Comic Book Artist #25

THE ABC COMICS OF ALAN MOORE & FRIENDS

™

No.25 June 2003

$6.95

Promethea TM & ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC

In The U.S.

O’NEILL • SPROUSE • BAIKIE • BARTA • DUNBIER • KLEIN • VILLARRUBIA

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At

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

We’ll Meet Again!

In the words of Linda Ellerbee, “And so it goes….”

Ye Ed and Comic Book Artist magazine bid a fond adieu to the good folks at TwoMorrows, as we saunter off to join up with Top Shelf Productions and relaunch Comic Book Artist next month. It’s been a gas, playing in John and Pam Morrow’s playground for the past five years, but change is good and I hope you’ll check us out as we initiate Phase Two of CBA’s continuing examination of the great artists, writers and editors of comic books, both old and new.

But we’d be remiss if we didn’t extend our heartfelt and sincere appreciation for the support of everyone who has contributed to CBA for our initial 25-issue run.

So please bare with us, good reader, as I will take this “Last Front Page” to attempt to personally thank each CBA supporter by name (though I’m bound to miss someone, regretfully, for which I hope to be forgiven).

First, to JOHN MORROW for being a superb publisher, as

well as conscientious contributing editor. Next, hats off to ROY THOMAS, for his camaraderie and contributions as his Alter Ego Vol. 2, which graced the first five issues of CBA, as well as his contributing editorship.

For their always-appreciated consultation, contributions and suggestions: GEORGE KHOURY, ARLEN SCHUMER, CHRIS KNOWLES, CHRISTOPHER IRVING, and DAVID A. ROACH. ALEX TOTH, FRED HEMBECK, J.D. KING, JOHN R. COCHRAN, CHARLES HATFIELD, RICK PINCHERA, ADAM MCGOVERN and MICHELLE NOLAN will forever have my gratitude for their great work for CBA. Transcribers STEVEN TICE, BRIAN K. MORRIS, SAM

GAFFORD, JON B. KNUTSON, and LONGBOX.COM staffers: Thanks! My appreciation to colorist TOM ZIUKO, always the man. Kudos to proofers ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON and RICHARD HOWELL. A special nod to the following publishers and their ever-helpful staffs: DC, MARVEL, DARK HORSE, FANTAGRAPHICS, SIRIUS, DRAWN & QUARTERLY, TOP SHELF, BONGO, IMAGE and WILDSTORM. A wink to RETAILERS everywhere for their support.

My greatest appreciation and gratitude goes to my lovely wife, BETH, and our three boys, BEN, JOSH, and DANNY; as well as to my mother and stepfather, INA COOKE and NICK MOOK; my greatest collaborator and eternally my best friend, ANDY COOKE (and PATTY!); my four other siblings, BECKY, RICHIE, CHRIS and SUSIE; my great intern, ROB RIEGERT; and, of course, to QUEBECOR and DIAMOND. Finally, thank you all, MY LOYAL READERS, for the best five years this editor could ever hope to imagine.

—Ye Ed.

Muy gracias to every CBA contributor!

Neal Adams, James Warren, Kevin Eastman, Tom Horvitz, Albert Moy, Mark Hanerfeld, Paul Levitz, Archie Goodwin & Anne T. Murphy, Dick Giordano, Joe Orlando, Joe, Muriel, Adam & Andy Kubert, Julius Schwartz, Dennis O’Neil, Joe Simon, Jim Amash, Irwin Donenfeld, Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich, Steve Skeates, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Jim Aparo, Nick Cardy, Sergio Aragonés, Gil Kane, Bernie Wrightson, Michael W. Kaluta, Sam Glanzman, Don Mangus, Andrew Steven, Walter Simonson, Mike W. Barr, Glenn Southwick, Garrie Burr, Amy Kiste Nyberg, Ed Hatton, Cory Adams, Rich Morrisey, Carl Gafford, P.C. Hamerlinck, Danny Serafin, Tom Stewart, Michael Thibodeaux, Stan & Joanie Lee, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Romita Sr., Virgina & John Romita Jr, Marie Severin, Steve Englehart, Don McGregor, Mike Ploog, Jim Starlin, Dave Cockrum, Wendy Everett, Sal Amendola, Bob Brodsky, Kevin Stawieray, Bruce Lowry, David “Hambone” Hamilton, Alex Bialy, Allan Rosenberg, Phil Straub, Fiona Russell, the Estate of Jack Kirby, Richard Martinez, Steve Ahlquist, Bob Yeremian, James Guthrie, John Coates, Les Daniels, Jack C. Harris, J. David Spurlock, Steranko, David Berkebile, Victor Lim, John Fanucchi, Kris Stone, Tom Palmer, Louise Simonson, William DuBay, Richard V. Corben, Bruce Jones, Jack Davis, Bill Alger, Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, Will Eisner, Russ Heath, Jim Janes, Larry Ivie, Flo Steinberg, Trina Robbins, Al Milgrom, Michael T. Gilbert, Cam Villar, J. Hiroshi Morisaki, Todd Adams, Glenn Danzig, Richard Garrison, Mark Wheatley, Tim Underwood, Robert Miller, Roger Hill, Jeffrey H. Wasserman, Joe Brancatelli, Ray Kelly, Mark Burkey, Dick Sprang, Gloria, John & Peg Broome, Howard Post, Murphy Anderson, Mark Evanier, John Costanza, Evan Dorkin, Ed Noonchester, Manual Auad, Ronn Sutton, Conrad Eschenberg, Bob Beerbohm, Arnie Fenner, Mike Gartland, Jerry K. Boyd, Marc Svensson, Frank Miller, Jim Long, Paul Gulacy, Charles Hatfield, Gary Groth, Frank Brunner, P. Craig Russell, Tom Sutton, Dan Adkins, Mike Royer, Jim Salicrup, Steve Mitchell, Doug Moench, Jim Mooney, Denis Kitchen, Alan Weiss, Rich Buckler, John Severin, Billy Graham, Joe

Staton, Dean Motter, John A. Lent, R. Gary Land, Steve Leialoha, Rocco Nigro, Jerry Bails, Arnold Drake, Craig Thompson, John Byrne, Steve Gerber, Klaus Janson, Jerry Ordway, George Pérez, art spiegelman, Frank Springer, Herb Trimpe, Tim Barnes, Bob Lerose, Dave LeMieux, Al Bigley, Sam Maronie, Richard Kyle, Malcolm Whyte, David Miller, Steve Rude, George Roussos, Dylan Williams, Mike Baron, Ken Bruzenak, Howard Chaykin, Donald Simpson, Scott McCloud, Mike Grell, Mitch O’Connell, Scott Saavedra, James Kochalka, Fred Himes, Charles Santangelo, Joe Gill, Dave Glanzman, Keith Giffen, Peter A. Morisi, Frank McLaughlin, Will Franz, Bob Layton, Bill Black, Dave Gibbons, Alan Moore, Paul Chadwick, Robert Greenberger, Mickey Spillane, Bhob Stewart, Bill Pearson, Glen D. Johnson, Pat Bastienne, Mike Carpinello, Mark Pacella, Mike Collins, Scott Dunbier, T. Motley, John Workman, Anne Timmons, Sandy Plunkett, Scott Shaw!, Ramona Fradon, Linda Fite, Mary Fleener, Anne Thalheimer, Hilda Terry, Chris Butcher, Olga Abella, Joel Thingvall, Lance Falk, Joey Cavaleri, Merrily Harris Mayer, Lanney Mayer, Mark Chiarello, Paul Rivoche, Jim Vadeboncouer Jr., Beverly Martin, Phillip Hester, Steve Cohen, Paul Power, Charlie Roberts, Robin Snyder, Al Dellinges, Joe & Frank Giella, John Hitchcock, Terry Austin, Tom Field, Terry Beatty, The Mad Peck, Jim Lee, Tim Sale, Kevin Nowlan, Adam Hughes, Brian Bolland, Bill Sienkiewicz, Anthony Smith, Rick Roe, R.C. Harvey, John Lustig, Nick Cuti,George Wildman, Jud Hurd, Mike Zeck, Jack Keller, Warren Sattler, Roger Stern, Dan Reed, Rich Larson, Ed Konick, T.C. Ford, Jay Willson, Roger Broughton, ,Batton Lash, Steve Morger, Barry Keller, John R. Borkowski, Albert Vay, Greg Huneryager, Blake Bell, F. San Milan, John Castiglia, Mike Curtis, Alan Kupperberg, Tim Truman, Gene Colan, Tony Isabella, Don Perlin, Pablo Marcos, Steve Sherman, Cat Yronwode, Bill Morrison, Rob Pollak, Andy Ihnatko, Russ Maheras, Gisella Marcos, Myriam Marcos, John Yon, Chris Gage, Gary Friedrich, Shel Dorf, John Carbonaro, Brian C. Boerner, Russ Jones, Len Brown, George Tuska, Dan DeCarlo, Jeff Clem, Lou Mougin,

Gary Brown, Daniel Tesmoingt, John Harrison, Jeff Gelb, Bill Schelly, Jay Stephens, Dean Haspiel, John Backderf, Bill Wray, Marc H. Kardell, Dave Elliott, Emil J. Novak, Merlin Haas, Dave Stevens, Jaime, Gilbert, Mario & Carol Hernandez, Greg Preston, Ralph Alfonso, Matt Wagner, Ernie Colón, Jeff Rovin, Larry Hama, Ric Meyers, Jim Craig, John Castaglia, Marcus Wai, Peter Wallace, Mike Burkey, Thomas Drucis, Mark Arnold, David A. Kraft, Bob Wiacek, Lee Nail, Larry Lieber, Nicholas Caputo, Arthur Adams, Homer Reyes, Rick Veitch, George Evans, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Pocho Morrow, Carol Petersen, Ray Cuthbert, William Cain, Pauline Weiss, Michael Netzer, Dan Kraar, Paul Wardle, Steven Ng, Vilmar Vogelaar, Ken Steacy, Neil Polowin, Jim Woodall, Mark Cannon, Aaron Sultan, Sid Jacobson, Warren & Grace Kremer, Ken Selig, Sid Couchey, Shawn Hamilton, Bill Janocha, Bill Matheny, Jeff Bonivert, Scotty Moore, Jim Korkis, Nick Dragotta, Pete Carlsson, Andrew Farago, John Miesegaes, Anthony Snyder, Axel Alonso, Cyrus Voris, Sal Buscema, Alex Ross, Steve Darnall, Garry Leach, Owen O’Leary, Larry Dempsey, Paul Gravett, Alan Woollcombe, Tom DeFalco, Enrico Savini, Michael Maikowsky, Joe Sinnott, David Lloyd, Patrick Olliffe, Paul Neary, Scott Rosema, Claudio Castellini, Eric Yonge, Royd Burgoyne, Rob Kirby, Ed Fields, Paul Norris, Don Glut, Dan Spiegle, Andrew Lis, Alberto Becattini, George Wilson, Tom McKimson, Jesse Santos, José Delbo, Joe Caporale, Ed Rhoads, James Van Hise, Biljo White, Chris Hunt, Jeff Kapalka, Toni Rodrigues, Dan Forman, Gregg Hazen, Daniel I. Herman, Dave Stewart, Mike Mignola, Jill Thompson, Harlan & Susan Ellison, Dan Martin, Joe McCabe, Ladronn, Bob Burden, Chris Day, Lee Hester, J.J. Sedelmaier, Richard Starkings, Gahan Wilson, Mark Bodé, Michael Gross, M.K. Brown, Sean Kelly, Michel Choquette, Mark Simonson, Shary Flenniken, B.K. Taylor, Ed Subitzky, Susan Hewitt, J. Scott Campbell, Mark Lewis, Scott Gosar, Daniel K. Laikin, Joe Fallon, Beth Gwinn, Theresa Calamita Nobile…. …and all the contributors in this issue.

—Jon B. Cooke

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

4-issue Subscriptions • PRINT: $36 US with FREE Digital Editions • DIGITAL: $15.80 ($45 First Class US • $50 Canada • $65 First Class International • $95 Priority International) Subscriptions include the double-size Summer Special

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VOLUME 1, NUMBER 25

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

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THE FRONT PAGE: WE’LL MEET AGAIN….

Ye Ed bids adieu to TwoMorrows and gives thanks to all who contributed to CBA’s initial run............................1 EDITOR’S RANT: EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN Existential comments by Ye Ed on his brief encounter with the Great Beyond and the meaning of Moore ..........4 THE AMERICA’S BEST COMICS CELEBRATION KHOURY’S CORNER: DESTINATION NORTHAMPTON George dishes the dirt on Ye Ed and their sojourn to the Alan Moore abode deep in the heart of England

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW

......5

ALAN MOORE INTERVIEW: THE MAGIC OF COMICS Ye Ed & Khoury visit the world’s finest comics scribe for a long, trippy talk on comics and magic ......................8 SCOTT DUNBIER INTERVIEW: IN THE HEART OF WILDSTORM The ABC editor on the magic of Alan Moore and the British writer’s ingenious collaborators............................43 BONUS ALAN MOORE INTERVIEW: AMERICA’S BEST APOCALYPSE The magic man chats about his creations for the America’s Best Comics line and possible retirement ..............46 CBA EXTRA: TODD KLEIN AND THE ABCS OF DESIGN The award-winning letterer/logo designer on his exquisite work for America’s Best Comics..............................56 KEVIN O’NEILL INTERVIEW: AN EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMAN The superb artist gives us a look at the early days of 2000 AD and working with the Magus, Alan Moore ......58 J.H. WILLIAMS III INTERVIEW: PROMETHEA UNBOUND! Jim Williams talks with George Khoury about his mind-expanding collaborations with Alan Moore ................74 CBA EXTRA: PICTURE PERFECT JOSÉ VILLARRUBIA The photographer/colorist/digital artist discusses “Me and ABC,” a look at his Promethea contributions ........80 CHRIS SPROUSE INTERVIEW: OF TOM STRONGS AND SUPREMES George Khoury chats with the artist on his life beyond Supreme and into the strange worlds of Tom Strong ..82 HILARY BARTA INTERVIEW: MAKING A SPLASH WITH ALAN MOORE The EC-inspired cartoonist tells George Khoury about his work with Britain’s Best Comics Writer ....................88 JIM BAIKIE INTERVIEW: THE FIRST ORKADIAN From Skizz to the First American, the artist from the Orkneys regales Khoury about his life and long career ....94

Assistant Editor GEORGE KHOURY Associate Editors CHRIS KNOWLES DAVID A. ROACH CHRISTOPHER IRVING Consulting Editors JOHN MORROW ROY THOMAS Cover Art & Color J.H. WILLIAMS III Flip Cover Art & Color KEVIN NOWLAN Proofreader ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS SAM GAFFORD LONGBOX.COM STEVEN TICE

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ was published as often as we could get it out 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. No subscriptions are available as this CBA is the last of the TwoMorrows run. See you on the Top Shelf, people! All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2003 Jon B. Cooke. Cover acknowledgements: Promethea and Jack B. Quick ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC; Batman ™ & ©2003 DC Comics. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Editor’s Rant

Embracing the Unknown On life, death and the magic of Moore’s alchemy of language Title Originator/Logo Design ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song ALL MY LIFE Foo Fighters Contributors Alan Moore • George Khoury J.H. Williams III • Kevin Nowlan Scott Dunbier • WildStorm Kevin O’Neill • Jim Baikie Chris Sprouse • Hilary Barta José Villarrubia • Todd Klein Cyrus Voris • Steve Bissette Titan Books • 2000 AD/Rebellion This issue dedicated with great affection to

George Khoury my generous friend & fellow traveler into the magical realms of

Alan Moore

Regardless of my close-cropped (and receding) hairline and materialistic ways, before delving into this issue devoted to the ABC Comics of Alan Moore and Friends, you should first understand that I’m nothing but an old hippy, however misguided I’ve become since that mind-expanding Age of Aquarius. Back in the late ’60s, my mom was actively involved in Leftist politics and the movement protesting the Vietnam War, and I had four older siblings pretty much citizens of the Woodstock Nation. I recall marching in the October ’70 moratorium protest, writing “Free the Chicago Seven” in the sand of Jones Beach, becoming friends with a Vietnamese teenager who had lost an arm and leg to American napalm, meeting Dr. Benjamin Spock at the height of his anti-war work, endlessly drawing peace symbols in my school notebooks, and pretty much reveling in the trappings of the counter-culture, from memorizing the words of The Doors’ “Unknown Soldier,” to ogling R. Crumb’s Zap Comix. However turbulent and divisive, those days were magically creative times, an enchanted epoch we’ve yet to see the equal of before or since, and living through those days helped form me in many, many ways.

It was my mother who encouraged me to be curious and creative, teaching tolerance for diversity and a healthy respect for life, so it was natural for me to cheerfully seek out the strange and different. To explore the unknown was exciting; the familiar merely complacent and, well, dull. Looking for what I did not know motivated me to dig deeper and ask more questions, a preoccupation that continues to this day with Comic Book Artist. Nothing is more invigorating than learning hitherto unknown facts about the history of this beloved art form.

So it wasn’t surprising to me that much of what my mom had taught was confirmed through a near-death experience courtesy of a hellacious car crash when I was 20. I imagined becoming an ethereal spirit, floating above my body, and indeed, above, there was a blinding

light compelling me towards the Great Unknown, with comforting, familiar beings beckoning (ghosts resembling my deceased maternal grandparents), and I was engulfed with an overwhelming, soothing sensation that everything was OKAY; there was no guilt, no regrets, no disappointment, no hesitation… I merely had to surrender to the good, suddenly blessed with the new knowledge that to die, to move on from the material world, wasn’t so bad at all, but rather the natural order of things. I do recall, however, before being enveloped in this divine blanket of utter acceptance, calling out for my mother.

Obviously, life—or rather, Mom—had a stronger pull on that Summer’s eve 24 years ago and I was suddenly yanked back to this earthly plane, gratefully spending six months or so in a hospital traction bed. Have I since lived the quarter-century a completely lifeaffirming, “live everyday like it’s your last,” altruistic, benevolent existence? No, as those earthly demons that earlier tormented me did return and I continue to struggle with some to this day. But I did recognize something assuredly divine in that supernatural adventure, and thus I’m not much afraid of dying. Sure, I want to live so my kids can have a father, and to get old with my wife, but I learned there’s no shame—or fear—in taking that inevitable journey into the hereafter…

A similar epiphany occurred in a college Comparative Religions class when my Korean professor explained the précis of Taoism, how all life is inter-related—the yin and the yang—and how seeming contradictions are actual complements (i.e., to receive, one must give; to triumph, one needs to surrender, etc.). That, along with some hallucinogenic adventuring, a revelatory reading of J.C.’s Sermon on the Mount, and an attraction to Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker (look it up), helped me formulate a patchwork philosophy about the Big Questions, one I continue, for better or worse, to muse over to this day.

But just what the hell does all this indulgent confession have to do with Alan Moore? Well, because I often get a glimpse of the divine in the renowned comic book writer’s work, and the more I learn of his explorations and revelations, the more I feel kindred to the Northampton scribe. Whether it was to be outrightly flabbergasted by his reinvention of Swamp Thing in “The Anatomy Lesson,” or chilled to the marrow by Johnny Bates’ destruction of London in Miracleman or astounded by Alan’s cleverness in “Pictopia,” my appreciation of the writer’s abilities is continuously punctuated by moments of epiphany. Indeed, Alan Moore does know the score.

I don’t think you need to flirt with oblivion to grasp the importance and vitality of the man’s work, or to see that he often wrestles with profound issues under the guise of comic book entertainment. For my money, Alan’s Promethea may just be his most intensely personal and inspired opus yet, one that describes the writer’s explorations as a magician, an enlightened road map of Alan’s journey of self-discovery. In other words, it’s one far-out trip, fer sure.

Now, if you’ve bought this issue because you’ve dug Alan’s work on Swamp Thing or Miracleman or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or From Hell, but may have avoided Promethea because it seems too “slow moving” or “spaced-out,” take this old hippy’s word for it, screw up enough courage inside to embrace what you don’t know, and give the goddess a shot. It’s time to set aside the ol’ same-old, same-old, and embrace the unknown, folks. Heaven knows, these materialistic and darkly polarizing days need a good dose of spirituality.

—Jon B. Cooke, Editorman

Destination: Northampton or How I Survived a U.K. Trip with Ye Ed & Lived To Tell About It The day of departure arrives and I get my luggage in order, but before I leave, there’s one last thing I must do: Eat a tasty calzone with garlic knots from a favorite pizza place on Route 22, to be my final meal in the U.S. of A. It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and Ye Ed hasn’t shown up. Earlier that morning, from his Rhode Island home 120 miles north of me, Jon said he’d stop by at 3:00. A few minutes later, Jon calls to say he’s lost in Jersey City despite having directions from every which way but Tuesday from mapquest.com. At this point, I remember thinking, “Heaven help us.” After my brother gives him directions, Jon shows up at the Khoury home in no time flat.

At the airport, the economy parking lot can’t be found, so we end up paying a lot more than planned. When we get to the ticket agent, Jon’s name had been entered incorrectly—last name first and first name last—and this needs to be corrected with a supervisor, taking about 20 minutes to correct. To quote our dear President Dubya, Mr. Cooke Jonathan was “plenty hot!” Once Ye Ed’s blood pressure leveled off, we go through airport security and—this being post 9/11 and me blessed from birth with olive-colored skin—I get singled out (maybe my profile was featured on America’s Most Wanted?). The security officer asks permission to pat me down—I guess I have to do my part for national security—and soon his hands are all over me (sadly, the most action I’ve had all year). After he checks my shoes for bomb residue, I’m permitted to join Cooke, who’s already eaten a three-course meal, saunaed, and napped during my ordeal. While waiting to board the plane, we kill time reading (what else?) Moore funnybooks from Cooke’s packed comic box, which—lucky me!—I got to haul around most of our trip.

The first time I met Jon was through his work in The Jack Kirby Collector, as his interview style and enthusiasm really injected excitement into the mag. The first TJKC I purchased featured his talk with Frank Miller, a stupendous piece of interviewing. While I love the current TJKC, undeniably my favorites were issues #16-19 where John Morrow and Cooke had a beautifully productive symmetry going. Even Jon admits those particular issues read like a precursor to CBA, and I felt they took TJKC from a distinguished fan effort to a certifiably professional magazine. When I started contributing to TJKC, Cooke had launched CBA which quickly became the best magazine about comic books I’ve ever read. Yes, it was packed with great art and invaluable interviews, but underneath it all was Jon’s genuine enthusiasm—love, really—for comics that made me cherish those moldy, rotten, stinking books even more. That’s what this magazine is, and no doubt will continue to be, whoever publishes it and so long as Jon is at the helm: A love-in celebrating the men and women who create comics, and CBA inspires to make one to seek comics you wouldn’t have thought to read in a million years. With so much negativity in the comic industry nowadays, it’s nice to have a Jon B. Cooke being our angelic guide into the history of the form.

by George Khoury On March 21, 2002, Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke and I decided to take the plunge and travel to Northampton, England for an audience with perhaps the finest writer in the history of comic books, Alan Moore. Before purchasing plane tickets, I ring up Mr. Moore to ask if he’s available on a Saturday in early May for an interview for this very issue of CBA, among other things. [George is being modest not to mention his forthcoming celebratory tome, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, as well as our future book collaboration, Swampmen: Muck Monsters of the Comics.—Ye Ed.] Without any hesitation, and in his distinctive, matter-of-fact, deeply and resonant voice, Alan says that sounds fine. So, after buying the plane tickets, we’re set to leave on the ninth of May from Newark International Airport, returning from Heathrow on the 12th. (The reason for the quick trip is apparently because Jon can’t bear to part with his cherished wife and three loving sons for more than a day.

Otherwise, he turns to stone or something.)

For a month, we prepare for our big European expedition: Jon reserves a local hotel room and a rental car from Heathrow. “A car?”

I ponder. I was a little hesitant because the road layouts are extremely different over there and, yes, their steering wheels are on the wrong side of the car. Despite my concern, I’m okay with it and say, “Yeah, what the hell, Jon.” Cooke’s a smart cookie and he’s very psyched about our excursion: running off innumerable maps from mapquest.com for all the sights we’re going to see in the U.K. Since we’re there, why not visit London’s fabled Forbidden Planet, and take a leisurely side trip to drop by a couple of noted Brit comic book artists, as well as setting foot in the only comic shop in Northampton?

Heck, we had all of Friday to fart around as our appointment with the Midland’s wizard scribe was set for the following morning.

Repeatedly, Jon brags about once having lived in England, albeit at the age of 11 and 12 (sans any driver’s license), so he was down with it and, “Natch!” he enthuses, puttering around the English countryside will be a piece of cake.

Since we’re to arrive early Friday, I suggest we meet up with Garry Leach at Forbidden Planet in London (Garry’s one of my favorite artists and someone very friendly to me while I was compiling Kimota! The Miracleman Companion, my first Moore book). Jon arranges for us to also visit Dave Gibbons and maybe share a pint in the artist’s hometown of St. Albans. I phone Garry and tell ’im the plans thus far. Always a caballero, the artist says he’ll give us a personal tour of Olde London Towne’s finest comic shops. Garry says we’re crazy for taking such a short trip—a weekend jaunt—and that we’d suffer severe jet lag. He also advises that driving in London is crazy because of gridlock traffic. I was already starting to get visions of Cooke and I running over a few hapless Limeys… accidentally, of course. With this in mind, I tell Garry that if I don’t phone him after arriving, please not to get upset and think we’d forgotten about him, because that would mean we’re only lost or dead. With ominous deliberation, I somberly prepare for the trip as if preparing for a final voyage: Get a haircut, buy some new clothes, pack some clean underwear, and leave behind a few blank checks for my mom in case anything dire happens. This would be the longest flight I’ve ever been on.

Table of contents page: Vignetted detail of the cover of The America’s Best Comics Sketchbook (’02) featuring the contributions of Arthur Adams, Hilary Barta, Gene Ha, Kevin Nowlan, Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, Rick Veitch, and J.H. Williams III. All characters ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC. Left opposite: John Totleben drew this portrait of Swamp Thing and Abigail Cable for the cover of the Comics & Comix newsletter, The Telegraph Wire, in the mid-’80s. Courtesy of Steve Bissette. Art ©2003 J.T.; Swamp Thing, Abby ©2003 DC Comics; Promethea ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC. F

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Above: George Khoury (left) and Alan Moore pose for a quick pic (taken by Ye Ed) in front of the renowned scribe’s Northampton, England home. George’s book, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, a 50th birthday present for Alan, is due to be released by TwoMorrows Publishing at the 2003 Comic-Con International: San Diego on July 16, and in shops shortly thereafter! Buy early and buy often, Moorefolk!

This issue is also dedicated in memory of the real Kid Colt and beloved hot-rodder

Jack Keller and with best wishes for a full recovery to CBA’s good friend

Donovan Williams surviving the Station Nightclub Fire of February 20, 2003

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Above: Writer Alan Moore gestures while regaling his two American visitors in his living room during the May 2002 interview with Ye Ed and George Khoury. Photo by Jon B. Cooke.

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So, by the time we boarded, around eight that night, Jon is on the ropes and cranky after the long drive and us talking comics straight for a few hours. Hey, I don’t know too many people to talk shop with, so I was annoying the exhausted Ye Ed. (Another hint that Jon was tired of hearing me talk was when he put on his airline-issued headphones to listen to Peter Frampton… it’s a ’70s thing, I guess.) Alone, I have no other option but to watch Cuba Gooding’s epic motion picture Snow Dogs and Jim Carrey’s decidedly un-majestic The Majestic on the small TV screen in front of me.

Three hours later, Cooke speaks.

Not a man to waste words, so if he talks, it must be something important. Jon nods to a few rows ahead of us and clues me into the Mile High Club initiation passionately taking place between a young couple. It’s obvious by the rising steam that some major heat is being generated under their shared blanket, and Cooke tells me they were strangers to each other when they boarded. But apparently their rapport, fueled by those itsy-bitsy bottles of airplane booze, quickly made the late-teen American girl and the mid-20ssomething British bloke the most intimate of friends, sharing their Transatlantic love affair with lucky us. Cooke weaves this sultry story about the pair, telling me it won’t last and these two will tire of each other by Heathrow. “Because she’s so obviously a spoiled, bored, rich Yank, and he just a horny, working-class stiff who, post-coital, won’t suffer needy chicks very well.” Lemme tell ya, Cooke’s a regular Danielle Steele! As we nod off to sleep, I knew for sure that catching those two shamelessly doing The Horizontal Grind was way better than watching Mr. “Show me the money” Gooding play secondfiddle to a bunch of huskies.

Upon arriving to a beautiful, muggy London (and, yep, like comic journalism’s own Jackie Collins predicted, that couple did just exchange parting pleasantries after a sober cooling off), my stomach was shaken, feeling impregnated with some extraterrestrial zygote. At customs, I’m asked about the nature of my flight. I tell the agent I’m here to interview the Alan Moore, which somehow didn’t impress her all that much. But my declaration did get me a six-month tourist visa to wreak havoc in the United Kingdom. (Thank you, Tony Blair!) The rental company shuttle bus driver—a very friendly chap—tells us which roads to take for our quest north, directions so simple even a child could follow. He cheerily drops us off at the Avis lot where we’re given an option of transmissions. Now, Jon’s the driver of the pair and given he misses the challenge of negotiating roads with a stick shift (as he did before becoming automatic mini-van man), Ye Ed opts for a compact with standard transmission, just for kicks because, he tells me with a smarmy grin, ”It’ll be fun, George!” Bad move.

Ya see, in his exhausted state, Cooke forgot to thoughtfully consider three major facts: 1) He hadn’t driven a stick in eons; 2) The Brits ride on the “wrong” side of the road; and, most importantly, 3) You have to shift with your left hand. So just trying to get out of the bloody parking lot was quite… umm… “interesting,” as it takes Cooke a full half-hour just to shift the car into reverse (and only then, after his American cockiness finally caves, and the lot attendant reveals the “secret” button under the stick’s handle, after Ye Ed begs for assistance). Thank God, I realize, we’ve insured this vehicle.

In typical lurchy-lurch, just-out-of-driver’s-ed, popping clutch fashion, we jerk out onto the motorway—the legendary M1—and traffic is heavy on the outskirt roads of London; it immediately becomes obvious we can’t go into town. We throw ourselves into the northbound traffic like a young tadpole learning to swim in a school of swarming piranhas. We quickly dismiss the folly of visiting Gibbons or Leach, being content with just trying to stay alive and in the right direction, no easy matter with Cooke behind the wheel. We figure if we make it to Northampton alive, we’ve won the battle.

Now, though as resigned to steer clear of London as we were,

the drive was not easy by any means, never mind Cooke’s constant grinding of the gears. See, people in England drive really fast. Our lives were at the mercy of the M1 and any sympathetic driver who may note the Fear of Death in our blood-shot eyes. Off the motorway, we also drove over curbs and into the opposing lanes; to this day, over a year later, my nerves are still edgy, and I still thank God nobody died.

Soon we passed Northampton several times without finding the off-ramp, not noticing it until a kindly French waitress in a roadside restaurant, who we desperately begged for guidance, points us in the right direction, an exit a mere hundred feet away. So, finally we’re in the center of bustling Northampton, exhausted, frustrated, rattled to the bone, and still trying to figure out how to get to our hotel. By this time, a severe migraine comes over me, feeling like someone has stuck a dagger through my skull. Finding locals to direct us to the hotel proved difficult, as well, because those we asked didn’t even know a Marriott existed in Northampton, until we found a knowledgeable gas attendant. The hotel is located on the outskirts of town and upon arrival it looks vaguely familiar to us—yeah, we’d already passed it a half-dozen times before. The Marriott is quite lovely, surrounded by a large grass lawn inhabited by rabbits and birds. After checking in, I lay my pounding head on the bed, the migraine even more violent than before because I’ve also gotten carsick from Jon’s expert driving abilities. Off the road, Jon is more relaxed and any early symptoms of road rage have disappeared and his spirit seems reinvigorated. I take a shower hoping for renewal as well. I look around the bathroom and see that Jon has thrown a mess of towels on the floor; apparently if he wipes his finger he’ll use a new towel— he’s a regular Del Griffith (John Candy’s classic character from Planes, Trains and Automobiles). Lucky for me there are a few towels left, and I realize I have some personal habits as annoying to him as well.

We decide to see what kind of city Northampton is and where we can find some grub. Carefully, we retrace our steps to a commercial plaza we passed before and hit the only comic book store in Northampton, which after arriving at 5:15 P.M., we found out closes at 5:00 on a Friday. We hit the hottest spot in town, a huge store called Morrison’s (not unlike Wal-Mart). They have everything, including a little Woolworths-type cafeteria; Cooke orders a burger and I get a chicken sandwich. 25 minutes later, we get our dinner and it’s God-awful. The chicken must have been radioactive, and I could have sworn I saw some hair fall from Cooke’s head as he ate the cheeseburger.

We spend some time checking out the rest of Morrison’s and it proves curiously different from any American counterpart. Giveaways are a big thing over there, as one premium offered with a box of Kellogg’s cereal was a porcelain bowl—pretty extravagant compared to the States. There is an enormous magazine display with nearly every mag having some sort of freebie incentive attached to it. The comics rack is loaded with an assortment of British weekly titles: Beano, 2000 AD, Dandy, The Simpsons, Ultimate Spider-Man, and even a good number of girls’ comics. Business is booming and the store is packed. Another oddity is the cashiers in Morrisons worked seated on their fannies. (Yeesh! And folks call us Americans slackers!

The nerve.)

We walk through the rest of the shopping district, which is completely deserted, every establishment closed. Except the pubs.

Except the sports clubs. Except any place with flowing alcohol.

Strangely, there are a couple of nightclubs on the same block, both specializing in vodka drinks and sporting (trendy?) faux Soviet Russian motifs, called something like Revolution and The Kremlin. We hit one of them for a quick pint, just as the locals saunter in to start a nodoubt riotous weekend of drinking and, well, drinking some more. It’s a nice upscale looking place, filled with lots of young girls and guys serving pints and mixed drinks. I don’t know what the legal drinking age is in England, but it looks to be around 12. The bar was filling with kids looking like Archie Andrews and the Riverdale gang going to the malt shop. After finishing our beer, we go back to the hotel because we wanted to be fresh for the Big Day with Our Assignment in the morning and, anyway, there isn’t much else to do in Northampton at night ’cept drink or watch TV or watch TV while drinking.

(It would turn out that we made the right move. As Cooke and I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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would part company with the ingenious scribe the following evening, Alan Moore would give us just a single bit of advice after nine hours of conversation—this from the legendary genial, nonjudgmental, liveand-let-live gent—and that was, he told us emphatically, to STAY OUT of the center of Northampton at night, as it apparently became a free-for-all zone of drunken violence and inebriated debauchery. ”Drinking is all the kids do ‘round here,” Moore explained. “Murder and mayhem happen all the time. People die.” That night in the hotel lounge, Cooke chatted with two perky working-class birds from the sticks, all dressed-up, smelling fine, and apparently ready to paint the town red. “What brings you to Northampton?” he asked. “Drinking!

This place gets crazy, and we love it!” says they. “We save up for months to do this a few times a year.” Feeling suddenly very old and very out-of-touch, Cooke dutifully pattered back to our room and tucked himself in… with a deep sigh.)

Back in our hotel, I nurse my lingering headache while Cooke reads Moore’s Swamp Thing run. We watch the telly—an old episode of Black Adder and a new Jonathan Ross Show, a delightfully raucous, profanity-laced talk show with guests that night including Ozzy Osbourne, whose colorful use of vulgarity was outdone by noneother than Academy Award-winning actor, Sir John Mills, who shared an anecdote using the word “f*ck” in the punchline… quite something to hear from the 80-something year-old thespian! The last thing I remember before fading out is seeing Cooke reading those Swamp Thing comics.

I awoke Saturday morning at 5:00 A.M., my migraine vanished, and I felt like a new man. My travel companion is asleep, drooling on Swamp Thing #46, atop the blankets on his bed. Looking outside the window, I can tell it’s going to be a beautiful day. As soon as Jon wakes, we go to the hotel restaurant for the breakfast buffet, yet another example of England’s legendary cuisine. As Cooke inquires if there’s any scrambled eggs instead of these poached ones, the gnarlylooking cook barks, “’Em’s scrambled eggs!” as she points her spatula to the white goo right in front of him and plops an obese sausage, oozing puddles of grease, on his trembling plate. After a sigh, he eats the coronary-bursting meal, muttering,”Can’t say I’ve missed those Brit restaurants, Wimpy’s…”

We get on the road early, well before our 10:00 A.M. appointment, carefully navigating our way to Alan’s working class neighborhood, one that resembles those seen in any given episode of Monty Python or in Alan Parker movies about a poor-but-loving Irish family.

Row after row of row houses. Made of red brick with chimneys and little gardens out back. No picket fences or front gates. Walking down to the middle of Alan’s road, we’re not sure this is the right place until we see The Door. With serpents—resembling those coiled about Promethea’s scepter—carved into the obviously newly-made portal, we knew this was The Place. We knock and a couple of seconds later out comes Affable Alan Moore, pop culture icon and America’s Best Comics writer, looking exactly as he’s always looked, sounding exactly as he’s always sounded, acting exactly… well, you get the picture. To meet him is a profound experience laced with intense dèja vu…

Encountering Alan for the first time is very much like catching up with an old friend after a long absence. Earnest but funny, sincere yet friendly, Moore towers over us, energetic and looking very youthful at 48 as he invites us into his modest home. The house is loaded with an astounding number of piles of books and magazines and comics—words are EVERYWHERE!—and later, he tells us he reads at least one book a day. While exchanging pleasantries, Moore offers us warm tea (which, without exaggerating, proves the best cuppa I’ve had in my life). As we all sit down in the dark and cozy living room, tea cups in hand, Cooke turns on the tape recorder and Alan lights a meticulously handcrafted cigarette, and so begins the longest interview session I’ve been a party to.

When I was in my last year of college—burying myself in debt, losing sleep, slaving in a mailroom, and studying for a degree that would probably be more useful as toilet paper—I remember my greatest source of joy were the Supreme comics Alan Moore was turning out for Awesome. Those Weisinger-inspired funnybooks were just so endearing and clever you couldn’t help but fall for them—a real contrast to the bulk of lame-o Marvel, DC and Image Comics of that era. So in 1998, when Awesome collapsed, WildStorm’s Jocular Jim Lee offered Moore another venue where to continue the June 2003

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momentum the writer had generated with Supreme, into a new line of books solely to house Moore’s new creations, and thus, with the aid of editor Smilin’ Scott Dunbier, was born America’s Best Comics.

A little later, Lee sold his publishing house to DC Comics, a deal which included all of WildStorm’s imprints, including Homage, Cliffhanger, and ABC, which was just about to launch.

The first ABC title released was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with Kevin O’Neill, an instant smash hit that lured back many of Moore’s former readers who had strayed over the years (many of whom missed out on such gems as From Hell, Big Numbers, and Lost Girls, in the intervening years). Then followed Tom Strong, co-created with Chris Sprouse, a throwback character to the pulp and comic classics of the early to mid-20th century. With Gene Ha and Zander Cannon doing the art chores, the Top 10 comic chronicled the Hill Street Blues-like adventures of Precinct 10 in Neopolis, a city where the common folk are all super… heroes, that is. The trippy and wondrous Promethea, a title profoundly exploring the nature of humanity and spirituality, with J.H. Williams III at the art helm, certainly is unlike any mainstream comic ever done.

And finally the anthology titles, Tomorrow Stories (the book that introduced us to such lovely characters as Jack B. Quick, Greyshirt, Cobweb, First American, and Splash Brannigan) and Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales (showcasing Jonni Future, as well as The Strongs), utilizing some of the finest artists in the businesses, as well as writers Steve Moore (unrelated) and Leah Moore (related), all proving that short-story compilations can often be the funnest material around. (And look for Peter Hogan to scribe some special ABC one-shots coming soon).

Over the last four years, the ABC titles have, time and time again, lived up to their imprint to be among the best comics produced today. Inspired by Moore’s obvious high standards for quality in his own work, the amazing array of ABC artists often strive to do the best artwork of their careers, if just for the sheer joy of it.

With the exception of League, the entire ABC line is coming to an end commencing in November, which Alan promises to be an “apocalyptic event” unlike anything ever seen in a comic book line. Although this news of Moore’s final ABC work is sad, how can one not get excited about the writer seizing the opportunity to do the unthinkable and end a comics “universe” voluntarily and artistically on his own terms? There will be no secret wars or earth crises (infinite or otherwise) or mutant massacres or any such cross-over, circulation-boosting nonsense that promises a conclusion but never concludes, in these last adventures of Promethea, the Family Strong and company. As a faithful ABC reader, all I know is that while I can hardly wait to see how this is going to be pulled off, I know it’s going to be good.

As for Jon’s interview with America’s Best Comics writer, it went very well, part of which you can now read within this special CBA issue. I couldn’t get much input into the interview (Jon talks a lot!

Anyway, I’ve since clocked something like 20 hours talking to Alan on the phone for my upcoming book, so I did get my chance to ask a few questions), but overall I was just content with being there. After the conversation was over, Jon and I had a very smooth trip home without incident. Any sore feeling I held against Jon was now gone and, since then, I’ve come to think of him as a pretty talented man and a very good friend. As crazy as this trip sounds, the entire experience was very enlightening. Just listening and watching the following interview take place was a great deal of fun. I hope you readers enjoy it, as well.

Above: Note the mystical serpents carved into Alan’s doorway to perception. Photo by Jon B. Cooke.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke & George Khoury Transcribed by the LongBox.com Staff Special Logo Treatment by Todd Klein As my esteemed colleague George Khoury relates in the “Destination: Northampton” article prefacing this piece, the following took place during a marathon nine-hour interview session in Alan Moore’s humble rowhouse home in Northampton, England, in May of 2002. Excised portions will appear in the forthcoming Khoury/Cooke book, Swampmen: Muck Monsters of the Comics in 2004. We trust that the renowned, award-winning writer—widely heralded as the medium’s finest scribe—needs no more introduction, but let’s just add that the man, looking surprisingly vibrant-eyed and youthful for his 48 years, is exactly the towering, long-haired, bearded, deep-voiced, dressed-all-in-black, amiable fellow we expected him to be. His living room, where we sat, had wands, strange symbols, and other various magician accessories decorating the walls, and the ceiling was painted as a starry night sky. On the wall behind the writer’s reading chair was a curious pattern of painted stars, which seemed to shimmer as endless swirls of delicate smoke (exotic fumes giving off an intoxicating, pungent scent) danced about Alan’s head, as George and Ye Ed fell under the spell of the storyteller’s magical presence. The writer copyedited the final transcript.

Above: Harbinger of the coming ABC Apocalypse (honestly, it’s a good thing!), Promethea.

Detail from JHW3’s cover art for the second collection. Courtesy of the artist. Opposite top: Imps of the divine and perverse, details from Promethea #12 (Feb. ’01). Art by JHW3 and Mick Gray. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC. Opposite bottom: José Villarrubia portrait of Alan Moore. Courtesy of and ©2003 José Villarrubia..

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Comic Book Artist: [After a discussion of under-appreciated fiction authors] Do you think, comparatively speaking, early in your career you were appreciated and loved? Is that relevant? Is that enough to drive the art itself?

Alan Moore: Early on, when I started to get into comics, it’s difficult to remember exactly what my motives were. I’m probably lying or editing here, but I think what I really wanted to do above anything was earn my living for just a short time doing comics, either drawing or writing them. At the start, when I first realized I was supporting myself by actually doing these two [“Maxwell the Magic Cat” and “Roscoe Moscow”] comic strips per week, I felt so incredibly successful. I was earning £45 per week. This is £2.50 more than I would have been getting on the dole.

CBA: That’s like $100 a week?

Alan: Right, it might be about $100 bucks a week. This would have been back in 1979 or something like that. It was not very much money. Not with a newborn baby and two adults and a cat.

CBA: But it felt good?

Alan: As soon as I got the £2.50 more, I realized I was earning my living doing something I loved. I felt so privileged and also realized that this was not going to last. But if I could just do it for a year, however long, then I could say, later on in my life, that I was a comics COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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professional once for a year. I managed to keep at it, though for the first couple of years, I expected it to all fall apart. I just thought this could all end at any moment and then I’d be back to signing on the dole or finding a job somewhere.

CBA: Was this ingrained fatalism? Or didn’t you have enough confidence in your own work?

Alan: There wasn’t a reason to have very much confidence in my work at that time. I hadn’t done very much and it wasn’t very good. I still viewed myself as an artist and not a very good one.

CBA: Did you think you had potential?

Alan: As an artist, when I started I thought maybe I’d learn. That’s what I hoped.

“If I just do this weekly strip, surely to God, I will learn to do something that is both fast and acceptable to a certain standard.” But, no, that did not happen. I talked to people like Steve Moore and he said that, “I think that most professionals I know use a brush.”

It would look horrible, so I would abandon the brush halfway through the drawing and cover everything with stipple. I learned early on that you don’t need talent at all to stipple; you just need manic patience. [laughter] CBA: Look at Maxon Crumb.

Alan: You do all kinds of chrome effects and things like that. Most editors of British music papers at that time were not incredibly sophisticated in their visual tastes. They would be impressed by the stippling or just sorry for you because you were obviously going to go blind by the time that you were 30 and they thought, “We might as well give him some work while he still has his sight.” No, I couldn’t produce anything of a standard that I felt was adequate with enough speed to make a living out of it. I could just about scrape up a living, but it was after about two or three years of doing that when I started to figure that I was never going to be able to compete with people I was seeing in the issues of 2000 AD, which I was buying back then. People like Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Kevin O’Neill, Ian Gibson… these were incredible, accomplished artists who seemingly could turn out remarkable work very, very quickly.

When I originally quit my job at the Gas Board and decided to make a go at comic book work, I started upon some insane space opera that I was going to write and draw myself purely on spec for 2000 AD. The editors would, of course, see it, realize how brilliant it was, and agree to publish it. I’d gotten the whole thing worked out. Three whole books, about 400 pages long. I got the entire continuity, interesting characters, and everything like that. I had one page finished and one page penciled and half-inked and one page half-penciled, and that was in six months. I suddenly thought, “Why am I doing this to myself? I know I’m not going to finish this.

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I’ve not got the talent. I’ve not got the patience. I’ve not got the time, the craft, anything, so why did I start this huge epic that I am not going to finish?” The answer came to me, “You started it because you are not going to finish it.” Suddenly, my inner workings were made clear to me. “If you finish it, you will have to send it in and it will be judged and it might turn out that all the talent you thought you had wasn’t there. You might do this work and you might send it in and someone might say that it is rubbish or, ‘It’s okay, but we can’t use it,’ and then you’d be crushed. You’d be crushed and you wouldn’t have your dream anymore.”

So I was trying to manufacture a situation where I never had to actually prove myself, so that in the future I could always say, “If I’d tried, I could’ve been a contender,” and I thought that was some of the most f*cked-up thinking that I had ever heard. Because of this peculiar cowardice, it’s better to throw away any real chance of actually being able to use and develop your talent for the sake of having this sad little wistful old man’s might-have-been? That was part of realizing I was my own worst enemy and that I had to ignore these attempts by the mind to avoid taking responsibility.

At that point, a light went on, and I thought, “This is entirely up to me. I know that if I put some work into it, I can do something that can sell, and I know what to do: Do a couple of short episodes that I think are manageable.” Little half-page things to sell and I did a couple of them and sent them in and I knew that this was going to work out fine.

CBA: Because you had that epiphany?

Alan: As soon as I drew these wretched “Roscoe Moscow” strips for Sounds, put them in an envelope with a little note saying, “I’m a cartoonist. I noticed that you used to run two half-page strips a week and for a long while you’ve only been running one. If you are looking for another strip might you consider this one?”

We didn’t even have a phone, so I got a telegram back from him, the only telegram I’ve ever received in my life.

CBA: That was urgent.

Alan: Yes, at the end of every sentence it said “STOP.” “Alan Moore. Stop. Loved your comic. Stop.” [laughter] He wrote, “Phone me up.” So I phoned him up from a pay phone in the middle of wasteland of the sink estate where I was living at the time, and I kept having to put more coins in the slot. He said, “The second strip will need redrawing, but we like the style” He said he could use the strip and it was as easy as that and I was working.

I got the “Maxwell the Magic Cat” strip shortly after, and I was expecting it all to end at any moment, but at least I was doing it and it was working. When it didn’t end after a little while and when I managed

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Above: Typical British comics weekly (though this issue is technically a seasonal entry), The Seaside Comic, #6 (June ’35).

Comics in the British Isles have been hugely successful over the decades as a cheap form of children’s entertainment. ©1935 C. Arthur Pearson. Below: Courtesy of Robert Miller and his fabulous Sarge’s Comics of New London, Conn., here’s a Mick Anglo spread from the 1959 Miracleman Annual. ©2003 the respective copyright holder.

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to make the move gradually into comic writing, gradually by realizing that I was never going to be able to draw quickly enough or well enough to make a living, but I had learned something about telling stories with pictures even if I couldn’t actually draw the pictures myself very well. I realized that I’d learned something about dialogue, about short story structure, and things like that. I mainly learned it by making terrible mistakes, but I learned it nonetheless. I said to Steve Moore… Steve is one of the major influences on my life.

I met him when I was 14.

CBA: Did you seek him out?

Alan: Yes, I did. Back in the ’60s, when I was 12, 13, 14, a lot of the British comics at the time were the DC Thomson titles—Beano, Dandy— juvenile titles which had wonderful work in them by some great artists. In the ‘60s, there was a company in London, Odhams, that decided to compete against DC Thomson by getting artist/writers like Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid to come work for them down south.

Odhams offered them more money. The publisher was also trying to be a bit more modern in their outlook, as this was the ’60s. They wanted to be more up-to-date. They were aware what Marvel Comics was doing in America, so they got a license to reprint, in black-&-white, most of the Marvel stories which they spread across two or three titles. These were weekly British comics titles. Alan Class was publishing these thick black-&-white books, Creepy World, which had reprinted Atlas stories quite often.

CBA: The Marvel/Atlas mystery stories?

Alan: Yes, but Odhams was reprinting the Marvel super-hero stories. They first brought out three titles, Wham!, Smash!, and Pow! Wham! reprinted, in short six-page sections, Fantastic Four from #1 onwards. Pow! reprinted Spider-Man, and Smash! had The Incredible Hulk, or something like that. They were reprinting, in black-&-white,

the very early Marvel super-hero stories.

Now, in the same issues of Wham!, Smash!, and Pow! were these great new scripts by British comic professionals and they were a mixture of super-hero and comedy (British comics had a very eclectic mix back then) and Odhams was also modeling themselves after Marvel in terms of style. They started calling themselves Power Comics with a picture of a fist in a circle as a logo.

CBA: Coming at you or going up?

Alan: It was coming at you, so it didn’t get confused with the Black Panthers or anything like that. They started to run a Bullpentype page… I forget what they called it; did they call it the Sweatshop like we did in [the early 1990s Image comic] 1963?

Anyway, it was something like that and the two editors, middle-aged British blokes who had been working in comics for years, suddenly thought, “Wow, look at all this Marvel Bullpen Bulletins stuff, all this Stan and Jack stuff! We’ll call ourselves Alf and Cos,” and they’d talk to the readers through the Power Pack, or Sweatshop, or whatever it was, and they created this great atmosphere.

CBA: They didn’t act like they were staffers?

Alan: They talked like it was a bullpen and gave names to whoever was working there. They wouldn’t mention Marvel; they would just be the editors of Power Comics, and they’d gab and talk about anybody who was around the office, and what projects they had coming up. When these titles were doing well, they brought out two titles in a slightly different format, Fantastic and Terrific.

CBA: They weren’t stapled, right?

Alan: They weren’t much better than the average comic, a little bit bigger. They got better quality covers and mainly had American reprint material. If I remember correctly, Fantastic reprinted The X-Men and The Avengers was reprinted in Terrific.

CBA: Isn’t that where Barry Smith got his start?

Alan: Barry Smith used to draw the back covers. I remember buying a color proof of one of Barry’s back covers when I was about 15 and getting him to sign it when I met him back then. I thought he was the most glamorous individual I had ever met in my life.

CBA: He was cool yet classy, well-dressed, well-groomed.

Alan: I can’t remember if he was actually wearing a panda-skin coat when I met him… perhaps that’s what I’ve added to my memory.

CBA: Did he have a goatee at the time?

Alan: I think he was clean-shaven, but he had the long golden pre-Raphaelite hair. He was great. He knocked me out. Barry had drawn this picture of the Angel from The X-Men of which I remember he told me it had been printed incorrectly as he meant for the character to be upside-down, swooping with his head downward, but they printed the character right-way up.

CBA: He was pissed?

Alan: He was pissed.

CBA: Did he tell you that long afterwards?

Alan: No, this was when I was 14. This was the only time I ever met or spoke to Barry.

CBA: So how old was he at the time?

Alan: He was 20, something like that.

CBA: So he had already been published in the U.S.?

Alan: That’s right. I’d already seen that first Daredevil or X-Men he did and he was t here at the second British comic convention in ’69.

CBA: That was real early on his career, when Barry was still aping Kirby?

Alan: I loved it. It was terrific.

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were a lot of 1940s CBA: Right! He added something different that made it fun. characters whom I had no Maybe a little Steranko influence? idea about. So I thought Alan: I remember seeing some pages from an Avengers story that was never printed, which featured Barry’s pencils. I remember it was a Steve Moore was probably a Roy Thomas story. I remember it had Rick Jones in his Bucky costume comic expert, so he would be able to help me. I wrote him a and he’s walking around the Avengers mansion, and there’s this letter that said, “I’m doing beautifully laid out dinner table with tea pots. this book and I’ve got this CBA: That was a spin-off project. Those were printed in CBA #2, huge list of characters that courtesy of Barry.

I’ve got no idea about, but if Alan: On the page, there’s a mirror and Bucky looks into it and there’s any way you could there’s a weird Kirbyesque alien on the other side which I thought help me…?” was great. Perhaps if it had dialogue balloons on it, it would have Amazingly, Steve wrote been ordinary. [laughter] I’ve noticed that if I can’t understand back saying, “I probably something, that makes it all that more exotic. I remember that couldn’t do it, but I’ll try my happening looking at some Spanish Dracula comics which were best.” The correspondence brilliant. They had art by Estaban Maroto. started from there and I CBA: Did you ever see the Warren translation? eventually met Steve at the Alan: When I first saw them, they were in Spanish and I couldn’t same convention where I met understand a word and I thought these have got to be the most Barry. Barry was doing some intelligent and brilliant comics ever. You could just tell by looking at them that they are so intellectual. But eventually I read those transla- brilliant stuff for Steve’s fanzine and Steve was doing Orpheus tions and they turned out to be total rubbish. and Aspect. Aspect was the first CBA: They weren’t translated, just rewritten terribly into English. and then it was upgraded into Alan: I thought by somebody who didn’t even speak Spanish.

Orpheus, which was marvelous.

They made up a story around the pictures.

Barry and Steve Parkhouse CBA: Marvel-style [laughter] produced this story which I got the Alan: “Marvel-style,” as we call it. impression was never from one script. It was Back then, in Fantastic and Terrific, they had the bullpen page probably three or four fragments joined together into this talking about people around the office, giving them Marvel-style weird, post-modern framework, but I loved it. There were these names. They started talking about their office boy, junior editor great Kirbyesque characters, who looked like knights. The strip was “Sunny” Steve Moore. I think they even had a tiny, indecipherable, called “The Paradox Man” (which has probably been reprinted gray, blurry photograph of Sunny Steve when he must have been again somewhere). about 16 or 17, modeling the Hulk T-shirt or something. They By that point, Steve and I got together about two or three times announced that Sunny Steve and a couple of pals of his were putting a year. He’d visit Northampton or I’d visit his place, and Steve would together the first British comic book convention. introduce me to a lot of stuff I had never seen before. He’d gotten Sunny Steve published a fanzine called Kapow, and he, Phil Clarke (who now runs the Nostalgia Comics shop up in Birmingham), the big color EC collections and the Ballantine paperback reprints of Mad comics. and Kaye Hawkins (who I believe became Phil’s wife) put together CBA: Did you see those early on? the first U.K. convention in Birmingham.

Alan: Yes, when I was younger, because they were available.

CBA: Which is north of Northampton?

CBA: Did you recognize that the comics were different than the Alan: Yes, about 40 miles north of here. magazine?

CBA: Is that coal country?

Alan: Yes, but I also bought the magazine Alan: No, not quite. It’s still the Midlands. from early on and liked that, as well.

CBA: Is it poor? Working-class?

CBA: Did you always know Mad Alan: The working-class is on the way out. Most people are was a comic? middle-class and Birmingham is quite a big city in the Midlands.

Alan: No. I first bought the CBA: Was it a good place to have a comic convention? Wouldn’t magazine in 1961, when I was London normally be the natural choice?

Alan: I think the fact that Birmingham was more central than London was a more practical pick for the first one. I didn’t get to it but apparently all the other comic fans in Britain did.

CBA: You were only 40 miles away and you couldn’t go?

Alan: I was young.

CBA: You didn’t go to London until…?

Alan: I didn’t go to London on my own until I was about 13 or 14, which sounds ridiculous now, but back them to go to London at that age was quite forward. At least, it was for the neighborhood I came from.

Steve was running this convention in Birmingham, where I couldn’t get to, but I was able to become an associate member and that meant I got all of the convention booklets and wouldn’t pay so much and all the rest. In the material, I noticed Steve Moore had placed an Above: Power Comics Group’s Terrific ad asking for subscribers for his fanzine, which and Fantastic featured their own had his address. I had this mad idea at the time versions of Stan Lee in the letters page of compiling an encyclopedia of every superpersonas of “Alf and Bart.” ©2003 hero who had ever existed and I was going to the respective copyright holders. do a drawing of each one but I realized there June 2003

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Above: Two Alan Class titles from the 1960s, often featuring reprints from various U.S. comics publishers, including Atlas/Marvel, Tower, American Comics Group, and even Archie’s Radio Comics heroes.

Below: A very young Barry Smith contributed scores of pin-ups to the Brit Marvel reprint Power Comics Group’s Terrific and Fantastic. ©2003 the respective copyright holders.

11

Top: As a young teen, Alan Moore caught his first glimpse of R. Crumb’s work and American underground comix when Oz, a British alternative magazine, reprinted Crumb’s Angelfood McSpade (seen inset upper right, reproduced from Zap Comix #2 (June ’68)). Oz ©2003 the respective copyright holder; Angelfood McSpade ©2003 Robert Crumb.

Above: Behind this Charles Burns cover, Moore discussed Crumb’s influence in an essay for Monte Beauchamp’s Blab! #3 (Sept. ’88).

Comic Book Artist will be showcasing the remarkable Blab! and its talented editor—both still going strong and now published by Fantagraphic Books—in an upcoming issue of CBA Volume 2. ©2003 Monte Beauchamp.

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about eight. It was bit too old for me but I loved it.

CBA: Because it was rude?

Alan: Not because it was rude; it was just incomprehensible.

CBA: Too many American references or because it was corrupting?

Alan: I was eight and had no idea who Jimmy Hoffa was, who Fidel Castro was, who Caroline Kennedy was. I had no idea about any of this stuff but it looked funny.

Then I started buying the Mad paperbacks and these were the ones reprinting the magazine, like The Bedside Mad. When I came across the reprints of Mad comics—The Mad Reader, Inside Mad, Utterly Mad—I immediately knew that these were different, not the same.

CBA: Did it seem corrupting?

Alan: Yes, these were actually a lot cooler.

CBA: “This could blow your mind!” I read “Starchie” and that was the wildest thing I ever saw. To me, it’s still the funniest satirical comic book story ever.

Alan: It certainly is, and look where it got them.

Archie Comics went after EC. CBA: Harvey Kurtzman took on America with that story. He took something totally antiseptic, completely fake and corrupted it by showing the reality.

Alan: Kurtzman just took the tag line “America’s Typical Teenager” and he took it literally. If he was America’s typical teenager, what would he really be doing? He’d be running rackets in high school.

That was a great story, but it obviously didn’t impress the people at Archie Comics too much.

CBA: Think about the portrayal of women in that story! Remember they were drawn exactly the same, one a brunette, the other a blonde, and they both wanted to be f*cked by the guys! Reggie ended up being the guy who got ’em, of course.

Alan: As I understand it, Archie Comics was instrumental in setting up the Comics Code which stipulated that no comic book could have “horror” or “terror” in its title, which seemed directly aimed against EC. You can’t help but think that maybe “Starchie” had something to do with EC being run out of the business because their iconic, pure, wholesome Archie figure had been laughed at.

CBA: They immediately put Gaines out of business. How long did the comic book last after “Starchie”?

Alan: The one that I remember weirding me out—in a good way—was the Robinson Crusoe story where, at the end, you’ve got this Robinson Crusoe character

standing in his bedroom (which he built with nothing but basic ingenuity and a few simple tools) and he’s created a woman out of goat skins with the brains of a murdered man animating it, and I’m thinking, “Is what we have here a dead goat with a man’s brain that has been made into a woman?” [laughter] “I’ll call her Frankenstein!

It’s amazing what man can make with his own ingenuity and a few simple tools.” He’s steaming with lust for this goat skin! It’s homosexuality, necrophilia, and bestiality, all in one!

CBA: Did Steve also introduce you to the other EC Comics?

Alan: Yes. He actually had several of the original EC Comics. He’d been earning money slightly earlier than I, so he’d been able to buy the comics for what were then exorbitant prices like £2.50.

CBA: Did you view the Kurtzman material as worlds above Feldstein’s science-fiction and horror books?

Alan: Oh, yes. Once I was aware that stuff existed I was still fairly limited in how accessible it was. I’d gotten all the Mad paperbacks that reprinted the comics I could lay my hands on. I bought the Ballantine paperbacks that reprinted EC horror and science-fiction stories, Tales from the Crypt and Tales of the Incredible. It was wonderful and such nice way to read them as well. They were all brilliant stories, like “Blind Alley,” and those great little Jack Davis stories.

CBA: The George Evans story where the walls were all lined with razor blades and the lights are turned out and he’s got to get out of the maze!

Alan: The guy is being chased through this maze by a rabid dog and realizes that there are razor blades on the sides of the walls and somebody turns the lights out in the last panel!

CBA: While we’re led up to this, we learn he’s such a smart ass saying, “I’ll get out of this! This is a cinch.” Then the lights are out, the dogs are going to get him, he’s going to fall into the razors, and it’s going to hurt a lot. [laughter] Alan: That was one of those morality plays EC would do where he’s been persecuting a lot of blind people and this is their revenge.

CBA: He was a landlord. The bad guys were always landlords.

Alan: Steve would show me loads of this stuff, and at one point, he was running a shop with Stan Nichols. They would have material more towards the underground comix end of the spectrum, so I was picking up all these American undergrounds as they came out or least as many as I could lay my hands on. So Steve really taught me a lot about comics.

CBA: Can I ask a brief aside about R. Crumb? When did you first see underground comix?

Alan: I was about 13 or 14. These were not American copies of the underground comics. When I was 13 or 14, I started to notice the British underground magazine Oz, where I first started to see Robert Crumb. I was hanging out in the Market Square bookstore in Northampton, which had magazines and comics. Some magazines were hanging on bulldog clips high up, out of reach, and they always looked scandalous and forbidden. I knew that they were probably

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dirty and my mum would probably not want me to read them. But I remember the cover of one issue had this beautiful reproduction of Robert Crumb’s exaggerated female black character, Angelfood McSpade. Seeing that caused an explosion in my mind. I even wrote an essay on it, for Monte Beauchamp’s Blab!

CBA: What was the essay about?

Alan: I was saying there was this picture and it did lots of things at once, but one aspect was that I realized the art style was exactly like the cozy American cartoon books that had always existed. It was of such an archetypal style that somehow you knew you’d seen it somewhere before. (As it turned out, I later realized I had seen Crumb’s style before, on the bubblegum cards and greeting cards he did a few years before.) What impressed me about that cover was the fact the sexuality of it was so open. That was shocking and, on one level, the content was of a grotesque, racist caricature.

But the fact that the presentation was so knowing showed it was actually making fun of and exposing racism. Crumb was putting it up front. I thought that this was fantastic and it wasn’t until later that I actually started to come across whole strips by Crumb after buying my first underground comix when I was about 15. Then I would be reading all the Crumb strips I could find.

CBA: How old were you when you first got high?

Alan: 15. I was 15 in the end of 1968. ’69 was the year when it all started happening for me. There was just all this incredible material around and stuff that was happening. I was 15. I was adolescent and had discovered psychedelic drugs.

CBA: Did you hang out with a lot of peers that did drugs?

Alan: I was at the grammar school. That was seen as quite a good school. I got into it by passing my 11+, an exam you took at age 11 which determined the rest of your life. It was completely unfair, but I passed it and was able to go to a better school. It wasn’t prep school; it was secondary school.

CBA: You had to pass just to go on to secondary school?

Alan: All kids took the exam when they were 11. If you passed, you went on to a grammar school or an equivalent level of education where it was middle-class kids. I was one of the few working-class kids in the grammar school. We were kids who got there because we had actually passed our 11+. In my class of 26, there were about six or seven who passed. The other 19 would have gone onto ordinary secondary schools, which were not so good.

CBA: These were pre-vocational schools?

Alan: They were more for working-class kids.

CBA: Do you mean they wouldn’t teach literature in one school but they would in another?

Alan: No, it’s just that the standards of education and teachers and equipment would be better at the middle-class school than the working-class school. They were some good teachers, I’m sure, at the working-class secondary school, but it was an unbalanced situation and very much a class thing.

The class thing in Britain is very difficult to understand if you’re not British. It must be almost completely incomprehensible if you come from outside Britain, but it shaped an awful lot of society as well as shaped an awful lot of my family life.

The working-class was only educated because the upper-class needed people to turn up on time to work the conveyer belts. They needed us to at least be able to read and write, so that we could sign pay-slips and things like that. This is my family. We were removed June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

from rural Northamptonshire towards the end of the 19th century and into the urban center of Northamptonshire, along with a lot of other rural families, purely because they wanted people to man the factories. Now, they needed to educate them for that. The lower-class were not given any education before but now they had to be educated enough to work the factories.

It was not considered dangerous to educate the working-class because they were obviously genetically inferior to the middle-class. The reason the working-class was the workingclass was because they were stupid, brutish, and had the bad luck to have been born into it.

Our religion was eugenics.

We tend to think these days that it was only something those horrible Nazis did.

America had a eugenics program at the turn of the century. Sweden and most of these countries thought eugenics was a great idea. Over here, we didn’t need eugenics because we already had the class system that was working perfectly well anyway.

The working-class was considered to be genetically inferior, so it didn’t matter if you educated them because these people would always be hunched over and weak and stupid anyway.

Then, when I was a child, they made this incredible mistake. They started providing school children with free milk and it suddenly turned out that it wasn’t genetics; it was a calcium deficiency. In the generation before mine, rickets had been everywhere but when we got the free milk program there were suddenly these working class children who were very tall, very healthy, very strong, very intelligent and had higher expectations than their parents about what they wanted out of life. That’s a dangerous situation because this was happening in the ’60s. I’m sure that a lot of the more forward-thinking politicians were thinking, “This is bad because if we raise these people’s intelligence, we raise their expectations. If we raise expectations just at a time when automation is starting to take its first big bite out of the work force, and where we project in the 1970s we’re going to have a lot more unemployed people, then do we really want an educated and healthy unemployed section of the population that might not feel all together happy with the lot they have been given in life?” This was when Margaret Thatcher, who was Health Minister at the time, long before she was Prime Minister, decided to take away free school milk. This is why, when she was running for Prime Minister, everyone called her “Milk-Snatcher Thatcher.” [laughter] While I was in school, she realized this horrid situation was threatening.

CBA: Steve Moore was your entré into comics?

Alan: I’ve known Steve since I was 14. It came to a point where I was looking for some way to make a living that didn’t involve drawing, and it struck me that Steve had been writing comics and could

Opposite page, inset bottom: Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad comics proved an enormous influence on Alan and the writer cited, of all things, Harvey and Wally Wood’s expert super-hero parody, “Superduperman,” #4 (Apr. ’53), as being the inspiration behind his groundbreaking super-hero masterpiece, Miracleman. Panel detail ©2003 William M. Gaines, Agent.

Inset left & below: 2000 AD, the innovative British comics weekly, reinvigorated a staid industry when it debuted in ’77. Judge Dredd quickly became the title’s flagship strip. At left is Brian Bolland’s cover art for #173 (Aug. 16, ’80).

Below is detail for Brian’s Judge Dredd #2 (Dec. ’83) cover. ©2003 Rebellion.

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Above: Alan Moore and artist Ian Gibson’s three-volume Halo Jones saga in the pages of 2000 AD followed the life experiences of a young girl in the Earth’s future… and beyond. This detail is lifted from the back cover of the singlevolume collection, The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones, currently available from Titan Books.

Courtesy of the publisher. ©2003 Rebellion.

Right inset: Alan Moore collaborated with U.K. comics veteran Jim Baikie (interviewed in this issue) on Skizz for 2000 AD in the early 1980s. The epic is currently available as a trade paperback collection from Titan Books. This cover detail (by Baikie) appears courtesy of the publisher. ©2003 Rebellion.

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teach me the basics, so I asked and he told me how to lay out a script. I wrote a Judge Dredd story and sent it to Steve. He went through it ruthlessly and pointed out all the things wrong with it. I rewrote it and sent it into the estimable Alan Grant at 2000 AD. Alan was a brilliant editor.

He must have brought so much new talent in. He could see when someone had something and he knew how to encourage it. So I got a letter back from Alan saying, “We can’t use the ‘Judge Dredd’ story, we’ve already got a couple of fine writers doing a great job on that strip. Why would we want to use somebody new? However, there was some interesting things in your storytelling, so write us some little, short, twist-ending fillers, and we’ll see how they go.”

So I wrote one more that got rejected and then sent in “The Killer in the Cab,” [2000 AD #170, 1980] a science-fiction, twist-ending story like the old ECs. He sent it back saying, “I think you need to change the ending.” So I changed it, sent it back, and I got back a picture of cheering robots saying, “Congratulations! You’re in!”

From that point on, I started writing these little short stories and at the same time I got accepted to do back-up stories in Doctor Who. That was great.

CBA: Did Steve ever write for 2000 AD? Alan: Back in its early days. Steve had edited lots of British comics first with Odhams. Later, when Odhams was absorbed by Fleetway, Steve was editing their comic line. Steve, Kevin O’Neill, and Steve Parkhouse were all in an office together.

Kevin stills reminisces fondly about this peculiar game—apparently only played in the British comic book industry—called KeepyUppie where you have a ball of something and kick it around the office trying not to let it hit the ground. Kevin remembers that around this time they had a ball made of tin foil that was quite dense and they were kicking this around when Steve Moore walked through the door into the office and this ball of tin foil struck him right in the testicles. [laughter] Steve has either blotted this from his memory or Kevin was hallucinating.

CBA: Dredd is the main character in 2000 AD. Didn’t you ever want to write him?

Alan: The nearest I ever came to writing a Judge Dredd story was that Batman team-up.

Brian Bolland was going to be the artist. They asked, “Do you want to do a Judge Dread/Batman crossover with Brian?” I said, “Yes, that sounds good, but John Wagner is the Judge Dredd writer. I don’t want to tread on his toes. It’s his character as far as I’m concerned.”

They said, “No, we’ve talked to John and he is perfectly all right about it.” I said,

“Well, if you’re sure then I’ll do this proposal.” So I did it, sent it in and, as I remember it, it was at a Forbidden Planet party where I bumped into John Wagner and he wasn’t very pleased with me about “this ‘Judge Dredd’ thing.” I said, “Jesus, John! I was told you were completely cool with it,” and he said, “You shouldn’t believe everything you’re told.” I accepted that, apologized, and then went around to the person who had proposed the book. I told him I was dropping out of the project and didn’t want anything to do with it. I was rather upset I had been put into an awkward position with John, when it wasn’t something that I wanted to begin with. At that point, I bowed out because I’ve got the greatest respect for John Wagner and the work he did on “Judge Dredd.”

George Khoury: He was the person who got you thinking about writing comics?

Alan: That’s right. It was the intelligence of John’s work along with the writing of Pat Mills and the stuff they were doing in 2000 AD. George: 2000 AD was where some of the most revolutionary stuff was happening.

Alan: …in mainstream comics. I remember I was doing stuff for Sounds and noticed 2000 AD. I noticed that this comic was funny, it was intelligent, very often beautifully drawn and here might be the place in British comics for the things I wanted to do.

CBA: Who was editing 2000 AD? Dez Skinn?

Alan: Oh, no.

George: Dez was at Marvel. 2000 AD happened first.

Then Dez started Marvel U.K., wanting it to be another 2000 AD. Alan: I knew Dez Skinn had been involved in fandom back when I was. He was working at British Marvel repackaging American super-hero material but also producing some new stuff. Fleetway, who was publishing 2000 AD, was a completely different—and much bigger—concern. British Marvel was always a very, very small shoestring operation.

CBA: Marvel U.K. got most of the material from New York?

Alan: That’s where they got most of the reprint material. The Mighty World of Marvel came out and they also had original material

by Steve Moore, Steve Parkhouse, David Lloyd, and Steve Dillon, who were working under Dez Skinn. They had a certain small budget, got reprint material from America (which didn’t cost them anything), so they could afford to put some new, homegrown strips in there. At first, these were all American Marvel characters. “The Hulk,” which may have been drawn by Dave Lloyd; Steve Moore was writing a “Nick Fury, Agent of Shield” strip which I think had some of the earliest art

by Steve Dillon; and Steve Parkhouse was writing and drawing “The Black Knight.” Parkhouse made that strip into a Celtic mythology-based strip and, at one point, he had Captain Britain turn up. There was one point where Dez Skinn was publishing a humor magazine, Frantic, which I submitted to. It was a British Marvel Mad knock-off. I knew there was to be the Frantic Winter Special [Oct. ’79] and I had done two pages of wordless Santa Claus gags under my “Curt Vile” guise.

It wasn’t very funny but it was two pages of work.

Dez Skinn then left or was fired from British Marvel. As I remember it, Paul Neary took over it as acting head.

George: There was bad blood between Neary and Skinn.

Alan: That’s what I think a lot of it was about and there were other people involved that I didn’t actually know.

CBA: So Neary ceased being an artist and became an editor?

George: He was an artist and an editor.

Alan: When Dez Skinn had been ousted then Paul took COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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over as the main editor of British Marvel.

CBA: Paul is a solid artist.

Alan: I’ve been aware of Paul’s work since I was 14 or 15 because he used to do stuff in British fanzines.

So, Paul had Steve Moore writing the lead script in Doctor Who with art by Dave Gibbons. Steve was also writing the back-up strips, “Tales of the Doctor Who Universe,” and doing stuff with Steve Dillon and Dave Lloyd. So I did a story, which I sent into Paul and then he commissioned these four two-page chapters that ran over four weeks. That was with David Lloyd and it was called “Black Legacy” [Doctor Who Weekly #35-38, 1980], one of the first stories I wrote. Then I remember that I started doing stories for 2000 AD. So, that was the start of my writing career, though I was still drawing at that time. The writing started out as a way to supplement my drawing career and then the drawing career became too timeconsuming to supplement my writing career.

I started working at Marvel and then they sacked Steve Moore on the main strip. This was after I’d done two or three of the back-up strips for Doctor Who. I think I was next in line to take over the lead strip and I’d gotten a very precarious hold on a comic writing career.

But, on the other hand, this was Steve Moore they’d sacked, so I said I couldn’t work on Doctor any more. The assignment was important to me money-wise, but this was Steve Moore. He was my best mate.

So I said that I didn’t want to do any more work for Doctor Who, but I was still okay working at Marvel.

When I stopped working on Doctor Who, it was a big decision but also Warrior was starting at the same time. This was Dez Skinn’s attempt to perhaps get revenge on Marvel.

(He actually used Paul Neary as an artist on Warrior.)

At the beginning, there was Dez starting up Warrior and he asked his original crowd—Steve Parkhouse, Steve Moore, Dave Lloyd, Steve Dillon, all the people that he’d been working with on The Mighty World of Marvel—to work on the new magazine. I think Steve Moore recommended me and Dez had seen the article where I was interviewed about what it was like to be a fledgling writer. They asked me if there was any project I would like to do in the future and I said, just off the top of my head, that it would be great if someone revived Marvelman. I had a really brilliant idea as to how to do that character in the 1980s. Dez had seen that so he got in touch and said that he was going to get the rights to Marvelman for his new comic and would I like to write it? I said, “Sure.” [Warrior #1-18, 20, 21, 198284; Marvelman Special #1, 1984] It was around this time when British Marvel relaunched “Captain Britain” with Dave Thorpe/Alan Davis strips. Alan Davis, who had worked on “Marvelman” with me, had taken over as writer on “Captain Britain” after Dave Thorpe left the strip. Alan then asked me to write it [Marvel Super-Heroes #386-388, 1982; Daredevils #1-11, 1983; The Mighty World of Marvel #7-13, 1983-84]. So it all happened at the same time, so I had these two ongoing strips in Warrior plus I was writing “Captain Britain.” Then 2000 AD suddenly started offering me work because they saw it was obvious that I wanted to do a series. So I was offered “Skizz” (on which Jim Baikie did great artwork). I’d never seen the movie E.T., but I knew “Skizz” was a knock-off of that. They said, “Spielberg has this film out about a boy who adopts an alien, so we want you to do a knock-off of that called ‘Skizz.’” I didn’t think the concept was that interesting and I wasn’t interested in the seeing the film when it came out, but if I could do it in modern-day Britain and could have it set in Birmingham, an ugly industrial city in the middle of Britain, I thought I could perhaps give it an edge.

“Skizz” [2000 AD #308-330, 1983] had a lot of unemployed characters and it’s very much a Thatcherite Britain. It’s a lot less June 2003

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sentimental and cute than Spielberg’s version, which wasn’t very impressive when I finally did see it. So when I finished “Skizz,” they offered me “Halo Jones.”

George: Of all the strips you did, “Halo Jones” was your favorite?

Alan: I loved “Halo Jones” [2000 AD #376-385, 405-415, 451-466, 198486]. They asked if I wanted to do another ongoing strip. I was going to be doing it with Ian Gibson who, I thought, drew beautiful and distinctive women. At that time you had all the British girl comics— Bunty, Mandy, Judy—and they weren’t that great but they were comics for girls.

CBA: Who published those?

Alan: DC Thomson. These were stories of girls adventures, blind ballerinas… [laughter] Writers like Pat Mills and John Wagner cut their teeth on those books. When Wagner started writing “Judge Dredd,” he’d already been writing for 10 or 11 years on the girls comics line.

CBA: Girls continue to significantly buy comics?

Alan: Back then.

CBA: No, I mean now. Yesterday, I was trying to get time in front of a comic-book rack but there was this little girl hogging all the space.

Of course, I was a tad impatient, but I realized it was nice to see a kid spending time around a comics stand,

Left inset and below: Alan Moore’s career exploded in England when his Warrior work appeared in the form of the outstanding comics serials, “Marvelman” and “V for Vendetta.” Inset left is David Lloyd’s cover painting for Warrior #11 (July ’83). Below is a detail of Mick Austin’s cover painting for Warrior #7 (Nov. ’82). V for Vendetta ©2003 Alan Moore & David Lloyd. Marvelman ©2003 the respective copyright holder.

Warrior © 1982, ’83 Quality Communications., Ltd.

something I really haven’t seen since the ’70s (and, even then, it was never a little girl).

Alan: There used to be an audience for girls comics in Britain, but around the early ’80s the girl titles all started to drop like flies, one by one. At the time, I thought, that means girl comic readers are now really only left with two things: The better boys comics like 2000 AD and the humor titles for younger readers. 2000 AD was famous at that time for all of its characters being big boys with guns. You had Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Robo-Hunter, and they were all macho.

CBA: Did you know a lot of women? Did you have aunts?

Alan: Working-class families were matriarchal.

CBA: Are they still?

Alan: I don’t know about these days. The working-class in this country has largely disintegrated and there’s an underclass, so I don’t know if there is any center to the family these days. Back then in my house, was my mum, my dad, me, my brother, my grandmothers, and we lived in my gran’s house. Prior to me being born, there had been 10 people living there. There had been three children and seven adults living in the house before I was born. My gran was very much the focus of the household. I’ve got lots of aunts. My primary school where I was until 11 was mixed school. I was used to girls. I liked girls.

CBA: Did girls like you?

Alan: Some. I think that I was quite a frightening teenager. I was a little bit creepy.

CBA: You are a frightening-looking man.

Alan: People talk about how they remember hearing girls discussing them. “Isn’t he cute?” or whatever. The only discussion I ever over15

Opposite page: Panel from The Saga of the Swamp Thing #23 (Apr. ’84), “Another Green World.” Steve Bissette, pencils; John Totleben, inks. ©2003 DC Comics.

Below: The comics assignment that truly launched Alan Moore as a comics creator of superstar proportions, was his work on Saga of the Swamp Thing in the 1980s, where the writer immediately reinvented the character and returned the title, with collaborators Steve Bissette and John Totleben, to its roots as a horror title. This painting detail by Steve and John is from The Comics Journal #93 (Sept.’84) cover.

Swamp Thing ©2003 DC Comics.

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heard about me was when some girl, who was actually on my side in the discussion, was saying that I was misunderstood rather than evil. [laughter] CBA: A lot of the content of space operas is about macho heroes, the supremacy of humans, the subjugation of women or aliens. We love to use aliens as the villains because they are not human, they are “different,” and therefore okay to kill. But in this same genre, you had a humanity in your work early on.

Alan: I’ve always said that I don’t really believe in entertaining.

Obviously, if my work doesn’t entertain, then nobody will read it, but if the only purpose is to entertain, then there’s no point in me writing it. So, yes, I try to do stuff that is entertaining, but which will also be saying something to people that will be, even in some minor way, important. It may be just telling an insightful joke or expressing some philosophical point. I’ve felt I should speak with my own human voice and people are free to accept or reject my ideas, but at least I have been heard. That voice is what defines me.

With “Halo Jones,” I didn’t want to do a future heroine in any traditional sense, but rather something about an ordinary woman who just happens to be in the future. It starts off in this environment called the Hoop, which is anchored somewhere off Manhattan.

CBA: It’s in the water?

Alan: It’s part of a poverty reduction program which is not making people less poor; it’s getting them out of the way and putting them where you can’t see them. There’s this community living on this Hoop, which is very crowded and there is at least one alien species living there as well, largely a despised alien species. These four or five unemployed women are sharing a house. There are more women than men and everybody is vegan. Most people are completely unemployed.

CBA: Do they have a clothing budget?

Alan: They get a certain amount of credits every week that they can spend on food and stuff like that. It’s unemployment. The central character is this ordinary girl who is completely trapped in this environment where she has been born, and she wants desperately to get out. That’s the whole story. The first book mainly revolves around a shopping expedition.

CBA: Was the real reason to show pictures of pretty girls in 2000 AD? Alan: No, absolutely not.

CBA: Then how did you pitch “Halo Jones” to the editor of a boys comic book?

Alan: I said I’m going to do a story about an ordinary woman in this future environment, this is what happens, and bad things happen when they go shopping because shopping is very complicated and dangerous in their future era. At the end of the book, she gets an opportunity to leave and she takes it. In the second book, she’s a hostess upon a liner that is sailing up from Earth and she has to wear a stupid costume.

CBA: Does she get a boyfriend along the way?

Alan: Her love life is not that great.

CBA: So she’s awkward in her love life? Is she a virgin throughout?

Alan: No, she’s definitely not a virgin. She’s an ordinary woman who’s had sexual relationships, but not any long-term one. She has difficulties, just like everybody does. The third book is where we finally get some action. Having run out of chances, money, and luck, but not yet far enough away from Earth for her taste, she still feels trapped in our crowded galaxy, so she joins the Army of the future, which has more women than today.

By this time, I’d read an awful lot of books about the Vietnam War, and what struck me reading 2000 AD, which had lots of future war stories (and then reading Michael Herr’s Dispatches and a lot of the other books around that time about Vietnam), Vietnam was a stranger weirder, more science-fiction-like war than anything that was being imagined taking place in the 30th century. I was thinking, “This is where we are now in our science-fiction? Even after Vietnam, we still can’t come up with a convincing picture of a genuine future war that has the same real emotional aspect as contemporary conflict?

Where it’s not just killing alien bugs or something? There would be a very disturbing situation whenever a war was going on, whether today or 300 years from now. It’s probably going on for all the wrong reasons and we would be on the wrong side. Earth would probably be the aggressor and these colony worlds are probably just small defenseless planets doing their best to get by in the face of oppression from the mother planet. You’ve got this awful world where it’s dirty and life is cheap.

There’s one episode where Halo and her platoon shoot a sniper after the sniper has tried to pick them off while they’re on patrol. The sniper is in a tree and they eventually manage to bring down the tree using a vibrating mine in this petrified forest, to shatter it. A woman in the platoon shoots this sniper in the back. They go over to the body, because they are excited to have got this local guerrilla, and they turn her over and discover she’s only 11. Then one of the other women says, “Nah, she’s 12 or 13 easy. The women around here look younger than what they are. Under all that camouflage, she could easily be 18 or 19.” They throw the body on the truck and then there’s a caption saying, “We rode back to the base and the body just kept getting older all the time. By the time we got back to base, she could have practically died of old age.” It might be a war in the future, but kids would still be getting killed.

CBA: “Who cares? She’s one of them, not one of us.”

Alan: They talk in the training program about how brutal these colonists are, about how these creatures eat ovary produce of certain birds for breakfast, how they cook this “food” in congealed mammary fluids from other animals… they paint a picture of these tribeswomen as savages because they eat eggs, butter and cheese. Remember that Halo’s people are vegans. “They’re subhuman! They breed like rats, often having as many as two or three children!”

So I’m using the strip to try and make some statements.

Not big or clever statements, just things I wanted said.

And I have pretty much carried that approach with me, right down the line.

CBA: Besides “Marvelman,” one of your most interesting early depictions of super-heroes was your almost-sinister use of the Justice League early on in Swamp Thing.

Alan: I didn’t mean for them to be so much sinister as distant. All I did was put them in shadow so you’re only seeing these iconic silhouettes and, when they talk to one another, they don’t use their super-hero names. They only use their Christian names, because the readers are all going COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

to know who they are anyway. I didn’t have to spell-out Superman, Hawkman, Flash. If I used their hero names that immediately makes them familiar which was not my intention. We are in Swamp Thing now and this is a different place. I wanted readers to see these characters through my eyes.

So I didn’t mean for the heroes to be presented as sinister or scary. There’s descriptions in the beginning of a man who can see through the planet and wring diamonds from anthracite, and another who moves so fast that his entire life is an endless gallery of statues. I didn’t want to say Superman and Flash, so I came up with poetic images that will actually say something about what it was like to be these guys, up in orbit in this incredible Justice League satellite station manned with these incredible beings who have this incredible responsibility to protect the world. Here they’ve got this problem they can’t work out: The trees on Earth have suddenly decided to get rid of all humans.

Understand that familiarity breeds contempt. When you become familiar with these characters, they cease to be awesome. You become bogged down in the soap-opera details of their lives and their continuity, and they become uninteresting. What I was trying to do with that Justice League scene is to take a step back so all of a sudden the readers would have to look at these characters through fresh eyes. Not to make them more sinister or scarier than they are meant to be or in any way more threatening, but just to make it as if you have never seen these characters before.

Just step back and look at these extraordinary beings you thought you were so familiar with.

CBA: For me, one of the most successful aspects of that story is I did feel terrified that these cold, godlike people were (usually) in control of everything. They were gods standing on this balcony overlooking the globe, pondering the events of humankind.

Alan: It seemed to me that if this was a real universe, if this was a real world, if the Justice League of America actually existed, then what kind of vibe would they have about them? This was also my first chance to use any of DC’s super-heroes. I’d been given Swamp Thing, a series with a prestigious history, but off in the margins of DC’s then-current continuity.

CBA: Was the only horror comic with continuity at DC, “I… Vampire”? You seemed to have the whole genre to yourself.

Alan: Swamp Thing was certainly the right title for the book because it was out there in the boondocks.

I quite liked super-heroes and I certainly liked some of the DC characters, so perhaps, if I could have a Justice League guest spot in Swamp Thing, I could take a couple pages and show how I’d write super-heroes and then, who knows? People may start thinking of me as something other than just a horror writer.

I remember when I was on holiday in Southwold, on the east coast of Britain, I picked up the latest issue of Justice League. I was just reading through and, in the letters page there was this letter saying, “What a spectacular comic. Rarely have I ever seen such a wonderful depiction of the Justice League. Rarely has Superman seemed so heroic.

Wonder Woman seemed more beautiful.” It was saying that it was the best depiction of the Justice League that they’d ever read, too bad it was in Swamp Thing! The answer from the editor was, “Not much we can say, really.” I realized that it would be to my advantage—and to Swamp Thing’s advantage—if we diversified the series as much as possible.

If I tried to do as many things as I could, not only stories of pure horror.

From very early on I was thinking about doing “Pog,” the Pogo issue because I thought, “Who else lives in a swamp?” and realized that Pogo could team-up with Swamp Thing. I thought, “Now, wouldn’t that be fun?”

CBA: How did you come up with the language?

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

Alan: That was fun. I wanted to come up with something that sounded like an alien language that was kind of understandable for the reader and which also sounded like the marvelous kinds of dialect Walt Kelly was so wonderful at writing. I wanted to write it as a tribute, but also to sound a bit more like a science-fiction language, so I came up with this weird compound word language that was very difficult to write at first. Then, when I finished with that issue, I found it very difficult to write in English! [laughter] By the time I finished the issue I was writing it very quickly. The last eight pages went by really fast, whereas the first couple crawled because I was actually inventing the language as I went on and getting into its thought processes. By the end of the issue, I was completely immersed in its thought processes and was thinking in that language, coming out with words that didn’t exist but should have.

I’ve always had an interest in the actual molecular structure of my job. My job is writing and the molecular structure of that job is language. Language in itself is fascinating. It’s like what I was saying earlier about having read the original Spanish version of this Dracula comic and how great I thought it was. I thought it was great because I couldn’t understand any of the balloons and I found that with a lot of foreign comics when you can’t understand the language, you are making the language. Your immersion in the comic is different than if you do understand it. That’s why I’ve delighted in Tom Strong, where I’ve made up the Ozu language and various other languages. In League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, we actually have material translated into authentic Arabic or Chinese because I think that’s cool. I think it’s great to actually have balloons that people can’t understand, unless they happen to understand those languages. All of those balloons from the Ozus, or the volcano people in Tom Strong, are from a made-up language, but I think they would actually work because I know what they are saying. I know that weh-wa is their word for baby. This was something I didn’t understand until I got into magic: Language is magic and language is consciousness.

CBA: When did you hear about 9/11?

Alan: I was sitting at the computer over there, just working on Tom Strong #16 and I’d just been typing the panel where the Weird Rider turns around to the Modular Man and says, “There’s going to be a range war, you take care now.” The phone rang and it was my daughter Amber.

She said, “Do you have the telly on?” I said, “No.” She said, “You ought to, because two planes have just flown into the World Trade Center.” I put it on and they were just showing the tape, and I thought, “Well, this is new.” Then, for the rest of the day, there was all this coverage (which was probably slightly different from what Americans saw on TV).

CBA: I thought it was strange that one really didn’t see the bodies of those who perished. 3,000 people just disappeared.

Alan: I’ve talked to a lot of Americans since the 11th of September and one of them hadn’t seen the people jumping out of the windows and we were getting that live, the couple jumping hand-in-hand, and all the rest of it. We were also getting slightly different information.... In that 9/11 story I did for Dark Horse, I pretty much recount exactly what I was doing for the next couple days around that time and what I was thinking.

CBA: When you’re writing a horror story, for instance, do you try to reach a point where you actually are terrified yourself to properly express the feeling?

Alan: You have to.

CBA: To get a better appreciation?

Alan: You have to make yourself almost skinless or very tough. Of course, I’m talking about myself here because I don’t know how other writers work, but I will frequently sit here, working on some particular scene from Promethea or 17

Above: As this is the last TwoMorrows issue of CBA, and Ye Ed is a rankly sentimental old fart, we thought our kind readers would suffer the indulgence of seeing this Valentine’s Day image drawn by Jon B. Cooke in ’86 for his honey (and now wife), Beth. Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing was the one comic book Beth enjoyed reading, though she lost interest immediately after he left the book. Art ©2003 Jon B. Cooke. Swamp Thing ©2003 DC Comics. Below: Page from Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s contribution to the Dark Horse 9/11 Benefit book. ©’03 A.Moore & M.Gebbie.

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any other book, and I’ll get to some little detail of the story and there will be tears starting to run down my cheek, and I’ll be thinking, “This is great. Go with this.” I’ll write something else and I’ll be smiling and weeping.

It schizophrenic because I am smiling because I’m writing some killer sh*t here and I’m weeping because it’s sad because I’ve done something that has touched me.

My own feelings set my criteria, and tell me that the readers are going to choke up when they get to that page and they are not even going to know why. If I’m writing comedy like “Jack B. Quick,” I have to sit there until I imagine Kansas and then I start laughing. [laughter] I’m thinking about [fictional Kansas towns] getting out of Trouble, entering Matrimony, going into Debt, avoiding Denial, and driving straight into Ruin, and I’m laughing and starting to put it all together and I get into the character and write about Jack B. Quick, who is fiendish. He’s one of the most monstrous characters I’ve ever written. He’s terrifying. He’s a little child and he really doesn’t care. This is science.

So the characters have to be real to me and I have to be emotionally right in there with them. If I’m not excited then the reader won’t be. If I’m not laughing then the reader won’t laugh.

If I’m not crying then the reader won’t cry. If I’m not scared the reader won’t be scared. I have to go into places sometimes, places I don’t want to go.

CBA: It took me some time to finally read your work. I would go into comic stores, and people were always saying, “Alan Moore this, Alan Moore that,” and the talk made it sound like you were trendy and I had usually been disappointed buying into trendy stuff. But when I finally read “The Anatomy Lesson” [Swamp Thing #21], I thought, “No f*cking way! This guy’s putting hallucinogenics into mainstream comics!” [laughs] Alan: But it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t a traditionalist. None of this radical work would occur to anyone who wasn’t a traditionalist. Unless I understood the tradition of Swamp Thing, how could I ever come up with exactly the right sort of twist to put in them?

When I got my crack at doing Superman stories, my last two stories for Julie, I didn’t intend to be irreverent or iconoclastic or take the character to some ultimate extreme. I used elements from the earlier stories, and certainly stretched them, but for instance, I loved Krypto. I knew Krypto was going to be thrown out with all the other garbage in the next issue when John Byrne took over, but at the

same time I thought I would try to get the readers to appreciate all the good stuff they were losing. I tried to write a Krypto scene that would make grown men weep, and it did. I got some good reports on that death of Krypto. It is okay that we can love this stuff, and I do.

CBA: Did you art direct that?

Alan: This the only comic book cover [Action Comics #583] I’ve ever been paid doing the layouts for. That was a delight. I got to work with Kurt Schaffenberger inked by George Pérez.

CBA: I wept when I heard Kurt died. I didn’t expect that to be my response but the emotional meaning of his work all came back to me. All of a sudden, I thought about those Lois Lane stories and how cheerful Kurt’s people were and how Lois was so pretty in her way, cute and perky. She’s vacuuming the floor in this pleated dress with Superbaby in his playpen.

Alan: His ink line was so springy! It was this black, springy and wonderful line. I am interested in the essence of the characters. I don’t think it does them a service to change them into transvestite serial killers or whatever, re-imagining them as something deep, dark and horrible.

CBA: You mean what you brought into comics with Watchmen?

Alan: But those were characters that didn’t exist before, so I wasn’t violating anything, except with Marvelman. But, even with that character, I wasn’t violating Captain Marvel; I was taking an unused British character, a knock-off of Captain Marvel, and I took off in my own direction.

CBA: You also infused comics with a healthy sexuality, I think, especially looking at Abby and Swamp Thing’s sexual head trip….

Alan: Their relationship was sexual/spiritual, psychedelic/spiritual.

CBA: Tantric?

Alan: Yes, but very sexy. What we would say over here is that, “She was dripping like a f*cked fridge.” We’ve got a lovely way with language over here. [laughter] CBA: You seem to be saying language becomes life and life is language. Is that the essence of magic?

Alan: I think that’s it. The words that pour out our mouths are always magic.

CBA: You can never take them back?

Alan: You can never take them back and they make a difference to the world.

CBA: They go into the ether? Did you ever see the movie, A Christmas Story, directed by Bob Clark? It was based on a Jean Shepherd story about a kid that wanted his BB rifle. It was a perfect satire of a kid growing up in 1946. He talked about his father using a string of obscenities that are still floating above the Lake Michigan. [laughs] My mind still sees those words hovering over the Great Lakes!

Alan: On TV here, there’s a funny comedy game show with two or three English comedians and this black American comedian, a very funny guy. There were bits where the show’s host would say, “What the f*ck are you talking about?” to these other people. That was just his way of talking and he says, “Well, in the States, this is something you hear all the damn time. Oh, sorry!” She says, “You just said f*ck seven times and yet you’re apologizing for saying g**damn?” [laughter] He said, “I didn’t know if you were going to get all religious on me and this is England where you turn churches into Bingo halls, and sh*t like that.” [laughter] He got a round of applause, but the difference in the vernacular is interesting.

CBA: But it’s also a national attitude too, I think. The more European one gets, the more you can create your own reality. In America, there is a ingrained fatalism where reality has been created for you and you must fit into that mold. We are slaves to our material goods.

Alan: Your problem is you’ve got the same problems as we do in Europe, but on a much higher technological level. America has its own empire that it is losing and you just don’t realize it yet. Just like when we didn’t realize in the early 20th century, pretending we still had a British Empire. We have that kinship, America and England.

All these other countries in the past have had their empires and they’ve all learned an important lesson: Empires f*ck you up. Just say no to empire-building, because then you’ll be paying for centuries.

You will make enemies who will stay with you for centuries, and there will come a point when you try to bluster, then they’ll treat you like COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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you treated them, and then they’ll do worse.

You’ll soon realize all these countries that once had empires eventually realized they were just countries that had done a lot of bad things, even if they now pretended that it didn’t happen. But it doesn’t matter what you pretend. It doesn’t matter how good your spin and bullsh*t is.

CBA: What was your thinking behind coming up with the imprint name, America’s Best Comics?

Alan: I wanted something that was plain and old-fashioned and thought it would be funny to call something America’s Best Comics.

If it turned out to be crappy then I could claim that it was ironic. It was a fallback position, a post-modern joke.

CBA: What is the most popular title in the line?

Alan: I have no idea.

CBA: You never look at the numbers at all?

Alan: I never pay any attention to circulation, all that. Otherwise, it might influence me and I might start writing what I thought people wanted. [laughter] CBA: That would be scary?

Alan: Doing the work for Image, after being away from mainstream comics for a long time, was different. Image was everywhere and everybody wanted comics about super-heroes with a pin-up every three pages and no story. I thought that this is a challenge, so let’s see if I can write comics like this. I worked at it for a while. At the time, I had a lapse in consciousness where I thought it was my job to work out what the readers liked and luckily, around about the time I started doing Supreme, I worked out that it’s not my job to work out what readers like; it’s my job to tell readers what they like. My job is to do what I like and then readers will like it. So I started doing what I liked again and the readers have liked it as well.

CBA: When you reconsider comic-book characters, it’s not so much revisionist as it is reinventing. You never seem to pander.

Alan: Back in the ’80s, it seemed like a good thing to give characters more texture and more interesting moral or emotional angles, to set them in a more realistic world seemed right. The stuff that followed, when it became a trend rather than an intriguing oneoff—and I don’t mean to dump on Vertigo because Karen Berger is a lovely woman and an old friend of mine, and I’m sure she must get completely sick of me putting down Vertigo (which has done some great comic books)….

CBA: Didn’t you, in essence, start Vertigo?

Alan: I didn’t start Vertigo. I did Swamp Thing and I think Vertigo was an attempt to build off that. When I wrote Swamp Thing, I was just approaching a DC horror book in a certain way because I thought that would be interesting. It was just me and my pre-occupations about sex, politics, environmentalism, and all the rest. There’s no reason why they should take my pre-occupations and make them into a line of books written by other people. Barring the good Vertigo books, they were taking my ongoing, developmental and experimental process and turning them into a style, a dogma.

CBA: It’s now a genre?

Alan: Now, when they write all the DC characters nobody cares about, they become horrible people, wearing leather jackets and some hair gel, turning these characters into punks.

CBA: Who are your children?

Alan: Amber is the youngest and most frightening of the two.

She’s five-foot-ten, tattooed, pierced, and daddy’s little girl. She’s had a couple of years of kick boxing and tai chi, so she works as a bouncer. Leah, the eldest and shortest, has just had her first comic story accepted in Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales, edited by Scott Dunbier.

She said she would like to try and write a story, so I said, “Okay, come up with one.” I called Scott and told him I had script by somebody I wanted him to read, but didn’t tell him who wrote it, as not to put any pressure on him.

CBA: So you sent Leah’s script to Scott blind? What did he say?

Alan: He said sure and I think Leah e-mailed from her boyfriend’s e-mail address, so that there wouldn’t be any name associated with it.

Scott got back to me and said, “I think it’s great.” He told me that this guy really knows what he’s doing and that Scott would like to use it in Terrific Tales #5, and that he’s giving the art assignment to Sergio Aragonés. Leah was thrilled hearing that because she met Sergio when she was eight.

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CBA: Sergio is quite a character!

Alan: He’s fantastic and if you meet Sergio Aragonés when you’re eight years old, you’re probably going to be in love with him for the rest of your life. So she’s written that story and working on her second one, this one for Tom Strong. She’s loving it.

CBA: Is she a chip off the old block?

Alan: We’ll see. She’s already been interviewed by Wizard and they asked her, “Aren’t you worried people will be comparing your work to your father’s?” She said, “With your first story, how is that going to compete with someone who’s been in the industry for 20 years?”

She’s not worried about it and I told her being related to me will be as much a curse as a blessing in this industry.

CBA: Besides this row house in Northampton, you have a farm in Wales?

Alan: Yes, I bought it in ruins at an auction. The guy who lived and died there had given it to the local hospital and told them to auction it and buy a kidney unit.

CBA: So you travel between the farm and your place in town?

Alan: I don’t go to Wales often. I don’t have enough time to, and it’s still being renovated.

CBA: Do you ever indulge yourself and go on vacation?

Above: What just may be the last word on comic book super-heroes, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen remains a poignant and relevant body of work, still in print today. Below: The notorious bloodspotted happy face button, the icon for the 1986-87 series. ©2003 DC Comics.

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Above: Though we trust Alan’s experience wasn’t quite so disgustingly rude as in this 1991 Glasgow Comic Art Convention souvenir book cartoon by Davy Francis, legend has it that the writer ceased making convention appearances in the mid-’80s after being virtually stalked by fans, sometimes into the W.C. (that’s restroom, for us Yanks), obviously invading the poor guy’s personal space. In England, his celebrity status is more widespread (even inspiring a ’80s U.K. song, “Alan Moore Knows the Score”) to such a degree that he basically just travels around his own neighborhood. ©2003 Davy Francis. Below: Proof that talent runs in the family lies in Alan’s youngest daughter Leah’s stories for the ABC line. This panel is from her first effort, “King Solomon Pines,” drawn by the indomitable Sergio Aragonés, for Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales #5 (Jan. ’03). ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Alan: I’ve not got a passport. When I went to Wellingborough prison to talk to the inmates, they said I needed some identification.

My friend, a writer-in-residence there, came over to me and asked, “Do you have a passport?” I said, “No.” He said, “You haven’t got a driver’s license?” I said, “No.” He said, “You’ve got credit cards?” I said, “No.” He said, “This is going to be a problem, right?” So he went back to the prison governor [warden] and said, “He hasn’t got a passport, driver’s license, or any credit cards. He hasn’t got any identification at all.” The governor laughed. The governor is a kabballist, really into Kabbala, so he said, “All right, we’ll write him a pass but he’s obviously a complete anarchist, and you should keep your eye on him.” [laughter] It was pretty cool.

CBA: Do your mates get into trouble?

Alan: A lot of my friends are in the working-class and, at least 10 to 20 years ago, they were in the criminal-class, as well. But they’re my friends, and the younger generation of local criminals probably know somebody who knows me.

CBA: So what is your process in writing? Do you write on a computer?

Alan: I do it on a notepad.

CBA: In longhand? Doesn’t that hurt?

Alan: Yes, but one of the better British TV comedies, Father Ted, is about a group of Catholic priests in Ireland, and there’s a bit where there’s an old lady who looks after them, Mrs. Doyle, and makes

them tea every five or six minutes. Somebody gets her a new teamaking machine, and says, “You’ll love this, Mrs. Doyle! It will take the misery out of making tea.” She looks at him with contempt and says, “Perhaps some of us like the misery.” [laughter] That’s my attitude. [Handing over a pad with handwriting] This is the first five pages of Tom Strong.

CBA: This is impressive!

Alan: I was performing some magic a couple weeks ago, doing an intense ritual about one of the spheres of the Kabbala I needed to reach (but hadn’t before) for the next issue of Promethea. So we did this and, after I had the experience, I was so full of this enthusiasm to try to express what just happened and to interpret it for all 24 pages of Promethea #22, that I had it all written in three hours. I laid-out the visuals, breakdowns, for every panel. The page layouts, the spread layouts, I know no one will be able to make sense out of it but I know what every single squiggle and line means. I know that this is somebody’s head in the foreground and somebody’s full figure in the background.

CBA: So you are using the form itself, as well? It’s not only writing, it’s also visualizing.

Alan: Yes, I can see how a page is going to look even if it’s only in squiggly form.

CBA: How do you constantly infuse your material with meaning all the time? Don’t you sometimes find yourself falling back into genre where it can become rote or routine?

Alan: If I fall back on routine then I’m going to have to rip it up.

And I still do that.

CBA: Have you done it?

Alan: I rip it up afterwards. I always throw it away. I have to wait until I write something good because otherwise it goes in the rubbish.

CBA: [Looking at the squiggles and tiny handwriting on the pad] Do you have to go through another stage, something better visualized? Is this just a guide to get to the next stage?

Alan: What I’ll do is….

CBA: Look how dense this is! How is your eyesight? Do you use glasses?

Alan: I’m nearly completely blind in that eye. My focal length with this one is here [gestures a few inches in front of his face] and I’m almost completely deaf in that ear, so I have one functioning sense organ on each side of my side that I use to balance. I’m partly blind and partly deaf, giving me enough disabilities to get a good parking space. I rather like being shortsighted and partly deaf.

CBA: Your depiction of 17-year-old dialogue in Promethea seems so authentic. I was astonished how entertaining it was and it sounds to me how girls really do talk to one another.

Alan: I know a lot of young people and try to keep my ear open.

CBA: It must be delightful. In England, there is something to be said about staying in the same place where you grew up, and having ancestors that reach back who were here as well. In America the statistical average is that people move something like 11 times in their lifetime, and I fear we live pretty anonymous lives from our neighbors. And the Internet has made us more anonymous than ever.

Alan: One of the reasons that I avoid the Internet is that extension of loneliness. That’s not a human means of communication to me.

CBA: Do you write every story in a single sitting? Do you sit down, write a story until you’re satisfied, and then sit down again later and write another story until that one is over with?

“If this is Tuesday, it must be Promethea”?

Alan: The Promethea breakdown I just showed you was one the quickest I’ve ever done. Not COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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only do you have the little sketches, but this is also all the dialogue for the first 12 pages. It’s all on one page so I don’t have to keep turning pages over. All the dialogue for the entire 24 pages was written in six hours. Laying-out the pictures took three hours and typing it up took another six. That entire issue took 15 hours over two days.

The Tom Strong issue you see there is only five pages of three issues I’m doing at once, and that’s only as far as I’ve gotten so far.

I’ll try to get a few more done tonight to send over to Chris [Sprouse] so he’s got seven or eight pages to start off with.

CBA: Do you sometimes frustrate artists?

Alan: I don’t think so. I don’t think that I make any artist late. I stand to be corrected on that, but generally if the ABC books have been late it hasn’t been because my scripts were late, I think.

CBA: You’re always on time?

Alan: I’m not saying I’m always on time, but I’m doing so many so it’s very often that I’ll give an artist four pages and when those are done I’ll have another four. I try to make so that the artists are not waiting for work even if that means that I have to switch titles in midstream. I’ll do four pages of one story, six pages of Promethea, three pages of something for Tomorrow Stories, and ten pages of this. I do a lot of that.

CBA: So you are a multi-task type of person?

Alan: I seem to be able to compartmentalize the different assignments.

CBA: Don’t you ever just get into a mania and total focus on one thing for longer stretches?

Alan: Sometimes. I can get a real surge of enthusiasm, like that Promethea story I mentioned, and finish it within two days. That’s unusual. When I was starting out and not handling so many books, it would normally take me three days. On Swamp Thing, I did eight pages a day, handwritten and then typed.

CBA: How long does it really take? For this one you said 15 hours, but did you include pondering and mentally conceptualizing in that time frame?

Alan: There was really wasn’t any pondering at all.

CBA: Do the stories take a life of their own and you’re just the conduit?

Alan: Sometimes they take a lot of thinking about.

CBA: Do they take over?

Alan: Sometimes they take over, but it varies.

CBA: Do you think that you are the master of the ship or do sometimes you think that you channel the story? That thing you said about Superman is the most profound I’ve heard in years.

Alan: That wasn’t me that said that; that was Alvin Schwartz, ex-Superman writer, in his book, A Most Unlikely Prophet, where he mentioned his belief that there actually was a platonic, ideal form of Superman that existed somewhere, and I just believe there was some truth to it.

CBA: [Looking around Alan’s living room] So, imagine what you are doing now. I see boxes of your comics here. There’s Watchmen #1 over there. You’ve created things that may never go away, generally, unless the world turns into Fahrenheit 451 and all paper is destroyed.

Alan: Perhaps a lot of people don’t see it, but I think Promethea is the most important thing I’m doing at the moment. Some probably think that there should be more action, but when we get finished with this Kabbala storyline around #24, there will be action and the readers will then wish there wasn’t so much. It’s going to get very active around #24. The readers sticking with Promethea are getting something from it that they don’t get from other comics. There is something genuinely weird about Promethea.

CBA: It is very educational.

Alan: Especially with these Kabbala issues. Jim [J.H.] Williams told me that he’s seen some discussion that there is no plot and no story and nothing really happens. Someone said, “I don’t think the plot or the story is what this issue is about. It’s about how did it make you feel to read this issue.” That was exactly what I’d hoped for, that it would be how you felt after you read it. I know that working with this material has very strange roots. For me to work with these spheres of awareness, I have to be there to fully understand it. To me, these are real spheres. To me, they are states of being, they are states of consciousness, and they are exactly what they say they are.

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CBA: To me, much of what you talk about in Promethea makes sense. Someone can really translate any high spiritual goals, whether Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, whatever, as being very similar. Whether you’re talking about the Kabbala or the yin and the yang of Taoism, it’s all a part of the same fabric.

Alan: It is all related and that’s why I thought there’d be something for people to discover in reading Promethea.

CBA: You’re a writer who doesn’t depict violence against people with great frequency. You can be a gentle writer, but you can be monstrously horrific. I don’t think there has ever been a more violent comic than Miracleman #15.

Alan: What I was thinking about when I did that story was what if these super-heroes were as powerful as they were supposed to be and what if these super-villains are as powerful and evil as they are supposed to be, then why is it that these powerful super-villains never really do anything that is powerfully evil? Why do they always come up with a stupid plan that never works and never hurts anybody? I thought what if you have someone who is as strong as Superman who has gone completely mad and become a serial killer? What if life was a psychotic dream to him and he just didn’t care what he did, so long as he enjoyed what he was doing? I thought that would be a cool ending, with most of London destroyed.

Below: If man were God, would He have the capacity for mercy?

While the writer certainly has since continued to toy with concepts involving super-humans, from Supreme to Tom Strong, no better statement—by any writer, in Ye Ed’s humble opinion—has been made than in Alan Moore’s 15issue Miracleman epic (1985-88), where he juxtaposed the ideals and desires of omnipotent beings into a terrifying, sublime mix of the real and the supernatural. This magnum opus begs to see print again. (So, what’s up, Neil and Todd?) John Totleben superbly delineates the consequences of unchecked power in his cover art for Miracleman #15 (Nov. ’88), the issue containing the masterpiece’s final, apocalyptic conflict. ©2003 the respective copyright holder.

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Above: Alan Moore gives us his perspective on one of the truly defining moments in modern history by recalling past sorrow in his two-page collaboration with artist Dave Gibbons for the Marvel Comics 9/11 benefit book, Heroes (Dec. ’01). ©2003 Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons.

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CBA: [Looking at the comic] Most of London and 30,000 people dead. Ten times September 11th. What you are talking about is ultimately apocalyptic and the collapse of the Twin Towers looked very apocalyptic, seeing these massive buildings fall and turn to dust.

Alan: When I did the Marvel benefit book after September 11th, what I was trying to say with Dave was, “Welcome to Guernica.”

We have all been here since the ’30s. America has been blessed up until this time. Pearl Harbor was attacked, but that was an American military property and it was remote from the mainland. That was a slap in the face of the American military.

What we saw on television after September 11th was America in shock. There were a lot of Americans saying—and you could tell they meant it—“Why do these people hate us?” You’ve got our every sympathy but you should read a few papers and then you will understand why some people don’t like America.

I’m not much for organized religion. I’ve got every sympathy for the ideas that started these religions, but what’s been done with them by people who are most often interested in keeping power, it’s a different story. My position as a magician is that when we talk about, “Do what thou will,” it’s not a license for doing what you want; it is about what is your will. What magicians understand about their true will is that it’s not the will to make more money than anybody else or rule the world or anything. Your true will is the will of the universe. If you are doing what your inner voice, your true will, your true self,

tells you, that is the voice of the entire universe. The universe is working through you, which is not that different from the Islamic position. I feel comfortable with the idea writing Promethea and making these CD recordings because if I think the gods are telling me to do something, that’s what I do and that works for me.

After the Twin Towers fell, everything seemed to shut down to this simplistic level of right and wrong, good and evil, and I think that’s dangerous. Immediately the “War Against Terror” was announced and anyone who has a grudge against anybody else could say like the Russians, “Those Chechnyans are terrorists. We agree with you, President Bush.” The Israelis will all say, “Those Palestinians are terrorist bastards.” The freedom fighters are called terrorists, the terrorists are called freedom fighters. I thought Osama bin Laden was a freedom fighter when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. It’s a muddled moral world.

CBA: I’m not saying that you don’t do it, but I haven’t seen you create much explicit political work in recent years. Promethea comes close but that has more to do gender relations, I think.

Alan: Did you see Brought to Light which I did with Bill Sienkiewicz? I have been known to be political once or twice. I tell you what Brought to Light brought me. There is a house just across the road and two doors up where this couple used to live. I didn’t know them too well, but sometimes when I was having a New Year’s party, they would come over for a drink at midnight. I got along with them pretty well. They split up and both moved out and some months later, I happen upon the women in a pub and she says, “Alan, my husband and I have split up. There’s something that has been eating at me and I want to tell you about it. A month before I left, the police came around our house and asked us if they could set up at our house and monitor you.” They refused to their credit, not to say that didn’t happen with someone else. Doing Brought to Light is the only thing I can think of that would merit the attentions of the Special Branch (which is what they sounded like).

CBA: So this happened after Brought to Light was published?

Alan: Yes. Brought to Light was pretty fierce. Basically, it was about the findings of the Christic Institute which was a legal advocacy organization. They were the ones who got a payment from the Atomic Energy Commission to the estate of Karen Silkwood. She was a worker for the AEC and a whistle-blower who contracted cancer and was run off the road in a mysteriously fatal car accident. She had previously approached the Christic Institute because they specialized in taking on big, invulnerable enemies. Meryl Streep played her in the movie version.

The Ku Klux Klan fired upon some marchers in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I saw a video of this. Those f*ckers didn’t even bother to wear their hoods. They didn’t even bother covering up their car registration tags. They just turned, loaded their shotguns, and just started blasting into the marchers. The mother of one black kid who was killed was given the mansion of the KKK Imperial Wizard. That was the Christic Institute that got that.

CBA: And an imaginative judge, right?

Alan: Yes, but the Christic Institute was the group who fought the KKK. They were a little tiny legal organization run by a Jesuit, Father Bill Ryan. (The Jesuits are all right, with certainly an intelligent and intellectual strain of Catholicism.) They were deep in the belly of the beast, in a Washington, D.C., housing project, as far as I can tell the only basically-white organization with guts to be based in the center of a poor black neighborhood. That is what I saw of it when I visited.

They wanted me to write in 30 pages the history of CIA activities since the end of the Second World War (during which they were called the OSS). So I followed all this through and it’s probably the most horrific thing I’ve ever written. It was certainly the most horrible material to research.

CBA: So you wrote about the CIA’s adventuring in the Congo, Guatemala, Chile, etc.?

Alan: Absolutely, and all the drug dealing, heroin dealing through the Vietnam War, and the coke dealing during the war in Central America, and all these friendly dictators, [Cuba’s] Batista, [Nicaragua’s] Samosa, [Chile’s] Pinochet, and the Mano Blanco and all the death squads. Sandoval, the leader of the death squads and Lucio Gelli who was the head of P2. The P2 are a quasi-Masonic organization that used to be run from the Vatican. Gelli was an COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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Argentinean fascist so it’s an Argentinean-Italian fascist Free Masonry. They were the ones behind Roberto Calvi when he was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge with bricks in his pockets.

CBA: Can you imagine what that day was like in Chile when Allendé was overthrown? Could you imagine what that day in the football stadium was like as they lined people up and tortured them one after the other?

Alan: We had Pinochet over here and the British and American governments were saying they weren’t sure if he had any crimes to answer for, and you’ve got Margaret Thatcher saying he was a fine man who did a lot for his country. He would have people put into cages and you would be in one cage and your wife and your child would in a cage on above you as you watched them be tortured before your eyes. Your wife, your son, your daughter, your mother staring down into your eyes while they were tortured. It was just a nice little kink, a nice little development.

CBA: They just wiped out entire families.

Alan: This wasn’t for anything other than for the pleasure of the torturers. Imagine the exquisite joy of watching people witness their loved ones violated, tortured and killed. You would have all that horror pouring down to you in that bottom cage. That’s what General Pinochet had done, and I say he should be thrown into a trash compactor. I’ve got no sympathy for these people. Somebody was going on about euthanasia and how people should have the right to die. I agree with that, but I was thinking about it and I don’t think you should keep people alive if that’s a misery and they prefer to be dead except Franco. They kept saying, “Franco is very ill but we managed to keep him alive.” [The conversation continues along political lines for a period.]

CBA: Just about the only thing worth watching in the U.S. is The Simpsons because, not only does it poke fun at all things American, but because it also depicts an honest-to-God loving family.

Alan: I love The Simpsons, and South Park, as well.

CBA: Both are pretty anarchistic. The Simpsons especially exposes the foibles of “truths” we hold so dear, and how consumerism is not a truth; it’s a lie. Love is the only thing that matters.

Alan: My theory is all American TV shows are sh*t unless the title begins with an “S.” I think South Park, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos pretty much sums up the good in American television…

Malcolm in the Middle is also good (so there goes my “S” theory).

CBA: Did you notice that these shows are all centered about love and family? Even The Sopranos in its own perverse way.

Alan: The reason I like those shows is because they are about recognizable humans who have recognizable human reactions to events.

CBA: You mean they have real affection?

Alan: Sometimes in Americans shows, there’s that term so often used to describe American families, dysfunctional, and you can show them as being almost homicidal as long as that there a little hook at the end to show that they have normal values within the established norm.

Over here, we see the signs that you are moving into a postempirical stage. Take British humor, something that started out in British television and then was translated into American TV and all but lost what made it so brilliant to begin with.

CBA: Sanford and Son. Alan: Steptoe and Son was a brilliant piece of TV comedy and when it was taken to America you can see that someone at the network said, “What’s funny about this British thing? There’s this old guy June 2003

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and his son and they live in a junk yard. Brilliant, there’s junk everywhere and that’s what’s funny.” But what was funny was the really complex relationship between the father and son. There’s the old man, standard old British working class. There’s his son who has pretensions and aspirations of wanting to be middle class and wanting to go to the right intellectual films and know the right wines. But the son is never going to escape his background. He hates his dad but he needs him. He loves him in a way but it’s need mostly. Neither of them are likable characters. The best British comedy characters are all unlikable. Basil Fawlty… you’re not laughing with him; you’re laughing at him.

CBA: But don’t you end up loving him because of his nastiness, his weaknesses, his—pardon me—faults? Like Daffy Duck, just insecure to the extreme and pitifully loveable? You come to love him because you’re forced to, really.

Alan: In a real inverse way, it’s like Tony Hancock when he would play this grumpy, frustrated, wannabe intellectual, the little man that dreams of being so much more important and thinks he so much more important than everybody else. That’s it. That’s all of us. This is why I hate the TV show Friends. I’ve met people who really like the show and I’ve said in the past that television has deformed our lives to a large extent. We once used to have neighbors and now we have Neighbours. We once used to have friends and now we have Friends. Instead of having real relationships with people, we have virtual relationships with people who don’t give a sh*t about us or know that we even exist.

CBA: Culture has become not something to better our lives, but to waste time. Pop culture thrives because people want their minds off what they are doing or what and who they are.

Alan: Certain types of culture thrive on people’s desire to avoid themselves. Escapist culture.

CBA: The troubadour, the storyteller who’d be imparting wisdom and lessons through the telling, so you’d walk away hopefully enlightened in some way. True art will always do that. But most pop culture is now a giant teat for people to suck on, to be content with their prejudices and materialism.

Alan: You need to look back at some of the former traditions, and this what I try to do with my performances, the bardic tradition….

CBA: Well, comics are not related to the bardic tradition, are they?

Alan: All things are related to the bardic

Above: In support of the Christic Institute’s progressive legal efforts in support of human rights, Alan Moore helmed the graphic “novel” Brought to Light (Jan.’89), a comics anthology depicting abuses of the Central Intelligence Agency throughout its notorious history. With his original Big Numbers collaborator, artist Bill Sienkiewicz, Alan contributed “Shadowplay: The Secret Team,” two pages of which are reproduced above. ©2003 Alan Moore & Bill Sienkiewicz. Below: Under his Mad Love imprint, Alan also rallied talent to contribute to the Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia benefit book, AARGH! (Oct. ’88), and wrote “The Mirror of Love,” with art by Rick Veitch and Stephen Bissette. Here’s Bill Sienkiewicz’s cover. ©2003 B.S.

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Above: To date, Alan Moore’s most widely recognized work remains his 16-chapter collaboration with artist Eddie Campbell on their speculative investigation of the Jack the Ripper crimes in the 1880s, From Hell, (’91-’98) which was made into a motion picture a few years back. ©2003 Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell.

Below: Alan Moore and paramour Melinda Gebbie teamed to produce Lost Girls (’95-’96), a multi-chapter saga soon to be finished with the Top Shelf publication of the threevolume slipcased edition. ©A.M. & M.G.

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tradition. Television, movies, all these things are all related because before we had television, before we had comics, we had narrative poets who used all these different forms of performance to getting across information. Back when we were in the bardic tradition….

CBA: This was when few could read and the orator could tell his story his way?

Alan: A bard was not an entertainer. People were terrified of bards. If you offend a local magician, if you piss him off, what’s he going to do? Your hens are going to start laying funny-looking eggs and your cows will give sour milk and you’ll get a kid born with a harelip. But offend a bard and he does worse things than curses.

He may lay a satire on you. He will destroy you by mockery in the eyes of your contemporaries, in the eyes of your friends, in the eyes of your family and in the eyes of yourself. If he’s a good enough bard, even in 300 years time, when you are long dead and forgotten, people may still be laughing at what a twit you were because the bard’s words just might live on. He will have destroyed in a way that a magician or a soldier or a thug couldn’t have ever done. Such is the power of language. When most people haven’t got language, someone who has superior language skills also has genuine magical power.

CBA: How tall are you?

Alan: Six foot, two inches.

CBA: How much do you weigh?

Alan: About 14 or 15 stone [between 196 and 210 pounds]. It goes up and down a bit. It varies.

CBA: I ask because usually people who tell the truth and create satires are at great risk of getting their asses kicked, so it helps to be big. I think Jesus was the ultimate satirist because he was able to expose to ridicule the hypocrites who loved money above everything.

Alan: In any kind of work of truth there is bound to be an implicit criticism of the way things are done. This is always going to be true of satire. I was reading about Bill Hicks and it was saying that comedians are the unacknowledged legislators of their time, or moralists, because they are the true moral voices. It’s not lawmakers or the politicians.

It’s somebody who can expose how ridiculous the things we do are and can make them so laughable that we don’t have the strength to do them any more. Lenny Bruce, God bless. He was a junkie, he was a fink, but he told the truth.

CBA: And Lenny got his ass kicked for telling the truth! Everybody who does the same gets their ass kicked in one way or another. Did you leave comics to do screen writing?

Alan: I’ve never had any interest in writing film. I’m just not really interested.

CBA: But you went off and left comics pretty much completely for a time, right?

Alan: What I did is I went off and did a non-mainstream comic thing. What happened was after Watchmen and all that, I went off and started Mad Love Publishing. We published Aargh! [Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia, 1988] which was a benefit book to help fight the anti-homosexual legislation Mrs. Thatcher had tried to bring in Britain. We got all these great people who contributed and it was a pretty impressive book. We had everybody who was anybody contributing… Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller. I was calling these people and asking them to help out.

I spent about 30 bumbling seconds talking to Crumb because I was like, “Mr. Crumb, I’m so sorry to bother you!” I sounded like a nitwit.

CBA: When was this?

Alan: 1988 or ’90.

CBA: When did the song “Alan Moore Knows the Score” come out?

Alan: That was post-Watchmen. About ’88, I believe.

CBA: Did you become a minor celebrity in England?

Alan: Yeah, I became a minor celebrity in the ’80s and since then I’ve become a celebrity again. Recently that blew up again with the movie From Hell and with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen being filmed.

CBA: So League is really in full swing?

Alan: Yes. CBA: Did you just sign off on it and say, “I never want to see it again”?

Alan: Yes, “Just give me the money.” We then did Big Numbers [1990] of which I wrote five issues, but only published two. That was going to be my magnum opus. That was some of the most sophisticated storytelling I ever imagined. At the same time I started up From Hell [1991] and Lost Girls [1995].

CBA: Did you really plan for From Hell to be that big?

Alan: I planned for it to be 16 episodes long and I was aware that as I went along and did more research that it was going to be rather massive. I knew what era of history the events took place, but I didn’t know what details I was going to find. It was going to be 16 episodes with some episodes eight pages long and some of them maybe 58 pages.

George: Did you lose a lot of money spending so much time researching From Hell, taking time away from other paying work?

Alan: Well, Big Numbers made a lot of money. It sold really well for a black-&-white, very strange book.

CBA: I thought you were to write a screenplay with the guy who discovered the Sex Pistols, Malcolm MacLaren.

Alan: I did. I wanted to meet Malcolm. I thought I would like to meet him because he’s interesting and I did find him a very entertaining and amusing person to know. Lauren Hutton was his girlfriend and she was so sweet, very beautiful and one of the least selfconscious women I have ever met. We went out to get a bite to eat and she said, “Look at my skin.” She apparently was born somewhere in South America and she’s says, “I’ve just been in the sun and my skin looks just like a crocodile’s. Look at it.” It was and she was talking about all the flaws she has, but not to prompt me to contradict her or tell her she’s wrong or that she’s beautiful. She was genuinely like, “Look at my skin, I just pull it and it stays up. It’s got no elasticity.” She was really sweet and really unaffected and Malcolm was entertaining and amusing.

CBA: So how far did you get into it?

Alan: I wrote the entire screenplay and Malcolm had to tell me to leave room for the director to interpret because I was used to doing comics with everything in my control, so I was detailing all the camera angles. I like to think of everything, to see how it is going COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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to work, and then turn it over to be realized by others. If they want to add things, fine, as long as I know the basic structure is sound and will work.

CBA: Do you debate that quite often with your artists?

Alan: No, if they’ve got any ideas that will add to the story, I’m fine with it.

CBA: Do you feel challenged very often by your artists?

Do they often make the whole better by what they add?

Alan: All the time, on all the books I write. If I wasn’t doing Promethea with Jim Williams, Mick Gray, and Todd Klein, it wouldn’t be the same book. I just couldn’t do Lost Girls without Melinda Gebbie.

CBA: What’s up with that project?

Alan: She’s just finishing it at the moment. There’s another eight pages to go and then it’s all done, ready to get wrapped up and sent off to production.

CBA: Is there a lot of pornography in it?

Alan: It’s nothing but porn. [laughter] It’s a 240-page pornographic epic.

CBA: Do you have pages?

Alan: I’ve probably got a couple I could show you. The whole reason I did Lost Girls was because I wanted to write good pornography. (That’s kind of an oxymoron, “good pornography.”) What we wanted to do with this story is just dissect pornography and look at it and say, “What does it do? What should it do? What doesn’t it do?

What do we want it to do?” Pornography might be the most popular genre in the world. If it is the most popular, then why hasn’t it got any standards?

CBA: I’ve heard that 80% of the Internet is devoted to porn.

Alan: Then how can it be the most popular and most despised genre in the world? Weird, isn’t it? Even people who like it never try to defend it on any level, they’re never going to stand up and say, “Yeah, this is good stuff.”

What we also realized is that we want humor in this and elements of tension, but we do not want to make this humorous and we don’t want to make it horrible because when people generally do things about sex there are two ways that they treat it. There are some things about sex that are funny, so they make a sex comedy out of it.

CBA: A British tradition.

Alan: Not a particularly good one, in my opinion, because when I’m having sex, I’m not laughing most of the time. If I’m laughing, it’s because something has gone tragically wrong. [laughter] CBA: British television shows can be about nothing but sex, but discussed in a very buttoned-down way, like Are You Being Served?.

Alan: That type of approach is an embarrassment to us.

CBA: The nudge-nudge, wink-wink stuff.

Alan: Monty Python was at least intelligent. Benny Hill wasn’t.

Benny Hill was infantile, not any expression of sexuality. We’re repressed as a nation, so that’s fine. When I think of pornography as it’s done in this country, I think of sexual horror stories or sex comedies. So we thought about just doing something that is a sex story. It’s not a comedy about sex, it’s just a story about sex and, if it’s to be pornography, it’s got to have sex on more or less every page or people are going to get bored. We’ve also got to have variety to the sex.

I look at Victorian porn novels and it struck me how, in some ways, their standards were above ours today of what is excusable, but they were a lot more liberal and socially responsible than a lot of later commentaries have made them out to be. You’ll find that there are often proto-feminist ideas about sexuality that are coming across in these Victorian porn books. It also wasn’t completely dominated by male heterosexual sexuality. All the characters seem to be bisexual.

You got two men characters starting to hook up and that would never happen in heterosexual porn movies these days, because all men would go, “Ugh.” Back in Victorian times, it was all sex and, “Let’s make this appeal to people of almost any sexuality. Let’s put everything in there.” That’s the one thing pornography has got to do: It has to make you horny.

CBA: Porn is usually used as an aid in masturbation, but can you say comics can get you off?

Alan: When I was a teenager, I could get aroused by almost anything, even a cereal box, anything. I could get just as stimulated by a dirty comic as I could by reading porn. Reading pornography June 2003

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without images is still probably my favorite form of it. Comics are pretty good. I prefer that “Meet Joe Blow” strip of R. Crumb from Zap #1 or #2 that is so transgressive. It is so horny and so funny and so explosive. It probably does have an element of truth in it somewhere.

All this stuff is arousing, but what we tried to do with Lost Girls was make it arousing, but we also thought, “What has a pornographic book got to do? What has any other work of art in the world have to so?” It’s got to stimulate on a number of levels. It’s got to be intellectually stimulating, emotionally stimulating, visually stimulating, and

it’s got to have a story and got to have a point and a message. It’s got to have characters. These are things that you’re never going to hear about in pornography: Characters, plot, message and meaning.

CBA: That’s what you are trying to put into all your work, right?

Alan: Right. So we’ve got this sprawling story and because Melinda has the ability to convey my words, I had to do cleverer stuff. We even include an expurgated chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde. It’s the chapter where Dorian visits a male brothel.

It’s fun.

CBA: Couldn’t you call this erotica?

Alan: I prefer to call it pornography because, as far as I can see, the

Above: As testament to his brilliant imagination, Alan Moore takes Rob Leifeld’s blatant Superman rip-off, Supreme, to craft a multi-layered examination of the oddly endearing worldview of legendary Man of Steel editor Mort Weisinger commencing with Supreme #41 (Aug. ’96). This alternative cover was painted by Jerry Ordway. ©2003 Awesome Entertainment.

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Above: The writer’s deep affection and respect for the Superman mythos is most clearly evident in his pair of “farewell” issues— Superman #423 and Action Comics #583 (both Sept. ’86)—when Alan Moore teamed with Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, and George Pérez, as well as editor Julius Schwartz, to examine “Whatever Happened To the Man of Tomorrow?” ©2003 DC Comics.

only difference between erotica and pornography is the income bracket of the person reading it. I’ve decided pornography is just fine. If I’m a pornographer, I can deal with that.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

CBA: Is there something happening there when you say, “I don’t see anything wrong with being called a pornographer”? [laughter] Alan: I want to redeem the word.

CBA: The more pornography becomes acceptable in society, I just wonder how it could affect my children. I remember being just minutely exposed to porn as a kid and what an impact it made.

Alan: When my children were very young, there were loads of sex books around, so I had to figure out my position on this. I realized that if I told them not to do something, then I knew they were probably going to do it. If I told them not to do it and they do it, then they will lie to me about it. I know that because that’s what I did with my parents. That’s what all kids do. So, as not to lie to each other and keep talking, they can do whatever they want, but I will try to keep them informed. For example, with these underground comix, I told them, “You are welcome to read anything because I’m not going to censor your reading, but if you do pick up a Robert Crumb

Right: Interestingly, while sticking close to the Superman template with his Supreme work, something about Alan Moore’s revamping of Rob Liefeld’s Wonder Woman imitation, Glory, led the writer to take another route in exploring prototypes and precursors—beyond comics and into other realms of mythology and fiction—which eventually brought him to develop Promethea, perhaps his most profoundly spiritual and mystical work yet. This cover detail of Avatar Press’ reprinting of Glory: The Gates of Tears Prelude (a.k.a., Alan Moore’s Glory #0, Dec. ’01) is by Andy Park. Courtesy of George Khoury. ©2003 Awesome Entertainment.

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comic or anything that’s got stuff like that in it, you need to know that comic has sex in it and it’s a grown-up picture book of sex.

Sometimes grown-ups make jokes about sex that might look pretty horrible to kids, but to an adult it’s just a joke. You can read these if you want, but there might be some things in there that will disturb you. If you do decide to read it and it does disturb, come talk to me and I’ll try to explain what it is all about.” Some times they would pass on reading it and sometimes they’d say, “I think I will read it.”

CBA: I can see my seven-year-old coming up to me and saying, “This is too grown-up, huh?”

Alan: So I give them the choice and whatever you want to talk about with me, let’s talk about it.

CBA: Are they like most teenagers and become dismissive of your work?

Alan: I don’t think so.

CBA: They’ve always liked comics? Did they appreciate your stories?

Alan: I think Leah has been more into comics than Amber, but they both always enjoyed comics and have always read them. I send Leah and Amber all the ABC stuff that comes out. I just got the new Terrific Tales and I’ll be putting that in the mail to them as well as Greyshirt. They are both fans of Greyshirt.

CBA: Last year George and I went out to dinner with Rick Veitch and I have to say that was one of the best dinner conversations I’ve ever had. Rick is quite the thinker.

Alan: Roarin’ Rick is a gentleman.

CBA: I asked Rick, “What is this fascination Alan Moore has for Mort Weisinger’s Superman books? What’s the thinking behind all this Supreme stuff?” Rick enlightened me about your attraction to that material. Could you talk about Weisinger a little bit?

Alan: Everything I’ve heard about him personally made it sound like he must have been a complete nightmare to work for. I’ve never heard anybody say anything good about him. “Sadistic” is one of the nicer terms I heard used about Weisinger.

Julius Schwartz told me an anecdote (one I have since figured is a standing Jewish joke about the funerals of notoriously unliked people). At Jewish funerals there’s apparently a tradition where people can stand up and give testament to the many good qualities of the departed. Apparently, at Weisinger’s service, when the time came, there was complete silence that went on for an embarrassingly long period of time. Nobody stood up to say anything good about Mort Weisinger until, at the very end of it, someone stands up in the back of the synagogue and says, “His brother was worse.” [laughter] On the other hand, I grew up reading those Superman comics, and they were perhaps the first comics I ever read.

Weisinger edited Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Superman, Superboy, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane… a whole line of books that were easy to get over here. Of the American comics, I probably read more of his books than any other American titles. Not because I wanted to be Superman. It wasn’t an empowerment fantasy (though I think a lot look back and realize they wanted to be super-heroes to empower themselves).

The reason I was fascinated by Superman was because his milieu

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the mystery of things. Don’t you have to was wonderful. In the very best sense of the word, Superman was have mystery? You don’t have to reveal absolutely wonderful. Full of wonder. There were all these concepts everything, do you? and characters, like Kandor, Krypto, time-travel, Lori Lemaris, the Phantom Zone, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Bizarro, all of this fantastic sh*t. It was Alan: My feeling about is that we full of wonder and it would spark up my imagination. What if I had a can’t reveal everything.

CBA: You’ve created realities that are bottled city? All of the rest of it was like drugs. It was opening doors in my mind which I hadn’t known were there and it was showing me starting to take shape in other realms.

Recently From Hell was released as a that your imagination could take you anywhere. movie, and The League of Extraordinary CBA: You can infuse truth into anything. You can give meaning Gentlemen is going to be a major motion to anything by virtue of creating a name for it. Once you name picture. How do you feel about seeing something, you make it real. “This is a pipe.” your creations reinvented by others?

Alan: Of course, Superman exists. The main problem with this Alan: To tell you the truth, I don’t even and magic and all these other things is a simple problem, a simple think about the films. I still haven’t seen confusion. We are talking about two different sides of existence and two different sides of reality. There is physical existence, the stuff that From Hell.

CBA: But just as your stories become you can touch and feel all around you. No one gives any doubt that real, don’t the films themselves that is real. become real?

Then there is a mental existence that cannot be quantified in a Alan: No, they’re going to be movies. laboratory and because science cannot prove that any one of us is CBA: Movies are real, aren’t they? aware or conscious, consciousness and the mind are forever outside Alan: This is perhaps a cultural the province of science. An idea of a chair is as real as a chair is real, difference that we will perhaps have but they are real in two different ways. Thus, the idea of Superman to agree to differ on. has obviously got quite a complex and profound existence.

CBA: Ian Holmes certainly does a CBA: The meaning comes from within and you just recognize that great job in From Hell. he is an archetype?

Alan: The thing that attracted me to Superman was the fact that he Alan: I’m sure he does because he’s a could fly. He could see through walls. He could do all these things. He great actor. I’ve got nothing against the had marvelous toys. He had a marvelous place that he lived in. All his film, but I just don’t really get time to go out and see any films. I don’t go to the friends were marvelous. He’s got buddies in the future that were all cinema. That’s by choice because I don’t really enjoy many films. I marvelous. He knew all the Justice League of America and they were think the films I do like are good. I also try not to watch TV. I watch marvelous.

I know that this has been said before so it’s kind of cliché, but if the news and current affairs programs. I watch The Sopranos. I watch South Park. I watch The Simpsons. I watch you go back to the very earliest form of storytelling, those stories would have been about someone who did something amazing. “This the better British comedy shows, and that’s about it. guy Hercules was so strong. This guy Hercules, nothing could hurt CBA: Do people him.” People love to hear that sort of stuff: Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, know you around Jesus Christ.

Northampton?

Back when humankind was living in caves, I’m sure they were telling stories about the legendary warrior who came from the East who was as tall as a mountain and that he could pick up a mastodon and just eat it for a snack. They would come up with tales like that and that is the primal form of storytelling. Imaginative fantasy stories about people who are extensions of what we normal humans can do. We come up with these fantasy forms that can extend us into areas of perception or being that we can’t get to physically but where we want to go.

Dr. Manhattan was a way of extending myself into a being that sees things in four dimensions and can see all time as it’s happening at once, some character who can extend my mind and the reader’s as well. They can imagine for a little while what it is like to be a plant god or to be a quantum super-hero or something. This is what these stories have always done. They’ve allowed us to extend ourselves into areas of experience that would otherwise be closed to us.

If you give somebody the idea that this man can fly, then in their minds they are thinking, “Imagine if you could, imagine if I could.” They might have never imagined flying before. There must have been some point when we didn’t have a work for our imagination and the stories that we first told, they were extensions of us. The nearest that we probably get to that today is children’s super-hero comics.

When I was growing up, the first thing that captured my imagination was mythology. I was reading these Lady Bird books of Greek myths, Norse myths, Arthurian legends, and Above: Chris Sprouse, Roman legends, and I loved them because they were all about things Top: The Weisinger who originally began his that I couldn’t do, that nobody could do, purely imaginative areas. approach is in full-swing collaboration with Alan I was able to have adventures without leaving my room, without on Alan Moore’s Supreme Moore on Supreme, continleaving my chair! My mind would suddenly be going to all these run, as we see from this Superman ued the team’s work on the Tom Strong Annual pastiche on Supreme #42 (Sept. wonderful places. material for the ABC line. This previously unpublished Strong ’96). ©2003 Awesome Entertainment.

Family portrait shot is courtesy of Chris. ©2003 ABC, LLC. CBA: The problem with science is that it’s always trying to destroy June 2003

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Above: J.H. Williams III illustration adorning Promethea Vol. 1. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC. This and following two spreads : The writer cites this comic book, Promethea #12 as perhaps the cleverest idea he ever thought of: One 24-page issue consisting of a single enlongated panel (if one pieces all the pages together, sideby-side, as we have conveniently done for the reader in miniature over the following three spreads) which attempts to chart the entire history of humanity onto the 22 major arcana of the Tarot. The upper portion—featuring Promethea—were illustrated by JHW3 and inker Mick Gray; the bottom portion—starring magician Aleister Crowley reciting an extended joke—rendered by José Villarrubia. Special thanks to CBA’s #1 intern, Rob Riegert, for his photographic assist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Alan: The taxi drivers, vagrants, and waitresses do.

CBA: Do they like you?

Alan: I think so. What’s not to like?

Around town, it’s great and one of the reasons why I don’t leave Northampton is because people here don’t treat me as a celebrity because they’re used to me. I’ve been around for years and I’m just that guy with the long hair.

They know I enjoy talking to people when I am out and about.

I know the people at my bank by their first names.

CBA: You’re a pretty nice guy.

Alan: You know, I try to be.

CBA: I call you up and you always give me time. You always give me respect, right off the bat. A lot of other guys are dismissive and busy, busy, busy.

Even I do that.

Alan: I’ve always felt bad at the times when I do have to say I have a load of work.

CBA: You don’t give your phone number out much, right?

Alan: Everyone ends up knowing it anyway.

CBA: It’s surprising that a lot of the artists that I talk to say they haven’t talked to you a lot. Kevin Nowlan says he doesn’t talk to you very much at all. The last time I spoke with him, I told Tom Sutton how I thought you two would do well to know one another.

Alan: He said something in that interview you did with him and it was so funny. It was really scurrilous but so funny. He had some wonderful turns of phrases.

CBA: Did you see his Dementia, his Eros porn?

Alan: I don’t think I did. I read the first few Eros titles and I thought they were good. I like the Terry Leban material. Some of the stuff was just plain porn. Wendy Whitebread, there was something about that that was so bare-faced that you could almost dig it. I liked it. It was so in your face with no redeeming qualities, that I found it entertaining.

On South Park the other night, they had a scene where Mr. Garrison has been told to explain sex behavior to his Kindergarten class. So he asks the class, “What positions do we know?“ Missionary, doggie, and they go through all these different positions, and then they start to get into this really exotic stuff, “Hot Carl,” and all these things that even I barely know what they mean.

They’re disgusting, but very funny.

CBA: Would you say that the Brits are still rather prudish about sex?

Alan: When people talk about prudishness in Britain, they are talking about the prudishness of British customs and the upper class.

The British working classes are not prudish. They are very bawdy.

We like sex. Melinda was saying….

CBA: Is Melinda American?

Alan: She’s from California. She was an American underground cartoonist. She was in that crowd.

CBA: Yeah, you told me. What else did she draw? She was in Wimmen’s Comix.

Alan: She did Tits ’n’ Clits, Wet Satin. She was one of the originals from issue one. She did the one that got all the trouble. It was called “The Cockpit” where you have this woman committed to a mental asylum and she’s being f*cked by all the inmates and, in the end, she drinks bleach and her spirit spontaneous pours out of her body. I loved Melinda’s stuff before I met her.

CBA: Her work reminds me of H.G. Peter’s.

Alan: She didn’t know Peter until I showed her his work.

CBA: I meant that it came from that same sensibility.

Alan: I don’t think that.

CBA: This is Trina Robbins.

Alan: Trina Robbins… now her stuff is H.G. Peter, but if you go back and look at Melinda’s “Cockpit” story in that Wet Satin, it’s stippled and she’s coming from a fine art background. That is what she trained to be, a fine artist.

CBA: My wife generally has no interest in comics.

But the two titles she did get into were Swamp Thing and, more recently, Promethea.

Alan: I like human beings. I think they’re interesting creatures. I like women, though it’s not that I like them better than men. Women are great. Men are great. What’s her name?

CBA: Beth.

Alan: [Signing Promethea Vol. 1] “To Beth.”

CBA: Do you like Ramsey Campbell?

Alan: I love Ramsey. I like him as a bloke and as a writer. It was great that Ramsey was taking Lovecraft riffs and turning them into stories based in a very recognizable, very creepy modern England.

That’s is why his stuff works for me. His stories could be happening in Birmingham or Liverpool. Also, though many of his stories are terrifying and creepy, he is one of the most lovely and charming men you could ever meet. He’s really very friendly, with two wonderful kids (who must now be in their twenties because I haven’t seen Ramsey for years).

CBA: Generally speaking horror writers are some of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet. They get their issues out on paper and are then able to be nice, gentle and well-tempered.

Alan: I was talking Alexi Sayle, the comedian, a lovely bloke who is very funny and very down to earth. I mentioned to him about the difference between a comedian and a horror writer. The two genres

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are very similar because they both rely upon shock effects. They surprise you. Comedians surprise you for humorous effect. I was saying, “The thing is, Alexi, all the horror writers I know they are really happy, contented blokes. Most of the comedians I know, yourself excepted, are terribly and famously depressed. Lenny Bruce, John Belushi… they suffered from depression. But if anything bad happens to a horror writer then that’s great because that event can be turned into a story. If anything bad happens to a comedian then, what does one do?” If you are a horror writer and then you go into a depression, so what? It’s not going to affect your work. You’ll probably get a good book out of it. If you are a comedian and you go into a depression, then it’s the end.” I need to try to find a balance between the two.

Writing a horror story is exquisite, precise torture. I want to torture readers in an interesting way, one they like.

The main difference about what I did with Swamp Thing and what happened with the later books that owed a debt to Swamp Thing, the Vertigo titles, is that in Swamp Thing, I’d have a story with horrific stuff happening but then I would do an issue like the “Rite of Spring.” The audience needs the variety, which hopefully makes the quieter issues more beautiful, and the horror issues even more terrifying because of the contrast.

CBA: That’s one of the gentlest stories I’ve ever read.

Alan: You have to have moments of beauty. You’ll have things like the “Pog” issue which was sad, cute, funny, and environmentally informed. It not about endlessly banging out on these deep Gothic notes. That’s not music. You have to play the lighter notes at the other end of the piano, as well as the deeper ones, and then you get some sort of melody going. If you are torturing somebody and you keep going at the same spot, it will eventually numb and they will not be able to feel anything there. Don’t just keep at it with a blowtorch and pliers. Vary it. Horror is meaningless unless life is meaningful. If I can actually make it seem that the world is meaningful and it does have beauty and human lives are beautiful, then when something horrible happens to that world or those humans, it’s genuinely horrible.

Dave Gibbons and I were talking and trying to work out what our position was about explicitly showing horror, and Dave said, “I don’t think that I really like to see bad things happen to good people.” I said, “Nobody likes to see that, but that is reality. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people.

Good things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. That’s how it is. What I don’t like to see is meaningless things happen to meaningless people.”

CBA: Do you drink?

Alan: I don’t drink any more. I stop drinking about two or three years ago. Not that I ever drank excessively. If I’m at a restaurant and there’s something I fancy, like Chinese beer or saki, I’ll treat myself. I’ll

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also drink port at Christmas.

CBA: Is port like a sherry?

Alan: It has more flavor than a sherry.

Sherry is too sweet. Port is sweet, but it’s got depth to it. It tastes good, but generally I don’t drink because I got bored with it.

I very seldom get drunk.

When I was a teenager, I drank myself to death, literally. They had to revive me on my twentieth birthday. I drank a terrifying amount and I had stopped breathing. They got me down to the hospital. I had drank 10 pints of lager, two pints of bitter, six whiskeys, 17 Southern Comforts, and apparently I was holding it all together until I was violently sick. Then they got me back to my friend’s house and dropped me in a bath and I was unconscious. They carried on partying. Someone came out with a joint and apparently I did manage to reach my arm for it and then fell back. Someone said, “Hey, Alan’s stopped breathing!” They realized, “Sh*t! He really has!” [laughter] They called the ambulance and the ambulance sped downtown, pumped my stomach out, and they got me going again. I don’t remember anything about it. I can imagine that a near-death experience on 17 Southern Comforts would be a pretty cloudy one. I completely missed the tunnel of bright light.

A number of my friends are dying at the moment because of liver failure and things like that. I never used to drink much. I would occasionally get drunk on weekends, but in later years, I would go out to the pub twice a week. I’d go out once with my brother and his two sons on Sunday night. There’s a local working men’s club near where we used to live and we’re both members of it. I would have four or five pints and I would go down for a drink with Tim, my musical partner. Four pints doesn’t get you drunk. You start to soften at the edges a bit. You’ve got a bit fuzzy and the next morning you are going to be full of gas and feel a little not so good. You haven’t had a good enough time to justify the way you feel the next morning. I don’t even like the taste of lager. I don’t like the taste of beer, except the occasional one with a bit of flavor. I’m reminded that it’s like sex in a sailboat and I don’t like spirits because they drive you mad. I stopped smoking cigarettes, other than using tobacco in joints, so if I’m out in the streets or at restaurant then I don’t smoke, which is fine because it means I don’t habitually chain smoke. I do smoke an awful lot of drugs.

Above: While the artist may not have identified exactly why these series of round illustrations starring Promethea characters were drawn, we sure do thank J.H. Williams III for sharing these beauts with us.

This one depicts the New York City business-suited crime-fighting quintet, The Five Swell Guys. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Above: Art courtesy of J.H. Williams III. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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CBA: Do you try to have as little denial in your life as possible?

Alan: Denial of what? I know that tobacco is a killer. I know that I get short of breath occasionally if I’m running up stairs. My lungs probably aren’t as clear as they used to be, but on the other hand, I really do enjoy smoking dope. Most of the things that we do are probably not good for us, like sex is dangerous as is most of the food that we eat. I’m a vegetarian, which is probably safer—at least if you are in Britain—than being a meat eater. There are some ways that I live healthier than other people and there are some ways that I don’t.

CBA: Americans are big on guilt for any “sins” we commit.

Alan: I really don’t have a very strong concept of sin. I’ve always felt that if I’m doing it, then it’s good. It must be right. I’m a moral individual and think very carefully about things, probably as much as anyone else, if not more.

I try not to harm other people. With secondary smoke, I see it as us smokers are doing them a favor, as we have to pay for our smoking. They owe us money. [laughter] I try to be as open about what I am and what I do.

CBA: Have the least amount of hypocrisy in you life?

Alan: I’m not going to make any pretenses that I’m this or that or not this or that. It is pretty obvious what I am.

CBA: What are you?

Alan: I’m a normal, healthy, working-class English lad.

I’m somebody who has a great deal of fun in his life.

CBA: You have a lot of people who truly enjoy reading your work.

Alan: It’s nice.

CBA: One of the great comic-book writers just passed away, Robert Kanigher.

Alan: I didn’t know that. I remember meeting Robert once.

What a witty man. When I met him, he had these thick eyebrows, just overgrowth with beady eyes.

CBA: Did you have a good time when you visited the States?

Did you meet a lot of people who were sincere?

Alan: People were very sincere, but the thing was it was a bit overwhelming. I came over to the States two or three times, and those experiences were pretty bad. Once was to San Diego.

CBA: How long did you stay?

Alan: Only about a week or ten days on each occasion. The first

time I went on my own. The second time I went and Phyllis joined me in San Diego. The third time me and Debbie Delano went to Washington, and Phyllis stayed home that time. Seeing America through the eyes of the comics industry… for one thing, everyone was being very nice and telling me how much they liked my work.

CBA: Were they also being transparent?

Alan: No, and it’s nothing against those people, but there were people that just wanted to glom on to me, and I felt alienated.

Everybody was gushing over me too much. As writers, we live very solitary lives. I don’t go out very much. It’s just so hard to deal with that many people loving you and wanting to have some contact with you. I remember at San Diego there were two particularly bad moments neither of which I completely understand. One of them was a dream I had where I dreamed that I was back in the convention hall and there were all these people gathered around me and they all started to touch me. They were all just touching me. No hitting me, just wanting to touch me, and I remember just feeling this hand between my legs and it wasn’t even sexual, it was just that they would like to touch me there as well. I remember waking up in a cold sweat and in a state of absolute horror. I thought that this is getting to me.

CBA: You perform as a musician, right?

Alan: Yes, but that’s different.

CBA: But you’re physically there in front of an audience, right?

Alan: I know I’m physically there, but if I’m going on as a musician or a performer then I’m going on the stage and doing a performance and, if the audience likes that performance, then they will applaud; if they don’t like the performance, they won’t. It is a straightforward relationship: Performer and audience. It’s not celebrity and audience.

When I was traveling through America, it wasn’t as if I was typing an issue of Swamp Thing before an audience, and people would say, “Oh, look at that metaphor!” They were there because I was Alan Moore. When I’m Alan Moore on stage performing then I’m a performer. They are seeing what I am doing and if they want to applaud then that’s great. It’s honest. I’ve done something and they’ve seen me do it and they liked the performance. When I’m being a celebrity, I’m not doing my work, I’m just appearing as me.

That is what I don’t feel comfortable with. So I also don’t do television. Back in the ’80s, I decided I didn’t want to do talk shows. I’ll only do serious programs and art programs and programs on magic these days, documentaries that are going to be shown late at night on Channel Four when nobody is watching, and that is fine. I’m not interested in publicizing myself. I don’t need to. It the work is good, people will seek it out.

CBA: A lot of people embrace celebrity as getting that immediate gratification of feeling loved. I would think if some would have the same nightmare as you, it wouldn’t be a nightmare because to be touched by strangers is what they want.

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Alan: If you are a celebrity then you’re going to be getting a lot of anonymous sex, I guess, and that’s the idea behind it. Celebrity, sex, money, fame. I am quite intelligent and have a very strong sense of survival, and I think I’ve got a clear and lucid idea of the dangers in some of these things that others launch themselves into blindly without considering. I looked at fame when it was offered to me and I thought, “What is this stuff? What does it do to people? Do I want it? How would it benefit me? What are the reasons for wanting it?

What are the reasons for not wanting it? Is there any way to get the good stuff without having to accept the bad?” I made all of these decisions and don’t want anything to do with the sides of fame that I consider negative or injurious. I don’t want to put myself on a different level than other people because then communication stops.

Communication is only possible between equals. Life is a battle for meaning. The enemy is meaninglessness. In our Western culture, meaning has got a very brief half-life. The radioactivity of meaning just bleeds out of things until they mean nothing, and meaninglessness permeates the places where people live, and consequently the people that live in them become meaningless. [gestures around his living room] This is what it is all about. This place is a modest attempt to create some sort of strange occult temple somewhere in the middle of the street where I live, in Northampton, England.

There are stars painted on the ceiling, magic wands, the Kabbala… all this stuff that I’m looking at and absorbing all the time, and [pointing to a tall pile of books next to his reading chair] I also look at all this rubbish and piles of books and everything else and it makes me feel good.

Originally, all houses were built to symbolize the universe, especially temples and sacred buildings. You have the stars on the ceiling to symbolize the sky. You have the earth or the ceiling to place the four elements around you. It’s to make you realize that room, this temple, is a microcosm of the universe. If you grow up in a temple, subconsciously you’re going to soak up meaning and you’re going to think that you live in a temple and therefore, “I must be a god.”

Therefore, you’re going to feel that you are in your own right a self-contained exalted being and you are going to feel better than if you lived in a sh*t heap. If you live in a sh*t heap, you are going to eventually come to the conclusion that if you live in one, therefore you must be sh*t. You become influenced by your environment.

I’m living here in Northampton, which is not the most attractive town in Great Britain. It’s a bit halfway in terms of geography, politics, economics, and how pretty it is. If you go down the road that way to the main road, on that main road just a little bit up is the United Reform Church. The old building is still standing and they’ve built some rather unattractive extensions to it. The United Reform Church is where Francis Harry Compton Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, went to Sunday school. The guy who discovered DNA went to Sunday school right up there. Just down from there is the county

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cricket ground where Samuel Beckett played cricket against Northampton. Up there a bit there’s the racecourse. There is a bus shelter on the corner where the gallows used to be, where they used to hang people. If you actually go down one of the little side streets that leads to the racecourse, upon a chimney on one of the houses is a picture of a guy with a beard and long hair that you might think was a religious picture. It’s a molded relief of this figure with long hair and fairly eroded so you might mistake it for Jesus, but it’s not Jesus, it’s Colonel William Cody because Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show did a performance on the racecourse. We had Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull over there, which is also the scene of a number of murders. Some places in this town have levels of history going back to the Stone Age. And there has been a town here since the Stone Age. If you don’t understand it, or know about it, it’s not there. Whereas I can walk down the street and I have got layers of significance, some of it personal, some of it historical. I can remember this is the street where I used to know soand-so and this is also the street that this happened in or this famous person lived. It makes my environment rich and mythical. Therefore, if I’m living in a mythical environment and taking all this information in from the streets that I walk every day, I feel like a pretty mythic being. I think that it would be good for everybody if they felt like that and understood the world they spend their lives in and understood how fantastic it is. Consider everything: The guy who discovered DNA, all the saints, all the murderers, all the religious miracles, the ghost stories, the famous artists, the writers, the politics that have happened here.

Parliamentary democracy was invented here in Northampton.

The British Civil War was concluded in Northampton. The result of that was parliamentary democracy. King Charles was executed and the result was we had a Parliament. The War of the Roses was finished in Northampton. If somebody wants to be fighting somebody else, they were going to be passing through Northampton on their way to mix it up. Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded in Northampton. I think Richard III was born here. It was, in Saxon times, the capital of Britain for a while because it is the furthest point inland, so the Royal family would live here more than in London.

Thomas à Becket was tried here rather than in London. Henry was at

Above: Art courtesy of J.H. Williams III. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Above: Art courtesy of J.H. Williams III. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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that time living in the castle in Northampton.

He was passing through.

CBA: There is literally a sense of history everywhere you look around here.

Alan: It all started here. The entire universe revolves around this place.

After that Civil War, because it must have been pretty f*cked-up around here, a couple of families thought they might move to a place that was a bit nicer. These included the ancestors of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, whose families moved to America. Northampton had a minor village crest that, in heraldic terms, had what we call bars and mullets (which in America would be termed stars and stripes). The crest was the inspiration for the American flag.

CBA: Now America’s Best Comics is making sense!

Alan: We invented America as I keep trying to tell everybody.

Someone said, very wisely, “In England, 100 miles is a long way. In America, 100 years is a long time.” That’s the difference between the two countries. Over here we still having structures standing that were built in 1100.

CBA: People from London were telling me going to Northampton is a long way.

Alan: You could drop England five times into Texas. This is why I don’t how that song “24 Hours from Tulsa” ever got into the charts over here. Here you are not 24 hours from anywhere. In two days you can be at the furthermost northern point. It’s not a big country.

CBA: But there is a lot of history. The political control of the city was it bounced back and forth a couple of times by invasions?

Alan: The reason why England has one of the best languages in the world is that we were invaded by nearly everybody, so we developed a slave patois, which is what English is. English is like a pidgin language. We were invaded by the Romans, so as a result, we’ve got loads of Italian words to add to the Celtic words we had before. Then after the Romans, we had the Saxons coming in, so we got German words. After the Saxons are finished with us, we get the Normans so we get French added to the language. German, French, Italian, these are actually proper languages and have proper linguistic structures, something English does not have. Those language have got order and you have to learn all these parts of speech and feminine nouns and masculine nouns, whereas with English it was, “Let’s take the best bits of their language and not bother with all the

fussy stuff because there’s no point, and everyone knows what you mean.” We got English, so as a result we’ve got eight different words that mean different shades of one thing that is brilliant to a writer because they don’t mean exactly the same thing. If there is a word from another language that we don’t have, we just take that word.

CBA: Getting back to comics, do you think comic-book writers are more similar to comedians than horror writers in view of what we discussed earlier?

Alan: Well, many live vicariously through the characters, and let’s say a writer wants to kill a person in real life. He might realize that he couldn’t get away with it, but he could put his feelings into a fantasy.

“What if I was Wolverine? What if I was this perfect killer?” That’s an awful sort of masturbation.

CBA: Did that attitude make you run screaming from comics for a time?

Alan: It wasn’t that it made me run screaming from comics. Comics were pretty unappealing when I got into them, and it’s always been fairly unappealing in terms of how it treats various characters.

After I had done Watchmen and finished V for Vendetta, there had been a lot of stuff in my relationship with DC which made me feel bad about working for them and bad about working for comics in general. These things weigh on your heart a bit when you first realize that you don’t own this book that you created and you never will. It was making my heart heavy working in the mainstream business and toiling for these people. I was feeling angry and depressed, not a way I wanted to feel.

I don’t want to work for Marvel because of the “Marvelman” business. I don’t want to work for DC. Let’s strike into the wilderness where there are no footprints. I’m talking after Watchmen, when I did Lost Girls, Big Numbers, and From Hell, where there were no comics being done in those areas. There was Eros Comix but that was nothing like Lost Girls.

[After a break for tea, the discussion launches into the second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen mini-series] Alan: For the second series, I didn’t want to do another pulp story.

I don’t want to do another penny dreadful Allan Quatermain story, so what are we going to do for the background filler? I suddenly thought of doing this thing called The New Traveler’s Almanac where we explain that there has been a very secret group that is part of Britain military intelligence that has existed since Francis Walsingham’s original Elizabethan intelligence network, the first British spy network.

This was back in the 16th century. There was also a group back in the 16th century called Prospero’s Men. Then in 18th century there was a group run by Lemuel Gulliver and then in the 19th century there was Mina Murray’s group and even when that group broke up in 1898, Mina Murray who was one of the only two survivors of that group that was formed in 1898 that went on working. During those centuries, these people traveled all over the world and brought back

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lots of notes and journalistic evidence recounting their travels. So what we did is say we have edited these notes and arranged them in order of country, so the first episode talks about the British Isles from the Streaming Kingdom, an underground world that exists in the English Channel up to the Blazing World, a string of islands from the Orkneys to Antarctica. We talk about all the fictional places of interest in Britain. We cover every place that never really existed other than in the fiction of the British Isles. It’s the fictional Britain.

CBA: Did you read Phillip José Farmer’s Tarzan Alive?

Alan: I read that years ago, and I thought it was great.

CBA: Do you remember that Blackhawk story that was in one of Ron Turner’s Last Gasp comics? It was a twist on Blackhawk.

They basically showed him as the fascist murderer that he was.

The plane crashes and basically the message was that it is wonderful that this killer had ceased to live.

Alan: I don’t remember that particular one, but what I found interesting at the moment is I’ve done the first bit on the British Isles.

The second issue is Europe. The third issue will discuss North and South America, as well as the Caribbean.

CBA: [Alan hands over a detail schematic on The New Traveller’s Almanac] All fictional places spreading out from Great Britain?

Alan: It’s not all fictional places… [points to hand-drawn map] This is France. This is Portugal and Spain. All these numbers on this list here these are fictional places. That’s the island of the King of the Winds from Homer. This island, which had been described by Alfred Jarry as the home of Cyclops, has got to be somewhere near France, I figure. I’ve linked up all these bits from other people’s stories… Jarry, Homer, Graham Green, Lewis Carrol.

CBA: So this is a concordance.

Alan: I’m working through Germany. In France, you’ve got Sleeping Beauty’s castle, the castle of Puss in Boots, the Beast’s castle and Bluebeard’s castle. Most of them were destroyed by shelling during the First World War. I’ve got all these things from fairy stories.

CBA: Do you take it as a compliment when people call your work dear?

Alan: “Dear”?

CBA: That you are so considerate.

Alan: I’ve never actually heard anyone call my work dear, but it sounds lovely.

CBA: Look at that! [points to schematic] You are such a considerate human being, delving into such minute detail so affectionately. One of the most appealing aspects to your work is the humanity you instill in your characters. Even the Southern redneck with the shotgun in the back of his truck is going to get a nice twist from your storytelling.

Alan: When I wrote those awful—well, what I thought were not very good—two Swamp Thing zombie issues, I remember I was in San Diego and this guy approached me and said, “Mr. Moore, I really

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like these issues of Swamp Thing.” I said, “Is that a Southern accent I detect there?” He said, “Yeah, I’m a Southern Baptist and I’m about the most Right-wing person I know, but I really liked your comic.” I thought, “Well, that’s big of you. That’s good.”

CBA: [Points to a Swamp Thing spread] Is this the biggest panel you’ve ever done?

Alan: No, the biggest panel I’ve ever done was Promethea #12, where it’s a 24-page long panel. That was one of the cleverest comics I have ever done. The people who are into Promethea are really into it. They are my Apocalypse Cult. When the Armageddon comes, and I send out my dune buggy battalion, they’ll be in the front. She’s the Apocalypse. She is Revelation.

It’s what Apocalypse is. Apocalypse is Revelation.

That’s what the word means and it’s a Revelation that ends the world and that’s what she is.

CBA: It put fault like the concept of original sin?

Alan: It’s not placing fault. It’s just saying that the world is not as we understand it. We are not exactly innocent. We are ignorant.

This world—by which I don’t mean the planet, don’t mean the ecosphere, don’t mean the people on the planet; I mean the world— is a construct that we have built out of out minds. Everything in this room, everything that we are wearing, everything that we can see that is not organic is something that has come out of a human mind at some point. The ideas of houses, of plots, of carpets; everything has come out of a human mind. We live inside of our own mind. The world that we put around us, our economic system, our political system, our philosophical systems, it’s all stupid harmful bullsh*t we have made up. We made it up because we felt we had to. We needed some system so we put together one as best as we could. We didn’t do a bad job considering how we’re just a little above monkeys and we don’t have a clue as to what we were doing. Look at the world and look at where these systems have got us. Look at the Taliban blowing up those Buddhist statues. Look at all of this violence every country in the world is inflicting on other countries. It’s hate. This is not right. I say this is not good enough. This is not good enough for me. I was expecting a better standard of planet.

CBA: Do you believe in karma?

Alan: I must tell you about what I was reading about before you got here. I was reading about near-death experiences including an

Above: Art courtesy of J.H. Williams III. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Below: Turn back to page 28 and you’ll see that this final portion of the humongous extended panel in Promethea #12 (Jan. ’01)—page 24—can be lined-up up with page one, forming an infinite story.

Clever indeed, guys! ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Above: Basically the Kabbalah Quest—Promethea’s journey to ever-higher states of consciousness—as detailed in the recently completed two-year story arch, examine the Sefirot (seen above).

As explained on a Web site, “the Sefirot are channels of Divine energy or lifeforce. Sequentially, the sefirot”—each represented by one of the letters/symbols constituting the Hebrew alphabet—”represent the various stages of the creative process whereby God generated from the very core of His own infinite being, the progression of created realms which culminated in our finite physical universe. As a coexisting group, the sefirot constitute the interacting components of a single metaphysical structure whose “genetic” imprint can be identified at all levels, and within all aspects, of Creation.”

Inset right: Note the sefirot decorating the painted window above Alan’s reading chair.

Photo by Jon B. Cooke.

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unusual and not often mentioned factor in near-death experience. You’ve got your tunnel of light. You’ve got Jesus and your grandma at the other end, waiting to welcome you and all the rest of it. You’ve got your life review, that famous thing where people going down for the third time drowning say, “My life flashed before my eyes.”

But there is an article written by somebody in the 19th century that was fascinating. He had it happen to him and collected evidence of it happening to other people. The more I realized that, when your life flashes before your eyes, it’s not like a very fast film projection. Rather you see it all simultaneously, like a mosaic picture. It’s how you imagine an insect seeing things with compound eyes. You see all of these things, all that you’ve done in your life, seemingly trivial things, seemingly important things—throwing stones, having a glass of water, getting married, having children, killing somebody, reading a book—you see all these moments all happening at once. There is not a strong moral sense of judgment but there is an overwhelming sense of responsibility. You are responsible for all these moments and you see the outcomes and see the pattern of your entire life. Whether the images are beautiful or horrific depends on how you lived your life.

Apparently this has been reported by a very large number of people.

Some people say your life flashing before your eyes only happens because your brain shuts down and you suffer oxygen starvation, and that it’s not a supernatural occurrence. But, if it was your brain simply shutting down, then wouldn’t the same experience be shared by everybody and wouldn’t everybody see that brilliant blissful vision of Heaven with all consistent details coming forth from those pulled back into life?

There’s something different going on, and that thing is judgment, and as a magician, I believe that if Judgment Day comes, we will judge ourselves.

Nobody can judge us but ourselves. If Apocalypse does mean Revelation, I see it as the moment when the lights go on and we suddenly realize who we are in that new light and we see ourselves for the people we really are. We move to another level of seeing things and we look back at how we’ve lived our lives while we were sleeping. That is the moment of judgment. It’s not God or the devil judging you, but it has just as much power. It’s you and there’s no court of appeal.

You will realize whether you’re guilty or not.

CBA: One of the greatest scenes I’ve ever read in comics was in the second Swamp Thing Annual where Swampy comes upon Arcane in Hell, who is under such terrible torment, and who asks, “How long have I been here?” as it seems like a million years. Swamp Thing replies that it’s only

been something like 36 hours, and Arcane screams with agony at learning the answer. Now, that’s Hell! That’s one of the most chilling things I’ve ever read. You also scared the beejezuz out of me with the underwater vampires in Swamp Thing. You took leeches and took vampires and put them together into something new. What do you know of American swimming holes and that creepy feeling everybody gets when they jump in and wonder, “Are there any leeches in here?”

Alan: We get leeches over here, too, but it wasn’t leeches that gave me the idea. They were just a nice embellishment afterwards. I was thinking vampires are pretty boring because so much vampire stuff has been done and it bored me because the imagery is all so predictable. But what if an entire town of vampires is flooded, making a new lake? Running water kills vampires, but does stagnant water kill vampires? If not, why not? What’s the difference between running water and standing water? Running water is oxygenated and standing water is not. Do vampires need oxygen? They live in coffins and you wouldn’t think so, as they’re not alive in any normal sense. If vampires didn’t need oxygen, they could live underwater if it’s stagnant. We do have drowned towns over here, and I’ve often thought about them and what strange places they must be. [points to panels of a swimmer standing still getting whiter and whiter] That was a colorist’s technique. He gets paler with each panel and doesn’t move. Even the reader doesn’t have the attention pulled to what’s happening to this kid until the sixth panel when they think, “Why hasn’t that kid moved and why has he suddenly gone white?”

It’s just taking an idea and giving it a little twist.

In an essay about creativity I read by Douglas Hofstadter, he said there were parameter knobs on situations that you could twiddle.

For example, a friend of his went to a restaurant with his wife. They went in and it was really crowded and busy. Hofstadter’s friend said to his wife, “I’m glad I’m not a waitress in here tonight.” Now, he twisted two knobs on his situation. One knob was he thought, “What if I wasn’t a customer here tonight, what if I was employed here?”

The second knob was that he’d changed his gender, “I’m glad I’m not a waitress here tonight.” All of a sudden, he’s a woman that works there rather than a man visiting.

That’s creativity. He’s taken the basic situation and turned two knobs on it. This is what we do with most creativity. We take a previously existing concept and alter a couple of parameters.

Genius is when you alter a parameter that no one even realized was a parameter before.

I think that’s a pretty good working definition about how creativity works.

CBA: It’s important, isn’t it, to use your mind to be subversive?

Alan: It’s shock. A well-told joke is a form of shock. You set up a series of expectations and then you completely derail them.

Even on a simple level, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” The set-up is that the chicken must have crossed the road for some specific reason.

So when you answer, “To get to the other side,” that switches reference to what you were thinking and a tickle happens in your head and that makes you laugh. Most humor sets up a set of expectations and completely COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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defuses them and goes for a different ending entirely.

CBA: Like irony?

Alan: It’s a type of shock. Like horror, it sets up expectations and in the last line it changes them. For example, “Roses are red and violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic and so am I.” [laughter] That’s one I heard on television the other night and thought, “That’s quite good!” That’s how it works.

CBA: Switching subjects again, you’ve repeatedly mentioned that you’ve become a magician. Do people take you seriously?

Alan: When I took the risk of announcing that I’d become a magician, I didn’t do that to get more attention. I didn’t do it to impress people because I’m aware of what that sounds like to most people. What that was liable to do was completely lose me my reputation as people think I’d gone nuts.

I’ve had some interesting experiences. I speak to snakes. I worship demons. I’ve had the experience of meeting at least two gods. You can’t truly say that stuff and not have someone say, “No, you haven’t. You’re mad. You’re making it all up.” (Actually, I haven’t had anybody really ridicule me or suggest that I’m mad or lying.)

With Promethea, things that I’m saying in there are fairly straightforward and amusing stuff. It’s talking about demons or angels, but I’m explaining what demons are and how demons are a part of us.

Everyone knows that, surely. Once you’ve accepted that demons are the part of you that gets out of control, in order to get your demons working for you, you have to understand them and accept them and not fight them, because they are stronger than you. You’ll use all your energy in fighting them and you won’t win anyway. Understand them. Most of the people that I know who fight their demons, the fight becomes the most important thing. The fight takes over their entire lives and so the demons have won. The demons are just there to stop you from doing what you might be capable of. They are little checks that we put on ourselves, the little part of us that we let run amuck to f*ck up the plans of our higher selves.

CBA: They are the foibles that make us human?

Alan: Sometimes they are the foibles that destroy us or make us less than human. If you understand them and know that they are there…. Sometimes you do have serial killers who have a particular obsession, a fixation, a fetish. They do actually like to be the last thing that that their victim sees. It didn’t seem unrealistic. The laughable Hannibal Lector, that’s not a serial killer. A serial killer does not sit there and talk about the taste of particularly fine rare truffles and how he used to eat them while listening to quite an emotional piece of music (which a serial killer would not have the equipment to appreciate because they don’t have normal emotions, so to them it would be meaningless).

I read Red Dragon and thought it was great. A brilliant use of the Hannibal Lector character because he’s in jail the whole time. It works. The second book [Silence of the Lambs] was not so good and the third book [Hannibal] was an insult to the readers. Thomas Harris was writing the third one with the knowledge that it was to be made into a film. He was writing it for a film and had become completely besotted by his rather unpleasant central character. It was masturbatory and that awful bit where they explain the reason Hannibal Lector becomes a psychopath? In the first one, we don’t even know. “We don’t have a word for what he is.” By the third one, we’ve found out why he’s a cannibal because his beloved little sister got eaten by cannibals during a hard Russian winter. The poor man! Now we understand, no wonder. He was a troubled individual like us all.

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That’s trying to excuse him. He’s a cannibal but he’s got his reasons.

All the serial killers that I’ve read about are not more than us. They are less than us. They are missing something that the rest of us have got. They do not have extra superhuman powers.

CBA: They don’t have the capacity for mercy.

Alan: That’s it. They can’t tell what bath soap someone has been using by flaring their nostrils. They are inadequate. They are not worthy of being called human. They are not functioning.

CBA: There are a lot of them out there.

Alan: Probably a lot more than we know.

CBA: Everyone puts on fronts, so you never know.

Alan: That is another main message of Promethea, the glue that holds the universe together is love. It’s not going to work unless you’ve got that. That one that I showed up the notes for and the little drawings, we’ve got this double-page spread that is a classical scene from mythology. It’s the rape of Selene by Pan, but it fills the whole spread with the two little figures looking up at it. They explain what it means at that symbolic level and it’s the Big Bang. It’s the male force

Above: Photo by Piet Corrs of Alan Moore in full magick regalia, complete with serpent cane, taken in the scribe’s home. Courtesy of and ©2003 Piet Corrs.

Below: Artist Kevin O’Neill’s personal stationary features his drawing of this entourage of Extraordinary Gentlefolk. Courtesy of the artist. LXG ™ & ©2003 by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill.

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Above: We tried like the dickens to hunt down high-res versions of these superb League of Extraordinary Gentlemen tryout pages by the indomitable Adam Hughes, but alas we failed by presstime.

Still, are they gorgeous?

Art ©2003 Adam Hughes.

Characters ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

Right: Courtesy of the artist, a Kevin O’Neill character design of Mr. Edward Hyde. ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

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and the female force and the Big Bang is the orgasm and that’s how the entire universe is created. It’s all the same thing, sex, magic, religion, normal human life.

CBA: It’s really not that complicated but that’s very thought provoking.

Alan: That is about as simple as you can get without overcomplicating it. The universe is made up of out of ten numbers and 22 letters. You can make the whole conceivable universe in 10 numbers and 22 letters.

CBA: Is that why they say there are only 22 kinds of plots?

Alan: I’ve always heard that, but never from a writer. I suppose there are if you want to say that.

CBA: Wasn’t it Shakespeare that said that?

Alan: If you want to say that all journeys

are a variation on the story of The Odyssey, well, no, that’s not true.

They’ve got different plots. The basic tragedies are parents killing children, children killing parents, mothers who are duped… if you wanted to make crude sort of breakdowns, you could come up with 22 plots because the definition of what is a story and what is a plot is so vague.

CBA: To engage someone’s interest when it has to be a romance and there are only 26 kinds of romance, 26 combinations you can have. Father to son. Son to father….

Alan: Any story that you can think of has got its roots in some myth or legend, and certainly those myths or legends you can place somewhere on the tree of life and they would all make a lot more sense if placed into that context. Things like this path [points to a pattern of stars painted on a window] leads to the solar center which is Jesus, consciousness, the highest human aspiration, the best of us, your inner self, your holy guardian angel, all the sun gods, and there are three paths leading into it. This one is called the Art, this is called Death, and this one is called the Devil. The Devil on the Tarot is this big, red, horned devil with a pitchfork and goat’s hooves. He’s got an upside-down Ozzy Osborne pentacle. He’s got a man and woman in chains and he’s leering evilly. The rightway-up pentacle means that the four lower points are the four physical elements.

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The fifth point, the upmost, is spirit. The pentacle, the right way, means that spirit rules over matter. If you turn a pentacle upside-down, it means that matter rules over spirit. We live in a world where we believe the only world that is real is the material world and that the spiritual world is less revered than the material world. That is wrong. That is the Devil. That is the material world. This path here, the Devil, is saying that the material world is supreme. That is all that the Devil is.

If you look at The Bible, where you have the devil tempting Jesus, he takes him upon a hill and says, “You can have all this. I offer you the whole material world.” The reason the devil does this is that’s all he can offer Jesus, because he is the material world. Jesus, because he wants to get to this point and become the solar figure, he refuses it. You have to walk through this path, the path of devil, to reach the spiritual world because you have to walk through the illusion of the world. You have to believe that what is on the other side of the illusion is reality.

In Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminati Trilogy, there is a lovely line where someone actually meets John Dillinger, now a very old man.

This wasn’t the gangster who died; it was one of his brothers, one of the Dillinger quintuplets… John Edgar Dillinger, John John Dillinger, John Boy Dillinger, and the others. The last surviving one was the original Leaping Bandit, and someone says to him, “John, when you were the Leaping Bandit, you got caught and put in that locked prison cell. When they came back the cell was still locked and you were gone. How did you get out of that locked cell?” John just says, “I did it the same way you get out of any locked cell. I walked through the walls and into the fire.” I thought, “What does that mean?” That’s powerful. That’s how you get out of a locked cell. You walk through the walls and into the fire. The fire is spirit. The wall and the cell is matter. The wall will only stop you from getting into the spirit as long as you think that the wall is there. If you have the faith that you can walk through the snares that matter throws up for us, it’s possible. This is what I’m trying to talk about in Promethea.

I’m trying to talk about things that are of some use in people’s lives.

To understand why they constantly f*ck up without wanting to. I’m not saying that this is the truth, only that this is a map, a model, and it might help.

CBA: Your work can very often be a revelation. Whenever I read it, I often experience a flood of recognition that has me realize, “This guy thinks like I do. I know exactly what this guy is all about… he’s about me.” The impact of “The Anatomy Lesson,” was less about refiguring a beloved comic book character as it was about simply revealing the obvious. I never saw that coming while reading it, but as I made the realization, I gasped. How many times does anyone gasp at a comic?

Alan: Art, any sort of art, when it works, we suddenly feel less alone. This is the problem with pornography. It makes us feel more alone. This is why trying to make art and pornography into the same thing is tricky. Let me just show you a little bit of art and pornography. I’m sure Melinda wouldn’t mind, but don’t take any photographs of this. This is top secret. These are unfinished pages from some of the more recent chapters. There are no word balloons on them.

[Pulls out a huge portfolio of original art pages of Lost Girls] CBA: [Points out stickers on the portfolio cover] You’ve got stickers?

Alan: A fan made them. There are various logos, the Promethea logo, Swamp Thing logo, and various symbols. [Pulls out art] This is some of the last Dorothy chapter. This is the final one, where we get to the end of Dorothy’s story when she finally goes to the Emerald City and gets to meet the Wizard of Oz. We’ve got this nice little fantasy picture.

These are the semi-finished pages from some of the later chapters. This is the panel of the Dorothy June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

chapter were she meets the tin woodsman.

CBA: Dorothy, what are you doing?

Alan: And then she’s in the poppy fields and gets caught by her stepmother, the Wicked Witch. Then you are back in the hotel and she’s telling the story and you have the next Wendy chapter which I think is the last of the Wendy chapters. I think we have a couple of incompleted ones.

CBA: That’s pretty nice.

Alan: There’s a lot of pretty nice stuff in there.

CBA: Wow, that’s going to be quite a shock.

Alan: I think so. It’ll get us both put in prison. [laughter] CBA: You want children to see that?

Alan: No, not necessarily children, it’s for adults. We’ve got bits in here where I’ve been a bit naughty…

There’s child porn on the Internet where it is photographs or films of children and, of course, something is terribly wrong because those children should not be in that situation and nobody should be getting off on watching this horrible deed. But the mind is sacred. You can do anything in your mind you’d like. It’s a matter of degree.

Pedophilia is evil.

Above: Kevin O’Neill’s logo design for the final issue of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (#6, Sept. ’00), gracing the cover that resembled an early 20th century British children’s comic weekly.

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

Below: Detail of artist Kevin O’Neill’s cover for the trade paperback collection of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol 1. (What’s with the cat and tiny pony, eh?) ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

37

How many men went to see Pretty Baby and enjoyed it? It’s a matter of where you draw the line between imagination and reality.

The brilliant Chris Morris did the Brass Eye pedophilia TV special, which got him into so much trouble, but it was so funny. All the papers were saying that the show was a sick Chris Morris stunt, and that he should be hung, or at least ashamed. One of them, The Daily Star, was ranting about his sick pedophilia and, at the bottom of the page, there was a little side item about how Miss Charlotte Church, the 15-year-old singer is reaching maturity. The headline was “Charlotte’s Chest Swell With Us,” talking about the developing bosom of this 15-year-old girl! This on the same page where they were lambasting this satire of media attitudes on pedophilia! I think the best thing to do is talk about this stuff. Pornography at least gives a forum where you can discuss ideas without harming anybody.

That’s what we hope for any way.

George: Are they releasing Lost Girls as one book?

Above: A 16-page ABC preview Alan: It’s three books in a slip-case. It’s going to be very expensive bonus supplement was included because it’s going to be very well-produced and printed. It’s not going with Wizard: The Comics to be for children. It’s for adults and I think it’s horny and I think it’s Magazine #91, when the line was funny. I think it has a real moral power to it. The final chapter is the launched in 1999. Penciler Chris one that we’ve been looking the least forward to because it’s the one Sprouse and inker Alan Gordon where it starts off with the women getting up after the wild night of provided this cover art. ©2003 sex that they’ve spent after the previous chapter and it’s time for America’s Best Comics, LLC. them to leave the hotel because they can’t stay any longer. The three of them get dressed and you see all this reflected in the mirror and they leave. We never see them again. You just pan over this scene of the First World War. This is what you get if you don’t get sex. In the natural order of things, lots of these young men would rather be f*cking, than conducting war. All that youthful energy would be better off used to f*ck, have a good time, make love. But instead, that energy all gets perverted and gets shipped off to some remote foreign field where it is put into killing other young men. It seems to me there’s a straight choice.

Warfare is in many respects sublimated sex.

After the Gulf War, someone was doing an analysis and it was really strange because every time America is going to declare war on somebody, they seem to feminize the target. For example, there were rumors that Kaddafi dressed in women’s clothes just before we bombed Libya.

There was talk about how the Ayatollah liked little boys and DOWNLOAD THESE FULL was a homoSAMPLE ISSUES FREE AT sexual when we were in www.twomorrows.com! hostilities with Go to our FREE STUFF section online and sample a digital issue of all our mags! We sell full-color Digital Editions of all Iran. It was said our magazines, and many books, readable on virtually any that when you device that can view PDF files. listened to the WHEN YOU BUY THE PRINT EDITION ONLINE, young pilots YOU ALWAYS GET THE DIGITAL EDITION FREE! coming back from the

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bombing missions, they would say, “We shot our load right up their back door.” [laughter] A lot of them talk quite straight forwardly about how sexy it felt to kill, but there is this weird homoerotic stuff in the language. It’s as if we’re going to f*ck you and you’re going to be the women. We are the daddy and you are the mommy.

CBA: It’s about power not about sex?

Alan: Power and control. We take perfectly natural and healthy sexual energy and transplant it into killing the enemy. Most of our weapons are very penetrative.

CBA: They are phallic?

Alan: They are phallic. It’s like the urge of violence is a perversion or the misplacing of the urge for sex. The energies are connected and it doesn’t take much to push one into the other and get them mixed up in people’s head. For example, I’ve got a book upstairs called Sex and the Great War. The very fact that that is the title tells you that it was written after the First World War and before the Second. It’s talking about sexual attitudes during the First World War. It talks about the sexuality of wounds which sounds very unpleasant when I first read the title. What it means is that when a soldier comes home from the war with bandages, then girls would throw themselves at the wounded man. It was what we call a fanny-magnet over here. If you were bandaged up then women would see you as a brave warrior that they could nurse, shelter, and be maternal to. It’s pretty perverted. The women were also very turned on by a man in uniform.

The only way you could get sex between 1912 and ’20 was if you had a military uniform or a photograph with you in a military uniform.

That was the power of the uniform.

Later, revisionist feminists will say that testosterone is the source of all violence and evil. That violence is a male thing, but it was the women who were sending white feathers to the “cowards,” and only having sex with men who were “brave soldiers,” and there is a certain connection between the men doing the fighting and women getting off on it. Neither gender comes out very well on that one.

CBA: Isn’t one gender more passive than the other?

Alan: One is passive, but at the same time does that make them morally better? Is it morally better to be really proud of war? There was a play written during the First World War that is quoted in this book, where there are these soldiers in a foxhole and one of them says to the other, “Let’s be honest, if it wasn’t for our wives, there wouldn’t be a man out here. [laughter] If it wasn’t for the fact our wives wanted us to go and wouldn’t have sex with us and would have thrown us out if we wouldn’t have gone and done our thing.

We didn’t want to come. This is horrible. We are getting shot at. We don’t want to die. The wives said that if we were real men then we would go. What could we do?” There’s complicity there.

CBA: Mostly, isn’t it subjugation to the testosterone?

Alan: To a degree, when they are in adversity, men and women have different weapons and skills. This is a generalization obviously, but men have a greater capacity for physical violence and intimidation, but this is not true all of the time. There are lots of battered men whose wives beat them up and can’t even talk about it because they’d be laughed at and humiliated. “She broke my arm.” “She woke me up by hitting me with a hammer in the face.” It must be terrifying. A lot of women have learned skills that can be wounding yet get what they want without physical intimidation. There are forms of emotional intimidation.

CBA: Not to mention sexual manipulation.

Alan: We’ve all got our nasty little tricks. Both genders have their nasty little tricks for dealing with the other. It would be better if we didn’t have to use these things. I supported feminism when I understood feminism to mean there is no reason why women should not be paid, regarded, and treated in the eyes of the law the same as men. That seems to be self-evident. I wouldn’t want anyone treating any woman that I know—my daughters, my mom—any worse because they are women. If that goes for my daughters and loved ones, then that goes for everybody’s loved ones. That’s fair. But when the extremists started taking over the feminist sector and started to say things like, “All men are rapists.” No, we’re not. Some men are rapists and most men are not rapists. “All penetrative sex is rape.”

Well, no, some of it is just penetrative sex. Rape is something very specific and you shouldn’t weaken the word by applying it frivolously.

I parted company with hard-line feminists, the separatists. I thought COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

they were sexist and bigots and I don’t care if they’re women or not.

I say the hell with them. What I feel about the war of the sexes is I don’t have time for it and neither do the men and women I’m closest to. There is too much other stuff in life that needs doing and getting on with to bother with this mad, delusional and bitter sh*t.

CBA: Do you see your career as a hobby giving you great pleasure in life and one you’re able to give back to?

Alan: It was a hobby but it has become a craft. It’s something largely between God and me. If the reader likes it, then that’s great, but there came a point where I got good reviews for things I didn’t think were very good, and I’d get bad reviews for things I thought were very good, so worrying about that got in the way of craft. Just because someone is saying something I find flattering and is similar to my opinion doesn’t make him a better critic. It’s great that people can enjoy my work, but I’m not going to feel really inflated if everyone loves my work and I’m not going to feel bad if everyone hates it. I’m in this for me. When I did Promethea #12, I was thinking, “Can I do this? Is it possible? Can I map the entire history of humanity onto the 22 major arcana of the Tarot? Are there 22 perfect anagrams of Promethea? And, if there are, do they in any way associate to the 22 Tarot cards or the 22 ages of the world?” I didn’t know.

CBA: [Pulling out a copy of Miracleman] Now, this is a good comic. It’s the ultimate statement on super-heroes, too. What could you do after that? You did Supreme, but did that differently, more as a look at the Superman mythos specifically.

Alan: There would be no point in doing it again. With all of these things, there would be no point to do it again. I try not to do gritty super-heroes these days.

CBA: “Been there, done that”?

Alan: Yes. No one can be that interesting. “Oh, Batman is really a psychopath,” or “He’s really a homosexual.” Oh, yeah, sure! Get over it. Batman is a fascinating, lovely children’s comic character I used to take delight in back before he got that big yellow circle on his chest, back when he was drawn by Dick Sprang. The stories mainly took place in daylight and generally involved a giant prop of some sort, and that’s great. Robin with those chubby cheeks…. It was pure.

There was no need to mess with it. It doesn’t have to develop into something else. If I was doing it—not that this is ever going to happen—if I was to do Batman again, I could never do a grim story.

What would be the point? Everybody’s doing a grim version of Batman. The Killing Joke is one of my least favorite comics.

CBA: It was scary.

Alan: It has beautiful artwork by Brian Bolland and it’s easily worth five bucks or whatever it costs CBA: It’s a great twist in the Joker, but the relationship between the two didn’t work out in the end.

Alan: I was making a point, where I was saying, “Yeah, there are a lot of similarities between Batman and the Joker” That was the main point of The Killing Joke and, as such, that premise is completely useless because Batman and Joker are not real characters and they do not even remotely resemble anyone you’d ever meet. Knowing that they have many similarities is not going to help you in your life. That said, compared to a lot of Batman books that followed, I think that The Killing Joke is genius. Before I knew how bad it would get, I thought that The Killing Joke was a bad book. But it wasn’t that bad.

It was mainly this book about the Joker and that’s what Brian wanted to do.

CBA: It’s the ultimate Joker story.

Alan: That’s the idea, and at the end, Batman makes this genuine offer saying that if they were not going to kill each other maybe they could be buddies and work together. He’s obviously a genius and could benefit society and you have a panel where the Joker is thinking about it and then he decides it’s not going to work because they are both too far gone.

CBA: How old were you when you read Krazy Kat? Alan: I was much older, about 15 or 16, when I read that strip. I saw it in The Penguin Book of Comics and there was some Krazy Kat stuff reprinted and a year later I was buying Dutch Krazy Kat reprints and pirate editions and things like that.

CBA: Do you like Chuck Jones’s Road Runner?

Alan: I like Chuck Jones. I like Tex Avery.

CBA: Have you thought about doing something similar to Krazy June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

Kat and Road Runner, where it’s always virtually the same routine, only with minor variations, but can reach a zen-like state?

Alan: I do like that approach. I’ve never thought of doing it. It’s just a classic situation you can repeat indefinitely. I can see if you were doing a series of cartoons or a newspaper strip that that would be a handy thing to have. Back when I was doing “Maxwell the Magic Cat,” it wasn’t just one riff, I had two or three riffs I would keep returning to. Every six months or so, I would have his distant cousin Peregrine the Pleasant Panther escape from the zoo, and come to look Maxwell up. This would usually involve horrific scenes with men with dart guns and nets. That became a riff that his cousin was a man-eating panther. It’s not very cute at all. That’s fun, but it’s stuff that I appreciate and not stuff that I’ve ever really thought of doing because it hasn’t been appropriate.

CBA: Have you ever thought about how some creators try to keep their work to the basics?

Alan: Minimalism? I can do sparsity of words. I can do silent.

CBA: I thought some of your most horrifying work ever was when you and Eddie Campbell did that one page of the window in Miller’s Court [in From Hell] where each panel was the same except for the shadows moving in front of the light.

Alan: The door is shut and you can’t see what’s going on in the room and you can’t get in, but you know something dreadful is

Above: Woefully unrepresented in these pages, artist/writer Rick Veitch, with Alan Moore’s enthusiastic blessing and the help of some of the comic industry’s finest talent, produced the six-issue mini-series, Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset, a spin-off from the character’s 12-ish stint in Tomorrow Stories. Such luminaries as John Severin, Russ Heath, David Lloyd, Frank Cho, Hilary Barta, and Al Williamson contributed art for short stories in the title. Courtesy of a friend, here’s Rick’s superb cover art for the trade paperback collection. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Below: Two highly anticipated projects to be spun-off from the lamented ABC title, Top 10, are Smax the Barbarian and The Forty-Niners (of which Alan discusses in the bonus interview following). Zander Cannon is currently doing the art chores on Smax, and Gene Ha is working on FortyNiners. This teaser page closed the dozen-issue run of Top Ten (in #12, Oct. ’01). ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC

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taking place.

I can do quiet. I can do terse. Minimalism has its place, if it works. I do sometimes see laziness being passed off as minimalism. If it works with only two elements or one element, great, pare it down.

With V for Vendetta, David Lloyd was going for a very stripped-down scene and he was also suggesting that I strip down with no sound effects and no thought balloons. That was very liberating and I would have never done it myself, but because David suggested that I strip back that made me want to strip it back further with no captions which I used in From Hell because there are no captions, sound effects, or word balloons. Promethea has no captions, but there is an exception in the latest issue. In the latest issue, there are some captions on the first page and some captions on the last page.

CBA: Why is it that in your ABC books, that contemporary society is so futuristic, as compared to reality?

Alan: When I started ABC, we were going to need some cities for these people to exist in. We needed our Metropolis, Gotham City, or Marvel’s New York. I thought, “What do I remember about comic book super-hero cities?” When I was a kid in England, I was seeing those plazas and strange futuristic needle-like buildings, and I thought that America was such a clean, futuristic place.” I didn’t realize that there were no cities on the face of the Earth that looked like Carmine Infantino’s Central City. His was a dream world. It worked and was brilliant, so I said why not just fantasize about American cities and let’s have the one in Tom Strong be so tall they have to have cable cars between the buildings so people don’t get isolated on the upper stories. Indigo in Tomorrow Stories all runs on gas. They discovered

massive natural gas deposits, so televisions run on gas, refrigerators run on gas, cars run on gas, and there a blue light in the air and everything looks sort of from the ‘40s. Then in Top Ten, Neopolis is a city of tiers like a wedding cake with two or three levels to it. In Promethea, they have bridges and not cable cars to all these different levels, and flying cars and all the rest of it. Actually, I think that they don’t look like any city that you ever been in, but they feel like them.

I think they feel more like them then if we used a real New York City with the Chrysler Building, and all that. Marvel’s New York and DC’s New York are not New York. At least, Promethea’s New York is so obviously not New York that you can almost get past that and start thinking about the atmosphere.

I put in Weeping Gorilla because I thought that would be so stupid and I needed some elements that are stupid. I need irrelevant themes that I can just throw in and I made a note about Weeping Gorilla and the Five Swell Guys.

CBA: What’s interesting is that you’ve never done any back story on the Five Swell Guys, yet we do know these guys are replaced when one of them dies, and now you’ve a woman who came in and took the top guy’s name.

Alan: One of the things we have is a sign that says, “Welcome to New York, Home of the Five Swell Guys” and then you have pictures of them. Four of them look the same but younger and Roger is a man and he’s got red hair. He’s changed and there’s a bit where they talk about something happened in the Suffragette City episode and, “We’ve all had a lot of changes.” Bob now is completely smitten with lust for Roger. Roger is still psychologically a man. She’s put Bob’s neck in a cast. He says, “New Year’s was just a joke.” She says, “Bob, you were lucky to get your tongue back.”

CBA: It is the Fantastic Four, of course, right?

Alan: I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about the FF. I was just thinking of what would be the most stupid name of a super-hero group and yet kind of cool so I thought, Five Swell Guys. They have no super-hero names. Their names are Bob, Kenny, Marv, Stan and Roger. And Roger is a girl.

CBA: I assumed that she replaced someone who died because it was such a dangerous job.

Alan: Suffragette City is the same place that is called Electric Lady Land and is like a Jack Kirby project. It was built by brilliant American feminist scientists who wanted to set up a enclave where women would run everything and didn’t need men. So they’ve set up this huge complex under the desert somewhere which is very hardcore feminist with all these women and high technology. It is a feminist Kirby enclave of super-women. One of their weapons is a gas that will do nothing to women but will turn men into women. So that’s what happened to Roger. The Five Swell Guys had an adventure in Suffragette City and Roger got a whiff of the gas and is a woman for life.

CBA: If I was a woman, I know what I would do.

Alan: You would never go out. You would just sit there, wouldn’t you? [laughter] Why don’t they just spend all day staring at their tits?

I would!

Promethea is female but, in one of her personas, she has the mind and essence of a male comic book character, the only man ever to become Promethea. When I was thinking about who the Prometheas were, I thought, “Could I use a man as a Promethea?”

Why not? That would be interesting. If he’s got a relationship with a big, tough, hunky FBI guy as Promethea and then the guy finds out that his perfect woman is a man in her spare time, he’s going to end up killing her because he would feel unmanly. Just like that Jenny Jones show where the guy turns around and says to his male friend, “I have crush on you,” and the guy just sat there. Then, a week later, he kills the poor guy for emasculating him on television.

This Kabbalah story arc has got three more chapters to go. #23 is the last one of that run and it will be the last of the Kabbalah run.

It will printed in only two shades of white and gold. Those are the only colors we’re using. There are four colors for each of these spheres: White, brilliant white, white flecked gold, and brilliance.

Some of the lower ones have got those brilliant shades of green and amber. We are doing a hardcore Kabbalistic color scheme and following the colors in the Kabbalah even when they sound ridiculous.

There are different shades as there are four shades of the color white COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

when we get up to the top, and I wanted it to be a comic that’s suitably challenging to read.

It’s not going to be like John Byrne’s three characters in white suits fighting in the snowstorm. All the work is going to be in there but I want to give the impression of what that top sphere is like.

CBA: Have you seen the Pearly Gates? Have you envisioned Heaven?

Alan: It’s not Heaven; it’s God. God is next to nothing, literally. There are three different sorts of nothing and then you’ve got God who is right next to nothing. It’s One, and that’s the number, and it’s right next to nothing and so God is of great simplicity. It’s everything, but it’s a great simplicity and, if you achieve that consciousness, it is the most dangerous one of all of them. It’s the most dangerous because when you achieve that consciousness, a number of people don’t come back. It is the consciousness of God. It is like nuclear fusion, you fuse with it. It’s the white light. It’s pure.

Sometimes people fuse with it and don’t come back. Your body dies or you sitting there drooling for the rest of your life.

CBA: [Points to smoking joint] So are you always doing that as you go along?

Alan: I’m not doing it all with drugs. Some of the writing of the comic was done during magical meditation. What you were seeing in the comic is not the report of the magical experience; it was the magical experience. The trance I go into as a comic book writer has to be as deep and profound as any I’ve been in. The level of concentration and the focusing upon concepts that a writer is required to accomplish every day has got to be as commanding and rigorous as these mystic states.

I think that writing is a yogic trance. You’re in a different state of consciousness and that’s been useful to learn. I can do magic just by writing about it because I was getting all kind of insight during the act of writing itself.

CBA: You’re one of the very few writers I think of as an artist.

That’s not to say that writing isn’t an art, but in comics, writers and artists tend to have different sensibilities.

Alan: I must admit there are some post-Me writers that I really like and there are some that I feel embarrassed for because I can see that they are trying to do me and it’s like looking at a bad funhouse mirror and seeing nasty, posturing attitude and smug superiority. They look at me in contempt for me and my old-fashioned storytelling.

That said, there are some brilliant writers. I was over at the prison the other day talking and they have some of my books in the prison library. The other writer who is down with the murderers is Brian Azzarello. Brian and I seem to be the comic writers of choice amongst murderers.

CBA: Do you ever lose you temper?

Alan: I don’t snap, at least not any more. The worst I get is the temperature in my voice goes down. That’s bad and everything feels bad when that happens. Everybody wishes I were miles away, including me.

CBA: Do you explode often?

Alan: I don’t explode. I used to and, when I did explode, it was ferocious because I never really learned how to manage anger. I hated violence, confrontation, and aggression. When I was in school, I nearly killed two kids before I was 11, strangling one of them while bashing the other’s head on the stone pavement. They had been irritating and bullying me and running away. There was one kid that would come up to me, start talking, then smack me in the nose, make my nose bleed, and run away. He was ever so little, but so vicious and nasty. He had been bullying my brother as well and that really rankled me so I chased him. He ran onto his own street and ran to his front door and he tried the doorknob but it was locked. He started banging on the door and no one was home and I was just thundering down the street towards him and there was this look in his eyes just when he remembered all the times that he hit me in the nose and all the things he had done to my brother and there was no way that he June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

could get away. I got him by the neck and I was just smashing his head on the pavement and he was screaming. Somewhere I thought that if I didn’t stop I was going to kill him and that it would be bad. I was nine or ten.

The other guy had been throwing stones at me and running away because I wasn’t the fastest kid in the world. (I had a bit of weight problem when I was younger; I wasn’t fat, but my mom said I was big boned or pleasantly plump.) He came up to me and did that and ran away. He followed me throughout the whole school day and then followed me home, throwing stones at me from a distance. I walked home through a nearby block of flats. There was a block of flats with gardens that I knew very well because I used to play in them every night. He followed me through the flats and I waited until I was at the very bottom and, when he was as far into the flats as he was going to get, I turned around and ran after him. He took a wrong turn and ended up in a dustbin cul-de-sac where they put the trash cans for collection. It was this little dead end. I was choking him. The next day, his mom brought him to school and I was in the sh*t. It was difficult to explain. He had black rings around his neck and his mom was screaming at me, saying, “Look what you did to my son!” There was no way that I could explain that he had been throwing stones at me because strangling somebody is not a proportionate and appropriate response. But nobody did it to me again.

After that, someone started a fight with me when I was about 19 or 20, and they jumped on me from behind at a pub. If someone lays a finger upon me, I lose it completely and I’ll generally go for the throat first. I don’t know why that is but I will just find my hands around someone’s throat.

It’s a horrible thing and not me because I feel black and I’m churning and sick for days afterwards. It’s childish. It’s lack of control and it’s nothing that I want anything to do with.

The stage where I’m at now, nobody gives me any sh*t. I walk down the road with my black cloak on and my snake-headed cane, and I’m in the newspapers saying I do drugs and I’m a magician and I worship snakes and I used to write Batman, and all this stuff. People will shout things at me, but always when I’ve gone a long way past them, and it’s usually young kids who shout, “Hey, Jesus!” Which is quite flattering because he was dead by 30, so they’ve obviously mistaken me for a much younger man. I can’t wait until my hair has gone white and they have to shout, “Hey, God!” That’s what I’m waiting for. [laughter] CBA: That is the essence of your writing: Every man a god. Why not?

Alan: Aleister Crowley said, “Every man and woman is a star.” I think that’s a lovely sentiment and I

Inset left: The Neopolis Police Tenth Precinct emblem from Top 10, as designed by the ubiquitous Todd Klein. ©2003 ABC, LCC.

Below: Despite being almost an overpopulated book, Top 10 is ultimately focused on the relationship between Smax (the big white-haired guy) and neophyte officer Toy Box. This detail of the super-heroic partners was drawn

by Zander Cannon and Gene Ha. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

41

Above: Comic book artist superstar Alex Ross painted the covers for the first issues of the ABC line, returning to render this beauty for the one-shot 80-Page… oops…

64-Page Giant Annual (Feb. ’01).

The artist’s superb talents—and given Alex’s profound appreciation for Alan Moore’s work—leads us to ponder just when are these two masters gonna get together for a project…? Scotty? ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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think that, indeed we are all stars.

CBA: We can be stars because there is room enough in the sky for us? Do you watch these Hubble photographs with any awe or appreciation?

Alan: Yes. There are those towers that have stars forming at the tips.

They call them “The Hand.” There are three or four of them. Towers of gas giving birth to stars. Every week I drool over the pictures and try to work out what they mean.

CBA: I get scared sometimes, feeling so puny against the awe of such magnitude.

Alan: I’ll tell you something that will cheer you up, good news for you and your family: You can remember things much like I do that happened more than six months ago and more than six years ago, right? You’ve probably got memories going back 20 or 30 years old, so where is the memory?

CBA: Where is it stored?

Alan: All of the neurons in your brains are erased every six weeks.

They are constantly moving. There is no structure in your brain that remains stable for more than six weeks, so where’s the memory?

Your brain is a moving pattern of electrical energy. How do you record memories onto those chemicals? This is what the scientists say: There is no structure in the brain to record memories. Yet we have them, so there must be somewhere where memories are being recorded.

Where is the memory being recorded? Someone came up with a brilliant and elegant solution: They believe that we are over-writing our junk DNA. Inside every cell of your body there is a ribbon that is two yards long and ten atoms wide. To imagine it in more visual terms, it would be as if your little finger—without getting any thicker— stretched from here to Los Angeles. That long and that thick, but it’s only the last bit, that two yards of DNA that has the entire blueprint of your life, my life, and everything on the planet in it. The rest of it we don’t understand so being the ignorant chimps we are, we say we don’t understand so it’s junk. It’s the bulk of our DNA, and if we are over-writing our experiences on the DNA, that would explain where our memories are. What it would also do is overturn the main principle of evolution which is that information only travels one way between DNA and the organism. Information travels from the DNA to you at birth from your parents and no information goes back the other way.

No information goes from the organism to the DNA, but if what this guy says is true, every experience of your life, even the unconscious ones, has been saved to hard drive. It doesn’t matter when you die. It doesn’t matter when your kids die. It doesn’t matter when your loved ones die, because it’s been saved to hard drive.

CBA: That why I think you have to write stories with meaning because if you’re going to program these things, why not program them with positive, life-affirming input. Nobody is writing with a sense of morality these days.

Alan: I try. And, with Promethea, I’m trying to get to the root of morality. I think that the idea I just mentioned is good news because that means that DNA is intelligent and the DNA is us. There is only one creature on the planet and all these contingencies that it creates and these experimental robots it creates—us, insects, plants, mammals, birds, everything—with all that information, it’s not wasting any of it. It saves all experience and all information learned. It means that there is only one creature here on this planet and that any conversation is the DNA talking to itself, exchanging information about itself, but it also means that nothing ever dies and that no moment is lost.

All the good moments and all the bad moments are still there.

CBA: It really is like the bubbles?

Alan: That was an emotional issue of Promethea.

CBA: What you were saying about the bubbles was really profound. There was this most sympathetic look at a girl who had gotten pregnant at only 16 years old. You captured those moments wonderfully.

Alan: And it was Sophie’s mom who I’ve portrayed as a complete asshole. Sophie thinks her mother is a complete asshole and a slut, but then Sophie suddenly sees what her mom’s life was like and why her mother slept with anybody that came because her mom had never had any love and she mistook sex for love. She thought if boys had sex with her that meant that they were loving her for a little while and then she ends up pregnant. Sophie realizes that and she realizes what a bitch she has been to her mom.

CBA: She looks almost Egyptian. She has the look of a Middle Eastern girl.

Alan: Sophie’s Hispanic as is Barbara. They are both Hispanic and Sophie’s dad turns up in the blue issue. He’s the one Sophie’s mom thought had run out on her when she was pregnant, but got whacked in a drug deal that went wrong. He was trying to give up the life but never let Sophie’s mom know that. But the guys he was in it with thought he was an informer so they put a bullet in his head and dumped him in the river. Sophie’s mom waits for him to come home and he never does and so she thinks, “That bastard.” That’s one of the things that going to come up when Sophie comes home and sees her mom. Sophie will be so full of love for her mom and her mom won’t understand it. There’s going to be a lot of reconciliation between the two of them and Sophie’s mom will stop drinking.

CBA: Did you like Peter Bagge’s Hate?

Alan: I loved it. I did a strip for it. I think that we need more Hate in the world. [laughter] It’s a great magazine.

CBA: You watch The Simpsons with regularity?

Alan: Most we’re getting over here now are the same ones we’ve seen five times before, so there’s a bit of a repeat. Still, it’s a brilliant show and, if I show any Simpsons fatigue, it’s because I’ve seen a particular episode so many times. I’m very much enjoying South Park, which has good writing.

CBA: [After a brief discussions of The Beatles, the interviewers are packing up to leave] When Richard Lester did cinema verté with the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night, it must have blown your mind.

Alan: I always thought that if I got really rich I would buy these row houses and knock the walls between them down, so it would be like in A Hard Day’s Night, when The Beatles walk up to their ordinary terrace housing and all the old ladies in the street say, “Those boys haven’t changed,” and the lads go through the front door and all the houses are combined to make a gigantic palace with sunken bathrooms inside. That’s what I’d like. [laughter] CBA: Do you bind your comic books?

Alan: I lose them. I place them in a big pile and lose them. That seems to be the low maintenance way to take care of them.

CBA: Does anyone in your family save your stuff?

Alan: I think Leah and Amber have got most of my stuff, but I can’t be bothered.

CBA: What happened with 1963?

Alan: That might get finished. Rick and I are talking about it at the moment and we don’t know how it’s going to pan out.

CBA: [Points to Arthur Adams “Jonni Future” comic book] What’s the thinking behind Jonni?

Alan: I thought that I would like to have an Adam Strange sciencefiction strip somewhere in ABC. I talked with Steve [Moore] because he was a big-time “Adam Strange” fan and I asked what was it that we like about “Adam Strange”? It was sexy and Carmine Infantino did women very well. I said, “Can we cut to the chase here? Would ‘Adam Strange’ had been a better book if it was just about Alanna?”

He said, “It would, actually.” So let’s make this one sexy strip and Arthur says it’s his favorite.

CBA: It was Alanna, I didn’t know that. The amazing thing about “Adam Strange” was that it was so romantic.

Alan: We thought, “Let’s have all that in one parcel. Let’s not have the star-crossed lovers.” Some of the stories are really romantic. There is one where she meets the man who stole the moon. That’s a lovely romantic story.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

CBA Interview

Heart of the WildStorm Group editor Scott Dunbier on doing comics the ABC way Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice Despite how enormously helpful America’s Best Comics group editor Scott Dunbier was with CBA and, after being so generous with his time, the poor guy really got the shaft this issue, and for that, we apologize. Because of space constraints, we had to severely edit his interview, plus the photo the man lent us could not be found at press time. (Well, at least, there’s hoping this ish does move some books, buddy!) We virtually excised all discussion of not only his early years as a comics fan, but also his former career as an original art, but the reader need to note that Scott was a significant player among dealers before he jumped on board as an editor at Wildstorm. This interview was conducted via phone and Scott copyedited the final transcript (or, at least, what little that remains).

Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from, Scott?

Scott Dunbier: New York.

CBA: What was your first original art purchase?

Scott: [ponders] I can’t remember, actually. That’s funny. When I was young, I used to call up artists on the phone and beg for sketches, because back in those days the artists still had listed phone numbers. I remember calling Al Feldstein, who did a nice drawing for me.

Alex Toth did a beautiful Batman marker drawing for me that I framed and hung on the wall of my bedroom, in direct sunlight, which I treasured—until it eventually faded into oblivion. Little did I know. The best, though, was Jack Kirby. When I was about 15, we were living in California, and I went to the local comic shop, a place called Fantasy Castle. I went up to the register to pay for some old Kirby comics I had picked out, and the guy behind the counter for some reason mentioned that Jack lived nearby, in Thousand Oaks, California, and he had a listed phone number.

CBA: That’s all you needed! [laughter] Scott: Why he told me this I have no idea. So, of course, I called up Jack Kirby, and he was the nicest guy in the world. We talked for about 20 minutes, then he invited me up that weekend to his house.

He said, “Get your mom to drive you up here. I’ll sign some comics for you and we can have lunch together.” God bless my mom, she actually drove me up there, and Jack and I spent about four or five hours together while my mom chatted with Jack’s wife, Roz. I brought him a big stack of 50 or so comics to sign, definitely too big a stack to be considered proper comic etiquette. As I was taking them out of the bag I noticed Roz sort of rolling her eyes when she saw how many I brought. I never really understood her reaction until a few years later and all of a sudden it dawned on me, “Oh! So that’s why she was rolling her eyes!” [laughter] But Jack was a sweetheart and he signed every single one of them. He opened the covers, signed them on the first page. It was great. Then we had lunch together, he gave me a couple of portfolios, and he did this really nice sketch of Captain America waving, saying, “Hi, Scott!” It’s hanging up in my office at home.

CBA: Do you still have those signed Kirby comics?

Scott: Some of them.

CBA: So were there any other personal encounters with comic book artists? Was that ongoing?

Scott: That was really the highlight early on. But there were plenty of guys who would do drawings. I called up Harvey Kurtzman once when I was 16 and asked him for a drawing. He was a nice guy and said, “Just send me a letter with your address and I’ll mail you someJune 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

thing. I wrote a letter, actually just a couple of lines that said, “Thank you very much for agreeing to do this drawing for me.” He sent it back and on the same sheet of paper and did a self-portrait with his finger up saying, “I don’t do drawings.” [laughter] Jack Kamen did a sort of risqué little one for me of a girl in a shower!

CBA: So did you ever have those drawings published? Did you ever contribute to fanzines?

Scott: No. I was a member of a comic book APA [amateur press association] for a little while but that was only for a short time, and much later.

CBA: When did you start dealing in original comic art?

Scott: I started buying and selling art in the early ’80s. I remember having a table at a Creation convention, the 1981 Thanksgiving show in New York. I think that was the earliest show I set up at. I mainly sold comics but was always more interested in the art, and selling it as a full-time occupation slowly grew out of setting up at those early shows. I think it was about 1987 when I went into it full steam.

CBA: Obviously, you were getting in contact with some top-notch artists. Did you seek out top-caliber art? Is that what your interest was?

Scott: You know, I was just interested in picking up what I felt was good art, either to collect or to sell. I was never good at selling art that I didn’t care for, I’m not much of a salesman if I don’t actually like what I’m selling. I used to sell art for Mike Mignola, Brian Bolland, José Luis Garcia-Lopez, a whole bunch of really great artists.

CBA: So how long did you sell art full-time?

Scott: From 1987 until about ’95. Then sort of a little bit off and on. When I went to WildStorm, we were still dealing in original art, but as my duties on the editorial side increased, my art selling decreased at a matching pace. After a couple of years, I had nothing to do with the art sales anymore.

CBA: What was your first editorial job in comics?

Scott: It was actually for A1, a British anthology magazine put together by two friends of mine, Garry Leach and Dave Elliott. They were putting this magazine together around 1987 or so. I wasn’t an official editor, per se, but I did help them contact some American

Above: Penciler Chris Sprouse and inker Alan Gordon’s portrait of the America’s Best team, used to promote the launch of ABC in 1999. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

M.I.A. As longtime readers know, this wouldn’t be Comic Book Artist if, in virtually every single issue, we didn’t extend our apologies to those creators who should have been included in the celebrations, but were omitted due to lack of space. And our ABC Comics extravaganza is no different in that we truly regret not having the participation of quite an incredible array of talent who have contributed mightily to the imprint. To RICK VEITCH, GENE HA, ZANDER CANNON, MICK GREY, AL GORDON, MELINDA GEBBIE, ARTHUR ADAMS, ALAN WEISS, PAUL RIVOCHE, KARL STORY, JEROMY COX, and the many others, please accept our appreciation for your fine efforts and our disappointment at not having a 500-page issue to give you all full measure. Mea culpa.

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Above: Sneak peek at Arthur Adams’ bee-yoo-tiful cover art for Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales #8. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Below: Are we just adding insult to injury by printing such a low-res portrait of Scott Dunbier (snagged and enlarged from the tiny pic found on the back of Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset #4, Apr. ’02)?

We mean well, S.D.!

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artists. For instance, I contacted Joe Kubert and helped them put together the “Tor” story in one of the issues. This in no way takes away from what Dave and Garry did, because A1 is completely their baby. I just helped out, as a friend. But that was a great experience, seeing it from the other side of the table. Oh, and I did some “resizing” (don’t ask) for Quality Comics in 1986 on five or six early issues in their Judge Dredd run, which is where I met Garry and Dave.

CBA: How did you get involved with WildStorm?

Scott: Jim Lee had been a friend of mine for a number of years. We’d met at a WonderCon, I think it was in 1988. We used to hang out and play cards when we were in the same city, and have long conversations on the phone. I never sold his artwork. He had an agent already at the time and later sold his own artwork, but we were friends, so it didn’t really matter. Then he launched WildStorm at Image and we talked about me coming out to San Diego, maybe a year or two after they started. I turned him down initially because I wasn’t really sure about moving to California and changing what I was doing. In 1994, about a year later, he called again, we talked about it, and there wasn’t really any kind of set job description initially, but then we started thinking about different things, like doing prints and maybe repping for the artists at Homage Studios. Eventually I started thinking that it wouldn’t be bad to change what I was doing, to get out of that rut that I was in. So I said yes and moved to La Jolla [California].

CBA: Historically speaking, artists are not usually astute businessmen, per se. But Jim obviously has solid, practical business acumen.

Scott: Yes, very much so. But he’s more than that, he’s also a very passionate person about many things, and he’s there 100%, whether drawing or running a comic company or poker. Although he’s better at the comic stuff than card playing. [laughter].

CBA: Other than the visual interpretation of the scripts, most of the artists that I’ve spoken to say it’s not really a collaborative effort in maybe the old-style Marvel sense, right? Alan writes the scripts, they interpret them, then it is sent to you, correct?

Scott: Yes. Alan turns the script in and I fax it to the artist who draws it. They get a very finished script. But Alan is also a complete gentleman. On just about every script he writes some kind of notation that says, “This is how I see it, If you can think of any way that would work better, go for it. And he really means it, he trusts his collaborators. Some artists do deviate from his work. Gene Ha has mixed things up a little bit. So does J.H. Williams. Chris Sprouse pretty much stays exactly to what Alan envisions, often to the detriment of poor Chris’ schedule. It’s not easy to draw an Alan Moore script, but it is rewarding.

CBA: So they’ve contributed story points and interpretations?

Scott: Oh, sure. When you work with artists this talented, it’s only natural they would have ideas and want to try something different.

CBA: Does Alan approve all the art?

Scott: No, that falls under my aegis.

CBA: One of the astonishing things Alan told me when I asked if he had seen the film adaptation of From Hell, was that he had no interest. He seemed to feel that the movie was a different thing, that he had already signed off on it, “Goodbye!”

Scott: But that’s not the same thing as his not being involved in the artwork. He’s very, very much involved in the process of the comic.

It’s just that he both trusts the artists and he trusts me. He knows that if there’s any problem, I would let him know. As far as him approving the artwork, no, but that isn’t to say he doesn’t enjoy looking at it. I was talking to him yesterday, and he hadn’t seen any art in a while on various projects we’re working on, so we sent him a whole big stack of stuff. We sent him art from the Tesla special we’re doing, the first couple of issues of Terra Obscura, some new Smax stuff, some Tom Strong work Jerry Ordway is doing. Just a ton of art to pore over. I think that it really gets him excited whenever he gets a package like that. It’s something that really reinvigorates him.

CBA: What was your first editorial gig? What made you think that you could be an editor?

Scott: I’ve been faking it all this time! [laughter] I feel that way sometimes. When I first started working at WildStorm, I would occasionally mention to Jim, “Oh, we should be doing this, we should be doing that, we should be bringing in this artist or that artist. I think he finally got sick and tired of listening to me and said, “You know what? Just edit your own book.” At that time, Jim wanted to do a Gen13/Maxx crossover, and Sam Kieth is one of my closest friends, so Jim felt I should earn my keep and work on that. [laughs] So that was the first book, and it was a real trial by fire. I just did a terrible job on it. [laughs] I’m not saying that the creators did a terrible job, but I certainly could have done better. But it was a great learning experience, it really was. I had a tremendous amount of help from a lot of people around here who taught me many valuable lessons. Sarah Becker, the original editor on Gen13, was invaluable on that project, very patient and extremely helpful, probably much more helpful than I would have been to some newbie who didn’t know what the hell he was doing. [laughs] But the book turned out pretty good, and there was a nice fan reaction from it. Tomm Coker drew it. My second job was Gen13: Ordinary Heroes, a two-part mini-series written and penciled by Adam Hughes. That’s still one of my proudest moments at WildStorm, certainly one of the better series we put out. Adam is a talented writer, be nice to see him do more of it.

At the point we started doing the ABC books, I was already in charge of editorial. I started doing a regular title, Gen13: Bootleg, and then other projects, and then eventually I became editor-in-chief at WildStorm. We had a new imprint coming out called Cliffhanger, with Danger Girl as the debut launch. Jeff Campbell, Andy Hartnell, and I were on a signing tour on the East Coast. An artist I was trying to get to do some work for us from time to time was Brandon Peterson. I was checking my e-mail at the hotel, and I got a message from Brandon looking for work. I called him and he told me that Extreme Studios was having trouble and they were suspending publication of their books. So I got up very early the next morning and I called up Alan Moore in England and asked him if he’d be interested in doing some work for WildStorm. Now, this wasn’t unusual. I had called and talked to Alan many times before that, asking him if he was interested in doing some more work for WildStorm. At that point, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen had already been set up at WildStorm as an Homage title originally, and he was working on that.

CBA: Did you initially cold-call Alan, or did he always have a connection with WildStorm?

Scott: I had actually met Alan in 1984 at a comic convention in New York. My roommate then was an artist named Shawn McManus. Shawn drew a couple of issues of Swamp Thing written by Alan, “The Burial” and “Pog,” so he went over to meet Alan in the city and I tagged along. Anyway, I would call him up occasionally just to say, “I’d love to have you do some more work for us. If you want to, anything you want, we’d love to have you do something. He was always very gracious, very polite. He was pretty busy, he would say, but if he ever had time, he would definitely consider it. So when I was in New York on that signing tour for Danger Girl, after I had heard about Extreme’s suspension of publication, I called up Alan and asked if he would be interested in doing anything for us. He was again very polite and said, no, he was very happy with what he was doing. I was sort of taken aback when I realized he actually hadn’t heard yet. So I told him what I had heard from Brandon.

CBA: Alan was, at that time you called, writing Supreme?

Scott: Yes. So he was surprised to hear the news. He said he would have to make some phone calls. He asked me to call him back later, and I did. We talked for a while about various things and left it with COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

he would work up an idea for something for me in a week or so, if I was interested in doing something. I gave him some space and called him back a week later, and then he sent me a 15-page proposal for ABC. It was definitely more than I was thinking. Happily so!

CBA: So it was a proposal for an entire line?

Scott: An entire line of comic book titles. It was great! Alan’s proposals are as much fun to read as his scripts. He has so many ideas going in so many directions, has so much enthusiasm for all these projects he works on. He never phones it in, don’t think he could even if he tried.

CBA: Isn’t Alan quite generous in sharing co-creator credit?

Scott: Of course, but if you really think about it, these artists are cocreators. Chris Sprouse designed the character, came up with the look of the character, the look of the city. I mean, Alan had suggestions, of course, but Chris’ visuals are just as important as Alan’s scripts.

I’m going to sound like such a kiss-ass in this interview, but Alan is a gentleman. He would never take any credit away from anyone he works with.

CBA: Did you feel, “Oy! This pressure is going to be hell!” I mean, you were handling four books, right?

Scott: No, I was tremendously excited, as I think everyone here at the studio was. We were going to have a chance to start something completely new, all these different things by Alan Moore, arguably the best comics writer ever. Not to mention the caliber of the artists that we wrangled on these books—it was a wonderful experience.

CBA: How did you wrangle the artists? You had all these connections and just called up them up?

Scott: With League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Kevin was already attached to the book, and like all the other guys that are working on this, I can’t really think of anybody that would do a better job.

On Tom Strong, it was just sort of a given that that was going to be Chris. Obviously, Chris would do that one, because it was just made for him.

On Top Ten, I thought Gene Ha would be perfect, and I called him up thinking, “Oh, he’ll never do this. Then he just said, “Sure, I would love that.” I kept waiting for the but, but it didn’t come.

With Promethea, initially we were planning on having Brandon Peterson do that, since he was working with Alan at Extreme. He was interested, but then eventually decided not to do it and did work for Marvel instead, which is fine. That was really the only book that we couldn’t quite come up with an artist for easily. After that I had suggested Alan Davis to Alan, who thought that would be good. He’s obviously worked with him before and likes his stuff very much. I called up Davis, and it almost happened. He was on the brink, was having some trouble getting some X-Men scripts at Marvel, and was almost going to take the job, but then the scripts finally showed up.

After that, we talked about a variety of other guys. Another guy that I approached was Bruce Timm, who obviously would have had a completely different take as well. Then J.H. Williams came about actually through Alex Ross. Alex suggested him, and I looked at his stuff and thought, “You know, this guy is pretty good. I sent the samples to Alan which he liked a lot. Today it’s tough for me to think of anybody who could do Promethea except for J.H. and Mick.

Maybe Craig Russell…. The art choices for Tomorrow Stories were split between Alan and I. Alan wanted to work with Rick Veitch, Melinda Gebbie and Jim Baikie and came up with ideas that suited their individual styles. I picked Kevin Nowlan on “Jack B. Quick,” and had to talk Kevin into it. [laughs] But I was able to, finally.

CBA: We’ll have to tell readers to check out the flip-side and learn that actually Kevin wants to live in Kansas! It’s his choice. [laughs] Scott: Sure! He lives in a nice little town of 2,000 people. There’s something to be said for that.

CBA: It must be an interesting situation having Melinda Gebbie working with Alan, as they’re a couple. Did you have to deal with Melinda at all or was that just directly basically between them?

Scott: Pretty much just between them. Of course, Alan sent me the scripts, but they work very closely together, and Melinda is just a sweetheart. She’s so, so nice. So yeah, that was a very close collaboration between the two of them.

CBA: What precisely is your role at ABC? With all due respect, are you, in essence, a traffic manager with a lofty job title? Are you actually line-editing, coddling and prodding artists? How would you June 2003

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characterize it?

Scott: [Laughs] It really depends on the situation. I’m the group editor for WildStorm, so I oversee the entire editorial department, I oversee all of our books. At this point, we only have two editors, myself and Ben Abernathy [Alex Sinclair, famed for coloring Top Ten, Astro City, and Jim Lee’s Batman, has recently filled the vacant editorial slot at WS—S.D.], so it’s not hard to oversee the whole line.

Basically, it depends on the situation, depends on the creator I work with. Some creators need much more attention than others. With Alan, we talk a bit about his plans and he turns the script in.

Occasionally there will be something I mention that might be a problem, but very rarely.

There was a joke that I would use at conventions, when I would do a panel, and invariably there would be someone who would ask, “What’s it like working with Alan Moore? What’s it like editing Alan Moore?” I would just sit back, let out a sigh and go, [sighs] “All the rewrites” [laughter] and I would get a big laugh from the crowd. The joke is that Alan does turn in perfect scripts. He has such a singular vision. Alan is Alan, he has a legendary status in this industry, and deservedly so. Other guys need more attention.

CBA: Was there an initial intent to have Alan launch the books then wean him off and have other writers such as Steve Moore and Peter Hogan write the books? That Alan would delegate?

Scott: You know, one thing we talked about at the beginning was the possibility of Alan moving on from books and possibly having other writers take over afterwards.

We had initially thought he’d do maybe 12 issues and then move on to something else, and have other writers come on, with Alan’s blessing of course. As far as that goes, there are some books—Promethea, for instance—which I can’t imagine anybody but Alan writing at this juncture. Promethea is too personal a book—it may be Alan’s most personal book, period—containing too much of his singular vision. It wouldn’t be the same thing. As far as the others, I think with Tom Strong and Top Ten that other writers could successfully write them, and it’s something that we have talked about, but we haven’t made up our minds yet. But it’s really up to Alan. If he’s happy with having someone else writing them, then we’ll talk about it.

CBA: Do you speak to him with frequency?

Scott: Three or four times a week.

CBA: You mentioned earlier that Alan faxes the scripts to you, right? Do you have a major investment in fax paper? [laughs] Scott: Yes, I’ve tried to use the argument that we could save half of North America’s trees if Alan would get hooked up to the Internet, but he isn’t budging. I mean, we’ve actually even talked about buying a computer and having it set up at his house with a private server on which he could e-mail us scripts, but no, he’s a rock. Although we did just invest in some software for digitally recognizing typed characters on paper and turning it into Word files, so that helps a lot for getting scripts to artists.

CBA: What’s your greatest joy in the job?

Scott: [Ponders] Seeing something come together that I’ve really been trying to put together for a long time. Like, actually, this League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Absolute Edition with the scripts.

I’ve been wanting to do a book of Alan’s scripts for a very, very long time, something like four years now. So to get it to come out is pretty cool. Then any number of things.

The great thing about it is, we publish so many comics, and they go by so quickly, that there are always new joys.

Above: Kevin O’Neill’s art (sans type) for “The Game of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” as seen in the America’s Best Comics Special: 2000 (Feb. ’01). Sorry ’bout the insanely reduced size, folks. LXG ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

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CBA Interview Extra

America’s Best Apocalypse?

The scribe on ABC and his possible retirement from comics Opposite page: Detail from the cover of The America’s Best Sketchbook (’02) featuring the finest of the ABC art stable. ©2003 America’s Best Comics,LLC. Below: Check out the writer’s awesome rings on this José Villarrubia photograph of Alan Moore, taken on the streets of Northampton. Photo courtesy of and ©2003 José Villarrubia.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice As the preceding interview, which took place in Alan Moore’s Northampton home, didn’t cover too many specifics of the America’s Best Comics line (and given the fact it transpired over a year ago), Ye Ed thought it prudent to ring up the scribe to get the lowdown on his thinking behind the characters populating the America’s Best imprint, as well as to ask about rumors of his impending retirement from comics writing. The following took place in early May via telephone and was transcribed in lightning fast time by Our Man Tice.

Comic Book Artist: I’d like to ask you specifically about the ABC Comics line. Promethea: Was the intention originally to do your own version of Wonder Woman?

Alan Moore: No. All the ABC books, to a degree, were created in the wake of Awesome Entertainment going under. At that time, there were a lot of artists I was working with at Awesome I was enjoying working with. These included Melinda Gebbie, Rick Veitch, Chris Sprouse, and others. This also included Steve Skroce, who I worked with on Youngblood and who obviously was able to draw lots of interesting characters in a scene. So I had originally come up with the idea of Top Ten as something geared toward Steve’s talents.

I’d been working with Brandon Peterson on Glory, which obviously had been a Wonder Woman knock-off in its original inception, but which I was trying to turn into something more magic-oriented. Now, when Awesome went belly-up, I was thinking of coming up with a raft of titles that would enable me to carry on working with the artists I was already comfortably working with and I would be able to have more say in how the comics were presented. Because, although I’d enjoyed a lot of the stuff we’d done at Awesome, there’d been problems with some of the presentation that I thought could be very easily sorted out. Bad covers, things like that.

I then found this list of names I’d written some months earlier, just in an idle moment, including Tom Strong, Promethea, Cobweb, Top Ten. But they were just names with no concepts attached to them. I started to see how Tom Strong could be a character perhaps suited for Chris Sprouse. Cobweb would be a character perhaps suited for Melinda. Greyshirt would perhaps suit Rick. Top Ten, I took that name and tried to work it into a concept that might suit Steve Skroce, and Promethea sounded female, sounded like the sort of thing that might work for Brandon Peterson. Now, at this point, both Steve and Brandon bowed out, saying they had other projects so they wouldn’t be able to continue. But I liked the way these new concepts were developing, so [WildStorm editor] Scott Dunbier found me artists he thought might be suitable, in the shape of Gene Ha on Top Ten and Jim Williams and Mick Gray on Promethea.

I suppose there is something in the fact that Promethea sprung out of a character—Glory—who herself sprang out of Wonder Woman. If you’re going to do any female character connected to mythology in any way, I suppose she is going to end up looking something like the Wonder Woman archetype. While I was aware before taking over the strip that Glory had been a Wonder Woman knock-off, with Promethea, I tried to reference those things that came before Wonder Woman. So, in #1, I gave this brief history of Promethea in the strip, as well as in a text article, talking about newspaper comic strips at the turn of the century, where there were some quite interesting woman artists and female newspaper strip characters. I’ve worked that into Promethea through the Little Margie storyline, this imaginary comic strip done at the turn of the century that had a Winsor McKay quality to it. It had a wise woman guardian figure called Promethea. We also talk about pulp books, where I can remember all of these great Amazon characters, some of them written by women like Leigh Brackett or C.L. Moore that would be in things like Weird Tales, perhaps with covers by Margaret Brundage.

So we reference that through the Grace Brannagh character, who is a pulp cover illustrator for a Promethea pulp magazine. And yes, we’ve also got a reference to a comic book incarnation of this pulp character, who is congruent, at least, with Wonder Woman, from the ’40s to the ’70s. But no, there’s no real interest or intention in pastiching or parodying Wonder Woman. With Promethea, we’ve got a characCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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ter potentially much more interesting than Wonder Woman. That’s what we’ve been trying to explore.

CBA: Scott said it was in very short order when you turned around an entire proposal for the ABC Comics line?

Alan: I did do it in very short order, but the tapestry wasn’t complete in that initial proposal. What you’d got was my thinking upon these very titles that I’d found in one of my rough-books and the thoughts they had inspired in me, the kind of characters I thought might be possible. I’d got an idea for roughly how many books all of this would be done in. We’d have an anthology book, Promethea, Tom Strong, and Top Ten. The initial proposal for Top Ten had lots of characters who never made it to the final book and hadn’t really got the whole concept completely worked out where everybody in the city would be a super-hero. I don’t think that was completely worked through, but there was enough there for Gene to start working on designs; similarly with Promethea. When I actually started writing Promethea from the initial proposal, I think I’d written between four and eight pages and then just had to tear them up, because it didn’t have any of the life or vitality I wanted, which I added to the strip partly by talking with Jim Williams and coming up with a wildly different vision of New York, and partly by throwing in seemingly irrelevant, absurdist elements, like the Weeping Gorilla posters, the Five Swell Guys… those things added to the mix seemed to make the thing, give it a freshness, an originality and a life. It was the same with all the books.

Tom Strong was perhaps most closely worked out as this kind of primordial pulp character a bit like Doc Savage, very much drawing upon the pulp figures who came in immediately before Superman. I suppose, for a large part of the ABC line, that was the premise: I was trying to wind the tape back to a point before Action Comics #1. Or at least, insofar as that was possible, to wind the tape back and then play it forward along a different direction. So I was looking back to the early newspaper strips, weird fiction of the late 19th century, pulp magazines, all things that preceded the modern comicbook character, and then imagine a way forward from that point that would end up with characters who were distinctly different from the way the super-hero comic has played in reality. So it was an attempt to come up with some super-heroes from a parallel world, where they didn’t necessarily have all the same baggage that contemporary comic book super-heroes with their 60 years of history tend to have.

CBA: Was your thinking to do an Eisner homage with “Greyshirt”?

Alan: Not originally, but with the first issue, I realized you couldn’t really get a better model than Will Eisner for that sort of story. The main thing I wanted to do was not pastiche or do a homage to The Spirit, but to do a homage to the spirit of The Spirit, if you like. The very best thing about Eisner’s Spirit was the incredible experimentation, the constantly attempts at new storytelling techniques. All of that was the most thrilling aspect of The Spirit. So that’s why, yeah, we did that first “Greyshirt” story, which is a nice little twist-ending mystery, that doesn’t necessarily use any clever storytelling techniques, but by the second issue we were pushing for things like that “How Things Work Out” story, with the four levJune 2003

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els of the building in different times. Remember: There’s not really a vehicle around now to carry on the innovations Eisner was reaching for. I mean, even Eisner doesn’t do The Spirit anymore! There’s really no vehicle around now where you can do those wildly experimental stories within that kind of framework. So that became something I enjoyed exploring, and continue to enjoy, with “Greyshirt.” Though some of them are fairly conventional, most of the stories in the run are based around some interesting little visual storytelling device we thought of trying out.

CBA: Now, did Rick request to write and draw the mini-series, Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset?

Alan: Oh, I felt perfectly comfortable with Rick, who is a superb writer as well as a fantastic artist. I forget who suggested it, but whoever it was had my full support right from the beginning because it was a tremendous idea. That Indigo Sunset story was wonderful, one of my favorite comics of last year, just because of the way Rick had taken all of these insignificant, trailing threads from the continuity of the regular “Greyshirt” series in Tomorrow Stories and woven them into this coherent narrative that had all these wonderful, bizarre pulp touches in it, and where he was roping in people like John Severin and people like that on the back-up

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Below: Check out www.topshelfcomix.com for info on that publisher’s plans to feature the Cobweb story by creators Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie that was rejected by DC Comics execs.

This portrait of the femme fatale late of the now defunct Tomorrow Stories, appeared in The ABC Sketchbook (’02). ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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stories. I thought that was a wonderful little package.

CBA: First American was your take on the patriotic hero archetype?

Alan: With Tomorrow Stories, I was thinking about types of characters you don’t really see in comics anymore. Like I say, there is not a Spirit-like vehicle where you can tell these little experimental stories, so I came up with “Greyshirt.” Another one of my favorite archetypal comic characters is Fighting American. It’s one of my favorite pieces of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon’s work, and one aspect I like is that it clearly started out as a serious patriotic strip with its first issue. Then, I presume because it was published during the McCarthy era, Simon and Kirby were at least smart enough to realize you couldn’t really take this kind of stuff seriously, so they changed their character from a Red-baiting, serious, patriotic hero to this incredible satire upon the whole idea, with these ludicrous Communist villains like Hotsky Trotsky and Poison Ivan. I was thinking, “Yeah, that’s really good. The idea of a patriotic super-hero who is a satire on issues that were contemporary at that time.” Now this evolved first into a character we called Future American. Then we had very amiable words with Gentleman Jim Steranko, who pointed out that this was a character he’d come up with decades ago and had got trademarked and copyrighted. So we decided to change it to the First American. Now, I was working with Jim Baikie upon this, who was another one of the artists that I’d been working with at Awesome and had wanted to carry on working with. I knew Jim has always had the greatest regard and reverence for Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad comics. So I decided to do two or three things with that initial idea of the “Fighting American.” Yes, he’s a patriotic character, he’s satirical, but it’s going to be at least as much the satire of Harvey Kurtzman as it was of Simon and Kirby.

Because, actually, Kurtzman’s satire was sharper and funnier. So combining those elements, and also bringing it up to date so that it’s not turned against the Red paranoia of the ’50s, but against contemporary phenomena, like The Jerry Springer Show, reality television, etc.

We just decided to tell a bunch of stories using that as a basis: A patriotic, satirical character, but set squarely in the present day, with all of the ludicrous targets of the modern world in their sites.

CBA: An even more exact Kurtzman homage—albeit combined with elements of Jack Cole—was “Splash Brannigan.”

Alan: Yes. We came up with “Splash” because we couldn’t do an episode of “Jack B. Quick” in every issue of Tomorrow Stories, as it takes Kevin a long time to complete one—and, I’ve got to say, it takes me a long time to write them, because you have to get yourself into a certain mind set to write “Jack B. Quick.” So Scott suggested Hilary Barta as somebody who

could do a strip to alternate with Kevin. This brought me to another of my favorite super-heroes—along with the Fighting American and The Spirit—who is, of course, Plastic Man. Now, obviously, because Hilary had done probably the best of the later incarnations of Plastic Man, that character came to mind. Because of Hilary’s tremendous abilities and what I thought he was capable of handling, I decided, “Yeah, all right, we’re going to do a Plastic Man-type character, only we’ll make him liquid instead of plastic. We’ll also mix Kurtzman’s satire with Jack Cole in the same way we mixed Simon and Kirby with Kurtzman on the “First American.” There was also an attempt to allude to the Max Fleischer animation of the ’20s and ’30s, the weird early ones, like Koko and Out of the Inkwell, because they had very fluid shapes. Out of the Inkwell was certainly a big influence on “Splash Brannigan.” So, again, it was taking comic book characters I thought were exceptional and stood out from the herd. I suppose Plastic Man, Fighting American, the Spirit… they all stand out in some way from the average super-hero. Those strips have intelligence, a sense of humor, a sense of personal style. So it was mixing them with other influences that led to “Splash Brannigan.”

I’m not sure where Jack B. Quick came from. I’ve always liked the idea of the boy inventor. There used to be quite a lot of boy inventors running around in comics, and you don’t see them anymore. And it’s such a stupid idea… the idea that a ten-year-old boy would possibly have this miraculous grasp of science, and yet, it’s an abiding concept. Over here, the police have just been issued with tasers. Do you know where the name taser comes from?

CBA: Well, I always assumed it was a play on laser.

Alan: No. “Taser” is an acronym, “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.” [laughter] It was from an early Tom Swift story, where he’s using a weapon that’s a kind of rifle which fires a dart with a trailing cable to a small generator. So there is something very abiding about this ridiculous idea of the boy inventor. I decided to take that boy inventor character, last seen messing around with ’50s and ’60s science, and bring him up to date, at least scientifically. Still keep him in this rural, Kansas, timeless, bygone American period. But this kind of science he’s talking about, it’s this ridiculous quantum science we have today.

Some modern science is so bizarre they are almost like a Lewis Carroll logic children have. It didn’t seem like a huge step to have this tenyear-old boy with all of the mad, ludicrous ideas that ten-year-old boys have, but to actually make it so that, yes, in terms of science as we now understand it, as it turns out, he’s absolutely right and is just a complete genius. That seems to have worked very well. The mixture of this kind of rural, bygone atmosphere and the latest Stephen Hawking discoveries, which gives us the black hole over the top cow pasture in the first episode and the buttered cat anti-gravity in issue #3, for examples. It was just trying out ideas. A lot of Tomorrow Stories was taking characters who didn’t seem to me to have modern equivalents, who weren’t really standard super-heroes, and who I thought had still got something interesting in them.

With Cobweb, I’ve always thought characters like the Phantom Lady, the “glamour heroines,” who really have no purpose other than to stand around in a skimpy costume looking glamorous. That was the reason why everybody bought those books. But at the same time… maybe because it was sort of a sexist ’50s thing that has vanished with modern sensibilities, I miss that relatively innocent camp glamour girl of the ’50s. Especially when you compare that kind of Vargas figure, with the sort of c*m-spattered porn starlet we have today. I thought that there was a charming innocence in it.

It’s just a pity that those old “Phantom Lady” stories, other than the fact that she’s got such wonderful cleavage, there was nothing else to recommend those stories at all; they weren’t at all interesting. So with “Cobweb,” what I decided to do was to take this kitsch, camp, ’50s glamorous crime-fighter character, like the Blonde Phantom or the Black Cat or the Phantom Lady, any of those, and to use it playfully, so that we could do whatever we wanted, where we could jump around and show, I dunno, a five-year-old Li’l Cobweb if we wanted to. Or we could talk about this Victorian villainess in a collage if we wanted to. Where the character could be anything.

To some degree, I tend to think most super-heroes, at their essence, if you boiled them down, are only a name and a chest emblem. You think about that with, say, Batman. There is no resemblance at all between the avenging Batman originally created in the late ’30s to COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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the smiling, avuncular Batman of the ’50s, to Neal Adams’ taut/tense/grim/gritty Batman of the ’70s, or to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight in the ’80s. These are not the same person. The only thing continuous is the name and chest emblem. And that, to me, is part of the appeal of the character. I mean, who cares about continuity, really?

I thought it would be interesting with Cobweb that, yes, we know she’s got a sidekick called Clarice, we know she has her hair in a bun, has a mask, and has a cobweb design on her belt. Given that, we can do whatever we want with the character. So that was appealing as well.

As I’ve said to you before, I really love anthology books in general. I think most of the greatest comic books in history have been anthologies, and I dare anybody to challenge me upon that. Most of the best concepts, most enduring characters in comic book history, have come from anthology books, where you get a great variety.

Do you get Kellogg’s Variety Packs over there?

CBA: Sure!

Alan: I used to love Kellogg’s Variety Packs when I was a kid, because you could have Cocoa Puffs one morning and Sugar Pops the next. There was variety. I like variety. In some of the old comics, you’d get two stories, four stories, eight stories, all of different sorts and different lengths between the covers. You got a sense of having had a full meal, a full five-course dinner or something. That was something I wanted to try and instill into Tomorrow Stories.

CBA: Why is the title no more… or is it?

Alan: Well, we reached a point where the various artists were always getting swamped with other work. The various artists were, to some degree, running out of steam. It also seemed like #12 was a convenient place to at least take a break while we thought about what we wanted to do. Also, Tomorrow Stories had been the poorest-selling ABC title. That said, I still want to do it as an anthology.

What we’re currently looking at—and this might or might not happen, depending upon how much time I get—but I’d like to do at least one Giant Tomorrow Stories Special that could have quite a lot of interesting stuff. I’ve already got a start made upon a 1950s America’s Best Adventure with the America’s Best team, which Jerry Ordway was possibly to draw. There would be Cobweb, First American, Splash Brannigan, Jack B. Quick, Greyshirt… But that’s only if I get the time to do it, though I am planning to.

CBA: You’ve taken the anthology format and shifted it over to Tom Strong to some degree, right?

Alan: Well, Tom Strong has always had an anthology element to it.

One of the things I liked best about the Superman and Action Comics of my youth was they were both anthology titles… all the Superman family comics were anthologies. Some only had Superman in them, but they had three eight-page Superman stories every month. So, with Tom Strong, because I did want Strong to very much be this kind of archetypal flagship character, sometimes I’d have full-length stories, sometimes I’d have continuing stories, sometimes I’ll have a couple of issues that have three stories in each, because I like doing short stories. You can cover a lot of ground in three short stories you usually couldn’t in one 24-page story. They’re a great way of introducing background material, introducing supplementary concepts that make the character’s continuum a much richer one. You can do these stories where you introduce Warren Strong (ABC’s version of Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny), or do a story set in the ’20s, like the Gary Gianni story that we did with the Necro-Gyro. You can do odd little one-offs like Hilary Barta’s “Space Family Strong.” A lot of these very memorable little stories, and they have enriched the overall Tom Strong mythology and have shown just what a wide variety of stories the character is suited for. Something I always like in my characters is their ability to be flexible.

CBA: So you even went another tiny step further and created a bona fide anthology title, Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales.

Alan: Well, Tomorrow Stories had been unpopular as an anthology.

But I like that format and I also wanted to get [British comics writer and mentor to Alan] Steve Moore working, because I wanted to get people at least used to the idea of people handling these characters other than me. I knew Steve had this concept about Adam Strange, a character he always enjoyed, and we looked at that strip and decided the best thing about “Adam Strange” had been the romance and the June 2003

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women in this kind of beautiful, airy, Carmine Infantino fantasy world. So we came up with “Jonni Future,” and Art Adams just pounced on the concept. So we’ve got one of our strips. I wanted to have Tom Strong in the lead strip, although it took me a few issues before I actually worked out what to do with it. But for the other strip, I had been thinking for a long time that I used to like Superboy; I used to like “The Adventures of Superman as a Boy.” I thought we’ve got certain limitations regarding Tom Strong, because we know he spent his first 20 years of life on this remote Caribbean island. But at the same time, over here, back in the ’50s and ’60s, in the British children’s comics, there were lots of stories about castaways. Lots of great British children’s adventure stories on that theme. I remember “Shipwrecked Circus,” and other good, strong, solid adventures for boys set in an exotic landscape. So I thought I could see “Young Tom Strong” as a viable strip. We got Alan Weiss, who’s got that incredible solid style, and it’s just great comic storytelling. I’ve worked with Alan on my Western Tom Strong story in one of the regular books, so that seemed like a good idea, pairing him up with Steve to do “Young Tom Strong.”

Then, with the lead strip itself, it took me a while to hit my stride, which I’m only just starting to do in these last two or three stories. But Terrific Tales is a great opportunity to do really experimental Tom Strong strips, particularly now we’ve got, in the regular book,

Above: Though some mysterious stranger (cloaked in grey with a red mask) gave us this repro of an apparent Greyshirt cover, he vanished before we could confirm exactly what this was or will be intended for. Rick Veith’s pencils and inks. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Above: Though quite often a ripsnortin’, full-blown and serious adventure book, Tom Strong is not without humor, at times, especially when it comes to the ABC kid gang (led by good ol’ back packtotin’ Tommy Turbo), The Strongmen of America. This irreverent one-pager was written by Alan Moore with pencils and inks

by Chris Sprouse. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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much longer ongoing stories. I mean, I know that issue #19 was an anthology issue, but issue #20-22 is a three-part Jerry Ordway story I’m very pleased with.

In #5 we had Jason Pearson’s bubble gum cards story, which was something I always wanted to try: To see if I could tell a story through a series of bubble gum cards. In the next issue, we have Shawn McManus on a Tom Strong children’s story called “Blanket Shanty.” It’s just a lovely little rhyming children’s story. Scott Dunbier knew Shawn was doing children’s illustrations with a new style he was very enthusiastic about, and Scott asked me, “I wonder if you can write a children’s-story-style Tom Strong.” Which was the sort of challenge I love and which quite delighted me. So, I’ve written a little eight-page children’s story.

After that, we’ve got Jason Pearson back again with an episode from The Tom Strong Cartoon Hour, an imaginary Saturday morning cartoon we’ve previously made reference to in the text feature of the first issue. It’s a combination of Scooby-Doo, Wacky Races, and Tom Strong. It’s got its own theme song in the beginning, with interrupting adverts halfway through. Like all cartoons, there’s something slightly wrong with the continuity. You’ve got Tom Strong, Tesla, King Solomon, but Paul Saveen now has a pet dog called Scrappy Saveen,

who wears a little domino mask, a little tuxedo, a little bow tie, and who is known as the Mutt of Malice or something like that. [laughter] So Terrific Tales gives me a vehicle where I can try these odd little ideas for things that perhaps aren’t even technically stories, but where I can just play with things. “Yeah, let’s do a cartoon! Let’s do some bubble gum cards! Let’s do a children’s story!” It seems to be working quite well at the moment. I really like Terrific Tales. I think it’s a good, strong, solid comic book. In fact, we had the notoriously difficult to please Mike Mignola pass on a compliment saying that he thought that Terrific Tales was a really good, solid comic, which is high praise indeed.

CBA: Is the upcoming Tesla anthology basically a kind of Supergirl Annual?

Alan: Peter Hogan, who will be writing, is another good English writer I wanted to get involved with ABC. The first thing anybody will read of Peter’s is this Tesla 80-page Giant—The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong—which springs off from that little eight-page story we did in one issue of Tom Strong which was called “Too Many Teslas,” where we suddenly had all of those alternate world Teslas showing up. Peter liked that story and thought he maybe could expand upon it, so he’s doing this great big, full-length girly adventure with Tesla traveling through these various worlds. Because of the nature of all of these different parallel realities, that was a great excuse to get this incredible list of brilliant artists to do the various sequences. And, from what I’ve seen, it’s a beautiful-looking book. It’s strange, almost perverse!

We’ve got Arthur Adams, who loves drawing sexy women, but he loves gorillas more, so he’s got two or three pages with mostly gorillas and no sexy women. But there’s all these other people, including Adam Hughes, handling the babe content, so nobody need worry too much.

CBA: [laughs] Adam can handle it alone! What’s Terra Obscura?

Alan: Well, this is a mini-series we—Pete and I—have put together.

I’ve always like the concept of Terra Obscura Chris Sprouse and I introduced in Tom Strong #11 and 12, where we were taking the old standard Needle Ned Pines characters and coming up with our own variant of the parallel world, somewhere that could function as our Earth-2, but wouldn’t be the same concept. We have this duplicate Earth actually in our galaxy, not in a parallel universe. It’s a duplicate solar system on the other side of the Milky Way. This idea came about because somebody told me there was an America’s Best Comics back in the ’40s, which I was startled by, because I hadn’t realized that (unless I’d heard the name subconsciously). I got Scott to check it out and tell me whether there were any interesting out-ofcopyright characters we could revive as a kind of tribute to the people who came up with the name first. So it turned out there was Doc Strange, The Black Terror, The Fighting Yank, and a whole raft of other, more minor characters. Now, obviously, there’s a problem with having a character called “Doc Strange” in today’s comic book world.

There was also some uncertainty about the ownership of the Black Terror. There’s a Dark Horse character called The Ghost, so we modified that to The Green Ghost. So, we put together this idea of all of the standard characters having been in limbo for at least 30 or 40 years on their parallel world, and at the end of the Tom Strong stories, we had their world returned to its proper situation.

Peter and I would meet together regularly and plot the issues, and then Peter would go away and actually write the scripts. It’s a story about what happens after Tom Strong #12, where you’ve got all of these various super-heroes returning to their own cities after a 35year absence. Things have changed, and their return changes some things even more. So it’s kind of setting up this whole world. It includes all of the characters from the standard line, or at least as many of them as we’ve been able to fit in. I think it’s going to be very interesting. The artwork being done looks wonderful. It’s probably the closest thing that ABC has done to a conventional super-hero book.

But, that said, it’s kind of classic. The artwork has got that kind of classic ’70s/’80s really clean, good, powerful super-hero work. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing it. I’ve seen the covers and the artwork, and it’s going to be a good series.

CBA: You’re also doing spin-offs from Top Ten? Alan: Yes. At the moment they’re both about halfway through.

There is one I’m doing with Gene Ha, which is a graphic novel called The ’49ers, which is set in the Neopolis of 1949, when the superCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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heroes who had been so prolific during the Second World War suddenly find most of them are actually redundant now that the war is over. Not only that, but they can’t really return to ordinary life, because no one wants to live next door to them because there’s always going to be super-villains turning up and you’re liable to have aliens landing on the street. So it’s just easiest for everybody if most of them are relocated to this city, Neopolis, which is just being built as our story opens. The first episode sees the arrival of a very young Steve Traynor, Jetlad, in Neopolis, along with a couple of other people. We see the Vampire Mafia we introduced in that little Zander Cannon short in the ABC 64-page Special, where we introduced the Cosa Nosferatu, literally this undead thing of ours. [laughter] We have these vampire Mafiosi just turning up in Neopolis causing a crime problem. We’ve got the roots of a lot of the things you see in the present-day series. It mainly concerns all of those first-generation Neopolis cops whose pictures you always see upon that mural in the station house in Top Ten. It’s turning out very interesting. There are only a few characters who have got any connection to the presentday characters. Obviously Steve Traynor, Jetlad/Jetman is one of those, and we also see Traynor forming his apparently long-term relationship with his lover, who is a member of the Blackhawk-like Skysharks, where we’ve seen them in Top Ten as practically a married couple. But in The ’49ers we’re seeing the beginnings of their relationship, which is probably not entirely smooth, given that it was a different period.

CBA: Can you just give your thinking with Top Ten? Alan: Originally I thought, “Hey, I’ll do a big super-hero team!”

One way of doing that to be novel is to make them a police precinct.

That was my initial thinking. Then my second thought started to be, “Yeah, but if you’ve got a police precinct full of super-hero cops, then they’ll still have to go out and fight ordinary, boring, planetthreatening menaces like any other super-team. So you won’t be able to get that gritty, street-level quality the best American cop shows achieve.” What’s best about the better American cop shows is the fact they can focus upon life in a big city upon a completely streetlevel, gritty area of focus. That aspect would be lost if all the cops in the precinct are having to shoot out and battle Galactus or somebody. So then it occurred to me that if I made everybody in the city a super-hero or a junior partner or a super-pet or a villain or a comiccharacter-related person in some way, that then it would be quite fantastic. Because if everybody in the city was a super-hero, the superheroes will kind of become invisible. There’s so many of them and they’re everywhere that they become as boring and everyday as normal people. So you can have super-cops going out and dealing with normal, boring, everyday problems amongst the super-civilians, which seemed to me to be a much more interesting solution. So that was the way it started to shape-up. Then my thinking evolved from there.

I must add that these concepts were certainly established with Gene and Zander, who June 2003

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were also pitching in ideas. That said, it struck me if you had a city of super-people, there’s going to be different problems to the ones you get in an ordinary city. I figured, for one thing, a lot of the people in this city are going to be aliens or people who had their bodies changed by exposure to cosmic rays or gamma radiation or some kind of serum… all the stuff that happens to people in comic books,

Above: Alan Moore’s sheer love of the great old comics is never more clearly evident than in Tom Strong.

As two examples, check out the word-for-word, posture-for-posture pastiche of these old Marvel and DC comics! Strange Tales, Human Torch, Captain America ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Jimmy Olsen, Superman ©2003 DC Comics. Tom Strong and related characters ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC. Below and inset: Only after launching ABC did Alan Moore learn of the 1940s same-titled comic and he’s now having a ball incorporating many of those characters into the Terra Obscura quadrant of the Tom Strong universe! ©2003 ABC, LLC.

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Below: Just for giggles, here’s Arthur Adams’ eye-popping black&-white line art for Comic Book Artist #17 (Jan. ’02), showcasing Jonni Future, his co-creation (with writer Alan Moore) appearing regularly in Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales.

Art ©2003 Arthur Adams. All characters ©2003 their respective copyright holders.

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y’know, chemicals and lightning. Therefore, these people are probably going to be pretty genetically unstable, and if you’ve got a whole city of them packed together, having relationships and having sex with each other, you could probably get some really terrible sexually-transmitted diseases arise. So we came up with something called STORMS, which is Sexually Transmitted Organic Rapid Mutation Syndrome, where, if you catch it, then in the terminal stages you turn into something horrible and unbelievable. We showed some pictures of people who’d gone into the terminal stages of STORMS, and Gene Ha drew a picture of someone who looked very much like the giant turtle Jimmy Olsen.

CBA: [laughs] Ouch!

Alan: So, yeah, things like that. We also thought, what would the racial tension be like? Because, when an awful lot of the people are not human in the city, then to be prejudiced against people because they’re a different race or whatever would seem pretty stupid and unlikely. I mean, if you had to get used to seeing all sorts of fantastic beings walking around you all the time, then somebody of another race would certainly not be a problem. But it struck me that if I was going to make Neopolis feel like a real city, then there had to be some equivalent to racial tensions. So I thought, well, one thing a lot of these people have in common in Neopolis, even if they all do have different powers or planets of origin or whatever, is that they’re organic. But there is also a lot of robots who live in the city. So that

struck me as the major fault line in the racial tension in Neopolis, that robot culture has become very proud of itself, very aggressive, as a result of the prejudice leveled against it by organic culture. So we came up with things like “scrap music,” which is played by “scrappers.” And where, instead of “bitches,” they talk about “glitches.”

Instead of saying “Holmes,” they’ll talk about “ohms.” [laughter] That’s fun and it enables you to talk about racism without actually talking about racism. We can have this racist cop, who is not a parody of a racist, because he’s got no problem with black people, but he hates machines. He hates “clickers,” as he calls them. Then we started thinking about, “Oh, okay, so if there is some sort of equivalent between the position of black people and the position or robots, then what about other ethnic groups? What about, say, the Italians? What about the Mob?” We thought, well, what if it was vampires? So you’d have the protest lobbies that would deplore this Vampire Mafia, the Cosa Nosferatu. They would say, “Look, there are plenty of perfectly honest, hard-working Hungarian-Americans who do not rise from their grave every night to feast upon the living, and that these are just giving a bad name to the rest of us.” So we’ve got this family who don’t like to be called vampires; they prefer to think of themselves as “Hungarian-Americans with an inherited blood condition.”

We explore some of the origin of this in The ’49ers.

If I’d continued with Top Ten, we had all sorts of possibilities.

Like, I’ve got this idea for a Malcolm X type figure to arise amongst the robots, called John: 15, who is this very intelligent, very impassioned robot rights activist. I realized that if robots were the equivalent to blacks, then in Top Ten we hadn’t got any black cops. (I mean, yes, we’ve got actually black cops, the racial mix of Top Ten is pretty good, but we hadn’t got any robot cops.) This is why I introduced Joe Pi and this artificial intelligence from this a parallel world where the robots run mostly everything. Joe’s actually better than all the other cops, and we were starting to get into some interesting things with what makes somebody human? I think we were doing it in a way that was a bit more interesting than the, “Oh, I am a human brain trapped in a robot’s body, but am I not truly human?” cliché. We were getting into some interesting questions, because the main thing was that Joe Pi the character didn’t really want to be thought of as human, because he didn’t see that being human was anything particularly great. He was quite happy with being a much superior artificial intelligence. So we were getting some interesting little dialogues going.

That’s the thing with Top Ten: What kind of crimes would happen in a city of super-beings?

What’s the history like? Which is something that we’re exploring with The ’49ers. Before the super-people came there, was it all newspaper strip characters? It turns out that, yes, it was.

People like Mary Worth and Happy Hooligan and people like that who were the first residents of Neopolis, before they built the extra stories and started moving in all of the redundant super-hero types. Once you start thinking about the world, then it’s very interesting.

I remember the very first page of Top Ten #1, where I thought, “How do I introduce the city?” So I have the first page all taking place on a train. You’ve got one of the characters who is a new recruit at the station. She dresses like an ordinary punk girl but has this big box on her lap.

You see her with all the ordinary commuters on this train, which is stopped at the last station before the bridge to Neopolis. All the people in regular clothing get off, and a load of people in super-hero costumes get on. Then there’s still the same mundane conversations between the commuters, between mothers and their children, but COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

now they’re all about super-hero-related things. You know, the child is bothering her mother for some new prismatic cape all of the other little girls at school have, and stuff like that. Then you turn over the page and you’re in Neopolis, with super-heroes everywhere.

All of the ABC strips are interesting to me, but with Top Ten, I thought we were doing an interesting take upon the super-hero story with some brilliant little kinks in it. The stuff Gene and Zander were doing in the backgrounds is fantastic. You can gaze at those issues over and over again and still find some hilarious little sidegag you’d missed.

Gene is drawing The ’49ers, and Zander’s doing a Smax miniseries. The working title was Smax the Barbarian.

It’s a story where the kind of truculent, grumpy blue giant from Top Ten has to return to the alternate Earth he originated from, before he came to Neopolis, and where, as it turns out, he’s got to go back to for his uncle’s funeral. Smax takes his partner, Robyn Slinger/Toybox, along for moral support. It turns out he comes from a Lord of the Rings, hobbit-infested fantasy world that is a composite of every drippy fantasy story you’ve ever read. It’s got elves, unicorns, questing heroes. It does for the fantasy genre what Neopolis does for the super-hero genre. These fantasy characters are crowded together in ridiculous profusion. At certain times of the day, like it’s the rush hour, and there’s all these people on quests.

Basically, Smax has always been embarrassed about the world he comes from. It’s like the equivalent of a modern New York cop who doesn’t want anybody to know that he comes from the Ozarks.

He feels his background is laughably primitive. He comes from a world where there is no electricity, where it’s actually okay to marry your sister because all the gods were doing it. This fantasy world is not so far away from the gods as we are. So he’s just ashamed of it.

It’s a planet without electricity, a parallel world version of the Ozarks, and he’s embarrassed by it. That’s why he moved out. That’s why he changed his name. But there’s other reasons why he moved, as well, which we start to find out about in the course of this series.

CBA: How long is the series?

Alan: Five issues. It’s a lot of fun. Zander’s doing some fantastic work upon it.

CBA: Do you have anything else coming up in the pipe, or is that about it?

Alan: I think that’s about it. There are other projects of indeterminate status, which I wouldn’t really want to say too much about because they perhaps won’t happen. There’s something I’m going to be doing with John Coulthart called The Soul, but whether I’ll be doing that for ABC or not, I don’t know. There’s this project with John Totleben I should be doing hopefully called Pearl of the Deep, but again, I’m not sure what the status of that is, whether that will be with ABC or not.

CBA: You have one more story arc with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen after this second one?

Alan: Yes, but I don’t know when. There could be a lot more League of Extraordinary Gentlemen story arcs. I mean, there are potentials for stories stretching far into the past and far into the future. We’ve got lots of story ideas for the League, but we’ll do them in our own time as we see fit, and we’ll make them as good as we can.

CBA: I saw the LXG trailer and have to say, the one thing that June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

certainly impressed me was it seemed Mr. Hyde looked very much like Kevin O’Neill’s design.

Alan: That was the thing I noticed most, too. They have made it look very much like Kevin’s Hyde.

CBA: Nemo also looked good.

Alan: Yes. I saw that one-and-a-half minute trailer, and must admit it didn’t really look like my cup of tea. I’m sure it might be a great pyrotechnic adventure film that everybody will love, but I probably won’t be going to see it.

CBA: Film is quite different for you than the written word, right?

Alan: Oh, absolutely. The written word is the prime technology there, something everything else depends upon.

Obviously, I like film, but I don’t like it as much as I like books or comics or music or stage plays. Movies are not in my top five media. Which is not to their detriment, but because that’s only my personal preferences in taste.

I do feel that literature, the written or spoken word, is a higher technology than film. I believe it is much more genuinely magical in its effects. I believe it is much more human, and is capable of much more than film could ever be, and this is said with a knowledge of cinema. I’m including bodies of work like Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil. I’m including things like Kurosawa. I’m not ignorant or dismissive of cinema. But with the written word, any writer has got exactly 26 characters. Out of the rearrangements of those 26 characters, those 26 different marks on paper, that writer can create anything. By anything, I mean James Joyce’s Ulysses, the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Shakespeare, and all the thousands of other brilliant writers have actually advanced the human condition. They did it all with 26 characters. To me, that’s the primal technology. It’s what gives us consciousness. I believe that language occurs before consciousness, at least in the contemporary understanding of the phenomena, that we have to have language before consciousness. So to me, this is the source. Language, literature, writing, that is the source of everything. To me, it’s a much more complex, much more capable technology.

CBA: When we talked in Northampton, we only had a couple of words

Inset left: Artist Kevin Nowlan (star of this issue’s flipside!) tells us that this, the art for the first compiled volume of Tomorrow Stories was slightly altered on publication. Courtesy of Kevin Nowlan. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Below: In anticipation of the return of Splash Brannigan, co-creator/artist Hilary Barta whipped up this “back from the grave” illo of our liquid hero.

Sigh… Bring ’em all back, ABCers!

Art courtesy of and ©2003 Hilary Barta. Splash Brannigan ©2003 America’s Best Comics LLC.

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Above and below: If you’re lucky, you still may be able to scoop up a copy of The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, a dynamite one-shot which sports two variant covers, details of which are shown here. Above is

by Arthur Adams, below by Bruce Timm. ©2003 America’s Best Comics LLC.

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about film. I was making an assumption, and you said, “No, I feel differently about this,” which I didn’t understand. But after reading the interview, doing this entire issue, I walk away realizing that writing and film are very different. I just had a really wonderful time with this issue, because it’s very much a love letter to you, Promethea, and the magic of the word.

Alan: I believe that all of magic comes from language.

Aleister Crowley himself said magic is basically merely a disease of language. If you’ve got language, it makes magic possible; it makes magic inevitable. Because if your entire consciousness of the world and the universe is being turned into words inside your head, then to some degree it means the whole of your reality is a kind of text. Somewhere in your mind, it’s a text. You’re turning everything into words. You’re looking at a chair and you’re thinking the word “chair.” And by manipulation of words, and, to a certain degree, manipulation of images, you can change reality. I mean, ask any person who works in advertising—who are doing a kind of very low-based black magic version. But if that’s true, if you can limit people’s thinking with words… like George Orwell in 1984, where he has his “newspeak,” a kind of language stripped of all extraneous words so that the populace can’t even think of certain concepts. It limits what people are capable of thinking. And I think that’s true.

The Sun newspaper over here, which is moronic, is also the most widely-read and has a general vocabulary of about 10,000 words, not very many at all. But that has certainly done a lot to shape, to downgrade people’s thinking. So, by the same token, surely it must be possible, by using rich concepts, rich language, to actually raise people’s consciousness. It must work both ways. So that is what Promethea is an attempt at.

CBA: “In the beginning, there was the word”?

Alan: Absolutely.

CBA: Are you planning to retire?

Alan: Well, it’s very simple: Basically, I’m getting tired of all these deadlines and all this responsibility. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve done with ABC and having collaborated with all the artists, as well as working with Scott. What we’ve done with ABC has been fantastic, but it has required me turning out more work than I’ve ever turned out even back when I was in my twenties and early thirties. Yet, while I am smugly proud of having been able to do that, if I carry on too much longer, my energy will start to flag. It will start to tire, and the pressure will stop me from enjoying the work, which is vital to the work turning out properly.

So what I’m going to do is, as close to this November as I can manage—it’s not an absolute cut-off date, if there’s stuff I’ve not got finished by then, I shall stick around and finish it—I’m going to wind up all of the ABC books, or at least my work on them. There is a possibility some of them could continue with other people, but that’s a bit complex, and we’re still talking about that, so I don’t know. It all would be finishing off the ABC continuity, because no one has ever done it before with a comic book lines.

As you know—because, in Comic Book Artist, you’ve recounted

the stories of most of them—most lines end halfway through. It’s because money has run out or something else has happened, and the titles—all the storylines and characters—just stop dead. It’s not planned. It’s something that happens by accident. Nobody plans to end a successful comic book line. Now, on the other hand, you can see how most of the big comic companies have at least flirted with the idea of a big apocalypse that ends all their characters forever, whether it’s Kingdom Come, any of the Marvel imaginary What If? future apocalypses, or even Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. A lot of the frisson is gained by, “Oh, wouldn’t it be fantastic and scary if some event happened and all of our characters were brought to this apocalyptic state, if the world ended in some way?” That has always had to be a What If?, an imaginary story, because nobody wants to risk ending their characters. But I figure that we can do that. We can have an apocalypse, my kind of apocalypse, which obviously would be related to Promethea.

After thinking about it, I realize with Promethea I had a wonderful auto-destruct button built into the ABC line from the very beginning. The whole point of Promethea is she brings about the Apocalypse. That’s what she’s here for. So I can get to explore that in the final issues of the ABC books. I get to tell people what I mean by “apocalypse,” which is nowhere near, say, what the producers of Mad Max meant by the word. It’s something different. Then after that, what I want to do, when I’ve got ABC tied up, that’ll leave me with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which as it stands at the moment, I’m happy to let ABC continue publishing on the understanding we can take it away any time. I’m quite happy if they decide to keep publishing it as long as there are no irritations or distractions involved in that, like, oh, y’know, little things like pulpings, and things like that. [laughter] Kevin and I are both quite good professionals. I think we can be trusted to do a professional job. So that’s the way it stands. I’m happy to let ABC continue publishing any future acts of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as and when they appear, as long as the book is to be published in the way Kevin and I want it to be.

CBA: Is this November your 50th birthday?

Alan: Yup. That seemed a good enough date as any. At the age 50, you want to start thinking about your endgame a bit. What I’d like to do, when I’ve got all these deadlines off me back, is have League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for Kevin and I, when we feel like it, when we’re inspired, to carry on doing episodes and arcs of that series, forever.

CBA: At your leisure?

Alan: Yes, exactly. As and when we feel like it. Other than that, I don’t want to do any mainstream comics work. While The League might be mainstream at the moment, I want to take that even further away, into the kind of territory I think it could handle. So it might get more underground. We’ll see. It might get more literary. We might do both.

CBA: Was it fortuitous League was sold as a movie, so it put Kevin in a more comfortable position?

Alan: It puts both of us in a more comfortable position. It was sold as a movie before we actually signed on the deal with WildStorm.

We’ve retained it as our property. It’s something that’s got legs, something where me and Kevin can expand upon. We’ve got ideas for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen set in the 1950s with characters from Beat Generation literature turning up. We thought of including Dean Moriarty, the manic character from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (a character that was based upon Neal Cassidy), turning out to be the great-grandson of Professor James Moriarty, and we could have a conflict between him and Doctor Sax, from Jack Kerouac’s novel of the same name, who I believe was supposed to be a kind of combination of William Burroughs, Fu Manchu, and The Shadow. So we’ll have Doctor Sax as the great-grandson of Fu Manchu.

CBA: That kind of works! [laughs] Alan: Yeah, it works fine. We can bring in characters alluded to in American literature, American television, American culture of that period and do a great little ’50s story. We’ve got ideas set in 1910, in the ’20s and ’30s, in the ’60s, in the present-day.

Well, let’s just think: 2003. Two years ago, the black monolith was found on the moon. Perhaps a year after that, the Bowman Expedition set forth for Jupiter that hasn’t returned yet. And, in 2002, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist ©2013 Sequential Artisit, LLC. The distinctive Will Eisner signature is a trademark of Will Eisner Studios, Inc.

overpopulation in America had reached such frightening proportions that everyone was eating Soylent Green.

CBA: “Soylent Green is people!” [laughter] Alan: Right! So that was set in 2002. We could combine all the things that have happened in fiction. In England, for example, in 2002, our monarchy is still trying to recover from the constitutional crisis in 1997 that led an overweight American called Ralph to attain the throne.

CBA: King Ralph? [laughs] Alan: So there’s all this stuff. I forget when the Daleks invaded, but that was probably around that time. So this is the world of fiction we’re talking about, stretching back to practically the dawn of time. It stretches into the future, all these imaginary futures we’ve got. So I could do League of Extraordinary Gentlemen stories set in the 30th century.

CBA: If you didn’t do any work tomorrow, could you be pretty comfortable for the rest of your life?

Alan: No, no, no! If I don’t do any work again, I won’t be able to survive. I’m reaching a point in my life where what I want is less security, less certainty. I don’t want to know what I’m doing in a month’s time, or at least I won’t do after this November or thereabouts. I might write another novel. I might write a grimoire. I might waste a lot of time getting back into drawing, doing some more pictures. I might want to do more performances and release more CDs. I might want to write a play. I might want to get into sculpture. I might want to do a lot of things that are not going to obviously have any commercial value, which people might not like. I want to have that freedom. Now, I think that, yes, I’m going to need money to support that, as always. But I figure that with the royalties from my comic work—The Killing Joke, Watchmen, all the ABC books, Swamp Thing, etc.—all the things of mine that are in print. I still get substantial wedges of money every two or three months. Between that and what I’m able to earn doing these not necessarily big-paying things, I think I should at least be able to keep myself in some sort of manageable condition. I’m not sure, but that’s part of the fun.

CBA: So you really do embrace the unknown?

Alan: Well, yes. I always find it’s better to, before the unknown embraces you. [laughter] That can be a little bit of a shock if you’re not expecting it.

CBA: “The inky blackness….” [laughs] Alan: Those clammy, cold hands in the middle of the night. So, yeah, I think you’ve got to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

CBA: Well, thank you, Alan.

The Storyteller’s Story Official Selection in over 25 film festivals worldwide “The best comics bio I’ve ever seen… It’s wonderful, well done.”

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Jeffrey Katzenberg Arguably the most influential person in American comics, Will Eisner, as artist, entrepreneur, innovator, and visual storyteller, enjoyed a career that encompassed comic books from their early beginnings in the 1930s to their development as graphic novels in the 1990s. During his sixty-year-plus career, Eisner introduced the now-traditional mode of comic book production; championed mature, sophisticated storytelling; was an early advocate for using the medium as a tool for education; pioneered the now-popular graphic novel, and served as inspiration for generations of artists. Without a doubt, Will Eisner was the godfather of the American comic book.

The award-winning full-length feature film documentary includes interviews with Eisner and many of the foremost creative talents in the U.S., including Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Stan Lee, Gil Kane, and others.

Available Now on DVD & Bl Blu-ray ___ \_WUWZZW_[ KWU lu-ra lu ray ay

The ABCs of Design Beyond the letters and logos of Moore’s comics with Todd Klein Working with Alan and the artists of the ABC line has been a terrific experience. From the line’s inception, I’ve not only lettered the pages (except for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and “Jack B. Quick”), I’ve been involved in the design of covers, collections and text pages. Since the lettering is evident, I thought I’d write a few words about the less obvious area: Design.

When Alan and I first began discussing the look of the line, particularly covers, he expressed a desire to have each book be unique, an individual gem with it’s own style and flavor, in the manner of Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library, or in earlier times, the original comic-book version of Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad. While WildStorm limited our approach somewhat to the traditional comics size and format, I think we’ve succeeded in presenting quite a variety of styles, especially on Tom Strong and Promethea. For both titles, the initial plan was to reinforce the idea that the characters and concepts had already been around for decades by utilizing graphic styles from across the whole century. Over the first 14 issues of Tom Strong, for example, we referenced pulp covers of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, present-day Science magazines, computer game graphics, men’s adventure magazines from the 1950s, science-fiction paperbacks of the 1970s, Tintin albums, Tom Swift novels from the 1910s, and DC, Marvel, Fawcett and EC comics.

Design ideas usually begin with my calling Alan and talking over what might work best for a particular issue, outlining his ideas, then talking to the artist to see what sounds most attractive. J.H. Williams, artist on Promethea, often has ideas he wants to work in where we can, and I’ve come up with a few on my own, as well.

When everyone is on the same page, I usually put together a layout, doing research as necessary, design the logo and rough-in the type, run that past Alan and editor Scott Dunbier, and send it to the cover artist to produce the art. The artist (or inker) sends the finished art to WildStorm for coloring (either in-house or by the regular colorist).

The colored art file comes to me, and I put it all together in the page layout software program, QuarkXPress, adding and choosing colors for the date, price, UPC box, credits, logos, and any other copy

needed. Color approval copies then go out to Alan, the artist, and Scott, who has been very gracious in allowing us all to work together this way, and most helpful in getting some of our stranger ideas okayed. (He only winced slightly at the idea of a different logo on nearly every issue of Promethea and Tom Strong!)

With the second major storyline on Promethea, the Kabbalah Quest, J.H. Williams carried the design concept even further, not only incorporating a particular artistic style into the cover and interior art, but using colors and symbols from each level of the Kabbalah.

Together with colorist Jeromy Cox, we’ve had great fun making that work as best we can.

The other two main books I worked on, Top 10 and Tomorrow Stories, had challenges of their own. Tomorrow Stories, being an anthology, had to have a lot more information on the cover than the usual comic, but we managed to work in some good layouts there, I think. Top 10 I saw as more of a traditional super-hero book, albeit with a delicious Moore twist, and the covers have played to the drama rather than unique designs, though I’m happy with the video game cover on #8. I wasn’t involved with Volume One of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, though I got on board with the second series, designing text pages as well as covers, and have enjoyed working with Alan and Kevin O’Neill on those.

For the book collections, we talked about various approaches.

Alan was attracted to the oversize European album look, but I felt we wanted something that would really look good in a bookstore alongside any other fine work of fiction, and that was the direction we took for the hardcovers. Large type with vignette painted art on a subtle background pattern has continued to be the plan there, with full-art covers on the trade paperbacks, to appeal more to the comic shop buyer.

I love working on the ABC books; it’s challenging and fun. I’m able to talk to some of my favorite creators regularly, and I even get paid for it! The hours are long, but when those books come from the printer, I get a fanboy frisson every time!

—Todd Klein

All logos by Todd Klein and are ™ & ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

CBA Interview

An Extraordinary Gentleman Kevin O’Neill’s long career in British comics and his LXG work Inset right: Portrait of Kevin O’Neill, cartoonist extraordinaire.

Courtesy of the artist.

Below: With his oft collaborating partner, writer Pat Mills, artist Kevin O’Neill created the gritty science-fiction saga of Nemesis the Warlock for 2000 AD. This promotion piece appears courtesy of Kev. The hardbound compilation, Nemesis the Warlock: Death To All Aliens, is currently available from Titan Books (in association with 2000 AD). ©2003 Rebellion.

Conducted by Jon Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice Wow! Who would have expected the nifty cartoonist of the biggest hit of the ABC Comics line, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to have such expert knowledge of the history of British comics and also to boast such a distinguished career, starting in the very belly of the industry itself back in the 1970s?

While Ye Ed considers Kevin O’Neill’s stylings on LOEG to be a perfect fit with writer Alan Moore’s audacious ideas and one of the finest Brit comic book artists to boot, I certainly didn’t intend to conduct such an expansive interview (which had we hoped not to edit so severely—begging our readers’ and Kev’s forgiveness—but we had to squeeze Dunbier into the book, and don’t forget that the group editor controls the ABC checkbook!), but the artist’s erudite insights and charming anecdotes proved irresistible! We hope you enjoy the following, which took place via a transatlantic phone call on February 3, 2003, and the transcript was meticulously edited by Kevin.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from, Kevin?

Kevin O’Neill: I was born in London in 1953. The ’50s were a fertile period in British comics. [The boys adventure comics weekly] The Eagle had been launched to great acclaim. All our British weekly comics were in their glory, so to speak, and I was steeped in them, as I was later with American comics.

I was about ten years old when Marvel Comics’ rebirth happened.

A strong demarcation you get in British comics is the idea of boys’ and girls’ titles. Our comics were very strictly segregated, as they were gender specific. Romance and girls’ comics were usually quite beautifully drawn, often by artists who would go on to work for Warren Publishing and have big European careers.

There were these great Italian, Spanish, and South American

58

artists who began their professions working for Fleetway, drawing romance comics, for which they were admirably well suited.

CBA: When I was in England in 1970 and ’71, homegrown movie serials were still popular when kids would go to spend half of their Saturdays in the cinema. Perhaps England paralleled the ’30s U.S. experience by the ’50s and thereafter…?

Kevin: The kids’ Saturday film matinee performances were hugely popular when I was a kid. The Children’s Film Foundation supported and subsidized Britishmade kid movies which they screened all the time, but we also got to see the classic American chapter plays, so it was fascinating to see The Adventures of Captain Marvel and King of the Rocket Men, and things like that. The Superman TV show was also popular in Britain, even if nothing much ever happened on it. [laughs] There was a great deal of material imported from the States, but the ’50s were also a curious time over here, because there was a fear in Britain that we were becoming too Americanized. All the vulgar U.S. horror comics, as well as super-hero comics, were considered to be bad for kids, leading to juvenile delinquency. Fleetway and DC Thomson were seen as publishing comics that were perhaps more wholesome, which probably wasn’t actually true. So we only caught flashes of American comics for a period—and the operative word here is “flash” because American comics were four-color, more expensive, with strange advertisements, and particularly enticing because mum and dad considered them as being bad for you. They were banned in school, as well.

CBA: Really? [laughs] Obviously that just made you want them more, right?

Kevin: Of course! There was this whole subculture of comics. We were fascinated by the American imports and we’d trade these strange comic books. Kids would throw out their British comic weeklies or rarely keep them in good condition, usually only held onto for a couple of reads, but American comics were carefully looked after and traded.

I went to a Catholic school, as I had a very strict Catholic upbringing, and the worst thing being caught with wasn’t pin-up books; it was to be found reading Mad magazine! To have that happen was seen as the end of the road for you! You were just going to go straight to Hell if you read Mad. [laughter] (Originally, I misunderstood its title and thought it was intended for actual insane people.) [laughs] CBA: With The Beatles coming to the fore in the early ’60s, even as you were a 10-year-old, was there a feeling of freedom that came in with them?

Kevin: Oh, totally! Even though for a couple of years into the ’60s, the ’50s kind of lingered on. (Decades actually don’t have exact beginnings and endings, regardless of what the calendar says, as the ’50s lurched over a bit.)

CBA: You mean with the Teddy Boys in their boots and ducktails?

Kevin: A lingering presence of the ration book, if you know what I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

JUNE 2003

mean. We didn’t dress particularly well. It always seemed very grim.

You had Harold MacMillan in power. It just looked grim and gray and Edwardian in this country. But when The Beatles kicked in, and with the arrival of Marvel Comics, along with the whole swinging London thing, fashion changed. Teenagers became more of a force to be reckoned with. It completely changed things, I guess, during the period when National Service was gradually coming to an end and people had more time on their hands and money in their pockets. It was a good time to be in Britain, I’d say.

CBA: Are you of Irish descent?

Kevin: Yes, Irish father. My mother’s English, but there’s Irish blood in her family. My older brother read a few comics as a kid, but no one else in my family was interested in comics, illustration or anything like that. My indulgence was tolerated.

CBA: Was there any prejudice against Irish Catholics?

Kevin: I was told by my father that there was, but I guess we moved within our own community, through our own schools and the Church and so on.

CBA: Oh, so you were really in a Catholic neighborhood?

Kevin: Pretty much. In the days when I was growing up, there was a lingering persecution of Irish people in general, regardless whether they were Catholic or Protestant, but it was dying away. In the early ’50s, you would have seen notices above the “Rooms To Let” signs that said, “No Irish, Blacks, or Dogs.” I think that even lingered into the ’60s in parts of London, which is extremely shameful. But that was a prejudice from the 19th century.

CBA: But you didn’t feel persecuted particularly?

Kevin: No, I didn’t. But where I lived in London, it was quite near Woolrich. The Woolrich Arsenal was down there, with the docks and so on, where merchant ships would come in, and they carried American comics as ballast. So they were very freely available around the dockyard news agents. That always fascinated me as a kid, because they had a huge range of publications from America which I never saw in any other shops. But the selection was always inconsistent, because these things were brought over as ballast. So you could seldom follow a monthly title.

I acquired the collector mentality very early on. DC comics were far more common than Marvel. Some shops only had spinner racks with Harvey comics, which were colorful, but hardly what we were really looking for. [laughter] The Marvel comics were always the most difficult to track down, but the hunt was part of the joy of collecting back then. We were on hunting expeditions just for the pleasure of tracking them down, finding an 80-Page Giant or something. It was a big part of growing up being interested in comics and how difficult they were to find sometimes.

We had Marvelman, which was actually another curious thing when I was a kid, because you could never get consecutive runs of the title Marvelman, so you’d only find them randomly, with their staples pretty rusty because they had been warehoused for a couple of years and then released again in batches. Marvelman grew out of the Captain Marvel reprints, and they too were circulating well into the late ’60s. So I was certainly aware of all that stuff as well.

CBA: Well, that’s odd to hear. Wasn’t Marvelman created because of the demise of Captain Marvel?

Kevin: Yes. I don’t know whether it was a phenomenon of where I grew up in South London, but L. Miller and Sons Comics were overprinting so a lot more of their titles were returned to be warehoused.

Over years, certainly one distributor in South London was releasing them in random patterns for certain shops. You’d just suddenly see June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

a bunch of old ’50s reprints of Captain Marvel, Jr. which were the original printings.

CBA: These contained stories

by Mac Raboy?

Kevin: Yeah! Virtually everything was out there.

Odd books like Gene Autry were also around, along with other Western stuff. Lash LaRue would suddenly pop up. It was very, very strange. Those IW Comics, with reprints of The Spirit….

Comics created specifically for the British market were hugely profitable. If a title’s circulation fell below 200,000 or 150,000 a week, the publisher would more likely axe the comic or merge them with another similar title.

You need to consider that this is a pretty small country, and it was easy to distribute comics in Britain. But the publishers wouldn’t hold onto anything that wasn’t very, very profitable.

They were also quite impatient with new launches, which had to be hits from the start. They wouldn’t really hang on to something for very long to see if it worked.

CBA: Some truly renowned British artists worked for the comics, such as Frank Bellamy.

Did you clue into “Dan Dare” in The Eagle?

Kevin: A cousin of mine would save copies of The Eagle and give them to me when we came to visit. I always loved the artwork on “Dan Dare” and “Heros the Spartan,” as well as anything else by Frank Bellamy, and the Peter Jackson strips on the back cover. But I was never a big fan of The

Above: Outside of his co-creation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, perhaps Kevin O’Neill’s most acclaimed property—co-created with writer Pat Mills—is the super-hero hunting Marshal Law. (Titan Books was very helpful when Ye Ed pleaded for help with material, so be sure to check out their brand-new Marshal Law collections!) ©2003 Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill.

Above: Move over, Bruce Banner!

Courtesy of the artist, here’s a character design of Mr. Hyde, charter member of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This piece was previously unpublished. ©2003 Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill.

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Above: An extremely important influence on Kevin O’Neill’s artistic development was to have been exposed to Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad comics at a young age, through the Ballantine paperback reprintings he hid from his Catholic school instructors. ©2003 William M. Gaines, Agent.

Below: Ye Ed and Kevin O’Neill share a similar passion for the finest monster movie ever made, King Kong (1933). “T’was beauty killed the beast…” Still photo ©2003 Turner Entertainment.

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Eagle generally because editorially I found it a bit lame. You felt like you were being lectured all the time, and the material around those great strips was often not terribly interesting. They were tame, to be honest. I think some of the more shabbily printed comics were a little bit more exciting.

The first American comics I ever saw as a small kid (given to me by that same cousin) were the Superman titles. There was something about the format of American comics, when you’re a kid, which seems about the right size. British comics were kind of odd sizes, weren’t they? On the plus side, The Beezer and Topper were like reading bed sheets when I was young.

CBA: What attracted you to art?

Kevin: Mad paperbacks. The first one I ever saw was a Son of Mad paperback at school when I was a very small kid.

CBA: Were these the American Ballantine reprints?

Kevin: Yes, they were. They were being distributed in Britain, and were hugely popular among kids. You could hide them pretty easily. The artwork to me was totally mesmerizing. I just loved Will Elder and Wally Wood’s artwork. They were fantastic. Out of all the things I’d been seeing, they made me really want to draw, and that’s my earliest memory of why I became an artist. I was aware it was earlier Mad stuff. I didn’t know then it was from the Mad comic book, but I knew the material was different from Mad magazine. It just seemed very exciting, and not understanding all of the references made it even more intriguing.

CBA: Did it feel subversive?

Kevin: Yes, it did. It had a different way, a skewed way of looking at the world, which seemed very appealing, particularly to a very strict Catholic. I’m a lapsed or non-Catholic today… I suppose perhaps the nuns and priests were right, and I shouldn’t have been reading Mad. [laughter] It may have cost me my faith, but I’ve learned to live with that. [laughter] CBA: Did you see the Ballantine Tales From the Crypt reprints?

Kevin: I was never even aware of that paperback until I became an adult comic collector. Certainly, I’d have completely freaked out at seeing the EC horror stuff back then, but I hadn’t. I was aware there were horror comics that had been banned. But the Atlas Comics

material by Steve Ditko were being cheaply reprinted in Britain.

I just loved Ditko’s work, but the stories were pretty repetitive, weren’t they? Some of them were interesting, but I couldn’t help feeling that I had missed something by not seeing the EC stuff earlier on before. [laughs] CBA: So were you copying the comics you were reading?

Kevin: A big event for me was when King Kong was shown on TV. I guess when I was about eight-years-old, and just before I saw it, I picked up copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, which I should mention was another big influence back then. Famous Monsters opened the door to all these great old movies. Many of them weren’t being televised, but my dad had told me he’d seen King Kong when it first came out in the ’30s and how great that movie was. He would often describe certain scenes.

Famous Monsters had pictures of King Kong, and the movie was shown on British TV, so I just wanted to draw monsters. So it was a mixture of King Kong and Mad that just made me want to sit down and draw fantasy images.

CBA: Now, there was a pretty strict rating system in Britain at the time, right? Kids could not go see Hammer horror films, for instance?

Kevin: Oh, that’s absolutely right. The “X” certificate film applied even to War of the Worlds, which was re-released in the fairly late ’60s, so you had to be old enough to see it. But King Kong was shown pretty much in an uncut version. I remember the native being trampled and another being eaten by the giant head and so on.

I recognized the fact that the jungle in King Kong was unlike any real jungle. This was the jungle of imagination that had an impact on me. Like I say, King Kong is a huge influence. I also saw the Ray Harryhausen movies as a kid. Years later, I got to meet and interview Ray, because I was producing a special effects fanzine. So I marinated in that stuff, I suppose. When I was ready to leave school, I had a place in art school, which I couldn’t take (which is a long story). My father took early retirement, so I was left as the main breadwinner in the family.

CBA: How many brothers and sisters did you have?

Kevin: I’ve got three sisters and an older brother.

CBA: You’re in the middle?

Kevin: I’m pretty much in the middle, yes. So I didn’t want to go to work and do something I didn’t want to do. I wanted to have some sort of an art job. I thought I’d try to get a job in animation, that there would at least be a bottle-washing job I could do there.

So I rang up Halas and Bachelor, who owned the only animation studio I was aware of in Britain at the time. This was approximately 1969. I was caught in a kind of Catch-22 situation. I spoke to John Halas, of all people, and he said, “What experience do you have?”

I said, “None, I’m just leaving school.” He said, “We only employ people in animation who have experience.” I asked, “Where do you get experience?” He said, “By doing animation.” [laughter] I ran into him years later at the Lucca festival, and he said, “Yeah, we dissuaded a lot of interesting people away from our doors.” [laughter] So I went to my headmaster at the time, and he said, “Why don’t you apply for a job at Odhams Publishing?” I thought, “Odhams Publishing? Yeah, they’ve got a comics division and they publish Smash! Wham! and Pow!” So I wrote to them and got an invitation to go in the office, but between writing to them and actually going, Odham’s had sold their comics division to IPC. This really nice lady who worked in their women magazines told me to go to IPC and see Sid Bicknell, the editor of Valiant. And by that convoluted route, I ended up as an office boy on Valiant and Buster, British weekly titles.

CBA: Did you have a portfolio?

Kevin: Yes. I laid it out for them. It was full of odd and desperate—but enthusiastic—material. [laughter] Of course, when I went into the office, that was the first time I had ever seen original artwork, which was quite a shock, because they used twice-up pages on British comics, and they were huge. Some of the art was just stunningly beautiful, and extremely depressing, because I had no art school training and, being self-taught, I had a fool for a teacher, as they say!

So I got a job as an office boy, rather than in the art department, and I don’t regret that now. That was a good time, being on staff and gradually working up through the art and the coloring COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

departments was very good training. I enjoyed the few years I spent there.

CBA: What was the content of your portfolio?

Kevin: By that point, I was a very big fan of Arthur Rackham’s work, so there were lots of goblins, giants and fantasy material like that.

CBA: Were they pretty much single illustrations and not sequential work?

Kevin: Well, I think there may have been one half-hearted comics page with very poor lettering. I guess the usual kid’s stuff. At the time, they weren’t publishing material like that, but there was a very good art editor on Valiant named Janet Shepherd, who took me under her wing. She did tell me, “It’ll be ten years before you’re good enough to work for us as an artist,” and if you had seen my work at the time, I think you would agree. [laughs] In the end, she was right, because it took me ten years, which was not surprising as I was surrounded, during that period, by so much wonderful stuff. There were all these great artists, and the publisher was reprinting material from slightly earlier times, which was also beautifully drawn. The art coming up from the archives was gorgeous. You’d see Frank Bellamy originals, Ron Embleton originals. Just stunningly beautiful work.

CBA: In the ’60s, in the States, there was a real interest in fantasy material, including the art of Rackham, Beardsley and certainly the fiction of Tolkien was extremely popular. Were you attracted to that stuff, as well?

Kevin: Yes, I was. I must also mention the importance of the Warren magazines in my youth. All these publications were coming out: Creepy, Eerie, Screen Illustrated, Spacemen, Famous Monsters.

Also I was gradually aware of Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond and Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. So this was a giant soup, with all kinds of odd influences. The only thing I found slightly depressing at IPC was the fact that the people in charge didn’t seem to be great fans of comics. To them, it was product. Too much time was given over to accurate grammar rather than graphics on the page. It was pretty much left up to the artist. Some artists were not always working from the best scripts. They couldn’t sign their work.

One of my first jobs there was whiting-out signatures. One artist—and I’ve told this story many times—Jesus Blasco, who drew “The Steel Claw,” would sign every page. He’d sign in hedgerows, in brickwork, on water. He was quite cunning. But Janet Shepherd would always say to me, “You’ve got to spend time looking through every panel for the signature.” I said, “Well, why can’t we just leave it?” She would say, in all seriousness, “If the signatures are left in, kids will know it’s not real.” Which I didn’t quite buy, of course. [laughter] As a kid, I didn’t think I was looking at photographic images in the comics. I knew it wasn’t real. They felt it was just like a signature popping up on a movie screen every couple of frames. They were just worried about artists being poached. There was a huge rivalry between the companies, and it insured that the artist could never get any kind of a following, which might make him ask for more money.

Years later, 2000 AD put credits in because it was ludicrous not having credits. I never understood why American comics did and we didn’t.

CBA: Well, it was a long time coming for American artists, as well.

Kevin: Yes, that’s true. I guess I got used to seeing the credits in the ’60s American comics, so by 1970 it seemed silly that the British didn’t follow suit. I also felt that the atmosphere back then was kind of 1950s, as well. Fleetway was in a very old building, a sort of converted Edwardian hotel. So all of the offices had fireplaces in them and high ceilings. It was a very attractive old building, but it felt very cut off from reality, from what was outside the doors, which was mini-skirts and drugs and the ’70s madness. But I don’t think what was going on outside had an impact on them at all, really. For instance, they got into kung fu after it was pretty much finished, and the same June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

with skate boarding. Fleetway was always too late, and when they did do it, it was done rather ham-fistedly.

CBA: In ’68, you were 15, right?

Wasn’t London abuzz? Was there truly a “Swinging London”?

Kevin: Well, I was too young to fully appreciate it, but I was certainly aware from my older brother that there was an awful lot going on. It was a good time to be young. I was also coming to an age where I could earn a living and have money to spend.

There really was a feeling of change in the air. That was possibly true even at IPC. I was in on the end of an era, a period of comics being done in a very traditional way.

Something had to give.

Clearly, they weren’t reaching their readers anymore; they might be reaching parents, but certainly not reaching those who were supposed to actually enjoy the comics.

They were endlessly repeating themselves, sticking to a formula. It was described to me at one point as a sausage factory, where scripts and art were fed into one end and the product— comics—came out the other, and that was that. Anything else was some kind of comic hysteria which should be ignored.

CBA: I know Simon Bisley, and he looks like his art in a lot of ways. I know Dave Gibbons, and he looks like his art. I just saw a picture of you online. You do not look like your art. [laughter] Are you pretty much a repressed guy, a subdued guy?

Kevin: Well, let me think. When I was young I was painfully shy and spent some years like that. I’m still inclined to be less than comfortable around a crowd, but pretty outgoing with people I know or get on with. But yes, it’s true that it is a form of exorcism to do a certain kind of work and purge myself of my manic side creatively.

People are often surprised and disappointed I don’t look like my work. [laughter] CBA: Did you indulge in the temptations of the ’60s and ’70s?

Kevin: I was never part of the drug culture of those years. I didn’t

Above: Cyclops, a British magazine devoted to the hippy culture, was an important promoter of underground comix in the U.K. during the early ’70s, influencing a generation of fledgling artists, including Kevin O’Neill. ©2003 the respective copyright holder.

Below: While master British storyteller and artist Frank Bellamy was said to have loathed working on comic strip adaptations of the Gerry Anderson TV shows— Thunderbirds, Stingray, etc.—his artwork certainly never betrayed any ill sentiment. ©2003 ITC Entertainment Group Ltd.

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get the kick other people seemed to get so easily. I just found it unappealing. I’m a non-smoker anyway, and I was never actually interested. I got married pretty young. The ’70s were wild, but I was married through from the middle part of that decade. In those days, I was aware of it going on, but was not a big part of it.

CBA: Did you admire the work that was coming out, for instance, from Barry WindsorSmith and Bernie Wrightson?

Kevin: I was a big fan of Wrightson’s work as well as Mike Kaluta and Jeff Jones. But, above all, Barry Smith was always a shining beacon, because he had actually done what seemed like the impossible and gone to America and carved out a career. That just seemed incredible.

If you lived in a council estate in London, what Barry accomplished seemed an impossible thing to do, the idea of being published by Marvel Comics.

CBA: What’s a council estate?

Kevin: A council estate is a working class Above: All too many British comics weeklies devoted to boys in the early 1970s featured insipid science-fiction—antiseptic, boring, tales of circa 1950 giant monsters, flying saucers, and clunky robots— developing a vacuum of anything of substance, thereby paving the way for the kick-ass, in-your-face approach of 2000 AD and its legion of imitators.

The Wizard ©2003 DC Thomson.

Inset right: Rare use of the brush by artist Kevin O’Neill on this 1979 catalog for the renowned British comic shop, Forbidden Planet. Courtesy of the artist.

Superman ©2003 DC Comics.

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area of rented houses.

CBA: Was it like a ghetto?

Kevin: Not really. Mine was very, very nice and is now quite expensive housing. But social housing is the best way to describe it.

You get working class people clustered together and surrounded by, where I lived, middle class areas which had bigger and more expensive houses; a green, wooded place.

It just seemed like an impossible thing to achieve, to actually be working for Marvel Comics. I actually sent a drawing of Captain America in to Stan Lee when I was a kid, and months later I had the absolute joy of getting a reply from Marvel Comics, with the Hulk printed on the envelope. Inside was a hand-written note from Flo Steinberg. She mentioned that she received the drawing, but next time I should include cardboard in the package, as it got a bit crumpled in the post. [laughter] CBA: Not too many Brits were working in the U.S. market in the early ’70s, right?

Kevin: There was Paul Neary, whose work for the Warren magazines proved that you could live in Britain and work in the American comics industry.

CBA: Obviously, in the early ’70s, and even before, commencing with Barbarella, Europe was starting to explode with experimental and more adult work, right? Did you look at that material?

Kevin: A little bit later. Before that, I had seen underground comix starting to come out. In ’70s London, head shops carried that material. A friend of mine, writer Steve Moore, whom I was working with at IPC, started bringing in the undergrounds. I just loved them and they gave me the same thrill I had when I had first seen Mad paperbacks.

This was a different way of doing things, a different way of looking at the world. They were genuinely exciting.

CBA: Was it R. Crumb specifically who attracted you?

Kevin: I did love Crumb’s work, but also Greg Irons, as well. Also, I

was beginning to see Rich Corben’s work, which seemed to straddle the underground/overground world, and I still think his art is fabulous. But the undergrounds were being published somewhat randomly and distribution was spotty. Gilbert Shelton’s Fat Freddy’s Cat was hugely popular, as was Crumb’s work. A few years later, there was a bit of a backlash against his sexist imagery and racial stereotyping, which was natural because of the socio-political direction things were going. But that stuff was all very exciting. The S. Clay Wilson stuff was kind of bonkers and amazingly violent. [laughter] CBA: The American undergrounds were quite influential in England, right? A whole bunch of wild British magazines came out in the ’70s, right?

Kevin: Oh, God, yeah. Certainly, you had a newspaper format thing like Cyclops, which I recall having a Vaughn Bodé cover and reprints of Alex Raymond’s stuff, and mags with nude pictures of hippie chicks…

CBA: What a mix! [laughs] Kevin: Yeah, it was a crazy period with International Times, Oz, and all those publications. And the way they were printed! They were often illegible, sometimes printed on purple or green paper. But it was exciting, different from the staid old regular way of publishing things.

I think we possibly all felt that some of this attitude should be introduced into the mainstream comics. Why are we working on comics that are so antique, and not only antique in their mind set, but not as good as the older comics they were trying to imitate?

The humor comics I worked on were mind-numbing after a while! I mean, they had good artists, competent writers, but everyone seemed to be capable of so much more. People genuinely wanted to break out of the straitjacket. I know Steve Moore and Steve Parkhouse created a dummy of a comic called Krazy, which Pat Mills and John Wagner had written something for, a satire on Blue Peter, which is a long-running children’s show in this country, which Harry North, who later worked for Mad magazine, actually illustrated. It was a fantastic dummy of a potential new comic, which the board at IPC didn’t approve, so it was axed. (The same publisher would eventually do a Krazy comic years later, but it was a totally different product, a young kids comic.) Ken Reid, a fantastic humor artist, did a strip about three witches, which was quite beautiful. It had huge potential, but it was cut off at the knees, which was a great shame.

You have to jump forward to Battle Picture Weekly, Action, and then 2000 AD, to see a big weather change in the material being produced. Beginning with Pat Mills and John Wagner, who came from DC Thomson as young, creative writers, and were given the opportunity to create new comics because the management knew that things were sliding and that they were losing their grip on the market.

CBA: Was there a synthesis going on, comics and this new attitude coming out of punk rock music?

Kevin: Well, specifically on 2000 AD, punk was just starting.

The first paragraphs about punk were appearing in the London Evening Standard while we had 2000 AD in preparation. But there came a period when Britain, in general, and London, in particular, had slid into a mire.

London was particularly scruffy.

There were refuse collectors strikes. Everything felt like it was going to hell in a hand basket. I guess the punk thing grew out of that as much as anything else. That was an era of glam rock and super-rock COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

bands that became show-bizzy and ugly, and publishing reflected some of this. The product just looked safe, it wasn’t challenging, wasn’t exciting, wasn’t subversive. There wasn’t anything interesting going on.

John Sanders, as publisher of IPC’s Youth Group, saw the need for a new approach, but he couldn’t change the way the older management was doing things, so he engineered his comics separately. 2000 AD was created under the code name JNP13, Juvenile New Publication #13. Pat had a year to develop the comic, and when I joined him, I’d been working on Whizzer and Chips, Monster Fun, and all those dreadful humor comics. I went to John Sanders and said, “If you can’t get me transferred to the new science-fiction comic,” which sounded just my kind of thing, “I will quit the company. I’ll go freelance or something.” He wasn’t very happy about it, but he did get me an interview with Pat Mills, the editor of 2000 AD. CBA: Pat had a full year to develop a new title?

Kevin: Yes, a full year.

CBA: Isn’t that incredibly generous?

Kevin: Amazing, absolutely amazing. So he could throw stuff away.

Some strips were drawn and redrawn and drawn again and some of it was abandoned. “Judge Dredd” was heavily developed in this period.

It was a time the likes we’ve never seen since. It was a unique period in the history of British comics.

CBA: So Saunders believed in JNP13?

Kevin: Yes, he believed in it. I think he enjoyed it, and he knew it was different. He knew the direction it was going. I think the general feeling on the floor, among the other publications, when they got wind that we were doing a science-fiction project was, “Oh, Christ.

We tried science-fiction before. It didn’t work.” [laughter] It was that kind of feeling. I think a lot of people think 2000 AD was spun off, somehow, from Star Wars. But, of course, that movie was still in production at the time, when we were developing 2000 AD. The first film that came out before we were published was Logan’s Run, which represented the end of the old era of science-fiction films: An interesting idea not executed particularly well, that looked cheesy.

Star Wars came out the year 2000 AD was launched.

CBA: But there’s a real difference in tone, right? There’s an innocuous, wholesome tone to Star Wars, but you guys had an anarchistic streak, correct? I mean, there was some angry stuff! [laughter] Kevin: A lot of frustration was being worked out. I know Pat started out with no knowledge of science-fiction comics before doing 2000 AD. Pat wasn’t a comic reader as a child, as he grew up on W.E. Johns’ Biggles books; he was a book reader. So I introduced him to a lot of comics material. I brought in American comics and underground comix (which he loved), and he saw European comics. We were looking at anything and everything to inspire us. The artists Pat was using just before I joined him during this development period were really the artists represented by the old-style artists agents, the usual suspects… foreign artists, older artists. But Pat wasn’t getting the look he wanted, but he did have Carlos Ezquerra drawing “Judge Dredd,” who was obviously a major find. It also took time for Pat to find the right look and approach for the other strips as well.

When I joined, I already slightly knew Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland, so I obviously brought their names up to Pat. Mike McMahon came in. We were all pretty much the same age, all with similar interests and backgrounds. And it was just the right time for 2000 AD. If Pat had produced the title a couple of years earlier, it would have had a different look.

CBA: Is Pat your age?

Kevin: He was born in 1949, so he’s a little older than me. But pretty much we were all roughly the same age with a similar outlook.

We all wanted to do something different. And Pat would stick with his choices. When I first started freelancing for 2000 AD, I was very, very raw, to say the least. But Pat had great patience, and he sees the June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

possibilities in people, and he’ll stick with people and support them, which is uncommon in the business. It certainly was uncommon with a big publisher like IPC where they’d want a star artist to do the prime strips.

CBA: Were you friends with Pat? Kevin: I didn’t know Pat prior to starting to work with him. I knew him by reputation. He was known as this kind of crazy guy who was doing all this wild material. He’d been a writer for the humor titles Whizzer and Chips, and others, as was John Wagner. So I hadn’t known him when he did Battle and Action, but I knew of him. We became fast friends in the office, and when we were working together on “Nemesis, the Warlock,” Marshal Law, and many other projects over the years.

CBA: Was Dez Skinn simultaneously working on getting a title akin to 2000 AD going? Was he in the equation?

Kevin: When I was a 16-year-old office boy at IPC, I first met Dez. He was working for Bob Painter, head of the humor group, Cor!, Whizzer and Chips, and other publications. At the time, Dez was also producing Fantasy Advertiser, which was the first fanzine I ever saw. So I knew Dez from those days, and I also knew Steve Moore and Steve Parkhouse, as well. But when 2000 AD was being created, Dez was doing his own stuff.

The mood at that time was that everyone of a certain age felt that we’ve got to do something, because we’ve got a once big, rich, fertile industry, and it was falling apart. It was looking very decrepit.

CBA: When did you start getting work published?

Kevin: My first printed piece, I guess, would have been around 1973, in the humor comics. Just before 2000 AD, I’d worked on some poster magazines, Legend Horror Classics. They were for a Canadian guy who was a friend of a friend who told me, “This guy’s looking for an artist to do a comic strip for a poster magazine, comic adaptations of Hammer films.” Given the scant number of pages I had to accomplish the job, it was quite a task. I also had a couple of original things published towards the end. Those jobs were actually the samples I took in to Pat Mills in 1976.

One story was a pretty crappy rip-off of Jaws about a prehistoric shark.

CBA: Did you work from photo reference on those Hammer adaptations?

Kevin: I had a few stills, but for the most part, I was just faking it.

At the same time, John Bolton and other accomplished artists were doing much better adaptations.

But I was doing the best I could and certainly enjoyed myself.

It was nice to see my work published, because then I could work out

Inset left: Yum, yum! Action, the shortlived and outrageous 2000 AD precursor, featured strange movie-inspired characters— including the Jaws rip-off depicted here—in exceptionally violent stories. ©2003 the respective copyright holder.

Above: Though the artist isn’t identified, this rockin’ Judge Dredd piece is used to promote the 26year-old and counting British comics magazine 2000 AD. Courtesy of Titan Books. ©2003 Rebellion.

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Inset right: Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s Nemesis the Warlock makes the cover of 2000 AD for #222 (July 25 ’81). Courtesy of Titan Books. ©2003 Rebellion.

Below: Ye Ed has taken some liberties in this combined piece featuring the villainous Torquemada from “Nemesis the Warlock” (from the contents page of a 2000 AD Annual (’84) drawn

by Kevin O’Neill), and Kev’s cover rough for a Titan Books ABC Warriors compilation (Vol. 1, ’83). ©2003 Rebellion.

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what’s going wrong. It’s better than going around with a portfolio all the time and being told I’m not good enough without being told precisely what the problem was. When I was able to see my art reduced and printed on different paper stocks, it was incredibly useful.

Also in the portfolio I showed getting into 2000 AD was a little 12-page selfpublished thing, a fanzine comic called Mek-Memoirs, which was a robot strip written by Chris Loader under his Jack Adrian pseudonym. That had lots of robots in it, and it persuaded Pat to have robot material in 2000 AD, which he’d previously completely objected to. For years and years, there was this strip called “Robot Archie” in British comics, a dreadful old thing. It just went on and on, and it was so poorly done that it put Pat off robots completely. So it’s ironic that he ends up doing “Robusters” and “ABC Warriors,” both popular robot strips.

CBA: What was the frequency and how many issues did you get out of the fanzine?

Kevin: I had drawn two issues but only published one, because then 2000 AD came along and I gave up on it. There were about a half-dozen Legend Horror Classics, though a couple had been drawn by others. There wasn’t too much. It just filled in the gap. I was also doing color separations for Disney comics and stuff like that.

CBA: So you really had a lot of production background?

Kevin: Oh God, yes! I was pasting up “Billy Bunter” reprints as a kid. They gave me prints to cut up, which were on hairy paper, the cheapest paper imaginable, even a scalpel wasn’t sharp enough to cut them cleanly. I’d paste up these bloody microscopic panels and redraw bits to fill in the spaces.

But, as tedious as it was, it did give me a good grounding in that kind of the old school production style. Funny enough, on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Victorian ads are still pasted up in the same old-fashioned way, using paste and blade to make the mechanical. [laughter] CBA: Some of your earliest work was humor work?

Kevin: Yes. I did one ghost town type of humor strip. It was published, though the editor said it was too American-looking and he didn’t like it. Actually, it wasn’t very well-drawn. [laughs] It was an odd sort of style.

I believe that had my career taken the direction it was most well suited for, I would have spent my life drawing humor comics. But the market just wasn’t there when I was coming up. The comics I had grown up on, with exciting, offbeat material, were not being published anymore. So I gradually worked my way into adventure comics, though usually with a black humor streak running through my work.

Marshal Law is very humorous, and very black, as well. [laughs] CBA: Is that where you would have wanted to go, in an ideal world?

Kevin: Back then, I would have loved a career doing humor comics. If I had a time machine, I’d be doing humor comics for DC Thomson in the ’50s and early ’60s. That would have been fun, but by the time I was good enough to be published, I saw humor as not really being an outlet for what I wanted to do. I had, by that time, broadened my horizons and become a bit more confident in more serious styles of drawing. I saw a way of working humor into action/adventure material.

CBA: Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland, John Bolton, and some other artists from your era are pretty realistic in style, despite all their feathering… You obviously do not have a similar style.

Kevin: No. I met Dave in the offices of Fleetway Publications. I think he was doing lettering back then for Dez Skinn, maybe for Buster. So we’d met, he rang me up and asked me if I could do some color separations for the Power Man strip him and Brian Bolland were working on for a South African publisher. I went over to Brian’s place and did color separations when he was finishing up inking the strip.

Both those guys are obviously big fans of DC strips like “The Atomic Knights,” “Strange Sports Stories,” by Murphy Anderson and Carmine Infantino. My taste always ran to the more bizarre kind of material, like the works of Steve Ditko, Dick Briefer, Will Elder…

CBA: Idiosyncratic?

Kevin: Right. Basil Wolverton was also a favorite, of course.

Actually, we’d grown up on pretty much the same material, so there was a lot of crossover in our interests.

2000 AD tried to break the idea of a house style. Fleetway and DC Thomson did adhere to a particular look, and you had there certain artists being held up as paragons of the way the publishers wanted strips drawn. So at Fleetway it would have been, say, Mike Western, who had a pliable style. He would do adventure stuff and then do very bigfoot-style stuff.

Creating a house style always leads to a dead end, doesn’t it?

You’ve got lots of artists who are paler and paler imitations of the prime artist. Under those limitations, an editor can lose nerve and COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

simply follow tradition. 2000 AD swiftly broke that policy. Pat grabbed all these varied artists because he realized that the comic was an anthology. Okay, if you don’t like one strip, here’s four others you may like. So that was good for all of us.

CBA: What was the impact of 2000 AD? Kevin: It was huge. I actually wasn’t there for the entire year of lead time; I arrived about six months before the launch. I thought it was actually too good to last, because just before we debuted, Pat’s previous comic, Action, had been taken off the stands. There had been a huge outcry because it was an extremely violent comic, one that reflected the standard of films and television at the time—Straw Dogs, Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Jaws—and it was a very aggressive comic, always in trouble with the tabloid press. In those days before video nasties, comics were the target, always picked on because they were so easy to attack. The comic book publishers would very rarely defend themselves, so the press could give them a beating, raising the specter of the horror comics of the 1950s. But Action went too far and was taken off the stands, and that affected plans for 2000 AD, which was being developed as an extremely violent comic. So that meant the violence had to be really toned down.

CBA: Was stuff literally redrawn?

Kevin: Yes. We were pasting stuff over right up until the first issue was due to be printed. The first press day was Christmas Eve 1976, and even then we were making major alterations on press day before sending it off. We were whiting out blood, pasting stuff over severed heads, reconnecting severed limbs to bodies, and doing all kinds of “corrections” to the weird stuff going on.

CBA: Talk about paste-up! Reconnecting severed heads? [laughter] Kevin: Judge Dredd really bothered the editorial board at IPC. But Pat had the brilliant idea of holding the character back from issue #1, because he thought introducing Dredd in the second issue would make for a huge come-on for people to buy the second issue.

So the impact was instantaneous, absolutely incredible. I was going to a lot of parties during that period. When people asked what June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

I did, I’d say I was working on this new thing, 2000 AD, and it was astonishing the number of people—people who are between 18 and their mid-20s—who were big fans of the title already. Some confessed that they didn’t buy the early issues because of the free gifts because it seemed a bit childish and embarrassing. But they said they bought the later issues and then discreetly picked up the earlier ones. It had a huge adult following, which was incredible.

It was tough sometimes to convince our superiors that we did have this older audience. The publisher told us we should only think of the 11-year-olds who were buying 2000 AD, and not to consider anyone older. Their attitude was ridiculous, so we just chose to ignore it. 2000 AD had a long history of interference by management, such as being forced to alter artwork to disguise some of the violent or subversive material. It was all very silly and very juvenile, I know, but making those insubstantial, if petty, changes was the only way to keep the publication faithful to what it should have been.

CBA: Did the magazine become somewhat political, or at least reflect the volatile times, this anger rising from Britain’s youth?

Kevin: Well, certainly in the early issues. We did a strip called “Invasion!”, which was originally about a Russian invasion of Britain.

The management panicked at the last minute, exclaiming, “You can’t have Russians! We renamed them ‘Volgans’!” To them, the new name still sounded Eastern European, just not Russian. They were also upset when we showed Margaret Thatcher being strung up.

Pat Mills was a very political animal, and the magazine certainly reflected his feelings about the world. Some of the “Judge Dredd” stories were straight out of the headlines. They were relevant, though perhaps not in any kind of hammering-over-the-head kind of way; it was just all done in an entertaining manner.

CBA: What was your contribution to the beginning of 2000 AD? Kevin: Janet Shepherd had been appointed the art editor, so I became her assistant. A little bit later, she left to work on Starlord (of which I’d been offered the art editor job on but declined), which was kind of a knock-off of 2000 AD by Kelvin Gosnell, who had been Pat

Above: 1996 previously unpublished commission piece by Kevin O’Neill featuring Nemesis the Warlock. Courtesy of the artist.

Art ©2003 K.O’N. Nemesis ©2003 Rebellion.

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Inset right: The Marshal shows his contempt for the skin-tight costumed crowd in this pin-up from the 1989 United Kingdom Comic Art Convention souvenir book .

Courtesy of Frank Plowright. ©2003 Kevin O’Neill.

Below: Trade paperback collections of the adventures of Marshal Law are currently back in print, courtesy of Titan Books. This pinup of the tough guy is from the UKCAC ’87 souvenir book. Art by Kevin O’Neill. Marshal Law ©2003 Pat Mills & Kev O’Neill.

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Mills’ assistant editor. Kelvin took over 2000 AD when Pat left to go freelance and immediately did Starlord. It was kind of like creating your own rival, though it was better printed and had full-color. I then became 2000 AD’s art editor, designing logos, back cover pages, pinups, things like that.

I wasn’t doing anything particularly substantial until, funny enough, Starlord, when Pat Mills and I had talked about doing this kind of rescue squad strip. It became “Robusters,” a robot rescue squad. I designed the robot characters for that. I also designed some robot characters for a “Judge Dredd” robot serial. So it was mainly doing bits and pieces like that.

Toward the end, I was becoming extremely frustrated with the interference on the comic, with almost all of us being sacked at one point.

There were various things that caused trouble. One was a strip which featured the Jolly Green Giant and other trademarked characters, which caused a lot of problems with the Green Giant’s trademark owners. So we had to run a pathetic, embarrassing apology to the Jolly Green Giant. And there was another Dredd strip with Ronald McDonald and Burger King, which has never been reprinted, for by now obvious reasons. [laughs] But it was just one thing after another. Those were the big ones, but every week there was trouble, trouble, trouble. I thought, “Well, I’m getting a bit fed up with the editorial side. I’ll take the leap into freelancing for 2000 AD.” Pat Mills asked me if I wanted to draw the “Robusters” strip, which had been drawn by different artists over time (who had certainly done some good episodes).

So I worked on that as my first real regular work for 2000 AD as a freelancer. But what began what I laughingly refer to as my “career” was drawing “Nemesis the Warlock,” scripted by Pat, because that was a strip that I had all to myself, which I designed from the ground up and stayed with for a longer period of time. I loved working on it.

Pat grew up a very strict Catholic, an altar boy in his day, and I was a choir boy.

Obviously, I think perhaps this fueled some slightly anti-papal feeling in “Nemesis.” [laughter] CBA: What was the premise of the strip?

Kevin: Well, it grew out of a one-off episode, which itself had grown out of a sequence in “Robusters” which featured a tube system with vehicles traveling 360 degrees around it, a very complicated chase sequence, which the managing editor hated and said, “If we had time, I’d remove it.” So, of course, we immediately proposed a spin-off from this episode, which was a strip all about going down the tube. [laughter] That’s where we introduced Torquemada as an

arch-villain, who was kind of a mixture of the original [15th century Spanish Inquisitor] Tomas de Torquemada and a KKK leader. Torquemada went to different planets and hunted down and cleansed aliens, flushing out deviants. It was like hunting down heretics, I guess.

So that was really the premise.

We didn’t show Nemesis in the early issues, just his Blitzspear (his personal vehicle).

“Nemesis” was very popular, so we did a two-part sequel, then a full-blown series expanding on these ideas. And for me that was the true start of my career, because I got to do a lot I wanted to do. I wanted to do humor stuff, wild architecture, costumes, aliens, everything you could want, and “Nemesis” provided me the opportunity.

CBA: Were you having a ball?

Kevin: Absolutely! It was really “Nemesis” that got noticed by Mike Gold at First Comics that led to work over in the U.S. Interestingly enough, for First Comics, Alan Moore, Mike McMahon and I were going to do a comic called Dodgem Logic. The book was split into two halves, one written by Alan Moore and drawn by me; the other to be written by Alan Moore and drawn

by Mike McMahon. But Mike Gold was both publisher and editor at First, and he said he wore two hats: The editor in him really wanted to do it, but the publisher in him thought it was a bit risky. It just didn’t happen. It’s one of several projects by Alan over the years that just didn’t work out.

CBA: Was this after Alan’s success with Swamp Thing?

Kevin: I think Swamp Thing had just started, though certainly “Marvelman” was running. It might even have been before Swamp Thing, because Alan’s subsequent fame would have been such that I’m sure Dodgem Logic might have gone ahead… Still, 2000 AD and Warrior were bringing us to the attention of the American market.

Dick Giordano and Joe Orlando came to Britain looking specifically for artists, not writers in those days. The impression I had was they were looking for artists for Superman, which they wanted to visually revamp. They came over and talked to Brian and Dave, who both very soon began working for DC. I think Brian would have been the first, doing Green Lantern covers and stuff for DC. Then Dave started doing work for them. When they talked to me, they asked which characters I liked, and unfortunately I mentioned all the stuff they weren’t publishing. [laughter] I said I’d really like to draw Blackhawk, Metal Men, Spectre, Plastic Man… a long list of things DC hadn’t touched for years and clearly were not going to anytime soon back in those days. [laughs] They were giving me things such as Omega Men. I did a couple of fillers with Alan, one for Omega Men, as well as a nice little story which ended up in a Green Lantern Corps Annual rather than Green Lantern’s regular book because the Comic Code came down fairly heavy on it. So it was fun.

I was always disappointed by the way the work printed, because if you remember, that was during the early ’80s when American comics reached the bottom of the barrel of printing standards. The Flexographic printing made everything look washed-out and offregister. I guess American comics were heading towards the same crisis the British comics industry had to face, where something had to change, standards had to improve. So I remember being disappointed with the printed work.

Dick Giordano asked me, “Obviously, we’re not planning to revive any of the characters you want to draw, so do you want to come up with a proposal for a graphic novel?” So I contacted Pat. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

We had this robot strip that we were going to do in Britain, a creatorowned thing, but the publication it was aimed for fell apart before we signed any contract. So we reformatted the idea (as there was nothing drawn yet except for a few sketches) into what became Metalzoic, a graphic novel published in 1986… that bombed horribly. [laughter] CBA: Was this after their ill-fated series of graphic novel sciencefiction adaptations?

Kevin: Yes. I recall Ernie Colón had done one. They were an outsize format, generally an odd line of books, all disconnected. But we had the misfortune of pretty much coming out at the same time as Dark Knight, which established the prestige format as being the one of choice. Plus, Pat and my normal way of working is for us to have an idea and roll with it. We might make radical changes and switch gears in midstream, but DC insisted on wanting a detailed page-by-page synopsis, which required us to lock it down before we were comfortable with it.

I did the color separations for Metalzoic—and I had a lot of experience doing color separations—and these were done as bluelines, the worst I’ve ever worked with. I had to mix soap with paint to bond the gouache to the surface. The first few pages look better than the rest of it. [laughs] The whole thing was a disaster. It was a shame. I’d quite like to see it published again, only recolored and reformatted. It was a chastening experience and made us rethink our future. So immediately afterwards, Pat and I did a role-playing comic magazine called Diceman for Fleetway, that used 2000 AD characters in RPG situations where you throw dice and jump from different pages to different sequences depending on the roll of dice. That proved to be an absolute ton of work, a nightmare. It didn’t work out the way we wanted. (I think DC was interested in us doing a similar project for their characters, but that didn’t happen.)

In the meantime, I’d been working on sketches and ideas that I called Marshal Law. I sent them to Pat and said that we really needed to do something substantial now and is this of any interest? So Pat developed Marshal Law, which we actually took to Epic rather than DC. I think we felt we wouldn’t get anywhere at DC, so we took it to Archie Goodwin, who I’d already met very briefly once at a convention. I liked Archie and I’d always loved his work. He was a delight to work with, an absolutely charming gentleman. Dan Chichester was the editor for Marshal Law and he was great and encouraging.

Marshal Law was the first proper American success we had.

CBA: When did you first meet Alan Moore?

Kevin: Oh, I would have met Alan at one of the Westminster comic marts in the early ’80s, I suppose.

CBA: Was he already a professional?

Kevin: Yeah, Alan was already doing “Future Shocks” for 2000 AD when I met him. He was probably doing his Warrior material, as well. I first had a proper conversation just after “Marvelman”appeared when I went up and told him I enjoyed his work. The Westminster marts were the first big gathering places for professionals. We’d all go there to pick up the new comics, then go down to sit in the cafeteria and chat for a couple of hours.

Fairly early on, Alan’s fame started to grow. I think it was tough for him to go to a pizza place and be surrounded by comic fans, with people wanting his time while he just wanted to eat his meal. It became more June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

and more difficult to talk to him at these events.

CBA: Was Alan revered in England before he hit it big in the States?

Kevin: Yes, I’d certainly say so. He had quite a cult following, and certainly Swamp Thing was the knockout punch.

That’s when it really took off for him. But I think it was tough because Alan, as you know, is an incredible gentleman.

He’d be patient with people.

Some people didn’t know quite when to hold back. I think if a man’s got his food in front of him, let him alone to eat. But, of course, Alan is a very gracious guy, and he’d be patient with that kind of behavior.

But that really didn’t happen to the rest of us in the same way.

Titan Books was starting to republish the 2000 AD material, which was why we’d collectively appear for these book signings in London, and we’d get pretty huge crowds turning up. You’d see kids mixed in with Hell’s Angels, film people, and women as well (which was always a surprise at a comic event). But Alan was really a super-star relatively early on.

CBA: When DC came over and started courting the British artists, did you guys feel to be in a privileged position?

Kevin: It’s funny, I remember joking with Dave Gibbons at the time that we were the new Filipinos. [laughter] I never did quite understand exactly what it was DC saw in me. I certainly understood the appeal of Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland, as you could see a natural affinity for the DC way of doing things, plus an incredible amount of craftsmanship as well. So with me, while I couldn’t quite figure out why they cared for my work, I was very pleased with the interest. I think 2000 AD at that point was beginning to feel played out and us freelancers were all having problems with the magazine. One of my final acts with sub-editor Nick Landau on 2000 AD, was to put credits in the magazine, even though I knew it would be a big problem with management, because these were proper credit boxes stuck on every strip. I had to take a pile of original artwork down to Bob Bartholomew, the

Above: Previously unpublished promotional art spotlighting Kevin O’Neill’s shortlived Blackball Comics character, John Pain.

Art by, courtesy of and ©2003 Kevin O’Neill.

Inset left: Marshal Law and Judge Dredd meet for the first time in a special 2000 AD tribute celebrating the British comic magazine’s 25th anniversary. Courtesy of the artist, Kevin O’Neill. Marshal Law ©2003 Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill.

Judge Dredd ©2003 Rebellion.

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Above: Even Brit artist Kevin O’Neill got in on the “Supremacy” during Alan Moore’s stay at Awesome Comics, illustrating a “Squeak, the Supremouse” story in Supreme #52 (Sept.’97).

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 Awesome Entertainment.

Below: Presentation illustration by Kevin O’Neill for a rejected Batman proposal. Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2003 Kev O’Neill.

Batman ©2003 DC Comics.

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managing editor, who reviewed every page before publication. I knew he would call me in about it, which he did. He said, “What are these?”

I said, “Well, Bob, they’re credit boxes.

We’ll try them for a couple of weeks. If kids don’t like them, we’ll drop them.” He said, “Okay.” [laughs] And that was that! It was outrageous, really.

He let us get away with it. And it made a big difference, because people could finally identify writers and artists.

CBA: Obviously, you didn’t have that almost DC style Dave and Brian do so well. Did you feel a little bit left out…

Kevin: What I felt was, I couldn’t bend my work into drawing the clean-cut people that populate DC Comics. It was really strange. They were doing their best to give me material which was kind of offbeat.

But I knew there was no way I could do a Superman book or Justice League or something. It was not going to happen. Certainly, Batman I wanted to do. I thought I could have done something with that. But I don’t think anyone there who was responsible for Batman really liked my style, so apart from Bat-Mite, which was written by Alan Grant and edited by Archie Goodwin, that was it really.

Marshal Law was simply a better vehicle for what I wanted to do with super-heroes perhaps than the actual existing characters. I could do all the Human Torches and Plastic Men I wanted, and then…

CBA: … kill them! [laughs] Kevin: Right! I had a great deal of fun with that series, and that purged what I wanted do with the super-hero toy box.

CBA: Have you written anything?

Kevin: Occasionally. I did a couple of annual stories for 2000 AD,

as well as a few uncredited things with Pat Mills on annuals which he copy-edited.

CBA: But you’d write only on special occasions?

Kevin: Well, sometimes I would do a “Nemesis” thing for an annual and would write copy on overlays on the artwork. Pat would leave some of it alone, some he’d rewrite. Gradually I would do my own “Future Shocks” and stuff like that, but nothing terribly important.

I actually enjoy the process of working with a writer more than working on my own. I did the “John Pain” strip for Blackball Comics.

It didn’t last very long. But it was good to appear alongside of Simon Bisley and Keith Giffen. Great fun while it lasted.

CBA: Is there unpublished work?

Kevin: Yes, because Blackball ended rather abruptly, which actually was a bit annoying, because I had a meeting with the editor, Dave Elliot, and had a 10-page “John Pain” strip under my arm, and he said, “No, it’s all over.” I would have liked to have heard that before I went and finished it. [laughter] CBA: Has that ever seen print?

Kevin: No. It’s not lettered, but it is all penciled and inked. That’s the last thing I really did on my own. After that, I was doing more Marshal Laws with Pat and a lot of Lobo material with writer Alan Grant. Alan’s a good, fun guy, and Lobo was a sheer indulgence, really. [laughs] That’s what Lobo is all about!

I also did Death Race 2020, a kind of fill-in while the Marshal Law movie rights had been sold, so we were looking to get a movie made. I was just filling in time. But that didn’t happen, and then Alan offered me The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

CBA: If we can back up just a little: What was the premise of Marshal Law? Kevin: Marshal Law basically hunted renegade super-heroes in a future version of San Francisco called San Futuro, where super-heroes had been engineered to fight a war in Central America but had come back to America and were roaming in gangs. The Public Spirit was a prime Superman/Captain America kind of figure. He was leading a double life, a beloved, heroic figure and possibly a murderer.

That was it.

The concept was originally a straight whodunit with no superheroes, as Marshal Law hunted down a renegade astronaut. The feeling at the time we submitted it to Archie was, we’ll do it as a whodunit. But Pat rang me up and said, “Well, how about he’s hunting super-heroes?” To me, that didn’t make any sense, as a comic fan. Don’t you mean super-villains? Why would your hero hunt super-heroes? And when he explained it to me, it was obviously such a great premise, and obviously opened up everything. We could do all the types of super-heroes we wanted. And as I said, Pat never read super-hero comics as a kid, so I sent him a lot of stuff from my collection. Steve Ditko Spider-Man, Neal Adams Batman and Green Lantern. It was eye-opening and pretty bizarre to him. (Pat made me appreciate what an odd name Green Lantern was.) Yeah, we had a tremendous amount of fun with Marshal Law. Archie Goodwin and Dan Chichester were encouraging. The reaction from other professionals was often less than flattering. I think we were seen as tearing down icons and not offering anything in their place, that kind of thing. I think some people in the business didn’t get that it was black comedy as well.

CBA: They took it seriously?

Kevin: I think some people did. I was astonished. I once attended an Oakland convention, and heard pros talking about Law as if it was all serious. I said, “You’ve got to understand, it’s black comedy.” But they thought the violence alone made it serious. [laughter] You know you’re in real trouble when that happens, frankly! [laughs] CBA: Do you have a favorite sequence?

Kevin: Well, I think certain books stand out more than others for me. I think The COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

Kingdom of the Blind book, which was our take on the Batman myth, I enjoyed very much. I thought the art came together on that one and it really hung together very well. And there was a two-issue Dark Horse Marshal Law: The Secret Tribunal, which I don’t think that many people have seen, our take on the Legion of Super-Heroes, which I enjoyed a great deal. It was very, very over the top, and more sexual than any of the other Marshal Law books. We’ve been very lucky with publishers, because they’ve left our material alone. It was very seldom we were asked for alterations. Marshal Law has been good fun pretty much from beginning to end.

CBA: How many incarnations have there been?

Kevin: Some 16 Marshal Law comic books from numerous publishers. We started with Epic Marvel, went to Apocalypse (a British publisher), then Dark Horse, then we did a two-issue crossover for Epic, Law vs. Pinhead, then Dark Horse, Image, and Dark Horse. So he’s whored his way around the publishing world. I think the only place he hasn’t been published is DC, whom we offered it to, once.

But at the time we offered it to them, it was as if we were offering them a cyanide tablet, you know? [laughter] CBA: Was there an inordinate amount of poking fun at DC within the strip?

Kevin: I think I may have made a fatal error on the Secret Tribunal thing…

June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

CBA: Dude! Don’t mess with the Legion! [laughs] Kevin: Well, I remember the inspiration for picking on those characters. I was on the DC mailing list at the time, and was sent the Archive Edition of the first Legion of Super-Heroes volume. I rang up Pat Mills and said, “I’m looking at these old ‘Legion’ strips and they’re pretty funny. We should do something like this.” He said, “Oh, send me the book.” I sent it to him and then we did our spin.

I was taken off the DC mailing list when that came out.

WildStorm wanted to reprint the Marshal Law stuff in collected volumes, but the deal would have meant DC owning all the rights, which we weren’t prepared to do because they’d pretty much own it forever. So that was the deal breaker.

Now the material is coming out from Titan Books as collected volumes. The third one is due out soon. It’s nice to see it back in print. Some of the material had low print runs, so it’s nice to get them all in one place.

CBA: You worked with Moore on a Green Lantern Corps story?

Kevin: Yes. “Tygers,” and originally it was a two-part story that was going to run over a couple of issues in the back of Green Lantern. Andy Helfer was the editor. It’s a lovely tale about the temptation of Abin Sur. I sent the artwork in and then Andy rang me up to say, “The book hasn’t been approved by the Comics Code Authority.” As I understand, he contacted them and asked, “Well, what can we change to get your approval?” They said, “Nothing. It’s

Above: A horrific sequence in the helter-skelter climax of the first LXG story arc in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1, #6 (Sept. ’99). Words by Alan Moore., art by Kevin O’Neill. ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

Inset left: The team gets their act together in this panel of Kevin O’Neill art from page one of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2, #3 (Nov. ’02). ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

Below: Cover of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1, #1 (Mar. ’99). ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

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the whole style of the thing.” [laughs] It was deeply unpleasant to them. So I remember ringing up Alan and telling him this, and I think he was quite jealous. [laughter] So DC held onto it for some time and then ran both parts together in a Green Lantern Corps Annual. But when I was next in New York, I visited Archie Goodwin, and I said, “Is there a printed Comics Code I could actually sit down and read?”

He said, “Why do you want it?” I said, “Well, I’ve always been curious. I keep hearing about the Code, but don’t really know what the rules and regulations are.” He rooted around in his office, went to another office, asked around. He finally came back with a copy. So I looked at it and said, “There’s a phone number I can ring. Can I actually go and visit the Comics Code, just out of curiosity?” Archie

Above: Kevin O’Neill’s pencils for page one of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1, #2 (Apr. ’99). If the movie trailer is any clear indication, the Hyde character in the forthcoming film version of LXG looks to rather faithfully follow Kev’s grotesque character designs . ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

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didn’t know anyone who ever went and visited the offices, he didn’t even know what they’d look like. There was always the rumor of the pages being read by little old ladies. [laughter] So I did ring the Comics Code when I was in New York, and they were extremely suspicious. They wouldn’t let me go in. They said, “Well, there’s nothing to see here.” I said I was in New York and had always been fascinated by the history of the Code, and would just like to see the offices and meet people. But it didn’t happen. Tragically. [laughter] I think it’s either just an empty office or they just send the pages in and someone randomly says yes or no and throws them back out again.

CBA: “It’s got Kevin’s name on it—NO!” [laughter] So you and Pat

were called co-creators, or are you the single creator of Marshal Law? Kevin: We’re co-creators, because Pat did a tremendous amount of work and brought in another storyline that he’d already worked up, a kind of whodunit story.

CBA: So he contributed enormously to it.

Kevin: Enormously, yes. Pat’s kind of oddball take on super-heroes is a major part of the success of the character, certainly. All I sent him in the early stages was the way the character looked, and then we worked out the rest of it together. But like I say, that was a real fun period. I guess it’s kind of galling never having an ongoing publisher.

It was always tough starting up a new publisher, and some stories and some sequences continued from one publisher to the next. [laughter] The book’s had a fairly schizo history.

CBA: How did the movie situation pan out?

Kevin: Well, it was pretty early on in the Marvel/Epic days, people were interested in doing a movie version. But elements of it would have been too violent for the screen. There weren’t very many comic book type movies then, and so if they did it fairly faithfully, it would have been expensive and challenging… I don’t know. There was a producer in the ’90s who wanted to produce a Marshal Law movie and we spent a long time working on a screenplay. But, I dunno, most movies don’t happen. If you hang around the business long enough, you realize most people can work their whole career in the film industry and never make a movie. [laughter] CBA: Was there any influence of the non-success of the Judge Dredd movie?

Kevin: Well, if Dredd had been a hit, Marshal Law would have moved ahead a little bit further, certainly. But Dredd was certainly not a financial success. So yeah, that pretty much killed us dead in the water. Yet people are interested again, clearly because of the sheer number of comic-book type movies being made now.

CBA: Has anyone said that there’s a resemblance between Judge Dredd and Marshal Law? Kevin: Oh, yes. I think when the first advert appeared for the series, I remember going into the 2000 AD office delivering my last work for them—probably the last filler thing I did for them—and I think they were extremely suspicious of Marshal Law, which I had been working on. I think they thought it would be more of a “Judge Dredd” type of strip than what it actually was. But we steered away from the Dredd’s world. And Pat’s writing style made it different.

We’d given Marshal Law a kind of private life, as well, and the thing about Dredd is the absence of private life.

CBA: He’s always “on”?

Kevin: Yes, he’s always on and always masked.

CBA: How would you characterize Marshal Law? Is he fascistic?

Is he a Texan gunslinger?

Kevin: Well, I think it’d be fair to categorize him as unstable. He’s really two people. He’s possibly like Jekyll and Hyde. When he’s masked up, he’s pretty psychopathic, really. But Joe Gilmore, his alter ego, is a decent guy. In the later ones, we introduced Gilmore working as a hospital orderly treating super-hero characters, which kind of rounds out his character a bit more, makes him more interesting. He’s certainly not a well man, and I don’t think I would recommend him as a role model. [laughter] Let’s put it that way.

CBA: Do you look at him as quintessentially American?

Kevin: Yeah, I guess I do. Any British attempts to do American characters, like the ones I grew up on, seemed not to be American at all in their treatment. I don’t know. I’d be interested in what your take on him is. Does he read as American? Or is he still British? [laughter] CBA: He reads as a British take on an American. Over-the-top, draped in red, white and blue. Like a cartoon character.

Kevin: Oh, okay, right. I guess that’s fair.

CBA: With the tongue firmly placed in cheek. Bemused, very, very bemused. [laughter] So it remains in print today, right? Not only with Titan, but with Dark Horse, I was just online and saw they were selling collections.

Kevin: Oh, they are? I didn’t realize they still had them for sale.

CBA: Maybe they’re out-of-print collections, but I did see them as being on sale.

Kevin: Yes, you’re probably right. Nemesis the Warlock is back in print, as well, and that hasn’t seen print in about ten years.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

CBA: Are you proud of that work?

Kevin: Yes, I am. I did some good stuff on “Nemesis the Warlock.”

Like I said when we were talking about Frank Bellamy, the problem is to stay in print, because it’s always a tragedy that these things go out of print, because a new generation wouldn’t know what you’ve done, as if your very recent work just sprang out of nowhere.

CBA: I think there’s little doubt that you’re going to remain in print, at least with this new work, for a long time to come (which is my clever segue). [laughter] How did The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen come about?

Kevin: Well, this would have been perhaps in late 1997…

CBA: Had you always wanted to work with Alan again?

Kevin: I had! We’d tried with First Comics, as I said, and then we were going to do The Spectre at one point, which didn’t happen.

Then we were going to do a “Bizarro” series, which we both really wanted to do, but John Byrne revamped Superman and that killed that project. We’d done these little bits and pieces. There was going to be another self-publishing thing in Britain where we were going to do a strip, but that fell apart. So yeah, I really wanted to work with Alan on something long-form, so to speak. And when I was doing Marshal Law, we’d stay in touch from time to time.

One day I went into Comic Showcase, a comics store in London, and Paul Hudson, who runs the shop, said to me, “Oh, I hear you’re going to be working with Alan Moore.” Now, this was the first I had heard about any project. I really didn’t know what he was talking about. He said it was a new strip he had just read about on the Internet. So of course, not having any access to the Web, I didn’t take any notice. But as I actually had reason to call Alan anyway over a bogus contract sent out by the publisher of 2000 AD at the time— they wanted us to sign away rights and stuff, and I was just ringing people telling them not to sign this, it’s got repercussions—so I rang up Alan, we had a chat about that. Of course, he had thrown the contract away anyway, as is his way. [laughs] But right at the end, as we were signing off, he said, “Oh, by the way, I don’t know if you’d be interested, but one of these projects I’m developing involves Captain Nemo and other major characters from popular fiction.” And it was such a brilliantly simple kind of thing. I just couldn’t believe it.

It was the first I’d heard about the concept. All these iconic figures, it’s like a gift to any artist, really. I’d be crazy to turn it down. So I immediately said yes. And he said, “Well, we’ll talk about it again.”

And my involvement grew from that. We would have conversations on the subject, and, being foolhardy, I said, “You can have as many frames on a page as you want.” That’s why issue #1 has a 12-panel page, for instance. It was finding its way. I started to send sketches in, and I think the early sketches were way off the mark. I think the Mina character, Wilhelmina Murray, was the key to finding a way to draw the series. Because I’d literally gone from doing a fill-in on Lobo to doing this book, which is quite a jump, I think you’ll agree. I knew I really wanted to do something different on this, to do it in a slightly different style. And I realized that for certain things to work, people had to look interesting standing still. And most of the stuff that I had been doing was people being machine-gunned and their heads ricocheting off the wall, that kind of material. So it was a lot of work, but I enjoyed the challenge of it. I was also aware of that giant shadow cast by From Hell. Alan and Eddie Campbell’s previous Victorian project was a masterpiece, so I was naturally intimidated.

CBA: It could be characterized that Alan went through a dry period as far as comics were concerned. He was writing WildC.A.T.S. and Badrock vs. Violator, material that was perhaps critically dismissed, certainly when compared to From Hell. But with the advent of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it felt like, to this reader at least, that Moore was back in his game big time. Did you look at the series as something very special?

Kevin: Yes, from the minute he mentioned the premise of the story, I knew that the standard of the script would be incredibly high. Alan’s work is great, but the passion he has for the material, ear for period dialogue, and clear affection for these characters, made the task of drawing it pretty daunting. I knew I had a heavy responsible as well, because if the choice of artist was down to an editor or publisher, I wouldn’t even be on the list, frankly. I wouldn’t have been the obvious choice for the book, because people wouldn’t have assumed I could do it, I guess, or wouldn’t have assumed it was even June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

appropriate for my style. That’s what I love about working with Alan and looking at the other things he’s done is he often picks people slightly against type, if you know what I mean. It at first seems odd when you reflect on it afterwards. I mean, Eddie was perfect for From Hell when you see it as a finished product, but it’d perhaps surprise people if they heard Alan was working on a Jack the Ripper project with Eddie. You’d think, “Well, that’s an interesting choice!”

CBA: I thought you were enormously appropriate for it. There’s just really a synthesis that takes place from page one because not only do you have this obvious humor in your work, but your art radiates a Victorian kind of feel. Did you feel immediately that you had a kinship with the material? That yes, you “get” it?

Kevin: Certainly it’s a time I’ve always been interested in. That late Victorian period has always fascinated me. Growing up in the shadow of Victorian London, it kind of looked like the late 1890s anyway. The old docks and warehouses and the kind of limehouse atmosphere, so to speak, was even prevalent in Woolwich, near where I grew up.

I knew the character for me to crack really—the one who would open the series for me—was the Mina character, because I’d never really drawn a female lead before. They’d all been masculine protagonists and very bizarre heroes like Nemesis the Warlock. So I knew that she had to really work. So it is really rather pleasing to learn that Mina is incredibly popular. When I do signings, she’s the character people

Above: Ominous final page to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1, #2 (Apr. ’99).

Words by Alan Moore., art by Kevin O’Neill. ©2003 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

71

most want me to draw, more than the more obviously bizarre characters like Hyde.

CBA: That’s astonishing, actually. She’s probably the most sedate character of the group.

Kevin: I know! A lot of women readers identify with her, it seems. When I’m doing a book signing in Europe, I’ve noticed there’s a lot of casual readers, people who perhaps haven’t read comics for years, who pick up the League collection. Maybe something about the storytelling is very accessible. Also the pacing of the series. I think it’s an inviting book for people who are perhaps not that familiar with comics or left them years ago. I would say it’s pleasing, and there’s something about Mina which draws people in as well. She’s holding her own among these very powerful and dangerous men.

CBA: Were you familiar with Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard?

Kevin: Well, of all of them, H.G. Wells was my favorite, so I knew his stuff very, very well. H. Rider Haggard I’d read as a kid, but found a little bit stodgy. He goes from great moment to dull moment, great moment to dull moment… Jules Verne had to suffer some pretty atrocious English language translations, but I have to say, even when I tracked down, for LOEG, some allegedly better translations, his books kind of lurch from description/documentary style to incident. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is kind of odd, but it’s an important book. But H.G. Wells material can be read today and it’s as fresh as when it was written. It’s really quite beautiful writing. Dracula is an important book. I don’t reread it for pleasure, the way I reread H.G. Wells. And Robert Louis Stevenson’s work, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is a beautiful novella.

It’s very elegantly written.

CBA: There’s an aspect to the Jules Verne’s novels that I really dug as a kid, which was they were interconnected. Nemo was in Mysterious Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and other books. Was that continuity attractive at all?

Kevin: When Alan mentioned mixing up all these characters, obviously certain things had to be ignored. For example, the older characters apart from Mina were dead. Alan has elegantly written his own continuity for them, explaining this away.

But Verne’s crossover thing: The more I looked into the period, writers were quite sly… I mean, obviously people dabbled with Sherlock Holmes from the early days of that fictional detective’s popularity. He was certainly appearing in “Arséne Lupin” stories in France fairly early on, quite illegally, until it was stopped. I think there is something fascinating about mixing these characters up. It reminded me of when Alan first mentioned his idea, of the excitement of seeing an ad in a DC comic for The Justice League.

Just seeing all these characters standing together—that alone was very appealing, the idea of them interacting in that way was very intriguing.

CBA: Do you think that’s the strongest appeal of the series? Obviously, it predates comics and super-heroes, and yet there’s still that aspect of what makes super-heroes cool to begin with?

Kevin: I remember Alan very clearly mentioning that this was an early kind of super-group predating the American pulps and comic books. Invisibility, a supertechnologically-advanced craft, a character changing rather Incredible Hulk-like into a more formidable person, all these things predate comics. To join them together creates an earlier version of the FF, the Justice League, the Avengers, and so on. But the thing that really surprises me, to be honest, is how popular the book was from the get-go. I thought it would be a slow burn. I thought we were doing something that was good, but didn’t think as many people would get it as did. Certain characters… I mean, Allan Quatermain? We were always laughing about that character because, well, to most of us, Allan Quatermain is Stewart Granger, right? Or even Richard Chamberlain from those really crappy films a number of years ago. But for the most part, people don’t know who Allan Quatermain is. They might know Captain Nemo from the Disney film, I guess. The Invisible Man is practically a generic character. It’s really gladdening to the heart that people not only get it, but enthusiastically got behind it as well. It’s being very well supported by our readers.

CBA: Did you have any input, besides the visuals, with the stories? Was there any kind of writing collaboration?

Kevin: Oh, no. It’s not the same as working with Pat. Alan had a strong synopsis of the first series anyway. We chat over things like Griffin in the girls’ school in #2, joking among ourselves, actually. I would add touches in the artwork, such as details in the British Museum exhibits and stuff like that. I tend to enjoy tracking down reference material that is appropriate. I like to think people enjoy those little touches.

CBA: Is Alan generous in giving co-creator credit?

Kevin: Yes, he is! Alan is certainly more than generous. With the film people, he’s gone out of his way to say, “Don’t forget Kevin.” Because most Alan Moore projects are described as Alan Moore projects, period, which is understandable, because he’s the starting point; it springs from him. But I do have to agree that Alan is extremely generous with giving credit.

CBA: How did the movie project come about?

Kevin: The movie was really established pretty early on. Don Murphy, the producer of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film, had already made a deal with Alan.

Don had read a synopsis of the story long before it was printed, long before I’d finished drawing it. So a deal was already in place. Clearly that’s affected the fact that League,

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

of all the ABC books, is the one that is held outside of any publisher.

It’s owned by Alan and myself exclusively. The movie rights were sold to Don Murphy, then the deal was done with Jim Lee at WildStorm, and then WildStorm was taken over by DC Comics. But League was already a completely separate entity. Actually, it wasn’t even an ABC-line book to start with. It was going to be in the WildStorm creator-owned line. We came under the ABC umbrella with the first book out as just part of Alan’s new group, which I actually didn’t even know anything about when I first started the series.

CBA: So the movie deal was in the works before he even put pen to paper?

Kevin: Pretty much. I think I was designing the characters and bits and pieces. But I didn’t have anything to do with the movie people until last year when I met Don in London with Alan. I’ve got no creative involvement with the film, and Alan always stands well back from these things as well.

CBA: Was it lucrative for you?

Kevin: It certainly makes a big difference. I mean, the book has been very successful, and the film option is obviously very lucrative.

CBA: Besides the second mini-series you’re doing now, did the film deal make life more comfortable, so you don’t have to work so hard?

Kevin: Yes. I guess I still have the old Protestant work ethic… I guess Catholic work ethic [laughter] of feeling guilty about not working. But I am pretty slow, and this series is particularly labor-intensive to draw. So I probably give the impression that I’m kicking back, that I’m sitting around on some beach in the Caribbean or something, but I can assure you that only when I finish the second series will I take a proper break and then worry about the build-up to the movie coming out and what’s going to happen with that.

CBA: Are you on board in any kind of promotional way?

Kevin: Yes, I suppose so. People obviously do ring up Alan all the time. They go to him first, but if they can’t get Alan, they end up talking to me. [laughs] With the film, they’ve taken the premise and changed it to make it work for Hollywood.

I did visit the movie set in Prague. They’ve spent a phenomenal amount of money, and there’s an incredible amount of craftsmanship going into it. All the cast members I met were fans of the book, and they all wanted to meet Alan, of course. Steve Norrington, the director, is a big fan of the book, and wants to do the best job possible.

CBA: Dare I ask? Did you get to meet Sean Connery?

Kevin: I did actually get to meet him, yes. In the early hours of the morning on the set in Prague, I shared a very pleasant whiskey with the great man. He was extremely courteous, a very, very nice guy.

And Peta Wilson, who plays Mina, is delightful as well. The entire cast is extremely charming and very enthusiastic about the film, which is certainly encouraging.

CBA: Do you have mixed feelings about the use of Tom Sawyer?

Kevin: Well, it’s just one of those things. Friends of mine will occasionally ring me up and prod me for criticism. From what I’m told, there was an appalling screenplay at some stage, with the story set in America, in New York, which had Tom Sawyer in it, and that was thrown out. The whole project might have been on the point of disintegration when another, much better, screenplay was prepared, retaining Tom Sawyer’s relationship with Quatermain. I mean, Tom Sawyer is a man in the film, not a boy, though he is a young marksman character. No, I don’t find it deeply offensive. I mean, we’re playing with all these fictional characters by different authors, so I can hardly cry foul when movie people wanted to extrapolate and introduce other fictional characters into the mix. I know the actor playing Tom Sawyer was a bit disappointed he wasn’t actually in the comic. [laughter] CBA: I was a little surprised when Alan said no, he hadn’t seen From Hell, and didn’t particularly care if he saw it or not. To him, it seems to have taken on a life of its own. Are you going to be at the premiere to see it?

June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

Kevin: I will. Alan chooses to stay away from these things. That’s probably a wise decision to not become emotionally attached to spinoffs from his creations. I know Eddie Campbell visited the From Hell set. I think for artists it’s the siren lure of actually going out there and seeing the set, and certainly in this case meeting Sean Connery and the cast was definitely too great to resist. So I will go and see the film.

I know there will be the inevitable questions of, “What do you think of it?” and blah-blah-blah. [laughs] CBA: Has success spoiled Alan Moore?

Kevin: No. Alan is that rare, rare breed. He is a gentleman. He’s doing what he likes doing, and he doesn’t do anything that he doesn’t want to do. The material being published is in fact what he chooses to do. And I guess success—or whatever are the byproducts of success—is not the goal. He’s a very creative man, who wants his work to be seen by the widest possible audience, as I guess we all do. Most of us grew up in a period in British comics where, frankly, there was no chance of greater reward.

Frank Bellamy probably got a very good page rate, but nothing more. There was no creative ownership back then. These were all byproducts of us arguing over many years and saying, “Well, we can get creative control in Europe.” Which I recall actually mentioning to the IPC publisher at the Society for the Strip Illustrators, and his instructive reply was, “Well, f*ck off and work for Europe, then.” [laughter] Which was pretty much the attitude of the time.

CBA: So you’re in a much better world?

Kevin: Yes, I am. I think these are exciting days for comics. Alan and I have often talked about the direction things are going, but it’s very striking how progress isn’t a straight line, is it?

Because we do lose track of things sometimes. I do look at early American comic strips, Sunday strips from Winsor McKay onward, and I realize, okay, we’ve got a ways to go to achieve that again. There seems to be a huge outburst of creativity at a certain point,

Above: When the Batman film franchise was in full swing during the early ’90s, writer Pat Mills and artist Kevin O’Neill pitched a Marshal Law movie. Courtesy of Kevin, here’s a sample of the breathtaking presentation art. ©2003 Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill.

Below: Kev invented this monstrosity for a UKCAC souvenir book. ©2003 K.O’Neill.

continued on pg. 100 73

CBA Interview

Promethea Unbound!

Under the spell of the magical and mystic art of J.H. Williams III Inset right: Decorating the mailing envelope containing a print of Promethea, penciler J.H. Williams III and inker Mick Gray rendered this iconic image of our heroine.

Courtesy of Jerry K. Boyd. Below: JHW3 design for Promethea from Wizard #93’s ABC Preview (’99). ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Below: While we were unable to secure a photo of the artist, this image of Jim and his beloved wife greeting Alan Moore was in the Underground sequence in Promethea #16 (June ’01). JHW3, pencils; Mick Gray, inks. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC

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Conducted by George Khoury Transcribed by Steven Tice Jim Williams, after toiling in the industry as an artist on such books as Chase, Deathblow, and Judge Dredd, has emerged as a major contender since beginning his extraordinary collaboration with writer Alan Moore on the ABC title, Promethea. obviously an intensely personal book for both creators. We thank the exceptional artist for his superb rendering of his character with Alan for the cover to this ABC issue. Jim was interviewed by phone in late 2002 and he approved the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Are you originally from California?

J.H. Williams III: I pretty much grew up here in California my whole life, but I was actually born in Roswell, New Mexico.

CBA: Whereabouts in California did you grow up?

J.H.: Mainly in the Bay area.

CBA: When were you born?

J.H.: December 18, 1965.

CBA: Were your parents nurturing towards comics? How did you get into art?

J.H.: Well, that’s kind of weird. My parents would buy comics for me as a kid, but I didn’t really get jazzed over them. I was jazzed over the art in them, but I really didn’t experience any impact from them as far as what comics could be, as far as storytelling. A little bit later, when I discovered The Micronauts, Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s X-Men, and stuff like that, that’s when I started to realize, “Oh, people actually draw these things.”

CBA: So Michael Golden became a big influence early on for you?

J.H.: Yes, definitely.

CBA: Were you a big super-hero fan in the beginning?

J.H.: Yes. I was always

trying to draw the characters I encountered, old Spider-Man comics, old Iron Man comics, and stuff like that.

CBA: Did you have any siblings who went into art?

J.H.: No. CBA: You were an only child?

J.H.: Yes. CBA: So they pretty much spoiled you with comics and toys?

J.H.: Yes. [chuckles] CBA: When did you decide you wanted to become a comic book artist?

J.H.: As I said, I was drawing the characters out of the books. Some of them I can’t recall, but I was completely blown away by The Micronauts. The story was really cool, and I was very impressed by that title.

Then a friend of mine said, “If you like this, you need to see this other book.” It was Uncanny X-Men by Claremont and Byrne. So I saw that and was also blown away by that. That was pretty much all it took.

“This is what I want to do.” So, even as a little kid, I knew I wanted to draw comics.

CBA: Did you go to a particular high school for art?

J.H.: Not really. I had basic art in high school and stuff like that.

What probably influenced me the most in what I’m doing with comics is in the design aspects of the material. For two years in high school, I took an advertising art design class, which focused more about not the quality of the drawing, but the thoughts and the ideas behind the drawing, and it made you think about what you were putting down more. I’d say that was probably my biggest influence. We do all this crazy design stuff in Promethea which has become almost second nature to me, because a lot of that class taught me about thinking and realizing an unusual concept that would be in your head. I just kind of naturally applied that to my comics work.

CBA: What happened after high school? Did you go into comics right away, or try something else?

J.H.: I kept trying to get into comics, but breaking in, as everyone knows, was extremely hard. There are very few people that bounce in overnight and become successful. So I had to keep working as a waiter, a job I held for quite a few years. I just kept doing that, and also drawing practice pages on the side and trying to show them to professionals at conventions.

CBA: So you’d take the annual drive to the San Diego Comic Convention?

J.H.: Oh, yeah! [laughs] CBA: What was the first break you received?

J.H.: Well, it was kind of interesting, because certainly after I met my wife, I was taking all these practice pages and showing them to different editors at conventions. It would be kind of weird because the editors would say, “Oh, we want to see more of this.” Then I would do more of what they requested, come back the next year, and they’d tell me that’s not what they wanted to see anymore. It was very frustrating. So I just decided, “I’m going to start drawing the way I want to draw,” and started showing that stuff around. One year at WonderCon up in Oakland, I showed some of the work to Howard Chaykin, and he really, really liked what he saw. He COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

JUNE 2003

seemed really impressed by it. But at the same time he was quite critical, which was actually very good because he’s a really important person to learn from. So he took my stuff over to the DC table and said, “Hey, somebody look at this guy. Give him something to do.” He even said he’d be willing to write something for me to do (which didn’t happen until quite a few years later). But the end result was people saw what I could do, and saw that Howard liked what he saw, so people handed me their business cards. So I was just persistent after that about calling all these people. Bugging them to death and hoping they’d call me back.

CBA: Did your wife know she was marrying a struggling artist?

J.H.: Oh, yes.

CBA: But she’s supported you all the way?

J.H.: Absolutely.

CBA: So what was the first major assignment you had? Chase was the first ongoing book you had for a while, right?

J.H.: Yes. CBA: Who was the editor for that?

J.H.: Eddie Berganza.

CBA: That got you more work at DC? J.H.: Yes. Well, actually, just before the Chase stuff happened, it was interesting because I had done some small stuff here and there like a Batman fill-in, I did a Batman Annual… Judge Dredd, which they actually put me down to be the regular guy on that, but when Andy Helfer quit writing it after #12, I thought it might be better not to work with someone else and just leave and find another assignment.

So that title continued without me. I can’t remember who took over after I left.

CBA: Was it strange working on Judge Dredd? That’s a British comic book, right?

J.H.: Yes. It was cool. I mean, Judge Dredd is a really cool character when handled properly, and I think Andy had a really good grasp of what to do with the character, and he wrote pretty cool stuff. Then I also did a Legends of the Dark Knight book, and all that took place before Chase. So I did quite a bit of little pieces of stuff before Chase, but Chase was still the project where people really started taking notice of my work.

CBA: With Chase, did you get to do whatever you wanted? You did designs and contributed to the story….

J.H.: Right, exactly. Even though sales-wise it didn’t do well, and it didn’t have much support as far as advertising and promotion, so there was a lot of people that weren’t aware of it until it was cancelled.

CBA: But now you had a body of work to show around?

J.H.: Yes. The people who did see Chase, apparently really loved what we did with it. I still get e-mails and people coming up to me at cons saying, “Oh, that Chase book was so great!” People discovered it after the fact, and I think that helped propel people recognizing my name. Even though it didn’t sell very well, it has longevity, I think, as a competent body of work.

CBA: So while you were doing Chase, you were first paired with inker Mick Gray?

J.H.: Actually, I worked with Mick before that. After Judge Dredd, he and I got together. I did all that Batman work with him, as well as a bunch of other little things in-between there.

CBA: Did an editor pair you two up, or did you guys just became friends and decide to become a team?

J.H.: It was pretty much me pushing for it. I just wanted that feel Mick was so adept at giving my work. He did a couple sample pieces over some drawings I did, to show me what he could do, but we became friends way before this. I just loved this approach and convinced him to work with me. From that point on, I worked very diligently with all the editors. They would call me up and… for example, the Flash Annual that I did back in ’96. [laughs] They called me up and said they wanted me to do it, but they’d hired the inker before they’d hired the penciler. I was like, “What?” I wanted Mick.

They’re like, “Oh, we already have the inker assigned.” I’m like, “Well, that doesn’t make sense. You should hire the penciler first and get his opinion. Well, I’m not going to do it without Mick.” They ended up calling me back and giving me what I wanted, so I just held firm in the negotiation stage until people just accepted that if they wanted my pencils, Mick came with me. [laughter] June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

CBA: What does Mick have that other inkers don’t have when they work over your pencils?

J.H.: He’s very faithful to what I put down. It’s kind of hard to put my finger on it. He’s super-precise, crisp, and really good. I’ve had a lot of guys ink my stuff before, and they were good, but there was something missing. Some of the precision, based on what was there in the pencils, was gone. My pencils are pretty tight. If I were to go and fill in all my blacks with pencil, you could probably print a comic straight from the pencils, they’re so tight. So I really needed somebody who was willing to put that kind of effort into capturing what was there, and he was good at that, so we’re a team.

CBA: Did you try inking your own work in the beginning?

J.H.: Yes, on a couple of the independent things I did, I was inking myself, but the stuff wasn’t as good as what I can do inking myself now. Because I just wasn’t very proficient. It was a bit messy. I think it had more to do with not necessarily how good of an inker I was, but how good of an artist I was. It had to do with how well I could draw, period. I’ve grown so much more as an artist since those earlier days that the stuff I ink now, I’m pretty happy with, because I think I’ve come quite a ways in the good drawing side of things that I can pull off… I don’t think inking myself now ever looks like what I do with Mick, just because he’s got a different look, more polished. But the

Above: Cover art by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray for the third trade paperback collection of Promethea. Courtesy of JHW3. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Below: JHW3 gives this Promethea

#25 cover the Winsor McKay treatment. Note the characters populating the jury boxes.

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

76

direction I’m looking at now for a lot of my art is a more organic kind of feel, so I’m really at capturing that sort of stuff in ink. For example, in the Métal Hurlant #3 story I did is a good example of that.

CBA: Who wrote that story?

J.H.: Alexandro Jodorowsky.

CBA: How did you get this job?

J.H.: They approached me quite a while ago expressing interest in working with me, then they got me this ten-page story, and I just worked on it slowly until I got it done, and that’s pretty much it. I’m probably going to do be doing more work for them, actually. And other things I’ve inked myself. Almost all the covers I’ve been doing at Marvel over the last couple years, I’ve been inking myself.

CBA: When you were working at DC, were you inspired to do Batman or some other character? Or did that after a while just fade away? I mean, you grew up basically a super-hero fan.

J.H.: Yes. I’d say out of all the real popular characters, the “Big Gun” characters, Batman and Superman, are probably my favorites.

CBA: At DC, were you trying out for the “Big Gun” books?

J.H.: Yes. It’s not like I sought out the Batman editors or anything like that, but if something was offered to me, I was very excited to do it. When I got the Legends of the Dark Knight assignment, that was really cool. I love the Batman character, he’s always cool to draw.

CBA: Who would you say is your biggest influence right now?

J.H.: I don’t know. It’s hard to pin down now. A few years ago, I could rattle off a couple of names, but now I’m just looking at all kinds of art, and my eyes are all over the place. I’m influenced from fine art to European comic artists to independent comic artists like some of the Fantagraphics stuff. I’m just all over the place.

CBA: Is the a result of working with Alan, that you’ve opened up more, because of the work you’re doing on Promethea?

J.H.: No, I think it was there already. It’s just that working on Promethea has allowed me to explore different avenues. But I was jazzed about that approach to comics art way before getting the book. But Promethea has allowed me to dabble in a lot of different things, which in a way pushes me farther as far as stretching my influences goes, because I’m always looking for something else that will be exciting.

CBA: Do you feel like this book really puts you to the test?

That every script is a challenge?

J.H.: Oh, yes. Absolutely.

CBA: Sometime you get the script and don’t have any idea what you’re going to do until you start drawing it?

J.H.: Sometimes it’s that way, or sometimes Alan and I will talk about upcoming issues, and he’ll tell me what he wants to do as far as the story, and I’ll start the ideas in my head about the visuals and I’ll tell him my ideas, and that starts him writing. It’s kind of like a little circle. For example, the Kabbalah Quest storyline: When he first proposed that storyline to me, I was thinking, “Okay, these characters are going to be entering a different reality each issue.

Each issue should reflect that somehow to really hit home to the reader that they are now someplace else. That’s when I came up with the idea of using a wide range of different looks and styles and feels, and told Alan that, and he loved the idea.

So as the issues were coming up, like the Van Gogh issue, for example, the Impressionism, I told Alan I wanted to do the issue as an Impressionistic paint-

ing to capture that look, so he would write catering to that. His script would convey the approach I was taking. So I thought that was pretty cool.

CBA: Was there another artist attached to Promethea before you?

J.H.: Well, there had been some preliminary design drawings done

by Alex Ross. I think there is a drawing or two by Gene Ha. But I know Gene wasn’t attached to Promethea. I think it was for some advertising or design concept stuff. The publisher was actually looking for a big-name artist to put on the book, but for whatever reason, they couldn’t get anybody to commit. Throughout that whole time frame, Alex Ross had seen stuff that I’d done, as did Todd Klein, and they kept pushing my name. And I didn’t even know these people!

And so WildStorm finally said, “Okay, we’ll show this guy’s stuff to Alan.” So they contacted me and I sent them a stack of comics, some issues of Chase and stuff like that. They went over to talk to Alan and showed it to him and he said, “Yup, this is the guy.” So things just proceeded from there.

CBA: Do you remember being happy about hearing the news?

J.H.: Oh yes! It was pretty daunting at first, so when they first called to make the offer, it took a few phone calls before I said yes, actually.

CBA: Were you playing hard to get?

J.H.: A little bit, but also at the same time it was a daunting prospect. I would be working with Alan Moore! Promethea was one of a line of books especially important to him, so I knew the importance of the assignment, and it was kind of scary. But at the same time, it was very exciting to consider.

CBA: Did you have any idea at the beginning that this was going to be the most personal book of the ABC books he was working on?

J.H.: No, I had no idea. I don’t think Alan knew either. [laughs] It’s one of those things that just happens, y’know? Just like when I worked on Chase, with my writing partner, when we created that, we did it just to get him a job as a writer, to get him into comics, because he always wanted to write comics. It ended up becoming a very personal thing. We put a lot of heart and soul into it, and I think that COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

somehow translated to the people who read it, and that’s why I think people like it so much. They could feel the effort and the care that we put into it. I think that’s what’s happened with Promethea, too.

CBA: Was Chase one of the things Alan liked with your work?

That you had a strong female protagonist?

J.H.: To be honest, I’ve never had the guts to ask him, “Why me?”

One of these days I’ll have to ask him about that, but I don’t want to come across like I’m fishing for compliments from him or something. [laughs] CBA: Did it bother you at the beginning when people were saying, “Tom Strong is like Superman and Promethea is Wonder Woman.” A kind of snap analysis which can belittle a book, don’t you think?

J.H.: I think so, to some degree, but at the same time, it’s not surprising people would make those kinds of comparisons, for several different reasons. One, Alan was creating a hero universe filled with archetypes. Then the fact that it’s Alan Moore who has got such a huge reputation behind him that anything he does is going to be highly speculated about. So, to some degree it doesn’t surprise me people would look at it from a more cynical angle. I think that if it had been any other writer, it wouldn’t have gotten nearly the speculation it did.

CBA: But your book at the beginning might have been the one that people might not have thought that much of because they didn’t know who you were, but in the long run it’s actually blown people away, what you’ve done. Are you proud of that?

J.H.: Yes! Anytime I can convert people into digging what I do, I can’t help but to feel gratified.

CBA: In designing Promethea, what were you trying to achieve?

What books were you looking at? What was your inspiration?

J.H.: Well, it was an interesting thing. WildStorm had sent me over a couple of the designs, like the Alex Ross design, which actually I ended up using for Margaret.

CBA: You mean the cover Alex Ross did for the first issue?

J.H.: The character Margaret, the one that tends to float around and June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

she’s completely naked with wraps of cloth floating around? She wears a Greek warrior helmet, but it’s tilted back on her head like you would see from old depictions of some of gods and goddesses? That’s an Alex Ross design. So I really liked that, but didn’t think it was appropriate for what Alan was describing to me in the script. So I ended up using Alex’s design for one of the other characters, because it fit better. But as far as my interpretation of the current Promethea, based on Alan’s scripts, he wanted a warrior-like woman, armored, goddess-like. In the design process, I always confer with my wife, so she and I both sat down and one day just went over all the descriptions Alan had, and detail by detail added stuff to what he was saying, based on his thoughts. So the overall effect we were trying to get was a combination of Greek and Egyptian styles combined into one. For example, her headpiece (which she no longer has) had wings coming off of it. A lot of the old chariot drivers would have these headpieces that would have wings on them and stuff like that, not nearly as exaggerated as we did it, little bits and pieces of things combined into one.

CBA: Is there a significance to Promethea’s tattoo?

J.H.: We thought all the tattoos should be symbolic of where she came from historically. For example, the tattoo on the front of her leg was a Thoth, which is one of the gods that helped in her creation in #1. Then the back tattoo, being the winged scarab, it’s a symbol of the afterlife in Egypt, so we thought that was very appropriate. The new version of Promethea, she no longer has the leg tattoo, and the back tattoo is now the sun symbol, which has been associated with the character ever since #1.

CBA: In terms of guest-stars, is José Villarrubia going to do more?

J.H.: I have no idea. At this point, I don’t think so. I think I’ll probably be pretty much handling everything up until the end.

CBA: But you enjoyed working with José?

J.H.: Oh, absolutely! Jose is a very good friend of mine. All of the Marvel stuff that I do, all the covers I’ve been doing over there, we’ve worked on those together.

CBA: Wasn’t Neil Gaiman supposed to write something at one point for Promethea?

J.H.: I have no idea. There are rumors, talks going around, of different people giving their interpretations of the characters. I mean, that could still happen after Alan is done with what he wants to do with the characters, but I have no confirmation of any of that stuff that was flying around.

CBA: Do you feel like you have any input in the stories?

J.H.: A little bit. I think my input has a lot to do with the visual concepts I can bring to it.

If I think of something interesting visually, I will talk to Alan about it and see what he thinks, and then, once we agree, do it.

He’s pretty much a visual writer, so talking him about that sort of stuff ahead of time—before he actually writes something— affects the way he writes it. So, in that regard, I definitely feel I have an input over the direction of the story.

CBA: How does the process work? When he sends you a script, do you usually read it, then call him to ask him to elaborate more on details, or does he ask you to research something?

J.H.: A lot of times, if it’s dealing with something very specific, there will be some research involved, which my wife helps me out on that, too (otherwise I’d never get anything done!).

She does all the research for the

Inset center: JHW3 painted this battle sequence for Promethea #24. Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Below: JHW3 penciled and Mick Gray inked this cover for Promethea #26. Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

77

Above: JHW3 contributed covers

to the new Marvel series, The Crew. This example will sport the fourth issue. The artist is also drawing the covers for The Inhumans, Weapon X, Nightwing, The Inquisitor, and others. Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

78

book. Talking to Alan once I get the scripts, it’s pretty much not that necessary, but if there’s something I’m not clear about (which is very rare, as he’s always very clear in his scripts, what he’s looking for), we’ll discuss that. Whenever I make changes, as far as layouts are concerned, I’ve never had the need to call him. He’s very open to whatever I want to do. He’ll quite frequently have a long description of some way-out concept, but then at the end he’ll always write, “If you see it differently, go for it.”

CBA: Do you work closely with the colorist, Jeremy Cox? J.H.: Yes, very much so. It’s the designer in me that forces me to consider, on everything I work on, when I’m in the concept stage, before drawing anything, that the color always plays an important role to me in the way I’m thinking about a piece or a page or whatever. So when I draw all this stuff, I have certain ideas in mind, and have to convey that to Jeremy so that he understands what I was thinking when I did such-and-such. Also, with Promethea, in a lot of ways, especially with all the magic stuff, color plays a very important role, and I have to convey all that to Jeremy, as well. So, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of things where I come up with a page design and the certain graphic I might be using has a specific color design to it because that’s what’s in my head. So I always do a block of color notes, either on photocopies or I type them out, which I then send to Jeremy. Then he does his thing, and I look at the pages online before he turns them in, and we go over the fine little details to get any

corrections that we need to do. That’s how that process goes.

CBA: What’ve been your favorite covers for Promethea?

J.H.: It’s always the one that I just did. [laughs] One thing I love about working on Promethea, is every cover is so drastically different from the previous one, so every time we do a new one, it’s always refreshing, so that’s the one that sticks in your mind the most, the one you just did.

CBA: You’re penciling, inking, and then having them colored digitally?

J.H.: Yes. Whatever is required to get the desired effect. Most of the stuff is pen-&-ink. Or, for example, #25 is hand-painted. But generally a lot of the covers are based on notes or design ideas we have.

CBA: Was the Van Gogh one painted?

J.H.: Yes, that was hand-painted. All the work in that issue was hand-painted except for the figure work, which was digitally colored so they had a consistency with previous issues. All of the flashback sequences in the current issue were hand-painted by me. All the graytone issue of Promethea, #22, I did all the painted sequences to that, all hand-painted.

CBA: So how long does it take you to usually do an issue?

J.H.: If it’s just pencils, it’s roughly a page a day. If I’m doing pencils and inks and color, like the painted color stuff, I can almost do a page a day, but not quite.

CBA: Is Promethea on a deadline, or is it basically Alan always keeps you busy?

J.H.: It’s pretty much on a deadline. We try to have the book out every other month, or as close to that as possible. A lot of times, as far as getting stuff from Alan, I have to call him when I know I’m going to need it. He needs to know that I’m ready to do the work.

CBA: Does Alan verbally explain to you in detail what he’s going through when he’s performing the magic rituals and all that stuff, or is it there in the script?

J.H.: It’s pretty much there in the script. Occasionally we’ll get into conversations about what he’s got to do to prepare for such-and-such a point in the story, but we don’t talk about that a heck of a lot.

Some stuff, he’s very open about it, but at the same time, I’m not going to pry. If he wants to talk to me about it, that’s cool, and I’m glad to discuss it with him, but I don’t feel comfortable pressing the subject with him, because it’s a private, personal thing.

CBA: Sure, but at the same time, a lot of people think of magic as being something dark. But with Alan presenting it, it’s a selfdiscovery kind of thing, developing this awareness of what’s going on around you. Do you relate to that?

J.H.: Yes, absolutely. Magic has been very maligned over history, that it is the dark arts and all that kind of bullcrap. It has a lot to do with the political perspective. I think it was labeled dark because they want to keep it in the dark. They don’t want the general public… I don’t know. Lots of organizations out there want to keep this sort of stuff out of society, I guess you could say. So the general public has kind of taken these phrases such as the dark, the occult, giving it negative phrases and labels, and just automatically saying it’s evil, but that’s not accurate at all. Does that make sense?

CBA: Sure! When I’m reading the comic book—and I’m sure that you get it from a lot of readers—I don’t necessarily get it, but I understand the quest, the journey of discovery, that one has to make the trip to learn, to find yourself, to find your place in life.

J.H.: Right!

CBA: That’s what I love about Promethea. She represents a challenge.

J.H.: Yes. That’s really great, George.

CBA: Alan told me #12 is the cleverest thing he’s ever done.

J.H.: Yes, he’s said that to me, too.

CBA: For a guy who’s done so much stuff, what do you think when you hear that?

J.H.: It’s a trip to hear it from Alan, with such an impressive body of work as he does, to say something like that. It’s hard to put into words how that makes me feel. I look at the issue every once in a while, and it’s pretty impressive, the way whole thing works. In some ways, I wish it could have been published the way it was put together, because all the pages actually form one big, psychedelic panorama mind-trip, and it would have been cool if they’d have printed a poster of it. But it would have been cool if they could have found a way to COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

print it where people could have unfolded it in its entirety.

CBA: Do you think these stories read better as a collection?

J.H.: I think so. That’s one thing that’s cool about it, what Alan can pull off. For example, the Kabbalah Quest. Each chapter is one small part of a greater whole, but yet each chapter had something in it for you to discover in its own right. A lot of Alan’s work tends to be like that. Even when Watchmen came out, the individual issues were great, but the work as a whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. A lot of Alan’s work tends to be like that, for some reason. I think it’s because his work is so multi-layered.

CBA: Of all you’ve done with him, the Kabbalah Quest, was perhaps the most complex. A lot of readers were confused; they didn’t know where it was going. Then, once #23 came out, it’s this real emotional ending. Did you want readers to wait until the end and for it to explain itself?

J.H.: No, it was frustrating for me in some regards, because some people were giving up on the book….

CBA: They were getting fidgety. [laughs] J.H.: Yeah, some people just didn’t have the patience, though some stuck with it. Promethea did lose a lot of readers. But, talking with Alan about it, he thought we would have lost a lot more readers than we actually did, so he was happy about that. [laughs] CBA: So, hopefully you’ll get those former readers back, once the collection comes out?

J.H.: Yes, I hope so. Alan did say he really thinks that a lot of the people who gave up on it will come back to it and end up getting something out of it they hadn’t realized was there. He’s probably right. He usually is. [laughs] CBA: Was this your favorite of all the work done with Alan so far?

J.H.: Yes. I haven’t had the opportunity to work with Alan on any other material. We’ll have to see what comes in the future.

CBA: Alan told me the future of Promethea is going to get a lot darker. Is he alluding to one of the issues you’re doing now?

J.H.: Oh, yes. I think people are going to be surprised, and hopefully, they will like the direction we’re going to take it.

CBA: Are we talking about violence?

J.H.: It’s hard to say, I don’t know if it’s going to be more violent….

CBA: Emotional?

J.H.: It may be emotionally violent. [laughs] Just what’s going to happen to some of the characters. It’s going to be pretty far out.

CBA: Is Promethea the most rewarding and best thing that’s ever happened to you?

J.H.: I think so. Mainly because it’s not just the quality of the work that’s being produced, but how the work has affected who I am. I’m still the same person, but it’s made me gain a different insight into things. It’s hard to describe, really, but I just look at things in a lot of different ways now. The work I’m doing here, I think it’s just the first in an evolution of anything else that I do afterward, on the way to discovering who I am. I’m looking at things in a new way, and I’m now considering new types of stories I’m interested in telling.

Whether I work on a really popular character or create something of my own, I think the work on Promethea is definitely going to have an influence on me well after it’s done.

Above: This panel from JHW3’s one-page contribution to the recent 800th issue of Action Comics (Apr. ’03)—based on a photograph depicting longtime DC Comics publisher Harry Donenfeld (left) talking with the radio voice of Superman, Bud Collyer—was altered at the request of DC’s editorial department. Donenfeld was made to vaguely resemble Billy Batson and Collyer given a moustache with tousled hair, now speaking into a WHIZ radio microphone. Art ©2003 JHW3.

Superman ©2003 DC Comics.

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CBA Appreciation

ABC and Me

Digital artist/photographer José Villarrubia on his labors of love Having just finished reading Promethea #25, the final chapter of the phenomenal “Kabbalah Quest” Alan and J.H. began almost two years ago, I feel totally privileged in having been a part of this important series, especially considering the fact only the extraordinary Charles Vess and I have been guest artists in the series. It is an honor and a great satisfaction to have worked with Alan in what is currently his most personal work. In addition, J.H., Mick, Jeromy, and Todd were absolutely delightful and cooperative.

It all began four years ago when I approached Alan about doing a theatrical adaptation of his story, “The Mirror of Love.” Since then, we’ve talked on the phone once in a while, and after my graphic

Above: Actor, singer, and 1996 Mr. Gay U.S.A., Douglas Bayne in a digital illustration by José Villarrubia. Douglas also modeled—along with Audrey, seen opposite—for the digital artist/photographer in the poignant Promethea #7 (Apr. ’00) story, “Rocks and Hard Places,” where they played Promethea’s male alter-ego Bill Woolcott and Promethea herself in the issue’s realistic sequence. This 1996 image is by José and starring Douglas, reproduced from an 8” x 11” dye sublimation print.

Courtesy of & ©2003 J. Villarrubia.

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novel, Veils, was published by Vertigo in, Alan told me that the aesthetic I had developed for it—a combination of photographs, paintings and computer-generated imagery—would be suitable for Promethea’s surreal Inmateria. A few months later, he conceived of the appropriate chapter, a back-story of a previous incarnation of Promethea that was really a gay comic book artist who found himself transformed into a transsexual Promethea. Pretty outrageous stuff, but I was definitely up to the challenge. Alan asked what type of images I wanted to do, and I told him that I pictured creating mythical type of illustrations, in the vein of most of the fine artwork that I had done until then. In particular, I wanted to do an image of Prometheus Bound, a subject that I had done before as a large oil painting and was very willing to revisit, given that the heroine of this comic book was named after the Greek god. Alan figured out a way to make the regular artwork in the series transform into photographic characters fitting the story.

I also suggested—and sent to Alan—acclaimed early 20th

century illustrator Maxfield Parrish’s painting of Prometheus as inspiration for the style of the sequence: a surreal juxtaposition of photographic imagery in very saturated colors and lush textures.

Parrish’s work also exhibits a kind of chaste eroticism, and in this particular image of homoeroticism, appropriate for the secretive and repressed tone of the story. Curiously enough, Alex Ross had also incorporated this image by Parrish, changing the gender of the figure from male to female instead and using the costume for one of his preliminary designs for Promethea. A sketch of this was reproduced in The Comics Journal. This costume—basically a Greek helmet—and a swirling piece of fabric strategically covering the naughty bits) was used by J.H. for one of the previous Prometheas, the one that fought in World War One. Casting Promethea was relatively easy. I knew that my friend Audrey Causilla, a classical concert pianist who had modeled for me many times before, would look the part and was able to play the role effectively.

The rest of the cast was a combination of models and friends, all of which were very enthusiastic about participating in such a ground-breaking project.

Douglas Bayne, actor/singer/ performer (chosen Mr. Gay U.S.A. in 1996), played Promethea’s alter ego, Bill Woolcott. Tom Burke, also a performer and pianist, had the enviable task of acting in the double role of Dennis Drucker and his fantasy alter-ego Dirk Dangerfield and see himself aged from his early twenties through mid-forties to midseventies. The hardest thing for Tom was to pose wearing David Page’s straightjacket. Tom got very claustrophobic, and that anguished look in his eyes in the picture where he is bound, is pretty authentic. Another piece of trivia is that David Page’s creations <http://www.davidpageartist.com> were featured in the recent motion picture Hannibal. The last important role to fill, that of Sophie, was played by Jeannie Lobato, an art student at the time at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Casting a Latina in this role was a stroke of luck, since Alan had not revealed at this point that Sophie’s long-gone father was, as a matter of fact, a Hispanic.

Alan made an exception and, so I could get a head start, phoned me with a detailed description of my sequence, instead of sending a finished script. I scribbled it down in several pieces of paper and got to work right away. A couple weeks later, I got a fax with the same information written in Alan’s own words. I worked frantically for about six weeks to get the work done. I wanted to include everything that Alan wanted in the artwork, but in addition I also want to include another layer of information that made it my own. I did all the shooting in Baltimore, and my friend Aleksey Zolotaryov COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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constructed the snake and moths in 3-D for me. I then took all of the materials with me to Spain, when I visited my family for Christmas.

I got everyone involved in helping me out while I was there: my mother, my siblings and my friend David Drake, who spent the holidays with us. Their advice and support proved to be invaluable.

When I came back to the States, Alan had finished the script, and I tweaked the images to suit certain details in the dialogue. Blending it with the artwork by J.H., Mick and Jeromy was a breeze, since they all accommodated me by making the drawn part of the pages fit my art. J.H. even traced part of my photographs to make the transformation of the characters smooth and believable and Jeromy matched my color palette digitally. Todd and I discussed a special kind of lettering that would not obscure parts of the artwork, since the word balloons were made translucent. All and all, a labor of love.

After this issue came out, J.H. asked me to paint in watercolor the bottom part of the pages of Promethea #12, the Tarot issue. This was a big challenge since I had to blend my coloring with Jeromy’s, but we pulled it off! And later he asked me to do the finishes for two covers, one inspired be ubiquitous Maxfield Parrish and the other by Salvador Dalí. Both of the artists’ styles perfectly suit the tone of the series. J. H. provided me with very tight pencil sketches for both and I finished them in Photoshop.

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My other minor contribution to Promethea has been doing painted finishes over penciled sketches for the hardback collections of the series. This was Alan’s idea: getting me to render the work of J.H. as well as that of Chris Sprouse in Tom Strong and Gene Ha in Top Ten, would lend the collections a unified look. As talented as Gene and Chris are, I have enjoyed working with J.H. on these the most, since he is my friend and we have a very good rapport about what he would like me to try in each cover. I have painted the three so far in a combination of methods, but mostly watercolor with Photoshop. I look forward to painting the fourth one since it will feature J.H.’s new design for Promethea.

When all the promotion for the ABC books came out a few years ago, I was one of the fans that could not wait to get the books. I have to confess that the first issues of both Promethea and Tom Strong moved to the point of tears (as did Top Ten #8).

Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that that I have contributed to these projects, since deep down, I am of course still the same fan that I have always been. But I feel I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to contribute to the Alan Moore oeuvre, for which I will always be thankful.

Above: Audrey Causilla, classical concert pianist, also poses for photographer/digital artist José Villarrubia, as in this 1995 photo, reproduced from an 8” x 10” dye sublimation print. Courtesy of and ©2003 José Villarrubia.

Left inset: Alan Moore and José Villarrubia. Courtesy of José.

Photo by Melinda Gebbie.

Below: In August, Top Shelf releases the first U.S. edition of Alan Moore’s 1996 novel, Voice of the Fire, featuring color plates by José Villarrubia and this beautiful jacket design by Chip Kidd.

Courtesy of José Villarrubia ©2003 Alan Moore.

—José Villarrubia Baltimore, January 2003 81

CBA Interview

The Strong and Supreme Artist Chris Sprouse on his collaborations with Alan Moore Inset right: Chris Sprouse shared an astonishing array of artwork with CBA, including quite a bit of unpublished material, and among those repros, we found this great group shot of the Family Strong and associates, detailed here. Art ©2003 Chris Sprouse. Characters ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Below: Portrait of the artist in repose. Photograph by Xan Sprouse and courtesy of the artist.

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Conducted by George Khoury Transcribed by Steven Tice Though he worked in professional comics prior to his association with writer Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse’s artistry quickly captured the attention of the entire comics world on Supreme and, most significantly on Tom Strong and that ABC Comics title’s multiple spin-offs. A humble, grateful and eminentlytalented artist, Chris was interviewed via telephone in late 2002 and he copyedited the final text.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from, Chris?

Chris Sprouse: The Washington D.C. area, in Virginia, about 15 minutes from D.C. CBA: You just moved to Ohio?

Chris: About three years ago I moved to Ohio.

CBA: When did you get into comics?

Chris: Professionally, in 1989. But as an art form, when I was really young, somewhere between three and six years old. We—my older brother, younger sister, and our parents—lived overseas, in India. My father worked for the U.S. government and was stationed in New Delhi. There was a big flea market where you could go and buy comics. Basically, people working for the American embassy, and other embassies as well, would keep coming back, and it was like a lending library. You bought your first couple of comics and then came back and dropped them off the next week to exchange them for a new batch. It’s kind of scary to think about some of the stuff we had.

We had early runs of The Avengers, Fantastic Four, stuff like that,

from the 1960s. Kids basically just read them, took them back, and picked up others they hadn’t yet read. The first comics that we owned were foreign comics, which my parents bought. We were able to get all kinds of European comics, or more specifically British translations of them. The one that stuck with me was Tintin. We had a complete set of Hergé’s Tintin—complete at that time, at least, and that’s what I really got into. My brother got into super-heroes, the Marvel stuff, but I was into Tintin, Asterix, and stuff like that.

CBA: Your father was in the diplomatic service?

Chris: He worked for the General Accounting Office at the U.S. embassy. I don’t know whether he was auditing the embassy or auditing some overseas project. He spent a lot of time going out on trips, inspecting dams.

CBA: How long did you live overseas?

Chris: Three years.

CBA: When you got back to the States, did you pursue your love for comics right away?

Chris: No, actually, I was more into sci-fi stuff like Ultraman, Star Trek comics, and other stuff like that.

CBA: The Gold Key comics?

Chris: Yes. My brother kept buying the super-hero stuff, and eventually, in the late ’70s, he showed me—well, we got the Star Wars adaptation but even though it was Marvel, it was still a sci-fi comic.

But in ’78, The Micronauts came out, and my brother said, “Hey, maybe you’ll like this. It’s super-heroes, but it’s sci-fi stuff. It has kind of neat art.” I was hooked after that. I collected The Micronauts, because I fell in love with Michael Golden’s artwork.

CBA: So when you were in high school, did you pursue more art?

Chris: Yes. I had always been drawing. Since we were overseas, my dad would basically sit down at night and draw with us, because, as I should have explained earlier, there was no TV over there, and not much else for kids to do. We couldn’t go out because there were snakes and stuff in the yard. We were pretty much trapped inside.

CBA: Was your dad a pretty good artist, too?

Chris: It’s hard to remember. As far as I know, he just drew for us kids the way a lot of parents do. We would say, “Dad, draw me an airplane,” And he could draw one. I don’t have any of that stuff left, so I can’t say, but I haven’t seen him draw since, so I don’t think he really was an artist. My mom had a lot of creative stuff going on.

She doesn’t really draw, but she does craft-type things.

CBA: What were your influences for your art style? I can’t see anybody who draws similarly to the way you draw.

Chris: Michael Golden was a big influence. Like I said, Micronauts got me hooked on him, and since ’78, I’ve been collecting everything he’s done. I didn’t collect too many series; I collected artists I liked. So I’ve got Golden’s work, and that’s what inspires me most, I guess. But a lot of ’70s guys like Howard Chaykin, Marshall Rogers, Walt Simonson—guys from the late ’70s, when those guys were getting in, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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that’s when I really started to get into it.

CBA: Do you appreciate Art Adams’ work as much as Golden’s?

Chris: Not as much as Golden. I like Art Adams a great deal as a person, but because I was at that age when I first encountered Golden, I’m still more into Golden’s work. I did like Art’s stuff, and as a matter of fact, probably pieces people don’t expect, like that X-Factor issue inked by Bob Wiacek. But yeah, I’ve got a ton of Art’s stuff, I just never was into him as much as those ’70s guys. I hope he’s not offended by that, but the ’70s was when I first fell in love with the art of guys like Chaykin, Mike Nasser, and the rest. They’re not necessarily all artists who worked at Continuity. But those artists who all had unique styles back then (at least unique to me).

Now I know a little bit more about where they were coming from.

Golden was really into Steranko, but at the time I’d never seen Steranko’s work.

CBA: After you finished with high school, did you go into art school?

Chris: I wanted to draw comics, but my parents talked me into going to a “real” school. “Why don’t you go to school and get a decent education in case this comic thing doesn’t work out.” So I went to a small college called James Madison University. It turned out that’s where Matt Wagner went for a while. My final portfolio didn’t have any real comic work, just a lot of painting and drawing. I went to become a graphic design major, but became disenchanted because all my design classes seemed to be grooming me for a career where I wouldn’t actually get to draw, which is all I wanted to do.

CBA: When did you graduate from college?

Chris: ’88.

CBA: What was your first comic?

Chris: Hammerlocke #1. That was 1989. It was a mini-series for DC. CBA: Did you have a hard time finding a job in comics?

Chris: No, actually, it was very simple. I mailed in samples after seeing ads saying that DC needed artists. I mailed in four pages of continuity, a Mister Miracle action sequence. Two weeks later, I got a call back from DC, and they said they would send me work. Another two weeks went by and then I was actually working on my first job with them. I’ve since found out that the submission editor’s desk had just been cleaned off, and I was lucky enough to be the first person to send in samples that week. They had a hundred the week before, then mine came in first thing on Monday. I was very, very lucky.

CBA: You were at DC a long time. Did you enjoy the books you did over there?

Chris: I loved Legionnaires. That was a fun book for me. I left after #12 because I was really unhappy with my art. Basically I wanted to spend more time working on it but just couldn’t find the time. It felt like they were really, really strict with the deadlines back then, and the books had to be in a lot earlier than they do now. There was a lot less tolerance for late artists. I can’t remember the details specifically, but it just seemed like I started on the book and suddenly they moved up the shipping date. I think originally it was going to ship in six months or something (which I really needed, because even then I wasn’t very fast), and they pushed it up to three months from when I started, and I lost a lot of lead time. It just went downhill from there. I was late from then on, and the stress just got to be too much. I wanted a break. I think I was holding up other people, including the writers, Tom and Mary Bierbaum. They were doing it Marvel style, sending a plot and they wouldn’t get paid until after I was finished with my part. I was keeping everybody from making money, so the pressure was grinding me down. I needed a break.

CBA: What do you think the appeal is to the Legion books for the comics fan?

Chris: I think it’s because it’s about family. Actually, it’s not quite like the FF, where they’re a real family, but this group of kids get together in their clubhouse as friends and all kinds of strange and unusual people coexisting. Beyond that, I think there’s just some real fun stuff that’s goofy and appealing. For others, like me, it was the sciencefiction aspect. At the time I got into the Legion as a fan (the first Giffen run), they had toned-down costumes and had aliens running around, and spaceships—all that stuff. That appealed to me. I have to imagine that appealed to lots of other people, as well.

June 2003

Above: Chris Sprose’s black-&white line art for the cover of the second Tom Strong collection, courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, Inc.

Inset left: Certainly there’s at least a creative lineage from Alan Moore’s Supremes to the Strongs, if only in the superb delineations of artist Chris Sprouse, who first teamed with the superstar scribe in the Awesome title in 1997. This previously unpublished picture of Supreme, girl sidekick Suprema, and Krypt… I mean, Radar, the Hound Supreme! (What, you think the Dalmatian spots would fool us?). Art ©2003 Chris Sprouse.

Characters ©2003 Awesome Entertainment.

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Above: Courtesy of the penciler, the final page (inked by Al Gordon) intended for Supreme #57 but, after that incarnation of the title was placed in temporary limbo, it was discarded when that issue was reconfigured as Supreme: The Return #1 (May ’99). Art ©2003 Chris Sprouse.

Characters ©2003 Awesome Entertainment.

Inset right: Chris Sprouse pencils and inks sporting what was to be Supreme #57, though delayed and finally released as the cover of Supreme: The Return #1 (May ’99).

Courtesy of the artist. Characters ©2003 Awesome Entertainment.

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As for other DC books, before Legionnaires I did a bunch of other jobs while working on Hammerlocke. I drew a Secret Origins story, a Batman Annual, and I did Justice League Europe with Andy Helfer (who was editing all the Justice League books), who thought I’d be good for the Justice League Quarterly.

CBA: Those were 64-page books. Did it take you long to do that book?

Chris: Actually, I think it was 80 pages.

It was a huge book. It took me forever! Still, it was a lot of fun and it didn’t take me as long as I took on WildC.A.T.S./Aliens! [laughter] CBA: Were you an official member of Blanc Noir or were they just your friends?

Chris: Actually, I met Jason Pearson first when I went up to a meeting while first working on Legionnaires. Jason was working on Legion of Super-heroes at the same time. Jason was looking for an inker and chose Karl Story. I liked Karl’s inks over Jason, and we teamed up for Legionnaires.

Later on, I went to a con and met all of them, and we’ve been friends ever since. They’re just friends, but I sit with them so much at conventions that everybody thinks I’m one of them.

CBA: Do they have a studio?

Do you work with them?

Chris: I just work out of my home. I lived in Virginia up until three years ago, like I said, and they were always in Atlanta, and I just mailed stuff to them. I talk to them on the phone, meet them at conventions, and do stuff through the mail.

CBA: I take it you were a big fan of Star Wars, which led you to do Splinter of the Mind’s Eye? Chris: Yes, that’s right.

CBA: Was that a dream project for you?

Chris: That was definitely a dream come true. That was one of those things I never expected to happen, but I got the job because I knew Terry Austin, who wanted to write a Star Wars story and he asked me to work on it with him. It was tons of fun, though it was pretty hard. I

had to redraw quite a bit. Lucasfilm had to go over it and they had me make changes to about 17 pages in the first issue. So, it went on longer than I expected, and the job got a little grueling towards the end, but it was mostly a lot of fun. Terry and I wanted to do another Star Wars project after that, but that just never happened.

CBA: After that, did you swear off doing licensed characters?

Chris: No, I loved it, actually. I wouldn’t mind doing a Star Trek book because I’m a big fan. I did Aliens, which was a lot of fun as well.

CBA: How did you become part of Supreme? Was #50 a try-out issue or did you pretty much know you were going to join the book?

Chris: I had been working on New Men for three issues with Extreme Studios, whatever the company was called back then— Awesome, Maximum, I don’t remember—and that was getting cancelled. They said, “We don’t know what else we’ve got for you, but in the meantime, do you want to do an issue of Supreme?” I thought, “Well, okay.” I was a little reluctant at first because Alan seemed to be contrasting old-fashioned comic art styles with the modern style, and I didn’t really think my style looked like what was modern or popular at that time, which was Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. I did it not thinking I would do the regular series, because I thought I wouldn’t look right for the sort of stuff Alan was trying to get across. But it was so much fun and the strip was so good I was grateful they offered it to me again, this time as a regular assignment. To that, I said, “Yes!” CBA: You came back with #53. Was there a reason for that interval? Did you just need to catch up?

Chris: I needed to catch up. Maybe #51 and 52 were already under way, so I’m not really sure how it happened. It’s been so long, I don’t remember if somebody else was originally supposed to draw it and dropped out, but I remember the situation was sort of, “Hurry up and get this done,” because it was already late by the time I started.

CBA: But those books were always late, weren’t they?

Chris: Well, #52 was my first regular one, so I really didn’t know.

CBA: How did Al Gordon end up the inker on Supreme? Was he inking New Men? Chris: Yes, he was. He had inked me on my very first published job, which was the Secret Origins story I mentioned earlier.

Hammerlocke was the first job I drew, but it wasn’t printed for another year after that. So, when we were working on Secret Origins, Al and I struck up a friendship, so if I would have a job coming up, either I would ask for him or he’d beat me to it for the inker’s assignment. He’d call up and keep asking me what I was up to. I requested Al Gordon and Karl Story for different jobs because those are the two guys I like to work with the most. I also enjoyed working with Terry Austin—very much so.

CBA: What was your reaction when you were reading the script for Supreme? Were you a big Alan Moore fan before that?

Chris: Yes, I was. I never thought I’d be working with Alan Moore. I felt lucky enough to have worked on Star Wars and Legion of Super-heroes, but my God, Alan Moore? I just didn’t think I was that serious an artist. You know, Alan’s always doing these big name jobs with top-notch collaborators, so I just didn’t think I was up there yet.

Frank Miller and guys like that, yeah, they work with Alan Moore, but me? And there I was doing it!

CBA: Were you happy with your work on Supreme?

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Chris: Oh, yes. I think with just about everything I’ve done, with a few exceptions, it’s been the best that I could do at the time. I look back at it now and cringe, even if it seems like it’s not that long ago.

But, at the time, yes, it was the best I could do. To look at the work now is sort of painful.

CBA: What exactly happened in Supreme #56?

Chris: I don’t know the full story, but I heard stuff through the grapevine.

CBA: When it happened, were you still drawing the series?

Chris: Yes, I had turned in the final page of #57, which became Supreme: The Return #1. We had pretty much just gotten through #57 and Rob Liefeld called up and said something like, “We’re going out of business” basically. They were still putting out books after that, so I always wondered what the heck happened. Nobody ever told us.

A year later, what was Supreme #57 finally got published as issue #1 of Supreme: The Return. I still don’t know the full story. It’s been published, we got the art back, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s that.

It’s done. It would have been nice to do more Supreme stories.

CBA: Did you get as far as #58?

Chris: Yes. I had just gotten the script, which featured a whole legion of alternate Darius Dax characters, but Jim Starlin actually ended up drawing the issue, though I’d actually started to design the characters for that, and I think that’s what I was working on when Rob called and said it was over. I have no pages of actual finished work.

CBA: What happened after Supreme ended? Did Alan contact you again? Did you two talk about doing something else together?

Chris: I went a week without doing anything, if even that long. I hadn’t talked to Alan in that whole time because I thought he was actually done with Awesome. I think he’d pretty much finished what he was doing with them anyway. I didn’t know if he’d found something else or what, but I hadn’t talked with him the entire time. So I called him up after I’d finished #57 just to tell him that it had been a lot of fun to work with him and that I really enjoyed it—I was just calling to be a fanboy, honestly—and Alan just said he had enjoyed it too, and had just come up with some characters he thought I might be good for, one character in particular. All he had at the moment were names, and one was Tom Strong. Later on, he gave me this whole description of Tom Strong’s life and everything he had thought of up to that point about the character. But that took about an hour on the phone to explain. At the end of the conversation, he said, “That’s just off the top of my head. What do you think?” I thought, “Wow! If that’s just off the top of his head, sign me up!” I really wanted to do it because it sounded very cool.

CBA: Did you have a choice?

What if you weren’t interested in Tom Strong?

Chris: I don’t think so. He didn’t really offer anything else. He really didn’t need to, though, because I was hooked on Tom Strong.

CBA: So how did the process work?

Chris: Alan started with sort of a mix of Doc Savage, Tarzan, and Superman elements, then he asked me what I liked to draw, and what I had always wanted to draw but never got the chance to, and then began incorporating some of that in the story. A good example of how Alan did this (though a lot of people

may not notice), is the Timmy Turbo character. Timmy Turbo started out as Alan giving me a chance to do my version of a Tintin/Hergé style of drawing. I like drawing high-tech stuff, guns, spaceships, gadgets, and things like that, but with a strong sci-fi feel, and that was part of what went into Tom Strong, along with a healthy dose of Kirby FF. As it went on, the series became even more hightech, a lot more science-fictiony. Sci-fi elements were always there from the beginning, but he seemed to emphasize that aspect, perhaps because he knew that’s what I wanted to draw. So that was very, very nice.

CBA: How do you normally work with him? Do you call him or does Scott just send you the script and you take it from there?

Chris: Alan sends the scripts to WildStorm and they send them to me. I have called him in the past, but not a lot lately.

Here’s the thing about Alan’s scripts: I just have no questions. Everything is spelled out, and I’ve never had to call him and ask, “What do you mean by this?” or “What exactly are you getting at here?” I always feel like I should call him just to talk, but it’s just a little intimidating, because all I would do is gush and tell him how much I liked the scripts and I’d bug him about what’s coming up next, and ask questions he’s June 2003

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Above: Strong undersea currents in this unpublished piece courtesy of artist Chris Sprouse featuring Tom Strong & Company taking the plunge. Chris tells us, “I drew this because I’ve always wanted to do an undersea story and haven’t yet had the chance.” Art ©2003 Chris Sprouse. Characters ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC. Inset left: The bodacious Tesla Strong in a “red shirt version” model sheet penciled and inked by Chris Sprouse. Be sure to check out the recently released ABC oneshot, The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, a great 64-page special featuring art by an unbelievable array of talent, including Sprouse, Frank Cho, Art Adams, Adam Hughes, and even the incomparable José Luis Garcia-Lopez.

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Above: Tom Strong #18 cover pencils by Chris Sprouse. (Ye Ed took the liberty of deleting all those annoying little “x”s, which is artist lingo for “Ink It Black!”)

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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probably answered a million times about his work—I’d probably just make a big fanboy idiot of myself. Someday, I’d love to talk to him about stuff other than work, but I haven’t gotten a chance yet.

CBA: Tom Strong feels tailor-made for you. Was it fun to design a book from the get-go?

Chris: It was tons of fun. My favorite thing throughout the book is designing new characters. I really go to town doing character design for him. I really do feel like I have a lot of say concerning the way things look in the book. Alan has really not changed anything once we finalized the Tom Strong design, and I’ve had pretty much free reign to do whatever I want. But, having said that, when Alan writes a script, it’s pretty well-described—I’ve only made changes to a few things.

CBA: Did you feel like you were carrying on the mission you guys had started on with Supreme?

Chris: There was a long time between the end of Awesome and when ABC got going, but it was so exciting just reading Alan’s ABC Universe proposal. He detailed the characters and situations, and it took quite a while to receive the first issue’s script, so in that time, I did the WildC.A.T.S./Aliens stuff. There was a little time lag, but by the time I got started, I was really excited about it. The script was so

good, just incredible to read, let alone draw! By the time I got it, it was like, “Wow!” Incredible.

CBA: How many issues of Tom Strong did you have done when the first one came out?

Chris: Probably two at that point, if that many. I was probably finishing up #2 when the first one came out. I’m not really sure.

CBA: Is Tom Strong still considered to be a monthly book?

Chris: No, it’s supposed to be bi-monthly. But we’re not really bi-monthly, thanks to me.

CBA: When you’re on schedule, how many pages can you usually do in a day?

Chris: I try to do four a week. Sometimes I do less. Pages with giant ants attacking 10 or 12 main characters will take me forever.

CBA: You usually don’t ink your own work, right?

Chris: No. I usually only ink my character designs and maybe some pin-ups. Karl Story is the inker on the book.

CBA: Do you do much research for Tom Strong?

Chris: I always have in my work. Sometimes I have no choice.

For example, in #11 and 12, we had 20 or more guest stars. Alan basically said these are mostly existing public domain characters, and told me where I could find them. Then for characters he couldn’t find any reference for himself, he told me to go ahead and make them up.

But for the most part I had friends looking everywhere looking for Golden Age heroes, through hundreds of covers… so, yeah, basically, I had to do research for that. I just had to make up four or five. The research is a lot of fun; it’s something I enjoy.

CBA: When you made up Millennium City, what kinds of influences do you use to do it?

Chris: Alan said, “Don’t look at too many real cities. Just make it up.” I’ve drawn enough cities in all the work I’ve done that it’s something I can easily do, just making it up. The idea was that this city has never existed in our world, so I’m not really basing Millennium City on a real city. While I was working on the first issue, I took a trip to Chicago and saw a lot of really ornate buildings there, and thought, “I’ve got to work some of this stuff in.” I incorporate a lot of things like that, and a friend lent me a book with architectural drawings by Hugh Ferris, which also influenced my thinking, but for the most part I make it up right out of my head. I just try to stick to Alan’s basic description of the city, which was described as incredibly tall with lots of art deco.

CBA: Like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis?

Chris: Exactly. When I was first thinking about the city designs, I got a lot of architectural books and some had designs from Metropolis and I just soaked them in for inspiration also.

CBA: Did you change the look of Timmy Turbo recently? He looks more realistic now.

Chris: I don’t think fans picked up on this, but I talked about it in the notes for The ABC Sketchbook. Alan’s idea was that when Timmy Turbo is used as the main character in his own stories, we decided he needed to be kept in that cartoony, Hergé-like style because the stories are lighter, more humorous; but when he co-stars as a supporting cast member, he’ll be more realistic, reflecting the more dramatic tone of those stories. I don’t think anybody’s really picked up on that, so it’s kind of a shame. But, you’re right, he’s drawn in two styles, and sometimes people ask, “Are there two different styles for Tom Strong?” Because they’re not really sure, so I guess we sort of failed in that respect. But, yeah, if you see the little humorous stories, it’s always going to be in the cartoony style, and in the Tom Strong stories, it’ll be as real as I can get him anyway within the boundaries of my style.

CBA: Does the triangle on Tom’s shirt mean anything?

Chris: Alan just wanted an iconic logo for his chest. Tom’s symbol is sort of our homage to Superman, I guess. Alan wanted some symbol or logo to identify Tom’s vehicles as his, so it’s on his planes, tanks, and whatever. It’s not really a corporate logo, so much as just an identifying logo. We wanted something very simple and… strong.

CBA: I think in the first issue you do him in his pajamas which had all these triangles Chris: Oh, right. I put it on whatever I can think of.

CBA: Is it a family crest?

Chris: Could be. We never really talked about it. It’s the Strong family symbol, I guess, if not a crest. I don’t really know what it COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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means, if it means anything at all. It’s just a very solid, strong symbol CBA: Are there any characters you enjoy drawing more than others, any favorites?

Chris: I really enjoy drawing Tom. I love drawing Solomon, the ape. He’s a lot of fun to draw. I’ve never drawn a lot of animals, especially not gorillas. So at first he started out not looking all that great, and not all that much like a gorilla, anyway, but I hope I’m getting the hang of it.

CBA: You seem to enjoy drawing Tesla a lot, too. She looks pretty sharp sometimes.

Chris: I do (enjoy it, that is).

CBA: Saveen is Tom Strong’s biggest enemy. Is he coming back any time soon?

Chris: He’s dead. [laughs] I actually asked Alan about that myself and he said, “If Saveen comes back, it will only be in a flashback.” He wants to avoid that cliché of the comic book villain constantly returning from the dead. So, Saveen is as dead as you can get. If he comes back, it’s going to be a guy who isn’t actually Saveen, as in #7 where somebody was impersonating him, and it turned out to be a shape-shifting character.

CBA: Who are going to be guest artists on the book?

Chris: Alan sometimes will pick people, sometimes Scott will pick people, sometimes Scott will ask me who I’d like to get. Early on, when we started talking about doing the back-ups on the old flashback stories, Scott asked me who I’d like, and I gave him this big list of all my favorites. Quite a few of them have come to pass. We had Howard Chaykin in #19. Michael Golden is working on a chapter of the Tesla solo story (in The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong). So those are two of my favorite artists.

CBA: Are back-ups usually preplanned?

Chris: I like doing complete issues. I am slow, so I lose time over it. Like, these last three issues—#16, 17, and 18—have been one self-contained, three-part story, and I’ve drawn every page. I just lost a ton of time, and now we need to get a few back-up stories again to allow us to make up the lost time. But it was preplanned, as we were

originally going to have a eight-page back-ups in every issue. I think the fans complained a lot, and I felt weird not doing more of the book, so I’m at least trying to do longer issues, longer segments of issues. And that’s why four of the last five issues are entirely myself.

CBA: How long do you plan to stay on the title?

Chris: Until it’s over. I mean, I hope that’s a good long time from now. I really can‘t imagine working on something else right now. I like the characters, I like everything about it. I think that I’ve never had this much of a part in the creation of a book. I have no plans to leave.

CBA: Are you comfortable with these characters?

Chris: Oh, yes. I think my art’s getting better also. I’m getting better at drawing these particular characters. It’s a really challenging book to draw, and I’ve been drawing things I never thought I’d have to. I’ve never drawn cowboy stuff before, so that’s fun.

It’s keeping me on my toes. I never get bored.

CBA: What’s up in the future?

Chris: I know Alan really likes alternate-universe stories and we have at least one more coming up with Jerry Ordway working on it. There’s also the Tesla solo book, The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, which has Tesla travelling through all these different dimensions, meeting alternate Toms and Teslas. I’m dying to do an underwater story, which they’ve done in Terrific Tales, but not in our book. I’ve been waiting my entire career to do an underwater story, but never got the chance.

I seem to recall Alan or maybe Scott Dunbier saying that Alan likes to write—this book, at least—very spontaneously. I think Alan has an idea where its headed, because he always writes the next issue tag line in the script, but I’m always pleasantly surprised.

I’m having fun just letting him do what he does best, telling a story.

This page: Model sheet designs by Chris Sprouse for various Tom Strong characters. Can you name them all? Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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CBA Interview

Hilary Barta Makes a Splash The wild cartoonist on his Tomorrow Stories collaborations Conducted by George Khoury Transcribed by Steven Tice

Below: Courtesy of the artist, a detail of Hilary Barta’s cover for Tomorrow Stories #7 (June ’00). ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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It’s gotta be said that this field needs a lot more material featuring the manically delightful stylings of Chicago-based cartoonist Hilary Swank, who’s been working in comics since the ’80s, most prominently on the 1988-89 Plastic Man mini-series, Stupid, What the—?!, and others. Though he’s inked a zillion books for Marvel and DC over the years, it’s his humorous drawing ability—so expertly showcased in his collaboration with Alan Moore in Tomorrow Stories, “Splash Brannigan”—that’s simply killer. The artist was interviewed by phone in late 2002, and Hilary copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: When did you get the desire to be a professional?

Hilary Barta: Probably high school, though I was into art before then. My parents were very supportive of creative work in general.

My mom had some notions about inspiring kids and giving them room creatively. She disapproved of the coloring book approach to drawing. She’d read somewhere early on, that if you took the kids’ crayons and took the paper off them and broke them in half, they were less likely to draw outlines and more likely to draw textures, and use the sides of the crayons and things like that. I don’t know if that worked or not, but that’s one of the ideas she had. If she was doing things like that, I’m sure she influenced me in ways I don’t even remember. My parents brought us (I come from a family of seven children, and have three brothers and three sisters) to art museums and the theatre and things like that, exposing us to art. So that was a cultural education.

CBA: Are any of your siblings artists besides you?

Hilary: A number were artists early on. I have two sisters who went to art school, but didn’t pursue it as a career, though they’re still creative. My one sister became a potter and still does that, though she’s also a speech therapist, and that’s really where she spends most of her time as a career. But I’m the only one who pursued art as a career, though there’s a wide variety of careers in my family. My younger brother is the only one who really succeeded. He works for NASA and puts me to shame.

CBA: [laughs] When you went to art school, did you want to be a comic book artist?

Hilary: Yes, I definitely did go into art school with a preconceived idea of what I wanted to learn. So, since I was so focused on what I wanted to learn and wanted to have taught to me, I tended to quickly leave classes that didn’t seem to fill those needs. I eventually dropped out of school because I found there were certain teachers I met through school who had drawing workshops, so I just simply followed them around and studied with models. Actually, I learned most by just watching these guys draw. When you actually see the hand moving, and the guy is articulate enough to tell you, “What I’m drawing here is this muscle underneath the skin,” that’s just an amazing education. You can have all the anatomy books in the world, but when you see a guy doing it, somehow your brain makes—at least for me—the connection. I said, “Oh, okay. This is what those marks mean; this is how you do it.” So I aped their style, learned from it, and hopefully developed my own after studying another person’s technique.

CBA: Was Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine the first professional gig you had?

Hilary: Yes, I did a couple of illustrations for that magazine, but not many. I had stage fright when I first started, but had some great editors over the years, who, as they were looking through my portfolio and published samples I was sending in, would say, “We want more of this portfolio material.” That stuff, which was me just having fun and being loose, was the style they wanted.

When I began in science-fiction illustration, I read Kelly Freas’ book where he talked about how he was COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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inspired by the stories he was assigned to illustrate, and how, in his illustrations, tried to suggest the story’s theme or give a clue if it was a mystery. But, in my work, I was trying too hard. In any case, very few of my science-fiction illustrations—and there were only a few, anyway—but only one or two of them were successful by my definition of “successful.”

The thing about science-fiction illustration, too, is the money is so bad. Artists do it solely for the love of it. Even more so than comics, the money’s not very good. You’d spend a day or two drawing illustrations and you’d get a check for $25 and you’d say, “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” But if I’d been better at it… if I had actually felt better about it, I’m sure I would have done a lot more of that stuff. I think it was my failure. Similarly, when I first started drawing in comics, I didn’t really find my way for a few years. I just did some terrible work.

CBA: How did you break into Marvel? Did you hit Marvel first when you were doing your freelancing thing?

Hilary: Yes. I was submitting illustrations to things like Rocket’s Blast/Comicollector, an old fanzine, and meeting other artists through the fan field. That led to comic book conventions, because I was going to comic books stores where I would hear about these shows. I just presented my work to Al Milgrom, at a Chicago convention, and he was nice enough to get me some work. Like I said, everything I did for the first few years was pretty bad, so I was always amazed when I realized that I would get another job! [laughs] CBA: You never felt comfortable when you were doing your stuff at Marvel?

Hilary: It wasn’t that I didn’t feel “comfortable.” I was doing things like trying to ink brush strokes with pens, because I hadn’t seen any comic book artists working, I didn’t know how they did things. I just learned a lot of really bad habits early on that took a long time to get rid of.

CBA: Did you aspire to be a super-hero artist in the ’80s?

Hilary: I don’t think I’ve ever drawn a real super-hero strip. I drew super-hero parodies, and that’s probably the best stuff I’ve done at Marvel (besides inking a few different people where I liked the results).

CBA: Didn’t you ink a story or two by Rob Liefeld?

Hilary: Yes, I inked Liefeld on a few issues of New Mutants. I inked Jon Bogdanove for a long time on Power Pack, and that was a lot of fun. Jon and I really work well together. I just loved his drawing. As an inker, I’ve always felt, if you like the art you’re given, you just want to do it justice. I’ve never been someone who would try to change stuff too much. I try to bring out the strengths of (or at least not screw it up too much) whatever I’m given. Bogdanove is one of those guys who just inspired me. There would be these beautiful drawings of Franklin Richards in Power Pack. Jon would use his own son as a model, drawing him sleeping on the couch, for instance, and they were just the most vividly rendered drawings. I realized, “Oh, God! I’ve got to ink this perfectly! I’ve got to nail this!” So that was a blast. Here I was, inking for years, doing very little drawing of my own. So I don’t think I really knew what I wanted to do. I was having fun, depending on who I was inking, but it was more like marking time, I suppose, trying to discover what it was I wanted to do.

CBA: The Plastic Man mini-series was one of your first assignments as a penciler?

Hilary: That was definitely one of the big things for me. I’d done some pencil and inking at First Comics, and that led to work at DC. I got that job sideways through Doug Rice and Phil Foglio, because Phil was living in Chicago, and they asked Phil if he wanted to do Plastic Man, and he said, “I don’t know if I want to do Plastic Man or not.”

And I had heard about it and I said, “Oh, you gotta do this! He’s this great character!” But he didn’t want to pencil it or didn’t have time, so he ended up writing and co-plotting with Doug Rice and me. It was fun. It was kind of a strange experience, because I felt that the worst that could happen in drawing Plastic Man was that I could only fail. [laughs] Because the standard is so great, and there was no way we could even hope to approximate the work of Jack Cole—and, by no means did we—so that realization took off the stress. But we definitely were not trying to modernize the character in a way that would hurt it. We were under orders to modernize it and to sort of explain Plas. It was kind of weird because they said, “You’ve gotta June 2003

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come up with some reason why this is cartoony.” We were like, “Huh?” So our idea was that the acid that turned Plastic Man into Plastic Man also sort of distorted his perspective on the world, but he saw the world in a cartoony way. And as lame as that is, it would have been better than, say, coming up with an Earth-Cartoony or some other science-fiction explanation. Unfortunately, we were saddled with that, and we did the best we could with it.

CBA: Did you model for Alex Ross for Marvels? I was looking at it today and noticed your name.

Hilary: I’m trying to remember who I was: I know I was holding up the sign that said “The End Is Near” in the park. Alex used me for crazy old dead guys and stuff. In Kingdom Come there’s a Civil War Army prison, and I’m every single guy in that scene. [laughter] I have this long, lean face, with dark circles under my eyes most of the time: maybe it’s just Alex’s joke. But he’s very good at casting with people he knows. Whenever he needs somebody who looks a little bit insane, or at the end of his rope, Alex will hire me.

CBA: Why are there so many great cartoonists from Chicago?

Is there something going on over there that we don’t know about? [laughs] There’s Chris Ware, yourself, Ross, Bill Reinhold.

Hilary: There are more. Ivan Brunetti lives here, and Gary Gianni.

CBA: Jill Thompson.

Hilary: Jill and Brian Azzarello. Actually, I don’t know if we have more great artists than New York City per capita. New York obviously has a bigger population of artists given it’s the center of publishing.

So does the West Coast, because there’s a lot of animation and publishing there.

I don’t know how it happened, but there is a neat little group of people here. We used to have meetings. This was a few years ago now, but we had a Thursday night thing where we’d meet at this certain comic shop and then all go drinking at this bar afterwards.

I guess it’s sort of the “good old days” kind of syndrome. I guess none of us can drink as much anymore (with the exception of Brian perhaps, who is always talking about doing his research in bars).

But that was a blast.

I’m going to forget everybody who was there, but there were probably a dozen people, and we’d do these comic book wars.

Someone would start a fight in the first panel, and then you’d pass the drawing back and forth and do these panels. It is rather juvenile, but you’d find a hundred different ways to kill the other guy or whatever, and then he’d come back from the dead and attack the other guy. I dunno, it sounds pretty silly, I suppose, but it was a blast.

CBA: Your first work with Alan Moore was Supreme #44 with Bill Wray. You told me that happened by accident?

Below: Artist Hilary Barta first gained prominent notice in the field as doing a damn good job penciling in faux Jack Cole style for the four-issue Plastic Man mini-series. Here’s the cover of #2 (Dec. ’88). ©2003 DC Comics.

Below: The wiley artist himself, Hilary Barta. Courtesy of H.B.

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Above: Here’s hoping this Doctor

Strange pin-up by Hilary gets a better reproduction job than in its original appearance in What the— ?! ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Hilary: Well, Bill just needed some help inking the piece. I wasn’t hired by Extreme; I just was helping Bill out. He said, “I’m doing this Rick Veitch story written by Alan Moore, and it’s in a Mad parody style.” Essentially Rick was doing Elder and Wood, and I just tried to push it even further in that direction. I saw it once when it came out and couldn’t look at it again. I had talked to whoever it was over there, and I said,

Above: Self-caricature

by Hilary. Courtesy of and ©2003 Hilary Barta.

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“You know, you guys ought to try to color this in a way that evokes the early comics and Marie Severin’s color. You shouldn’t just overwhelm it with computer effects.” I don’t know if I talked to the colorist directly, but I was explaining to whoever about how they do “knock-outs,” where you color the entire background of a panel blue or something, or in blues, or with a certain color, to separate the background from the foreground and focus on the important stuff.

And these guys said, “Oh, yeah, okay.” And all I can recall of seeing the job is that one panel was pink, one panel was green— it’s like they didn’t quite get the idea, so they just applied this theory of, “Well, you just knock stuff into one color,” without quite understanding why they were doing it, or using any sense to it. At least, that was my impression. [laughs] I was aghast when I saw the thing. No wonder these guys noodle everything with the computer, because they don’t really quite understand how to color something very simply, and direct the eye.

CBA: When you did the “Space Family Strong,” was that another last-minute assignment?

Hilary: Yes, that was one I definitely got by accident— well, not by accident, by someone else’s accident, because Tom McWeeney, who’d done the cover as sort of a spec drawing, sent it in. They liked it so much, Alan decided to write a story about it. And Tom either hurt his hand or got sick; I forget exactly what happened. But they said, “Hilary, would you like to do the story that goes with the cover?” I said, “Yeah!” Alan really did describe it as an early Mad story, so to me that meant, well, I’ll throw a lot of Wood stuff in here—and the cover was the inspiration, too. The cover had a real EC comics science-fiction feel to it.

CBA: So how exactly did you become part of the mix at ABC Comics? What led to “Splash Brannigan”?

Hilary: Well, I assume it was Scott Dunbier, the ABC editor, who suggested me. Alan had an idea for a new feature, “Splash,” and then Scott gave him a list of names, and somehow I was picked. I assume that’s the way it happened.

CBA: How did “Splash” come about?

Hilary: It was described to me more than just getting a plot. Alan and I talked over the phone a couple of times. The first thing that they needed was for some sort of ABC teaser in Previews. They needed some coverage of what this was going to be well before I ever started drawing the strip. So I had to design the character before receiving the first script. I hadn’t really designed many characters, so it was fun to start from scratch. Alan’s initial idea was this is a character who is sort of a comic book character come to life in a lot of ways. He was thinking, well, the artist who created him was an artist in the ’40s or ’50s, and he should look like a character from that time.

So Alan described this guy wearing a suit that was like Flash Gordon (it seemed to me) with a Rapidograph gun holstered to his hip, which he would shoot ink out of and, à là Felix the Cat, that would create a window that he could dive through. So Alan was first suggesting this slightly wilder kind of vision. I don’t know if it was all my doing, but the character became a little more of a traditional super-hero looking thing, as wild as the stories are. I kept playing around with this guy wearing a suit and kept coming back to the fact that, well, if he’s made out of ink, why is he wearing clothing? Because he literally is something that can change into liquid. He doesn’t need a gun to shoot out ink, he is the ink! So I eventually just drew him as an ink creature. Then it was, well, what do I have to do to make this look like a character as opposed to a blob of ink? So I gave him the traditional little logo on the chest. The only thinking I had is I’m going to try to put as many ink-like features in his design. So in terms of the “S” on his chest, I tried to use the droplet form repeated through the “S” as many times as I could. He had the spit curl with a big droplet at the end of it, and even his feet have a point like a brush stroke. So that was the sort of approach I was aiming for. But he ended up being very simple as opposed to a guy wearing a costume and all the rest.

CBA: When Alan offered you this assignment, did you jump at the chance or stop and think? Did it sound interesting to you?

Hilary: Oh, it sounded fantastic! I think my first reaction was, “Alan Moore wants to work with me?” But what probably really happened was, Scott has a way of springing these things on you.

He knows that he’s editing Alan, he knows he’s got this great COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

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thing going. So when he said, “Hilary, are you working? I have this project I thought you might be interested in. How’d you like to work with Alan Moore?” [laughs] It’s that kind of approach. You don’t go, “I don’t know… maybe… what is it?” You don’t really do that. You just go, “Yeah! That sounds fantastic! You bet! Count me in!” When you hear the thing is tailored to you, they’re not just saying, “We want you to draw like somebody else,” then it just becomes, “Wow! Pinch me! This is great!”

CBA: I’m sure you’d heard the stories about how his scripts are super-detailed and there’s no space to do whatever you want to do.

Did you find this to be true when you started doing your stuff?

Hilary: It’s not just Alan, but any time I’m working with a full script… not being a letterer, it’s an awkward process, because you have to leave room for the words. Otherwise, they’re just dropping balloons in over figures and whatever. I got better at it during the course of “Splash,” I think, but there’s some awkward moments where I know Todd Klein is just saying, “Hilary! You keep putting stuff in the middle of the dialogue!” He’d have to break the balloons up and move them around. But I tried the best I could to plan things out. I think one of the problems I have is that I tend draw things a certain size, a middle-sized figure. I don’t do as many close-ups as a lot of artists, I don’t do tiny figures as much. So drawing these medium-sized figures sometimes creates space problems when you have to put in the dialogue and whatnot. The thing is, the dialogue is generally so funny that I never feel like it’s a problem because of length. I’ve worked with other writers where I’ve said, “Oh boy, you could take this whole thing out and it wouldn’t hurt anything.” And with Alan’s stuff, I don’t feel that way at all. I love the scripts. So you’re just hoping you’re not making the panels too crowded for the script, in a way.

CBA: What did you think of Kyle Baker’s “Splash” story?

Hilary: Well, to be honest with you, I thought that was the better “Splash,” because he had a little more of a lively, animated feel. He went more to Harvey Kurtzman than I did, and I just love it. It just really moves, the figures have this bounce to them. I looked at it and said, “Boy, if he had done the first story, no one would have ever wondered what my Splash would have looked like.” I thought Kyle’s work was fantastic.

CBA: Did you design Mister Kaput after anybody in particular?

Hilary: Well, Alan suggested the Mole character from Mad as a jumping-off point.

CBA: Is that who that’s supposed to be?

Hilary: It’s supposed to be the ultimate nebbishy guy. His description was pretty vivid in that he’d have the visor on, I suppose, and sort of like an old cartoon editor, where you’d want to have the sleeves rolled up. That was probably all in the description. When you suggest the Mole, your goal is to to come up with somebody that fits the same bill without looking exactly like the Mole. I didn’t want to draw the Mole as the main character. [laughs] That would have been taking homage too far! So you try to come up with a differentshaped giant nose with pores in it and all of that, a few warts and things. The main thing is to have this guy who was always at wit’s end, who’s already torn most of his hair out and had the thick, Coke bottle-type lenses in his glasses, always gnawing on a stub of cigar, a stogie, that kind of thing.

CBA: Miss Screensaver is a typical Wood woman?

Hilary: I don’t know, I think Alan’s description was something between….

CBA: She always wore those tight skirts. [laughs] Hilary: Well, yes. I don’t remember if he described what she’d be wearing, but he did probably say something along the lines of, “Make her look professional but sexy.” Which, to me, there’s no contradiction there at all. When you’re suggesting a bimbo from the past, but don’t really want to do a bimbo like they used to, times have changed. So Alan may have suggested somebody as a cross between Annie Fanny and another character. To me, it was to try to draw someone who is naive and sexy, but not in a way that would be sexist as opposed to sexy. I’m sure a lot of people do think that these kind of women are sexist no matter what you do, and there’s no way around that. But to me, the thing that makes her interesting is she’s innocent without being stupid. Alan doesn’t fall into that trap. Wally Wood’s Sally Forth probably would be another touchstone there, June 2003

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though you just take out all the sex, or the sex has to be implied, I suppose. [laughs] “Clean it up! It’s like a PG-rated Sally Forth.”

CBA: Do you have a favorite story?

Hilary: I love the first one, and probably the one where they go into the art gallery and run through the paintings.

That was just a fun thing, because it sent me out researching paintings and prints. Just the whole idea of running through the world of art, bumping into Whistler’s Mother and knocking her over and things like that, it’s just such a great idea. That was a lot of fun.

CBA: What happened in the last issue of Tomorrow Stories where you ended up inking that “Greyshirt/ Cobweb” story?

Hilary: Rick needed an inker and Scott wanted The Spirit and Eisner in there, too, as the inspiration. Just to have fun, just to ink, trying to throw in the shadows and stuff like that.

CBA: What’s the future of “Splash”? Are there going to be any more strips?

Hilary: Well, there was an intention to do more. Scott has told me that Alan wants to do more. First they were promising me the next issue, whenever that was. Then they decided okay, maybe we’ll do a special issue now and then, and I’ve been waiting for that. I’m sure that’s still the intention, to just do an occasional Tomorrow Stories when Alan can get around to doing the scripts. The last I heard is that it was going to be a double-length story, something closer to 15 pages. I can’t wait! Unfortunately, I have to! [laughter] So when it comes in, I’ll be thrilled. Until then, I’ll just be looking forward to it, I guess.

CBA: Of all the stuff that you’ve done, is “Splash” your most personal work?

Hilary: I wouldn’t say that, which is nothing against “Splash,” but there’s just a number of things that I’ve both written and drawn, that I’m probably in some ways closer to. The thing is, I haven’t done many characters. I did four issues of Plastic Man and a number of “Pulverizer” Punisher parodies….

CBA: The parodies from What The…?

Hilary: That and “Splash” are probably the closest I’ve come to doing a regular character when I’ve been the artist. The other things I’ve done are one-shot stories. I guess, because I designed him, I do feel like Splash is probably the closest to an actual

Above: Hilary Barta’s original pencils for the first episode of “Splash Brannigan,” in Tomorrow Stories #6 (Mar. ’00). Courtesy of the artist. Below: Detail of Hilary’s cover art for Tomorrow Stories #11 (Oct. ’01). ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Above: When Tom McWeeney became ill, Hilary Barta pinch-hit for the cartoonist on this Tom Strong #14 (Oct. ’01) short story, an homage to the great old EC Comics science-fiction strips. ©2003 America’s Best Comics,LLC.

Below: Hilary Barta shares this Wally Wood-inspired Tom Strong cartoon. Art ©2003 Hilary Barta.

Tom Strong ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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character that I can identify with. So yeah, it’s important in that way, and I love Splash.

But when you’re not writing the story, no matter how great someone else’s script is, it’s not quite all yours. That doesn’t mean that the best that I’ve done is the stuff I’ve written, I wouldn’t say that. But it’s just more personal, I guess. There’s something more satisfying about it when you’re doing the whole thing yourself, or at least more involved in the writing.

CBA: Were you surprised when the ABC line was going to be published by DC Comics, by way of WildStorm, given Alan’s prior relationship?

Hilary: When I was first told about this and was first asked about “Splash,” I talked to Alan briefly and then did the designs of the character, and was already working on the full script before the contract came in. I might even have drawn the first story, but I’d certainly already committed to doing it and did the designs and everything. There was a delay with the contract. I knew that DC had bought WildStorm, but what I didn’t know is that WildStorm was doing the ABC line under the DC contract. I thought it might be creatorowned. On some level it is creatorowned, but really you don’t own anything unless they want to get rid of it. DC can keep it for as long as they want. But I was operating under the assumption, based on everything I’d ever read about Alan’s dealings with DC, that Alan would never work for them again.

This is my fault for making the assumption, but I didn’t ask anyone if it was creator-owned. I had told myself a long time ago, after I did Plastic Man, why should I put so much effort into a company-owned character—because I had created secondary characters owned by the publishers—why create characters for a corporation, you know, when I can create characters for myself? So I had this uncomfortable feeling when I found out finally, when I got the contract and realized that the rights were being sold. I was really disappointed. But in talking to Alan, he said, “Well, Hilary, could you afford to do the stuff on the small advance they would give you against royalties?” Which are nonexistent at this time. [laughs] I said, “No, I probably couldn’t realistically afford it, but I just wish I had known.” So it’s their

fault for not telling me up front this is the deal, because originally ABC was going to be a totally different contract to WildStorm. So I was probably the last person to know, and it’s my own damn fault for being a bad businessman, I suppose. That was the strange beginning to the whole affair, though I still enjoyed the whole experience. I wouldn’t have turned it down anyway, had I known. I think I would have done it; I just would have gone into it with the knowledge before I started working.

CBA: Can you describe a script by Alan?

Hilary: Alan first writes the story and concentrates on that in each panel, and then goes to describe the background gags, letting his mind wander. Anything that occurs to him that is amusing—and it’s amazing how his mind can wander, he just comes up with the wildest stuff!—he just tosses it in there. He told me many times, “If you don’t like something, if you’ve got a better idea, just put it in there. If you want to go in a different way, just do it.” As long as I’m serving the script, that to me is the main job I have. Then, when it comes to background gags, I determine if Alan’s gag concerns the story or is a total aside, and if I could come up with a gag that reflected the main action, that would be the gag to go with. So I didn’t feel like I was just simply erasing his idea just so I could stick my own in there, but to choose whose idea better reflected the story.

At the beginning of the art gallery story, Kaput is on the ledge and says, “My life is over,” whatever. He’s holding these comic book pages and about to commit suicide, and Daisy slams the window on him and he can’t come back in. So Alan had various background gags, and I substituted my own. I had the Kevorkian Life Insurance sign behind him, ironic commentary for a potential suicide to be reading.

Then, in the very next panel, where Kaput is embedded in the sidewalk, having fallen off the building, there’s a Downey Plummets Estate Sales. That kind of stuff. Those are some of the better ones, perhaps, but I try to make the gags be a comment on the foreground action.

I usually receive at least double the amount of pages I have to draw it in. An average comic book script comes in pretty bold type, and Alan’s scripts come in fine print. [laughs] So when you say there’s 15 pages of script, that’s a lot of script. I think the “Splash” stuff is relatively light compared to when he writes dramatic stuff, where I think he probably puts even more detail. I’ve seen a couple scripts and I’ve heard them described to me over the years as having copious amounts of detail.

CBA: The Watchmen script was 120 pages an issue.

Hilary: So you get the idea. The most amazing thing is to just sit there and read this stuff. That’s really half the fun, spending the afternoon with Alan Moore as he tells a tale. His whole creative process is right there on the page. Most other writers edit out all the thinking and just put down the final thing, but Alan thinks aloud on the page.

I don’t want to say stream-of-consciousness exactly, because that sort of makes it sound random. It’s not quite that, it’s just that his thought process is conveyed through the way he writes, and it’s a dialogue between him and the artist, because he does address you directly. The scripts will usually start, “Hello, Hilary. I thought what we’d do this time is a kind of a story that… “ He starts into the thing. Anyway, it’s very amusing, and the asides go on sometimes longer than the story. [laughs] CBA: So it’s been a unique experience for you, the whole thing?

Hilary: Oh yes! He’s great to work with. For a guy as talented and successful as he is, I have not run into any ego there. I haven’t run into the sort of thing where you want to strangle the writer. With a lot of people, you want to make a minor change, suddenly you hit this thing, “I wrote it this way! I want it that way!”

Actually, one thing I’ve found over the years is there’s more amateurs who feel that way; the professionals are very confident, which doesn’t mean they’re detached, but they know that this is a collaboration. So, by the very definition, that means you have to turn the thing over to somebody else. You want to turn it over to someone you like and respect, and if that’s the case, then you go, “Well, look what he came up with!” It’s a new thing now, better than the sum of its parts. That seems to me like the way it ought to work, as opposed to a fight going on between two people, and one will wrestling with another. By the same token, I didn’t rewrite his scripts! [laughs] It wasn’t like I said, “Let’s change this” or “let’s change that!”

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

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

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CBA Interview

The First Orkadian Jim Baikie talks about his long comics career and Alan Moore Conducted by George Khoury Transcribed by Steven Tice

Below: Portrait of Jim Baikie.

Courtesy of the artist.

Those Americans who may believe Orkadian (that’s someone from the Orkney Islands) artist Jim Baikie leapt full-form onto the comics scene as Alan Moore’s collaborator on the hilarious “First American” strip in Tomorrow Stories will be surprised to learn the talented artist’s career stretches back well into the ’60s and that, among other notable work, his partnership with Moore writer began with the early ’80s “Skizz” series in the British comic weekly 2000 AD. This interview was done via phone in late 2002 and was copyedited by Jim. Comic Book Artist: Were you born and raised in the Orkney Islands?

Jim Baikie: Yes. I’d better make clear for geographic perfectionists who know there are two lots of Orkney Islands—one close to the Antarctic, the other nearer to the Arctic—that I’m up here in the northern version.

CBA: What kind of place is that?

Jim: It’s a bunch of 60 or so islands sandwiched between the Northern tip of Scotland and the Shetland Islands. It’s amazing to approach it from the sea because the islands that look perfectly flat from the air, in fact have the highest sea-cliffs in Britain. It’s a great place to work. Very quiet— between gales—with all the live reference for sheep and cows you’ll ever need.

CBA: What year were you born?

Jim: I was born in 1940, so I’ll be 63 by the time this appears.

CBA: And you started working in comics at a young age?

Jim: In my heart, yes. I used pictures to communicate before I could write, as most kids do, but when most kids abandon drawing in favor of writing, I didn’t. I was lucky to live where I do because there was no psychiatric social worker to say, y’know… ”still using drawings to communicate at age ten? Must be retarded/abused/autistic!—I rest my case.”

Comics and pulp novels were my staple entertainment in an environment that had no main electricity—at least on the island of Hoy which was my specific part of the Orkneys. It got that name from the first Vikings who saw it, and it means “high island” because of those high sea cliffs.

When I was 14, I sold a drawing to the Vargo Statten Science Fiction Magazine and I sat back after that and waited for the commissions to roll in, but they didn’t! I went into the Royal Air Force when I was 16 because I heard the R.A.F. Training station had a cinema that showed actual Cinemascope movies. After training, my first job was connected with the demobilization of guys who were finishing their two years mandatory National Service, and one of the

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people I was doing clearance procedure on was an ex-editor of a weekly kids’ comic, Beano (still going strong), that was published in Dundee, Scotland. I showed him some of my drawings and he told me right away I should get out of the R.A.F. and get into the comics.

He gave me some phone numbers which led to an interview with a senior comics editor at publishers DC Thomson in Dundee who gave me a tryout script and a load of illustration paper, plus huge encouragement. If I got out of the R.A.F. I was to let them know, and they would fix me up with accommodation in Dundee and a career in comics. I applied for release from the R.A.F. and they responded by posting me to Cyprus, ostensibly to show me what I’d be missing if I left. The truth was I’d be missing not only my girlfriend in Scotland who would now be thousands of miles away, but the chance of a lifetime drawing comics for Thomson. But, George, I have to say Cyprus was good for me. I got a spare time job as a cartoonist with a local Greek newspaper and an evening job as bass player in a rock and roll band, from which I made enough cash to fly home, get married and bring Wendy back with me to Cyprus.

To cap it all, my R.A.F. station decided to start a monthly magazine, and were looking for someone with some background in publishing. Myself and a Hungarian flying officer were the only applicants, and we were shown a pile of crates with parts of an offset printing machine and told to “get on with the magazine.” We built the printing machine from scratch, then went out to sell advertising space to local Greek businesses. The Hungarian, being a commissioned officer, was in charge, and all I had to do was write copy, illustrate it, and finally print it. I learned more about publishing in the year that followed than at any time since! During this time Wendy had presented me with a daughter, Jacqueline. Realizing I now had everything my heart desired, a family, an art job, I was a rock musician three nights per week, and we were living in the palmy tropics, my ambitions to leave the service and seek a career in comics seemed suddenly a precarious option. But… [sighs] my old “Application for Discharge by Purchase” chose that moment to resurface, and £250 later I was a free man! Freedom is seldom without conditions, though. Back in Britain I found it hard to get decent housing without having a regular job, and nobody looks less financially secure than a “self-employed artist.” So I took a series of jobs in London as a studio artist doing commercial design work and so on before the comics work started for real in mid-1966.

CBA: What kind of comics were you into growing up?

Jim: “’Oor Wullie” and “The Broons” are Scotland’s undisputed favorite comic characters, and they were running weekly in the Sunday Post newspaper before I was born. I remember my first encounter with them one day when I was trotting around a wet floor that had been covered with newspaper. There, amid a sea of grey print, a page of “’Oor Wullie” caught my eye. I was no more than four, and couldn’t yet read, but the pictures grabbed me. And I stayed grabbed! The art, I learned later was by one of the absolute masters of British comic art—Dudley D. Watkins, who was just as spectacular with realistic illustration. His rendering of “Blind Pugh” in Treasure Island frightens me still.

In Britain, we had these whole sub-genre of girls comics, and they were desperate for artists because all the portfolios they were seeing from artists were heavily slanted toward war and football.

The girls comics didn’t care if you showed a car with three wheels as long as the people in the story were attractive and functional.

CBA: Were you pegged as a girls artist because you did those kind of comics going on? Because you always seem to do strong females.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

JUNE 2003

Jim: Yeah. Women are stronger than men. [laughter] They have to be! My first concept sketches for Gerta Dammerung showed a ferocious Teutonic warrior with muscles and attitude. Alan asked me to think more along the lines of a manic-depressive female with a weight problem who would destroy the world if she didn’t get a man.

It was the same with the female version of Deathblow Alan and I did.

My concept sketch for the lead female was a “warrior vixen” cliché pandering to the adolescent male readers’ supposed appetites. Alan wanted a more “natural” female character, and I have to admit it wasn’t easy to find her looking back at me out of Michael Cray’s gross personage. But to answer your main point, George, when I started out on the comics trail in the early ’60s, I was trying to sell what I thought was long overdue in British comics, i.e., female characters interacting with males, being strong in the female sense of the word, not just substitute males, or sexy stereotypes. I wanted the kind of balance you had in America in the Sunday funnies, you know… a Dale Arden in there with Flash Gordon… and stuff like Leonard Starr’s On Stage or Stan Drake’s Juliet Jones. Even Olive Oyl and Daisy Mae brought something more to their respective roles than being mere foils for the male characters.

Here in Britain in those days, we had sexual apartheid. There were “boys” comics, which were mostly about war and football, and “girls” comics, which were… at the juvenile level, mostly centered on girls’ school situations, or at the teenage level “romance” stories.

These often had beautiful artwork, but here all the story advancement was through the female characters, and the males were just props for them to play to. But having said that, those romance titles gave me my start in comics. I’d taken my samples ’round every boys comic in London, and found no takers. A few of them showed me examples of what they might be looking for in the future, but invariably it was about some muscle sport or speedway driving and stuff like that. It was depressing. My theory was that people who were interested in sport were out there doing it, not reading about it in comics. So I started on a circuit of the girls comics.

Valentine was a romance weekly that was selling a quarter of a million copies each week. The editor was in a flap because that week’s issue was due at the printer, and a three-page story hadn’t arrived from Spain (where most of the romance titles were drawn). I showed the distracted editor my ‘romance’ sample. I’d written a three-page story to hang my art sample on. The editor stared at it for a few minutes, then promptly bought it, script and all! What had been no more than a hopeful foot in the door for me was in the very next issue of the comic, and I left the office with a second commission clutched in my unbelieving hand. And that is how I became a girl artist, George!

CBA: What comic did you do with Steve Moore?

Jim: “Twilight World,” for Warrior. That serial got me the Society of Strip Illustration’s “Best British Adventure Artist” award in 1983. I met Steve through a fanzine, Comic Cuts, put out by a Manchester glassengraver, Dave McCulloch. I’d seen science-fiction fanzines before, but this was the first ’zine dedicated to comics in Britain. Through that, I heard about some people in Birmingham who were putting together what would be the first British comic convention, around 1966, ’67. Events stemming from that led to Steve contacting me, and we started to meet quite regularly just to swap comics and talk.

And he was incidentally, a friend of Alan Moore (no relation).

CBA: You used to travel from Scotland to London regularly?

Jim: That was the plan, but I soon discovered that an artist couldn’t get freelance work in those days unless he lived in the elevator of the publishing house. Everything north of London was remote, and where I hailed from… they were still waiting for Neil Armstrong to land on it!! So we were actually living in London from the time I left the R.A.F. until around ’72.

CBA: How long were you living in London?

Jim: From ’63, when I got out of the Air Force, until about ’72. With no real hope of coming back up here because editors wanted artists to be close at hand, and you could never be more than a train ride away from the company, so I was stuck with having to be down there in a tiny house with a growing family. Then suddenly a few Australian guys who’d been working with the comics managed to get a deal where they could go back to Australia and work from there, and I said, June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

“Look, these guys have gone halfway around the globe. Why can’t I go back to up to Scotland?”

So that’s what I did.

CBA: Did you have any formal art training?

Jim: Nope, nothing. Just a scraping of native talent, I suppose. A couple of my mother’s brothers were very good painters, and they used to encourage me a lot. I’m descended from Vikings and Celts, so maybe the blood gave me something.

CBA: Who were some of your influences early on?

Jim: My earliest interest on the American side was probably Burne Hogarth on Tarzan. My father was a huge fan of Hogarth, and he used to get American comics from the naval base and bring them home when I was a little kid. I told Hogarth about this when I met him in 1985, and he said “How about that!” We also liked The Katzenjammer Kids and Li’l Abner.

CBA: Your father was also in the service?

Jim: My father had been in the R.A.F. during WWII, but in these post-war years he worked for the Admiralty in a civilian capacity. My interests really started quite young; seven years, eight years old. Hogarth Tarzan stories in the late ’40s, early ’50s, are fantastic. There was also an interest in the humor strips, Gasoline Alley and all those.

I just read and consumed everything that came in comic form, because we didn’t have television in those days, and comics were the pictorial medium of choice.

CBA: Did your father actually encourage you to draw?

Jim: Absolutely. He was a wonderful guy, he used to pick up anything he’d find lying around on the naval base. He was working there building oil tanks for the war and maintaining them after the war. Quite a few people were reading comic books in those days before mass media and they left them lying about at the end

Left: U.S. Angel and First American leap into battle in their unique super-hero fashion in a panel detail from Tomorrow Stories #6 (Mar. ’00). Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Above: Previously unpublished sketch of Alan Moore & Jim Baikie’s Skizz and friends.

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 Rebellion.

95

Above: The alien is discovered in this pivotal page from the saga of Skizz from 2000 AD, as collected

by Titan Books. The book is still available, so please go to www.2000adonline.com for more details on this and other Alan Moore-related volumes. Courtesy of the publisher. ©2003 Rebellion.

96

of the day, my dad would just pick them up and bring them home to me.

CBA: Did you have any siblings, or was it just you?

Jim: My sister, yeah, Janice was never interested in any aspect of publishing at all. She read those small format romance comics, like Golden Heart Romance, etc., but never gave them a second glance after the first real life boyfriends started to show up. The comic companies who put those books out knew their readership was only there for, at best, ten years, and every ten years or so they’d reprint those books—with minor fashion updates—and the next generation of relationship-hungry females would swoop on them. Romance comics occupied a niche that today is probably filled by soaps on TV, hence the virtual disappearance of that genre today.

CBA: Did any of your daughters become artists?

Jim: I’m proud to say two of my five daughters have, y’know, Fine Art degrees. Another has a design diploma, and the remaining two are married with children, which is arguably the best education of the lot! All of them have artistic leanings, but I don’t take all the credit; Wendy is a textile designer and printer, so art is always around us in its many forms.

CBA: Steve Moore used to run the first comic conventions in England, right?

Jim: He wasn’t the organizer. I think he was on a kind of an associative basis with the organizers. He’d been in touch with me for a number of years before that, just on a mutual enthusiasm thing. I said I’d go to this convention (Birmingham, in the midland of England), with him because I wanted meet a few people that were into comics; I didn’t know many professional artists. I thought I could go and meet a few, but it turned out there weren’t many artists there at all. I was quite surprised.

CBA: Did you work first for 2000 AD, or did you work for Marvel UK? Which did you do first?

Jim: I didn’t work for Marvel UK at all. I worked for Marvel (Epic) at

one point, adapting the Clive Barker movie Nightbreed into comicbook form. That was a blast! But going back somewhat, to my early years, what happened was that I was working for these various girls comics, which were all published by Fleetway who eventually came up with 2000 AD. When the dummy for 2000 AD was put together, Fleetway got artists from other magazines in the company to do the pilot episodes, but I didn’t get asked. Kevin O’Neill told me years later that the editor I was working for at that time on the girls titles had put a death notice on anybody who stole her artists for the 2000 AD project. I was thus deprived of an earlier start with them than I might have otherwise had.

CBA: You were always into science-fiction and all that?

Jim: I was very into that, yeah. I’d discovered American sciencefiction in a roundabout way. One of my boyhood chores was to pick up a stack of Wild West paperbacks from an elderly neighbor and take them to my grandfather, who would give me another load to take back to the neighbor. Occasionally among these well-travelled books, an s-f title would appear, and those were given to me to keep.

I remember when the bug really got me. I was about ten, and a coverless copy of Astounding came my way. I read a short story: “Hobbyist,” by Eric Frank Russell, and I was lost to the world. Later I discovered s-f comics, and I liked the stuff with a quirky angle to it like Strange Adventures, those sort of things. But almost as much as science I liked magic, and was enthralled by artists like C.C. Beck on Captain Marvel and all of the Shazam! group, Whiz Comics and Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr. I loved all that. I really loved that stuff. When all that ended, I was bereft! When the Marvelman titles replaced them in Britain, I loathed them on sight. The Marvelman Family were all male. It wasn’t natural! Mary Marvel had not even been thought worthy of replacement! It was a terrible time.

CBA: What was the first strip you did for 2000 AD? Jim: “Skizz” was my first work for them.

CBA: How were you selected for “Skizz”?

Jim: Well, 2000 AD were trying to beat E.T. to the screen with a similar story about an alien stranded on Earth. The film had been mentioned in the press, but they were giving nothing away. They wanted the film to open without the public having a clue what they were about to see. So 2000 AD got Alan Moore and Steve MacManus to cook up a parallel story. It wasn’t even meant to try and plagiarize the E.T. thing; it was just a bit of mischief to get the first non-horror alien out there before the film premiered. It wasn’t a competition with Steven Spielberg really. At that time, it was just a bit of fun. But I was in the middle of another job, couldn’t start on it immediately, and couldn’t get down to London to talk about it for a couple of weeks after I was first asked to do it. But luckily, with a bit of juggling, I did get down and had a definitive meeting with Alan Moore and a few other people and a couple of editors, and we thrashed out what “Skizz” was going to be about, what it was going to look like. And Alan more or less knew what the dialogue for the final panel of the last episode was going to be, because he had it all worked out in advance.

CBA: By the time “Skizz” came out, E.T. was already out, right?

Jim: By that time, another serial was running in the time slot we’d been aiming for, so we settled down to produce a few inventory episodes in preparation for the next window of opportunity.

CBA: And this was sort of like the first script in 2000 AD. with a female protagonist, wasn’t it? This was way before “Halo Jones.”

Jim: Well, I think 2000 AD saw what I’d done on the girls comics, which was to strive for a kind of realism rather than follow the puppy-dog cuteness favored by most of the artists on the girls titles.

As I may have said, 2000 AD had a good list of Spanish artists who could do great fantasy and science-fiction art, but the Spaniards were way down in Spain and I was in Britain. They wanted Skizz to be constantly faced with gritty aspects of England that would accentuate his “alien-ness,” so they were looking for an artist who knew what British policemen and that sort of thing looked like, y’know, on their day off. The Spaniards were great at drawing girls and fashions and stuff right, and showing horses and so on, but whenever they were asked to draw something that was true to life in the “not a holiday” sense, dripping with grey English rain, they would be too kind to it, and the readers wouldn’t get the required mood.

CBA: So that added to the flavor of the strip. You and Alan went COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

JUNE 2003

for a lot of realism in “Skizz.” I can’t think of any other strips in 2000 AD where they did things like that. These characters were in Birmingham, and helped make Roxanne seem real. You had a lot of pop culture references going on.

Jim: Right. I think Alan and I both have the desire to do that. I’m a pretty “soft” artist by nature, but I can be gritty and real if the story demands it. Alan is a lot stronger than me as a person, but his storytelling is never gross. I’ve had scriptwriters say stuff like: “Make this guy ugly, so we won’t care when he gets killed later.” Alan has never asked me to approach anything in that way.

CBA: So the strip, what kind of feedback did you get from readers?

Did you go to a lot of conventions at the time?

Jim: I went to a few at that time, including Lucca, Italy. I got more fan interest with “Skizz” than usual, but I naturally assumed a lot of that to be due to Alan. However I discovered later that I had unsuspected fans among the female readership who had pre-existed “Skizz,” from my girls comics days. They began popping up on the Internet, and it was clear they were following “Skizz,” because there was a substantial female character in there with the alien. In the two sequels to “Skizz,” which I wrote (with Alan’s blessing), I continued on this track. I got a great review in Comics International from Sara Bolesworth, a reviewer who is merciless with anything sub-standard.

CBA: How did the “Skizz” sequels come about? How did you end up writing them? Was Alan offered it?

Jim: The sequels came about largely through a kind of lull in the comic. They were looking for something a bit different that would address the interest generated by a spate of s-f movies that were doing well, and I was kind of invited to come up with anything I could think of. I thought this is really a good time to mention “Skizz.”

It’d been a while since “Skizz” was done, how about a sequel? So I phoned Alan, and he said that he wasn’t interested in doing anything with it beyond what he had done. He told me he’d never really felt “close” to it, as he did with things he was creating from scratch. I heard the door of opportunity creak open, and went to Richard Burton, editor of 2000 AD at that time, with an outline proposal for a sequel. I got the go-ahead for “Skizz II—Alien Cultures,” and, after that, “Skizz III—The Gunlords of Omega Ceti.” “Alien Cultures” was later collected as a graphic novel by Mandarin Books.

CBA: Was “Skizz” a personal thing for you? Is that what you’re best known for?

Jim: At the start, I felt a bit like, it’s just a job. It seemed like comics by committee. Also, I was quite busy doing television adaptations at the time “Skizz” came to me. I was doing Charlie’s Angels in a comic-strip form, and that was one of the first things that was a blend between the girls’ comics and the boys’ comics, in a sense. We had just got into “people’s comics,” where I was drawing for a general audience of both sexes. I had been asked to do TV adaptations because I could do convincing likenesses, convincing car chases, etc. and convincing female characters. My first color work, incidentally, had been an early TV adaptation, The Monkees.

CBA: Was “Skizz II” the first strip you wrote?

Jim: Apart from the sample three-pager I sold to Valentine, yes. I’d collaborated with writers where the final thing was theirs but the work had been developed between us as we went along.

CBA: How much artwork can you get done in a day?

How fast are you?

Jim: Well, at the time of “Skizz” I had to be pretty fast, because I was doing two pages, often in full-color, for the television adaptation stuff, as well as the five to seven pages of “Skizz.”

So I was doing nine pages a week, two of them in full-color, as well as a few covers. But I’ve been lucky. I got a big workload done when I was young and hungry, and now that I’m 60something (with a mental age of 30), I can go to bed for a whole hour every night, because I only work when I feel like it.

June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

CBA: You usually ink yourself?

Jim: I do, yeah.

But things have got really sophisticated now, you can look at a pencil drawing that’s gone through a scanner and been processed a little bit on a computer and you can think, wow, you can do comics without inking, you know?

CBA: But it’s not the same. It sort of like it’s missing something sometimes.

Jim: Yes, I know, but when I think back to the time when I started—and I don’t know if America went through this too, George, because you had computers a lot sooner than we did.

But when I first started seriously in ’65, I was working freelance off and on, it was a lot better than the studios. So the first comics work I did was probably in ’65. It was printed by what they called letterpress then, which meant the artwork was going to have to survive being etched on a block with acid. And it meant no thin lines because the acid could weaken them halfway through the print run, and a drawing could lose a nose, and I don’t need to tell you how that might alter the mood of a love scene. But now, because of computers, publishing and printing has come out of the mud and is halfway up the mountain.

It’s hard to believe.

CBA: How did your work get to the States? Was Vigilante the first book you did in America?

Jim: Yes, it was a strange thing, because I had been working with Steve Moore on “Twilight World,” and that was seen by Dick Giordano at DC Comics, and he contacted Mike Friedrich, who was a great help. He contacted Dez Skinn, and Dez phoned and said, “Dick Giordano wants to talk to you about something. Are you interested?”

I said, “Well, you bet I am!” [laughter] Then, when I finally was put in touch with Dick Giordano, it was an Alan Moore story, The Vigilante, that he wanted me to do. So I was back with Alan again!

CBA: That was one of the best short stories Alan did for DC. Did you like that story?

Jim: Yes, I did! I was a bit surprised by it, because there was a very incestuous angle to it, which wouldn’t have troubled European readers, but I was amazed to find something that dark in a DC comic.

That was before Vertigo, remember.

CBA: Yeah, it seemed kind of heavy!

Jim: It was heavy-duty for its time, yeah.

Left: Another detail of the acrobatic super-heroic team of U.S. Angel and First American, this one from Tomorrow Stories #1 (Oct. ’99).

Art by Jim Baikie. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Below: Another superb Alan Moore/Jim Baikie collaboration was a two-issue story arc in Vigilante #17-18 (May & June ’85). Courtesy of George Khoury. ©2003 DC Comics.

97

Above: A typically madcap Jim Baikie illustration, this one sporting the cover of Tomorrow Stories #4 (Jan. ’00). ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Alan was right at the start of his American work then, and most professionals in that situation would be toe in the water, trying not to rock the boat… you know?… sticking carefully to the perceived house rules.

Not Alan! He went straight for the jugular with a socially dark subject, while pouring blatant scorn on the central name character. I certainly wouldn’t have had the guts to do that.

Sure, I illustrated it, but it’s the writer who has to answer primarily for a story’s content.

When I was in the States in the mid-’80s, I met a few people who commented on it.

Somebody said, “Oh, the Vigilante, that was a weird one.” And quite a few other people liked it a lot, but a number of people ignored it, as though they preferred to believe Alan’s first American work was Swamp Thing.

CBA: Alan’s angle’s very real, but the fever then takes it even more seriously.

Jim: Yeah, that’s right. Social realism. Comics are a good medium for it.

CBA: Well, you made it very psychological, especially when the daughter stands up for her father even after all the things he’s done to her.

Jim: Heart-warming, isn’t it? My brother-in-law was in the Metropolitan Police in London, and he would say about how they’d be called out to rescue some poor woman from domestic violence, and when the cops turned up at the house, the woman and the man who’d been beating her up were both standing there saying, “This is private, get out of here!” [laughter] CBA: It’s unexplainable, huh?

Jim: It’s life, George, but hopefully not as we personally know it.

CBA: Another story that you did that was pretty good was the one with Marv Wolfman, the “Brother Blood” one, the New Teen Titans Annual. That was pretty violent!

Jim: It was, yeah! I broke a few pencil leads on that one.

CBA: How did you land that story? Was that the story you did right after “Father’s Day”?

Jim: Sounds right! Yeah, I actually was due to go to the States when I’d finished that, the “Brother Blood,” and I was able to hand the final pages to Marv Wolfman, who was the editor at that time, and Marv had written it as well. But it was a tremendously difficult thing for me to do that book, because I slipped a disc in my lower back around that time, plus I was already drawing “The Fall Guy,” a comic strip version of….

CBA: The TV show?

Jim: Yeah.

CBA: The Lee Majors one?

Jim: Lee Majors, that’s right, yeah. For a kids’ TV magazine called Look-In. I was on an episode where he was making a movie along the lines of Ben-Hur and there were chariot races with horses dashing around the Circus Maximus, and all this sort of thing, and I was doing it all in bed. It’s almost impossible to draw this sort of stuff in bed, besides which it was in full painted color! but I persevered, and I was just recovering from that when I got that call from Marv Wolfman to ask if he could interest me in a Teen Titans story, “The Origin of Brother Blood.” He’d been my editor on The Vigilante books, of course, before that, and I’d gotten on quite well with him. And this “Brother Blood” story was one he had written himself, a minimal script which he would complete when he got my artwork. and gave

me more interpretive freedom than I’d ever been given before. I’d like to have done more work with him, but I was up to my pain threshold with all the other stuff I had to do, not to mention my bad back, which was still giving out warning signals.

CBA: You did The Spectre for a while, right?

Jim: The Spectre was later… more than a year later. I had to draw Hell, for that one. I’ve been told to go to Hell from time to time, but in the end, like most locations I had to make it up! [laughter] The actual next thing in the sequence there, right after “Brother Blood,” was Electric Warrior with Doug Moench, 18 issues of that. I was actually at DC offices on Fifth Avenue delivering the last pages of “Brother Blood” when Doug came in, and we had a conference about Electric Warrior. The script synopsis had been circulating for about two years, looking for an artist that matched Doug’s exacting requirements. Doug is a strong, fair-minded professional who doesn’t mince his words. He’d had head-to-head rows with people of the magnitude of Dino De Laurentiis, and I had to rapidly modify my usual free-form blank verse sort of thinking into a tidier mode to deal with this one-man tour de force. We spent the afternoon at DC discussing Electric Warrior, then Doug marched me over to my hotel to check out. He was taking me home to Pennsylvania, where we’d continue our discussion for three days in the company of Doug’s wife and little son, and a colorful wild pheasant that constantly wandered in from the woods to see what was going on.

CBA: So throughout your career, it sounds like you never had problems getting work.

Jim: I’ve been lucky. Most of my working life there has been a glut of work available and I could pick and choose.

CBA: Unlike most artists, who seem to be in a constant struggle to find the next gig.

Jim: It’s a terrible injustice. A lot of the people trudging around today with their portfolios are supremely talented individuals who deserve better. My fear is that when this downturn corrects itself the best of these talents will have taken their skills elsewhere and it’ll be the comic companies who are trawling the streets looking for talent. [laughter] CBA: How did you end up becoming part of the ABC line?

Jim: Well, I had been working with Alan immediately before that, on a fill-in issue of Supreme. I’ve never actually seen the printed results of that.

CBA: That was one of the few times I’ve seen you inked by somebody else. Were you happy with that?

Jim: I don’t mind working with inkers. Inking isn’t my strongest point and I’ve killed plenty of my own drawings at that stage. My difficulty on that Supreme job was that Alan was looking for a sort of Curt Swan style, which wasn’t easy to convey with just the pencils. If I’m paying homage to a pre-existing style I find it easier if I’m doing the inks as well. But broadly speaking I enjoy seeing what an inker makes of my pencils. My favorite inker on Electric Warrior was Dennis Janke. He had a real feel for what I was putting down. Dan Adkins was great, too, although I’d already penciled those pages before I knew it’d be Dan inking them. Ideally if I’m working with an inker I like to play to the inker’s strengths. It sort of connects with my years as a musician, getting the best from the people sharing your stage, and since most of my conversation with Dan Adkins was about guitar music. [laughter] You can see how the whole experience of creative collaboration can be enriching to all concerned. Umm… where were we, before pretension took over, George? Supreme… yeah…. It might have been Al Gordon on Supreme, and he’s a good inker. I just can’t remember who inked it, because I never got a copy.

CBA: I’ll try to get you one.

Jim: I’d really appreciate that, George. Alan probably has 500 copies in an unopened box. [laughter] What he did last year or last week or whenever is… done, and he probably gives them to a badger at the bottom of his garden to line its nest.

CBA: Did Alan do the “First American” strip to fit your style?

Jim: I think Alan tends to custom-build his stories for the artist who will be doing the job, He has a great capacity for rapport with whoever he’s working with, and modifies his instructions accordingly. I’m sure it connects with what I just said about musicians and inkers.

Sometimes when I’m working with a good writer the symbiosis is on the level of a sea anemone clinging to the shell of a hermit crab, trading crumbs for mobility. At better times there is a true synergy, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

which on a good day might reach as far as the reader.

CBA: How did the collaboration with Alan start?

Jim: We’d had “exploratory talks” long before we did any creative work together. I mean, like 20 years before! [laughter] The first meeting we had was at the Westminster Comic Mart or a London convention where we’d gone along to a sandwich bar afterwards, and were sitting down for lunch. Steve Moore was there, Barry Smith, Steve Parkhouse and others. I’d never spoken to Alan Moore before that. Here was this very impressive guy with all this hair. And he joined in intuitively with a conversation we were having about Mad magazine. I hadn’t done much in that sort of style, but we talked flat-out about Wallace Wood, John Severin and Harvey Kurtzman, and all the other great talents at Mad. When we got up to go, Alan said he was sure we were going to work together at some point.

Maybe people say that to each other when they meet at conventions, I don’t know. But this time it was true. History is our witness.

CBA: First American is based on Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Fighting American?

Jim: We talked about Fighting American, and to parody that character was Alan’s kick-off. Then that got scuttled by some copyright issue, and it became the Future American. Alan became so settled on the new name I think the first two or three scripts I got was still called the Future American. That was the way he was thinking. I think Jim Steranko had done a character called Future American somewhere, and Alan and Jim Steranko had a conversation about this, and Steranko was helpful, but the fact that it pre-existed in any form at all was enough for us to find another name. So we stuck to the same… I’d obviously drawn a few bits of it by the time we discovered that it was going to be called the First American, and I just said to Alan at the time, “I hope it’s going to have the same initial letters, F.A., because all these visual puns I’d put in and things where we used the F.A. logo to design the buildings he lived in and so on had been done.”

CBA: He doesn’t seem to be the smartest character around.

Jim: [laughs] No. I laughed out loud when I got the first script. I had a lot fun, working with those scripts. Alan entertains his artists all the time. A lot of the jokes are almost not in the final thing because they’re just for you. It’s a great feeling of collaboration against the odds considering the distance between Orkney and Northampton.

Alan speaks about Northampton in the same kind of passionate way I do about Orkney. Some of the stories he told me about things that intrigue him about Northampton have resonances with stories about this place. It probably has something to do with ley lines….

CBA: How are you doing your research? There’s a lot of references to what’s going on here in America. Have you ever been here?

Jim: Well, on subjects of guns in school, the media over here report that fully. It’s one of the most outrageous images coming out of America, kids in classrooms with real guns. When Alan told me we were going to do a story about kids shooting up a classroom in school, I was thinking how can this be done? But Alan came up with a story that dealt very neatly with it, while allowing First American to bumble idiotically along in his usual way.

CBA: You even had Ken Starr, who was prosecuting Clinton.

Jim: Yeah. Alan just said show this guy as the prosecutor, and I got on the Internet and found a cartoon that had been published by somebody, one of the American newspapers had shown Ken Starr a few times during the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, and I got an idea what his face looked like from that. I also have a good friend locally, a writer/artist named Rob Moran find some more references for me.

CBA: You must think Americans are crazy from all the stuff that Alan throws at you in those scripts. [laughs] Jim: Well, Americans don’t hold a copyright on craziness! There are crazy people everywhere. I suppose Americans are just more expansive and out front about everything, so they can seem more generous… actually that’s unfair. Americans are the most generous people I can think of… dangerous, crazy or whatever than other people. Take my part of the world for example; if you met a psychopathic axe-murderer from here, the guy would probably talk for an hour about the weather before hacking you to pieces, whereas an axe-murderer from the south of England wouldn’t hack you to pieces until you had been formally introduced. [laughter] CBA: This strip seems definitely a take on what Alan thinks of June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

America, the media, and all that kind of stuff.

Jim: Alan is a pretty shrewd guy. I’m sure he’d give a better answer to that than I could. I don’t think the strip sets out to trash America, per se. I’d say English people—even Europeans as a whole—make more use of irony and cynicism than Americans are used to. We might use it as a form of peer pressure, to quietly keep a fellow countryman in line, whereas in a country that doesn’t use irony in the same way it might be seen as hostile or insulting in some way. The American writer Bill Bryson says he’s “bilingual in English,” referring to the differences between what we call “Queen’s English” and “American English.” But having said all that, my favorite American TV show is Frasier, and they use irony all the time! (As a footnote to what I just said, read what Alan has to say about my beloved Orkney Islands in his first editorial in Tomorrow Stories….

CBA: What’s the future of “First American” right now? Are there going to be more stories?

Jim: Well, it already hit the end of the time that I expected it to last, but I asked Alan if there were going to be more stories. He assured me that there was one more story to come, and that is good enough for me. When I’ve worked on a character for a while I begin to feel kind of protective, and I need to feel I’ve done what I can to assure that character’s survival, (even if First American has already died more than once at the Deathblow-stained hands of his other parent, albeit with the reincarnative certainty of Wile E. Coyote). That’s parenthood for you. [laughter]

Above: Note the appearance of ABC Comics editor Scott Dunbier in the bottom center in this page (holding the paper) from Jim Baikie’s “First American” episode in Tomorrow Stories #12 (Apr. ’02).

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

99

Kevin O’Neill

continued from pg. 73

and then things sort of dampen down, and then it bursts up again. But it’s not always in a straight line and sometimes things will roll back again for a period, which is a bit of a shame. But these are still more exciting days than, say, 1970 in Britain? [laughs] What do you think?

CBA: What is cool about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is that it continues to surprise. I turn a page, and there’s Hyde exploding out of a room, or Mina gets attacked or… there’s really unexpected elements. Do you get to feel that as well, that same sense of shock and delight when you initially read the script?

Kevin: Yes, I do. The one I’m finishing, #5, is very surprising, very surprising indeed. Alan constantly surprises. He hints at things he might be doing in the later episodes, I know generally where the story is going, but suddenly you hit a scene thinking, “Geez, where did that come from?” [laughter] I think because we’ve worked together for quite a long time now, he knows certain things that I enjoy drawing. I wouldn’t say that he didn’t tailor it for me anyway, but there are certain things coming up which I would naturally gravitate to, certain bizarre scenes and he knows that. So it’s very enjoyable and entertaining.

It’s just so beautifully written that it’s such a pleasure to get these scripts.

CBA: Are we going to be surprised?

Kevin: Yes, I think you’ll be stunned, especially in the third series, where there will be even more surprises. I wouldn’t say it’s only worth doing for surprises, but I think it’s never going to become a generic group book, let’s put it that way. I think it’s got an end in sight for the present line-up, but there are directions that the series will go in other periods. So it’s actually very exciting for both of us.

CBA: Have you read the final issue script?

Kevin: No, I haven’t. I haven’t gotten that yet.

CBA: Does he hold off until you’re done with the previous issue?

Kevin: No. Dave Gibbons might have commented on this about his work with Alan on Watchmen: You start off getting full scripts and then by the end you get just sequences or even single pages. Both series have been like that. I’m astonished at Alan’s output, which seems colossal compared to a lot of other people. And as you probably know, he doesn’t have an answering machine, so you always feel guilty ringing the guy up…

CBA: He always answers! [Imitates Alan’s deep baritone] “Hullo, Kevin.” [laughter] Kevin: He always answers, right! But he could be typing the middle of some profoundly important scene and you say, “I’ll ring you back.” But he’ll always say, “No, no, we can talk now.”

CBA: There’s this illusion that he’s always got time for you, but I make the call as brief as possible, not because I don’t enjoy his conversation—I do!—but because I feel so guilty taking up any of his time! He has to be under an exhausting schedule.

Kevin: Absolutely, yes. Obviously, I never have any criticism of his scripts, which I’m happy to read it as it comes, whether complete or by the page.

Alan doesn’t leave artists without work, let’s put it that way. I think he feels a great responsibility to people so artists aren’t left twiddling their thumbs.

CBA: How is WildStorm to work with? Does Scott call up and ask for pages?

Kevin: Scott’s always calling me up. [laughter] And quite rightly, too. He has to keep on top of me, because it gets embarrassing. We started this latest series with the best of intentions. We got three in a row out in time and then four a little bit late. But I dunno.

It might be something about the nature of the book, but by the time we get to #5 and #6 of both series, there’s so much more going on. I’d feel extremely guilty rushing it out. I think our readers are pretty damn patient after all this time, and hopefully we will deliver the goods when the book finally does appear. People are patient and will bear with us.

CBA: Well, readers waited patiently for the conclusion of the first series, right?

Kevin: They did, yes. People were extremely patient. I think the last couple issues of the first series did deliver a nice knockout blow for the conclusion of that story. And as we’re working on it, I put a bit more into it and I get caught up in it, myself. As you can probably appreciate. [laughter] There are those times that Scott reminds me how tardy I am. WildStorm is very good. There’s always very positive feedback. They protect us from management interference regarding content. I think most people aren’t going to interfere with what Alan’s doing. I think people take it for granted a book on this sort of subject matter is sometimes going to be challenging.

CBA: Besides the third mini-series, what would you like to be doing after this? Do you have any plans?

Kevin: I don’t really have any plans, no.

CBA: You said you were going to just kick back for a little while?

Kevin: Yes, I’ll finish this series and then do work for the second series collection, the 100

covers and such, that will keep me occupied. I’ve never had long-term plans. I had some childhood ambitions, I guess, I was fortunate that most of those were achieved. I think it’s great to have scripts by Pat Mills and Alan Moore, and draw “Nemesis the Warlock” and Law and League, and to work on some great British comics, and some of great American comics. That’s as much as I can hope from the business, really, given that just breaking in seemed impossible when I was a kid. It’s a really odd business to even imagine anyone working in. If you lived in the days before there were fanzines or comic conventions, you wouldn’t have any idea what comic artists and writers would look like or how they worked and how the offices functioned. And also I guess reflecting back on it, as a kid, it seemed like the same style of artwork, the same artists, and presumably the same writers, year after year, were doing all these comics, like, forever, so there was no opening for anyone else. I think it’s possibly even true of American comics in a certain period, it seemed like these same names of so many legends of our business. So it was almost a joke to think that you deserved to break in among all these colossal figures. But I’ve been very happy in the comic business, I’ve been very fortunate.

CBA: And would you be happy to retire from the business, so to speak?

Do you have any aspirations outside of the field?

Kevin: Yeah, I might do some different material with Alan, more illustrative work outside of comics, probably some way off. That would be interesting. I always loved the work of the 19th century and early 20th century illustrators. So that interests me. And it’s not like moving out or away from comics, it’s just doing something different and recharging your batteries as well, to work outside. I’ve done occasionally design work and odds and ends for film companies in the past, and that’s interesting to do. It makes you appreciate perhaps, if you’re working for a film company, the freedom you get to do your own thing in comics. It really is a remarkable business that we’re in, as compared to film, where it’s so rare for a single artist to have control. Movies, of course, and other businesses involve so many people, with so many people making decisions, as well.

CBA: Do you have any feeling that Alan will retire for a period of time from comics?

Kevin: I don’t know. I sure, after this great ABC line workload he’s taken on, I could well understand him retiring.

CBA: When you hear there’s five new ABC projects coming, you realize that maybe he just can’t stop! [laughter] Kevin: Well, he will never stop writing. He has interests outside of comics. Alan is always working… His work is always upping up the standards, isn’t it? He sets an incredibly high standard in this business. And you feel you want to live up to that when you’re associated with him, because there’s that awful feeling of letting him down. Which you know he wouldn’t tell you if you did. [laughter] It’s quite a weight to bear.

CBA: Do you think that your abilities as a designer might be overlooked to some degree? Do you feel like you’re not only a comic book artist but also a designer?

Kevin: I guess so. Like I said, before comics I was designing for comic strips, characters and logos. People never really talk about design work I’ve done. I guess it’s sort of taken for granted in the general body of work, maybe.

CBA: There seems to be an aspect about you that I’ve never seen articulated before, but to me, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is—pardon the expression— extraordinarily well-designed.

Kevin: Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that.

CBA: That’s really well thought out. Do you spend a lot of time on the layout?

Do you draw up tiny thumbnails?

Kevin: I do. I also do a lot of design work and give the tone of a book a lot of thought of how I want it to look. There are certain sequences in the first volume, with Quatermain stealing the Cavorite container, and things like that I know I want to look a certain way. Certainly Alan Moore and Pat Mills tend to appreciate and comment on my design work. I guess that’s why they work with me. It just comes as part of the bag of tricks. I mean, I’ve always loved these big operatic things as a kid. I loved King Kong, liked the big operatic movies and big operatic illustrations. I find that very appealing.

But I also like on a different level the caricature of characters, the exaggeration of body language and so on which I find enjoyable to do. I know that on League, Alan appreciates the background characters and all the people wandering through the scenes.

As a final word, may I express my appreciation for the wonderful lettering on League by the great Bill Oakley, and I’d also like to note the superb coloring job produced by Ben Dimagmalin, issue after issue. I would mention Scott Dunbier, our editor, but next he’ll be wanting a dedicated Web site and begin that ugly descent into Golden Age comic sniffing… no longer just “Jenny On the Block.” Todd Klein is above praise. I rest my face.

Above: Kevin O’Neill’s icon depicting the Invisible Man of The League. ©2003 A.M & K.O’N. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

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

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ALTER EGO #108

DIEDGITIIOTANSL E

BL AVAILA

ALTER EGO #104

ALTER EGO #105

ALTER EGO #106

Celebrates the 50th anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1 and the birth of Marvel Comics! New, never-beforepublished STAN LEE interview, art and artifacts by KIRBY, DITKO, SINNOTT, AYERS, THOMAS, and secrets behind the Marvel Mythos! Also: JIM AMASH interviews 1940s Timely editor AL SULMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and a new cover by FRENZ and SINNOTT!

See comic art and script BEFORE and AFTER the Comics Code changes, with art

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

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

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #109

ALTER EGO #110

ALTER EGO #111

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

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art!

DEWEY CASSELL spotlights Golden Age artist MIKE PEPPE, with art by TOTH, TUSKA, SEKOWSKY, TALLARICO Part 3, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, cover by EVERETT & BURGOS, and more!

Spectre/Hour-Man creator BERNARD BAILY, ‘40s super-groups that might have been, art by ORDWAY, INFANTINO, KUBERT, HASEN, ROBINSON, and BURNLEY, conclusion of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH, MIKE PEPPE interview by DEWEY CASSELL, BILL SCHELLY on “50 Years of Fandom” at San Diego 2011, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, PÉREZ cover, and more!

SHAZAM!/FAWCETT issue! The 1940s “CAPTAIN MARVEL” RADIO SHOW, interview with radio’s “Billy Batson” BURT BOYAR, P.C. HAMERLINCK and C.C. BECK on the origin of Captain Marvel, ROY THOMAS and JERRY BINGHAM on their Secret Origins “Shazam!”, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, LEONARD STARR interview, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

GOLDEN AGE NEDOR super-heroes are spotlighted, with MIKE NOLAN’s Nedor Index, and art by MORT MESKIN, JERRY ROBINSON, GEORGE TUSKA, RUBEN MOIRERA, ALEX SHOMBURG, and others!

Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and part II of JIM AMASH’s interview with Golden Age artist LEONARD STARR! Cover by SHANE FOLEY!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

ALTER EGO #112

ALTER EGO #113

ALTER EGO #114

ALTER EGO #115

ALTER EGO #116

SUPERMAN issue! PAUL CASSIDY (early Superman artist), Italian Nembo Kid, and ARLEN SCHUMER’s look at the MORT WEISINGER era, plus an interview with son HANK WEISINGER! Art by SHUSTER, BORING, ANDERSON, PLASTINO, and others! LEONARD STARR interview Part III—FCA—Mr. Monster—more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and a MURPHY ANDERSON/ARLEN SCHUMER cover!

MARV WOLFMAN talks to RICHARD ARNDT about his first decade in comics on Tomb of Dracula, Teen Titans, Captain Marvel, John Carter, Daredevil, Nova, Batman, etc., behind a GENE COLAN cover! Art by COLAN, ANDERSON, CARDY, BORING, MOONEY, and more!

Plus: the conclusion of our LEONARD STARR interview by JIM AMASH, FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

MARVEL ISSUE on Captain America and Fantastic Four! MARTIN GOODMAN’s Broadway debut, speculations about FF #1, history of the MMMS, interview with Golden Age writer/artist DON RICO, art

by KIRBY, AVISON, SHORES, ROMITA, SEVERIN, TUSKA, ALLEN BELLMAN, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER and BILL SCHELLY! Cover by BELLMAN and MITCH BREITWEISER!

3-D COMICS OF THE 1950S! In-depth feature by RAY (3-D) ZONE, actual red and green 1950s 3-D art (includes free glasses!) by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT, MESKIN, POWELL, MAURER, NOSTRAND, SWAN, BORING, SCHWARTZ, MOONEY, SHORES, TUSKA and many others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover by JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY!

JOE KUBERT TRIBUTE! Four Kubert interviews, art by RUSS HEATH, NEAL ADAMS, MURPHY ANDERSON, MICHAEL KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, and others, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY’s Comic Fandom Archive, FCA’s Captain Video conclusion by GEORGE EVANS that inspired Avengers foe Ultron, cover by KUBERT, with a portrait by DANIEL JAMES COX!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

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

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

(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) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(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

A COMICS HISTORY GAME-CHANGER!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES

THE

1960-64 Volume NOW SHIPPING! 1980s Volume ships in MARCH!

This ambitious new series of FULLCOLOR HARDCOVERS documents every decade of comic books from the 1940s to today!

Each colossal volume presents a year-by-year account of the comic book industry’s most significant publications, most notable creators, and most impactful trends.

This ongoing project enlists TwoMorrows’ top authors, as they provide exhaustively researched details on all the major events along the comics history timeline! Editor KEITH DALLAS (The Flash Companion) spearheads the series and writes his own volume on the 1980s. Also in the works are two volumes on the 1940s by ROY THOMAS, the 1950s by BILL SCHELLY, two volumes on the 1960s by JOHN WELLS, a 1970s volume by JIM BEARD, and more volumes documenting the 1990s and 2000s. Taken together, the series forms the first cohesive, linear overview of the entire landscape of comics history, sure to be an invaluable resource for ANY comic book enthusiast!

JOHN WELLS leads off with the first of two volumes on the 1960s, covering all the pivotal moments and behind-the-scenes details of comics in the JFK and Beatles era! You’ll get a year-by-year account of the most significant publications, notable creators, and impactful trends, including: DC Comics’ rebirth of GREEN LANTERN, HAWKMAN, and others, and the launch of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and multiple earths! STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY’s transformation of superhero comics with the debut of FANTASTIC FOUR, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, X-MEN, AVENGERS, and other iconic characters! Plus BATMAN gets a “new look”, the BLUE BEETLE is revamped at Charlton Comics, and CREEPY #1 brings horror back to comics, just as Harvey’s “kid” comics are booming!

NOW SHIPPING! The Best of FROM THE TOMB Compiles the finest features from the preeminent magazine on horror comics history, along with never-seen material!

(192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $27.95 • (Digital Edition) $8.95 ISBN: 9781605490434 • Diamond Order Code: AUG121322

The co-founder of Filmation Studios tells all about leading the last American animation company through thirty years of innovation and fun!

(288-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 • (Digital Edition) $9.95 ISBN: 9781605490441 • Diamond Order Code: JUL121245

MATT BAKER: The Art of Glamour The fabled master of glamour art finally gets his due!

(192-page HARDCOVER with 96 COLOR pages) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 ISBN: 9781605490328 • Diamond Order Code: JUN121310

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

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

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LOU SCHEIMER: Creating the Filmation Generation

All characters TM & ©2013 their respective owners.

1960-64 VOLUME: (224-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 9781605490458 • Diamond Order Code: JUL121245

No.25 June 2003

™

$6.95

In The U.S.

Batman TM & ©2003 DC Comics.

Jack B. Quick TM & ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC

DIGITAL

NS DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional EDITIO BLE A “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and IL AVA NLY animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS FOR O 5 and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic $2.9 storytelling, as well as such DRAW! #4 skills as layout, penciling, inking, Interview with ERIK LARSEN, KEVIN lettering, coloring, Photoshop techNOWLAN on drawing and inking niques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, techniques, DAVE COOPER’s coloring techniques in Photoshop, BRET and a handy reference source—this BLEVINS tutorial on Figure magazine has it all!

Composition, PAUL RIVOCHE on Design Process, reviews of NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for the comics drawing papers, and more! purposes of figure drawing.

(88-page magazine) $5.95 INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS. (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #8

DRAW! #9

DRAW! #10

DRAW! #5

DRAW! #6

DRAW! #7

MIKE WIERINGO interview, BENDIS and OEMING on how they create “Powers”, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw great hands”, “The illusion of depth in design” by PAUL RIVOCHE, art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, and more!

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!

(88-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(96-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

DRAW! #11

DRAW! #12

DRAW! #13

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!

WRITE NOW #8 crossover! MIKE MANLEY & DANNY FINGEROTH create a comic from script to print, BANCROFT & CORLEY on bringing characters to life, Adobe Illustrator with ALBERTO RUIZ, Noel Sickles’ work examined, PvP’s SCOTT KURTZ, art supply reviews, and more!

RON GARNEY interview & demo, GRAHAM NOLAN on creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN and others discuss lettering, “Draping The Human Figure, Part Two” by BRET BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ on Adobe Illustrator, interview with MARK McKENNA, links, and more!

STEVE RUDE on comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS on Flash animation, JIM BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits, BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on “Drawing On Life”, Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and more! New RUDE cover!

KYLE BAKER on merging traditional and digital art, MIKE HAWTHORNE on his work, “Making Perspective Work For You” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, Photoshop techniques with ALBERTO RUIZ, THE VENTURE BROTHERS, links, and more! New BAKER cover!

Demo of painting methods by ALEX HORLEY, interview and demo by COLLEEN COOVER, a look behindthe-scenes on Adult Swim’s MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, links, color section 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!

Covers major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/interview with BILL REINHOLD, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, and more!

In-depth interview with HOWARD CHAYKIN, behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on HOW TO USE REFERENCE and WORKING FROM PHOTOS (by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY), and more!

Interview and tutorial with Scott Pilgrim’s BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY on how he creates the acclaimed series, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS creates his series, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Interview & demo by R.M. GUERA, Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

DOUG BRAITHWAITE demo and interview, DANNY FINGEROTH’s new feature on writer/artists with R. SIKORYAK, BOB McLEOD critiques a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and tool tech, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on penciling & more!

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

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, designinspired work with editor MIKE MANLEY, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews “Billy Dogma” writer/artist DEAN HASPIEL, plus more of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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

Seduction of the Art: The Jack B. Quick’s inspired delineator reveals the intelligence Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice While the man has spent a good part of his career as an outstanding and highly-regarded inker, colorist, and letterer (and sometime writer), Kevin Nowlan is quite simply one of the finest comic book creators working today, in any capacity. His thoughtful and intelligent work—as you will see in the following pages—is breathtaking, and his characterizations of many of the industry’s most renowned icons, whether Batman, Superman or the Hulk, quintessential. Though much in demand today as a cover artist (currently on the monthly Superman flagship title), Kevin is perhaps most appreciated for his Tomorrow Stories collaboration with Alan Moore “Jack B. Quick,” quite probably the most popular series in the ABC line. The following interview, conducted via telephone in two sessions (on Nov. 4 and 5, 2002, respectively), also reveals a man with a deep abiding respect and affection for the form. Kevin copyedited the transcript.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice Comic Book Artist: Kevin, where are you originally from?

Kevin Nowlan: I’m from the panhandle of Nebraska, the northwest corner of the state, which is a very, very sparsely populated part of the country.

CBA: Is that where you grew up?

Kevin: Until I was ten. Then we moved to Kansas.

CBA: What was life in Nebraska like, very sparse?

Kevin: Yes. We lived in a town with a population of about 5,000. In fact, it probably still has about the same number of people. It had a college, and the town was originally established, I think, by the railroad.

CBA: So was it farmland?

Kevin: A lot of ranch land. Not a whole lot of farming, but lots of cattle.

CBA: Did you live in the town itself?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: So you were able to go down to the corner store and stuff like that?

Kevin: Yes. They’ve got a great little newsstand, just the perfect place for a kid, because you’d walk in there and it was just wall-to-wall comic books, monster magazines and candy.

CBA: When were you born?

Kevin: 1958.

CBA: So did you get into comics at a young age?

Kevin: Yes, even before I could read, because I have a brother who is much older, and he would always go down to this newsstand and pick stuff up. You’ve probably heard of retailers, back in the days before direct sales, who would tear off part of the covers of comic books to return for credit and then sell the coverless comics for a few pennies. So, every week or so, my brother would bring home this stack of coverless comics.

CBA: Did you basically read anything?

Kevin: Uh-huh. My brother was very partial to DC, a prejudice I inherited from him, so I didn’t really look at a Marvel comic until many years later. But he also read tons of horror magazines and hot rod magazines as well.

CBA: Pretty much everything?

Kevin: Yeah, I think so. He always had a lot of those black-&-white magazines.

Those were always great, even as a kid, because they had me admiring artwork in black-&-white. I quickly grew to appreciate artists like Alex Toth, Warren Tufts, Mel Keefer, to name a few. Seeing their work in black-&-white was the great thing about those old days. Every little rendered line on a Reed Crandall story in Creepy or Eerie was visible, and if it had Left: Detail of Kevin Nowlan’s art featuring Jack B. Quick for the variant cover of Tomorrow Stories #1. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC. 2-B

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

Genius of Kevin Nowlan behind his work with an enduring passion for the art form been in a regular, color comic, a lot of the linework would have been obscured by color.

CBA: How much older is your brother?

Kevin: Mike is seven years older.

CBA: Is he your only other sibling?

Kevin: No, I also have four sisters.

CBA: Where are you in the line-up?

Kevin: I’m the last.

CBA: Ahh, the baby.

Kevin: I guess you could say that. [laughter] CBA: What did your brother go on to do?

Kevin: He went into the Army, and then to work for the U.S. Postal Service. He’s been there for at least a couple of decades.

He’s one of those jack-of-alltrades guys, which is funny because he can do anything, but I can only do one thing.

CBA: But you do it so well, Above: Kevin Nowlan in a candid moment. Courtesy of K.N. Kevin! [laughter] Kevin: Maybe, but it is a little handful of comics, you can tell the ones you thought were the best scary that I focused on this one little thing. You know, he could fix because they’re falling apart. Way beyond dog-eared, they’re just the car or do construction. He’s a real alpha male and I always felt almost shredded because they were read over and over again. really in awe of him. I believe he was a frustrated artist, but just CBA: What were your favorites? didn’t pursue it.

Kevin: The first book I remember having that actually had CBA: Did he admire your work? a cover on it, that was actually mine, as opposed to getting Kevin: I think so. I was so much younger that I think it was hard for him to get past the idea that I was just a pest. So we certainly got from my brother, was the first issue of Angel and the Ape, from 1968. along much better when we were both grown up. [laughter] Before CBA: The Bob Oksner title? that, he just wanted to get rid of me.

Kevin: Right, and that’s still a book that’s just CBA: Are either of your parents creative? absolutely mesmerizing to me.

Kevin: Not really. My father is retired, but for all the time I was growing up, he was a construction superintendent, building buildings CBA: What was it about it?

Kevin: Well, it’s got this great gorilla character who and stuff like that. wears suits and lives with a human being, plus he’s a CBA: Another alpha male thing. hippie! [laughter] He plays a sitar, wears love beads, Kevin: Yes, really! He’d bring home these big stacks of blueprints and everything! That issue in particular, in addition to and I’d watch him study these plans. You look at it and it’s like a Angel wearing her skimpy little outfit, it was all about foreign language! I was always very impressed by that. He could the Go-Go Girls, a gang of robbers that were hypnonot only build buildings, but none of them fell down. [laughter] tized go-go girls. So it’s not hard to understand why I My mother worked as a bank teller. Neither of them painted, drew loved that book! [laughter] or anything like that.

CBA: Did you get an essence of the ’60s CBA: So it was a pretty much middle-class upbringing? experience, so to speak, even out in Nebraska?

Kevin: Maybe lower middle-class.

Kevin: I think so, to some degree. By watching CBA: Working class?

TV, I had this vague idea that suddenly people were Kevin: Yeah. We were pretty poor. letting their hair grow long, etc.

CBA: Did you collect comics as a kid or just basically a reader?

CBA: Why did your family move to Kansas?

Did you save them?

Kevin: Once he became a construction Kevin: I don’t think I’d use the verb “collect,” because I would superintendent, my dad pretty much had to just move us just accumulate and read them. It’s funny, I can always tell, looking to a new town every time a project was completed to start on a back at something I’ve held onto since I was a little kid, just a small June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

Below: Detail from Nowlan’s “Monsters in the Closet.”

Batman: Black and White #4. ©2003 DC Comics.

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Above and below: Much of artist Kevin Nowlan’s earliest work can be found in Fantagraphics publications, often on the covers, as seen on these early 1980s issues of The Comics Journal and Amazing Heroes. ©2003 Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

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new one. He worked on a lot of high-rise buildings, that kind of stuff, so they’d finish one and then move to another town and start another project. He started working for the construction company a year or two before we left Nebraska. Then we moved to Kansas because their home office was down here. So it would depend. Some of the jobs would be nearby and he would just drive to the site in the morning. Others would be far enough away that we would have to move to another town.

CBA: Was it traumatic to move?

Kevin: Yes, I hated it. Until finally we moved to this town—it’s where my wife grew up and where I spent one year of junior high and two years of high school, and I always felt that this was the place that felt the most like home. We were determined to just stay here and let our kids grow up in one place and have them consider this home, because I hated moving so much. Every couple years, you’d have to leave your hometown, start all over in a new school and say goodbye to your friends.

Sterling, the town we live in, has a population of about 2,000. It’s a small farming town, with a small private college, not too far from the larger cities in the region.

CBA: Does it feel like Nebraska?

Kevin: No. It’s much nicer here than in Nebraska. [chuckles] The difference between a ranching community and a farming community is that farmers are just very laid back and easy-going, while ranchers are out to raise hell, chewing tobacco… the guys that I went to high school with were always looking for something to rope. [laughter] Like I said, once I thought about it, when our kids were very young and my wife and I were talking about my doing comics as a career, we understood that, these days, I can live wherever I want and still do the work. We talked about moving back here and having a nice, quiet place for the kids to grow up, pretty much the way we did. Grandparents are nearby, so it works out nicely. I really like it here.

CBA: Did you start drawing as a youngster?

Kevin: Yes. I would copy things out of the Sunday funnies, sometimes out of comic books. I’d mainly do sketches. Sometimes I would try to do a story, but I would maybe do a page or two and realize I didn’t know where I was going with it. [laughs] CBA: Were you known in school as an artist?

Kevin: A little bit. As I got older, they would start to give me chores like designing the homecoming float, and those kind of projects.

CBA: Did you have lots of friends or were you introverted?

Kevin: Pretty introverted. I still am.

CBA: Did you get into television and the typical pop culture trappings of being a kid?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: So you do recall the Batman TV show?

Kevin: Oh, yes. Remember, my brother was older, and because I was so nuts for that Batman TV show, he said, “You do realize that this is a big joke, that this is comedy, right?” It was like telling a kid that Santa Claus didn’t exist! I’m like, “What are you talking about?!” [laughter] Still, it’s fun to watch that show now and get all the jokes you missed as a kid.

CBA: So did you have ideas as you were growing up that you wanted to have a career in art? Was that the plan?

Kevin: Yes. When I got older, around high school, I was really sure that I didn’t want to be “just an artist,” I wanted to draw comics.

CBA: So were you able to go to any conventions as a teenager?

Kevin: No, no.

CBA: Did you have any inkling what the real life situation of a professional comic book artist was like?

Kevin: Things you watch on TV. Did you ever see that Jack Lemmon movie, How to Murder Your Wife? That’s what I thought it would be like. [laughter] CBA: Swigging martinis and “‘Deadline’? What 'deadline’?” [laughter] Kevin: With Virna Lisi coming out of the cake, and Terry Thomas as your valet. [laughter] CBA: Now, that’s the life. Ahh, to be a smarmy cad. [laughter] So did the fanzine work come first?

Kevin: No, not really. I actually sent in some samples to Marvel when I was about 15 and got the nice rejection note from John Romita who replied along the lines of, “Keep working at it, get better and maybe we’ll give you some work when you’re grown up.”

CBA: Was it an epiphany to discover Marvel, or did you always know they were there?

Kevin: I kind of knew they were always there, but they seemed sort of inaccessible because you would be jumping into the middle of this big, epic story. You wouldn’t know who all the characters were, and it’d be frustrating because you’d get to the end of a story with no real resolution. Whereas the DC books, especially in the ’60s, had those Mort Weisinger Superman titles and books like that, with these nice, self-contained short stories, two or three in an issue.

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June 2003

The problem with Marvel was, in a place like Nebraska, you could never really find the next issue, so if it was continued…

CBA: …you were doomed?

Kevin: Right.

CBA: So when did you get into Marvel?

Kevin: I would have been 12 or so, when we moved here to Sterling. They had two drug stores here just a couple blocks from our home. I had a part-time job, so I had some spending money. That was in the early ’70s. In my eyes, comics were having a Golden Age then, with just all kinds of great stuff coming out of both Marvel and DC. I was developing this insatiable appetite for comics. They weren’t putting out DC books fast enough, so I started to branch out and read some of the Marvel books.

CBA: Did you appreciate the older pros like Jack Kirby while at the same time getting into Barry Windsor-Smith?

Kevin: Yes. It’s funny. At first, I didn’t like Kirby’s work. I would have if I had seen the earlier Fantastic Four stuff, but I didn’t. I was always seeing something like Thor or something else, inked by Colletta, which just didn’t work for me. But if it was a slow week and there weren’t very many good books coming out, sometimes I’d pick up New Gods or Mister Miracle or something like that, even though I really didn’t like his work. I’d end up reading and rereading and rereading them, and kind of begrudgingly finally admit that I did like his work. Then, much, much later, they started reprinting some of that early FF stuff, and his imagination was so incredible!

CBA: So at this point you became a collector and not just a reader?

Kevin: I don’t know that I’ve ever been a collector. I finally put a few comics in bags and things like that, but I never followed a certain title or characters; I would usually just go for specific artists.

CBA: Were Wrightson and Kaluta important to you?

Kevin: Absolutely, yes. That whole group of guys from The Studio.

CBA: Did you aspire to illustrative art or did you want to go the Kirby/super-hero route?

Kevin: I leaned more to The Studio guys.

CBA: Did you draw the pin-ups? You know, the iconic poses kids always drew?

Kevin: Yes, I did a lot of those. Like I said, if I would get really ambitious over the summer vacation and tell myself I was going to draw an entire story before school started. I would start out with a big splash page, and then, of course, do my own lettering and a logo and all this stuff… then maybe two or three other pages, and then finally realize I didn’t know what I was doing, so I’d just drop it. [laughs] CBA: Were they established characters or were they your own creations?

Kevin: I did both. I tried to do a Justice League story, and made up some kind of science-fiction/fantasy characters, as well.

CBA: At the same time, in the early ’70s, The Great Super-Heroes had already been out for a long time, and Steranko’s History of Comics was out, and there was a real renaissance regarding the history of comics, as well. Did you clue into that?

Kevin: I don’t think I did then, because I wasn’t able to find any of those books until much later.

CBA: Did you have a curiosity about the Golden Age and further back?

Kevin: Yes. Actually, DC was doing something really cool back then with their larger books which had reprints from the ’40s and ’50s. In these 100Page Super Spectaculars, they’d have new material as well as old reprints. It was the first time I’d seen artists like Lou Fine and Jack Cole. It was incredible work. This was around 1972, I believe, such a wonderful time in comics because you not only had these incredible young artists—Barry Smith, Wrightson, Kaluta, Jeff Jones—but you also had a lot of guys from the older generation just hitting their stride. Gil Kane, Kirby, Alex Toth, Wally Wood were doing great work all over the place. Two generations at the same June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

time doing fantastic work! It was wonderfully inspiring.

CBA: It’s really quite interesting just how inspired and enthusiastic the Young Turks were at that time. Perhaps it was a holdover from the impact of the underground comix arriving on the scene… you know, the freedom being expressed in the comix.

Kevin: It’s possible. Even Marvel was doing outstanding stuff. They started doing those monster books with Mike Ploog, which I thought looked very, very un-Marvel-like. Ploog was a wonderful comic artist, but absolutely not a super-hero artist. He was a most wonderful little exception to the rule at a place like Marvel, which was pretty solidly into super-hero stuff.

CBA: Did you start looking at particular artists who inspired you?

Kevin: Yes. All the obvious ones like Neal Adams, Bernie, Russ Heath, Bob Oksner, Toth, Wally Wood….

Above: Outside of a short stint on a strip produced for Fantagraphics, Kevin Nowlan’s first professional comic book assignment was on Doctor Strange #57 (Feb. ’83), where he was inked by fan favorite Terry Austin. Kevin also drew the cover seen here. ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Left: The artist designed a statute of the Sorcerer Supreme in recent years. Courtesy of Kevin Nowlan. Doctor Strange ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Art courtesy of and ©2003 Kevin Nowlan.

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Above: Batman cover art by Kevin Nowlan. ©2003 DC Comics. Inset right: Nowlan character designs for the second season of the ’90s Batman cartoon series. ©2003 DC Comics.

CBA: Did you go for the realistic approach more than the dynamic styling of someone like Kirby?

Kevin: Yeah.

CBA: One thing I find awfully attractive about good comic art is the amount of ink being used. The artist is just not shy about pouring it on. While there are too many artists who just don’t know how to use negative space, the masters revel in using a lot of black. Your work has always shown an appreciation of using negative space.

Kevin: I’m sure you’ve heard that old Wally Wood adage, “When in doubt, black it out.” When you’re a kid, the first time you try inking with a good watercolor brush and realize 6-B

it’s a good brush that can form a nice point, you just go nuts. [laughs] It’s hard to stop putting shadows on things, you’re just having way too much fun.

I don’t know if it will fit into the conversation, but there was a very surreal moment maybe 20 years ago when I was at a convention, and after hours, a bunch of us were hanging around with Gil Kane in his hotel room. Robert Crumb was sitting there. They were having this long conversation (which is just so bizarre to begin with). [laughter] What do these two guys say to each other? You know what Gil was like: Mostly Gil talking and everyone else listening. It became such a fanboy conversation, because Crumb was talking about the difference between inking with a brush and inking with a pen, and he was saying that inking with a brush was almost a slippery slope into obsessing over technique because you start playing around with those shadows and there are things with a brush that are just impossible with a pen. [laughs] It was strange, but really educational!

CBA: You hung with the Fantagraphics crew at this convention?

Kevin: Yes. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been there if I wasn’t acquainted with Gary Groth. It was a Texas convention, I think, in Dallas.

CBA: The Comics Journal had an issue with Crumb and Kane as the cover feature.

Kevin: Well, they published a panel transcript the two of them did… I don’t know if this night was before or after, but the private conversation in the hotel room I remember as being much more interesting, but it was not recorded.

CBA: What was Crumb like?

Kevin: He was very quiet… I was going to say, “like other people like Crumb,” but there aren’t a lot of people like Crumb. [laughter] A lot of guys who looked down their noses at mainstream comics could still be impressed by Gil, because he had such an incredible mind. He could just sit back and do a monologue, with complete sentences and everything, like no one else. He could not only give you a detailed overview of the comics industry, but also be erudite about film and literature and everything. Really! He had an incredible memory, so he could tell you these little personal things about artists he’d known when he was a kid, like Mac Raboy and guys like that. There was never a conversation, it was just…

CBA: A soliloquy!

Kevin: Right. Just Gil speaking and everybody else listening, even Robert Crumb.

CBA: Did you get a chance to go one-on-one with Gil much?

Kevin: Yes. We got to do quite a few projects together, and I would use that as an excuse to call him up and visit, which was a genuine thrill, because I’d just sit back and listen to him tell stories about not just old-time comic artists, but give a quick assessment of people working today, and I always learned something from him.

Even before that, though, before we even had a chance to work together, he was exactly the same way. If you saw him at a party after a convention, you could just walk over to him and say two words—for instance: “Jack Burnley”—and then listen to him go for hours! [laughter] CBA: Were you aware of his opinion of your inking over his pencils?

Kevin: No. He would say really nice things, but I also figured, well, that’s how smart people learn to work with others. You throw a few compliments and stuff like that and then you have a better working relationship, so I don’t know.

CBA: In one of the last conversations we had, we discussed Distant Fires, and he said that he considered you, after himself, to be the best inker on his work.

Kevin: I get criticized quite a bit for changing stuff too much when I ink over certain pencilers, and I started out on that job attempting to ink it just like Gil, because I love Gil’s inking.

He used markers for so much of it, and so many of those COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

originals are just fading. But his inking… I thought he was his best inker. A lot of people strongly disagree with that, but his own inking style was so unique and fit so perfectly with the way he penciled.

CBA: You know, I absolutely agree with you, and so did Gil! I’m thankful I was able to tell him, “The minute you started to ink your own stuff, on ’The Incredible Hulk’ in Tales to Astonish, you just totally and completely knocked me out, because, God bless Murphy Anderson, but your energy could get buried under his stylings,” and, with those Boomerang and Abomination stories, I really felt Gil finally came into his own. He’s got a very sparse touch, not heavy with blacks, very light with it. But after himself, I think probably the best inkers beyond himself were these really lush guys, like Neal Adams, Klaus Janson, Wally Wood, Murphy, who would go over his work generally pretty heavily, yet still retaining his magic, you know? I just prefer the heavy hand more than Giacoia, for instance, even though Frank was an extremely faithful inker… but Adkins was great, as well.

Kevin: You felt you were still seeing Gil’s pencils, as he would have inked them, with Giacoia, with a few little stylistic differences. But you didn’t feel like you had a second personality imposing on it.

CBA: Yeah, it just worked, because it was just solid breakdowns.

Kevin: So I did a few sample pages of Distant Fires, and I faxed them to Mike Carlin.

June 2003

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He said, “Absolutely not! Gil actually wanted to ink this story, but we want you to ink it. We want a combination of styles; we don’t want you imitating Gil’s inking style.”

That really led to an existential crisis, because I felt, “I’m not going to go through, redraw faces and make wholesale changes in his stuff.

What do you want me to do?” He said, “I don’t know. Whatever you do. I’m not going to tell you how to be you.” So I talked to a whole bunch of people and just agonized over this until finally, speaking to Gil, we talked about inkers. He mentioned how much he loved Wood’s inking, and Adkins’ work, for example. He mentioned Wood and how much he loved the shadows that Wood added. He finally said, “As far as I’m concerned, that’s the inker’s job.” He got frustrated with inkers who wouldn’t add blacks, add shadows, and spot blacks the way he thought a good inker should.

CBA: Like Vinnie Colletta, for instance?

Kevin: I don’t know if he mentioned anyone specifically.

CBA: I know he hated the inks on The Flash material. He penciled that title for about five or six issues, something like that.

Kevin: An uninked splash page from that showed up on the Web a few years ago. Those pencils were so beautiful! Some of that still made it through Vinnie’s inks.

CBA: Thank God he got to ink some of his own covers for those issues! Those were superb!

Kevin: They’re just incredible looking! Anyway, once he mentioned spotting blacks, he compared my work to watercolor. He said that he’d noticed that my style was changing a bit and it was reminding him more of watercolor than the scratchy

Above: More Nowlan character designs for the second season of the ’90s Batman cartoon series.

All courtesy of the artist. ©2003 DC Comics.

Below: Commissioned pencil drawing by Kevin Nowlan featuring the Batman Family.

Courtesy of Cyrus Voris.

Art ©2003 Kevin Nowlan.

Characters ©2003 DC Comics.

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Opposite page bottom: Cover detail of Superman vs. Aliens (’95), pencils by Dan Jurgens, inks by Nowlan. Below: The late comic book master Gil Kane once confided to Ye Ed that his favorite inker was the ever-conscientious Kevin Nowlan. No job better shows the art team at their most complementary than the Prestige Format oneshot, Superman: Distant Fires (Feb.’98). Here are repros of Gil’s pencils (inset) and the finished page. All courtesy of Kevin Nowlan. All ©2003 DC Comics.

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stuff I had been doing earlier. Then I thought, “So, that’s what he’s looking for! He wants somebody to go in there with a brush and put in some nice, solid blacks, and shadows that aren’t in the pencils!”

So that’s what I did.

CBA: So the existential crisis was averted?

Kevin: Yes. I think it’s ironic that I, of all people, had a problem figuring out how to ink his stuff. Most people would have assumed that I would just go in there and start changing stuff, but the pencils were beautiful. They weren’t tightly, slickly finished, but everything was there. I was looking forward to just inking it as much like Gil’s style as possible.

CBA: Getting back to the chronology. How did you first start getting involved with Fantagraphics?

Kevin: I just sent them fan art, because they were always running little spot illustrations in their letters page, things like that.

CBA: Did you get paid for that?

Kevin: Yes, I think around the time I started, they were paying a little bit.

CBA: Were they the first guys that you dealt with as a fan artist?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: Did you pretty much just stick with them?

Kevin: Right. I did work for The Comics Journal and Amazing Heroes.

CBA: They started giving you cover assignments?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: Was that pretty quick?

Kevin: Yes. I was really anxious to get in there and start doing stuff for them. Once I’d sent them a couple drawings and they published them, then I was writing them constantly, “If you have any upcoming articles or interviews, and need a cover, I’d love to do it. Just give me a shot.” Sure enough, they did.

CBA: I recall a lot of covers, including one cover illustrating a Jan Strnad article?

Kevin: Yeah, It was called “My Brilliant Career at Marvel.” They asked for a cover to go with that and a couple of other articles that he wrote.

CBA: What tools were you using? You had an extremely fine line back then, if memory serves.

Kevin: Probably the same thing I use now: Hunt #102 Quill pen. I also used another really awful pen point for a long time because it gave me a fatter line. I kept using it because I liked the fat line but it was hard to control.

CBA: When you were in your adolescence, did you finally draw complete stories?

Kevin: Nothing more than a couple pages here and there.

CBA: Were you submitting samples to the Big Two? Kevin: Yes. After the work for Fantagraphics, Terry Austin wrote a note to me, just out of the blue. He had seen one of the drawings I’d done and wanted to buy the original. He wrote, “And I like the way you draw, so if you’re interested in getting work in comics, let me know and I’ll take samples to Marvel and DC sometime and see if we can get you an assignment.”

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CBA: Did you take him up on it immediately?

Kevin: [laughs] I definitely did! I was extremely excited. I sent some samples in and sure enough! He went in to DC and Marvel, but I think he ended up getting me a job at Marvel first.

CBA: At the time, drawing for Fantagraphics, were you exclusively working for them? You weren’t looking for work elsewhere?

Kevin: At the time, I really liked their books and magazines. I guess there were other fan publications at the time, but I didn’t pay much attention to them.

CBA: Why not go directly professional?

Kevin: I think I was just looking to get experience and learn to do better work before I got a real assignment. I was very frightened of actually starting in comics as an amateur and really not knowing what I was doing. So I was looking to get more experience under my belt and get better before I started.

CBA: At that time, Gary Groth was starting to be considered the industry’s “bad boy.” Were you aware of their notoriety with an increasing number of mainstream fans?

Kevin: Yes. Terry Austin said, “You realize everyone hates those guys, don’t you?” [laughter] I said, “Sure.” I was pretty young and naïve and pretty idealistic. I developed a lot of snobbery for a while that was influenced by hanging out with those guys. I continued to admire things they did, like the crusade to get Kirby’s artwork back, and they really did fight a lot of battles worth fighting along those lines. Who knows? They may have helped both Marvel and DC finally give in and offer contracts that weren’t strictly work-for-hire.

A lot of important issues were being discussed, but I finally got really uncomfortable with all the negative stuff. There’s a defensive aspect one goes through when being criticized, which is to say to the critic, “Let’s take a look at your work.”

CBA: Fantagraphics was obviously publishing comics at the time….

Kevin: Right, and they had talked to me about doing some comics, but I wanted to be able to make a living at it. I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen at Fantagraphics. [laughs] They were good guys, we got along well, and I admired what they were trying to do with comics, but I also knew that if a guy really wanted to be able to pay the rent by working full-time in the field, I knew I would have to work at Marvel or DC. CBA: How long did you stay at Fantagraphics?

Kevin: [pause] A couple of years or so. I don’t remember exactly.

I had a day job and just worked on that stuff on weekends and evenings. I worked for a printer doing design work, designing logos and all that paste-up stuff I’m sure you remember.

CBA: When you actually had to use a waxer? [laughter] Kevin: Yeah, the waxer! Offset was just magical to me, because as a kid, I worked for two different letterpress newspapers, so this stuff done photographically was just magical. The typesetter could actually make changes without melting down type! [laughs] CBA: Can you describe those earlier jobs?

Kevin: Yeah, I was a printer’s devil for weekly local newspapers. I swept the floor and tore down the pages after the newspaper was printed each week. I would take the Linotype, toss all those lead lines of type into a bucket and melt them down… they had a big, hot… I don’t even know what the thing was! Some kind of oven…. It wasn’t very big, only about three feet wide, but it was hot enough to melt lead, and then you’d put these big iron molds down at the bottom, pour hot lead down into them and those would be the “pigs” that would go back on the Linotype machine to be melted down again after printing. Waxing and pasting down cold type was high tech to me! [laughter] Certainly compared to my first exposure to printing.

CBA: Did you like the newspaper environment?

Kevin: Yes! I really loved it.

CBA: Did you consider doing your own fanzine?

Kevin: No. CBA: Did you work on the high school yearbook?

Kevin: Yes. I did some drawings for the high school paper, things like that. They were really poor. At that age, you really learn a lot very, very quickly. My first few attempts at doing cartoons were just really horrible.

CBA: You worked for two newspapers?

Kevin: Yes. The first newspaper I worked for was here in Kansas during junior high. Then, we moved to Gordon, Nebraska, and I got a June 2003

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job at the local paper doing the same kind of work.

CBA: You were paid?

Kevin: Yes, it was nice, because I could always buy comics and art supplies and things like that.

CBA: When did you get to go to your first convention?

Kevin: I remember one convention in Wichita that was extremely small—I don’t even think they had any guests—but someone there had original artwork on display. That’s all I remember about that convention. The whole event was just in one tiny room in a hotel. But someone had a Wally Wood splash page and a beautiful Neal Adams cover illustration. I was just staring at these things and seeing that they were actually drawn larger than the printed size and I was up close enough to see the technique. That was a real education, because I had never seen original artwork before, and just seeing how they actually did these things…. Like, the Neal Adams cover had a dog inked with dry brush technique. It was just amazing to look at! I stood there for a couple hours staring at these two pieces of artwork. [laughs] CBA: With drool coming down your chin?

Kevin: Yes! It really is like a light bulb going off in your head when you see something like that for the first time.

CBA: What was the third publication job?

Kevin: After I graduated from high school, I went to a trade 9-B

school north of here. They had a commercial art program. After I graduated from high school, I knew I couldn’t draw well enough to get a job in comics, so I thought, “Well, here’s a good fall-back position, I’ll go to this school.” They were very, very proud of their 90% placement, everyone who graduated from their school got some kind of job working in commercial art or graphic design or something.

Their emphasis was on publication design and they really browbeat us if we were too caught up in illustration. The instructor kept saying, “None of you guys are going to get jobs as illustrators so don’t waste your time.”

When I graduated, the local job printer hired me to do logos and advertising designs and stuff like that. I worked there for about four years and hated it so much that I’d go home and work on samples to send to Marvel and DC. I was determined to get out of that place.

CBA: So what was your first professional comics assignment?

Kevin: Doctor Strange #57. Terry Austin was inking that title at the time, working with several different pencilers. Marvel needed someone to pencil a fill-in issue, so Terry took the samples of my work to the editor, Al Milgrom. He showed him a Wonder Woman page and an Angel and the Ape page that I’d written and drawn. I guess Al liked them enough to give me a call and ask if I’d be interested in penciling a fill-in.

CBA: That was during quite a high point for Doctor Strange, right? Michael Golden had worked on the book…

Kevin: Well, the Golden issue came out while I was working on my story. [laughter] I just felt like I’d been punched in the head. [laughter] I’m struggling and felt I didn’t know how to draw a comic book story. I know how to draw a picture of a guy standing there, but you get a script and there’s a million things you’ve never drawn before, including backgrounds, buildings, things like that, and I was just overwhelmed by all of this. I kept thinking, “Boy, I hope Terry fixes all this stuff. I hope he really saves me.” So about that time, the Golden issue came out, and I just despaired. It’s still one of the most beautiful comics I’ve ever seen. I was horrified someone might compare the two.

In the end though, I got a lot of positive feedback, to my amazement, about that issue of Doctor Strange. It just has to be one of those glasses half-full/half-empty situations, because I just see all the really amateurish mistakes and I have to assume that other people

This spread: Kevin Nowlan’s variant cover (pencil and inked versions) for Gen13 #36 (Dec. ’98) and that same issue’s four-page Burnout back-up story (sans lettering), “No Good Deed,” written by John Arcudi and drawn by Kevin. This beauty was reprinted in Gen13: Carny Folk (Jan. ’00).

All courtesy of the artist. ©2003 WildStorm Productions.

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were seeing little areas of promise and potential.

CBA: Are you particularly hard on yourself?

Kevin: Well, on something like that, yeah! [laughs] I’m less hard on that particular issue than I used to be. I used to just cringe when I saw it. Now it’s like, okay, you can sort of look at the first page and then look at the last page and see some improvement. I remember very clearly learning so much on the 20 pages in-between, and getting a feel for how this is done, or at least figuring out a few things that would work. So when I did the last page, it’s actually a very weak page, but I can tell by looking at it that I was starting to get the hang of it. So it was worth going through. There really is no faster way to learn to do something like that. Just jump in with both feet and see what you can do.

CBA: Throw yourself into the fire.

Kevin: Like I said, getting an actual script is so different than sitting down and dreaming up poses.

When you’re doing samples on your own, if you can’t draw something, you just draw something else. [laughter] But if you have a script, you feel like you’ve got to figure out a way to draw it, come hell or high water.

CBA: Was it a Roger Stern script?

Kevin: Yes. Roger wrote the plot. You know, a Marvel plot would basically be a page-by-page breakdown without individual panels spelled out. I was breaking it down on a piece of paper, and was really having a hard time at it because I would have a lot of trouble squeezing the plot into 22 pages. So I called Roger up and he was really helpful. He was totally open to giving me latitude. “Well, on page three, this scene here, you can just drop that, and you can cut out this scene here.” That really helped me out a lot by giving me a little more space to squeeze the story in.

CBA: It must have been advantageous to have a nice collaborator like that.

Kevin: In retrospect, absolutely! At the time, I was so nervous, so insecure. It was done in the classic Marvel style, so there was a scene where Roger wrote something along the lines of: “At this point, Doctor Strange and the Sorceress fight for the next three pages.” I was dumfounded! I asked him if he didn’t want to give me some more specific information, and he said, “No. Do whatever.” [laughter] I think if I got a plot like that now, I would be, “Cool!” Even a couple of years later, when I did an Outsiders Annual, Mike Barr wrote it that way, and I

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This spread: Undoubtedly, Kevin Nowlan’s most acclaimed work has to be his collaboration with Alan Moore on the series “Jack B. Quick,” in Tomorrow Stories #1-4, 9 and 12 (recently reprinted in the two collected volumes), featuring boy genius inventor Jonathan Beauregarde Quick whose blind, single-minded scientific investigations make him oblivious to the psychological torment his parents suffer or the chaos wrecked on his Midwest hometown of Queerwater Creek. Above: The opening page of the character’s installment in TS #4 (Jan ’00), with lettering by Kevin. Right: Detail from the splash panel to TS #3’s “Pet Theory. Center background image: Detail from TS #4. All art by (and courtesy of) Kevin Nowlan. ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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really appreciated the fact that he left sequences like that for me to work out the details. But at the time, I was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing! You gotta give me something!” [laughs] CBA: Some of the best conversations I had with Gil was to listen to him get quite angry about being hoisted with the burden of doing the storytelling because of the Marvel-style scripts.

Kevin: Oh, really? I didn’t know that.

CBA: Yes, he thought that he was doing half the work the writer was supposed to do and he should get 25% of the writer’s rate, as well.

Kevin: Well, sure! They should have paid him for the writing.

CBA: Did you have any feelings like that at all?

Kevin: No. CBA: But you obviously relished the opportunity to work Marvelstyle, right?

Kevin: Yes, and to be fair, I wasn’t doing any of the plotting on Doctor Strange. Marvel-style leaves so much up to the artist, but I never felt like I was doing any writing. All dialogue was suggested, at least, in the plot. So I didn’t feel I was doing anything like that. And in a way, no, I never did any of the plotting like Gil did. The few things that I did do Marvel-style, I really did grow to appreciate the freedom, because you could adjust the story to your own strengths and weaknesses as you’re working.

CBA: So you were initially hired as a penciler, then?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: When did you start inking your own stuff, professionally?

Kevin: After I did that issue of Doctor Strange, they asked me to do Moon Knight [#29, 31, 33, 35]. I believe it was a bi-monthly book, and I kept thinking that if I figured out what I was doing and could develop some speed, I kept hoping that I could ink those stories as well as pencil, but I never really did.

CBA: Who did you have for an editor on that?

Kevin: Denny O’Neil.

CBA: So you worked it out with him, you originally got the assignment just to pencil, or to do both?

Kevin: Just to pencil. I mentioned to Denny or his assistant that I would really like to be inking my own pencils. Of course, their response was, “Well, sure. Just turn the pages in on time and you can.” So that never happened. [laughter] CBA: Who was inking you on Moon Knight?

Kevin: Terry inked the first one, and then Carl Potts inked the second. I believe the third one was so late that it had five different inkers….

CBA: Would you say that Terry was a complementary inker to you? He seems to be a different style.

Kevin: I didn’t realize that until we worked together, his approach is really very different. I have a more organic approach to inking. His is a little more precise. If he feathers, he doesn’t feather haphazardly; he puts down perfect parallel lines. On the other hand, Terry is famous for his wonderful, detailed backgrounds, so I loved seeing how he would finish those things.

CBA: After Moon Knight, you worked on…?

Kevin: I can never actually remember the chronology, but at some point around that time, I did “Grimwood’s Daughter” for Fantagraphics. It was a back-up in a color comic they published called Dalgoda. It was written by Jan Strnad. It was a grim fantasy story, broken into five chapters.

CBA: Was it a collaboration between you two?

Kevin: No. Jan wrote a full script for Charles Vess to draw, and Charles ended up not wanting to do it, so they asked me.

CBA: I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. Has it been collected?

Kevin: No, but a collection has been talked about. It’s come close a few times. One of the problems is that it’s so short. It’s only forty pages long, maybe not even that.

CBA: Up to that time, was this perhaps the most personal work that was you, so to speak?

Kevin: Yes, definitely, because I got to create visuals and all of that, even though I was really still pretty wet behind the ears. I felt like I could design the thing however I wanted to because I didn’t have to follow someone else’s work.

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CBA: What was the milieu?

Kevin: Fantasy. It didn’t look anything like Elfquest, but it had a feel like Lord of the Rings or Conan, that kind of thing. It was about the Age of the Elves was passing, as they were dying out or being killed, and men were taking over.

CBA: Did you enjoy it?

Kevin: Yes! Yes. It was very well written.

CBA: Were you under a strict deadline with it, or was it pretty casual?

Kevin: I guess you’d say casual. [laughs] I remember Gary writing a note at one point encouraging me to hurry up and get the pages done, saying, “Even independent publishers must eventually publish.” [laughter] CBA: Did you letter that, also?

Kevin: By the final chapter, I was doing all the lettering and coloring. Ken Smith colored the first four.

Phil Felix lettered the first two. I also did a logo for it.

CBA: Was it through your newspaper work where you really honed your distinctive logo work, or did you just pick that up?

Kevin: It was just something that I would work on, even as a kid.

I would draw comic pages, and I’d focus on the splash pages. I wouldn’t do covers, but I would do splashes, because my intention was to do an entire story and then submit it to Marvel or DC as a sample of my work. So the first thing I would focus on would be the title lettering or a design for a character’s logo or something like that, so I really put a lot of time into learning how to do that.

CBA: So you clued into the design of comics, the graphic vocabulary…?

Kevin: Yes! Because the page wouldn’t look complete without lettering, and I wanted it to look fairly professional. So I spent a lot of time just figuring out how to letter.

CBA: Did you admire certain letterers before you got into the business, like John Costanza?

Kevin: Yes, definitely. Before the days when they would give credits for the letterer, he would always identify his stories by reversing the page number 13. Also, I enjoyed the work of Gaspar Saladino, who actually was credited on Swamp Thing (they must have had that information on the letters page or something like that, because I somehow realized he was lettering that title). The lettering on that book looked better than the lettering on any other comic title. The letters had beautiful thick and thin strokes! I just thought he was fantastic. I only realized later that he was doing a lot of the logos for Marvel and DC. CBA: Do you to this day take lettering in consideration as a design element unto itself? Form follows function… ?

Kevin: Yes, absolutely. When I do “Jack B. Quick” stories, they’re from Alan Moore’s full scripts. Most artists, when they set out to draw a comic book page, start penciling out the figures and leave space above the characters for word balloons. But when it’s a full script like this, especially with Alan’s stuff, there’s little, if any, revisions made in dialogue, narration and all that. It’s pretty much June 2003

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carved in stone. So I start out and the very first thing I do on a page is work out the balloons and captions. I try not to hyphenate words, so if he has some big word in there, I’ll work around that so it doesn’t have to be broken.

Then I know exactly how much space I have left over for the drawing. It seems backwards to a lot of people, but it really works much better, as far as I’m concerned.

CBA: That’s probably a pretty original, unique approach, right?

Kevin: No. Toth did it years ago, and I think it was more common back in his day than today.

CBA: Because of the nature of having full scripts in those days?

Kevin: Yes. I suspect comic strips were done that way as well, but I don’t know.

CBA: I’ve been talking to a lot of people who now work at Marvel and they tell me Marvel doesn’t do Marvel-style scripts anymore.

Kevin: They’re full-scripts instead of plots?

CBA: Right! Most artists get full scripts (though there are a few exceptions from mostly old school writers).

Apparently, more writers at DC are using Stan Lee’s Marvel method. Do you think that that’s a good thing, to get away from the Marvel style?

Kevin: I certainly wouldn’t want to see Alan Moore working that way, with a plot and then having an artist draw the pages, and then going back to Alan for the final dialogue.

You’d really get watered-down Alan Moore even if he was working with first-rate artists. But other projects where you know that the artist is contributing a fair amount to the story, sometimes I think it works out a little better, if it’s a real collaboration. It worked well enough, I thought, at Marvel, on the few things that I did. Even the one job at DC was done that way. Mike Barr wrote that Outsiders Annual as a plot, I did the pencils, and the pages went back to him to do the final dialogue before I inked them. I really liked that. It certainly frees up the artist to contribute a little bit more to the pacing of the story.

Working from a full script, for

Inset left: Note the mention of some long-gone but well remembered ’60s comic book characters in this freeform page from Tomorrow Stories #4 (Jan ’02). Above: Kevin’s cover art on TS #3 (Dec.’99). Below: Detail of Kevin’s cover art on TS #10 (June ’01). Left courtesy of the artist. All ©2003 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

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Above: Courtesy of Cyrus Voris, it’s Nowlan’s version of Daredevil in his original Daredevil garb.

Below: K.N.’s cover art on The New Mutants #56 (Oct. ’87). ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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me, takes a lot longer, because it slows the process down. You really have to work within those limitations.

CBA: Was the design of a page intuitive for you? Has that always been important, or was that something that became a revelation as time went on?

Kevin: Probably intuitive, because I always try to make the stuff I draw very, very readable. I think I was always aware of the fact that everything had to flow very naturally left to right. I experimented a few times with more complicated layouts and inset panels and stuff like that, but I remember talking with people who weren’t really interested in comics, and one person in particular said, “I never know how to read these things. Do you go from this panel to this panel?”

That always stuck in my mind, because I thought, especially if you want more people reading this stuff that don’t normally read comics, you really have to work hard to make everything as clear as possible and not confuse the reader. Because if you do that, people will put the book down and they won’t finish it.

CBA: Have you gotten feedback from Alan specifically about the design of Jack B. Quick?

Kevin: I think he’s happy. We really only talked, I think, once or twice at the very, very beginning. The rest was just through a note at the beginning of a script or something like that. So I assume he’s

happy with how it all turned out, but I don’t know.

CBA: How about you?

Kevin: Yes, definitely, I’m happy. Of all the work I’ve done, “Jack B. Quick” is by far my favorite.

CBA: What makes that so?

Kevin: Besides the obvious: Alan’s writing. Alan said somewhere that he thought it was the funniest thing he had written, and I think he’s right. They’re just really wonderful, funny scripts. Then I admire the way he can squeeze what seems like a much longer story into a mere six pages. The flying cats story is a good example of that, because it’s only six pages long, and if you sit down and tell someone that story, it’s unbelievable, because there’s those little passing references to Animal Farm; you have Jack figuring out a way to make his cat fly; you have the neighbor being assassinated before a firing squad of pigs; and, at the end, the perfect resolution, which was set up early in the story. All of it fits very neatly into just six pages! It’s just astonishing that he can do that, that he can move a story along that quickly in a small amount of space. I also have to mention the setting, because a rural or a small town environment was something I was itching to do. Even before this assignment came up, I had been dreaming about doing a Smallville story at DC. I just really love that environment.

CBA: Do you actually go out and take pictures for reference?

Kevin: I have taken a few. Actually, early on, especially the first “Jack B. Quick” story has a lot of stuff that’s photo referenced.

Unfortunately, a lot of the nicer, old downtown buildings in this town are gone. The old editor of the newspaper where I worked in junior high has an incredible collection of photographs from the last hundred years or so of this town, so I used a lot of those for reference.

CBA: If Jack B. Quick were to become a real grown-up, would he be a dangerous, scary guy? [laughter] Kevin: Yes! He’s already a dangerous, scary kid! In the first story, I was thinking Jack would be a cute, lovable guy, and I drew him that way. But as I got more and more scripts, I realized, “Oh no! Jack’s an awful human being.” [laughter] I based his appearance on my son, when I was figuring out what he should look like. My son was in second grade and I used him as my model. I kept telling him, when I would show him the finished “Jack B. Quick” stories, “Bear in mind, I’m not thinking Jack is you. Jack is an awful person, but you’re a good kid, okay? You’re just the model for the physical look of this guy, so don’t get the wrong idea.” [laughter] CBA: Obviously, Jack is not evil by intent, right? He’s just misguided because of his persistent devotion to science, right?

Kevin: Right. I don’t think he means to do any harm.

CBA: Is there an allegory there?

Kevin: No. Really, these are questions for Alan because I haven’t really thought that much about it. I’d probably answer these incorrectly. But it’s humor. I wouldn’t look at it as an allegory, just a funny story. [laughs] CBA: What is a Moore script like?

Kevin: I always get them via fax and they are—as I’m sure you’ve heard—incredibly dense. It’s not uncommon for him to take an entire single-spaced typed page to just describe the first panel of the story.

On the other hand, that’s not really a problem. In fact, it’s very helpful, because you certainly have a clear idea of what Alan is thinking in his head. I’m almost surprised that he doesn’t just sketch it out. He knows how to draw, so I’m surprised sometimes that he doesn’t just doodle a sketch. It seems like it would take longer to describe the layout of the page doing it through words than to just do a quick little diagram.

CBA: You get the story faxed from Scott Dunbier in California?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: Then what do you do? Do you sit down, get a cup of coffee, and casually read it through?

Kevin: Yes. Then the phone usually rings, and I have to start reading parts of the dialogue to whoever calls because it’s just so funny. “What until you hear this! It’s hysterical!”

CBA: My favorite has to be “On the Road to Adolescence.”

What a literal translation! [laughter] Kevin: His poor buddy goes through the hideous transformation of adolescence. [laughs] Yeah, they’re wonderful.

CBA: You know, the stories do feel like Kansas.

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Kevin: Yes! That’s another thing! I have to remind myself, as far as I know, Alan’s never lived here, he’s never even visited Kansas, and yet he gets the jargon perfectly, the slang and all that. He seems to be aware of the fact that Kansas is not the South, so he doesn’t accidentally put in Southern phrases. It’s a very specific region of the country, and he nails it perfectly. It’s one of those mystifying things about Alan.

CBA: Even the characters look to be of Norwegian or Swedish stock, by way of Topeka. That Liv Ullman Emigrant look.

Kevin: Right, absolutely.

CBA: The personalities of the farmers…

Kevin: Yes. And, some of that comes from basing a character on a certain person I know, and that keeps it grounded in reality a little bit. I’ll think, “I want to have fun with this, so I don’t want to be too literal.” The townspeople are pretty exaggerated and hopefully have a lot of personality, with the big noses and big ears and poor posture and things like that. That’s another thing I just love about drawing it, it’s such a nice antidote to drawing super-heroes. I enjoy drawing costumed characters, but it’s a lot more fun to draw these dumpy, middle-aged Midwesterners. [laughter] CBA: So visually some of them are based on real people?

Kevin: Uh-huh. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I just started out drawing Jack’s dad as a generic, late-middle-aged guy, but then I realized he looks so much like a guy here in town who actually has this private museum. In the first story I needed a kerosene lantern and couldn’t find any good reference photos, so I went to visit this museum downtown, and he’s just got all this stuff all over the place, photos and artifacts from the early days of Sterling. The more I visited, I realized he looked like Jack’s

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dad, and I started to stare at him thinking, “Okay, that lower lip doesn’t quite stick out as much as I thought, I’ll have to adjust the drawing.” So now Jack’s dad probably looks more like him. (I actually don’t want this guy to know that because he’s not as old as the character, not as goofy-looking).

CBA: What’s the plan to do the “Jack B. Quick” stories? Are they going to be collected?

Kevin: They’ll be collected when we do some more stories. We don’t have enough yet to do a collection, but from the very beginning, that was the plan when Alan and I first talked. We wanted to do enough for a hardcover or trade paperback. I would even like to do a longer story.

Tomorrow Stories as a 22-page anthology title is dead, and I really haven’t heard anything recently about what might take its place, if anything. The last I’d heard was that they’d like to do a larger, 86-page annual or something like that. If they do, I’d really like to do some longer “Jack B. Quick” stories with larger panels. The very first story was actually intended to be six pages.

Because there was space available, I asked Scott if I could take two extra pages to expand the story. It just seemed really claustrophobic, but that was the only time that was possible.

CBA: There’s a real feeling of airiness to your work, a design sensibility that seems to be behind that look. Do you give great consideration to negative space?

Kevin: Maybe just viscerally, because as much as I’ve admired comic artists who seem to fill up every single available space with detail, I think that’s off-putting sometimes if someone picks up this thing and flips through it, and they’re trying to decide if they’re going to read it, I think too much detail pushes people away sometimes.

Whereas a little bit of open space, negative space, for some reason makes the stories a little more inviting. I’ve noticed that with the stories I’ve read, I’m always drawn to the things where you feel like you have a little breathing room as you’re reading the story. I don’t know why that is.

As I’m working on a comics page, I do think a lot about making it something that someone will want to read. I won’t mention any names, but I’ve picked up comics over the years that were very nicely drawn, but I didn’t ever get around to reading. Or I’ll start to read them and something just pushes me away. A lot of times it’s hard to put my finger on what’s

Above: Kevin Nowlan’s cover painting for Hulk Smash #1 (Mar. ’01). Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Inset left: Kevin Nowlan does The X-Men. The artist tells us this was for an issue of Classic X-Men but unfortunately, Ye Ed can’t find any reference to what issue number.

Courtesy of K.N. ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Kevin Nowlan’s cover art for Wolverine #12 (Sept. ’89).

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Kevin Nowlan’s pin-up contribution to Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others (Aug. ’98). Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2003 K.N. Hellboy ©2003 Mike Mignola.Below: From marker comp (left) to pencils (center) to finished inks (right), Kevin Nowlan’s pin-up in the Hellboy, Jr. Halloween Special (Oct. ’97).

Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2003 K.N. Hellboy, Jr. ©’03 M.Mignola.

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happening, what’s doing that.

But I know it happens, and I know even with artists and writers whom I admire, sometimes they do aesthetic things that just… they don’t look bad, but they just discourage me from reading. I’m confused trying to read the story and not sure exactly what’s going on. So I try really, really hard to make everything as clear as possible. When I do the layouts, I try to work out the staging and the action, all of that so it’s very clear.

CBA: Do you start by composing thumbnails?

Kevin: Yes, I did that on the first few stories. Then, on the last two, I finally just stopped doing layouts. The characters are so small that I am essentially doing a thumbnail as I draw on the finished board. I work out the word balloons, and then the rest of the layout flows pretty naturally from that. Unless I got into trouble and didn’t really know how to put something together, I wouldn’t do layouts; I would just start drawing.

CBA: Do you letter by hand?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: Have you ever lettered on the computer?

Kevin: No, though I’d like to.

CBA: [Surprised] You would? [laughter] Kevin: Well, it would be much faster! Lettering some of the denser pages takes me an eternity. But I want to have full control over the look of the pages and lettering important to the overall look of the story. I certainly don’t want to turn it over to someone else.

CBA: Lettering corrections have to be made at times, right?

Kevin: Yes. On the first few stories, I corrected them if they were spotted before I turned in the art. I would correct them right on the board with white paint. Later on, the last few stories I’ve colored myself, I would just copy and paste from another part of the balloon

or another part of the page and make the corrections digitally.

CBA: You scan in the black-&-white line art and then color?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: Then you electronically transmit it to WildStorm?

Kevin: I sent all of them on Zip disc. The DC covers I’ve been doing I’ve just been sending in as e-mail attachments, but I believe “Jack B. Quick” is sent in on disc.

CBA: With the covers you’re doing for DC, are you working with Mark Chiarello?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: How is that?

Kevin: Great! Mark is the perfect editor, because he’s really, really supportive, never pushy or difficult.

CBA: Do you think it’s important for an editor have some kind of an art background?

Kevin: It does seem to work out. When you think back on the really great editors in comics, think of how many of them had that background. Even Archie Goodwin was a cartoonist. The one time I worked with Archie on a cover, he described it so clearly that it was very, very easy to do. I assume that’s the artist in him coming through. I don’t know why that is. That doesn’t mean an editor can’t be really talented if he’s never drawn a line in his life, but it does sort of seem to be a pattern in the history of comics.

CBA: I wonder if it’s an important distinction to recognize that Alan Moore is an artist as well as a writer.

Kevin: Well, I’ve encountered some writers—and I won’t mention any names—who, by reading their scripts, I was sure they were picturing this thing as a movie, because they were describing movement that couldn’t possibly be done on the comic book page, like a character nodding or something like that. “Here I want this guy to nod his head slightly.” I felt like saying, “Okay… how do you suggest I do that?”

Conversely, there are really good writers I’ve worked with who seem to actually visualize the page in their minds before they write it.

I worked with Jan Strnad a lot, and we did an awful lot of projects together, including some advertising work and things like that. Jan really understands what an artist needs. We did two different advertising comics stories for Details magazine. These were comics stories, but magazine advertisements were worked in… it’s hard to describe… but, for instance, the guy was going through some little adventure and you’d see him chasing after a girl that he was smitten by. Then there’d be a blurb for the jeans he was wearing, and on the facing page there would be a big, slick ad for whoever the manufacturer of these jeans was. It sounds really crass and commercial, but it was executed in a really clever way, using comics in advertising. The

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June 2003

first time Details called and asked me to do this, they had seen the Batman: Black and White story and they liked the way that looked.

They needed artwork for a 12-page story done in about two weeks.

CBA: Holy Moley! [laughter] Kevin: Yeah! Of course, they knew nothing about me except the fact that I had drawn this Batman story, and they asked if I could do it. I really agonized. My friend Dave Johnson always seemed to be doing jobs like this, ones that paid really well, and the impossible deadlines didn’t seem to bother him. He would just do the best he could. So I said, “I’m going to give it a shot. What the heck.” They spent weeks of the schedule just trying to work out a story there in the office. They finally gave up and—and this is a scary sign—they asked me, “Do you know any writers that could do this? Because we’re really running out of time and we still don’t have a script.” I’m thinking, “Yeah, if you’re running out of time, I’m really running out of time.” I said, “I know exactly the guy you should call.” Sure enough, within hours (or so it seemed), Jan had put together a coherent story for them that met all the requirements, and worked in all the products. Jan also understood that I had virtually no time at all to draw this, so he wrote the story with my limited schedule in mind.

It was an easy story to draw very, very quickly. For instance, the second one we did a couple of years later, it was a little haunted house story, so he threw in a panel that was all sound effects, knowing that I would fill up the space with big scary lettering and save a lot of drawing time. [laughter] CBA: Where does Jan live?

Kevin: He lives in the Los Angeles area now. He used to live in Wichita.

CBA: Is that how you got to know him so well?

Kevin: No, it’s not. It’s funny that we ended up working together, because we both lived in Wichita, but never at the same time. We were both friends with Gary Groth, which is the main reason we started working together. The Kansas connection really had nothing to do with it.

CBA: What’s he doing now? He’s a writer I’ve always been curious about.

Kevin: Jan did a lot of writing for TV animation. I think he wrote a lot of scripts for the Disney TV cartoons. We did the “Man-Bat” Secret Origins story at DC. We also did “Grimwood’s Daughter” together.

CBA: How in touch are you with readers? Do you perceive that you’re well-received out there? That you’ve got a fan base, that people really like your work? Or are you way out there in the middle of the country?

Kevin: I feel that I’m way out there in the middle of the country, because until I started doing conventions, I had no idea that there were actually people out there reading that stuff. In the ’80s, editors in the office would, if you asked for them, sometimes forward the mail they got, things like that. But a lot of times the mail was very negative.

CBA: Oh, was it?

Kevin: Yeah. I did an issue of New Mutants [#51], and editor kept saying, “Boy, you wouldn’t believe this big stack of hate mail we’ve got.” So I said, “Go ahead, send it to me, I want to see what their complaints are.” That was very humbling.

CBA: Did you really care?

Kevin: Yes, I really did! I did the story in a very stylized, cartoony style, and they didn’t like it.

CBA: Was it because of what you were doing to “their” characters, or was it valid?

Kevin: I don’t think the criticism was valid. I liked the way that job came out. I mean, they were the New Mutants, so I was trying to draw them as kids, to make them really look like teenagers. Some of the artists on that series had been drawing them to look like gigantic super-heroes with huge biceps. I mean, they looked like the Hulk! I was impressed that Ann Nocenti, the editor, let me do it my way and didn’t give me any grief about it. But… I don’t know. It wasn’t what the readers of that title wanted to see.

CBA: But you were happy with the final work?

Kevin: I was. Then later, when I got the artwork back, I believe Art Adams and Mike Mignola bought all the pages, and I felt totally vindicated. I don’t care if all these kids hate it; I respect the opinions June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

of these two guys!

CBA: Have you always lived in Kansas?

Kevin: Yes. Nebraska and Kansas.

CBA: So when you were doing a lot of lettering jobs, for instance, they would just FedEx you the package and then you’d ship it back?

Kevin: Right.

CBA: Have you had a regular penciling and inking assignment besides “Jack B. Quick”?

Kevin: No. I penciled Moon Knight, which was a regular, ongoing title. That was it. After that, the series that I’ve done have been like “Jack B. Quick” and “Grimwood’s Daughter,” a chapter here, a chapter there, spread out over several months.

CBA: Have you ever written?

Kevin: No. In comics, the closest I’ve come to actually writing something was the Batman: Black and White story I did. I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do and described the plot to Jan Strnad over the phone. Then he went to work and turned it into a finished script. A lot of the elements of that story were from me.

CBA: Would you like to write in the future?

Kevin: Yes, I really would.

CBA: What kind of stories would you do?

Kevin: As I mentioned earlier, I always wanted to do a Smallville

Above: As a donation for a benefit auction, Kevin Nowlan whipped up this cover for an imaginary title.

Now, Kev, what’s the story behind Zeb, Russ, Earl and Irma, hmmm?

Courtesy of and ©2003 Kevin Nowlan.

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Above: As discussed in the caption opposite, penciler José Luis GarciaLopez and inker Kevin Nowlan contributed great work to Doctor Strangefate #1(Apr. ’96), cover seen below. Courtesy of K.N. ©2003 DC and Marvel.

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story, even before they had a TV show. I thought the whole idea of Clark Kent being this guy who was raised on a farm in a small town, that part of it always appealed to me. I loved those old comics. I’d like to do more super-hero work. I still enjoy it.

CBA: How about a creator-owned project? Have you ever given much thought to that?

Kevin: A little bit, but not enough. I created some characters for this card set a few years ago and played around with the idea of doing something more with them….

CBA: You’ve retained the copyright for them?

Kevin: Yes. CBA: You obviously have drawn your share of super-hero stories. Is it your favorite genre to work in?

Kevin: Yeah! They’re fun! They’re really enjoyable to do. I mean, I’m much prouder of the “Jack B. Quick” work, once it’s finished, but, boy, those “Quick” stories are really hard to draw. [laughter] But super-heroes are fun. You get to exaggerate and bend the rules, and visually they’re always interesting. I don’t have a prejudice against them these days.

CBA: Who’s your favorite character to draw?

Kevin: Batman’s probably the easiest because of all those shadows and the cape and everything. He just lends himself to doing interesting black-&-white shadow patterns and all of that. That cape continues to fascinate me. I’ve done some drawings here and there, and you can just do things with that cape that for some reason you

can’t do with any other super-hero.

CBA: Do you actually look back at, like, Bernie Wrightson’s “Night of the Bat” in Swamp Thing [#7] and the old Neal Adams stuff, how they made the cape into its own character.

Kevin: Yes, exactly. Once I was drawing Superman and couldn’t get the cape right, and then I stumbled across some Neal Adams cover and I ended up studying how he made it look so solid.

CBA: Certainly an aspect of your career is as a cover artist. Adam Hughes really only does that nowadays. He’s pretty happy doing it.

He gets good exposure and is able to work, because it’s difficult for him to do sequential material. It’s just so time-consuming.

Kevin: Yes, Adam is so good at sequential stuff that I hope he does some more in the future, but you can understand. He puts so much thought and work into those covers that each one is a masterpiece, and that work does suit him really well.

CBA: Do you like the pacing for yourself?

Kevin: Yes. I guess it’s always been this way, but it’s even more true now: Covers pay better for the amount of hours you put into them. They’re fun, but I could never see myself doing just covers, because you feel like you’re missing something if you don’t have a chance to develop an actual story.

CBA: How long would it take you, starting from pencil to paper, to pencil a page?

Kevin: Oh, dear. That gets real convoluted with me, because often on “Jack B. Quick,” I’ll ink a little section before I finish penciling the entire page and I’ll work around things that I haven’t quite figured out how to handle, just hoping that those things will get worked out in my head as I’m working on the rest of the page.

CBA: So you’re just keeping busy with the page, you’d still have a problem with an aspect of it, and yet you want to keep your mind going, so you’ll ink a little section?

Kevin: Yes, to keep working, instead of sitting back and just staring at the thing for hours trying to figure out how to handle something, I’ll go up and ink the lettering, then the balloon, maybe ink part of the background that is resolved, so I usually end up working out the figures in the foreground before I’ve completely worked out the backgrounds. I try not to pay attention to how long it takes to do an entire “Jack B. Quick” page because some of them have taken an incredibly long time. The last story didn’t really take as long. It went slowly—they always go slowly—but compared to the first few stories, it was a bit faster. The stuff is also getting a little more cartoony. I hope I’m not remembering this wrong, but I believe that Alan told me that in his mind, the perfect artist for this series would have been Norman Rockwell. He really didn’t want a lot of cartoony exaggeration and all of that.

CBA: But Alan wanted that sense of caricature Rockwell could capture?

Kevin: I think so, yes. Rockwell, I really think, was in essence a cartoonist, because he knew when to exaggerate. You talk about great storytelling! He was one of the best. He could give you so much information! With one image he was telling you an entire story.

I think he could do that because he wasn’t a slave to realism. He could tweak a picture here and there, and could make it come to life a bit more.

CBA: Do you agonize over the work perhaps more than you should or are you a procrastinator?

Kevin: No, I don’t think I agonize. More a procrastinator.

Sometimes a job just falls right into place, and there’s no extra time spent working things out. Other times you get stuck on a part of it, and you can’t work it out. In the alien story, “Why the Long Face?” the big mechanical hammer that comes out of the ceiling had me stumped. I could not for the life of me work out that layout. I couldn’t get the movement in there and the balloons and the characters. I just couldn’t get those things arranged.

CBA: Were you redrawing, redrawing, redrawing, or were you thinking it out in your mind?

Kevin: I was sketching and sketching and sketching. I tried a lot of different layouts. I’m still not sure that it works as well as it should, but I finally just had to put something down. But it’s that kind of thing, where I really wanted—I felt like the joke would be totally lost if you really didn’t have a feeling that it was a giant hammer coming out of the ceiling and smashing an alien. I really felt like you had to COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

have the movement in there, as well as the absurd scale of the thing.

It couldn’t just be a little hammer, it had to be a gigantic hammer. So stuff like that can really trip me up, and it’s not that I don’t want to work on it or that I’m procrastinating, more that it’s…

CBA: You’re working out the problem?

Kevin: Yes, I’m just stuck, and have to work it out.

CBA: Obviously, deadlines are a reality in the business.

Historically, Neal Adams has always taken the rap for having deadline problems, yet he’s always, always working his ass off. But as a person who appreciates his work, I think, well, it’s worth any wait, it’s worth whatever time it takes.

Kevin: From our point of view as the consumers, we don’t really care. We’re glad that he took the extra time to produce a masterpiece.

CBA: But the nature of the business is that it’s periodic. Do you find that frustrating?

Kevin: Yes. I’ve struggled with that. Earlier on, I would try really hard to figure out a way to draw much, much faster. But those times I’ve done that, they end up being things that I don’t even want to look at now.

CBA: Besides “Jack B. Quick,” what is your favorite work?

Kevin: The Batman: Black and White story, maybe the “Secret Origin of Man-Bat.” Ironically, I got a bunch of hate mail for the New Mutants story, where I drew it in a very cartoony style, but the opposite seemed to happen with the “Man-Bat” story. I tried to draw the whole thing without rendering, so it was just shadows and lines, no feathering. It was just one of those jobs where everything seemed to go right, as opposed to the others, where everything seems to go wrong. There was this strange moment… it almost seemed like an Alan Moore moment. When I was digging up

reference for the opening scene of the story, where Batman confronts Man-bat in the Egyptian room of a museum. There are all these Egyptian statues around. I had to find some props to establish the setting. I kept noticing, wow, look how much of this Egyptian stuff has human bodies with animal heads.

That’s perfect for this scene, where you’ve got Batman and Man-Bat fighting each other, and here’s Horus and all these, the jackal-headed god and the hippopotamus-headed god. It seemed so perfect! I mentioned to Jan, “That was really ingenious, what a great inspiration.”

He said, “No, that was in the original Neal Adams story.” I looked it up, but Jan was completely wrong. The original story took place in the gem room of the museum. Jan doesn’t even think that he came up with the idea, but somewhere the perfect idea popped into the story.

CBA: So you knew when it was all coming together?

Kevin: Yeah! It was a job that I actually asked for, because Jan mentioned he was writing it, so I called up the editor and begged him to let me draw it. He said, “Well, the deadline is only about 30 days away.” That’s June 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

This spread: One of Ye Ed’s favorite Kevin Nowlan-inked jobs is the DC Comics-“Amalgam” one-shot, Doctor Strangefate, which sported lovely work by penciler José Luis Garcia-Lopez, an extraordinary and highly-underappreciated artist (whom CBA hopes to cover in the coming months), who turned in a superb job which was inked with equal verve and gusto by the appreciative Kevin Nowlan. Above: José and Kevin’s cover art for that April 1996 issue. Inset left: Nowlan shared with us numerous photocopies of José’s penciled pages on that nifty job, including this moody splash page. All courtesy of K.N. ©2003 DC Comics and Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: When given an issue of sketchy layouts (drawn by Dave Taylor) for an issue of Legends in the DC Universe, showcasing the first meeting between Superman and Robin (with a guest appearance by Batman, seen here), Kevin Nowlan truly went to town with his inks and handed in a lushlyfinished, gorgeous book. Taylor’s pencil layout’s at left; Kevin’s finished page at right. Courtesy of K.N. ©2003 DC Comics.

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part of the reason for drawing it without rendering. I thought I could speed things up if I just left out a bunch of the rendering. Plus, it was on newsprint, and newsprint softens the image so much that you could somewhat get away with not rendering. Anyway, they also let me letter it myself. Then—and this is how you really know you’re not blowing the deadline—they actually let me do my own color guides, so I knew I hadn’t missed the original deadline and I was still comfortably on schedule. It ended up being one of my all-time favorites.

CBA: Where did you develop your skill as a colorist?

Kevin: Just looking at old comics that I thought were nicely colored. I saw how the Neal Adams work in the late ’60s and ’70s just looked so much better. Later, I found out that he did a lot of his own color guides. The same with Tom Palmer when he was working with Gene Colan, on those issues of Doctor Strange, they just looked so much better than the average comics at Marvel and DC. I believe it’s his coloring that really pushed them over the top. Especially with Adams, you could tell that it wasn’t so much that he was doing a lot of fancy stuff with the coloring; he just chose a really nice palette. He wouldn’t necessarily use a lot of different colors, but they would be the right colors. Or they would be kind of sour colors, where instead of being a straight red, it would be a red with very little or no yellow in it, so it would just be pure magenta, or magenta with a little blue in it. You study this stuff and realize that you can really do a lot by just making the right choices. It’s not a labor-intensive job, it’s one of those where if you think it out in advance, be creative, you can really enhance the drawings.

CBA: One of my favorite pieces of work that you did in the ’90s was Doctor Strangefate. How was that, working with José Luis Garcia-López?

Kevin: It was wonderful. Because I was sandwiched between Garcia-López and Matt Hollingsworth, and there was virtually nothing

I could have done to mess up that job, because the pencils were just incredible, and then Hollingsworth finished off the pages so beautifully… it was great. It was hard work, because Jose puts a lot of detail on each page. Everything’s there, but they’re almost like Gil Kane’s pencils, where he doesn’t work out every little bit of rendering.

CBA: He shorthands it?

Kevin: Yes, it’s more structure than finish. But that’s nice, because then you feel like you’re actually making a contribution.

CBA: Do you think José is under-appreciated?

Kevin: Oh, yes, absolutely! He’s amazing. I don’t know if it’s because he hasn’t done that many series or what, but of the people drawing comics now, I don’t think there’s anyone who’s a better draftsman.

Speaking of drawing Kansas, he did a story that starts out with scenes of rural Kansas, and I was astonished, because he had the terrain down perfectly… I mean, a lot of times you’ll see Kansas on movies and TV and there’ll be these gigantic mountains in the background.

CBA: [Sarcastically] Well, the Rockies are pretty close, right?

Kevin: On a very clear day. [laughter] He got it right, and he got it right to the point that… you could follow the route this character took from Wichita to Denver. Even the road signs and the number of miles were correct. Sure enough, it was all worked out. I could not believe it!

CBA: Did you ever get a chance to talk to him?

Kevin: Just for a second or two, at a convention. I don’t really know the guy well at all, but I can’t say enough nice things about him, and like you said, the fact that he’s under-appreciated really bothers me. Every artist that I know is really crazy about his work.

The comic buying public often is very indifferent to him.

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is just—whoooaaa!—to die for!

Kevin: I guess he doesn’t like drawing super-heroes. But like John Buscema, it’s hard to believe, because he does it so well.

He did the definitive Superman, as far as I’m concerned, but I guess that’s not really what he would prefer to be drawing.

CBA: Do you have an affinity for Superman?

Kevin: Yes. I loved those old comics as a kid. He’s harder to draw than Batman, because, like I said, the shadows and the cape and the mask and everything give Batman an idiot-proof costume.

With Superman, you have to get the facial features just right, and I’m still learning the correct way to draw him. I want him to look tough, but he still has to look innocent and wholesome and all of that. I probably make him a little too dark, so I’m still working that out.

Drawing Superman and Batman, that’s the kind of thing you would do when you were six years old and didn’t have anything else to do. You didn’t expect to get paid for it, you’d just sit down and do it. So I really love a lot of the iconic DC characters, I just love to draw them.

CBA: Do you have any interest in working on Marvel characters?

Kevin: I really like Doctor Strange. Of all the Marvel characters, Doctor Strange is by far my favorite. But that’s probably never going to happen. I remember when they were publishing Marvel Fanfare, [the editor] Al Milgrom said, “Do anything you want, but just don’t give me a Doctor Strange story, because every artist wants to draw Doctor Strange.” [laughs] CBA: What is it about the character? Is it the quintessential Steve Ditko design?

Kevin: I don’t know. It’s a great-looking costume. It’s one of those they messed around with, time and time again, and they really shouldn’t. It’s all been worked out, just draw it the way he’s supposed to look. Don’t give me variations on this with a trench coat and a goatee. This is the way he’s supposed to look! It’s Doctor Strange.

Just leave it alone. I think that going to all these different realms with monsters and things like that, it’s just so much fun to draw. Just let your imagination run loose. The Hulk’s also a fun character to draw.

CBA: What version, so to speak? Is it the Kirby Hulk that appeals to you?

Kevin: Yes. The Kirby Hulk had kind of a Karloff Frankenstein face and that’s fun to draw.

CBA: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a drawing of the Hulk by you, per se, but I can see a Nowlan version in my mind’s eye right now, that grim grit in the face. It’s a cool character, yeah.

Kevin: I had this weird, surreal day two years ago, when I went to [film director] Ang Lee’s house outside New York and did Hulk sketches. I guess he had seen the two cover paintings I had done for the Hulk Smash! mini-series, and he was trying to get clear in his head what the Hulk would actually look like. The movie hadn’t been cast yet. So we just sat there at his dining room table with some paper and pencils, and he showed me some photos of actors’ faces. I drew a few Hulk faces using the specific actor’s features. It was important to the script, I guess, to have the Hulk recognizable as this same individual. (They’re not going to have the Lou Ferrigno transformation, it’s going to be the actual guy, only big and green.) It’s so funny because, clearly I was going in a different direction from what he wanted, because he kept saying, “Make the eyes bigger. Bigger, bigger! Rounder!” In my mind, he looks sort of like Frankenstein, with those little, squinting eyes and that huge brow. And he showed me some Japanese masks that had the kind of three-dimensional look that he was looking for, and I just didn’t get it. It’s like, no, this is what the Hulk should look like. [laughs] I did my best, but…. He was a very nice guy. After I returned home and did a series of drawings for him, he seemed to think I was finally getting it, but….

CBA: Do you think what he was trying to go for was getting the personality, getting recognizable eyes?

Kevin: Yes, he was talking about how important expressive eyes June 2003

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are for an actor. I was covering the eyes up so much with that big brow and making the eyes so small, he was worried that it would be a problem later on.

CBA: Do you think he has a good grasp on the character?

Kevin: Later on, once I got home and was working on the additional drawings, they sent me a few pages of the sample script, and I really think he does. The pages that I saw were wonderful, dramatic, kind of tragic monster moments. I think he really does have the right idea. It was fun paging through the Hulk Smash! comic with this big-shot movie director who had just won an Oscar. At one point in the comic, some army jets are attacking him, and the Hulk picks up a tank and throws it up in the air and smashes the planes away, and Ang Lee is saying, “Yeah, I want to get some of that in the movie! I like that.” [laughs] He seemed to get the essence of what makes the character so appealing.

CBA: It’s funny how quickly Hollywood has been raiding comics to such a degree now, because they’re finally able to visualize what

Inset left: Woefully under-represented in this section are examples of Kevin Nowlan’s superb lettering and logo design abilities, though we have snuck this story title, composed for the tale drawn by K.N. and written by Jan Strnad in Batman: Black and White #4.

Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 DC Comics.

Below: One of Kevin Nowlan’s most beautiful art jobs appeared in Batman: Black and White #4 (Sept. ’96). Here’s a page from that Jan Strnad-scripted horror tale starring the Caped Crusader. Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 DC Comics.

21-B

Above: Kids these days! Papa Kevin in a picture supplied by K.N.

Inset right: Looks like Kevin’s daughter, Paige, getting ready to trick and treat! Photo courtesy of Kevin Nowlan.

Below and inset right bottom: Kevin’s son Spencer posed as the character Jack B. Quick for these photo studies, appearing here courtesy of K.N.

22-B

before only people like Kirby and Neal Adams could draw.

Kevin: I was thrilled with the Spider-Man movie and how they made it seem so much like the best Steve Ditko/Stan Lee Spider-Man comic you ever read. It was all of that and more, I thought. Tobey Maguire just looked like Steve Ditko himself had drawn him.

CBA: Here’s hoping that DC can follow suit.

Kevin: Right. With special effects, it would be much easier to do things that were incredibly expensive and impossible in the past, so we’ll see.

CBA: Have you worked with Hollywood beyond that?

Kevin: No. Most of the things really turn out like the Ang Lee thing, where you get your hopes up that something’s going to happen and then nothing does. I did some design work that was never used for Space Jam. I guess they asked a lot of different people to send in some drawings of aliens and stuff like that, and I did a bunch of them. I think Mignola and Arthur Adams and who knows how many other people also did drawings. We were paid and everything, but none of our designs were ever used. Actually, the most pleasant experience I’ve had along those lines was doing some character design work for Bruce Timm for the first season or two of Batman: The Animated Series. That was so much fun.

CBA: Who did you design?

Kevin: I’m never sure what they actually used, because they sort of get filtered through Bruce’s style, but I did designs for Robin, the Joker, the Mad Hatter, and Scarface, the Ventriloquist. I designed a whole bunch of thugs, guys in fedoras and things like that. But really, the one thing where I can see they took what I did and used it verbatim was Killer Croc, because in the comic he’s drawn with all those little scales, and that wouldn’t translate very well for animation, so we had to kind of start from scratch and work out a design that made him look somewhat like a human crocodile, but what we did looked very different from the comics.

CBA: I loved that particular episode, because they melded a Neal Adams/Denny O’Neil story to Killer Croc, and it worked!

Kevin: Yes! Exactly! The circus freak story.

CBA: That was really cool. You’re very often spoken of in the same breath as Arthur Adams and Mike Mignola and certainly some of the top comic book artists around. Art has Monkeyman, Mike has Hellboy. “Jack B. Quick” notwithstanding, would you like to create your own single property?

Kevin: Yeah, I would. But I haven’t done it yet, so I don’t know.

CBA: Obviously, Mike Mignola has parlayed his property into a major motion picture.

Kevin: Yeah. Mignola’s the ultimate example of that because, the movie aside, he has a character that finally people would rather see him draw than Batman, a character that works for him better than any other character owned by anyone else. Yes, I would, and I keep thinking that I’m going to, at some point, get a little bit of free time and get to work on something like that, but I always have deadlines and never really seem to find that free time. Or, if I do, I’m never exactly sure what I want to do. But, generally, I think at some point I’ll at least try to do some short stories that are creator-owned and try to find a home for them and see what happens. I haven’t totally ruled it out, but it hasn’t happened yet, so I’m a little pessimistic.

CBA: Have you ever done a graphic novel?

Kevin: Yes and no. [laughs] I started on one that’s not finished yet but hopefully will be wrapped up here in the next few months.

CBA: Oh, really? Is it anything that you can, in very generalities,

tell us what it is?

Kevin: Yes, I’d have been so happy if you hadn’t brought this up. [laughter] It was a painted Man-Thing graphic novel that I started in 1988, maybe even ’87? I got some scripts in 1987. Steve Gerber wrote it. It’s a follow-up to “Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man” [Man-Thing #12]. It’s painted and in some places painted in a fairly cartoony style, other places painted fairly realistic. It got put on the back burner after I finished a large part of the pages because it eventually became so timeconsuming that I could not make a living doing it.

You know how it is, once things get on the back burner sometimes, they have a really hard time getting off. The cover’s done and at least 50-some pages are painted, so Marvel and I have talked about different ways of finishing it up, and right now we’re working on one way of doing it.

CBA: Are you happy with it?

Kevin: I haven’t even looked at it in years, so I don’t know. I’ll get it out in a couple of weeks, here, and I’ll let you know. [laughs] I don’t know. It’ll at least be nice to have the thing finally finished up.

CBA: When did you get married?

Kevin: In ’88. Deanne works in the public preschool. Everyone gets confused when I tell this story, because they think we were high school sweethearts or something like that, but we weren’t. We knew each other when we were in school here in eighth grade.

We weren’t friends, but we were friendly. When we had our ten-year high school reunion, we struck up a friendship, and we got married a couple of years later.

CBA: A post-high school sweetheart.

Kevin: I keep saying it’s a good thing we went to the same high school, because I keep telling her there’s no way that I would go to her high school reunion. [laughter] CBA: How many kids do you have?

Kevin: I have two: An 11-year-old son, Spencer, and a 13-year-old daughter, Paige.

CBA: Are either one of them creative?

Kevin: Yes. Paige is very, very musically inclined, plays a couple of instruments, and sings and just loves doing all of that stuff. Spencer is putting me through a whole lot of deja vu, because he draws all the time. He’s got a blank sheet of paper, he’s filling it up with monster drawings and stuff like that.

CBA: Is he good?

Kevin: Yeah, he’s wonderful!

I got on him once because he kept drawing without doing preliminary sketching, and then he’d sometimes get frustrated because the drawing wouldn’t turn out right. I’d say, “Well, just try laying it out lightly before you bear down on the pencil lead.

Do some light sketches that are barely visible.”

And he kept saying, “I can’t do that, I can’t do that.” I was writing to Alex Toth, at the time, when Alex was doing these alla prima drawings (directly with an ink pen without any preliminary pencil sketching), and I asked Toth for a little parental advice. My question was, “Should I just let Spencer do it his way or should I try to encourage him to sketch first?” Toth’s comeback was, “Get off his back!”

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 25

June 2003

C o l l e c t o r

The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine (edited by JOHN MORROW) celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through INTERNS VIEWS WITH KIRBY and EDITIO BLE A IL his contemporaries, AVA NLY FEATURE ARTICLES, FOR O $3.95 RARE AND UNSEEN $1.95— KIRBY ART, plus regular columns by MARK EVANIER and others, and presentation of KIRBY’S UNINKED PENCILS from the 1960s-80s (from photocopies preserved in the KIRBY ARCHIVES).

DIGITAL

Go online for #1-30 as Digital Editions, and an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all the issues at HALF-PRICE!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #34

KIRBY COLLECTOR #35

KIRBY COLLECTOR #31

KIRBY COLLECTOR #32

KIRBY COLLECTOR #33

FIRST TABLOID-SIZE ISSUE! MARK EVANIER’s new column, interviews with KURT BUSIEK and JOSÉ LADRONN, NEAL ADAMS on Kirby, Giant-Man overview, Kirby’s best 2-page spreads, 2000 Kirby Tribute Panel (MARK EVANIER, GENE COLAN, MARIE SEVERIN, ROY THOMAS, and TRACY & JEREMY KIRBY), huge Kirby pencils! Wraparound KIRBY/ADAMS cover!

KIRBY’S LEAST-KNOWN WORK! MARK EVANIER on the Fourth World, unfinished THE HORDE novel, long-lost KIRBY INTERVIEW from France, update to the KIRBY CHECKLIST, pencil gallery of Kirby’s leastknown work (including THE PRISONER, BLACK HOLE, IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB, TRUE DIVORCE CASES), westerns, and more! KIRBY/LADRONN cover!

FANTASTIC FOUR ISSUE! Gallery of FF pencils at tabloid size, MARK EVANIER on the FF Cartoon series, interviews with STAN LEE and ERIK LARSEN, JOE SINNOTT salute, the HUMAN TORCH in STRANGE TALES, origins of Kirby Krackle, interviews with nearly EVERY WRITER AND ARTIST who worked on the FF after Kirby, & more!

KIRBY/LARSEN and KIRBY/TIMM covers!

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

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

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

KIRBY COLLECTOR #36

KIRBY COLLECTOR #37

KIRBY COLLECTOR #38

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

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

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

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

(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!

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

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

97

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!

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

(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

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

(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

(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

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

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

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

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

98

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

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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

All characters TM & ©2013 their respective owners.

(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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TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

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

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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!