Comic Book Artist (Vol. 2) #5 Preview

Dedicated to reluctant mentor

“For the Celebration of Comics” SERVING READERS SINCE 1998

Jon B. Cooke EDITOR/CREATOR/DESIGNER

Chris Staros & Brett Warnock Top Shelf Productions PUBLISHERS Tim Barnes SPECIAL CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Barbara Lien-Cooper MANAGING EDITOR George Khoury SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR Christopher Irving ASSOCIATE EDITOR/CHIEF CORRESPONDENT Chris Knowles ASSOCIATE EDITOR Steven Tice TRANSCRIBER Greg Preston CBA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER

MASTHEAD AND COVER DESIGN Bissel & Titus www.bisseltitus.com CONTRIBUTING EDITORS David A. Roach Fred Hembeck Michelle Nolan Joe McCabe TITLE ORIGINATOR/CBA CLASSIC LOGO Arlen Schumer CBA MASCOT Woody J.D. King ISSUE THEME SONG “They Can’t Take That Away” Billie Holiday COVER COLORIST Michelle Madsen COVER ARTIST

Howard Chaykin

www.topshelfcomix.com Editor: JonBCooke@aol.com Publisher: staros@bellsouth.net Comic Book Artist ™&© 2004 Jon B. Cooke

Peter Leviten Who taught Ye Ed that life is a veritable treasure-trove of fun, neat things to do!

8

MACH 2 Gettin’ Up to Speed

Wah-wah-wah! Who needs to hear anymore Ye Ed kvetching about being mopey and late and unproductive and just a ol’ lump on a log, all sensitive about the Red states encroaching on the Blue, and moaning about the current state o’ things? Bah! Taking a page from Karl Rove, the Desaad to Dubya’s Darkseid, yours truly has decided it’s time to take care of one’s own and to shore up my strengths. So, on the comics front, look for a revitalized Cooke in 2005, coming out with a whole batch of new books — Swampmen: Muck-Monsters of the Comics, The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Companion, the third CBA Collection, and (hopefully, if the contracts are inked) the Heavy Metal history I’ve been working on with Jean Depelley for the past few years — as well as a jumpstarted CBA. Now, because of previous delays and the need to establish a realistic schedule, this humble mag won’t return until sometime in the spring, but when it does resurface, rest assured it’ll be a more streamlined operation, increasingly focused on retrospective subjects, and hopefully as fun as it oughta be. Please stick with us and keep ye eyes peeled for those aforementioned tomes!

11

KUDOS 20 Winning Blankets

CBA’s big daddy, TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS, tell us that one of our finest cartoonists — maybe the best new talent to come along in the last 10 years or so — CRAIG THOMPSON (of Goodbye, Chunky Rice fame) has achieved something never before done in the history of comics: His glorious graphic novel, Blankets, didn’t just sweep the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Awards on a single category, he did it twice! Craig’s acclaimed book not only snagged the “Best Original Graphic Novel” accolade, but the guy took home all three “Best Cartoonist/ Outstanding Artist” awards, as well. This is a rare feat indeed! If you haven’t read Blankets yet, you’re missing out on a modern masterpiece of sequential storytelling. Craig’s exceptional writing and breathtakingly excellent art help the art form come ever closer to the stature it deserves as bona fide literature. Nice going, Mr. T.!

Barnes Stormin’!

TIM BARNES is special contributing editor this ish, and here’s our shout-out to the Brit for all his great help! Tim tells us he discovered Chaykin around Easter 1974, through Sword of Sorcery #3.

“It was different, and I enjoyed it, so I looked out for the others.

Over the years, HVC’s style has changed and that’s kept me interested. At one point, I figured I had most of his stuff, so I went looking for the rest. It amused me, and I could afford it, and I get a good read (and re-read) out of his work. Thing is, while Howard clearly has his influences, he’s distinctive in comics, and has a classy style.” Anyhow, Tim adds, “It keeps me from mugging grannies!”

14

WANTED Designers Needed

Casa CBA needs graphic designers to help out the mag and those book projects mentioned above. While the pay ain’t spectacular, you may find a good opportunity to give your skills some relatively wide exposure. If you’re interested in finding out more about the available job, work on a Macintosh computer (or on Mac-translatable programs) and are at least somewhat familiar with comics lore, please snail-mail photocopied samples of your work, plus a résumé, in care of Ye Ed at Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston RI 02892-0204.

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DEPARTMENTS Ye Ed’s Rant Movin’ and Chaykin 4

Quagmire Queries Can ya help with Swampmen?

4

5

Knowles Knows Counter-Culture as Comic Books 6

Khoury’s Corner Wild Girl (& Boy): L. Moore & J. Reppion

8

A. DaViD’s Watching Spider-Man: Once Upon A Time DVD 10 Incoming! Love letters (with dissent) about the Filipino ish 19 Comic Book Chit-Chat

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Rex Steele: The animated short, the comic, the Nazi Smasher! 11 Imp of the Diverse: Dan Raeburn and his new book, Chris Ware 14

High 5ive Rating the best album covers by comic books artists 20 CBA Sketchbook The art of Sonny Liew 23 To Be Continued… What’s coming & Joe McCabe bio 112

FEATURES Howard Chaykin An American Artist 33

From the ’70s to today, the sophisticated, urbane comics of HVC

103

Chaykin Portfolio HVC Art Gallery 103 Comic Book Artist Classic 39

Skywald “Horror-Mood” magazine color cover collection 40

Skywald’s Horror-Mood The Archaic Legacy 41 Christos N. Gage on the 1970s black-&-white horror comics line

Archaic Al Forever! Al Hewetson on Skywald 42 The late, great editor-writer on his Horror-Mood days ON OUR COVER: Howard V. Chaykin’s forthcoming project, City of Tomorrow, features Tucker Foyel and his comely assistant, Ash Wednesday, a robot. HVC tells us the plot involves a love affair between the two! Many thanks to HVC for the beautiful job and to Michelle Madsen for that superb coloring! ©2004 Howard V. Chaykin, Inc. COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published as often as possible by Top Shelf Productions, P.O. Box 1282, Marietta, GA 30061-1282 USA. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. Chris Staros & Brett Warnock, Publishers. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, 3706 Kingstown Road, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287. E-mail: JonBCooke@aol.com. Subscriptions are currently unavailable. All characters © their respective copyright holders. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted.

All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2004 Jon B. Cooke. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

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Comic Book Artist’s shameless hype, capsule reviews, news briefs, mini-interviews & other ephemera of note • December 2004

Rex Steele!

The Nazi Smasher kicks fascist fanny in a paperback collection and on DVD

BY JOSEPH MCCABE For all the respect and attention paid to Alan Moore’s comics, too few comics creators seem to follow Moore’s advice regarding the fundamental application of superheroes: “Super-heroes are fine, so long as they know their place.”

These words can be found in Moore’s introduction to volume one of Michael T. Gilbert’s collected Mr. Monster [Marlowe & Company, 1996]. In it, Moore places the good Doctor Strongfort Stearn’s name alongside such champions as Will Eisner’s The Spirit, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby’s Fighting American, C.C. Beck’s Captain Marvel, and, of course, Jack Cole’s Plastic Man — all examples of figures who, Moore claims, were “comic book characters and knew it. They reveled in it.” Heirs to this teeter-totter lineage of playfulness and respect are uncommon at best, particularly as comic books are ever more frequently strip-mined by Hollywood for their adaptability to big-budget spectacle. But, thankfully, a few champions have emerged in recent years to challenge conformity both on and off the printed page, among them Madman, Hellboy, The Goon… and Rex Steele.

“Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher” has, to date, appeared in only three adventures, featured in the first three volumes of anthologies from Monkeysuit Press — Monkeysuit, Bride of Monkeysuit, and Viva la Monkeysuit [1999, 2000, and ’01, respectively] — but these exploits (collected in ’04’s Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher) of an amiably square, two-fisted patriot couple the joie de vivre of the better Quality and Fawcett comics with the verve of Bruce Timm’s design sense.

Fittingly enough, like most strips found in the Monkeysuit anthologies, Rex is the brainchild of two animators, artist Bill Presing and writer Matt Peters.

“Rex first came about while Bill and I were both students at the Joe Kubert School of Graphic Arts in Dover, New Jersey,” says Peters. “We pretty much met our first year. The school itself is a three-year program, and we shared classes for two out of the three years. The first year, we became fast friends, and we both really had similar interests in comic books, and similar styles, too, when it comes to drawing. We also had an interest in movie serials at the time — 1940s movie serials and stuff. We thought about

actually filming one. Bill found an old Super-8 camera and we joked about the fact that it would be a really fun thing to do if the two of us actually got together with some friends and tried filming a movie serial ourselves. We came up with the idea of Rex Steele from that.

“I don’t think we actually had the name for him at that point. We just had the idea of a guy

wearing a leather jacket who would fight Nazis, and he’d be a Nazi smasher, based on [Fawcett comics hero] Spy Smasher. We kind of played it off of that. But obviously we didn’t make a movie, so that kind of faded away. Later, being at Joe Kubert, you’d get assignments for comics stuff, so we had an assignment where we had to do about three pages of a comic, and Bill thought it would be a cool idea to do Rex. That’s when we finally actually named him Rex, and we named all the other characters. That threepage assignment was the first time Rex was made as a comic.”

The influence of movie serials extended beyond the physical design of Rex Steele’s world, Peters explains. “In the original, the idea was that Rex was going to fly to the moon, in the movie serial that we were going to film. And what we wanted to do was capture that kind of 1940s movie serial science-fiction. Like while they’re in a rocket ship in outer space the door would suddenly slam open and clouds and wind would blow by. There’d be no change of pressure, or lack of oxygen. That kind of stuff. It was that kind of pre-teen version of what science-fiction is, that cartoony version of what science really was.”

Presing claims he continued to see Rex Steele’s film potential when he and Peters, after graduating from the Kubert School, began working full-time and were approached by Monkeysuit Press: “We were at Jumbo Pictures at the time.

Matt had been at Jumbo for a couple of years, I think, by the time I started. A bunch of the guys who were working there were putting together the [first] anthology. They had seen my stuff and liked it and asked me to be in it. Previous to that, I was wanting to do Rex as an animated short. I was wanting to do a film, because I was at another company, called Magnet Pictures, before that. I had access to the equipment, and I was like, ‘I should make something, since I’ve got this stuff around.’ And I wanted to do Rex. That assignment that I did back at Kubert — I wanted to expand on it. And then I kind of fleshed out really rough storyboards, and Matt wrote up a script for it. It never got made. But then Pat Giles approached me — he’s one of the Monkeysuit founders — at Jumbo. He’d seen a lot of my development drawings and stuff for Rex Steele.

He really liked it. And a few other guys, like Miguel Martinez. They persuaded me to do it. So I took that script that Matt had written for what

TOP INSET: Rex Steele, Nazi Smasher! Image taken from DVD cover art, courtesy of Alex Woo. INSET ABOVE: Trade paperback collection of the comic book stories.

Courtesy of Bill Presing. All art by Bill Presing. Rex Steele ©2004 Bill Presing & Matt Peters. The film ©2004 WooHoo Pictures.

11 CBA V.2 #5

Comic Book Chit-Chat Imp of the Diverse Daniel K. Raeburn on his new Chris Ware book, The Imp, and the “comixscenti”

14 CBA V.2 #5

Comic Book Artist: Dan, it’s no secret that I’m a great admirer of your efforts and, however effective, CBA has tried to help promote your magazines over the years because, well, you seem to love the weird and wacky shit in comics as much as I. So I’m curious if you had a similar experience during your formative years, being exposed to a lot of strange and eclectic comics material. Can you give us a bit of your background and introduction to comics?

Dan Raeburn: Well, like all kids in the ’70s, I was obsessed with Peanuts. I read and re-read those Fawcett paperbacks until they literally fell apart. So that was my earliest experience with comics, and my best. Still is, probably.

Schulz is the touchstone. After that came Mad magazine, which I loved, mainly because to a square like me it seemed so hip and with-it. Once Mad started including full-color facsimile editions of the earliest Kurtzman Mads, though, I was spoiled for life. “Starchie” in particular really did it for me. Once I read the old ’50s Mad I realized just how lame the magazine had become, and I was never satisfied with it, or any current comic book, ever again. All I wanted was more Kurtzman and Elder. In the meantime I did read a lot of DC comics, especially Batman and “Sgt. Rock,” but in a sort of meat-&-potatoes way, when I couldn’t get the really sweet stuff I craved, namely the EC books, which were almost impossible to get back then.

Then I read Crumb. I was snooping in the University of Iowa bookstore and found a copy of an anthology that had “Whiteman Meets Bigfoot” in it, and I huddled up in the corner guiltily — I was only in fifth or sixth grade — and read the whole thing in utter terror. I was just old enough to get most of the satire in it, but still young enough that the bubbling, belching vagina of the she-Yeti scared the bejeezus out of me. I’m 36 years old now and I still remember vividly that winter day, hunched over that book, terrified that somebody would discover me reading this stuff before I could absorb it all.

I also read Swamp Thing, Plop!, and any horror comic I could find. That was stuff I could actually get, so I made do with it. But what I really wanted were the undergrounds. In the sixth grade my best friend and I made our own undergrounds, called Barf Comix and Scum Comix, which were mostly about hippies, drugs, and cops beating people up.

So, long story short, for a long time I’ve

been drawn to comics that have some sort of element of perversity to them. Not perverse in terms of sex, but perverse in that they have some sort of highly charged, highly personal weirdness to them.

CBA: Where did the idea for your magazine, The Imp come from? What were your original intentions with the ’zine?

Dan: I started the magazine because nobody was writing about the comics I liked, in the way that I liked. I was mostly interested in the Fantagraphics/Drawn & Quarterly-type stuff and the only magazine with writing about those kind of books was The Comics Journal, which has always bored the pants off of me.

Aside from Gary’s interviews, which are always great, and a few little things here and there, it’s just not my cup of tea. What I wanted to read was a magazine about comics that was aimed not at comic book collectors or fanatics but at a regular audience of readers, what we might call the “graphic novel” crowd who read Eightball and Hate! but didn’t necessarily collect Fantastic Four.

Unfortunately, there was no magazine like this, so I decided I would start one myself.

CBA: How long have you been a part of the Chicago comics scene and what’s your insight into this diverse group?

Dan: Well, I don’t know if there’s really a scene to be a part of. The thing about comics is that they’re so labor-intensive, it’s like writing novels.

It takes so much lonely work, day in and day out, that cartoonists don’t get out much at all.

Especially in such a big, spread-out city like Chicago. The cartoonists I know pretty well, namely Ivan Brunetti and Chris Ware, are dedicated to their work. That’s the best thing overall about Chicago, I guess, and the Midwest in general: a stellar work ethic. It’s been inspiring to me. Chicago isn’t a good place to “make connections,” or “get noticed,” or get in with the popular crowd, but if you know who you are and what you want to do, it’s a good place to work hard and try to create something of lasting value.

CBA: Can you talk about your relationships with Chris Ware and Ivan Brunetti?

Dan: Sure. During the course of writing my third Imp, Ivan and I became pretty good friends, mainly by working together on his strip about Chris. After the issue was done I continued to hang out with Ivan a lot, and since he and Chris are practically best friends, I eventually became friends with Chris, as well. And this friendship has survived the new book, much to my relief, and my friendship with Ivan has survived my repeated threats to write a book about him as well.

CBA: Why was the focus of The Imp #1 on Clowes?

Dan: I focused on Eightball because I knew it forwards and backwards, and yet it still baffled me. I mean, throughout the ’90s, I read and re-read those comics so intently, yet it always seemed like there was this secret meaning telegraphing from it, barely beyond my understanding. I loved Hate!, too, but writing about Bagge’s stuff probably would have ruined my own enjoyment of it.

Dan’s stuff was more serious, somehow, in a way I couldn’t pin down. I guess I’m saying that I wrote about it because I had the most questions about it. I hadn’t “figured it out.”

That’s a great secret in writing: always write about what you don’t know. That’s the way to honestly put yourself on the reader’s level and not come off like a blowhard (which is how most of those TCJ writers sound).

CBA: How was the first issue received — i.e., was it successful? Did you perceive Imp as a hobby or perhaps a full-time gig?

Dan: It was always a hobby. I mean, I knew that if Dan Clowes and Chris Ware couldn’t make a living from their comics, there was no way I was gonna make a living writing about their comics.

I sold 1,000 copies of my first issue, which took about a year and a lot of legwork and trips to the post office, and it eventually sold 3,000 copies. So I broke even on it, financially, and got some good mail from people whose opinions I respected. The

ABOVE INSET: Derived from the book jacket of Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, the cover of Dan Raeburn’s Monographics book. Art by and ©2004 Chris Ware.

big disadvantage to self-publishing, as you no doubt know, is that you have to sink your life savings into the damn thing with every new issue, so you never get beyond the beans-&-rice stage of living. This is fine when you’re 25 or 30, but now that I’m married with a kid on the way it’s totally untenable. Which is too bad, because I loved it, it was the best thing I ever did. Do it yourself.

Everybody who wants to be a writer or an artist should just go out there and do it.

CBA: Certainly Clowes is a celebrity of sorts in the indy/alt comics world, as is the subject of your third issue (Ware), but Imp #2 was devoted to the religious comic booklets of Jack T. Chick.

What motivated you to examine this zealot’s work and how do you view the results?

Dan: Because Chick was totally ignored by all of the historians, critics, and fans of comics. Here’s this guy, easily the most widelyread underground cartoonist of all time, almost on a par with Charles Schulz in terms of readers reached worldwide, and there’s nothing out there about him. Zilch. All the official histories of comics, underground comix, The Comics Journal — barely even a footnote. It didn’t seem fair. Also, Clowes told me an anecdote about reading dozens of Chick tracts in a row, and I printed it, so it made for a nice little link between the first two issues. I want people who read my writing to see that these seemingly disparate artists are actually influenced by each other and part of a larger story. I’m happy with the issue, although there are a few factual errors and what-not that would need updating now, in light of the new research that’s been done by others.

CBA: Did Jack ever make any mention of your irreverent study?

And is there any virtue, that you can see (in a contemporary point of view, as well, given the influence of religion on politics today) in JTC’s material?

Dan: No, I never heard from Jack. Even if he did read it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he did, I know him well enough to know that he’d have no comment. He

doesn’t care about small fry like me. He’s got his eye on the big issues like Armageddon and the Tribulation, etc. I don’t really see any virtue in Jack Chick’s take on religion — I think he’s incredibly narrow-minded — but I do admire his dedication and drive. I mean, putting out my little ’zine that sings the gospel of comic books, I couldn’t help but feel some kinship with him. We’re both self-publishers, and he has a lot in common with the other, non-Christian, underground cartoonists. He’s a part of a counter-culture, in a way. It’s complicated, because his brand of hellfire Christianity is also pretty mainstream, as you noted.

CBA: Can you give us some idea of the distribution and content of the JTC tracts?

Dan: The tracts themselves are little 3” x 5” rectangular comic books, each focusing on one sinner who either gets saved in the end or burns in hell. Basically they’re hardcore, fundamentalist propaganda, loaded with conspiracy theories. In a nutshell, Chick thinks the Pope is the AntiChrist who controls everything.

All of Chick’s roads lead to Rome.

He’s distributed over 500,000,000 of these comics — that’s right, over half-a-billion — in over 100 different languages through a volunteer network of rebel Christian distributors. The comics are meant to be left out in public places for lost souls to find and get saved.

CBA: Imp #2 was a clever pastiche, format-wise, a take-off of the actual Chick comics pamphlets. Can you give us your background as a designer? (By the way, what do you exactly do for a day job, anyhow?)

Dan: I do freelance graphic design, print production, and writing gigs when I can get them. I’m totally self-taught as a designer, no school whatsoever. I got an English degree from the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, my hometown. Actually, I think that my English classes have been a big help in my writing about comics, because comics are really about storytelling. Even though they’re a visual art, at least on the surface, they’re really a form of writing, namely

THIS PAGE: Starting from top left, The Imp #2 (1998), with cover art by Dan Clowes; The Imp icon from #4; The Imp #1 (1997), with cover art by Clowes; The Imp #4 (2002), with cover painting by Oscar Bazaldú Nava & José Silva; The Imp #3 (1999), with various art by Chris Ware. All courtesy of Dan Raeburn. All art ©2004 the artists.

15 CBA V.2 #5

High 5ive Covered Bands Music execs — and lifelong comics freaks — Gelb & Surratt rate the jackets

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BY JEFF GELB WITH HUGH SURRATT Jeff Gelb: First of all, there have been hundreds — and we do mean hundreds — of music albums with cover art by comic book artists. And we’re not even counting the dozens of albums over the decades that are comicsrelated, like Jan & Dean Meet Batman, or all the Power Records releases of comic book stories on vinyl, with accompanying comics and cover art. Nor are we talking about comics-influenced songs (though that’d be a great “High 5ive” for a future issue of CBA).

These days, it’s normal — even de riguer — to employ a comic book artist to do some work for a band. Just ask my lifelong buddy Hugh Surratt, a big shot at RCA Records in Metropolis… I mean, New York City, who does it all the time.

Hugh, tell the good folks out there about some of the comics people you’ve put to work on RCA artists’ albums and even videos.

Hugh Surratt: Hi, folks! Whenever the initial planning of an album (CD) cover steers towards using an illustration, many different ideas/artists are discussed. And, more often than not, a comic artist can be in that mix. For instance, I’ve even entertained with the Dave Matthews Band the idea of getting Alex Ross involved in one of their album packages (not that he’d know it because it never went beyond casual conversation). As you can see below, we don’t limit their work to solely graphics, but three “comic guys” who we’ve worked with come to mind, two young artists who ply their trade in mainstream comics, and one who actually contributes to CBA: RANDY GREEN: Eve 6, a platinum-selling rock band, wanted to do a comic-oriented package for their second album, and Randy delivered the cover illustration and interior illos for their hugely successful 2000 release, “Horrorscope.” The girl on the cover is really quite a striking image.

Randy’s comic credits include X-Men, Witchblade, Tomb Raider and Buffy.

ADAM POLLINA: Adam is really

a multi-faceted talent, and we actually worked with him as a video director. Adam directed the video for “One Big Holiday,” from our amazing band, My Morning Jacket. Adam has worked on BPRD (Hellboy), X-Force and DC’s Big Daddy Danger, among others.

PAUL RIVOCHE: For readers of CBA and Draw!, this renaissance man needs no bio (I was actually introduced to him by the esteemed editor of this fine publication). A few months ago, Paul stepped in, under an intense deadline crunch, and created the character design and storyboards for an animated TV spot for our mega-star, Avril Lavigne. This spot proved so popular that it was used throughout the world to promote the release of her latest album (and Avril loved it, too).

Thanks for the intro, Jon! Back to you, Jeff!

Jeff: Meanwhile, at other labels, Todd McFarlane jump-started a very successful second career as a director/animator of rock videos for bands like Korn. Hell, even Alex Ross has done an Anthrax cover (man, was he slumming that day!). Dan Clowes and the Los Bros Hernandez have also done a whole bunch of album covers (well, CD covers, actually).

But for the purposes of this article, we’re going to go back a good ways. After all, between the two of us, Hugh and I cover over 100 years of rock ’n’ roll history — and that’s quite an accomplishment when you remember that rock ‘n’ roll itself has only been around for about 50 years! And remember: We’re not grading music here, just picking favorite covers.

I think the biggest surprise is that, until very recently, there were no Jack Kirby album covers (someone used an image of his on some obscure jazz release a few years back). Given the number of comic projects Jack worked on simultaneously in his heyday, I guess it’s no great surprise that he was perhaps too busy to do any album cover graphics. But “Just Imagine” a Kirby Hendrix cover. Or a Kirby Pink Floyd cover, or — well, just about anything by Kirby on an album cover would have been exciting (PG&E sported an obvious Kirby clone cover on one of their LPs, but it wasn’t by Kirby himself).

But in the late 1960s and ’70s, there were several comic book artists who did get images on album covers. In no particular order, here are our favorite comic cover images on albums:

Molly Hatchet Molly Hatchet (1978, Epic) Flirtin’ With Disaster (1979, Epic) Beatin’ the Odds (Epic, 1980) — all Frank Frazetta

Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell (1977, Epic) — Richard Corben Dead Ringer (1981, Epic) — Bernie Wrightson Somebody at Epic Records in the late ’70s and early ‘80s had to be quite the comics fan, and he had great taste: Frazetta, Wrightson, Corben. The Molly Hatchet covers are “pick-up” jobs from earlier Frazetta paintings, and the Corben cover is certainly a classic. But Wrightson’s image on “Dead Ringers” is just gorgeous, so I’ll pick that one.

Hugh: I could just never really get

THIS SPREAD: A whole bunch of 1960s-80s record album covers drawn by some of comic books’ kewlest talents, including Rich Corben, Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams, and Rick Griffin. Immediately above is R. Crumb’s jacket art for a Janis Joplin record. All images courtesy of Gelb & Surratt. ©2004 the respective copyright holders.

The following interview took place at Mr. Chaykin’s Los Angeles home on Jan. 21, 2004. HVC copy-edited the final transcript.

HVC color section credits

36 CBA V.2 #5

PAGE 33: Vignetted frontispiece from the American Flagg!: Southern Comfort limited edition hardback (Graphitti Designs, 1987). PG. 34: Clockwise from top left: Time2, Power & Glory, Dominic Fortune, Batman, and Blackhawk.

PG. 35: American Flagg! and the Iron Angel (from Mighty Love) flank a debonair Chaykin, whose suave portrait was shamelessly lifted from Infashion magazine (circa 1987).Photo by Daryll Estrine. Courtesy of HVC. Raoul the cat naps down below. All characters ©2004 HVC, Inc., except Dominic Fortune (©’04 Marvel Characters, Inc.), Batman & Blackhawk (©’04 DC Comics). THIS PAGE: Above: Witchblade, Vampirella and unknown, apparently a commission job. Courtesy of HVC. All characters ©’04 their respective copyright holders.

Right: this promotional poster was sold at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1976, a year before the film’s release. (Look for a pic of HVC and Roy Thomas at that show on the Special Features disk in the Star Wars Trilogy DVD Collection!)

Courtesy of George Khoury. ©2004 LucasFilm Ltd. All art by HVC.

Comic Book Artist: How old are you, Howard?

Howard Chaykin: I’m 53 years old, and that means I lie about my age in show business, but not in comic books, because it’s easy to track it down in this field. I can be Googled up the ass.

CBA: “Chaykin,” what does the name mean?

Howard: It means “seagull” in Russian. I found out about six years ago that my name isn’t really Chaykin, because I learned the man I thought was my father was actually my adoptive father. My real father’s name was Norman Drucker, no relation to Mort Drucker. I found this out due to a series of weird events that took place.

I was raised in Brooklyn, and my mother and adoptive father split up when I was a kid, so I hadn’t seen him since I was a little boy. I sought him out, expecting to find his grave. Instead I found this 78-year-old guy, alive and well, living in Phoenix.

My mother never knew I had found my father, and my brothers never knew either. But a couple of months after my mother died, and as I started to make peace with this situation, I get a phone call from a woman, a cousin of mine on my father’s side. When my mother split with my dad, she divorced herself entirely from his side of the family.

This woman, in the course of the conversation, remarks about my adoption, and tells me something she assumed I knew, that this guy wasn’t my father. It turns out I was born out of wedlock and adopted by him when I was two. All the women in my mother’s family knew about this, and all of them had assumed I had known.

I had a lot of resentment about not having been told. Now I only have half of my own health history. My mother died of malignant lymphoma, so there you go. I called my brother — now my half-brother — and his reaction was, “Holy fuck! It’s just like Bonanza!” [laughter] See, ask a simple question… but I’ll be Chaykin for the rest of my life.

CBA: What’s your mother’s maiden name?

Howard: My mother’s name is Russian, Pavonovich or something. The name came through Ellis Island as Pave. Her mother was Austrian and her father Polish. So I’m a classic Eastern European Jew. I have direct antecedents with all the great men of the comic book business, guys like Jack Kirby and Gil Kane. Comics, in those days, were the domain of the Jews and Italians, because they were the only kids who would work for the kind of money they were being paid.

CBA: Have you examined your Drucker lineage?

Howard: No. Chaykin is an unusual enough name that you can actually find the few people who have it, whereas there are a lot of Druckers. I ultimately had to accept the fact that my father’s identity was my mother’s trump card from beyond the grave. On the other hand, it inspired me to find my own daughter, in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve not met her, but we’ve talked on the phone and corresponded through e-mail.

CBA: Did she express any resentment about being put up for adoption?

Howard: No. She’s perfectly happy being the child of her adoptive parents.

CBA: Had she known she was adopted?

Howard: Yes. I don’t necessarily want an on-going relationship with her, but found her just to be sure that she’s alive and to let her know if she needs to call me she can.

I gave her all the information about me that I can’t get from my real father.

CBA: So this Drucker was a Jew? Howard: Oh yes — I’m a Jew-boy from way back. There’s no escaping that reality. [laughter]

Archaic Al Forever!

THE BLOOD-CURDLING TRUE STORY BEHIND SKYWALD’S HORROR-MOOD Although I, Ye Ed, had been searching for the legendary editor/writer for five years or so prior, I finally tracked down the elusive “Archaic” Al Hewetson in December of 2003 through the Internet. Lo’ and behold, Al was living in Ontario, Canada, and was editing a weekly newspaper in the town of East Windsor. Plus, a history of his Skywald efforts was being prepared at Britain’s irreverent book publisher, Headpress (a publisher of delightfully strange tomes about various weird aspects of pop culture, as well as one CBA is friendly with), and the time was perfect for Al to return to the world of comics. We immediately made a strong connection (albeit via e-mail) and, very soon after I made a request to interview him for a Skywald “Horror-Mood” section in Comic Book Artist Classic (and for Swampmen, our still-forthcoming book devoted to “Muck-Monsters of the Comics,” about his work on Skywald’s revival of The Heap), the affable scribe seized the initiative and quickly e-mailed the this full-blown article/interview/excerpt.

I was delighted with Al’s obvious enthusiasm and startled, to say the least, by his fervid dedication.

It was a profound shock to learn of Alan’s untimely death in early January, a mere three weeks after sending this piece. In honor and respect for the Archaic One’s achievements, I’ve decided to run much of the piece as Al wrote it, a decision that might make us now wince at some of his playfully morbid black humor but, well, the guy was entertaining to the end, and please note CBA means no disrespect. For as short a time as I knew him, somehow I am convinced Mr. Hewetson would’ve wanted it this way. (Because the holidays interrupted our correspondence, I never had the chance to ask Al just what specifically was excerpted from the Headpress book as compared to what was composed exclusively for our CBA “interview,” but I suspect it may all be selected from the book (of which you will find ordering info elsewhere in this section). Al had agreed to allow us to run an excerpt, so we’re just running this pretty much“as is,” with an appreciative and respectful nod to our Brit compatriots, and implore readers to pick up the new Headpress book). — Ye Editor.

has turned all-white, though it’s still a'plenty; he’s much heavier than the string-bean, gaunt-bodied image his artists used to caricature in many of his stories; he heartily survived a coronary and stroke a couple of years back and thinks of his life and career as reborn, mainly due to his timely unearthing by British panelologists David Kerekes and Stephen Sennitt. Archaic Al Hewetson lives!

Editing and publishing his own community newspaper, Greater Windsor, in a small Southern Ontario city, he labored in relative obscurity until the publication of Ghastly Terrors in 2001, a tome devoted to exploring the timeline of comic horror.

Previously reviewed in Comic Book Artist, the book lavishes critical praise upon Hewetson for his Skywald years, unabashedly gushing one compliment after another upon the writer-editor whom they thought long-dead — after all, Skywald was on the newsstands as long ago as 30 years, and for three decades nobody has known of his whereabouts, or even if the Archaic One was still with us. Turns out: “I was dead, just not yet buried,” Hewetson chuckles, recalling the title of one of his satirically-morbid tales.

Founded in 1970 by the late Sol Brodsky and Israel Waldman as an obvious competitor to Warren’s Creepy and Eerie, with their black-&-white, magazinesize titles Psycho and Nightmare, along with such other b-&-w titles and full-color comics as Hell Rider, The Heap, Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid, Desperados, and Crime Machine, Skywald Publishing made a presentable start then fell flat on its face almost immediately!

Brodsky called in Hewetson, with whom he had worked at Marvel in 1969 when Al was Stan Lee’s assistant, and within months cancelled all the color

by Alan Hewetson

“I, Slime” panel ©2004 the respective copyright holder.

He’s older now, of course.

The jet black hair which grew in abundance around his head and face

Portrait by Pablo Marcos

Excerpted from the currently-available Headpress book

The Complete Illustrated History of the Skywald Horror-Mood OPPOSITE PAGE: Just for this special tribute issue of CBA, longtime Hewetson friend (and artist supreme) Pablo Marcos rendered this lovely portrait of “Archaic Al” joined by many of his Skywald “Horror-Mood” creations. Thank you, P.M. ©2004 Pablo Marcos. ABOVE: Al as depicted by José Gual in Scream #1 (Aug. ’73).

43

comics, the ready-for-press Science Fiction Odyssey, and passed on the editorial mantle to Hewetson so that he could return to the better-financed Marvel and safer ground to develop the mega-giant’s burgeoning overseas syndication.

It’s the years under Hewetson’s editorship which makes this small independent comic book company memorable. Along with introducing a third horror title, Scream, Hewetson developed a writer-artist core bullpen and coined the phrase “the Horror-Mood,” presenting in the pages of Skywald’s three horror titles an astonishing mix of bizarre, often lurid images, and stories unlike anything that had been published since the Al Feldstein days of EC Comics, or before or since, to be accurate. In 1974, writing about the horror market in Writer’s Digest, a young and impressionable Stephen King noted that Psycho, Nightmare and Scream were “the most vital in the field — constantly moving ahead, breaking new ground, using consistently innovative stories — a strong bullpen staff.” Certainly, despite their outward appearance, they were utterly unlike the Warren titles, and comparisons

between the two publishing companies should have ended the day Hewetson took over. The fan critics did not make that distinction and were mostly unkind. Unlike Warren, Hewetson made no attempt to cater to the comic book market, claiming to have developed his own “horror readership” which hungrily ate up the up-to 150,000 print run of his titles for several years through 1975 (plus the international editions which were translated into several languages and distributed in the millions in Europe and South America), when the company closed its doors due to the declining quality of its distribution and the fact there were no fewer than 27 other competing titles on the newsstand. In fact, the entire horror market seemed to collapse along with them.

All this is detailed in a handsome new book from Headpress Publishing.

Titled The Complete Illustrated History of the Skywald Horror-Mood, it is indeed a lavish and handsome 225-page book complete with 21 of the original Skywald stories; plus a detailed insider’s account of life at the company, spanning eight chapters by Alan Hewetson; fresh interviews with and new features by such stalwart Skywald bullpenners as Ed Fedory, Gus

A Message from Alan Hewetson’s Wife I would like everyone to know what great joy it was for my late husband, Alan Hewetson, to work on the Skywald book and to participate in this “Horror-Mood” retrospective in Comic Book Artist. He had great memories of his days as editor and writer for that beloved black-&-white horror comics magazine line, and Alan was also especially thrilled to be in touch with so many of his old fans again, many of whom quickly became new friends.

I don’t believe that too many know this but, on the day Alan passed away early last January, he had just finished the Skywald book, a project he relished being involved in and one that was a celebration, really, of his

wonderful experience collaborating with so many talented artists and fellow writers. I know that he was grateful to be able to re-live those fruitful days.

After Alan’s untimely passing, I was going through his computer disks and came across one labeled “Skywald Book: Final.” The fateful date listed was January 6, 2004, his last day in this world.

Just a little ironic… and somehow fitting, after having completed Alan’s greatest story, the epic about his own life.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their kindness.

Your gratitude is very much appreciated and it is a great comfort to recognize just how widely respected and loved Alan was by friends and fans. — M.L.

by Michelle Lemieux

44 CBA V.2 #5

TOP: Pablo Marcos painted this superb horror scene as a wraparound cover for the just-released Headpress book, The Complete Illustrated History of the Skywald Horror-Mood (see page one of this issue for an advertisement), which the author, Alan Hewetson, shared with us before he passed away. Art ©2004 Pablo Marcos.

“Archaic” Al Hewetson: A Remembrance Well, first, I never actually met Al Hewetson in person, but in 2003, I posted a Skywald checklist on the Internet (at <www.enjolrasworld.com>), and Al contacted me to see if I knew how to get in touch with Skywald artist Maelo Cintron. I didn’t, but posted his interest on the Web site, and a couple of weeks later, Maelo e-mailed me his address, and I passed those along to Al. In November 2003, I asked to interview the Archaic One for an issue of the Warren fanzine, Spooky, and he graciously agreed. From that point, right up to the day he passed away, we were pretty much in daily contact, discussing the interview, working on the definitive Skywald checklist for his book, The Complete Illustrated History of the Skywald Horror-Mood, and just swapping stories.

One of the last tales he told me was of artist Syd Shores.

Comics legend Wallace Wood had told Al on many occasions that Wood considered Shores the best penciler he ever knew. Although Syd and Al had been friends for some years, Syd was angered by what he regarded as a vindictive ink job on one of his stories for Skywald and swore he’d never work for Al again. Al told me he spent two years rebuilding bridges with Syd

(whom he greatly admired) and finally got him to agree to work for him again, only to have Syd drop dead of a massive heart attack at the age of 58.

Less than a week after telling me the story, Al himself was gone.

Al was in the process of re-entering the comic field after 25 years, writing two comics — Labyrinth Street, an anthology series, with art by frequent Hewetson collaborator Pablo Marcos; and Gargoyle Justice, an updating of his Skywald Human Gargoyle series, with original artist Maelo Cintron, as well as writing the history of his Skywald days. I don’t know the fate of these comics but I hope they come out. It’d be great to see how his work had matured.

Al’s horror stories were unlike anybody else’s in the field: feverish, garish, and at times, bordering on looney. His tales were sometimes hampered by slapdash artwork, but his writing was always done with a regard and respect for the reader that, sadly, seems rare in modern comics.

Archie Goodwin did that sort of thing, too. I miss them both.

Take care, Al. — R.J.A.

Funnell, Pablo Marcos and Maelo Cintron (with whom Hewetson created the memorable Human Gargoyles series, a Kafkaesque parody of religion, horror, society, family life and pop culture); artist/writer biographies and photographs; a genuinely fascinating account of the young editor’s meeting and correspondence with an elderly Fredric Wertham; features and critical reviews about Skywald series and characters by David Kerekes, Stephen Sennitt and Peter Normanton; a complete Skywald checklist along with all the covers; and a slew of original and unpublished artwork from the Archaic One’s private vault. The book is admittedly a fond remembrance, but also critically examines the genre of the day and contains insider clues to how manipulative the larger companies operated in the ’70s, controlling the distributors to exclude small independents from playing in the big boys’ ball park. It’s an honest and revealing history of a short-lived little publishing company still remembered long after its unceremonial demise, and gives rise to the suggestion that it might now be time for a credible re-examination of Skywald’s “Horror-Mood.”

Alan Hewetson’s own writing style is stylized and sort of a cross between Kafka, Andrew Sartyros, the Lovecraft, Orwell, and Kurtzman; dark and off-spring of the Human humorous, obtuse and in-your face at the Gargoyles, Edward and same time, and intelligent and nihilistically Mina Sartyros, is now all grown-up and a U.S. silly. He’s re-teamed with cohorts Pablo Marshal in Colorado (!).

Marcos and Maelo Cintron, respectively, This cover painting by with two new comics: Labyrinth Street, Maelo appears courtesy of with Marcos (an anthology series set in its Archaic Al. ©2004 M. own odd little universe of macabre recurring characters, on a street in New Orleans described as “a corridor between heaven and hell….”), and Gargoyle Justice, with Cintron (the adult adventures of young Andrew Sartyros, the gargoyle-baby from the Human Gargoyles series of 30 years ago, now a U.S. Marshal in Colorado “satirical anxiety in a metaphysical world…”).

What follows is edited and excerpted from The Complete Illustrated History of the Skywald Horror-Mood, (contact info: <www.headpress.com>), trade distribution in U.S.: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, call toll-free 1-800-283-3572; e-mail: <rberger@cbsd.com> with questions by Stephen Sennitt and David Kerekes, followed by our own CBA interview with Archaic Alan Hewetson….

The Stories

by Richard J. Arndt

Question: “Paranoiac” Pablo Marcos, “Emotionally-Disturbed” Ed Fedory, “Awkward” Augustine Funnell, and, of course,“Archaic” Al, were some of dozens of the affectionate nicknames you prescribed to the bullpen in the tradition of EC and Marvel. Did anyone object to their names and description?

Alan Hewetson: Oh no, at least not to my face. Even Herschel Waldman, whom you would think would not like being called Homicidal, would sign his notes and letters to me as “Homicidal.”

The only people associated with the Skywald Horror-Mood who did not get a horror nickname was Israel Waldman, the publisher, which I didn’t think would be appropriate, and my pen names. Calling myself “Archaic” was a only a joke based on the fact I was so young, in my mid-20s.

The names were intended to serve a multi-fold purpose, to involve the reader with the bullpen, and for the bullpen to feel that they were part of something joyful and playful and unique.

Q: How many pen names did you use and why did you come up with them in the first place?

Al: I was just trying to be modest, because for a length of time I was writing a story every day! First, there was Howie Anderson, then Joe Dentyn, Stuart Williams, Henry Bergman, Peter Cappiello, Edward Farthing, Hugh Laskey, Harvey Lazarus, Victor Buckley, and sometimes I gave the artist a credit line for the story I’d scripted. If memory serves correctly, I never mentioned the imaginary writers in the letters pages. And don’t ask me how I came up with the pseudonyms, because they came out of thin air at the spur of the moment.

I had an entire imaginary persona made up in my mind for Howie Anderson, who wrote a lot… he was this terribly old guy who’d been a lighthouse keeper since graduating from Lighthouse Keeper School in his early 20s; made redundant in his 70s by technology and was now writing horror stories for Skywald to get revenge on a society who had spurned him. Old Howie was very popular — he used to get his own fan mail!

INSET ABOVE: Alan Hewetson re-teamed with original Human Gargoyles artist, Maelo Cintron, to bring the old Skywald horror serial full-circle, collaborating on Gargoyle Justice in 2003. The fate of that project is unknown to Ye Ed and we’ll try to update readers next time.

45 CBA V.2 #5

BELOW: In their infancy, Skywald initiated a line of color comics, including The Heap #1 (Sept. ’71). It didn’t last very long. ©2004 the respective copyright holder.

46 CBA V.2 #5

Q: As Skywald came to the end of its run, there were still a lot of fresh ideas being poured into the magazines.

Nightmare #22 is the Tomb of Horror special edition, intended as the debut number for a new horror title. It also features several new characters and has the artists and writers introducing the strips themselves.

Al: Yes, that was the premise for the intended Tomb of Horror magazine: to personalize all the stories with all of our writers and artists telling the stories. Tomb of Horror was the only genuinely all-new title we’d planned. What I was going to do was consistently present old-style vampire and werewolf and monster type stories, traditional tales, in Psycho.

I was going to consistently present the Human Gargoyles and other character stories in Nightmare.

The entire magazine would be character driven. One issue would be given over to The Complete Human Gargoyles stories. Another issue would be given over to reprinting The Complete Saga of the Victims. Successive issues would be given over to “Monster Monster” and “Tales of Nosferatu,” and whenever a character series became complete and the right length to fill one complete magazine. Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe was promoted as a independent title but in actuality was intended to be a “special” series of Nightmare issues given exclusively to our many adaptations of Poe stories, and would have been followed by our Lovecraftbased Shoggoth series, and probably our adaptations of Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Leroux’ The Phantom of the Opera; James’ The Turn of the Screw, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray; and other classic horror stories.

We had no plans to change our various Annuals — they were all going to contain new stories, however — and the only other title we contemplated was to add an annual issue to each of our titles which would be headlined The Best of Nightmare, The Best of Scream and The Best of Psycho… which would be reprints of our best stories throughout the year. Our European syndicators only ran 100% original issues, so to do reprint issues would have been financially counter-productive. Still, we knew Best of… issues were popular in North America, so we were planning these annuals for the U.S./Canada market only. And Scream — full-blown, all-out Archaic Horror-Mood Tales, only.

Our most mature stories, only.

The first issue of Scream is a spectacularly strong, dark, unsettling one, from its disturbing skeleton on the cover right through stories like “I, Slime,” “Hickory Dickory Dock,” the Nosferatu series debut, and “The Tale of the Perfect Crime.” Many people

have suggested this is the best single horror comic ever published.

I’m extremely proud of Scream #1 for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I wrote the entire magazine. It was Skywald’s blossoming showcase for the “Horror-Mood” and was intended to set the record straight about Skywald’s future direction: that we were hell-bent on providing the reader with the most creative, unique and polished horror magazine imaginable.

The same month we launched Scream there were 15 direct competitors on the newsstands. Scream #1 sold out.

Q: What was the decision making process when it came to allocating which artist would work on a particular script? And did this process differ when it came to artists working for Selecciones Illustradas in Spain?

Al: I wanted character series to belong to the writer and artist who’d started them, unless there was some logical reason to change things, such as somebody quitting. Certain artists did make their bones with Skywald and then moved over to Warren, who paid a little more, and Marvel when they got into syndication, who paid a lot more.

Sometimes writers would request certain artists for certain stories.

Many stories were written with a certain artist in mind, too. For the most part, I’d simply try to line up the right artist for the right story.

Occasionally, S.I. had their own reasons for assigning another artist than was selected — usually because they were trying out a new artist. And, by the way, there were several “new” artists who we rejected for future stories, while publishing their single ‘sample’ story.

Q: What was the reasons certain artists in early issues of Skywald used pseudonyms? Some of them were pretty well-known artists….

Al: Warren Publications advised all their writers and artists of their option that they had a choice of working for Warren, or anybody else, meaning Skywald mainly, demanding loyalty. Some artists decided to work for Skywald anyway, and used pseudonyms to get around Warren’s demand for loyalty.

Q: How did covers influence sales?

Al: It’s too difficult to relate the sales success or failure of certain issues solely to the cover because there were far too many factors, including what else was in the given issue, our competition on the same newsstand, the quality of the distribution of the given issue. For the most part we developed a pretty steady readership and they bought all our issues. What moved our sales up and down had much more to do with the quality of distribution.

A traditional monster in a less than traditional environment is “The Suicide Werewolf” (in Psycho #10 — The “Almighty Evil Issue”) which has obvious Kafka overtones: it opens with “Corrupt F,” a bedraggled man in some underground lair who refuses to “confess,” to what, we don’t know.

He is tormented and eventually escapes his captors, demanding some kind of revenge. He runs through New York City and throws himself under a train in a moment of self-realization. Nothing is resolved except that Corrupt F may have thought himself a werewolf.

I’ve been fascinated by Kafka since adolescence and his work has influenced more than one of my stories. This particular story was also influenced by O’Brien’s Room 101 in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: “…and why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?”

TOP : Sol Brodsky, longtime Marvel production manager, left the company in 1970, to form Skywald Publications with Israel Waldman. This portrait was drawn by John Romita, Sr., for a memorial in Marvel Age #22 (Jan. ’85). Sol designed the Fantastic Four logo, among others. ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

working for [editor] Dorothy Woolfolk on the romance stuff, I did a couple of romance stories for her. Then I did some stuff with [editor] Murray Boltinoff.

You just get work, and you get the necessary experience to a great extent.

Joe Orlando was my main editor, and he was just a wonderful guy. Joe was just a hero, a great guy.

One of my fondest memories is playing translator between Joe and Fernando Fernandez, a Spanish artist. Joe spoke no Spanish, Fernando had no English or Italian, and I can bullshit my way through both.

CBA: You worked with Gil first? How did that happen?

Howard: I was housesitting for this hat designer.

Nobody wears hats anymore, and even at that point, hats were already passé. This was on Second Avenue and 60th Street in the most amazing apartment. Gil lived at 63RD Street and Second Avenue. He had an assistant working with him named Tim Battersby who died at age 21.

CBA: Did Tim also work for Woody?

Howard: Yes. I forget who told me about his death. I called Gil up and said, “Hey, I hear your assistant’s dead. You need somebody?”

CBA: Who did you know to get into the network of comic book artists?

Howard: I have no idea how I found out that Tim had died, but I got Gil’s phone number and called him.

CBA: You’d already gone up to DC a couple of times?

Howard: Yes, but I’d been thrown out.

CBA: Did you come up with sample pages?

Howard: Yes. CBA: What was it?

Howard: I don’t recall. I showed Gil the same pages — and he justifiably tore them apart. I was the least skilled and least talented and least gifted of my generation, beyond any reasonable doubt.

I’m very comfortable with my own sense of my work, and this is not self-abasement. I sucked.

I didn’t get good until years later.

I went to work for Gil, filling in blacks and doing paste-ups and Zip-A-Tone and clipping art for his swipe files. He had tons of paperbacks and issues of Piloté. So I got to see “Lucky Luke,” “Bob Moon” — great strips — and I learned a great deal from Gil. He was my real father figure.

CBA: As you recall, was Blackmark a comic book, or was it a paperback?

Howard: A paperback.

CBA: What is your assessment of Gil? Howard: He was a giant. He’s my hero — everything I wanted to be. I met Gil for the first time when I was 13 years old at a bookstore, a comic book store called My Friends Bookstore, a.k.a. Dave’s, in Brooklyn. I was selling a pile of comics and Gil was hunting for Will James books. Will James was a cowboy who ultimately became an artist and writer in the 1920s. He wrote children’s books of which the best known is called Smoky. Gil always regarded Will James as the greatest horse artist ever.

Gil looked the same as he did ’til the end: that shock of white hair, black eyebrows, tall and lean.

CBA: What did you think of his pontificating manner?

Howard: I loved it. Working for Gil was the single most important educational experience in my professional life. I got more from him than I

ever did from Neal or Gray Morrow or Woody. No offense to any of those guys — I got a great deal from them — but Gil was the first and most significant.

Gil once asked me, “What do you like?” It was an excuse to diminish my tastes and cut me down. But his criticisms were brilliantly incisive and I came to agree with his opinions. They were the building blocks for my own sense of critical thought. He opened my eyes to some of the most important artists I had ever seen.

One day, in those pre videotape days, we stopped work to watch Cover Girl on a little Panasonic black-&-white television. Gil kept up a running monologue throughout the picture. Gene Kelly was Gil’s archetypical hero. He was athletic, a cross between Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, and Tyrone Power. Gil was deeply interested in dance.

Years later, I saw Bob Fosse’s anthology, Dancing, where the great choreographer recreated a lot of dance numbers from earlier musicals — and everyone of the dancers was a Gil Kane super-hero come to life.

Baryshnikov looks like a Gil Kane hero. Gil’s figures were dancers as opposed to wrestlers. I gained an enormous amount of my own professional sensibilities by watching Gil work. Still, I had and always will have issues with his ethical quandaries.

CBA: When Gil embraced his inner Kirby, so to speak, on the “Hulk” stuff in Tales to Astonish…

When Gil started inking his own stuff, did you appreciate the leaps he was making?

Howard: The first time Gil inked his own stuff was on Green Lantern. You have to remember, Gil was Kirby’s assistant back in the ’40s. Gil always said he was predominantly influenced by Jack Kirby and Burne Hogarth. For me, I never understood his obsession with Hogarth. I never understood his appeal. It still escapes me. The work is pretentious bullshit. Gil was so much better an artist than Hogarth ever was. One of the few things Neal and I agree on is that Gil transcended anything Hogarth could have done.

CBA: Obviously, Kirby changed as he went through his career, he went through a metamorphosis. I think that when Gil embraced Kirby in the ’60s, when all of a sudden, his work just exploded.

Howard: Yes. Significantly for me, the Kirby he was embracing was the Kirby of The Fly and The Double Life of Private Strong and Captain America. By that time, Jack’s work had developed weight and heft, but for me at least, had lost much of its sense of mobility. Gil’s stuff was always about movement. I understand that Stan always thought Gil’s work was faggy, and I think that just missed the point. But it’s a typical reaction to Gil’s elegance. For me, Gil’s stuff was just the greatest. I love his Superman stuff from the mid-’80s.

CBA: Gil had a strange assessment of his own work, which echoes you, sometimes, when you’re discussing your work. He had very mixed feelings about his abilities. He did not have much respect for quite a bit of it. It was always curious to talk to him — and I loved talking to him — but I always ended up arguing with him about his own work. Yet we agreed on almost all major issues. Like, I always thought he was the best inker of his own work, and he agreed.

Howard: Absolutely.

CBA: Though there were wonderful inkers who did work for him. But his

THIS SPREAD: Was Mangus Colorado an Iron Wolf prototype? Apparently Howard Chaykin was developing a swashbuckling space hero early in his career, if these two drawings are any indication. Both courtesy of Tim Barnes. Mangus Colorado ©2004 Howard Chaykin, Inc.

77 CBA V.2 #5

Friday Foster ©2004 the respective copyright holder.

assessment of his own stuff was that the content was vapid. I could see what he was talking about, and I read what you say, I can see what you’re talking about, in a way, but there is enormous heart in it, which is important, I think.

Howard: The problem with Gil’s stuff is he never got past the idea of producing work on a mechanical, machine-like basis. He never bothered to seek out reference, never worked from photographs. I’m not talking about for

characters, I’m talking about the worldview. There were always generic airplanes, generic automobiles, generic suits. It became a glib cliché. When he tried to work with reference, he couldn’t work at his usual speed. He just never learned how to incorporate photography and reality into his work.

That’s something I learned how to do by looking at guys like Roy Crane and the guys who created their own authentic cartoon worlds.

Wash Tubbs is a very cartoony strip, but it takes place in a completely convincing universe. Gil also developed a dislike for pulp and for massmarket entertainment material, to the point where he stopped reading fiction years before he died.

He and I would argue about popular culture.

Gil was of the mindset that everything was better in the late ’40s and early ’50s. That’s absurd.

There’s a lot of stuff that was better in the late ’40s, early ’50s, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s better now.

Gary Groth once described Gil’s work as hyperbolic — but I think that’s what sold it — and what Gary sees as hyperbole, I see as an operatic sensibility, and there’s room for opera in comics.

Jack Kirby’s stuff has an enormous operatic sensibility, too. My stuff is less operatic than chatty and loud. There’s a lot of extraneous stuff going on in my work. I tend to give the audience more credit than it might deserve for paying attention. I wish I could figure out a way to be more explicit with what I’m trying to tell the audience, but I find that implication is better than explication.

CBA: Did you think that Gil was beating himself up by being too self-critical?

Howard: Yes, I do.

CBA: How does he embrace pulp and yet reject pulp?

Howard: Well, he produced pulp for a living. He thought he was trapped by the pulp sensibility, and always wanted to do something else.

CBA: Gary would always say to him, “Can you do something that’s more personal? Can you do something that’s autobiographical?” And Gil said, “I just can’t.” (This was Gil’s own description.)

Howard: Gil drew himself into the hole his work had dug. I don’t really give a shit about his take on The Ring of the Nibelung, about King Arthur and His Knights. It would be difficult for me to visualize what would be appropriate for him to do with his approach. He became very generic and glib, so that that was what he did. But, you’re right, it was out of a tradition that dates

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TOP: “Eric Pave” was a pseudonym used by Howard Chaykin in his early fan days. This page is from Imagination #1 (’71). Art ©2004 Howard Chaykin, Inc. ABOVE: Howard helped legendary artist Gray Morrow by penciling a run of Friday Foster syndicated newspaper comic strips (dated Jan. 21-Feb. 16, ’74). Both courtesy of Tim Barnes.

back to when he was 14 years old.

To give credit where credit is due, if you look at those three guys — Toth, Kubert, and Infantino — Toth is the only one who continued to evolve and develop in different directions — at least in visual terms.

Infantino owes a great deal of his development to elements of Bernie Krigstein’s stuff from the early ’50s. They all three went through their Mel Graf /Frank Robbins/ Milton Caniff/Alfred Andriola phase in the ’40s and they all looked alike. Kubert sort of codified what he was doing in the mid-’70s. He’s brilliant, but there wasn’t any variation to the page. It is what it is.

Toth has tried different techniques.

CBA: Do you think Toth suffered paralysis because he’s trying to refine even further something already refine to brilliance? I mean, he just seems paralyzed.

Howard: Toth is just pissed off. I don’t think it’s any secret that Gil and Alex were never particularly fond of each other on a personal basis. Yet Gil was able to put aside any personal animus for Alex and write an extraordinary epistolary introduction to a chapbook of Alex’s stuff some years back, that I think was very astute and right-on in its observation.

Gil always talked about the two artists that came out of the ’40s and early ’50s who defined the two directions of comics for his generation — Alex Toth and Wallace Wood. What I’ve tried to do in my life, particularly over the past 20 years, is incorporate elements of both of those two men, because I believe Gil was right.

There was graphics and there was bravura drawing, two totally different approaches to the same material. Take the EC stuff. You look at what Alex did with the few jobs that he did for EC. I wish he’d done more for them, but Toth drew three great jobs for Harvey Kurtzman, which Harvey typically shits all over in the slipcase editions.

Wood was ubiquitous there, because he did everything. He worked on all of it, and it’s great to watch his stuff evolve. It’s easy to dismiss Woody because in his last years he was a difficult man, but his work was astonishing. There’s technique flying out in every direction, and if you know anything about the period, you can see he must have seen a Fritz Lang movie that week, or an Anthony Mann picture the next.

His stuff is just so overheated and passionate.

You talk about the hyperbole of Gil’s and Jack’s stuff, Woody had that same essence of hyperbole, but put to an entirely different use. There was a sense of outrage to Wallace Wood’s stuff. Woody was the archetypal liberal mugged by reality. His politics start out popular front populist liberal — then, by the late ’60s, he codifies into this unpleasant race-baiting man. His self-loathing was intense. But the work from the early ’50s, the Shock SuspenStories in particular, is gutwrenching. In its own way, it’s as important as what Kurtzman was doing. It was just completely over-thetop and huge.

CBA: We are talking about Wally Wood…

Howard: Wallace Wood. He never called himself Wally. Like “Howie” Chaykin. I’ve never been “Howie.”

“Howard” is tough enough to bear; “Howie” is something I will not accommodate. His name was “Woody” or “Wallace.” Let him rest in peace.

CBA: Was the transition straight from Gil to Woody ABOVE: Contributor Tim Barnes and Ye Ed aren’t sure if, in fact, Howard Chaykin worked on the exact Cannon and Sally Forth strips featured here, but they were produced during Howard’s time as an assistant to Wallace Wood in the early ’70s. HVC definitely worked with Nicola Cuti on Shattuck. ©2004 the respective copyright holder(s).

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for you working as an assistant?

Howard: There was about a year in between. I went to work for Woody when he was living in Long Island and I was living in Manhattan, so I was reverse commuting. I penciled a Western strip that he inked for about eight weeks, then I dropped it, and Dave Cockrum picked it up. It was called Shattuck. He was doing these vaguely smutty comic strips for Overseas Weekly, a newspaper for the military service: Sally Forth, Cannon, and Shattuck. He’d rented a big old studio space over an Italian deli. Great scene.

Syd Shores rented space, and Jack Abel, too. That was when I met Jack. Jack was just a total pisser. He and I developed an affinity for each other, because Syd was totally oblivious, while Woody would come in and sit down on the floor in a lotus position, vodka in one hand and black tea in the other, and pontificate on everything he hated at endless length. Talk about curmudgeons! So it was an education.

CBA: What was Jack Abel like?

Howard: Jack was sly, funny, and easy to underestimate. He never became one of the great talents in the comic book business, but who gives a shit? He was a great guy — a real hero of mine. He was one of the best people I ever met.

CBA: What made him so?

Howard: He was smart, he was funny, and you could have a real conversation with Jack about just about anything. Jack was a great man.

CBA: Did you get to know Syd Shores at all?

Howard: No, he was just kind of goofy.

CBA: Getting back to Gil for a second, did your pen touch any of his work?

Howard: I was simply a gofer. I did paste-up, Zip-A-Tone, filled in blacks.

He didn’t even let me deliver his stuff to DC because he felt I misrepresented him, because my hair was too long.

CBA: Did you avoid the draft?

Howard: I was in the first lottery — and I didn’t want to go. I was involved in the anti-war movement, but the first time I saw somebody burn a flag, I knew it was time for me to blow that scene. It was the complete and total abdication of patriotism — allowing it to be hijacked by the right, and it’s been that way ever since, to this day. So I hung out with hippies for a while, because that’s where the chicks were. I went to Woodstock with two pals of

mine in a ’63 Bonneville convertible and had a great time, and I learned a valuable lesson — I don’t do dirty and smelly well. I’m not a camper.

CBA: Did you develop an affinity for jazz years earlier?

Howard: I got turned on to jazz by my mom, who was a third-rate band singer. The jazz I first heard was vocalese. The first rock ’n’ roll I heard was a cappella and doo-wop. The first cowboy and Western music I heard was Hank Williams. The first jazz singing I heard was King Pleasure, Eddie Jefferson and Lambert Hendricks and Ross. For me, it all comes from the vocals.

To this day, I still listen to a lot of girl singers from the ’30s and ’40s. It’s one of the things I have in common with Gary Groth. We’re both huge fans of Anita O’Day and Lee Wiley, two great singers.

Back then, I was into rock ’n’ roll. I was a huge fan of The Band, Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, and Joe Cocker. I was in the culture but not of the culture, because basically that’s where the women were.

CBA: Did you read underground comix?

Howard: Some. It’s the oddest thing: they weren’t as generally available in New York.

I saw more of them in Chicago. I certainly got the East Village Other in New York and Windy City Comics and stuff like that. I got some comix, but I didn’t love them. I liked Crumb’s stuff, I liked art spiegelman’s stuff, back in those days.

Justin Green. Some of Spain’s stuff. But again, I was a real middle-of-the-road kind of guy when it came to comics.

CBA: So you didn’t see it as a revolution that was coming from within the form?

Howard: No. It wasn’t something I felt I could do.

CBA: How do you look upon it now?

Howard: It seems sort of oddly innocent in its expectations. The work of that period that best holds up for me is Arcade, The Comics Revue.

Crumb’s two pieces for Arcade remain gigantic. The piece about modern America is an amazing piece of work, as is his piece about blues musicians.

Astonishing stuff.

CBA: So you bought Arcade when it was coming out?

Howard: Yes. CBA: Did you see the East Village Other as a possible place you could work?

ABOVE INSET: One of Howard’s most prominent credits to date was his penciling job (with mentor Gray Morrow inking) on Man-Thing’s debut strip in Fear (#10, Oct. ’72) .

Here’s the cinematic opening page. ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Howard: No, I didn’t have anything that would have interested them at all. I have a longstanding tradition of responding positively to pieces that are not for me. I like a lot of work by guys who hate my work. I got a nice squib in GQ an issue or two back — and my reaction to my wife’s delight was, “No big deal — just a nice pat on the head from another magazine that won’t give me work” CBA: It’s genre that interests you?

Howard: Pretty much.

I’m a genre/pulp guy. My Solo book is all-genre material. I had a great time working on the Michael Chabon-edited issue of McSweeney’s, illustrating a series of genre fiction pieces both by genre writers and by guys who were not regularly associated with genre fiction.

CBA: Why did you leave Wallace Wood?

Howard: He fired me.

CBA: Why did he fire you?

Howard: I wasn’t very good, I was sloppy. He needed someone neat. I got a lot neater, but in those days, I was all thumbs. I was just really clumsy. I’m pretty sure he died owing me 50 bucks.

CBA: Was Gil a man-about-town?

Howard: He was a character. He was the first real flesh and blood human being I ever knew who owned a dressing gown. I had never seen a guy who owned one, except in the movies. He was a class act.

CBA: Did Gil regale you with stories?

Howard: Always.

CBA: So did you gain insight into people like Jim Warren and Carmine Infantino?

Howard: Yes. I’m sure you’ve heard all the stories. Bear in mind, Gil's was a very jaundiced worldview. A couple of years back, Jim Steranko asked me what was the most interesting thing in comics the past year in or so. I nominated the interview Gil did with Gary for The Comics Journal.

CBA: I thought that was great.

Howard: Gil’s a controversial figure. He’s easy to misunderstand, misconstrue, and misjudge. He was ethically challenged and a bit of a scoundrel. But he was still intriguing and brilliant in his own fashion.

CBA: So what did you do after you left Gil?

Howard: I don’t remember. I did a lot of drugs, and ended up working for Woody — how and why I don’t recall.

CBA: But there were always new assistants in his studio, right?

Howard: Woody went through assistants like other people go through tissue. The great Woody quote — and I’m paraphrasing here, is — ”Don’t draw what you can’t trace, don’t trace what you can’t paste up, and don’t paste up what you can’t swipe.” Nick Cuti basically assembled pencils from swipe files. A little bit of Alex Raymond, a little bit of Reuben Moreira, all this stuff.

He would trace all these pieces off, hand them to Woody, who would then ink them in the Wood style, so that everything came together. It was a fascinating thing to observe.

I’ve never learned to ink. I draw with a pen.

I go back to the EC stuff once in a while, to remind me what the best stuff used to look like — the technique, the tweaking of brushwork — and it helps me remember.

I went from Woody and met Gray Morrow.

Gray was living in Brooklyn — two apartments, one on top of the other, one he lived in and one he used as a studio. Gray was a real funny guy who came to New York just in time for EC to go belly up and the comics business to have it’s first implosion.

He did a couple of jobs for Stan at Atlas — Westerns and s-f — then disappeared from comic books until he came back in the late 1960s. I ghosted for him, did a couple “El Diablo” stories, and I penciled a “Man-Thing” job.

CBA: This was for Fear?

Howard: Yes. I penciled it. Twelve-panel pages with a tapestry in each panel.

Half the job was in editing the script.

From there I went to work for Neal.

Neal had this paternalistic thing going. You lived at his house, hung out with his kids, and had Thanksgiving dinner at his place. There was a real sense of the Last Supper. “Let’s all pretend Neal is Jesus!” He generated a lot of chaos. He prodded a lot, stuck his finger into sucking chest wounds to make trouble.

CBA: You worked for Gil, who was always trying new things: with the Bantam paperbacks — Blackmark — and His Name Is… Savage. Wally

TOP: Page from Girls' Love Stories #173 (Sept. ’72). Though they sure look to be Howard’s pencils (inked over by Vinnie Colletta & Co.), HVC isn’t exactly sure but says it’s a good bet! ABOVE INSET: Howard doodled over a Curt Swan Superman piece, as he seems to recall,”Everyone was doing it!” Courtesy of Tim Barnes. Both ©2004 DC Comics.

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obviously was doing a great deal outside of comic books. Did you see a message there, that comics were not the only place to be?

Howard: What I learned from Neal Adams, more than anything, when he was working in advertising, drawing storyboards and comps, was to develop as commercial a drawing style as possible to get through lean comics times.

CBA: When Continuity was a fully-blown art agency?

Howard: This was long before Continuity. I’d hang around the coffee room at DC, like I said, and go out to dinner with the guys. Then I’d go with Neal to the Bronx and work in his office in his house all night. His kids were very young at the time. I was penciling animatics and storyboards for him. I learned comics didn’t pay very well. There were no royalties, they didn’t return artwork; it was just a flat fee.

The goal for me was to develop my skills to the point where I could do storyboards, where the money really was. For the amount of effort you expended on a page of comics, you could make three to five times as much doing boards and animatics. So ultimately, that’s what I did. I penciled for him. I was briefly in business with an incredibly talented artist at the time, who seems to have disappeared, doing animatics and

boards and comps on our own. We had a lot of work for Old Gold cigarettes developing their campaign, a slew of comps, Council, and a bunch of other things.

CBA: For what agency?

Howard: Mostly Benton and Bowles.

CBA: Were you on staff there?

Howard: All freelance, all the time.

CBA: What did your portfolio look like?

Howard: I did sample animatics, storyboards and comps. The biggest job I ever had was a transitional campaign for G.I. Joe. for the Australian market. This was before G.I. Joe became small action figures; it was still a super-hero doll. I did those on my own. I had no assistants, didn’t use a colorist, just did everything myself. I didn’t quite figure out how to do it, how to farm the work out. I did very shortly afterward. I had a group of assistants doing the coloring and stuff. It was just an amazing job, and it paid very quickly. I pissed that money away.

CBA: It was good money?

Howard: Oh, it was great money.

CBA: Did you continue to have a passion for comics?

Howard: Without question. The thing is, once I got the work, it was an enormous letdown, because the work I got wasn’t very interesting, and I wasn’t very good and didn’t know what to do with the work. So I humped along doing different stuff. It wasn’t really until I had the opportunity in the mid to late ’70s to work with Byron Preiss that everything came together. I loved doing that.

CBA: At Continuity, what were you doing?

Howard: I never worked at Continuity. I just hung around a couple of times a week.

CBA: Were you a Crusty Bunker?

Howard: No. I lived in Queens. I’d go to Continuity, hang around until rush hour was over. You had fried chicken wings and just shot the shit.

By that time, Neal was just getting into the animatics. Marshall Rogers and Pat Broderick were there, and Lynn Varley was working as Neal’s colorist and assistant.

CBA: Were you close with Wrightson and The Studio guys?

Howard: Intermittently. I was closest to Walter Simonson. He came in around ’74. I’d been around for about a year, but he was older than the rest of us. I was the youngest of the bunch. Then there’s Weiss, Kaluta and Wrightson. But after a while we sort of drifted out of each other’s lives.

CBA: What are your feelings about Kaluta?

Howard: Kaluta and I come from LEFT: Howard’s the same root, but blossomed in cover for SOS #2 different ways. I have a great deal (May ’73). ABOVE: of respect for Michael’s work.

The giant Fafhrd by Michael is still living in the same Howard Chaykin. apartment building he was Published in a New York Comic-Con souliving in back then. It’s just venir book. Courtesy of Tim amazing. In the time I’ve known Barnes. Cover ©2004 DC Comics.

Michael, I’ve lived in I can’t Fafhrd & Gray Mouser © 2004 remember how many different Fritz Leiber. Art ©2004 HVC, Inc. houses and apartments! And

THIS SPREAD: Howard’s first big splash in comics was as penciler & co-plotter (with writer/editor Dennis O’Neil) of Sword of Sorcery, starring that memorable pair of adventurers, Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser. TOP LEFT: From the original art, splash page for SOS #1 (Mar. ’73). ©’04 DC.

I’ve been married four times.

CBA: There was a lot of nostalgia….

Howard: I was interested in the ’30s stuff back then, and Michael was into the ’20s. I liked the sleeker, slicker stuff. I was talking about Robert Fawcett, and Michael sort of poohpoohed the illustrator, and I was like, “What are you talking about?” To this day I consider Fawcett to be one of the greatest illustrators who ever lived. A lot of guys who influenced Michael were a little too much on the fantasy side for me. I’m not a fantasy guy, though I used to be. It doesn’t interest me at all.

CBA: Had you had any knowledge of the great illustrators?

Howard: In a very rudimentary way.

CBA: Did you ever look at the pulp reprints that were coming out as paperbacks?

Howard: Not really. I never read those Doc Savage paperbacks, for example. For all my pulp sensibility, I’m not particularly steeped in the original pulp material.

CBA: But you did read Tarzan?

Howard: Oh, yeah. I was a fanatical Edgar Rice Burroughs fan. I bought my first Burroughs novel the day before my bar mitzvah in 1963. I had five bucks in my pocket — so I picked up a copy of A Fighting Man of Mars with a Bob Abbett cover painting. I went home, sat on my stoop, and read the first 75 pages of this book. My reaction was: “How long has this been going on?”

From that point on, I was an absolute Burroughs fanatic.

I read all the Martian books at least three times over.

CBA: What was it about it that you liked?

Howard: It was comics in text form. Super-science as well as sword fighting. A couple of years later, I got turned on to the Robert E. Howard stuff with the Lancer editions that came out. I just loved that stuff, too. I was just a huge fan of that material — and now, I find it amazingly unreadable.

CBA: Did you like Frazetta?

Howard: Sure. I hadn’t seen the Ace editions; I saw the Ballantines first.

CBA: Was it the Hollywood movies that got you into this stuff?

Howard: No. I saw all the Tarzan pictures, but the Tarzan novels were my least favorite of all the Burroughs books — but we’re talking degrees here — and I still loved them dearly.

CBA: Well, I was talking about your affinity for the ’30s. Did you get that from Hollywood?

Howard: I guess.

CBA: Obviously, you have a ’30s sensibility.

Howard: Again, it’s more movies than comics.

CBA: Did you read the pulp magazines, The Spider or The Shadow?

Howard: I read The Shadow. The golden age of comics and pulp is the age of 12, and, if there’s anything about me I have any deep respect for, it’s that I’ve learned not to have that much respect for my tastes when I was growing up.

ABOVE: Design CBA: [Looking over Sword of Sorcery #1-4, sketch by Howard of the Gray Mouser Mar.-Oct. ’73] Did you have a hard time with from ’73. Mouser deadlines? Inks are by the Crusty ©’04 Fritz Leiber.

Bunkers in the first one, and Art ©’04 HVC, Inc. “Chaykin, Inc.” is listed in #4.

Howard: No. I was never supposed to ink the book.

NOTE: All art for this spread courtesy of Tim Barnes.

CBA: Why didn’t you write your own stuff in the beginning?

Howard: Because my writing sucked.

CBA: I was talking to Walter, and he said you two did a jam session.

Howard: On Scorpion [#2, Feb. ’75], Walter and I would jam. Again, it was not so much a problem with deadlines, because deadlines were flexible and shifted. But no, my writing was really awful.

BELOW: Howard’s cover CBA: Were you happy with the results of for SOS #4 (Oct. ’73). ©2004 DC Comics. the jam?

Howard: I don’t remember. We’re talking 30 years ago now.

CBA: But you’ve remembered everything else so far.

Howard: Yeah, but this stuff doesn’t interest me, it wasn’t important.

CBA: Was there an embarrassment from it or something?

Howard: No, not at all.

CBA: I mean, you made it to the Big Time, right? You were working in comics.

You finally had made it, right?

Howard: Yeah, but my attitude was, “What’s next?”

CBA: What was your living situation?

Were you married at the time?

Howard: Yes. I was living in Brooklyn, across the street from Walter, on Argyle Road in the bad section of East Flatbush which, 83

THIS SPREAD: Of course, Sword of Sorcery was based on the witty and effervescent short stories of Fritz Leiber (a wonderful, charming man Ye Ed met before the s-f/fantasy author’s death). TOP RIGHT: From the original art, the splash page for SOS #2 (May ’73). ©’04 DC Comics.

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THIS PAGE: The Chaykin Hero persona emerges:Lord Ironwolf. This unfinished piece is apparently an aborted try at what would become The Comic Reader #94 (Feb. ’73)’s cover (seen next page). Courtesy of Tim Barnes. Character ©2004 DC Comics. Art ©2004 HVC, Inc.

oddly enough, was the new location of My Friends Bookstore, the store that I’d met Gil 10 years earlier. I was happy with the work. Years ago, I said at a convention that difference between me and comic book fandom is for them every month on the stand, for me, every morning on my desk.

CBA: Did you really make a transition from being a fan to a professional?

Howard: I was never part of fandom.

I didn’t go to conventions until I was already a professional.

CBA: You had no interest?

Howard: I was intimidated. I thought I’d look like a fool. They’d always make fun of the cons on the local news, and it just looked too geeky and weird to me.

CBA: So you didn’t have a need to get back issues?

Howard: I didn’t think I’d be welcome. I couldn’t tell how I, who I was, would fit into that world. I go to conventions now and frequently feel the same way, because I don’t unqualifiably love the stuff. I find when I go to conventions today, I generally seem to find myself sitting in the same place and not moving. I plant myself.

CBA: Did you have any desire to do super-hero stuff?

Howard: No, because in those days super-heroes were defined by the Marvel Bullpen — and my stuff was certainly too different for that. The only artist of my generation who seemed appropriate for super-hero comics was Rich Buckler. You couldn’t see Wrightson doing it, though you could maybe see him doing Batman, but even that was too weird. So it was great to see all the sword-&-sorcery and Robert E. Howard stuff start surfacing in the quasi-mystery/horror vein.

CBA: Was Dennis O’Neil okay to work with?

Howard: Dennis was terrific. The great irony is that his son Larry ended up working for me as my assistant on American Flagg!

CBA: What did he do?

Howard: Backgrounds. Larry and Dean Haspiel came in and worked for me and Simonson. They were 17 or 18 years old at the time. I’ve known Larry since he was three or four.

CBA: Has he done work that I should know?

Howard: Larry?

Larry is a successful screen writer and feature director.

CBA: Walter certainly is one of the finest people in the comics biz….

Howard: Walter and I hit it off immediately.

He’s still The Viking Prince and I’m The Jew From the Future and we’re still friends.

CBA: You guys had a studio together?

Howard: Upstart Associates.

CBA: Was Frank Miller a part of that?

Howard: Frank replaced Starlin. It was originally Walter, Starlin, Val Mayerik and me. Mayerik left

and Jim Sherman moved in. Then Starlin left, and Frank took his spot.

CBA: Do you have any idea what the story behind “War of the Worlds” [Amazing Adventures #18, May ’73]? Was it a rush job?

Howard: Oh, that… oh, sure! Neal had spent eight months doing 12 pages, or 12 months doing eight pages — I forget exactly what — and they got tired of waiting. I got a call from Marvel asking if I would finish the book, and like a schmuck, I said yes. It was a valuable lesson learned, because if Neal had taken eight months to do 12 pages (or 12 months to do eight pages), I had to finish the rest of the book in a weekend… and it looked it.

CBA: What did you learn?

Howard: If you have a deadline of Friday, tell him you can get it to him by Monday, because if you give it to him on Friday, you’re a hero.

CBA: So you learned that pretty early on, then.

Howard: It was a very educational experience.

CBA: And yet you still did the next issue [AA #19, July ’73]?

Howard: I think I did one more, and then it was done for me.

CBA: You didn’t do that much work for Marvel.

Or did you?

Howard: I didn’t have the desire to work for them back then. Marvel was a very parochial company in those days. They had a specific idea of what the stuff looked like. They’d have John Romita redraw heads. I never really had anything that Marvel wanted.

CBA: Were you disappointed when Swords of Sorcery was cancelled?

Howard: I don’t remember feeling one-way or the other.

CBA: [Picks up Weird Worlds #9, Feb. ’74, featuring Ironwolf] You enjoyed doing stories like this?

Howard: That was the same deal. I was doing the plotting and penciling, and Dennis was doing the dialogue and collecting a fat paycheck.

CBA: Did you feel like you were developing your chops?

Howard: I was a kid.

As I said, this stuff was a lot of work. I loved doing it.

CBA: Where did the character of Ironwolf come from?

Howard: I loved Scotland, loved Germany, loved all that stuff. It was this weird melange of bullshit: E.E. “Doc” Smith, Cordwainer Smith, all that s-f stuff, Captain Future.

CBA: Is there an archetype being developed here? Is there this direct lineage, let’s say, from Ironwolf to Flagg?

Howard: Okay, I don’t draw an iconic hero.

For me, Flagg was always a combination of James Garner and Henry Fonda.

Garner is my archetype, a wise guy who’d do the least amount of work to get the job done.

CBA: Was there you in that archetype, as well?

ABOVE: HVC, Ye Ed, and Howard: I’m a short, fat Jewish guy. contributor Tim Barnes all An idealized version of me is Robert speculate this early Downey, Jr. [Jon laughs] I’m serious! sketch is probably an Ironwolf prototype design.

He’s going to play me in a TV movie.

Check out his emblem!

CBA: I seem to recall you having Art ©2004 HVC, Inc. an “interesting” fashion sense back in the ’70s.

THIS PAGE: Ironwolf, Howard’s swashbuckling space hero makes a debut in Weird Worlds #8-10, (Dec. ’73, Feb. ’74, Oct. ’74), and the artist begins a coming of age. TOP: HVC contributes this Ironwolf piece as cover for The Comics Reader #94 (Feb. ’73). ABOVE LEFT: HVC’s new cover for the ’86 Ironwolf reprint collection. ©2004 DC Comics.

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BELOW & FAR RIGHT: Howard’s pencil layouts and the printed results as finished by Terry Austin of a “Dominic Fortune” page from Marvel Premiere #56 (Oct.’80). Layouts courtesy of Tim Barnes and ©2004 HVC, Inc. MP page ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Howard: I was in my late 20s when I realized that everybody who used to call me a faggot for having long hair now all had long hair. I started buying clothes. Armani sweaters, just gorgeous, sort of cotton thread and gold, and a couple of dress shirts in flannel. Suits, shoes, neckties, pocket watch. I went and got a haircut, and started looking like an Italian pimp.

I’d always liked clothes, but I never felt worthy of them, because I was always this fat guy, but by then I wasn’t fat anymore, so I figured I might as well try a makeover, and I looked okay. To this day, when I dress up, I’m frequently the best-dressed man at any wedding.

CBA: Would you say that you were a hippy?

Howard: We never used that word. We called ourselves freaks.

CBA: And did you dress the part?

Howard: I wore blue jeans, work-shirts, boots. There you go. Look what I’m wearing today: A pair of blue jeans, a ripped T-shirt, a denim workshirt, and white socks.

CBA: You used to have mutton chops, right?

Howard: Oy. CBA: Is that from Joe Cocker or—?

Howard: No, it preceded that. It was actually more [lead singer of the Lovin’ Spoonful] John Sebastian. Look, I was as much a victim of fashion as the next guy.

CBA: And the fashion sense of your characters was very much of the day.

Howard: I never developed a sense of the figure as effectively as Gil did. I liked clothes. I could do a silhouette, but muscle-bound figures? To this day, I’m not that interested, but I really liked to draw clothing.

I had a pretty good swipe file on costumes, fashion and everything else.

CBA: [Pulling out Detective Comics #441, July ’74] I guess this is one of your few super-hero jobs.

Howard: The very few.

CBA: Did Archie Goodwin approach you to draw Batman?

Howard: Yes, and I never apologized enough to the guy.

CBA: Why? Howard: Because it’s just… I just wasn’t very good at super-hero stuff, that’s all. You’re really pulling out the shit, aren’t you? This is unbelievable.

CBA: Sorry, Howard. [Picking up Scorpion #1] Were you most happy with it? It seemed to be the most “Chaykin” comic book yet.

Howard: It was fun at the time, yeah. We had a good time.

CBA: This book was a real change for you, I thought. The work was much more assured, the layouts stronger. We had discussed this before [CBA V.1, #16], but in shorthand, what was your experience with Atlas/Seaboard.

Howard: It wasn’t pleasant. Atlas/Seaboard raised everybody’s rates.

It was a company that existed to show Stan Lee that somebody else could do it, too. On the other hand, I got to do two issues of a book I really liked, and had a good time with it. I had a lot of personality issues and problems with the people involved.

CBA: Were they well-received, those two issues?

Howard: I think so. I think there were some good spots in each. I walked across the street and did another version of it at Marvel. I ended up doing “Dominic Fortune” [Marvel Preview #2 (’75), Marvel Super Action #1 (Jan. ’76), Marvel Premiere #56 (Oct. ’80)] which was a similar milieu, but a very different hero and heroine.

Cody Starbuck [Star*Reach #1 (’74), #4 (Mar. ’76), Cody Starbuck (July ’78)] is, to a certain extent, an evolved version of Ironwolf. It takes a similar world. If you accept Ironwolf as the nobleman of that universe, Cody Starbuck is a bastard king. He comes in as more of a blue-collar guy in that

THIS PAGE: The Chaykin Hero, ’30s style redux: Few comic titles during the ’70s shined as brilliantly — and burned-out so quickly — as The Scorpion, Howard’s homage to the great pulp heroes, gone after two brief issues (#1-2, Feb. & May ’75). So an angry HVC resurrected him at Marvel Comics… as Dominic Fortune!