a lot of my early design drawings. I remember loving that \idea and recalled some Rupert stories from Britain that had these great secret tunnel-ways under Nutwood, the town that Rupert lived in. These tunnel-ways were filled with conveyor belts and it was all hidden. Normal people had no idea that any of it was there but if you went down certain sewers, manholes, there was a whole conveyor belt system where you can travel around and emerge in another city. Stuff like this, I just loved as a kid. I wanted to have that sense in Radiant City, of mysteries and hidden secrets. CBA: Do you know where the phrase “psychetecture” came from? Paul: I don’t know. Probably Dean wrote it in. CBA: Psychetecture was a great concept that perhaps was not fully exploited. Obviously, it was inherent in the plot of the first issue that the city was driving people mad, that Mercedes was the only sane one in the city and Mister X was probably the most insane. Still perhaps the role of the city wasn’t ever fully articulated. Paul: It wasn’t. A lot of the design work I’d been doing and my studies had alerted me to the whole idea of how different spaces affect people. Rooms and buildings designed in different shapes have different effects on people. I don’t know if any city actually drives people mad, but we all know from living in houses or cities that different arrangements of things certainly have different effects on us, and we were just doing an exaggerated version of that. CBA: Animation and films have the luxury of having the budgets to really create worlds and fund a lot of development work. In comics, generally speaking, you come up with a character and, boom, you start the series and build the environment. Dean mentioned there was a lot of development time devoted to this one title. Did you spend a lot of time on it? Paul: I spent tons of time on it. This dovetails, ultimately, into a lot of the different reasons I ended up not doing it. I don’t know how much of this was planned out beforehand, but I loved the whole idea of a world behind something. That’s 50% of the interest to me. A character can’t stand alone. It has to have a backdrop, whether it’s on a stage or anywhere else. I grew up reading Tintin, the French comic. I loved the whole world behind the character of Tintin, how well-described it was. Jack Kirby was another huge influence. He, November 2001

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too, had worlds behind his characters. Unfortunately for later comics, his followers weren’t geniuses like him, and they left out that aspect when they copied or followed his lead. I mean, he could apparently make it up on the fly. From what I’ve read about him, Jack Kirby obviously was constantly thinking about his stories and designing in his mind. When it came time to put it down on paper, he was very spontaneous and on any two days he might have done it a little differently. But the point still was, he wasn’t completely making it up in a ramshackle way. He had a world in mind and one day, he might take one slice of it; another day, he might take another but he was building it and being somewhat consistent. That’s what I loved about the Fourth World, how it all tied in together but each book came at it from different angles. Mister Miracle versus The New Gods and Orion versus the Forever People. I mean, it just had a huge impact on me! And it wasn’t just the characters alone, or the world alone, but the combined effect of the two together. That created the effect of a vast story going on, past the edges of the comic panels. I think that’s something sorely lacking in modern comics—that the creators either don’t care or aren’t equipped to really focus on the world behind the main characters. So when it came time to do Mister X, yes, from my design experience at Nelvana, I was used to sitting down and turning things over in my mind, trying to do lots of

sketches and roughs, to examine what’s the best way of presenting something, whether it was Mister X or the design of a vehicle or whatever. I worked for a long time on the sidekick character, this robot that we were going to have, which never came into the Hernandez version. The cars, the nature of the city, all kinds of stuff, but I have to say I don’t know how completely conscious it was. It wasn’t like we were organized enough to say, “Okay, we’re going to spend exactly six months developing this and then start drawing it all up.” It was more like, just for myself, I couldn’t sit down and draw the pages before I had any idea of what I was drawing, what the world was like behind the story. So I started designing. Unfortunately, money soon became a problem and I got into these sort of detours of doing other jobs to get enough money so as to be able to go back to Mister X.

Above: Evocative comp by Paul Rivoche for a Mister X poster design, a variation of The Return of Mister X collection cover. Courtesy of the artist. Mister X ©2001 Vortex Comics, Inc. Art ©2001 Paul Rivoche.

CBA: For a time, developing Mister X was a full-time gig for you? Paul: For a while, yeah. I was young, unencumbered and very enthusiastic, but severely underfunded, too. CBA: In the beginning, Bill got some investment money and that was what initially paid you? Paul: I honestly don’t have a clear memory of, nor records of how much I was paid so I can’t answer that. But I do know that whatever length of time it was, it wasn’t huge amounts and it wasn’t for a long time because money soon became a problem, amongst other problems which ultimately resulted in my not doing it. I don’t know how much money Dean, on his side of it, got from the investors, but he also had a completely-running business doing album covers to

support him, which he was doing full-time. Me, I stopped doing most of my other stuff. So it wasn’t exactly an equal situation. I left Nelvana and wasn’t really pursuing much other work. I was trying to do this Mister X. I honestly can’t remember the exact financial details of how I survived except to note that after a while, I was forced to do other stuff to make money. Someone would say, “You want to work on this animated commercial, to do the backgrounds?” And I’d say to myself, “Yeah, I’ve got to do that. I need the cash.” CBA: Do you remember how far into it when you started working on the comic story? Did you have a script? How did you develop it? Paul: The exact timelines are hard for me… As far as a script, the only one I recall getting, at least in the beginning, was a very rough ballpoint-pen outline. It wasn’t a full, final script with exact dialogue and panel descriptions such as, “Page one: five panels, Mister X is doing this.” It wasn’t like that. It was rougher, with only some dialogue. Frankly this gets into the nature of our creative differences. I don’t remember that a lot of the script and the proposed story made complete sense to me. I had problems with it as the person trying actually to draw the final incarnation of Mister X and have it displayed to the world. I had problems making sense of it all. CBA: Do you remember what was confusing or vague? Paul: Well, I had problems making sense of the way it was flowing. Different story points didn’t seem to connect up properly, and the mystery didn’t build clearly the way it should in a detective story. I also had big problems with the nature of how Mister X was being presented. For example, Dean basically had Mister X as a drug addict, and I had a big problem with that, because it made Mister X the kind of character I didn’t want to do. I wanted the main character to be a hero—even if it was a dark kind of hero, a mysterious kind of hero—but still a hero. That really appealed to me, and I think it appealed to other people out there... that was the Mister X they expected to get, a mysterious deco-detective-hero. But to me, the drug addiction angle was crossing a line and the strip was becoming too dark. In the earlier versions, Mister X injected drugs with needles into his fingertips. I couldn’t agree to that, I couldn’t agree to draw it. I wasn’t the kind of person, certainly not as a co-creator then— nor now—to go, “Okay, I’ll just draw that and shut up. Gimme the money.” [laughs] I was uncomfortable drawing such an unhealthy character. It didn’t inspire me. I didn’t mind a dark character but the drug addiction crossed the line into making him unsympathetic. He was no longer a heroic character. He became weak. That, to me, isn’t something to build a whole series around. If that was the way it was going to be, I didn’t want to draw it, because I couldn’t relate to it. I grew up reading Jack Kirby comics, stories of heroes. Now, of course, Mister X was never going to be one of the New Gods, obviously, but I wanted Mister X to have a similar positive sense, a sense that the hero is ultimately striving for good, even if he has problems. CBA: Do you recall a debate about having Mister X drink a secret formula as opposed to injecting drugs? Paul: I don’t recall anything about a secret formula versus drug addiction. My memory’s not as good as I want it to be, Jon. [laughs] But it’s reasonably good. I remember more the tone of those days, as opposed to specific, exact words and arguments. But back then, and now, if I’m going to spend a whole bunch of time visualizing something and drawing it down on paper, it had better be interesting to me and positive. I’m not the kind of guy to draw all this dark sex/murder stuff that you see, that’s been flooding the stands for years. I don’t want to occupy my brain with that all day—I really don’t know how anyone can. It’s no wonder the comic business is in big trouble. Yeah, we probably had debates about all this back then, because I was this young, idealistic 22-year-old kid, raring to go, and I wanted to deal with the positive. And on his side of it, I guess, Dean was writing something reflecting his world or his experiences. So while we never came to blows and never had knock-down, dragout argument, we certainly had fundamental disagreements and it became increasingly clear that they were not the kind of things that were going to be resolved. CBA: It was all philosophical. Paul: Sure, and it mattered to me. Like I said, I was never the kind of person who’s just, “Okay, I’ll shut up, I want the money.” I just wouldn’t do it, and it wasn’t because of stubborn ego, it was from principle. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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CBA: In the collected edition, The Return of Mister X, there are probably about six pages that were reproduced quite small, of the comic as you were working on it. All told, how many pages did you do? Paul: There were nine final inked pages shown in The Return of Mister X, which was all I did as far as I can recall. A couple of those pages were different versions of the same sequence, such as “The Train Sequence.” Dean had this thing about nuns [relating to Motter’s “The Sacred and the Profane”], so an early version included nuns on the train. A later version I drew didn’t include the nuns, because I had insisted that I didn’t want to draw nuns on trains; and it also didn’t focus on one of his fingernails being taped up where he had earlier injected himself. After those pages, there were about 30 or so rough pages of the first issue that I drew on layout paper. A few were fairly detailed but most of those were rougher. CBA: Were you drawing pages that you would discard and then approach them different ways? Paul: Yes, but most of the discarded ones were discarded at the rough stage. I was trying lots of versions out of a kind of desperation, trying to figure out what would work the best. We had this big, old studio in a building called the Darling Building. Dean’s studio, with his assistants doing commercial work was at one end and I was at the extreme, opposite end, working on Mister X. It was almost symbolic—as the months dragged on and this thing bogged down, the distance between those two ends seemingly became greater. Whereas in the beginning we had talked about the project regularly and were collaborating, I was increasingly being left more and more on my own and just struggling with the whole thing, story problems and all. We never did sit down and say, “We have to find a way to agree, we’re going to revamp this, you’ll get a final script to draw from, and then that’s that.” I got a couple of different script versions and they were, to me, still pretty vague. I was struggling to inject my ideas into it, to pull it together, and did a number of different versions of a lot of pages. Looking back, I was very inexperienced. I mean, I had barely been a commercial artist for any length of time, barely done any comics, and then immersed myself in this huge X-project. I felt the whole thing was my responsibility— looking back, too much so. But I’ll certainly take my appropriate share of responsibility for why it didn’t work out. Part of it, when I look back, was the necessity of producing all this work up to the level that I wanted, and producing it reasonably quickly; I just wasn’t up to it at that point. Like I said, I certainly wasn’t a seasoned commercial artist. Often during a project you either revise it as problems arise, or else you can go down the wrong path, and then it can be a long time before you check yourself and realize, “Oh, this isn’t working.” Back then, through inexperience, I believe I made the latter mistake. Whereas now, having a bit more experience, if something isn’t working, the alarm bell goes on a lot faster. You say to yourself, “Okay, that’s not working,” you admit it to yourself and you switch course. Back then, I felt this pressure that Mister X has got to be really good. And part of that was self-imposed for sure, but part of it was external, because the Mister X snowball had started rolling quite fast and expectations were high. The pressure wasn’t pleasant. CBA: So you had the best of intentions of doing a cutting-edge comic book, and yet inexperience had its toll? Paul: Oh, absolutely. I think we all sincerely wanted to do this really great comic, but a lot of things converged and then it all fell apart. Dean certainly had his own problems, and even his own inexperience; and I had my own problems of another stripe—being young and really perfectionistic at that point—and there was a lot of external pressure to get the thing going, get it done. I was a kid trying to sort myself out, you know, and I’m sure on his side of it Dean had the pressures of running his own business. Yet, we were supposed to be turning out this great new monthly comic book like clockwork. When I look back, it was just not realistic, but we didn’t know it then. I was green, and he already had a full-time job! I would, hopefully, not get myself into that position now, because I would see it coming. But I didn’t see it then. CBA: Would you say that you were stubborn, set on doing it your way? Paul: To some extent, yeah. I’ll cop to a certain amount of that. I November 2001

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guess I was stubborn in the sense that I wasn’t going to just sit down and draw something that had content in it that I just didn’t agree with, as I related about the whole idea of the drug addiction and that type of direction. I was stubborn in just not giving in to that, and also I had reservations about the coherence of the story. I remember that Dean and Bill said in effect, “Just get it done. Let it evolve. Sure, we haven’t worked out where this is all going, but please just finish it.” But I didn’t know how to do that—Dean hadn’t written a full script and a lot of what he did give me made little sense to me. Nevertheless there was a lot of pressure to just go on and do it and let it evolve. Now, there is something to that in the sense that in the intervening years, I’ve learned to let go, get the damn job done and just go on to the next one and make the next one better, provided of course there is a solid script to start with. But I didn’t know that then, I didn’t really know how to sit down and communicate my concerns clearly and get them all sorted out and then smoothly go on from there. So between one or another of these obstacles, there was enough to stop the project. It’s funny, though; I look back now at the pages I did, Jon, which I hated at the time, and I think, “What’s wrong with them? Sure, they’re not perfect, but they’re easily good enough to be published.” But back then I was supercritical of myself, and that really crippled me. But having said all that, even if that perfectionistic streak hadn’t been a problem, the content issue alone was enough to shut things down all by itself. CBA: How do recall the break-up? Paul: One day Bill Marks finally wandered in and said, “This is not working. We’re getting someone else.” And I said something like, “Good!” because it had all become such an ongoing burden. There was a mixture of emotions: I was relieved but awfully disappointed at the same time. At that point, I blamed myself completely, and for a long time. But today I see that there were a lot of threads involved. I also felt at the time, fairly or not, that the others blamed me solely, so it was a

rather unpleasant experience. For a long time I would never talk about Mister X even though different people kept asking, “Why’d you leave Mister X, huh, why?” CBA: Did you do the covers to Mister X before the break-up? Paul: Yes, at least the first couple of covers, but I also did some covers after the falling-out, because I loved the character and wanted to get my version of him published, even if it was only on covers. I still think Mister X is a great character who has never been fully realized. I have great respect for the Hernandez Brothers’ work, but I don’t think they were the right people for Mister X, although of course they deserve full credit for stepping in and salvaging the book. But I don’t think they were fully tuned into the kind of sensibility we were looking for; they had their own approach that they developed so brilliantly in Love and Rockets, but it wasn’t a deco-detective-film noir sensibility. They were suddenly asked to be commercial artists and execute someone else’s vision, alien to their own, and I think they did a very good job on short notice, all things considered; but Mister X became almost goofy in their version, and also didn’t have much of an “Art Deco” feel. The character I was imagining as I drew the posters and sketches was a much more mysterious character, a detective, not at all goofy. He didn’t take comedy-sequence showers with women in lingerie! He was someone who would

speak very little, but when he did speak, you paid attention. We wanted to set up this mysterious character, Mister X, whom everybody is fascinated with—a man in silhouette with dark glasses and some nefarious past that’s hinted at—and in classic style play his history out slowly; drop the line of bread crumbs through the forest and have the readers following it behind you, as they greedily try to solve this puzzle. Classic mystery writing, revealing more and more, leading to a big pay-off. But I just didn’t see that taking place, and certainly the Hernandez Brothers’ version, while very likeable and well-done, didn’t have that feel. CBA: Do you feel you’re a co-creator of Mister X? Paul: Yes, in that I think my visuals did a lot to define who Mister X was—they helped “create” him in that sense, although of course Dean was the one who came up with the name and the earliest visualizations of him. I do know that a lot of people seem to remember my posters and designs fondly, for which I’m grateful, although to me it all seemed to come and go quite quickly. But because I came into the project somewhat green, an inexperienced kid, I feel that I was regarded as something of a junior partner on the project. There’s an implied assumption that Dean Motter created all this, that he designed everything, and that I just executed his vision, but that’s not the way it happened.

This page and opposite: Montage of Paul Rivoche concept drawings depicting his meticulous approach to characterization, setting, atmosphere and even vehicle designs for the world of Mister X. All courtesy of the artist. Mister X ©2001 Vortex Comics, Inc. Art ©2001 Paul Rivoche. 98

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CBA: Have you ever worked on a regular comics series? Paul: No. I have done a bunch of short stories for different comics—Alien Worlds, a Sandman story, a Batman: Black and White story, and a bunch of covers—though recently I did a Legion of Super-Heroes book, Legion Worlds #3, that was 30 pages. It’s only been in the last five years that I’ve veered strongly back into animation and comics, on purpose, after many years doing various kinds of commercial art. CBA: Was that redirection to get back in touch with what you loved as a kid; bring things full-circle? Paul: Yes, absolutely. You don’t get any younger. The nature of illustration was changing in the early ’90s and, getting married, buying a house, and having a young daughter, I had a need to up my income; but I was also restless and tired of illustration work. I wanted to get back to my first loves, character and storytelling, which translated into comics and animation. So a lot of things were changing at once. I expressed a bit of all this in a letter to Alex Toth and he very kindly replied that Bruce Timm had written him that Warners TV Animation needed more people. So I called Bruce, after Alex sent me his number, and immediately got work doing storyboards and designs. It was perfect. I loved what was being done on November 2001

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Batman and Bruce actually said that my work on Mister X was an influence on the backgrounds of the series, so we hit it off well. I’m now working on Justice League, as a background designer. And working again in animation gave me the confidence to decide to get back into comics. Storyboarding for animation helped me a lot too, because you’re forced to turn out a lot of images quickly, and just as in comics, consider sequences of images instead of only one at a time. Plus, I was inspired by working at Warners; they have a real infectious love for Kirby’s work, and that reminded me of how much I loved Kirby, comics, the whole thing... CBA: Did Alex Toth get you in touch with [Art Director] Mark Chiarello at DC? Paul: Yes! Alex has been very helpful to me and he recommended Mark to me. Mark and I talked and we got along. Things developed naturally from there, and I got a number of jobs from DC. So it’s funny—when I look at it, there’s been this Toth connection at a number of different points in my life—as a kid through his brilliant comics, and later as a link to first Warners, and then DC. All in all, I’m happy with the way things are turning out; the more turbulent days of good old Mister X that we were discussing seem very far away. So yes, I’ve come full circle... 99

CBA Interview

Sandy Plunkett is the Best Artist You Never Heard Of Tim Barnes interviews the renderer extraordinaire Right inset: Mrs. Plunkett and her two children, Sandy and Michéle. Sandy writes, “Looks as though it’s from another century, doesn’t it? Guess it is, actually!” Courtesy of Sandy Plunkett.

Below: Photo of Sandy and his nephew, Charles Fredrick Plunkett Beach, on the occasion of the latter’s tenth birthday. Sandy writes, “His career path has taken a drastic sea change of late, from astronaut to philosopher and comic book artist.” Courtesy of Sandy Plunkett.

Conducted by Tim Barnes Just who the hell is Sandy Plunkett? Ye Ed discovered the elusive artist via a Marvel Comics Presents Ant-Man story back in the early ’90s and was blown away with Sandy’s accomplished stylings and exquisite ink line. In e-mail conversation with Brit Tim Barnes (The World’s Number One Howard Chaykin Fan), Ye Ed learned that Mr. Barnes was also a rabid aficionado of Plunkett’s, and Barnes was immediately asked to interview the artist, the results which follow. The interview was conducted by e-mail in Summer 2000, augmented by a couple of phone calls, which due to the differing time zones, were made after Tim got home from the pub. The Q&As were married up by Tim and the whole thing was edited by Sandy.—JBC. Tim: Tell me something about your background: Where you were brought up, and the environment. Were you born into an artistic family? Sandy: Art was “in the family.” Until I was four, we lived in Mexico City. We were supported, primarily, through art classes that my mother taught in her third floor studio. She was a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (a well-regarded college here in the States). She was heavily into Abstract Impressionism. She worked on large canvases in oil. My parents separated when we moved to New York City, somewhere around 1959, and so

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I never got to know my father well (he died when I was seven). But I do know that he did some commercial art at various periods in his life. My impression is that he had Bohemian proclivities and wasn’t very “career oriented” (maybe that tendency runs in the family as well). As a teenager, I came across a full-page cartoon that he drew and I had trouble, at first, distinguishing it from one of my own pages. My mother taught art at a grammar school in New York for several years, but I don’t remember her ever actively encouraging me to draw. But then, she might have realized that pushing me in that direction might have caused me to rebel and never pick up a brush or pencil. She did have a Masters degree in child psychology after all…. Tim: Did you always intend on a career in art, and was it comics you aimed for? Sandy: The idea of being an artist as a career didn’t occur to me until the time came to start thinking about college. At a young and tender age, I was encouraged by friends and family to throw out my comics and “grow up.” When I gave up comics, I seemed to lose my interest in drawing as well. So for the majority of my teenage years, I didn’t think much about art, let alone consider it a career option. The void seemed to be filled by an interest in snakes, and I was seriously thinking about becoming a herpetologist (I read tons of books on reptiles, had about a dozen snakes and lizards as pets, some which occasionally escaped into neighboring apartments. Police arrived on the scene on one occasion, but that’s another story.) Then something changed. It seems that one day I just decided that if comics still had some interest to me (and they did), I’d start reading them again, despite the ridicule I was likely to get. Fortunately, there was a newsstand on the corner of 79th Street and Broadway, right next to the subway I took to school, which always had an up-to-date selection of comics. So getting back into comics was easy. Unfortunately, other kids from my school got off at that same subway stop, so, despite my resolution to be courageous, I always had this dread that my weakness would be discovered. Sooner be found reading pornography than the latest issue of Swamp Thing!… Anyway, soon after I began reading comics again, my interest in drawing returned. Not too long after that, I met Larry Ivie, who took it as a matter of course that I should/would get into comics as a career. At the time, I had no real interest in art other than what was found in comics and related fanzines. In high school, it seemed those kids who were into art were kind of cliquish and maybe pretentious. I guess I thought I would be rejected if I tried to enter that social circle so I never tried. Pre-emptive rejection, if you know what I mean. In any case, most of what passed for fine art really bored me. No art classes for me…. Tim: When was it that you got back into reading comics? Was it the same stuff you’d previously followed, or were you attracted by some of the newer artists/titles? Sandy: I got back into comics somewhere in 10th grade, though I had been eyeing them surreptitiously for a while on the newsstand. I guess I gravitated to the new books and artists that were on the market. The landscape had changed a good deal, but I don’t think I had any urge to “revisit” the titles of my youth. I was never so much a Fantastic Four fan (let’s say), as I was a fan of Kirby’s Fantastic Four. When Ditko left Spider-Man, I lost interest in Spider-Man, etc. When COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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I got back into comics (1970?) there was a lot of interesting stuff to look at. Wrightson’s work for House of Mystery, [Barry] Smith’s Conan, the Burroughs’ material that DC was adapting. Again, the actual titles weren’t as important to me as the artists who were drawing for them…. Tim: What did you read as a youngster: Was it primarily comics, what subject matter? Sandy: I didn’t read much, mostly because I was, and still am, dyslexic. I read incredibly slowly, and can’t spell to save my life. The problems were worse when I was a kid. I’m sure this has something to do with why I was so drawn to comics. All other reading came with great difficulty and therefore wasn’t very pleasurable. I wasn’t really reading books for my own enjoyment until the last couple years of high school when I discovered the “new wave” science-fiction writers of the late ’60s and ’70s (Samuel Delany, Thomas Disch, Joanna Russ, among others). I’m not sure what, if anything, I was reading between seventh and tenth grade. I do recall that when I started to get interested in snakes in a serious way, I began to work my way, painstakingly, through college textbooks on herpetology. But otherwise, my reading was pretty sparse and traditional. Tim: How and when did you meet Larry Ivie? Were you aware of him and his work prior to meeting him? I think you described him to me as a mentor figure—how did he help? (encouragement/advice? did he help open doors?) Sandy: I met Larry Ivie not too long after I started reading comics again. I think in a previous question I mentioned this newsstand on the corner of 79th and Broadway. Well, if it wasn’t for that newsstand, I probably wouldn’t have found my way into comics (in a children’s story I’ve abandoned for now, that newsstand is transformed into “The Little Shop of Comics”). At a time when most newsstands were cutting back on the number of titles they carried—or dropping comics altogether because the owners made so little profit on them— this newsstand carried virtually every title and always put the new ones out on Thursday afternoon. One day, in among the comics was a magazine with a black-&-white cover, but one which looked very much like a comic book. That was the first fanzine I ever saw. It was titled Comic and Crypt, and the cover, I found out later, was a very blatant rip-off by Dan Adkins of a Williamson drawing. It might have been in this fanzine (or one that appeared on the stands soon after) that I spotted the name Manny Maris. He was looking for artists to contribute to his fanzine, and his address indicated that he lived just a few blocks uptown from me. I worked up a drawing (a rip-off of a Hogarth figure from one of his anatomy books) and then, instead of mailing it in, decided I’d give Manny a call and see if I could drop it off in person. I don’t know if you ever heard the name Manny Maris (or Marris perhaps), but he always attended Phil Seuling’s First Friday conventions, and helped out with the early Creation Conventions. We got to be friends and after a while, he mentioned the name of Larry Ivie to me. Manny described him as a comic book writer and artist who was known for helping out aspiring artists. I’d never heard of Larry—I still really had no idea there was such a thing as comic fandom at that point, or that there were grown men who took comics seriously. I screwed up my courage and gave him a call. A couple days later I went over to his apartment with drawings in hand (by another stroke of luck, he happened to live just a couple blocks downtown from me). It’s hard to summarize what he taught (or gave) to me. My awareness of comic book history was nil, and he introduced me to the great artists of the “past”—Frazetta, Williamson, Krenkel, as well as J.C. Coll, Montana, and other influential illustrators. He was an active ERB fan and through Larry I realized I wasn’t so isolated in my interests—there were adults who enjoyed Tarzan stories, and published fanzines about ERB’s characters, who thought King Kong was a great movie, and revered early Disney animation. He also helped foster a deep appreciation for good drawing— a rare commodity in comics or in most commercial art. Somewhere around 1973, he left New York and headed to California, so actually, I only had about a year and half to visit with him in person (we’ve maintained an on-and-off correspondence over the years). But that time was invaluable for my artistic development. To my great frustration, he would rarely give me any tips, or solutions to my problems with drawing. He would always say that it would be better if I figured these things out for myself. In retrospect of course, I know he was November 2001

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right, but at that time it felt like he was withholding priceless information because of some latent sadistic streak (or something). He always stressed two things above all else: Good anatomy and originality. Whenever I adopted “an influence” (swiped), he could spot it right away and I’d get embarrassed. He really urged me to see things for myself and not simply copy how other artists had interpreted the world around them. That’s an ideal I’m still shooting for. I’m also eternally grateful to Larry for introducing me to Roy Krenkel. They were good buddies, and Roy often visited Larry at his apartment. Occasionally Larry would give me a call and invite me over (if I was home from school) and I’d race over with my latest drawings. I still have a small number of tracings and drawings Roy did as guides to improve my work… Tim: I was interested to find your early interest in reptiles, later involvement in an environmental organization (the Tropical Conservation Foundation) and an appreciation of the likes of Williamson, Frazetta et al, whose names always make me think of those jungle scenes with vines/creepers hanging off trees, and all sorts of small lizards and the like crawling all over the place. They seem interrelated. Sandy: I’m sure there’s a connection and I’ve always found it pretty interesting. The attraction to primordial images seems to be a strong thread running through my life, linking many of my interests— animals and reptiles, jungles, Tarzan, King Kong, psychedelic drugs, ancient civilizations, even the music I like. And I guess art is the means with which I express those interests. There seems to be something so much purer in the energies of the aboriginal world than those of the refined, Western world, and therefore something much more powerful and closer to the source of creation. I’m sure that’s what attracts me to the jungles of Bélize. (This is not to dismiss everything that the Western culture has produced. I mean, there are artists like Chopin, Faulkner, Whistler, who have given the human race amazing gifts. But sometimes I think the function of Western art is primarily to provide a way for us to survive the insanity of the Western world…. Tim: It seems to me that many of your contemporaries who entered the comics business in the late ’60s and early ’70s had some

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Above: Sandy Plunkett received his first professional break by drawing for Gold Key’s Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery in the mid-1970s. Courtesy of the artist, here’s a page of his work Sandy calls typical. ©2001 the respective copyright holder.

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track record in fanzines before turning pro. This wasn’t the case with you was it? (I only know of the one.) Hence having to work up the samples. Sandy: I was never very active in comic fandom, but I did go to some New York conventions in the early ’70s, and I did contribute some work to fanzines. This was very good experience. It’s always a shock when a young artist sees his work reproduced for the first time, and it’s best to have that over with before you’re a professional. It never looks as good as you think it will, but with effort and experience, you can begin to compensate, in the original, for some of the damage that will occur with reduction and bad printing. My best memory of “fandom” at that time is of the small group of aspiring comic book artists, living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, who came together around their interests. Unlike other such conclaves (that formed around Kaluta in Virginia, or earlier, around Williamson and Frazetta), we were slackers, underachievers and maybe not all that talented. We mostly slid from obscurity into further obscurity. But these were the first friends I had made outside my school and I found them much less snooty and pretentious than my classmates. We had a good time… Tim: I was only aware of that Comix Art Showcase issue you did around 1975. Is this because you’ve kept very quiet about your other fan efforts? Don’t suppose you remember any of the titles to which

you contributed, and whether these were strips or spot illos? Sandy: I didn’t do a lot of it—mostly single illustrations and maybe three (or four) entire stories. I thought I had dug out the names of these fanzines and passed them on to you, but I guess not. One that I contributed to a couple times was called Chronicle, for whatever good that’ll do you. If I were a faster typist, I might choose this opportunity to wax eloquent about the fanzines of the late ’60s, early ’70’s. They were far more art oriented than today’s ’zines and, boy, I really enjoyed them. Even managed to save a good many (I’ll Be Damned, Infinity and some others). Tim: How did you get into the business? Sandy: After high school I went to a State University in New York for one year (one year, two weeks, to be precise), enrolled as a fine arts major. Though I had a great time there, I didn’t think the classes were of much use to me so I quit. I was very anxious to be doing comics. For a while I lived in a friend’s house in Queens, rent free, and worked on samples. I wrote a dreadful story called “Second Chance”—a Burroughs-esque piece of nonsense and took it as far as the pencils. I had a friend who had a friend who worked in Marvel’s British department and with this tenuous connection to the company, I got through the door. Archie Goodwin and Marv Wolfman were sharing an office at the time and they both took a look at my drawings. Archie was impressed enough to give me a Ka-zar inside front cover to do. That’s how it began. A really dull story, but what can I say? It took a lot of time to begin to get anything like regular work (1982). The late ’70s were not an easy time to find comic work and I was slower than you could imagine. I ended up as another body cluttering up the hallways at Continuity for a while, and found some assistant and advertising work there. I’m very grateful that Neal Adams tolerated my presence, seeing as how I wasn’t actually renting space, or really much use as an assistant…. Tim: I’m sure you sent me a photocopy of an inked version of “Second Chance.” Sandy: What I showed Archie and Marv was the penciled version of the story. A year or two later I inked it for possible inclusion in Star*Reach, the fanzine/underground/alternative press comic that Mike Friedrich was putting out in the ’70s. But after indicating that he would accept the story when he first saw it, he rejected it after I inked it, saying he didn’t much like the writing. I’m still kinda pissed about that, but in retrospect, I don’t blame him—the story was pretty wretched…. Tim: Incidentally, was this Bob McLeod you stayed with? I think you mentioned sharing an apartment around this time? Sandy: No, his name was Jerry Buter (not “Butter” as people often mispronounced it) and he lived with our family, on and off, for a few years before my mother’s death in 1972. Most of our family possessions went with Jerry because both me and my sister were off to college in the fall. He moved to Queens, and when I dropped out a year later, he offered me the use of his house. He had started to see a woman in Westchester by that time and the house was empty about 23 hours a day. A nice arrangement for me. Bob McLeod moved in with me for a short time when I lived on the Lower East Side a couple years later. Bob got married, moved to Florida, I believe, and his name still crops up occasionally as an inker in comics. But we haven’t been in touch for a long time… Tim: I’m curious about the Neal Adams/Continuity period. I heard that he was supposed to ink your first DC work (House of Mystery #253). A number of the Continuity people were supplying art to International Insanity, an early issue of which featured your work. What else did you work on at this time? What did you learn from the experience (and were you aware of it at the time)? Sandy: A friend of mine named Gary John Reynolds was doing some assistance work at Continuity back when they were producing a couple of black-&-white books for Charlton (Six Million Dollar Man and Emergency!). He encouraged me to bring my work in and eventually I did. I got a nice reception from Neal and he arranged that I receive a script from DC. He’d worked out a deal where he would send promising artists over to them for work, with the condition that he would ink their first job. Thus, DC would be guaranteed at least a reasonably good job, even if the pencils turned out weak. Well, I got a Jack Oleck script for House of Mystery, but by the time I finished it, Neal had his hands full with other work, and the pencils got passed to COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Klaus Janson… Continuity was a great place for an up-and-comer to hang out because most all the interesting artists working in the industry would, at one time or another, walk through the doors. And there was a sense of camaraderie among established pros and bumbling newcomers alike. People such as Howard Chaykin, Alan Weiss and Ralph Reese would drop by to socialize, drink the bad coffee, look for an assistant or bug Neal. I don’t think I learned too much about art while hanging out there, but I learned a lot about the industry, the good, the bad and the ugly. Mostly the latter two aspects. Neal’s approach to comics and my own were so opposed that I eventually had to drop the little I did pick up from him. But I’m extremely grateful for the generosity he showed in making me feel welcome at Continuity. Tim: What were your influences, and have they changed over the years? And where does Jack Flanders fit in with these? Sandy: Influences… Well, I used to give a standard answer to this question (one that comes up a lot), and list the names of Williamson, Frazetta and Wrightson. And if you’re familiar with my work, those are the most apparent influences. But it struck me a couple of years ago that my tastes and aesthetics were shaped long before I saw the work of any of those artists. For reasons unknown to me, I fixated on jungles at a very early age. My favorite toys were plastic jungle animals and my favorite TV was old Tarzan movies. As I got older, I began to realize that what really drew me to those beautiful old clunkers was the setting, the atmosphere, and especially those matte paintings of exotic lost cities (glimpsed from afar by the safari after rounding a turn high up on the escarpment). I’ve spent a good deal of my life trying to recreate the feeling those matte paintings gave me. Also, I lived near the Museum of Natural History in New York when I was a kid. The dioramas constructed to display the stuffed gorillas, rhinos, etc., were pure magic to me. Without much effort, you could imagine yourself on the African veldt recreated in front of you, or in the rainforest or a taiga in Siberia. The artists who painted those displays created an incredible illusion of depth and could control the quality of light to suggest intense, tropic heat or bitter, winter cold. And for the most part, their names have been lost to popular memory. Alas! Another strong influence was the cartoons I watched on TV, especially early Disney animation. In later life, I’ve learned some of the animators’ names, and it’s Gustaff Tenggren whose style represents what I like best about the early Disney look. In the last few years, my tastes have grown a bit more diverse. I find myself admiring R. Crumb more than I ever did as a kid. Not simply for his drawing (which I greatly enjoy) but for the fact he brings so much of who he is into his strips. Many of the artists I have admired in the past seemed indifferent to the stories they drew. That seems a shame, exploiting only a portion of what the medium has to offer. I admire Chris Ware for the same reasons as I do Crumb. Incredible eccentric obsessives both! I’ve also gotten intrigued by a lot of non-comic book artists. I’ve been trying to teach myself watercolor painting over the years with middling success, but the process has deepened my appreciation for those artists who are good at it. There’s a landscape painter living in upstate New York named Thomas Aquinas Daly who does stuff with the medium which is beyond belief. But mostly I’m taken with what has to be a very deep love and understanding of the natural world that comes through in all his work. And there’s a poet/painter named Kenneth Patchen who lived in Ohio. He integrated words (poems) into his painting in a very free and spiritual way. Another rebel and visionary. You probably won’t see much direct influence of Patchen or other artists I could name in my commissioned work, but maybe in my sketchbooks. (It’s hard to get too far out there and still expect to get commercial jobs…) How does Jack Flanders figure into the grand scheme of my artistic life? Well, he probably doesn’t. When I dropped out of college, I got into the habit of working with the radio on. I eventually happened upon a wild and radical station which was part of the Pacifica Network—five left-of-center, listener-sponsored stations begun in San Francisco by Lew (or Lou) Hill. That began a long term fascination with radio (especially pirate radio) that has occasionally crept into my comic stories. “The Fourth Tower of Inverness” is the first Jack Flanders adventure produced by ZBS Media, and was initially broadcast in the New York area by WBAI, November 2001

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the above-mentioned wild and radical radio station. It was aired in 15-minute segments nightly like old-time radio, and I thought it great fun. Skip ahead about 25 years. In the Fall of 1999, I took a truck down to Central America with a friend of mine named Jerry Moomaw. To make the long ride more bearable, he bought along a bunch of CDs, including “Moon Over Morocco,” the second Jack Flanders adventure. During the day, it was too hot to travel with the windows closed. This made listening to the subtlety of those recordings impossible ’cause of the noise of the rough roads. So we listened when we drove at dawn and at dusk—which was the perfect time for that kind of trippy, hypnotic story. When I got back home, Jerry lent me all his Jack Flanders tapes, including “Fourth Tower… ” I hadn’t heard it since those bygone days of the ’70s and it was a real pleasure to rediscover them. Again, I listened to the serial as I worked, but this time I found the images that came into my mind were so clear and interesting that I couldn’t resist doodling them down on paper (at the expense of the work I should have been doing.) These drawings probably won’t go any further than my sketchbook, but it did occur to me that each holds a germ that could be sprouted into a House of Mystery-type comic cover. I have this fantasy of doing a color portfolio of these pieces, self-consciously modeling them on the Wrightson/Kaluta/Adams covers I loved so much in my younger days. Boy, a pretty long-winded answer to a simple question, but you asked! Tim: Okay, to save face: As you correctly pointed out, asking about influences is one you get frequently. So what about telling us about the ways in which these people (comics people, book illustrators, “real” artists) have influenced you. Has it been technique, work ethic, subject matter, or something else? I’ve often seen people list their influences, but I’ve never really understood what it means. I’m not aware of being influenced by anyone, certainly not in my work (you’ll be amazed to hear that no-one actually filled me with a burning desire to become an internal auditor). There are many people whose work I admire (art, acting, music), but whether they’ve influenced me, or how that influence might have manifested itself, is unclear to me. Sandy: When an artist lists his/her influences, I usually assume

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Opposite page: Ye Ed first clued into Sandy Plunkett when pal John Borkowski sent him a copy of Marvel Comics Presents #131 which featured an Ant-Man story written, drawn and colored by Sandy. Incidentally (as if anyone cares) Ant-Man is Ye Ed’s absolutist favorite Marvel hero after Captain America. Here’s two pages of that tale, courtesy of the artist. Ant-Man ©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc. 104

that the influence has to do mainly with technique and maybe subject matter (to a smaller extent). How that influence manifests has never been a great mystery to me. You look at the work of an artist and you say to yourself, “Wow—I wish I could draw like that!” And you set about to imitate that artist’s style. You draw trees the same way, position figures the same way, render the same way, etc. Hopefully, there comes a time when you don’t need to look at other people’s work for your sources of information—you go to nature for what you need and rely on your own aesthetics to make judgment calls. There are more subtle ways artists influence one another, of course. You can admire the freedom and spontaneity with which someone approaches their work, and use that inspiration to loosen up your own work. Kenneth Patchen’s painting/poems influenced me because they seem so unselfconscious and unpremeditated. Almost as if he intended to defy every rule about painting. Seeing this helped me overcome some preconceived notions about how I “should” be approaching color work. The drawings for Winnie the Pooh by Ernest Sheppard have a really strong appeal to me. He helped teach me how important the warmth of a drawing can be. Technically, his work isn’t very sophisticated. If he had tried for a slicker rendering style, his work most likely would have lost a good deal of charm. Tim: How did you hook up with Gold Key? I tend to think of them

as a rather traditional outfit, relying on old established talent. Sandy: Joe Orlando suggested I try Gold Key. I showed him my work at DC and he seemed impressed, but didn’t have any scripts to hand out. He had me wait around the office about three hours because Wally Wood was going to be dropping by and was looking for an assistant. Well, he never showed up, so I hightailed it to Gold Key. Gold Key’s market was young kids. Or more precisely, the parents of young kids. Their comics were pretty drab, but they were also tame and stood little chance of corrupting the value of someone’s seven-year-old. Yet Gold Key provided a market for a fair number of newcomers to the comic profession, who as yet, didn’t have much experience (myself included). In a way, it was nice to do a few stories for a company no one paid attention to—kinda took off some of the pressure. Tim: You worked on Al Williamson’s Star Wars film adaptation continuity. How did that come about, and what was it like working for one of your heroes? Sandy: Larry Ivie provided the link between me and Al Williamson. I guess Williamson got word to Larry out in California that he could use an assistant, and Larry gave him my number. He (Al) was trying to get a couple week’s worth of samples done for Lucasfilm of a proposed Star Wars comic strip but was getting bogged down. He asked me to send him a few copies of my work, and on seeing them, must have decided I wasn’t a total loss. He invited me up for a week. The truth was that Williamson liked working with other artists around. He liked (and probably still does) company while he draws. My skills were way too underdeveloped to be of any real use to him. As has been reported by just about everyone whose worked with Williamson, he is a great guy. I think Al is one of the few people I’ve met who understands the secret to making himself happy. He put me at ease very quickly, so any awkwardness I might have felt in meeting one of my heroes didn’t last long. One thing which surprised (and to a certain extent, disappointed) me was how casual he was about his work. Of far more interest to him was his family, old serials, the stuntmen from those movies (who he idolizes), and jazz. Maybe I left a couple things out. In any case, no seething cauldron of self doubt or introspection here, no fixated obsessive. Williamson struck me as one of the most well balanced people I’d ever met and the week I spent with him was very enjoyable. Most of my time in his studio was spent drawing backgrounds in pencil from reference photos, but then there’d be breaks when he’d start pulling out his collection of original art (including his own). I probably learned more from looking through those pages than I did from working with him. I don’t know why I didn’t come away with more insights into technique than I did—maybe I just wasn’t ready at that time. (I’ve always been shy about looking over an artist’s shoulder when they’re working, but that’s how you learn. I should have done that more with Williamson.) Tim: Why the move from New York to Athens, Ohio? Sandy: That’s a fairly easy one to answer, though it did take a while to realize how simple the motivation really was. I was never very happy in New York as an adult. I’m not sure why, but mostly I think it was because I was lonely. The unhappiness grew to pretty constant depression and there didn’t seem to be any change I could make that would help. Eventually I met a woman who travelled to Athens a couple times a year and one day she invited me along. I got to like the people in no time at all and the area struck me as beautiful and the countryside rustic and undeveloped (characteristics which, alas, are rapidly changing). After eight years of infrequent visits on my own, I decided to move. Tim: Has your interest in “green” issues, such as working for the Tropical Conservation Foundation and similar, arisen since your move out of the big city? Or is it a development of your earlier herpetological interests? Sandy: My interest in nature probably goes back to my youth and my obsession with animals and jungles, but it was visiting Athens that helped reconnect me with those feelings. Also, I met a fellow by the name of Mark Cohen who helped clue me in as to just how extreme our current environmental problems really are. He was something of a visionary type, living in a small, hand-built cabin out in the woods with his dog, Ursa. He seemed to be attuned to the forest and especially to plants in a very deep and mystical way. He COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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was the first person I knew who talked about the destruction of tropical rain forests (this was in the mid ’80s). He was a founder of the Tropical Conservation Foundation, an organization I joined as soon as I moved to Athens. We’ve bought about 200 acres of land in Southern Bélize, most of it a disused cocoa plantation, and are slowly introducing agroforestry principles into the land’s farming and planting practices. For those with any interest in the subject, here’s a Reader’s Digest description of Agroforestry: It’s an alternative to “slash and burn” agriculture often employed in the tropics, and an alternative to other non-sustainable agricultural methods. Agroforestry’s objectives are to provide a livelihood for the local population while simultaneously increasing the forest’s biodiversity, the microbial health of the soil, and overall vitality of the landscape. The center is a mile up river from a traditional Mayan village and is surrounded by dense bush. Pretty idyllic. I could go on about Mark and TCF for a while, but I’m not sure it would be of interest to many people. Suffice to say that being around people like Mark probably did serve as a catalyst to get me more active in environmental problems. (Though I want to be careful here—I’m actually a slug, and a hypocrite, and sit out many too many fights that go on around Athens over coal mining, clear cutting, development, etc.) Tim: You’ve had various works of a political nature published (“cartoons to the editor” in local papers, Radio Free Athens, Bleeding Hearts, etc). Do you consider yourself an activist, or that as an artist you have a duty to raise public awareness of certain issues? Or is it that the circumstances in which you find yourself prompt you to get involved? Sandy: Despite the fact that I’ve spent some time working on environmental issues, I don’t consider myself a political activist. I don’t think you can change the system from inside or outside. The best thing you can do is turn your back on the whole bloody mess and become as self sufficient as possible (i.e., grow a garden, generate your own energy, have your own source of drinking water, pay as little in taxes as possible, rely on friends and community when you need help, not the federal or state governments. End of tirade.). Some of my anger at the greed and stupidity of men in suits does express itself in the cartoons I’ve done for a paper here in Athens, and a comic strip (Bleeding Hearts) I did for a student paper. I didn’t do these cartoons because I thought they would change anybody’s opinion, or because I feel its an artist’s duty to try, it’s just a way for me to blow off some steam… Tim: You’ve previously commented to me on your earlier work that in hindsight you wish you’d done it differently (“should never have seen the light of day”, in reference to a Vision/ Scarlet Witch story, springs to mind). I assume this is looking back at your early technique. Is there anything you regret doing as a result of your beliefs/opinions having changed since? Sandy: I haven’t done any comics story that I now regret having done, certainly not because of a change in politics. If anything, I might one day look back and regret I didn’t make more (and more inflammatory) statements in my work. (It is said that, on his deathbed, Henry Thoreau murmured, “What possessed me that I should have behaved so well?”) Perhaps my depiction of women in my early drawings leaves something to be desired, but considering the pressure by editors such as Shooter to draw ever more exaggerated breasts and ever teenier waists on my female figures, I think I come out looking okay. I do look back and find that some stories I drew look awful in print. There are various reasons why that’s so, not the least being lack of ability on my part. But I’ve always tried very hard with each job to do good work. I think I would feel regret only if I found myself hacking out work, either for the money or out of disinterest. That hasn’t happened yet… . Tim: The reason I asked about any regrets you may have had was prompted by an interview with James Coburn on the BBC. Apparently there’s a buttock-clenchingly awful line in the film Waterhole #3 (which I only know of for having Frazetta art on the soundtrack album sleeve), where Coburn’s character cheerfully describes rape as “assault with a friendly weapon.” He looked pretty sheepish about that. Anyway, moving swiftly along. Is your current interest in comics a “professional” one, i.e., you want to keep abreast of developments (whether it be genres, techniques, new writers/artists), or is it from the perspective of a consumer? Sandy: I’m not sure if they (my interests) fall into either of the two categories you described. Or maybe they fit into both. Athens is a small college town and I guess we’re lucky to have a comic shop at all. But the fellow who owns the place (goes by the name of Ski) stocks the store pretty conservatively. In other words, he orders mostly mainstream titles. Which all goes to say that I miss a lot of the good stuff, and feel pretty remote from the current comic scene. But I’m not sure I mind all that much. Sometimes I get to see a current issue of The Comics Journal and I find my palms getting a little sweaty and feeling a little uncomfortable. I not entirely sure why, but it’s the same reaction I have to comic conventions. Maybe it’s because everyone there seems to take the business side of comics so seriously. I get the sense of a lot of people competing pretty fiercely to promote their latest product and are somewhat oblivious to the larger world. I don’t think I do well in that environment, under that kind of pressure. But I still do love comics. Maybe I’m a case of arrested development, but I still find myself drawn to the comic shop most every Friday, hoping against hope that I’ll find something of interest… Tim: Did you have the chance to see the local product on your various European/UK expeditions? If so, how did it compare to the US stuff? Sandy: The way you phrased part of your next question, “… on your various expeditions to Europe and the UK” makes me sound like quite the world traveller. Well, I did make it to Paris a couple years ago and did spend an unforgivable amount of time in a couple of the comic shops there. One in particular (I believe the name would translate from French as something like “Library of Images”) was spectacular. It made all the ones I’ve seen in the US look silly by comparison. Actually, I didn’t walk out with that many books, but I did discover a couple artists that November 2001

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were new to me. One, by the name of Carlos Nine (an Argentinian), really knocked me out. I don’t know why he isn’t well know here in the US. He’s really incredible. But to answer your question more directly—I really don’t manage to keep up with European artists very well. My sister lives near London and I’ve made it over to visit her two or three times, but not enough to keep current on the UK comic scene, and the idea that old Ski would stock any foreign books in his shop is laughable… . Tim: I’m not familiar with the work of Carlos Nine. What sort of material does he do, and what is it about his work which so knocked you out? Sandy: I’m not sure if one can relate to another why a certain artist appeals to him or her, especially without a visual reference, but I’ll give it a shot. Nine (pronounced knee-nay, I imagine) has done one graphic novel that I’ve seen, and other than a few illos for American magazines (such as The New Yorker) that’s all I know about him. He works in a combination of pastels and watercolors and his drawing is hard to describe. The words “caricature,” “impressionistic,” “abstracted” simply don’t convey the feeling. “Surreal” comes a little closer. But in any case, he has the sensibilities of a fine arts painter combined with a bawdy, no-holds-barred vulgarity of a Ralph Steadman. His color sense and textures leave the other “avant garde” comic book painters in the dust. Since the graphic novel I have is in French, I can’t read the story, but it really doesn’t matter to me. The force of his personality comes thundering through every panel…. Tim: I’ve still got to ask you about your favorite collaborators, whether there’s anyone in particular (besides the early ’50s Al Williamson) that you’d like to work with. Sandy: About collaborators—I don’t think much about collaborating with other comic book artists these days. This might be a function of living so isolated from the comic book world, or maybe of my

megalomania (which insists that I do it all myself.) I don’t know. I have thought of other types of collaborations. Recently I did a reading of a story I both wrote and illustrated (“The Redemption of Avery Appleblum”) at a local bar. The reading was interwoven with a musical accompaniment composed and performed by a local guitarist, Bruce Dalzell. Bruce agreed (much to my amazement and great pleasure) to essentially interpret the story with music and then perform it on stage as I narrated. It was great fun to shape this piece with Bruce—as much to produce as to perform. I also have fantasies of some day collaborating on a film. For some reason, the idea of creating a low budget, film noir fantasy movie has stuck in my mind for some years. I guess that it just seems obvious to me how one could make a striking fantasy (or sword-&-sorcery) movie with very little money or special effects. I’m surprised no one has come closer to accomplishing this. A small addendum after some thinking… the idea of working with Alan Moore is something of a fantasy, since I have tremendous respect for his work. But I hear his scripts are very specific and weigh in by the ton. That knowledge intimidates me…. Tim: I love your inking (very slick and precise, with that certain something which other inkers don’t have). Why didn’t you do more of it when working in comics? Practicalities of working in the real world? (Like it was more cost-effective for you to pencil and let someone else ink). Or did you simply prefer penciling to inking? That Building Better Communities spread I liked—touches of Franklin Booth (not that I’m overly familiar with his work). Sandy: Actually, answering your question as to why I didn’t do more of my own inking while I lived in New York is easy. There were friends around who inked my work well and I was pretty insecure with a brush in my hand. Naturally, I could have continued to have others ink my work once I’d moved to Ohio, but I disliked (and still do) sending my originals through the mail. To avoid this, I decided to start inking my own work pretty much exclusively, and sending in good quality Xeroxes or photostats instead of the originals. Tim: How did you became involved in those two Rocketeer issues? Sandy: There’s not much of a story behind my involvement with Rocketeer, but since you asked… I made the first contact with Dave many years ago. Someone had pointed out an interview with Dave wherein he mentioned me as a favorite artist. This emboldened me to ask him if he would ink a cover I had recently penciled (for the XMen index book). He said that he would love to, but seeing as how Marvel was currently suing him over the use of the name “Rocketeer,” he didn’t feel too good about the idea of making any money for them. Hard to argue the point, I thought. A year or so passed, and I got a call back from Dave, asking if I would give him a hand on penciling one or two Rocketeer pages. I said I’d love to, and did. By the by, working with Dave was a thrill and a pleasure…. Tim: Which of all your work are you most proud of? Sandy: I like the story I wrote a long while back for Solo Avengers, starring the Black Panther. A serious, 11-page story is hard to pull off since there’s so little space for development. Any success at that page count is difficult. Other than that, I guess I’m going to be a little evasive. Actually, so little of my output has been seen by the comic reading public that, if I did mention a particular job or two, I doubt many people reading this interview would be familiar with the work. Tim: Current/future projects? Sandy: Current and future projects? Well, not much, on both counts. I just finished up a CD cover and will probably do another piece of art for the same band next. And I’m gonna try to do a limited run, b-&-w poster for a publisher in France after that. Just recently, I came up with a story that, much to my surprise, tied up plot threads left dangling in Bleeding Hearts. I’ve begun working on it in stolen moments, but Lord knows when I’ll find the time for it, or the money and motivation to publish the thing. Tim: Is the CD cover the one showing your Crumb influence? Sandy: When I ink with a crow quill, my work tends to pick up a little R. Crumb flavor naturally. The guy who commissioned the CD cover wanted an “old-timey” look to the piece (they play mostly ’30s type music) and because Crumb has borrowed so freely from cartoonists of that era, it seemed like a good excuse to bend my own style in that direction…. Tim: How much of an affinity do you have for super-hero comics? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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Sandy: Well, do I have a particular affinity towards super-heroes? I first thought of answering “not much” to this question, largely because I don’t have any real interest in super-heroes nowadays. But I realized that’s the wrong answer. As a kid, introduced to a TV at the age of four, the show which first grabbed me was the Superman reruns, shown every afternoon. I watched each episode dozens of times. And the first comic to catch my eye was a super-hero comic— The Fantastic Four #39 I believe (the second part of the Battle of the Baxter Building). My mother was friends with the janitor of our building, and when his kids were through with their comics, the janitor would pass them on to my mother and she would hand them over to me. Mostly they were Westerns and war comics and not of much interest. But then that copy of The Fantastic Four appeared… I was out on the street the next day looking for more issues of the title. So that strongly suggests to me that I do have some innate attraction to the genre. It’s an interesting question, and it’s made me start thinking—I’d more or less dismissed super-heroes because they have been so badly done so often. Now I’m beginning to think that the little kid inside me who loves super-heroes and wants to be one is still alive, if not kicking. Tim: Do you consider yourself a writer who draws or an artist who writes—and whether that question makes certain assumptions—like there’s a difference: Aren’t you simply someone who tells a story using words and pictures? Sandy: Am I a writer/artist of artist/writer and does it matter? Actually, in my case it does matter, if only to me. I’ve known for a while that people like my drawing, but it’s taking time to develop a similar confidence about my writing. Would people like my writing if there weren’t pretty pictures to go along with it? I’m still not sure. So I definitely see myself as an artist whose trying to grow into being a writer as well…. Tim: Also, I seem to remember getting a blank expression when I mentioned San Diego to you—maybe it was my mispronunciation, but had you heard of the convention there? Do you get invited to many conventions? Sandy: I’ve heard of the San Diego convention (hasn’t every living being on the planet?) but I’ve never seriously thought about attending. I think I expressed my feelings about conventions—at least in part—earlier on. It’s been a while since I’ve been to one, and aside from those I attended in the last couple years of high school, I’ve generally felt kinda out of place at them and maybe a little inadequate. I’ve never gotten many invitations to go to conventions, but that doesn’t surprise me. I doubt most convention organizers are aware of my work. Even if they were, I’m sure they’d be more interested in roping in an artist that the fans know and would be excited to meet. This (presumed) attitude on the part of convention organizers makes perfect sense to me. Tim: Are you still TV-less? To what extent has this saved you from the brain-rot that has affected most of the rest of us? Sandy: Well, I’m still TV-less, but my brain is probably just as rotted as everyone else’s (the syntax of the last sentence driving home my point!). The easiest reason to give as to why I don’t have a TV is this: I have addictive tendencies and feel sure that, within a very short amount of time, I would be watching the worst crap being broadcast. I have to exercise enough discipline in other areas of my life—I don’t need to introduce yet another. That being said, I should probably state, for the record, that I think TV is pure evil, a tool exploited by the power elite to control the masses and preserve their position of political and cultural dominance. (The sad thing is that I’m not sure if I’m joking.) Tim: Do you think that the lowering of standards (intellectual content and draftsmanship) for which Image have been so deservedly criticized are specific to comics, or do they apply to all mass media? What is it that makes a classic piece of work such as King Kong “boring” to kids, while they enjoy the likes of Pokémon, Power Rangers, etc.? Sandy: Well, I think comics were moving rapidly downhill well before Image was formed, but they certainly gave a good shove. Remember, for years Marvel was flooding the stores with unbelievably bad material in an effort to gobble up shelf space and drive out competitors. They set the norm for unending crossover stories and completely incomprehensible plotlines. My impression is that the November 2001

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boys who founded Image perceived the situation quite astutely and tailored their books to an audience who had no real expectations or desire for comics that had a coherent structure. I don’t know if this decline in comics is reflective of popular culture in general. I get the feeling that popular culture elsewhere is thriving. There’s an awful lot of money being spent on movies, TV shows, TV commercials, magazine production, etc. Friends tell me the writing on some TV programs is excellent, better than ever. The steep decline in the quality of comics (at least mainstream comics) seems to be an unfortunate conjunction of unbridled greed, stupidity and the changing times. In the last couple days I have been thinking about why American pop culture, and especially TV, bothers me so much and finding the answer wasn’t so easy. I guess, in the end, I think that TV tends to

isolate you, whether your live by yourself or with a family. Why is this so? Some of the reasons are pretty familiar, i.e., TV restricts interactions with others, commercials feed your insecurities, etc. Hollywood movies, commercial radio, pornography, some internet use, all tend to do the same thing—they provide manufactured experiences that substitute (in addictive cycles) for real flesh and blood contact with the organic world. Tim: I know some people have moved from comics to TV (notably Howard Chaykin who has been story-editing, consulting and coexecutive producing, whatever these entail, on various shows for the last ten years). With the general dumbing-down of the medium, I wonder if it’s really a step up from comics. I guess in terms of the audience you reach, and the pay, it must be. But it seems everything

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Above: Page from an unpublished illustrated story, “The Redemption of Avery Appleblum,” written and drawn by Sandy Plunkett. The artist assures us that this is a pre-proof reading copy and he tells us that the story is in need of a publisher. ©2001 Sandy Plunkett.

is done by committee, and I’m not sure whether you’ll get anything worthwhile from the medium while that’s the case. And while the amount of money spent on TV shows is ever increasing, I don’t think it necessarily makes for better programs. The various Star Trek spinoffs are almost entirely dire. Babylon 5 was made for a fraction of the cost (although that was still big budget compared to UK science-fiction shows) and is what? Star Trek for grown-ups? The thinking man’s Star Trek? Incidentally, stating the difference between UK and US ’60s TV sciencefiction, ex-pat American comedian Greg Proops commented, “Ours had production values.” Sandy: I’m essentially clueless on this topic (and therefore have a great many opinions about it). I was being a little facetious when I implied that more money spent on movies and TV meant better movies and TV. Of course, it doesn’t. But has TV really been dumbed down? I haven’t watched any of these shows, but I hear that programs like NYPD Blues, LA Law, The Simpsons, The Sopranos, ER are all really well written and intelligent. I grew up with Gilligan’s Island, My Mother the Car, and I Dream of Jeannie. Has there really been a downhill skid? My concern is really not the quality of mass entertainment these day, but rather the degree it consumes our lives. Tim: It’s kind of interesting discussing (US) TV. I read an article recently on the so-called “art terrorism” on Melrose Place. They’ve

apparently had props created for the show by a bunch of art students, who have been sneaking in whatever they can get away with which would normally be vetoed by the network censors. One of the female characters cuddling up with a blanket with a design which is actually a representation of the chemical/molecular structure of some drug used in abortions, pillows with designs based on the shape of a condom. They also had rooms decorated with paintings of idyllic views which happened to be the sites of Charles Manson’s murders, the house where Marilyn Monroe died, the Viper Club (where River Phoenix OD’d?) While reading it, I realized just how draconian your network censorship is, which is odd considering how the likes of Greg Theakston editorialize about how much better off you are in the States than us downtrodden masses in the UK. Also, the newsletter of the UK Comic Creators Guild has just repeated a piece on the US government providing tax breaks to broadcasters who would slip government approved messages/themes into their programming. Sandy: Well, to tell you the truth, The standard forms of censorship don’t worry me too much, and neither do I feel morally compelled to join the fray. Here’s why: It seems to me that often, those arguing most vociferously for “freedom of speech” are actually more concerned about their right to make money being infringed upon. Much of the material that seems to be threatened by church groups—things like rock videos and CDs, pornographic magazines and comic books—often seem to be of dubious artistic value. Often sex and violence is being used just to increase sales and not because they’re an intregral part of an artistic vision. Should these materials be censored? Of course not, but I don’t feel impelled to put myself on the front lines in defense of this stuff. But! There is another sort of censorship that really does anger me. Years ago, the radical left fringe was saying that if trends continue, a few large corporations would be controlling all media, and therefore be able to determine what the mass market would see, hear and read. Well, that day has arrived. Political views that run counter to the status quo rarely receive a wide audience in this country. There’s been a tremendous effort by the FCC to squash pirate radio stations and micro-broadcasters, and only millionaires can buy TV stations. One can always publish alternative opinions in magazines and books, and that is where most alternative opinions are presented to the public. But the readership of such publications are miniscule. More people watch Oprah Winfrey on one afternoon than read The Nation magazine in a decade. Ralph Nader ran for president as a Green Party candidate. He was on the ballot in many states, but he still isn’t allowed into the Presidential debates. Alternative voices are so marginalized in this country as to be virtually silenced. That really bugs me. So, there’s my rant. Still awake?

Tales of Despulpadoras & Yankee Desperados The back of the pick-up was already packed to overflowing with 800 pounds of children’s textbooks, several boxes of solar equipment, and a considerable amount of camping gear. Cramming a despulpadora behind the seats in the cab was a formidable task. Even disassembled, it was a massive piece of equipment. Jerry Moomaw and I were on our way down to the Bélize Agroforestry Research Center, facing the rigors of the Mexican road with generally good humor. In Vera Cruz, we veered inland towards the mountains to visit Robert Sheddan and Laura Gonzalez, known to Athenians [residents of Athens, Ohio] from the time they’d spent in Amesville several years ago. The area is renowned for the quality of its coffee. In the small town of Cuatapec near where they live, there are literally dozens of cafés, a term which indicates both a place to sit and drink coffee and one which processes coffee for local growers. Robert grows organic coffee and is on the threshold of turning the practice into a business. One of the tools he uses in processing his crop is a despulpadora, a hand-cranked device that is cleverly designed to feed the beans through a chute and then separate the outer husk—or pulp—from the rest of the coffee bean. The amount of time and human energy expended in accomplishing this task is surprisingly small. At BARC, and throughout our area of Bélize, the task is done by hand—a tedious, time-consuming process made more inefficient by the waste of the pulp. Beans are taken 108

to the river and husked, with the outer shells allowed to drift into the current. As it turns out, coffee husks are excellent for composting but a source of pollution in a river. In Cuatapec, Robert went out of his way to help Jerry locate a despulpadora at a good price. This purchase was a difficult executive decision for Jerry (who was to be BARC manager for the opening weeks)—a decision to be made with only his hapless sidekick (me) to consult. Was it worth the money? Would the extra weight prove the proverbial straw that broke the shocks of a truck already loaded beyond capacity? Maybe it was Jerry’s passion for (nay, addiction to) coffee that was his true consultant on the issue. Early on the morning of our departure from Robert’s finca (plantation), we tooled into Cuatapec and, according to prior arrangement, found the despulpadora already disassembled, waiting to be packed up and driven off. The purchase proved to be a tremendous success, impressing Eladio, Pancho, Enrique and other farmers with its efficiency. The despulpadora is a perfect example of a technology appropriate to the region. Its introduction to the coffee processing system at BARC achieves one of our primary objectives, i.e., discovering techniques and technology that will benefit local growers as well as our own operations at minimal expense, measured in dollars, energy expenditure and impact on the environment.—Sandy Plunkett. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 15

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C o l l e c t o r

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FIGHTING AMERICANS! MARK EVANIER on 1960s Marvel inkers, SHIELD, Losers, and Green Arrow overviews, INFANTINO interview on Simon & Kirby, KIRBY interview, Captain America PENCIL ART GALLERY, PHILIPPE DRUILLET interview, JOE SIMON and ALEX TOTH speak, unseen BIG GAME HUNTER and YOUNG ABE LINCOLN Kirby concepts! KIRBY and KIRBY/TOTH covers!

GREAT ESCAPES! MISTER MIRACLE pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER, MARSHALL ROGERS & MICHAEL CHABON interviews, comparing Kirby and Houdini’s backgrounds, analysis of “Himon,” 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel (WILL EISNER, JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN ROMITA, MIKE ROYER, & JOHNNY CARSON) & more! KIRBY/MARSHALL ROGERS and KIRBY/STEVE RUDE covers!

THOR ISSUE! Never-seen KIRBY interview, JOE SINNOTT and JOHN ROMITA JR. on their Thor work, MARK EVANIER, extensive THOR and TALES OF ASGARD coverage, a look at the “real” Norse gods, 40 pages of KIRBY THOR PENCILS, including a Kirby Art Gallery at TABLOID SIZE, with pin-ups, covers, and more! KIRBY covers inked by MIKE ROYER and TREVOR VON EEDEN!

“HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE KIRBY WAY!” MIKE ROYER interview on how he inks Jack’s work, HUGE GALLERY tracing the evolution of Jack’s style, new column on OBSCURE KIRBY WORK, MARK EVANIER, special sections on Jack’s TECHNIQUE AND INFLUENCES, comparing STAN LEE’s writing to JACK’s, and more! Two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

“HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE KIRBY WAY!” PART 2: JOE SINNOTT on how he inks Jack’s work, HUGE PENCIL GALLERY, list of the art in the KIRBY ARCHIVES, MARK EVANIER, special sections on Jack’s technique and influences, SPEND A DAY WITH KIRBY (with JACK DAVIS, GULACY, HERNANDEZ BROS., and RUDE) and more! Two UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #39

KIRBY COLLECTOR #40

KIRBY COLLECTOR #41

KIRBY COLLECTOR #42

KIRBY COLLECTOR #43

FAN FAVORITES! Covering Kirby’s work on HULK, INHUMANS, and SILVER SURFER, TOP PROS pick favorite Kirby covers, Kirby ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT interview, MARK EVANIER, 2002 Kirby Tribute Panel (DICK AYERS, TODD McFARLANE, PAUL LEVITZ, HERB TRIMPE), pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by MIKE ALLRED and P. CRAIG RUSSELL!

WORLD THAT’S COMING! KAMANDI and OMAC spotlight, 2003 Kirby Tribute Panel (WENDY PINI, MICHAEL CHABON, STAN GOLDBERG, SAL BUSCEMA, LARRY LIEBER, and STAN LEE), P. CRAIG RUSSELL interview, MARK EVANIER, NEW COLUMN analyzing Jack’s visual shorthand, pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by ERIK LARSEN and REEDMAN!

1970s MARVEL WORK! Coverage of ’70s work from Captain America to Eternals to Machine Man, DICK GIORDANO & MARK SHULTZ interviews, MARK EVANIER, 2004 Kirby Tribute Panel (STEVE RUDE, DAVE GIBBONS, WALTER SIMONSON, and PAUL RYAN), pencil art gallery, unused 1962 HULK #6 KIRBY PENCILS, and more! Kirby covers inked by GIORDANO and SCHULTZ!

1970s DC WORK! Coverage of Jimmy Olsen, FF movie set visit, overview of all Newsboy Legion stories, KEVIN NOWLAN and MURPHY ANDERSON on inking Jack, never-seen interview with Kirby, MARK EVANIER on Kirby’s covers, Bongo Comics’ Kirby ties, complete ’40s gangster story, pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by NOWLAN and ANDERSON!

KIRBY AWARD WINNERS! STEVE SHERMAN and others sharing memories and neverseen art from JACK & ROZ, a never-published 1966 interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER on VINCE COLLETTA, pencils-toSinnott inks comparison of TALES OF SUSPENSE #93, and more! Covers by KIRBY (Jack’s original ’70s SILVER STAR CONCEPT ART) and KIRBY/SINNOTT!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

KIRBY COLLECTOR #45

KIRBY COLLECTOR #46

KIRBY COLLECTOR #47

KIRBY COLLECTOR #48

KIRBY’S MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS! Coverage of DEMON, THOR, & GALACTUS, interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER, pencil art galleries of the Demon and other mythological characters, two never-reprinted BLACK MAGIC stories, interview with Kirby Award winner DAVID SCHWARTZ and F4 screenwriter MIKE FRANCE, and more! Kirby cover inked by MATT WAGNER!

Jack’s vision of PAST AND FUTURE, with a never-seen KIRBY interview, a new interview with son NEAL KIRBY, MARK EVANIER’S column, two pencil galleries, two complete ’50s stories, Jack’s first script, Kirby Tribute Panel (with EVANIER, KATZ, SHAW!, and SHERMAN), plus an unpublished CAPTAIN 3-D cover, inked by BILL BLACK and converted into 3-D by RAY ZONE!

Focus on NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE, and DARKSEID! Includes a rare interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER’s column, FOURTH WORLD pencil art galleries (including Kirby’s redesigns for SUPER POWERS), two 1950s stories, a new Kirby Darkseid front cover inked by MIKE ROYER, a Kirby Forever People back cover inked by JOHN BYRNE, and more!

KIRBY’S SUPER TEAMS, from kid gangs and the Challengers, to Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Super Powers, with unseen 1960s Marvel art, a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, complete 1950s story, author JONATHAN LETHEM on his Kirby influence, interview with JOHN ROMITA, JR. on his Eternals work, and more!

KIRBYTECH ISSUE, spotlighting Jack’s hightech concepts, from Iron Man’s armor and Machine Man, to the Negative Zone and beyond! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, complete 1950s story, TOM SCIOLI interview, Kirby Tribute Panel (with ADAMS, PÉREZ, and ROMITA), and covers inked by TERRY AUSTIN and TOM SCIOLI!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #49

KIRBY COLLECTOR #51

KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

WARRIORS, spotlighting Thor (with a look at hidden messages in BILL EVERETT’s Thor inks), Sgt. Fury, Challengers of the Unknown, Losers, and others! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, interviews with JERRY ORDWAY and GRANT MORRISON, MARK EVANIER’s column, pencil art gallery, a complete 1950s story, wraparound Thor cover inked by JERRY ORDWAY, and more!

Bombastic EVERYTHING GOES issue, with a wealth of great submissions that couldn’t be pigeonholed into a “theme” issue! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, new interviews with JIM LEE and ADAM HUGHES, MARK EVANIER’s column, huge pencil art galleries, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS, and more!

Spotlights Kirby’s most obscure work: an UNUSED THOR STORY, BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, unaltered pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and more, including a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING (with lots of surprises)! Color Kirby cover inked by DON HECK!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

KIRBY COLLECTOR #56

KIRBY COLLECTOR #57

KIRBY COLLECTOR #53

KIRBY COLLECTOR #54

THE MAGIC OF STAN & JACK! New interview with STAN LEE, walking tour of New York where Lee & Kirby lived and worked, re-evaluation of the “Lost” FF #108 story (including a new page that just surfaced), “What If Jack Hadn’t Left Marvel In 1970?,” plus MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, behind a color Kirby cover inked by GEORGE PÉREZ!

STAN & JACK PART TWO! More on the co-creators of the Marvel Universe, final interview (and cover inks) by GEORGE TUSKA, differences between KIRBY and DITKO’S approaches, WILL MURRAY on the origin of the FF, the mystery of Marvel cover dates, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, plus Kirby back cover inked by JOE SINNOTT!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

KIRBY COLLECTOR #60

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

“Unfinished Sagas”—series, stories, and arcs Kirby never finished. TRUE DIVORCE CASES, RAAM THE MAN MOUNTAIN, KOBRA, DINGBATS, a complete story from SOUL LOVE, complete Boy Explorers story, two Kirby Tribute Panels, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, pencil art galleries, and more, with Kirby’s “Galaxy Green” cover inked by ROYER, and the unseen cover for SOUL LOVE #1!

“Legendary Kirby”—how Jack put his spin on classic folklore! TONY ISABELLA on SATAN’S SIX (with Kirby’s unseen layouts), Biblical inspirations of DEVIL DINOSAUR, THOR through the eyes of mythologist JOSEPH CAMPBELL, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, pencil art from ETERNALS, DEMON, NEW GODS, THOR, and Jack’s ATLAS cover!

“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!

FANTASTIC FOUR FOLLOW-UP to #58’s THE WONDER YEARS! Never-seen FF wraparound cover, interview between FF inkers JOE SINNOTT and DICK AYERS, rare LEE & KIRBY interview, comparison of a Jack and Stan FF story conference to Stan’s final script and Jack’s penciled pages, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, gallery of KIRBY FF ART, pencils from BLACK PANTHER, SILVER SURFER, & more!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(104-page magazine with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES, edited by John Morrow Each book contains over 30 PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED!

VOLUME 2

VOLUME 3

VOLUME 5

VOLUME 6

VOLUME 7

KIRBY CHECKLIST

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #10-12, and a tour of Jack’s home!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #13-15, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #20-22, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #23-26, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30, plus new art!

Lists EVERY KIRBY COMIC, BOOK, UNPUBLISHED WORK and more!

(160-page trade paperback) $17.95 ISBN: 9781893905016 Diamond Order Code: MAR042974

(176-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905023 Diamond Order Code: APR043058

(224-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905573 Diamond Order Code: FEB063353

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490038 Diamond Order Code: JUN084280

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490120 Diamond Order Code: DEC084286

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 9781605490052 Diamond Order Code: MAR084008

NEW!

Lee & Kirby: THE WONDER YEARS

Celebrate the 50th ANNIVERSARY OF FANTASTIC FOUR #1 with this special squarebound edition (#58) of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, about two pop-culture visionaries who created the Fantastic Four, and a decade in comics that was more tumultuous and awe-inspiring than any before or since. Calling on his years of research, plus new interviews conducted just for this book (with STAN LEE, FLO STEINBERG, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, and others), regular Jack Kirby Collector contributor MARK ALEXANDER traces both Lee and Kirby’s history at Marvel Comics, and the remarkable series of events and career choices that led them to converge in 1961 to conceive the Fantastic Four. It also documents the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s, with previously unknown details about Lee and Kirby’s working relationship, and their eventual parting of ways in 1970. With a wealth of historical information and amazing Kirby artwork, STAN LEE & JACK KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS beautifully examines the first decade of the FF, and the events that put into motion the 1960s era that came to be known as the Marvel Age of Comics! (128-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490380 • Diamond Order Code: SEP111248

NEW!

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

First conceptualized in the 1970s as a movie screenplay, SILVER STAR was too far ahead of its time for Hollywood, so artist JACK KIRBY adapted it as a six-issue mini-series for Pacific Comics in the 1980s, making it his final, great comics series. Now the entire six-issue run is collected here, reproduced from his powerful, uninked PENCIL ART, showing Kirby’s work in its undiluted, raw form! Also included is Kirby’s ILLUSTRATED SILVER STAR MOVIE SCREENPLAY, never-seen SKETCHES, PIN-UPS, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SPECIAL EDITION

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905559 Diamond Order Code: JAN063367

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

Compiles the “extra” new material from COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES 1-7, in one huge Digital Edition! Includes a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ remarkable home, profusely illustrated with photos, and more than 200 pieces of Kirby art not published outside of those volumes. If you already own the individual issues and skipped the collections, or missed them in print form, now you can get caught up!

For the first time, JACK KIRBY’s original CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHIC NOVEL is presented as it was created in 1975 (before being broken up and modified for the 1980s Pacific Comics series), reproduced from copies of Kirby’s uninked pencil art! This first “new” Kirby comic in years features page after page of prime pencils, and includes Jack’s unused CAPTAIN VICTORY SCREENPLAY, unseen art, an historical overview to put it in perspective, and more! (52-page comic book) $5.95 • (Digital Edition) $2.95

(120-page Digital Edition) $4.95

NOTE: THIS IS ISSUE #58 OF THE KIRBY COLLECTOR!

KIRBY FIVE-OH! CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE “KING” OF COMICS

For its 50th issue, the publication that started TwoMorrows presents KIRBY FIVE-OH!, a BOOK covering the best of everything from Kirby’s 50-year career in comics! The regular KIRBY COLLECTOR columnists have formed a distinguished panel of experts to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORY published each year from 1938-1987! The BEST COVERS from each decade! Jack’s 50 BEST UNUSED PIECES OF ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And profiles of, and commentary by, the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s powerful RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre. This TABLOID-SIZED TRADE PAPERBACK features a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER, helping make this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics! Takes the place of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #50. (168-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: FEB084186

NOTE: THIS IS ISSUE #50 OF THE KIRBY COLLECTOR!

KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED)

Reprinting the fabled 1971 KIRBY UNLEASHED PORTFOLIO, completely remastered! Spotlights some of KIRBY’s finest art from all eras of his career, including 1930s pencil work, unused strips, illustrated World War II letters, 1950s pages, unpublished 1960s Marvel pencil pages and sketches, and Fourth World pencil art (done expressly for this portfolio in 1970)! We’ve gone back to the original art to ensure the best reproduction possible, and MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN have updated the Kirby biography from the original printing, and added a new Foreword explaining how this portfolio came to be! PLUS: We’ve recolored the original color plates, and added EIGHT NEW BLACK-&-WHITE PAGES, plus EIGHT NEW COLOR PAGES, including Jack’s four GODS posters (released separately in 1972), and four extra Kirby color pieces, all at tabloid size! (60-page tabloid with COLOR) SOLD OUT • (Digital Edition) $5.95

TwoMorrows—A New Day For Comics Fandom! TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • www.twomorrows.com

THE ORIGINAL GOES DIGITAL!

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all print issues HALF-PRICE!

The forerunner to COMIC BOOK CREATOR, CBA is the 2000-2004 Eisner Award winner for BEST COMICS-RELATED MAG! Edited by CBC’s JON B. COOKE, it features in-depth articles, interviews, and unseen art, celebrating the lives and careers of the great comics artists from the 1970s to today. ALL BACK ISSUES NOW AVAILABLE AS DIGITAL EDITIONS FOR $3.95 FROM www.twomorrows.com!

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com

Order online at www.twomorrows.com COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION, VOLUME 3 Reprinting the Eisner Award-winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST #7-8 (spotlighting 1970s Marvel and 1980s indies), plus over 30 NEW PAGES of features and art! New PAUL GULACY portfolio, MR. MONSTER scrapbook, the story behind MARVEL VALUE STAMPS, and more! New MICHAEL T. GILBERT cover! (224-page trade paperback) $24.95 • ISBN: 9781893905429

#3: ADAMS AT MARVEL #4: WARREN PUBLISHING

#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

#2: MARVEL 1970-77

Era of “Artist as Editor” at National: New NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews, art, and articles with JOE KUBERT, JACK KIRBY, CARMINE INFANTINO, DICK GIORDANO, JOE ORLANDO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ALEX TOTH, JULIE SCHWARTZ, and many more! Plus ADAMS thumbnails for a forgotten Batman story, unseen NICK CARDY pages from a controversial Teen Titans story, unpublished TOTH covers, and more!

STAN LEE AND ROY THOMAS discussion about Marvel in the 1970s, ROY THOMAS interview, BILL EVERETT’s daughter WENDY and MIKE FRIEDRICH on Everett, interviews with GIL KANE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, MIKE PLOOG, STERANKO’s Unknown Marvels, the real origin of the New X-Men, Everett tribute cover by GIL KANE, and more!

(80-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(76-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#6: MORE MARVEL ’70s #7: ’70s MARVELMANIA

NEAL ADAMS interview about his work at Marvel Comics in the 1960s from AVENGERS to X-MEN, unpublished Adams covers, thumbnail layouts for classic stories, published pages BEFORE they were inked, and unused pages from his NEVER-COMPLETED X-MEN GRAPHIC NOVEL! Plus TOM PALMER on the art of inking Neal Adams, ADAMS’ MARVEL WORK CHECKLIST, & ADAMS wraparound cover!

Definitive JIM WARREN interview about publishing EERIE, CREEPY, VAMPIRELLA, and other fan favorites, in-depth interview with BERNIE WRIGHTSON with unpublished Warren art, plus unseen art, features and interviews with FRANK FRAZETTA, RICHARD CORBEN, AL WILLIAMSON, JACK DAVIS, ARCHIE GOODWIN, HARVEY KURTZMAN, ALEX NINO, and more! BERNIE WRIGHTSON cover!

More on DC COMICS 1967-74, with art by and interviews with NICK CARDY, JOE SIMON, NEAL ADAMS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, MIKE KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, MARV WOLFMAN, IRWIN DONENFELD, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GIL KANE, DENNY O’NEIL, HOWARD POST, ALEX TOTH on FRANK ROBBINS, DC Writer’s Purge of 1968 by MIKE BARR, JOHN BROOME’s final interview, and more! CARDY cover!

Unpublished and rarely-seen art by, features on, and interviews with 1970s Bullpenners PAUL GULACY, FRANK BRUNNER, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, MARIE and JOHN SEVERIN, JOHN ROMITA SR., DAVE COCKRUM, DON MCGREGOR, DOUG MOENCH, and others! Plus never-beforeseen pencil pages to an unpublished Master of Kung-Fu graphic novel by PAUL GULACY! Cover by FRANK BRUNNER!

Featuring ’70s Marvel greats PAUL GULACY, JOHN BYRNE, RICH BUCKLER, DOUG MOENCH, DAN ADKINS, JIM MOONEY, STEVE GERBER, FRANK SPRINGER, and DENIS KITCHEN! Plus: a rarely-seen Stan Lee P.R. chat promoting the ’60s Marvel cartoon shows, the real trials and tribulations of Comics Distribution, the true story behind the ’70s Kung Fu Craze, and a new cover by PAUL GULACY!

(60-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(116-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(100-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(128-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#10: WALTER SIMONSON

#11: ALEX TOTH AND SHELLY MAYER

#8: ’80s INDEPENDENTS

#9: CHARLTON PART 1

#12: CHARLTON PART 2

Major independent creators and their fabulous books from the early days of the Direct Sales Market! Featured interviews include STEVE RUDE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DAVE STEVENS, JAIME HERNANDEZ, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, DON SIMPSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, MIKE BARON, MIKE GRELL, and more! Plus plenty of rare and unpublished art, and a new STEVE RUDE cover!

Interviews with Charlton alumni JOE GILL, DICK GIORDANO, STEVE SKEATES, DENNIS O’NEIL, ROY THOMAS, PETE MORISI, JIM APARO, PAT BOYETTE, FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, SAM GLANZMAN, plus ALAN MOORE on the Charlton/ Watchmen Connection, DC’s planned ALLCHARLTON WEEKLY, and more! DICK GIORDANO cover!

Career-spanning SIMONSON INTERVIEW, covering his work from “Manhunter” to Thor to Orion, JOHN WORKMAN interview, TRINA ROBBINS interview, also Trina, MARIE SEVERIN and RAMONA FRADON talk shop about their days in the comics business, MARIE SEVERIN interview, plus other great women cartoonists. New SIMONSON cover!

Interviews with ALEX TOTH, Toth tributes by KUBERT, SIMONSON, JIM LEE, BOLLAND, GIBBONS and others, TOTH on continuity art, TOTH checklist, plus SHELDON MAYER SECTION with a look at SCRIBBLY, interviews with Mayer’s kids (real-life inspiration for SUGAR & SPIKE), and more! Covers by TOTH and MAYER!

CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983! Interviews with Charlton alumni GEORGE WILDMAN, NICOLA CUTI, JOE STATON, JOHN BYRNE, TOM SUTTON, MIKE ZECK, JACK KELLER, PETE MORISI, WARREN SATTLER, BOB LAYTON, ROGER STERN, and others, ALEX TOTH, a NEW E-MAN STRIP by CUTI AND STATON, and the art of DON NEWTON! STATON cover!

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#13: MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

1970s Marvel Horror focus, from Son of Satan to Ghost Rider! Interviews with ROY THOMAS, MARV WOLFMAN, GENE COLAN, TOM PALMER, HERB TRIMPE, GARY FRIEDRICH, DON PERLIN, TONY ISABELLA, and PABLOS MARCOS, plus a Portfolio Section featuring RUSS HEATH, MIKE PLOOG, DON PERLIN, PABLO MARCOS, FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE, and more! New GENE COLAN cover!

Interviews with Tower and THUNDER AGENTS alumni WALLACE WOOD, LOU MOUGIN, SAMM SCHWARTZ, DAN ADKINS, LEN BROWN, BILL PEARSON, LARRY IVIE, GEORGE TUSKA, STEVE SKEATES, and RUSS JONES, TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST, history of TIPPY TEEN, 1980s THUNDER AGENTS REVIVAL, and more! WOOD cover!

Interviews with ’80s independent creators DAVE STEVENS, JAIME, MARIO, AND GILBERT HERNANDEZ, MATT WAGNER, DEAN MOTTER, PAUL RIVOCHE, and SANDY PLUNKETT, plus lots of rare and unseen art from The Rocketeer, Love & Rockets, Mr. X, Grendel, other ’80s strips, and more! New cover by STEVENS and the HERNANDEZ BROS.!

’70s ATLAS COMICS HISTORY! Interviews with JEFF ROVIN, ROY THOMAS, ERNIE COLÓN, STEVE MITCHELL, LARRY HAMA, HOWARD CHAYKIN, SAL AMENDOLA, JIM CRAIG, RIC MEYERS, and ALAN KUPPERBERG, Atlas Checklist, HEATH, WRIGHTSON, SIMONSON, MILGROM, AUSTIN, WEISS, and STATON discuss their Atlas work, and more! COLÓN cover!

Discussion with ARTHUR ADAMS about his career (with an extensive CHECKLIST, and gobs of rare art), plus GRAY MORROW tributes from friends and acquaintances and a MORROW interview, Red Circle Comics Checklist, interviews with & remembrances of GEORGE ROUSSOS & GEORGE EVANS, Gallery of Morrow, Evans, and Roussos art, EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER interview, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(128-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#18: 1970s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

#19: HARVEY COMICS

#20: ROMITAs & KUBERTs #21: ADAM HUGHES, ALEX #22: GOLD KEY COMICS & examinations: RUSS MANNING ROSS, & JOHN BUSCEMA Interviews & Magnus Robot Fighter, WALLY WOOD &

Roundtable with JIM STARLIN, ALAN WEISS and AL MILGROM, interviews with STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE LEIALOHA, and FRANK BRUNNER, art from the lost WARLOCK #16, plus a FLO STEINBERG CELEBRATION, with a Flo interview, tributes by HERB TRIMPE, LINDA FITE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, and others! STARLIN/ MILGROM/WEISS cover!

History of Harvey Comics, from Hot Stuf’, Casper, and Richie Rich, to Joe Simon’s “Harvey Thriller” line! Interviews with, art by, and tributes to JACK KIRBY, STERANKO, WILL EISNER, AL WILLIAMSON, GIL KANE, WALLY WOOD, REED CRANDALL, JOE SIMON, WARREN KREMER, ERNIE COLÓN, SID JACOBSON, FRED RHOADES, and more! New wraparound MITCH O’CONNELL cover!

Joint interview between Marvel veteran and superb Spider-Man artist JOHN ROMITA, SR. and fan favorite Thor/Hulk renderer JOHN ROMITA, JR.! On the flipside, JOE, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT share their histories and influences in a special roundtable conversation! Plus unpublished and rarely seen artwork, and a visit by the ladies VIRGINIA and MURIEL! Flip-covers by the KUBERTs and the ROMITAs!

ADAM HUGHES ART ISSUE, with a comprehensive interview, unpublished art, & CHECKLIST! Also, a “Day in the Life” of ALEX ROSS (with plenty of Ross art)! Plus a tribute to the life and career of one of Marvel’s greatest artists, JOHN BUSCEMA, with testimonials from his friends and peers, art section, and biographical essay. HUGHES and TOM PALMER flip-covers!

Total War M.A.R.S. Patrol, Tarzan by JESSE MARSH, JESSE SANTOS and DON GLUT’S Dagar and Dr. Spektor, Turok, Son of Stone’s ALBERTO GIOLITTI and PAUL S. NEWMAN, plus Doctor Solar, Boris Karloff, The Twilight Zone, and more, including MARK EVANIER on cartoon comics, and a definitive company history! New BRUCE TIMM cover!

(104-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(104-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#23: MIKE MIGNOLA

#24: NATIONAL LAMPOON COMICS

#25: ALAN MOORE AND KEVIN NOWLAN

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #1

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #2

Exhaustive MIGNOLA interview, huge art gallery (with never-seen art), and comprehensive checklist! On the flip-side, a careerspanning JILL THOMPSON interview, plus tons of art, and studies of Jill by ALEX ROSS, STEVE RUDE, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and more! Also, interview with JOSÉ DELBO, and a talk with author HARLAN ELLISON on his various forays into comics! New MIGNOLA HELLBOY cover!

GAHAN WILSON and NatLamp art director MICHAEL GROSS speak, interviews with and art by NEAL ADAMS, FRANK SPRINGER, SEAN KELLY, SHARY FLENNEKIN, ED SUBITSKY, M.K. BROWN, B.K. TAYLOR, BOBBY LONDON, MICHEL CHOQUETTE, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and more! Features new covers by GAHAN WILSON and MARK BODÉ!

Focus on AMERICA’S BEST COMICS! ALAN MOORE interview on everything from SWAMP THING to WATCHMEN to ABC and beyond! Interviews with KEVIN O’NEILL, CHRIS SPROUSE, JIM BAIKIE, HILARY BARTA, SCOTT DUNBIER, TODD KLEIN, JOSE VILLARRUBIA, and more! Flip-side spotlight on the amazing KEVIN NOWLAN! Covers by J.H. WILLIAMS III & NOWLAN!

(106-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

Previously available only to CBA subscribers! Spotlights great DC Comics of the ’70s: Interviews with MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN on JACK KIRBY’s Fourth World, ALEX TOTH on his mystery work, NEAL ADAMS on Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, RUSS HEATH on Sgt. Rock, BRUCE JONES discussing BERNIE WRIGHTSON (plus a WRIGHTSON portfolio), and a BRUCE TIMM interview, art gallery, and cover!

Compiles the new “extras” from CBA COLLECTION VOL. 1-3: unpublished JACK KIRBY story, unpublished BERNIE WRIGHTSON art, unused JEFF JONES story, ALAN WEISS interview, examination of STEVE ENGLEHART and MARSHALL ROGERS’ 1970s Batman work, a look at DC’s rare Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, PAUL GULACY art gallery, Marvel Value Stamp history, Mr. Monster’s scrapbook, and more!

(76-page Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page Digital Edition) $3.95

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WHE % OR N YOU SUMMER 2013 ONLDER INE! THE BEST IN COMICS ® & LEGO PUBLICATIONS!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #61

ALTER EGO #118

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #1 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2

BRICKJOURNAL #24

Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

JOE KUBERT double-size Summer Special tribute issue! Comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. Kubert interviews, rare art and artifacts, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, pin-ups and miniinterviews by faculty, students, fans, friends and family! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

LEGO TRAINS! Builder CALE LEIPHART shows how to get started building trains and train layouts, with instructions on building microscale trains by editor JOE MENO, building layouts with the members of the Pennsylvania LEGO Users Group (PennLUG), fan-built LEGO monorails minifigure customization by JARED BURKS, microscale building by CHRISTOPHER DECK, “You Can Build It”, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Now shipping!

(164-page FULL-COLOR mag) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $6.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships May 2013

ALTER EGO #119

ALTER EGO #120

ALTER EGO #121

JACK KIRBY: WRITER! Examines quirks of Kirby’s wordsmithing, from the FOURTH WORLD to ROMANCE and beyond! Lengthy Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, LARRY LIEBER’s scripting for Jack at 1960s Marvel Comics, RAY ZONE on 3-D work with Kirby, comparing STEVE GERBER’s Destroyer Duck scripts to Jack’s pencils, Kirby’s best promo blurbs, Kirby pencil art gallery, & more!

AVENGERS 50th ANNIVERSARY! WILL MURRAY on the group’s behind-thescenes origin, a look at its first decade with ROY THOMAS, STAN LEE, JACK KIRBY, THE BROTHERS BUSCEMA, TUSKA, ADAMS, COLAN, BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, MERRY MARVEL MARCHING SOCIETY, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, FCA, Golden Age Blue Beetle artist E.C. STONER, unused Avengers cover by DON HECK!

MARC SWAYZE TRIBUTE ISSUE, spotlighting FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America)! Salutes from Fawcett alumnus C.C. BECK and OTTO BINDER, interview with wife JUNE SWAYZE, a full Phantom Eagle story from Wow Comics, plus interview with 1950s Dell/Western artist MEL KEEFER, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and a SWAYZE Marvel Family cover art from the 1940s!

X-MEN SALUTE! 1963-69 secrets, rare ‘60s BRAZILIAN X-MEN stories, lost ‘60s XMen “character sheet” by STAN LEE, ROY THOMAS on the 1970s revival, art and artifacts by KIRBY, ROTH, ADAMS, HECK, FRIEDRICH, and BUSCEMA—plus the MARVELMANIA fan club story, interview with Golden Age writer ED SILVERMAN, FCA, Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY, and JACK KIRBY’s unused X-Men #10 cover!

GOLDEN AGE JUSTICE SOCIETY ISSUE! Features on JOHN B. WENTWORTH (Johnny Thunder), LEN SANSONE (The Atom), and BERNARD SACHS (All-Star Comics inker), art by CARMINE INFANTINO, PAUL REINMAN, MART NODELL, STAN ASCHMEIER, BEN FLINTON, and H.G. PETER, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more! Cover homage by SHANE FOLEY to a vintage All-Star image by IRWIN HASEN!

(104-page magazine with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships August 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Oct. 2013

DRAW! #25

BACK ISSUE #65

BACK ISSUE #66

BACK ISSUE #67

BACK ISSUE #68

LEE WEEKS (Daredevil, Incredible Hulk) gives insight into the artform, YILDIRAY ÇINAR (Noble Causes, Fury of the Firestorms) interview and demo, inker JOE RUBINSTEIN shows how he works, “Comic Art Bootcamp” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Rough Critique” of a newcomer by BOB McLEOD, and “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and software! Mature readers only.

“Bronze Age B-Teams”! Defenders issue-byissue overview, Champions, Guardians of the Galaxy, Inhumans, PETER DAVID’s X-Factor, Teen Titans West, Legion of Substitute Heroes, an all-star chatfest of Doom Patrol interviews, plus art and commentary by ROSS ANDRU, SAL BUSCEMA, KEITH GIFFEN, TONY ISABELLA, PAUL KUPPERBERG, ERIK LARSEN, GEORGE PÉREZ, BOB ROZAKIS, cover by KEVIN NOWLAN.

“Bronze Age Team-Ups”! Marvel Team-Up and Two-in-One, Super-Villain Team-Up, CLAREMONT and SIMONSON’s X-Men/New Teen Titans, DC Comics Presents, SuperTeam Family, HANEY and APARO’s Batman of Earth-B(&B), Superman/Captain Marvel smackdowns, plus art and commentary by BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, LEVITZ, WEIN, and a classic GIL KANE cover inked anew by TERRY AUSTIN.

“Heroes Out of Time!” Batman: Gotham by Gaslight with MIGNOLA, WAID, and AUGUSTYN, Booster Gold with JURGENS, X-Men: Days of Future Past with CHRIS CLAREMONT, Bill & Ted with EVAN DORKIN, interview with P. CRAIG RUSSELL, “Pro2Pro” with Time Masters’ BOB WAYNE and LEWIS SHINER, Karate Kid, New Mutants: Asgardian Wars, and Kang. Mignola cover.

“1970s and ‘80s Legion of Super-Heroes!” LEVITZ interview, the Legion’s Honored Dead, the Cosmic Boy miniseries, a Time Trapper history, the New Adventures of Superboy, Legion fantasy cover gallery by JOHN WATSON, plus BATES, COCKRUM, CONWAY, COLON, GIFFEN, GRELL, JANES, KUPPERBERG, LaROCQUE, LIGHTLE, SCHAFFENBERGER, SHERMAN, STATON, SWAN, WAID, & more! COCKRUM cover!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships August 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Sept. 2013

Ambitious new series documenting each decade of comic book history!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1960-64 & The 1980s

JOHN WELLS covers comics in the 1960-64 JFK and Beatles era: DC’s new GREEN LANTERN, JUSTICE LEAGUE and multiple earths! LEE and KIRBY at Marvel on FF, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, and X-MEN! BATMAN’s “new look”, Charlton’s BLUE BEETLE, CREEPY #1 & more!

MODERN MASTERS: CLIFF CHIANG

Spotlights the career of CLIFF CHIANG (artist of DC’s New 52 breakout hit WONDER WOMAN series) through a career-spanning interview, and loads of both iconic and rarely seen artwork from Cliff’s personal files. There’s also an in-depth look into the artist’s work process, and an extensive gallery of commissioned pieces, many in full-color. By CHRIS ARRANT and ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON.

1960-64: (224-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-045-8 • Out now! 1980s: (288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $41.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-046-5 • Out now!

(192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $27.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-051-9 • (Digital Edition) $8.95 • Ships July 2013

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Editions) $4.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-050-2 Ships May 2013

THE STAR*REACH COMPANION

Complete history of the influential 1970s independent comic, featuring work by and interviews with DAVE STEVENS, FRANK BRUNNER, HOWARD CHAYKIN, STEVE LEIALOHA, WALTER SIMONSON, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, KEN STEACY, JOHN WORKMAN, MIKE VOSBURG, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, DAVE SIM, MICHAEL GILBERT, and many others, plus full stories from STAR*REACH and its sister magazine IMAGINE. Cover by CHAYKIN! MATURE READERS ONLY.

KEITH DALLAS documents comics’ 1980s Reagan years: Rise and fall of JIM SHOOTER, FRANK MILLER as comic book superstar, DC’s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, MOORE and GAIMAN’s British invasion, ECLIPSE, PACIFIC, FIRST, COMICO, DARK HORSE and more!

DAN SPIEGLE: A LIFE IN COMIC ART

PLUGGED IN!

COMICS PROS IN THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY

Documents his 60-year career on DELL and GOLD KEY’S licensed TV and Movie adaptions (LOST IN SPACE, KORAK, MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER, MIGHTY SAMPSON), at DC COMICS (BATMAN, UNKNOWN SOLDIER, TOMAHAWK, JONAH HEX, TEEN TITANS, BLACKHAWK), his CROSSFIRE series for ECLIPSE, DARK HORSE’S INDIANA JONES series and more, with rare artwork, personal photos, and private commission drawings. Written by JOHN COATES.

Offers invaluable tips for anyone entering the Video Game field, or with a fascination for both comics and gaming. KEITH VERONESE interviews artists and writers who work in video games full-time: JIMMY PALMIOTTI, CHRIS BACHALO, MIKE DEODATO, RICK REMENDER, TRENT KANIUGA, and others. Whether you’re a noob or experienced gamer or comics fan, be sure to get PLUGGED IN!

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $6.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-048-9 • Ships May 2013

(104-page trade paperback) $14.95 • (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-049-6 • Ships May 2013

(128-page trade paperback with COLOR) $16.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-047-2 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Now shipping!

SUBSCRIBE! • Digital Editions: 3.95 each, or save with a digital subscription (digital editions are included FREE with a print subscription)! • Back Issue, Draw, Alter Ego & Comic Book Collector are now all full-color! • Lower international shipping rates! $

2013 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

Media Mail

1st Class Canada 1st Class Priority US Intl. Intl.

Digital Only

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$50

$68

$65

$72

$150

$15.80

BACK ISSUE! (8 issues)

$60

$80

$85

$107

$155

$23.60

DRAW! (4 issues)

$30

$40

$43

$54

$78

$11.80

ALTER EGO (8 issues)

$60

$80

$85

$107

$155

$23.60

COMIC BOOK CREATOR (4 issues w/Special)

$36

$45

$50

$65

$95

$15.80

BRICKJOURNAL (6 issues)

$57

$72

$75

$86

$128

$23.70

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THE BEST OF ALTER EGO, VOL. 2

This sequel to ALTER EGO: THE BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE presents more vintage features from the first super-hero fanzine, begun by JERRY BAILS & ROY THOMAS. Editors ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY reveal undiscovered gems from all 11 original issues published from 1961-78, including features on Hawkman, the Spectre, Blackhawk, the JLA, All Winners Squad, the Heap, an unsold “Tor” newspaper strip by JOE KUBERT, and more!