Comic Book Creator #14

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A Tw o M o r r o w s P u b l i c a t i o n

No. 14, Winter 2017

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also: RAINA TELGEMEIER • THE GHOSTS OF BOB KANE • SONNY LIEW • DREW FRIEDMAN

W i n t e r 2 0 1 7 • Vo i c e o f t h e C o m i c s M e d i u m • N u m b e r 1 4

T DEAD-WOODY CBC mascot by J.D. KING

©2016 J.D. King.

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Ye Ed’s Rant: Keeping Up with Jones............................................................................... 2 COMICS CHATTER

About Our Cover

Comic Book Zeitgeist: Talking with Singapore’s Greatest cartoonist, Sonny Liew, about his life and recent magnum opus, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye............ 3

Art by KELLEY JONES Colors by GLENN WHITMORE

Incoming: Extra-long letters o’ comment section on our Gil Kane ish........................... 12 The Trouble With Bob: Will Murray examines the troublesome legacy of Bob Kane, spurned Batman co-creator Bill Finger, and the caped crusader’s many ghosts...... 18 Raina Telgemeier’s Smiling Army: Correspondent Eti Berland looks into the phenomenal success of the lauded graphic novelist and her cadre of fans............. 24

Characters TM & © DC Comics.

Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt on Marc Tyler Nobleman’s books about comics..... 27 Drew Friedman’s Hero Worship: Rob Smentek talks to the amazing caricaturist and recent author of More Heroes of the Comics..................................................... 28 Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred on forgotten Brit artist Leopold “Lee” Elias........ 31 THE MAIN EVENT Above: Kelley Jones graces his CBC cover with three of his signature characters at DC Comics, Batman, Swamp Thing, and Deadman. Memorably, the artist would join with writer Doug Moench, inker John Beatty, and letterer Todd Klein, to produce 34 issues of Batman in the mid-’90s within a 37-month time frame.

His Deadman, of course, was featured in Action Comics and in two mini-series, all written by Mike Baron. Of late, Kelley has drawn Swamp Thing for a two-issue Convergence run in 2015, as well as a six-issue series written

by Len Wein, published in 2016.

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

Bloodwork: The Art of Kelley Jones. In a massive and totally geeked-out rap session, longtime Jones pal Peter Quinones conducts a thoroughly exhaustive, career-spanning interview with the comic book professional in a conversation that covers the artist’s love of movies, music, and weird fiction, as well as Kelley’s enormous body of comics work. The chat details his earliest years as Micronauts inker, breakout with his two Deadman prestige format mini-series, mind-bending “Elseworlds” graphic novels (starring Batman as a vampire), threeyear stint as monthly Batman artist, and his forays outside DC, including his work on the creator-owned The Hammer and other Dark Horse assignments, along with recent Swamp Thing work and upcoming Batman: Master of Fear. We also include a breathtaking gallery of Kelley Jones artwork courtesy of the artist......... 32 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: The debut of Kendall Whitehouse’s photo feature........................ 76 Coming Attractions: Announcing the Archosaurs and Automobiles of Mark Schultz.... 77

PLEASE READ THIS:

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Kelley Jones’ Deadman presentation art.... 80

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Right: The creation of Doug Moench and Kelley Jones, the Elseworlds vampire Batman. Here is a detail of Kelley’s cover art for the collection, Elseworlds: Batman Vol. 2, which includes all the vampire stories.

www.twomorrows.com

COMIC BOOK CREATOR is a proud joint production of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows

Comic Book Artist Vol. 1 & 2 are now available as digital downloads from twomorrows.com!

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $40 Standard US, $60 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2017 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

This issue is dedicated to the memory of STEVE DILLON ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

KELLEY JONES Cover Artist

GLENN WHITMORE Cover Colorist

GEORGE KHOURY RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO Contributing Editors

STEVEN THOMPSON BRIAN K. MORRIS Transcribers

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON KENDALL WHITEHOUSE CBC Convention Photographer

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK GEORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO CBC Columnists To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail CBC, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 2

Remembering our guileless early affection for this artform The resulting 33,000+ word Q&A — This issue’s main feature could conducted by Quinones, who had prenot have come at a better time viously interviewed Jones for Comics for yours truly, arriving as it did Interview and Comics Scene, as well during a particularly tumultuous as a talk with Pulitzer laureate Michael period. Because, y’see, much as Chabon for The Comics Journal — is I love comic books, I’ve always about the accomplished artist’s love for been a political junkie, and for weird fiction, eclectic music, dinosaur those, like me, who suffer this movies, and (of course) a passion for affliction, the 2016 U.S. Presithe work of Bernie Wrightson, an artist dential campaign season has whose work he so effectively channels been as addictive as no other. I and yet makes his own. Oh, and yes, type these words a mere 48 hours Jones does discuss his comics work. before the polls open and while Both Quinones and Jones have I’m tremendously anxious about been wonderful to deal with in the where the results of Tuesday’s making of this issue. The family-man vote will take this country, I am artist is particularly pleasant and glad to have spent a good chunk helpful, and it is immediately apparof the last few weeks finding ent that while he clearly recognizes solace in a shared love of comics his accomplishments and value as a by “getting back to the garden,” professional, the gentleman’s gratitude so to speak. and humility is just as obvious. I hope Back in June 2015, former you find pleasure in the extra-lengthy comics writer Peter Quinones feature herein. This has been a blast. dropped Ye Ed an unsolicited email, It was also great fun — and equally one suggesting a comprehensive serendipitous — to showcase old feature on his friend, and he chum Sonny Liew for our opening explained a personal connection to feature on his career in general and the artist. “Kelley Jones was part of very specifically about his astonishing a group of young Sacramento-area Kelley Jones by Ronn Sutton graphic novel, The Art of Charlie Chan artists back in the 1980s,” Quinones Hock Chye, a release from Pantheon I wrote. “He was the first one to break cannot recommend highly enough. Sonny and I go back into comics, landing the inking job on Micronauts. I met Kelley through a group that hung around Comics & to my days editing the Top Shelf edition of Comic Book Comix, a group that included Jim Sinclair (inker on Sam Artist (to which he contributed a sketchbook feature) and it’s been nice charting his rise in the comics world, Kieth’s The Maxx), Glen Johnson (penciler on some most recently as artist on Doctor Fate. As enjoyable as issues of Sun Runners and then went into video game his mainstream comics work has been, Liew’s latest design), and would grow to include Ron Lim (who lived book launches him into the realm of important graphic out of town), and Marty Lasick (who was inker on Kirnovelists of our time. Learning that he was to lecture at by-related projects). I was the writer of the group, and a local art school soon after I found an advance copy of would eventually work with all of them on a number of Charlie Chan proved an astonishing coincidence. independent comics.”

What is mind-blowing about Liew’s effort is his I’ll be frank and share that though I had been pretty plethora of spot-on homages to so many different much buying anything that Kelley Jones has drawn ever since his breathtaking redesign of the character in aspects of comics history. As with the obvious affection 1989’s Deadman: Love After Death, the notion of cover- Kelley Jones infuses into his efforts, so too does the Singapore artist pour tremendous enthusiasm throughing the artist in one of my magazines hadn’t struck me out his work. These shots of unabashed ardor for comuntil this email. Quinones’ lengthy missive gave me an ics are just what one needs in this volatile, polarized immediate sense that the writer really wanted to not time that often pits neighbor against neighbor. only celebrate a deserving artist but also find a place While Ye Ed has no plans to ignore issues of our for a comprehensive conversation between two friends time, it sure is good to be reminded of the joy of comics. just geeking-out about their shared love for comics, movies, and music. I immediately gave the go-ahead.

— Ye Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

cbc contributors

Richard J. Arndt Allen Bellman Eti Berland Alan Brennert Andrew D. Cooke Drew Friedman Fred Hembeck

Heritage Auctions Londyn Jackson J.G. Jones Kelley Jones J.D. King Sonny Liew Don McGregor

John Morrow Will Murray Eric Nolen-Weathington Peter Quinones Jerry Robinson Joyce Sim Jim Sinclair

Rob Smentek The Southwick Boys Joe Staton Ronn Sutton Ty Templeton Roy Thomas Maggie Thompson

Carol Tilley The Time Capsule Kendall Whitehouse Patty Willett Bernie Wrightson Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Kelley Jones portrait ©2016 Ronn Sutton.

CBC Contributing Photographer

Keeping Up with Jones

comic book zeitgeist

Singapore’s Greatest CBC talks with graphic novelist Sonny Liew about The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye ©2016 Sonny Liew. Doctor Fate TM & © DC Comics.

by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor The appeal of the art of Sonny Liew isn’t easy to simply state, but suffice to say I know what I like and I’ve loved his work for quite some time now, ever since we first met and he opened his portfolio at a Comic-Con International: San Diego, in the early 2000s.

One look at the Singapore artist’s charming, engaging, humorous, and tremendously energetic work made me a fan for life, and I immediately enlisted him to share sketchbook pages for a Comic Book Artist feature back in ’04, and I’ve been an avid follower ever since.

So to say I was stunned to pick up an advance copy of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye [Pantheon, ’16] at a Niantic, Connecticut, used bookstore is an understatement. Sonny’s first bona fide graphic novel is, in the apt words of NPR’s Fresh Air, a “tour de force,” one that gives us a biography of a fictional Singapore comics creator while simultaneously depicting the very real political history of the Southeast Asian island city-state. This ambitious story is partly told through extraordinary pastiches of a diverse array of sources — Walt Kelly’s comic strip, Pogo; Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller; Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge; and even the E.C. war comics of Harvey Kurtzman — all culminating to give a moving and effective masterwork by a supremely talented artist who has matured into a creative force to be reckoned with.

Thus this past spring, when Sonny visited his alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design, I jumped at the chance to attend his presentation and the artist kindly agreed to sit for an interview. The following biographical profile had been distilled from his lecture and our talk and has been copyedited by Sonny for accuracy and clarity.

Top inset: The U.S. edition of Sonny Liew’s excellent new book, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye. Above inset: Detail from Sonny’s Doctor Fate #2 cover. Top right: Cover for the Singapore edition of Sonny’s latest book. Right: Photo of Sonny taken during his visit to the Rhode Island School of Design this past April.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

The Early Years

Though he and his older sister, Cheryl, were born in Malaysia, they had moved to the tiny city-state of Singapore when Sonny was about five years old. “My parents sent us over because they thought that Singapore had a better educational system, which was taught in English, while Malaysia’s schools used the Malay language.” Their father was a practicing physician and the Liew siblings experienced a middle-class upbringing. Sonny (whose Chinese name is Jing Xian) and his sister would copy stuff from comics and illustrated children’s books, he said. “Dennis the Menace, Mickey Mouse, all those things… everything we saw, we would make drawings. Back in those days, she would win prizes in school for her art.” He adds with a laugh, “She never had a real interest in it, but she was definitely a better artist than I was.” (Cheryl, who studied economics at Cambridge, England, and attended Harvard, worked at Morgan Stanley and is today a tech search recruiter, in San Francisco.)

While there wasn’t much of a comics scene to speak of in his adopted country while he was growing up, “In the ’80s,” Sonny says, “there was a bit of a boom, because of the influence of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and some comics were being brought in from Hong Kong and Taiwan. There was a slight increase of creators doing original work in Singapore, but before that there really was not a lot of stuff being produced (though there were ample newspaper strips).” That is, in comparison with another Asian comics pro3

Above: Mary near the Binder home, at 467 Voorhees Street, in Englewood, New Jersey.

Courtesy of Michael Turek.

Above: Sonny Liew’s first professional sale as cartoonist was to the Singapore daily, The New Paper, a daily newspaper strip called Frankie & Poo, which featured Mary Shelly’s man-made monster and a giant honey bear chatting about this and that. Inset bottom right: Sonny excelled at painting while attending the Rhode Island School of Design between 1998 and 2001. Below: Self-caricature by Sonny featured in The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye.

Next page: At top right are examples of Sonny’s irregular series from the ’00s, Malinky Robot, which was more recently compiled by Image with 2011’s Malinky Robot: Collected Stories and Other Bits. At bottom are Marc Hempel’s covers for the 2004 title My Faith in Frankie, the Vertigo mini-series that first exposed the U.S. audience to Sonny Liew’s comic book material. The editorial office determined Sonny’s inks were not quite polished enough and they enlisted cartoonist Marc Hempel as delineator of the four-issue run.

ducing country. “The closest to Singapore would probably be Hong Kong,” he says, “because the numbers suggest that Hong Kong had a similar population size after the war, but they came to have a much more active comics industry.

Some speculate that this was because the Chinese who moved to Hong Kong tended to be from the cultural elite, whereas Singapore saw an influx of mostly working-class laborers who were much less likely to be empowered to pursue artistic endeavors.”

Mostly, the comics available to local readers were imported. “Looking back,” Sonny says, “I’ve been told that there were people doing woodcut single-panel cartoons in Singapore and those tended to be political. They were usually left-leaning and pro-independence. Chinese papers had comics, but these were mostly one- and four-panel strips, so no long-form stuff at all until, I think, at least the ’80s.”

As for the future graphic novelist, it was a popular British weekly title which fostered his interest in comics. “I first discovered 2000 AD in my middle or late teens,” Sonny explains. “It was different from everything else I’d read.

I used to read all that Beano stuff and then Marvel, Little Archie, and Richie Rich. 2000 AD had, of course, attracted all these amazing British talents. Alan Moore had already moved on to the U.S. market, but others like Simon Bisley were just starting out. So the fact that you could read five stories every week each drawn in their own unique styles made me start to realize the stylistic range that was possible in comics writing and art. Anything was possible! That was probably when I first started thinking about wanting to draw comics, but it wasn’t until I did my first paid work that I really started thinking I might want to make a career out of it.”

That first professional sale was a daily strip sold to Singapore tabloid The New Paper, “Frankie & Poo” — “‘Frankie’ for Frankenstein and ‘Pooh’ the bear without the ‘h,’” explains Sonny — which ran for a year (earning him $30 a day in Singapore dollars) and featured, he says, “Two friends who would talk about politics and culture, and all that nonsense.” Around that time, Sonny was studying philosophy as an undergraduate at Clare College, in Cambridge University, for three years, and “Frankie & Poo” was conceived during one summer break.

“Just to be doing comics and getting paid for it was so exciting to me back then,” he enthuses. “I couldn’t believe that someone would pay me to draw my own stories.

And once I did it I was hooked, and I was determined to do something art related. But I had no clue about how to become an artist and have a career in the arts.”

was feeling stuck and, at his sister’s urging, attended the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design as an illustration major. “RISD was amazing for me. The idea of being able to go away to school to just draw and paint, to get away with doing that for a couple of years seemed to me to be just so amazing.” In Providence, fortified with a steady diet of Coca-Cola and Twizzlers, Sonny learned color theory and painting, the latter with which, he relates, “I was exploring my interests in manga, anime, Sanrio’s Hello Kitty, robots, and things like that.” Most importantly, he pursued an abiding interest in comics storytelling under the tutelage of one of the form’s finest practitioners, instructor David Mazzucchelli, renowned Daredevil and Batman: Year One artist and author of the regarded graphic novel Asterios Polyp.

“Mazzucchelli was really the first person I had ever met who knew the comics industry very well,” Sonny says, “and he gave me advice on how to become a comic book artist.”

To this day, the Rhode Island-born artist (currently teaching at the School of Visual Arts) remains Sonny’s advisor and sounding board. Of Mazzucchelli’s teaching approach, Sonny explains, “The way he taught us was, ‘You do what you want and I’ll tell you what I feel about it and give you guidance.’ He won’t tell you what to do. It’s not like, if you’re

All © Sonny Liew.

Mentor Mazzucchelli

While his strip was collected as Frankie & Poo: What is Love: Incomplete & Abridged [1996], the young cartoonist 4

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Malinky Robot TM & © Sonny Liew. My Faith in Frankie ©2004 Mike Carey & Sonny Liew.

going to, the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning, where I’m guessing, you kind of learn a style and you learn a way of storytelling.”

For an online article, Sonny also told RISD’s Robert Albanese about what he learned from his mentor: “Before I came to RISD, my work was more linear, more mainstream. The way he explained the language of comics helped me conceive of new ways to tell stories.”

In 2001, upon producing a comic book as his senior project, Sonny graduated from RISD and was determined to break into the comics business. “Mazzucchelli sent me off to San Diego Comic-Con to show my portfolio,” he says, “which was where I got my first assignment, from Marvel — a two-page Iron Man story called ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ [Marvel Universe: Millennial Visions #1 (Feb. ’02)]. Though I didn’t know who he was at the time, I had gone up to Chris Claremont and first showed him my portfolio, which he liked, and that’s what got me that job at Marvel.”

A regular assignment proved elusive, though the young artist did have a shot at procuring one of the ’00s biggest hits. “Mazzucchelli told me that my art was a bit alternative,” Sonny recalls, “so I sent my portfolio to Vertigo, and they sent me back a script to do a pencil test, a two-page assignment. The results weren’t very good — I thought I was ready to break into the professional industry, but there was still a lot for me to learn. The test was for a new book called Fables, which turned out to be a successful book for DC and I’ve always thought about it and wondered, if only I had done Fables… but I just wasn’t ready back then.”

In 2002, Sonny received a Xeric Foundation grant to produce Malinky Robot: Stinky Fish Blues, the first of the Malinky Fish story series that the Comic Book Resources website says, “[B]lends dystopic sci-fi and indie sensibilities into a uniquely oddball world, where street urchins Atari and Oliver scrounge, steal bicycles, and watch giant robot movies.” Sonny says, “The stories of Malinky Robot have always been the ones that I feel most personally connected with, from their rhythms and structure, to the character and architectural designs.” (In 2011, Image Comics published Malinky Robot: Collected Stories and Other

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

Bits, which includes episodes originally appearing in a Slave Labor one-shot (Bicycle [Dec. ’05] and the Image/Random House comics anthology Flight .)

Breaking In

Sonny remained in the States long enough to get a job with the Boston area video game company Turbine, where he produced character designs. “At that point,” he remembers, “Vertigo came back and offered me a mini-series,

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Above: Not widely known is the fact that Sonny Liew auditioned to be artist on the Bill Willingham-written series Fables, a title that was a bona fide hit for Vertigo. Here are Sonny’s tryout pages and the cover of Fables #1. Inset right: Cover for Sonny’ and writer Tommy Kovac’s Wonderland collection.

Below: Cover of Re-Gifters, a manga-esque graphic novel.

Breakout

Though he was finding work and much as he yearned for it, breakout success just wasn’t in the cards at the time.

“Making comics isn’t an easy career path, by any stretch of the imagination,” Sonny admits. “I’ve wondered about its financial viability, and I’d hoped every book I did would be the really big break. But it’s turned out to be much more of a gradual process, rather than a big bang. There are so many factors involved in how well a particular book does, or how much work you get from the Big Two… there’s hard work and talent, but also always an element of luck: being at the right place at the right time or doing a book that happens to capture the zeitgeist.”

Luck came in the form of a fellow cartoonist of Asian heritage as well as in the guise of a Golden Age super-hero.

“The Shadow Hero [2014] was a pretty big stepping stone,” Sonny says. “Gene Luen Yang (who had success with his graphic novel, American Born Chinese) and I had done a short story together for Shattered: The Asian American #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All TM & © the respective copyright holders.

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because they didn’t think I was ready for an on-going series but felt they could take the risk with a four-issue mini-series. It was called My Faith in Frankie, about a girl with a personal god.” At first, the artist believed he could handle the double workload. “For a month or two,” he says, “I thought that maybe I could juggle working days at Turbine and doing comic pages for Vertigo when I came home at night. But that was impossible. To finish a page in time, sometimes I would have to work for 10 hours, and Turbine was a full-time job and the bus ride to and from work was two hours each way. So I was faced with the choice of getting a work visa by sticking with the Turbine job or heading back to Singapore to work on the Vertigo mini-series. For better or worse, I chose comics. I went home to Singapore to work on My Faith in Frankie [#1 (Mar. ’04)–#4 (June ’04)].”

Though his effort on Frankie was charmingly distinctive and eminently original, his development as a comic book artist remained a work in progress. “I wasn’t quite ready to produce complete art,” Sonny explains. “I was supposed to do the pencils and inks for the story, and after I sent in my first issue, my editor, Shelly Bond, called and said, ‘It looks pretty good, but we need an inker to go over your pencils.’ So Marc Hempel ended up doing inks over my pencils… which kind of explains why all of my early comics were always in pencils… I didn’t quite know how to ink at that point, so I found a way to make my pencil art polished enough by scanning the pages and using various digital tools to give them a distinctive look.”

Around this period, Sonny was pitched work by Top Shelf. “I was offered to draw The Surrogates and I turned it down because I didn’t quite connect with the script. It had an intriguing premise but didn’t quite play out the right way to me. It was like Blade Runner but not as good. The Surrogates later became a movie starring Bruce Willis, which I feel okay about partly because it didn’t do too well at the box office. Instead I did a mini-series with Slave Labor Graphics called Wonderland [#1–6 (May ’06–Apr. ’08), eventually collected by Disney Press], a sequel to Alice in Wonderland, and it’s about Mary Ann, a girl who is

mentioned but never shown in the original. Tommy Kovac wrote the story.” The artist adds, “Wonderland was really interesting because I got to try out different color palettes throughout the story.” The book earned Sonny a 2007 Eisner Award nomination for “Best Penciler/Inker.”

In a push to grab the manga-loving teenage girl market, DC Comics created the Minx imprint, a line of six digestsize, black-&-white books, which saw Sonny reuniting with his My Faith in Frankie collaborators, writer Mike Carey and inker Marc Hempel, and produced Re-Gifters [June ’07].

About the 174-page book, Sonny confesses, “They told us to draw these comics in half-size, so for every two pages we drew, we’d get less for them then we would for two normal sized pages. Even though it wasn’t the best deal, it seemed like an exciting venture to get in early and take advantage, so if the imprint hit it big, we’d be in a good position. Unfortunately Minx didn’t do quite as well as anyone hoped.

Looking back, it was probably due to a combination of factors, such as the books being individual volumes rather than the multi-volume sets you would have in manga.”

The artist found better success by adapting (of all things) an early 19th century book by a celebrated British novelist. “Marvel assigned to me a Jane Austen adaptation.

Doing the art for Sense and Sensibility was an interesting project because the job was to distill a prose novel into a readable comic, which was quite a challenge. For Pride and Prejudice, for which I did a few covers, they wanted a teenage magazine look to the covers.” Editor Nathan Cosby then tapped Sonny to draw a story starring the publisher’s flagship character, “Nightmare Commute” [Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #50, June 2009], written by Roger Langridge. “I like playing with forms,” Sonny explains, “and, in the last page, I wanted to make it look like an original art scanned in, and I found an old drawing and gave it an aged look through Photoshop.

The ending is, of course, a nod to Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland.”

Sonny also initiated the comics anthology Liquid City, which showcased comics creators from Southeast Asia. Published by Image, all three volumes of the trade paperback collections — the second was nominated for a 2011 Eisner Award for “Best Anthology” — were edited by Sonny, who also contributed stories.

The Shadow Hero TM & © Gene Luen Yang & Sonny Liew. Warm Days, Deathless Nights © Sonny Liew. Doctor Fate TM & © DC Comics

Comics Anthology [2012], and we’d enjoyed our collaboration. So when he asked me to come on board for his new project, it was not a difficult decision.”

Gene’s project was a re-visiting of an obscure World War II era comics character, The Green Turtle, a super-hero who, along with sidekick Burma Boy, battled nefarious agents of Imperial Japan. Headlining five issues of publisher Rural House’s Blazing Comics, the adventurer was created by one of the first Asian American comic book artists, Chu Hing. In the original run, readers never quite learned the character’s backstory, Sonny shares. “The Green Turtle would turn to his friend, Burma Boy, to begin explaining his origin, but he would always be interrupted and have to run off to save the world. So we never found out what made him The Green Turtle. Gene thought it would be interesting to fill in that gap, to give an account of the Green Turtle’s origins while exploring Asian American identity issues.”

It has been rumored that the racial identity of The Green Turtle was deliberately kept vague by his creator, who likely envisioned him as Chinese. “In the original 1940s series,” Sonny say, “the publisher wanted The Green Turtle to be white (a problem we still have ongoing in Hollywood), so Chu Hing, who was resistant to the idea, would rarely draw the character from the front and, when he did, he’d depict the scene so we couldn’t see the super-hero’s face.

The artist’s idea was that if you couldn’t see his face, you wouldn’t know for sure if he was or wasn’t Chinese.” The artist adds with a chuckle, “His skin was colored pink, so, in The Shadow Hero, Gene found a way to explain it, such as if it rains, his skin turns pink.”

Of personal interest to the artist was the Asian angle to The Shadow Hero. “Growing up in Singapore,” Sonny says, “I was part of the Chinese majority. So, for the most part, I never had to think very much about what racism meant — it’s much easier to be oblivious of how skewed the institutions around you are when you’re benefiting from them.

So it was a bit of a jolt to be on the other side of the fence during my time in the U.K. and U.S. I remember some kids just driving by in Rhode Island shouting, “Chinky chong!” Or being told to go back to my country by random strangers in

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

the U.K. So getting to work with Gene on a story that addressed some of these issues was definitely something I was keen to do.”

The Shadow Hero was well-received, with Kirkus Reviews calling the book “an entertaining and intelligent response to classic super-hero stories,” as well as opining, “Yang’s funny and perceptive script offers clever riffs on familiar tropes and explores themes of identity, heroism and belonging… Liew’s playful illustrations, especially his characters’ cartoonishly exaggerated expressions, complement the story’s humor.”

Breakthrough

In the last couple of years, mainstream comics publishers have striven to infuse their lines with racially and culturally diverse characters, more reflective perhaps of an increasingly varied readership, and the House of Superman hoped to spearhead the move with their “DC You” initiative.

Among those 2015 titles was a rebooting of the mystical super-hero Doctor Fate, this version being a first generation American medical student of Egyptian heritage named Khalid Nassour.

Written by a former president of DC Comics, the art assignment was a serendipitous one for Sonny. “The Shadow Hero led to Doctor Fate,” he shares, “I had first met Paul Levitz at the 2011 Singapore Toy, Game & Comic Convention and afterward we’d kept in touch off and on. And I think that when he saw The Shadow Hero, he realized that my style could work on a super-hero story, so he recommended me to DC, who liked the work enough too to ask me on board.”

Sonny adds, “Without a face-to-face meeting, Paul might not have remembered me.”

Of working with his creative partner on Doctor Fate, Paul said in a Newsarama interview, “Sonny is wonderful.

He’s a smart, talented artist, and an excellent writer on his own projects. Knowing his strengths (or some of them, at least), I can throw him visual situations and leave it open to his collaboration. He’s been massively effective on helping humanize the characters with his sense of expression and acting, and in several cases he’s re-carved the panels to give himself the best canvas to do that.”

When asked the difference between writing his own material and working in collaboration, Sonny admits, “You’re definitely more engaged working on your own material. It’s just a natural thing, as we all have our own interests and priorities. Working off a script is, in some ways, easier… though, of course, since you’re only dealing with the visual breakdown and can leave the bulk of the storytelling issues like story structure and scene turns to the writer. And working on Doctor Fate has also been a real

Above: Blazing Comics #3 cover and detail from The Shadow Hero. Inset left: Sonny Liew’s cover art for Doctor Fate #12.

Below: His cover for Warm Nights, Deathless Days: The Life of Georgette Chan.

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This page and next: Besides being a riveting account of the modern political history of Singapore juxtaposed with a fictional history of the island city-state’s comics industry, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye is rife with cartoonist Sonny Liew’s amazingly spot-on pastiches, whether the U.K.’s Eagle comics weekly, Jack Rickard’s MAD stories, Harvey Kurtzman’s E.C. war comics, or Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns.

learning experience, in terms of getting advice from Paul, as well as figuring out ways of making monthly deadlines.”

Of particular note are Sonny’s effective covers for the series (from which he has recently moved on after completing art chores on 13 of 16 issues), about which he says, “For the Doctor Fate covers, they let me do what I want to do.

Number seven’s cover is based on Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.” Indeed, the artist produced paintings for a number of covers.

In 2014, Sonny wrote and drew Warm Nights, Deathless Days: The Life of Georgette Chen, an acclaimed luminary and fellow citizen. “It is about a Singapore artist from the 1950s and ’60s,” Sonny reveals. “The National Gallery in Singapore asked me to do a 48-page book on one artist and I chose her because I had seen her self-portrait in the library many years ago and that painting really struck me for some reason.” The creator was subsequently determined to keep focused on the homeland for his next major project, his most ambitious yet.

Magnum Opus

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“An understanding of comics’ history [requires] an understanding of [their] general historical contexts — the connection between the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s and Robert Crumb’s comics, for example, or the success in the U.S. of various genres as a result of the nation’s moods during and after World War II,” he says.

He describes the popularity of horror and crime comics in the 1940s and 1950s — arguably part of the same trend that saw the golden age of film noir. “The Second World War and its aftermath brought out the kinds of fears and anxieties that helped these darker, more realistically violent genres thrive,” he explains. “I thought it might be possible to turn that idea on its head and construct a narrative that examined Singapore’s history, but which on the surface was a book about comics.”

The People’s Action Party (PAP) has been in power since Singapore cleaved from Malaysia in 1965 and is a wholly dominant political force, which has allowed the party to control the historical narrative, he says. “The book was a chance for me to learn what was left out or could be understood differently — to look for a more inclusive version of Singapore’s history.”

For his American interviewer, Sonny offered a comparison: “Imagine if, in the U.S., the House of Representatives and the Senate had been controlled by one party over the last half-century, occupying 90% of the seats. This is an indication of the power the PAP has had over Singapore.

That is an integral component of the book because what I am exploring is really the history of Singapore itself and because the PAP has been in charge for so long, they have been able to tell their own version of that history. Growing up, I had an inkling there were things the official narrative was leaving out, but it was only when I started doing research for the book that all the different sides of the story #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye © Sonny Liew.

“I’ve always been interested in exploring political and historical issues through comics,” Sonny reveals. “Frankie & Poo was often overtly political and it was something I’d return to now and again, in between the work I did in collaborations with other writers.” That interest resulted in the 320-page graphic novel and recipient of the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, an amazing volume years in the making.

He continues, “Charlie Chan represented something on a whole different scale though, and was a moonshot of sorts for me, in the sense that there were certain kinds of book I wanted to draw and write, but hadn’t quite found a commercially viable means of pursuing. So, although the initial advance of $8,000 wasn’t going to cover much over two-and-a-half years of work on the book, I had a sense that it was something I had to try — and hope that the book would find enough of an audience and reception that I’d be in a better place afterwards to make more books of a similar kind.”

About the book’s concept, the cartoonist shares, “The whole idea was to tell the history of Singapore through a

history of comics, both real and fictional. So that notion came pretty early on. Teasing out who to focus on came as it was developing.” The idea was sparked when Sonny was reading Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels, Roger Sabin’s 1996 cultural history of the form. The artist told the Southeast Asia Globe:

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye © Sonny Liew.

Left: Sonny Liew includes a charming homage to legendary cartoonist Walt Kelly’s classic newspaper comic strip Pogo with his Bukit Chapalang.

Previous page and below: Two portraits of Singapore’s “greatest comics artist,” Charlie Chan.

became a lot clearer.”

Rather than a treatise told in comics form, the graphic novelist melded a pseudo history of comics into the book.

“I had been reading books of comics history — of the U.S., France, and Japan,” he says, “and what I realized was that to understand the history of a nation’s comics, you had to understand the history of the nation where they came from.

For instance, with Robert Crumb, to understand him you have to understand what the 1960s were about in the United States. So I decided to flip that around and tell the history of Singapore through a fictional history of their comics. I realized that was possible because we don’t really have a strong comics industry in Singapore, at least compared to the U.S.A., Japan, or France, and that vacuum allowed me to create this fictional history in which to tell the real story of my country.”

Innovatively, Sonny detailed that account in part by appropriating innumerable comic book styles. He says, “I wanted to create enough to suggest an entire body of work of a fictional comics artist, everything from paintings to comic strips and long-form graphic novels. The idea was to create stories that could be read as stand-alone pieces, but, when put together, would also offer another overarching narrative.”

The book was as much a learning experience for the writer/artist as anything else. “I like reading books and I like the smell of the paper and the way it feels,” Sonny confides, “especially old comics that I had from childhood. So I COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

wanted to capture that feeling in the book, to capture the texture and colors of old comics. I also felt that learning the history of comics was a part of the job. You hear about [star professional basketball player] Kobe Bryant watching old tapes of games of the ’70s and ’80s to understand how the game is played. So, I think whatever it is you do, learning the history and knowing where others before have gone will help give you a better sense of the lay of the land and give you a better chance of breaking new ground.”

The creator’s sense of mission extended to giving focus to the largely forgotten opposition leader Lim Chin Siong. ”I had to dig up information on Lim,” Sonny says. “He appears in the history books in maybe one chapter, one photo of him and his friend, Fong Swee Suan. There’s still a very vocal group in recent years, a minority pushing revisionist (what I call inclusive) history that talks about what the left wing were doing and how they’ve become semi-erased from history. And I was struck by just how little I knew about Lim relative to how well regarded he was back in the day. The influence he had in the ’50s and ’60s, compared with our general memory of him in Singapore these days, is quite stark.” Referring to rivals Lee Kuan Yew and Lim Chin Siong, Sonny adds, “That’s why I came to see that it could be possible to do a story with the two of them as contrasting opposites.”

“I’d never done a book this long before,” he continues.

“At most, I’d done about ten to twenty pages. So, for me to do a 320-page book was a real learning experience. I had 9

Above: Jack “King” Kirby and Carol Tyler, among others, make an appearance in the faux San Diego Comic-Con sketchbook in Sonny’s Charlie Chan opus.

Below: Sonny has recently devoted his efforts to a monthlong celebration of comics in Singapore, hosted by the National Library. Bottom: NPR called Charlie Chan “probably the greatest work of art ever produced in Singapore.” As is fitting, the cartoonist receives his rightful share of publicity in the region, including a Southeast Asia Globe feature article.

Postscript

While The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye continues to sell in the U.S. as well as in Singapore, Sonny Liew is contemplating his next move. As for mainstream comics, he muses, “Ideally, if Marvel or DC would allow me to do my own take on one of their characters, that would be very interesting. I remember reading a take

by James Sturm on the Fantastic Four a while back set during the Cold War. It was called Unstable Molecules, with art by Guy Davis and Robert Sikoryak.

I’d love to be able to try out something along those lines, where you didn’t have to worry as much about continuity and consistency with the rest of the super-hero universe, and just let the story take you where it needs to go.”

Having now made an impact in the separate worlds of graphic novels and mainstream comics, where would the artist feel most comfortable? “It partly depends on the kinds of offers I get for different projects,” he says. “It’s still a question of balancing the personal and commercial, which, I guess, is the challenge the vast majority of artists will always face.”Ultimately, the cartoonist would prefer to produce more efforts like Charlie Chan. “I’d dearly like to work on more books like this one in the long term… I have a rough idea #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye © Sonny Liew.

10

to go read books on screenplay writing and about writing in general — about the arc of a story and how to break it down into three acts.”

Besides relying on savings and the occasional commercial job, what kept Sonny fed and sheltered while creating his magnum opus during the period was a $9,000 (SGD) advance from his publisher, which included a $8,000 (SGD) grant from Singapore’s National Arts Council. “I think that was given because I hadn’t done any political stuff in a long time,” he surmises. “When I started as cartoonist, I was very political but in between — with the Marvel work and other stuff that was about robots and science-fiction — my material wasn’t controversial. When they saw my application, they must have thought, ‘Oh, that Sonny Liew just does robots and cute characters,’ so they probably gave me a grant without looking at it too closely.”

In a stunning development, the National Arts Council revoked the grant and demanded the return of the funds from Sonny. The Economist reported, “[The] NAC director explained, the book ‘potentially undermines the authority

or legitimacy of the Singapore government.’ The book does not shy away from controversial periods in the nation’s history.” The Straits Times quoted a NAC source as criticizing Charlie Chan for its “sensitive content, depicted in visuals and text, [which] did not meet our funding conditions.” The author was momentarily crestfallen. “There was initial concern for the publisher, who’d factored in the publishing grant in their financial planning for the book,” he says. “But, once the news broke, we got a lot of attention on social media, and there was huge turnout for the book launch at the Kinokuniya book store — hundreds of people showed up, as opposed to the usual twenty or thirty, and the book’s first print run sold out in about a week.”

Also gratifying were the accolades bestowed upon his book once the book was published in the U.S., by Pantheon, this past spring. The Economist called the book “brilliantly inventive,” as well as “a touching, thoughtful meditation on Singapore’s relentless progress.” NPR Fresh Air critic John Powers gushed that Charlie Chan is “a startlingly brilliant tour de force,” “dizzyingly meta and deeply heartfelt,” featuring “dazzling virtuosity” and “It’s a Valentine to cartooning, to old buildings and street food, to heroes written out of official history, to ordinary people trying to make a better life.” Powers goes on to call it “probably the greatest work of art ever produced in Singapore.”

Asked if he is pleased with the final result, Sonny opines, “Well, I remember having completed the first 50 or so pages of the book and having a sure sense that it was working as a narrative,” Sonny answers, “and that if the I could sustain it for another couple of hundred pages, I’d be really be on to something. Still, there were subsequent passages in the book that were a lot harder to get right — the ending, in particular, I sweated over quite a bit. I relied upon sending drafts to folks I trusted like David [Mazzucchelli] to get a sense of their reactions.”

His former mentor also championed the book with other cartoonists. “David has been really generous with him time and support for the book,” Sonny explains. “He helped bring the book to Pantheon’s attention, and was telling everyone to check it out during MOCCA.”

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye © Sonny Liew. Stranger Things © Netflix Studios, LLC.

for my next project. I tell people that it’s a story set in 1980s Hong Kong and it deals with the problems of capitalism…

It’s kind of vague right now. I don’t really have a clear handle on how I’m going to exactly tell the story… and another idea is actually a sort of semi-sequel to Charlie Chan where you look at the ‘80s through real comic artists. It’s hard, because most of them are kind of retired. I’m not sure how keen they are to get back to those old days.”

One interim project has been Sonny’s co-curation of the recent month-long Speech Bubble event, which celebrated Singapore’s comics history, hosted by the National Library.

“It’s true that the comics industry here isn’t as developed as the ones in the United States or Japan,” Sonny told The Straits Times regarding the exhibition that took place in September, “but there’s still a rich history here that I don’t think has ever been brought together in a serious way.”

The artist continued, “If nothing else, I hope the audience will learn that comics are more than American super-hero comics or Japanese manga. They can also be everyday and exciting stories created by Singapore artists.”

The prologue of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye ends with the titular character professing, chin high and splayed hand to chest, “Maybe I was always destined to become Singapore’s greatest comics artist.” Audaciously, this writer asked Sonny Liew if he might hope to one day make such a claim. ”I don’t know,” the artist says in his typically self-effacing demeanor. “I’ve been called, ‘arguably the most illustrious.’ I’m not sure what that means — ‘Arguably the most illustrious comic artist from Singapore’ — whatever that means.” Sonny laughs. “I think when people say these things they always have to put a caveat in front: ‘arguably.’

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

I can never argue it comprehensively and I’ve learned that there are alaways other people doing interesting stuff.

There’s a guy called Troy Chin, who has done The Resident Tourist books. Gary Choo is doing great covers for Marvel.

Depends on how you look at it, but I like to think that I’m doing something that might influence future creators in Singapore. That they might see that it is possible to somehow make comics as a viable career. Maybe, I don’t know… we won’t see until another five or ten years from now.”

Above: For fun, Sonny recently created a handful of Stranger Things comic strips, as homage to the hit Netflix series from this past summer. This example features the “mom” character, Joyce Byers (played by Winona Ryder) attempts to converse with son Will through various modes of communication.

11

incoming

Kudos, Comments on Kane LOCs on CBC #11’s exhaustive biography on the artist formally known as Eli Katz Write to CBC: jonbcooke@ aol.com or P. O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892

[By Crom! Just after yours truly’s endless whining about not receiving much in the way of reader response, the palatial offices of CBC were awash in missives about our Gil Kane biography in #11! Thanks to all who wrote and now on to those letters… — Ye Crusading Editor]

Gary Brown

Below: Reader Gary Brown (who contributed to Ye Ed’s old magazine, Comic Book Artist, back in the day) tells us he vividly recalls picking up Western Comics #77 [Oct. ’59], which debuted “Matt Savage, Trail Boss,” and introduced Brown to the artistry of Mr. Gil Kane.

Geoff Grogan Congratulations and thanks for CBC #11 focusing on Gil Kane. Exhaustive and informative, your article enriches a fan’s appreciation of his work — work that I’ve greatly admired since I first encountered it on one or two post-Ditko issues of The Hawk and the Dove back in the ’60s. Kane was one of those artists who I’d buy any book [he drew], no matter what the characters… obviously, that still holds true today.

To me, Kane was the natural heir of Burne Hogarth, and so it made sense he would work on the Tarzan strip. Yet, in my mind, his best work was on another half-naked barbarian, Conan — specifically, Conan the King of the “Hour of the Dragon” adaptation realized in Giant-Size Conan the Barbarian #1–4. As a fan-those four issues drawn by Gil (and rapturously inked by Tom Sutton), they remain one of my greatest comics joys of that or any era. One of my greatest disappointments was that Kane never had the opportunity to finish it the way it should have been finished. It could’ve been his magnum opus — the great graphic novel (pulp-based for sure) he’d been striving for.

If I had any disappointment in CBC #11, it was in the omission of that body of work in this otherwise engaging and comprehensive discussion. I’m betting you’re as much a fan of those books as I and I would’ve liked to have heard any backstory you might be privy, as well as your own thoughts on the work. That said, thanks so much for your hard work on what was obviously a labor of love. The love shows through every page.

Richard Arndt Just finished the first draft of your Gil Kane book, a.k.a. CBC #11, and it’s great stuff! Very thorough and well-written. I hope you do get a book contract for this. Abrams, who did such a nice job with The Art of the Simon and Kirby Studio, would be a place to start looking, I think, particularly if you can arrange with the Kane estate to print the entire Jason Drum material as a centerpiece for the book itself. Gil Kane’s history and that story together would make a hell of a book! #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Everything But the Kitchen Sink TM & © 2016 Denis Kitchen. Man-Thing and related characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Finally finished digesting CBC #11 and it was good reading all around. The Herb Trimpe remembrance was excellent.

Always liked his Hulk and Godzilla books. His style was rather simple, but he was a born storyteller.

I was especially interested in the Gil Kane portion of the issue, being a Gil Kane fan from back in the 1950s. It’s funny how, as a young reader, I quickly began to pick out certain artists I enjoyed. Curt Swan, Dick Sprang, Wayne Boring, Jack Kirby, and, of course, Gil Kane. His work on Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, Rex the Wonder Dog, and the DC Western comics always intrigued me. Then, of course, I later became a bigger fan when he drew Green Lantern, The Atom, and a long string of various super-hero titles and other comics.

To this day, I remember coming across Western Comics #77 [Oct. 1959], with a Kane cover and the introduction of “Matt Savage, Trail Boss.” Matt Savage looked just like John Wayne. Matt continued to look like Wayne under Gil’s pencil through to the end of the series, with #85 [Feb. ’61]. I didn’t realize until years later than he also drew some John Wayne comic book stories earlier in his career. Possibly a double nod to the popular movie star.

The photo of the 1969 Comic Art Convention banquet in New York City brings back memories. I have that identical photo, which Bill Schelly used for his first Comics Fandom book. Hal Foster (sitting to Gil’s left in the photo) was the special guest of honor at the convention and Gil introduced him with a short, but I thought, brilliant speech.

Just prior to the banquet, I was standing next to the elevator that went up to the banquet room. When they said we could go up, I was the first on. Some convention folks brought Gil and Hal to the elevator and would not let anyone else on. I got to ride up with these two great artists. I know I mumbled something to Hal Foster and he signed a Prince Valiant book I had brought. I also mumbled something equally incoherent to Gil. Many years later, I was at Orlando Con with friends Alan Hutchinson and Rick

Davidson. We were walking around the artists’ room, trying to avoid the long lines for the new Image artists, when one of us spotted a man sitting all alone. “That’s Gil Kane.” We looked at each other and went over. He was sketching something and we introduced ourselves. Rick had a history of DC book we had been getting all the DC editors, artists, and writers to sign over the years and needed Kane’s signature. A few years earlier, at a previous Orlando Con, I bought a full page of Rex the Wonder Dog that Kane had penciled and inked for [Who’s Who in the DC Universe].

Gil smiled and looked at the page before signing it and shook his head. “I loved that pen I inked this with. I wish I could find another just like it,” he said. I told him I loved the Rex series and he said he did, too.

I’ll never forget that scene of one of the greatest comic book artists sitting ignored and all alone, while hundreds of fans buzzed around new “hot” artists who couldn’t carry his briefcase. It was sad, but I hope our fawning over his work for the twenty to thirty minutes we talked to him was a plus.

Bud Plant I thought I would share my raves about your Gil Kane piece, just added this to my already-full issue description: I can’t recommend the Comic Book Creator article enough. I’m really enjoying it. Editor Jon Cooke pulled out all the stops with quotes from other artists and insider information. It’s like a book-length and book-quality biography—in a $8.95 magazine!

[Yowza! Thanks, Bud! Mr. Plant gave CBC #11 his infrequently bestowed “Highest Recommendation” rating. Very grateful for your support over the years! Next up, onetime Kane assistant and top-notch comics creator makes reference to a footnote about Kane’s boyhood address.— Y.E.]

Howard V. Chaykin Very nice job with the book. For the record, never Gilbert.

And I got the “420 Saratoga Ave.” from Gil himself.

Richard Corben I received the finished book and it looks great! A very thorough job.

Bill Schelly Not that there aren’t other things of interest in the latest Comic Book Creator, but the issue will doubtless be remembered for your sterling biography of Gil Kane. Very informative, historically accurate, balanced and perceptive — in short, just an excellent job! In fact, it really ought to be expanded and published in book form some day.

Congratulations! Well done!

Wrightson strip © Bernie Wrightson. Batman, Superman TM & © DC Comics. MLJ characters TM & © Archie Comics Publications, Inc.

Arlen Schumer Hey, just got the Kane issue of CBC; you did an unbelievably great job on this! Your blood, sweat, and tears of joy drip from every page, down to the beautiful coda about the vertical book idea! Great idea. Do it!

And, of course, I was honored to be quoted at the end, there, from the Kane intro in my Silver Age book!

Bravo, Jon; Kane would be indeed proud of you, “m’boy!”

Allen Smith I just finished the very fine article on Gil Kane in this issue, and was touched by it. It’s a thorough, well done (well, except for the occasional typo!) examination of the man and the work. I will keep this issue as a reference tool and remembrance of one of the greatest comics artists of all time.

The article, more like a book, really, covers a lot of history and gives us Gil’s background, personal history, and approach to his art. I can give no higher praise than to say, again, well done!

Jean-Daniel Brèque Many, many thanks for CBC COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

#11. What with The Comics Journal interviews, the books

by Daniel Herman, and such, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about Gil Kane, but you proved me wrong.

You did a wonderful job, and brought to life one of my favorite artists and entrepreneurs.

You say you wanted to produce a book about him, and I consider this issue as a rough draft. Please do write the book, with the insight you demonstrated here, plus more testimonies, more examples of Kane’s genius — the works.

And I agree with you: “The Valley of the Worm” is one of his (many) masterpieces. I still cling to my battered copy of Supernatural Thrillers (and I liked Ernie Chan [Chua]’s inking).

The Robert Browning quote was icing on the cake. In my (modest) creative endeavors, Gil Kane has always been, and will always be, a beacon. Once again, many thanks.

Hugh Surratt I’ve been away for a week and a half, but amongst the bills and junk mail in my box when I got home last night was your Gil Kane CBC. I’m excited to dig into it! It’s massive!

By the way, I really enjoyed your Warp magnum opus. It brought back memories of when I was doing the concerts at Michigan State in the ’70s. Things were just so much…looser… back then.

Really good stuff.

Above: As mentioned in the “One Last Thing” postscript in CBC #11, Ye Ed’s neighbors, the Southwick boys, would, back in the day, tease yours truly about my advocacy for the outstanding art of one Mr. Gil Kane. They would disparage the great artist’s predilection to draw “up the nostrils” closeups during his early ’70s heyday. Though, by the mid-’70s, Gil would abandon that admittingly over-used trope soon enough, the lads still won’t put their mocking to rest apparently, as evidenced by this photo of (from left) Gary, Glenn, and David, with all three using Scotch tape to emphasize their Kane-esque noses! Inset left: Reader Geoff Grogan thought omitting any discussion of Gil Kane’s Giant-Size Conan work was a glaring error in CBC #11.

Below: Yours truly is current producing an exhaustive history of R. Crumb’s Weirdo magazine, to be published by Last Gasp Books by year’s end.

Look for it!

Darcy Sullivan I was excited to see the new Comic Book Creator at the TwoMorrows stand at WonderCon. Your careerspanning article is the best ever on Gil Kane, my favorite Silver Age artist.

In the 1970s, when kids and teens like me would talk about our favorite artist, Neal Adams was usually top of the 13

Above: Correspondent Jeremy Radisich shared a scan of his latest acquisition as a collector of Gil Kane comics art, the cover Daredevil #125 [Sept. ’75], boasting inks by Klaus Janson.

Thanks again for an in-depth feature on one of the comic book world’s all-time masters. I admire and am astonished by the work you, John Morrow, and Michael Eury do.

Jeremy Radisich I wanted to drop you a line to tell you how much I enjoy your mag. Not every feature is for me, but I do appreciate the scope and diversity of each issue and I like the mix of Silver/Bronze Age creators who fall right in my wheel-house along with underground/alternative/modern features that might not be my first choice to read about but usually end up being interesting. And I find your design and packaging to be top-notch — slick, colorful, eye-catching — each issue is a pleasure to look at, even before reading the articles.

But what prompted me to write was your amazing Gil Kane issue — I saved it to bring on a family vacation, and during my downtime in Maui I immersed myself in the world of Kane. Kane has long been one of my favorite artists-for me no one beats Kane when it comes to designing an impactful, stop-you-in-your-tracks cover — and I generally was already aware of the basic trajectory of his career, his time split between the various publishers and his special projects like His Name is… Savage. But until I read the article I didn’t really have a true sense of Kane the man: his passion for the form of sequential art, his love of “pulp,” and his unbridled ambition to create the next big thing — with the goal of elevating both the medium of heroic fiction as well as his name and position in the annals of comic book history. While none of those big ideas caught on in a huge way, the fact that he was able to make them happen at all — from Savage to Excalibur to Star Hawks — was fascinating; and that he seemingly immediately got back up every time he was knocked down — maintaining his confident and erudite poise throughout — is downright inspiring.

Reading about his personal life — his childhood upbringing and love of heroic entertainment to his marriages to the recollections of his kids was all so interesting; even the fact that he had gotten a nose job was a revelation, when I think about how he treated noses in his art, and how often he seemed to enjoy drawing himself (which now that I think about it reminds me of the King — though Kirby more often cast himself has a character in his work).

Congrats on pulling together an illuminating and compelling portrait of one of our medium’s giants. Since finishing the issue, I haven’t been able to get Kane out of my head, and you drove me to re-read several of his great Marvel stories. And, boy, did you give me the itch to add some more examples of Kane to my original art collection. Looking forward to hopefully more features like this one in future issues, there are so many comic creators whose work I love who I really don’t know that much about….

Brennert & Thomas on the First Fakers [Yours truly had an email back-and-forth with Alan Brennert, one of our fave comics writers from the late 1970s to early ’80s, and fellow TwoMorrows colleague and Alter Ego editor Roy Thomas, an entertaining correspondence that is informative enough to warrant inclusion here. — Y.E.] Alan Brennert: I haven’t read Keith Hammond’s original letter on this subject [in CBC #9], so I don’t know whether he mentioned this, but I saw Roy’s letter in CBC #11 speculating about the inspiration for the “alien menace” subplot in Watchmen and I can tell you with some certainty that it’s not a radio play — as Roy surmised might have inspired his All-Star Squadron story as well — but a teleplay.

Specifically, “The Architects of Fear” on The Outer Limits from 1963, in which a group of scientists surgically alter one of their own members (played by Robert Culp) into a 14

fake “alien,” along with a fake spaceship, in the hope it will unite humanity. Alan Moore actually acknowledged this inspiration in Watchmen itself, on page 28 of the last issue: in panels one to three, an off-panel announcer on a TV set says, “And now more Christmas excitement with tonight’s return visit to the Outer Limits… in which Robert Culp is physically transformed by... The Architects of Fear!”

It’s possible, of course, that the writer of the episode, Meyer Dolinsky, might have been inspired by that Harvey Kurtzman story in Weird Science #5, but to judge by Alan Moore’s “homage” it would seem “The Architects of Fear” was the more direct inspiration.

Roy Thomas: Thanks. However, I still have to wonder if perhaps the Outer Limits episode you mention was inspired by the radio drama I heard around 1950 or so… because that did exist, and if it wasn’t earlier than Kurtzman’s Weird #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Daredevil TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Cover of the SF novel, The Flying Saucer [1948], by Bernard Newman.

list. Some people preferred Kirby (I did and do), and there were probably even a few votes for Jim Starlin or Steranko. I liked all of them, but Gil Kane was my favorite. Fortunately, Gil was in his prime, and his covers for Marvel showed his amazing sense of composition. (I once wrote a letter to Gary Groth complaining that in his long interviews with Kane he would never actually talk about the art!)

In 1991, I was living in Brentwood, CA (near UCLA, and also where [murder victim] Nicole Simpson lived), and I picked up the local advertising gazette to find an article on Gil Kane—who, it said, lived in Brentwood! I pitched a feature to Comics Scene, for which I had written before (along with The Comics Journal), and they accepted.

I went to Gil Kane’s apartment to interview him, and to my surprise it was about ten minutes’ walk from our apartment. He was the gracious, elegant, talkative person most people describe, and, yes, he did call me “my boy.”

I’ve attached Gil’s article in the Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction. You may have this already — you showed the cover and discussed his participation in your article — but as you didn’t quote it, I wasn’t sure you had the actual article. This was a wow moment for me when I read it. I believe I got it at the first San Diego Comic Con I ever attended, back in 1975. It was one of those odd times when you chance upon a publication you’ve never heard of, and the issue you find just happens to feature one of your passions.

Gil stated the things he says in this article many times, but reading them at the height of his Marvel popularity (and when I was 15) helped me understand his work and Kirby’s much better.

As you’re a fellow Kane fan, I imagine you’ve also had this observation. You can compare any Kane ’70s comic book cover to one by anyone else at Marvel and the latter will almost always fall flat. (I left wiggle room for the real stylists like P. Craig Russell, Windsor-Smith, Steranko, Jim Starlin, and Frank Brunner.) Romita, the Buscemas, Buckler, etc., convey force with straight lines, but Kane twists and curves everything, which brings this incredible sense of dynamism. All the other straight super-hero artists’ work looks simplistic by comparison.

Famous Monsters of Filmland TM & © Philip Kim.

Science #5, it certainly wasn’t much later. So, while your information is very welcome, it, alas, does not answer my question — what was that vintage radio show in which the world’s scientists teamed up to make the world believe it was being invaded, so that its nations would stop fighting amongst themselves and unite against a common foe? Because my story certainly owed nothing at all to Weird Science #5… I doubt if I’d ever read that story, even if it had been reprinted. I bought the old EC reprints, but I didn’t necessarily read them, and I sure don’t remember that one. My inspiration was that radio show…

Alan: Well, this still doesn’t answer your question, but a little Googling turned up a novel from 1948 — The Flying Saucer

by Bernard Newman — about a group of scientists who fake an alien invasion in order to bring about world peace: [Alan included a link to Faking a Martian Invasion at philipcoppens.com/newman.html] The book might have been adapted for radio sometime after this — it would certainly fit the time-frame of when you heard the show — but I haven’t been able to find anything concrete about an adaptation. The novel does predate the Kurtzman story, so maybe he read or was aware of this (apparently it was the first novel about flying saucers, so it had some notoriety). It’s also possible that Meyer Dolinsky was inspired by this (or by a possible radio adaptation). Since everyone involved is dead, we may never know….

Roy: Thanks. This may well be the ultimate source of that radio show. I’ll have

to see if that 1948 novel was ever officially adapted for radio, as happened from time to time. Then again, of course, the radio people could’ve just swiped the basis premise... or it could’ve been a coincidence. But it’s worth checking into. I don’t specifically recall the mention of flying saucers on the radio show… but, of course, the “flying saucer” phenomenon had begun in 1947. Sounds like H.G. and Orson Well(e)s might have been at the root of things….

Alan: Glad it helps. No need to publish the letters — I love this kind of fanboy research. I’ll have to share the info about the Newman book with my pal Dave Schow, who wrote The Outer Limits Companion, he’ll find it fascinating too.

Roy: Fine by me. Sure seems like an adaptation or at least swipe of that 1948 may have been what I heard, just a year or two or three later. Dare I suggest that perhaps Kurtzman read (or at least heard about) that book, as well?

Alan: I do find it ironic, that after all the swipes EC did from published sf stories, that it was one of their SF stories that writer Tom Godwin swiped for his Astounding story, “The Cold Equations” — now a classic reprinted in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and which I adapted 20 years ago for The Twilight Zone without realizing its true origins! What goes round, comes round…

Left inset: The uncredited cover art for Famous Monsters of Filmland #26 [Jan. ’64] features the faux alien invader from The Outer Limits episode “The Architects of Fear,” which originally aired in late September 1963, starring Robert Culp and Leonard Stone.

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#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

#2: MARVEL 1970-77

Era of “Artist as Editor” at National: New NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews, art, and articles with JOE KUBERT, JACK KIRBY, CARMINE INFANTINO, DICK GIORDANO, JOE ORLANDO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ALEX TOTH, JULIE SCHWARTZ, and many more!

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

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

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

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

BERNIE WRIGHTSON cover!

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

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

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

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#10: WALTER SIMONSON

#11: ALEX TOTH AND SHELLY MAYER

#8: ’80s INDEPENDENTS

#9: CHARLTON PART 1

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

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

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

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Interviews with ALEX TOTH, Toth tributes

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

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#12: CHARLTON PART 2

CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983!

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

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#13: MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

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

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

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

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

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

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#18: 1970s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

#19: HARVEY COMICS

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

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

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

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

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#23: MIKE MIGNOLA

#24: NATIONAL LAMPOON COMICS

#25: ALAN MOORE AND KEVIN NOWLAN

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

New MIGNOLA HELLBOY cover!

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

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

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

HUGHES and TOM PALMER flip-covers!

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

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #1

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #2

Previously available only to CBA subscribers!

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

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

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a ghost story

The Trouble with Bob

Though professing to be sole producer of Batman, Bob Kane had much “ghostly” help

by WILL MURRAY

Below: Given Bob Kane’s predilection to sign work that was not made by his hand, it’s unknown whether the Batman co-creator was the true artist behind this painting, a pastiche of the immortal Detective Comics #31 [Sept. 1939] cover.

Whatever the provenance, Kane is credited on this image used as one of a set of five lithograph produced in 1978.

Above: Cover for Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary by Bill Schelly. Published by North Atlantic Books, the biography features a forward by Richard A. Lupoff.

Excerpt from Otto Binder

by Bill Schelly, published by North Atlantic Books, ©2016 Bill Schelly. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Batman, Detective Comics TM & © DC Comics.

18

Bob Kane would have turned 100 on October 24, 2015. A solid century after the self-proclaimed creator of Batman was born, he is remembered today as two entirely different personalities. There is the celebrated Bob Kane who created Batman. Period. Then there is the Bob Kane who co-created Batman with writer Bill Finger, and who early on all but bowed out of drawing his own creation, leaving the task to a small army ghost artists, as well as other writers.

It has been fashionable these days to minimize Bob Kane’s contributions to his own character, and elevate writer Bill Finger to the status of the true creator. Kane himself made self-serving statements during his life that he was the main originator of the Guardian of Gotham City have helped to relegate his seminal role to that of mere observer or enabler status for more talented people.

The truth behind Bob Kane is more complex than that.

Batman began when Detective Comics editor Vincent Sullivan asked Kane for a strip similar to “Superman” in late 1938 or early 1939.

“I was at DC Comics doing fill-ins for an editor named Vincent Sullivan,” recalled Kane. “I was doing slapstick comics, funny drawings like Mutt and Jeff, rather than the illustrative type. Superman was born, and the year of 1938 is historic. The character changed the whole complexion of the comic-book industry at that time. In January 1939, we were speaking and Vince said, ‘Do you think you could come up with another super-hero?” I had shown him sketches of Flash Gordon that I copied. I was a very good copycat. Although I preferred the comic slapstick stuff, I was able to do the illustrative type if I wanted to.

“So, I said, ‘Of course, Vince. How much are they making a week?’ I think they were making $800 apiece and I was making $35 or $40 a week. I said if I can come up with a super-hero and make their kind of money, I sure will! He wasn’t looking for another Superman. He was looking for another super-hero. He said not to copy it, but to emulate it.

I took the figure of Superman and started putting tracings over it. First, I called him Bird-Man. He had bird wings.”

Comic book history might today remember Bob Kane as the creator of an early version of Hawkman, but the artist recalled a film he had seen, The Bat Whispers.

“The story was about a lot of murders in an old mansion,” admitted Kane. “I remember shadowy-like figures on the wall when he was about to kill someone.

They caught up with him in the attic––he wore a costume that looked a little like my early Batman’s, with gloves, a mask, and scalloped wings. He looked like a bat––very ominous.”

Over a weekend, Kane toiled on what he dubbed “The Bat-Man,” tracing an Alex Raymond Flash Gordon pose and noodling it. He called in a friend, Bill Finger, who had aspirations to become a writer.

“So, I came up with a very crude drawing. Bill came over on a Sunday and he looked at the sketch. It had bat wings attached to the shoulders to look like a bat. Of course, that would inhibit him in his actions during fighting scenes. So, we rearranged it so that it would become more of a cape and swoop about like wings and flight when he’s was swinging on a rope.

“I knew that of that should be dark and I had a black mask on him. But I think I might have had a red union suit instead of the gray one. The initial colors were not the colors that finally emerged. They were much brighter. Bill told me to subdue them. I got it down pretty much the way you see it on the Detective Comics [#27, May 1939] cover.”

Captain Marvel, Shazam! TM & © DC Comics

Finger’s recollections closely match Kane’s: “He had an idea for a character called Batman, and he’d like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane’s, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of… reddish tights, I believe, with boots… no gloves, no gauntlets… with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign…

Batman.“I got Webster’s Dictionary down off the shelf and was hoping they would have a drawing of a bat, and sure enough they did. I said, ‘Notice the ears, why don’t we duplicate the ears?’ I suggested he draw what looked like a cowl. He experimented with various cowls. I suggested he bring the cowl nose-piece down and make him mysterious and not show any eyes at all. I was very much influenced by The Shadow and Doc Savage, the Phantom, things of that sort.”

Finger did not mean Lee Falk’s Phantom, but the hero of The Phantom Detective pulp magazine. The January 1939 issue, probably not by coincidence, pitted the Phantom against a cloaked and masked villain calling himself the Bat. In later years, Falk himself singled out Batman as a blatant imitation of his pioneering costumed hero.

“The Phantom started in New York, in 1936, in the Journal American. These guys all read it, and within ten years they had started direct copies, and they gradually developed their own things. And then others copied them, and then the whole super-hero school began. Batman was an imitation of the Phantom. The Batcave versus the Skull Cave. It was a direct imitation. The Shadow was the rich playboy, and Batman took that direction. He is a playboy, you see. He could not have copied the character of the Phantom more closely than if he had taken it out and pasted it in his strip, I think.”

While Kane and Finger freely admitted that they were most influenced by The Shadow, it was not until long after their passing that the truth came out. For the Batman’s debut, “Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” both men ransacked the November 1, 1936, issue of The Shadow, featuring “Partners of Peril.” Finger compressed the novel into six pages. Nor was Kane ignorant of that fact. His art, normally full of swipes from Alex Raymond and elsewhere, also copied one of Tom Lovell’s Shadow interior illustrations!

“My first script was a take-off of a Shadow story,” Finger admitted.

Detective Comics #27 featured the strange character’s debut. A month later, the Thrilling pulp chain released a COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

new masked and cloaked hero called the Black Bat, who looked uncannily like Batman’s cousin, and a lawsuit was avoided through the intercession of Whitney Ellsworth, who had worked for both companies. It was agreed that the Black Bat would stay in the pulps and Batman would never leave the four-color realm.

But Kane and Finger were not above purloining the Black Bat’s finned gauntlets for their Gothic hero. Similar gloves soon appeared on Batman.

“They stole our character, so we stole their gloves,” insisted Finger.

Above: Bob Kane during the Batman TV era posing with a painting of the Dynamic Duo that was quite likely not painted by the man.

Below: Among the influences that spawned Batman were pulp crimefighters The Shadow and Black Book Detective’s Black Bat.

Batman was an instant hit, and Kane realized he needed help, inasmuch as he had been working in the big-foot cartoon style up until then.

Sheldon Moldoff was the first ghost Kane hired for Batman. A fellow Bronx resident, Moldoff was only 16 when they began working together. Initially, Shelly did backgrounds and lettering, starting with the second Batman story.

19

Above: Among Bob Kane’s stable of ghost artists were, from left to right, Sheldon Moldoff, George Roussos, and Jerry Robinson. Inset right: The most important contributor to the Batman mythos was writer Bill Finger, who has only been recently recognized (posthumously) as Batman’s co-creator.

Below: A very young Bob Kane in a photograph reportedly found in a garbage can, within a discarded steamer trunk, in Rego Park, Queens, by collector Mario J. Sacripante, who auctioned this and other items found during that discovery.

20

“Early on,” he remembered, “I started to pencil more and more. Sometimes Bob would start a page and then he would say, ‘Shelly, you finish it up.”

Maybe he would have a rough outline of what he wanted, and then he would leave it to me. After a while, he had a lot of confidence in me. Bob had an expression. He says, ‘You’re like an extension of my drawing hand.

You have a great feeling for what I would do.’ So we had a good relationship. I didn’t try to change his style. I thought it was very mysterious and very good. And very successful. You don’t fool around with success.”

Moldoff departed after only six months.

Enter Jerry Robinson, a young journalism student at Columbia. Kane noticed Robinson wearing a jacket festooned with hand-drawn cartoons, and hired him to letter and art assist.

Robinson’s advent coincided with the launch of the Batman title in 1940 and the creation of Robin. “Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had Bob,” revealed Finger.

“As I said, Batman was a combination of Douglass Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn’t have anyone

to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That’s how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea.”

Initially, the name Mercury was floated. Other names, including Dusty and Wildcat, were considered. Robinson recalled, “We had all kinds of names, and it was Robin that I suggested, based on Robin Hood. Some early articles said that I named him after myself, which was silly, because at that age, I wouldn’t have been so presumptuous. I was 17 to 18 years old. I knew the Wyeth drawings of Robin Hood, and sketched the traditional costume of Robin.”

But there was more to the story. During his brief stint, Sheldon Moldoff suggested that Kane remove the “The” in front of the Batman, and also that Batman might benefit from having a kid sidekick. Months later, Moldoff was shocked to discover the Robin origin story artwork lying on Whitney Ellsworth’s desk. When he complained, Ellsworth offered to kill the story, confiding that they previously had problems with Kane plagiarizing the work of others. Not wanting to make waves, Moldoff begged off. And so Robin lived. But Moldoff stopped speaking to Kane.

The introduction of the Boy Wonder ushered in a new era for Batman. Yet Kane was a reluctant participant, once admitting, “I prefer Batman operating alone and mysteriously, like The Shadow. Before Robin he was that way, and his style changed then. When Robin comes in, they begin punning and joking.”

Before long, Robinson was inking stories over Kane pencils. “In the beginning, they were fairly complete,” the artist recalled. “Not in great detail. But as we went on, and Bob had more confidence that I could finish them up, they got fairly rough. Particularly as we got more and more work to do when we got into the Batman quarterly. Finally, we added George Roussos to the staff as background artist.

George was a great complement to the staff when he joined.”

“Bob’s stuff was so sketchy, Jerry had to do a lot of work,” confirmed Roussos. The new team member recalled Kane and Finger as the nucleus of a smooth operation.

“Bob and I got on very well during the years I worked on Batman,” Roussos said. “He was a mild-mannered individual who made no demands on either Jerry or me and in general, he was terrific to work for… Bill was a terrific writer #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Batman TM & © DC Comics

and was most responsible for the success and development of Batman. He was really the background for Batman; Bob Kane had the ideas while Bill sort of organized them.”

Deadline issues led to Finger and the associate artists being hired away from Kane and put on strict schedules.

During this period, Batman’s roster of recurring rogues was developed under new editor Mort Weisinger. Other than possibly conceiving the original Clayface and The Penguin, Kane reportedly had little to do with them. But even these scant credits are in doubt. Finger also claimed The Penguin as his.

Weisinger once noted, “Clayface was one of mine. I was thinking of the Phantom of the Opera. Lon Chaney.

Two-Face was Bill Finger, but I kicked it around with him.

Crazy Quilt was a character that I created. The Joker was Finger. Two-Face was three-quarters his, I would say. The Scarecrow was his.”

The greatest controversy surrounded the developed of The Joker, whom Robinson claimed originated with him, but which Kane hotly contested, insisting that he and Finger were the sole creators.

Robinson always said that the character sprang from a evil-looking Joker playing card he brought in. Finger remembered Kane suggesting a killer clown for a villain, but Kane’s first sketch was too cartoony, and was abandoned.

Whatever the truth, the Joker resembled Robinson’s playing card.

During this era, Finger and Robinson began receiving lucrative offers to work for other comics houses. DC hired them directly in order to keep them on the successful strip, with Kane separately contracted to deliver 12 penciled stories a year.

Batman was booming. After Pearl Harbor, editor-in-chief Whitney Ellsworth hired Dick Sprang to draw Batman against the possibility that Kane would be drafted, and began stockpiling stories for the future. The first ones appeared in print in 1943. “I met Bob Kane once in DC’s offices to say hello, and that’s all,” Sprang noted. “I know nothing about working with Bob Kane.”

Kane himself stopped working on the comic book to focus on the prestigious Batman newspaper strip, leaving the comic book to DC staffers. Although Kane is supposed to have penciled the strip himself, it is assumed that unknown ghosts also contributed. Robinson had turned down the opportunity to assist Kane.

Robinson moved on in 1946. When the newspaper strip folded that same year, Kane resumed contributing to the DC version. He also picked up a new ghost in another of those charmed chance encounters he often benefited from.

Lew Sayre Schwartz was fresh out of the Navy when he tried to pick up a girl on a Miami Beach. Bob Kane’s girl. Words were exchanged, yet somehow this led to Kane offering Schwartz work.

“He was an arrogant son of a bitch,” Schwartz stated.

“I was really upset with him at that time because I had just gotten out of the Navy and didn’t have any money.

After a couple of weeks I found out who he was, and the lady mentioned that I was a cartoonist, so to speak. I got together with Bob and he asked to look at some of my work.

And he said, ‘Would you be interested in working for me?’

Of course I loved Batman as a kid. I used to copy it.”

The familiar routine continued with the new artist. “I never did anything but pencils,” Schwartz noted. “I would leave Batman and Robin loose, really loose. Everybody was this tight. It didn’t take much to ink that. And I would turn the pages over to Kane and he would turn them in and keep me as far away from DC Comics as he could. I worked for Bob six to seven years –– I can’t remember –– but, in that time frame, Mort Weisinger was trying desperately to find out who the hell was doing Bob’s work. Bob was paying me, for conditions then and for a kid, a lot of money. I was getting at a hundred bucks a page, which was good money for

pencils. But he would turn it in and get $500. Which was fine with me, God bless him.”

Schwartz witnessed a turning point in the history of DC Comics’ superheroes one day circa 1946. “I was at Bob’s apartment in New York the day that Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel came over to try to talk him into getting into the lawsuit against DC,” he remembered. “And Bob’s father, who was a wise old Jewish guy, said, ‘Listen, they guarantee you x-amount of money. It’s okay if you don’t own it. They’re

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2016 • #13

Top: The character’s origin was revealed in the first issue of Batman [Spr. 1940] in the opening story, written by Bill Finger.

Below: Two other notable Bob Kane ghosts included artists Lew Sayre Schwartz (left) and Dick Sprang.

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Above: Bob Kane’s other credited contribution to pop culture was the cartoon Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse (actually created by Sheldon Moldoff).

Below: In 1998, Joe Giella to the Asbury Park Press, “I remember [Kane] would be going on TV Saturday mornings and he’d have this big pad on the easel and he would proceed to sketch these characters. But see, they were my drawings on the pad, done with a very light blue pencil. I came up with a slew of drawings and put them on the pad. Then he’d take the pad to the studio and then he would just proceed to go over my drawings. He’d get a big hand, you know?... My kids would fume but I would tell ‘em, ‘Hey, it’s his strip.

What can you do?”’

“I, Bob Kane, am the sole creator of ‘Batman’… The truth is that Bill Finger was taking credit for much more than he deserves, and I refute much of his statements here in print. The fact is that I conceived the ‘Batman’ figure and costume entirely by myself, even before I called Bill in to help me write the ‘Batman.’ I created the title, masthead, the format and concept, as well as the Batman figure and costume. Robin, the boy wonder, was also my idea, not Bill’s.”

Later, Kane was forced to relent, admitting to Finger co-creator status.

And so it went. Kane continued contributing stories, but on a reduced scale. The ghosts came and went, the last being Chic Stone, who penciled the origin recap in Batman #200.

During this period, Kane claimed to have personally penciled 90% of the Batman stories, a fact disputed by the issues themselves and by an oft-told anecdote wherein Kane brought in some ghosted work and Julie Schwartz asked him take it to the bullpen to re-pencil a hand.

Each time Kane brought it back, it was worse than before. Finally, he asked Murphy Anderson to fix it. Schwartz, knowing full well that Kane had not produced the pencils, asked why he hadn’t fixed it himself. In a rare moment of candor, Kane sheepishly replied, “Three little words: lack… of… talent.”

In 1968, Bob Kane retired from active participation, but his ego did not. Mark Evanier recalled running into Kane in Los Angeles and showing him the recent Batman issues.

Kane unabashedly laid claim to the work of the different artists and became upset when Evanier corrected him, pointing out which stories were the work of Joe Giella or Carmine Infantino.

All the while, he continue to collect royalties and residuals, while Bill Finger passed away, a largely forgotten man, in 1974, virtually penniless. Only after his death did Kane, under growing public pressure, begin acknowledging the writer’s contributions to Batman –– and conveniently after Finger could not claim any residuals. “He brought a great deal of the early pulp writing style to Batman,” Kane allowed. “I really feel he’s the unsung hero of Batman.”

Interviewed late in life, Kane made bizarre claims to have been inspired by notables ranging from Leonardo da #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse TM & © Telefeatures, LLC.

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paying you. Be quiet about it.’ He talked Bob out of doing that, and he was smart because the money kept coming in.

Jerry and Joe won the suit. They won two million dollars.

The two lawyers took $500,00 apiece, and Jerry and Joe got $500,00 apiece. Three years later they were broke. And they never recovered from it.”

Schwartz saw Kane with an unjaundiced eye. “I ran into him one day somewhere in midtown,” he related. “I was with some young lady. And along came Bob Kane. I introduced him to the girl, and the first thing you know we’re hearing the life story of Bob Kane! In bull sessions, I usually walked away because I couldn’t take what he was saying.

He said, ‘Who the hell is Milton Caniff?’ And on Jerry Robinson’s desk at that particular moment is a big airport layout taken from Milton Caniff! Can you imagine? He’s swiping the stuff and he says, ‘Who the hell is Milton Caniff?’”

After Schwartz’s departure in 1953, Sheldon Moldoff returned to the bat-fold for 13-year run, triggered by running into Kane at a cartoonists’ weekend gathering. While ghosting Batman, Shelly also penciled other strips for DC, whose editors were unaware that he was simultaneously toiling on the Caped Crusader. This led to the bizarre situation where Moldoff was once asked by unwitting Batman editor Jack Schiff to ink his own Batman pencils!

A decade had passed since his first brush with Bob Kane. Moldoff saw the change money and celebrity had wrought in his collaborator: “I was actually his friend. As we went along, Bob became weirder and weirder. He was a very strange person.

Success, it didn’t exactly go to his head, because he didn’t flaunt it. He didn’t go around bragging, he stuck to himself. He had his own private world. He wasn’t interested in fans. He wasn’t interested in conventions.

He didn’t want to meet anybody. In his own private life, he with obsessed with sex.

That was the only thing on his mind. I never interfered

with anything, but I did not admire the way he lived.”

Moldoff recalled a spoiled individual whose parents doted on him. In the early 1960s, Kane sold a Batman and Robin knockoff to TV. Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse was an animated series credited to Bob Kane but, in reality, Moldoff did all the scripts and storyboarding, uncredited. Asked about Kane’s contributions, Shelly said flatly, “Nothing. He didn’t do anything.”

By 1964, Batman was in deep trouble. Sales were in the tank. Twenty-five years of Bob Kane-style artwork had taken their toll, as had several years of the Caped Crusader fighting various aliens and monsters under Jack Schiff at the instigation of publisher Irwin Donenfeld.

Donenfeld called on editor Julie Schwartz and top artist Carmine Infantino and gave them six months to save the franchise. Batman hovered over the precipice of cancellation. They succeeded, paving the way for an amazing revival less than two years later.

Batman sales rebounded, but Bob Kane fell into eclipse until the Batman TV show of the 1960s catapulted the character back into the public consciousness.

Batmania kicked off a rollercoaster ride Bob Kane milked for all it was worth, producing new Batman paintings, which sold for high prices and all of which were reportedly ghost-painted.

Bill Finger’s role in Batman’s creation began to surface in the fan press, which incensed Kane sufficiently that he penned a long screed to Batmania fanzine, “correcting” the record:

“What If Bob Kane…” © Ty Templeton.

Vinci to Marilyn Monroe, whom the artist insisted he had personally known, and who was the model for Vicky Vale. He all but dismissed the artistic army who supported his career, remarking, “I had a uniqueness. Let’s face it. There’s an old saying, ‘To the victor goes the spoils,’ and they deserve it because we created the whole essence of the strip. Without me, there wouldn’t be a strip. It’s not an ego thing. I have my own style.

Nobody could ever emulate my style. It was an original. Nobody can imitate an originator. I don’t agree that anybody ever made the Batman better. They might have improved the anatomy here and there. But it lost the uniqueness of the character.”

Strangely, Kane singled out as a favorite bat-ghost one artist he never directly worked with. “Dick Sprang, because he imitated me the nearest. I think a ghost artist’s job is to emulate the artist as closely as possible. Most artists bring their own personality. Jerry Robinson had a very sketchy style.

He may have drawn more illustratively than I did, but he wasn’t as clean. Dick Tracy was what I was trying to do. Jerry brought a whole different dimension to it, as all the other ghost artists did. But Dick Sprang, to this day, still has my cartoony style. He was the best.

He still is.”

The Batman motion picture of 1989 again shone a spotlight on the Dark Knight. Three sequels followed. Kane spoke of this second wave of Batmania as his “last hurrah.” It was. He died in 1998, before the last cycle of Dark Knight films.

Bob Kane’s tombstone is a wonder. Designed to look like the two pages of an open book, it purports to memorialize a man who created Batman alone, but through the divine inspiration of the Almighty. It reads as if Kane himself wrote it. Probably, he did.

Despite so much negativity attached to his personality, some of those who worked with him saw Bob Kane in a positive light. “Well, I only met him once,“ recalled Dick Sprang. “I’ve no thoughts about him as a person.

His early work –– not his very earliest, not Batman #1, but shortly thereafter –– was absolutely superb. I think his concept of Batman, with the use of the cape, and the huge, bat-like shadow, really did depict the bat-like menace… a man whose mere silhouette against a skyscraper strikes fear into the hearts criminals, and all that malarkey. He did an excellent job for that time period. I thought he was unbeatable, and I copied him straight-out. But then it seemed as if his work took a turn for the worse. I don’t know why. I never discussed it with Kane or anyone else.”

“I always thought Bob perhaps has not got his real due as an early creator,” asserted Jerry Robinson. “I thought he was very imaginative. He had a great flair. He had his own idiosyncratic view and style in certain respects. But I thought that was good. What’s interesting for me was when I first met Bob, he was doing the very comic cartoons. Not illustrative or semi-illustrative. ‘Rusty and His Pals.’ I did some of those in the beginning before we concentrated on ‘Batman’ and ‘Clip Carson.’ If you look at them, they’re very cartoony. So he had to make that transition from real comic artist, which accounted for some of the stylistic things he adapted. Because he wasn’t really an experienced illustrator. And I think it was great for Batman. Even the things that weren’t drawn so well, in normal illustrative

terms. It’s much easier to go from illustrative style to humor, than the other way around. And that’s the bridge Bob had to make. So I give him credit for being able to make that jump.”

“Bob made it fast,” observed Lew Schwartz. “He became almost an overnight celebrity with Batman. When I first met him in Florida, in 1946, he already had almost ten years of people knowing who he was and making money he never dreamed of making. Even if it was $50,000 a year, $50,000 in 1946 was pretty good. He had Batman’s head cut into the linoleum of his studio. I looked at this and thought to myself, there’s a certain amount of arrogance that goes with this guy. And in many ways he deserved to be proud.”

Jack Schiff, who broke into comics scripting early Catwoman and Joker stories and soon rose to become editor of the growing Batman line, gave Kane his due when he recalled: “Bob was pretty much of a prima donna, but I would say that nobody who drew Batman could capture his inimitable style. Even though it wasn’t, from a purely artistic point of view, as technically developed as many of the others. Like Dick Sprang, for example. He would inject the Batman with that dynamism and spirit that kids liked. I can always tell a Bob Kane thing from anybody else’s. Bob was a nice guy and he worked like hell. A lot of people thought he sloughed off. He didn’t.

When he went to Florida, or anything like that, he took work down there. I gave him a deadline and he came through.”

Yet even Schiff, a forming Thrilling pulp magazine editor, who worked on the Phantom Detective and the Black Bat, recognized that Batman was not entirely original: “It’s funny. Not until it was brought out so shortly about the pulps, that Batman was a combination of the Bat and the Phantom Detective, did it really hit me. And I never spoke to Bill or Bob about it. That’s where it was taken from. There’s no question in mind that those characters must have influence Bill and Bob.” “Bob was basically a thief,” asserted Shelly Moldoff. “If he liked something, he stole it! And had no compunctions about it!” At the same time, Moldoff was forced to admit, “I had the utmost respect for Bob as an artist.

Bob had a tremendous sensitivity toward mystery. He loved shadows, and that creepiness. I give him credit for Batman, there’s no question about it.”

Lew Schwartz took the opposite view, pointing to Bill Finger as the true originator. “Kane put it best: ‘I’ve never gave that guy enough credit for what he did.’ Because when you think about it, Bill Finger more than likely dreamed up Batman. But I don’t know that.”

Yet Bob Kane’s contributions cannot be dismissed entirely. He himself captured one truth when he said, “Batman absolutely differs from any hero ever, ever, ever created. I believe he’s the only well-known super-hero that’s a real person without super-powers. Sometimes I look at drawings in comic books today and I see like two thousand super-heroes and I can’t believe it: Everyone is another costume! They’re all just offshoots of Batman and Superman.”

In the end, one thing can be said about Bob Kane: Without question, he had a great ride.

Inset above: Ty Templeton, best known as an “animated-style “Batman comic artist, produced this “What If?” strip, which was made into a Reno Wizard World freebie poster.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

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the telgemeier allure

Raina’s Smiling Army Eti Berland examines the appeal of Raina Telgemeier’s popular graphic novels

by ETI BERLAND

A Huge Thank You!

Eti Berland extends her appreciation to all who contributed to this article, including Raina Telgemeier, Rebecca Oxley, Michael Gianfrancesco, Laura Given, Carol Tilley, Jennifer Billingsley, Ronell Whitaker, Scott Robins, Elisa Gall, Tom Spicer, and Alice Son.

Inset: Raina and just some of her young, enthusiastic fans.

Below: Portrait of the graphic novelist herself, Raina Telgemeier, taken by Kendall Whitehouse at the 2016 Comic-Con International: San Diego.

explains Laura Given, a K–8 library media specialist from Minnesota. “The palette is bright with light colors. Many of the shadows in Smile are done with a darker color block and not hatching, which makes the pages feel more open and light.”

Carol Tilley, comics scholar and professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, points out, “Her use of bold, flat colors, along with a nearly iconic representational style, draw in readers. All together it’s an enticing, comforting, and delicious bowl of comics mac-and-cheese.”

Telgemeier’s superior attention to detail supports an immersive reading experience. She creates entire worlds within her stories that captivate readers’ senses. “The beauty of the Raina-verse is that the works are all so cohesive,” says Jennifer Billingsley, a librarian at Lake County Public Library District, in Indiana. “Even when she jumps from autobiography to fiction, the difference in narrator’s perspective is not jarring. Readers get the same feel from her works, so if they like the first one, they will keep coming back for more.”

Comics open doors for young people to the joy of reading since the blend of text and images support their literacy skills. When Ronell Whitaker, a high school English teacher at Eisenhower High School, in Chicago, asked his students to rate Smile, they responded with, “I liked the drawing style,” or “It was funny,” or “That was real, Mr. Whitaker,” or his favorite response, “I knew I could finish it.” This last comment made the biggest impression on Whitaker, who works primarily with at-risk freshmen. “So many of my kids are intimidated by reading, “ he explained, “and I love that Smile put them at ease almost immediately.”

Whitaker adds, “I sometimes come across readers, young and adult, who are reluctant to try comics. Telgemeier’s work does a great job of breaking down those barriers because her characters are approachable, her style is not overly complex, and the self-contained novels she writes don’t require a ton of knowledge about backstory.” Readers of all shapes, sizes, and ability levels enjoy Telgemeier’s stories. Scott Robins, a children’s librarian at Don Mills Branch of the Toronto Public Library, shares, “I’ve had discussions with parents about Raina’s work and how much they appreciate it as well, and how much they love how her books have inspired their children to read — boys, girls, strong readers, and reluctant readers. It just goes to show the wide appeal her books possess.” #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary ©2016 Bill Schelly.

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In a cavernous theater packed to the gills with young people and their families, excitement is mounting as the horde eagerly awaits the appearance of the guest of honor. Since the author event was first announced, they have been counting down to this very moment. And they have arrived prepared; some even go as far as cosplaying characters, bringing handcrafted fan art, and of course, carrying multiple copies of books to get signed. So, when graphic novelist phenom Raina Telgemeier takes the stage, her ardent fans cheer with wild abandon, their love for their favorite author knowing no bounds.

During the next hour, Telgemeier shares an unforgettable program of interactive readers’ theater, behind-thescenes stories, and an audience Q&A that allows fans a chance to ask their most pressing queries. She then manages the vast signing line with grace and aplomb, engaging with each reader who tries to express why her books mean so much to them. With eyes aglow of wonder and glee, they declare that they are her biggest fans.

But what inspires Telgemeier’s army of young aficionados who are each obsessed with her graphic novels and comics, re-reading them repeatedly until the pages are frayed and the binding is worn (a sure sign of true love)!

What are the elements of Telgemeier’s stories that encourage continued and new readership and intense loyalty?

And what provokes passionate librarians and educators to integrate Telgemeier’s work into their collections and classrooms, and advocate for the importance of her comics in young readers’ lives? This throng of fans is legion and powerful, and they have a pivotal role in the story of Telgemeier’s great success.

Any discussion of Telgemeier’s kid appeal must begin with her exceptional art. Telgemeier uses sophisticated artistic techniques to show deliberate body language, expressive facial expressions, and pitch-perfect dialogue. Rebecca Oxley, a teacher-librarian in Prince George’s County Public Schools, in Maryland, shares, “Stylistically, her character design is appealing and approachable; her linework is elegant and expressive.” Young readers are drawn to her visual storytelling that allows them to read the pictures. “The style is inviting — especially to new comics readers,”

Captain Marvel, Shazam! TM & © DC Comics

In a variation of that old adage, give a child Smile and they’ll read graphic novels for the rest of their life. Elisa Gall, a lower school librarian at the Latin School of Chicago, emphasizes the importance of Telgemeier’s work to the development of young readers’ understanding of visual texts. “For many kids, Smile bridges the gap between their perception of short picture books and longer forms of visual rhetoric,” Gall explains. “Experiencing one of her graphic novels for the first time tells them that reading pictures is a life-long thing and isn’t something one leaves behind in second grade.”

As young readers age, they can find stories by Telgemeier that connect to the emotional truths of each milestone in their journey. By telling her own stories, she shows a vulnerability that feels authentic and relatable, which, as Scott Robins sees it, “Creates a real intimacy between reader and writer that kids rarely get with reading other books.” Everyday real-life stories of childhood, from the horrors to the glories, are presented as valuable and worthy of being told. “It’s a formative time of life where kids are just starting to really discover who they are, who they want to be, and what’s important to them,” says Rebecca Oxley.

“The reader can identify with moments in Raina’s life while experiencing the excitement of someone else’s story.”

Laura Given adds, “Raina (the character) feels like a real, flawed and likable kid. She feels like a friend.” Telgemeier conveys not only what happened to her, but how she felt at the time, as Tom Spicer, teen services supervisor at Arlington Heights Memorial Library, in Illinois, points out.

“Her effectiveness at portraying exactly how she felt when she was that age is very powerful.” Children need that sense of validation and respect, where stories serve as windows and mirrors in their lives.

Alice Son, a teen librarian at Arlington Heights Memorial Library, asks, “Remember when the most important thing in your life was whether or not your crush liked you back? It consumed you! But for teens who are living it, the failures, embarrassments, and victories of these characters are felt with a greater intensity because, for them, the panels are a mirror to their lives.” Telgemeier’s stories resonate with readers, encouraging empathy for others and a deeper understanding of one’s own experiences. By creating stories that are rich in unique details, they become universal in appeal. “She has found the pulse of adolescents,” asserts Michael Gianfrancesco, a teacher at Rhode Island’s North Providence High School and co-host of the League of Extra-Nerdy Parents podcast. “When a kid picks up one of her books, they see some part of themselves in the characters COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

she presents.”

In Smile, young Raina’s mother explains that “lots of kids wear funny stuff to help fix their bodies… You probably don’t realize it because no one talks about it.” Frustrated, Raina yells, “Well, maybe someone should start talking it!!”

And then she thinks to herself, “Maybe it would make us feel less like freaks.” This exchange captures the ethos of Telgemeier’s work as she sheds light on painful moments and awkward incidents with humor and sincerity. The accessibility of her stories, both in format and content, lets young readers know they are not alone as they struggle with the dramas of adolescence.

As a creator of stories that provide authentic portraits of adolescent lives, Telgemeier has been highly regarded for her inclusion of diverse characters in her graphic novels.

Educators are particularly appreciative of her portrayal of queer characters in Drama, a story set in middle school, which reflects the realities of adolescent development.

When Drama was listed as number 10 on the American Library Association’s list of frequently challenged books, librarians rallied to support it, writing articles and taking to social media to protect young people’s right to read. Rebecca Oxley argues, “Raina’s earnest portrayal of life as a kid has drawn light upon comics as an influential agent for diversity. To me, the fact that Drama made this year’s ‘ALA Top 10 Banned/Challenged Books’ is just further proof that Raina’s comics have made a major and lasting impact as a whole and get people talking.”

Telgemeier is aware of her audience, the range of their experiences and backgrounds, and responds in kind in her stories. Oxley shares a powerful story that illustrates this fact. “I did a read-aloud of Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier’s story ‘The Rainy Day Monitor,’ from Comics Squad: Recess, to grades first through third grade using a document camera,” she explains. “One of my Muslim students exclaimed, “Look, Mrs. Oxley! She has a headscarf just like me!” Raina’s decision to depict diversity in her work helps kids to see themselves in her stories.”

Telgemeier’s books appeal to all kinds of readers, including readers, as Laura Given puts it, “who are not normally drawn in by fantasy, super-hero, and adventure stories,” but who enjoy contemporary realistic fiction and memoir. In an industry that has often been dominated by male creators

This page: Raina Telgemeier is that rare bird in the world of graphic novels: a popular as well as critical favorite, and her books have earned her a legion of fans, both young and old (though, admittingly, mostly young). Smile (A Dental Drama), her autobiographical story of Raina’s middle school and high school years was followed up with a sequel, Sisters. Both books earned the cartoonist Eisner Awards, as well as innumerable other accolades in the publishing world. In May of 2015, four of her efforts took the top spots on the New York Times “Best Selling Paperback Graphic Books” list, an unprecedented achievement.

As seen below, the artist/writer has also produced a number of Babysitters Club graphic novels, published by Scholastic Books.

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graphic novel to get made. I don’t think the average reader has a concept of how much work really goes into it, from the brainstorming to the design to the writing to the various steps to create the art. Many people don’t seem to grasp that I do it all by hand. Graphic novels are so quick to read; it’s easy to gloss over how much effort goes into creating them. So I’ve started trying to check in as often as possible (mostly via Instagram, which has a larger number of young people connected than most of the other social media platforms I’m a member of), showing off a little bit of what goes into the making of a book. I get to talk about it, too, kind of like an ongoing DVD commentary track. It definitely seems to be a light bulb moment for a lot of my readers: ‘Oh, I get it… it’s actual work!’”

Follow Telgemeier on Instagram — user name: @goraina — and you will be rewarded with early sketches of her next book, a work of magical realism, out soon, along with lovely comments from her fans, and a deeper understanding of the craft of creating graphic novels. This level of access to Telgemeier’s works in progress expands that sense of intimacy born from reading her books and attending her author visits.

Telgemeier is aware of her fans, but as a creator, anticipating their reactions can stifle creativity. “I try not to think about my audience too much while I’m writing,” she explains. “The audience always thinks they know what they want — namely, they want more of exactly what you’ve already given them. Creators have to learn to trust themselves to go in new directions. I’m always trying to push myself beyond my own expectations, and so far, my readers have pretty willingly come along for the ride. If anything, what I am conscious of at this point is what I want to say about the world, the things I care about, my morals and values. Those all show up in my stories. Stories help move the needle forward, and I’m constantly humbled that I get to be part of the larger conversation.”

Telgemeier has had a significant impact in advancing the conversation about the inclusion of comics in young readers’ lives. Elisa Gall points out, “Telgemeier is part of a group of contemporary cartoonists dedicated not just to their work, but to their readers. They are child advocates, constantly presenting and sharing the benefits of comics.”

Supporting graphic novels in the classroom is important because, as Oxley asserts, they “are an impressive and inclusive vehicle for learning and teaching. It takes comics that have a power like Raina’s do to convince the skeptics by providing evidence of efficacy.” The educational world is full of stories of young readers encountering Telgemeier’s work and realizing that reading can be exciting, entertaining, and relatable.

In Drama, there is a scene where Callie and Jesse are reading a beautiful book about Broadway sets and stage design. They are swept away by the wonder of the book, and in the panels, transported into the book. Callie says, “It’s one thing to dream it… and another thing to actually build it.”

For Raina Telgemeier, she is building the world she dreams up, one panel at a time, one event at a time, one conversation at a time.

Attend any author event she hosts and you will witness the magic and wonder of the world of her fans. You will encounter readers of all ages, both boys and girls, excited to share in the experience of connecting with their favorite author, who will declare that they are Raina’s biggest fan. It will be an event they will never forget — and that’s something that will make everyone smile.

Inset: Raina Telgemeier smiles for a selfie at the 2016 ComicCon International: San Diego.

Photo by Kendall Whitehouse.

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Photo ©2016 Kendall Whitehouse.

and stories, Telgemeier has carved out a space for girls to shine, both on the page and as readers. Carol Tilley points out, “Raina’s books resonate with middle-grade girls, who can see themselves in her stories filled with familiar moments of frustration, joy, determination, silliness, and angst.”

Girls are being given greater credence in the publishing market that has expanded its offerings due to Telgemeier’s influence. “I like to think of Raina as the Eminem of comics,” says Ronell Whitaker. “Much like Eminem, Raina gave a new audience access to a medium they thought was closed to them. Now, Smile, Drama, and Sisters will lead them down a rabbit hole to the comics world they never knew. Maybe they will discover Kelly Sue DeConnick, G. Willow Wilson, Becky Cloonan, Grace Ellis, Kate Leth, Noelle Stevenson, Hope Larson, Alison Bechdel, and countless other creators that will empower them even further. Or maybe, Raina will be their first ‘favorite author’ in a climate where those are increasingly rare.”

Many young people claim Telgemeier as their favorite author, creating a community that is passionate and vocal – and eager to share their obsession with new fans. “Raina is an example of how books and authors go viral with kids,” explains Rebecca Oxley. “Kids see other kids reading these books all the time, talk to each other about what they love about her work, and are excited to recommend them. Parents and teachers take notice; they too read these comics and telegraph their young readers’ excitement to other adults.” When children love a book, they will read it repeatedly at various stages of their life. While we live “in an age in which media is quickly consumed and then set aside,” says Elisa Gall. “Telgemeier’s stories are read over and over and over again. Re-readability says something about the way an artist is reaching her audience.”

Once young readers read the canon of Telgemeier’s work, they eagerly demand new material. Gall adds, “When Sisters came out, there was a countdown leading up to the release. As soon as they all read it, the second countdown for the next book, about which we had no information about or knowledge of started immediately.” Telgemeier’s fans trust her to create narratives that speak to who they are. “Raina has become this generation’s Beverly Cleary, if not, in moments, its Judy Blume,” argues Carol Tilley. “She tells her stories with honesty and humor; they’re gentle but not censored… Although Raina isn’t responsible for making comics for kids more acceptable, she’s helping ensure that they stay that way.” Telgemeier herself counts Cleary and Judy Blume as influences on her writing, so the torch will continue to be passed down, as Scott Robins asserts, “I guarantee there will be a generation of new children’s book writers, illustrators, and graphic novelists who will have Raina as their top influence in their work and the person who inspired them to become a creator themselves.”

Young people are not only inspired by Telgemeier’s stories, but also by the individual connection she makes with them. “She is very personable and she makes every one of the kids that come out to meet her feel special,” says Michael Gianfrancesco. “She’s a genuine person and her books reflect that just as much as her personality does.” She is known for her generosity of spirit and wholeheartedness, recognizing the sacred relationship between author and reader. “Raina has this amazing way with her audience,” Oxley shares. “She’s funny and humble, and never condescends to her audience. She makes kids feel honored.”

While there are numerous deadlines and pressure to produce, Telgemeier prioritizes her interactions with her readers. “Writing and drawing for a living is a solitary profession,” she explains. “Going out into the world and actually meeting my readers reminds me that there’s an end-goal, real people on the other end of the process who will appreciate all those hours I spend at my desk. Seeing kids who love my books is really rewarding, and talking to them is rejuvenating!” It is clear that the feeling is mutual among her readership.

When readers learn the behind-the-scenes process of how Telgemeier constructs her books, they gain a deeper appreciation of her labor of love to create these works of art.

She not only shares her work with readers in real life, but has taken it upon herself to draw the curtain on the process of creating graphic novels. “For years now, I’ve gotten emails and letters from kids and (well-meaning) adults, telling me to ‘make books faster!’” explains Telgemeier. “I actually do work very quickly, but it still takes several years for a

comics in the library

The Nobleman Cause

Author Marc Tyler Nobleman’s noble crusade for neglected comics creators tion of the character. It was Finger who wrote the two-page origin sequence that detailed the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne and the Marc Tyler Nobleman has written well over inspiration of a bat for the Batman persona. fifty books for young readers, most of them The two-page filler was attached to a Gardner nowhere in the vicinity of the comic book Fox story in 1940 that, in the years since, has field. However, he has written two excellent formed the basis for all the many later tales biographies for grade-school folk that really expanding on this origin of the Batman. need be discussed here.

Finger was also the guy who was out-maThe first is the 2008 release Boys of neuvered by Bob Kane upon signing an excluSteel: The Creators of Superman, with sive contract with National/DC that credited illustrations by Ross MacDonald. This book only Kane himself as creator of the character tells the inspiring story of how two teenthat rapidly became DC Comics’ second agers from Cleveland created the very first great super-hero character. As each episode super-hero, you-know-who. It’s a book included his distinctive signature, for decades aimed at students younger than those at my few were aware that anybody other than Kane own middle school, but it’s so well done and contributed to any of the stories. quietly charming that I purchased it for my Nobleman does great work in telling this library as a “low-level” title. story without heavy exposition. He acknowlNobleman does a really nice job of edges that many of Finger’s problems may condensing the Jerry Siegel/Joe Shuster have been caused by his own willingness to team-up in high school and their struggles accommodate and get along with Kane and with teachers, adults, and publishers to others in the industry. develop and sell their innovative Superman Ty Templeton’s artwork — no surprise — strip, first to newspaper syndicates and does an excellent job of moving the narrative finally, years later, to National Comics and along and he has a delightful Dick Sprang-ineditor Vin Sullivan. fluenced two-page spread that invokes the Nobleman collaborator Ross MacDonald mood and style of the 1940s. On other pages, contributes the illustrations, with a sweet you can see hints of the styles of other great 1930s art approach that really does evoke Batman artists, like Jerry Robinson and Joe Shuster’s own style while remaining MacStaton, among others.

Donald’s own. One thing I thought particuIn his afterword to the main narrative, larly nice was the inclusion of scenes where Nobleman writes a great little essay on how Shuster is shown actually drawing SuperFinger gradually become known and credited man to give a sort of mini-art lesson on how (over Kane’s protests) as a writer of the early to draw realistic characters to young artists Batman tales, even if he wouldn’t be officially picking up the volume. It’s a nice addition in recognized by DC as co-creator until 2015. a little book that has more than its share of The essay covers efforts to credit Finger such touches. following his death in 1974 and Nobleman’s The main story ends with Siegel and detective work to track down Finger’s grandShuster selling their idea to the publisher daughter, who wasn’t known to even exist that would become DC Comics, witnessing before discovery, as well as the author’s efthe first issue of Action Comics on sale, and forts to convince DC to share with her Finger’s seeing the character take off into modern payment for reprinted stories. He also found mythology. In an afterword, Nobleman numerous photos of Finger — prior to Noblerelates the later history of the duo, including man’s research only five were known to exist how shoddily DC treated the two creators of and only two were acknowledged — and three the publisher’s flagship character. of those appear in the book’s afterword.

From this afterword it would appear that In addition, since his Bill Finger book not only did Siegel and Shuster invent the appeared, Nobleman has been on a crusade first modern super-hero, but may well have Above: At top is Marc Tyler Nobleman’s important 2012 book of sorts to have DC and Warner Brothers propcreated the term itself in scribbled notes devoted to celebrating the co-creator of Batman, Bill Finger. erly credit Finger for his contributions to the written in 1936 as they worked on phrases Batman legend. It appears he succeeded. With to pitch the Man of Tomorrow to publishers. Above is his 2008 volume on the creators of Superman. great fanfare, Finger’s name has added to the Siegel and Shuster referred to Superman as credits of TV’s Gotham, as well as prominently displayed in the Batman “the greatest super-hero of all time.” No hyperbole, that!

In 2012, Nobleman wrote another comics-related volume with Bill, the vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice film. And it’s not just Finger’s credit either.

Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, with art by Ty Templeton. At the end of the credits came a long — and long overdue — list of various creators who have contributors to the initial adventures of every Since at least 1964, it’s been no secret to comic book readers that writer comics-based character in the film. It’s nice, as well as important, to see Bill Finger co-created Batman with cartoonist Bob Kane, long before the this finally happen and I suspect that Nobleman’s campaign has strip appeared in Detective Comics #27, and the writer had a significant had something to do with it. It certainly hasn’t hurt. And let’s face hand in creating Robin, Commissioner Gordon, the Batcave, the Joker, Catwoman, and many more villains, gadgets, and characters in the evolu- it, it’s always good to see such a noble fella live up to his name!

TM & © the respective copyright holders.

by R ICHARD J. ARNDT CBC Contrib. Editor

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

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the friedman treatment

Drew’s Hero Worship Talking with the great caricaturist about his new book, More Heroes of the Comics

by ROB SMENTEK

Above: The creators of the super-hero genre, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel adorn the cover of Drew Friedman’s latest collection of comic book creator portraits, More Heroes of the Comics, published by Fantagraphics. Below: Its predecessor, Heroes of the Comics, was published in2014. Inset right: One luminary to emerge from the comics biz was Patricia Highsmith, who would go on to become a prolific novelist.

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All art © Drew Friedman.

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For Drew Friedman, the real comic book heroes aren’t the caped crusaders or wall-crawlers found within the pages of the magazine. Forget Superman, Batman, and Spider-man, the acclaimed illustrator — known for his hyperrealistic portraits that have graced the pages of diverse publications like Spy, The New Yorker, and National Lampoon — is way more interested in the men behind the heroes… more specifically, the pioneers who essentially created the comic book medium in the period between 1935 and ’55.

Recently, Fantagraphics released More Heroes of the Comics, a follow-up to Friedman’s 2014 book Heroes of the Comics, featuring exquisitely crafted portraits and biographies of various artists, writers, editors, and money-men from the golden age of comic books. Although the sequel includes 100 more additional profiles — ranging from comics’ giants like John Buscema and Curt Swan to long-time workhorses like Larry Lieber and Jerry Grandenetti, and even little-known figures such as Orrin C. Evans and Abe Kanegson — Friedman had no plans to assemble a second volume after Heroes of the Comics was published.

“I was kinda done with the subject when I put out the first book,” explained the artist, “but I knew I was leaving out some people, so that kept nagging at me.

Then people kept contacting me and asking ‘how come Nick Cardy isn’t in the book’ or ‘How come Gene Colan isn’t in the book?’ And I had really no answer other than ‘Yeah, they should be in the book… I just ran out of time and space.’”

Brisk sales of Heroes of the Comics afforded the artist with the opportunity to give those artists left out the first time to get exposure via Friedman’s pen and brush. “For the first book,” he shared, “it was the people you would assume would be in it, the cream of the

crop, the legends, the essentials, the innovators. So, of course, you had to include Jack Kirby, Siegel and Shuster, and Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, and the Gaineses,” said Friedman. “The second book has a lot more obscure people, but all of them certainly talented, some of them incredibly talented, many of them unheralded, and some of them cult figures. I have to say I still had to leave out people from the second book, mainly because I couldn’t find reference material.”

Although Friedman claims that he is, by no means, an expert in comics, they have been a ubiquitous part of his life. As a boy, Drew and his brothers were exposed to comic books through their father, acclaimed novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Bruce Jay Friedman, who would bring home comic books each week… directly from their source.

“I was a comic fan from the get-go because my dad worked at Magazine Management,” Drew said, “which, of course, was Martin Goodman’s company. Stan Lee worked in the office next to my dad for 12 years [1954–66] when he was editing men’s adventure magazines. As a kid, my dad would deposit stacks them in our bedroom every Friday night when he got home from work. And, when we’d visit him in the office, I’d make a beeline for Marvel Comics, where Stan was the emperor and held court.”

These visits remain special memories to Friedman. “[Stan] couldn’t have been more charming or nicer, especially when he learned I wanted to be an artist,” he recalled. “He paid special attention to me and would say ‘Someday Drew is gonna draw for Marvel,’ which I loved hearing.”

But it wasn’t just Marvel comics that captivated the young Friedman, it was the entire medium. Friedman cites MAD, the Warren magazines, and even the mid-’60s Mort Weisinger-edited DC comics as heavy influences. “They just spoke to me,” he admitted. “It was if they were calling directly to me and were being published just for me, that’s how essential they were to my life. And from a very early age, maybe as early as six, I just knew that I wanted to be involved in that kind of work, that world, visual storytelling.”

Alas, as the Marvel Age exploded, Friedman lost interest in mainstream comics, and instead looked to be an artist for Topps trading cards or become one of the “Usual Gang of Idiots” behind MAD magazine. However, in 1972, he found himself back in the legendary House of Ideas as an employee… of sorts…for a week-long work study program through his high school.

While he was essentially put to task as an errand boy, Friedman has some fond memories of being in the bullpen. “Herb Trimpe was there, and John Romita was especially great,”

All art © Drew Friedman.

Drew said. “He was so nice to me: ‘Oh, you want to be an artist? Help me with this panel.’ He obviously didn’t need my help, but he was attentive… a really sweet, terrific guy. I’m forever grateful.“ The artist added, “Roy [Thomas] was there too. He had been at my father’s retirement party in ’66 and he took photos… I have some of them. Mario Puzo was there, and Martin and Chip Goodman. We talked about that, in ’72, when I was in the office. Marie Severin was also there that week working in the bullpen.”

While the spinner racks no longer held the same appeal for Friedman, he remained interested in comics, largely due to his discovery of E.C. Comics (which he confessed to fanatically collect), Friedman then connected the dots to find that MAD actually started out as a comic book, and then later he was exposed to ZAP Comix: “R. Crumb’s work completely threw a deranged monkey-wrench into my brain-works, which I still haven’t recovered from.”

Though Friedman was frequent introduced to celebrities and famous people through his father (many will recognize the elder Friedman’s name as screenwriter for the hit film Splash), it was the four-color illustrators that always impressed Drew the most, and often left him star-struck.

“Comic artists were the true super-stars to me. I would go to the Phil Seuling comic conventions in the ’70s, in New York City, and I would keep my distance when I saw Harvey Kurtzman or Wally Wood or Will Eisner. I was just too intimidated. I could approach the publishers and writers… [but] the artists were, like, whoa, I couldn’t fathom it. They were the true rock stars. Even the younger guys like Barry Smith — he would have groupies around him. And Vaughn Bodé, he would come in with entourages.”

Later, when Friedman attended the School of Visual Arts, in New York, his instructors would include Kurtzman and Eisner, which of course is somewhat ironic given his hero worship of the two men. Later, the artist would come full circle, doing work for National Lampoon, R. Crumb’s Weirdo magazine, and ultimately becoming one of the Idiots at MAD. As with the first volume, an extensive amount of research was put into More Heroes of the Comics, which COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

not only provided Friedman with visual reference for each creator, but also gave him the opportunity to learn more about the industry’s icons and uncover some new talent he hadn’t been familiar with.

“When I go into a project, I want to learn along the way,” admitted Friedman. “For example, I went in researching Will Eisner, but then I found out the guy doing the lettering for Eisner [Abe Kanegson] became a folk singer, and the more I learned about him, I realized I had to include him too. He didn’t work that long in the industry, and died young, but the more I read, he was brilliant and I knew I had to include him too. What he was doing was innovative, and he made the lettering special.”

Chief among the obscure creators Friedman wanted to illustrate are brothers Bill and Hy Vigoda, who are the siblings of famed character actor Abe Vigoda, best known for his roles as Tessio in The Godfather and Detective Fish on the TV sitcom Barney Miller.

“Some people know that Bill Vigoda worked at Archie for years,” Friedman revealed, “but most don’t know the third brother, Hy, who wrote for comics for decades. In fact, Bill was frequently seen as the ‘success’ of the family before The Godfather came out and made Abe famous (or infamous).”

Finding reference material on the Vigoda brothers was neigh impossible, especially for Hy, but Friedman made a

Left and above: Two of three Vigoda brothers worked in the funnybook business. At far left is Hy, left is Bill, and above is a photo of the most well-known of the siblings, Abe, who gained fame playing Sal Tessio in The Godfather and in his portrayal of New York City police detective Phil Fish in the situation comedy Barney Miller. The character was later spun off into his own show for a season. Below: Self-portrait of Drew Friedman as young comics aficionado.

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From Pencil to Paint Above: Mary near the Binder home, at 467 Voorhees Street, in Englewood, New Jersey.

Courtesy of Michael Turek.

Above: Mickey Spillane, rendered here both in pencil and in watercolors, began his writing career in the field of comics.

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it’s just that I can’t keep up with everything”), he remains loyal to the art form. He avidly follows the work of Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Charles Burns, and Robert Crumb.

“Again, after the mid-’60s I kinda lost interest in mainstream comics,” he said. “I’m not putting them down, but aside from maybe Plop!, I didn’t buy too many comics by the mid-’70s. Even when I was ‘working’ up at Marvel, I wasn’t a fanatical Marvel fan, it was just the experience of being there for a week.”

Drew said, “With the Heroes of the Comics books, I was returning to that world I loved as a kid, especially the Marvel, DC, and E.C. stuff. Doing these books is like returning home for me, to that stuff I loved.”

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All artwork © Drew Friedman.

Above: Orrin C. Evans was the publisher of All-Negro Comics, the first publication of its kind, said Time magazine, “to be drawn by Negro artists and peopled entirely by Negro characters.” Evans was also a pioneering African-American journalist. Inset right: Drew Friedman working on his color portrait of H.G. Peters, renowned artist of the early Wonder Woman comics.

connection with the family through an unlikely place.

Because of Friedman’s repeat appearances on Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast, he was contacted by a Gottfried fan who just happened to be Hy Vigoda’s granddaughter. Ultimately, she provided him with a wedding photo that he was able to fashion into a portrait for the book.

Friedman was strict with including people who entered the comics industry during his established 1935–55 timeline, with one exception: “James Warren is in the book, even though his publishing empire didn’t start until ’57 or ’58, but I felt it important to include him based on the influence of his magazines in the 1960s [notably, Creepy, Eerie, and pop-culture phenomenon Famous Monsters of Filmland]. The only rule I broke was to include him, largely because he wrote me a series of letters after the first book came out to tell me how much he enjoyed it.“ Friedman also chose to include some figures who aren’t normally equated with comic books. Among those are Jules Feiffer, famed cartoonist and editor of the influential Great Comic Book Heroes book; Mickey Spillane, the hard-boiled creator of the Mike Hammer novels; and Patricia Highsmith, the renowned author of Carol and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Although each of these people worked in the field for a brief time, their later notoriety made it virtually impossible for them to not be included.

Though Friedman no longer follows comic books with any enthusiasm (“It’s not that I’m not interested in comics,

Reference is paramount in Friedman’s work, as he works with great precision to capture every wrinkle, stray hair, or liver spot of his subjects. Attention to detail is evident in the title of one of the early collections of comic strips he did with his brother, Josh Alan — Warts and All. For the plates featured in More Heroes of the Comics, Friedman exhibits his trademark meticulous detail.

“The size of each finished painting is, give or take, 8½" x 12",” the artist said. “I first make a very rough sketch, which I’ll fiddle with for a day to make sure all the elements are correct and it’s matching what I had envisioned in my head. Next, I’ll create a tight pencil sketch onto the illustration paper and then paint over that. Average time for one image is about three days although some take longer. My painting of John Severin in the first Heroes book took a week because I re-created one of his Cracked covers within the illustration. It took about 16 months to create all 100 images for More Heroes of the Comics, and I attempted to work on it exclusively, although I took on a few assignments during the duration.”

Eclipso, Adam Strange, Tommy Tomorrow, and Ultra, the Multi-Alien TM & © DC Comics. Hembeck © Fred Hembeck.

hembeck’s dateline: @?*!!

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

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“Don’t let us be mild or drab. Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, ‘the stony grin of unearthly malice,’ pursing forms in darkness, and ‘longdrawn distant screams’ are all in place, and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation...”

— from a 1929 essay by M.R. James, ghost story writer of yore.

Interview Conducted by Peter Quinones Transcription by Steven Thompson & Peter Quinones 32

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Batman, Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

It’s almost as if James were describing a vampire Batman story from his Eton township grave.

Montague Rhodes James is considered the finest writer of ghost stories by everybody from H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King. He is also Kelley Jones’ favorite writer of horror. I won’t indulge in a scholarly essay of comparing and contrasting the M.R. Jamesian influence on Mr. Jones, but just know that Kelley is a great student of horror literature. While Kelley’s talents are mostly in the visual arts, and he has steeped himself in the work a diverse group that includes medieval and Renaissance painters and pop culture artists like Kirby, Wrightson, and Frazetta; countless hours watching and dissecting Universal and Hammer horror movies, Kelley knows the primacy of pure imagination, on what can be learned from the great masters of horror stories, and the way to create dread and fever dreams by combining the words on the page with the reader’s conjuring mind. It’s the book-is-always-better-than-the-movie phenomenon.

And besides M.R. James being a horror writer, he was also a preeminent medieval scholar. He translated a number of apocryphal tales (stories that didn’t make it into the mainstream Bible), and Kelley shares this love for the whispered, clearly meant-to-beforgotten tales from the spectral side of human nature.

The skeletal Deadman and the Elseworlds Vampire Batman stories are examples that work outside the established super-hero canon and are yet connected.

But while James led a cloistered, scholarly, bachelorhood of a life, Kelley leads a normal existence in the suburbs: married and with two teen-aged boys. He loved being his sons’ Little League coach (Kelley is a big baseball fan), going on family trips to the coast,

Deadman, Batman Unseen TM & © DC Comics.

A career-spanning chat with the renowned artist about movies, music, weird fiction… and, oh yes, comics! and supporting his wife in her career. And if you ever spend any amount of time with him during a rare convention appearance or signing, you will be delighted with his quick wit and humor. Don’t let his penchant for dark tales fool you: Kelley is one of those naturally gifted humorists. He is flat-out funny, and is able to laugh at himself. When you meet him, ask him to tell you the “Elton John Greatest Hits” story. It will embarrass him and amuse you.

One of the things I had been missing over the years, as paths started to diverge — the marriages, the mortgages, the careers, priorities being shifted — was the camaraderie of our comic book group.

Besides an occasional meeting at a local Sacramento convention, or a signing at a comic shop, I hadn’t really spent much time talking with Kelley in the last 20 years. Before that though, there was a group of wanna-be artists who would meet at the Comics & Comix in the Birdcage Walk Mall and become tight friends. The shared love of comics, movies, science fiction, and fantasy created an instant bond for that small band of geeks that aspired to work in the field of comics.

Kelley was first among the crew, in the mid-’80s, to break into the professional ranks when he got an inking gig on Marvel’s Micronauts. We were all envious, but not surprised. When we gathered at Kelley’s house back then (and every house he’s moved to since), our friend was always perched at his drawing board. I never saw him sit at a couch or a kitchen table.

He always had a pencil or brush in hand, and there was always a drawing in progress as we visited and talked about Frank Frazetta or Christopher Lee or John Byrne or Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Previous page: Kelley Jones, expressing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, Jan. 2015. Details from Batman #515 and Swamp Thing #1. This page: Details from Batman Unseen and Deadman: Love After Death.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

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on the Swamp Thing mini-series, and then a wrap-up session in this past January. Eight-plus hours of interview and several hours more of just shooting the breeze. . .

I didn’t get to cover all of the books and characters that Kelley had worked on, since those pages stretch into the thousands by now. There was a span of years I had stopped reading and collecting comics, except for occasional storylines.

So I missed some of Kelley’s work, because he never stopped creating. And I’ll be honest, as a fan of Neal Adams version of Deadman, I did not like Kelley’s rendition, so I didn’t pick it up back then. But preparing for this interview, and going back to reading the books, including all the Deadman, I see the genius in Kelley’s artistic vision, how its atmosphere fits perfectly the tone of the story. There’s a concept in art called the Shock of the New when you see something that you’ve always taken for granted, such as the traditional nude figure in painting, and then it becomes something else in the cubist brush of Picasso (Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907): planes, angles and distortions. It’s shocking. It’s new... like Kelley’s decayed Deadman or Batman’s exaggerated ears and expressionistic cape.

But Kelley will tell you it’s no big deal, that I’m reading too much into his stuff.

If he’s going to sit there all day, he wants to enjoy himself, to have fun.

So read the interview and find out what is fun, monstrous fun, to one of the premier horror artists of the day.

-- Peter Quinones

Peter Quinones: Let’s start with some background. Where are you from, Kelley?

Kelley Jones: I was born in Sacramento and have lived my whole life in California’s capitol. I’ve never had the desire to leave Sacramento. Pretty boring. I’ve traveled a lot, but that only made me like it here more. I really began to appreciate the area. It’s not like I’ll never leave; it’s just that traveling gives you something to compare, and you realize it isn’t bad here.

We’re close enough to everything and yet far enough from everything. It’s a good place to grow up.

Peter: Were you an only child?

Kelley: No, I have an older brother and he’s probably the one who got me into comics, because he had a class in junior high, and if you were done with your work, the teacher would let you read what you want. And, in this class, they had an old box of mostly old Marvel comics, old back then so major collector’s items now. For whatever reason, they didn’t want them anymore, and they

told him to take them home. He wasn’t really into comics, though, so he threw the box into my room and I fell in love at that moment.

Peter: Is this when you first picked up a pencil?

Kelley: No. I was always drawing something. Even when I was really, really little, they said I was always drawing, so I don’t really know how old I was. The things I remember drawing were telephone poles (who knows why) and then dinosaurs and Frankenstein all the time.

Peter: Dinosaurs seems to be a common theme with comic book artists.

Kelley: I guess. For me, it’s probably because my dad took to me to go see those kinds of movies as a kid. He liked those movies, so I saw Ray Harryhausen films, like Valley of the Gwangi, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, One Million Years B.C. Peter: With Raquel Welch…

Top inset: Kelley Jones Batman illustration. Above inset: Fifteen-year-old burgeoning artist Kelley Jones at his brand-new drawing table in a photo from 1977.

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Batman TM & © DC Comics.

We were working on our stuff, too, but Kelley seemed to have more confidence in his skills. He had a knack for drawing, and a single-mindedness and sureness about his craft. He started showing his stuff to editors and other professionals, and the feedback was becoming more praise than pointers.

And somehow, that helped us elevate our skills. All of us eventually broke into comics or video games. I was the only writer in the group, and I would give them my chapters-in-progress. Jim Sinclair, Kelley’s best friend, had a long run as the primary inker/finisher on Sam Kieth’s The Maxx. Glenn Johnson took one of my chapters about a royal artist and presented me with four beautifully drawn pages and became my first published comic (Against Blackshard 3-D). I saw those pages at Kelley’s house, which was the nexus, the dry pub gathering place of the group.

My first article sales were interviews with Kelley for Comics Scene, Comics Interview, and Amazing Heroes (remember those? If you do, you are showing your gray-haired age.) And Kelley, Jim, and I were co-creators of TerraFormers (Wonder Color Comics, 1986), a big robot sci-fi comic where we spent hours spit-balling ideas, and where I watched in amazement as Kelley penciled awesome pages, and then again when Jim applied his gorgeous inks. And these lead to other connections and friendships with artists in the area, such as Ron Lim. Oh, it was an exciting and splendid time.

So maybe now you can imagine my excitement and joy in interviewing Kelley once again, three decades later. We got together in October and November of 2015, as he was working

has been really supportive.

Kelley: They are, even though they never understood it. They’re very blue collar.

They ran their own business, so they understand working for yourself. But what they did, and I’ve asked them about it, because I don’t think I’d let my kid do what I did back then, they just knew I loved this. My father always said that when other kids drew stuff, they’d have to explain what they were drawing, but he never had to ask, he knew exactly what I was doing. He knew it was different, but he was very permissive in me watching old, scary movies; he just thought it was fine.

When my brother got his driver’s license, my dad made it part of his job to drive me to the 7-Eleven to get my comics.

Peter: It always comes back to the comics. At this point were you copying panels? Some Kirby action here, some Adams figures there?

Kelley: Well, what happened was that I was being influenced by the subject matter, but I didn’t really know how to draw well yet. When you come across Kirby, he’s completely developed. Wrightson, completely developed. I was like a caveman trying to figure out how a flashlight works. So I didn’t try to do that level. What I did, though, was try to work out my own stories in science fiction and horror and just do my best. And the results were bad, but it was fun to do. And enough people around me were impressed by it, just enough so I wasn’t discouraged.

I wasn’t the kid who plays the violin and you just want him to stop because the talent isn’t there. But nobody did that to me and so I got better. I got the knack of drawing people pretty quick. The difficult stuff, like the hands, came easy to me.

Peter: Did you pick up books on drawing instruction? Like Burne Hogarth’s Dynamic Anatomy?

Kelley: No, because those were so well done. I realized that I had to figure this out on my own. I’m not good at something unless I solve the problem myself. And the things I was interested in, those how-to books weren’t addressing, like odd angles, atmosphere, figures blending into one another… I was fascinated by that. But I didn’t have the ability to articulate any of this, or even know the right questions to ask. I just knew what I liked, and where I was seeing it done was in films. Films are where I went for inspira-

Above: Young Kelley Jones became a comics fan upon reading Swamp Thing #2.

Below & inset: Ray Harryhausen’s dinosaur movies were an influence on the young artist.

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Movie material © the respective copyright holders.

Kelley: Well, back then, she just got in the way to me.

And, as sad as this sounds, she still gets in the way! [laughter] I wanted to get to the dinosaurs. I remember being completely knocked out by those movies. So my dad got me the Aurora dinosaur model kits, from the Pterandon to the Allosaurus… all that wonderful stuff. I just started drawing them. So Harryhausen gave me the love for dinosaurs. And, you know, the dinosaurs were monsters. And then I saw Frankenstein, so it was kind of a mix of those things when I started drawing.

Peter: When did you start connecting with friends who shared your interest in comics and movies?

Kelley: Probably around seventh or eighth grade. I was starting to buy comics and, in those days, there were no comic shops, so it was the 7-Eleven. And it was exciting, because you never knew what was coming out every week.

Some people say it was a frustrating time, but I loved it, just happening upon things. And, in some of the 7-Elevens, they’d have comics going way back, that they just kept jammed into the racks. So I would just grab whatever looked good. And I found there were friends of mine who were buying comics, though they weren’t passionate about collecting; they just liked them. Well, I was drawing a lot, all the time, and they started noticing some of my stuff looked like some of the comics, and they started asking me about it, that kind of thing. But I’d say it was mostly with movies that we connected. And then, when we had a comic shop in the neighborhood, that’s where all the comic book Casablanca barflies would end up there. It’s all the same people — “Everyone goes to Rick’s!” [laughter] — so we’d all go, and that’s where I met you, Peter, and everybody else. And it’s interesting, that all the people I knew from school, they all went away almost immediately. But the comic store crowd, I still know most of them.

Peter: You were the first person I knew who actually had a drawing board. Do you remember when you first got it?

Kelley: I still have it. I mean, I had one first, kind of a hand-me-down from someone my father knew. But when I decided I wanted to do this near the end of high school, that I wanted to draw a lot more, even though I didn’t know it would just be comics, I knew I wanted to draw on a proper board, not a flat surface. So my dad and I went down in his truck and found the kind that you could fold up and carry around.

I didn’t want the gigantic architectural thing with all the bells and whistles; just something that would tilt at an angle. I still have it and I’m still working on the same board.

Peter: Sounds like your family

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

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Above: At top is Montague Rhodes James [1882–1936], renowned author of ghost stories, whose collections profoundly affected Kelley Jones. Inset right: Kelley, who drew this portrait, is also fond of the weird fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Below: Teenagers Kelley (left) and Jim Sinclair about to depart for the 1978 Creation Con in San Francisco, where Kelley would meet Marshall Rogers.

ed this. I started looking at other people’s work now trying to see things and what you see is what you can’t do. I then realized, “It’s all different, and I’m very different. And I didn’t know if that was good or bad.” To this day, I still don’t. Just cause you hang around doesn’t justify you work. While I’m doing it, it looks completely mainstream because I see it that way.

Peter: You’ve mentioned that you began to be interested in drawing after reading Swamp Thing #2…

Kelley: Well, I’d always drawn a lot and, as I said, always liked to draw all types of odd things, dinosaurs and whatever kids like to draw. But that comic book got me into sequential art. I drew on little typing paper with my little Bic Flair pens and inking ’em in, you know? Color them. Then go play baseball and do everything else.

But Swamp Thing #2 kept sticking with me.

Mom collected antiques and so, if I went with her and was a good kid and kept my mouth shut, she would let me buy some old comics that were always in those shops. Luckily, there was a little 7-Eleven store near me and was able to keep up with new issues of Swamp Thing. Through back issues, I discovered Steranko and some really great stuff and then I started to associate names with the work, such as Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema, and so on. At that point, it made me think that I could do this, maybe I could draw comics professionally. But I had a lot of other things going on. In 1978 or ’79, I said, “I’m not good enough.” I didn’t know how to do it. I looked at my results and I wasn’t particularly taken with the work. Up-and-coming people I would look at were just geniuses and I couldn’t figure out how they were doing it — John Byrne, George Pérez… Jesus, those guys were just so good! So I just messed around with it somewhat, but in the fan mindset. You have to look at what you’re doing and say, “Can I really compete? No way!”

At that point, I went to a San Francisco comic convention. Steranko was there and he was wonderful. And I found this wonderful Bernie Wrightson treasury-style book and that was wonderful. One of the reasons for going was that Marshall Rogers was going to be there. I had gotten turned on to Detective Comics by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers from the guys at the comic store I was going to and that got me back buying comics. I had not been a Batman fan but that series turned me into one. And I still think those issues are the best single run of the character… they’re perfect, pitch perfect. So, in front of Marshall, my friend Jim Sinclair takes out my stuff (because he also had brought his portfolio) and he says, “This is my friend, who’s too embarrassed to show any of this artwork. Would you take a look?” I was absolutely mortified… My heart was beating and I thought I was gonna throw up!

So Marshall takes a look at my work. Now I had just looked through his original art for “Batman,” Mister Miracle… all this great stuff he’s been doing. I could have killed Jim for this! First thing he says as he looked through my work is, “Ooh! That’s nice. Wow. This is really different.”

None of it was super-hero art. It’s all crap that I was into.

And he asked me a few questions and I answered him mumble-mouthed. Jim was as surprised as I was. He liked what I was doing and, though I was already saying, “I don’t think I’m going to pursue this,” Marshall tells me, “This is wonderful! Great! Work on this, develop this. Change #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Illustration © Kelley Jones.

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tion, for ideas, and a way of learning. So I started watching films now with a purpose. I watched a local late night Tom La Brie’s Night Comfort Theater and, in the middle of the night, he would run these really good movies.

I remember seeing Night of the Hunter [1955], which was so impressionistic, it stayed with me. It was a major league influence of my tenure on Batman — and it still is. I remember sitting there, and that had more impact on me that than any Burne Hogarth book, or things like that.

In the summer, LaBrie would do a film festival of classics, and I would stay up and watch these movies on all different subjects. A movie like Out of the Past would make me a big fan of the director, Jacques Tourneur, because it was so good. I didn’t know who he was, just a name, but he just worked with so much lighting into his films and I realized lighting meant something. Certain shadows meant a character was “trapped”; certain things meant “trying to be secretive”; others, “deception”… all this great stuff. I thought, “This is really cool!”

So I started taking film classes — you know, film appreciation courses. Though I couldn’t really ape film, I wanted to get the effect of a Leone, like when that moment comes when you realize finally after two-plus hours what the harmonica means to Henry Fonda’s “Frank” and to the audience as well. I became a different artist. I didn’t live for the big impact pages. I lived for the one impact you had to get to. All those things that made sense to me, this atmosphere, and I realized it was why I liked Wrightson: he would do all these wonderful atmosphere panels leading to that moment that was delicious. I didn’t like comics that were explosions on every page, because that was desensitizing to me. There was no journey in that. So the film classes taught me sequential storytelling: how to frame your image, compose your shot, and you had to light it. And they were talking in terms I understood and I didn’t need any talent to understand them. My degree of talent didn’t matter in learning these concepts. But I’d think about it. You remember, we’d go see The General…

Peter: Buster Keaton.

Genius.

Kelley: Yeah, I was completely knocked out by him.

But it didn’t matter if it was comedy or horror, suspense, or drama; I was beginning to see how the storytelling would work. Oddly enough, I had no desire to get into films, to work in the film industry. There were too many cooks in that kitchen. I was learning how to control the story on each page and that developed into an honest desire not to have a real nine-to-five job (though I was working all the time at the board). I was hardest on myself because I really want-

Detective Comics, Mister Miracle TM & © DC Comics. Doctor Strange TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

nothing, but keep going!” And then he drew a little how he figures out human bodies and how to distort things. “Don’t worry about the rules,” he said. All that good stuff!

Marshall Rogers spends 20–30 minutes doing this. I keep saying, “Well, thank you,” and not wanting to bother him anymore. But he said “No, don’t leave. Let me finish.”

I’m sitting next to him, however old I was then—still in high school. And I’m just waiting to be told I’m on Candid Camera… [laughter] Then he gets up and he’s done, and he savages several other people’s work, which I thought was better than my art! [laughs] And I just sit there. At that point, I move along, and, later on, he comes by, points at me, and says, “You will make a great Batman artist someday. If you keep doing this, I can see you doing a great Batman!” That was 1979 and I’m 16 or 17 years old, and while it wasn’t like it set me on fire to do it, but that was good validation! So I went and started doing it. A few years later, Marvel had the big try-out thing. And they selected four guys and I was one of them. Out of 20,000-something submissions.

Peter: Out of the Try-out book?

Kelley: No, not the [Official Marvel Comics] Try-out Book. They did a thing, in 1981, I think it was. They had just announced, “Hey, if you want to send in something and try out for Marvel…” I turn my submission in, but don’t hear anything, and then several months later… The same day I get the letter from Al Milgrom at Marvel, I get one from Ernie Colón from DC, who wrote, “No way. Everything wrong.”

He was right, but it was very dismissive. But the letter from Al Milgrom said, “This is pretty good.”

Marvel let me try out on The Defenders, five pages. The other artists they chose were Arthur Adams, Mike Mignola, and Kim DeMulder, who got the Defenders gig. They gave me a pin-up to do in Micronauts [#52, May 1983]. At that point, for whatever reason, Al Milgrom kinda went, “Eh!” [laughs] But again, how weird this all is. So I figured, “Well, it’s over.” They actually gave me a phone call. “Well, we’ll do what we can, but you need more work.” Some such thing. But Ralph Macchio calls me and says, “Jackson Guice really likes your stuff and wants to give you some try-outs.” And this was all within, like two weeks. So I start inking and the first ten pages stink. And then I do ten more and they’re a little better. It was a 32-page book and the last third of the book was out of the park as far as they were concerned. I owe Jackson a lot because he said, COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

“No, you’re going to get used to it. Anyone who comes in is going to freeze up, but I’m seeing this get better and better and, from page one to page ten, you’re getting better.” And then the last ones put it over.

Peter: How long did you ink?

Kelley: For about a year-and-a-half, and then Jackson quit! I thought, “That’s it. I’m done. It’s over.” I’m in Sacramento, they’re in New York. I can’t talk to anyone. When they like you, they like you; when they don’t, they don’t.

But that’s when Ralph Macchio said, “I like your pencil samples. I said, “Look, those were just so I could show my inks not pencils! I have not drawn a comic book. I’ve drawn maybe 11–12 fully penciled pages in my life and they were just so I could ink something. And they were only so I could show you the before and the after. I don’t think I’m a penciler.” He says, “Nonsense. Let me send you a script. We’ll walk you through it. It’ll be fine.” That’s when they said all the things on how to be a comic book artist, advise and such. They had a mimeographed sheet they sent me — whether he wrote it or it was something they handed out, I don’t know — on how to do a page.

Peter: Was this during the Shooter years?

Kelley: Yes, but no one cared about Micronauts. They were off in the corner. At Marvel, it was Spider-Man, Avengers, that stuff. It’s a licensed thing. So I draw it thinking I’m going to get help from Ralph on what to do. But Ralph

Above: Among his highly regarded early comics work, artist Marshall Rogers contributed memorable tales to Detective Comics, Mister Miracle, and Doctor Strange. Neophyte Kelley Jones met with Marshall at a San Francisco Creation Con, in 1978, an encounter that would forever change the youth’s life. Marshall predicted that Kelley would one day produce a memorable Batman.

Below: Marshall also gave the teen a lesson in proportion.

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doesn’t answer my phone calls… on purpose. He just doesn’t return my calls. And all he would say is, “We have to have 15 pages in by the end of the month.” So I turn ’em in and that’s when I finally hear from him. He says, “And you said you couldn’t pencil! These are wonderful. The writer loves it. The inker’s all excited. Go to town!”

Now whether they were or not, I don’t know because I didn’t contact them, but I believed what Ralph said!

I did it for a couple years.

I always apologize to Peter Gillis because I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d taken film classes and that was as close

Inset right: Photo of Kelley Jones during Halloween of 1982, a period that saw the launch of the young artist’s professional career. Above: During that period, Kelley received a note from Marvel that accompanied new work from Marvel as well as a “thanks, but no thanks” note from DC Comics’ art director Ernie Colón. These missives arrived on the same day!

Below: Micronauts was Kelley’s first regular professional comics assignment, a title where he started off as inker but quickly graduated to penciling duty.

Here is a page from Micronauts #54 [Sept. ’83] with Jackson Guice pencils and Kelley’s inks.

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Micronauts TM & © the respective copyright holder.

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to art as I got.

Peter: How did you learn anatomy?

Kelley: I took a pre-med course and I saw that bodies were completely different and different sizes and… It’s kind of gruesome at points. Life-drawing classes didn’t do anything for me, but this pre-med course did because then I saw how flesh worked and looked at people of all different shapes and sizes. It was very organic. I only did it for about a semester, but it was enough.

Peter: When did you decide inking was the way in?

Kelley: I didn’t feel it was a way to get in, to get a job in comics. For me, back then, it was a way to achieve the effects I wanted. The lighting effects, for example. You couldn’t get them with a pencil, and a pencil wasn’t what I was looking at in a finished work. So I knew I had to ink, and maybe it would help my pencils, understand them, because I wasn’t really confident in that regard. In those days, when I got to see actual pencils, they were fairly

loose, very gestural. Not like today, where they are so tightly penciled where I don’t see how an inker can enjoy it. You might as well as print off the pencils. I prefer the gestural type of penciling, because I’m big on inkers.

So I did that to push my pencils and they took my inking because I had gotten pretty accomplished at using my tools. I was very confident with brushes and that was due to Wrightson. I learned from studying Wrightson that you don’t have to be perfect.

What you want is organic, and organic means it is not perfect. It means some lines are strong, but not all, but they achieve this great lighting trick. Randomly perfect!

Peter: And this was all self-study?

Kelley: Yeah. Even though I went to college, and quit after a year or so working on Micronauts. My parents say that I was drawing all the time when I was in college, because that’s all they saw me doing. And so, when I quit college to do this full time, it didn’t even raise an eyebrow. They said, “Well, this is what you do.” So, when Marvel called and asked if I want to do some inking…? Well, yeah! And it was because Jackson Guice liked my inks. He wasn’t satisfied with what he had been getting. So, for about a year, year-and-a-half, it was fine. When he left, because he wanted to ink his own stuff, he called me and said, “This isn’t about you; it’s just something I want to do.” And that call became an influence on me — it was wanting to see the full thing realized. He said, “You’re really good,” but it was his time for moving on. Later on we did work together again.

Peter: So Guice left?

Kelley: Yeah, and I thought my career was pretty much done. Micronauts was out in left field, and I was working for an editor whose other books I didn’t really fit in with. So, I thought, “I’ll just go back to college.” I wasn’t that vested yet in this comics career. But then the editor called and said they couldn’t find a penciler; the ones they were looking at weren’t working out. But he said, “I’m going through your samples and I saw the original pencils and wondered, though I really liked the finishes, I think your original pencils are fine. I talked to Bruce Patterson, who is a good inker and he thinks you’re terrific. He thinks he can handle you fine.” And I refused, I said, “No, I don’t know how to do this.

I know how to draw, but I’m at this level, and, well, I’m like a minor league player and want me to start for the Yankees.

I can’t go with that. I’ve got maybe a 70 m.p.h. fastball, but you’re asking for a 95 m.p.h. fastball. And this is a lot of pages that have to get done every month.”

But they said the only way to get experience is to do it.

And maybe because I had a New York editor who was Italian… well, it was a very authoritative voice. So I said okay, they sent me a script, and I just start doing it. I remember calling him at the end of the first week and saying it’s taking me all day to do one page. It’s from 8 a.m. to 10 o’clock at night. He said, “Yeah, that’s the way it’s going to be for a while, until you start figuring it out.” Then they started giving me some really great advice, like, “Pick one panel and make it good. Don’t worry about the rest of the panels, and work towards a page in your head, make that page the one you are most proud of. And don’t worry about little transitional

Micronauts TM & © the respective copyright holder.

things. Just do it. We’ll cover for you.” And that got me through, made it work. That method still works for me today.

Peter: Breaking it down into small victories.

Kelley: Yeah. Because if you can get one terrific panel a page on a monthly, that’s 22 great panels. That’s almost unreachable if you’re doing a monthly. If you’re one of those guys who says, “I take eight months to do a book, then they should all be great.” But, in the actual blue-collar production work of making a comic, it was great advice. It removes a lot of junk in your head.

Peter: Good advice for beginners. Before we get into some of your works, let’s hear some stories about how your work has caught the eye of some horror writers, like Stephen King. You worked with him, right?

Kelley: Yes, I did. Well, there’s an unpublished story, “The Raft,” that I did for him. And they loved it.

Peter: Was it done for Marvel?

Kelley: Yeah, but there was some kind of rights issue.

Not with King, but with whoever owned the rights and they got into a fight with Marvel over it. And that was that. But he remembered it and, when I did Deadman, he was very impressed with that book. He actually bought a page from one of the issues. I don’t usually sell my stuff, but you don’t say no to King, who says he wants to hang it in his studio.

So it went off to Maine. It was very cool.

But the coolest thing was that my brother was managing a Tower Books, and King was doing a signing, and my brother mentioned something about me (I wasn’t there), and King was like, “Oh yeah, Kelley. How is he doing?” So my brother had instant credentials because King lit up over that and started talking about Deadman, my Batman, and Sandman. So that was cool. It was like, “Wow, you don’t know who’s looking at your stuff!” I have a distorted view of my own work, so when you hear something like that, well, it’s just cool.

Peter: Other writers: Harlan Ellison…

Kelley: I worked with him. I adapted one of his stories, the name escapes me right now. And I adapted a Ray Bradbury story. And it was at the request of Ray Bradbury, so that meant a lot. You have to remember, he loved comic books.

So, a lot of what I was doing was closest to his heart, because he was seeing my horror stuff. He loved horror comics, scary stuff. So, yeah, it makes you aware that there are others out there looking. It’s that existential moment when they are talking about some other Kelley, they’re not talking about me. For I live a fairly normal, pedestrian, PTA, Little League life with my kids and everything.

Peter: I know Kirby is a favorite. Did you meet him?

Kelley: I did. And you just come up and babble incoherently and you say the nineteenth million thank you to him.

But you get to do it. I got to do it a few times. But I never had the desire to connect with these people beyond that fan relationship. I mean, they are on another planet. It’s just that this is the guy who drew the Fantastic Four for a hundred issues, and they are all great. This is the guy who did a hundred issues of Thor with no clunkers. I could never do that. And he influenced everything. He’s like George Washington. What do you say to someone like that? “Thank you for creating the United States”?

Peter: But you became friends with some of these artists, like Bernie.

Kelley: Right, and he had said, “How come I hadn’t met you in so long?” Well, I don’t really do shows and, when I was doing monthly work, I can’t get free and still get anything done. And, being a horror artist, I’m working during the summer conventions for Halloween releases. So I can’t leave. He understood that, but we hit it off pretty good, and found that we had a lot of the same interests beyond merely monsters, or horror films, or things comics-related.

He looked at me very strangely when I was talking about watching these DVDs of cooking with Julia Child as I was working. And he had been doing the exact same thing.

Peter: That’s totally weird. [laughter] COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

Above: Caption.

Kelley: Yeah! And so, a lot of stuff had nothing to do with comics, but when I talked about what I liked about his work, he would tell me that a lot of people wouldn’t say that, wouldn’t see those things. Like I mentioned how he roughed things up, made it a point not to be too perfect. That’s genius. His approach was the opposite of another brilliant artist, Dave Stevens, where every line has to be planned, and yet Bernie achieves these great effects. So there were all these things and the fact that all life stops when The Bride of Frankenstein comes on, and we watch it again and it has that same restorative effect.

Peter: I know Bernie has designed some movie monsters.

Have you done any movie stuff?

Kelley: I’ve done stuff that’s been used in movies, but I don’t really do that kind of thing. The closest I’ve come is for some of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. Some style guide stuff, I guess… what the cape looks like, lots of cape and cowl stuff, some devices… how Batman looks jumping off something, an enormous numbers of those sketches.

But, you know, I hadn’t seen what they’d done with those drawings. I used to go to the movies all the time, but when you have kids, well… you have to wait till it comes out on DVD or a premium channel. So I didn’t know, but when you finally see it on screen, it’s fairly amazing. I also did stuff for

Above: Kelley Jones’ first pro work was to ink Jackson Guice for a pin-up in Micronauts #52 [May ’83]. Below: Upon the cancellation of Micronauts, Kelley was given the job penciling a new Micronauts series. Here is his cover for #15 [Dec. ’85]

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the video game people. I guess they all work together, but you never know what effect you have on it.

Peter: I guess you never know what the producer or designer is going to use.

Kelley: Yeah. They look through it all, finding what they like, and, when I would see the movies, I wouldn’t say, “Hey, that’s what I did.” It’s more like they pay me for what I like to do. You know, I like that long-eared cowl, the cape that goes everywhere. They’ll say that they have been looking at the books. They did like my Scarecrow a lot, as well as my Two-Face. But I don’t know how much of my sketches they used. They paid well and kept asking for more. But it’s their football, so they can use it or not use it.

Peter: Back to the books: Do you want to keep doing just pencils or full inks?

Kelley: Depends on the project. If I’m doing a finished look, I put enough down to confidently draw with

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TerraFormers TM & © Kelley Jones, Jim Sinclair, and Peter Quinones. Bachelor card art © Kelley Jones..

Above: TerraFormers was a short-lived 1987 collaboration between Kelley Jones, Peter Quinones, and Jim Sinclair.

Below: Kelley’s invite for Peter’s bachelor party. Inset right: Jim Sinclair and Kelley at a signing.

my brush or with my pens. My crowquills, I don’t really use Microns; there’s not enough life in those. The virtue of the Microns is that you don’t have to dip, you can just keep working, you can crosshatch and stitch. But I like the life in a crowquill and the life in a brush. And, when the brushes start losing their life, I keep them because they can do things a new brush or a crowquill can’t do. So I have all these old beat up brushes that do different things.

Peter: Have they ever asked you to just do tight pencils and they can digitize from there?

Kelley: They probably could ask, but I don’t shade in my stuff.

Peter: I know from our friend Ron Lim, sometimes they shoot straight from his pencils.

Kelley: He’s a different type of artist. He’s doing a different thing. With me, well, when I’m working with light, there’s just a lot of things they can’t figure out. Like I said, when I work with a colorist, I tell them black is a color, so don’t do knock-outs or overproduce me. Don’t change it. Work with it. I’m probably the easiest check they get. Because you really only need four colors with me. Go primary and you are fine.

Peter: That’s interesting. Jim Steranko says he’s recoloring Chandler and he’s inventing a new process. I think he calls it cinematic coloring.

Kelley: Huh, it’s backlit and bright, I bet. Like the old Technicolor, I guess. What I’m used to getting is that the shadows and dark areas are black. And the other colors are over-saturated bright. So you can watch an old movie, say Peyton Place, and it’s a beautiful looking film, very rich.

There are some scenes that take place in the fog that are just stunning and, subject matter notwithstanding, I can watch that movie all the time for that look. I always try to recreate that. I think it’s still striking. And, the further we’ve gotten away from it, the more striking it’s become. I don’t want to bash my audience over the head with a frying pan.

I want them to be brought into it. I don’t attack them. I let them wander in.

Peter: Other artists: Bill Sienkiewicz?

Kelley: He’s a genius, because he can literally do anything, any genre. Some people are just born with it. There are those who sweat and there are non-sweaters. Bill doesn’t sweat. He may say he does, but he doesn’t. And he’s a guy who is still interesting. There’s always something new. So I can pay my money for that all the time. I also feel that way about Frank Miller. Always feel that Miller transcends even a simple drawing. There’s a real verve in what he does. I always find it interesting, whether you like or dislike his work, ten years later you can go, “What was I missing?” Kirby had that. You loved it, but you didn’t love it enough. Should have been smart enough to love Millers stuff with awe and reverence when I first bought it! There’s something of Kirby, of himself, that is in that work. There are guys who are technically proficient, but they don’t put any of themselves in it. They try to impress, without being impressive.

Peter: Who do you think is underrated?

Kelley: As far as an artist? I feel Tom Sutton was underrated. The artist Wayne Howard, he worked for Charlton. He was one of Wally Wood’s assistants. First guy anywhere that got cover credit—Wayne Howard’s Midnight Tales. And he was a writer, penciler, inker, colorist… did everything. I found those absolutely wonderful. It’s when I first started buying comics and I liked horror stories. I remember reading these. Just terrific, beautifully drawn. Like Wood, he could do anything.

Deadman, Action Comics TM & © DC Comics.

But then he quit, walked away, and that’s why people don’t remember him probably. And that seems a shame.

Peter: Seems there’s a resurgence of interest in Wally Wood.

Kelley: Yeah, because they put out that great artist edition of his stuff. For many years, I would say Wally Wood is a huge influence. And people would say, “Wally who?” That is distressing. I don’t have a favorite Wood period because he was always good. But he was working with Jack Davis, Frazetta, Williamson, Torres, Kamen, and he was the best one. And they were saying, “That guy’s the best one.” When the others were taking two months to do their things, Wood was bringing them in every few weeks. I still look at his stuff and wonder at what he did. He was great at putting a lot in, when he would finish a page, then go back and add more.

But he also took out a lot. He was a master of light. He knew what didn’t need to be there. He textured things. Right now, comics are all shiny to me, but Wood could do trees, he could do water, any texture. We overuse the word “genius,” but he was a genius.

Peter: Thoughts on John Buscema?

Kelley: If there was a guy whose talent I could acquire, it would be his, because he could draw anything, at any time. I had the good fortune to spend a day with him, and he could just draw, flat-out draw. He didn’t need his… what is it in fantasy books who are adept? You know, a box of stuff that an amateur magician needs to his thing. Well, John was a master, he could move his hands and perform miracles. If you see his work with Don Heck as his inker, it is unbelievable. They would do these little horror stories, harking back to the old 1950s’ stuff. Nobody saw those stories then, but I did!. I was buying these reprint books, looking for that one little story by them.

Don Heck was underrated, majorly underrated. He was terribly savaged, for whatever reasons. In fact, I just wrote an intro for a book on Don Heck’s horror work in the ’50s.

I’m amazed to see how nasty the comments could be, for no reason, just to be sadistic. For certainly, if we’re going to take artists to task, there’s a long list before you get to Heck.

Peter: He’s all over early Marvel.

Kelley: Right, and clearly there was Kirby and Ditko, but there was also Heck, inventor of Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow… He held “Thor” together with Kirby in those early years. Some of the classic “Thor” stories are drawn by Heck. And he invented characters for that, too. Stan Lee went to him and said, “You have to come over and work with us.” And he did. There’s so much really great work he did that stands the test of time. His “Iron Man,” especially in Tales of Suspense, is remarkable.

Peter: Storytelling-wise?

Kelley: Everything. He was a terrific penciler, a great storyteller, good at hitting all the beats. A fabulous, all-around finished artist. If he inked his own work, it was tremendous. He could do everything. If it was spy genre, horror, Western… he could do it. In those days, I know you had to, but he stood out. And, later on, when he went to DC, well, I didn’t know he had health issues, all the things going on with his life.

I just remember picking up Batman Family because of the cool stories he was doing. It was one of the reasons to get it. So I didn’t understand when I read things like: “Why is he working? He’s the worst artist ever.” Really? Because I can think of 25 artists right now that I avoid like the plague, that they are telling me are great. But Heck is an artist I can still look at. And what a class act! He never responded, he just kept doing his thing. You don’t have to when you invent Iron Man and half of the Avengers.

Peter: Of course, back then, the artists didn’t really get the credit. The fans didn’t know.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

Kelley: It isn’t what it is now, but for us who do it, we knew who everyone was.

I’ve never believed in eating our own. It’s a hard job. First you have to think, spend all day realizing something and not repeat yourself. And then you have to make a deadline that is usually unreasonable. And no one is going to read that book and say, “I’m going to give him extra credit because he penciled and inked it in three-and-a-half weeks,” right?

Peter: Right.

Kelley: When it’s an incredible job, they should acknowledge that. Old Marvel did. Old Marvel would say this guy did this great job. Bang. And they would protect their artists and their writers that way. Now, the end result is all that matters. And it’s been bad for comics, because you have guys who should know better, taking months and months to do a book, miss deadlines, and they aren’t exercising that muscle on them. Look: fear is a great motivator.

Peter: And hunger.

Kelley: And that. And out of that comes wonderful things.

These miracles come out of those desperate hours that I

This page: For editor Barbara Kessel, writer Mike Baron and penciler Kelley Jones (with inker Tony DeZuñiga) produced the Deadman serial for Action Comics Weekly. Top is Kelley’s photocopy of his pencils. Inset left is Esteban Maroto’s cover for Action #619 [Sept. 27, ’88] 41

This page: Certainly it was Kelley Jones’ astonishing redesign of Deadman which earned him instant attention from the field. Hints of a more cartoony approach were found in the eight-part “Grave Doings” serial in Action Comics Weekly, a style brought to fruition with the 1989 two-issue mini-series, Deadman: Love After Death.

Right: Detail from the cover of Batman #530 [May, 1996]. Art by Kelley Jones.

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Peter: Mike Mignola?

Kelley: Wonderful. The thing I’ve always liked is that he decided — and I’m not just talking about his books — to invent his own country and he just did his thing. And that’s when you look around, and it can be intimidating that everyone looks so different from you. Because that’s the nail that gets hammered down. I feel like I’m in the same position.

Not that you try to, it’s just where you’re left.

Peter: Mike is a friend?

Kelley: Yeah, God, we go way back. We are fellow travelers, as it were. We both came in at the same time, when Marvel was doing tryouts. We both didn’t get the job that we were aiming for, but we both got work. And luckily we both did things that have life beyond their publication months and I’ve had the good fortune of inking his work.

Peter: Would you do a Hellboy story with him?

Kelley: Certainly, I would always do something with him because you know something is being said, it’s not just churning out pages. You like being around people who are more than just the sum of what you see. You know that they are more than just their drawings. There’s a reason, it isn’t trite, it isn’t commercial, it isn’t any of those things. It’s just the only way they know how to do it. And they are just trying to get better.

Peter: When did you feel that you could have that freedom to change Deadman?

Kelley: When I was trying to get fired. [laughs] I had been at Marvel for several years and I had done well. They had me on contract and everything, but I hated everything I was doing. Not the drawing itself, and I’m not going to blame the inkers that came after me, but what I was drawing and what was coming out were two different things and it was really distorting what people thought of me. But, worse than that, I kept having these ideas that weren’t coming through because the inking would totally change it. Once that would happen, it was very depressing. I wasn’t even looking at the books when they came out.

Micronauts was a good period because I had Bruce Patterson who was following what I was doing, and [Danny] Bulanadi also did that, to an extent. But, as soon as that was over, I started getting people who would just change and change and change. So, the crushing thing was when I had done Comet Man and in it I had drawn the Hulk and Fantastic Four, which had impressed Marvel enough to let me have a shot at those. And then they were inked so… differently. There were a lot of nightmares behind that. The original guy slated to do it got in trouble with the law and was changing things and then the book got really late and so it was just get it done! No instruction. I had no contact

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Deadman TM & © DC Comics.

Below: Prompted by the success of the two-issue “prestige edition” Deadman: Love After Death,” writer Mike Baron and artist Kelley Jones produced another two-volume tale, Deadman: Exorcism, in ’92.

Here are the covers of both.

have to be done by 5 o’clock to get this out and it’s 2:30 now. And I’ve got to draw a page. I don’t want to be in that position, but I’m comfortable with it. That’s what doing a monthly teaches you.

Peter: You’ve worked for most of the major publishers…

Kelley: Everybody.

Peter: Can you talk about the different creative freedoms you’ve had with the publishers, say Dark Horse.

Kelley: They’ve been excellent.

But what happens, once you’ve established yourself, whatever you are, they tend to… well, I don’t consider myself an auteur, but they may. And they may want you to do your thing, so they’ll back out and let you fill that void. It isn’t like a discussion, it’s “let him go do his creative or weird thing.” For example, when I did The Hammer, it was expressly told me that they wanted something different. Only they didn’t know what the “different” was, and they didn’t mean just in the art. Well, I knew some people there, and I was sitting having dinner with them when I was doing the Aliens book.

And that’s when they said, “Do something as bizarre as the way you talk.” And I went, “Okay.”

They wanted to know if I had an idea. Well, I’ve always had this idea that was The Hammer. Same thing happened when I did The 13 th Son or Zombie World. I was talking about something and they said, “You make a book about that.” But I only have so much steam in me to do those things. I can’t go on and on. I just get in, do it, and move on.

Even if they ask — and the demand is there — it’s good to get off the stage.

Deadman TM & © DC Comics.

with the inker to say, “Here’s what I’m trying to achieve,” so he just did it like everything else. So those offers to do their flagship books went away and then it was, since you’re under contract, you’ve got to just do what they give you. So at that point, I stopped doing it. I just wanted to be fired.

At that same time, Sam Kieth had made the move over to DC and he said, “Hey, I’ve got some stuff going on here and I wanna get out of this, but I really like what’s going on over at DC. Would you want to come over and maybe we could do some stuff together?” Now, at the same time, I’m not doing my Marvel job, which I was slated to do. I just couldn’t do another licensed thing with no soul. And I waited and waited and waited for the call asking where the art was for the book I was to do, thinking what I’d say to Dan Daley, the editor, that I just wasn’t into this anymore. But a miracle happened…

Marvel had a big shakeup there and canceled all the licensed books. This was 1986 or ’87. Daley called telling me the book was cancelled! They sent a big check and a big apology! “Sorry, you don’t even have to turn in your work.” For three months I hadn’t been doing anything! But they wiped out all the licensed books and it was, like, wow!

So being at DC was a free and clear thing now! I wasn’t on anything, no one there had anything in mind for me. But fate intervened, thank goodness! Dan Jurgens did not want to do this “Deadman” series, for whatever reason. They threw it to me not because I’d said I’d take anything, not because they knew I liked this kind of material… I was just looking for some pick-up work. I was moving on, out of comics. I figured I was done. No one was gonna understand. There were no horror comics then!

Peter: Right.

Kelley: So that happens and at the same time I get this “Deadman” script by Mike Baron, who was doing some very successful Punisher and Nexus books. Nobody at DC was paying attention to some little artist on a B-character like Deadman! So the stars were aligned! I started drawing it and on the first page I choked because I couldn’t draw like Neal Adams, Garcia-Lopez, or Jim Aparo. I couldn’t draw like those guys! So I said, “What would I really want to do?” So I spent the day thinking about his name, Deadman. I just took it literally. I got all this reference that wasn’t comic book stuff, totally different. And then I thought, “He’s a ghost and he’s floating around, and there’s just so much potential but when he uses his power, he disappears. So he should be really upsetting looking to make it disturbing that he inhabits a person’s body.”

Then I thought that, maybe, “I’ll be fired for what I want to do.” But I drew the first episode for Action Comics Weekly, turned it in, and waited to hear the“What have you done!?” phone call! But I didn’t hear anything. At the same time, you’ve got to remember, they didn’t really care about this back-up series. Barbara Kesel was the editor and she had bigger fish to fry. I drew the second episode and it’s even worse than the first one as to changing Deadman’s look and such, because now I was angry. I was mad about how I’d put myself in this position.

I didn’t want do this anymore and now I’m just drawing with anger and whatever, because, dammit, I was starting to really enjoy myself. I thought I was on my way out of this career, and I wanted at least one job to point to and say, “This is what I wanted to do. This is what I should have been!”

And still I don’t hear from Barbara but she forwards this one little letter to me — it’s a card, and it’s in an envelope and it’s from Baron, and all it says is, “This stuff is pisser.”

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

And he didn’t sign it. He had a stamp that said “Baron.” I didn’t know what that meant! To me, I didn’t know what “pisser” meant — good or bad? So… I kept doing this weird yet so satisfying “Deadman,” and then I finally hear from Barbara (who apologizes for not getting back to me). She doesn’t sing praises or anything. She goes, “This is absolutely nothing I would be interested in as a comic fan, but you keep doing it, because a lot of fans might.” Okay. I can live with that and it was somehow even more liberating to me!

Then Barbara tells me that John Beatty — the John Beatty — who was riding high in those days… the inkers pantheon at the time was Janson, Austin, Rubinstein, and Beatty… came in and wanted copies of these things. He’d seen the pencils and said he’d love to work on them.

Above: Kelley Jones’ art in Deadman: Love After Death #1. Inset left: Recent Deadman redesign by KJ in Swamp Thing.

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Above: In January, Graphitti Designs release the Deadman Kelley Jones Gallery Edition, featuring all of the original art from the two prestige series.

Inset right: Kelley’s Deadman illo for DC’s Who’s Who. Below: Xerox of Kelley’s pencils. Next page: Above are two pages from Kelley’s Deadman: Love After Death #2. Below is ’80s pic of artist Bernie Wrightson posing with Kelley and Jim Sinclair.

Above: Caption.

That kind of told me nobody still cared about Deadman… or at least I hoped nobody cared! They basically had to do this to retain the trademark. The two issues were 48 pages each and I didn’t turn anything in until I did the first 48 page book. Turned it in and, again, it’s quiet for a while, and then assistant editor K.C. Carlson called up and said, “This is absolutely wonderful. I only have one minor concern, but this is amazing.” Richard Bruning wrote me this long letter saying how great it was, asking for only one change. “Wonderful. Keep doing what you’re doing.” He let me go to town on it and that turned out to be my best year in comics. What I always fantasized it would be. I had been left alone, nobody cared about it, and I could do whatever I wanted. And the script was kind of wonky… great wonky, so interpretation was very wide open. And so the thing came out and was a smash hit, no horror to compete with it — maybe just Swamp Thing, but that was about it… and Swamp Thing had become more metaphysical by then. I was doing just raw horror, y’know? Bang! For the company, it did wonderful. It sold extremely well. It was a left-field hit, which they love. I think they were just hoping it would make its money back and then it hit, and then you start getting all these other writers seeing it. I went on to do Aliens, Sandman, and soon Batman came along. But it was all due to Deadman.

Peter: Your Batman is different from most.

Kelley: Because, again, I cannot draw as well as Neal Adams; you don’t compete with Neal Adams. You simply can’t. I happen to really love Adams’ stuff but whether you like someone or not, that’s just the elephant in the room! You will be compared to the greats, and Neal was the gold standard then. So, for me just making Deadman skeletal, floating around, and weird is as opposite of Neal as you can get, so we’re not compared.

And then came Batman. I couldn’t draw like Neal.

The guy I wanted to draw like was Marshall Rogers, but no one can draw like him. So, I was going through this huge Orson Welles phase, and everything Welles had done was really working for me. I began to just notice how beautifully a shot was set up. Nothing was wasted. Everything works. There’s #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Deadman TM & © DC Comics.

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And she just said that in an off-handed way, but that was major validation from a professional at that point. I then got to where she calls me up and I’ve done now four or five episodes and they’re starting to appear in print in this little crappy book, they’re getting great attention, and I’m thinking she’s going to give me all this work now, the kind I want, scary stuff, or Batman or the Spectre or who knows?

But good stuff! And she goes, “I’m quitting.” [laughter] And I go with sinking heart, “You’re leaving?” She says, “Yeah, but one thing I’m going to do before I go is get you assigned to the Deadman prestige series. John Totleben was slated to draw it, but he can’t do it, so I’m going to go to [DC art director] Richard Bruning, who’s editing it, and I’m going sit on his desk until he gives you the goddamn job.” Barbara’s very direct. She’s clipped. Very New York savvy… I think she’s from California, but she just came off like a New Yorker. And I just said, “Okay.”

I get this call from Bruning and I tell him, “Well, I already told Barbara I would do it if I get to ink it.” (I’m so arrogant at this point!) And he goes, “That’s okay. You can ink it yourself if you want. No problem.” They sent a contract and the script for Deadman: Love After Death came about two weeks later. It was the weirdest script I have ever gotten!

I don’t mean content, but in the way it was written. All in cartoon panels and such! And they said, “It’s due in a year and it’s got everything you want. Here’s the script. Here’s a big advance. We’ll leave you alone.”

Deadman TM & © DC Comics.

a lot of heavy symbolism to what he does. And then the lighting’s completely in service to the story.

All the stuff that makes you want to eat popcorn and enjoy the show is there but all the stuff that makes you want to take a filmmaking class on it is there, too. Not that I’ve ever achieved that, but I started thinking about what would I do in Batman. Then I thought: James Whale mixed with Billy Wilder from Double Indemnity and there’s something there.

Peter: What about the really long Batman ears?

Kelley: I wish I’d invented it, but it was Marshall Rogers and Bernie Wrightson who did it long before me. I was thinking practically — and probably wrongly — that his real power is that he has no power, yet he threatens and intimidates you best by simply being in the room with you… That kind of stuff. I think Rogers did that in his Detective Comics run, where he’s in Boss Thorne’s office and he’s just there. How did he get in? And how long has he been there?

You’ve got to have the lights on all the time and never sleep or Batman will simply get the better of you! I really like that and that Batman simply would say, “Stop it,” and that would do it. So, when I got those chances in Batman, I told Doug, “You know, my Batman, if he uses his fists, it’s because it’s a rogues’ gallery idiot or someone who’s thinking he’s Billy the Kid. But he wouldn’t need COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

to use his fists on most people — the rest of us, we’d just go, “Yes, sir.”

Everyone in that town, too, would think he’s the top dog villain! They wouldn’t know he’s a hero because they never see that he’s a hero. They just think he’s protecting his turf from The Joker or whoever. And he’s so bad, he kicks their asses all the time. So he’s not a hero to those people.

That’s part of the mystique. So I’m going to draw him portraying that character. I’ve always seen it as Bruce Wayne with psychological things saying, this is what I do. He puts on this big scary outfit and he intimidates. So the ears got bigger, the cape got weirder. Usually artists have the cape very still, hanging straight down his back. Now it’s alive.

Peter: It looks heavy.

Kelley: It looks heavy and he uses it. Like a bullfighter does, he uses it. It’s a part of what he does and visually it all works. I had Dick Sprang come up to me and go, “That’s really good.” I didn’t know it was Dick Sprang. I thought, “Oh, it’s a nice old gentleman telling me that. Hey, he still likes Batman,” and Julie Schwartz, who was sitting next to me, said, “That’s Dick Sprang.” I am not a comics historian and I don’t know everything, and I only collected comics for about three years, so I didn’t know! Then I would go back and look and go, “Wow, Sprang’s work is tremendous!”.

Peter: I notice you redesigned the Batmobile, too.

It seemed more organic.

45

Above: As described The MLJ Companion, in the late ’80s, Archie Comics developed a mature comics line called Spectrum, with writer Len Wein and artist Kelley Jones producing The Hangman. Due to bad publicity, the entire line was scrapped and artwork shelved.

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Hangman TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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Kelley: It did. Comic book art is reduced so small. I like the eyeball perspective.

I like the organic-ness of it. I like that there’s drawing going on. I like to physically draw my stuff just a little bit out and follow perspective. I can eyeball it pretty good. When it’s that small, it’s foreshortening.

I figured it had to be small enough in case you had to get it around cars. I mean, I’m thinking like that and I went and found old shots of guys like Barney Oldfield in their Formula Ones from a long time ago and I thought that would be cool. Whether it’s cool or not is debatable, but I loved doing it and I always figured Batman was a guy who maybe two wheels touch the ground when he’s driving, y’know? There’s a lot of impracticality with a car where you have to get out of it and go do something. Someone may steal it, stuff like that. So I made it as wonky as I could so if they stole it, it would be really obvious. I don’t know. It’s just silly stuff.

Peter: Of the Batman movies then, which one would fit closest to your vision?

Kelley: Probably the first two Tim Burton movies that came out. Later on, they asked if I would draw and design and I knew they were using a lot of the comics. But they did that a lot. They did that with the Mr. Freeze one, which they took that design and used it. It didn’t look like anything I’d done. So I know they’re looking at a lot of guys, but when it came out, I went, “The weird cape and the long ears?” There were certain things I just went, “That’s really cool!” I don’t know if they got it from me, but we were on the same page. I loved it because with the sound off, it looked like a Batman movie.

Peter: Are there any other characters that you haven’t drawn yet but would like to?

Kelley: God, there are tons! I always wanted to do Superman. I always would kill to do Superman, but that ain’t never gonna happen, though I know theres a sigh of relief that hasn’t happened!… The Spectre… The Demon… I love Doctor Fate. I love Thor (not the new one, but the classic Kirby one!), whether he’s on the streets of New York or off in the furthest galaxy fighting a cosmic menace. I love that range! There’s a lot of stuff I could do.

Peter: About your Batman… Gothic, haunted, skulls everywhere. How did that begin?

Kelley: Red Rain started it. That came out of Deadman, which had gotten me noticed. Well, around that time, [editor] Archie Goodwin had me do a fill-in cover for Detective Comics. Then I went on to do Sandman. Malcolm Jones was inking me on that and he was working with Doug Moench on another book. And he said, “Doug would like to know if you’d do a Batman story with him.” And Doug, was, well…

Doug. So that was a huge moment for me, where someone who had read and followed my work… well, you disassociate yourself from that moment, because I’m not really part of that club. Even though I knew what I was starting to build, I was not part of that club.

And, as good as Mike Baron was, he was my generation. Doug Moench, to me, was from that period where you are a fan, you’re collecting, you are starting to know names, so it was very intimidating. Of course, I had to say yes and Malcolm gave Doug my phone number. And he called, and said, “I have this idea, I like what you are doing.

I enjoyed Deadman. Would you have an interest in this Batman story I’ve been thinking about?” I said, “Absolutely!”

Peter: That’s what you say when Mr. Doug “Master of Kung Fu” Moench is

The Sandman TM & © DC Comics.

pitching you!

Kelley: Yeah, and about a month later, I get this outline.

And it’s very intimidating, but you can’t say no, though I didn’t really like the name when he first said it. And I was thinking of drawing a more normal Batman because I had only drawn him once. But it was a very good proposal and it was called “Glory in Scarlet.” And he said, “I’m going to put this forward to [editor] Denny [O’Neil]” — just saying “Denny” so casually, but it was very intimidating to hear those names at that point in my life. But it was an excellent proposal and I wanted to do it, and they accepted it immediately.

Peter: As an Elseworlds concept?

Kelley: Right, because that’s what was happening at the time. They wanted to do stuff like that. And Denny O’Neil calls me. It was the first time I ever talked to him. He’s like, “Hi, Kelley. It’s Denny…” So you just say yes because it’s Denny… Denny O’Neil, and because it’s a Doug Moench idea. It was a little overwhelming. Okay…a lot overwhelming! And, well, it gets worse. I flew out to meet Doug for the first time, back East where he lives. I get off the airplane and it’s all I can do to not throw up.

Peter: Really? Like stage fright jitters?

Kelley: Seriously jitters. He said, “You don’t look good.”

I said, “I don’t feel good.” We’re on our way and he says, “Are you getting car sick?” I said, “No, it’s just you’re here in this car, and it’s really weird.” He says, “What do you mean?” And I said, “You have to understand: I have a box of comics at home labeled ‘The Good Stuff,’ books I reread all the time…and about 70 percent of it is your work.” Master of Kung Fu, Batman… all the stuff he used to do. He laughed pretty hard over that!

So he probably sees that I need to calm down, and he says, “You know, we’re going to do what we want to do on this book. Just go do it.” And that really set the tone. At that point, he says, “Don’t draw it like you think I want it.

Don’t draw it like you think they want it. Just draw it like you want it.” Then he asked me — me! — if the script did everything I wanted. He wrote a very passionate action script, but he left the visuals up to me. He didn’t say make it real Gothic, or real scary, just: “Do what you want.” It was pretty cool to have someone block for you like that.

And it became a big hit, which shocked me. I mean, I enjoyed it, and was hoping it would get me another gig doing more Batman.

Peter: But you were already making it your Batman. I mean, it was the first time we saw this funky Batmobile.

Kelley: Yeah, and that came from sitting around thinking COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

Above: Caption.

about how he’d get around. At that time, he always had this really big Batmobile. And I realized I didn’t really want to draw Robin, so I decided if it’s a one-seater, I don’t have to draw Robin.

Unless, you know, he shows up and we throw in a motorcycle or something.

But, I thought, “If you’re going around the city, you need something smaller, something quicker.” I wasn’t really thinking about changing it, per se, but I just wanted something different, so it doesn’t look like everybody else’s version.

Peter: And when it’s moving, it doesn’t appear that all the wheels are touching the ground.

Kelley: No! He drives like a maniac.

He wins every race he’s in. A car is sort of a static image, right? Like guns. Static. So you have to think of something to do with them. So, in my head, I have to convey movement, and like someone running, one foot should not be on the ground. Same with Batman’s car.

This page: Kelley Jones joined with writer Neil Gaiman for the Sandman story arc, Season of Mists. Upper left are the collaborators at a 1992 signing in San Francisco. Above and below are pinups.

Inset left is Sandman #22.

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more alive, swirling with menace.

Kelley: Well, that’s to show him becoming more vampire. That’s true.

It’s how I approach a character visually. Batman is a character that, well, it’s his mind and will that makes him a hero. So you can have him do heroic Captain America-like stuff, but he has to have an angle. And my angle on Batman is fear. That’s what he says, what he vows he is going to do: inspire fear. He’s scary before he does anything. And those thoughts started to coalesce into how I’d draw his cape.

I remember going to Macy’s and getting a black sheet. I wet it down and hung it over some chairs on my back porch. And as the day wears on, as the sun goes over this sheet, these neat folds started showing. I didn’t do studies or sketches; I just looked at it, and thought, that looks really good. It looked alive, very coiling, and writhing.

Now, a lot of my favorite artists never explain what they do, why his cape is really long or why the ears are really long, they don’t do that, so I can’t really say why I do that. It’s more an expression of what you want to create. Does it help create that fear?

It’s like when you listen to great John Lennon lyrics; they can be kind of bizarre, open to interpretation. So I think along those lines, try to do the same thing.

Peter: But you can’t get away from influences. There’s always seems to be a little Universal monster in the mix.

Kelley: Absolutely!

Frankenstein maybe, right?

You look at the things that brought you where you are. You don’t get away from the things that made you be a comics artist, what you are a fan of.

I was always watching those Universal films. They weren’t so much horror as they were like these morality tales or like fairy tales. So I wanted to put that element into it. There’s obvious horror, but what I always got out of them was a mythic quality, that later on those movies didn’t have any more, but I #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Batman and related characters TM & © DC Comics.

Peter: Back to Red Rain: it sounds like it was written “Marvel style.”

Kelley: Not quite. Each page was described, and maybe a few lines of dialogue here and there. This kind of stuff: Batman confronts a vampire, fight ensues, and he throws vampire off a cliff. Some dialogue peppered in… say it’s a scene where he’s talking to Gordon, and then there would be dialogue to convey what they are discussing. But there was never any instruction of how many panels.

I get to come up with that, and I enjoy that. Though, at first, it was a little intimidating because you were not getting absolute direction on this big book. But then it becomes very free, you are the one interpreting the story, and a lot more of your style, your personality is coming out in the pages.

Peter: Was this Elseworlds Above: Caption. Batman always conceived as a three-parter?

Kelley: No, just as a one-shot, but you leave the door open to possibilities.

The story is designed to be complete in and of itself.

And frankly, with Arkham Asylum and Batman/ Judge Dredd, not getting that follow-up book, well, we never assumed that we would. But then, we didn’t think it would sell as well as it did. I didn’t know it would have any legs.

You do it and move on. I didn’t know it would become part of a mythos.

But Doug’s genius isn’t just that Batman fights Dracula, it’s what Batman becomes.

Peter: I think your art started to add to that change. Batman’s cape begins to change; it looks

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

wanted my books to have that epic feel. When you look at James Whale doing Frankenstein or The Invisible Man, they transcend their stories, and become a timeless fairy tale.

So if I’m going to distinguish myself in the world of Batman, well, there’s a lot of Batman material out there.

Number one, you have to have the story, and while I know it’s heresy in an interview about art, it starts with the writer. I’m a big believer in if you don’t have something good to read, I don’t care what it looks like. (Frank Frazetta excepted, right? I’ll read whatever he does.) But you really want a good story or it doesn’t matter what the pictures are. I’ve spent most of my life just trying to find those stories and, after finding one, culling out good imagery. And inspiration! I would love to say there was planning going on, but I don’t sketch. I don’t do sketchbooks; I don’t do preliminaries; I don’t thumbnail. I don’t do anything, but just sit down and let it hit me. And, for the most part, that has always worked.

At first, I used to think that was laziness but, in actuality, it’s saving up your powder for when it’s time to go to war. It’s just: now I’m ready. There’s an anxiety to that: “What am I gonna do?” So the most I’ll do is read the script a few times through and things will come to me. My preparation for the next page is I’ll read the next day’s script, the story page.

And then I’ll think about it. And that’s it!

Peter: You don’t thumbnail?

Kelley: No, that would water it down for me. I know everyone else does these things but I don’t like taking the same ground twice. I think that spark — or whatever it is — happens on the page. Werner Herzog said storyboards are for cowards! [laughter] Peter: So, do you start with the first panel or do you start with an image or…

Kelley: I always start with the last panel on the page.

That’s the one that makes you turn to the next. The first panel can be the weakest because you’ve got to start there, but the last one has got to be the one that says, “Ooh! What’s gonna happen next?”

Peter: How long did the first graphic novel take?

Kelley: Probably, in penciling terms, the 90 pages took about five months, and that’s not counting the covers and promotional materials, and stuff like that. About halfway through, Doug said, “I think we have something really good here.” Because there was enough to judge it. He said, “Look, even if you suck the rest of the way it, there’s about 45–50 really good pages… This is good!” And the inking was coming in and it was looking very bizarre — really good bizarre, very Gothic, but hip.

Peter: Very Sandman-like.

Kelley: But I was very much into composition, heavy black layout, negative space, and all that stuff, so you mix it with kind of rough rendering… And a lot of stuff [inker] Malcolm [Jones III] could not change so much to it being kind of sketchy because the blacks had to be inked. I was getting a good result. Les Dorscheid, the colorist, would start working with the illustration, too. Not just color it! He would do things to it to help bring out the darks. Les was a painter who was coloring.

So we just had this really good confluence of things.

Everything was converging at the same time and there were no expectations on the book. Doug wanted it, and Denny is his friend, and Denny liked what I was doing and said, “Let’s build a relationship for things down the road.” He didn’t know me at all. I knew his assistant editors. But Denny has to keep the monthly books going, and so it was that same with Deadman: no one is really paying attention. Nobody has expectations. It’s to make the writer happy because he’s a big writer there.

Red Rain comes out on the same weekend as Simon Bisley and Alan Grant’s Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgment on Gotham, which was really beautiful! And heavily promoted!

In this amazing turn of events, they sold out 30–40,000 odd copies of the first printing of Red Rain. It came out on a COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

Above: Caption.

Wednesday and had sold out by Saturday. That’s what they were telling me, and I went to do signings where there were no books to sell and have signed. When DC called me the following weekend to tell me the book had sold out, I said, “That’s great, but I’m getting yelled at during these signings because the retailer can’t get any, the distributor doesn’t have any, and the people coming there thought it would be there and they don’t have it because it sold out so quickly!

So, at that point, I knew they’re going to want to do another one. You just knew it.

Peter: How long was it before the next one?

Kelley: It was a couple years because, at that point, Doug had written something else that they accepted, this Dark Joker book, which another artist was to draw. Eventually I signed a contract to do Dark Joker and then the sequel to Red Rain. The Joker book did well and then I got started on Batman: Bloodstorm. That’s when they hired me to do covers for Detective and Batman.

DC initially wanted Sam Kieth, who was doing very well on Wolverine at Marvel, to do one cover. They didn’t have his contact information, so I gave it to them and I really

This spread: After making his stunning impact with Deadman, Kelley Jones teamed with writer Doug Moench to create the “Elseworlds” vampire version of Batman, which started with Batman & Dracula: Red Rain. Sculpture at right

by William Paquin.

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sold him. I said, “He’s the guy you’re going to want to do all of this stuff!”

They originally wanted one cover, but I said I would hire him for the whole thing. “You’re going to get a totally different look. It’s cool, nothing like it, and I know he digs Batman.” I get a hold of Sam, Sam says, “Yeah, I’m going to do this. It’s great.” And then I go back to what I was doing. Soon I get a call from Sam saying, “I’m having trouble doing this. It’s Batman, so I’m kinda freezing up here.” With Wolverine, he could do whatever he wanted because he was in a place nobody cared what he was doing. So I said, “Don’t worry. Do one, no matter how it turns out, and then you go on from there.” I hang up and don’t hear from him, but then the editor calls and says, “Sam just quit and we are really late and it’s your fault. [laughter] You recommended him, you said all these

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Batman, Deadman, Justice League Dark TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Artist Kelley Jones joined with Swamp Thing co-creator Len Wein for the pair of Convergence: Swamp Thing issues, in 2015, which co-starred the Elseworlds vampire Batman. The two-issue mini-series proved popular enough with readers for DC to green-light Kelley and Len to again team-up, this time for a six-issue Swamp Thing miniseries, published in 2016. Inset right: Justice League Dark is an offshoot of the Justice League of America that features a number of DC’s supernatural characters and Kelley contributed the variant cover art for JLD #33 [Sept. 2014], which sports Batman and his oft guest-star, Boston Brand, a.k.a. Deadman.

things. I need covers!” So that’s really how it happened. So I called Sam and Sam apologizes. I said, “You don’t have to apologize. I get it. You can freeze up on something.” Which is odd because he turned out to be such a great Batman artist! But, at that moment, I understood Sam’s plight. It is intimidating. I have felt it. They told me they needed five covers in a week. So I stopped doing what I was doing and I just hammered ’em out. They told me what each issue was basically about…

Peter: So you just took a symbolic approach.

Kelley: Right. That’s all I could do! I had no idea what was going in them. I knew Doug was writing one portion of the Batman line, but this was when everything was connected, and he didn’t know what was going on with the other guys’ books so much. When they say Batman is trapped in a sewer, well, okay, that kind of draws itself. You can put rats on his head and it makes it really good. And it’s quick!

“Batman is fighting Mad Hatter” or something, and that’s all you know, “Okay, you come up with something.” What was good was there was no controlling anything on this but the deadline. So now I’m comfortable with Batman, and I’m just knocking these things out, and thinking that will be the end of it, and then I can go back to what I’m doing, and they’ll find whoever. But they liked them quite a bit and said, “Can you fit in the regular cover assignment for Detective and Batman?” So that’s how that started and that became an enormous amount of work! It started out with, “Don’t give me too much. Just tell me the gist of something.” As it got more connected, they had to be more representational. And then they changed Batman so I tried to avoid showing that as much as I could.

Peter: Did they ever reject any of the covers?

Kelley: No. I think, at that time, I was the sideshow of a sideshow, right? The main battle was going on. They were just trying to get several books linked together, each artist in sync with ending where the next one begins, starting with the designs done right. So I was the guy who just was told, “Make your deadline so we can promote this.” Now, working in advance on a cover, they didn’t really know what each issue was going to be that many months in advance.

So there was a great deal of freedom in that. And the covers took on a life of their own! The only one we worked out on was where Bane breaks Batman’s back [Batman #497].

That was the only one. It was the only time I sent a sketch in. I faxed it in. It was very loose.

I sent this thing in and they said, “Yeah, go with that,” and that was because they were doing some fancy special cover thing. I thought no more of it and went on and really hadn’t thought it was one of my better covers, if you want to know the truth. Then ten to twelve years go by and you just see my cover everywhere! You can never tell. I would have picked several others which I liked better.

I became known for drawing Bane and I’d only drawn him like five or six times and I didn’t understand the character because I wasn’t following him as much. So I didn’t understand him like you would the Joker, the Riddler… This was a new guy so I just made him up, kind of.

He was a big guy. They would tell me on the phone that he‘s on steroids or something. I just made him probably really much bigger than he was in the books and a lot more exaggerated.

But I wanted on a cover that would have impact! If Batman’s going to be hurt this badly, it can’t be from just a regular guy.

Peter: What was your approach with Dark Joker?

The Spectre, Green Arrow TM & © DC Comics.

Kelley: In that one, he’s a sorcerer and Batman is more of a bestial character. It was much more fantasy. It took place in a whole different kind of forest, with villagers and stuff like that. So it wasn’t The Joker we all know; he was a mad sorcerer. When I got to Bloodstorm and they were going to put him in there, that was, “Okay. He’s just the Joker in this. He’s the same nutjob in this universe.” His thing was to make his gang vampires and then take over, and that sat well with the vampires because Batman has been taking them out, but the Joker clearly can handle a crucifix. He can plan during the daytime. He can do all this really great stuff! And so it worked. It was another one of those really great, fun scripts, but the foundation was Bruce turning into this thing!

Peter: Drinking the blood.

Kelley: And having to drink the blood! Those things that make a vampire a vampire… His great power to me is his incredible will, and even channeling it into what he was doing, he knows eventually it’s going to go bad. Which should be a tragedy, right? Universal horror films always end in tragedy.

Peter: There’s one where you see Batman and he’s got his vampire batwings!

Kelley: Yeah.

Peter: So that was really cool! I’m from the era where Spider-Man all of a sudden got six arms!

Kelley: Well, I always liked this! With Swamp Thing, how do you break away from the Wrightson mold? Alan Moore said the character is literally a swamp “thing.” Okay, and he’s growing stuff off his body. Deadman? I took that to be he’s literally a dead man. [Peter laughs] It gets to be pretty easy, right? So, with Batman, that was one of the things. It was, like, Doug said, “Let’s make him really monstrous!”

Well, he’s already monstrous.

Peter: Right. But he’s not the Man-Bat! Kelley: But he’s not a man-bat and he can’t do Man-Bat. So you give him these huge, like, batwings, dragon wings, whatever. It became a really very powerful image! Much more than I had intended it to be. The only problem is that it became difficult to lay out pages, [laughs] because it would take up so much of the page! His wings and his cape… but it was cool!

Peter: What was the reaction with Bloodstorm?

Kelley: It was kind of like what Bride of Frankenstein was to Frankenstein. Here you have this thing take off… And, of course, any time you have the Joker well done, it helps support the rest. The fact that Batman was still spiraling down became very, very interesting, too. So what they’re actually fighting over becomes less than this personal thing between him and the Joker and, as always, Batman with Alfred, succumbing to something far worse than any villain in Gotham.

And he would be far more successful than Dracula ever could be. He gets all better — you know, drinks animal blood and he’s okay — but there was none of this romantic notion of what a vampire was. I’ve always seen them as really unlikable monsters.

Peter: With Batman here, he has the bat-crucifix, right?

Kelley: Right. Well, he has to! I mean, all of those things. When you start taking them going, “Well, how would this work?” And that starts developing right there; that starts working. I remember Doug saying, “You know, he would start making things—like he always does—to take out vampires. They would be this kind of stuff! It would be this same kind of ingenuity that it would be for a Man-Bat COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

device or a Mr. Freeze device. He’ll always come up with something!”

Peter: Like bat-shark repellent! [laughter] Kelley: Yeah, there’s gotta be something like that, which is silly when people talk about it, but when you think of the character, his intellect would come up with it. It’s the Sherlock Holmesian nature of him that sometimes gets forgotten; that he is a detective first. And, even in this really degenerate form, he would still be doing that. As long as Bruce Wayne’s still there, he would be doing that.

Peter: You have kind of Wolf Man character in there.

Kelley: Well, once you get the ball rolling on it, then you start putting in the things that kind of go with that Universal mindset. And you’ve got to remember, at that time you had an audience who really understood all that,

Above: Though he has yet to draw a solo story featuring DC’s vengeance obsessed “super-hero,” The Spectre — which, we wager, would be an awesome idea, you think?

— artist Kelley Jones has rendered the character now and again. Curiously in a rare moment when he unexpectedly inked another artist’s pencils, Kelley delineated Jim Aparo in The Spectre #16 [Mar. ’94].

Here is KJ’s Spectre #31 [July ’95] cover featuring the astral avenger, courtesy of the artist.

Inset left: Appropriately, DC Comics tapped Kelley to produce pencils and inks on a variant cover for the “Monsters of the Month” edition of Green Arrow #45 [Dec. 2015].

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This page: Marshall Rogers’ 1978 prediction that Kelley Jones would become an effective Batman artist was proven true with not only the Elseworlds vampire Batman trilogy, but particularly by Kelley’s three-year stint as the main Batman title’s assigned monthly artist. For 34 glorious issues, Kelley joined with writer Doug Moench, inker John Beatty, and letterer Todd Klein to create some of the finest Batman comics of the 1990s.

Above is Kelley’s stunning Batman #516 [Mar. ’95] cover. At right is a recent KJ commission.

really good stuff. So you want to go even further, beyond my drawing, I would always say go to the Hammer films. That really garish color they used to do really knocked me out!

Because what you find is with a bright limited palate, if you work as dark as I do, the blacks become blacker and the darks become darker and the lines are easier to see.

Peter: John Beatty inked Bloodstorm. Was Malcolm not available?

Kelley: Malcolm had his own issues. I had the deal set with him, “You’re the guy until you don’t want to be the guy.”

So he worked with me on Sandman and Red Rain, but he had his own concerns and had a hard time dealing with the office. At a certain point, he also wanted to do his own thing.

I see myself more as an inker who pencils, not a penciler who inks. I have a deep respect for inkers and would try to understand who the inker was and set them up, and work with what they do best in mind. So when Malcolm said he couldn’t go on anymore, John Beatty wanted to work on my material. When the opportunity came up, I called him up and he was ready to go.

Peter: Was that the first major work that you guys did together?

Kelley: No, we did a book for Archie Comics that never got published, The Hangman, written by Len Wein. Comics are filled with “might have beens” and “almosts.” What I remember was that Archie wanted to go in this new direction and John had called me about Deadman — how much he liked Deadman. I was very humbled by that because John was a major inker. There was Terry Austin, Klaus Janson, Rubinstein, and John Beatty. So, if one of them calls you, well, you know they have their pick of the litter.

Long story short, Archie gets a hold of me. They want to redo the line. They had a couple of different things going on.

Would I want to do this book, The Hangman? They’re going to update the old character. Len Wein is going to write it…

Len Wein! And he wrote a really good strip, I drew it, and John had inked quite a bit of it. In fact, the Comics Buyers’ Guide had actually published several pages saying it’s not what you expect from Archie. And the shops pre-ordered hundreds of thousands on this, like 600,000 or 700,000 copies! The publisher, though, looked at it and said, “We can’t publish this. This is too violent!” (Today, Archie does whatever — everything — but back then they didn’t.) So, at that moment, it was scrapped, and they still have those pages. It broke the editor’s heart. But, anyway, John and I saw that we could work really well together and it probably was fortuitous because it led us to doing Batman later on.

Peter: So, at the end of Bloodstorm, you kill Batman.

Kelley: Yeah, you had to.

Peter: Right, but he’s a vampire and you can never really kill a vampire.

Kelley: No one ever really dies in comics any way.

Peter: But at the end of Bloodstorm, did you guys think this was the end of it?

Kelley: Well, at the end of that one, we thought that was it because they had called and asked, “Do you want to do the monthly?” That was because Bloodstorm came out and did tremendously big numbers again, so there was probably the thought of doing something again, At that moment, Doug probably wanted to let the Elseworlds vampire Batman just go and let it percolate. Doug was kicking ideas around at that time about doing Superman. But, at the same time, all this was going on, and those covers had really caught fire.

So, without intending to, I became known as the preeminent Batman guy for a spell. Now, I’m not doing the monthly Batman books and I’m not involved in anything that’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on! I’m way out in the weeds doing these covers. I would go to signings where there were Batman fans and I didn’t know the answers to all of their Batman questions. I knew nothing! And I’m not being coy, but I would read that I was becoming this preeminent Batman guy, which was funny because I wasn’t doing Bat#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

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too. They all were very well versed in at least Universal’s approach to those things.

Peter: And Catwoman?

Kelley: Well, you’ve got to have Catwoman. [Peter laughs] That’s more grist of the mill as far as things he’s gotta deal with. You have to show how he would deal with all these same people he’s always dealt with but under this way he’s become.

And then the way they might change, how they might be different. You know, it did create its own universe without any initial intent; it expanded naturally. First you have an actual vampire in the traditional sense in an actual Batman story. Well, you can’t really do that, so it has to be an Elseworlds, and then all the things that happen outside of that.

By the time you get that fully fleshed out, you have a universe, and a very “used” kind of a universe, so it felt comfortable. Because everyone knows the dance, right?

They know the tropes. You just bring a new twist here and there, like big batwings or whatever. And it starts telling itself.

Peter: You have Batman almost eat a rat in Bloodstorm.

That was pretty shocking.

Kelley: It was to me, too. What I found always shocking is maybe not the big event — those rarely can live up to that — but all these little moments that create dread. The journey is where the shocks come in. So, yeah. [chuckles] You eat a rat.

Peter: You don’t really objectify women’s bodies in your work. Well, on some you do.

Kelley: I draw what’s real and I wouldn’t say I champion feminism, but I just think it’s better not to exaggerate their figures. If you want to know the truth, it works better. If your goal is to be erotic, it works better. Even if your goal is to be exploitative, it works better. It just works better and I don’t know why. I’ll look at stuff that people are known for doing that and I think it’s silly. It wears out its welcome, really. And then it becomes, “How do I draw a panel to the best leering angle?” Whereas I just go, “This is what it is,” and I go from Red Rain there.

Peter: Red Rain had a Universal vibe. Bloodstorm has a Hammer approach.

Kelley: Oh, totally. There’s all kind of nods to both. That’s why I wanted to do it. I loved the arguments I used to have with horror film fans! Who is a better Dracula, Lugosi or Lee? Color or black-&-white?

But what both studios did was to make them fairy tales, morality tales. I learned most of my religion from a Hammer film, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, where they lay it all out, as silly as that sounds, right?

Not just in dealing with vampires, but what was going on with the monsignor… the guy carries a gun, but he won’t kill a person, even if they are in thrall of Dracula… it’s just

what the copyrights are on these things.” I said, “Well, all of ’em have been dead for 700 years!” Right?

They’re woodcuts and prints. So I had to show them where I was getting that material. So they were afraid that it was somebody else’s art and I said, “No. It’s Albrecht Dürer or some unknown guy from the 13th century in outer Germany.”

So, once I showed ’em what that was, they said, “Yeah, you can do that.” It became so much of a nightmare that I wouldn’t do it again.

Peter: [Laughs] It adds a certain flavor to it. Especially since this particular issue is a little too clean!

Kelley: Well, there you have it.

This new style of printing. Everyone was trying to overcompensate for this new style — this Baxter printing or whatever you would call it — of printing.

You didn’t know what you were going to get. And they were going from plate printing to digital printing so you really didn’t know unless somebody was there looking at it. You didn’t know what you were going to get. We were afraid of everything closing up. That’s what was going on. So you had to build in for potential production problems until it was all worked out. Because if you look at the early ones, those weren’t the issue. The plate printing and colorists per book. I mean, everything’s working the way you know. Later on, though, I was looking at books and having other artists call me just freaking out! They would say I had nothing to complain about, but I was able to see what their problems were and try to avoid them. My style would lend itself more to adapting to that as opposed to someone who’s very… less lighting, less rendering, that kind of stuff.

I could get… well, if it’s gonna get that way, I’ll darken it up! If it’ll get that way,

This page: Before being recruited as the monthly artist on Batman, Kelley Jones was the cover artist during the “Knightfall” era of the early 1990s, and he produced the iconic “broken bat” image (below) of Bane fracturing the back of the Darknight Detective (Batman #497, late July ’93). Above is his Detective Comics #651 [early Oct. ’92] cover.

Batman, Bane TM & © DC Comics.

man, you know? In my head, I thought, “I have got to get the assignment!” So, when Bloodstorm came to an end, that’s when Denny O’Neil asked me, “Would you want to do the regular series?” And that took over for the next three years.

Peter: Staying with the vampire Batman, different colorist on the third one, Crimson Mist?

Kelley: Well, Les had switched from how he colored books to a pretty different style. Also, he had gotten some job offers to work for a video game company and he was teaching painting. He’s a painter. The good thing was, working with him, I never gave him color notes, other than “night” or “day,” if it wasn’t clear. He did his thing and I gave him as much leeway as I did with John on the inks.

“Do what it takes.” I think he had told me once breaking in to comics he got used to getting a lot of leeway. But he had these other opportunities and he moved on.

Peter: Crimson Mist doesn’t seem as moody. The colors are…

Kelley: Well, it’s a different colorist. And you have to realize, they also switched techniques of printing. They went from newsprint four-color to the new computer laser stuff on slick paper, which was a shock for a lot of people.

When I first saw it, it was in the regular pages of Batman so I went from the newsprint Batman to this slick stuff. It threw a lot of people because it simplified things immediately. You couldn’t watercolor anymore. They didn’t blue line, so there are fundamental changes in how you do it. If you look at coloring at that time, a lot of books are very monochromatic, just homogenized-looking coloring. Gregory Wright actually put in a lot of different colors. And that was the direction I said to go; back-lighting, two-tone coloring, a lot of stuff like that — stuff like you’d see in Hammer films. I still give that advice to any colorist I work with, to this day! Keep it bright and simple, and black is a color. How many colors do they have now? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? I always go, “Y’know, how about eight colors?” Very simple.

Peter: In Crimson Mist, you have all these marginal illustrations.

Kelley: Oh, the little graphics? I saw it as infection and in the medieval sense Gotham was becoming this… It was weird place before and it’s really weird now. Essentially, it’s been reduced to this medieval town with a plague. There was a big to-do on that because I had gotten these all from these old books with prints and whatnot, and at first DC said, “You can’t reproduce these because we don’t know

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Above: Caption.

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I’ll design a little bit more. I was more flexible that way. That was a rough little period. Now I look at it and they’ve gotten much better at it. If I had my way, would I really want to be on newsprint still?

Peter: So Batman: Crimson Mist is the last one…?

Kelley: That was the end! Because Doug said, “Okay, the third part of a trilogy is going to be the toughest. It’s going to end badly.”

Peter: Poor Alfred.

Kelley: Poor Alfred. But there could be no one left, right? [laughter] Lord of the Rings was just written as one book, but they chopped it into three sections and called it a trilogy. Batman: Red Rain was a one-and-done, and then you do a sequel and, like Doug said, the only problem he had about doing Bloodstorm was that they’re going to

want a third one. He was reticent about doing that but he said there you have to agree that if we’re going to do two, we might as well do a trilogy… You do it and you’re done.

You go on. I don’t think he or I would have thought it would last that long. And now, the revamping at DC, they got rid of all the Elseworlds material except they kept the vampire Batman.

Peter: Wow. Kelley: He’s still doin’ his thing. [laughter] If somebody said, “We want you to create a franchise,” we would’ve failed completely. It worked because we were doing it in the middle of nowhere. No one cared about Red Rain. We’re doing it basically to entertain ourselves.

Peter: Any final thoughts on this trilogy?

Kelley: It was as good as it could have been. A fairly silly premise turned into something, as far as comics go, into a kind of high art. Batman vs. Dracula… if you tell someone that, they would probably like the concept if they’re not into comics. But in comics, people already have really pretty preconceived notions of their heroes, who they should fight, and all that. So I thought that was a big impediment because I’m that guy! “Why can’t it be Ra’s Al Ghul?”

Something like I knew. But I’ll give it to Doug. I mean the guy comes in there with something completely different, but very seriously! If you’re wrong then it becomes parody.

In just an instant, it can become a parody. But if you take it seriously, you’ll have people after the first few pages go, “This isn’t what I thought it would be.”

Peter: Were there any pages or images that got rejected?

Kelley: No, because you’ve got to remember, it was an Elseworlds book and, with Elseworlds, they were trying to push those limits. Vertigo was just coming into being. I mean, in, he shoved a piece of glass through his hand and that’s in canon! The Killing Joke. They’re doing what they do in there and that’s in canon. So I’m sitting there going, “Well, we’re not doing what they did to Barbara Gordon and we’re not doing glass through the hand. It’s a tragedy!” And who he is killing are bad dudes!

Peter: Except for Alfred.

Kelley: Except for Alfred. And it goes the way it has to go. But in that, you’ve already set the limits of what you’re gonna do and once people know, you throw something outside of it like that.

Peter: And Robin doesn’t exist in this world?

Kelley: No. I don’t think Doug was ever a Robin fan.

He would ask me that. “Do you want to do Robin?” And I always found my favorite Batman stuff was just really Batman. I don’t mind Robin… well, I do mind Robin. But, in this universe, he doesn’t exist. And that would have slowed it down, frankly.

Peter: [Looking over Kelley’s Batman run from the mid’90s] So do you want to talk about these?

Kelley: Sure. These have a life of their own. This is my “cult book.” I’m constantly assailed about this. “Do more of these,” someone will say. That’s the monster people, but this is the giant gorilla in the living room.

Peter: [Referring to Batman #515 (Feb. ’95)] So this one, “Dark Rider, Cold Warrior,” was this the first Batman that you did for…?

Kelley: In canon, yes. It’s scary. I decided it was time for something new. I had to do a transitional story, and I was supposed to start an issue later, but circumstances being what they are, I had to come in one issue early. So they readjusted it as much as they could for that. At that point, Denny had told me before I got started: “You do it the way you want. We’ve been doing these connected stories. You just go to town and do what you want.” Doug was essentially saying the same thing. No one said do it a certain way.

They just said, “Take it.” Even though I had already been doing Batman, in-canon is different. That’s a completely different animal. So I had to really psych myself up to go into it. And frankly, distinguish myself from everyone else doing it, but more so the way all these books were connected.

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

Peter: Right, because the Batman was like… a clenchedfists guy. I mean… he’s pugnacious.

Kelley: And he’s coming out of having been injured for a long time, after someone had replaced him. All that was going on. So it wasn’t just, “And now Kelley Jones takes over.” It was, like, “And now Batman comes back!” So you had two things from breaking his back to the Batman has returned. There was a lot going on and a lot of attention was focused on this. And I did want it to be different.

Peter: Your villain Dark Rider is kind of disgusting, with all his radioactive pustules.

Kelley: Yeah, he is, but again, here I am coming in at the end and they’d already established these things. So I didn’t really look at anything. I had a big fear of not being able to do what they were doing or having it be watered down me or… You want to sink or swim on your own, because later on, when it’s all said and done, you don’t want to be thinking, “Would have, should have, or could have.”

Peter: So this KGBeast is kind of like an early Bane type of thing.

Kelley: Kind of, something like that, and he might have existed earlier. He was one of Jim Starlin’s creations. I was thinking James Bond with those weird assassins and stuff like that.

Peter: It’s good to use the Russian mob type of thing.

Kelley: Which was just happening then!

Peter: Your splash pages really set the pace.

Kelley: You know, I can’t say “every” time, but I always used to have a thing with Doug that I don’t want the first page to be ambulances around a building on fire or something… It’s gotta be Batman or Batman-related, because, if

I’m in a store, the cover makes me pick it up, but the first page sells it to me. That was my rationale. So you want to be, “Okay, this is inviting.”

Peter: Was Doug writing to your strengths?

Kelley: Well, his thing was, “I’m going to write the stories I’ve always wanted to write. Kelley happens to be drawing it, but I’m going to write my stories.” People labeled these as paranoiac, X-Files, government conspiracy things… whatever. Which is Doug, right? He’s a ’60s guy. That’s his thing. Mine was, “Fine. I’m doing film noir monsters.” That was my thing. They kind of went together. You know, Doug would bring in all these things, like MKUltra, all that secret stuff. I knew nothing about it, but he would go on about it on the phone to me and it really flavored Batman well. And it brought a certain ambiance to the whole storyline.

Peter: And also you brought a kind of eroticism to some of it.

Kelley: Well, there is a lot of that.

Peter: The two-part sultry Sleeper story. The splash page of Batman on the bed with her and all these little skulls dangling. Skulls mean…you know, you could write a Jungian paper on it.

Kelley: Well, you could because there was a lot of that going on, a lot of symbolism. I’m not saying we were being Salvador Dali; you can only go so far. But I felt, at that time, comics were starting to get expensive, so you wanted to give more than just what you were expected to. You start giving Easter eggs, you start giving more to get across something more than just the simple — he tracks The Penguin, attacks The Penguin, brings The Penguin in. You wanted to bring more to it because, like I said, comics were starting to be more expensive and I wanted a more complete deal. It meant more work, but it was much more satisfying.

Peter: You know, looking at page six of #517, the automobiles always seem to want to stay in the ’20s and ’30s…

Kelley: You know what? If you look at classic cars, there’s an artistic sweep to them. They’ve got an organic nature to them, a beautiful line.

There aren’t really classic cars being made right now so… I don’t want functional, I want cool. In a comic, it’ll all be functional.

Now you see, as you’re saying that, and I’m looking at this page here, you say, “What does editorial accept? What do they not accept? What do they take you to task for?” Whatever.

What they took us to task for was the doughnut.

Peter: [Laughs] Really? The cream doughnut panel?

Kelley: Yeah. It was written as a jelly doughnut and I drew it with jelly coming out, but it was dark. But, for whatever reason, it had to be a cream doughnut because… I don’t know. To this day, I do not know what that was about. I remember Doug went round and round with them on this. Why? He felt any encroachment meant there would be more encroachment. That was the lesson I learned: Don’t ask. If it’s something that small in a whole issue of mayhem and murder, if that’s all they’re asking then, okay, fine. But it’s one of those odd things. Denny just said Harvey Bullock doesn’t eat jelly doughnuts.

Peter: But again, you know, I noticed there was little subtle things you were adding. Like on the splash to #518, with the row of small panels at the top, all the masks. You have the Mexican mask and then there’s Batman. But he’s never the last one. He’s always…

Kelley: Just one of them. What happened was I started doing this thing because I was really into

This spread: Previous page features Kelley’s original art for a 1992 Wizard magazine cover, plus detail from his cover of Batman #520 [July ’95]. Readers realized that Kelley’s arrival on Batman was going to be epic with page three of #515 [Feb. ’95]. Almost every Moench/Jones/Beatty Batman story included a numbered “DM-KJ-JB” notation.

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Above: In 1993, Doug Moench and Kelley Jones produced the Elseworlds graphic novel Batman: Dark Joker: The Wild, which featured the titular hero as half-man/half-beast. Below: Detail from the cover of Batman #536 [Nov. ’96]..

Kelley: It’s a little thing that’s coming. I love trains and I think those kind of trains go in to Batman’s world quite well.

I remember at the time, they said, “Kelley, you’re doing, like, old steam engines. How about electric trains?” But I want the old ones. I said, “Look, I always think of Buster Keaton’s The General and trains are a static thing, so if I just draw them the way they are, meh! But if there’s all this billowing smoke and big gears moving, that’s exciting to me!”

Peter: How fun was it to do this Swamp Thing story?

Kelley: It was enormous fun! Because I basically got to do a fill-in issue of Swamp Thing.

Peter: The splash for #522 really set the mood, with the gnarly, spooky tree. You can see the poor souls writhing in in the trunk and branches, and Batman is almost part of it.

His cape almost root-like.

Kelley: You know, in comics, decoration is important to me. And, really, it means more in a monthly title than it does in a special. As a special, it’s expected, but in the monthly, decoration is a big deal! So to get to do Swamp Thing in a Batman book…

Peter: The boat on page 10, with Batman in it, is named Baren Samedi. Does that mean anything?

Kelley: Baron Samedi is a big Voodoo dude, right? So when you’re down there, I figured, yeah, you just do a little of the Cajun/Creole stuff. It’s kind of like in Live and Let Die, remember? He’s the guy who dresses up like Baron Samedi and he comes with the snakes, the “Uncola” guy [Geoffrey Holder].

Peter: And this great two-page layout?

Kelley: We needed the double-page shot. We had to.

Can’t do Wrightson. Can’t really do Bissette. They’ve done their thing (and rightfully so). So I kind of split the difference, y’know?

Peter: This issue has a panel, on page 21 that’s always intrigued me. An effective symbolic look of the Batman’s demons.

Kelley: All the different things that made Batman who he is, inside of him. He’s always going to be that kid. He’s going be that guy that grew up as an orphan, and the guy #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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decoration. So I would start doing an intro panel, I would start doing chapter breaks where I could, and I would do “Next Issue” blurb stuff. I loved the set decoration. I loved the fourth wall you knock down, but you’re taking it very seriously at the same time. But you want nods to your audience that, “Hey, I’m into this!” I wanted them to know I was one of them.

Peter: Black Spider was a new villain, right?

Kelley: I didn’t know who he was. He was just like this kind of a villain who was like a guy from the cast of Grease. I think Doug was poking fun at [inker] John Beatty because John had a pompadour or whatever, a kind of ’50s thing. So he was just making fun of John.

Peter: Killer Croc in #521: What did you think of Killer Croc? He seems like an odd Batman villain.

Kelley: He does! And I’ve never really understood exactly. He seems like, frankly, a Swamp Thing villain, and the big deal then was Vertigo and the DCU didn’t cross-pollinate. I’d come from that and so Doug said, “I really want do a Batman/Swamp Thing story.” They hadn’t done it in forever. And luckily the people I knew said it would be cool because they knew me and that I would take it seriously and not turn him into a sidekick… And Doug actually wrote an excellent story where you think there’s going to be a big fight between Swamp Thing and Killer Croc, but no, he’s calling Killer Croc to come home.

Peter: In #521’s decorative panel on the splash, there is a silhouette of train behind Batman. So when you did this, it was after you knew that the train would be jumping the tracks, right?

Batman, Detective Comics TM & © DC Comics.

who is perceived as this playboy ne’er-do-well. There are the many different personalities that make the one person.

Doug was a big anti-drug guy, so his view was the MKUltra view of it, right? He wasn’t like, “Drugs are evil, kids.” He wasn’t that. This was to warn about the danger of what you could unleash.

Peter: Did you and Doug co-plot on these books?

Kelley: We would talk about all of them on the phone.

Clearly they were Doug’s stories, but he’d say, “Who do you want to draw? Who do you want to do? What do you think?” He was going to use Killer Croc, so I said I had always wanted to do Swamp Thing. That worked together, right? I always wanted to do The Scarecrow. I loved The Scarecrow. I loved that he was a psychiatrist, you know?

You could do a lot with that! So we’d go from there. But a lot of it was just talking on the phone, mostly to discuss moments—if this incident should happen or this complication should happen or this scene should happen. And then you weave them together, you know, and that’s what he would do. You discuss it, but he would still always throw me a surprise!

Peter: So, out of all the Batman villains, which is the one that Batman should be most scared of? Is it The Joker?

Kelley: The Joker he’s not afraid of. The Joker’s probably the least fearsome to him. I would say, to me, it had always been potentially The Scarecrow because he was a psychiatrist and he had that fear gas. You yourself would be your own antagonist, but I don’t really know that he’s scared of anyone. I think he is frustrated that it just keeps going on. I mean, if I were Batman, I’d be like Tony Soprano, and my enemies would be disappearing. But he doesn’t do that, so…

The things that make Batman work for me are so multi-faceted. The city is a character to me. The city will be whatever I want it to be at that time, so it can look like Manhattan or it can look like Prague. It depends. And that’s to get across different districts in this very old city. That part I really like. Nice little pieces. It’s just that I love the comic book nature of a comic, which I don’t know why we get away from. But you know what? I got so much reaction to those things, that I found that if I wasn’t doing it, I would get a lot of mail, “You’re not doing that!”

Peter: Your Mr. Freeze design [#525]. His jaw is basically always…

Kelley: He’s just basically always up-lit and whatever’s in there. But it’s creepy to me, and I think freezing people is creepy to me!

Peter: Yeah, because they shatter into little pieces.

Kelley: Yeah, they shatter! It seems to me he’s almost alien because he can’t live in our atmosphere, or can’t live in our temperature, I should say. But they disliked the character of Mr. Freeze quite a bit in the office in those days, so to use him… Initially, it came up when Doug said, “Who do you wanna do?” I said, “Mr. Freeze.”

Just that idea of him freezing cold does something to me. What I didn’t know, because I was a latecomer to all this… was that Denny O’Neil’s been there since 1968 and he just had this aversion to the character.

No one does a Mr. Freeze story anymore because of the TV show or whatever.

I didn’t know any of this. So Doug had wanted to do a three-parter or a two-parter (I forget) and the book now was doing very well on its own. We weren’t connected to anything. Sales had gone up and it was doing good and COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

I had done a lot for them! And I wasn’t goin’ in there sayin’, “Aw, man, I really wanted to do it.”

So anyway, I said, “Okay, no Mr. Freeze.” I didn’t know how they felt about him. I really wanted to do it. So Denny said, “How about one issue? I’ll let you do it for one issue, and that’s it. You don’t get to ask for the character anymore and I don’t want to have to deal with this anymore, all right?” I said, “Look. I appreciate it.” He then called Doug and Doug said fine.

And I love the idea of doing one-and-dones anyway. Single issues which are not connected to anything, I think, are good for readers. It’s good for creators. It’s just good. Short stories you really have to hone it and get your point across. Luckily, I got to do some of those. So he wrote the Freeze issue and it was a big, big

This page: As mentioned, Kelley Jones was a regular cover artist on the Batman family of titles during the early 1990s, receiving the assignment from editor Dennis O’Neil, who saw in the young talent the makings of a legendary Batman artist. Above is the original art for Detective Comics #663 [early July 1993] and inset is the printed version.

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Above: Kelley Jones’ redesign of classic Batman villain Mr. Freeze impressed the Batman movie producers so much that they adapted the look for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role in Batman & Robin [1997]. TV’s Gotham also has a KJ-like version.

books they were doing, so I would add a few aspects. But I would always go back and look at how Dick Sprang did it. Then at that point I could at least say I’m honoring the history of it. And I knew people who were involved in stock car racing and racing in general, so, as a kid, I’d see these kind of things. So, while the editors would nudge you, you still try to keep the cool kid angle to it. They did it more like the movies and they wanted us to follow [Batman production designer] Anton Furst or something. I just did my thing.

I liked it! You can’t compete with a movie. You have to kind of do your own.

Peter: So the strange circus oddities you drop in the TwoFace story?

Kelley: Well, what’s kind of good in that is later on the X-Files people took from that issue with Two-Face. They liked that. And at least they were kind enough to say so.

They had a black-&-white kind of X-Files. But anyway, I liked the idea. Doug had said a Siamese twin. I just stuck ’em together. That was in the discussions and he said, “Okay. I’ll write a character like that.” And I loved Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes quite a lot and a lot of the freaks in that are their own people. They’re not just one big evil group like Marvel’s Ringmaster or something. They’re all their own guys; they’re just sort of a collective. And I told Doug I’m big on Bradbury.

Peter: Issue #528, the second part, has a little bit of a Mike Ploog Man-Thing clown story feel.

Kelley: Probably I was thinking more along the lines of Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai. A lot of heavy darks, a lot of sympathy for clowns. People hate clowns, so I wanted to do a good clown… you know, The Joker’s the evil clown, so… Again, the symbolism with that character and TwoFace, you know. It’s fairly obvious but it works pretty good.

Peter: Issue #529: That’s an awesome cover. The border… skulls always creep back in!

Kelley: Well, this one was one of the few times we had to.

They had this event of disease taking over.

Peter: Oh, right. Contagion.

Kelley: Right. And Doug hollered over that, but he said, “All right. I’m going to do one… but I’m going to get what I want out of it.” So we got stuff later on down the line, but what he did was he made it separate from what was going on in Detective, Robin, Azrael, and all the other books. So, for this issue, it’s a one-and-done. And he didn’t talk about it later.

Peter: And then, at the end of the Contagion/Poison Ivy issue, we get that cool coming next panel of a skeletal Batman because it’s— Kelley: Deadman. Well, Deadman goes into people, right? Well, there you go.

Peter: And, again the splash of that issue [#530], a stylized Batman, a gargoyle on the corner of a building. Very cool.

Kelley: Not that any of the art would show it, but it’s because I always loved Jim Aparo’s Brave and the Bold, so this was my asking, “Can we do a Brave and the Bold in Batman?” And I was very glad, and so Doug took it from there.

I’m not big on a lot of team-up stuff, because they subordinate your own hero sometimes, but if you did it like The Brave and the Bold, you could do it. Plus Deadman and Batman go together, due to Neal Adams.

Peter: Then we have “The Cult of the Mummy” [Batman #531], so again we’re going back to Hammer films and those things.

Kelley: Yeah, and Doug was really into that whole thing at the time — Aztecs and Mayans, and all that. I think just the cultures. And he had once said that it’s sometimes good to take Batman out of Gotham. Denny had done it with the Ra’s stories, so Doug took him out of Gotham just to #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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hit. Freeze became a DCU regular after that.

All the other editors wanted to use him! So Mr. Freeze was on the loose!

So everyone got to use Mr. Freeze from then on but me! [laughs] The final irony was that when Batman and Robin was to be made, with George Clooney, the main villain was to be Mr. Freeze.

The filmmakers were to follow the animated TV series version of Freeze, a smaller slender version. They cast Patrick Stewart for the role.

Yet when my Freeze hit the stands they immediately decided to do my Freeze in the armor and all. The director, Joel Schumacher, held up Batman #525 on television and proclaimed this was the Freeze he would do. They recast the character with Arnold Schwarzenegger!

But I still wasn’t allowed to use him anymore! Again, I wanted to move on, to go on to the next one, because Batman’s rogues gallery is so good, while you’re there, you want to get as many of them as you can.

Peter: Some of these endings have your sense of humor.

Kelley: Yeah, there’s always black humor in those things.

Peter: At the end of the Swamp Thing one, Batman’s like, “Got a lot of questions, not the least of which is, how to get to my car?” [laughs] Kelley: Well, let’s be practical. In this one [#525], Mr. Freeze ends up in a refrigerator until the cops can come.

Because there’s a natural humor that should be in it from the circumstances they’re in. For me, you’ve got to remember, too, the prevailing thing with Batman was that he’s grim and dark and gritty and edgy, all those things. And I always see him as… well, he’s driven; it’s vigilante justice, and he’s driven, and the whole thing. But his angle is fear. He’s not some robot, so there is natural humor to all this, and a certain sarcasm that comes with that.

Actually, that’s more like Doug’s nature. He has a dry sarcasm.

Peter: In #527, the Two-Face one, the Batmobile changes.

Kelley: Well, they would nudge me to make it like the other Batman

All characters TM & © DC Comics.

do this. Doug was pretty wise on this. He wanted to shake things up a bit as far as jungles instead of dark alleys. I remember him saying, “I want more green in the background.” You know, he’s thinking in that way. When you’re going through, it does make a difference. It breaks it up.

Peter: How long does it take you to come up with the decorative flourishes on the splash page, like this one in #531?

Kelley: Sometimes longer than it should because you know you’re expected to and you don’t want to do the same thing over and over, but you want something kinda cool. And, a lot of times, I need to know before I’d get the script for him to tell me what the theme is or what the objective is and then I would see if that would give me an idea.

Peter: These are fun stories. And look at #535, “The Ogre and the Ape”…

Kelley: Well, they’re comics the way I remember them. And, at that time, those were anachronistic.

You had Image doing the very big bombastic stuff, Marvel similarly doing what they were doing — tying together huge epics — and here we are doing a guy who makes a smart monkey. I mean, that’s 1935 or something.

During these issues [Batman #533–534], they were doing some kind of event [Legacy] and Doug didn’t want to participate, and neither did I. So they said, “All right. We’re going to give those two issues to Jim Aparo and Bill Sienkiewicz,” or something. They were very good! But I didn’t want to be involved in it. I always felt that it took me out of what I was doing. So Doug then wrote “The Ogre and the Ape,” and he went in and said, “I want to do a double-size issue.” So we worked on that while the other ones were coming out and, when they came out of the event, Doug’s intent was, “Okay, we’re gonna have a really anachronistic story now.” In the best Universal tradition, the villains are actually the victims who do all these horrible things. I still get mail on the “Ogre and the Ape” story. They really liked that!

Peter: That was 20 years ago!

Kelley: Oh, I know! [laughter] Well, here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter how good you are if you don’t do a monthly series on a number of books…

Peter: Three years or more.

Kelley: Yeah! You’ve got to. You tend to be forgotten. For example, as successful as Sandman was or the Batman vampires, those are for the people into it. There are people who buy Batman though who aren’t into comics. They’re Batman fans, they’re Superman fans, they’re Spider-Man fans. They won’t follow the rest. I always knew that, when it was said and done, I had been through those early years at Marvel where you just do what they say and you can’t break out. Even if it’s good, you can’t break out. So I didn’t want that to be the case with Batman.

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Peter: So, are you going to get to write your own Batman?

Kelley: If I wanted to. I’d miss collaborating, though. The stuff I’m doing with Batman now?

It’s coming from long talks where I really take to the idea of what coming up with these really good moments and put them together along with what the writer Scott Peterson, my old editor on the Batman/Detective covers years ago, wants to do. So it isn’t his idea or my idea. It’s how do you make these two things go together. It’s not as hard as you think, but there’s so much fun in doing that.

For every Frank Miller, you get 20 things that are forgettable.

Peter: Why? Kelley: Because they become vanity projects.

Peter: Would it be intimidating to be totally in control?

Kelley: No. It would be self-aggrandizing for me.

Whereas I like to work on my own, I don’t want to be all alone! I do like talking it over. I love the fun of sharing something and then getting maybe something that comes out of that that’s a wholly new thing. I dunno!

I like Stan and Jack. I like Chris and John.

Englehart and Rogers. There are guys you like that work together. Even if it’s 90 percent one and ten percent the other… But I think it’s good for your soul to work with a partner.

It keeps you in check, keeps you willing to have an open mind. It doesn’t have to be all about you.

Peter: Would you ever do a story with Batman carrying a gun?

Kelley: [Sighs] It would have to depend on the circumstance, but for me part of the charm of it is how you censor yourself, how you limit yourself. Clearly the “anything goes” in movies and music has not advanced movies or music. But where you have to artistically get yourself out of a box or arrange something by censoring yourself, by making things palatable, or one, honor the character and other, sell it to as many people as you can, keeping the highest level of artistic merit to it. Those are all good boundaries. I mean, I don’t want a writer to say, “Here, I’m giving you a script about exactly what you want to do!” But I do like it when they say, “Okay, there’s some scenes in here—depictions— that’s gonna be very different.” Well, then I’ve got to come up with it in my way. It’s not a tug of war, to be sure, so that part of collaboration is fun. And I don’t want to show everything. I think it’s cheaper in the long run, I don’t see it in a noble way. It keeps me fresh. It keeps me thinking. I don’t get anything out of Batman using a gun on the Joker.

Does the Joker stab people? Yes. Does The Joker kill people horribly? Yes. His madness has an agenda. I think he’s an interesting character but when you go so far as he has, well… But to get to the point where the Batman would kill him? Because he’s killing people? I don’t want that to get to the point…

The rogues gallery typically, for the most part, kill each other or their own kind.

He can live 59

Previous page: The creative team of Doug Moench and Kelley Jones obviously had a ball during their tenure on Batman in the mid-’90s, bringing in guest-stars galore, including Swamp Thing, The Demon, Deadman, and The Spectre.

Right: For their two-issue grand finale, DM and KJ brought in the rarely-used Robert Kanigher/ Joe Kubert creation, Ragman.

Below: The team’s final regular Batman issue [#552, Mar. ’98] included this notation on the splash page indicating it was the 34th issue produced by “DMKJ-JB.” Bottom: Panel from Batman #517 [Apr. 1995].

with that, but when they start going outside of that… I don’t want to get too literal and realistic in that way.

Peter: So, other DC characters that you would like to either do a Brave and Bold with or just draw? I know you mentioned Superman.

Kelley: Yeah, well, Superman because he’s Superman.

But I’ve always liked Green Lantern. A shot at him would have been good. I’ve always thought that I would want it to be more of a cosmic story than a story set on Earth. I’d do it as Hal Jordan. I always wanted to do Mister Miracle. That was a biggie for me, to do Scott Free.

Peter: Have you done him?

Kelley: Nope. But I love Kirby’s… everything!

Peter: Would you want early Scott Free while he’s on Apokolips, or would you do him as Mister Miracle?

Kelley: He’s got to do both, because you want Darkseid, right? You want Big Barda, Master Blaster, Desaad… all these great characters. They’re all so good and all lend themselves to being drawn. Kirby did it in

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Batman, Ragman TM & © DC Comics.

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such a way that it’s endless, the possibilities that you can have with them, you know?

Peter: The Forever People.

Kelley: Yeah, I love all that stuff. The New Gods. They were all terrific! And even the ancillary characters of those were really good… the DNAliens.

Peter: A character like Forager who was in a tiny seven-page thing or something. He’d be really cool.

Kelley: I think any of those things. One of Kirby’s great gifts was — and I’ve always tried to take it — that anything can be anything. Anything can go off in any direction. They could be big huge stories… or very small stories. But he told them with so much panache!

Peter: I was thinking about his gangster stuff.

Kelley: Well, that’s where he grew up. He saw those people and he knew what they were. He avoided that life, but he grew up with them and, after a while, he began to kind of grudgingly like them, you know? I don’t know how much you’d be beaten up wanting to draw in those days but after a while you’d want a break, you know? And that’s why in those stories he kept coming back to that. I mean, you couldn’t do it now because it changes so much, but traditional Thor. I always wanted to do a Thor story. The way he used to be when he was cool. Those lent themselves to drawing. I mean, Thor could be in a New York alley as much as with the Colonizers of Rigel, you know what I mean?

And that’s what I mean about collaboration. You’ve got Lee and Kirby arguing over, “Well, which should he be?” And they split the difference and you get great stuff.

Peter: He just created concepts like crazy! Galactus’ origin there in…

Kelley: And what an origin in Thor! This thing comes out and it’s worse than anyone can expect. Wonderful. And he’s outside of the known everything!

Galactus! Very rarely does a character live up to their name.

But it’s all due to that great

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

back-and-forth and I miss that… I think a lot of comics are written, sent to the artist, artist does it, it goes in, and it doesn’t feel like that, that there’s a collaboration going on. My stories with Neil are different than everyone else’s stories with Neil. My stories with Baron were different from all his other stories because we collaborated, and the same with Doug. The things I did with him. Art style notwithstanding, the stories are different because of that collaboration. It wasn’t, “I’m just sitting here, so send me a script.” It would be back and forth. Even now, that’s what is going on.

Peter: Is there any collaboration that didn’t quite work out? You don’t have to give a name.

Kelley: Yeah, there were, early on. When I started having a say in something, then I started choosing where I wanted to go. Because, what would happen is, you’re an assigned artist and, hey, that’s great… For example, when I went to Dark Horse to do Aliens, they sent me three different stories from three different writers. I didn’t ask for that. I just said, “Well, I want to do Alien.” It’s more like the stories were military action rather than horror, and I prefer horror.

Anyway, they sent me three. The one that I loved was the one that I did because it was a pure horror story and had a very personal thing going on where the monsters receded to the background in the right way. When they were there, they were horrific!

At the time, I was accused of it being very gory but there’s only a couple shots of it, because Aliens is fairly gruesome, but the atmosphere was so filled with dread. It was such a well-written story. So I was always grateful to get one of those. Probably, if I had taken one of the other ones, they were all Marines and stuff like that. And I wanted Alien. It turned out to me to be one of the more satisfying things you do because I don’t know how it was going to come out. But it was really good to get into that and feel that you’re into that role for a while. A good script! And that one I didn’t do any collaborating on. I just read it and I thought, “But I can do a lot with this!”

Peter: To get back to Batman, all the little merchandising that has come out based on your stuff, I’m thinking, you know, you had one of the first statues. How did that feel?

Kelley: One, it’s really weird because I don’t see what I was doing as being merchandised. But I had Randy Bowman, who did the statues, tell me, “No one really wants that standardized, generic thing. If you’re going to do this, you want the more eccentric or the more articulate view.”

Bowman, he wanted something that would get his juices going. So, the first thing they did was a Sandman and the next thing was a Batman. Now, they’re everywhere, there are statues of everything. But those were the first ones. In fact, Randy had sent me the bronze he made, to present, to show how it would look. It was a big deal! So later on, when Licensing would say, “We want you to do a Batman or a Bane,” I’ve always felt it’s kind of off, you know? Because I’m used to seeing the standard Dick Giordano pose. The one that you use for trademarking! So, when I see mine, I wonder.

Peter: So how many statues or T-shirts or things do you know…?

Kelley: Marc Ecko did a hoodie of my Batman. That was weird. And then there were the video games that they do.

They’ll do these little tributes. For one, they’ll use stuff that I did, like the long ears and the weird cape, the strange Gotham. I mean, they take a lot from you, but then they’ll tribute you by putting you in the background on a billboard or something. So that stuff was cool!

I’m so much about just the book that everything ancillary is fine. If they do it, if they don’t do it… I’m flattered when they do it, but I’m not dishonored and upset if they don’t, because it’s always been just about simply the book and how it comes out. Not even the original art. It’s just, if you can get it to be good in the book. Because that’s what everyone’s going to remember, that’s what your career rests on.

They didn’t really ever reprint any of my Batman run beCOMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

cause they weren’t connected. We were told, “Hey they’re not connected to anything. It’s not part of a big event. It’s not part of some earth-shattering thing for Batman. So we aren’t inclined to reprint these issues.” They said that’s what people want: big events and the like.

Fair enough. But those are the things that largely become forgettable or dated to me. Immediately you know the times when it first came out.

[Indicating his Batman run] These have kind of got a cult thing going today. It was for the people who bought ’em then or went to a back-issue bin and found them. These have rested on their reputation rather than on any marketing. They have rested on the fact that if they sold it was because someone who was very passionate was pushing it. It was a simple as that. That kind of stuff was cool. I lived for that because that’s a validation you don’t get from anyone else other than the readers.

Somebody liking you is big. Somebody liking you so much that they’re saying, “This is worth a person’s time and effort to find.” Like, with me, if somebody told me a great series, I wouldn’t read

Above: Some of the Moench/ Jones run has been collected.

Below: Last year, Graphitti released this KJ Gallery Edition.

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Above: Caption.

Above: For IDW, Kelley Jones contributed illustrations to their Sherlock Holmes book series.

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Sherlock Holmes illustrations © Kelley Jones

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it until I collected them all, and only then I could read it. So I would get a lot of that and people would say, “Does it bother you that they’re not reprinted? Does it upset you?” No! Not in the least. I never called DC saying, “Do it.” I wasn’t upset with them. I was, “Thank you, God, for letting me do it!

Thank you for believing in me!” If nothing else happens with the run, that’s fine. But then one day I am told the first half of our run was to be put into hardcovers… and I was as happy as when I first got the job! Then to see the hardcover sold out the month it was released…! I am a blessed guy.

Peter: The Lucas Arts deal: I know you can’t say much about it yet…

Kelley: It’s still in the pipeline, as they say, so that’s all good. It’s good until they say no. But that’s the way most of this stuff is. The vast majority of my friends who have been through this, and then nothing ever happened. So I just wait for certain crossing the Rubicon moments that have to happen. But mostly I just stick to my own affairs.

Peter: I hear The Crusades, which you did with Steven Seagle, might also be under consideration somewhere.

Kelley: There’s interest from outside media. Again, we’ll wait and see.

Peter: Well, let’s get back to the comics. You finished up a

Swamp Thing series…

Kelley: Since I’m inking it, the deadlines stay the same, but I just don’t have time for much else. As soon as we finish here today, I have to go back and finish a cover, and at least start on a page. It’s personally been a shock to me that it has gone over as well as it has. The way it was presented to me, well, I liked it a lot, but I’m fairly anachronistic. So I’m shocked that the first issue has sold out. And the orders were good. I think what surprises me is that I liked as it was written, but you don’t think people will like it as strict horror comics. Len Wein seemed to have stripped it down to what I like. The character has such an encyclopedic history that it was hard for me to follow what was current with it, because I hadn’t read it for a while. (You can’t read everything.) But I know people that are really into Swamp Thing… but would they care for this story or not?

Peter: It’s definitely not the Alan Moore and recent versions…

Kelley: I read the script again, because maybe I misunderstood it. I thought the current line of thinking was that Alec was dead. But, no, it’s Alec. He’s back. But I think it did well because it’s a horror story and it’s easy to read. You can pick it up and start right in. It explained itself and got into what it was doing. Swamp Thing, this organic book, in the literal sense, was all there.

Peter: Have you gotten comments, from other professionals?

Kelley: Yes, it went over really well. I was very humbled

by Steve Bissette and Bernie for their enthusiastic responses to it. I tried to do my own thing but also honor their tremendous work.

Peter: Do you think it was your passion for the book?

Kelley: I guess. Well, my approach maybe. I don’t require a lot production. I ask the colorist for a limited bright palette.

So it’s going to inherently look different from the other books out there. It’s not that I don’t move on, because if the colorist can find a way to do better, fine. All I ever ask is that the blacks stay black. It’s just the look of it that I want for a Swamp Thing comic.

Peter: Will it go beyond a mini-series?

Kelley: I think the plan is to see how it does. If it does exceptionally well, maybe we’ll go on. It could go on, because this is a good starting point in the DC Universe: this is who Swamp Thing is.

Peter: Would you continue inking it?

Kelley: Well, I think that’s what they want me to do on any book I draw, and I’m okay with that. I’ve done it for a long time. I would just have to build it into the schedule. When the book came up, that was almost not built into the schedule, and I thought I might have to get an inker. But I was told no. And Len had some health problems, so that delayed the script for a while. But it worked out, and it can be done, if you schedule it right.

Peter: It sounds like you were working on something else when the call came.

Kelley: I actually had started on a Batman/Scarecrow mini-series when Swamp Thing came up. I had done an issue already. They said, “Look, you can jump right back on it after this is over.” And that was fine, because it was an opportunity to work with Len Wein.

Peter: Are you writing the Batman/Scarecrow mini-series?

Kelley: I’m co-plotting with writer Scott Peterson, an editor of mine during the Batman days. We worked out a pretty cool idea.

Peter: So that’s next— Kelley: Depending on what happens with Swamp Thing.

Peter: What did you think of the Graphitti Gallery Edition of some of your Batman stories?

Kelley: Honored, and it did well, not only because it was black-&-white original art size, but because it was ten stories. Also, some color overlays and other extras were just wicked!

The Crusades TM & © Steven T. Seagle & Kelley Jones.

Peter: Any other Gallery Editions in the future?

Kelley: Deadman, maybe vampire Batman. I have most of the original art, but sometimes the significant challenge is about rounding up the last 25 percent.

Peter: Do you have a wish list for a GE you’d like to see?

Marshall Rogers’ Batman run?

Kelley: Well, yeah! But you’ve hit a time now where people don’t get it, they don’t understand it, or they see it through eyes that they see things now, which doesn’t have much of a history to it. So they’ll look at the art and not see the genius.

Peter: We all have our favorites. I had to get Simonson’s Manhunter.

Kelley: That was cool stuff. We would count the panels and think: how can you be clear and exciting with this many panels? And they are all essential.

Peter: Well, it was a lot of story to cram into eight- to tenpage chapters.

Kelley: Gorgeous, brilliant. Look, you do this and if you get some kind of legacy after all that time, you wonder will people remember what you did. What Simonson did was very rare: you would buy an entire book for those eight pages.

Peter: I’m just going to drop some names and you can tell me what you think. First: H.P. Lovecraft.

Kelley: Completely misunderstood. He was personally far different than the way he was always portrayed. He wasn’t reclusive; he had a wide range of friends. He traveled.

His eccentricities were no more or less than anyone else.

The thing that I always thought was engaging about his writing, beyond anything else, is that his real monster was alienation and I always felt that was what he was about.

He felt different, obviously, from people just walking up and down the street and so he wrote that the reason being that there’s some terrible truth that we don’t know. His truth was he was a complete fan of what he loved, so he devoted himself to it. But there wasn’t any money in it. He was a very well-read person. He read everything. He was up on Ernest Hemingway. He was up on e.e. cummings. He was up on everything. He still chose to do what he did and the great thing is that all these years later, he’s… The Man! Peter: Tell us how Lovecraft influenced your monsters, because I noticed a lot of wet, creepy-crawly things… mouths, things protruding from the various parts of the body, all evoking HPL… Kelley: Well, his was a kind of body horror, so rather than a werewolf or a vampire or something traditional, he would take parts of the human body, and, well, not all parts are necessary, but there were parts in there that were, and that was upsetting to him. But his creatures were completely horrific in an alien sense, a completely different environment. Yet they were intelligent, but still had this bestial sense to them. They hadn’t evolved from… you know, eating people or something. I always liked that.

Peter: How did it influence The Hammer?

Kelley: Well, for me, I like things that, on the surface, are not what they appear to be. I like things that, once they reveal themselves, go from being, “Okay, I think that’s the hero,” and then it turns out it may not be the hero. Or that hero is actually telling the truth and the way to confront it is not the way you think. That is what I got from Lovecraft: that even in the victory, it didn’t matter, because the dark forces will win. In that, I just said, it isn’t like what is cost of victory; it’s like a completely subjective, make up your own mind view of the conflict humanity is facing…

Peter: Are there any other writers of that period who influence you?

Kelley: I love M.R. James. I can probably say he’s the best. Short and completely frightening. He is the most frightening writer there is. I’ve illustrated one M.R. James story. I’ve never done a Lovecraft adaptation. For me, illustrating Lovecraft is taking Lovecraft and infusing him into something else I come up with. But I’m very much into the writers of that period because they were simply trying COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

to sell stories to a magazine and, at the same time, invest some kind of art into what they were doing. So you can get a Manly Wade Wellman, who would put in what he knew of Southern history or backwoods folklore, and he would write a very good story.

Peter: Silver John…

Kelley: Oh, Silver John’s wonderful! I know they all came from the John Silence stories by Algernon Blackwood. I also love J. Sheridan Le Fanu. He’s tremendous. If anyone is owed a lot more royalties, it would be him because he started a lot of stuff.

Peter: All that vampire stuff.

Kelley: That and psychic investigators. He started that. I liked the story distance you would get from his pieces. So you’d read about Uncle Silas through a girl who remembers him and not directly from Silas. That makes it creepier.

Wonderful stuff. I love ambiguity! I don’t want all the answers! That’s probably why I like Stanley Kubrick. “You figure it out.” And you have to be very good to do ambiguity.

Peter: Clark Ashton Smith?

Kelley: Yeah. I like him. I actually really enjoy his sculptures.

Peter: How useful are dreams to your imagination?

Kelley: I never remember any dreams. I think the reason

Above: The Crusades, written

by Steven T. Seagle and drawn

by Kelley, lasted for 20 issues.

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Above: The 13th Son from Dark Horse was a four-issue mini-series from 2006, written and drawn by Kelley Jones.

it had gone over very well. I was at this convention and Dark Horse had a table there. I thought they wanted me to come and sign some books or something, but they said, “Actually, Doug Wildey would like to meet you.” At that time, he was doing a Western for them. He was with his wife and he sat down and I went back to meet him. This was… wow! I had no idea what was coming! And before I could get out all my praise, he wanted to say that he had read the Aliens mini-series the previous night. He didn’t understand the story at all, but he really liked the art in it!

So he started asking me very practical questions, such as, “How long did this take?” He had noticed I had inked my own work. “Was that a choice?” So I answered all these questions and his wife said how he usually doesn’t like too much what he sees now because, at that time, he didn’t see that “age of illustration” that he had come from represented too much.

I said, “Yeah, all the people I really liked were from the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.” She looks over at him and I named a few of the classic illustrators. And then he said, “This is outstanding work. I really think what you did was special, but the only way you’re going to really make it, to really become something — not career-wise, but for yourself — is if you do monthly work.” He didn’t use that term but that you have to get something out on a strict, regular basis.

I said, “Like a monthly comic book?” He said, “Certainly.

After three years, you can see how good you are. Because you can’t repeat an image or you have to really hide that you’re repeating an image, which is fine, but you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to produce this much art. It will force you to develop a style. It will force you to get it done #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The 13th Son TM & © Kelley Jones.

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is that I do so much fantastical, dream-like material in my work. I work out so much when I’m drawing and, when I go to sleep, I try to get away from it. I never walk around with a sketchbook. I never draw awake other than in my studio and the studio is not a comfortable place to be in other than if I’m going to draw. It’s not a place like I would sit around and do other stuff. Drawing is all I do in the studio. Now, I think of things to draw. I see the world in that romantic way where I’ll look at things.

So, in that regard, it’s always kind of working, but the physical work of drawing is eight o’clock ’til 4:00 or 5:00.

I don’t get up and mess around. That’s the only way you get anything done.

Peter: So you don’t work late at night like some artists?

Kelley: No. In fact, I don’t know how the parameters of the business are now on monthly stuff, but in the ’90s, especially when I was doing Batman, you could not miss a deadline. I knew the only way to do it was I had to get at least five pages done a week and a cover done by the end of the week.

If I could do that, I would make it. And you had to just get into that kind of mindset!

In ’92 I believe, I had done an Aliens mini-series for Dark Horse and

Zombie World TM & © Mike Mignola.

when you don’t feel like it and it will quit being a thing of moods.” Now, I didn’t say anything like, “I work in moods,” or anything like that, but he made sense to me. It made a lot of sense. He said, “You’re going to find a lot of guys can’t do it. There’ll be the guys who are really good but they can’t produce.” And he says, “And, in the publishing world, who needs ’em?”

Peter: Right.

Kelley: He says they would be useless. On the other hand, if you just blast it out and it doesn’t do anything, that’s also useless. But there’s this middle ground. The only way he knew to do it was this kind of crucible you had to go through. And that stuck with me when Denny O’Neil called and asked, “Would you like to do Batman?” Of course, I’m used to doing a graphic novel or a mini-series. That’s easy!

Right? What Doug Wildey said kind of took the wind out of my sails and it changed how I looked at other artists, you know? Now, I’ve always admired Kirby, Wood, and Ditko.

I always admired them. I still do! They’re still my favorites, but I never thought of them in that context. It forces you to rely on your imagination. So, when that offer came from Denny, I took it. I know Doug Moench was not happy about that decision. A number of people were not happy about that decision, because they wanted me to keep doing these special projects and stuff. At that time, it was a big deal to do a prestige mini-series or a hardcover one-shot. At that point though, when it was all said and done, I surpassed something like 36 issues in 36 months. And it was the best thing I ever did. It was boot camp for horror. Being in some kind of service. There were times when I couldn’t tell if I liked what I was doing or not.

Peter: Were these full-script?

Kelley: Some parts would be and some parts would be paragraphs. It would depend on what mood Doug was in or what point he was trying to make. He was always very visual but left it up to me what I wanted to do, so it was a great working relationship. So I just hit it and came out of that with 36 issues in 36 months. Barring DC and Diamond moving stuff around the schedule, we were always working about three or four months ahead. That was due partly to Doug Wildey and partly to Marvel in the old days.

When I first came to Marvel, they had a great teaching tool: draw a page a day. Even if you can’t finish it, draw as much as you can, go on to the next, and by the end of the week, you’ve got five pages. When you do a page, pick one panel and make it really great. Get the others done. If you can do that for an entire story, you’ll have 22 great panels!

When you hear that…!

At first you say, “Well, one panel per page. That’s good!

That sounds easy!” But think of a comic book and doing a monthly. You’re lucky if you get three or four panels, really.

And I knew there are great artists so I would think that those things affected me — what Marvel had said and Wildey about ten years later saying what he said, and then the imagination thing. I always had an idea where I knew I couldn’t draw as well as Frank Frazetta or Jack Kirby or any of those guys, but what I could do is come up with an idea that would be uniquely mine. Such as on Deadman, making him a skeleton. Because that was great cheek. He was interesting then all the time. [laughs] Peter: Your Conan-related material, Thoth-amon… how did that happen?

Kelley: Kurt Busiek and Len Wein were working on something, and I was finishing up a Steve Niles story for Dark Horse, and they liked my stuff. I was thinking of doing creator-owned stuff for Dark Horse, so they asked and, though it was another tight deadline, the story was really good and a lot of fun. It wasn’t about Conan, but I like the villain’s backstory. I’m always attracted to the thing around the hero’s world. Because you see what makes them, and it changes how you look at that character. And, just for drawing sake, that’s interesting to me. There’s some pity involved in the story.

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Peter: Any particular challenges in that book?

Kelley: Making the deadline. Because, the scenes with magic in them, I wanted them set up for a different look.

Unfortunately, that took a long time to execute. And each issue was 30 or 40 pages. It was a lot of work per issue. So it was a tight deadline, but it came out good because the story was so interesting to me.

Peter: Is there anything you won’t draw? Like an Archie story, or…

Kelley: I did an Archie cover, with Predator on it. I love animation style. I can do that really easily. I did a pin-up once for Batman Adventures and it was one of my favorite things I ever did. Of course, done how I see it. I’m a fanatical Chuck Jones fan. I love his stuff because it’s violent, weird, and all from that really great period of Warner Bros. I love all those guys.

Peter: Tex Avery?

Kelley: Yeah, of course. I always thought that Calvin and Hobbes came out of the Ralph cartoons.

Peter: I can see that.

Kelley: In fact, a lot of my art gestures, expressions, come from animation. It’s visual and it just works. At that time, I was so into my artistic universe and thoroughly enjoying

Above: Kelley Jones wrote and drew the Zombie World: Eat Your Heart Out one-shot, in ’98.

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Above: Kelley wrote and drew The Hammer, about “a creature that attaches itself to the back of an archeologist’s head in order to fight an evil Death Cult attempting to bring hell on earth” [S&A Comic Guide].

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The Hammer TM & © Kelley Jones.

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what I was doing. It was very liberating.

Peter: So if you weren’t doing comics, would you like to do animation, or something completely different?

Kelley: Hmm. Probably involved in some kind, of well, let’s see…

Peter: Some underworld activity?

Kelley: [Laughs] Something to do with teaching or dealing

with history.

Peter: History?

Kelley: That’s what I was really into.

Peter: Any particular era?

Kelley: I love classical— Peter: European history?

Kelley: Pretty much 100 B.C. to 500 A.D. Peter: The Dark Ages?

Kelley: I like the transitions… and the Dark Ages were actually not that dark. Lot of good inventions came out of that time. I always thought it was a lot of guys with horns on their helmets, but it was a lot more. Amazing and subtle things. Like who’d have thought that barbarians would take over Rome and the first thing they do is institute a pension and welfare program.

Peter: That society didn’t last long. I wonder if there’s a lesson in there for us. So, did interest in that era contribute to your enjoyment on a book like The Crusades?

Kelley: Actually, that was really the desire to work with Steve Seagle. His thing was taking a Batman character to an extreme, where he’s doing it for the sake of justice, but with a medieval influence. He thought it was funny, and it was. That’s a book that’s way ahead of its time. That book was quite a ride. I never knew how it was received, because it was so different. I thought a lot was happening in the story, but I’d have people come up and say, not much is going on. But, to me, there was all sorts of stuff, the characters were evolving and changing and they were very real to me. The character of Venus is very real, and artistically, they would let me do my cartoony stuff. One of my great rip-offs was to borrow those scenes when Fred Flintstone would get yelled at by his boss, Mr. Slate, and Fred would get smaller and smaller and smaller. I ripped that off. But I don’t know if anybody got the reference.

Peter: But it doesn’t matter, because you know it’s there, and if they ever do an annotated collection — the Sandman treatment — on that series…

Kelley: [Laughs] I know. Well, on Sandman, I was lucky because it has achieved a certain rarefied air status. Within the title, those issues really stand out, even in a stand-out series. And ultimately it’s how they were done, in that they were very collaborative. Neil and I would be on the phone all the time. I think the only one that wasn’t that way was the cat issue.

Peter: “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” [Sandman #18 (Aug. 1990)]?

Kelley: Yeah. He called me up, and Neil used to say to me, a great writer writes out of a problem, and he said, “I can’t use adjectives in this one. I have to think of different ways to describe things because cats wouldn’t have our frame of reference. So it’s really screwing me up. But, man, it’s really exciting, because every page I have to come up with a new way of saying something like cold is… And that’s good, right?” So that one was mostly Neil. But all the other ones we went back and forth on. Especially “Season of Mists” [Sandman #22–28 (Jan.–July ’91)] Those were some really fun phone calls. Because he was in England and I could hear his little computer going on and on, and I’m in Northern California sitting with a cat and this loud air conditioner. He had an outline in mind but it was very sketchy. Karen Berger sent me a one-page description. We talked and talked about the themes and what not. Neil and I had a ball on that.

He would call at all hours and I would call at all hours. We really meshed well because it was a real collaboration. I always figured that as a Sgt. Pepper’s period for Sandman… like the Beatles, there are all these great songs and records…but it is Sgt.Pepper’s that defined for all time the Beatles. “Season

The Hammer TM & © Kelley Jones.

of Mists” is that for Sandman.

Peter: Right. Music is a biggie for you.

Kelley: Yeah. Well there are certain bands that you associate with a certain book. Music is probably one of the most important things when I work. I mean, after I pencil. I’m not really into what is hip. I haven’t really liked contemporary music for a long time. So I’m forced to go back further and find older and older music.

Peter: What types of music?

Kelley: Soundtracks to jazz to rock to classical…. Different things.

Peter: Can you remember what you were listening to when working on, say Deadman?

Kelley: I believe that was Debussy’s House of Usher. And always Mr. Holst.

Peter: The Planets.

Kelley: Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh cuts. Every day, since about 1977, and that’s because I became a big Star Wars fan, like everyone else. John William’s Star Wars was the second soundtrack I bought. First was 2001: A Space Odyssey. Williams did a concert and he didn’t do Star Wars, he did the Planets, and said, “I come from this.” I’d never heard it before. Any disappointment that it wasn’t Star Wars quickly faded. I got in the car and went and bought Leonard Bernstein’s Holst’s The Planets. And about every day, I can say I’ve listened to it (which is really sick, but it sets the tone). I get up in the morning and put it on.

Sometimes I listen all day. Sometimes just once.

Peter: I remember you liked The Alan Parsons Project.

Kelley: Yes. Very much. I liked old Electric Light Orchestra, which had a lot of classical riffs and German male choruses. In particular the choruses. Really powerful stuff, really musical… romantic, not in the boy-girl thingy, but more in the Dante Rosetti kind of thing. You close your eyes and see the colors…the pictures. But, hey, I can sit down and work to Def Leppard.

Peter: Do you have playlists?

Kelley: Sure. Some favorites are Ennio Morricone’s work.

It’s nostalgia. I love Jerry Goldsmith’s Blue Max. I can listen to that all the time. Then I want to hear early ’70s and late ’60s. You go through periods. Maybe cause it makes you think of being in that time. I’m not affected by what other people say. If I like the music, I like it. I have to be alone in the room with it, so I have no fear of someone saying, “that sucks.” A lot of the stuff I like probably does suck.

But I like it.

Peter: Let’s talk about The Hammer, a creator-owned property you both wrote and illustrated. What was the reaction to that?

Kelley: Well, good, but I did get some hate letters. Still do, because of the positions that are in it. Because they think it’s you. Rather than the character, who does what he does. One gal just wrote this shredding review — but then said the art was really pretty, good pacing, but hated the views of the character. And I went, “Okay, but that’s the character. He’s not human, he’s outside from us. He sees us not critically, yet by action is so critical of us!” I remember, even during the production of the book, the editors being mad at what the character would do. I guess I just see things a little differently, so my character looks at things way differently. For example, to me it’s funny that, in Lovecraft, all these monsters are deep underground, in caverns, and wherever.

And I always thought, what if you drill and suck up these things, not knowing it was an Old One? And the Old Ones are refined into gasoline. So, when you are driving around, you are burning them up, so they are gone forever. So people, when they are in a traffic jam, they are saving the universe, and that’s very funny to me. I COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

got a lot of comments on that, good positive view of air pollution, whatever. Looked at that way, it’s funny. Contrarian positions, for the sake of being contrary, suck, but when you can change someone‘s mind for a second, it changes your view of gas stations filled with the liquefied corpses of Old Ones. Traffic jams saving the human race!

Above: Kelley’s The Hammer appeared in two mini-series and a one-shot between 1997–99. This page is courtesy of the artist. Below: Covers of the Dark Horse titles.

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Peter: We’re fine with the carcasses of other monsters… dinosaurs.

Kelley: Right. But I get it: not everybody has the same sense of humor.

Peter: Was that your twisted humor, making Deadman a dead-looking man?

Kelley: Well, I never got hate letters on that, but I would get comments from people who didn’t understand it, because it didn’t look like Neal Adams’ work.

They would take you to task for that, and I would always respond, “If I had Neal’s ability, then so be it, but if I had done it classic Deadman, they would say, you’re just copying Neal.”

Peter: And you didn’t want to be of that period where there was a lot of cloning of Neal’s style.

Kelley: Well, no. But, within your own skills, you can do some of Neal, but you cannot do Jack Kirby.

There is only one Jack. The closest was Steranko, who took it to a cinematic level.

He would do Jack, but it was

This page: Aliens: Hive is the 1992 Dark Horse four-issue limited series written by Jerry Prosser and penciled and inked

by Kelley Jones featuring the ever-popular monster movie franchise In addition to Aliens: Hive, Kelley also contributed to the two-issue “jam” title written by Mark Schultz, Aliens: Havoc, also published by Dark Horse, in 1997.

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Aliens TM & © 20th Century Fox, Inc.

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still Steranko.

Peter: And then he became all Steranko Kelley: And no one else can do Steranko. Like, there was Frazetta, then Wrightson told me he was trying to do Frazetta, then Wrightson doing his own thing. And no one can do Wrightson. At that point, and I’m not in their category, the only way to deal with this is through your own thinking. The only way you’re going to be separate and above, is you’ve got to come up with something unique to you.

And that’s hard to do, harder than figuring out three-point perspectives, etc. How do you come up with something unique to something that everyone knows and is very tried

and true? I know I don’t like anybody rearranging classical music. But, every once in a while, you have a Glenn Gould who can rearrange Beethoven and it’s really good. It’s different Beethoven, and that’s good. You get that movement and do the tropes. I hate when you get away from the tropes. You have to have those. “Shaken, not stirred.” I’m waiting for that and, when you remove it, I don’t like it. But then you can go off and do something new.

For example, when getting Batman, which at that time, the character was just going along being traditional Batman, Image was taking off, but I wasn’t influenced by the Image style, because I didn’t want to do what everybody else was doing. So my Batman became its own thing. You get a lot of credit for that, which maybe you don’t deserve.

Raging against conventionality, against the norm, being my own guy, like I’m Kurt Cobain or something (which I emphatically am not!). But, really, it’s more like, I can’t do that, I don’t understand this, but I want to enjoy my afternoon work. I want to work out my own ideas!. And one way to do that is by making Batman’s cape do all those weird things or redrawing Mr. Freeze because it really was creepy to me that he’d freeze people alive. I wondered, “How long are they alive when they are frozen, knowing they are going to die?” That kind of crap… and Doug put that in. And I said, “I can’t draw that realistically, because you have kids buying comics, so I had to make it cartoony, but still make it work. I like those kind of things to figure out when drawing!

Doug would come up with these out-of-the-world bizarro things, which I loved, because he was doing the same thing with these Batman stories… peanut butter and chocolate approach. And after doing so many years of it, people start labeling your work. I’m doing a Batman story right now, and there’s things I’ve always want to do, different things that there just wasn’t a place for before, things that rattle around in your head.

Peter: Let’s talk about your approach to style.

Kelley: I didn’t want to look at the time I was in, but I wanted to be a product of the things that made me. And then, when you shake it up, you hope to become timeless.

I don’t think my Batman look has aged. When I look at the ’90s run, I think it could have come out now. The Sandman stuff could come out now, absolutely. The Aliens stuff, the Deadman stuff… Deadman would be brand new. I don’t go into it thinking I’m independent, because I am trying to be as commercial, as mainstream as I can. I am trying to do that. But, through all of it, well, I hear things, whether good or bad, that you are an auteur. No. I am not an auteur.

And then, other times I hear “You are defacing the Sistine Chapel.” Again, no. I just want people to know that I am a fan of these things, so you want to connect with the right people, and when it’s all said and done, that the equation is — I have no idea. None whatsoever.

Peter: You have no idea about the impact of your style?

Kelley: No, because I have no problem with someone saying, “You should die for what you did.” None whatsoever, because I hear wonderful validation in that, because what they are saying, responding to, is exactly what works for me. Those elements provoke a response. It’s their taste.

Because, at the same time, I’m getting people coming up and saying “I love your stuff,” and it’s exactly for the same reason. Laurence Olivier was said it’s not the bad reviews to fear, it’s the good ones.

Peter: A good day’s work…

Kelley: Yeah, but I don’t go back and look again at my art too much. You know, until that Gallery Edition from Graphitti Designs came out, I had not opened some of the art returns boxes from DC when they sent back the art for those issues of Batman years ago. Because, one, you’ll see everything that’s wrong, and two, I don’t want to ape myself. Because I’d go back and ask myself, “Why am I not doing some of that stuff anymore? Why did I do that? Why am I not doing some of that anymore?” And, that’s good, because I get to keep doing it the way I did when I was a kid, dreaming of

Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc.

being a published comic artist… I’m still excited to do this. I don’t know how long anyone wants to do a certain job, but when it becomes just The Job, well then it’s time to stop.

Peter: Even after 30 years?

Kelley: No. Maybe because I didn’t come in with people going, “Absolutely, you are going to be an artist.” There wasn’t that vibe; it just was never there. So there’s this really good, lucky to be here, mixed in with, since I shouldn’t be here, then I can do whatever I want. But now, after all these years, rather than I should do what I want, now that I have this style I can comfortably work in, I don’t have to change someone’s mind about my art, my approach to the story.

Peter: That’s good. How about some influences, or a dream project… working on something like inking a Bernie Wrightson-penciled Batman story.

Kelley: Oh yeah! I’ve already asked Bernie, “If you ever come back, I want to do it” (unless he wants to ink it himself, which I would prefer).

But if the opportunity was there, absolutely.

But — and people would probably yell at me — I wouldn’t want to just ape what he did. That’s not what an inker should do.

Peter: You would interpret it?

Kelley: Well, let’s talk about one of my favorite inkers on Jack Kirby. It was Vince Colletta, and

everybody yells about that. But I go, “I love it. I mean, I like Sinnott, love Royer, Bill Everett was terrific, certainly good guys.” But ultimately, there was this raw power when Colletta did it.

Peter: I think it’s because you like the Kirby Thor stuff…

Kelley: Because it all came together. Kirby was essentially writing the stories, and there was this absolute rawness in the inking; it wasn’t just filling in the blacks. There’s almost an illustrative quality to it (or as close as it can get). A lot of line work.

And I know everybody yells, bitches, and moans, but Kirby liked it, and Kirby never fired him. That was always a myth. But I always dug those stories. Because I’d just look at it, and wonder, how is he getting that? Colletta was the first guy that I looked at and went, “Wow! It is different from The Fantastic Four, and it is different than what the other guys are putting down.”

Peter: It’s always interesting when pencilers talk about their favorite inkers. It’s so personal.

Like Jim Steranko likes Frank Giacoia on his Captain America…

Kelley: Well, Giacoia nailed it. Giacoia spotted blacks beautifully. That man spotted blacks. You Above: Kurt Busiek and Len Wein scribed Conan: Book get an inker who can spot blacks, that’s what of Thoth, the 2006 four-issue mini-series illustrated by holds the composition together. Palmer is a great Kelley Jones and published by Dark Horse. inker, but his line didn’t hold the work like Giacoia

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

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Batman, Lord Ophidian TM & © DC Comics.

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did. Artists look for their vision. John Byrne’s favorite inker was Tony DeZuñiga, because that was what was closest to what was in Byrne’s head.

Peter: Not the [Terry] Austin stuff?

Kelley: Well, they worked so well together, so I’m sure he was happy. But different inkers give you certain differences. I always loved the difference you’d see when Marshall Rogers inked himself, it was completely different than Austin, and they both worked. Rogers was very rough, which was surprising for a guy who was so technically accurate would be so rough in his own work.

Peter: Yeah. I don’t always like it when artists ink themselves, with some exceptions. I love Neal Adams pencils, but I’m not crazy about him inking himself.

Kelley: You get too precious sometimes. So, sometimes I’ll pencil complete so people can see it, because I don’t know how well they can read a drawing. But once the get comfortable with me, I go to just blue line, very little lead.

Most of it is done with a brush or a pen. I like the moment of inspiration on it, I like that organic anything can happen, to where you start getting it. All I need is just the skeleton of it, the rest I can put together. But sometimes I’ll draw more complete, just to keep that skill. Ultimately, comics are the end result. And the end result is what’s printed.

Peter: Well, yeah, but the paper and printing process is different, it’s changed over the years.

Kelley: You said something earlier about a dream. I’ve only had one dream about comics that I remember. Oddly

Uncle Creepy TM & © New Comic Company.

Above: Kelley Jones has contributed pinups and stories to the revived Creepy, published

by Dark Horse. Here is one of the artist’s Uncle Creepy illos.

Below and inset: In 2000, Kelley re-teamed with writer Doug Moench to produce the four-issue “prestige” format series Batman: Haunted Gotham.

enough, it’s that they called me and said they were going back to newsprint and four-color printing again, and I was so happy. Because blacks stay black, and black is a color, and they seem to forget that.

So, every time I work with colorists, I say judiciously, “Knock yourself out on my stuff, but stay with black, work with black. It tends to work. Now, without changing, you look brand-new.” And back-lighting: I’m big on back-lighting; I’m big on non-representational color. But that’s old-style comics, and I can’t assume these people have seen them.

I work very well with the colorist Michelle Madsen, and when we first started working together, she was very quiet and very respectful, which she didn’t have to be. So she wasn’t quite sure how to ask me. And well, I’d worked with Les Dorscheid for a long time and you don’t tell him what to do. “Just go to town,” I’d say, and Les would do his brilliant, wonderful things. And I was just lucky to have him. So I wanted to give Michelle that freedom. But she was so respectful, I remember telling her, “Before I tell you anything: black is a color. And look at the first season of Star Trek. And color movies by Mario Bravo, in particular. You look at the kind of coloring. Oh, and Kill, Baby Kill is another one.” And that’s how I see it. And, from that point on, she understood my suggestion, and it’s worked out for her.

In the early 2000s, I worked with editor Mike Siglain at DC, one of those great people to work with, because he goes from “I didn’t like your stuff at first, then I loved it!” Because the work changed his mind. And I said, “Yeah, sure.” He said, “No, when I moved, I got rid of all of my comics, but I kept yours and I lost an afternoon because I read them all.” And that’s why he called me up. So, when he asked what colorist I wanted, I said I’d been working with this woman, and he completely dug what she was doing, because he hadn’t seen that approach either. Not that it’s the only way. If someone has a different way, do it. I’m big on letting an inker or colorist do their thing. Now, it might not be what I see in my head, but it might be better. I’m not a control freak, that’s why I give very vague directions, because sometimes it’s

TM & © DC Comics.

good if you don’t know what you’re getting. It’s a thing I learned from Kubrick, who was called a control freak, yet who let Douglas Trumbull do the split-screen in 2001 on his own, and it’s the most memorable scene in the movie. So Kubrick was a perfectionist, but he let weird things happen.

Peter: Right, but Kubrick had final edit…

Kelley: And that’s what you want. But people were generous with me, so I’m going to be generous with them. But the editor is the one with the final edit, so when I work with a new editor, they are the first audience, and I want to know if something needs fixing or changing — they need to tell me.

Peter: You mentioned wanting to do independent work…

Kelley: It was close to independent work. I’ve always flirted with independent work. I’ve always liked it. Because there’s a part of me, since I have no professional training and I didn’t really want professional training because I thought I would end up looking like other people. I like solving my own problems. That’s why I like doing the penciling and inking, so you have so many less cooks in the kitchen.

Peter: Were you thinking horror or zombies? Did you ever do work doing the Marvel zombies phase?

Kelley: No, never did that type of zombie work, not the really gonzo stuff. I’m not normally thought of that way, though I will plead guilty to having moments of epic gonzo. But I do a lot of set up to get to those gonzo moments. So it stands out. The Zombie World I wrote was guilty of being over the top… but it was frightening black humor.

Peter: Wait, Kelley! Talk about gonzo: you beheaded Batman’s butler!

Kelley: Well, yeah. It’s a vampire Batman world. But you don’t have lots of beheadings leading up to it.

Peter: Well, some bad guys.

Kelley: Look: what I always like to do is a set-up. Remember Aliens: Hive I did, there’s only a handful of really gruesome shots in it. But I was very pleased (and only in comics can you say this) because it was one of the shots I came up with. You see a guy yelling and you then see those extended jaws from an alien coming out of his mouth, it grabbed him from behind but the reader doesn’t see that. It was shocking… and I had the good sense to do that scene bloodlessly as well. Not long after I started seeing that shot show up because a lot of guys were starting to do that. I felt kind of good, that after all that time, I could come up with new stuff, and it wasn’t gory. It was just these jaws coming out of this guy’s mouth. I try to think of those moments, just an exquisite little moment of shock. Those scenes get more attention than if you do page after page of blood and splatter and gore.

Peter: But you don’t blink. You’re from the Stephen King School of “going for it, whatever it takes.”

Kelley: Well, I don’t know. I think horror is made up of the little things…lots of them. When I see horror movies, there are certain scenes I’ll see once and never want to see again. I still can’t see MacReady cut his thumb to see who’s an alien in The Thing. I’ve seen it once, I don’t need to see it again. It’s just so gruesome, because I know the odds of me being absorbed by an alien is pretty remote, but the odds of cutting my thump is pretty high! [laughter] But it’s still such a small thing. I can watch all the rest of the wild stuff. But there are certain moments that you never get tired of. I can go back and watch John Carpenter films over and over for those moments. There’s a handful of guys that have that as well: Terence Fisher, Stanley Kubrick… they can do this thing where they show something you never forget. The true auteurs, who have such a passion for what they do, the can remove all the interference of all the cooks in the kitchen. You get their singular vision.

Peter: You mention the auteur theory— Kelley: I can admire it in others. But COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

me, no. My influences come from many different places. I look at other comics out there, and my books don’t look like anything out there. I’ve felt that way since about 1989, and maybe I should try to do some of those things with my art, but after about 20 minutes, I give up and go back to what I do. Either I’m lazy or block-headed — both. But I find that even those influences, movies or music, I have to translate into what I do on the page.

Peter: Okay, let’s do some top five lists. Movies?

Above: Though completed in 2007, the five-issue series Batman Unseen, by Doug Moench and Kelly Jones, went… umm… unseen for a few years, finally seeing print in 2009–10.

This is the original art for the first issue. Below: The remaining Batman Unseen covers.

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Kelley: Fall of the House of Usher, by Roger Corman; Dracula, Prince of Darkness,

by Terence Fisher (with moments of pure cinema in it); The Shining, by Kubrick; The Thing, by Carpenter; Curse of the Demon (for black-&-white moments of pure cinema). Curse has Dana Andrews and Peggy Cummings in it, and it’s based on the work of one of my favorite writers, M.R. James, who would probably been horrified of how much they reworked it, though in an odd way probably appreciate it because they capture the absolute essence of his stuff. That was directed by Jacques Tournier.

Peter: Albums?

Kelley: Magical Mystery Tour, by the Beatles. Every track is great, so it’s one long song to me. It’s going to be hard to pick one Pink Floyd record. Maybe Dark Side of the Moon or Animals. There’s too much good stuff. New World Record, by Electric Light Orchestra. I’m excluding classical, which I like a lot, but sounds pretentious. Elton John — Peter: So what would a Kelley Jones mix tape contain?

Kelley: It would be bands that people make fun of, but that I love. Well, Men Without Hats, because they are really

fast, [snap fingers quickly] so they are great for deadlines. I like to think of them as undiscovered geniuses. I like older music. I love Frank Sinatra. I can listen to that all the time.

Then you get into certain styles. I like the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s jazz. Not the pretentious warbly stuff, but the songs. They tell stories. I’m always listening for stories.

Like Charlie Parker, who was listening to country-western, he was big on Hank Williams.

He even got into a fistfight over it.

He said it was, “Because the man is telling me things.” He didn’t care about anything else, and maybe that’s why I like Sinatra: there’s a lot of songs that are stories. Even if he didn’t write them, he chose them because they meant something to him. I didn’t listen to it as a kid, but I was exposed to it. My dad loves Sinatra, so I heard it all the time.

As you get older, you hear different things. Well, I wasn’t a Beatles fan as a kid; it came much later on when my kids got into them!. Like The Beach Boys, who I still love. And there’s nothing really new I like. Not that I’m an old man screaming, “Get off my lawn!” It’s just that so much music is just all homogenized. Probably the crux of me is that I live in fear of falling into the homogeneity of things. #14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Batman and related characters TM & © DC Comics. Edge of Doom TM & © Steve Niles & Kelley Jones.

This page: Sometime collaborator Steve Niles teamed with Kelley Jones for the 12-issue Batman: Gotham After Midnight series, published between 2008–09 (beautifully colored by Michelle Madsen).

The pair also produced the five-issue Edge of Doom horror series for IDW, in 2010–11.

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

Peter: Well, you got to do Swamp Thing.

Kelley: I love Swamp Thing, who was like the holy of holies and you don’t touch it. I got to do that last year primarily because Bernie just didn’t have time in the schedule to do it… which was disappointing because I wanted to see him do it again. Bernie’s still amazing! A lot of guys lose their skills but he hasn’t. His Frankenstein with Steve Niles is genius.

Swamp Thing is my version of the character. In the Wrightson mold. It has percolated in my mind for years… since I first saw him when I was 10. You know, like Frankenstein by James Whale is always Frankenstein to me.

And there are great versions of Frankenstein that come later and they’re wonderful, even to this day, but Whale’s version is definitive to me! So, to me, it’s like a classic thing.

Wrightson’s is classic! When Bernie couldn’t do it, they asked me. It took me a week to come to terms with that because that’s that was the book which made me want to draw comic books. But to work with Len Wein…on Swamp Thing…I had to.

As I’ve told you before, I first came across that book with issue #2. I was staying at a friend’s house in the mountains and it was snowing and the power was out, so it was a perfect introduction. There were stacks of comics — most of them super-hero — but there were some Ploog Frankensteins, and that issue of Wrightson’s Swamp Thing.

It was 1972. And I hated it when I first saw it because it wasn’t John Buscema or Gil Kane, though I didn’t know names then. Finally I read it. It was late at night and I had the old Coleman lantern going. It was great, with a blizzard raging outside. At first I did not like it. I read Swamp Thing #2 and Monster of Frankenstein #6. I went back and read ’em again, though, and both of them really started to work on me. By the end of that weekend, I loved the stuff. That’s when I went out and started to buy these things myself. For whatever reason, the Un-Men were very frightening to me. I knew nothing of Swamp Thing, but then I really got into it.

And so, you go forward however many years, and the writer who created it is asking you to draw it. And that was the clincher! “Len really wants you to do this!” To actually have my name paired with his…? That’s a big deal to me.

I’ve never seen myself as a professional, but more as a fan who got lucky enough to be published. That’s not humility, that’s reality! I’m not trained in this. I thought I would be doing something else. I’m still waiting for them to say, “Okay, Jones, we’re done. You can go on now.” I’m also lucky enough to be friends with Wrightson! So they let me do it COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

and they left me alone. While I did it I started to morph the character into my version because I can’t really do Bernie’s.

His Swamp Thing is what it is. I just started going off in my direction. It over-performed when it came out. I thought it was a really good little story [Convergence: Swamp Thing two-issue series], mixing the character with the vampire Batman, which I had co-created. It was everything you want as far as a career highlight. It was amazing.

Peter: If there were a couple of issues of a book, or certain pages that you think best represents you, or you would like to be remembered by…

Kelley: That would be Deadman, because it was one of those perfect moments where you are left alone, so what it became was totally me good or bad.

I was already thinking of other career options, so I figured I would go out on something I really liked. It was a wonderful beautiful year of just getting up and drawing with the joy of it.

Hmm… Red Rain…. anything with Doug; the Aliens book I did with Jerry Prosser… It would be bits of things that I would remember going, “Okay, that was monumental.” So, I absolutely loved the Mr. Freeze issue from Batman. I loved the Clayface/ Giant Robot issue of Batman: Gotham After Midnight. At the time, I was surprised that it got approved. It was like the Adam West Batman makes a giant robot and fights Clayface. But it was exceptionally good, with lots of problems for me to overcome artistically. The Sherlock Holmes stories I did

Above: Kelley informs us that this panel is from his upcoming Batman Abyss, slated for release in 2017. Below: Also due this year is Batman: Master of Fear, a six-issue mini-series drawn by Kelley, featuring (who else?) The Scarecrow.

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This page: Kelley’s most recent achievement has been his rendition of Swamp Thing in the two-issue Convergence run and six-issue mini-series of last year. Both projects were scribed by the character’s co-creator, Len Wein. Above is a watercolor piece. Inset right, unfettered by trade dress, is Convergence: Swamp Thing #2’s cover, and below is the first issue of same.

Next page: On top is the original art for Swamp Thing #6 [Aug. 2016], featuring the bayou beast along with Zatanna, the Spectre, and the Phantom Stranger. Inset bottom is a photo of the Jones men, taken a few years back. Bottom is a recent pic of Kelley’s brood.

From left: youngest son Carter (13 years old); wife Lynn; Kelley; and oldest son, Sam (15).

#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Swamp Thing, Batman TM & © DC Comics.

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for IDW. And there’s a things I did that I don’t know if many people have seen. It was a book with Steve Niles called the Edge of Doom, a collection of short stories. I like the whole series, but the second issue was striking. It got a lot of reaction from other writers. It was this guy marooned on a planet, and it was as good a piece of writing that I’ve ever worked over.

Another thing that I did was a one-shot called Zombie World, which I wrote, that I would like people to see. I wrote it on an airplane. At first I didn’t want to do it. Mike Mignola had set up this universe and I didn’t feel I could add anything to it. I was a fan of it, and you know, you just want to read it. But Dark Horse pushed, asking if I could just do one. And, on the flight from Portland to Sacramento, I wrote it out. I just drew lines where the pages would break and that’s what I worked from. It was a completely bonkers issue. There was a lot of commentary that I was doing at that time and I just put it through this character. But I always felt good about it, because years later it got reprinted in a book, and it was singled out by Bob Kirkman, The Walking Dead creator, as one of his favorite pieces. That was kind of cool, because it wasn’t just a zombie story; it was my homage to E.C. Comics. And not just how it’s drawn, but it’s that insanity in the world of E.C. Peter: You’ve written some comics — The Hammer, 13 th Son, a couple of other things…

How do you approach the story?

Kelley: With the punchline. To me, I did that in Zombie World. I

was thinking even then zombies were kind of hackneyed, so what could you see that you haven’t seen before? A zombie eating a Siamese twin? And then it started being Richard Matheson’s thing. Not what happens on your world, but what happens on your street? So I thought, “What happens on my street at that point?”

I didn’t want to do this and I was kind of bullied by Dark Horse. First it was, “Do three. Do two. Well, just do one.”

So I said, “Okay,” and, as I said, I was flying home from Portland and I wrote it on the airplane. It wrote itself really fast. It got to be funny that this guy was kind of a loser who’s already an outsider and he falls for this girl who’s just simply kind to him. It’s not that she likes him. She’s just a very pretty girl who is kind to him. So he instantly attaches all, projects all this stuff… Then the zombie thing happens.

He’s watching MTV and they’re all zombies. You know, it just turns bad. And so it got to be how he woos this girl who’s now dead. So he starts eating people just like the zombies, to be like her… So he’s sicker than the zombies, you know?

And to me, it’s all so hysterically funny, as horrific as it may be! I was always really proud of that one because I love short stories. In and out, ya do it, you’re done. It was sick.

I still think among the sickest things that got published because it’s just got everything wrong in it. I mean, I guess it could only have been worse if it was his sister but I did that for 13 th Son. [laughs] Peter: You seem to be doing a lot more covers and illustrations, like Sherlock Holmes. Is that just because… ?

Kelley: It’s because I love Sherlock Holmes. I make time for it. I normally just work five days a week but right now on Sunday I’ll do that. And at this point, if I’m asked to do like a Popeye or SpongeBob or something, sometimes you want to show people you can be outside the range. I’m fine with being stereotyped. I mean, worse than being stereotyped is not stereotyped. And I can live with that because I’ve invested so much in trying to put beauty to something ugly.

And again, I think people at this age of comics — probably at every age — but at this age of hyper-realism is at its strongest, and that’s probably due to using computers a lot. But I still do it the old way, so in a weird way, it’s kind of come full circle where I’m working with grotesques.

And just by not trying to make it hyper real, I stand out and luckily people still like that.

Peter: I know you family was really supportive, but you also had some friends like Jim Sinclair, who also became an inker [The Maxx].

Kelley: Oh yeah, I owe Jim in the sense that he took my stuff and showed it to Marshall Rogers.

I’ve told that story many times. There’s so many people, you know, I’m going to leave someone out.

Scott Maple was huge for me. Scott was a guy who ran Comics & Comix, a great store in a chain of stores owned by Bud Plant. Scott introduced me to Wally Wood and the E.C. guys. His great taste in art opened my eyes. God, he loaned me back issues of Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and classic E.C.s the store had, because I could never afford them. He really was a great mentor

Swamp Thing and related characters TM & © DC Comics.

in that sense. Scott introduced me to the great artists that were before my time and the rich history of comics as a medium.

Peter: I mentioned this interview to Marty Lasick…

Kelley: Marty. You have to mention Marty because we like the same guys. Very rarely do you equally like Kirby passionately and Wrightson passionately. They are very different and I was a big fan of both. I can see Kirby all over my stuff. No one else sees it, but it’s there. Kirby was the first guy I looked at. And when I saw Wrightson… Well, it took a second reading of Wrightson to like Wrightson as much as I do because I was Kirby-fied. I remember not liking Steranko the very first time I saw him. I thought, he’s just ripping off Jack. But then you read more than five pages, and you go this guy’s a genius, he’s building upon it, and he’s every bit the master. I was just ignorant.

Peter: We all hung out at the Comics & Comix, at Birdcage. Bill Stancik, Glenn Johnson, Chris Cade, others…

Kelley: Yeah, the group was small, and not that we were hip or cool or anything, but we loved comics and, not that we were the first to do that, but we all suffered for the cause of comics. Now today’s fans have movies and TV shows!

Peter: There was nothing like getting together and talking movies and comics back then.

Kelley: Yeah, I remember the sheer excitement of going to the movies together, like 2001. Or all talking about the book we were all into. Going to the old bookstores and finding the old DAW science fiction paperbacks with the great covers. I still have that stuff. Everything. I still have my old Universal monsters and Star Trek posters on my walls. As Henry V said,”We few! We happy few!”

I didn’t keep up with friends from high school. But the comics crowd… I still have those friends. And there was more than just comics. If the topic was Bruce Lee, we talked about him and everything he did. If it was about any subject that we loved, sound tracks, science fiction, Theodore Sturgeon, that was the evening and that was the discussion. It was very exciting and very formative to me.

Those days, beyond the nostalgia, that was my college.

Peter: We talked about Sturgeon’s short story “It” being about the Swamp Thing.

Kelley: That’s where all this stuff comes from. My kids are excited about Lovecraft; they’re discovering him. And the fact that one of them said to me the other day (he’s 13) that it really freaked him out, reading it. I thought he was going to say the monsters, but he said is that everything you know isn’t what you think it is. It’s the illusion. Reality is The Other. And that bothered him the rest of the day. And we would talk about those things years ago.

Peter: Any thoughts about retiring?

Kelley: The way I approach it is as long as I still like doing it, and can physically do it, I will. I still look forward to it. It’s not my identity, so I don’t think I worry about it. Seriously, I don’t.

If it ends tomorrow, it ends tomorrow. It’s not who I am.

But I could never teach it, never explain it, never say, “Follow how I did it and this will unlock the secrets.” What happened to me was that I was that I was just different enough to be published, just different enough to be remembered, and just different enough to still be interesting enough to go back and see. Not too much. Just different enough.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2017 • #14

Above: Caption.

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creators at the con IT TAKES TWO — COUPLES AT THE CON: In this initial installment of Kendall Whitehouse’s “Creators at the Con” photo series, we underscore how comic cons are often family affairs and, in particular, how spouses frequently work together to greet fans at these events. Top row: Allen and Roz Bellman at Asbury Park Comic Con 2013; Bernie and Liz Wrightson at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2015. Middle row: Marsha and Don McGregor at Asbury Park Comic Con 2014; Dawn A. Bruno Jones and J.G. Jones at Wizard World Philadelphia 2015. Bottom row: Joe and Hilarie Staton at New York Comic Con 2013; Jerry and Gro Bagn Robinson at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2011.

Photography by Kendall Whitehouse All photos © Kendall Whitehouse.

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#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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Celebrating 30 years of the creator’s “Archosaurs and Automobiles” masterworks, COMIC BOOK CREATOR #15 journeys into the Xenozoic Era with a feature-length, career-spanning interview with artist’s artist Mark Schultz, creator of the renowned and fantastical Cadillacs and Dinosaurs franchise. In a revealing and intimate conversation conducted in Mark’s Pennsylvanian home, CBC examines the early years of struggle, success with Kitchen Sink Press, and hitting it big when series stars Jack Tenrec and Hannah Dundee (depicted with dastardly dinosaurs on our all-new CBC cover) hit the airwaves as a hit Saturday morning cartoon series. Of course, the

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs TM & © Mark Schultz.

issue includes rarely-seen art and fascinating photos from Mark’s amazing and award-winning career. Plus, courtesy of “Mad Dog” artist and Hollywood story-boarder PAUL POWER, we look at the story behind JACK “THE KING” KIRBY’s network television appearance on Bob Newhart’s short-lived situation comedy, BOB, back in 1993. CBC also discusses 50+ years of the terrific TEEN TITANS with renowned TT scripter MARV WOLFMAN. In addition, Anthony Taylor shares an interview with the late, great artist DAVE COCKRUM on his work for the Aurora Model Kits back in the 1970s, and Michael Aushenker interviews controversial Acme Comics mogul MEL SMITH about Gumby, rock ’n’ roll comics, and other subjects. Plus there’s HEMBECK!

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40 years after the debut of Marvel’s STAR WARS #1, its writer/editor ROY THOMAS tells RICHARD ARNDT the story behind that landmark comic, plus interviews with artists HOWARD CHAYKIN, RICK HOBERG, and BILL WRAY. Also: GEORGE BRENNER, creator of The Clock—”Jazz in Comics” by MICHAEL T. GILBERT—the finale of BILL SCHELLY’s salute to G.B. LOVE—FCA—and more! CHAYKIN cover.

DOUG MOENCH in the 1970s at Warren and Marvel (Master of Kung Fu, Planet of the Apes, Deathlok, Werewolf by Night, Morbius, Moon Knight, Ka-Zar, Weirdworld)!

Art by BUSCEMA, GULACY, PLOOG, BUCKLER, ZECK, DAY, PERLIN, & HEATH! MICHAEL T. GILBERT on EC’s oddball “variant covers”—FCA—and a neverpublished Golden Age super-hero story by MARV LEVY! Cover by PAUL GULACY!

Giant-size Fawcett Collectors of America special with Golden/Silver Age writer OTTO BINDER’s personal script records and illos from his greatest series! Intros by P.C. HAMERLINCK and BILL SCHELLY, art by BECK, SIMON & KIRBY, SWAN, SCHAFFENBERGER, AVISON, BORING, MOONEY, PLASTINO, and others! Plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and an unpublished C.C. BECK cover!

Relive JOE PETRILAK’s All-Time Classic NY Comic Book Convention—the greatest Golden & Silver Age con ever assembled!

Panels, art and photos featuring INFANTINO, KUBERT, 3 SCHWARTZES, NODELL, HASEN, GIELLA, CUIDERA, BOLTINOFF, BUSCEMA, AYERS, SINNOTT, [MARIE] SEVERIN, GOULART, THOMAS, and a host of others!

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“Creatures of the Night!” Moon Knight’s DOUG MOENCH and BILL SIENKIEWICZ in a Pro2Pro interview, Ghost Rider, Night Nurse, Eclipso in the Bronze Age, I…Vampire, interviews with Batman writer MIKE W. BARR and Marvel’s Nightcat, JACQUELINE TAVAREZ. Featuring work by BOB BUDIANSKY, J. M. DeMATTEIS, DAVE SIMONS, ROGER STERN, TOM SUTTON, JEAN THOMAS, and more.

SIENKIEWICZ and KLAUS JANSON cover!

“Marvel Fanfare Issue!” Behind the scenes of the ‘80s anthology series with AL MILGROM, interviews and art by ARTHUR ADAMS, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, STEVE ENGLEHART, MICHAEL GOLDEN, ROGER McKENZIE, FRANK MILLER, DOUG MOENCH, ANN NOCENTI, GEORGE PÉREZ, MARSHALL ROGERS, PAUL SMITH, KEN STEACY, CHARLES VESS, and more! Cover by SANDY PLUNKETT and GLENN WHITMORE.

“Bird People!” Hawkman in the Bronze Age, JIM STARLIN’s Superman/Hawkgirl team-up, TIM TRUMAN’s Hawkworld, Hawk and Dove, Penguin history, Blue Falcon & Dynomutt, Condorman, and CHUCK DIXON and SCOTT McDANIEL’s Nightwing. With GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, GREG GULER, RICHARD HOWELL, TONY ISABELLA, KARL KESEL, ROB LIEFELD, DENNY O’NEIL, and others! Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ.

“DC in the ‘80s!” From the experimental to the fan faves: Behind-the-scenes looks at SECRET ORIGINS, ACTION COMICS WEEKLY, DC CHALLENGE, THRILLER, ELECTRIC WARRIOR, and SUN DEVILS. Featuring JIM BAIKIE, MARK EVANIER, DAN JURGENS, DOUG MOENCH, MARTIN PASKO, TREVOR VON EEDEN, and others!

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“BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES’ 25th ANNIVERSARY!” Looks back at the influential cartoon series. Plus: episode guide, Harley Quinn history, DC’s Batman Adventures and Animated Universe comic books, and tribute to artist MIKE PAROBECK. Featuring KEVIN ALTIERI, RICK BURCHETT, PAUL DINI, GERARD JONES, MARTIN PASKO, DAN RIBA, TY TEMPLETON, BRUCE TIMM, and others! BRUCE TIMM cover!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #15 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #16

KIRBY COLLECTOR #70

KIRBY COLLECTOR #71

Interview and demo by Electra: Assassin and Stray Toasters superstar BILL SIENKIEWICZ, a look at THE WATTS ATELIER OF THE ARTS (one of the best training grounds for students to gain the skills they need to get the jobs they want), JERRY ORDWAY shows the Ord-Way of drawing, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, and BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY take you to Comic Art Bootcamp.

Celebrating 30 years of artist’s artist MARK SCHULTZ, creator of the CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS franchise, with a featurelength, career-spanning interview conducted in Mark’s Pennsylvanian home, examining the early years of struggle, success with Kitchen Sink Press, and hitting it big with a Saturday morning cartoon series. Includes rarely-seen art and fascinating photos from Mark’s amazing and award-winning career.

A look at 75 years of Archie Comics’ characters and titles, from Archie and his pals ‘n gals to the mighty MLJ heroes of yesteryear and today’s “Dark Circle”! Also: Careerspanning interviews with The Fox’s DEAN HASPIEL and Kevin Keller’s cartoonist DAN PARENT, who both jam on our exclusive cover depicting a face-off between humor and heroes. Plus our usual features, including the hilarious FRED HEMBECK!

KIRBY: ALPHA! Looks at the beginnings of Kirby’s greatest concepts, and how he looked back in time and to the future for the origins of ideas like DEVIL DINOSAUR, FOREVER PEOPLE, 2001, ETERNALS, KAMANDI, OMAC, and more! Plus: A rare Kirby interview, the 2016 WonderCon Kirby Tribute Panel, MARK EVANIER, unpublished pencil art galleries, and more!

Cover inked by MIKE ROYER!

KIRBY: OMEGA! Looks at endings, deaths, and Anti-Life in the Kirbyverse, including poignant losses and passings from such series as NEW GODS, KAMANDI, FANTASTIC FOUR, LOSERS, THOR, DEMON and others! Plus: A rare Kirby interview, the 2016 Silicon Valley Comic-Con Kirby Panel, MARK EVANIER, unpublished pencil art galleries, and more! Cover inked by WALTER SIMONSON!

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a picture is worth a thousand words from the archives of Tom Ziuko This is my pre-publication editorial presentation art coloring for Kelly Jones’ Deadman mini-series from 1989. — TZ

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#14 • Winter 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

™

A Tw o M o r r o w s P u b l i c a t i o n

No. 3, Fall 2013

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #1

Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! CBC #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2 ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES JOE KUBERT double-size tribute issue!

DANIELS, a talk between NEAL ADAMS With comprehensive examinations of each and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist cover, and more! and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert (Digital Edition) $3.95 School. KUBERT INTERVIEWS, rare art, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, and interviews with JOE 4 issue subscriptions: KUBERT, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT, RUSS $ HEATH, and FRANK THORNE! 40 US,

60 International

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #3 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #4

NEAL ADAMS vigorously responds to critics of his BATMAN: ODYSSEY mini-series in an in-depth interview, with plenty of amazing artwork! Plus: SEAN HOWE on his hit book MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY; MARK WAID interview, part one; Harbinger writer JOSHUA DYSART; Part Two of our LES DANIELS remembrance; classic cover painter EARL NOREM interviewed, a new ADAMS cover, and more!

RUSS HEATH career-spanning interview, essay on Heath’s work by S.C. RINGGENBERG (and Heath art gallery), MORT TODD on working with STEVE DITKO, a profile of alt cartoonist DAN GOLDMAN, part two of our MARK WAID interview, DENYS COWAN on his DJANGO series, VIC BLOOM and THE SECRET ORIGIN OF ARCHIE ANDREWS, HEMBECK, new KEVIN NOWLAN cover!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #5 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #6 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #7 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #8 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #9

DENIS KITCHEN close-up—from cartoonist, publisher, author, and art agent, to his friendships with HARVEY KURTZMAN, R. CRUMB, WILL EISNER, and many others!

Plus we look at the triumphant final splash of the late, great BILL EVERETT, Prof.

CAROL L. TILLEY discusses the shoddy research and falsified evidence in the book SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, DENYS COWAN interview part two, and more!

SWAMPMEN: MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS dredges up The Heap! ManThing! Swamp Thing! Marvin the Dead Thing! Bog Beast! The Lurker and It! and other creepy man-critters of the 1970s bayou! Features interviews with WRIGHTSON, MOORE, PLOOG, WEIN, GERBER, BISSETTE, VEITCH, MAYERIK, MOONEY, TOTLEBEN, VEITCH, and others. FRANK CHO cover!

Huge career-spanning BERNIE WRIGHTSON interview on his life and art—from his fannish days, Swamp Thing, Frankenstein, and work with STEPHEN KING, to his ghoulish movie work (Ghostbusters, The Thing, etc.). Plus Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror’s BILL MORRISON; interview with BATTON LASH, feature on HARDMAN & BECHKO, RICHARD BRUNING, HEMBECK, and more!

The creators of Madman and Flaming Carrot—MIKE ALLRED & BOB BURDEN— share a cover and provide comprehensive interviews and art galore, plus BILL SCHELLY is interviewed about his new HARVEY KURTZMAN biography; we present the conclusion of our BATTON LASH interview; STAN LEE on his final European comic convention tour; fanfavorite HEMBECK, and more!

JOE STATON on his comics career (from E-MAN, to co-creating The Huntress, and his current stint on the Dick Tracy comic strip), plus we showcase the lost treasure GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS drawn by Joe! Plus, Part One of our interview with the late STAN GOLDBERG, JOHN WORKMAN’s Mighty Aphrodite, GEORGE KHOURY talks with artist LEILA LEIZ, plus HEMBECK and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(192-page paperback with COLOR) $21.95 (Digital Edition) $9.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows.

The Future of Comics History.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #10 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #11 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #12 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #13

WARP examined! Massive PETER BAGGE retrospective! It’s a double focus on the Broadway sci-fi epic, with a comprehensive feature including art director NEAL ADAMS and director STUART (Reanimator) GORDON, plus cast and crew! Also a career-spanning conversation with the man of HATE! and NEAT STUFF on the real story behind Buddy Bradley! Plus the revival of MIRACLEMAN, Captain Marvel’s 75th birthday, and more!

Retrospective on GIL KANE, co-creator of JACK KIRBY’s mid-life work examined, the modern Green Lantern and Atom, and from Fantastic Four and Thor at Marvel in early progenitor of the graphic novel. Kane the middle ’60s to the Fourth World at DC cover newly-inked by KLAUS JANSON, (including the real-life background drama plus remembrances from friends, fans, and that unfolded during that tumultuous era)! collaborators, and a Kane art gallery. Also, Plus a career-spanning interview with our tribute to the late HERB TRIMPE, inter- underground comix pioneer HOWARD view with PAUL LEVITZ about his new CRUSE, the extraordinary cartoonist and book Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic graphic novelist of the award-winning Novel, and more!

Stuck Rubber Baby! Cover by STEVE RUDE!

MICHAEL W. KALUTA feature interview covering his early fans days THE SHADOW, STARSTRUCK, the STUDIO, and Vertigo cover work! Plus RAMONA FRADON talks about her 65+ years in the comic book business on AQUAMAN, METAMORPHO, SUPER-FRIENDS, and SPONGEBOB! Also JAY LYNCH reveals the WACKY PACK MEN who created the Topps trading cards that influenced an entire generation!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

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TwoMorrows

The Future of Comics History.

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TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919-449-0344 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Web: www.twomorrows.com

New book by BACK ISSUE! editor MICHAEL EURY!

HERO-A-GO-GO!

Welcome to the CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, good guys beat bad guys with a pun and a punch, and Batman shook a mean cape. HERO-A-GO-GO celebrates the camp craze of the Swinging Sixties, when just about everyone—the teens of Riverdale, an ant and a squirrel, even the President of the United States—was a super-hero or a secret agent. BACK ISSUE magazine and former DC Comics editor MICHAEL EURY takes you through that coolest cultural phenomenon with this all-new collection of nostalgic essays, histories, and theme song lyrics of classic 1960s characters like CAPTAIN ACTION, HERBIE THE FAT FURY, CAPTAIN NICE, ATOM ANT, SCOOTER, ACG’s NEMESIS, DELL’S SUPER-FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, the “Split!” CAPTAIN MARVEL, and others! Featuring interviews with BILL MUMY (Lost in Space), BOB HOLIDAY (It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman), RALPH BAKSHI (The Mighty Heroes, SpiderMan), DEAN TORRENCE (Jan and Dean Meet Batman), RAMONA FRADON (Metamorpho), DICK DeBARTOLO (Captain Klutz), TONY TALLARICO (The Great Society Comic Book), VINCE GARGIULO (Palisades Park historian), JOE SINNOTT (The Beatles comic book), JOSE DELBO (The Monkees comic book), and many more!

(272-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-073-1 • SHIPS APRIL 2017!

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

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MONSTER MASH

GEORGE KHOURY's “love letter” to comics of 1976-1986, covering all the top artists, the coolest stories, and even the best ads!

LAST SUPERMAN STANDING

Biography of the Superman artist who co-created Supergirl, Brainiac, and the Legion of Super-Heroes!

Time-trip back to the frightening era of 1957-1972, and explore the Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze, when monsters stomped into the American mainstream!

(288-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-067-0

(240-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-063-2

(112-page trade paperback) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-066-3

(192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $13.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-064-9

SUBSCRIPTIONS ECONOMY US Alter Ego (Six 100-page issues) $65.00 Back Issue (Eight 80-page issues) $73.00 BrickJournal (Six 80-page issues) $55.00 Comic Book Creator (Four 80-page issues) $40.00 Jack Kirby Collector (Four 100-page issues) $45.00

Printed in China

Documents the complete history of Archie Comics’ “Mighty Crusaders” super-hero characters, from the 1940s to today!

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