Comic Book Artist Special Edition #1

DON’T ASK WHY--IT’S HERE!! IT’S NOW!!!

CBA

COMIC BOOK ARTIST

NO. l DEC.

S P E C I A L

E D I T I O N

KIRBY’S HERE!

Big Barda ©2013 DC Comics

HEATH

TOTH

ADAMS

WRIGHTSON

TIMM

S P E C I A L NO. 1

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E D I T I O N

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

2013

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EDITOR’S RANT: ON COOKES, MOOKS, AND COMIC BOOKS Ye Ed tries to get on his mom’s good side ..........................................1 MARK EVANIER: THE UNKNOWN KIRBY True Divorce Cases! Soul Love! Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix!

Our interview with Mark Evanier gives us the skinny on the King’s unrealized ’70s DC work! ............................................2 STEVE SHERMAN: JACK KIRBY’S SUPERWORLD Starbaby, The Ship, and Jack’s Superworld of Everything— Kirby’s ’70s assistant reveals more of Jack’s hitherto unknown “could-of-beens”! ........................................................................15 RUSS HEATH OF EASY COMPANY War artist extraordinaire talks about Haunted Tanks, Sea Devils, Pterodactyl Guy, Cowgirls at War, Sgt. Rock and more of his superb DC Comics material ............................18

©2013 DC Comics COPYRIGHTS: Adam Strange, Batman, Big Barda, Cain, Darkseid, The Demon, Female Furies, Forever People, Jimmy Olsen, Kalibak, Haunted Tank, Kamandi, Lightray, Lois Lane, Mantis, Mister Miracle, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, OMAC, Orion, Sea Devils, Sgt. Rock & Easy Co., Superman, Two-Face ©2013 DC Comics Galaxy Green, Superworld ©2013 The Kirby Estate. Gemini ©2013 Steve Ditko. Hot Wheels ©2013 Mattel. Dr. Faustus, Lilith ©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. Conan ©2013 Conan Properties, Inc. Tarzan ©2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Cowgirls at War ©2013 National Lampoon Inc. The Shadow ©2013 Condé Nast.

Gunsmoke, Victory at Sea, Rip Kirby ©2013 their respective copyright holders.

Visit CBA on the Web at: www.twomorrows.com Please send all letters of comment, articles and artwork to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor Comic Book Artist P.O. Box 204 West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 e-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

ALEX TOTH: BEFORE I FORGET From Hot Wheels to The Witching Hour, romance to war, the quintessential “black-&-white” comics artist writes about his ’70s DC masterpieces (and The Shadow that got away!).... 30

THE GREATEST: NEAL ADAMS’ SUPERMAN VS. MUHAMMAD ALI Frequent CBA contributor (and our logo designer!) Arlen Schumer goes a few rounds with Neal Adams about perhaps the eminent artist’s finest work for DC, lavishly illustrated with unseen work by the master! ........................................36 BERNIE WRIGHTSON: DARK COMEDY Writer Bruce Jones gives us a glimpse of the Master Artist of the Macabre in this 1977 appreciation, plus an astounding portfolio of Bernie’s ’70s work ............................................56 SEXTET: A DC ODDITY............................65 BRUCE TIMM: YOUNG GOD OF SUPERTOWN Our most excellent cover artist gives us the lowdown on the animated Fourth World, Kirby’s babes, his sparse comics work, and what Jack means to him ..............................................66 HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @#!$?%!

Oh, man, it’s… OMAC! ..................................73 Front cover by Bruce Timm. Back cover by Neal Adams.

Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, Big Barda, Superman ©2013 DC Comics

COMIC BOOK ARTIST SPECIAL EDITION 1 is published by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA. First Printing. All characters are © their respective companies. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©2013 TwoMorrows/Jon B. Cooke.

Editor’s Rant

This One’s for Mom Celebrating My Mother, Nick & My Favorite Comics My bestest friend—and dreaded publisher— John Morrow teased me the other day that we ought to change the name of this magazine to 1970s DC Comic Book Artist as it’s painfully obvious that I’m just plain obsessed with that era at National Periodicals. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” John said, “that you can do a bi-monthly mag devoted to that company and last for years.” Not missing a beat, I replied, “You’re right: I could… and I’d love to.”

(Of course, John is one who knows of what he speaks! He’s already given five years of his life and 25+ issues of his mag The Jack Kirby Collector to a single artist, and there’s no end in sight for him!)

And, yep, I would love to do a ’70s DC-only CBA. I cringe to think how many wonderful artists, writers, and editors I have yet devoted adequate space to who worked for DC Comics—Julius Schwartz, Alex Niño, Jim Aparo, Sid Check, Nestor Redondo, Howard Chaykin, Michael Golden, Murphy Anderson, Frank Thorne, Bob Oksner, Jack Adler, Irv Novick, Gaspar Saladino, Arthur Suydam, Tony DeZuniga, Don Newton, E. Nelson Bridwell, Mike Grell, Ramona Fradon, Bob Haney, Alan Brennert, Joe Staton, Rudy Nebres, Mike Nasser, Keith Giffen, Steve Gerber, Gray Morrow, Bill Draut, Doug Wildey, George Tuska, Wally Wood—God! I could go on and on! (And, of course, I could die and go to heaven if ever I was blessed to do an interview with Steve Ditko, but we all know the probability of that happening!) DC is fertile ground for celebrating and investigating, and I’ll be delighted to return to the era of “The Daring and the Different” whenever possible, but rest assured we’ll be examining other companies and creators in the coming months with like enthusiasm.

So in this, CBA Special Edition #1, I’ve totally indulged myself and focus on the creme de la creme of DC’s creators—robbing John to do my take on King Kirby, with help from Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman; celebrating the all-too underrated Russ Heath; showcasing that true genius of sequential storytelling, Alex Toth, and his recollections of superb work; presenting exquisite unpublished art by the masterful Bernie Wrightson; featuring my other bestest friend, Arlen Schumer, and his conversation with all-time great, Neal Adams, on his superlative Superman vs. Muhammad Ali; and sharing time with that “up-and-comer,” Bruce Timm, a generous, kindred soul if there ever was one. I hope my presentation does these brilliant creators justice and, as self-indulgent as this magazine is for me, I hope you dedicated readers and contributors will accept this as a gift from John, Pam, and I to you—and from Fred Hembeck, too! Thank you and happy-happy-joy-joy!

But, like the headline says, this one is for my mother, who I love and cherish completely. I wouldn’t have this passion, this creative desire, this need to express myself, A) if you didn’t birth me, and B) if you never nurtured my artistic drives. It’s all your fault, lady!

Y’see, Ina Cooke not only approved of her two youngest sons’ love and obsession for comics, she also encouraged us to draw and tell stories—and, importantly, to listen to the stories of her life.

It may sound strange, but my love of DC Comics is tied-up with my mother’s influence on my creative endeavors. Our family went through some tumultuous times in the early ’70s, and my mother, brother Andy and I spent a year (between ’70-’71) in Europe which utterly changed my life. That’s when the comics bug really hit; that’s when I discovered Jack Kirby and his Fourth World; that’s when Andy and I really started to draw.

Mom would take us on never-ending—and always fascinating—historical tours all over France, England, and Ireland; from Stonehenge to Notre Dame, from bombed-out Coventry Cathedral to the plaques honoring martyred WWII French Resistance Fighters mounted on walls beside the Seine… man, history was alive for us!

And my mother realized there were times when Andy and I would be homesick for American culture, so she’d allow us to buy a U.S. comic book once a day at Brentano’s, the Parisian bookstore. On those racks, I discovered Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, Neal Adams, Russ Heath, Bernie Wrightson—hey, are you seeing a pattern here? And then we’d walk to the American Library where in the stacks I discovered Mark Twain, Hugh Lofting, Arthur C. Clarke, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.—all of this during April in Paris. Imagine.

I love you, Mom. You opened doors that will open anew for my kids because you allowed me to imagine possibilities. I treasure what you taught me: History lives, the truth is important, and art matters. I hope I live up to the promise you instilled in me and honor the privilege of your nurturing. Thank you.

(Oh, and I love you too, Nick! A better stepfather a son could never have. And thank you for the Ditko, Dan O’Neil, and Crumb comix! You warped my mind forever!)

One more thing: There’s one creator I truly regret not paying proper homage to in this issue and who deserves a monthly magazine all his own devoted to his work: Joe Kubert.

As gracious and talented a man as I’ve ever had the joy to talk with, I sincerely hope the day will soon come when a proper tribute is spotlighted in these pages. How about being the subject of the CBA Special Edition for next year?

Sound good, Joe? Happy 2000 everybody, and thanks for sharing the ride.

—Jon B. Cooke

Above: The proprietors of Rhode Island’s greatest bookstore—Mom & Pop’s Book Shop of Wakefield— Ina Cooke and Nicholas Mook (who are also my real mom and steppop!). Photo courtesy of Mother Dearest.

Below: Joe Kubert’s wonderful contributions to DC Comics cannot be overestimated. ©1999 DC Comics. Tarzan ©1999 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

CBA Interview

The Unknown Kirby Mark Evanier Reveals the King’s Treasures Unseen Below: Jack Kirby selfportrait from his Fourth World titles. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

Bottom: Is this an initial cover design for New Gods #1, or a recreation done in 1976? Art ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

New Gods ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Mark Evanier—columnist for the Comics Buyer’s Guide, television writer, and perennial creative cohort of Sergio Aragonés—received his first professional break (along with Steve Sherman) as assistant to the King, Jack Kirby. Now writing the definitive biography of the great comic book artist, Mark has an astonishing grasp of the entire history of comics and is an engaging interviewee. The writer has always been a vocal supporter of the TwoMorrows magazine group and I’d like to publically thank him for the enormous help he’s given this lowly editor over the years.

Mark was interviewed via telephone for two sessions, Oct. 10 and 20, 1999, and he copyedited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: How did you start working with Jack?

Mark Evanier: Well, I met Jack in July of 1969. I was just one of your geeky grade-level fans, but we got along very well. He saw some of my writing, and was for some inexplicable reason, impressed. Jack actually—God knows why—got it in his head that I could help out with artwork, which is kind of like Arnold Palmer picking someone out of the stands to do his putting for him.

CBA: Were you a cartoonist?

Mark: I was doing a little drawing, but I had absolutely no pretensions of ever making a nickel at it. I did it just for fun. In my whole life, I was never naive enough to think I could ever make a living as an artist.

CBA: You’re really quite a mimic with signatures and such.

Mark: Well, Jack was impressed that I could do his signature better than he could, he claimed. He was also impressed with my work on the Marvelmania magazine and other things I had done, but I think just generally, we got along. A stream of local comics fans had traipsed out to visit him, not only because he was Jack Kirby but also because he was the first comic book artist in L.A. who was even remotely approachable. Roz later

told me that, of all the people he was meeting, I was the one he most connected with as somebody who understood his odd way of speaking. I think a lot of fans came to him wanting sketches and autographs and freebies, and so on. I just wanted his wisdom and counsel.

CBA: So you had no mercenary inclination.

Mark: None. I wasn’t even at that point interested in working in comics. I’m as surprised as anyone that I’m in the business at all. More surprised, actually, because when I grew up, the prevailing wisdom was that if you didn’t live in New York, you didn’t work in comics.

CBA: So Steve Sherman, Jack’s other assistant in those days, was your friend at the time?

Mark: Yes, we had a comic book club, and Steve was a member. He just showed up at a meeting one day, and we became buddies. What happened was there was a science-fiction convention in Santa Monica in the summer of 1969—I think it was actually the July 4th weekend. I didn’t attend, but Jack did. He and Roz paid admission, and a lot of comics fans, members of our club, were there and word spread, “Oh, my God, Jack Kirby is here!”

They all met him and got autographs, and Jack invited a couple of them to the house, and I tagged along. Our secretary, Rob Solomon, and our treasurer, Mike Rotblatt, had said to him, “Mr. Kirby, we have a comic book club, and we’d love to have you as a guest speaker at one of our meetings.”

That was their excuse just to talk to him, and he said, “Great, why don’t you come to the house and let’s talk about it!” Jack was new in Southern California. He and Roz had only been here for a couple of months, and they were looking to make contact with the local writers and artists. Jack had a dream at that point that he was going to someday, in some fashion, start a West Coast comic book company. The Kirbys were a little isolated, living in Irvine, California so he invited our officers, and since I was President, I went along. We got along great and I ended up seeing him a couple of times after that, mostly through my involvement with a mail order firm I worked for briefly called Marvelmania (where I was handling Marvel merchandise). One day, he and Roz came down to Marvelmania, and they took Steve and myself to lunch. We went to Canter’s Delicatessen, where Jack told us, “I’m leaving Marvel. I’m going over to DC, and I’m going to be editing a bunch of books. I need a staff; would you guys like to work for me?” We thought it over for about four seconds, and said, “Absolutely.” I had no idea what the job would encompass or even if there was any money involved, but you don’t say no to Jack Kirby!

CBA: He’s the King, eh?

Mark: Right. We sat on the secret that he was leaving Marvel for about a month as he finished the final parameters of his deal. Finally, one day he called and said, “I just talked to Stan, it’s finished,

to give him the best deal in the place, when he, in fact, had not shown much loyalty to the company over the years. You’ve got to remember this was a time when DC had been throwing bodies out the door, and an awful lot of guys who’d worked for them for many, many years had either been eased out of their jobs, or outright fired. Whether the dismissals were justified or not, most of those who remained were very concerned that DC was forgetting about people who had been loyal to the company for years, and who had delivered in many cases books that had been relatively successful.

So, all of a sudden, they’re being told there’s a new generation going on here, there’s a new wave, and….

CBA: They resented it.

Mark: Yeah, anyone would.

CBA: Was the idea for Jack to “Marvelize” DC?

Above: Jack's original design for the cover of his first ’70s DC work, Jimmy Olsen #133. From Kirby Masterworks. Art ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

Jimmy Olsen ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

you can tell anyone you want.” It set off shockwaves throughout the business.

CBA: Jack came to DC in late Summer 1970.

So the deal was done in the Spring?

Mark: It was in early March, if I’m not mistaken.

CBA: Do you think Carmine Infantino had a hard time “selling” Jack Kirby to DC, so to speak, because of Kirby’s previous problems with Jack Schiff?

Mark: I think it was a couple of things. A lot of people at DC did not like Marvel Comics.

They did not like Marvel artwork. They did not like Marvel style stories, and they believed DC was producing a superior product. The thinking was, “Why would we even want Marvel’s best artist when all their books stink?” That was kind of the attitude that some— not all—people there had.

It was one of the factors that ultimately made Jack uncomfortable at DC. CBA: But other than inhouse staff sentiment, that wasn’t necessarily coming from Jack Liebowitz?

Mark: I don’t know.

CBA: One could speculate if Liebowitz didn’t want it, it wouldn’t have happened, right?

Mark: Not necessarily.

At that point, Liebowitz had moved upstairs, and Infantino was assuming more and more power. Liebowitz may have thought bringing in Kirby was a bad idea, but Carmine fought for it. It doesn’t necessarily mean Liebowitz would’ve either vetoed it or loved the notion—those were not the only two alternatives. He might have grudgingly felt that since Carmine was taking over, Carmine had to be given what he wanted. I don’t know exactly where the reticence came from.

CBA: Possibly Sol Harrison?

Mark: Well, Harrison never liked Jack’s work. That was not a secret. Sol was quite unabashed about it.

CBA: Schiff still had friends at DC. Mark: Yes, but I think one of the things that was operative then was that you had a staff of people who’d been loyal to the company for (in some cases) 20-30 years. Some of them weren’t thrilled to see some guy brought in, and to suddenly be told this guy is the new star of the day, and we’re going

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Above: Jack’s quick cover comp for his proposed Mr. Miracle spin-off, Big Barda and Her Female Furies. Art ©1999 The Kirby Estate. Big Barda and the Female Furies ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

Below: Kirby’s unused cover icon intended for New Gods.

Art ©1999 The Kirby Estate. New Gods ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Mark: No, I think Jack’s job was to invent new DC comics. I think everything was in play, as witnessed by the fact that Infantino talked to Kirby—and I think, to other people as well—about taking any book in the place and revamping it. That showed at that point, there was no strong commitment to any long-standing book. But it was not just a matter of Jack being brought into a company that was otherwise unchanged—DC had gone through enormous changes in the two years preceding Kirby: Orlando coming in, George Kashdan, Mort Weisinger and other editors going out. You had artists like Jim Mooney, George Klein, and Wayne Boring leaving abruptly or being let go, people like Frank Robbins and Howie Post being brought in, writers like Bill Finger, Eddie Herron, Gardner Fox, and Arnold Drake being ousted… Suddenly, everything in the company was subject to revision, and Kirby was one more thing that was shaking it up. And it was right for Infantino to shake up the company—that was his mandate, that was his mission. If he had come in and left all the books exactly as they looked before he took charge, he would’ve been guilty of malpractice.

CBA: Suddenly, there was a big publicity build-up for Kirby’s arrival in DC’s books.

How top-secret was it for the short period of time you knew about it?

Mark: Boy! I sat on it for a month or two, and

then it erupted. At that time, Don and Maggie Thompson were putting out a monthly newsletter on the comics industry called Newsfangles, and they actually put out an Extra about Jack’s defection to DC. It was the only time in the history of fanzines I’ve ever heard of a publication putting out an Extra. I cannot think of any news item which could be released today about the comics industry which would have as much impact on comics fans as that did.

CBA: Did the news come straight from Marvel?

Mark: I don’t know where the Thompsons heard it, but I suspect it was from Roy Thomas. It was not a secret at that point.

CBA: So, it happened after the call from Jack.

Mark: Yeah, Jack closed his DC deal in stages.

He had to be extremely definite about going to DC before he made the call to Stan Lee. Once he made the call to Stan, it became public knowledge, within 48 hours probably.

CBA: As far as you know, did Jack initiate the call to DC? Mark: Jack had talked informally to Carmine off and on over the years. They were friends, and had some history, and they’d had some conversations earlier both on the phone and in person. Carmine didn’t suddenly become top man at DC. He advanced through a few other positions—art director and so on. They’d been talking about how, if and when Carmine got the right position, DC would make him an offer. And Jack was at that time saying, “Well, if and when I have certain problems with Marvel, maybe I’ll leave,” so there was a certain dance going on there. Eventually, it became more and more probable, to the point where Infantino felt he could start assembling a final, firm offer, which required the blessing of his superiors at that time. At the same time, a few things were done to Jack that more or less pushed him over the edge.

CBA: What was the concept of “DC Comics West”? Was that implicit or explicit?

Mark: That was a dream of everybody involved.

DC’s relationship with Warner Bros. was fairly new, because Warner had been acquired by Kinney, and they were trying to figure out how they’d fit together. It seemed to make sense to establish a West Coast DC office, probably on the Warner Bros. lot. It still makes sense. I’ve been working for DC since 1970 and I think I’ve heard discussions of a West Coast DC office every year since then!

CBA: Jack would have been the natural head of that West Coast office?

Mark: Well, it never got that far, but Jack would obviously have been a key player. I don’t think he would have been the office manager. I think he was hoping that Steve and I would be the hands-on production managers if he had any say in the matter.

CBA: He’s the idea guy!

Mark: He might have come in once or twice a week, and met with people to give them ideas. Jack was neither capable of nor interested in doing a nine-to-five office thing, so I think the idea was that we would run day-to-day production, hiring people, writing some things, whatever was necessary. Jack knew he needed a crew and we, I suppose, would have been that crew. We never took it that seriously, but that’s what was discussed. I never believed it

would actually happen and, of course, it didn’t.

CBA: Was Jack working on the concepts that ultimately became the Fourth World upon initiation of the deal?

Mark: Jack came up with the basic concept of The New Gods while he was still at Marvel, though nothing about it was firmly defined until he actually put pencil to paper and drew the first issues. He had a number of ideas, one of which was this basic concept of an epic called The New Gods, which would interlace all these strips and characters. Jack showed it to other people besides Infantino. He’d actually shown it to me when I first met him, when he was still drawing Fantastic Four. It was a book he knew he would do someplace, somewhere, for someone.

CBA: Was his initial plan to do it for Marvel?

Mark: The only way he would’ve done it for Marvel would’ve been if Marvel were to suddenly give him a totally different deal, with a totally different structure—if Marvel was going to suddenly do a 180º on the way they were treating him.

CBA: As far as you know, did any kind of discussion like that take place between Stan and Jack?

Mark: No, Marvel was not willing, at that point, to even discuss changing the terms of Jack’s employment in any meaningful way. One of the things that drove him away, was the fact that Jack hit this brick wall every time he said, “I think I deserve a better deal.” Marvel would say, “Go back to your drawing board and get the new Fantastic Four in. Keep drawing.”

CBA: So, the concepts that he showed are those well-known colored concept drawings?

Mark: Yeah, he came up with a whole pile of them, though not all of them were necessarily for The New Gods. The way Jack created, everything was in a state of flux until he actually put it down on paper. Jack was the kind of creator who was always juggling ideas and changing his mind. One example of many I could cite would be that when I was working with him, he would tell me, or tell Steve

and me, what the next issue of Forever People was going to be about. We’d sit there for an hour and hear this whole story, completely mapped out and completely realized as a full-fledged saga, and one of us would go, “Gee, Jack, that sounds great. I can’t wait to read it!” And we’d leave, which was the main extent of our contribution to his work— leaving [laughter]—and Jack would sit down and draw a completely different story! [laughter] A week later, I’d ask him what happened to the story he’d told us, and he’d say, “Isn’t this what I told you?” [laughter] It just happened that way. So the whole Fourth World thing—everything—was subject to change until he actually committed it to paper.

CBA: Jack was a very spontaneous guy.

Above: Kirby’s original cover for Mister Miracle #5 before Neal Adams altered aspects of the threatening weaponry.

Art courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

Mister Miracle ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Mark: He was a completely spontaneous guy. I think sometimes he was genuinely surprised at what he had drawn and written.

Above and right: From left to right, Orion, Lightray, and Mantis concept drawings, inked

by Frank Giacoia—these were used to pitch Kirby’s Fourth World concepts to DC Comics.

See seven in their fullcolored glory in The Jack Kirby Collector #26, on sale now! Art courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate. Characters ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

Below: Kirby’s cover icon for The Forever People. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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CBA: One of the surprising things is the genesis of these concept drawings, because Jack seemed to be the type of guy who wouldn’t do anything if he wasn’t going to get paid for it.

Mark: I think at that point, he was already unhappy at Marvel, and he’d had occasional inquiries from other people, other aspiring publishers. He made a decision he was not going to throw new characters in the Marvel pool, under the terms he had then. It is well-known that at some point, he kind of shut down—the phrase he was using at the time was, “I’m not going to give them another Silver Surfer.” So, when ideas occurred to him, instead of sticking them in as villains in the comics he was doing, or giving them to Stan, he would draw them up for himself. He had them inked—mostly by Don Heck—and he colored them, and thereafter, when people came to visit him who were possibly interested in launching projects, he would whip these ideas out. He wanted to impress on anyone that if he found the right situation, he could create ten new books tomorrow.

CBA: As far as you know, did Al Harvey [of Harvey Comics] or Tower Comics or anyone try to get in touch with him during his years at Marvel?

Mark: No, neither of those companies. Al Harvey had a deal with Joe Simon on their super-hero line, with Fighting American and Spyman. I assume Harvey’s attitude was that if they couldn’t sell superheroes with Simon, what was the point of trying them with Kirby? I don’t know that Tower was even interested in Jack, nor could they have probably afforded him. The problem was that Jack was very prolific, and in order to just match his income from Marvel, some company would have to put out three comics a month and to pay him the top page rate, and I don’t know that Tower ever put out the equivalent of three comics a month, especially if you leave out Tippy Teen, which Jack wouldn’t have drawn.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents seemed to manage one issue a month, sometimes less. There were really no new companies that got a foothold in the industry at the time, because DC and Marvel—particularly DC—had such a lock on the magazine and comic book distribution,

which itself was beginning to atrophy.

CBA: Was Jack approached by entrepreneurs who wanted to enter the comic book field?

Mark: Yes, he was approached a number of times by people who talked about funding new lines of comics, or hiring Jack away from Marvel to do things. None of them, unfortunately, ever became firm enough to accept. A couple of them apparently had the money but couldn’t get distribution.

CBA: Did Martin Goodman (after his debacle with Marvel when he started Atlas/Seaboard) make overtures to Jack?

Mark: No, he didn’t.

Or at least, if he did, I never heard of it.

CBA: In your estimation, was Jack probably the highest-paid artist-creator in the industry at the time, because he was so prolific?

Mark: Yeah, when Jack went to DC, the industry was abuzz with the notion that he was the highestpaid person in comics. That was a source of resentment for some of those people who may have felt that DC should be rewarding its past geniuses before they threw money at the guy whose work they all said they didn’t like. But, the truth was, what Jack was receiving from DC was not really that much more than anyone else had received. I think the rumor mill exaggerated how much he was above the norm. He got a buck or two more a page than their top people, but they may have had to raise the Joe Kuberts, or anyone else with a “favored nations” arrangement, to keep up. Jack was committed to edit, write, and pencil 15 pages a week, which was an incredible amount of work. If Dick Dillin had edited, written and penciled 15 pages a week, he would’ve received a nearly comparable amount.

CBA: It seemed to be roughly for the first three issues of the bi-monthly Fourth World books, they were inked by Vince Colletta and lettered by John Costanza, who was back in New York. And suddenly everything—inking, lettering—was being finished by Mike Royer in California. Did Jack renegotiate the arrangement, to say, “No, I’m going to produce everything out west”?

Mark: It’s kind of a long, tricky story. Jack initially—to be cooperative and because it didn’t matter that much to him—told Carmine to get anyone he wanted to ink him; Infantino picked Vince Colletta, which was fine with Jack at the time.

Later on, he increasingly began to want to change inkers for a number of reasons: One was so many people—Steve Sherman and myself, chief among them—telling Jack that his pencils deserved better.

Another was a personality clash with Colletta, who liked to brag how little effort he put into a page.

Another was unhappiness with the fact that the work was being passed around the offices in New York; and also because Jack felt, as the editor of the books, he wanted to have the inker turn the work in

to him, instead of it disappearing into the DC production department.

When Jack sent off an issue of Forever People that was going to be lettered by John Costanza and inked by Colletta, Kirby never saw it again until it was too late to change anything.

So he began to casually ask New York about it every so often. Finally though, the problems escalated to the point where Jack demanded a change, and Infantino agreed.

CBA: Obviously in pretty short order, right?

Mark: Well, it took a while. And even then, Colletta did not go completely off the books; he retained Jimmy Olsen for a while, and Royer inked the other books.

CBA: Didn’t Jack sub-contract the work to Mike?

Mark: No. CBA: Mike got paid from DC? Mark: Right.

CBA: As far as you can recall, what were the memorable unrealized books?

Mark: There were an awful lot of them. Some of them were just in the talking stages, some of them got into mock-ups.

There were two issues of romance books done for the black-&-whites that never got printed. (Actually, they were not two full issues, because a story for one wound up being used in the other.)

CBA: What was the concept behind True Divorce Cases?

Mark: Well, at that time, everybody was saying that the 32-page color comic as we knew it was dead. I don’t think anybody would have ever believed or predicted that we’d still be doing them today, but it was a very common belief that the industry had to branch out into other formats, other sizes or shapes, and other audiences, including older audiences. One of the things that intrigued Jack about going to DC, was the prospect of launching new formats, and unleashing different sizes and shapes of comics. He proposed a lot of different formats and sizes, but the only things that materialized were the two issues of the black-&-white books—Spirit World and In the Days of the Mob— which were ideas that had been downsized considerably. Jack was initially talking about full-

color magazines. If you’re familiar with how the National Lampoon looked in those days, what Jack envisioned was probably very much like that format, but applied to a wider range of material, with advertising and glossy paper, photos, and things of that sort. DC was, for whatever reason, not interested in developing these concepts; they either didn’t like Jack’s ideas, or the proposals represented too much of a gamble. So the magazine idea was eventually scaled back to something that more resembled what Jim Warren was doing. Jack had been proposing genres that would appeal to a much more adult audience. They wound up with a crime book, a horror book, and a love comic, and they didn’t even put out the love comic.

True Divorce Cases was one of 10 or 20 ideas he had for that format. When he suggested it, he was thinking of something that would be much more geared towards the audience for, say, Harlequin romances— something that would be put in the “romance”

Above: Page from the unpublished True Divorce Cases. Below: Kirby’s unused cover icon intended for Jimmy Olsen. Art courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate. Jimmy Olsen and Superman ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Above: Detail panel from the unpublished True Divorce Cases story “The Twin”—one provocative Kirby Koncept!

Art courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

Below: Kirby’s cover icon for Mister Miracle. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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section, as opposed to the comics section. This was not something that Independent News felt they could distribute, or that DC felt they wanted to gamble on at the time.

CBA: Out of that came Soul Love?

Mark: As I recall, the genesis was Jack did the first issue of True Divorce Cases—he wrote and drew the whole issue with a little help from us, sent it in—and there was a consensus somewhere between DC and the distributor that this book was not worth gambling on; that it was not that good a comic.

However the one story in it that had a Black couple got someone interested. There was talk at that time that Independent News wanted to try to do more magazines that catered to what we call today the “urban audience,” but at that time was called the “Black audience.” There were a lot of music magazines catching on that were Black-themed, and someplace between Jack, the editorial offices at DC, and Independent News, the decision was made to take the divorce story with the Black couple out of True Divorce Cases, and for Jack to add to it to create a whole issue of Black love stories. The book was variously titled Soul Love or Soul Romances.

Since it never went to press, I don’t think the final decision was made which it would be.

Jack kind of liked the idea, but he didn’t feel he should be the one to write and draw it. He felt DC should beat the bushes and find young Black writers and artists—and young was more important than Black. Unfortunately, that was not in Infantino’s budget, or in the best interests of the project, they felt. So Jack wound up doing the

entire book itself. Steve and I brought in a whole bunch of issues of Ebony for Jack to use as reference, and he did these stories, quite conscious of the fact that a Jewish guy in his 50s was not the ideal person to be writing a Black-oriented book.

CBA: A personal observation: It seems to me that True Divorce Cases were strong stories, they were good storytelling, and it was a good book!

Mark: I thought it was some of the best stuff Jack did. That was not an opinion held, for whatever reason, in New York.

CBA: From my point of view, Soul Love was, arguably, one of the worst things he ever did.

Mark: Did you ever see the penciled versions of those stories?

CBA: No. Mark: I don’t know if they even exist any more. I liked the material better, much better in pencil than I did inked. And that was not just because Colletta toned down the ethnic qualities of the faces. It was some of the best art Jack had ever done, there was something in the drawings that…

CBA: Some of Kirby got lost in the process?

Mark: Yeah, some things got lost, and I’m not entirely sure that the stats that are circulating today completely represent the actual dialogue Jack wrote.

There was a lot of fiddling with those stories over a period of months, and I don’t really know for sure.

Jack did not keep any photocopies at that time of his work, and it would not surprise me at all that some of the dialogue that we see on those books was not his.

CBA: Why was Tony DeZuniga involved in the inking of at least one story?

Mark: I didn’t even know about it until years later.

I’m not sure Jack even saw the inking on those books, or at least on that story.

CBA: You’d mentioned to me earlier that there was some “flak” from the Roberta Flack organization about Soul Love?

Mark: The book was supposed to have a full-color pull-out poster, like we had in Spirit World and In the Days of the Mob. At that point, Roberta Flack was recording for, I think, Atlantic Records, or some subsidiary of Kinney or Warners. The idea was that the poster in Soul Love or Soul Romance, whatever it wound up being called, would be a poster of Roberta Flack. As I said, the material for the book underwent a number of revisions. Jack wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, and a number of different people at DC and Independent News had their ideas about the material, although I don’t think any of them were Black. They went to a consultant, or maybe it was a distributor with some supposed expertise in marketing material for Black audiences.

Out of this came a directive to Vince Colletta to tone down the ethnic qualities in the characters’ faces. We were told that Colletta was making the men all look like Sidney Poitier, and all the women had to look like Diahann Carroll. Some package of this material (I don’t know if it was before or after the revisions were made) was shipped to Roberta Flack’s public relations people—her “flack,” I guess—and we got back the word that they hated it. I don’t know if she hated it or if she even saw it but that was the death knell for Soul Love.

CBA: If you look at the trio of books there—Mob, Spirit World and the romance book—you find three

genres that Kirby was very involved in at one time or another in his career. He did Justice Traps the Guilty—crime comics; and he helped create horror comics with Black Magic; and Jack and Joe Simon were the creators of the phenomenally successful romance comics with Young Romance.

Interestingly, his three DC b-&-w projects returned to genres he was very familiar with.

Mark: One of the things that was interesting about Jack was that he had very little preference as to which genre he worked in. He thought certain kinds of books were more commercial at certain times and, of course, he preferred to do a commercial book... something that would sell. But if you put that consideration aside, he didn’t care that much if he was doing a Western or a war book or a love book. It was like a personal challenge to him to do something special with every project. So it was no hardship on him to do a crime book or a love book. It was like, “Okay, DC wants a ghost book... I’ll give ‘em the best possible ghost book I can do.”

CBA: What genre was he most passionate about?

Would it be science-fiction?

Mark: I don’t know. That was the thing about Jack: He was interested in everything. He loved doing war comics, loved doing romance comics, loved doing super-hero comics. He wasn’t wild about a steady diet of any kind of book and there were a few subjects he preferred to avoid—like, he didn’t like comics that were obsessed with death and gloom. He did not like things he felt were negative.

He felt that DC during that period had way too many post-holocaust/atomic bomb covers.

CBA: DC had an awful lot of corpse-filled covers, too.

Mark: Yeah, he didn’t particularly care for them.

But generally speaking, even then, if they’d said, “Do a story about an atomic bomb,” he’d have done his take on nuclear holocaust. I really don’t think he had any real favorites. If they’d suddenly said to him, “Do silly duck comics,” I think he would’ve done great silly duck comics! When push came to shove, he was perfectly happy to sit there

and write and draw stories about gangsters. He was fascinated with that arena, and thought it would be very commercial on the newsstands, and sure enough, shortly after that, you had The Godfather, and an awful lot of crime novels about gangsters at the top of the best seller lists. So, he was at least working the right side of the street, even if he didn’t find quite exactly the format to do it in.

CBA: Did you know him to be a fan of The Untouchables?

Mark: Sure, he was.

CBA: And then he had the gangster story arc in Fantastic Four just before he left Marvel.

Mark: Well, he was fascinated with gangsters. An awful lot of the famous gangsters in New York were guys Jack had known; he had run into people who knew them, he had been in the same places….

CBA: Well, many were from the same neighborhood Jack was born in, right? Bugsy Siegel was from the Lower East Side.

Mark: He knew people, and he’d heard folks say, “Oh, yeah, I was there when Lefty was shot.”

Above: True Divorce Cases was shelved and somehow morphed into a bizarre oddity of Jack’s ’70s DC stay, Soul Love. Here’s Jack’s cover design for the unpublished mag. Art courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

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Above: Splash page to a story from Jack’s “SpeakOut” concept, Soul Love.

Art courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

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[laughter] He had a number of books on gangsters, and such; they were stories that interested him. He loved movies about those guys.

CBA: It’s just funny—not that any of those three books were, per se, retreads of earlier genres that he had actually helped to initiate to varying degrees— but Jack was not known for covering old ground.

He always seemed to move ahead as a creator. Was that the initiation of those three ideas? Did they come from Jack, did they come from DC, were they a mix?

Mark: My understanding was that Jack suggested a whole pile of ideas, dozens of them, and they picked out the ones they wanted.

CBA: They just cherry-picked.

Mark: Yeah, and he was perfectly comfortable doing those genres. He would have liked to do more upscale magazines—what he actually wanted to do was to only write and draw one story in each, and let other writers and artists do stories, especially if

they did things totally different from what he was doing.

Jack wanted very much to be an idea man, an editor, a nexus for creative talent, and that did not fit in with DC’s plans or structure at the time, so he wound up doing it all pretty much himself.

There were little token things he gave Steve or myself to do.

CBA: Something you brought up earlier about Jack being a conduit, like a studio head or something, and one of the reasons you were there, as an ambitious young writer, was you wanted to take on assignments on these Kirby spin-offs?

Mark: Sort of. I had never really wanted to write comics—actually, I take that back. I had never thought I would ever have a career in comics. As I said, there was a common belief that you couldn’t work in comics if you were not living in New York, and everybody I knew who worked in comics had either moved to New York, or already lived there. Then, all of a sudden, a number of opportunities were thrown in my lap, and I took them just because they were interesting, and to see how far they would go. I had other career plans, and they never changed. At the same time Jack was asking me to work with him, he was cautioning me that the comic industry was a dead end and that if I had any talent, I should be trying to apply it elsewhere. So I figured I’d just hang around Jack Kirby for a little while.

That was reward enough, and I’m fortunate I had that mindset, because there was certainly no money in it.

CBA: So, you had spoken to me before about Kamandi. Did you have aspirations to write that book?

Mark: “Aspirations” is putting it a little strong.

Jack came up with this book called Kamandi, because he wanted to edit a comic that he would not write or draw, that he’d launch and then only plot, or maybe do the covers. He asked Carmine what kind of new books DC was interested in, and Carmine said something either about Planet of the Apes and post-holocaust stories, or something that

different art forms into one. So, he told this idea to various people at DC—not just Infantino, but also other folks at Independent News who could distribute such a publication. I don’t think anyone understood what he was proposing but that wasn’t their fault. One of the problems Jack had was, the way he talked, people often didn’t understand what he pitched them. When he started talking about an idea, he went off in all directions at once, skipping over the basics, almost daring the listener to keep up with him. His style was not always conducive to conveying what he envisioned. Still, he was so hot

Below: One of several unused cover designs for Kamandi #1. Note the “Fourth World” designation in the upper left corner. Art courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate. Kamandi ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

on this idea that no one seemed to understand so he said, “Let’s show it to them! Let’s do a mock-up of this book!” Steve and I threw this thing together, calling in favors from friends, using different people we knew.

CBA: Did you guys call Steve Ditko?

Mark: Jack wanted Ditko in it. Well, of course, we all did but Jack was making the decisions. He thought Ditko was a tremendous talent and as we discussed different projects Jack might do for DC, he kept wanting to involve Ditko. One day, we came up with an idea for a strip and Jack picked up the phone, called Steve Ditko and said, “Hey, I’ve got this idea for a strip here that my boys have come up with. Would you draw two pages for it? We’ll pay you.” And Ditko said, “Jack, you’ve done enough for me over the years; save your money and pay me if the book ever sells.” So he drew two pages of this

©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

made Jack think up the Kamandi book. Jack had me type up an outline for the first issue, an overview of the book, and the idea was that I would write it—or perhaps Steve and I would write it—I’m not sure which was the plan. Then, we would hire a local artist to draw it. I suggested Dan Spiegle, a local artist I did not know at the time. I got Dan’s number from Mike Royer and Jack called him. Dan came down to visit Jack one day and showed his work.

Jack thought he was terrific, so he sent the outline I had done and some samples of Spiegle’s work to Infantino, and what came back was ultimately the decision that they liked the idea of Kamandi, wanted to do the comic, did not want Spiegle to draw it. Initially, Carmine was talking about having one of the Filipino artists do it (DC was just at that point contracting with the Filipino artists, who subsequently did many of their books). Jack had also already created The Demon by then, again as a book someone else would do, and Infantino asked Jack to do the first issue or two of The Demon, to establish the premise and characters, then he asked Jack to do the first issue of Kamandi for the same reason. When Jack did the first Kamandi he believed he was doing a pilot issue of a book where some Filipino person and I would do #2. After he sent in the first Kamandi, DC decided that Kamandi and The Demon should launch as monthly books, and that Jack alone should do them. New Gods and Forever People would be—the term at that time was “suspended.”

The funny thing is that, at the time, I was pretty unenthused about Kamandi and The Demon. Of all the ideas I’d heard out of Jack, they were the ones that least excited me and when he wound up doing them, I wasn’t impressed. I stopped reading them early on because I had so little interest in the material. Years later, Julie Schwartz conned me into writing a Superman-Kamandi team-up story for DC Comics Presents, so I hauled out the old Kamandi books, read them and went, “Hey, these are terrific!

What was I thinking?” I read all Jack’s issues of The Demon shortly after and had the same reaction. In retrospect, I think we’re all fortunate that I didn’t wind up writing one or both of them.

CBA: What is Dan Spiegle like?

Mark: Dan is one of the nicest guys in all of comics. He is a terrific artist. As I mentioned, I was a fan of his work before I met him, and he’s maybe the most reliable artist who ever worked in comics.

I’ve known him for 25 years. If you were the editor of a comic book, and you told me, “Spiegle was working for me, and he was late with the assignment,” I would just call you a liar. Just not humanly possible, Dan was never late. When I was editing comics, he bailed me out over and over again. The work would always come in on time and it was always perfect.

CBA: What was the idea behind Superworld?

Mark: Jack wanted to do a comics tabloid. He was looking for new formats to put comics into. Now, he wasn’t the first person thinking about it—it was an idea that was in the air. He envisioned a weekly magazine/newspaper, maybe monthly, that would cover all the arts—film, television, dance, theater, everything, and there’d be a large comics section in it that would bring all these different forms together.

He saw comics as the convergence of all these

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“Gemini” strip—it was all we wrote, and I have no idea what would’ve happened on page three, if we’d ever done it. Ultimately, the people at DC did not like anything about the Superworld mock-up we did. Jack put in a thing called “Galaxy Green,” and there were a few other strips we did pieces of, and we sent along stats. We actually printed (for reasons I really do not quite understand) what was in essence an ashcan issue. This was something Jack did outside the purview of his DC deal. He submitted it to DC or Independent News, hoping that they would agree to fund this publication, but they didn’t care much for it, and that was the end of it.

CBA: Was there any relationship between the concept of Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix and Superworld?

Mark: Not really. I don’t think Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix was actually a serious proposal.

Above: Kirby deemed this splash to Forever People #10 as being too sexy, and changed Beautiful Dreamer’s bikini into a one-piece suit, with the help of a little India ink.

Forever People ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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What I recall was that we had talked about Superworld, we had also talked about a tabloid of all underground comix, similar to Gothic Blimpworks. Jack had come up with Fat City Comix as a possible title and Steve and I each designed title logos. As I recall, Steve said, “Let’s call it ‘Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix,’” and he did a little caricature of Carmine as part of his proposed logo.

That’s as far as it got. I don’t think we ever submitted anything. It was just kind of a talking point.

CBA: Was Jack ever exposed to Gothic Blimpworks, [an underground comix tabloid published by the East Village Other] or any of the undergrounds?

Mark: Oh, sure. He had a stack of undergrounds in his studio. And one day Steve and I took Jack out on a field trip into Westwood Village, in LA, which is the city built around the UCLA campus. At that time, there were a number of what were then called “head” and “poster shops,” and a particular place called The Free Press Bookstore, which sold alternative magazines and books from small (sometimes radical) publishers. Most of the head shops had comic racks, some with mainstream comics, all with underground comix. Jack felt this kind of shop held the future of comic books, or one possible avenue. He loved undergrounds—not so much the material, as the freedom and the fact that artists were doing whatever they wanted to do and speaking to a new audience—and he felt there should be a magazine that would be comfortable in these outlets. Superworld was created to go into college bookstores, poster shops, places like that.

CBA: And he envisioned that as a weekly comic?

Mark: It was either going to be monthly or something close to that. I doubt it would’ve ever been weekly.

CBA: It was somewhat provocative material for Jack Kirby, right?

Mark: Up to a point, yeah. You know, the thing about “Galaxy Green,” that strip he did, was that we had talked to Jack about erotic comics, and Jack felt he could not do them; that he was not physically able to sit down and do something as adult as he knew an adult strip would have to be to be commercial. It was a very strange situation, in that Jack felt there was a huge market out there that wasn’t being tapped. In fact, he was talking to Wally Wood during this period, and he encouraged Wood greatly in that direction. But Jack felt that he could not draw a strip with naked women in it.

CBA: Well, with “Galaxy Green,” Jack was doing sexy material.

Mark: What you saw there was Jack going as far as he felt he could—that’s what “Galaxy Green” was. It was almost an experiment. That was about as dirty as he could make it. Today, it looks relatively tame.

CBA: In the Days of the Mob had prostitutes and a lot of heaving-bosom shots.

Mark: Yep. That was about as far as he could go.

CBA: Yeah, he was a middle-aged guy.

Mark: I’ll tell you an interesting story. It was an issue of Forever People where Jack drew the splash page with Beautiful Dreamer in a bikini bathing suit—a two-piece—and it was very sexy. After the inks came back from Mike Royer, but before Jack had sent the issue off to New York, a group called the UCLA Campus Comics and Science-Fiction Society made a field trip to Jack’s studio. It was a group of eight or nine comics fans who all met every week at UCLA. They saw this page, and got all excited about it and Jack thought these 19-year-old guys were getting too worked up about a sexy drawing. After they left, he took a bottle of India ink and he blacked-in the swimsuit, turned it from a two-piece into a one-piece. [laughter] He had unleashed something much randier than he had intended. In

hindsight, Jack even admitted it was a silly panic.

CBA: There was an actual published page where Jack drew a nude Big Barda in the bathtub.

Mark: Well, I wrote that page—that’s the one page in the history of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World comics that Jack didn’t write. He gave it to me to do because he was a page short. Jack was wonderful at many things, but calculating was not one of them. [laughter] He had trouble measuring, too. There’s an issue of Jimmy Olsen that Jack accidentally drew 11" x 15" instead of 10" x 15". The original art for the black-&-white books was 11" wide and Jack was doing them at the same time and got confused. I had to go in and erase an inch from every page which, since Jack’s composition was so flawless, was just about impossible. A lot of artists are absolutely terrible when it comes to using a ruler. (Years later, we had this group called C.A.P.S. and we put together a catalog where every artist had to submit a drawing of a certain size, and of 50 professional artists, I think around nine submitted the right size... nine were able to measure correctly!) Jack had penciled that issue of Mr. Miracle. He handed it to me for a read-through before he sent it off to Royer, and I said, “Jack, you’re a page short.”

He didn’t believe me, but sure enough, he had misnumbered. He’d somehow jumped from page 9 to page 11 or something like that, so he said to me, “Find a place to put a page in. You write it, and I’ll draw it.” At that time, there was a little bit of a fetish going on in comics where all the heroines were suddenly taking showers.

CBA: Like Black Canary?

Mark: Yes. All of a sudden, after years of strenuous fight scenes, all of the super-heroines suddenly found it necessary to take showers in their comics. It was just a little exploitation thing and everybody was a little horny about it. Jack had written a line in the issue wherein Barda said, “I’m going to go take a bath,” but he had not drawn that scene. So, I figured everyone would be disappointed and I found a place where, with a few minor dialogue changes on other pages, the bathtub scene could be inserted. I wrote that page, and Jack drew it, making some changes in the dialogue. I was trying to sound like him as much as I could, because my writing style, I felt, was drastically different.

CBA: So, it was an easy sell to him?

Mark: Well, he had no problem with it at all. I think if I’d had Barda putting on a chicken suit, he’d have drawn it. [laughter] You see, that story was over for Jack. Often in comics, you have artists who, once they finish a story, have trouble going back to it. I never liked seeing a cover on a comic that wasn’t drawn by the guy who drew the inside, but sometimes, a justifiable reason for it is that the artist finished the story, and then could not quite bring himself to reopen it and draw a cover scene. Jack, I think, did not have very much interest in covers and his covers from about 1970 on are not that fabulous.

I think he was less interested in the cover than in any other aspect of the comic.

CBA: Don’t you think that could have been because there was so much revision work that was

done by DC? From the photocopies The Jack Kirby Collector has printed, we’ve seen so many revisions done to the DC covers.

Mark: DC did that with every cover. So did Marvel. Back before the direct market, back when comics were sold only on newsstands, they were more of an impulse buy and there was a widely-held belief that the cover was what sold the book. They spent a lot of time designing and redesigning covers, trying to find that magical touch that would attract buyers. Jack often got sketches from the office, both at DC and Marvel, to illustrate—or if he did the rough, they’d often revise it. That may be part of why Jack wasn’t interested but I think it was more that he thought of himself more as a writer than an artist. Drawing a picture of a scene didn’t interest him half as much as doing the story, and the way he worked, there was really no good time to do the cover. If he’d designed it before he did the insides, he had a problem because, the way Jack worked, he was never sure where the story was going until he drew it. On the other hand, if he waited until the story was done, it was over with, and he’d already drawn his best take on the most exciting scene in that story and his brain was already on to the next.

I’m oversimplifying a little bit, but I think that drawing the cover became anti-climactic.

In the case of the Big Barda page, I think that

Above: Mark Evanier says the dialogue on this page represents his single literary contribution of his years as Jack’s assistance—a memorable cheesecake sequence featuring Big Barda coming clean. From Mister Miracle #6. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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story was done as far as he was concerned. It was out of his head, and he asked me to figure out the extra page because he just didn’t want to clear up his head from the next story and go back to the previous one.

CBA: Did Jack take an affection for Big Barda?

Mark: Absolutely.

Above: Back cover to the Superworld mock-up.

Ahh, to have read the “Uncensored Exploits” of Helen Damnation!

Courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

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CBA: Were you cognizant about Jack’s intent to spin off Big Barda?

Mark: Every character in the Fourth World was a potential spin-off. If he’d had his way, there would eventually have been 25 comics, one featuring Lonar, one featuring Beautiful Dreamer, a book about Lightray… any character who walked through the Fourth World was, to Jack, a potential comic.

This plays back to Jack’s attitude about doing stories in any genre. Jack felt he should be able to take any character and do a series of it. Obviously, he preferred some ideas to others, but if DC had said to him one day, “We must have a solo comic of Dave Lincoln,” that Jack’s challenge would’ve been to do a good, worthy comic of that one character. Barda was a character that Jack put in because he thought it was a great idea, one that was not being done in super-hero comics at that time. There had never been a really strong woman character who looked strong, except maybe for Little Lotta. Jack noted that female bodybuilders were starting to catch on in the mass

media. He saw these pageants on ABC Wide World of Sports, and in other places, and he said, “That’s a great idea for comics.” So Big Barda was suddenly in the next Mister Miracle he drew. He was also inspired by Lainie Kazan being in Playboy. [laughter] CBA: That makes sense.

Mark: But ultimately, the personality of Big Barda was pretty much Roz, and Jack was pretty much Scott Free.

CBA: Did he really push the Big Barda book? Of the Fourth World characters, was that the one push you remember, that he actually came up with a cover sketch?

Mark: He did other cover comps. Jack would talk to Carmine once or twice a week. They’d talk about future projects, and Jack would say, “I really want to do this; I really want to do that,” and Carmine would say, “Let me see a page on that.” I don’t know that he pushed any one that much.

CBA: Are there any projects that you particularly pushed with Jack? Or other genres you wanted to be involved with?

Mark: Jack was the idea guy, and everything he said sounded good to me. The thing I think I should emphasize here is that Jack was not looking to do comics for the same audience. Almost everything he proposed was to be in a different format, usually something with big, full-color pages. Jack was not wild about black-&-whites. He wanted something big and fancy, with lots of advertising, and a color pull-out; the bigger the paper, the better. Jack hated small pages. Just about everything he came up with was something I thought would be fun to do; some, of course, more than others.

CBA: One final question: Was there any truth to the rumor or reports that were printed in, I think, Rocket’s Blast/Comicollector about Jack being so dissatisfied with DC that he wanted to move over to Marvel in 1973?

Mark: That’s correct. Yes. Paul Levitz was publishing The Comic Reader at that time and he was getting information straight from DC. He printed a whole story about it.

CBA: Denny was asked about it, and said he didn’t know anything. He was reportedly supposed to take over editorship of Kamandi.

Mark: It never got that far; it was about a threeday thing. I was not working for Jack at the time but my recollection about it was that Jack got upset about a number of things and he told DC, “Tear up my contract.” Jack had had a conversation with Roy Thomas four or five months earlier, and Roy had said to Jack something like, “The door is always open here; we want you back.” So he called Marvel, and Infantino—I was told, I don’t know this first hand—was coming out here anyway for some sort of meeting and he moved the trip up a day or two, sat down with Jack and convinced him to stay on.

That was the end of that. Nothing ever reached the stage where Jack started drawing anything, or decided officially what he was going to do for Marvel.

CBA: So it was pretty much over almost as soon as it began.

Mark: Yep. CBA: Were there any reverberations from the reports in RBCC or The Comic Reader?

Mark: I don’t think so, not that I know of.

CBA Interview

Jack Kirby’s Superworld Steve Sherman Recalls Unseen Kirby Koncepts Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Assistant to Jack Kirby in the 1970s, Steve Sherman was witness to one of the most fertile and creative epochs in the King’s remarkable career.

Steve not only composed the letter columns (along with Mark Evanier for a time), but also devised concepts for Jack’s final DC book, Kobra. Now a renowned puppeteer in the film industry (with M.I.B., Mighty Joe Young, and other movies to his credit), Steve was kind enough to answer some questions via e-mail this past October.

Comic Book Artist: Do you recall any specific projects that Jack developed that never made it to publication?

Steve Sherman: I can only recall two.

One was a female robot character. Jack had the idea and I did a photo mock-up cover for it. I think the title was Starbaby. The reason it was a photo cover was because Jack was very intrigued with fumetti type comics (these are comic books done with photographs, mostly either Italian or Mexican in origin). Jack felt they really hadn't been done properly. I don't know if Jack wrote it down somewhere or not. That was as far as it got.

The other was a concept called The Ship. It was sort of a Challengers of the Unknown type of saga.

A group of ordinary people discover an alien spaceship which they use to fight evil. They keep discovering all kinds of different weapons and things that the ship can do.

CBA: Can you remember the genesis of True Divorce Cases?

Steve: That book came along the same time Jack was developing Spirit World and In The Days of the Mob. He was very excited about it, and thought it was an interesting approach to an adult comics magazine—sort of the darker side of romance comics.

CBA: What was behind changing True Divorce into Soul Love?

Steve: Well, I can only go by what Jack told me.

According to him, the publisher of DC Comics had a certain religious aversion to divorce, and just didn't like it. However, one of the distributors who happened to handle the books in Harlem felt that a comic targeted to a Black audience would go over.

So, we started working on Soul Love. Jack didn't seem to mind at all. He jumped right into it. Mark Evanier and I felt a bit awkward about it. It seemed to us that Black writers and artists should be the ones working on it, but we went ahead and did it anyway. I think we wrote the story about a goofy Black guy on a roller coaster. Sort of pre-Urkel.

CBA: Did Jack have specific spin-off plans for some of his Fourth World concepts?

Steve: Not that I can remember. He pretty much took everything book-by-book. If anything, I think that he would have been happy just doing New Gods, Forever People and Mr. Miracle. That was

what he was concentrating on. Jack only did Jimmy Olsen because DC wanted him to do a Superman book.

CBA: What was the idea behind Superworld?

Steve: I recall Jack calling it the Superworld of Everything. It was going to be an anthology magazine featuring different strips by a variety of artists. I guess it would have been something along the lines of the early issues of Heavy Metal, only on cheaper paper.

CBA: Any relationship between Superworld and Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix?

Steve: I think that Uncle Carmine’s FCC evolved out of Superworld. It all came about because Jack wanted to try different things. He wanted to break out of the 6" x 10" 32-page comic book format.

He was very impressed by Steranko’s History of Comics, and liked the format—that’s one of the reasons why the Kirby Unleashed portfolio was the same size.

Above: Front cover to the Superworld mock-up, featuring a Kirby watercolor. Courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

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Above: A second page exists to this Steve Ditko creation. Anyone seen it?

The above splash was featured in the mock-up Jack had printed to pitch the Superworld project.

Courtesy of The Kirby Estate. Art ©1999 Steve Ditko.

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Anyway, Mark and I were kicking around ideas, and it seemed to us that there was this whole underground comics movement going on that was being ignored by the Big Companies. Really funny stuff. Jack loved the undergrounds. The more gross they were, the more he would howl with laughter.

He’d point to something and shake his head in amazement. We knew that DC wouldn’t publish anything too risky, so we tried to minimize the risk as much as possible. We came up with a monthly tabloid-size magazine, without the slick cover—sort of like Rolling Stone, only for comics. Part of the idea came from the old Wham-O Giant Comics one-shot with Wally Wood and Alex Toth art. We figured out a way so that it could be printed on the Eastern Color comic presses using the same plates as the comic books only without the folding and binding. We would have movie reviews, articles, comics, pictures, cartoons. We figured we could get Coke,

McDonald’s, etc.—advertisers who at the time didn’t advertise in comic books.

Remember, this was back in the days when Grit was still buying ads. We talked to Steve Ditko, Harlan Ellison— everyone we thought would be willing to do one page a month. Once they heard that Jack would be in charge, everyone was eager to come on board. They were all excited about working on it.

We wrote up a presentation, I think I did a logo of a cityscape and Mark lettered the title. I can’t recall who came up with the name. Jack came up with “Fat City,” I think. “Comix” made it look underground. And “Uncle Carmine” seemed funny. We needed some sort of figurehead. If Stan Lee could do it, we figured Carmine Infantino could do it, too.

As far as I know, Carmine never even saw the proposal.

Once the Spirit World and In the Days of the Mob magazines came out and bombed, there was no more talk of doing anything other than comic books. Too bad, too. I still think it was a pretty good idea—sort of a monthly, national comics section.

CBA: Did Jack threaten to quit DC in 1973 as reported in the Rocket’s Blast/ Comicollector?

Steve: I don’t know. Jack had a contract with DC. I know he was disappointed, but he was too much of a professional to threaten to quit over something like that.

He said when he started at DC that he was competing with himself. At the time, I thought that he meant he was going up against the characters he was leaving behind at Marvel. Over the years I’ve thought about it, and I see now what he meant. He was competing against what he had helped to create—Marvel Comics. I think that everybody was expecting him to do the same thing over again—create more characters like the FF, Hulk, X-Men. But he didn't want to do that.

So it was tough. Just the fact that he had the audacity to call a comic book New Gods was a bold move. This was back in 1970. It didn't sit well with a lot of people—the Southern distributors especially.

I think the comment was, “What the hell is this ‘Kirby’s Gods’?” So the cancellation didn’t exactly take Jack by surprise. He took his best shot at a time in his life when he felt he had to do it. And I think the fact that the characters are still around today proves that he was on the right track.

CBA: Was Marvel making overtures to Jack between 1970 and ’74?

Steve: I think that there was always the hope that he would come back. I don’t know if anyone was specifically in touch with Jack trying to get him to return. At the time, Marvel was Stan Lee, and Martin and Chip Goodman. It was also a time when Marvel was in the process of being sold to a corporation. I think the door was always open for Jack’s return. I know when he told me that he wasn’t renewing his contract with DC and that he was going back to Marvel, I was surprised. At the time, there weren’t many other options. But by then, I think he was more concerned about making a living than making a statement.

CBA: Did you have specific projects you promoted to Jack?

Steve: Not really. I was 20-21 at the time. Mark was, I think, 18 or 19. We were just jazzed at the prospect of working with Jack Kirby and that he was open to our ideas. The one thing we mentioned once was a series of “How-to-create-comics” books.

Jack just hated that. Wouldn’t touch it. He felt that if someone wanted to learn how to write and draw comics, they just had to pick up his books. Everything was there he felt.

CBA: Were you aware of a DC Comics West concept where Jack would be de facto creative director, turning over work to you and Mark—e.g., Kamandi was allegedly going to be given to Evanier and Dan Spiegle?

Steve: Yes. That was Jack’s plan. He wanted to develop a group of writers and artists that he could work with so that he could eventually just supervise. There were never any specifics. We never had any kind of budget. Plus, there were a lot of political things going on at DC that we were not aware of. You have to remember that DC Comics was at the time a very, very conservative company. Most of the staff employees had been there since the 1940s. I think that they viewed Marvel as one step above pornographers, since the Goodmans also published some pretty cheesy men’s magazines. Many of them were not very happy to have Jack Kirby working there writing and editing his own books, let alone setting up a West Coast office.

CBA: Did you accomplish what you wanted working with Jack? What were your goals?

Steve: I’m not sure what my goals were back then. I know it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot from Jack about writing and storytelling.

CBA: What’s the story behind Kobra? Were you satisfied with the final book?

Steve: Jack was doing these one-shot comics.

I happened to have this idea that I pitched to him and he liked it. We worked on it together and came up with some storylines. I guess at the time I was trying to come up with a Dr. Doom kind of character. If I were to do it today, I would make it darker and more sci-fi and fantasy. I’d make him creepier. Kobra was meant to be this guy who collected weird stuff that he shouldn't be messing with. The character is still viable. I’m still waiting for the PVC figurine.

CBA: Do you remember any material from Kirby’s unrealized DC projects from the ’70s?

Steve: I’m afraid I don’t. There really wasn’t that much stuff that wasn’t used. It wasn’t like we were creating lots of presentations or characters in hopes that they would be used. Jack had enough to do just putting out a book a week.

Above: The other regular strip intended for Superworld was this provocative character created by Jack Kirby. Art courtesy of and ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

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CBA Interview

Russ Heath of Easy Co. Interview with the Artist on His DC War Comics Duty Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Above: Self portrait of the artist (labeled “Rapacious Russ Heath”) from The 1975 Mighty Marvel Comic Convention souvenir book.

Courtesy of Roy Thomas. ©1999 Russ Heath.

It is legend that in the early ’70s, when a new job would arrive at the DC offices from Russ’ Chicago studio, all work would stop, and the bullpen would wait in nervous anticipation as the package was unwrapped, so they could be the first to see the latest opus from a master.

In a comic con program book, renowned writer/editor Archie Goodwin wrote in his tribute to Russ: “Artist’s artist. That’s something you read somewhere. I haven’t heard anyone in comics actually say it. What I do hear said is: ‘You see what that crazy bastard Heath did this month?’ And everyone stops and looks at the new ‘Sgt. Rock’ and shakes their head. Then they go back to their drawing boards or their typewriters or wherever, and maybe they work a little longer, try a little harder.

And maybe it has nothing to do with a crazy bastard like Russ Heath. But maybe it does.”

After over 50 years in the industry, Russ is still hard at work producing glorious work, and he continues to be our inspiration. Look for a special tribute issue in the coming year. The artist was interviewed on July 22, 1999, and he copyedited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: While you worked for Timely/Atlas with Stan Lee, were you looking to get a gig at DC? Russ Heath: Well, the business in those days, it used to be up one year and down the next, and so on—sometimes a lot worse, and sometimes not so bad—but there was a big break around 1950, somewhere in there, and I ended up doing some of Joe Kubert’s 3-D book, Tor. And then I went over to DC and showed my stuff to Bob Kanigher, and he gave me a war story to draw.

CBA: How did you get hooked up with Kubert?

Was it through Joe, or his partner, Norm Maurer?

Russ: Well, they were working together at St. John’s offices, and I was going everywhere—I had a list of 15 places to go—and I went over there, and I talked to Norm first. As I’m about to open my portfolio, Kubert walks in and says, “He doesn’t have to show that. He’s okay.” Which was very flattering!

CBA: So Kubert knew your work from Atlas?

Russ: Right.

CBA: And Kubert and Maurer were really cooking with the 3-D stuff then, weren’t they?

Russ: Yeah, they were working around the clock.

CBA: Did Kubert tell you to go over to DC, or did you just go over there on your own?

Russ: I can’t remember… it could’ve been either way, or both.

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CBA: Recall your first meeting with Bob Kanigher?

Russ: Not really… it was, “Show your samples, and here’s a script.”

CBA: Was “Golden Gladiator” [from The Brave and the Bold] your first DC work?

Russ: The first was a war story, I think it was a winter story about ice and then, when I finished that one, I got another one… I’m not sure of the order of when the “Golden Gladiator” thing….

CBA: That was ’55 or so… after the Comics Code came along. You did some work for Kubert, and then Harvey Kurtzman at EC, at the same time?

Russ: I met Harvey at Atlas in 1946, when I was working there, and he was doing the “Hey, Look!”

one-page strips. I guess we went out to lunch and one thing led to another. Then I did a story for his Frontline Combat, I think. Then I worked on everything—all the magazines he ever got into— such as Trump, Humbug, and Help! Through the years, we’d go to lunch, and he’d give me a job.

CBA: For decades on end, right?

Russ: Yes, through “Little Annie Fanny.”

CBA: Were you ever exclusive to anybody, or were you always freelancing?

Russ: I might’ve been exclusive once in a while, but not by intention. It’d been because they kept giving me another job when I went in, and I didn’t have to work elsewhere. But I did find out and learned a lesson that even the nicest editor—if you’re only working for him—has got you under his foot, and he can’t resist grinding the heel in. And I thought, “What a strange thing human nature is.”

I always tried to have something else going.

CBA: Nonetheless, you did a huge body of work for DC in the late ’50s/early ’60s. Was it like they

say: You went to Kanigher’s office, delivered a job, picked up a check and a new job at the same time?

Russ: Yeah, or I’d go to lunch and Bob would write a story during lunch. He was that quick.

CBA: Were stories being tailored to you? Did you have particular strengths that Bob saw?

Russ: Well, they’d start you on a feature. I did some “Robin Hood,” and some “Golden Gladiator.”

It’s like, “All right, you’ve done the ‘Golden Gladiator,’ and we’ve got this stuff on hand, so we’ll give you some ‘Robin Hood.’”

CBA: As part of Bob’s group of artists, were you exclusively on his books?

Russ: It wasn’t by design; you were just working for him, and someone else was working for Julie Schwartz.

CBA: Did you ever lean over to Julie and say, “Hey, got anything?”

Russ: What he was doing wasn’t up my line.

CBA: You were where you were supposed to be, so to speak. But you could’ve done other genres,

Below: Possibly Russ’s epitome as one of DC’s finest war artists: The double-page splash to “Easy’s First Tiger,” Our Army at War #244. This also features a very rare turn of Russ as writer.

Courtesy of the artist. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Above: Heath recreation of his cover for an issue of Sea Devils.

Courtesy of the artist.

Sea Devils ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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right?

Russ: Right. I did some stuff, but I can’t quite recall who I did it for.

CBA: Did you hang out at all with any of the other Kanigher regulars, like Mort Drucker or Gene Colan?

Russ: Mort was so tied up with MAD magazine.

I did hang around with Ross Andru, and we became good friends. I had lunch with Ross about once a week—sometimes his wife would come along—I was usually with a girlfriend, and the four of us would go.

CBA: Were Ross’ pencils something to marvel at? Were you particularly a fan of his stuff?

Because I always hear artists raving about Ross Andru’s pencils.

Russ: I liked some of the things that they did, but I was more of an illustrator than a cartoonist.

Someone like Shelley Moldoff always had a comic approach—like [Fawcett’s] Captain Marvel— whereas I was trying to be an illustrator. I read that Moldoff interview in The Comics Journal [#214] and I realized that he was saying the way they drew

Batman in the old days, was better than the guys who are doing it now for animation— it was a better take on the character, because it was a comic approach.

About a year ago I did a “Justice Society” story, and it was too illustrative, you know.

It looks silly, like people are all dressed up for Hallowe’en—it was too realistic. I just realized that’s why I didn’t seem to fit into the super-hero thing; they’d ask, “Why don’t you do Superman?” or “Why don’t you do this super-hero stuff?” I just feel silly about the characters.

CBA: Your strength was in genre material, whether horror or war.

Russ: Well, I started out with Westerns.

CBA: In the late ’50s, for a long period of time in their war books, DC was doing basically short stories, and then they started to do series. I think they started with “Sgt. Rock.”

Russ: “The Haunted Tank” started somewhere in there, too.

CBA: Exactly. Were you looking to do a regular strip, or did it just fall in your lap?

Russ: I didn’t like “The Haunted Tank” [in G.I. Combat] as much, although I probably didn’t say so—it wasn’t good business policy to be negative about anything. You don’t know what it does if the writer hears that, and he doesn’t want to write for you anymore. You kept your mouth shut. “The Haunted Tank” I liked less because there was always the same four characters—J.E.B. Stuart plus his three buddies—virtually the same story every issue: He’d be talking to this ghost, over and over again.

I couldn’t believe kids kept wanting to look at it.

CBA: You did hundreds of pages of “The Haunted Tank,” didn’t you?

Russ: Yeah, it was probably the longest thing I did.

CBA: And you did that strip for 10 years?

Russ: I don’t know, I have no idea of the years.

In those days, in the early days, and before that, it was like “That was my job,” and the guy who lives next door is a butcher, and you go off to work, and you worked fast. It wasn’t like having a career; it was what you did. And you had a little control over your wages by how many pages you could turn out.

A lot of the guys tried to turn it out as fast as

possible, and did, but I felt they became hack artists, and I was afraid I’d become a hack, and I wouldn’t be able to do good stuff. So, I decided I wasn’t going to go for the gold.

CBA: What was your dream at the time? Was it you wanted to remain good, and just didn’t want to be like so many other artists who’d churn out pages and maximize their productivity? What were you holding out for?

Russ: It’s like that time I did that story for Blazing Combat, “Give and Take.” [For a detailed interview on Heath’s Warren work, see CBA #4.] All the guys working on that book who were my peers were doing excellent work. I knew I had to work to the best of my ability against that quality. So, I worked my ass off on that one story in particular, which turned out to be what many people think is the best story in that issue. It’s ironic, and I guess it was just happenstance, but everybody turned in a great job on that issue [#4].

CBA: Sadly, the last one of the run. There was a lot of good stuff.

Russ: I was always trying to grow.

CBA: You said in an earlier interview that while you were doing Sea Devils you spent time with a young lady who was going to art school, and she influenced you?

Russ: She’d been to three art schools, and she

moved in with me. I had gotten sick of going over and getting her clothes, and I said, “Why the hell don’t you just bring all your clothes over here?”

So we set up dual drawing boards. She had no experience, and her work leaned more towards fashion, but she was good at it. She wasn’t into comics. But if you go to art school, and you learn some of the rules, like negative space….

CBA: That rubbed off onto you?

Russ: Yeah, I had no concept of negative space.

Once I realized what it was, I could tell what was wrong with my stuff. Before, it was accidental.

This panel worked, that one didn’t, and I didn’t know why.

CBA: Did you do an enormous amount of research before that?

Russ: Well, from the time I was a kid, my father used to take me to all these Western movies. On Saturday mornings, they’d have these serials, like Tom Mix, and my father, having been a cowboy, would point things out to me and say, “Oh, no cowboy in his right mind would wear a boot with a heel like that,” or “The spurs are on wrong.” So, I felt I should try to convince the readers that I knew what I was drawing. And I’d better get it right! Of course, illustrators use a lot of photo research, and of course, you have to know how to interpret the photo; you can’t just copy it.

Below: Heath’s various tryouts for syndicated strips circa the late ’50s.

Top is a proposed Gunsmoke daily, middle is Victory at Sea sample, and bottom was the artist’s submission for Rip Kirby, when the syndicate was looking for a replacement after the sudden death of creator Alex Raymond. John Prentice, who recently passed away, got the job.

Courtesy of the artist. All properties are ©1999 the respective copyright holders. Art ©1999 Russ Heath.

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CBA: So, did you buy a lot of magazines, did you have a reference file?

Russ: Yes, I had all of Life magazine, from the time it started, plus a lot of others. There were a lot of photographs in these magazines—nothing compared to the amount used today—and then there was The

Above: “Skee-skaaa!”

The very odd—if endearing—pair of tales [Star Spangled War Stories # 129 and #131] featuring the Pterodactyl Guy (or, more properly, “The Brother With No Wings”) as drawn by Russ and written by Bob Kanigher, are fondly remembered by those of us who know. Featured is a detail from SSWS #19. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc. Below: Wanna find out just how many pages of “Haunted Tank” art Russ drew? Well, buy Chris Pendrin’s extraordinary Big Five Information Guide and count ‘em yourself via the exhaustive checklist!

Send $9 to Chris at P.O. Box 219, Redwood City, CA 94064. It’s a great book on DC’s war titles.

Art ©1999 Russ Heath.

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Saturday Evening Post, which was full of all these great illustrations. As a teenager, I had really intended to be an illustrator. Collier’s had illustrations, True Magazine had a lot of good illustrators. Eventually, I had to get rid of them. I had them in the garage, and they threatened to fall over and crush my car! [laughter] CBA: Man! Would you regularly go out there and dig through them when you had them? How would you have the memory for that?

Russ: Special ones you’d put aside on a shelf, and the rest you’d save. God, it’s amazing the sh*t I had then.

CBA: Did you have a memory where you could go, “Oh, yeah, there were these tank pictures in Life”?

Russ: Well, when I first started out, I would tear out the pictures and file them under whatever it was, girls, horses or—it was bad when I confused the two! But then, they got ahead of me, and you’ve got a pile of torn pages, because you’re trying to get rid of the bulk of the paper. But you remember what you put on file; in other words, I knew, when I was looking for a picture, where it was filed and pulled it out.

CBA: How did Sea Devils develop? Was that Bob Kanigher’s book?

Russ: Yeah. I guess I was there from the first issue. It started in Showcase, then it got its own book, and I guess I did about 10 or 12

covers and interiors. Whether the covers exactly paralleled the interiors, or what, I can’t recall.

CBA: Did you feel you were going to town with the covers? Because they certainly looked it.

Russ: Yeah, I was trying. I’m paying for it now in doing re-creations! That one with the sunken ship, you know, and some of them were so complicated… almost painted. I just finished a complicated one— it’s fun doing them right, like the way the should have been done, and the way they should have been colored, because I didn’t have control of the coloring when I initially did the covers. In 98% of all the work I did, I had no color input at all. Color is so important. The colorists weren’t artists, and didn’t appreciate lighting, using white. They were afraid if they brought it in and something was white, it was like you were lazy and not coloring the whole thing.

CBA: If memory serves, there was some interesting processes used on a number of your covers.

Russ: The gray tones? Yeah, well, they found it was too expensive to do full-color separations, and they wanted to head in that direction, so they felt if they added tone, they could do it that way. It wasn’t such a great idea. You mix gray with a color, and you get mud. It was terribly dull….

CBA: You weren’t in favor of the process?

Russ: Well, I was and wasn’t.

CBA: Did Jack Adler or Sol Harrison start that?

Russ: Sol Harrison, though I’m pretty sure it might’ve been either one of them. They wanted to get something that looked closer to full-color, or painted. They couldn’t do that because of the reproduction. They felt it was too expensive, so we added tone, using grays.

CBA: Was that due to the line screens?

Russ: I’ve never been in that end of the business, I don’t know. I just know a full-color cover’s a lot more expensive. I read an article once where somebody in the office did the grays, and that’s bullsh*t. We did our own tones; the artist put the gray on. It was weird that someone would think anybody else could put the grays on. They said they wanted us to do it, so we did. There was never any grays put in at the office.

CBA: Were you at times dismissive of the way your work looked in the books? Were you like, “Ehhhh!”?

Russ: Not so much. I tried to get copies of everything I ever did; if I succeeded, I felt I was keeping even.

Of course, we were two or three stories beyond that by the time it came out. But I always studied the stuff, because I wanted to know about line width—if my line was too fine it wouldn’t reproduce.

CBA: Did you go in and pick up color proofs?

Russ: Not so much. I just looked at the published magazines. Color proofs might be different than the final product, with that rotten paper comics were printed on. So, if you wanted to know what the thing was going to

look like on newsprint, that’s what you had to look at.

CBA: Did you enjoy working on Sea Devils?

Russ: Well, there were positives and negatives; it certainly was a lot better because of the background—or lack thereof. Underwater, everything could be… you know, you can’t make a lump of coral too big or too small, it was whatever you drew it as. Whereas if you’re drawing a goddamn building, you know, you’d go crazy. One thing I didn’t want to do was stories based in Manhattan. So, with Westerns, the buildings were rough-hewn and didn’t have to have all the straight lines, because the more they wiggled, the more authentic they looked.

So, it was very good in that sense. But, the four people in Sea Devils would drive you nuts, because you can’t draw four people in every panel, or you can’t do an arm reaching into the panel to represent two of them, and then draw two of them. I mean, it was a real dumb thing, and of course, if you divide your heroes by four, each one only has one-fourth of the value—it waters it down. So, when you have a single or perhaps two people, you can do more effective storytelling. I think that’s why such things as Terry and the Pirates would go on for a year-and-a-half with just Terry, or a yearand-a-half with just Pat… some with both of them, just because it’s so hard to do a story about a herd of people. I had taught SCUBA-diving, I got compliments about the attitudes of the bodies and so forth.

It was fairly convincing, having done it myself.

I knew what a swimmer looked like.

CBA: Did the popular TV show Sea Hunt inspire the series?

Russ: No, it was that I had done some “Frogman” stories for Kanigher’s war books, and so he knew I could do that stuff.

CBA: And there were good sales from the war stories, that got him to make an attempt adding Pterodactyls and other dinosaurs?

Russ: Yeah, all that kind of crazy stuff. What was really something else was that they passed these edicts down, and you haven’t been there in two

weeks, and “Oh, did you hear about the new rule?

All the GI’s are supposed to have stubble beards.”

And you’d go in two weeks later, and “Oh, did you hear the new rule? No more stubble beards.” So I figured, they don’t know what they want, I’m just going to draw it the way I want to. Nobody ever said anything. Sometimes in the Kanigher stories, he’d have a lot of things like the tank hidden in a hay-stack, and throwing the grenade down the muzzle of the tank, and stuff like that which

appeared multiple times in different stories. I would—maybe to get more room if it didn’t conflict with the storyline—ignore the redundant scenes and spread it out focusing on something else, and get more room. He either didn’t care, or didn’t realize I was doing that.

CBA: You took liberties with Bob’s scripts, eh?

Russ: I don’t know how he’ll take the news.

CBA: He had a notorious reputation with a number of people as being quite an angry guy.

Russ: We originally—way, way back, you know, before ’50—cartoonists came to work in a shortsleeved sportshirt and dress slacks. One day I went

Above: Michael “Mr. Mike” O’Donoghue’s mondo wacky strip from his National Lampoon Encyclopedia of Humor.

Check out the tank and see if you can see the statlines!

Russ tells us he’s into recycling: The tank’s a reprint of his “Easy’s First Tiger” splash! (see pgs. 18-19) ©1999 National Lampoon, Inc.

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in and he’s telling one artist that he’s not getting the feeling of this thing, and he makes the guy get down on the floor to get the feeling right.

CBA: To get him to pose?

Russ: To get him rolling around on the floor and I thought, “Dammit, I’m not going to do that!” So I started wearing a suit and tie. I think Gil Kane picked that up, and everybody wore a suit for a while there.

CBA: So they wouldn’t have to roll on the floor?

Russ: “I’ll be damned if I’m going to get down on the floor in my good suit!”

CBA: Were some of you scared to death about working with certain editors?

Russ: We weren’t scared to death, but some of us were more religious about following rules than others, and of course, it depended on how much demand the artist was in. If a guy had a couple of weak pages, he’d be nervous. There weren’t too many changes made to my stuff, and I think the better you got, if you had any intelligence, you started anticipating what an editor was going to change, so you did it the way he wanted it in the first place. To me, the most successful editor is one who hardly ever changes anything, because he’s explained what he wanted so well to the artist, and the artist is bringing him what he wants.

CBA: During this same time, you were becoming a dominant war artist, along with Joe Kubert. Did you hang out with Joe at all?

Russ: Yeah, I went out to his house a few times, and we went to a health club or something or other.

And we’d go to lunch. He’d always marvel that when we’d go somewhere to have a hamburger,

and I’d have a vodka tonic, a martini or something with my hamburger, and he’d have a glass of milk.

“You know how much you paid? Your lunch is twice as expensive as mine.” I think he thought this was idiotic—but we became good friends.

When I went to Chicago, I was working by mail, it was a different time, and a different age, and I spent almost every evening going out in my sandals and my bellbottoms, going into bars and partying, and bringing people along to party, and carrying on and so forth. That’s what was going on in those days, part of the ’60s. I started being late with my deadlines, and Kubert would get very justifiably angry, and I remember one time he got so mad he said, “If I had you here in New York, I’d punch you right in the face!” And I didn’t blame him! In fact, that’s one of the things where I started improving my stuff a lot. I was trying to make up for being late, I wanted to dazzle… if they’re distracted by how neat it looked, they’re not going to come down so hard on me for being late—or so I thought. Later 24

on, they wised up, and started making longer deadlines. All that pressure disappeared, because if they knew you were usually late, they’d give you a deadline two weeks before they really needed it.

Finally, I heard—I didn’t realize this—but apparently, because of the lateness, I didn’t get a call back… it very well could be true. But Joe and I remained good friends.

CBA: Your output for DC dropped considerably when you started working for Kurtzman and Playboy, right?

Russ: I was working in ’64 for a New York ad agency as well as comics before that. I was just doing comics, feeling fine when a buddy—without my asking—went by Doyle, Dane & Bernbach, one of the most successful agencies at the time, and he told me, “I’ve made an appointment for an interview for you.” I asked, “What did you do that for?” But I also thought, you never know, around each corner somebody’s always making more money than you. So I went up there and I had the best of

both worlds, because I told them when there’s no work in the house, I’d do comics, because they’re not in competition with the advertising work, so they said, “Oh, that’s fine.” So about 50% of the time, there was nothing in-house, so I was working on comics. I also would stay from five o’clock—quitting time—to about eight and do more comics, so when I finished a day up, I was paid a day’s wages, and I had done close to a day’s work on comics!

CBA: You were working at the advertising agency, then you went to Chicago, working under Hefner’s roof, and then you were still doing comics. Were you doing less comics then? It seems your output….

Russ: Obviously, after your day’s work is done, it’s quite hard to go home and work some more.

CBA: Did you do advertising work when you were in Chicago?

Russ: No. I wasn’t familiar with any of the Chicago agencies. My hands were full between the comics and “Fanny.”

CBA: Did you have any particular affection for

Above and opposite: First three pages of Our Army at War #253, featuring breathtaking pen and ink work by Our Man Heath.

Courtesy of the artist. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Above and opposite: Rare teaming of Neal Adams (pencils) and Russ Heath (inks) on a G.I. Combat cover. Above is the published version.

Current owner Steve Morger peeled off a paste-up to reveal the cover as originally intended, opposite, featuring a Tommygun toting nurse—a refreshing change of pace for a cover subject, yes?

Our thanks to Steve for contributing this treasure. ©1999 DC Comics.

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that pterodactyl flying guy that so many remember?

Russ: You mean the dinosaurs in the war books?

I thought it was silly, but ironically, I’ve found out in recent years, people loved that stuff. I didn’t use many swipes, or go into the technique of making them accurate, I just made kind of a monster.

In many cases, I didn’t usually get too technical about it, because I thought it was kind of silly to begin with.

CBA: Going back to the Tor stuff you did—the dinosaurs appeared to be anatomically correct.

You knew animals, right?

Russ: Yeah, fairly well. Of course, drawing so many horses as a kid. But I was not Will James or Charlie Russell.

CBA: Did you ride horses a lot?

Russ: No, as a little kid, my father would take me to the pony track in my cowboy suit now and then.

I also rode English Style.

CBA: I can’t picture this… come on! I always figured you as being right out there on the range!

Russ: I guess that was about it years ago. I went to Gray Morrow’s place, he had a horse, and I got up on that, but I didn’t feel at all secure. I was too

heavy. He said, “You look good, you still know how to sit on a horse.”

CBA: Knowing you, and appreciating your work, I had a feeling there was an ingrained sense of the American West in you.

Russ: Again, that comes from my father, and I guess because I was an only child, he spent a lot of extra time on me. I remember there was a huge lawn at the college next to our house, with a rock right in the middle of it, and I remember him laying down behind the rock, me behind a tree and shooting cap pistols.

Many of the years I wore western boots as a kid. We certainly talked about cowboys. I appreciated women a little later on. I became known for my drawings of women, although I had trouble because I’d drawn men for so long, that my women weren’t very feminine, their bodies were too masculine.

CBA: Do you remember how you got “Sgt. Rock”?

Russ: I don’t really know the facts… I’m guessing that Joe wanted to do less of it, or wanted to do more of something else. I remember the first story I did, I tried to ape his style a little bit, so there wouldn’t be a sudden shock to the reader; you can see it in the first story I did.

I’d do my version of his explosions. Years later, somebody said, “How does it feel to be known for not just your work, but known for ‘Russ Heath explosions’?” and I thought that was kind of neat.

CBA: Initially, do you recall on “Sgt. Rock,” whether you were just doing fill-in issues so Joe could catch up, or…?

Russ: If memory serves, I just started doing them.

CBA: You’d do three, and then Joe would do one.

Then Joe did the book less and less.

Russ: That sounds right. I don’t think anybody ever did “The Haunted Tank” while I was doing it.

CBA: Your work has such an impact, it’s hard to describe, such a sensual line with this realistic… you know, one of my favorite things of yours is—I forgot the name of it, cowgirls fighting Nazis—but it was just so weird, and so well rendered….

Russ: It was called “Cowgirls at War,” from the National Lampoon Encyclopedia of Humor.

CBA: Yeah! It was just so beautiful!

Russ: I got a call from some group in Arizona asking if I was going to do any more of that stuff.

They were obviously into bondage! They said, “If you ever do any more of this stuff, please let us know.” To do the job, I bought some bondage magazines…

CBA: Simply for research! [laughs] Russ: …for the research, and I put these in a pile and burned them after the job was done.

CBA: To look at it, it looks like you’ve got full

and complete understanding… with that rubber fetish—I remember rubber balls in the mouth, and everything like that—it was some extreme sh*t!

Russ: It’s in the magazine… it’s amazing how people think that this is you! I draw what I’m told to draw, for God’s sake! I did “Naked Ladies Telling Old Jokes,” that was in National Lampoon. It was tough do to, though. I remember in this one there were 18 women in the thing, and if you don’t get them just right, if one of them looks ugly, then that’s no good. I mean, you get Sgt. Rock’s nose a little bigger, who cares? [laughter] CBA: Back to the DC books… like you were saying, part of it was you certainly were pleasing the staff at DC. Marv Wolfman told of opening up a job from you and just being floored. Mark Hanerfeld remembers vividly opening up your “Easy’s First Tiger” [Our Army at War #244] story, Neal Adams hovering over him, dying to look at the work.

Russ: They’d gather around the office to see what I’d done. Archie Goodwin wrote a flattering piece about that in a convention program.

CBA: So, do you recall a story with Len Wein and Marv that juxtaposed cavemen and modern-day warfare [“The Pool,” Weird War Tales #3]? You just went to town with it.

Russ: Each page was reversed… the stuff on the borders was the other world, and the main part kept changing. I think I had something to do with the color on that.

CBA: Were you getting burnt out from the amount of work you were doing, and the amount of time you were spending with this stuff?

Russ: No, I don’t think… I was just too deep in it to know. A picture was done when it was done, it wasn’t a matter of finishing it on Tuesday. When somebody says, “Don’t you get awfully tired of drawing?”

I say, “It beats working for a living!” Again, it’s that “trying” thing, and especially when I was working by mail, I was trying to shock them by making something special. I kept trying to do things a little different than I’d done before, which is really tough, because you look at something; what is the best way to tell this story in this panel? It’s logical to keep doing it the very best way that you know. So, how did I do it before, and how can I change it and do it completely differently, and still stay right on the mark of telling the story? So that was a challenge to make it different, and not to make the storyline suffer from crazy shots or something.

CBA: Can you reach a point of being completely satisfied with a story, and just being happy with it?

Russ: Well, you’re always looking back at things that could’ve been better, but it doesn’t bother me too much. A couple of times I did—one Warren job I was just burned out on the last page, and I spoiled the whole story for me, but I don’t know if the readers felt that way. But again, when you’re trying, and you get your mind totally involved in what you’re doing, as with the “Sgt. Rock” stuff….

CBA: So, you moved to Connecticut, roughly in the early ’70s?

Russ: Yes, I think it was about ‘74, maybe ‘73.

CBA: That’s when your work was dropping off from DC, right?

Russ: I think it must’ve been another one of those things where the books weren’t selling, because I don’t recall after leaving Playboy in ’69, and having too good a time, I guess… not making out too well. Carmine Infantino was then the editorial director, and he said he’d give me regular work if I came back to New York. So I said I couldn’t afford to go back there, and he loaned me money, which he could take out of my paychecks, so I could come back.

And that’s how I came back.

CBA: And you worked that often?

Russ: He really got pissed because I was doing some stuff for National Lampoon and he said, “You haven’t paid your debt all off!” And I said, “I never said I was exclusive; I said it would be paid.” And of course, I paid it, but he got all upset, not that I cared much. As

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long as I kept working, I was paying him. I tried to stay away from office politics. Sometimes you’d run across this kind of editor, or that kind of editor, maybe one of them likes to exploit weaknesses of people, and I hid that pretty well. A couple of times they did reach a soft spot with me, but I didn’t react, so they didn’t know they hit it.

CBA: And you just stayed away from them?

Russ: Yeah, I just said, “That’s fine,” or “That’s okay.” Nobody’s going to be able to start an argument with me.

CBA: Very rarely, you’d occasionally do something for another editor.

Russ: I think I did very little for anyone other than Kubert. I think I did a couple of mystery stories, but I can’t think of who they were for.

CBA: With your strength as a renderer of the female form, were you ever interested in doing a regular heroine adventure strip, like “Black Canary”? Skintight costumes look awfully good.

Russ: Not back in those days, because most of the stuff was censored even if it happened to just look sexy. When did Wonder Woman ever look sexy? Not until the TV show.

CBA: Man, you would’ve done one bodacious Wonder Woman!

Russ: They wouldn’t have allowed it; if I’d drawn it like I wanted to, they wouldn’t have accepted it. I stuck some stuff in the war stories here and there, like a nurse….

CBA: It seems kind of weird you were doing “Easy Company” when certainly one of your strengths was to draw women. Did you ever consider doing romance work?

Russ: I did a romance story once, and a couple of romance covers. I did one thing for Atlas/ Seaboard, and I think I did something in the romance line for Charlie Biro. (I was working through Bob Wood, who was my editor.)

CBA: After “Sgt. Rock,” it seemed you really didn’t do work for DC for a period, right? You were pretty much doing freelance work.

Russ: I’d have to look at the dates on some of the magazines, but I don’t think I ever stopped working for DC in the ’60s and ’70s, at least, and maybe it fell off later on.

CBA: I remember you working on Mister Miracle with Mike Golden.

Russ: Yeah, I inked two issues of his stuff, inking his exciting little effects here, video effects there.

It was interesting to work on Mike’s work, it’s not interesting to work on hackwork. They sucked me into a couple of jobs, like I’d try to save them.

It just drags your reputation down, you can’t save something, you’re better starting off, better off starting over. They’d get these beginning artists, so I said I didn’t want to do any more stuff unless I did the penciling and inking. I did some kind of Chinese or Japanese thing with army comics, maybe it was Korean.

CBA: You did some work with Continuity?

Russ: Oh, yeah, I did quite a good deal of stuff for them. Plus my comics….

CBA: At Continuity, were you doing advertising?

Russ: Yeah, that and my comics. I did some covers. It was supposed to be one page, like back covers. They put them all in one magazine, Savage Tales or something. They were like a werewolf

straddling at a woman, and I thought, “Gee, maybe it’d be more interesting to have the woman on top,” but they didn’t like the woman on top.

CBA: You still sporadically work for DC, right?

Russ: I recently did a “Balloon-Buster” story. I also did a whole 48-page book of Enemy Ace that takes place in World War II, and there’s a companion 48-page book, which another guy is doing but it’s not done yet.

CBA: What would you call your high point working at DC? What was the most memorable, pleasant experience you had?

Russ: Oh, I think when I look through the “Sgt. Rock” stories. Each one had a special deal.

As much as they were alike, they were all different. I liked to interject something to make the stories more interesting, like snow… there was a story we did about blood, by having it on top of the snow, it made it different. I’d make one a rainy thing, to establish weather, instead of just hanging back in limbo, make it winter, and get a chance to draw different clothes and there was the snow effect, too. There was a “Sgt. Rock” job where he gets his voicebox temporarily cut, which was a neat winter story… there were a couple of good winter war stories.

CBA: It was a short run, but the continued stories, “Rock in the South Pacific,” were really exciting.

Russ: I don’t know whether you’d call it surreal, but some of the splashes were done as montages.

In one, there’s a big map of the world in back of everything.

CBA: I can see it right now in my mind, right.

Rock’s on a raft or something.

Russ: I’d take that page out and show people.

And I’d ask, “See if you can find me in there.”

And they look, and I said, “Look, I’ll give you a hint—I lived in Chicago at the time.” And if they look at the map, there’s a little tiny arrow pointing to Chicago labeled “Me,” very tiny!

CBA: Your place in the DC Universe, right?

Russ: There I am! [laughter]

Above: Russ’s place in the grand scheme of things—that is, read the end of the interview for the meaning of this detail from the splash page of Our Army at War #258. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc. Opposite: Exquisite and macabre pin-up page by Russ featuring Lilith from a b-&-w Marvel horror mag. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Below: Is this Russ preparing for a visit from Editor Joe Kubert circa 1974? ©1999 Russ Heath.

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Alex Toth: Before I Forget The Artist Discusses His ’70s DC Comics Work

Background image: Page 6, “20 Miles to Heartbreak, Chapter 3,” Secret Hearts #142.

Vince Colletta, inker. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Background image: Page 6, “Burma Sky,” Our Fighting Forces #146. Archie Goodwin, writer. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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©1999 Alex Toth

All images on this spread (except for the enlarged doodle above by the artist) are from Alex’s seminal ’70s work for DC Comics:”The Case of the Curious Classic,” Hot Wheels #5, 1970. Ye ed claims this is just about his favorite Toth story of all time, and we are proud as all get-out to announce Alex will be a regular columnist in every CBA, commencing in 2000. Also, with the able help and contributions of Mark Chiarello and Paul Rivoche, CBA’s tribute issue entitled “Alex Toth: Before I Forget,” is humming along, set for release in Summer 2000. Our profound thanks to the artist for all of his support. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc. Hot Wheels ©1999 Mattel, Inc.

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Background image: Page 4, “Mask of the Red Fox,” House of Mystery #187. Bob Kanigher, writer. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Background image: The Shadow. From Alex Toth: Black and White by Manuel Auad. See notice below.

The Shadow ©1999 Condé Nast. Art ©1999 Alex Toth.

Please note that Manuel Auad’s excellent Alex Toth: Black and White is still available. Limited Edition, signed: $49.95. Regular Edition: $24.95.

Add $5 S&H. Send check or M.O. to Manuel Auad, P.O. Box 31087, San Francisco, CA 94131-0087.

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CBA Collection Extra!

The Greatest!

Neal Adams on his masterpiece, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali Conducted by Arlen Schumer Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Below: We found this partially unused full-body image of Ali and Kal-El in Neal’s thumbnails, though the upper-body portion was adapted for the book’s final two-page spread. Art ©2000 Neal Adams.

Superman ©2000 DC Comics.

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[Editor’s Note: I may be in the minority fandom opinion on this, but I’ve long felt that Neal Adams’ Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was his best work for DC Comics. Ever. It appeared on the stands in late 1977—just as I was losing interest in comics, and Neal’s storytelling and technique simply blew me away. So I asked Neal and my pal (interviewer/designer/historian extraordinaire) Arlen Schumer, if they could do a brief interview about the story behind the story. In phenomenally short turnaround time, Neal gave us the definitive interview on the project, Arlen sent us original art and the tapes, and transcriber

Jon B. Knutson finished the transcript in record time. CBA presented an edited version of the transcript—about half the size of this interview—in CBA Special Edition #1. What follows is the entire transcript, illustrated with plenty of new artwork. This interview was conducted in Neal’s Continuity Studio on Nov. 12, 1999.—JBC] Arlen Schumer: Let’s start with the cover: Originally, this project at DC Comics was going to be drawn by Joe Kubert, and for whatever reason, the Muhammad Ali people weren’t happy with the likenesses, and somehow the idea came up, “Maybe we can get Neal to work on it.”

Neal Adams: Clearly, DC was having a problem with likenesses, and Ali’s people weren’t happy, so they had me take a try. They were happy with my likenesses, and basically, that was the turning point, and the reason I got the project.

When I saw Joe’s original cover (he hadn’t done detail to the background) with the two figures, I thought, “Gee, you know, no matter what I do, I don’t think I’m going to come up with a better layout than Joe.” So I essentially took his layout, and just put my own drawing into it, and if somebody recognizes the pose of, say, Superman as not being a typical Neal Adams pose, it’s a Joe Kubert pose, adapted to my style.

Arlen: I remember looking at this at the time, thinking, “This cover doesn’t quite look like Neal.”

Neal: I wanted to keep Joe’s name attached to it, and by using his layout, I paid homage to it. Because this is a classic Kubert layout: The one foot up, and the shoulder. The big question that entered my mind was, I knew it would have a wraparound cover, so how do I then make it an event? And I thought, “Why don’t I put famous people on the cover watching the match?”

Arlen: Kubert’s layout had a generic audience.

Neal: I don’t think he was focused on the audience at that point; he was looking to get a layout done, and just show the main figures.

So, I started to put in some famous people. Naturally, the President would be there if the Earth is in jeopardy, as would various other people—and for some reason, it caught on at DC Comics. They thought, “Well, why don’t we put famous people there?” The logic says make it an event. So, I started to do that. I didn’t have any idea what I had let myself in for. [laughter] I simply had no idea.

Arlen: What do you mean? You knew you had to do likenesses….

Neal: If you count them, I think there’s something like 170 different likenesses there. For a cover, that’s a lot of drawings. You don’t really do that—but I guess I was caught up in it, in that, for instance, I had just met Kurt Vonnegut and I thought, “Gee, Vonnegut would be at this fight.” Certainly Ali’s trainers would be there, and of course, if Superman were there, Lex Luthor would be there, [laughter] and Batman would be there... well, by the time I got that stuff going, we got carried away—it just turned into this ball of string that I just couldn’t unravel. And it got to the point where I was saying, “If there’s a circle there, I ought to put a person there... where do I stop?” [laughter] Where does it end? Well, it just never ended, we just kept on going and going and going.

Arlen: As a former employee of yours, I remember one of your lessons in drawing was, when one has to do a crowd, design it in such a way that you suggest a crowd….

Neal: That was one of those times that I should’ve stuck with one of my own rules! [laughter] Once the idea was presented up at DC, the question was: Should we get permission from these people to put them on the cover, or should we not? My feeling was, “I don’t see

Devoid of type, here’s Neal’s fully-inked front cover for his masterpiece Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. Note the presence of Mick Jagger in the lower left-hand corner. The singer was later replaced by Don King in the final version.

Special thanks to Continuity employee and friend Tom Ziuko for making us a copy of this treasure. Courtesy of Neal Adams. ©2000 DC Comics.

May 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 8

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Below: Preliminary version of the legendary cover featuring Neal’s likenesses of at least 17 celebrities who ultimately declined to be used. Note the ringside use of Telly Savalas (smoking, no less!) who was easily transformed into Luthor.

Another treasure found by Tom Ziuko and courtesy of Neal Adams.

Art ©2000 Neal Adams. Superman ©2000 DC Comics.

why we’d have to get permission. If it was an editorial decision, that essentially these people would be at this thing, if you put drawings of people on a comic book cover, it’s just a comic book. You’re not really saying anything or implying anything, so I don’t think there’s any reason for it.” Well, for whatever reason, it was decided, “Well, why don’t we ask anyway?” Maybe it was the publicity….

Arlen: And thus, the biggest can of worms was opened.

Neal: The logical thought was that everybody would say, “Yes, who cares?” And certainly, a majority of people said yes. There were people who decided not to say yes… why, I have no idea. Assuming that they would say yes, I went ahead and put them in. So, then we started to get responses (and most people were very cooperative, and very generous, and I’m sure that even the people who rejected the idea were very generous and very cooperative), some just decided on that day, “I don’t feel like giving my permission.” You know, it’s sort of a flip of a coin. They just said no, or yes, whatever.

So, there were people I just left out—but there were other people I’d already put in there. For example, John Wayne decided he didn’t want to be in it, but I’d already drawn him. So I decided, “I don’t want to take him out, but on the other hand, I don’t want everybody to know it’s John Wayne.” So we put a mustache on him. So, if you look very carefully on the front cover, you’ll see a guy with a mustache sitting right next to Johnny Carson, and sure enough, that’s John Wayne with a mustache. You’ll see next to Ron Howard, is a guy with a mustache—that’s Fonzie [Henry Winkler] with different hair and a mustache.

Arlen: So, basically, anybody with a mustache is somebody that didn’t give approval? [laughs] Neal: Well, I can’t guarantee that! It becomes a game to look around and find people who might not have given permission. We tried, but it got to be like a silly joke after a while. I thought, “Oh, God, what are we doing?” So, there were a whole bunch of people I

really had to put aside, if I had to take them out, but in some cases, I did the mustache thing. So there are, again, over 170 people on this cover... big, big project! The two figures in the middle? The easiest part of the cover! [laughter] Remember, I had to have photographs to work from, and I then had to draw these people so small, yet the likenesses had to be there, so people wouldn’t come to me later and say, “Gee, that doesn’t look like so-and-so.” It’s a professional thing to not miss the likeness.

Also, all the people who were not stars on the cover, but people I liked, I didn’t want to disappoint them, and put them in such a way that you couldn’t recognize who they are. So the game with this comic book, of course, if anybody can find it, is to play that little game of “Find out who all those people are.”

Arlen: Whose idea was it to do this comic in the first place?

Neal: I think it generated like lava, from some swamp beneath the earth, and it suddenly appeared. [laughs] My memory says that Julie Schwartz had something to do with it, and of course, without knowledge, I’d love to give Julie credit for the whole idea, but I guess you’d have to ask him. Certainly, when I heard it, I thought it was a great idea. I mean, just the concept... yet, at the same time, the logical question is, “How do you have a human being fight an alien—Superman—and how do you justify such a battle?” We had to come up with an answer.

Arlen: Let’s back up for a minute. Once you did your thing, and were approved, in a sense, as the artist, were there any other creative people involved?

Neal: Denny O’Neil was certainly involved, and both Denny and I had to be approved, not by DC Comics or by Muhammad Ali, but by Elijah Muhammad [head of the Nation of Islam, the American Black Muslim organization]. Elijah Muhammad had to decide whether or not we were okay to do this book. Remember, Cassius Clay had accepted Islam as his religion, changed his name to Muhammad Ali,

1 George C. Scott 7 John Travolta, Gabe Kaplan, & 2 Art Garfunkel Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs 3 Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward 8 Charlton Heston & Bob Mitchum 4 Elton John 9 Mick Jagger 5 Bob Dylan 10 Telly Savalas 6 John Denver 11 John Wayne 12 Jimmie J.J. Walker 13 Dean Martin 14 Mary Tyler Moore 7

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and essentially put himself under the guidance of Elijah Muhammad. So, here we were in this curious situation, that once the artwork was approved by the Ali people, the question was, were we approved by Elijah Muhammad? And there was really only one way we could be approved of by him, and that was for us to get on a plane, go to Chicago, be driven by limousine to the home of Elijah Muhammad, set out in the windy plains of Chicago, through a gate, and up to his rather elegant house.

Arlen: This is just you and Denny?

Neal: Just me and Denny, led into a parlor, very Turkish in design, surrounded by columns and couches around the edges— and Elijah Muhammad came out, said hello, got into a phone call, was called away, and left— and we were excused!

Arlen: That was it?

Neal: That was it.

Arlen: He just had to physically...?

Neal: See us, I guess, I don’t know! [laughter] I think, in spite of the fact that my personal history comes from many different back-

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grounds, I think the map of Ireland was on both Denny’s and my face, and perhaps that’s what swayed him. I don’t know, whatever it was, we seemed like friendly guys. I think it was just a... a ritual. I think that he felt responsible to Ali, and was looking after him, and why not meet the people who were going to do this, and see if they’re okay? It seemed a little odd to us. [laughs] Arlen: The book came out in 1978. Your last comic for DC before this was “Moon of the Wolf,” which was published in early ‘74, which you had to have drawn, let’s say, in late ‘73, after “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge.” From that point on, you pretty much thought that was it for you and DC, in terms of concrete artwork.

Neal: Right. Remember at that time, I was dealing with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster [fighting for Superman’s creators to receive recognition and a pension from DC Comics]. That became a rather intense time for me. At any rate, I had a contract for Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali, I also had an agreement with DC Comics that I get a very, very small percentage of overseas sales. I don’t believe that any other comic book artist has ever gotten that.

Arlen: This was really the first mainstream DC comic you did that was not work-for-hire?

Neal: Not as work-for-hire, but under contract. It wasn’t a great contract, but it did have stipulations in the contract that were valid for people to have, and I let everybody know what was in there.

Arlen: At the time, this was DC’s highest-priced original comic book, I believe. The format was established from those dollar editions, so this was really the first “prestige format.”

Neal: It was meant from the beginning to be a success. In the end, whether it was a success, I don’t know.

Arlen: How come you don’t know?

Neal: No, I don’t know the sales in the United States. I know that all around the world it sold very well.

Arlen: So you were approved as the artist, Denny was approved as writer, Julie Schwartz is the editor.

Neal: Now, I participated in the outline, and it turned out, in the middle of the project Denny could no longer work on it, so essentially, Julie Schwartz dumped it into my lap to finish.

Arlen: We’ve got some script pages so we know it was written as a traditional script.

Neal: Up to a certain point. Remember, this is a 72-page story. You don’t write it all at once, you do it in parts. Midway into it, Denny was unable to finish, so Julie asked, “Do you want to finish it? You know the story better than anybody else.” I said, “Fine.” He said, “Have the remainder of the script in here Monday.” [laughs]

Above: Joe Kubert’s cover art for his version of the book, a design Neal retained in homage to the great artist/editor/mentor. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Ringside Seat John Workman remembers Superman vs. Muhammad Ali As I recall, by the time I had started working on staff at DC in 1975, there had already been an ad printed in certain comics promoting the upcoming Superman vs. Muhammad Ali tabloid-size book. It featured artwork by Joe Kubert. At some point, a logo was needed for Ali and Sol Harrison gave me a pencil rough with instructions to do the finish at home and to bring it in to the office the next morning. The finished logo would then be shown to Ali’s people for their approval. I’m not sure, these 24 years later, who had done up the rough, though I believe it was either Sol himself or Joe Orlando. There is an outside chance that it could have been Carmine Infantino’s handiwork, since I remember doing a few things (including the “square-jawed” Batman face with the 1960s-style lettering that adorned Detective Comics for a few issues) that were based on Carmine’s concepts.

When I got to the Staten Island apartment that I shared with Bob Smith, I looked at the logo rough and was appalled to find that there was the very real possibility that Muhammad Ali’s name had been misspelled. Knowing that my brother Bill would have the necessary information, I phoned him out in Washington State and found that someone at DC had, indeed, messed up Ali’s name. My brother corrected the spelling and I did up the logo. The next morning, Sol Harrison put it in for stats and took the copies to show Ali’s people.

Because there seemed to be no further need for my original, I took it back home with me… at least until a few weeks later when Jack Adler was looking around for it and I told him that it was in my possession. He was happy to find that it hadn’t disappeared or been misfiled and told me to bring it back. I did.

As things progressed on the book, a couple of interesting stories circulated through the office. The first one concerned Joe Kubert. Evidently, the group that represented Ali’s interests was not happy with the “scratchiness” of Joe’s art. I had seen evidence of such attitudes when I was still out in Washington. Bob Smith and I had once attended a symposium on comics at Western Washington University and found that, along with the moderator and cartoonist Russ Meyers, we were alone in our liking of Joe Kubert’s art. Everyone else attending the symposium was unanimous in their intense dislike for the Kubert Tarzan artwork.

The result of this rejection of Joe Kubert’s work was that Jenette Kahn (who had since assumed the duties of DC Publisher) and Sol Harrison presented to Ali’s representatives samples of the work of every artist that they could possibly get to do the work on the book.

After looking over the samples, Ali’s guys agreed that Superman vs. Muhammad Ali should be drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger. The DC people were not happy with this and successfully lobbied to have Neal Adams as the book’s artist. In retrospect, it’s understandable that Kurt Schaffenberger (or Curt Swan or Murphy Anderson or a ton of other comic book stalwarts) should be seen as being representative of what the general public thought of when comic books came to mind. But there was already a drastic change taking place at DC as the “fan” element came to prominence. Kurt Schaffenberger was not a “fan favorite,” but Neal Adams was. The strange thing was that Neal’s work encompassed the dynamic energy so beloved by the fans while his stuff also appealed to the much-larger group of comics buyers that would make or break Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. Neal was, in the end, the perfect choice.

The second bit of information that swept through the corridors at DC concerned Neal’s intent to create a Sergeant Pepper cover with tons of famous people pictured in the audience. There was word that the Beatles had given their enthusiastic support and that they would be reunited on Neal’s cover. Carol Fein lined up the DC staffers in the hallway near Sol Harrison’s office and we had individual Polaroid photographs taken so that Neal could use them as reference when he drew each of us into the crowd scene. I remember going to a party at Jenette’s and looking at the work-in-progress cover that Neal was doing. Once, he brought it into the production department and I made a Xerox copy of what he had done to that point… including drawings of several celebrities who decided against being on the final version of the cover. When I went to seek Neal’s advice about going over to Heavy Metal (Neal had suggested to National Lampoon Art Director Peter Kleinman that I would be a good Art Director for HM), he was sitting in the Continuity Associates office working on fight scenes between the Man of Steel and Muhammad Ali. Seeing Neal draw is a fantastic experience.

I was working at Heavy Metal when the book finally came out. I have to admit that I was bothered a bit by not being at the press conference wherein the DC staffers got to meet a somewhat reticent Muhammad Ali. I dropped in at DC and was given a copy of the book.

Somebody told me that the print-run was 400,000 and they expected it to do very well.

We were kidding Neal a lot in the production department as the original deadline came and went. The joke went around that Neal would finish Superman vs. Muhammad Ali right after he completed the work on Superman vs. Joe Louis. After seeing the finished book, we were all happy with it and we figured that the long wait was worthwhile.

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Arlen: He wanted you to write it up full-script?

Neal: Of course. Any work that I’ve ever done for DC Comics, I have to write full-script. I wrote the “Deadman,” and a couple of issues of The Spectre that way. [laughter] Believe me, Julie Schwartz gives no dispensation to anybody. He’s a very, very tough editor.

Arlen: Up until this point, nothing is drawn, right? It’s all script?

Neal: Right, and because this is the way it was established, I basically had to say at DC Comics—contrary to what anybody may say, this is the deal that was made—I said, very clearly, and it was agreed, “I cannot be on a deadline on this book, because I’m no longer taking up space at DC Comics, I’m really not pushing myself forward as a comic book artist, I have to make a living, I have a studio, I have to fit it in between whatever else I do.” It turned out my partner, Dick Giordano, was the inker on the book, and so he would ink the pages as I would do them, but it was very, very clear from the beginning that they could not be on a deadline. Everybody agreed that it would be fine.

Arlen: Again, do you remember what year this was?

Neal: Probably 1976, something like that. That was the way we proceeded, and I must admit, I proceeded slowly. But on the other hand, if you just look at that cover, you’ll get some idea of the kind of work that went into doing this book. So, I did it when I could. It got to a point, a half a year, eight, nine, ten months later, people were asking, “When is this thing ever going to get done?” I did work on it whenever I could, but it’s one of those books that if you look at it, you go, “Boy, this guy really busted his ass on this book.” And I did!

Arlen: Did DC make a mistake promoting it too far in advance?

Neal: I’m sure they didn’t say it should be out, but they certainly said that we were doing it. I don’t know what their promotion was. My agreement with DC Comics was that I couldn’t commit to a deadline, and it was agreed it would be done when it was done. That was the agreement—the full measure of the agreement—and it took a year to get the thing done! If there was a deadline, certainly the book would’ve been pulled long before the year went by. Everybody agreed there was no problem, and it was a big project to do.

Arlen: The ironic thing is that Ali was champion when the project was announced, and in a bitter irony, by the time the book came out, he was….

Neal: In between his second championship and the third. Then, almost on

Above: A page of Neal’s revised script, complete with thumbnail. Note the use of Adam Strange and Alanna in the bottom right panel. Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2000 Neal Adams. Adam Strange & Alanna ©2000 DC Comics.

the occasion of the book’s release, he won the championship back a third time. So, I actually liked that the coincidence worked out very nicely. I had no problem with it. It was clear the book was very popular all over the world. It appeared in more languages than you can possibly imagine, and it was very, very popular. Superman, of course, is a popular character around the world; Muhammad Ali—even though he got rapped in the United States—you must remember that Ali is the champion of the world. He was certainly the champion of people whose color isn’t exactly white; and for people like myself, he’s our champion, too, because he stood up for what he believed in, and was willing to go to jail for it.

Arlen: And he forfeited his crown.

Neal: These are not small things.

People do make light of them, but I don’t. I really feel very strongly about it.

Arlen: Actually, they don’t make light of him now.

Neal: They did, they don’t so much now. I’m doing the cover for ESPN magazine featuring the 100 greatest athletes in the last century, and you can pretty much guess about right where Muhammad Ali is located. In fact, I was asked by ESPN to do it very much like the cover for Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, because the editor remembered that book. So, there are some people out there who’ve seen it, and have a certain amount of respect for it, which is pretty gratifying after all these years! One wonders why DC Comics hasn’t reprinted that book, or in some way, promoted it.

Arlen: At the time, other than a couple of World’s Finest stories, and maybe one or two back-ups, you never really got to draw Superman per se.

Neal: That’s true. That’s interesting, isn’t it?

Arlen: So, what was your emotional connection with this? Were you a fan of Muhammad Ali? I mean, you respected him, but going into this, knowing it was going to be this massive project, what was your feeling about it?

Neal: Well, first of all, I’d established a certain amount of connection with Superman, because of the covers I’d done (and I will admit to anybody there are a lot of covers for Superman that I did that were not really good covers or good layouts, but there were some that I did like). One of the things I felt I did with Superman, over time, was make him younger and more athletic, somebody whom you could admire a little bit more as a trim, attractive human being.

I’d done enough Superman work that I could present a Superman I was happy with, somebody more athletic, younger, more vital. My Superman could be at least comparatively equal to Muhammad Ali, so I had these two guys who physically looked fairly equal. Beyond that, I really liked Ali. I was totally offended by the way the press and a lot of people treated the man. You know, it’s not the brazen side of

Ali that’s important, it’s that—in the middle of his life—he changed.

Not necessarily because of religious conviction, but because he stood for something, and he brought attention to the problem: How many black guys are named after their slave owners, how many times do they take on superficial names? He led the way. More than that, he stood up for himself in a political way, and again, willing to go all the way to stand up for what he believed in. You know, an awful lot of people didn’t. But here was somebody who was worthwhile. How do you turn it into a comic book story? Well, I guess you have to believe it, and that’s what I did: I believed it, and I bought the whole story.

Arlen: Muhammad Ali is a real, true super-hero—that’s a thing that defines him.

Neal: And compared to Superman—well, Superman’s an alien, isn’t

Above: Typical Neal Adams thumbnail showing his sometimes loose, sometimes tight layout approach. This page, drawn at letter-size, depicts the breakdowns of pgs. 12-15 of the final book.

Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2000 Neal Adams. Superman, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: House ad adorning DC letters pages. Courtesy of John Workman. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Above: The Adams forté: Realism.

This Metropolis street scene was originally intended as a single panel atop page 4 (as evidenced by the uninked panel on the page reproduced below), but adapted— and expanded—as a two-page spread. The unused panel was replaced with a shot of Clark, Lois and Jimmy. Above thumbnail courtesy of the artist. Below page courtesy of Todd Klein. Art ©2000 Neal Adams. Characters ©1999 DC Comics, Inc. Right inset: “Bad” little in-joke Neal added to the sidewalk in the “Training” double-page spread. ©2000 DC Comics.

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he? [laughter] So, if you want to be close to one of them, you’ve sort of got to be close to Muhammad Ali! I felt very much that way—not alienated from Superman, he’s an icon—but Superman is, after all, not of this Earth, you know? We love him as a super-hero, but I think that, in some way, their individual statures made them equal, in some weird kind of way.

So, we started off with a bang, and I thought, “Well, you know, I have a story here, how do I begin this story and make people go, ‘Woof!’?” So, I did this first double-page spread, which had to be significant. It had to show some part of America... you know, I think in comic books, if you really have the opportunity to say something, you really ought to say something! This is a neighborhood in the Bronx, or Brooklyn, or....

Arlen: It’s got that Bronx feel: Jerome Avenue. Were you working from photo reference, or did you make this up?

Neal: No, in fact, I’m so familiar with the territory that though I was going to go out and take pictures, I thought, “You know, there’s not an ideal place. But I know!“ As much as I say to people,

“Research, research, research!”; in this case, I thought, “Maybe I could put it together, and if I couldn’t, I’ll go out and walk around and see what I see.” I mean, the black lady in a blonde wig, I know that lady! She lived down the street, and why she wore that blonde wig, I have no idea—but I know her! The guy looking at her suspiciously while she’s rummaging through the food, with the cigar sticking out of his mouth? That’s somebody! There’s little things in there, things that I don’t really talk about, but—you see those initials in the concrete?

Arlen: “JC and VM?” Neal: That’s Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary! [laughter] Nobody knows that, and it’s a joke in bad taste, but bad taste is part of it! It’s like, “What is that?” and some jerk in the neighborhood goes, “Yeah, I wrote that... you know what that is?” It’s one of those... you know those funky little whales that they put in these little bathtubs, these plastic tubs, and they float around and squirt a little water out, and kids go, “Oh, I want that, I’ve got to have that!” and the mother doesn’t pay any attention? The guy’s walking by the girl, and she’s got a little patch on her pocket that says, “Randy,” there’s all these little things... for me, I was saying, “Yes, in the first page, you’re going to see Superman and Muhammad Ali, and you’re going to see this down shot, but we’re going to take you right into a neighborhood, wherever you look in this picture, you’re going to see something, and you’re going to think about it. You look in the upper left-hand corner, you’re going to see pigeons flying out over a building, and somebody’s got an old pigeon coop. You’ll see the kind of buildings that are there, you’ll see the lamps, the kind of fire hydrants, everything you see will be real, in a comic book format, and then we can go on from there.”

Arlen: In many ways, this is the epitome of what you are about, as an artist in the field, this is what you brought to comics.

Neal: Then didn’t it deserve my best—or the best that I could do?

Garbage bags and garbage sitting on the side next to a car, leaning up against the car, the poor son-of-a-gun that’s going to come out and try to drive that car away, and all the garbage falls down....

Arlen: Garbage that looks like garbage, people who look like people, realistic settings that look real. These inks, this is all Giordano with Terry Austin backgrounds? Give us a clue....

Homage to the Greatest!

In late 1999, the art director of ESPN magazine (a periodical well-regarded in the field for its cutting-edge design) contacted Neal Adams and requested his artistry for a planned special edition of the sports magazine, featuring a celebration of the top 100 athletes of the past century. Confessing a life-long affection for Neal’s Superman vs. Muhammad Ali cover, the art director asked for a homage of that breakthrough work. Taking on the assignment, Neal and his staff at Continuity worked under a crushing

deadline, producing a full-color wraparound cover (featuring ESPN’s choices for the two greatest athletes of the last century, Ali and Michael Jordan, and the likenesses of over 100 sports legends in the audience), and a double-page interior spread spotlighting the career of the greatest boxer of all time. Thanks to the help of Neal, Tom Ziuko (official CBA cover colorist), and the staff at Continuity, CBA is proud to feature the line art for that cover [bottom], a repro’ of the finished cover [left], and the interior spread drawn by Neal [above].

But before you go looking for this back issue in your neighborhood library or dentist’s office, be forewarned that this ESPN just might be one of the rarest Adams collectibles around. This “Thrillennium of the Millennium”number was sent only to subscribers for the holidays—hmmm, there’s a marketing idea!—making it a very special edition indeed. Of note to comics aficionados, the magazine also features spreads by Jack “Mad” Davis (featuring Babe Ruth), Kyle “Why I Hate Saturn” Baker (depicting Michael Jordan), and Todd “Spawn” McFarlane (rendering Wayne Gretzky), making the issue a veritable comic book/sports fiesta! [All illustrations ©2000 ESPN magazine, courtesy of Neal Adams.]

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Above: Courtesy of Todd Klein, this page and opposite feature the partial unlettered inked pages seven and nine respectively. ©2000 DC Comics.

Neal: Here was the magic: Not to take anything away from Dick, but when Terry Austin inked his backgrounds, the thought that immediately came to mind is, “I can put anything in these backgrounds, and Terry will ink it.” Terry was around the [Continuity] studio, and he suffered the brunt of my eagle eye, so he was very, very careful, but he was always—always—conscientious, and he was always hard at work. Terry never, never gave anything short shrift. I knew that if I did all this stuff, that Terry would ink it, and Dick would be glad to leave it to Terry to ink, he could focus on the things that he had to focus on. So, I put these things in, confidently, whereas perhaps—in another time—I knew if Dick was inking it, and he had another background artist, I would never get these kinds of 44

backgrounds, so I could take the chance to do these things, and Terry would lay them all in. And he really, really did it—I mean, he just did a fantastic job.

Arlen: Neal, I’ve got to tell you, even these figures... this doesn’t really look like Dick’s inking. This is all his inking? Did you go in and ink some of this?

Neal: I’ll tell you, part of the joke between Dick and myself on this book was, in spite of the fact that I love Dick as an inker, there were times with this book that I felt he was inking it too fast. [laughs] Arlen: Now it can be revealed! Neal, this always bothered me, because I knew this was not Dick’s inking!

Neal: There were certain things that I inked myself because I felt personal about them, there are other things where Dick would come in the morning, and I’d be sitting there, going over his page, and tightening up his pages, and he’d stand there and go, “What are you doing?” and I’d say, “Well, uh... I’m just tightening up this stuff a little bit, Dick!” Dick would then say, “Well, that’s fine,” and he’d walk away. It was this understanding, that if I felt that strongly about it, then he didn’t mind my going ahead and doing it. So, you’ll see an awful lot of Neal Adams in the inks. Up until the end, I said to Dick, “Gee, I’d like to ink the rest of the book,” Dick inked it all the way through. On the other hand, I was the kind of pain in the ass that would go over all the pages and make sure they were tight enough.

Arlen: Your whole alien design is reminiscent of some earlier work. You never finished the “Kree-Skrull War,” [laughter] but this was sort of your intergalactic sequel to that with so many designs that resemble characters from that Avengers run.

Neal: Between you, me, and the fence post, I would love to have finished the “Kree-Skrull War,” because I think that was a project that would’ve been, should’ve been done. You can’t go very far in this comic book and not find Neal having fun—it’s all over the place, all you have to do is turn the page!

Arlen: Were you happy with the reproduction [on Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali]? Was this the best DC could do at the time?

Neal: Sure, this was toilet-paper comic books. I mean, nowadays, we’d look at this with a jaundiced eye, because we get good quality reproduction. We worked within the medium, all comic books looked like this. Within the medium, if you do your job right, even in spite of all that, it’s going to look good.

Arlen: In the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, reproduction in newsprint comics actually seemed better. In the mid-’70s, it went downhill.

Neal: No. Understand the difference between what you’re talking about, and that is that in the ‘70s, when we were still printing with letterpress presses, which means metal plates were pressing the image into the paper. Nowadays, we essentially put the ink on the

plate, and it’s separated by oil and water, and we “lick” the surface of the paper with the ink, so the dot or whatever it is appears only at the size it appears. Here, we’re pressing the ink into the paper, so every time you have an edge on a color, and this is a good example of it, if you have a tone, right at the edge of the tone, the letterpress pushes into the paper. The same thing with lettering. If you remember the time, this qualitywise was well above that quality, because we were using more colors than other people, at least I was. We were using white as a color, which is hardly ever done in the comics.

Want to know what it’s like for Neal to have fun? This page [pg. 15—see fourth thumbnail, CBA Collection pg. 91]! [laughter] You’d think there’s something mundane in a scene with policemen lining up, holding people back—but for me, the challenge is take a mundane situation and make it interesting. That’s what I used to do when I did my Ben Casey comic strips—I learned this process of how you take something that’s not that interesting and make it interesting by the way you do it. So, any time we’ve calmed down and the characters are talking to one another, I would find ways of making that panel interesting... the cops lined up in front of the people, the way it’s colored, the way you can feel the sunshine of day on the situation, you can see the cops become a symbol of what happens when cops hold people back.

Arlen: Gaspar Saladino never lettered a comic of yours, if I remember correctly. There’s something about his lettering throughout the book that—this is just personal—I find a little off-putting.

It’s a little bigger, it’s bolder....

Neal: I don’t have that problem. Whatever it is that Gaspar does, to me, he makes the lettering lyrical, and I have reasons that I like certain letterers. You could say that my favorite letterer is John Costanza, because he was trained by Kubert, and I’ve always really loved that Kubert lettering. As the classic comic book letterer, I consider Costanza to be the best. I had Gaspar letter for me on Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope comic books, and the thing I liked about his lettering was it was very lyrical, and very easy to read, and it didn’t steal weight away from the art. What it does, for me, is it takes lettering outside the story that’s being told, and it allows the story to be told by itself, and it’s not—it doesn’t pretend to be integrated with the art, and I like that. I have such an affinity for Gaspar’s stuff, and like it so much, that I felt here I had a ponderous, long book, I’m going to pick somebody that’s going to keep the lettering light.

Another thing, too: Letterers I like tend to be artists on their own, so they tend to have more respect.

Arlen: Being that this was an oversized comic, do you remember how big the original art was?

Neal: It wasn’t 150% of the page size, I think it was something like 15% larger. It really wasn’t gigantic. Remember this: I always draw quite tightly. You can tell from my layouts that I have no trouble with drawing small. The second was, once again, I had Terry Austin doing backgrounds, and he is very meticulous. I had no

problem with, “Well, the page is big, it’s going to be reproduced big, are the backgrounds going to hold up?” With Terry, they held up. I had no problem with that. I don’t know that I’d do that with another background guy. You look at some of these backgrounds with the Zip-A-Tones, and all the fine linework....

Arlen: Is that all Terry Austin?

Neal: It’s all Terry, absolutely.

Arlen: Because this is your space design, I remember when I was working for you, this is your EC/Wally Wood...?

Neal: I think you’d have to say it’s Wally Wood’s space design. [laughter] Arlen: That’s what I meant. As we proceed....

Neal: Here’s another thing, too.

Arlen: Page 18.

Neal: Yeah, this is a great example of Denny’s writing, where he picks up from Muhammad Ali’s own way of speaking, and created this page of writing, and of course, it’s a simple-enough looking page, but I would be in very difficult shape if I didn’t understand this stuff, so I had to do a fair amount of studying... the idea of stepping backwards and throwing a punch, if you really have to get across that idea, or not. Remember that lots of comic books are done—this is not intended as a criticism because artists have reality to deal with—are done off-handedly. If you’re going to show a guy boxing, well, perhaps it’s not necessary to learn the art of boxing to do it.

That’s not how I work. So, when you look at my drawing, and you’re seeing boxing going on, you’re actually going to see boxing, that’s what’s happening on the page. I don’t feel comfortable having somebody coming up to me later on and say, “That page you did on boxing had nothing to do with boxing.” I don’t like that, I don’t like those conversations, so I’m very conscientious about those things.

©2000 DC Comics.

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Above: Thumbnails to pages 1819. Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2000 Neal Adams. Superman ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: This thumbnail image was not used in the final book.

Courtesy of the artist.

Art ©1999 Neal Adams.

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Arlen: But Neal, it’s the same thing you cited as a concern in Terry’s work!

Neal: Well, yeah.

Arlen: I mean, why should this be any different?

Neal: Again, it’s a source of joy. I’ve got this little kid in me that giggles when I do stuff and it comes out right, and I step back and look at it and say, “Right. I like that.” This little chuckle comes out.

Arlen: Let’s see, we’re up to here, with the thumbnail, it’s a beautiful little....

Neal: Isn’t it interesting how it’s possible—if you really pay attention—to get some very interesting design work into something as simple as having rockets launch? There’s a personal, quiet pride I take in this rocket launch shot.

Arlen: But this is like you had photo reference. Did you?

Neal: Interestingly enough, no.

Arlen: No? [laughter] Neal: It’s one of those times where you go, “Boy, photo reference.

No, if I can knock it out without it...” Okay, if you fail, then you pull

out the reference, but you look at the layout, and you go, “I know exactly what to do with this layout, I got it.” It’s sort of like drawing on clouds. You see an elephant in a cloud, and you can actually sit down and make a sketch of it, and you’ve got an elephant, and maybe you didn’t know how to draw an elephant quite right, but somehow, the cloud helped you. In a way, when you sketch things out, the sketch itself—by its freeness—will give you hints as to what to do.

Arlen: But Neal, what I was going to say, your accumulated years of studying photographs enables you to draw without photographs, and almost subconsciously you’re pulling it up, where it ends up looking like a photograph, from the years of experience of....

Neal: And there’s the quiet secret, isn’t it?

Arlen: Right.

Neal: If you do work from photographs... well, heck, same page, upper left-hand corner, total photograph, tracing from a photograph.

Arlen: “You are what you eat” when it comes to drawing, you surround yourself with photographs and looking at life, you’re going to end up drawing photographically.

Neal: Well, it’s a tool you can learn from. There are a lot of art students—and a lot of artists—who decry the use of photographs. I think they’re very foolish when they do that, because artists aren’t born in a vacuum, they don’t grow up without having input. The question is, how valid is your input? Are you going to make false markers, to say, “I’ll do this, but I won’t do this”? If your goal is to do a good job, then why should the things that are supplied to you be limited by other people’s opinions? So, using photographs becomes almost foolish not to use, when there’s a reason for it. Here, on page 20, we have a photograph... I didn’t even draw it. I just pasted it in. It’s the UN Building. Yes, I took some white paint and I took a side of the UN Building out that I couldn’t see clearly, because I wanted to make it clear it was the UN Building—but did I need more for that panel? It was just fine, it worked great. The robots? I love robots. Remember, this was a time when people weren’t doing very good robots. [laughs] So, I got to play with robots on pages 21 and 22. But what was interesting about the robots was not so much the robots themselves, but the relative size of the robots compared to

the men—they were a really great size to work with. I didn’t get to play with them very long, but this idea of running between the legs and making the robot bend over, and punching the robot in the ass, I thought was pretty cute. Smashing the robots. Once again, I guess Dick got involved in the inking, Dick and Terry together. Not too much Terry here, but I guess Dick felt obligated to do a lot of the inking on these robots. Here’s an example of what has now become standard for the business. Now, you’ll have people who do robots fantastically. In those days—geez, I hate to say things like “those days”—but in those days.... [laughter] Arlen: Are you talking about these chrome-like effects? They’re very well done.

Neal: Nobody did them.

Arlen: But also, drawing—once again—drawing machinery realistically, as opposed to designing, like Kirby’s. This looks like you could see the joints and the way things bend, and fold.

Nowadays, people draw robots like this, like they could be real, but that’s really a thing you innovated.

Neal: Well, here’s another little thing: You see this, on this doublepage spread where Superman smashes these robots? You see the lettering over here? This—for today—would be nothing, the way the shadows of one letter fall on another. To get DC Comics to agree to do drop-outs for these letters was like pulling teeth. [laughter] There was no room in the DC universe for that sort of thing. Times have changed.

Arlen: This is the big 24-25, the Hun’ya establishing shot.

Neal: Yeah, here’s this thing... we don’t have a thumbnail of that one. The thumbnail was done separately on another piece of paper.

This was a problem, because it’s not your typical layout... you’ve got two guys that are normal-sized, then you’ve got a bad guy that’s normal size, and you want to present the bad guy—the big bad guy—and you want to show a relative size that, essentially, the character’s going to end up in the ring with the other guy, so he can’t be so big as to be impossible to conceive, but he has to be sufficiently big enough that a normal human being would look at him and go, “I’ll never be able to fight this guy!” If that’s the case, essentially, you have three normal-sized people, and then one slightly bigger, and then you have a vertical page... how do you handle that, and get across the impact of it? This was my solution. Other people would have other solutions, but I can tell you, it seems like a simple problem—not a simple problem at all, everything being the same size. It’s always nice to have something big and gigantic, and some things that are small to display.

Arlen: Actually, you’d think maybe the cliché way to approach it, if you want to make this character Hun’ya big, is you’d shoot it from a low angle, make him big looking up at him, but in that case, you’d have to shoot him from the back, because you want to get their response.

Neal: Right.

Arlen: But the fact that you made him seem big by looking down on him is what makes it off-beat and memorable.

Neal: But that’s—in a way—all these little problems we’re talking about is artists’ solutions, that you go along saying, “Gee, I’ve got the time to do this, and I’m doing this nice commercial work, now I can turn to this.” Probably the reason that page was not on this page of layouts was that I didn’t have the solution at that point. When I finally did have the solution, I couldn’t find that piece of paper, so I found another piece of paper, and I did the solution on that; but I gave myself that grace. One of the things that I do, often, is if I’m not happy with the solution, I’ll go on—not very far—but two or three pages on, and give myself a chance to percolate the idea and see what’s going to fit this best. For any problem, there’s possibly a thousand solutions, of which maybe 100 are good. Then, to go down and pick the right one that fits into this story correctly, and does all the things that you wanted to do—and sometimes they’re the simplest ones, you know, you’ve got Godzilla above the city, it’s really not hard to figure out what the hell to do—but something like this, it is a problem, and I would guess that’s the reason that thumbnail’s not here.

Arlen: Your spaceship designs—which are unique to yours—what have been your influences? They’re somewhat reminiscent of things, but yet they’re unique, and I’ve always wanted to know, when you

go to do spaceships, what are you drawing from? They don’t really look like the Wally Wood ships, they don’t look like the Kirby ships... I’m just curious.

Neal: Remember: Here we’re talking about a deficiency in Terry Austin, which you’re going to hardly ever find me do: One of the things that Terry does is he kind of makes things look like Tinkertoys, because he outlines everything. So if you look at my sketch of that ship, it has a sleeker look than what Terry ended up inking. Now, what I found as I was doing these things was that Terry was doing this kind of “klunking” these things up, and I had to find a way to overcome that, I had to find a way to sleek things up so that—even though Terry may have inked it the way he inked it—I could sleek it out. Very, very hard.

Arlen: You see, this looks like Austin’s inks, these look like yours.

Neal: They’re not.

Arlen: That is Austin inking?

Neal: That is probably Dick. The logic is Dick did that. But these outlines are all Terry. So, here we have this problem. Now, how often have I had the problem of doing spaceships? Well, remember, I’m a science fan, and so I know what the possibilities are, I know what solar sails are, and I know what all the booster rockets looked like, and how all this stuff works. So, the opportunities that present themselves up in comic books up to this point are not very great, but in this book, I had opportunities to sit and design. I could initially start this concept of making my own designs. I thought, when I started, I stumbled a little bit, but I got an opportunity very soon on to do a lot of different design work, not necessarily using these immediate pages, but to come to it. We can talk about it then. Here’s Hun’ya punching the wall—of course, it’s one of my favorite panels, and a lot of other people’s favorite panel. A lot of people will talk about that... there’s a lot of times that you’ll see—even now—artists will handle a big guy this way, the way this is done. He somehow seems compact, his effect is not so much like a car is exploding, but somehow you really get a sense of power.

That is the origin of that particular thing. Also, the way

Below: Neal’s robots in action.

Thumbnails to pages 22-23.

Courtesy of the artist.

Art ©2000 Neal Adams.

Superman ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: Neal’s version of The Hulk, Hun’ya, throws a tantrum. ©2000 DC Comics

47

Above: Thumbnails to pgs.

30-31. Note the appearance of sportscaster great Howard Cosell in the final panel. Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2000 Neal Adams.

Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane ©2000 DC Comics.

48

Hun’ya is put together, very, very compact and very powerful.

Another photograph of Muhammad Ali....

Arlen: I always thought that you never really got to draw the Hulk, but I always got the feeling that this is your...

Neal: Yes! Arlen: ...kind of Hulk.

Neal: Well, that was obviously of some inspiration. One of the things that I get the biggest kick out of was all these different designs of these spaceships. It wasn’t so much that I was designing spaceships, that the spaceships had to seem as if they came from different cultures. So, as you look at them, certain spaceships look “klunky,” certain spaceships look sleek, certain spaceships have a solar sail feel to them, some of them are flying saucers... So here, even though they’re small, if you start to look at them individually, you start to spot things. There’s one over here that looks like a snail.

Here’s one that looks like it’s from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here’s one that looks like a rocket sled by Gil Kane. A lot of different things, very simple ships, energy in front of them. There were a lot of ideas, and as they get smaller and smaller, you kind of go, “Well, they’re just shapes.” No, each one of them, as you go smaller and smaller, was something—and, because I had Terry Austin inking, he wouldn’t let me down. He nailed them all. This, in the upper right-hand corner, is an extension arm of this spaceship that—if you follow the perspective and see it goes off, in effect—there’s another captain sitting with a crew, there’s a whole crew sitting at that ship, and it’s like an arm of the ship that can detach and fly away. So, this is not just, “Here’s an interior of a spaceship,” here is some kind of structure that you can look at and go, “Gee, what the hell is that guy doing?” You start to examine it. It’s sort of like... I guess maybe a part of me is infected with this Wally Wood thing, Wally Wood used to do things for Mad magazine that, wherever you looked at on the drawing, you’d see something else, and do these little things in the corner, that if you read the thing five times, you’d find something each time.

Arlen: That’s what made Mad. Neal: Right, and in a way, that’s what I do... periodically, I’ll do something where if your eye drifts someplace, you see something else.

Arlen: You put the work in, I mean, the blood and the sweat...

Neal: Oh... not the blood and sweat; never blood and sweat—fun.

It’s always fun. Here, we’ve got two aliens talking to one another, and their brains are floating inside some kind of gelatinous crap in their head. [laughter] Arlen: I think that’s great.

Neal: It’s funny. Ah, the stadium... throwaway panel. People lined up for miles to go up to that stadium, and it’s floating in the air. It’s a throwaway. Alien TV commentators floating around in these pods... this is the kind of stuff that—only now—we’re starting to get to, artists are doing this sort of stuff. I don’t know if we went into this one: You get more aliens viewing what’s going on and Jimmy Olsen is the narrator. On page 31 in the foreground is Howard Cosell, while Jimmy—in the background—is doing an imitation of Howard Cosell. [laughter] Arlen: Yeah, you even wrote down “Howard Cosell” in the thumbnails.

Neal: But the reason it’s there is: If you read the copy, it’s very clear that Jimmy is doing Howard Cosell, and here’s Howard Cosell in the foreground, giving him that kind of eye. In the upper right-hand corner, the panel, another throwaway panel, looking at aliens. Well, it is a throwaway panel. Accept that, accept that. Here is grumpy dad, [laughter] here’s his son, here’s a little kid, here’s mom, and the right-hand side, there’s somebody in the family kind of moving away because dad is farting and making bubbles behind him [laughter] and this character is moving away, because he doesn’t want to smell the farts, while the other teenagers in the background are fighting, and the neighbors are looking at the TV set.

That was the thing about this, too: I met—since we’ve had a studio in Hollywood—people who do special effects, and I was in a couple of guys’ studio, the Chiodo Brothers, very good special effects people. I noticed on the wall, around the bookcase, they had Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. I said, “Gee, that’s real nice, you’ve got Superman vs. Muhammad Ali.” One of the Chiodo brothers, I forget which one, said, “Don’t you know, Neal? That book is in all the special effects guys’ studios!” I said, “Why?” They said, “Well,

any time we need to do aliens, all we do is flip open the book, and you’ve got pages and pages and pages of aliens!”

Arlen: It’s like a sourcebook.

Neal: Pick a panel! I thought that was pretty funny. And sure enough, there are aliens everywhere. What is there to say about this, Angela Dundee and... I tried to stay close to the characters, I forget the name of this... oh, here it is, Angelo Dundee, Herbert Muhammad, Bundini Brown... this is one of the panels where I hit portraits, I used photographs, I drew from the photographs, and Dick didn’t ink it very well. [laughs] So, I was like, “Dick, these are the guys we have to suck up to!” [laughter] “Come on!” But he just knocked them out. [snaps fingers] “Noooo!”

Arlen: I like your little baby thumbnails, things are interesting.

What is this?

Neal: These are just pages of script that I’ve had, with all of these thumbnails, and I tried to just align them with this page. What had happened was, the way this story was going—and this is a conference that Julie and I had—that things were being added, and we didn’t have enough for the back end of the story, and since Denny wasn’t involved at that point, I was having to make decisions as to what to leave out, and what to put in, because we had events we had to put in, and in order to fit those events in, we had to leave some other stuff out. Part of my writing technique is to do little sketches like this, to structure the story. These are not really layouts, they’re quick roughs, to get a story structure to pace the story, to find out where I am in the story, and how many pages I have left, and what to do, and I started to number the story based on that, so basically, what you have here is—in effect—a re-pacing of the story, and decisions on what to leave in and what to take out. My goal was to leave as much of what Denny had done that was specific to the exact story, and to only take those things out that didn’t allow us to get to the end. So it worked out pretty nicely. I kept a lot of really good stuff. Here is another example, on page 34 and 35. This is something that I owe to Bob Kanigher, and I freely say it. Bob did a story about this idea of standing, even when you’re out cold.

Arlen: A Sgt. Rock story?

Neal: Sgt. Rock.

Arlen: Yeah, getting a boxing story.

Neal: A boxing story,

where the idea is that you have what he called a “fighting heart.”

The idea is that if you have a fighting heart, then even if you’re out on your feet, you don’t go down. I thought, “Gee, that’s a great idea.” I know when I read it, when Kanigher did it, I thought, “Of the things I like about Kanigher’s stuff, this idea of a fighting heart... that’s a very... I can understand that, that you go beyond yourself, and then your body takes over, and because you refuse to go down, whatever happens to your body, you just stand there and be punished!” A very good idea.

Arlen: And it fits Superman.

Neal: It’s Superman’s persona. He may not be the greatest athlete on his planet, but he is certainly… part of what makes Superman what he is, is that, in spite of the fact that he’s Superman, his own personality makes it impossible for him to give up. So to have this fighting heart, and to have him get punished like this, I thought was a very good dramatic thing— so I punished him. I had Ali: And there’s some shots in here that I’m very, very happy with—middle of page 35, when Superman lunges forward, and Ali socks him, and his head goes back like that—you just feel the shot. It doesn’t matter what happens to him after that, you know that he’s taking it, and he’s just taking it and taking it.

Arlen: Once again, Neal, it was realistic hitting, unlike comic-book hitting. You were true to boxing, and hitting and impact.

Neal: But overall, the idea that he wouldn’t go down, and that Ali’s choice was to walk away from it, and only after Ali was declared the winner would Superman’s body allow him

Above: Down for the count.

Evocative full-page splash. ©2000 DC Comics.

Left: Neal cites the influence of Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert’s “fighting heart” Sgt. Rock story, “What’s The Color of Your Blood?” from Our Army at War #160, Nov. 1965. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Below: Neal’s thumbnails to pages 44-45. Courtesy of the artist.

Art ©2000 Neal Adams.

50

to fall down, I think just really... it’s one of my favorite story ideas and contributions to the story.

Arlen: Also, looking at the art...

Neal: I say my contribution to the story, but of course, it was Kanigher’s contribution to the story! And Bob, if you’re out there listening to this interview, I want you to know, this is all yours, baby! [laughter] Arlen: But Neal, also, I want to draw attention, artwise, to the cape... your understanding of the way the material folds, and even the impact, some of these images, because of the design—top of page 35—Superman’s cape drapes over the body, the way it folds, it adds to the motion and the impact of what’s going on.

Neal: It’s interesting in the story, a small contribution... I decided that it was a great idea for Superman to fight in his costume, and you could say, “Well, I’d rather see Superman in boxing trunks, fighting,” but there’s time enough for that... we have Ali fighting like a boxer, and I thought, “Well, here’s a good opportunity to make a statement.” So, essentially the statement that was made was made

by Jimmy Olsen, and that was the reason that Superman is fighting in his costume was that, except for only minor changes in skin color, aliens found that humans looked exactly alike, and I thought, “Gee, I like that one.” [laughs] That was good. So, that was my excuse for keeping his costume on, I thought it was a pretty good excuse and a pretty good statement.

Arlen: Then we have the fantastic full-page overhead shot of Superman on the stretcher being taken out. Again, just everything about it... the Zip-A-Tone floor... makes everything jump.

Neal: I’ve got to tell you, that was Terry Austin again. That was not my decision. It was Terry’s decision, a really good decision. I can tell you that people who had been used to Superman for many, many years at DC Comics really, really, loved this page, because they’d never seen Superman just smashed up like that before. We got some really nice drama out of it, the excitement... this is the kind of filmic drama like I’m talking about, where Jimmy’s making his way through the people, and there’s a big meleé, Lois Lane is running, and here’s Hun’ya, watching it happen, and something is clearly

going through his head.

Arlen: A beautiful, silent panel.

Neal: Is it because he’s watching Lois Lane go by? Is he thinking he’s going to kill this guy? What is he thinking in this panel? And it’s not until the end of this story that we discover the kind of things going through his mind.

Arlen: Neal, at what point do you take over the story? Was it a concrete, “He only wrote up to page 37,” or...?

Neal: I think it was a process. Remember, these are things I believe Denny would’ve done had he continued. If you’re writing a story, and you get up to page 40, and you have a given number of pages left, you have to edit yourself, take it back, or the editor does it, and then you start to edit it. That process wasn’t available to Denny, so that was the process that I took over by taking things out and adding other things back in. In a way, it was an amalgam. One thing drifted over into the other, and the story got finished. There are pages in here, for example, that Denny wrote that I kept that are later on in the story, because they’re so powerful, and they fit the story. Other pages I took out because we didn’t need that event. It’s more the event wasn’t needed, and it slowed the pacing of the story down, and we needed to get other events in. Certain things—the big closeups of Muhammad Ali, where Muhammad Ali is yelling—Denny looked that stuff up and wrote that out in sequence, that’s really great. This was a page that I felt I’d made a particular contribution to in a writing sense, this idea of... because I’d done that Kanigher thing, I thought it would be really interesting to have this ship take off and do this little conversation... “Yet these soldiers stand in silence, until the ship disappears from sight, and in their hearts, there is a special place for this alien warrior. And when fighting men sit around and cook fires on distant outposts, they’ll tell about the man who would not fall down.” I liked that piece of writing, it’s very nice, I think.

Arlen: Well, it shows how things become legends. This was a spectacular panel, on page 41... Ali, the roar of the crowd....

Neal: Well, here was a very, very difficult page, if you think about it. We had a number of panels to do, and we had to bring the bad

guy into the fight. Then, on the very same page, we had to bring the good guy into the fight, and we had to give them an equal balance, and we wanted to focus attention on them, yet we had all this other stuff going on; we had the weighing in, the mentor in the ring. One of the things you do as a comic book artist is you make decisions based on what goes on in a page, what you will emphasize. Very often, you’ll get a situation where something is important, and something else is important, and how do you balance those things out?

How do you find the room on the page to do that? Sometimes, it’s very, very hard, and you really have to... in this case, I didn’t feel there was much opportunity to change, to give something short shrift, so I found a way—through composition, through lighting—to really focus on these two events, while not losing anything otherwise. But this book is rife with that, I mean, I’m not saying to people, “Go out and buy this book, that it’s a great comic book.” For me, it’s the best comic book I ever did.

Arlen: Well, Jon Cooke agrees with you, he thinks this is the best thing in the world. Do you feel that, this is your best single...?

Neal: I would have to say that. I’ve been asked lots of times, but I must admit, even I enjoy reading this book over and over again.

Arlen: There’s nothing like it, so it’s unique just on that level.

Neal: It’s also a strange idea. People say, “Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali?!? What the hell is that?!?” But it really works out to be a pretty good story.

Arlen: But in a way, it’s classic, because didn’t every now and then, Superman met a real person, in the ‘60s there was a John F. Kennedy story, in the ‘50s, he met Steve Allen… I mean, Neal, there was a comic book tradition to Superman meeting celebrities.

Neal: If there were more stories like this, I’d be reading Superman more often.

Arlen: Not like this, what I’m saying is, this was a modern... I think that’s also what made it great, is it made perfect sense, “Oh, yeah, Superman and Muhammad Ali, sure.” We’re at the big fullpage of... I forgot the name of this character, she’s an ethereal....

Neal: She’s a symbol, she acts as a symbol.

Arlen: And again, nice Zip-A-Tone.

Neal: This was one of Denny O’Neil’s ideas, even though I shortened up some other stuff, this is a very, very strong idea, and I made sure I kept this very fully. Also, I had fun with the aliens in America. But this seems to come out of nowhere. The story’s gotten very gritty, and in some ways, very plodding and moving along, and suddenly, this thing comes out of nowhere. I think it’s a really interesting story surprise. Very strong element...

Here we have—and this is sort of very critical to the story—we have, now, we think Superman’s gone, or something’s happened to him, and now we have Ali by himself. So, now we have the two characters split up, and now they’re doing their own thing. Of course, the villain shows his evil side, and we get to do this great double-page spread of Ali blowing his mouth off, and it’s one of those things like, “What am I going to do with this?” I came up with a design technique where, basically, I used three photographs in the background in high con—which totally set the production department off the deep end [laughter] at DC Comics... “What are we going to do with this?!?” Because, of course, these photographs appeared in black, so we had black on black, and so they went nuts.

Arlen: But Neal, how different was this from your second “Deadman” cover with the eagle in the background... you know what I mean? I’m just saying, that was just a color hold....

Neal: That’s right, that was a color hold. But that was for a cover. I could work with Jack Adler. This was for the production department—not so good. But by that point, I had gotten sort of special dispensation. [laughter] You know, they knew they were going to expect the unusual, and that I would give it to them, and they were going to have to deal with it, so nobody came walking up to me saying, “This is impossible.” They just looked at it and said, “What are we going to do with this?” I basically told them what to do with it.

What’s interesting about this is, essentially, it almost has nothing to do with the art. The art is there the way it would be in a magazine, as in a magazine illustration, it’s the words that matter, and the words are what it’s all about. They don’t show Ali in the greatest light in the world, because Ali’s use of the language left something to be desired. Yet, for building critical mass, this really was great!

[laughs] I thought, “Well, all I can do is decorate the stuff,” and that’s what I did. I used photographs as much as I could.

Arlen: This is some of the best... [laughter] Neal: I don’t think this one on the right was inked all that well, but I got to tell you, when Ali used to do that thing where he’d screw up his face, and he’d start breathing through his nose and panting, and woofing, and I thought...

Arlen: But you pulled it off!

Neal: I thought I could not do it.

Arlen: I think this adds to it, part of the beauty of the book is that you never knew what was coming next, so all of a sudden, this spread just blew people away when they saw it.

Neal: And then we discover that...

Arlen: There’s thumbnails here... page 48, 49....

Neal: Then we discover that suddenly, Bundini Brown is acting like a hero, we don’t know what the heck is going on, and he’s doing a “James Bond,” and he’s doing it very, very well. We didn’t hold on that very long, we did it, and we’re going, “What the hell is that?”

Storytelling-wise, it was a really nice twist. Later, we’re going to reveal that’s Superman, but for one page, we get all this really nice James Bond-type action, and then you go back to the fight.

Arlen: Which again makes this whole book feel like a movie, I mean, that’s part of the twists, the turns... it wasn’t just a straight, linear narrative. You weaved in and out.

Neal: I would’ve loved to have seen this as a movie. There was a little part of me that was saying, “Boy, you know... Ali’s the right age, you get the right actor, would this make a great film?” We lived in an America at that time where it just wasn’t about to happen.

Arlen: And yet, later that year, after this came out, the first

Above: Thumbnail to pg. 50.

Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2000 Neal Adams. Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane ©2000 DC Comics

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Above: Line art portrait of the one-time World Heavyweight Champion from Neal’s recent ESPN assignment. Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 ESPN magazine.

Below: A kiss for luck. Panel detail. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Superman movie with Christopher Reeve came out.

Neal: Yeah.

Arlen: So it’s not like they weren’t making Superman movies.

Neal: It’s not like this couldn’t have been the second film.

Arlen: Right, right.

Neal: That would’ve been way too much to hope for, but it’s the kind of thing where you go, “I don’t know, I’d have a good time watching that movie.”

Arlen: Part of what’s wrong with Hollywood is they don’t realize they’ve got a movie on paper, in a sense, planned out for them, and all they’ve got to do is film it, so to speak.

Neal: Twenty years later.

Arlen: Anyway, this, the kick—again, this was covered in the Neal Adams Sketch Book... I think stuff that was covered probably will not be in this article—but you know, you went into a nice whole discussion about this drawing.

Neal: From this point of view, once again, this is, in effect—two pages back, we had Bundini Brown—now we’re back to Bundini Brown, and once again, the design work... I was getting off. At this point in the story, we’re on page 51, I may have felt I was practicing, but when I got to page 51, I felt really comfortable with the design work. I was feeling very good—even though I wasn’t necessarily given the opportunity to do design work—I was much more confident the way this escalator works up into the ship, and the energy field, and the ships on the outside, and this interior of this room here... I felt very, very comfortable doing that. I think, in some ways, I cut my teeth on some of the space design stuff in this book, and I felt very comfortable when I got to this point. So, from here on, the spaceships and the other stuff get more confident. Even though it was of a given style—a style I wouldn’t do now—I still was doing it confidently, the strokes were bolder, they were cleaner, the shapes were even kind of bolder... this kind of stuff in here with these... taking a design, and moving the camera around and finding it, like on page 52, panel 3, here was a vast design that we just isolated a given area and took the picture, and you can imagine taking the camera and moving it to the right, and moving it to the left, and seeing all the other design elements of the ship... they’re still there, because in my mind they’re there, and in your imagination, you can see them. I was

much more comfortable, very, very comfortable with this stuff. These spaceships—I had decided what these aliens’ spaceships looked like in general, so I was clean on that.

Arlen: Neal, how influenced were you—because this came out a year after Star Wars—how influenced were you at the time by the impact of that movie coming out?

Neal: I think you’d have to say I was influenced only in that you had this kind of transition between The Day the Earth Stood Still, Wally Wood-type of spaceships that were these pointed bullets that fly off into space....

Arlen: And then you had 2001.

Neal: Well, 2001 was very mechanical in nature. Even though it was interestingly designed, they had a lot of interesting design elements, it was very industrial looking.

Arlen: Lucas brought back the fun with spaceships.

Neal: Yeah, in effect, if you look at the contrast between 2001 and then George Lucas’ stuff—and I have to say that George Lucas’ stuff essentially was very basic, it was all triangles and circles—what it, in effect, said to you was, “There’s a wide, vast difference between what you can set up in space.” Even though you knew from literature and everything else that once you got into space, you’re basically free to design anything you wanted, you didn’t believe it.

You bought the Wally Wood spaceship, that had to look like a bullet or a rocket. Now, we saw other people doing it, and we saw, “Wow, there’s a lot of freedom, you can basically do whatever you want.”

So, their technology is based on solar sails, it’s basically a ship that has various functions, and one way or another, there’s a sail. Maybe different designers designed the ships, they come from different companies or whatever—the lesson, of course, that we learned was, “Hey, there are other ways to do this... yeah, you can shape them like bullets, but they’re not really bullets, they’re designs.” So, if you have a culture that’s into sleekness, you can make them sleek. If you have a culture that’s into klunkiness, you can make them klunky... you can make them balls, you can make them flat walls that fly forward... it didn’t really matter. So, here was, essentially, the call to freedom was out there. Was I the first to do it? No, no—but I certainly had a lot of fun!

Arlen: Page 54, 55?

Neal: Here I’m well into the semi-reality of Superman. Once again, I had only done Superman covers. Now, I’m really beginning to enjoy the Superman character. Once I got through that fight, and I had that cape move, and I did all the stuff that you mentioned with the cape, I’m realizing, “Hey, I can really use that cape. It’s not Batman’s cape, it’s a very different cape, it’s a piece of cloth on this guy’s back that can fit his form, I can really play with that. I like that.” It’s very, very enjoyable. So, now we’re at...

Arlen: I’ve always loved Superman kissing his fist. That’s a great...

Neal: Of course, you don’t have to see the next scene.

Arlen: Yeah. But, Neal, interesting again, like a movie, the cutting: This is how a great director would do it: Kissing his fist, and then you cut to....

Neal: At least a good director.

Arlen: Yeah.

Neal: I got a lot of fun out of this. Now, each time we cut back, in a way, the story is developing each of the characters. We’re seeing Superman develop, he’s doing his job. We’re seeing Ali face the situation, that he’s doing his job.

Arlen: Step up to the plate.

Neal: He’s stepping up to the plate. He’s deciding that this is going to end, that he’s going to win. No matter what the bad guys do, he’s going to win this fight. Even in the first panel, one of the things that I tried to do was to show...

Arlen: We’re on page 56.

Neal: ...at the top of the panel that, here was a small man punching a big man, and the effect of his punches is not to knock the guy away, but he can wear him down, so those two punches, if you look at it, essentially the first punch to the gut really doesn’t make the other guy do anything, but you still feel from that little turn of his foot that he’s felt the impact. In the second drawing, he’s tried to throw a blow, his jaw has been slammed together, he’s felt it in his brain, but there’s not that kind of comic-book action to it yet. You’re starting to get it, the little guy is fighting back, and he’s got a chance,

so now the bad guy is also getting it... just while you’re getting it, the bad guy gets it! That realization comes into his face, and he decides to be a real bastard, and he decides he’s going to attack the Earth—and so, I had this fleet of spaceships going by the red spot on Jupiter...

Arlen: Page 57..

Neal: ...which I got such a bang out of drawing—and look at this U-turn they make! [laughter] This is reminiscent of some experiments that Jack Kirby did with perspective that I really liked, where you’d do angles that seemed so odd, where at the bottom of the page, you’re looking at something front-on, and at the top of the page, you’re looking right under its underbelly.

Arlen: You know, Neal, when I look at this, I also think of the Sentinels going into the sun, full-page. It’s almost like the flip side of that. But again, accurate use of Zip-A-Tone at the right moment for that graphic impact.

Neal: Is Neal having a good time? I was having a good time.

Arlen: Then we have this last scene, in the chin.

Neal: Then we get to...

Arlen: Page 58. Again, Neal, you talk about this in the sketchbook, you know, about how you wanted to re-position Superman.

Neal: In effect, to re-introduce him—and that was the idea of this... here, I had an opportunity, in this nice, big, comic book, to focus on Ali, to really show you Ali, in this fantasy background that made you buy him. Now, here, I had the opportunity to take Superman’s powers away, and then give them back, and to have him glory in the power. So, it wasn’t so much that I just had him fly out of the ship—that was enough fun, if that’s all I got to do, that would’ve been enough—but to then have him take on this gigantic space fleet, and to have some trouble taking it on, and to bounce off a force field, and to realize that here was Superman taking on a battle that maybe he wouldn’t win, but he was going to fight it as Superman.

Then, we come to my favorite spread in the whole book. Oh, man... would anybody not want to be given the opportunity to draw these three panels? I can’t even imagine. Any artist, just to be given the opportunity, it’s just so... I had such a great time, because here was—if you were Superman—oh, man, wouldn’t this be something?

And then you get bashed? Then we get back to the fight... is Superman dead, what’s going on?

Arlen: Neal, at this point, you’re hitting us over the head. It’s like, again, you paced the story where we’re getting these giant full-page spreads, full-page panels. I remember reading this, and again, what could keep coming next?

Neal: And I wasn’t going to let up, either.

Arlen: The classic knock-out, knocking out of the ring. And again, it’s all in the thumbnail.

Neal: Right. The thing about the knock-out was, I thought, “Well, I’ve shown you two panels already where you see him hit the guy... how’s he going to do a knock-out that you’re going to believe?” Because the guy is this mountain! So, what he does is run across the ring, and he uses his fist like David and Goliath, his fist becomes the stone, and he hurls it at this guy with such ferocity—I mean, you see his whole body bends back, this is a sevenfoot long punch, and smashes this giant in the face, strong enough to knock him out of the ring, you believe it! You look at him go back, and you look at him run forward, and you look at that hand

down there, and you know he’s got to pull it from the ground, and he smashes this guy, and— for one of the few times in comic books—you believe that this has happened, it’s like “Yep, he did it... he knocked him out of the ring.”

Arlen: A classical spread.

Neal: The crowd explodes.

Arlen: You know, Neal, maybe another artist would’ve used this format to do a bunch of double-page spreads, you paced your double-page spreads out only for the effect.

Neal: Where it was deserved, I did it. Where we could get the impact. I mean, this panel alone here, in my opinion, was worth a double-page spread.

Arlen: Page 64, top panel.

Neal: I just had so many opportunities. But if you examine that panel, you can have a lot of fun just going from character to character to character, and seeing these guys.

It’s not this panel, but there’s another panel that we passed earlier on with one of the aliens so taken by what’s going on, he grabs another alien and throws him up in the air in joy! [laughter] Arlen: We’ll have to find where that is.

Neal: Anyway, so now we’re back to Superman, he’s doing a great job, beating the aliens, but now he’s got a problem: He says he’s disabled nearly half the fleet, but how can he stop all of them, because he’s done... he’s used it all up. So, he decides he’s going to trick them into thinking they’ve beat him. In their zeal to destroy the nearlyinvulnerable Superman, they—in effect—line up to blow him away, all at once, and he takes the opportunity to just make a living rocket out of his own body, and fly through their ships... oh, was that fun! Man... if I had fun

Above: Step aside, George Lucas!

Neal’s intergalactic traffic: A full page splash from Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali. ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: Neal’s favorite spread in Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Terry Austin vs.

Muhammad Ali The Inker meets The Greatest!

As I remember, it was a sunny afternoon in January 1978 when I punched the down button on the wall of Continuity Associates and waited for the elevator to arrive. Neal Adams, ambling past, spied the copy of Superman vs. Muhammad Ali under my arm and asked, “Where ya goin’?” “I’m going to the big press conference and get Ali to sign my book,” I replied as the elevator door opened. As the doors slid closed between us, Neal said, “Uh huh,” in a tone indicating he figured I had about as good a chance of returning with the autograph of the Man of Steel himself.

I walked a few blocks over to the Warner Communications building and hooked up with my good buddy Al Milgrom, then an editor at DC Comics. I related Neal’s skepticism as we traveled to an unfamiliar part of the building, eventually entering an immense room with a ceiling somewhere in the stratosphere. At one end was a stage with a podium cluttered with microphones from all the New York radio and TV stations. A photo of the champ wearing a Superman cape was affixed to the lectern; hanging behind was a huge blow-up of Neal’s cover of Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. The atmosphere in the room was electrically charged, packed with a great rolling sea of humanity. I could easily identify the reporters, cameramen, Warner executives, and less expensively-dressed DC employees—but who were the hundreds of others jammed into this vast enclosure? Looking around at all the happy, laughing faces, charged with anticipation and excitement, I realized we were all there united in purpose: To bask in the glow of one of the most celebrated and charismatic personalities in the history of our planet. That, and we were all there to see a show.

For those of you readers too young to remember, Ali became a celebrity based not solely on his boxing skills—which were considerable—but by virtue of the force of his personality. Cocky, confident, outspoken, and controversial, Ali was the consummate showman, as much a force of nature outside the ring as within. A hush fell over the crowd as we braced ourselves for the whirlwind about to descend into our midst.

Ali strode to the podium accompanied by cheers and deafening applause. As I remember, the first question was something innocuous like, “Champ, how do you feel?” The assembled multitude collectively breathed inward as if to soak up the essence of the man like a sponge. “Fine,” Ali replied, without any vocal inflection, staring unblinkingly at some distant point over our heads. The crowd tittered nervously. The next question may have been, “Are you ready for your next fight?” to which the champ answered, “Yes.” At this point the energy level in the room plummeted to zero and the faces of the onlookers fell with it. Every question that afternoon was answered with a flat unemotional yes or no by Ali, with none of his characteristic braggadocio. We might as well have been watching a poorly-programmed Ali robot. With an air of infinite sadness descending, the questions soon dwindled to a trickle, and the heavyweight world champion left the stage to a smattering of weak applause. To no one’s surprise, no footage from the press conference would air that night on any of the New York news broadcasts.

Dejectedly, I looked to Milgrom to get us out of there, since I had no earthly idea where I was. Allen led me over to a side corridor and stopped. We talked quietly about the fiasco we had just witnessed and about how not one of the questions had had anything to do with the comic book that was ostensibly being promoted.

Just about then we looked up to see a phalanx of burly guys coming down the corridor toward us and in the center was Ali. To my horror, Allen stepped right into his path and said, “Champ, I’d like you to meet one of the artists who worked on your book!” That’s when everything went into slow motion for me. Muhammad Ali stopped, turned his icy stare straight into my eyes for a moment, nanoseconds that seemed like an eternity; and I saw his hand coming up from his side, moving in my general direction. “I’m dead,” I remember thinking, “Who’s gonna phone my mom and tell her that the champion of the world punched her son so hard that his brain flew out of the top of his skull and is now being searched for above the acoustic ceiling tile in the Warner building?” Unbelievably, that lightening fast hand stooped, extended in a gesture of friendship. As I shook the champ’s hand, for the first time that afternoon, there was a genuine twinkle in his eye as he looked into mine, and he smiled as if to reassure me that the real Ali had been there the whole time, he was only playing possum for the crowd. Then, everything sped back up again as he swept the book from my hand, signed it, and he was down the corridor and gone. I looked over to Allen, seeking confirmation that it actually happened, and there was good ol’ Milgrom grinning like a loon.

“So, did you get Ali’s autograph?” Neal asked when I arrived back at Continuity. “Sure,” I replied jauntingly, tossing the book onto his drawing table. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind signing it too, if it isn’t too much trouble.” Neal may have flown to distant galaxies on an adventure with the champ, but I was privileged to share a moment with Muhammad Ali in the corridor of a glass and steel tower in the heart of Manhattan.

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with that first drawing of Superman, imagine how much fun I had on this one!

Arlen: It’s like, “Can you top this?”

Neal: Oh, really!

Arlen: You kept topping it.

Neal: And had fun all the way, all the way. Here, I’ve got Terry Austin inking spaceships for me, putting in all the crap that I want to have in there, what a great time! Hun’ya, suddenly, that expression that we saw on Hun’ya’s face on page 68, pays off... he turns on the bad guy, smashes him, and the next panel, we see all his minions, all the bad guy’s minions, stand there and they all agree with our chief bad guy, it’s like, “You’ve disgraced us, you son of a bitch.” To me, if I saw that in a movie, I’d buy it... I’d buy it. You can say whatever kind of hokey things you want to say, but this is something that...

Arlen: But you know, the classic element of turning the so-called “bad guy,” bringing him around...

Neal: Well, turning what seems to be the brute into the intelligent, feeling character that he always was, but he’s been used, you have the true story of a warrior. So, here we see Superman floating in space, rescued by what was Hun’ya, obviously wearing royal robes, and is doing fine. And then, the story calms down. I did this intentionally, even though it was hokey. I slowed the story down, and I stopped the story, and I said, “Okay, let’s just wind this story down, baby.” There’s nothing I do about the layouts that I do to excite you, simply just to tell the story between these characters, and move the story to its end. And I really wanted this idea to happen that Ali guesses that Superman is... in a way, I felt—and I think we all felt—that we wanted a true equality between these characters right at the end; and I think that by guessing Superman’s identity, we sort of create that.

Arlen: Brains and brawn, not just brawn.

Neal: Exactly.

Arlen: Because you know, Neal, there’s a running subtext to this whole thing, the white man against the black man.

Neal: And that’s the thing that I felt was the strongest challenge of all, was that, in an honorable situation, you put these characters together, they can fight each other and still be brothers, and that’s the important story to be told. You see it in sports all the time, that’s part of the thing that’s so great about sports, is that the competition is meaningless except as competition—it has nothing to do with fighting, it has nothing to do with prejudice—it has to do with the joy of sports. In effect, that was a really good reason to put them together. Why did I do this story? Why was I so intrigued, and why was I in love with this story, no matter what anybody would say?

I’ve had people criticize this story, saying, “Why did you want to do this Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, it’s sort of ridiculous.” Not for one second is this story ridiculous, it’s a terrific story. It was a pleasure doing it. As far as I’m concerned, Superman and Muhammad Ali are the greatest. Two Jewish boys from Cleveland, Ohio, and the black heavyweight champion of the world, that’s what it’s all about.

Arlen: So Neal, why hasn’t DC treated this well, or reprinted it?

Neal: I’d be curious about the answer to that question myself. I’d be curious, because I think it’s a good job, it deserves to be.

Arlen: First of all, DC owns it... is the original art still around?

Neal: I’m sure they could reprint it, it has nothing to do with the original art. Dick has some of it, I have some of it... that was part of that time, was to get artwork returned, and one of the things that we were very, very strong on was to make official the return of that original art, so everybody was aware of it, so that made a very strong case. I mean, there are certain turning points in the industry that are significant, relative to this book, that underline a lot of what went on. The original art has nothing to do with it. I question whether or not... I’m not so sure that DC Comics didn’t make a sincere effort to get it reprinted, and maybe permission was not achieved.

If somebody in ESPN magazine can remember this book enough to have me do the centennial cover, certainly there are people out there remembering and it means something to them.

Arlen: That’s my point: it’s a shame that it always seems to be people outside of the company that get it, and the people in the company don’t get it, but on the other hand...

Neal: Yeah, but pretty much the success of Green Lantern/Green Arrow, you know, Aquaman, I don’t know what happened to him, he’s got one hand. [laughter] I don’t know how many Flashes there are, it doesn’t seem as though the licensing ability of these characters is being held intact, and the things that we love about them continues on.

Maybe it’s all become mashed potatoes after a while.

Arlen: The success of this tells me that, if your work were treated with the care, and reproduced well, there’s a market for it if this thing was done as a hardcover.

Neal: I don’t think anybody questions whether or not there’s a market for it, I think that sometimes they question whether or not they want to do it, I don’t know. It’s very hard to read other people’s minds, I don’t get it.

Arlen: After this book came out, do you remember what the reaction was? You said you don’t know how it sold.

Neal: I had the impression from DC Comics that the sales were disappointing—but I have to tell you, between you, me and the fence post, if you read the article that just recently appeared about how distribution was done [CBA #6], then...

Arlen: It’s another victim of affidavit return fraud?

Neal: I would say this is another victim of that, I would say that... the way I get my copies is there are certain stores—I did this in California—there was a store in California that puts them out every

once and awhile, and I said, “Look, I’d like to get some of these copies, do you know anybody that has them?” And the guy said, “Well, I happen to have a box in the back of the store, and I usually sell them for a little more than the cover price, but if you want to buy them, you can go ahead and buy them.” So, I bought 20 copies.

Now, how come that guy has 20 copies in the back of his store somewhere, mint condition? And I gave them to friends. All I know is that around the world, it did great... if sales were disappointing in the United States, after all, haven’t they always said that about my books? “Deadman,” Green Lantern/Green Arrow, X-Men, “Sales were not as good as we expected them to be.” I wonder how that’s possible, and I wonder how come I keep going to conventions and signing mint condition copies of these comics?

Somebody has to put that together.

Above: And the readers go wild!

Stunning example of Neal’s tight thumbnail pencils. Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2000 Neal Adams.

Superman, Jimmy Olsen ©2000 DC Comics.

Opposite page inset: Courtesy of Terry Austin, a New York Post news photo (by Arthur Pomerantz) from Jan. 31, 1978 showing a “tired-looking champ,” according to the caption. Superman ©2000 DC Comics. ©2000 New York Post.

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Appreciation

Bernie’s Dark Comedy The First Decade of Friendship by Bruce Jones

Above: Bernie’s self-portrait from a ’70s BayCon program book. ©1999 Bernie Wrightson.

Below: Cover to House of Secrets #139.

Opposite: Anyone know what this was done for? ©1999 Bernie Wrightson.

Courtesy of Mike Thibodeaux (below) and Todd Adams (opposite).

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We entered the Baltimore cemetery together under slate-grey skies pregnant with rain and over an asphalt path that Bernie had himself trod countless times since childhood—and one which had been instrumental in shaping both his life and his art. I would have known this even if his rambling conversation hadn’t disclosed it as we strolled among the graves, for Bernie was at home here, it was obvious.

The gaunt lanes of skeletal trees and towering granite-faced crypts embraced him like old friends—as indeed they were. There had been times in his life—as in mine—when only the silent tombstones and quiet lawns could be trusted with the special problems of a young artist’s life and it was apparent these had listened many times to his, even as they were listening now….

It has been an unusual year.

Bernie would make a major move to a strange town, face critical decisions about his art, fall in love and then break off with a girl from the Midwest,

lose his father to cancer, and move back to New York again, all within a few short months.

“It used to be an open cemetery,” he was saying, squinting up at the grumbling overcast.

“But teenagers started vandalizing the place so they fenced it in.” I glanced across at the chiseled features and saw a thousand grave-choked comic panels reflected in his eyes. “They put guard dogs in here at night to keep the people out.”

“Jesus,” I muttered, remembering the graveyard scene in Val Lewton’s Leopard Man. “That could be a little hairy if you got trapped in here!”

“Oh, I did once!” Bernie replied proudly.

“You’re kidding! What did you do?”

“I climbed a tree.”

I was both chilled and envious. I wished I had met Bernie when we were kids. But that wouldn’t happen until 1968 when I’d walk into Jeff Jones’ New York apartment with my new bride and see a Byronic young man in jeans and sweater slouched on a sofa with a drawing board in his lap. “Bruce, this is Bernie Wrightson. He’s just started working for National….”

One look and I could see why. That portfolio of early drawings beside him—the first Wrightson art I would see—was truly staggering, all the more so for his tender years. I remember taking Jeff aside later and whispering ominously, “How’re we gonna get rid of this guy?”

Bernie affected all our work in some way, whether by actual application or just through the good vibes that flowed from his brush. Probably that was his greatest contribution—just looking at the immense love and care that went into each panel. As Kaluta once said, “When Bernie’s cookin’—whew!”

“Whew!” indeed. Bernie drew like he’d never worked at it at all, like it was the most natural thing in the world to just sit there and watch this gorgeous stuff appear magically on a blank page— while the rest of us sketched and erased and redrew and cursed and sweat blood.

But then, we didn’t have the cemetery.

We stopped on the cemetery path and Bernie reached down and picked up a flat stone. “Looking for snakes.”

He had collected many snakes. At one time or another there was always a rainbow boa or corn snake in an aquarium on top of Bernie’s TV or bookshelf. I even witnessed his strange hunt personally one day when Bernie suggested we look for water snakes in the creek in my backyard. I’d never seen any water snakes there—but then I’d never really looked. I found that there is a real art to that. Bernie pointed out two beautiful specimens from the bridge spanning the creek that for all the world looked to me like dangling reeds. Then, with me guiding from the bridge, he descended to the rushing waters, waded across the tumbled stone and approached one of the serpents. From his angle

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Above: Cover to the rarely-seen DC 100-Page Super Spectacular #4. ©1999 DC Comics.

Below: Fan drawing. ©1999 Bernie Wrightson.

Both courtesy of Mike Thibodeaux.

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the glare masked anything beneath the surface but I could see everything clearly from my vantage point above. “To your right… a little more… there.

That should put you right over him…” Zap! His right hand shot down and to my amazement broke the surface a second later lashed by rust-colored coils. He was a plucky little water snake I remember, trying at least twice to bite Bernie on the hand. We were finally obliged to let him go.

Collecting didn’t stop with reptiles. Dinosaurs were an even more sought-after item—anything from the two-inch plastic and rubber models you can get at the local Woolworth to the enormous lumbering monsters Aurora put out a few years back. Rubber dragons, Egyptian stone replicas and any really neat toy are also included on the list.

As a fellow collector I have often reflected on why we do it. I have a theory. Remember when you were a kid and you saw all that neat stuff in the local toy store window and you couldn’t afford it? Well, now you can afford it! Of course, you still have to think like a kid in some

respects but that’s a small price to pay for owning your own plastic Styracosaurus.

Raindrops pelted down erratically as we neared the exit gate. It was time to leave the cemetery, as it would soon be time to leave Baltimore and thus end one phase of our lives.

Having lived close to Bernie in Kansas City, I had worked with him, and we did rather well. People have told me repeatedly that “Jenifer” is the best story I’ve ever written for the comics. It isn’t true.

I’ve done other tales I consider equally as good if not better. But Bernie’s art lends so much to the feeling of the thing, you can’t get it out of your mind. It’s been said before: A good artist can elevate a mediocre story, just as a bad artist can wreck a great one.

We only worked together once artistically. It was penciling a job for National that was never published called “The Jade Hand.”

Our styles clashed drastically and by today’s standards the work is pretty crude. But I wouldn’t part with the originals for anything.

From the nearly ten years of our friendship, little isolated highlights pop like strobic flashes in my mind—as zany and wild as the Warner Bros. cartoons we revere: Bernie doing his Karloff impression; Bernie running around my backyard like a gibbon; Bernie emerging from the bathroom wearing his Creature from the Black Lagoon mask; Bernie sitting transfixed before the television, absorbed for the 86th time in Bride of Frankenstein; Bernie waxing enthusiastic over the greatest film we ever saw—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre… or telling you how terrific Graham Ingels was… or how we’re going to make this really great movie someday… or just sitting over his cup of coffee discussing who we are, why we’re here, what it all means….

We left the cemetery behind us and headed for Bernie’s mother’s house a few blocks away.

We’d reflected enough. It was time to get on to New York—on to other drawings, other adventures.

There’s a whole new decade of memories to fill up.

I can hardly wait.

Bruce Jones April 3, 1977 Kansas City, Kansas This appreciation originally appeared in the 1977 Comic Art Convention (Phil Seuling Con, to us!) souvenir book and is reprinted courtesy of the author.

Next page: Preliminary pencil sketch for the cover painting of the first House of Mystery paperback.

Courtesy of Todd Adams. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Bernie’s Batman

Images courtesy of Albert Moy (top) and Todd Adams (bottom pair). Art ©1999 Bernie Wrightson. Batman ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Above: Pencils to a page from Bernie’s and Len Wein’s masterpiece, “Night of the Bat,” Swamp Thing #7.

Center: A 1990s Wrightson Batman.

Both images courtesy of Todd Adams.

Art ©1999 Bernie Wrightson.

Batman ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Above: Cover art to House Of Mystery #236. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc. Next page: Unfinished plate to Bernie’s magnum opus, his illustrated Frankenstein. ©1999 Bernie Wrightson. Both images courtesy of Mike Thibodeaux.

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Above: Bernie’s pencils of the unforgettable climax to the award-winning story by Steve Skeates and the artist, “The Gourmet,” which appeared in Plop! #1. Courtesy of Todd Adams. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc. Inset: Steve and Bernie both confessed the inspiration for the tale came from this grotesque cartoon by S. Gross which appeared in National Lampoon. ©1999 Twentieth Century Communications, Inc.

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DC Oddity

Sextet: The Lost Comic A Charlie’s Angels-inspired series that never made it Comic Book Artist thrives on finding unpublished art, unused stories, and other material that just didn’t make it, and sharing this new unearthed stuff with our readers. As editor, I’m always hounding creators and collectors for cool pages, and I was delighted when my British buddy David A. Roach (new CBA columnist) told me during one of our frequent transatlantic phone calls that DC produced two issues of an apparently Charlie’s Angels-inspired comic book featuring the women adventure team, Sextet, that (the production code reveals) was prepared in 1976 as a Joe Kubert-edited series. I tracked down pages from the second issue of this oddity from another frequent CBA contributor, Ed Noonechester, the Filipino art representative, and present some choice images for your inspection.

The origin reference below and nickname of the group, “The Sensational Sextet,” certainly recall the cosmic experience of another group of astronaut heroes, The Fantastic Four.

The art does look like the Nestor Redondo Studio style and the words appear to be Bob Kanigher’s. Was the series scrapped when it was realized DC was about to release a comic book with the word “sex” in the title? CBA promises to hunt down the real story of these violent vixens and give you the lowdown. Naturally, if you have any pages or info on this aborted title—or any other unknown project—be sure to contact CBA and spread the word!

—Jon B. Cooke

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CBA Interview

Timm of the New Gods Chatting with Bruce Timm about Kirby’s Fourth World Below: Self-portrait of the artist, from the 1999 Wondercon souvenir book. ©1999 Bruce Timm.

Below: Betcha didn't know that Bruce started out as an illustrator for pulp and horror small press publishers. This is the cover to Starmont House's Reader's Guide to Clark Ashton Smith.

Courtesy of the artist. ©1999 Bruce Timm.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson I recall the moment I discovered Bruce Timm’s work. I sat in my parked minivan, waiting for my wife to be done with some appointment, and I started to glance through Batman Adventures Annual #2 I had picked up because I was attracted to the Kirby riffs inside. Well, from that moment on, I have been thunderstruck

by Bruce’s astonishing ability as a premier cartoonist. He is mostly known as art director and producer of the lauded Batman animated show, but one look at his graphic novel (scripted by Paul Dini), Mad Love, proves he is a comic book artist to be reckoned with. Seek him out in the (unfortunately) too few places his artwork has appeared and you will assuredly become one of the converted. And though he was knee-high to a grasshopper when the other creators in this Special Edition were producing some mean work, Bruce drew and colored the perfect Big Barda cover for us (thanks, Timm!), and I’ll feature Bruce coz’ he damn well deserves it!

The artist was interviewed via phone on November 5, 1999, and he copyedited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: When did you first discover Jack Kirby’s Fourth World?

Bruce Timm: In 1972 or ’73. I was always interested in comics, but I never really bought a whole bunch of them. I watched super-hero shows on TV, but I’d always spent my allowance on Hot Wheels, things like that, instead of actually buying comics. But in ’73, I really started collecting them seriously. When I was going to junior high school, I had lunch money, which I could spend on comics instead of lunch. [laughter] The only Fourth World title still being published at that time was Mister Miracle, and I got two issues of that, but I didn’t actually discover the rest of the Fourth World until later, when I bought back issues. I was aware of Kirby from the Marvel cartoons, but without actually being able to put his name on the style. So it was right around ’73 or ’74 when I started really getting into

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comics that I started putting it all together, and realized, “Oh, yeah, this is that guy!” It’s funny, because I had a love/hate thing with Kirby for a while there; I wasn’t sure that I really liked this stuff or not. I’d go back and forth, and say, “Well, this is really kind of sloppy, weird and strange-looking.”

But I’d keep going back and looking at them.

CBA: The style was compelling?

Bruce: Yeah, kind of. I was that way with a lot of people when I was first getting into comics. My first heroes were John Buscema and Neal Adams. I was much more into the “slick,” realistic style, and Gene Colan was one of my top favorites. So, a lot of the people I love now, I wasn’t really crazy about back then; I wasn’t crazy about Kirby, I wasn’t really crazy about Alex Toth. I’d look at Toth and think, “My god, this stuff is like kiddie drawings! It’s like coloring book drawings, they’re so simple,” but I’d keep going back, looking at them, saying, “If I don’t like this, why do I keep looking at them?”

CBA: Did you go through a phase of attempting to draw with a slick, realistic style?

Bruce: Oh, absolutely. I still can’t get the John Buscema out of me. [laughter] There’s things about Buscema—I still think he’s just one of the masters of comic book art. I’ve said this before in interviews, and it’s absolutely true: I got hold of Silver Surfer #6, and it totally blew my mind, and I literally traced every drawing over and over again, trying to figure out what he did. John was my number one favorite artist for the longest time. He still is one of them.

CBA: You obviously reached the point of getting into an iconic style. It’s been said ad nauseum that you’re a synthesis of Kirby and Toth, two opposing kind of styles.

Bruce: Well, Toth’s heroes are all from the real, slick, Noel Sickles school, and Kirby’s stuff is so brain-blasting! [laughter] Kirby’s stuff was all over the place, and really exuberant and wild and full of pizzazz.

CBA: You obviously clued into a Kirby/Toth synthesis as a style you were trying to achieve?

Bruce: Well, you know, I don’t even know if it was a conscious effort. My “style,” when people talk about it, they’re actually probably referring to the Batman animated style, for which I’m most known.

CBA: Even going back to your pulp illustration work for Bob Price [small press publisher of Crypt of Cthulhu and pulp homage zines], you had a real dynamic approach which suggested a Kirby influence within the work. I recall very vividly these adorable girls fighting in the mud, that was just great. There was a real energy in that early work that persists.

Bruce: Actually, one of my other major influences is Frank Frazetta. In that particular piece, I was trying to get into that kind of style. People don’t notice the Frazetta in my work because it’s buried very deeply, but, in particular, the way I draw

women, you’ll actually notice a formula based on a really stylized version of Frazetta-type women, with the slanted eyes and the little tiny nose, pointed chin, heart-shaped face—I took all that Frazetta stuff and stylized it into my approach. So, a lot of these influences are probably subliminal; it’s not really a conscious effort thing, “Okay, I want to do a little bit of Kirby here, a little bit of Toth here,” I just absorbed all those things over the years, and they just come out of my hand that way.

CBA: When you first bought the Fourth World material, did Kirby become very important to you? I can’t even think of any other artists who have been able to clue in so successfully to what Kirby was doing. Not only did you overtly use his material in the Superman cartoon show, but it also showed up in your comic book work. I recall picking up a Batman Adventures Annual which featured a dead-on version of The Demon. My eyes popped because you “got it”; you understood Kirby’s approach.

Bruce: Well, we were really consciously at that point trying to do a lot of Kirby stuff in that Annual.

That was overt; we wanted to really put as much Kirby into it as possible without actually doing a swipe. Anytime I do something that I think is specifically a Kirby homage, I try not to do an actual swipe, and I’ll have a lot of his stuff in front of me, but I won’t actually swipe a whole pose or a face or anything. I just have his material there as an osmosis kind of thing—trying to pull up the vibe from it. But yeah, that was one that I and Glen Murakami, who worked on that annual with me, we were really trying to achieve. Well, the thing with The Demon, especially, is that the character had gone through so many permutations in the DC universe since the Kirby days—they’d changed him so much—so I thought, “Well, gosh, he’s hardly even the Kirby Demon any more, so if we’re going to use him in the Annual, we should go back to the source and try to make it as true to Kirby as possible.”

CBA: Yeah, and mixing it up with other iconic figures at the time—Ra’s Al Ghul and Talia.

Bruce: Yeah, it’s something that hadn’t really been done before, and I thought, “Well, it kind of makes sense.”

CBA: Your comic book work is quite sparse. It’s difficult to even find it on a yearly basis nowadays.

Do you plan in the future to be doing… do you have any time?

Bruce: Well you know, that’s the problem: It’s the time it takes to do it. I recently did Avengers #11/2. That was something that I fell into doing for Marvel. Again, it’s a direct Kirby homage, and all the way through I tried to make it look as much like Kirby as possible, more than anything else, and I honestly think I failed. I look at it and I think, “It doesn’t really look like Kirby, and it doesn’t look like me, it’s kind of neither fish nor fowl.” People really seemed to like it, but….

CBA: So you’re not happy with it?

Bruce: Like I said, it’s neither 100% Kirby or 100% me, it’s somewhere in-between, and it’s just… whatever. A lot of people tell me, “It looks just like Kirby,” and I’m just like, “Oh, well, that’s nice.” It frustrates me on that level. Anyhow, getting back to your original question, to actually take the time out to do a 25-page comic, I actually

had to take a week off of work just to pencil the thing, because I have this really demanding day job, and I’ve got a wife and daughter, and when I get home, I want to spend time with them, so finding time to actually do a full comic is pretty back-breaking.

As much as I enjoy doing comics, I wish they paid as well as my animation work. I’d probably do them full-time!

CBA: So your animation work is going full gangbusters right now?

Bruce: Oh yeah, big time. We’re cranking away on Batman Beyond.

CBA: That’s a daily show?

Bruce: No, not yet. Warner Bros. wants to get it to the point where they have enough episodes so they can actually strip it and run it Monday through Friday, but they don’t have enough yet. I think it’s on twice a week—one day during the week, and Saturdays as well. We’re doing 52 episodes total, and we’re still working on them.

CBA: Is anything up with Superman any more?

Bruce: Superman is officially on hold for the time period. I kind of doubt we’re going to go back to doing any more. There doesn’t seem to be much interest from the network or from the lot to do more Superman, but if they ever get the Superman live-action movie up and running, then chances are, that might spark some interest in doing more cartoons.

But for the time being, it’s pretty dead.

CBA: The Superman cartoon show was full of obvious homages to Kirby—there was even a character, Terrible Turpin, who was, for all practical purposes, Jack Kirby as a cartoon character. Do you see the Fourth World creations as a

Above: Timm's take on the mighty Cimmarian from a Robert E. Howard tribute zine called The Barbarian Scroll. Courtesy of the artist. Art ©1999 Bruce Tim. Conan ©1999 Conan Properties, Inc. Below: Cover illustration of an issue of Robert Price's legendary HPLzine, Crypt of Cthulhu.

Bruce tells us L. Sprague DeCamp owns the original! Courtesy of the artist. ©1999 Bruce Timm.

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Spread: Bruce’s concept sketches for this issue’s cover, all courtesy of the artist. Above: Bruce notes, “As you can see, I had a hard time deciding on a concept and/or pose… I hate multicharacter compositions!”

Below right: The artist simply noted: “Oh, Lashina…” Big Barda and the Female Furies ©1999 DC Comics, Inc. Art ©1999 Bruce Timm.

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perfect setting for Superman?

Bruce: The Fourth World certainly blended in very well with the character. Of course, Kirby started that himself, with Jimmy Olsen, and even in recent years, Mike Carlin has re-introduced a lot of the Kirby elements back into the Superman strip.

It was certainly a good blend. I think one of the problems we always have with Superman is that the character’s been around for so long, and he’s kind of such a… I don’t want to say dated, but you know what I mean? There’s nothing terribly modern about Superman; he’s been around for so long. His costume is so primary, and he’s such an icon that it’s hard to find anything fresh and original about him, so bringing the Kirby mythos into the Superman universe seemed to be a way to introduce a new element, to make people interested in the character.

Even though the Fourth World stuff has been

around for a long time, it’s not something that’s been seen on a mass media exposure.

CBA: If you could, do you have more Fourth World stories you’d love to do?

Bruce: You know, it’s so hard to say. On one hand, I go back to them a lot and re-read them (or try to re-read them—they’re kind of all over the place), it’s a hard thing to really get a grasp on. People keep saying, “Why don’t you do a Fourth World series or a movie or something,” and I don’t really know how to do it. In a way, it was nice that we introduced it into Superman because we didn’t have to concentrate solely on the Fourth World, and try to figure out exactly how to make it work. We were able to use elements that worked on a more commercial aspect, reducing Darkseid’s whole central being and mythos into something that’s kind of easily palatable to our key audience.

But the whole thing is such a big mind-expanding concept, it’s so huge! To this day, I think that it kind of got beyond Kirby; I mean, Kirby couldn’t even control it all, coming up with concepts so fast, he’d lose sight of what the story was. If you go back and re-read the entire run of The New Gods, the first three issues are, “Wow, he’s really onto something!” But by the fourth issue, he’s introducing new characters, and something is getting lost in the mix. All of his comics are created that way: The first two or three issues of The Eternals are like, “Wow, he’s really on to something,” and then, “My God, now where are we going?” [laughter] So, a lot of people say, “Well, it’s not fair because Kirby never really got a chance to finish the Fourth World,” and I’m not sure he really had anything in mind as a complete story, even though he said he did.

CBA: Jack was a very spontaneous guy.

Bruce: Seriously, if the books had been successful, and he’d been able to do 30 issues of The New Gods, and 40 issues of Forever People and Mister Miracle, maybe he would’ve been able to tie it all together, but it doesn’t really

hold together as a complete story arc, if you know what I’m talking about.

CBA: Yeah, it could be all over the place.

Bruce: There’s certainly a lot of great ideas and concepts in there, so there’s a lot of stuff to pick and choose from, but in terms of actually doing more of it? Superman is gone— we really don’t have a chance to do anything more with Superman, and I wouldn’t presume to do a New Gods series, because I wouldn’t presume to think what Kirby would’ve had in mind.

Once you actually adapt the original comics, beyond that, I don’t know what he would have done. Again, I wouldn’t presume to finish the saga off. Even Jack’s conclusion to the Fourth World, Hunger Dogs is still kind of out there! [laughter] CBA: Do you feel George Lucas and his Star Wars movies were influenced by Jack’s Fourth World?

Bruce: I don’t see how he couldn’t have been.

It’s entirely possible that he came up with these similar concepts on his own (because we’ve done that as well—we’ll come up with a character for the Batman or Superman show, and suddenly find out, “Oh, my God! There’s another character out there exactly like that, in the exact same type story!”), but the similarities between Darkseid and Orion with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, and the whole bit about the Source and the Force… it’s all so close, you have to think… I don’t know. Lucas hasn’t really touched on that in interviews, and I’m not sure anybody has ever directly confronted him with the similarities.

But I definitely think the New Gods had an impact on Star Wars, or at least was influenced by it. Certainly, Jim Starlin has always said that his whole Captain Marvel and Thanos thing was directly inspired by the Fourth World stuff, and that had an impact on comics in general.

CBA: Has your ambivalent feelings on Avengers #11/2 turned you off on doing Kirbytype projects?

Bruce: To a degree.

I was talking with Erik Larsen about a Kirbythemed project he had

in mind and wanted me to work on with him. This came literally two weeks after that Avengers book came out, so I’m kind of soured on the whole thing.

But at the same time, I love playing in Kirby’s backyard, and I love playing with his toys, so I’ll still probably keep my hand in, occasionally. But I’ll probably never do a full-length project like Avengers #11/2 directly in the “Kirby style” again—I don’t think I can do it. It just didn’t satisfy me. I keep talking with Marvel about doing a Fantastic Four Annual, that would be set back in the Kirby days, so it would have some Kirby-ish elements. I’d try to have a little more of my style with it, rather than trying to make it a direct Kirby homage.

CBA: Something about your art, too, that differs somewhat from Kirby, is your material is really sexy. [laughter] You do more for small-breasted women than any other artist I know! [laughter]

Above left: Bruce commented, “Boring, cropped too tight.”

Above: The artist noted, “Finally! Good pose on Barda… but those soldiers are giving me a hard time.”

Below left: “Getting there,” Bruce wrote, “but still not quite right…” Below: Bruce noted, “A little wider angle and voilá! Close enuff…” Big Barda and the Female Furies ©1999 DC Comics, Inc. Art ©1999 Bruce Timm.

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Above: Page four from Bruce's grimly brilliant “Two of a Kind,” Batman Black and White #1. This rare turn of Bruce as writer/artist was just featured in Les Daniel’s Batman: The Complete History, exquisitely sepiatoned by the artist. ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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Bruce: You noticed that, did you?

CBA: Oh, yeah. [laughter] Gee, where was I going with that? For our cover, you made Big Barda sexy in your own fashion.

Bruce: You know, a lot of people say they don’t like the way Kirby draws women, but I actually really love the way Kirby draws women. They’re not the kind of women I draw, but there’s something about them, a vitality to them. There’s that one issue of Mister Miracle where Barda’s taking a bath, it’s like, “Wow, that’s really kind of sexy!”

CBA: Mark Evanier told me Kirby based Big Barda in part on Lainie Kazan.

Bruce: Oh, sure, sure, I can see it. Definitely. I find Jack’s women very appealing—I mean, Crystal and Sue Storm, and even Hela… there’s something about Hela! [laughter] I don’t know what that says about me, I’m not really into bondage or anything, but oh, boy! That outfit!

CBA: What were you trying to achieve with the cover you did for CBA Special Edition #1?

Bruce: John Morrow basically told me he wanted me to do something Fourth Worldish. I was trying to create an image that was not something that you’ve seen a million times—I didn’t want to just do Orion punching out Kalibak, something with Darkseid, or whatever. And because I do like to draw sexy gals, I thought, “Well, I’ll do something

with Barda,” so it just kind of came from there. I did about 10 or 15 sketches before I finally landed on the one that worked, composition-wise, so… I went with that.

CBA: You prefer to color your own work?

Bruce: Oh, yeah. Sometimes, in the past, when I’ve done covers, or pin-ups for people, and I haven’t actually had time to do the color guide, I usually end up regretting it.

There have been some really good colorists on my work, but for some reason, it never comes out the way I envisioned it, so I try to do the colors whenever I can; I’m a total control freak.

CBA: Is Kirby a part of you?

Bruce: Definitely, absolutely. Though I’m closely associated with Batman, I grew up as a Marvel kid, and Marvel Comics were always my favorite. I wasn’t into DC Comics very much at all (except for Batman), and seeing as how Kirby is really synonymous with the whole Marvel mystique, it’s kind of a very deep part of my being. It’s really odd, I actually live within shouting distance of his burial site, so I pass by it all the time, and I always end up saying, “Hey, Jack!” when I pass by.

CBA: Did you ever meet him?

Bruce: I only met him once or twice at conventions, and I never really had a conversation with him or anything. I just said, “Oh, Jack, I’m a big fan, blah-blahblah.” It’s happened every time I’ve met one of my idols; when I met Frazetta, it was the same thing, and I didn’t really know what to say to him.

CBA: What can you say, really? You’ve obviously been in animation for some time.

Would you, if you could live your dreams, love to get your hands on Marvel characters to do an animated series?

Bruce: [laughs] This is opening up a whole can of worms! With the current management at Marvel Entertainment, I don’t think they would let me do what I want to do with the characters. I don’t know if you’ve actually seen any of their recent cartoons, Spider-Man Unlimited and The Avengers, or whatever, but I think the direction they’re going in with the Marvel characters is the wrong direction. So, if I could, sure; are you kidding? Yeah, at one point, it was probably about five or six years ago, after we finished up the first season of Batman, there was a period right after the Image guys left and Marvel was really financially floundering, and they made some overtures to Warner, to see if we were interested in buying any of their characters, and I just jumped out of my skin! I said, “Oh, my God, yeah!

Give me the Fantastic Four! I’ll do the Fantastic Four!” I guess they actually looked into it, and there seemed some kind of anti-trust thing, so it didn’t go anywhere. Didn’t happen; probably never will.

CBA: Do you think a good live-action movie could be made from Jack Kirby’s concepts?

Bruce: God, yeah, for sure, are you kidding?

Captain America would make a great movie, Fantastic Four would make a great movie. I guess it’s still possible it might happen, but I haven’t heard about anything lately.

This and following page: Selected panels from Bruce’s storyboard for the Fourth World finale episode of the Superman animated show.

Bruce notes, “It’s called ‘Legacy,’ and is set to air in January. It turned out to be the Superman series finale as well. We go out with a bang and a whimper! (Superman’s not exactly triumphant in the end.) There’s some good stuff in the episode, including Supe’s and Lois’ first kiss.”

Courtesy of the artist. ©1999 Warner Bros. and DC Comics, Inc. Superman, Kalibak, and Darkseid ©1999 DC Comics, Inc.

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©1999 Warner Bros. and DC Comics, Inc. Superman, Darkseid ©1999 DC Comics, Inc..

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Fred’s weekly strip appears in every issue of the Comics Buyer’s Guide—read it!

©2013 Fred Hembeck. OMAC ©2013 DC Comics Dr. Faustus ©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST SPECIAL EDITION #1 A JON B. COOKE / TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING PRODUCTION EDITED & DESIGNED BY JON B. COOKE

PUBLISHED BY JOHN & PAMELA MORROW PROOFREADING BY JOHN MORROW MARK EVANIER STEVE SHERMAN THE JACK KIRBY ESTATE RUSS HEATH ALEX TOTH NEAL ADAMS BERNIE WRIGHTSON FRED HEMBECK ARLEN SCHUMER J.D. KING TODD ADAMS MIKE THIBODEAUX ALBERT MOY TOM ZIUKO TODD KLEIN ROY THOMAS STEVE RUDE INA COOKE STEVE MORGER MANUEL AUAD MARK MARDEROSIAN BOB LEROSE GLENN DANZIG BRUCE JONES ED NOONECHESTER DAVID A. ROACH SPECIAL THANKS TO: JOHN & PAM MORROW BETH & THE BOYS NICK MOOK CHRIS KNOWLES ANDREW D. COOKE JIM AMASH JOHN D. COATES NICK CARDY KRIS STONE MARK CHIARELLO BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH DAVID A. ROACH ALL THE CBA SUBSCRIBERS & THE WONDERFUL CONTRIBUTORS TO CBA #1-6 & OF COURSE ME MUM, INA COOKE! ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IIN PRINT FORM IN 1999 • Digital Edition published April 2013 TRANSCRIBER JON B. KNUTSON COVER ART BY BRUCE TIMM CONTRIBUTORS: BRUCE TIMM

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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!

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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 #107

ALTER EGO #108

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

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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!

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(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!

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(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

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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!

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(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

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

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

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(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!

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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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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!

(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) 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

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

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#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!

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#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!

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#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!

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#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!

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

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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!

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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!

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

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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!

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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!

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• Back Issue, Draw, Alter Ego & Comic Book Collector are now all full-color!

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2013 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

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BACK ISSUE! (8 issues)

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DRAW! (4 issues)

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ALTER EGO (8 issues)

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR (4 issues w/Special)

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BRICKJOURNAL (6 issues)

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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!

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