Comic Book Creator #15 by TwoMorrows Publishing

ALSO IN THIS ISH:

Remembering Jay Lynch & Skip Williamson

™

Recommended for MATURE READERS

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

No. 15, Summer 2017

$8.95

82658 00091

All characters TM & © Mark Schultz.

in the USA

AUTOS & ARCHOSAURS: THE ART OF

MARK SCHULTZ Cover art by Mark Schultz

S u m m 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 5

About Our Cover Art by MARK SCHULTZ Colors by GLENN WHITMORE

COMICS CHATTER In Memoriam — The Bijou Boys: With the participation of family, friends, fans, and peers, Comic Book Creator examines the life-long friendship and numerous collaborations of the late underground comix pioneers, Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, best buddies who passed away within 11 days of one another this past March. Along with the recollections of Art Spiegelman, Denis Kitchen, Jay Kinney, Patrick Rosenkranz, and others, CBC zeroes in on the era from the cartoonists’ Kurtzman-inspired fanzine work as teenagers up until the final issue of their superb creation, Bijou Funnies, either the second or third underground comix title, one born of the tumult of the Chicago riots in 1968! Um Tut Sut! .................... 3

Characters TM & © Mark Schultz.

Incoming: Another extra-long letters o’ comment section on past issues.................... 24 Hembeck’s Dateline: Multi-hued heroes & villains, as rendered by Our Man Fred.... 31 THE MAIN EVENT

Above: Jack Tenrec and Hannah Dundee, the protagonists of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, the epic future-world mashing of prehistoric beasts again roaming our planet, are depicted by creator Mark Schultz on this brand-new cover created especially for Comic Book Creator! Mark tells us that, after a 20-year-plus hiatus, he is currently at work on the next chapter of the series, which will see publication (possibly as soon as next year) as a (thus far untitled) 64-page graphic novel. If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

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

Mark of Excellence: The Mark Schultz Interview. Artist and writer Mark Schultz shares an incredibly in-depth and detailed look at his life as a cartoonist (with side forays as comic book scripter), from his dinosaur-obsessed childhood to his current work on a forthcoming Xenozoic Tales graphic novel. We go back to the future as the conversation ranges far and wide, from his appreciation for — and friendship with — the late, great Al Williamson, to his experience as he observed his property becoming a Saturday morning cartoon show and action-figure toy line, to growing alarm for our ever-warming, increasingly endangered home planet..... 32 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse shares his pix of pals of the comics realm .. 76 Coming Attractions: Up next are Archie cartoonists Dean Haspiel and Dan Parent...... 77 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Kelley Jones’ Deadman presentation art.... 80 Right: Detail from the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs limited edition print by Mark Schultz, published by Kitchen Sink,and also used as the wraparound cover for the Xenozoic Tales collection, Time in Overdrive [1993].

Editorial Note: As fate is wont to bestow upon us mere mortals, sometimes intentions are dashed by an onslaught of events. While we had promoted that this issue would contain a number of secondary features, the editor was compelled to postpone that material until future issues. This was to make room for an extensive look at the lives of recently-departed Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson. We thank all contributors and readers for their understanding and appreciate any patience. 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 Dr., 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 US, $60 International, $15 Digital. 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 memories of JAY LYNCH, SKIP WILLIAMSON, RICH BUCKLER, and BERNIE WRIGHTSON ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

MARK SCHULTZ 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 RICHARD J. ARNDT 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

Ruminations on the mission of CBC and the passing of giants

friends who died in a span of time so Back when I was producing remarkably near to one another. I admit, Comic Book Artist magazine for too, that I greatly admired the Bijou TwoMorrows (circa 1998–2003), Funnies founders. As a young teen, no I had this habit of apologizing cartoonist’s style and substance was left and right within the mag, so more appealing to me than that of Skip much so that a parody of CBA, Williamson… simultaneously so comtitled Comic Book Nerd, was pelling and so iconoclastic… Snappy published, and I cringed to Sammy Smoot was simply the coolest. note that, if memory serves, Back in early 2015, I made plans to the editorial headline was “I’m visit Skip, to spend a weekend chatting sorry!”My typical mea culpa things up with “Trippy Skippy,” to regarded not having included this discuss his eclectic and varied career. or that promised item in a given I had hoped to give back to an artist issue, and I was, I thought, pretty whose work I had loved 40 years and sincere in those regrets… but more, a cartoonist who I believed was they were a bit excessive, to say woefully overlooked. But, alas, work the least, and, with Comic Book and domestic issues got in the way, Creator, I’ve kept the candor and the Vermont stay had to be postabout behind-the-scene decisions poned. “I’ve got time,” thought I. to a minimum. I lived, I learned…. Since becoming (ahem) a comic That said, to state the obvious, book historian, I hold no archivist in I’ve been relying less on material higher esteem than Jay Lynch, and I produced by others and more on was lucky to call him a friend. I had the self-generated items, and this is privilege to interview him at length and no more apparent than in this issue, moderate a convention panel devoted which showcases, besides an to the artist formerly known as Jayzey, extended letter col and a few and I’ll miss him terribly. one-page items (including Fed Two days after Skip died, another Hembeck’s “Dateline: @?*!!” and tremendous talent succumbed. Bernie Tom Ziuko’s “Picture is Worth a Mark Schultz by Ronn Sutton Wrightson, an art god since the ’70s and Thousand Words” end-of-ish kicker), a man who graciously allowed me to spend three days only two features — an exhaustive talk with our cover with him for an interview in his L.A. studio about ten artist, Mark Schultz, and, prompted by their sudden years ago, passed away. The crushing news, while not passing within less than two weeks of one another, an in-depth look at the early lives and careers of two close surprising (Bernie had been suffering health issues for years now), was nonetheless stunning. He is nothing buddies and tremendous talents, Jay Lynch and Skip less than a giant in this field and we’re hoping to pubWilliamson. While I had hoped some other items could lish an appropriate tribute — likely as a book — in the be included in this ish, such as features produced by near future. Godspeed, Bernie. More news next issue. my patient associate editor Michael Aushenker, work Just before press time comes the sad news that that has been ready to go for many months now. Rich Buckler has died. I’ve always been fascinated I can only ask for understanding. I might say I’m by his career, one celebrated and complicated, and sorry, restarting the CBA habit of confession, and had hoped to build an issue out of an extensive email much as I do wish I could bump up page-count on a whim — an impulse I would, back in the day, inflict time interview Michael Aushenker conducted with the artist (which will appear next issue). Certainly Rich was game and again on my browbeaten publisher — that era is (and perplexingly effusive with praise about yours truly long past and the parameter of 80 pages is immutable whether I was in his company or not) and we chatted (except for the occasional, previously announced about it when greeting one another at cons… I am 100-pager, such as the upcoming Wallace Wood and grateful he contributed cover art to a recent book I Frank Frazetta issues to come). co-authored and he also shared a fine testimonial for Features also get supplanted because of events Kirby100. God bless, Rich, and thanks for the respect. and, in the case of this issue, it was the deaths of All is fleeting. Don’t hesitate, peeps. Share the love. two underground comix pioneers, remarkably close

cbc contributors

Bob Armstrong Richard J. Arndt Rhonda Baker Molly Bernstein Philip Dolan Tom Firak Evert Geradts

Michael T. Gilbert Roger Hill Jim Keefe John Kinhart Jay Kinney Denis Kitchen Violet Kitchen

Jay Lynch Bill Morrison Gioia Palmieri Peter Poplaski Denise Prowell Everett Rand Patrick Rosenkranz

— Ye Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Mark Schultz Jane Shay Wald Valerie Snowden Art Spiegelman Bhob Stewart Bob Stevenson Ronn Sutton

Steven Thompson The Time Capsule Kendall Whitehouse Glenn Whitmore Skip Williamson Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

CBC Contributing Photographer

On Mags and Mortality

in memoriam

The Brothers Bijou The entwined fates of underground comix pioneers Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson

Nard n’ Pat TM & © the estate of Jay Lynch. Snappy Sammy Smoot TM & © the estate of Skip Williamson.

by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor The pair, destined to become among the earliest of the underground comix creators, were first bound together as teenage pen-pals who shared a mutual devotion to the satirical genius of Harvey Kurtzman. Though each would go on to make his own distinct impression on American pop culture, as partners they would launch arguably the second underground comic book title and solidify their respective statures in the form’s history. And, in a weirdly synchronistic twist of fate, they would also be linked in death, as Jay Patrick Lynch and Mervyn “Skip” Williamson, Jr., both aged 72, would finalize their brotherly connection by departing the realm of the living within eleven days of one another. I was about 16 when a weather-beaten copy of The Best of Bijou Funnies [1975] made it into my eager cartoon-loving hands, though, by that time, I had already been thoroughly corrupted by underground comix, particularly the work of Bijou stalwarts Skip Williamson and Robert Crumb, whose work had already — and irrevocably — warped my still-developing brain. But that collection, overflowing with an eclectic array of material, both hugely entertaining and head-scratchingly bizarre, became a much-read, treasured addition to my then-scant library of the day’s “books on comic books” because of Marty Pahl’s detailed, jaunty, and informative introduction. From my point of view, that well-written, engaging opening essay confirmed my suspicion that, despite being ignored by comics fandom in general and a category entirely absent in the purportedly authoritative Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, these irreverent funnybooks from out of the counter-culture were undeniably as much a part of comic book history as Superman, Frontline Combat, and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. I was grateful to Pahls (Crumb’s friend and brother-in-law) for widening a burgeoning appreciation of the form, and for especially sharing the story of the Bijou brothers, Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, and the origins of their renowned Chicago-based comix anthology. Pahls, the writer behind three comprehensive biographical essays in The Complete Crumb Comics (and who, in 1989, died far too young), nailed the appeal of the duo’s respective styles and signature characters — Lynch’s “Nard n’ Pat” and Williamson’s “Snappy Sammy Smoot” — as well as being a neat complement to each other: Nard (short for Bernard) and Pat were two real friends of Lynch—a conservative and a radical, respectively, just like their cartoon equivalents. Pat the Cat’s wisenheimer belaboring of his “boss” smacks more than a little of the relationship between Charlie McCarthy AUTHOR’S NOTE: Any quotes within this feature that are not attributed are from interviews conducted by this writer.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

and Edgar Bergen. But, if “Nard n’ Pat” was stylistically traditional as comic strips go, it was revolutionary to its audience. Readers who had had it to here with plotless, laughless psychedelia loved the burlesque-show banter of the new feature. “Snappy Sammy Smoot,” on the other hand, had antecedents in classic as well as popular literature. Like Candide, he was the consummate naif caught in the toils of a chaotic society. While Lynch shunned topical references and sought a timeless look for Nard n’ Pat, Williamson’s references were up-to-the-minute, and Sammy found himself coping constantly with black militants, rioting police, incendiary students, and revolutionary assassins. Even the art styles of “Pat” and “Sammy” contrasted. Turning his back on girlie-mag slickness, Jay returned to the “big-foot” cartoon styles of the Twenties and before, eventually honing and polishing his fine-line penwork to a burnished glow that remains the envy of his cartooning colleagues. Imaginative use of Zip-A-Tone and incredibly detailed renderings make a Jay Lynch page look like the work of no other artist. Meanwhile, Skip developed the use of wide crosshatching and broad, flat, open areas to give “Snappy

Above: The Bijou brothers during the underground comix days. From left is Skip Williamson and Jay Lynch. Inset left: Lynch’s trademark characters, Nard n’ Pat. Below: Williamson’s most recognized character, Snappy Sammy Smoot .

Above: Lynch and Williamson grace the cover of Don Dohler’s fanzine, Wild! [#7, 1962]. Below: Starting in ’62, Williamson produced his own ’zine, Squire, lasted for three issues, which included cartoons by pen-pal (and lifelong friend) Jay Lynch.

In late winter, the comics community was shocked to learn not only of the passing of Lynch and Williamson, but also that the deaths would occur within two weeks of one another. On the fifth of March, Lynch expired due to lung cancer, and, by the 16th, Williamson succumbed to renal failure. The proximity of these events, while tragic to their fans, friends, and family, evoke a peculiar kismet given the two comix pioneers are so closely coupled together by history, with the founding of Bijou Funnies, second only to ZAP Comix as being the first of their kind to appear in the world (though Lynch stated that Gilbert Shelton’s Feds ’N’ Heads was released virtually at the same time, so maybe Bijou was third). The story of these two lifelong buddies stretches to when, as high school students, they began to correspond in the early ’60s through the niche fanzine scene that emerged after the EC Comics heyday. Williamson shared, “It just so happened that those of us involved were Kurtzmaniacs — worshipers of the work of Harvey Kurtzman — and we followed him assiduously.” By then, the celebrated MAD creator had quit EC, made short-lived, vain attempts, withTrump and Humbug, to recap-

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Wild! © the estate of Don Dohler.

Sammy Smoot” an almost art deco look. This look is heightened by Sammy himself, with his glistening hair slicked back like a 1930s radio crooner, who looks like he could have stepped off a plywood flat.

ture that phenomenal early success, and was then editing Help!, the humor magazine whose “Public Gallery” feature would include the first respective national appearances of Lynch and Williamson cartoons. Born into a family of “nihilistic atheists,” Lynch was creative from the get-go. “I think I always thought of myself as a cartoonist,” he said. “When I was a little kid, there were cracks on the sidewalk, which I then drew embellishments so the cracks formed the outline of Mickey Mouse, then I hid in the bushes and listened to people’s comments on my sidewalk drawings. It’s not so much the act of drawing but listening to critics that I found amusing.” He lived in the same Belmar, New Jersey, home as his cousin, Valerie Snowden, who related at the Jay Lynch/ Skip Williamson memorial (held at the School of Visual Arts, on March 31). “We were raised in the same eccentric household by a bunch of eccentrics, and I think we were the only ones who turned out normal.” She also revealed, “My father, who is 92, wanted me to share about Jay’s beginnings: my father brought him comic books when he was five and Jay was just obsessed with cartooning and comics, and that’s when he became an organizer. He’d keep those comics under his bed and study them very carefully and try to copy and emulate what the artists did… He wasn’t interested in anything else, and this was from five years old on.” As a boy, Lynch was also attracted to things satirical and absurd, whether Ernie Kovacs on TV, The Joy Boys on radio, and, specifically, Kurtzman’s parody comics. “The first issue I saw of MAD was the one with the ‘Ping Pong’ parody, with people standing in a giant footprint,” he said, “which my uncle [John Snowden] brought home… and immediately I totally flipped and that was it.” By then, he was eight years old. In Pigheaded, John Kinhart’s film documentary about Skip Williamson’s life, the cartoonist (who, as a mischievous boy was nicknamed after Percy Crosby’s comic strip mischief-maker, Skippy) said, “One of my earliest recollections is really getting in trouble, when I was in the third grade, for drawing Mickey Mouse in my workbook, and having my teacher come down and whack me with a ruler. What it did was to show me that if I could provoke such anger and hostility from authority figures, then this is the way I wanted to go!” In his Comics Journal interview with Grass Green, Williamson revealed, “Of course, the early MAD comics were a big influence around that time. I would trace the drawings of Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Wally Wood. When I was in grade school and later in high school, there was a core of guys, there were three of us, and we were totally fanatic about MAD. We would sit around and try to out-Basil Wolverton each other. I’m the only one who became a cartoonist.” What brought the two fledgling cartoonists together — as well as forming a connection with others of like mind, including a 14-year-old Art Spiegelman — was a classified ad in an issue of Cracked magazine, a second-tier MAD imitation (for which Lynch would freelance in the mid-’60s). “There was an ad from Joe Pilati, who was putting together a Kurtzman homage fanzine called Smudge,” Williamson said in Pigheaded, and he, Lynch, and Spiegelman each ordered copies, resulting in all three plugging into the MAD-centric ’zine scene. “We became aware of each other,” Spiegelman shared, “and both started contributing to Smudge.” Soon enough, the young teen began his own publication, Blasé, in which Lynch and Williamson participated, and Spiegelman sent material to Williamson’s own ’zine, Squire. “Jay Lynch and I connected through it, as I did with Art Spiegelman,” Williamson said. “And that’s how we connected to Crumb, too. It was a harbinger of things to come.” “[E]ventually, we all started corresponding with each other, just asking questions about how each one had

Chicago Mirror © the estates of Jay Lynch & Skip Williamson.

gotten various shading techniques,” Lynch told Patrick Rosenkranz, in Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution. “[The fanzine] Wild was printed on a duplication machine and we had to use ditto masters. We had to use a ballpoint and it was really difficult to get fine lines. I found I could buy a mimeograph stylus and make really fine lines with that. The first letter I got from Skip was asking me how I got those fine lines.” Soon enough, Williamson and Lynch were each submitting cartoons to college humor magazines, including Charlatan and Aardvark, and, as mentioned, both witnessed their national debuts as cartoonists in Help! Williamson, the first to appear (when a high school student, no less), had his submission chosen by the satire magazine’s assistant editor, Gloria Steinem (yes, that Gloria Steinem!). His civil rights-themed cartoon, which earned him a whopping five bucks, was then shown on national TV by comedian Dick Gregory on the Tonight Show, hosted by Jack Paar. “All my peers saw it,” Williamson said in Pigheaded, “and it really made me feel great.” To be featured in a humor magazine edited by their idol was fitting for the MAD “fan-addicts.” Williamson told TCJ, “Harvey Kurtzman had the vision to publish the drawings of Jay Lynch, Robert Crumb, and Gilbert Shelton in Help!, and that was the basic core of underground comix. And I think that says as much about the corrupting influence of Harvey Kurtzman as does anything.” The self-described “father-in-law” of comix would, to varying degree, remain a presence during Lynch, Williamson, and Spiegelman’s time in the counter-culture years and beyond. Through the early ’60s and into their college years, the pair kept in touch. Asked when he first met Williamson in person, Lynch responded, “It must have been ’63, when I first moved to Chicago. Canton, Missouri, where Skip lived, was about a two-hour train ride from Chicago, so Skip would come into the city, and then I started going up to Canton to visit Skip, and he’d come to Chicago to visit me.” By that year, Williamson had finished his final issue of Squire and was becoming involved in campus publications. “Jay Lynch and I were corresponding while I was in college,” Williamson told Green. “He was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago and producing surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness comic strips. I was editing the literary magazine at Culver-Stockton College, and I got Jay into a couple of issues. Then we started jamming, doing the strips together. The attitude of these cartoons were kind of like early Bob Dylan lyrics put to visuals. They didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we were excited enough to continue using the comic strip format.” Their ambitions also expanded. “I knew that I wanted to publish something, though I wasn’t sure what it was,” Williamson recalled, “but I was in constant contact with Jay… So we were setting up our grandiose plans about what we would do together and… I moved to Chicago specifically to produce something with Jay.” Lynch said in Pigheaded, “We always knew that we’d have to do something together major.” COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

In later years, Lynch would abstain from drugs but, in 1966, when Williamson came to town with new wife in tow to crash at his pal’s vermin-populated apartment, Lynch was an avid LSD user with a speed-freak girlfriend. At the memorial, their future publisher and fellow cartoonist Denis Kitchen recalled, “[Lynch] told me he was high on acid and he was in bed with his girlfriend at the time and he peered over the side of the bed (in the probably lousy neighborhood he lived in at the time) and there was a rat. He said that the rat had the face of the girl and he turned to tell the girl and, of course, she had the face of the rat. I believe that Jay had that experience… but you didn’t always know when Jay was being deadpan or honest.” There was likely more than a little honesty in Lynch’s anecdote, as Williamson wrote in an excerpt (from his Spontaneous Combustion memoir) recalling that stay-over, “Jay had a problem with rodent infestation and, toward morning, he wandered into the small room that was his studio. A rat had been caught in a trap and, in its dying throes, was dragging itself across a sheet of acetate next to his drawing table. Jay read this as an omen. If there’s a rat in the house, it must be removed.” That drug-addicted “rodent” was in the cartoonist’s bed. “Metaphorically speaking, [Lynch’s girlfriend] Linda was a rat in his house,” Williamson wrote. “She kept a bag of disposable syringes in his living room closet. And the appearance of the rat indicated to him that he had to get Linda and her bag of needles out of his house before he got busted. So he took some Thorazine, in order to come down from the LSD, and escorted Linda and her bag of spikes out of the house and put her on an el[evated] train. Jay told me, ‘I had to follow the rat omen. Otherwise we’d never have started doing the Mirror, as I would have been too busy porking and taking acid with Linda to get anything done.” The Mirror was to be the first publication co-produced by the artists (aided, through the mail, by Art Spiegelman — “Me, Skip, and Artie,” Lynch wrote in The Life and Times of R. Crumb, “it was in the cards that the three of us would ultimately do a satire magazine together that would call society’s bluff”), and it was inspired by a renowned iconoclastic periodical. Since first encountering it in 1959, Lynch was a rabid fan of Paul Krassner’s revolutionary and self-professed “social-political-religious criticism and satire” magazine. “The Realist was it for me,” Lynch wrote in his Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix introduction. “[I]t completely blew me away. The Realist seemed to be publishing material that mirrored my own private thoughts on taboo topics as it zoomed in on the sham and hypocrisy of society at large.” (Lynch would Inset: Covers of the three issues of the Chicago Mirror, Lynch and Williamson’s satirical quarterly (top two with cover art by Peter Green), the short-lived periodical that would directly result in the creation of Bijou Funnies. While lauding then-husband Lynch’s dedication, Jane Shay Wald recently said, “That part I was very impressed by. I did not like that he was always after me to get down to the street corner and sell those Chicago Mirror magazines.” 5

This page and next: The covers of Bijou #1–7. The dimensions of the first and last issues (#8) were about the size of typical comic books, but the rest were smaller. Answering an age-old question, Lynch said, “Bijou #2 was intentionally shorter, because #1 was still on the stands, so they put #2 in front of #1, so it’s shorter because the taller comic would be in back of it, so we’d get full cover display on the new issue, yet you could still see the logo of the old issue.”

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Bijou Funnies TM & © the estates of Jay Lynch & Skip Williamson. All art © the respective artists.

also cite the British satirical weekly Private Eye as an inspiration.) Along with the Village Voice, Krassner’s satirical monthly influenced the emergence of underground newspapers across the country, any number of which published (mostly single-panel gag) cartoons by the two. These periodicals, among them the Los Angeles Free Press, San Francisco Oracle, East Village Other, and Berkeley Barb, combined with the college humor magazines the twosome had contributed to, inspired the buddies to tackle their own periodical, a quarterly dubbed the Chicago Mirror. After launching the mag in late 1967, they discovered that their intended readership had been weirdly transformed by the Summer of Love. “All of the sudden, though,” Lynch confessed in The Life and Times of R. Crumb, “even before the rubber cement of the paste-ups of our first issue had dried, the whole hippie thing started to take off. Our perceived audience of local beatnik intellectuals was turning into a zoned-out flock of cosmic-conscious love babies. Loss of ego boundaries among our readers didn’t mix with our penchant for editorial cynicism. We toned it down. We tried to speak to our readers in their own lingo, but somehow hippies and satire just didn’t seem to mix.” M. Steven Fox’s comixjoint. com describes the short-lived periodical: “With its mixture of counter-culture articles and comics, the Chicago Mirror was relatively tame stuff compared to ZAP, but the comics it did have were quite underground in nature. With all the literary contributions, the Mirror kind of feels like The Realist, except expressly designed for blue-collar iconoclasts, whether they be artists, poets, or hippies.” Fittingly, Krassner was interviewed

in the last of its three issues. In Pigheaded, Skip described the Mirror (with staffers that included Nard Kordell and Pat O’Kiersey, whose names were later appropriated for Lynch’s trademark characters) as “half-magazine and half-comic book.” He went on, “One of the problems with the Chicago Mirror was its message: what exactly is it? Is it an underground newspaper? Is it like a paranoid’s newsletter?” Lynch related, “It was a hippie satire magazine, which is kind of an oxymoron. It didn’t really work, because hippies didn’t appreciate satire.” Any number of Windy City’s “hip” readers missed the humorous intent of the Mirror, and that sobering realization was struck home after the appearance of “Groovie New High,” a spoof prose piece in the second issue (which also included a letter from Kurtzman). Lynch related his oft-told anecdote about that feature: “We had this fictitious article in the Mirror about hippies who were smoking dog sh*t to get high — this was when the legend that you could get high from smoking a rotten banana peel was prevalent in the subculture— and we said, ‘Well, now the big thing is dog poop. They’re smoking dog poop and these people are known as “sh*theads.” Here’s how to a dog turd to make it smokable,’ and we had instructions for curing dog poop. There were all these gags, and it was all obviously humor… or so I thought. I was selling the Mirror on the street and this kid comes up to me and says, ‘Hey man, thanks for the tip. We been smokin’ that dog sh*t and we’re really gettin’ high and we really love it.’ I said, “No! It’s humor! It’s satire! Not real!’ ‘Oh yeah, it is, man!’” By the dogs days of summer 1968, the United States was a nation facing social upheaval. Vietnam, assassinations, the fall of LBJ, resurrection of Nixon, campus revolt, Black power, and indignation of the counter-culture were among the year’s flashpoints, though few events laid bare the American divide more starkly than the police riots endured by Chicago in late August, which took place during the contentious Democratic National Convention. The idea was to hold a “Festival of Life” during the last week of that month, a gathering organized by the Yippies — the Youth International Party — self-proclaimed “Groucho Marxists” founded by Krassner, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin, among others. In an effort to defuse political tension during the divisive convention, the prankster anarchists were to host concerts and “naked dancing” in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, and, with tongue firmly placed in cheek, they threatened to dump LSD in the municipal water supply. City fathers, led by Mayor Richard “Shoot to Kill” Daley, failed to see the humor. “To face this harmless, if bizarre, menagerie,” Time magazine related, “Daley turned Chicago into a bristling armed camp, with a posse more than 24,000 strong: 12,000 policemen, 6,000 Illinois National Guardsmen, and standing by at suburban naval posts, 6,000 U.S. Army troops equipped with rifles, flamethrowers, and bazookas.” Though 100,000 or more demonstrators were expected, final

Bijou Funnies TM & © the estates of Jay Lynch & Skip Williamson. All art © the respective artists.

estimates amounted to only about 5,000. It was against this backdrop when the first issue of Bijou Funnies was being put together, and after the last edition of the Chicago Mirror had gone to press. “The third issue [of the Mirror] was scheduled for publication in the summer of 1968,” Williamson wrote in an essay. “The cover and interview featured The Realist publisher Paul Krassner… The idea was to sell copies to the thousands of war protesters and hippies who were certain to show up during the Democratic convention that August. Unfortunately, the printer was late and we missed our window of opportunity.” He added, “Fortunately, though, Robert Crumb had sent Jay a copy of the first issue of ZAP Comix. Inspired, Jay decided to change the format of the Mirror to a comic book and rename it Bijou Funnies.” The name was inspired by Lynch’s discovery of an old magazine titled Savoy (writes Mark James Estren in A History of Underground Comics) and he determined “that movie theater names also work well as magazine titles.” Lynch and Williamson had known of Crumb from his work in Foo (a fanzine by Robert and his brother Charles) and from the artist’s sketchbook features in Kurtzman’s Help! Soon after its publication, the two received a copy of ZAP Comix #1 (which had been advertised in the second issue of the Mirror). “I was in touch with Crumb and [Gilbert] Shelton (who was then living in Austin, Texas, and doing comic strips in The Austin Rag) through the mail,” Lynch explains in The Life and Times of R. Crumb. “Gilbert wrote me praising the first issue of ZAP and telling me of his plans to publish his own book, Feds ’n’ Heads.” Frustrated by the clueless hippies who missed the humor of Mirror’s satire and, Lynch wrote, “excited by Crumb and Shelton’s use of the comic strip medium in this new, directly accessible format, the underground comic book, Skip and I decided to try it ourselves.” Williamson related in his essay, “Robert Crumb, after completing the art for Janis Joplin’s [Big Brother and the Holding Company] Cheap Thrills album cover, got a free ride on a bus of protesters headed for the Democratic convention and we all, fairly rapidly (along with contributions from Jay Kinney and a reprint from Gilbert Shelton), produced the first issue of Bijou as the Democratic convention raged around us.” During the daylight hours of that tumultuous week, while Lynch and Crumb finished up their Bijou stories, Williamson would venture

into the fray. In Pigheaded, he described a virtual war zone. “It was truly a surreal experience. I’m sitting in the car and looking out the window, and on one side these people are being chased out of the park running, and then you have the police in their gas masks, and they’re beating the hell out of everybody! They’re grabbing them and throwing them across cars and beating the sh*t out of them. They’re knocking them to the ground. It was just pandemonium. There was blood everywhere. It was just this constant cracking sound of skulls being cracked.” At night, an often bruised Williamson would return to the Lynch apartment to work on his contributions for Bijou #1. “I remember coming home, after a long day of street fighting,” he said, “and I’m beaten down and in rags, smelling of CS gas, and just filthy as sh*t from street fighting all day, and there, sitting in my

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Above: Caricatures of Skip Williamson’s first wife, Cecilia — she was known as Cecil — and his first of three daughters, Megan, adorn the cover art for Bijou Funnies #5, which also sported a fanciful self-caricature of the artist as two-fisted super-hero. Skip would marry three more times: Francy, Harriet (mother of Nikki and Rita, Skip’s other daughters, and close friend after the divorce), and, in his final years, Adrienne, whom he had first encountered on the Deviant Art website.

apartment, is Jay Lynch and Robert Crumb waiting to do comic strips.” With a chuckle, Lynch said in Pigheaded, “During the convention, Skip was out getting teargassed and Crumb and I were on the third floor of the Fine Arts Building looking down and laughing.” Kitchen saw the contrast between Williamson and the other two Bijou brethren as revealing. “That summarizes that Skip was a man of action and Jay and Crumb were more the mild-mannered types, the Clark Kents who would be peeking out the window. I couldn’t see them in a street-fight, whereas I could see Skip getting his nose bloodied easily or getting hit by a cop’s baton.” Williamson observed about the intent of his cartooning in Pigheaded, “Before I was doing psychedelic kind of things, but afterwards it was like ‘Kill the Pigs!’” Regardless whether the Chicago riots were a catalyst for his radicalization, Williamson was thereafter firmly associated with the Yippie organizers, particularly when, as “Chicago Seven” defendants, Hoffman and Rubin were prosecuted for conspiracy. Lynch said in Pigheaded, “Skip hung out at the Seed, which was [Chicago’s] underground paper, and I guess his connection to Abbie Hoffman came through the Seed when Hoffman came to organize the Yippies for the demonstrations for the Democratic National Convention. His headquarters were the Seed office and Skip was doing cartoons for the Seed.” Not only would Williamson contribute book illustrations to Rubin’s Do It! and Hoffman’s Steal This Book, but the latter author would tell court officers that the cartoonist was his sister, ensuring Williamson a seat during the highly publicized and standing-room-only trial where he served as the courtroom sketch artist for the underground press. Williamson combined his comic-creating skills and radical fervor to produce Conspiracy Capers,

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Photos, Steal This Book © the respective owners.

This page: The Windy City was engulfed in turmoil while Bijou Funnies #1 was being finished by Lynch, Williamson, and Crumb, though “Trippy Skippy” jumped into the fracas that was the police riots “the whole world was watching” during the Democratic National Convention of late August, 1968. At the “Festival of Life” that preceded the street fighting, Williamson encountered a friend (for whom he would contribute illustrations, in Steal This Book). The cartoonist wrote in an essay, “While waiting for the music to start, we wandered around the park. Abbie Hoffman spotted me. ‘Hey, Skip,’ he shouted and tossed me a bunch of grapes laced with LSD. Greedily I gobbled the sacrament, and I was off to the races.”

an underground used to raise funds for the defense of the “Chicago Seven” — Hoffman, Rubin, Tom Hayden, and others — who were being prosecuted by the feds for inciting riots. Much of the usual Bijou crew contributed to the Williamson-edited one-shot (which listed activist author Susan Sontag and Black Panther spokeswoman Kathleen Cleaver as part of Capers’ publishing consortium, an association dubbed “The Conspiracy”). In Pigheaded, Williamson said, “I tend to be anti-political. I do not trust politicians or the system of politics the way it is set up in this country, so in that sense, my work is critical of the political process.” Indeed, though wrapped in a veneer of beautifully designed and exquisitely rendered cartooning, friendly and accessible on the surface, his stories, albeit hilarious in content, also raged against the establishment. President Nixon and Vice-President Agnew were routinely — and savagely — skewered. “It was like an extreme political positioning, done for a laugh,” he said, “but also not for a laugh, y’know?” “Some comics are overtly political,” Lynch explained in a video interview with Tom Firak. “Skip Williamson’s stuff, a lot of it is political in nature. My stuff is not about the day’s events. ‘Nard n’ Pat’ is just about a man and his cat, and the way that they relate has to do with not the topics of the day, but some kind of universal thing about human nature and human behavior.” Still, the cartoonist was at times motivated to help progressive causes. Cartoonist and political activist Ethan Persoff shared at the memorial, “I later learned of Jay’s activism, supporting unions and combating corporations, contributing art to massive banners and posters for such bold attacks on organized crime and corporations, like the ‘Unthinkable, Undrinkable Killer Coke’ campaign, which took the Wacky Packs format to an uncanny, subversively effective, and unprecedented political level. All of this done with a warm chuckle and grin.” Jane Shay Wald, Lynch’s wife from the mid’60s to mid-’70s, shared, “Jay was by no means apolitical. He was far to the left of the mainstream. But, unlike Skip, he saw no glamour in the vague concept of revolution. He thought Skip’s fantasies of an impending violent overthrow of government by ‘the people’ were childish and absurd. We believed in less violence, not more! And the thought of a bunch of hippies organizing a new government was risible.”

Conspiracy Capers, Harvey Kurtzman portrait © the estate of Skip Williamson. Bijou Funnies © the estates of Jay Lynch & Skip Williamson. Bijou #8 cover art © the estate of Harvey Kurtzman.

About her and her husband remaining home, out of harm’s way, during the melee of August, Wald said, “It was ominously apparent that there would be excessive police force (not all predicted the police riot and Mayor Daley’s ‘shoot to kill’ order). While we did not shy from peaceful protests, we weighed the chances of serious bodily harm. I wanted to go, and Jay felt it was too dangerous. He was right. We respected the choice others made to go.” Regarding her husband’s creative partner (who was, according to Shay, in daily contact with Lynch during their marriage) she said, “Skip cultivated and relished his persona as the rabble-rouser. As Jay did his, of the staid observer.” Wald, the daughter of Life photographer Art Shay and bookseller Florence (Gershon) Shay, married Lynch — quoting Michael Miner’s recent Lynch and Williamson remembrance in the Chicago Reader — “in a small ceremony in the late 1960s (she can’t remember the year). Williamson was the best man, and his wedding gift — ’for some reason,’ says Wald — was a bouquet of cigars.” “One thing I think that attracted us to each other,” Wald reflected, “was our respective individual strength.” She later added, “I said I was attracted to Jay because he appeared strong (and very kind, I will add)… Unusually vital purpose, focus, direction. But he also cultivated an attitude of detachment, of remove. Of calm. The ‘observer.’ The raised eyebrow. He wanted to seem the solid grown-up.” And Lynch had very grown-up concerns to contend with during the Vietnam War era. Wald shared, “Jay struggled to earn conscientious objector status, and his rights were repeatedly abused during this turbulent process. ‘Draft dodgers’ were reviled by the government and — before the tide turned [against the war] — by many mainstream individuals.” She elaborated, “When Jay got CO status, he was supposed to be drafted to do his alternate service in accordance with his draft lottery number, which was fairly high. But they drafted him for his community service far earlier than was legal. They were not allowed to assign CO’s to community service more than 50 miles from home, but they drafted him to go more than 50 miles from home. We did not fight the timing, but we did fight the relocation.” Lynch would meet his community service obligation by producing

artwork for a Chicago church group, though religion was not a rationale for his seeking CO status. “I did it not as a religious conviction,” he explained, “but as a philosophical thing.” Williamson did get the suspicion that the government was keeping watch on his activities. “I know the FBI started a file on me in 1967, when I got drafted,” he said, “and they sent me to see a psychiatrist and then I had to have an interview with the FBI and I told them that I advocated the violent overthrow of the American government, and so they didn’t draft me. So that was when the file started, but I’ve never really had much of an interest in looking at it.” Among the cartoonist’s subversions was to poke fun at the Vice-President. “There was a leaflet that I did for the SDS,” he revealed, “and it was about Spiro Agnew molesting Cub Scouts, and my friend had this flyer in his pocket, and the cops found it and they beat the holy sh*t out of him! So it was dangerous! I never got hurt, but other people did!” Wald also recalled the married couple apparently being under the gaze of J. Edgar Hoover and company during those paranoid times. “Men in dark cars and dark garb used to watch our apartment, and photograph our comings and goings from time-to-time.” (Wald added that, like Williamson, she also never filed a Freedom of Information Act request to uncover hard evidence of any surveillance.) COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Inset left: To help cover legal expenses for the Chicago Seven being prosecuted by the feds for inciting the Chicago riots, Williamson helmed Conspiracy Capers, which included the work of numerous Bijou regulars. Above: Lynch & Company paid homage to their idol Harvey Kurtzman in the last issue of Bijou, with the MAD creator also providing the cover. Below: Williamson’s portrait of Harvey.

Above: This jam of self-caricatures of the Krupp Comix Works gang (including Lynch and Williamson) was produced for Funnyworld magazine. Below: Handmade poster promoting a Bijou brothers lecture on comics history at a local college.

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All © the respective copyright holders.

Those two single-pagers in Purple Cat #1 appear to contain the only published comix stories by Wald (though, as Jane Lynch, she is credited as contributing to a Zippy the Pinhead text feature in Arcade in 1975), one a feminist-themed gag and the other an origin tale for Nard and his ex-wife, the lawyer Vera, indicating they are likely based on the real-life Lynch couple. (Refer to the “Veraly Unto Me” Purple Cat back cover by Wald reproduced on pg. 12.) Lynch produced episodes of Nard n’ Pat that featured Wald’s doppelgänger, Vera, revealing that Pat the cat was purchased by Nard to sooth his suicidal angst over separation from his now feminist ex-wife. The kicker, in a pair of one-pagers, is that the duplicitous feline is actually Vera’s lover. In the Nard n’ Pat one-shot, Nard and Vera almost reconcile, only to have hopes dashed by her walking in on the ex prancing around in Vera’s “so soft an’ silky” dress. Wald and Lynch also playfully interacted in cartoon fashion with one another at home. In a July 1971 letter to Patrick Rosenkranz, Lynch shared, “I do a running comic strip called Wife Laughs and leave it around the house for Jane to find. It’s a really crude comic strip, and most of the jokes are only funny to th’ wife and I. Jane in turn does a comic strip called Hubby Ha Has and leaves it around the house for me. It’s just a psychotherapeutic way of venting our hostile attitudes toward each other when they pop up, I guess… We have about 300 different Wife Laughs and Marital tensions between the equally proud stay-atHubby Ha Has strips that Jane has saved over five years home cartoonist husband and ambitious law student wife of marriage. It’ll be nice to look at when we’re old and gray, were sometimes whimsically played out in the underground I guess.” comix themselves, whether in Lynch’s signature strip, “Nard (Wald also produced a newsletter to share with other n’ Pat,” in a pair of one-pagers written and drawn by Shay spouses of cartoonists. In that same letter to Rosenkranz, herself, or even on the back cover of Lynch’s Roxy Funnies Lynch writes, “Jane Xeroxes about 30 copies of Little Ladies one-shot, where the couple are depicted bickering over every few months and sends copies to 30 cartoonists wives house-cleaning duties and home finances. all over th’ world… Little Ladies is just recipes and stuff for cartoonists’ wives….” In his final interview, conducted in February by Gary Groth, Lynch described his response to his wife’s circular. “I did one called Big Men, it was like the opposite of Little Ladies. I did two issues of Big Men just for kicks.” That oddity included a cartoon by S. Clay Wilson.) Though Bijou Funnies #1 — subtitled “More Fun Than a Barrel of Monkeys!” — was a rather crude affair in terms of production, it was a solid and important start, novel when compared to Crumb’s first two issues of ZAP and Shelton’s Feds ’n’ Heads in featuring the work of not just a single creator, but a stable of regular contributors. Williamson said, “The idea of Bijou Funnies was to do a comedic anthology. And we had a line-up of artists… Jay, myself, Justin Green, Art Spiegelman, who were in every issue… we had a regular line-up that was very, very strong. Plus we included a lot of other cartoonists of that day: everybody from John Osbourne to Rory Hayes to Kim Deitch… So we were like an open venue for people who were doing that and they were welcome to contribute.” In his Best of Bijou Funnies intro, Marty Pahls described the hassles behind producing the first issue: “Jay took $50 — all that was left from the Mirror disaster — plus $150 saved from his $50-a-week soda-jerk job, and found a printer who would give them 5,000 copies for $200. But, in mid-run, this printer too balked; his estimate had been too low, he said, and he would give them 2,000. Moreover, they would have to come down to the print shop and bind it themselves, there. So Jay, faithful Dean Natkin, and friends trooped down to the printer’s and collated and stapled, by hand, that rare first printing of Bijou #1.” The untrimmed, hand-stapled collector’s item was further marred by an oversized cover that extended beyond the interior pages. Lynch was also unhappy with his artwork in that debut issue. “None of us really did much in the way of comics before that,” he said, “but it was still close enough to the time that we were taking acid that the work, my work in the first Bijou is really terrible, and I probably wouldn’t have let it pass… But there was still that residue of LSD in my system… I would look at the thing and think that the texture

All art © Robert Crumb.

of the paper was cross-hatching or something.” Those contributing to Bijou #1, besides editor/publishers Lynch and Williamson, were Crumb (who had traveled with a bus-load of Yippies to the Second City), humor zine cartoonist Dave Herring, Gilbert Shelton (courtesy of two mailed-in pages of strip reprints), and a recently graduated high school student from the nearby Chicago suburb of Naperville. “I first met Jay and Skip in the summer of 1968, when I turned 18,” Jay Kinney shared. “Jay and I immediately hit it off — perhaps because we shared membership in the elite fraternity of guys named ‘Jay.’” Kinney continued, “I was lucky enough to have Jay as a mentor: he literally taught me the craft of cartooning. ‘Use this bristol board… here’s a Rapidograph pen… this is a sheet of Zip-A-Tone… this is how you rule out lines using a lettering guide… this is how you do color separations on sheets of acetate,’ and all the other little secrets of professional cartooning. He also invited me to contribute to the first issue of Bijou Funnies and pushed me to improve my work with every strip I drew. I can’t begin to measure how much I karmically owe my old pal Jay Lynch, but it is plenty.” Curiously, Golden Age comic book artist Vince Fago, a childhood favorite of Lynch and Crumb, was slated to participate in the anthology. “I asked Fago to contribute to Bijou Funnies #1,” Lynch revealed, “and he did do something, but we didn’t print it. It was called ‘Flower Kids’ or ‘Flower Children,’ or something like that, and it had bombs falling on these cute little kids and they run away. But it didn’t have any dark side to it. It was like that ‘War is unhealthy for children and other living things’ poster. It really didn’t fit into what we were trying to do — the underground comix thing.” That “thing” was humanized on the inside front cover of Bijou #1, with a photo (by Lynch’s across-the-hall neighbor)

which depicts the four main contributors — Lynch, Williamson, Crumb, and Kinney — holding pages of their work. Referring to the throwback nature of their styles, Lynch intended the group to be in make-up for the group shot. “We figured we had to explain this thing of comics that looked like they were drawn in the ’30s,” he said, “but that were about sex and drugs and modern topics. So we were going to put on age makeup for the photo and pretend we were all cartoonists from 1910 who took acid, but we never got around to it.” The printed inside cover would go on to affect a future Bijou stalwart. “[T]hat was sort of an impressive picture because” Kim Deitch recalled, “the two people who seemed to really be into it was Skip and Crumb.” Most importantly for the joint editors, their most famous creations debuted in Bijou Funnies #1, with Nard n’ Pat and Snappy Sammy Smoot respectively gracing the front and back covers. Sammy, in fact, is featured on a “clip and save” pin-up, advising readers with his oft-quoted “handy hint”: “Don’t wee wee on yer tee vee set.” The characters would continue to be prominently featured in subse-

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Above: Crumb’s delightful wraparound cover adorned the Bijou collection published by Links Books in 1975. Below: Late ’50s/early ’60s fanzine mascot ProJunior found new life in the undergrounds, first in Bijou #4 [1970] by R. Crumb.

Above: The Bijou Publishing Empire was aided considerably by Lynch’s then-wife, the current Jane Shay Wald, who, as Marty Pahls relates in his Best of Bijou Funnies introduction, found inspiration in the creator-owned environs of underground comix to pursue a law degree. Today, Wald is one of the country’s leading intellectual property attorneys. This pic from 1973 was taken by Dutch cartoonist Evert Geradts. Inset right: From left, R. Crumb, Jane Shay Lynch (Wald), and Jay Lynch pose for a photo by fellow Bijou brother, Jay Kinney.

Color photo © Evert Geradts. Black-&-white photo © Jay Kinney. “Veraly Unto Me” © Jane Shay Wald. Nard n’ Pat artwork © the estate of Jay Lynch.

Above: It’s a fair guess that Nard and ex-wife Vera were (albeit totally absurd) stand-ins for Jay and Jane Lynch. This detail of Bijou #7’s back cover is by Lynch. Inset right: As evidence, we submit this “origin” one-pager (a rare Shay comic story) from the back cover of Purple Cat, which features Vera as dedicated lawyer. Below: We doubt this detail of Vera (by Lynch from the Nard n’ Pat oneshot) is an accurate portrayal of the formidable Jane Shay Wald.

quent issues of the anthology. Besides the lateness of the Mirror’s final issue (profits from which could have made for a more handsomely produced Bijou #1), the then-current street battles raging in the city held up their first comix book. As Rosenkranz explained in Pigheaded. “Jay had to bring his artwork to his printer on the other side of Chicago and, to get there, he had to go through all the demonstrations, so they were putting that off until things calmed down a bit.” Back on the homefront, things could get a bit tense at the Lynch apartment, particularly regarding domestic duties. “We lived in squalor!” Wald enthused at the memorial. “Because he didn’t want to soil himself by making any money working — that’s fine — but I didn’t feel that I should clean the house. This was the beginning of the women’s movement… and back then he thought that women should clean the house… or maybe he didn’t think that way, but he sure didn’t want to do it and I sure didn’t want to do it. But the whole room where he would store his collection was triple-bagged… and I told him, ‘You know how to clean. Look at that room!’” At the memorial, Denis Kitchen referred to Lynch’s archive room. “In the apartment which everyone has described as being strewn with dirty dishes and all sorts of material, Jay did have his one room that was his study and collectibles room that was quite neat. And it was off-limits to Jane and he was quite rigid in enforcing this and I remember he had on this door, which was closed, a sign with a piece of string on a thumbtack and it said, ‘No Girls Allowed.’ Some

of you will know that it was inspired by a sign on Tubby’s clubhouse in Little Lulu… By the time I visited, on this particular occasion, Jane’s feminism had become stronger and stronger, and she was yelling at him about his sexism and she punctuated it by saying, ‘And I don’t like the fact that I am not allowed in that room; I don’t like the sign that say, “No Girls Allowed”; and, furthermore, I’m not a girl, I’m a woman!” Jay looked at her very calmly and he said, ‘Turn the sign over, dear.’ She turned it over and it said, ‘No Women Either!’” Besides Bijou contributors streaming in and out of their home, Wald told the Chicago Reader, “We had a lot of fans who were always hanging around the apartment — young cartoonists, fan boys, you know the type. Jay said, ‘Let’s see if we can get these fan boys to do some work.’ So he drew versions of himself and of me as if we were religious figures, and he’d make a piece of yarn so they’d go around peoples’ necks — a scapular — is that the right word? He’d get fan boys to wear these things and wash the dishes — but they never did.” Comparing her then-husband to his best friend, Wald told the Reader, “Jay liked to create this character of

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All © the estate of Skip Williamson.

himself as an old fart even though he was in his 20s. He was very disciplined in his artwork, and if you step away from the page ten feet, it still holds together as a design. He bought this 1940s or 1950s time clock on Maxwell Street. He’d punch in and out when he went to work — and he worked at home.” She continued, “Skip was the opposite. He would come into a room and be very loud and very ostentatiously counter-cultural and try to get a rise out of people. His artwork would reflect that. They made an interesting counterpart to each other, but I think they both knew that the other was living a preferred persona and they were opposite, like yin and yang.” Before their 1976 divorce, husband and wife oversaw the Chicago underground comix outfit (half-jokingly referred to as the Bijou Publishing Empire) and Pahls wrote that Lynch and Wald took care of the

contributors. And, as a result, “Jay and Jane have become knowledgeable about the ins and outs of copyrights and trademark laws. In fact, the complexities of protecting these interests was one of the factors which motivated Jane to enter law school.” Wald has since gone on to become one of this country’s leading intellectual property attorneys, and she eventually remarried, her second husband being the late Eliot Wald, a Chicago newspaperman turned Saturday Night Live writer and eventual Hollywood screenwriter. Jay Kinney, who joined Bill Griffith in 1970 to create the hugely profitable romance parody comix title Young Lust, was present in the first issue of the anthology (with his “New Left Comics”). He said, “Bijou Funnies was one of the earliest underground comix. It was notable for being both an anthology book and one almost entirely focused on humor. Though Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson were sometimes described as co-founders, the editorial reins were primarily held by Jay, who maintained tight quality control and tried to enforce deadlines as best he could.” Kinney continued, “While some anthology books basically parceled out a certain number of pages for each invited artist to fill — or conversely, ran whatever came in haphazardly, Jay didn’t shy away from rejecting strips that he didn’t think were quite up to snuff. Such rejections often came softly, many months after the work was first submitted, with Lynch still trying to find a home

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Above: Skip Williamson’s leather-bound sketchbook from the ’70s fetched nearly $9,000 at a recent auction. Inset left: Snappy Sammy Smoot earned his own self-titled one-shot, in 1979, published by Kitchen Sink Press, and with Williamson’s self-published Smoot, from 1995. Below: Skip Williamson 1983 self-portrait.

Above: Lynch poster for a comics history course he taught at Chicago’s Art Institute in the ’70s. Inset right: ’73 self-portrait. Below: Nard n’ Pat one-shot.

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All © the estate of Jay Lynch.

for the work, often in a couple of ‘grade B’ books he pulled together such as Roxy Funnies. It could be argued that such Bijou rejects might better have not seen the light of day at all, but I got the feeling that Jay didn’t like to see hard work wasted, even if it was mediocre.” (Like Bijou, Roxy was a popular name for innumerable theaters.) The comix pioneer added, as an aside, “Because both Jay Lynch and Jay Kinney were initially associated with Bijou, we often were confused with each other. I can’t count the number of times that UG comix readers would meet me for the time and tell me how they loved Nard n’ Pat, Jay’s recurring characters. Perhaps in response to this confusion, Jay took to signing his work as ‘Jayzey’ Lynch, a nickname that fit the wacky tenor of his humor.” In a 2015 Facebook exchange with this writer, upon Lynch being addressed as “Jayzee,” he explained why he abandoned that oft-used moniker: “It was ‘Jayzey’ before [rapper and business-

man] Jay-Z came along with, as Azealia Banks calls it, his ‘cultural smudging.’ The spelling ‘Jayzee’ is something that Kar Chieu, this Asian woman from Chicago, started. But that’s a whole other story. So now I gotta be just ‘Jay.’” Besides Roxy Funnies, the other one-shot to feature material not quite up to Lynch’s standard for Bijou inclusion was Purple Cat. That 1973 issue contained, as comixjoint. com’s M. Steven Fox opined, curiosities that included “the nastiest drawing I’ve ever seen from Justin Green,” as well as “an unsettling story by [Dutch cartoonist] Willem about aborted fetuses who survive being flushed in the sewer and come back to murder town folk.” One character featured prominently in Bijou which had a much longer history than many realized was ProJunior, whose genesis reached back into the late ’50s. Created by a young Don Dohler as mascot for his fanzine Wild (which boasted early work by both Lynch and Williamson), ProJunior, with reversed-out eyes and spiked hair, was resurrected for the comix age by Crumb in Bijou #4 (where the character gained an ample-bottomed sidekick, Honeybunch Kaminski, who — my hand to God! — Crumb created before meeting his future and present wife, Aline Kominsky, a.k.a. “The Bunch”). With the blessing of Dohler (who later became a cult-favorite B-movie film director), the earnest world-saver (“I’m no playboy! I’m a workboy!”) would be appropriated by many cartoonists in the pages of a ProJunior one-shot and in other publications. [The fascinatin’ story of Dohler’s creation will be examined, in typical exhaustive detail, in a future issue of CBC. — Ye Ed.] At the memorial, cartoonist and comics anthologist Glenn Head spoke of the impact Lynch and Williamson’s title had on a young reader. “I had read Bijou Funnies, and I knew they went for the jugular in their attack on straight suburban values, so I was definitely a fan,” he said. “And, while Bijou Funnies had a sharp edge to it, it was rarely nasty or hateful. It didn’t go in for shock-value much either, at least not too much. Even when it did, it stuck to the basics of good solid storytelling in the comic book tradition. I guess my point is, in its own way, Bijou was welcoming to the reader, inviting them into a world where there was chaos but rarely nihilism.” Singling out the cartoonist also known as “Trippy Skippy,” Head added, “I think of 1960s’ undergrounds as a wild and woolly time. Anything goes — and it did. The gloves were off, and Skip’s gleeful attacks on Nixon, the corporate world, and the counter-culture were full-on. He was the most politically engaged of his contemporaries.” (And he could be sentimental as, in an affectionate gesture, Williamson added caricatures of his first wife, Cecilia, and young daughter to his Bijou #5 cover, with Megan as caped sidekick to father Skip as two-fisted super-hero.) Around the same time the pair had begun transforming the Mirror into Bijou, a young cartoonist named Denis Kitchen was re-purposing his unpublished second “all-comics” issue of Snide, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee humor mag, into what would become Mom’s Homemade Comics #1. The Badger State native had encountered a copy of Lynch and Williamson’s inaugural comic book effort and, Kitchen said, “I mailed Mom’s #1 to Jay because, at that time, Bijou #1 was the only other underground comic I had seen. I was kind of surprised when, shortly afterward, Jay called me and he suggested we get together. Jay didn’t drive — ever — so I drove down to Chicago and I met him and Skip. That would have probably been the summer of 1969. And we immediately hit it off as kindred spirits.” Kitchen recalled the Bijou brothers with fondness. “Those guys were a real study in contrasts,” he said, “because Jay was quiet, studious, and low-key, and Skip was brash and loud. Skip was the archetypal hippie, with

The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette © the respective copyright holder.

long, flowing hair, and wore outrageous T-shirts, and Jay tended to wear sports coats and had a trimmed beard. So, in a lot of ways, they were a study in contrasts and personality, but the one thing they shared was an absolute passion for comics.” Williamson described the co-editors’ respective duties. “In terms of production, Jay and I cut our own color separations when we needed to, so we were responsible for the production of what we individually did. Jay would supervise the printing and worked on the distribution, and that’s how it worked.” Soon enough, the actual publishing aspect of the Bijou Publishing Empire was becoming a nuisance for Lynch. “In the beginning, it was hard because there was no distribution system set up. So, in Chicago, we had to distribute Bijou Funnies ourselves. Eventually the Print Mint started distributing other publishers’ comics and we went with the Print Mint. But Skip and I were far away from Berkeley, California, where they were, so we were the next to last to get paid, and Denis, who also had given the Print Mint his books to distribute, was the last to get paid, because he was in Milwaukee. So Denis wound up setting up his own distribution system and we went with him instead of Print Mint.” Naively believing publishing two ongoing titles would be as easy as one, Kitchen effectively established his long-running company, Kitchen Sink Press, when taking on the publisher’s role for Bijou Funnies by its fourth issue. “And at that moment,” he recalled at the memorial, “I became a real-life publisher, and I took it very seriously and it became something. For better or worse, I have to thank Jay for that because Jay trusted me at a time when I had no real track record other than having self-published one comic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That’s the kind of true friend he was. He had complete faith in you if he believed in you.” Remembered Lynch, “Skip and I wanted to be publishers, but we never could collect what was owed to us from the retailers, so we went with

Denis as publisher. With Kitchen Sink, we were kind of like co-publishers because Skip and I physically made the offset negatives and retouched them. We had the negative made in Chicago, so for Bijou, Denis didn’t have to go through the expense of having the negative photographed.” Kitchen said, “Jay was the bookkeeper for Bijou, so all the checks and royalty reports would go to him. When I was publishing Bijou and other things he contributed to, everything always came through Jay. He was the organized one who took care of the mail. With Skip, it was more social. If there was a party, Skip would be the guy I was up late into the night with, but it would be Jay who would do most of the formal communication.” About the nascent publisher, Williamson said, “We were in Chicago and he was in Milwaukee, so it was just a short drive, so it was really just a matter of convenience as it was anything else. In terms of production, we had more opportunity to be hands-on, and in terms of accounting, we got more reliable numbers as to where the money went. It was just a natural thing, actually.” He asked rhetorically, “What made Denis a good publisher? Well, he would take pretty much anything we did! There was minimal interference, though I always chide him for being the one who brought contracts — actual contracts! — into the business!” With a chuckle, Williamson joked, “I said to him, ‘You pig! You capitalist swine!’” At the memorial, Kitchen shared an anecdote about his rabble-rousing chum. “In 1970, I actually was a candidate for lieutenant governor as a Socialist [in Wisconsin] and, shortly after I — big surprise — lost that election, I was at a party with Skip and I remember talking to him. Of course, a lot of his work appeared to be revolutionary in nature, but really he was satirizing everything. When I thought he may be a kindred spirit, in that maybe he really was a serious Marxist or Socialist, he was not. He was a serious satirist. At one point he said to me, ‘I’m glad you lost that stupid election. I

This page: In more ways than one, the 1969 Four Seasons album, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette, was a pretty bizarre affair. First the gatefold cover was a mock newspaper, replete with a Parade-like magazine insert that sported a Jay Lynch/Skip Williamson collaboration rarely seen, High Frequency Funnies, with tame versions of Nard n’ Pat and Snappy Sammy Smoot, as well as their renditions of some Sunday strip characters. Another odd aspect is the concept behind the album, a rebranding of the “Jersey Boys” doo-wop vocal group (led by Frankie Valli) best known for “Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” into a “with-it” and hip quartet, replete with socially conscious songs and harder-edge music. While critically well-received, the record was a commercial flop, and the guys moved on to less risky fare, such as “November 1963 (Oh, What a Night”). COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2016 • #15

Above: Bijou #6 featured Lynch’s wacky duo in “Voodoo Rendezvous.” Below: Exquisitely rendered 1982 cartoon by Lynch of cat and master recalling the Bijou days.

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Nard n’ Pat TM & © the estate of Jay Lynch.

want my publisher to be a capitalist, not a socialist. I want you to sell a lot of my books. I want you to hustle. Can you do that?” I said, “Yes, Skip, I will hustle.’” Bijou would thrive in those heady early days of the form, one of the first titles that would herald a veritable deluge of new comix flooding the underground scene. “Within a

year there were a hundred titles,” Lynch told TCJ. “Within two years, 300 titles, and so on until it peaked. Then the proliferation of titles began to dwindle, and ultimately it stabilized.” While never achieving the powerhouse stature of ZAP Comix or The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Lynch and Williamson’s lively anthology continued until 1973, with new issues being produced and old ones reprinted, when a convolution of forces, both political and economic, merged to result in that comic book’s demise. Lynch opened the eighth issue of his anthology with an inside-cover editorial titled “Um Tut Smut?” (a tweak of the cartoonist’s apparently nonsensical catchphrase, “Um Tut Sut,” itself a play on the Sanskrit mantra “Om Tat Sat”) and it lambasted a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that had been decided on June 21, 1973, less than a month before Lynch composed his diatribe. Miller v. California determined that local communities could define what was and what wasn’t obscene, a ruling that sent a chill throughout the underground distribution network, threatening the comix market (and, come to think of it, all freedom of expression). The cartoonist made mention of the stifling impact of “Fred” Wertham’s editorial anti-comics crusade of two decades prior and urged readers to send letters of protest to their representatives. Lynch predicted that Bijou Funnies #8, “will be our last issue unless you take an active part in protesting the censorship….” That prophecy proved correct. Referencing Wertham’s notorious anti-comics screed, Williamson mused, “I really have always thought that what we did was a reaction to Seduction of the Innocent, when our precious comic books were taken away from us. And we were pissed about that! And, finally, when we were old enough, we made our own and said, ‘Oh, yeah? You think those were crazy? Look at this sh*t!’ I’ve always felt that there was a direct connection between the censorship of the comic medium and what we did when we got old enough to start doing it ourselves.” While that court decision is commonly believed to be the primary factor in dealing a near-death blow to the comix field, in truth, the glut of titles crowding the counter-culture magazine stands took a toll. Undergrounds, Kitchen said, “had been so successful in the late ’60s and early ’70s, that a lot of what I called ‘wannabe’ publishers and artists jumped in… it started clogging up the racks.” In contrast, Lynch believed there was a more fundamental impediment. “The real problem, I think, was really the paper shortage. The cost of printing, the cost of paper, doubled within the next two years and the head shops went out of business.” Newsprint, in particular, had become exceedingly scarce in mid-1973 due to labor unrest in Canada, main exporter of the commodity. “I had to beg to get paper,” Lynch explained. “The cover of Bijou #8 was printed on green paper, which, I think, we got from Rogue magazine. It was just impossible to get paper. After the paper shortage was over, the printing costs had doubled, so it wasn’t like we were paying a nickel for a book that got us a quarter; it was more like 12¢ and getting back a quarter. It wasn’t good.” Asked if the Bijou years were profitable, Lynch replied, “We could make money at that time. It cost us from five to eight cents to print a book. We’d sell it for 50¢ on the street or, if we wholesaled to a store when we first started, we’d sell it to them for 25¢. So, it cost a nickel to make and you’d sell it for a quarter. That kind of profit margin doesn’t exist today in comics. You’d have to sell the book for $15 to get the same percentage of return.” Despite the real-world hassles, Bijou Funnies went out with a bang with their final issue, a uniquely all-color edition that celebrated the “father-in-law” of comix and lampooned the entire genre. Bijou #8 sported a cover by Harvey Kurtzman, the inspiration for most of the top underground cartoonists — and the same Help! editor who had featured the first nationally-published work of Lynch, Williamson, Crumb, Shelton, etc. — and the entire issue was a spot-on pastiche of Kurtzman’s most influential creation, MAD

Snappy Sammy Smoot TM & © the estate of Skip Williamson. Self-portrait © the estate of Skip Williamson.

comics. Behind its “Tales Calculated to Sell You Bijou” homage cover, inside were Kurtzman-esque parodies of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Mr. Natural, Snappy Sammy Smoot, Nard n’ Pat, Trashman, and some lesser-known comix entities, with the twist being that the cartoonists would render their own version of peers’ characters. Among other spoofs, Crumb produced “Pard ’n’ Nat,” Williamson created “Melvin Natural,” and Lynch headlined the issue with his “Furshlugginer Fuzzy Geek Brothers.” As editor of a comic book with a limited budget, Lynch was thrust into a frustrating role, one that he had hoped would emulate his idol’s legendary obsessive directives that gave each MAD story its “Kurtzman look.” In 2003, Lynch shared, “In the underground comix, there really was nothing that was strongly edited. For what it was, it was fine, it was freedom of the individual artists. With Bijou #8, we tried to do something like MAD comics, but I couldn’t afford to make the people draw exactly as I wanted.” He continued, “So what I did was I ran the material in Bijou #8 in order of how well the artists followed my editorial instructions. Of course, my story’s first, Bill Stout’s is second, and the further it gets away from what it’s supposed to be, then the further back in the book it gets.” The last story? “That was Jay Kinney doing a parody of Trina and Spain in the same strip, and it just looks like it was done by Trina and Spain, it looks like a jam between them rather than a Kurtzman style parody. And the title is in Spain lettering rather than in MAD lettering… [But], with the underground comix, you couldn’t even tell the artists what to draw or how to draw it. You couldn’t really edit it or tell them what to do in any way because you’re not hardly paying them anything, so you’re lucky to get anything. I mean, Kurtzman paid something like $60 or $70 a page, which was very good, then. That was like $700, maybe $1,000 today.” Asked if he would have willingly toiled under the direction of an obsessive-compulsive taskmaster like Harvey Kurtzman, Lynch laughed and said, “No, I’d rather do the roughs. I’d rather be the control freak. Once I said to Pete Poplaski, ‘I’d rather be the butcher than the meat.’” Kitchen, then Bijou’s publisher and future Kurtzman art agent, shared about the tribute (in which he participated, parodying Dan Clyne’s Hungry Chuck Biscuits), “I think it was absolutely fitting. We were all part of that generation who discovered MAD and that magazine snapped something inside our brains and we were never the same again. It was a homage to Harvey because they totally loved him.” Kitchen added, “Harvey was a hero to all of us, but Skip was especially, I think, a hero to Harvey. Because (and don’t tell Hugh Hefner this) Skip, when he worked at Playboy, at a time when Hefner was keeping all of Harvey Kurtzman’s artwork for Little Annie Fanny, Skip would secretly spirit some of it out. And I was at his house once and he brought Harvey a package and Harvey unwrapped it and it was one of his Little Annie Fanny stories. Skip said, ‘This is yours, not Hef’s.’ And Harvey was very grateful. I’ve never talked about it before because what he did was technically wrong but it was morally right, and I applaud Skip for it.” With the decimation of the underground comix market (in part due to the shuttering of innumerable head shops across the country by proprietors fearing DEA reprisals arising from Nixon’s declaration of the so-called “War on Drugs,” as well as an overabundance of mediocre comix), the cartoonists devoted their efforts to search for other work venues. Lynch had established a freelance career with Topps Chewing Gum Company in the mid-’60s, working with longtime pal Art Spiegelman and under the able guidance of legendary creative director Woody Gelman. Lynch shrugged, “I made more money from bubble gum cards than I did from underground comix, I guess.” At Topps, Lynch was writer of the Bazooka Joe comic strip wrappers for nearly 25 years, and remained, for decades, intimately involved in the successful Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packages sticker cards up until his demise.

[Check out Lynch’s feature, “The Wacky Pack Men,” in CBC #13 from last fall. — Y.E.] For 17 years, his and Gary Whitney’s weekly comic strip, Phoebe and the Pigeon People, ran in the Chicago Reader. Well before the end of Bijou, Williamson had found work in slick periodicals, most prominently at Chicago’s Playboy, where he served as art director of their book imprint, Playboy Press. After stints on staff at other skin mags, Playboy competitors Gallery and Hustler (the latter where he was the founding — and brief — art director), he returned to Hefner’s girlie magazine, creating the long-running “Playboy Funnies” department, a section which put a good number of cartoonists to lucrative paying work. (Funnies featured Williamson’s strips, Neon Vincent and Null ’n’ Void.) The artist’s great passion, though, was painting and, over the decades, his work was exhibited to acclaim throughout the United States and Europe. Alas, though there is so much more to the lives and careers of these two kindred cartoonists worthy of examination — and celebration — this feature has been singly devoted to Lynch and Williamson’s greatest collaboration, Bijou Funnies, an early and quite remarkable comix title. As best as we can tell, Bijou was the first true anthology with a consistent open-door editorial policy to accept material

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Above: Nobody knew Skip Williamson by his given name of Mervyn, but rather the appellation given him as a kid, after the comic strip character Skippy. This detail is from his “fun page” in Bijou #2. Below: Bijou #3 included the epic Snappy Sammy Smoot tale of his demise, resurrection, and second death (complete with requisite Spiro Agnew gag).

Above: Jay Lynch apparently contemplated a 50 th anniversary final issue of Bijou Funnies, as evidenced by this piece (a takeoff of Bijou #1’s interior cover, seen below). Note the artist’s “2018” copyright notation.

from others. Though ZAP Comix #2, with contents that included work from a select cadre of artists, predated Bijou #1 by a few weeks, R. Crumb’s seminal title was constrained to include contents only from a limited (albeit exceptionally talented) few. That said, though Bijou was less restrictive, Lynch did maintain a critical eye as regarding the quality of accepted submissions. Lesser material from the slush pile might find an outlet in Lynch’s other comix anthologies, Purple Cat and Roxy Funnies, two one-shots which he compiledz. Of course, one of the most notable aspects of Bijou is the showcasing of the extraordinary talents of its two founders, and their breathtaking improvements as cartoonists in its pages over the title’s five-year run. The anthology gave proof that Lynch and Skip were among the greatest — and funniest — creators to work in the comics field, underground and otherwise. In listening to the memorial participants and speaking with appreciative and grieving friends and colleagues, one is struck by impact these two life-long friends had on their world. To close out this appreciation, what follows are memories and insight from family, friends, peers, and fans of those Bijou best buds, Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson.

Surprised how tenderly she felt toward her first husband 40 years later, a man she hadn’t seen since divorcing, Jane Shay Wald reached out to Lynch upon hearing he was dying. In an email she wrote: You were a cultural force helping to shape an important era. I am proud when I read about your mark on our generation, and your influence on the art of our generation. In so many books, blogs, and (egads) college degree programs…We were just kids when we united… I apologize for being a crappy wife after — OK — a few years of devotion.

“When Jay and I broke up and we were talking about what we had wanted out of the relationship and why didn’t it work,” Wald reminisced at the New York City memorial, where she had traveled from her Los Angeles home, “he said to me, ‘I want what I thought I had.’ And I hope he found it. I hope he found love and it’s wonderful to be in a room full of people who care about him.” At that same gathering, Ethan Persoff ruminated, “Jay had a wry gift of cutting to the sharpest slice of a joke and I loved the laugh and humor in his voice when he spoke, always inflecting upwards with a keen wisdom and with an easy, very wise chuckle.” Denis Kitchen offered, “For Jay, he saw underground comix as an extension of something larger, more so than anyone else in the movement.” And regarding Skip dying so soon after Jay, he added, “That was pretty strange. There was some speculation about whether that was connected because Skip was literally on the phone with Jay when Jay died and, according to Adrienne, Skip’s wife, it greatly distressed him, and he already had a weak heart condition, so there was speculation that that stressed him enough to cause his own death. But there’s no proof of that, though

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Bijou color cover , Snappy Sammy Smoot and related characters TM & © the estate of Skip Williamson. Bijou #1 inside cover photo by Al Lieberman. Pastiche © the estate of Jay Lynch.

Above: Note the copyright date of 1993, precisely one-quarter century after the founding of Bijou Funnies, on this unpublished cover by Skip Williamson. Were the Bijou brothers contemplating a 25th anniversary ish? A second version can be seen among the wealth of content on his skipwilliamson.deviantart.com member page.

Peter Poplaski Remembers Jay Lynch I was really sad to hear of the death of one of my oldest underground cartoonist pals, Jay Lynch. I met him in July of 1972 in Denis Kitchen’s Humboldt apartment studio, when Jay and Kim Deitch took the bus from Chicago to visit Denis to discuss the birth of the new Krupp Comix Works, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We went out for pizza, at a place on Oakland and North, and, after a few Blatz beers, agreed this gathering merited an allnight jam session that ended up producing a comix pamphlet, The Great Marijuana Debate. Kim and Denis lit up, and Jay and I refrained. I laughed all night long, but it was probably because I had a contact high. Jay and Kim, who was carrying a television with him, were full of stories. A couple of months later, Jay asked me to drive down to Chicago and work with him and Skip Williamson on a Chicago Sun-Times Sunday insert magazine cover crowd scene. So I got to work at the Bijou Publishing Empire, on Hudson Street. I also met his first wife, Jane, who had the biggest lunch box collection I ever saw. [She still does! — Ye Ed.]. They had a big TV set playing while we worked and there was variety program on with a chorus girl line up high-kicking into the air. Jay told me that if he would have had a TV like this one in his earlier days, he never would have gotten married. In those days, he seem to be living on hot dogs and Pepsi Cola and cigarettes. Jay liked to work with me because he said I didn’t have an ego. Thus, over the years, I would get art jobs to work on with him and get to hang out

in Chicago, go to the Art Institute on the side, and eat at the Busy Bee Restaurant down the block from his second studio apartment, near Damen and Fullerton streets. He took me to a great Polish restaurant someplace where nobody spoke English. Over time, I did some toy packaging jobs for Diamond, card back jokes for a Garbage Pail Kids series, and 42 Bazooka Joe comics from his thumbnail sketches for Topps Chewing Gum. He liked to work like Harvey Kurtzman, plan and lay-out projects and orchestrate things with other artists. I spent Christmas 1990 on a project and got to meet Bill Griffith, who was on tour and filling up sketchbooks with drawings and ideas for Zippy. We walked to the Busy Bee in a heavy snowfall and it was closed, so we went to another place down across the street at the intersection to have blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs. Probably one of the most memorable Bijou Publishing Empire experiences I had was when Jay called me up and told me we had to work with Skip in the art department of Playboy magazine, in downtown Chicago. The art director, Art Paul (I think), had been killed in a plane crash at O’Hare International Airport and, due to his death, Playboy had lost all their advance lead time to get the magazine out. This was November, 1979, and we were working on the January 1980 issue with Steve Martin on the cover. Jay had purposed and designed a Little Annie Fanny animation strip that I had to draw in a Kurtzman and Elder style and he would color. I managed to do that, but the

All art © Drew Friedman.

Inset above: As a public service, Denis Kitchen published an eight-page pamphlet, The Great Marijuana Debate [1972], which pitted Kim Deitch and himself as advocates and Jay Lynch and Peter Poplaski on the opposing side as the four slugged it out, comix-style. The tract was reprinted in Dope Comix #1. Below: Poplaski helped out Lynch and Williamson on this assignment for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1973. Comix historian Patrick Rosenkranz reveals that he also assisted on the Midwest magazine illustration.

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some pain killers and groaned with the chemical pack on his hand, drawing with his right hand, then left. I drew the instructions in an Al Capp sort of drawing style and asked Jay if he ever saw a fireball fly out of anybody’s pocket before. He squinted, took a drag on his own cigarette, paused to think about it, and said, “The universe doesn’t want Skip’s T-shirt project to happen. I guess it means that it is not a good idea.“ One year later, I told this story at a crowded Princeton, Wisconsin, Thanksgiving banquet, after Marty Farrell, a Ripon college professor, was complaining about the Pope being on tour again. I warned him to be careful what he said about the pontiff. “Oh, come on,“ he said looking at me and not at what he was reaching for on the table. “You don’t really believe that.“ And Marty immediately poured most of the contents of the hot gravy boat meant for his plate piled high with roast turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, into his lap. Poor Marty yelped in great pain and ran out of the room with a burning groin. The universe had struck again!! Anyway, Jay Lynch used to tell me, “You get what you draw!“ I try to follow his advice and, because I draw a lot of pictures of Zorro, I have an international collection of 246 Zorro movie posters. Jay should have said, “Be careful what you draw!!“ Hey, I miss this great funny cartoonist.

we couldn’t help but think that there was a connection.” Kitchen also shared, “I would sum up the friendship of Jay and Skip as the Odd Couple, because their personalities were quite divergent — the way they dressed, the way they looked, their mannerisms, and everything about them. Different as they were, their friendship worked because, before they ever met in person, they were already corresponding long distance. So they knew each other through correspondence, long before they ever met in person. By that point, it didn’t matter what superficial differences they each had. Part of why their collaborations worked was because Jay took care of the details and Skip was contributing his own kind of energy, and they found a balance.” “Skip’s work,” cartoonist John Porcellino mused in Pigheaded, “I wouldn’t say it’s forgotten, but it tends to get short-shrift and stuff, and I don’t know if it was because he was a Chicago guy, y’know, but that is probably a part of it, but he was not part of this big, classic underground scene that people necessarily think about.” “Their dying within 11 days seems like a cosmic joke,” former Chicago Seed editor Abe Peck told the Chicago Sun-Times, “but [it] made them literally friends to the end.” In a last interview and nearing his exit from this plane of existence, Lynch told Gary Groth, “What is, is. I leave my body, I become one with the universe, then I come back in tiny segments. Not necessarily as a human or animal, or

even anything that exists in our reality, but infinity is a vast thing. Ever since I was a kid I always wanted a certain degree of immortality that, in our system, represents being able to talk to unborn generations, and that being through the printed word. So I got that as good as I can, I don’t think I have anything more really to say.” Devoted neighbor and friend Kathy Duffy attended to Lynch in his final days, and she shared at the memorial, “I told him, ‘If you feel that you’re tired and ready to give up this fight, go ahead.’ At the same time I told him that, the phone rang, and he had taken his last breath, and it was Skip on the phone… That was the bond that they had. It was so strong.” Skip’s last wife, Adrienne Morales, professed at the memorial about her husband, “I admire the fierceness, the bravery that was always undying.” She added about the gathering, “He was adamant to make it here, because Jay was his brother and soul.” Art Spiegelman, who helped organize the memorial, recounted at the tribute about lifelong buddy Lynch. “He planned his own burial and bought himself a coffin. I said, ‘Gee, I would’ve figured you for cremation.’ He said, ‘No, I paid extra so they would take my DNA and clone me. So, he may come back and I hope he does. And he had an idea for his headstone, and it was really beautiful, and he worked heard on what it would say — ‘Jay Lynch: 1945–2017,’ and underneath just the word ‘Cartoonist.’ I sensed he tried a lot of other words out. Then, as he

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Jay Lynch sketch portraits © Peter Poplaski. Snappy Sammy Smoot, “The Stroll” TM & © the estate of Skip Williamson.

assembly instructions had not been done, so we had to do it on location. Skip was art director. It was a rainy day and Jay, Skip, and I took a lunch break near Playboy. As we were walking back, the rain stopped momentarily. Skip asked what I thought about a T-shirt project he was planning to do that said, “I Survived the Pope’s Assassination — Chicago 1979.” Pope John Paul II was on tour and stopping in Chicago. I laughed and advised him against it, being a Catholic myself, because you never know Above: Brilliant cartoonist, who you will get mad because raconteur, and R. Crumb neighbor they can’t take a joke. “WhaddPeter Poplaski rendered these fine ahmean,“ Skip exclaimed, “I’ll sketch portraits of his pal Jay Lynch. make a fortune on this!“ At the very same moment he said this, Skip stuck his right hand into his coat pocket to get a book of matches and light a cigarette, and, with a scream, he yanked out his burning hand as a fireball of matches flew out of his coat and across the sidewalk. Jay and I were frozen! Neither of us had ever seen this trick before. Skip’s drawing hand was smoking and he stuck it in a water puddle. Jay checked out the burn and suggested getting back to the art department, where they probably had something to put on the hand to numb the pain. There, surrounded by all the sex artwork, Skip’s secretary-receptionist, a nice older lady almost like a school teacher, brought in a chemical pack which you cracked and it was instantly cold. We had a killer deadline. This Little Annie Fanny animation wheel had to go out that day. Skip took

Captain Marvel, Shazam! TM & © DC Comics

told a couple of people, he really wanted to have a Magic Eightball screwed into the top that would be coin-operated, so that when people would come to the graveyard and put a coin in, it would be used to pay for the perpetual care of his lawn. And that is what it would mean to visit Jay Lynch, Cartoonist at the Candor, New York, graveyard. He got to stumble, because he realized that coins were not long for this world, a temporary thing, so he was trying to figure it out how to make it with a swipe card, but couldn’t figure it out. Anyway, he was still working on that when he died, never quite figuring it out. I think it was humor.” Underground comix historian Patrick Rosenkranz had the opportunity to spend time with Lynch and Williamson during the tail-end of the Bijou period and he was made privy to an enduring friendship. “I met them both on a trip to Chicago, in March 1973,” he disclosed. “I stayed at Jay’s apartment and Skip came over to work on an art assignment with him. They were jointly drawing a panoramic crowd scene for the Chicago Sun-Times Sunday magazine, Midwest. It was a large piece and they had room to work on it at the same time. They shared a lot of private jokes and sarcastic comments while drawing faces in the crowd, entertaining themselves for hours. They clearly appreciated each other’s company. They even invited me to add a few mugs to their mob and I did, and they were kind enough not to mock my crude scrawls.” About their connection, Williamson said to Grass Green, “We’re two different personalities. Maybe one of the reasons we work so well together has to do with that… I don’t know if it’s so much opposites, but it’s differences. Jay is more of an intellect than I am. I think he does a lot more intellectual reading than I do, and he absorbs details and knowledge. Everything from the arcane to the political to the frivolous, he absorbs it.” In the final analysis, Jay Lynch’s greatest passion extended beyond the field in which he helped pioneer. He told Tom Firak for an upcoming documentary, “I’d always thought of what we were doing in underground comix was an outgrowth of the free-speech thing, the Lenny Bruce, the Paul Krassner thing, even the Harvey Kurtzman thing — stretching the boundaries of the freedom of the press and all that. Unfortunately, rather than finding our historical niche in the two-fisted history of the fighters for the freedom of the press, the underground artists have become part of the history of comics.” In his last interview with me, Lynch lamented, “It’s sad that it’s just comics. There really should be a satire museum. It doesn’t matter what form it takes. It could be comics, it could be records, it could be movies — but it’s all satire. There’s comics that are fantasy and there’s comics that are satire. Fantasy is pretty much the opposite of satire. They’re parading icons in super-hero type books whereas satire type books are about destroying icons. They are the opposites of each other. They’re linked together because they are both comic books; whereas, in fact, they are the opposite of one another. I have little interest in comics that aren’t satirical.”

In her introduction at the memorial, Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library associate curator Caitlin McGurk, the event’s other organizer, nails the nature of Lynch’s wry and friendly demeanor. “It’s funny: Jay was so accessible, so available, so open to anyone who wanted to talk to him or to meet him, and yet, in so many ways, his code was an uncrackable one. There was never an obvious delineation between what was serious and what was a joke with Jay, what was a conspiracy or what was his own deeply held personal truth.” McGurk added, “Nothing was better than watching Jay crack himself up, which, if you’ve seen it, meant a toothy smile bigger than his entire face and a wheezing snicker-giggle… Jay wasn’t just kind to people, he treated everyone as an equal. Jay utterly lacked pretension.” In honor of her brother Skip, Rhonda Baker shared a poignant eulogy: “Too early, too tiny, the boy in the shoebox shivered next to the incandescent bulb. The frightened

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Above: During a 1972 visit to Jay Lynch’s Chicago digs, future comix historian Patrick Rosenkranz snapped this pic of his host and Skip Williamson joyfully at work. Inset left: Rosenkranz shared, “The closest they came to doing one last Bijou was their work in Mineshaft. The magazine is one of the last fragments of the spirit of underground comix, born long after the fact, but still carrying the torch, as evidenced by its many contributors from the underground. The memoirs Lynch wrote went back to that early and pivotal period of his life. Williamson opened his sketchbooks for Mineshaft, following some of his underground colleagues’ leads, and exhibited a more intimate part of his creative process — the raw ideas that were elements in more formal compositions. He put his greatest efforts into painting in his later life and probably had little interest left in drawing comic pages instead.” 21

Spiegelman on Jayzey, Skip, and Bijou As far back as their earliest fanzine days, Art Spiegelman held his buddy Jay Lynch in high esteem. “I really looked up to him. I was 14 and he was 16 and, as far as I was concerned, he was like a pro, the best that could be, and there was something really crackling about his work and ideas. So I was very happy that he was willing to consider me a peer, even though I was a couple years younger than his wise, old 16-year-old self.” The teens shared a devotion for MAD and its “usual gang of idiots,” Spiegelman said. “We would correspond about where there might be sightings of artists from the holy group. Like, ‘Oh, Jack Davis just did a poster for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World! or whatever. In fact, Jay later reminded me that when I was down in Miami for a vacation that my parents were on, it was just when [Harvey Kurtzman’s] Little Annie Fanny was just coming out for the first time [in October ’62]… And Jay pointed out that he was now of the age where he would have to put MAD inside of his copy of Playboy, so he wouldn’t have to look like a jerk, and I was still at the age where I would have to do the opposite.” The two kept in touch and nurtured common appreciations. “Bullwinkle was really important for both of us, and we’d correspond about the Jay Ward show and we could both sing the Moosylvanian national anthem.” They also helped in times of need. “Jay stayed with me when he was coming up from Florida to escape his family forever, which he did by the time he was 16 or 17,” Spiegelman revealed. “And he stayed in my parents’ home with me for a little while looking for work and then went on to Chicago, where he hoped to work for Playboy.” Within a few years, Lynch would start the Chicago Mirror, with the first issue containing a centerspread comic strip by Spiegelman. Lynch and Spiegelman were frequently involved in any number of each other’s side-gigs. “Jay did stuff for me in a college yearbook, where they gave me a section to make this thing called F*cked-Up Funnies (it was the ’60s, after all!) and, in fact, in the section of graduate photos, I put in these wash drawings that I had made of Nard and Pat as graduating seniors.” By the time he was 18, Spiegelman began his long association with Topps Chewing Gum Company, where he helped secure freelance work for his pal. “I got there first, but Topps was a lifeboat for Jay,” he said. “Very soon after I got there as it started the Wacky Packs, I called Jay in and he’d been there ever since. Ultimately, by ’86, I moved on from Topps, but Jay remained with them until he died. It was his lifeline.” And then came Bijou. “Bijou Funnies,” Spiegelman opined, “besides being the second underground comic book, was not an imitation of ZAP… I would say every anthology, on the basis of its contributors, has a different tone to it, and Bijou

was one that had a communicative clarity. It wasn’t going off in the totally psychedelic realms of the unreadable. It tended more overtly toward humor than others. Feds n’ Heads, which turned into The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, was oriented that way, as well.” In the same way ZAP was the quintessence of its contributors, he said, Bijou was the personification of the contributing artists. “It wasn’t any format that made it unique; it was the specific sensibilities of those working in it.” About his own work in the anthology, Spiegelman is a tad unforgiving. “I was a kid and not proud of almost everything I had in Bijou Funnies that I can remember. I’m proudest of the work before I started work in the underground comix, and then there was a period where I took a giant step backward and was trying to do work like my slightly older brethren, trying to do really shocking things, sexual comics, and weird things of one kind or another, and I didn’t really begin to find myself until around ’71 or ’72.” He credits encountering Justin Green’s autobiographical comix as helping him achieve a developmental breakthrough. Ruminating about the lifelong friendship of Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, Spiegelman observed, “While maybe it didn’t seem so at the time, it’s clear now that they complemented each other. They were good at abetting each other and maybe, if one would want to go back to the psychedelic terminology of the ’60s, they were each the yin-yang opposite of each other, thereby coupled together really well.” As organizer of the recent get-together, Spiegelman immediately recognized that Lynch’s Bijou chum simply had to be part of the celebration. “It was uncanny how Skip died so soon after Jay. Originally, Skip was going to come down for Jay’s memorial and he and I talked on the phone about how he could get down here, because Skip and Jay were on a race to the bottom, in terms of economics, but we were going to get him down. He was obviously really grief-stricken and shocked by Jay’s death, and he already had a lot of medical problems… It can’t be totally unconnected that he passed in Jay’s wake. He wasn’t on top of his game, though he had a young bride, Adrienne, with whom he was very happy, and she did come down. We had to include Skip because there was no way to honor Laurel without paying homage to Hardy.” Spiegelman added, “If you want irony and uncanny, Skip called the moment Jay died. He was on the phone with [Lynch’s neighbor and caregiver] Kathy when Jay stopped breathing.” AUTHOR’S NOTE: Art tells me the Lynch/Williamson memorial, attended by about 100, was invaluably enabled by Nathan Fox, chairman of SVA’s Visual Narrative MFA department.

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All © the estate of Jay Lynch.

Top inset: Partially derived from Lynch’s superb 2015 cover for Mineshaft, Art Spiegelman created this poster for the recent memorial. Above: Lynch gave these color roughs for a proposed Wacky Television Jokebook series to a collector. Alas, Topps higher-ups passed on the pitch (presumably made in the mid-’70s, judging by the checklist titles).

Art © Peter Poplaski. Snappy Sammy Smoot TM & © the estate of Skip Williamson. Bijou Funnies TM & © the estates of Jay Lynch & Skip Williamson.

young mother from a Texican family of artisans and musicians waited for the frightened young father from Virginia farm stock, shot down and imprisoned in a Transylvanian camp. Shell-shocked and broken, he was sent home to recover with his dark fey wife and tiny shoebox boy. At a place called Alamogordo, they saw a sunrise in the West and felt its soft deadly rain. Shoebox boy became a super-hero under that radioactivity, although no one knew it yet. He was already drawing comics. (Somewhere a smiling monkey strolls across the pages of my memories)… His roly-poly sister joined the family six years later and she worshiped her super-hero brother even when he nicknamed her the Crisco Kid and blew up her Barbie dolls with firecrackers. With the addition of Little Joe and beautiful, fair-haired Baby Alan, he came into his super-hero-dom. When the bullies appeared, so did he. When monsters threatened his sister’s world, he took them on without flinching. (Okay, maybe he flinched at the giant Missouri tarantula that was in my room, but he didn’t back down — and he prevailed.) He began to walk through the world with wonder in his eyes and a pen in his hand. He was Super Comix Man. “Skip was my real-life super-hero. He taught me the difference between a shallot and a scallion. He taught me how to make Bearnaise sauce and cassoulet. He taught me Inset right: For Denis Kitchen’s self-published book, Everything Including the Kitchen Sink, cartoonist extraordinaire Peter Poplaski produced an illustrated introduction, which included caricatures of Kitchen compatriots, including Skip Williamson and Jay Lynch, detailed here, with colors by Bryant Paul Johnson.

all three guitar chords. He was my first and longest love. He gave me nieces who call me Uncle Rhonda and the sister I never had, Hattie. My own kids adored their Uncle Bickie and his odd artsy home, where they ate baby squid and saw art that made you think. “All of us kids got old. What began as a 12-year spread between the us four disappeared. He still walked through the world with wonder in his eyes, and I saw him become Super Skippy Smoot. He found love again with a woman who cared for him even to my exacting standards. I will miss him forever. When his good friend Rudnick died, Skip designed his headstone. On it, he put a John Coltrane quote: ‘No road is an easy one, but they all go back to God.’ You are there, dear one. Save me a place at the party.” Currently writing a Lynch biography, Patrick Rosenkranz said of Lynch and Williamson, “I did several interviews with them, individually and together, over the years and they never lost their enthusiasm for each other’s work, always complimentary and supportive… People say that they were polar opposites in some way, but I always saw the things they shared in common… a love of hard-hitting humor, a desire to outrage and enlighten the public, a constant need to create, an appreciation for the things in life that money couldn’t buy, and an old-fashioned approval of hard work and dedication…That they died within weeks of each other shows they were closer than we knew.” In the immortal words of those furshlugginer Bijou boys: “Um Tut Sut,” and “Don’t wee wee on yer tee vee set”… Thanks for the laughs, fellas.

incoming

Copious Comments on CBC! A plethora of praise and exact emendations over exiguous errors evoked by Ye Ed Write to CBC: jonbcooke@ aol.com or P. O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 Next page: In 1999, Ramona Fradon imagined a new cover for Showcase #30. Colors by Marie Severin. Below: For the benefit of reader Jim Long, who laments we neglected to feature any work or discussion in CBC #13, of the Marvel graphic novel, The Shadow (a.k.a. 1941: Hitler’s Astrologer), here’s a page of original art from that great art job by Michael Kaluta (pencils) and Russ Heath (inks)!

Brian Martin You said you wanted comments on Comic Book Creator, so I believe I can help fill that niche. I have been reading your work since I picked up the first issue of Comic Book Artist off of the shelf. [Yikes! That was 19 years ago now!—Y.E.] Right off the bat, let me say that I did prefer the blanket approach to a single topic that CBA affected. Immersing myself in a specific time period or company was always a pleasure. Even the companies that

I did not have any interest in I found fascinating, and that approach gave a wonderful overview of what was going on. A perfect example is the Charlton issue that gave coverage to the history of the company. Knowing why they published the comics they did served to enlighten why the content of the comics came to be the way it was. I love the medium and finding out behind the scenes workings is always interesting. I do however understand some of the reasoning behind the change. I’m sure there were significant swings in the sales figures of the magazine depending on the subject matter. The simple fact is some subjects will appeal to a wider range of fans than others. Now that your content is more varied each issue you are more likely to have something for everyone. Which brings us to CBC. Based on my comments above, I’m sure you can guess that I do not enjoy the new magazine as much as the old. However, I continue to buy each issue. The reasoning behind that is simple: There are times where, if I only based my interest in the magazine solely on the advertised content, there are a few issues that I would not have normally purchased. As I said regarding your previous effort, that could have applied there as well. The simple fact is I love comics as a medium and am always willing to learn more about the people that make them and the stories they told. Your obvious love for the form shines through as well. Even when there was/is a subject or creator that I am not truly invested in, I can always glean a little bit of insight, or find something of interest. Howard Cruise’s story about squeezing his date’s purse in the current issue [#12] is a perfect example. Denis Kitchen and Batton Lash are two creators I have not had a lot of experience with but I found both interviews fascinating, entertaining and informative. [Issues #5 and #7 & 8, respectively.] The other thing your magazine does (as well as other TwoMorrows products) is that it introduces me to comics I might not otherwise have considered reading. While this does my wallet no favors, it certainly broadens the scope of my comic reading. I mean, everyone had to encounter their favorite comic somewhere for the first time, and if you love comics, there is no telling what will spark your interest. Hearing about a creator’s rationale for telling the stories they did and/or finding out more about subjects you were not aware of previously can only broaden one’s horizons. As for the current issue, again, I have never really had a connection to Howard Cruise’s work, but still found the interview interesting. The hoops some people have had to jump through to make a living in comics… The Jack Kirby article was again a thorough examination of the subject. The scope of Kirby’s vision for the Fourth World titles, I think, was always a bit of a barrier against their success. Add to that Kirby’s unique approach to dialogue and you have something else that factored against it. Kirby’s art style might also not have been a great fit for DC. If somehow the books could have been published by Marvel, they might have found a much more receptive audience. We’ll never know. If he was around now and able to do comics for a publisher where he had total control over his own work, who knows? Of course, the factors that went into creating Kirby’s style, outlook, and work ethic would not be present so the work might have been totally different. The

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

[Looks like CBC is hitting a nice groove with letters o’ comment, with a batch coming in responding to Roy Thomas and Alan Brennert’s fun exchange on fake alien invasions, which was in reply to a missive to our humble mag a zillion or so issues back. You’ll find those comments on the final page of this, our second four-page LOC column! Now, on with the opinions and corrections!— Ye Crusading Editor]

Jim Long

fact remains that the work will always be there to enjoy and we should cherish what we have. The Steve Rude cover was awesome. I am a big fan of the Dude. If you are in need of some current comics coverage, you could do a lot worse than showcasing his current RudeDude Comics that are being published continuing the adventures of Nexus, as well as presenting other features. I think that is it for now. If you continue to experience a dearth of correspondence, I will endeavor to send my comments on subsequent issues. Heck, now that I’ve got started, I may anyway. Keep up the great work. [Shucks, Brian! I very much appreciate the kudos and am gratified that you stick with my mags through thick and thin! Makes it quite rewarding, amigo. A big part of not devoting issues to a publisher or theme is due to my intent to do more books on those bigger subjects. To that end, I am intent on compiling a tome on the history of Charlton Comics, incorporating the two issues of CBA devoted to the Derby, Connecticut, company, plus material from pal Michael Ambrose’s superb Charlton Spotlight, as well as lots of new stuff. When that will finally get done is still up in the air… I had hoped for that to happen this year, but other projects keep bumping it, such as The Kirby100 book, featuring 100 artists celebrating the centennial of Jack’s birth (coming in August), my design/production job on Roger Hill’s awesome Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics volume (out this summer), never mind this insanely detailed retrospective I’ve compiled, The Book of Weirdo, examining R. Crumb’s great comics anthology (soon from Last Gasp). Oh, and look for our Steve Rude issue in CBC #18! — Y.E.]

Aquaman, Aqualad, and Showcase TM & © DC Comics.

Howard E. Michael, Jr. I am truly enjoying the latest issue of CBC and its Gil Kane theme. But I just have to wonder if it was Mr. Kane’s enlistment papers or you as the article’s writer/editor — or the transcriber, or senior transcriber, or proofreader — who made the mistake, but somehow the error made it into print for eternity. I hope you understand when I tell you that everyone has always led me to believe that 80" is equal to six feet, eight inches, not six foot, six inches. But it was an interesting issue! [Confound the U.S. customary system of measurement! Indeed, Howard, you are correct and blame for the error is entirely mine. Hopefully, though, eternity might be a short time off if we can expand that issue to a full-blown book (with correction, natch)! In the next week or so, Ye Ed is preparing to interview Larry Koster, Gil Kane’s partner with both His Name is… Savage and Blackmark, whose contact was shared by pal Brian Kane. Mea culpa for that boneheaded mistake! I did think Gil was taller than 6'6"! — Y.E.] COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

I just received my electronic copy of CBC #13 yesterday. I read the Ramona Fradon interview over lunch and spent yesterday evening devouring the Michael Kaluta interview. When does the next issue come out? Seriously, I was really looking forward to the Kaluta interview. I’ve always loved his artwork, especially his run on The Shadow, in the early 1970s, and had hoped to see a little more about his Shadow: Hitler’s Astrologer graphic novel with Russ Heath, but anyway… What I found most interesting about the interview was his backstory. I was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia, not far from where Mike grew up. It was interesting to hear his descriptions and see how they matched up to my memories of growing up in same time and place. I worked at the Buckingham Theatre that Mike mentions on pg. 49, in the summer of 1973, and am a 1979 graduate of the Corcoran School of Art, in Washington, D.C., that he mentions on pg. 54, so these references brought back fond memories. I also met Charles Vess in the mid-’70s when he was working the convention circuit and selling Carl Barks

cover recreations. Two corrections are in order for future printings: Pgs. 47 and 49: The Army base in Arlington is Fort Myer, not “Fort Mayer.” Pg. 54: The department store in Alexandria, Virginia, that he mentioned working in the art department is most likely The Hecht Company, not “Hick.” Thanks again for all the great work that you put into CBC!

Joe Frank CBC #13 was a gem. A neat trick as it wasn’t an immediate sure-sell for me, like with Gil Kane and Kirby. I do like Micheal Kaluta’s work, especially The Shadow. It was a short run, but absolutely terrific. I started late, with #2, but was still stunned and outraged when he wasn’t in #5. I liked it that much, that quickly. Keep in mind, too, I was never a big fan of the character. I knew nothing of the radio version and had only the most mild familiarity based on, of all things, the Kurtzman/Elder satire from MAD #4. Yet Kaluta’s art was so atmospheric and moody, that for the short time he was there, it was a must-read. All the candidates mentioned for the book (Toth, Steranko, Wrightson, etc.) would have likely been excellent, but here was Kaluta, whom I was unfamiliar with at the time, doing a tremendous rendition such that I wouldn’t have wanted any replacement. I was happy with him. When someone can make such a wonderful first impression, they must be doing something right. Naturally, I loved all the Kaluta Shadow drawings accompanying your interview. The chat itself was of interest even on non-Shadow related mat25

Above: Michael T. Gilbert speculates that The New York Daily News sports cartoonist Willard Mullin just might be an artist Ramona Fradon was speaking about in her CBC interview, though whose name eluded her. The above are courtesy of MTG.

ters. I laughed at the notion that one perk of adulthood is we can now afford all the cool toys we had or missed owning as a child. Or that some great epiphany doesn’t necessarily happen when, in our teens, we consider what we’ll do for a living. In his case, it wasn’t weighing numerous options so much as simply thinking he was skilled at drawing and nothing else came to mind. One aspect that was great: here’s a longtime pro who could empathize with the excitement of meeting an artistic hero (in his case, Frank Frazetta). It’s hard for me to imagine Frazetta paintings being shown in a hotel room rather than a museum. But, he was there early enough to experience such a treat. Or seeing contemporaries, such as Bernie Wrightson and Jeff Jones, whose talent and ability were more spontaneous. Yet, with effort, Kaluta made his mark, too. Maybe he wanted it overly badly as he spoke, a number of times, about choking on assignments. Overburdened with other books and eager to turn in perfect work, no wonder he had a hard time. Still, his consolation is that he knows, full well, his run was something special. As he noted, “They [fans] just know when it’s right and when it’s wrong.” It was very, very right. I know of Ramona Fradon and met her, exceedingly briefly, in San Diego. She seemed to be having tremendous fun with her friend Marie Severin. While I’m less familiar with her specific output — though I know I read one issue of Metamorpho when I was seven — I found the interview quite fun. She seemed very easy-going, unpretentious, and candid. She must know she’s held in high regard yet it still may baffle her as to why. I loved her line, “I still don’t understand why grown-up men read comics.” There’s no pretense of a great master plan with her either. She said, “It’s just something I stumbled onto and here I am.” One thing she said made sense but doesn’t echo my experience: “People look back on the ’60s nostalgically but they were not fun times.” Well, for kids of that era, including me, with all the diverting things adults provided us entertainment-wise, whether in the comics or on television, it was a wonderful era. It was a fun time to grow up. Adult concerns were beyond me. To some extent, we were isolat-

ed and ignorant about much of the bad stuff. One thing I didn’t like reading was about the staffer who chose to harass her by unwanted kissing on the neck. That, too, is a product of a different era. But, in that sense, it’s better now. The guy could be instantly fired. Her “jerk” is too mild a word. The one article that made me sad was the detailed examination of the untimely death of Mary Binder. How would a parent cope with something so horrible and needless? I recall, years ago, in some previous article about Otto Binder, his daughter being mentioned. I stopped reading, momentarily, trying to calculate how old she’d be now. Then, to my dismay, I read she was tragically killed in school. So, it was no surprise here, but still no less a loss. I can’t imagine how someone could deal with getting that news or go on from there. So, a wide range of topics and emotions this time out, Jon. I consider this one of your better issues and, yes, that is saying something.

Michael T. Gilbert Hey, just wanted to mention how much I enjoyed your Ramona Fradon interview. I’ve always loved her art, ever since I marveled at her charming Aquaman stories in the ’50s. Having met her a few times at conventions, I can attest that she’s remarkably humble, especially for someone so talented. By the way, I’m sure someone’s already mentioned it, but in the interview she mentioned admiring a New York sports cartoonist whose name she couldn’t recall. I’m pretty sure she’s thinking of Willard Mullin, who was a terrific cartoonist in his own right. I used to see him in the New York Daily News regularly back in the day

Paul Allen I enjoyed Will Murray’s article on Bob Kane in your winter issue. Here’s another possible “source” for the Batman legend: Johnston McCulley, the creator of Zorro, penned four stories about “The Bat” that were published in Popular Detective, in 1934–35. Crimefighter Dawson Clade, the Bat, didn’t wear a cape and tights, but he did wear a hood with the silhouette of a bat on it. Following are a few paragraphs quoted from the first story in the series, “The Bat Strikes,” which appeared in the Nov. 1934 issue. These paragraphs describe how Clade came to call himself the Bat. The scene bears a striking resemblance to Bruce Wayne’s encounter with a bat in Batman #1. The final paragraph is almost identical to the wording used that same issue. He was still thinking. Just what the character would be that he intended to assume was still vague in his mind. He only knew that it would have to be some nubilous creature of the night that lurked in the shadows. He glanced at the oil lamp burning on a table. Then he swung around, suddenly tense. In the shadows above his head there came a slithering, flapping sort of sound. Clade leaped back instinctively as something brushed past his cheek. Again the flapping of wings — a weird rustling sound. Terror overcame him for an instant as something brushed against his hair, caught in a tangled lock. Something that seemed unspeakably evil. He reached up, tore at with fingers that had suddenly grown frantic. He flung the thing aside. As he did so he saw that it was a bat. An insectivorous mammal, with its wings formed by a membrane stretched between the tiny elongated fingers, legs and tail. As the creature hovered above the lamp for an instant it cast a huge shadow upon the cabin wall. “That’s it!” exclaimed Clade aloud. “I’ll call myself the Bat.”

All four stories are available from Altus Press in the trade paperback collection. The Bat Strikes Again and Again!

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

More ‘Fake Alien Invasion’ Speculation [Last ish, we featured an email back-and-forth between esteemed comics writers Alan Brennert and Roy Thomas about “fake alien invasions” in comics, fiction, and film. Now, three other CBC readers weigh in… — Y.E.]

Simon R. Green I was just reading Roy’s discussion with Alan Brennert in Comic Book Creator, over the ending of Watchmen, and the influence of The Outer Limits episode “Architects of Fear.” I think I may be able to add another layer. I’m of the same age as Alan Moore, and I can remember seeing a kids science fiction television show in the late ’60s, (possibly called Planet X), which was based around the idea of scientists faking a threat by aliens to help bring governments together. The twist ending was that aliens really were on the way. So they did a second series, where the aliens landed deep in the ocean and changed the planet’s weather to suit themselves (possibly inspired by John Wyndham’s The Kraken Rises). We are all of us standing on the shoulders of giants. If I saw this on UK television, then the odds are Alan did, too. I think I’m right in saying that The Outer Limits weren’t shown on British television until the 80s, which is when I first saw “Architects.” So possibly Alan saw one, and remembered the other and… Has anybody actually just asked Alan? A further thought; I never had any problems with the giant alien ending, because to me it’s Ozymandias playing a practical joke on humanity. That’s why the Comedian ends up crying his eyes out on Moloch’s bed, because it’s the world’s biggest joke and he doesn’t get it. It’s just too big for him. I don’t know if any of this makes anything clearer. I just love that, after all these years, we can still find new things in Watchmen to talk about.

Micah S. Harris (Mr. Cooke: I do not have handy either CBC #9 or 11, so I am unaware if Keith Hammond has already put out there my “revelation” below. Please forgive me if that turns out to be the case (in which case I will certainly be embarrassed). If that is how it turns out, I am sorry if I ended up wasting your time, but I really did think I was contributing something new to the discussion that all involved, including you, would enjoy). I have long been a fan of the “fake alien invasion” subgenre, so I was naturally interested in the Roy Thomas/ Alan Brennert discussion on the topic in your letter column sidebar in #14. I have finally worked out in my head a short story of my own on the theme, a motif whose boundaries are pretty narrow, let’s admit. But the whole notion is just fascinating to me. How could anyone pull something this large off? Pretty unlikely in real life (like another favorite fictional theme of mine: “the assumed identity.”) but an irresistible, entertaining source of speculation for me in fiction, whether it is my own writing or that of others. My first exposure to the idea was that Outer Limits episode, “The Architects of Fear” (since the title is a quotation from Shakespeare, and given that Shakespeare is in the public domain, it’s a wonder that no comic book or pulp writer has ever created a team of villains with that name). I saw the episode for the first time on a friends’ Betamax recording, back in the ’80s. The opening, with the stock footage of people fleeing through a big city street and the control voice asking “Is this the day?” was pretty gripping stuff! Just a few years later, when Watchmen first began, and I saw the The Day the Earth Stood Still poster in the background, and having come to an understanding of Alan Moore’s method of foreshadowing, I predicted the mini-series was going to end with a faked alien invasion (a bit to the annoyance of a talented and current very popular comic book writer with whom I was good buddies at the time). Then we had the “footnote” in the last pages of that last issue of Watchmen acknowledging “The Architects of Fear” connection. Only later was I surprised to learn that Moore came up with the “fake alien invasion” idea on his own and did not know The Outer Limits had a story with the same concept until Len Wein pointed it out to him. And, then, of course, in the Ozymandias mini-series that Wein wrote, we see Ozymandias studying “The Architects of Fear” to figure out where the scientists on the show went wrong. I, too, thought it all began with The Outer Limits and writer Meyer Dolinsky. I did not know of its antecedents. While researching this tiniest of sub-genres in preparing for my own short story variation on the theme, I finally learned of the E.C. Harvey Kurtzman story. I also learned that Nigel COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Kneale, in either the movie or original TV version of Quatermass and the Pitt made a throwaway reference to “Fiji Mermaids,” and suggested that the very real Martians that had been unearthed in a British subway were nothing but the remnants of a Nazi attempt to panic the Brits, already under the Blitzkrieg, with a fake alien invasion! Wow! What a great idea for a story! I like it better than the actual Quatermass and the Pit movie! I did not learn of the novel The Flying Saucer until Alan Brennert brought it up in CBC #14. I do not have my copy of the issue that started this discussion thread handy, but since it wasn’t mentioned here, I am going to point out another fake alien invasion story that predates both “The Architects of Fear,” Watchmen, the Kurtzman story, and even Quatermass and the Pit. Interestingly, what it doesn’t predate is The Flying Saucer. Or, if it does, not by much, because both of these came out in 1948! (Was there something in the air — other than faux alien space craft?). Theodore Sturgeon’s “Unite and Conquer” appeared in the October 1948 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. And it is indeed a tale of a fake alien invasion, undertaken by a single scientist, that brings the human race together. If I remember correctly, this “single scientist” who does it all is part of Kurtzman’s plot (although that goes into more typical EC territory with its twist-ending and Sturgeon’s tale plays out far more differently). Given the relative brevity of “Unite and Conquer” (although it is not exactly short), I wonder if it was the source of the radio adaptation that Mr. Thomas remembers…? At any rate, let me take the opportunity to say, thank you to Alan Brennert for the first season of the unjustly underrated mid-’80s Twilight Zone revival. I loved it. “Her Pilgrim Soul” inspired me creatively and for years I showed episodes in the Interpersonal Communications class I used to teach to illustrate lesson points. And thank you, Roy Thomas, for contributing so much fun and wonder to a happy childhood (and later when it wasn’t so happy anymore). And Jon Cooke: thanks for your return! You and your writers have just been incredible historians for the comics medium (how many creators have we lost since the magazine’s first incarnation? I am so glad you were there to preserve their stories and insights), and, with Comic Book Creator, you are looking better than ever!

Richard Arndt I just got CBC #14 in the mail and would like to comment on your letter col’s remarks on the fake alien menace that Alan Moore used in Watchmen. While both Roy and Alan Brennert are accurate in your remarks on possible sources, there is one that stuck me when I first read Watchmen that dates earlier than any of your examples. Theodore Sturgeon, author of “It,” “More than Human,” “Some of Your Blood,” “To Menace Medusa,” and many more great SF and fantasy tales, wrote the novella, There Is No Defense, in mid-late 1947, and had it published in Astounding Science Fiction [Feb. 1948]. It explicitly tells of a scientist-based fake invasion, used to bring needed sanity to the Cold War on the eve of mutual mass destruction. Sturgeon’s premise was exactly that of having a common enemy to all mankind will trump distrust and even hatred between nations, bringing about lasting peace. The story was very familiar to me and I immediately thought of it as Moore’s probable source when I was reading the original Watchmen. Sturgeon also wrote for several radio shows in the early 1950s — such as Dimension X — and it is possible that story was used, either by Sturgeon or another writer, for one of those shows. Anyway, Sturgeon’s story does seem to predate even Newman’s The Flying Saucer novel and it was collected in the Ace collection, The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon, in 1972, in both the U.S. and Great Britain. It’s probably more likely that Moore, who clearly read SF during this period, read Sturgeon’s tale in the ’70s rather than a 1948 novel by a relatively obscure SF writer. I confess I’m a bit surprised that neither Roy nor Alan thought of it as both appear to be Sturgeon fans — Roy adapted Sturgeon’s ‘It’ for the comics and one of Alan’s early published efforts was an lengthly interview with Sturgeon for Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction. Of course, it could be that neither are quite as obsessive as I am about Sturgeon’s writings. I’ve got all of his published fiction — both book and short story — as well as most of his non-fiction articles and scripts from several of his TV shows. When I like somebody, I wanna read everything I can get my hands on! And, frankly, that’s why there’s also piles of Roy Thomas comics and all of Alan Brennert’s novels and collections in my library!

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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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COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

places him at the top of his field as a truly superb comic book illustrator. What’s equally startling is, in getting to know Mark, to be exposed to the man’s quiet, humble nature and thoughtful concern and abiding interest in the natural world outside of comic books. The following interview took place by phone over three sessions this past January, conversations bracketed by the inauguration of a new U.S. President, a development of concern that weighed into the episodic conversation. The transcript was subsequently corrected and clarified by Mark.

Comic Book Creator: If you don’t mind, I would like to talk about your relatives. Even before you graced this planet, did you have people who were creative in your family? Mark Schultz: Not really. I mean, yeah, “creative.” It’s disparaging to think that people who aren’t in the arts aren’t creative, but my family in general tends to be more… They work more with numbers than with visual images. There was someone in my family who I never knew, who was gone before I came along. A great grandmother on my mother’s side who was an amateur oil painter. She was good.

CBC: What was her name? Do you know? Mark: It’s terrible but I don’t. Her married name was Pentecost. I need to find that out. I grew up with her oil paintings. But that was it. My parents were not inclined toward visual arts. My mom loved cooking, my father loved reading. Both those things did influence me. CBC: Where was your father from originally? Mark: Right where I live now: the Scranton, Pennsylvania area. Both my mother and my father grew up in this area of northeastern Pennsylvania. CBC: Was it a middle class life for your parents?

The Mark Schultz Interview Conducted by Jon B. Cooke • Transcription by Steven Thompson 32

#15 • SUMMER 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

Looking through the mammoth-sized Xenozoic ominbus collection published a few years back, it was startling to witness the remarkably swift and considerable stylistic development of Mark Christopher Schultz. The initial installments of his signature comic book series, Xenozoic Tales, betrays the influence of artist Wallace Wood. But in a few short issues —partly engendered, we will learn, by a friendship with the late, great Al Williamson — Mark’s work was rapidly infused with a level of excellence that today

Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

have studios in the house, so we moved to this area, which I knew from my childhood. We moved here in ’93 and we’ve been here ever since. CBC: So your both mother’s and father’s families came from the area. Do they stretch back? Mark: Well, the Schultzes came over in 1857, part of a big wave of German immigration in the mid-19th century. I think, if I understand correctly, they were escaping the military conscription that was going on in middle Europe at the time. So they came here. The father died before he arrived and the mother came over with her children and worked as a laundress. They came straight to the Scranton area. The Schultz family branch that was my immediate family stayed in the area. Others dispersed all over the place. My mother’s family are Armstrongs, Scots-Irish who came over before the Revolutionary War. They’ve been here a long time, and had pretty extensive landholdings in the area where we live now, outside of Scranton, that were sold off long before I came along. So both sides of my family have pretty deep roots in this area. CBC: Do you remember roughly what year your father was born? Mark: He was born at the very end of 1924. CBC: So did he serve in World War II? Mark: Yes, he did. Yep. He was in the Army Air Corps and did decoding. He served in the Middle East, in Egypt. CBC: Did he have stories that he told you? Mark: Yes. In fact, those are some of the earliest stories that I remember as a kid [Mark was born on June 7, 1955. — Ye Ed.]. I would have been learning this stuff in the late ’50s/early ’60s, and he would be telling me stories and showing me photographs he took of his time in the Middle East. To me that was so exotic and it seemed like centuries ago at that time. [laughs] I realize now that it was less than 15 years earlier. But, to me then, it seemed like it was incredibly distant and exotic. So he had these great photos of the Middle East. He climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza,

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs © the respective copyright holder.

Mark: Yes. They were children who came up through the Depression, but both of their families were, for that time, relatively comfortable, because their fathers had government jobs. Both my grandfathers worked for the post office, which helped them get through those years in relative comfort. CBC: What was the industry for the region? Mark: Coal! Coal made this area an important industrial center. In fact, Scranton is the place where the American industrial revolution started, with the manufacturing of iron nails and rails for the railroad. This was before steel. When steel came along, the industry moved west. But there’s a wealth of anthracite coal here in this area, hard coal, which burns much cleaner than soft coal. So, when the technology in the mid-19th century got to the point where they could efficiently burn hard coal, this area became wealthy… or, at least, the industrial robber Previous Spread: On left page barons who lived here became extremely wealthy. And, as is Mark Schultz’s cover art long as coal was a viable fuel, this area did very well. But in for The Comics Journal #150 the ’30s and ’40s of this past century, hard coal was in steep [May 1992]. At right is Mark’s decline and the area’s never completely recovered. The Xenozoic Tales print, published cities here are old coal cities, a mixture of the grim remFlesk. Above: The How and nants of the coal industry, as well as the fabulous Gothic Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs architecture that recalls the wealth that was here. You get [1960], an influential book on the outside the cities, outside the coal valleys, and, because it young artist. Below: Five-year- is a relatively depressed area, it hasn’t been over-exploited, old Mark lining up his plastic so it’s just lovely, beautiful country. And it’s much more afdinosaurs in parade formation. fordable to live here. My wife and I wanted enough room to

Mark: My sister’s name is Lisa and my brother is Kurt. CBC: And your parents’ names? Mark: My mother was Mary Frances Armstrong. And my father was Joseph Harry Schultz. CBC: Was your father well read? Mark: He was well read! He liked to read a lot. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of him reading to us kids. I’m like eight years old and my sister was seven and he’s reading Edgar Allan Poe to us. And he had a good speaking voice — a good reading voice — and he would read dramatically. He enjoyed public speaking and singing. He had a good voice and he could really do a good dramatic reading of “The Pit and the Pendulum.” CBC: Was he well liked? Mark: My father was a very isolated person. He really was not a social person. He had kind of a typical German mentality where it was his way or the highway, so he could be difficult. He had a small group of friends from way back when, but, to be honest, he didn’t really go out of his way to make new friends. CBC: Was it a big family where he came from?

This page: Filmed simultaneously on the same RKO lot (by the same movie-makers and starring two of the same actors), King Kong [1933] and The Most Dangerous Game [’32] were seminal movies for film aficionado Mark Schultz when he saw them as a youngster.

back before it was protected, as it is now. He and a bunch of friends just climbed the damn thing. And also, he was in the Air Corps, so he had this interest in the warplanes of the time. He had all these great photographs, and I developed a real interest in World War II technology. CBC: You mentioned he was a civil servant? Mark: Yeah, he was in the Social Security Administration. All his adult life. As a result, to take promotions, we would move to different areas, so we moved quite a bit. All within Pennsylvania. We spent a lot of time in the Pittsburgh area, some in central Pennsylvania, and later in eastern Pennsylvania. CBC: Did your mom work? Mark: She was a mother and homemaker while I was growing up. Later, she went back to work outside the house. She worked as a bank teller before I was born and went back to that when the kids were grown. CBC: Did they struggle during the Depression? Were there stories about that? Mark: I don’t think their families struggled a great deal, not like many others did, because their fathers both had secure jobs in the post office. It all sounded exotic to me as I was a kid, hearing about how they planted victory gardens during World War II. It was definitely a different time. They did not have cars. They relied on public transportation. But, no, they did not have bad lives comparable to other people in the Depression. Or, maybe they just didn’t talk about the bad stuff. CBC: Were they New Deal Democrats? Mark: That’s a good question. I’ve been trying to remember about my parents’ political persuasions… they were supporters of Roosevelt. I can remember as a kid they went through different iterations just based on expediency, who they wanted to see put onto office at the time, who they thought was a better candidate, as opposed to having an hardcore political agenda. And then, later in life, much like myself, they became much more affiliated with the values of the Democratic Party. CBC: When did they meet and get married? Mark: Boy, my memory is foggy. They met in the early ’50s. They got married in ’54 and I was born in ’55. I was the first child and I have a sister who is a little more than a year younger than me and a brother who is six years younger than me. CBC: What are their names?

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Above: The actress Frances Gifford made an impact on young Mark Schultz when he viewed her Republic movie serial Jungle Girl [1941] on local TV. She also appeared with Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan Triumphs [1943]. Inset right: Mark confessed his first “man crush” was on Vic Morrow, star of the ABC TV series Combat! [1962–67]. 36

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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.

How many brothers and sisters? Mark: He had a brother and a sister. There were just three kids in that family. CBC: And your mom? Mark: She was an only child. CBC: Did you have much of the extended family around when growing up? Mark: We never actually lived in the northeastern Pennsylvania area, where our relatives lived, though we would visit once or twice a year. So I knew my extended family, but it wasn’t a large family and we would just see them on occasion. CBC: What’s your first memory? Where’d you live? Mark: Well, I was born outside of Philadelphia, in a town called Bristol. I really don’t have any memories of that, but we moved to a small town, Hulmeville, outside of Philadelphia, and my first specific memory was waking up in the middle of the night to hear the fire engines go by (which I think is probably typical for a lot of boys). [laughs] But it was an exciting thing when the fire engines went by. I must have been about two at the time. My other memory from this house is taking my tricycle up a long hill — our house was more or less at the bottom of this hill — and letting go, coming down on that tricycle until I wiped out about halfway down. CBC: [Laughs] Were you all right? Mark: Oh, yeah. Just scraped up. But it was the first time I can actually remember getting away from parental control. I must have snuck out of the yard. I remember that my mom wasn’t pleased. CBC: Overall, were you an obedient child? Mark: I think so. I was into reading and drawing. I wasn’t a troublemaker. CBC: Did you have a TV in the house? Mark: That’s another thing I can’t quite remember. Both my parents are gone now and I wish I’d thought to ask them all these questions. But I must have been about five when I first remember seeing television in our house. I remember watching shows like Sea Hunt and adventure-type shows. I remember when I found Combat! Are you old enough to remember Combat? CBC: Oh, yeah! Vic Morrow! Mark: Vic Morrow was my first guy-crush. [chuckles] I loved Vic Morrow in Combat! That came on in ’62. So I was aware of the TV then. Here’s an important part of my childhood: We were living outside of Pittsburgh and there was a local show on Saturday mornings, at around 6 a.m., awful early. It was hosted by this guy who dressed like a hunter and he would show wild animals and they would broadcast old jungle movies. That was where I first saw the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, but also Buster Crabbe playing Tarzan. They also showed the old Jungle Girl serial, with Frances Gifford. [laughs] And this was the first time I really appreciated girls! I mean, here’s this jungle girl in this mini-skirted outfit riding an elephant! What’s not to like? That’s also when I first saw King Kong and Son of Kong. So that was an important influence on me. That set up my whole interest in adventure. This was around ’60, ’61, and it was about the same time I was first noticing comic books, too. CBC: So, you could turn on the TV whenever you wanted or did you have to sneak it? Mark: Well, obviously, if we were getting it at six o’clock in the morning, my parents were not up at that time, [Jon laughs] so we had permission but, I think, it was pretty closely regulated. CBC: I had to sneak it! [laughs] I remember I used to get up at 6:30 in the morning to watch reruns of Biography with Mike Wallace. It was my little world here. Mark: I remember my sister and I seeing this stuff early in the morning when my parents were still in bed. This was before even the cartoons started coming on. But it was nice because we just had it to ourselves and it was this great world! We had this little Philco black-&-white TV, with the rabbit ears, so it was all radio wave reception, pre-cable. The reception was pretty sketchy… It was like the signal was coming from another planet. It was mysterious. I remember watching Kong and trying to see it through the static. Everything was very shadowy and dark because the image was so bad. It just seemed like there was so much

in those shadows I wanted to see. It was like a dream image coming through. CBC: Obviously, you immediately responded positively to King Kong. Can you describe what appealed to you? Mark: Just the mystery of it. By that time I’d already fallen in love with dinosaurs and exotic adventure. There was just this atmosphere in Kong, this feeling of mystery and weight that lies over everything, which is the craftsmanship of the guys who made the film — Willis O’Brien, the people who created the sets, the directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. It has this lush denseness to it, this layered feeling. And it’s a great story! It’s a moving story. I don’t think I appreciated that consciously at the time, but it’s not just your standard adventure story. There’s an emotional depth to it. CBC: No, it’s the Greatest Movie Ever Made, thank you. [laughs] Mark: I will still argue anyone to the death in any forum that, Kong is the great example of what cinema is capable of and what it can accomplish. CBC: Were you fully cognizant that it was special effects? Did you buy into it that this was a giant ape? Or did you let yourself buy into it? Mark: Wow, that’s a good question. I let myself buy it, absolutely. I had no idea if this was a real giant ape or not. I don’t remember even questioning that. I just accepted it. It was just so engrossing. That begs the question of when I did learn, you know, how stop motion was effected. That came a bit later, probably with Forry Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland, and that stuff. For my generation, that was the source you went to and learn how that type of film was made. CBC: So, okay. In the early 1950s, there was the cover of Life magazine that started a real renaissance that was taking place where dinosaurs suddenly became the purview of children. That came on really strong. When do you first recall realizing that there were prehistoric beasts that roamed the countryside… especially in Pennsylvania! Mark: Sometime around the late ’50s/early ’60s, I remember seeing comic and books in stores with dinosaurs on the covers. Like the How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs primers for kids, which my parents, to their credit, bought for me. I remember expressing to my parents an interest in dinosaurs and my mother taking me to the public library to get a book on that subject. That was probably before I started going to school It was right around that time that all this stuff was coming together for me. Another important thing at that time, too, because I was so interested in dinosaurs, my parents took me to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in Pittsburgh, which, excepting New York’s American Museum of Natural History, has the most significant collection of dinosaur fossil material in the United States. I was just blown away to see the scale of these critters! And there was a huge painting. It’s gone now, but at the time there was a huge painting of a tyrannosaurus behind the tyrannosaurus skeleton. It was a mural, a two-story high piece of art. That impressed me. About the same time, the movie Gorgo was in theaters and it was advertised in the newspapers, back when the

studios took out big ad spaces to promote their movies. There was this advertisement for Gorgo with the monster towering over the typical stuff, buildings shattering and people running away. But it was, in my mind, very close to that painting of the tyrannosaurus in the museum and it just kind of gelled in my mind these two images — the Hollywood monster version of a dinosaur and the attempt at a scientific re-creation of a dinosaur. CBC: Did you frequent the public library much? Did you go once a week? Mark: Probably. When I got a little older, definitely. I went frequently. I spent a lot of time at the library. CBC: Just to get an idea, when you were five years old where were you living? Mark: When I was five, we were living outside of New Kensington, which is just north of Pittsburgh — western Pennsylvania. CBC: When did you move from there? Mark: Well, we were there from about the time I was three until I was eight. Then we moved to the Northumber-

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Above: Mark’s early visits to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh fostered a growing interest in prehistoric creatures, particularly when he marveled at the Tyrannosaurus rex exhibit, which displayed the fossil bones in a “tail-dragging” stance later found to be likely an erroneous pose. In 2008, the museum revised the display to represent T. rex in a horizontal, bird-like posture, with tail in the air as counterweight to its monstrous skull. Painter O. von Fueher’s rendition of the beast also had an impact on young Schultz. Below: Gorgo, the 1961 monster-on-a-rampage movie, held the boy’s rapt attention.

land area, which is in the center of the state, and where I started third grade. CBC: Was it traumatic to move? Mark: Well, we moved a lot! It was just kind of part of our lifestyle. I mean, it was traumatic, but, when you’re a kid, you get over it quickly. CBC: Did you pivot into your obsessions? Do you think that you became more into the fannish stuff that you were into because you moved? Mark: Probably. Throughout my childhood years, as we’d move, you’re right. It did reinforce my interest in this kind of interior life of fantasy, science fiction, and just reading in general. Solitary pursuits. Absolutely. CBC: Did you have like-minded friends when you were young? In the first, second, third grade? Mark: Some. They were kind of the outliers wherever I was but there were always a few. CBC: Were you athletic? Mark: No, not particularly. Well, I guess to a certain degree but I’m certainly no athlete. I was not totally un-physical. I loved swimming. I did a lot of swimming as a kid. I loved playing baseball. But I was never a real joiner. The few times I tried playing team sports, I never stuck with it very long. I just don’t have that team sport mentality. CBC: When did comics come into play? Did they always seem to be around or do you have a distinct memory of when? Mark: Yes, I can remember — I saw them on a store shelf. They were just these exotic items. I never jumped into them until the first grade when a kid brought to school this comic and it was — and I figured this out in retrospect — it was the first appearance of the Metal Men, in Showcase [#37, Mar.–Apr. 1962]. I remember it specifically because the story opens with this prehistoric landscape with dinosaurs and this giant, flying manta ray that shoots heat rays. I forget the whole story, but it winds up in the

present time and, of course, it melts a bunch of the Metal Men before they beat it. But that really impressed me. Then, somewhere in that first year of school, I had to go in to have my tonsils taken out. I went in for the operation and my mom asked me what I’d like while I was recuperating in the hospital bed. I said, “Well, get me a comic book.” I was aware of Batman at the time, for some reason. I think I remembered my father talking about reading Batman when he was a kid, so I asked her to get me a Batman comic. I woke up out of the anesthetic and she said, “Sorry. I couldn’t find Batman, but I got you this instead.” It was Hawkman in The Brave and the Bold, by Joe Kubert, and it was great! Reading that comic coming down off the anesthesia and it’s dark out and I’m trying to read it by the parking lot light outside my window. And I’m all doped up from this stuff, so reading this story was an hallucinogenic experience! [laughs] Wild! But I think that’s what cemented the idea of comics as these kinds of magical experiences in my mind. That’s the first comic I ever owned. CBC: Do you still have it? Mark: No, I don’t. I’ve got reprints of it, of course, the bound editions that DC has put out. But no, it got lost somewhere in one of the many moves we did, along with my collection of Jack Kirby Fantastic Fours and other things that now seem invaluable. At the time they seemed disposable. CBC: Were you into Kirby? Mark: Oh, yeah! Though it did take me a while. I went through a stage where I was a big follower of the Dell/Gold Key books, especially the Tarzan stuff, and then I slid into DC, more or less, and was a big fan of their science-oriented stuff like The Flash, and the Hawkman that Murphy Anderson was drawing. Then, about ’64 or so, I started finally getting what Kirby and Lee were doing in the Marvel books. CBC: Do you remember roughly what issue? Mark: I think it was #52, with the second issue featuring the Black Panther, when they fought Klaw, the Panther’s big nemesis. That was the one that cemented it for me and I started picking it up regularly after that. CBC: You said that you were into the Gold Keys. Was that the time of Doctor Solar and Magnus: Robot Fighter? Mark: Yes, and I was picking up both of those. CBC: Was the appeal at the time that they were so… and I’m not saying this disparagingly, but that they were antiseptic? That they were really clean? Why does somebody get into Gold Key comic books at a certain age? I’m just curious. Mark: I don’t know. That’s a good question. I think you’re right, though. They just felt safe at the time. They were more adventure-oriented, and I think they were more geared for a younger reader. I’m not quite sure. It could be the, like you said, antiseptic aspect, the fact that they were easy reads. There was no tricky storytelling in them. Very clean, everything’s on the grid. CBC: There’s no cleaner art than that of Russ Manning,

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Showcase, The Brave and the Bold, Metal Men, and Hawkman TM & © DC Comics. Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Turok, Son of Stone TM & © Penguin Random House, LLC. Tarzan of the Apes TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

This page: Among the most impressionable comic books encountered by a young Mark Schultz were these specific issues of The Brave and the Bold [#34, Mar. ’61] and Fantastic Four [#52, July ’66], as well as the Gold Key titles Turok, Son of Stone and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes. Of that latter pair, pictured here are Turok #56 [Mar. ’67] and Tarzan #143 [July ’64]. To this day, the artist retains distinct memories about, while in first grade, seeing the first appearance of Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru, and Mike Esposito’s Metal Men, in Showcase #37 [Apr. ’62], mostly due to the dinosaurs and giant manta ray in the tale.

Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

that’s for sure! Mark: God, no. I loved his Magnus stuff and the work he was doing previous to that, on “The Brothers of the Spear.” When I was first reading Tarzan, it was Jesse Marsh who was still drawing it. And, at that age, I wasn’t differentiating between artists at all. I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, I like this guy’s stuff. I don’t like this guy’s stuff.” It was just the story and the visual storytelling that was exciting me. Not the stylistic stuff. But I guess Jesse Marsh is the guy who really hooked me and like you said, super-clean and the storytelling is just bam! Spot on. CBC: Turok, Son of Stone? Mark: Oh, loved Turok! Dinosaurs! I discovered Turok a little later. Not too much later, but I was into DC and stuff by then. Alberto Giolitti was drawing Turok. CBC: How were you able to buy comics? Did you have an allowance or did you work? Mark: I was given an allowance. I forget how much it was, but I basically allocated myself like 36¢ a month to buy three comics. After awhile, that started upping, but that was where I started from and 36¢ seemed like a lot of money at the time. I must have been given a 50¢ allowance. CBC: Do you recall movie matinées? Do you recall seeing movies just by yourself or with kids of the same age, without parents? Mark: Yes, I do. That started in the mid-’60s, when I was allowed to do that. I was maybe ten years old when I started to do that. We had to be driven to the movie theater. We weren’t in a location where we could just walk, so we had to be given rides by our parents. There was a Saturday matinee feature that had a whole bunch of cartoons and — this was the ‘60s when the old movie serials were starting to be appreciated again — they’d show these reconfigured, twohour movie versions of old adventure serials. I remember seeing Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars. But I think the first film that I went to with a friend, without parental supervision, was Thunderball. [laughs] CBC: Wow, you were pretty young for James Bond 007, right? I remember that being pretty much an adult kind of movie. I’m just sayin’, Mark…. Mark: James Bond had become a “thing” by the time Goldfinger came out, in 1964, and my parents decided to take us to a drive-in to see that. And that’s the first time I ever saw a film that had (even though they were tonguein-cheek) adult situations. Up until then it had been more family-oriented fare. But, yeah, it was pretty shocking to see naked women painted in gold and that level of violence. Even though it’s cartoonish violence, it’s still a level of violence I hadn’t seen and I was just [laughs] “Wow, this is the coolest thing in the world!” CBC: So, how would you characterize your childhood? Was it idyllic? Was your relationship with your father good? Was he happy with you? Mark: It was okay. Good and bad. I don’t know anyone whose childhood really was idyllic. My father was a distant, very demanding person, who was not particularly empathetic. But, you know, he had good points. His love of literature, his interest in letting me do what I needed to do in my life, instead of fitting into whatever pattern he thought was best. And that’s the same for my mother. I was much closer to my mother and she was someone I would say was a very creative person, but that was thwarted for whatever reason. I think she had a lot of creativity that got misplaced along the way — I don’t know if she felt a responsibility as a mother? Later in life, my mother became very interested in cooking, beyond just cooking for the family, and started taking classes in different cuisines. That’s where her creativity went. They were both very supportive parents and they supported my interest in the arts. They didn’t quite “get” my interest in the whole science fiction/adventure thing. I think they would have preferred that I become an architect — for my own well-being. [Jon laughs] But they never tried

Above: Caption.

to dissuade me from going in the direction I wanted to go. I remember when I was in college, I started in the commercial arts program. After a year of that, I realized that if I was going to go more toward the direction of being an illustrator, what I needed to do was move over the fine arts program. Fine arts certainly isn’t something that guarantees any kind of economic stability, so I was a little worried about talking to my parents about making that switch, because it was their money paying for my college education. But they totally understood my long-range plan and they supported it. CBC: Wow. You lucked out. Mark: Absolutely. CBC: Were you pretty tight with your sister growing up? Mark: Not particularly. We get along now. All three of us kids get along fine, but we all live our own lives. I was a pretty lousy older brother. I was a bully much of the time. I don’t think I was worse than the norm, but now I look back at it and just shake my head and think, “What was that about?” [laughter] CBC: When did you start to draw? Mark: Back around ’59–’60, the

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This page: Artist Jesse Marsh’s “super-clean” art on the jungle lord hooked young Mark Shultz. Marsh drew Tarzan for Dell and Western between 1947–65. This cover is from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan #7 [Jan.–Feb. ’49]. Below is a panel from ERB’s Tarzan’s Jungle Annual #4 [’52], with art by Russ Manning, who would take over as Tarzan’s main artist in 1965.

Above: Inspirations included stop-motion animators Willis O’Brien (left) and protégé Ray Harryhausen. Below: Histories of fantastic cinema were found in books and magazines of the ’60–’70s. Next page: Frank Frazetta’s Conan covers. Inset below is a Schultz Conan piece.

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All are TM & © their respective copyright holders.

first thing I remember drawing was a brontosaurus, at the kitchen table, using one of those little metal trays that have like six or eight different watercolor slabs. I was just sitting down and painting a brontosaurus. I can remember right around that time (or shortly after that), after I got my first book on dinosaurs, that How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs, I started to put together my own attempt at a book, with pages of pencil drawings of dinosaurs. I couldn’t write yet, so I would just scribble lines

to look like text underneath [laughs] and staple ’em together into book form. CBC: Did you show them to your parents and your sister? Mark: Oh, yes! Again, my parents were very supportive, They loved the fact that I was interested in learning, and they loved the fact that I was interested in books. CBC: Has any of your juvenilia survived? Mark: Not back that far. I have some stuff from elementary school. CBC: Can you see any spark in there? Mark: When I’d do my class reports, I’d always include an illustration to go with it, so I was always thinking in terms of integrating the visual with the textual work, making them work together. CBC: So you just always drew from then on in? Mark: Yes. That’s it. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t draw. That was just what I could do. I don’t know how to describe it other than that. It was just who I was. I was the guy who drew. CBC: So you were recognized as such by your peers? Mark: Yes, when I got into school. That identity made me who I was, especially moving to different schools. It was always that thing that you could trot out. “Wow! This guy can draw,” “Look at this guy! Look what he can do!” So that was like a calling card. CBC: How did you do it? For instance, you’re at your desk in class and you just start drawing and hoping somebody takes notice? Mark: Yes, that was part of it. Just being in class, bored out of my skull, in mathematics class, especially. I’ve never had a mind for numbers, and I wasn’t the best student. I didn’t really apply myself, either. I would sit there and fill up the margins of notebooks with little drawings. Of course, eventually the teacher would come along and say, “You know, if you’d apply yourself as much to your numbers as much as you do to your drawings, you’d get someplace in life, young man.” [laughs] In those days, too, every Friday we’d have an art class. So there was a weekly situation where my abilities were front and center. It just seems like there was lots of opportunities, in elementary school particularly, to incorporate art into reports and things, and I was always thinking in those terms. Or there was a project that needed someone to draw something and that’s what I would do. That was my contribution to the social structure of the classroom. CBC: So, that really filled you with positive esteem. Mark: I guess so. I never thought in those terms, but that was a role that I was recognized for, where I got (if you can call it that) a certain amount of respect at that age. I think, at that age, it’s more social status. It’s not even social status, it’s more like a group of chimpanzees, and where do you fit into the group hierarchy. You know, kids that age are animals. CBC: [Laughs] Brutal! Mark: Well, you haven’t learned social niceties yet. Basically, you’re just trying to fend for yourself and learn how you fit in with all your peers. Let alone the adults who rule your life, that you don’t have any control over, you’re just trying to… and that’s not being disparaging! I just think that’s socially how we work. It takes until you’re out of high school before you figure out how to be empathetic with other people. That’s not the same for everyone, but I think that’s kind of a general rule of thumb.

Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc.

CBC: By the time you’re between 10 and 12 years old, the world is dramatically changed with the rise of the baby boomers, the emergence of the counter-culture… How do you recall the later ’60s? Mark: I always think of Life magazine. Back in the ’60s, in my family, we would get a general world view through magazines — Life, Look, Time, Newsweek — beyond the daily paper and TV news. You’d see these reports on the counter-culture, and I remember this feature in Life about marijuana use, about 15-year-olds smoking pot, and it was kind of terrifying that this world was being thrust upon me, this change. That these people who weren’t that much older than me were doing this experimental stuff that I certainly wasn’t ready for. Then, when I was in the seventh grade, a friend found this article — probably from some Tiger Beat or some similar pop culture magazine—“How to Make Your Own Hippie Love Bracelet.” It described weaving together some strands of rope, like clothesline, and then painting it different colors, making a “hippie” bracelet for yourself. [laughs] So me and a couple other friends made these and we wore them to school and didn’t think anything of it. Me in my corduroys and button-down shirt. But, we got called out of class and pulled in to the vice-principal, who was the school disciplinarian. He asks, “What are you guys wearing?” We said, “We saw this in COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

a magazine. Hippie love bands.” He said, “Do you know what those things represent? Do you know what hippies are doing? Who they are?” We just kind of went, “Noooo…,” waiting for an answer, and, of course, he really didn’t have one either. To him, it was just something different and scary, so they made us sit in detention and promise never to wear our hippie bracelets to school again. So that was interesting, because, all of a sudden, you feel a little bit of power, because there’s this fear associated with this thing you’ve done. And you’re affecting, for the first time maybe, how adults look at you by challenging the power structure — if only inadvertently. You see that you can disturb the status quo. Now, I didn’t then start acting or dressing more outlandishly — that wasn’t me — but I was starting to understand the idea having an effect on how people thought and how people looked at things. CBC: As you were reaching your teenage years, did you start recognizing that there were comic book artists and movie directors… that there were human beings behind the cultural artifacts that you enjoyed? Did you ever have any sense of aspiration through your creativity by the example of, say, Jack Kirby or whomever? Mark: Yes. It was probably in ’66, ’67, ’68 when I started to realize that comics, movies, were produced by individuals. I started getting into the cultural aspect of it, the cult of personality 41

This page: Reed Crandall’s portrait of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Frank Frazetta book cover, and Mark Schultz rendition of Tarzan. Next page: EC Comics reprints were emerging in the ’60s in different editions. Eerie #5 [Sept. ’66] cover by Frazetta.

behind creativity. [laughs] And part of that I’ve got to admit (even though I have a great deal of ambivalence about how he did it) part of that was with Stan Lee in his Soapbox column inventing this idea that Marvel’s stories were created by individuals, a much more personal approach than any other comic company at that time was taking — the idea that there were individuals making these comics and Stan created personalities for them. So it sank in that guys like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were real people and, in my mind, they were living in penthouse apartments and were being chauffeured to work in the bullpen every day. [laughter] That’s the way I was interpreting it. Because these guys were creating this great stuff that was out there on the newsstands! It wasn’t just their friends they were showing their drawings to. The world got to see their stuff. And that time was so exciting, so great! When Ditko was doing Spider-Man, every issue was great. When Kirby was doing Fantastic Four, every issue was great. In my mind, their work was just so consistently wonderful, I thought they had to be wealthy, no different than movie stars. That was my fantasy of what it was like to be part of the comic book world. I was living in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania. I wasn’t going to jump on a bus and go check out the Marvel offices, and see for myself. About that time, between the late ’60s and early ’70s, I was starting to notice books that offered more background #15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All characters are TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

information on movies, and more critical appreciations. There were more appreciations of fantasy and science fiction. I was picking up on those, haunting the bookstores to find these looks at the type of genre films and literature that I enjoyed so much, and especially the accounts that pulled the curtains back. I mean, it had all been a mystery but, right around that time, it seems like there was a growing appreciation of these things and more was being written, and I was picking up on that. CBC: Did you become a regular reader of Famous Monsters of Filmland? Mark: I cherry-picked issues. I did read it for a while but it didn’t become a habit. It was when I discovered Castle of Frankenstein… and that, of course, went much more in depth than Famous Monsters. Castle of Frankenstein was one of those discoveries that blew off the top off my skull. I really got into it for several years. CBC: Had you had any exposure during those young years to EC Comics? Mark: Not really. I first saw EC stories reprinted in those Ballantine paperbacks from maybe ’63 or ’64, whenever they were published. I was in the supermarket with my mother, looking for probably Classics Illustrated and Gold Key comics, and I look at the spinner rack with the paperbacks and here’s this — I didn’t know it was Frank Frazetta at the time — this very gripping cover of this spaceman with this multi-legged outer space horror looming over him. It was scary! And I looked inside and, “Wow!” Was it ever compelling. It was gripping. I knew this was great stuff. Even at that age, I saw there was this weight and this craftsmanship to the art, and the text was so dense. But I could tell I didn’t want this in my room with me at night — it was too intense. So I had an encounter at that point, but I just wasn’t ready for it. Then, several years later, around ’70, Nostalgia Press came out with their Horror Comics Library of the 1950s, the coffee-table book of the best of EC Comics. At that same time, I was learning, again, from these sources that were starting to look at comics seriously and the history of comics, that there had been something called EC back in the ’50s that had been incredibly influential and of paramount importance, and even guys like Stan Lee genuflected towards EC. Slowly I put it together and, by the early ’70s, I was picking up some stuff. There were stories being reprinted here and there.

All are TM & © the respective copyright holders.

CBC: You were a little young for the Warren stuff when it first came out, right? Mark: Right. I didn’t get the Warren stuff at first. I probably would have loved Warren, but I wasn’t differentiating between those publications and the horrible Eerie Publications by Myron Fass. Man! Someone brought one of Fass’ rags to school and I looked at some of those stories, and even at that age [Jon laughs] I could tell, “This stuff is tripe! This is just awful, awful garbage.” I didn’t want to have anything to do with that. I made the mistake of mixing it all up — the crap and the Warren stuff — and I missed out on that really, really brilliant first year of Warren. When the old EC crew were working with Archie Goodwin to produce some really fantastic work. So I picked up on that when they were reprinting the stories, which was often. CBC: So do you have any memories in the ’60s of Frank Frazetta? Mark: Yes, actually he was the guy who did the most gripping paperback covers when I was discovering Edgar Rice Burroughs, all of ERB’s different worlds, and then, of course, the Conan stuff. Both the Ace ERB editions and the Lancer Robert E. Howard editions. That was my introduction to Frazetta. About the same time, I was finally picking up Warren magazines and appreciating his covers for Creepy and Eerie — and then Vampirella. CBC: As far as reading goes, were you bookish? Mark: Oh, yes. [laughs] For sure. I think “bookish” is the right word. CBC: Would people have characterized you a decade later as “nerdy”? Mark: Of course. I was the guy in junior high reading these little Ace paperback Burroughs editions between classes. You could divide up other kids responses — “Wow! That’s a great cover. What is this stuff?” and… [pauses] CBC: “What is wrong with you?” [laughter] Mark: That defined you as a nerd before the word “nerd” was there. CBC: [Laughs] Well, because, duh, you’re reading a book. Mark: You’re reading a book in the first place, and on top of that, it’s science fiction. CBC: Did you have a gang

of friends? Were you part of a crowd? Mark: “Crowd” would be too big, but, yes, there was always one or two people that got it and were into the same thing. CBC: Were you sociable with girls? Mark: Sociable with them, but at that point not really having a lot of contact between just being politely social. CBC: Was music important? Mark: Yes. Of course, and, being my age, the defining moment was the Beatles coming to the United States and appearing on Ed Sullivan’s show. That happened when I was in the third grade and, you know, you talk to anyone my age, that was the game changer. But I really didn’t start getting seriously into paying attention to music and regularly buying records until I was probably a sophomore in high school. And then I really got into it. CBC: Who was your favorite musician? Mark: Not one. I love Lou Reed’s work with the Velvet Underground, then his solo stuff. Iggy and the Stooges. The Doors still hold up incredibly well. I’m trying to think of stuff from that time that I enjoyed then and has held up for me over time… The Doors, for sure. I was a big fan of a lot of the San Francisco music at the time, especially Jefferson Airplane, but that hasn’t held up quite as well. And, of course, the Beatles are always gonna be there, and the other bands that came over from England in the ‘60s. The Rolling Stones… and the Kinks! I still love the Kinks. A bit later, while I was in college, punk broke big and it was, and is still, a big part of my life. Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, X... CBC: So, when you’re a teenager, are you making comics or were you doing illustration? Mark: Comics seemed so overwhelming to me. I remember many times as a kid, I’d have an idea for a comic and I’d start it, do one or two pages of panel breakdowns, but there wasn’t enough story to keep me interested and it just seemed overwhelming to me, all the elements that you had to be able to do, that you had to be able to control to pull off a comic. So I was more doing single-image illustrations. A lot of it revolved around Edgar Rice

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

strips, though maybe not Mary Worth. CBC: [Laughs] All right. So you’re in high school. Was it predetermined that yes, your parents were going to foot the bill for college? Did you have to keep up a modicum of good grades? Was there that pressure on you? Mark: I don’t remember ever having a discussion of that sort. It was just understood. I grew up with the understanding that I was going to go to college. My father had been the first of his family to get higher education and there was just the understanding that this was the direction we were meant to go in, you know? And I never questioned that because I never didn’t want to go to college. They had put away money for that in savings bonds (or whatever) and there was money for it. But, to their credit, I never remember them sitting down and saying, “You’re expected to behave in a certain manner, or accomplish a specific goal, or you’re going to be cut off.” There was none of that. It was just an opportunity that was being given to me that they were able to do because, again, they followed [laughs] the “American Dream,” to be corny about it. You just try to pass on something more to your children than you got passed on to you. I never felt any particular pressure. CBC: When you were about to turn 18, the Vietnam War was still going on. It was starting to wind down, but did you worry about the draft? Mark: I still have my draft card! The draft ended the year before I would have been placed in the draft. But I did have the draft card and that was something that I discussed with my parents. What would happen if I were drafted? If that had continued and I’d been drafted. What were the options? CBC: And what were your options? Mark: If I went to college, did that mean I got a deferment? I don’t remember specifically what the situation was at that time. The most extreme thing that people did was leave the country. I would never have done that, but I think if it looked like my chances were not good, I would have tried to enlist in a branch of the services that did not involve slogging through rice paddies. CBC: By that time were your parents against the war? Was that their overall feeling? Mark: Yes.

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Flash Gordon TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc. Weird Science-Fantasy TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.

This page: Mark Schulz’s growing friendship with legendary artist Al Williamson resulted in a wholesale improvement of the young creator’s stylistic approach. First emerging as a Wallace Wood acolyte, Mark experienced an epiphany when looking at Al’s impressive original art collection (of Al’s own and many other cartoonists’ work) and studying the actual art boards firsthand to learn “how it is done.” Schultz would remain a close friend of the gregarious and disarming comics pro until Alfonso Williamson passed away, on June 12, 2010. Above is Al’s hand-colored piece featuring Al’s life-changing inspiration, Flash Gordon and Dale Arden. Inset right is the Williamson cover art for EC Comics’ Weird Science-Fantasy #25 [Sept. ’54].

Burroughs or Robert E. Howard types of subjects. But I was also looking at Kirby as well as Wally Wood. I’d become a big Wally Wood fan by that time. CBC: Were you buying Creepy and Eerie during that second revival? You know, when Bernie Wrightson and Rich Corben were doing contributing? Mark: Sporadically. I would look at an issue and see who was in that issue and the story content to determine if I was going buy it. I wasn’t buying it religiously. I would cherry-pick things. CBC: Did you have a job when you were a teenager? Mark: At 15, I started working as a busboy and I did that up through my first year in college. That was my regular, steady job. I had disposable income that went to books, as well as comics, and LPs. I’ve mentioned this in other interviews, but this is important: As long as we’re going through things that influenced me, when I was first discovering Edgar Rice Burroughs, I found Richard Lupoff’s biography, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure, and that book was illustrated with brush and pen-&-ink illustrations by Frazetta, Reed Crandall, and Al Williamson! When I saw those, it was a defining moment in my life. Up to that point, the guys who really excited me were the more expressionistic comics artists, like Wood, Kirby, and Jim Steranko. Then, when I saw this more naturalistic rendering by Williamson and Frazetta, it just changed what I wanted to do completely. I saw that stuff and that set my goal for what I wanted to do with my skills. CBC: I swear to God, Mark, that was my next question, as I was doing a build-up to discuss Al Williamson! [laughter] Mark: I’d previously seen Al’s Flash Gordon for King Comics, and his Secret Agent Corrigan newspaper strip in the newspapers. But I didn’t put it together that this was the same guy doing these all things. I couldn’t imagine that you could work in a comic strip, a comic book, and do illustrations. Then, eventually I started noticing the signatures and I thought, ‘Man, those look similar! Could that really be the same guy doing all of this work?” So it took me a while to figure it out, but I did finally put it together that, yeah, there was one guy doing all these different things. CBC: Was he your favorite? Mark: Not my absolute favorite — Wally Wood was my favorite. I was collecting Williamson, though. There’s very few comic strips that I actually cut out of the paper and saved. One was Foster’s Prince Valiant and the other was Al’s Secret Agent Corrigan. My favorite comic strips, for sure. CBC: Did you always read comic strips? Mark: Oh, yes. I grew up reading them. Absolutely. I can remember seeing Pogo, which I adored, when I was really young. I loved Walt Kelly’s drawing — but when I was younger, I just didn’t get the story, so that didn’t hold my interest. It wasn’t until I was a teenager when I really got into Pogo. But I can remember my mother and father reading Prince Valiant to me at a very young age and I remember I was fascinated by Dick Tracy. I pretty much read all of the

Illustration © the estate of Al Williamson. Secret Agent Corrigan TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.

CBC: Did you try pot as a teenager and all that? Did you go down that road? Mark: No. It never interested me. I didn’t even really drink in high school. It just was not anything I felt comfortable with and then, when I got to college, all that stuff was right there on top of me, but I never became interested in smoking pot. [laughs] I started drinking in college—that was my thing, until I figured out it wasn’t. Living in the dorms for my first couple of years at college, I saw a lot of drugs and hallucinogenics being abused. I stayed up all night a number of times with friends dealing with bad trips. I never found that world particularly attractive. CBC: Were you dating in high school? Mark: Not seriously. CBC: Were you shy? Mark: Very. CBC: Were you pretty tall compared to your peers? Mark: I was a little taller than average, I guess. Not Denis Kitchen tall. I’m 6' 1", so I probably topped out in high school at about that. CBC: How was your facility when you were in high school? Were you a good artist by then? Mark: I think I was good for high school. I look at what I could have been if I’d really applied myself and I shake my head. I could have learned so much more. But I was just getting by. I was interested in drawing, but I wasn’t interested necessarily in the hard work of learning the fundamentals like I should have been. But I was good enough. Again, I went to a number of different schools and some had better facilities and better programs for the arts than others. But yes, I always was recognized as in that top echelon of students that are skilled in the visual arts at whatever school I attended. CBC: Could you draw girls? Mark: Yes. By high school, I was starting to get pretty good at that. Now I look at that stuff and it’s awful. But, at the time, it was recognized as, “Hey, he can draw a pretty good!” It must have been my junior year in high school when one of the alpha jocks — a really good basketball player who was a good guy, too — he asks me, “Hey, Mark, can you draw me dunkin’ a ball?” “Sure.” So I did. I did a pen and ink drawing and got a lot of attention for that because I drew a portrait of the top dog in athletics at the school. All of a sudden, within that high school social structure, that’s a credit to you, a validation. CBC: Did you get a license at 16? Mark: I guess so. Made sense for me because I was working weekends. It was easier for me to get back and forth to the restaurant. CBC: Okay, you’re renowned for a series that was eventually known as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. Were you into cars? Mark: No, I wasn’t. [laughs] In fact, I sometimes curse the day that I made a car so prominent in my series. [Jon laughs] Because they’re hard to draw and I’m just not… You know what? I love the period when that car was manufactured. I love the design, the look, of them. As far as the

mechanical end of things, how the engine works, how much power they generate… whatever? How quickly they can go from zero to sixty… ? I know nothing about that. All I know is I like that streamline look — the design and the look from that era, the late ’40s through early ’50s. CBC: So was it always the plan… did you always have in mind, “I’m gonna be an artist someday?”

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Above: Al Williamson’s cover art for Gold & Silver: Overstreet Comic Book Quarterly #4 [Apr.– June ’94]. Below: Al’s Secret Agent Corrigan strip from his “Lost World” single-panel sequence, Dec. 8, 1970.

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Kull TM & © Kull Productions, LLC. The Savage Sword of Conan, Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc. Illustration © Mark Schultz.

This page: Besides Edgar Rice Burroughs, one noted fantasy/ adventure author who would have an impact on burgeoning artist Mark Schultz was Robert E. Howard, the creator of the fabled sword-wielders Conan the Barbarian and King Kull. While the comic book creator still yearns for the day when the current licensor of the Cimmerian brute approaches him to write his take on Conan, as artist he has worked on any number of related projects starring the character (including contributing illustrations to REH story collections). At top is a sample of Mark’s inking over penciler Val Semeiks on Savage Sword of Conan #132 [Jan. ’87]. “The Sea King,” written by Chuck Dixon, features REH’s Kull, King of Atlantis, and the black-&-white eight-pager is Mark’s first published professional job as comics freelancer.

Mark: It was either that or a scientist. I tell people I really loved the sciences and thought maybe I was going to be a paleontologist or someone involved in the biological sciences, until I had to take high school chemistry and physics. All that math and struggling through those classes, I just realized that my future was in the arts, if anything. CBC: What year did you graduate? Mark: 1973. It was a long time ago. CBC: [Laughs] Summer of ’73. What’s your middle name? Mark: Christopher. CBC: What’s Mark Christopher Schultz going to do? Mark: [Laughs] Go to college. That’s what I was going to do at that time. I wanted to get the hell out of the house. I was looking forward to going to college. CBC: How far away was college from home? Mark: It was about an hour away, so I could come back on weekends and work. That’s what I did for my first year in college. By my second year, I wanted to spend my weekends on campus. But it was close enough where I could still see my family. There was still that connection there, but it was far enough away where I felt a little independent. CBC: What school did you go to? Mark: It was Kutztown State College at the time, now Kutztown State University. It’s part of the Pennsylvania state university system. It was the school that specialized in visual arts. Mostly art education but they had good fine arts and commercial arts programs as well. CBC: Had you encountered underground comix at all? Mark: It’s interesting that you bring it up. I was vaguely aware of underground comix through Rolling Stone magazine, which I started buying when I was

in high school. Back then they would do pieces on all sorts of counter culture stuff, underground artists like Robert Crumb included. I remember, when we were still living out in Pittsburgh, going to an arts festival downtown and I found this local rag that had some underground strips in it — reprints, I’m sure — so I was vaguely aware of that scene. But then we moved to the eastern side of the state for my last two years of high school, and there was a record store in a nearby city run by a couple of hippie types, [laughs] just kind of laid-back guys. They would have all the records that you couldn’t find in a shopping mall record store, the more obscure stuff. I was really into that and the prices were great, too. Upstairs they had a head shop (which I couldn’t have cared less about), and there was a big rack filled with underground comix! Man! This was an education for me! I’d go up there and just sit down and read. They had stuff that was years and years old along with new arrivals, just a mess of stuff. But they had no problem with me just sitting up there and reading the comix. Years later, I mentioned this to Denis Kitchen, that this was my real introduction to underground comix, and he asked how old I was at the time and I said I must have been around 16 and he just groaned. [laughs] “They weren’t supposed to let kids under 18 near this stuff. That was trouble!” There was always local civic groups complaining, and, of course, they got head shops shut down eventually, and made sure underage kids weren’t ever going to see the stuff. CBC: But, by god, we did! Mark: I don’t think it stunted my growth. Did it stunt your growth? That was the first time I saw Kitchen Sink comix, for instance, and Denis’s work. As well as a ton of stuff… Jack Jackson! I could go on and on and on. Corben’s work, although I might have seen him in the Warren stuff before then. He was doing his underground work as “Gore” in Slow Death — what a revelation! CBC: And the Last Gasp stuff with Greg Irons. Mark: Oh, yeah! Last Gasp! CBC: Okay, just so I can get a sense of this: when you were eight, you moved how far away? I want to just get an idea how many times you moved between eight and 18. Mark: We moved a couple times in the Philadelphia area. Then we moved to western Pennsylvania, around Pittsburgh. We lived in three places out there until I was eight. Sometimes it was just a matter of months between moves. I did my first two years of school out there. Outside of New Kensington, above Pittsburgh. Then we moved to Northumberland, and spent four years there. I spent seventh grade in the Shikellamy school district. Then we moved back to Pittsburgh and I spent three more years out there, in the Ringgold school district, a year in front of Joe Montana (if you follow football at all). And through my sophomore year we were at the Upper St. Clair school district. CBC: You had to move during high school? Mark: Yes. CBC: Wow, that must have been tough! Mark: Yeah, it was. By that time, I was accepting that this was the way life was. My interests were beyond high school. I was just waiting to get done and out at there. I spent my first two years of high school, ninth and tenth grade, out at Upper St. Clair, outside of Pittsburgh. Then we moved to the eastern side of the state to Northampton High School and I finished up my last two years there. CBC: For many comics fans, and I note with many comics professionals, they all experi-

Illustrations © Mark Schultz. Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc.

enced a period of time when they were isolated with comics. For instance, I was talking to Dick Giordano and he had a childhood ailment (scarlet fever or German measles) and he had a period of time when it was just him and comics. For me, my brother and I lived with our mom in Europe for a year and an intense relationship with comics started for us both. I’ve just noticed this phenomenon happening with dozens of different artists. Mark: That’s interesting. As far as an isolating illness and comics, I didn’t have an extended one but, like I said, I did have that hallucinogenic thing with Joe Kubert’s Hawkman in the hospital. CBC: I think it’s just having an intimate moment, really. Sometimes it takes a long period of time to “suddenly” fall in love! Mark: You’re right. It was spread out over time. I had many periods where we were moving and readjusting to a new locale and I hadn’t made friends yet, so I’d be very immersed in what I had, which was comics and books! CBC: It’s these little things in life that make us “not normal”! [laughs] Mark: Absolutely! They do add up to that type of person who chooses this as a career and a lifestyle. CBC: There’s this enormous conformity that goes on and creative types need something to get us knocked off course so that we can start going our own way. Mark: I also think that people who go into this type of creative work, we like alone time. We choose to have more alone time than most people do. CBC: Exactly. We get gratification from our own imaginations! Talking about imagination: I don’t know if I can precisely frame the question because there’s nothing cornier than asking, “Where do you get your ideas?” but allow me to ask, “Where do you get your ideas?” [laughter] Mark: A lot of places. One thing I’m interested in is the nature of creativity in whatever field you’re in. Basically, how

you come up with a different take on things. I mean, there’s only so many ideas in the world, but how do you come up with something that takes things in a new direction? I have interests in a variety of different subjects and I draw from and then something that comes from my personal point of view, that, you know, takes it out of the realm of what’s been done before. I don’t know. It’s just pulling from a lot of different places. CBC: What’s at the core of this? Did you crave an audience? Did you have some need to prove yourself? Mark: I grew up loving comics and story in general,

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Above: Mark’s wraparound cover art for Dark Horse’s Colossal Conan hardcover [2013], an omnibus collection. This gorgeous brush-&-ink illustration features the barbarian and Bêlit, the Queen of the Black Coast, as well as some nefarious critters. Below: Conan illustration by Mark featured in his Various Drawings Vol. 2 [’06].

whether it’s story in literature or comics or movies. But by the time I got to college, I slid into the fine arts program and became more interested in technique. My images were never totally devoid of story, but story wasn’t as important to me. It took me years after I graduated to finally figure out that what I was really interested in was story. That is the thing that motivates me. I like story and I like the idea of telling stories. Not to say that I necessarily think I do a good job of it, but that’s the driving thing. I like the fact that stories can potentially reach a very broad readership, or audience, as opposed to doing, for instance, paintings, as I had been doing, to try to place in a gallery type situation. Even if you’re very successful doing that — which I wasn’t — you’re reaching a very limited viewer-ship, you know? There’s a limited number of people that are ever going to see gallery work and respond to it. But stories — getting your stories out through the medium of comics, that’s a venue with much broader, much more democratic visibility. I’m not sure if I was driven by wanting an acceptance or a following. I don’t think in those terms. But maybe I am.

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Death Rattle TM & © Kitchen Sink Press. Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

Above: Mark was delighted to be given the cover for his first Xenozoic Tales entry, featured in Kitchen Sink’s horror comics anthology, Death Rattle #8 [Dec. ’86]. Below: Leslie Carbarga’s logo design for the eclectic Denis Kitchen comic book line.

I don’t know. I think anyone who does this, it’s a lot of work, so you better like the process. What excites me is figuring out the narrative — the choices I make to put the spin I want on things. CBC: Now, did you subscribe to the notion that (to be extremely generalized) there are two basic schools of comic book and comic strip illustration, the Alex Raymond/Hal Foster illustrative style or the arguably minimalist style of a Noel Sickles/Milton Caniff? Mark: Well, I think that’s simplifying things way too far. I guess you could say, within adventure storytelling, that’s a good place to start, to break things down that way, because that was the origin of adventure storytelling in comics. I’m sure some would argue, but I think it all starts with Roy Crane starting to push strips into the adventure realm, back when comics were all humor-oriented. He had that semi-bigfoot style for doing characters, but his backgrounds were more in a realist tradition. You see his Captain Easy evolving more and more toward adventure. What followed him was that Noel Sickles/Milton Caniff school. But Hal Foster essentially defined straight-on adventure with his Tarzan strip, and, after that, with Prince Valiant. Then Alex Raymond came along and developed his very romanticist Flash Gordon, and influenced generations of adventure and super-hero artists. By the way, the terms I’m using, like “realist,” are really squishy [laughs] because we don’t have our own stylistic jargon in comics yet — we borrow from other arts. But I see where you’re coming from on your question. It’s Foster’s and Raymond’s more naturalistic approach, as opposed to Sickles’ and Caniff’s more minimalist look. But I don’t think it’s all that clear-cut anymore. CBC: Let’s talk about your relationship with Kitchen Sink Press. Mark: In my spare time, back in 1986, I put together a six- or eight-page Xenozoic Tales proposal and I mailed it around to about seven different publishers. At the time, the ones I thought which might be the most interested and one was Kitchen Sink. I got a letter back from [KSP editor] Dave Schreiner, and it said they were interested in including a story in Death Rattle to run it up the flagpole and see how it did. So they had me tailor a story that fit into a horror/science fiction anthology. And that was pretty much it. It’s not a real exciting story, Jon. Denis wrote to me and — though I was familiar with KSP anyway — he pretty much laid out, “This is how we go about our business: It’s your property.” And that’s why ever since we have had such a long relationship. There’s a mutual respect. He comes from that tradition and respects the rights of the individual. And I respect what a publisher has to go through to have a sellable product. So we’re on the same page with that. CBC: Kitchen Sink? Mark: Because I loved their product. In fact, I had an inkling that if anyone would be interested in Xenozoic, it would be Kitchen Sink. What I was picking up at the time that most impressed me was, of course, their reprints of The Spirit. The Spirit and Harvey Kurtzman is where I went to learn how to do comics — panel to panel —storytelling. So I was studying those Spirit reprints. And I was picking up Death Rattle, which was in part influenced heavily by EC, a big influence on my work, as well. So I just had an inkling that there was mutual ground there and if anyone was going to be interested in my Xenozoic Tales, it would be KSP. And it turned out to be right. It was KSP’s philosophy that as the creator, you can pretty much do with it what you want as long as it sold well enough to be viable. CBC: Was having Schreiner as your editor a plus? Mark: I consider myself extremely lucky that I hit the ground with an editor who was a real editor, and sympathetic, someone who knew the business of editing. Dave Schreiner was a old-fashioned, out-of-journalism editor, and not just someone whose job was keeping the trains running

Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz. Photo © Denis Kitchen.

on time. No ego issues. He guided me through the process and helped me develop my sense of storytelling. He helped me figure out what needs to be left out of the dialogue and exposition. Creatively as well as technically (as a line-byline editor), Dave was great. I could have said to Dave, “I’m not interested in your input. Just take what I give you and print it.” But I’ve always believed that a strong editorial voice is important — it helps me, anyway. I need someone to bounce ideas off of; I need someone to help guide me when I’m not sure which direction I want to take. And Dave was all that. There were times when Dave would say, “Mark, you’re trying to convey this information, but I don’t think you need all this text; you can just show it.” Dave was very much conscious about reducing and keeping out extraneous material, and just getting to the nub of things. It was never an authoritarian thing; it was always ‘consider this.’ I think ninety percent of the time I saw his point and agreed with him. CBC: When did you first meet the KSP guys in person? Mark: At the time I lived in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and they were out in Princeton, Wisconsin. I first visited probably in 1989. My wife and I went to one of the Chicago shows, which at the time were being held at the Ramada Inn near the airport. Kitchen Sink had a big setup out there. It was kind of like their big, local show. And, after the show, we drove back with them to Princeton and stayed there a few days. I guess I visited Princeton two or three times before they moved East. But the first time I met Denis — he, Dave Schreiner, and Pete Poplaski — came out East for an exhibition of Will Eisner’s work, at the Museum of Cartoon Art, in Rye Brook, New York, in 1988. I met them there. Denis has always been this soft-spoken guy, very knowledgeable, very easy to talk to, and easy to like. CBC: So you were impressed with Denis? Mark: Absolutely. I was somewhat aware of his history. I knew underground comix to a certain extent. My particular interest (not surprisingly, I guess) was more toward the science fiction, horror, and historical end of comix. I was a big fan of guys like Jack Jaxon, Dave Sheridan, Greg Irons, Rand Holmes, and the guys who were contributing to Slow Death and the earlier incarnation of Death Rattle. I loved, of course, the early work of Richard Corben — Gore, as he was going by back in those days. I had picked up the trade paperback of A History of Underground Comics, by Mark J. Estren, with the big Rand Holmes wraparound cover, and that kind of filled in gaps. And I was also aware of humorists Denis and Jay Lynch — and I was always a big fan of Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Warthog. Then, in the early ’80s, I became aware that Kitchen Sink had survived the ‘70s — Denis had morphed it past comix. CBC: What do you think of Denis as a cartoonist? Mark: Look at what Denis is still doing today— it’s richer than ever. He’s always getting sharper. I appreciate his work and his view on the world so much more than I did when I was first discovering this stuff back in the ’70s. And now he’s getting recognition from the Scott Elder exhibition. Denis’ work has cultural significance, and I think people are starting to realize that. An interesting aspect of the man is that Denis is the most capitalistic socialist hippie you’re ever likely to meet. You can’t put him in a box. He comes out of socialist tradition, but obviously he’s a very adept businessman and that’s one of the things that’s led to our longstanding relationship. I admire his ability to cross over borders, and produce great work. I don’t think he’s beholden to preconceptions. He identifies with certain things, I know, but he’s flexible and is very adept at figuring out what he needs to do to produce great work. I do think his business approach was informed by Will

Eisner. I mean, that’s what he tells me and that seems about right. At the start, I didn’t have any expectations. It was just “do the job, send it into Kitchen Sink, and let them run with it.” I was impressed and a little surprised that they gave me the cover for that issue, Death Rattle #8, and the response was positive enough that Denis came back and asked me if I would be interested in doing Xenozoic Tales as a bi-monthly book. And that turnaround happened pretty quickly, especially when I think how long it takes me to do anything now! I believe that issue of Death Rattle was on the stands in November 1986, and then we had the first issue of Xenozoic Tales on the stands by February 1987. For me to produce those 28 or 30 pages of art for that first issue was just backbreaking. I was ready to quit many times and I thought, “I’m just not cut out for this.” For the second issue, we had Steve Stiles ink over my pencils — and he did such a great job — but I just wasn’t comfortable having someone else ink my work. And after two issues trying to stick with a bi-monthly schedule, Denis said, “Just do the best you can and we won’t announce it until it’s ready to

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Above: Page of Mark’s first story in his Xenozoic saga, Death Rattle #8 [Dec. ’86]. Inset left: Button collector Denis Kitchen (pictured below in 1980) produced many of his own over the decades, including this one promoting Xenozoic for a 1990 comics distributor conference.

Mark Schultz Photo Album

This page: Clockwise from top left, Dave Stevens, Will Eisner, and Mark Schultz; Ray Harryhausen, Al Williamson, Mark Schultz, and Denis Kitchen; Mark Schultz, Dave Schreiner, and Denis Kitchen; Denise Prowell’s photo of Joe Dragunas and Mark Schultz; Gary Gianni, Tom Roberts, Mark Schultz, Al Williamson, and Tom Gianni; John Fleske’s photo of Mark Schultz. Directly above is Denise Prowell and Mark Schultz on their wedding day.

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The Simpsons TM & © 20th Century Fox, Inc. Photo © Jim Keefe.

go,” so we quickly moved away from the idea of Xenozoic as a bi-monthly (which, to me, is pretty laughable now that I think back on it). But I had no idea of what I could do and on what kind of schedule, but because KSP is what it is, there was that leeway to leave it up to the creator to determine how he was going to handle a book. Denis would have liked if it was once every two months, and might have been a better selling book, but that wasn’t going to happen and he rolled with what I was able to deliver, and he did a good job of marketing it and made the best of that situation. And it did continue to sell well enough to make it worth doing on an increasingly erratic schedule. My wife, Denise, and I were keeping our fingers crossed that this would pay off. Was I going to be able to make a living, turning out work as slowly as I do? Denis told me to hang on until we had enough material to put together a collection. And that first collection was indeed the turning point. CBC: What was your first comic books convention? Mark: I think the first one I did was just a local show in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I was living at the time. CBC: About how old were you? Mark: [Laughs] It wasn’t until I was started as a professional in comics, so I was 31 or 32. Here’s the thing: I never took part in comics fandom at all, whether going to cons or being part of letter-writing or communicating with other fans on that level. I was pretty isolated when I started in the business. But the first con I attended was local, and Al Williamson, who I’d met by then, came down and we did the show together. CBC: That’s what I was leading up to! I assumed that you had first met Al at a convention. Where did you meet him? Mark: I had done that first issue of Xenozoic Tales. Denis knew Al. They had worked together on putting together Will Eisner’s Hawks of the Seas collection — Al had the proofs for that. So they had a relationship already (and it probably even predated that). Denis showed Al the first issue of Xenozoic and told Al that I was in Pennsylvania, where Al also lived. Al said, “Well, give him my number and we can get in touch with each other.” But I was so intimidated by this. I was so embarrassed by my work. I wanted to improve a bit before I got together with him. I was working on my third issue when I get a call out of the blue and it was Al. He says, “Why the hell haven’t you called me?” [laughs] And that was Al! Not only did I learn a lot about producing comics from Al, but I also learned a lot about how to behave at conventions from someone who was used to dealing with people who are interested in your work, want a signature, and want to talk with you. Al was a great role model for how you handle that graciously but keep things moving at the same time. CBC: I distinctly recall, as an adult, meeting Al for the first time at a convention and I was impressed with the way that he was… sorta holding court, holding his own, and having the upper hand. Mark: “Holding court” is a good description for what Al would do at a convention. He was very different when you were with him, just hanging around the studio. He “turned on” when he was at conventions. He became “Al Williamson” and he did hold court and he did like to have people around him and he did know how to become that big personality. CBC: A strikingly charismatic and good-looking guy, right? Mark: Absolutely, CBC: Your first response is interesting. Here is somebody in the same “school” as you, as far as adventure storytelling, and somebody you held in high esteem, and you were given the opportunity to contact him and yet you hesitated. Were you too shy? Mark: Yep. CBC: Was there any conflict in your mind about, “I could learn a lot from this guy?”

Mark: I knew, intellectually, my brain was telling me that, but I was dealing with that feeling of inadequacy. Geez, this was a guy who I grew up admiring his work. You know, he’s one of the pantheon that you wanted to be part of, but I just didn’t feel at all in that ballpark. I guess I didn’t want to go through the embarrassment of having him see this stuff and have to hear, “Well, listen, kid, this is crap. Don’t waste my time.” Which, of course, he never would have said. The fact is, when he called me, he said, “You’ve gotta come up to the studio,” and within a couple weeks I was up there. Al was an incredible sweetheart and that was the first time I actually got to sit down and look at original comics artwork outside of my own stuff. I got to study his original comic artwork, the actual pages, and see how he laid the ink down. I also got a chance to see other cartoonist’s work, because Al had an incredible collection of original art by

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Above: Jim Keefe’s 1998 pic of Al Williamson in his studio. “He’s inking the comics adaptation of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” Jim shared. “He couldn’t show me much of that particular issue as he was under contract to keep it under wraps as the movie hadn’t been released yet. He made up for it by the wealth of artwork he showed me at his studio and at his home later that day.” Below: Panel from the Al Williamson/Mark Schultz EC Comics pastiche in Treehouse of Horror #11 [Oct. 2005].

Above: Two pages from Steve Stile’s art job in the back-up story in Xenozoic Tales #10 [Apr. ’90]. Scripted by Mark Schultz, who enlisted Steve to help fulfill the obligation to deliver a complete issue to Kitchen Sink. Below: Triptych of Xenozoic Tales covers by Mark. From left, #2 [Apr. ’87], #3 [June ’87], and #5 [Feb. ’88].

CBC: This was roughly the mid-’80s or later ’80s? Mark: This would’ve been ’87, my first year doing Xenozoic. I guess we first visited in April. CBC: Did you become good friends with him? Did you see him with frequency? Mark: We did become very good friends. He was a very gracious person and very generous with his time and interests. In fact, Denise and I wound up moving a few years later (to the area I’m in now), significantly closer to Al, so we got together frequently, up to his death in 2010. CBC: I remember interviewing him in the late ’90s and he was beginning to struggle. Did you experience that, too? Mark: Well, I was in… I guess you’d call it almost a privileged position, to witness the deterioration of his health, of his skills, from the onset until the end. It was very interesting to see which aspects of his skill went first and what remained. And what was interesting to me, most of all, even though you could see his rendering skills, his skills with human anatomy… You know, Al was known for elegance and the skillfulness in which he did figures. He did very elegant figures and compositions. You could see those aspects of his work kind of deteriorating — his ability

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Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

people like Raymond and Foster and on and on. I saw how they handled their materials, the way they actually penciled and inked their panels. That was a revelation and that was the start of me really figuring out how to draw comics. Up to that point, I was just looking at reproductions. And mostly, back in the ‘80s, they were bad reproductions. I had been trying to figure out how to draw like Wally Wood, and just seeing the spectrum of work that Al had, his own work as well as other people’s, just opened up my eyes and broadened my understanding of what I should be doing, to learn how to render comics.

Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

to do proportions correctly, that really beautiful ink line that he had… But the thing that remained until the end, was his ability to tell a story clearly. The clarity of his panel-to-panel storytelling remained strong, which I found very interesting. When you’re teaching young people who are interested in comics, the last thing to fall in place is that ability to clearly tell the story from panel to panel. Almost always. They’re very interested in single images, designing costumes, working out anatomy and the composition within a single image. But to tell a story, to get that visual information right, and working with the text of the story, that’s the last thing to fall into place. But that remained with Al up until he couldn’t draw at all anymore. CBC: Al was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease? Mark: I hesitate to say that, but, yes, apparently. Alzheimer’s, in my understanding, cannot be diagnosed without an autopsy. It was a dementia, a loss of mental ability. So it probably was Alzheimer’s, yeah, but I’m not saying that with certainty. CBC: The loss of facility must have been tragic for him. He was a real sociable guy, right? Mark: Yeah. Of course, the sad thing is… Cori was nice enough to let me and his good friend Steve Kammer, someone that Al had been close to for a long time, she let us continue to be part of that circle that would get to see Al. Cori took care of Al at home, up to the end. She’s just an amazing person. It was sad, because you could see that Al knew something wasn’t right and it was very frustrating to him. It created a lot of anxiety in him. His mind would come in and out of focus, too. You would spend time talking to him and at first he would be a total blank slate. He just didn’t get what you were talking about. You’d be trying to bring up things from the past, ask him questions about his career, other artists, etc., whatever, and there wouldn’t be anything there at first, but then, after a while, it was like the stimulation of being asked questions started to bring things back. Then he might just stun you. He’d pop into focus and it was, like, “Man! He pulled that very precise recollection right out of thin air!” It was always interesting, seeing how the disease progressed and how it affected Al. CBC: Did you look at him as a father figure or as a brother? Mark: A mentor, and beyond anything else, a friend. But he was a mentor. He was someone who’d been there, done that, and he’d done it right, both in the way he handled his career and the way he handled, again, the whole… whatever notoriety there is with being a cartoonist. You know, how he handled people at conventions and how, again, he was very gracious with people. He had a lot of fanboys who wanted to spend time with him and they wanted to come see him at his house as well as at conventions and he handled that all very well. CBC: He was a part of a crew called the Fleagle Boys, right? Mark: The Fleagles! Harvey Kurtzman gave ’em that name. There was an actual criminal gang called the Fleagle Boys, in the late 1920s, around the Depression. Harvey saw Al, Frazetta, Krenkel, Angelo Torres, and Nick Meglin, skulking about together, and he slapped them with that nutty name. It’s become a myth that these guys all hung together through the ‘50s. In actuality, talking with both Al and Frank Frazetta, they were a group for a very limited time, maybe a few months, before they fractured in their own directions more or less. But it’s become comics culture mythology. CBC: Apocryphal, I think they call it. I experienced it hanging out with Al Williamson. He was fun to hang out with. He was like a big brother. He had this vibe of immediately disarming you and yet still holding you at arm’s length in this funny, fun wisecracking judgment. He would look at my magazine, which had a flip cover at the time, and he would go, “Ehh, I don’t know if I like this.” [laughter] I’d be like, “Oh, my gosh! Al Williamson doesn’t like my flip covers!” But he was just was so disarming once he accepted you as not a taker! Didn’t put on airs. He was one of the greatest

comic artists of all time and yet he was also a regular guy. Mark: That was the thing, he did not put on airs. It was never like Al up there and you down here. If he liked you and you were simpatico, he treated you like a regular joe… and Al loved it when you appreciated the stuff he loved.… guys like Alex Raymond and classic movie serials. But, what would anger him… You know, he was a collector, he was one of these people who started collecting original comic art, especially comic strip art, before that was popular, before there was a broader appreciation for the work. But when it became more of a commodity for certain people, it would enrage him to do a deal with someone who he thought appreciated the art as much as he did, and then to learn that they were just flipping it, y’know? He realized at some point that not everyone collected it for love. A lot of people collected because it was a game of acquiring and flipping — for profit or for one-up-manship. And that annoyed the hell out of Al because, to him, if you were lucky enough to acquire the stuff, you held it. There was an emotional attachment. CBC: In the beginning, you were isolated in your studio. Correct me if I’m wrong but you didn’t really have peers to

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This page: Mark Schultz’s cover (with Peter Poplaski coloring) for the first issue of Xenozoic Tales [Feb. ’87]. This debut of the series included three episodes of the adventures of handsome and rugged Jack “Cadillac” Tenrec and beautiful and resourceful Hannah Dundee. One can view Xenozoic as an evolving love story between the two protagonists, albeit a relationship set against the post-apocalyptic world of the 26th century, an age populated by dinosaurs and 1950s luxury automobiles (cars retrofitted to be fueled by dinosaur dung). The creator is current working on an extended graphic novel, a book that will likely appear in the next few years. 53

Above: Pair of superb Xenozoic Tales covers by Mark Schultz, who was quickly attaining mastery of facility and design as the series progressed. At left is #4 [Nov. ’87] and, at right, #6 [May ’88]. By 1989, Kitchen Sink collected the first four issues as Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, a compilation giving the storyline a more commercial name for licensing.

CBC: What were your prospects? Mark: Good question. I was working as a full-time security guard at the college campus and that was my fallback—what I did to pay the bills. Denise and I got married in 1980. She worked as a retailer at a jewelry store. I was picking up jobs by that time doing illustration for local publishers and advertising concerns when they needed something drawn in a more cartoony style. I was also good at doing diagram things, and freelanced for a publisher that did how-to books about gardening, kitchen remodeling, that type of stuff. I was doing mechanical, almost schematic drawings like you see in airline survival pamphlets. [laughs] “How to open the exit, in case of emergency…” Simplistic, “how to” stuff. That was in addition to my job working security. I had friends who already had careers illustrating paperback covers, but man, I just couldn’t get interested in going in that direction. It just wasn’t something that interested me enough to really put myself out there. It wasn’t until I came to the realization that what I really wanted to do was tell stories, and I gave up the idea of becoming someone who did paintings for gallery display, that I started moving away from depending on my local market for work. Turning 30 was like a kick in the butt that made me finally decide, “I have to do this now. If I wait any longer, I’m going to be too old.” CBC: Where did you meet Denise? Mark: At Kutztown University, our alma mater. She was a fine arts student as well, a couple of years behind me. CBC: Were you still shy in college? Did you date at all? Mark: Once I got to college, I started dating. I’d had one serious relationship before Denise. For several months, Denise and I were hanging out as friends and she was involved with someone else and I was seeing someone #15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

bounce off of. Mark: Right, not in comics. CBC: And then you’re launched into this tried and true tribe of Williamson and his clique. Mark: Even before that, though. Going in, I was totally isolated from the business, when I put together my comics submission over something like a six-month period and that response from Kitchen Sink Press, from Dave Schreiner… that is what changed my life and that group of people at Kitchen Sink — Denis, Dave… learning about design from Pete Poplaski and Ray Fehrenbach — those were the guys who really were my foundation and started me on the road to understanding what this was all about. If I’d gone done another road with another publisher… I just can’t imagine. KSP and I were very simpatico. It just worked out very well on that level. I don’t know if I would have stayed with comics if, for instance, if I had ended up at any publisher that didn’t have the standards and the foundation that Denis and Kitchen Sink had. CBC: It was really a rather unusual company wasn’t it? It was underground and yet alternative, and there were even some points that he wanted to push into the mainstream. Mark: Right. One of the things that really attracted me about Kitchen Sink is that not only did Denis — and Denis being the mainstay of KSP, of course — have an aesthetic vision, he also has good business sense. He was able to adapt the company and survive when the whole market for underground comix fell apart. He was able to keep thongs afloat and to move in other directions. CBC: Let’s talk about that crisis of turning 30. What were you doing? When did you graduate college? Mark: I graduated college in ’77.

else but eventually… [laughs] It was just one of those deals. When we were both free it just worked out. And we’ve been together ever since. CBC: That’s quite some time, right? That’s quite an accomplishment. Mark: We were married in 1980, so we’ve passed our 36th anniversary. CBC: To what do you account the longevity? You’re a freelancer who works at home, right? Mark: Correct. CBC: And does she work out of the house? Mark: Not all the time, but for the last few years, we’ve been both working in the house and let me tell you, that is not a smart decision! [laughs] It does put stress on a relationship to be around each other so much. So we’re looking at options now to get me studio space outside of the home, just so we have some room between us. CBC: What does she do? Mark: For years she did children’s book illustrations for educational publishers. Then she did volunteer work, facilitating land use planning. More recently, she started doing children’s book illustration again. CBC: You two have children? Mark: We didn’t have our own biological children. We do have a daughter, Olena, who came over as a foreign exchange student from Ukraine. She came over when she was 15 years old, stayed, and is our de facto daughter. And, I’m happy to say, became a U.S. citizen this past October. CBC: Congratulations! You mentioned a friend who visited with Al Williamson. Steve… Mark: Kammer. He’s local. Al and Cori met Steve… I think they were doing Lamaze classes when Cori was pregnant with Victor, Al’s youngest son. Steve and his wife were in the same class. This was, I guess, back in the late ’70s or early ’80s. Anyway, they became friends. Steve collects Disneyania as well as comic art so there were those overlapping interests. When I started to get to know Al I met Steve, too. Steve was a great help to Cori when Al’s health deteriorated. He’s a great guy, one of my closest friends. CBC: Do you draw from life at all? Mark: Not as much as I should. It’s one of my failings. I keep telling myself I need to get back into it. At this point in my life, I would benefit a great deal from drawing the live human figure again extensively, just to help my skills evolve CBC: Do you have pets? Mark: We have cats — actually, just one right now. She’s usually in the studio, staring at me, telling me I should draw her. CBC: [Laughs] I was wondering whether, with your art directly, you did any drawing from the natural world? Mark: I used to! Again, I’m embarrassed to say that as producing art for publication had become a business and a deadline situation, I just don’t make the time that I used to, to draw from life. I just need to make the time to do it. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I do photo shoots for figure reference, especially now, for this new Xenozoic story. My last Xenozoic story was finished in ’96. I did not have the option of using the Internet at that point. I don’t even know how much of it existed then, but I certainly didn’t have access to it. Now I’m working on this new story and I don’t need all the reference materials I’ve accumulated from years past. I just go on Google Images and there’s a million more options beyond anything I have in my library. It’s an incredible resource, a big time-saver. CBC: Was the crisis of turning 30 what you needed to get into comics? What was the thinking there? Why comics? Mark: In general because I like to have control over all aspects of what I’m doing. Comics allow you that option. You can (if you choose) do all aspects of a comic, publish it, and get it out there all relatively inexpensively. Even if you self-publish. As opposed to other forms of storytelling I was interested in, like, say, filmmaking, which is immensely more expensive. And you can’t make films on your lonesome —

you have to collaborate. It took me a while to figure that out, but what I wanted to do was tell stories visually — I didn’t feel confident at that I could tell a story with words only. I knew that I could tell a story visually — I just had to figure out what medium made the most sense for me. I did look into going to film school, but it seemed overwhelming both financially and, like I say, the whole collaborative nature of that medium, whereas comics is a medium you can control yourself, if you choose. CBC: Did you continue to buy comics through college? Mark: Yes, but not as much as I had. The ’70s were, for me, a really dry period. There wasn’t a lot happening that really interested me (and that could have just been my circumstances, too). By that point, the cartoonists I’d grown up loving — guys like Kirby, Ditko, and Kubert — weren’t doing work at that point that excited me so much. I wasn’t following the undergrounds closely anymore. But the DC and Marvel stuff that I was picking up sporadically… I’d never been a big super-hero fan. The movement in the ’70s to horror books didn’t in general excite me, either. So I’d fallen away, although I never dismissed comics entirely. It wasn’t until I became aware in the early ’80s of the whole independent movement and the new distribution system, comics shops opening up, all the new companies… that’s what reinvigorated my interest in comics. CBC: What excited you? Did you derive any inspiration

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from what was going on? With the alternative comics, the non-mainstream, non-superhero comics? Mark: Yes, because they were fresh. I was seeing new directions. On my first visit to a comic store, I saw The Rocketeer, Love and Rockets, what Eclipse was doing. I really enjoyed the Eclipse anthology magazine. I had always liked anthologies and just loved the fact that there were these books that showed you a variety of different stories. The mainstream publishers weren’t doing that. I rediscovered Kitchen Sink and The Spirit and Death Rattle. And Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! — stuff that was so different from what was coming out of the mainstream. The Hernandez brothers and Love and Rockets doing magic realism… whoa! CBC: Once you start a project, are you tenacious about it or can you often put stuff aside and procrastinate? Mark: I’m pretty tenacious. I’m one of those people who, temperamentally, I play the long game [laughs]. It takes me forever to figure out what I want to do and even longer to execute it, but once I’ve got my project in place, I’ll just sit there and keep at it. I just keep cranking away at it. CBC: Can you remember the moment of clarity that you had? “Thirty’s bearing down on me. I have to do something.”

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Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz. Weird Science-Fantasy TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.

Previous page: Xenozoic Tales #14 [Oct. ’96] page and vignette of John Wayne from Hatari! [1961]. Above: XT #13 [Dec. ’94] cover. Below: Possible inspiration for the above, Frank Frazetta’s Weird Science-Fantasy #29 [May–June ’55] cover.

Can you remember that moment? Mark: Well, it wasn’t so much a moment as it was an accumulation of anxiety as 30 was coming closer, and then I suddenly was 30. But I’d been developing story ideas over time. I’d sit and do these boring little illustration projects throughout the first half of the ’80s and I’d also be thinking in terms of, well, if I had my own comic book… and, at that time, this was just a total fantasy for me. Like I said, I had zero connection with the world of comics fandom, or knowledge about the production of comics. But I’d sit there and I’d fantasize, “Well if I had my own book, what would it be?” And that evolved over the years into something pretty close to what Xenozoic Tales became. So that was just an evolution over time. I knew it had to be something that I could stick with over time, that I wouldn’t lose interest in. But the kick in the pants was turning 30. That made me sit down and say, “Well. I’ve got to suck it up and give this a try.” CBC: Where did the idea come from? Mark: It’s just stuff that interests me. The adventure storytelling guys, like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, and films like King Kong, the movies of director Howard Hawks. When I was a kid, my mom took me to see Hatari! Does that ring a bell at all with you? CBC: Isn’t that John Wayne? Mark: Yes, John Wayne, exactly. I was seven years old and here’s John Wayne leading hunters in Africa, capturing animals for zoos. There are these incredibly exciting scenes of them riding these Land Rovers with John Wayne actually sitting on the fender of this thing in a customized seat, made for the specific job that he was doing: chasing and capturing rhinos. Big inspiration there. There’s all these other little elements from my life that got mixed together and formed Xenozoic. And what made the concept something that I knew would keep me interested was infusing it with the environmental angle. My interest in how we as a species relate to our environment, to the natural world we’re a part of — and how do we maintain a balance between what’s in our best interest and what’s the big-picture best interest? Injecting that element into the story is what made everything fall into place for me. CBC: Do you have emotional investment in the current state of our environment today? Mark: Of course. I believe it is the number one concern that we should all have — if we don’t have a healthy planet, we’re all screwed. A lot of folks don’t want to deal with the reality of human-advanced climate change, but the truth is that we’re going to see changes. Maybe not so much you and I, but our children. Their world is going to be very different. Even if we stopped carbon emissions completely today (which isn’t going to happen), the data is there, no matter what deniers might claim otherwise. The actual testable, proven research is there and we are not heading in a good direction. So, yes, it is the paramount problem that we are facing right now. CBC: Have you been driven to activism at all? Mark: Not as much as I should, beyond donating to causes I believe in, and trying, by engaging readers through my stories, to raise some consciousness. I believe if you can entertain people, but also drop some information in there… You don’t want to get preachy about it, but you try to make an impression, to instill a point of view. CBC: Did you have a eureka moment of saying, “Oh, my gosh! Cadillacs and dinosaurs!” The juxtaposition of “two great things that taste great together,” so to speak. Did you have that? Mark: I must have. I have to say, it is a pretty cool idea and it’s weathered well. People do respond to it. But I couldn’t tell you specifically, beyond what I mentioned earlier about seeing Hatari! as a kid. I love the look of the cars of the early ’50s, that beautiful streamlined look, and maybe that came from watching the science fiction movies of the ’50s that were all over TV back then. I was seeing films like It Came From Outer Space, which had these beautiful ’50s cars

Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

shooting through the Mojave desert, past the Joshua trees. I guess I combined those images with films and comics featuring dinosaurs. I don’t know when it happened, but somehow those things came together and, visually, that was the gotcha moment for me. “Oh, yeah! This is something I can work with.” When I infused the theme — our relationship with the environment — that solidified the whole thing for me. CBC: Did you see it early on as, “This is something that has legs? That I can expand on?” Mark: I didn’t have a clue! Again, coming totally outside the industry and fandom, I had no idea if anyone other than myself would be interested in it. It was a complete shot in the dark. CBC: So this idea gestated in your head for how long? Were you doing thumbnails? Mark: I was doing little sketches of the characters, trying to refine their looks, and occasionally a little bit of thumbnailing a page or two of a story. This was over four or five years. I was just daydreaming about this stuff. CBC: What was your schedule? You were a security guard during the day or night? Mark: My work schedule jumped around, but, by that point in the ’80s, I think I was working a day schedule. But it was mostly when I was sitting at the drawing table, working an exploded view of a microwave oven or something like that [laughs] — brainless, uninspiring work — that I’d be developing my comics story ideas. CBC: Was it good money? Mark: No. It was “local” money. It was okay, but it wasn’t great. What I will say is that it taught me how to sit down and draw on a deadline, be professional and get the specs right. CBC: How many publishers did you intend to pitch? Mark: I think it was seven. I did an eight-page Xenozoic story that eventually morphed and was published as “Mammoth Pitfall,” in the second issue of Xenozoic Tales. But the initial pitch was a six- or eight-page story that introduced the characters and, over a four- to sixmonth period, I drew this up when I had spare time. I made photocopies of my pencils as well as the finished piece and I mailed it around, as I said, to seven different publishers, including Marvel, DC, and Kitchen Sink. This was back when you could mail in a submission and actually get a response. I think I got responses from every company except one. DC sent me a form letter signed by Dick Giordano saying something like, “Thanks. We’ll contact you if and COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

when we’re interested.” Marvel gave me an inking assignment—my first job in the business. It was inking a back-up story in Savage Sword of Conan. And, as I said before, I got an immediate, positive response from Kitchen Sink. Today, when students ask me, “How’d you get in the business?” [laughs] I say, “Well, I’ll tell you, but it has no relevance to what you have to do these days to get started.” It was a totally different world then. CBC: Was the idea for it to say, “This is what I can do,” or, “I want to sell this specific story?” Mark: “This is what I can do.” I had in the back of my mind that I would do best at this type of adventure story, and, of course, you’re always hoping that someone is going to want your idea. But in my cover letter I was very clear to say, “I’m showing you what I can do, but I’d be happy to take on whatever work you can offer me.” CBC: Did you know that comic book art was done one-and-a-half times up? Mark: Yes. I’d picked up a couple of books about producing comics and I understood that. But I did most of my Xenozoic stories at twice-up, the pre-1967 dimensions, just because it’s easier for me. I’ve tried it both ways and I just find twice-up easier. These days, of course, it doesn’t matter at what size you want to work. CBC: You said you inked a story for Marvel? Mark: That was my first work, a back-up story in Savage Sword, #132 [Jan. ’87]. It was a Kull story, “The Sea King,” written by Chuck Dixon, with me inking over Val Semeiks’ pencils. That was panic time for me. Man! I had to produce on a strict deadline. It was interesting, but nerve-racking. I did that one job for Marvel back then and that was it. I didn’t have any other work with Marvel until Denis Kitchen and [Marvel publisher] Tom DeFalco reached an agreement to reprint my first six issues of Xenozoic Tales as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, for Marvel’s Epic imprint. We colored the stories and it appeared under the Epic banner. CBC: Was it a good deal? Mark: I think so. Tom DeFalco really went to bat for us. He was great. I don’t want to misspeak because I don’t remember the details, but Marvel wanted a lot more control over… I’m not sure if it was just financial or if it was actual control over the content. Denis sat down with Tom, and Inset: Pair of Xenozoic Tales #13 [Dec. ’94] pages, boasting evocative and ever-improving facility by the young artist. With his franchise’s success, Mark was able to focus on that improvement. 57

Above: Xenozoic Tales was rebranded Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and adapted as a Saturday morning TV cartoon show, lasting for 13 episodes in 1993–94. Marvel’ Comics’ creator-owned Epic Comics line reprinted XT #1–6 (only now in color) between ’90–’91 under the new name. Below: Splash page from XT #10 [Apr. ’90].

at all? Mark: It was real difficult at the onset. They thought my Xenozoic submission had potential, but they wanted something that they could fit into the more horror/science fiction-oriented Death Rattle anthology. So I went to work on a new story, and I had time to work on that and it went pretty well. I can’t remember the amount of time I had, but it was not a tight deadline at all. That Death Rattle story was successful and led to Denis offering me the regular series. Of course, I thought that this was an ideal situation and that I could get it out on a bi-monthly basis, every two months. As I said, that turned out to be totally unrealistic for my abilities. I busted my ass to get that first one done on schedule and it just about killed me. I was working 16 hours a day or more. I’d go to bed, grab five hours sleep, get up, and continue working on it. I was miserable. I was convinced by the time I finally finished that up that I wasn’t cut out for comics. But, you know, Denis realized that this was not working out and he said, “Let’s forget the idea of bi-monthly. That’s obviously not what you can do. We just won’t announce a new issue until you have it in the can.” That took a lot of pressure off me. That expectation that I should get it out on a fixed periodical basis was removed and that made it a lot more fun for me and a lot easier for me to really enjoy myself and get better at it. [laughs] Did I answer your question? I get going on these tangents sometime. CBC: We’re gettin’ there, Mark. What were your expectations and your needs? Let’s be realistic: people have mortgages to meet, they’ve got to buy groceries, and all that. Was it tough in the beginning? What was the direct market like? Mark: Well, it was tough in the beginning. I was lucky to be working with Kitchen Sink — they always paid on time. My deal was basically a percentage of the cover price and number of copies sold. It was a fair deal. I’m trying to remember if I got advances. If there was an advance, it was minimal. It was more a token than anything else. So, essentially, I didn’t get paid until I got the work done. For that first two years, we were living pretty much off what Denise was making working in a jewelry store. What I made on Xenozoic Tales supplemented that. During those first couple of years, I was concerned. Our numbers were pretty good but it wasn’t, in and of itself, enough to make an adequate living. I remember asking Denis, “Where is this going? What do you see coming, because I can’t continue this indefinitely.” And Denis said, “Just hang in there. Soon we’ll have enough material to put out a collection of the stories in book form.” And sure enough, by July ’89, that first collection, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, was published, and, all of a sudden, I’m making new money on work I’ve already completed. Sales were good. I saw that readers were willing to buy my work past the initial comic book appearance — there was an ongoing market for my Xenozoic stuff. That’s proven to be the case. Xenozoic has stayed in print pretty much constantly to this day. Work I did back then in 1987 and ’88 is still helping to pay the bills right now. But it did take a while. Those first two years were pretty scary, just going on faith that there would be a pay-off. CBC: I can imagine Europe responded very well to this. Is that true? Mark: We’ve done alright in Europe. We were reprinted very early on in France. The publisher, Glénat, serialized the stories first in an anthology magazine, and then collected them in albums. I think, at our peak, Xenozoic was translated in six different languages. I still have editions over there in several different countries. I can’t say that the sales were ever phenomenal, but there’s been a core interest in my work in Europe, especially in Spain! [laughs] Spain has been very good to me. CBC: Have you visited? Mark: I’ve been to Spain numerous times for conventions and I’ve had an exhibition of my original art in Majorca. I’ve always felt very much at home there.

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

the Marvel attorney kept saying, “No, they can’t have that,” and Tom would reply, “Let ’em have it.” Tom understood that this was a creator-owned book. It wasn’t something that I was going to let Marvel have any stake in beyond the onceand-done publication. The nature of Marvel (at least at the time) was to acquire. Tom understood it was mine and went to bat for me, and so, yes, Denis and he hammered out a good deal. CBC: You as a writer with other artists: Did that start with the back-up stories? Mark: After the first issue, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do a full issue myself. It wasn’t going to be able to consistently fill a 32-page comic myself, so we determined that I would do the first 20-page story in an issue and I would get someone else to do a back-up story that I’d write. It was a good deal for everyone. Steve Stiles was available and interested. So that worked out really well. He would do the back-up eight-page story, and I learned to write for someone else. Steve is an excellent storyteller. He does not screw up the script. He tells the story very clearly, very compellingly, which is what you want and not everyone can do. CBC: Getting back to this vague, ambiguous, “Where does it all come from?” thing: here you had been working as a cartoonist and writing your own material, and then you’re faced with scripting, a demarcation of creative responsibility, where you’d lose some control. Was that intimidating

Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

CBC: So, just to get a sense of what it’s like to be a freelancer who works at home, has his own property, is it basically every three months or every six months you get a check? How frequent is it? Mark: Well, there is no format, no schedule. It depends on what I have in print at the time. For instance, a couple of years ago, when IDW did the big Artist’s Edition of essentially half of the Xenozoic stories, and Flesk Publications, who is my regular, core publisher, had an omnibus edition of Xenozoic Tales out there, I’m getting checks quarterly from IDW and semi-annually from Flesk. So there would be times when, all of a sudden, there’s a lot of money coming in and then it peters out, and then I start thinking, “Well, what new angle can I come up with?” That’s what I’m doing now, coming up with new material. CBC: What’s the plan? You’re coming up with a new story? Mark: Yes, right now I’m working on a 64page Xenozoic graphic novel, which Flesk will be publishing. Again, it’s a situation where it’ll get done when it gets done, which probably means at least a couple of years down the road. It’s the primary project I have going now but to subsidize it, I’m going to need to supplement my income otherwise. So I’ll be picking up other work on occasion, but I’m concentrating on this project as much as possible. CBC: When did you meet Frank Frazetta? Mark: I only live an hour away from Frazetta, in northeast Pennsylvania. I think the first time I met him was with my friend, the sculptor Clayburn Moore, who was doing business with Frank at COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

the time. Clay would need to see him on occasion, and I’d just come along and hang out. Or I’d take visitors to the museum, and if Frank was having a good day, his wife, Ellie, would invite us to go over and visit him in the studio, after she closed up shop. So I’d go with friends. Over the last 10, 15 years of his life I saw him a handful of times. CBC: What did you guys talk about? Mark: Mostly about Frank and Frank’s art. [Jon laughs] That was what he was interested in talking about. It was an education, though, just the chance to sit there and pour over his originals. I remember, one time I brought him the first volume of my Various Drawings collections. I’d just started working with John Fleskes, so this must have been around 2005–06. Frank saw that it was filled with pencil drawings, so he pulled out his original pencils that were collected in Arcanum, which Verotik had published. We sat on the floor and went through them. And he was very open to my comments. I mean, we’re looking at individual drawings and I would say, “I like this one, but this one’s a little stiff,” and explain why, and he would agree or disagree, but there was no attitude. It was a reciprocal discussion about what was working and what wasn’t working. He said he had set out a goal to do a drawing a day and he stuck to that. No matter what the result was, he wasn’t going to worry about it. He was going to move on to the next one. It was nice to share a critical look at his stuff — he wasn’t looking for blind devotion. CBC: When did you start branching out to being a freelance writer for other publishers? Mark: With the Xenozoic property, which became known as Cadillacs and 59

Previous page: At top is Mark Schultz’s pencil rough for his “Slither Apocalypse” illustration, and inset below is the artist’s design for the Xenozoic Tales T-shirt produced by Graphitti Designs. Above: Tight pencils for “Slither Apocalypse.” Below: Capitalizing on the impending Cadillacs and Dinosaurs animated series, Tyco Toys created an action figure line-up that also included vehicles (as well as dinosaur figures, some modified from the firm’s “Dino-Riders” toy sets of a few years prior). Here are the Hannah Dundee and Jack Tenrec figures posed before Tenrec’s tricked-out 1953 Cadillac Eldorado Supercharged auto, fueled by dinosaur poop.

both learning as it we along. It was amazing to be among the creators being published by Kitchen Sink at the time. Unfortunately I was totally intimidated by Kurtzman and Eisner, to the point where I missed chances to chat these guys up. I would lock up — I didn’t know what to say to them that they hadn’t been asked a million times before. I did have a good relationship with Jack Jaxon. He was such a thoughtful guy. I think his nonfiction, historical work is so important. It was groundbreaking — broadening the scope of what can be done with comics. And there was Don Simpson and Jim Vance and Dan Burr… that was the great thing about Kitchen Sink: it was so diverse and it spanned back to the undergrounds and had all this history, right up until the contemporary stuff. Just amazing. Kitchen Sink comics also had a unique look, and part of that was due to Denis and part to Pete Poplaski. There was a definite cohesion in the design — there was an aesthetic. The color choices on the covers were so attractive, probably due to Pete. For me, they jumped off the stands and that’s what a cover is supposed to do. Back to the animation: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs only lasted one season and that was the end of all the potential for Hollywood-type money. I’d taken Xenozoic about as far as I could and, by the mid-’90s, Kitchen Sink was starting to falter. Denis had lost financial control of his company and his vision — which is what made KSP unique and viable — was lost to the dunderheads who had control. And I could see that they saw Xenozoic as a failed project that didn’t interest them. So I had to start looking for other ways of generating income, if I was going to stay working in comics. Good for me, I had enough friends in the business who apparently liked my work well enough. I got scripting opportunities. I also started doing cover art for other publishers, though I wasn’t fast enough to do interior art. I started writing for Dark

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

Dinosaurs for mainstream recognition, being developed into an animated TV show, there was a period with a great deal of interest in creating attendant merchandise. There were action figures and all the other associated gobbledygook that goes with that. Also, KSP was creating Xenozoic prints, T-shirts, and eventually the candy bars, which all sold very well and which all added onto my income. So there was that period where it was more a business for me, with less time for actual comics work, but there was good money that came out of that. We were able to buy our house and start a retirement fund. At one point, I think we were fielded four different suitors who were interested in developing Xenozoic into TV or film. Possibly the most left-field was the comedian/performance artist Gallagher, who had a production company and that was interested. He and his massive tour bus actually overnighted at Denis’ farm out in the hinterlands of Wisconsin. That didn’t go anywhere, but eventually I signed with producers that developed into the animated television show. This was, obviously, all new to me and, I think, Denis’s first big step into this interdisciplinary entertainment world. We were

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

Horse. Phil Amara, who had edited at KSP, had moved to the West Coast and Dark Horse, and he offered me work writing mini-series, mostly for licensed properties like Aliens, Predator, and so forth. That led me to work for DC, writing Superman. I wrote Superman: The Man of Steel, between ’97 and 2002. About four-and-a-half years. CBC: How was that? Mark: It was interesting. It was an education. This was at a time when DC kept the five Superman books linked. All the books had to work in lock step with each other — DC was publishing them one a week and they believed that sales would be improved by maintaining through storylines. So that meant that you couldn’t really take your ideas in just any direction you’d like. You had to work with everyone else on the storylines, and doing that was an education for me. I got a taste of working collaboratively, of figuring out my contribution to the whole, whether it was of particular interest to me or not. It was a good paycheck and no huge hassle. But, by the end, I was ready to pack it in. I was glad I tried it, and it was good to work with a team in DC’s sandbox, on an important property. But it wasn’t something that I wanted to continue doing. It wasn’t a career goal. CBC: Why was it a good thing to learn? You had to produce comics by committee, right? Mark: It was just a new learning experience. And I was happy to have a monthly paycheck. My goal originally was to use the money to create a financial cushion that would

allow me to do my own thing. It didn’t work out that way because, well, I guess maybe just laziness on my part. Unfortunately, I got away from drawing in general. For those years, I didn’t draw nearly as much as I should have. That was bad for me on a skill level, and, also, I wasn’t visible and readers forget quickly. I wasn’t a presence out there. So I had to rebuild my career as a visual artist after those years. But it was interesting, being in these conference calls, in these meetings with the other writers on the Superman books, who were much better and much more adept at doing story pitches. They were like pitches for a movie you wanted to produce. Some of those guys could just act out what they saw and they’d be doing this in front of the editors and Jenette Kahn, the publisher, and I’d just be sitting there, amazed, taking it all in. I’m just not that guy who can do that. I was in awe of their ability to get across their vision in this venue, their ability to pitch like that. Then, at some point, somebody would turn to me and say, “Mark, do you have any ideas?” and I’d be all, “Y’know, just let me fill in the gaps. I really can’t do this. My ideas aren’t these big ideas that can be exploited across an array of Superman books, so my position was I’d just take their ideas and make ’em work in the context of what I could do in my book.” CBC: What an interesting experience you’ve had: you’re an independent cartoonist who had a partnership

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Above: Final colored “Slither Apocalypse” print. Inset left: The end roll of the Nelvana cartoon series Cadillacs and Dinosaurs included the listing, “Based on the characters and concepts created by Mark Schultz,” and “Developed for television by Steven E. de Sousa.” Below: Mark’s art adorned the cover of the video cassette collection of the series. Above: Some of the Moench/ Jones run has been collected. Below: Last year, Graphitti released this KJ Gallery Edition.

Above: Mark Schultz produced this illustration in support of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, an organization founded by Denis Kitchen to support First Amendment issues involving the industry, which was under assault in the 1980s by various parent and religious groups, as well as law enforcement. Below: The Kitchen Sink Press publisher also made forays into diverse merchandising realms, including chocolate candy bars, as evidenced by this custom illustrated box, which contained bars wrapped in four different wrappers designed by Mark.

So I’ve started being more… anxious I guess you could say, about taking care of business going forward. And now, of course, with the political situation in the country. [laughs] It’s terrible to be looking down the barrel of this gun. Where the hell are we going as a country? CBC: [Incredulous] What are you talking about? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Mark: [Laughs] I know! And the environment — it is a very real crisis we’re facing here that people don’t seem to have woken up to yet. CBC: [Thumbing through the Xenozoic omnibus] The progression of your art is just amazing. I can’t get over it. Mark: Well, I started with a fine arts education, from the ’70s, which was a time when more emphasis was put on spontaneity and doing your own thing. Unfortunately, the fundamentals weren’t pushed and I wasn’t — at that age — disciplined enough to really go out and learn those fundamentals in my own. Doing comics was basically was on the job training for me. I started out just wanting my work to look as much like Wally Wood’s as it could. It took me some time and repetition to figure out what I was capable of doing. CBC: I definitely see the Wood influence in the beginning but you seem to quickly capture the essence of Al Williamson’s approach to design. Mark: Well, if you look at my stuff between the stories that appeared in the second issue and those in the third, I had met Al Williamson before I started the third issue and I got to look at his original work in his studio and the original art of guys like Alex Raymond and Hal Foster. I saw how these guys actually did the work on the page, at the size they worked. It was a revelation. It really kicked me into a different gear. CBC: The story I saw a sudden change was “The Benefactor,” and that is in #3. Mark: Yep, that’s the one. That was seeing, for the first time in my life, the original pages. It made a big difference. CBC: Getting into your creative process: do you thumbnail a page? How do you approach it? Mark: When I’m composing comic pages, it’s usually a back-and-forth process between just really rough thumbnails and figuring out the script that will go with it, the actual dialogue and captions. Whatever is necessary. In all my previous Xenozoic stories, I would go from very rough thumbnails directly to working out all the drawing problems, in pencil, right there on the finish board. Then I would ink over and finish. But what I’m doing with the Xenozoic story I’m working on now, I’m doing a much more elaborate preliminary stage, a lot more elaborate than a thumbnail. I still do those very small thumbnails, but then I’m doing much more worked-out preliminary drawings, which I will enlarge, print out, and copy onto the finish board. It’s just another variation, which I’m hoping both saves time and allows me to do cleaner, stronger drawing on the finish boards. CBC: What do your boards look like? Do you sometimes make a decision to replace a panel and paste on a new panel? Mark: I’ve occasionally done that, though I don’t like to. I like to keep the board as clean as possible. Part of the reason that I’m trying this new process is to eliminate all these needs for revision by getting that out of the way with a more involved preliminary stage CBC: Do your boards have lettering on them? Mark: Yes, and that’s something I want to continue with on this new story. The last Xenozoic story I did was in 1996. At that point, there was really no choice. Everything was done by hand on the board. Lettering is a part of comic storytelling and it should be there on the page, so I’ve decided that even though I could go digitally now, I want to have it done on the boards. CBC: The value of a page of original art would be higher, right, if it was just a straight illustration, with no word bal-

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Xenozoic Tales TM & © Mark Schultz.

with Kitchen Sink, which even included merchandising. At KSP, you were an independent creator, but you became a cog in the machine at DC. That’s a completely different thing! Yet you still have this property that’s out there. Mark: Well, I like being able to change things up and try different things. I like the fact that I write. I’ve written novels, written essays on artists, books about Al Williamson and his art. I write scripts for comic books. I had to learn how to write for comic strips — for Prince Valiant — because that’s an entirely different thing. And I like the fact that I can do illustration, that I can paint (to a certain degree), that I can produce my own comics. I don’t get tired of any of it, because there’s so much variety. I think working in that group mentality, working in someone else’s sandbox doing Superman, was part of that variety. I got my chance at DC because Joey Cavalieri was the Superman editor and he wasn’t afraid to bring someone from out of left field into the fold. He knew comics — mainstream, independent and underground comics. Joey was looking for a new Superman writer and was talking with Al Williamson — Al and Joey had worked together at Marvel. Al mentioned me, and Joey asked, “Do you think he’d be interested?” “Well, you should talk to him. I think he would be.” So again, it’s a small business. You make connections. There’s good people out there and if you treat them right, they’ll treat you right, and you get your chances. CBC: Well, you made yourself available. That’s to your credit, Mark. Humility for cartoonists is not a known trait at times. What is your personality? Are you a stressed-out person? Are you a person who can live in the moment and say, “Things are going to be okay”? Do you fret and worry? Mark: That’s a good question. I think I’ve changed as I’ve gotten older.. I’ve noticed that the older I get, the more I don’t live in the moment anymore, the more I worry about the future. I used to be the type of person who maybe I could envision like two weeks down the road, but I was very much in the present. I’ve always been good with money, of making sure we don’t get into financial difficulty, making sure we’ve got money socked away. In that regard, I’ve always been thinking down the road, but it wasn’t until recently that I’ve really started thinking in terms of… Well, I’m 61 now. In your 60s, you know, it’s a crapshoot. I’m in good health, but I’ve started thinking about my family’s future, the estate, what happens to a property like Xenozoic Tales, which I hope will have after I’m gone.

Flash Gordon TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc. Superman, Batman TM & © DC Comics. Aliens, Predator TM & © 20th Century Fox, Inc.

loons, on the board. Is that a consideration to you at all? Mark: I guess. I don’t know. I guess it depends on the individual buying the art. I’ve never sold any of my Xenozoic comics pages. CBC: So you own all of your Xenozoic work? Mark: Most of it. I’ve let a few stories go. Steven Stiles got a story that he inked, in the second issue of Xenozoic Tales. I gave that to him as part of our agreement. I also traded away two other stories. But that’s it. Everything else, I’ve retained. CBC: You didn’t use much Zip-A-Tone, did you? Mark: I did use Zip-A-Tone quite often. That’s the only tonal stuff I used to any degree. CBC: And there’s this transition also as far as depth goes. You started doing really fine backgrounds to communicate depth. A really fine line on items in the distance. Mark: Right. I was looking at guys like Roy Krenkel — who would do cityscapes for Al Williamson — and how they would handle architecture and stuff in the distance by using, as you say, very fine-line pen work. I developed a dry brush technique, a split hair technique that basically accomplishes the same objective. It just makes things look kind of faded and pushed into the background. CBC: When did you start using that where we can see physically in the books? Mark: There’s a little bit in #10, I think. I used dry brush tentatively at first. I started using it much more heavily in #13 and 14. In those issues, Kitchen Sink started reproducing my work tonally, as opposed to the straight black-&white, Photostat reproduction that was traditional to comics. (Boy, I’m dredging up some old, pre-digital production terms!) You had flat, solid blacks without any tonal variation within them. So Denis decided, with #13, based on what I was doing with the dry brush, to reproduce my stuff tonally, so that my technique would reproduce more accurately. It was more expensive, but the finer dry brush work would be lost in the traditional reproductive process. With that issue, I had more freedom to get experimental with the dry brush. CBC: What incarnation of the reprinting of the stories, of the original stories, are you the most satisfied with? Mark: As far as reprints of the material, the Flesk collection is by far the best repro of the page art, as it is meant to be viewed in publication. Of course, the IDW Artist’s Edition reproduces the original artwork excellently — it’s looks darn close to the boards themselves. CBC: You mentioned using models in photo reference? Mark: Back then to a certain extent. Mostly I tried to construct the figures from memory and imagination, but if that wasn’t working, or if it was for a very difficult positioning or pose, like someone walking downstairs (it’s hard to get the balance right), then I’d take photographs. Back then, I was working with an old Polaroid camera, so I’ve got all these little black-&-white Polaroid photographs around the studio. CBC: There’s this visceral kind of feeling that many of us got when we initially encountered Dave Stevens’ work,

this really sensual feeling where it just seemed absolutely perfect, like you couldn’t imagine it being better. Like, “Is this real?” Mark: Well, my work is far from perfect. CBC: [Laughs] Well, you know, I was talking about Dave’s stuff, but your work, when you reached maturity, it’s pretty

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Above: Mark’s pencils for his Action Comics #836 [Apr. ’06] cover. Below: The artist has also repeatedly written his fair share of comic books. Here are some examples.

darn near perfect, Mark. Mark: I think Dave and I were among the few cartoonists in our generation who were very much interested in traditional, naturalistic comic art. Maybe “naturalistic” isn’t the right word; maybe it’s “heroic naturalism,” or “classicism.” I’m not sure. We don’t have our own terminology in comics to describe what we do. We borrow terms from the other arts. But Dave and I were inspired by some of the superior artists, I think, of the ’40s and ’50s. And we didn’t produce stuff on a monthly basis, so we were able to take the time to put in a little more finish, and that recalls those cartoonists who came out of illustration and were really superior draftsman. CBC: Do you count Sandy Plunkett as one of those guys? Mark: Oh, absolutely! Sandy’s in there, too. He’s brilliant. CBC: He’s really

totally underrated, don’t you think? Mark: Absolutely. Sandy hasn’t had the advantage of being identified with a specific character or series. If he had a prolonged period with one property or character, he’d get the broader recognition he deserves. CBC: Well, it is tough to get it out on a schedule, right? Mark: Yeah, that’s the problem, to do that quality of work that Sandy always delivers takes time. CBC: [Looking through the Xenozoic omnibus] In the beginning, Steve Stiles is credited as the inker. “Xenozoic” is the story I’m referencing. Mark: Well, “Xenozoic” is all me. There’s two stories that I penciled, that Steve inked: “Rogue” and “The Rules of the Game.” CBC: Who is Judy Lyons? Mark: [Laughs] Judy Lyons was a friend who assisted when I needed some help. I think it was laying in the Zip-ATones. A few other friends also helped. CBC: There’s another credit with three people I don’t recognize. Mark: They’re all just local friends. My friend Vince Rush is in there [“History Lesson,” XT #4]. He had been a pilot on the Air Force. I’d go to him when had questions about aeronautical subjects, like the story about the guy who builds a glider. Vince was a technical advisor and that’s why he got credited. Lesleigh Luttrell, who was the wife of my editor, Dave Schreiner, was involved with simian research out in Madison, Wisconsin, and I had some questions regarding something to do with biology. She was able to help me with the story, “The Growing Pool.” In other cases, it was production assistance. Susan Wagner helped cut and lay in screens. CBC: Who did the lettering? Mark: Denise Prowell, my wife. I lettered the first couple stories myself — it’s pretty awful. I lettered both “Mammoth Pitfall” and “Xenozoic” but I knew I needed help. I do not have a skill for lettering. Luckily, I had someone sitting right there at home who is very good at it, so I was able to convince her and she was kind enough to take on the work. CBC: By the end, how long would it take you to finish a 20-page story? Mark: I was killing myself the first couple years, working 16 hour days six days a week and even with that, to do a 20-page story was taking me… well, it started out every two months and then it became every four months. As the artwork became more elaborate, it took more time, and at a certain point I just had to slow down. I just couldn’t keep up the work schedule. So it’s hard to say. I started out trying to do something every two months and then that degenerated to me cranking out 20 to 22 pages twice a year. In the end, when I was involved with shepherding the property into television and all the marketing going on in association with that, I was getting an issue out maybe once a year. So I’ve got a pretty sorry legacy of productivity. CBC: But it makes for a hell of a collection! Mark: Well, thank goodness that there’s been a consis-

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Star Wars characters TM & © Lucasfilm, Inc. Aliens TM & © 20th Century Fox, Inc. , Sub-Mariner TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. The Spirit TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc. Tom Strong TM & © Alan Moore & Chris Sprouse. Krill Stromer TM & © Michael Ryan & Mark Schultz.

Above: While his most renowned writing assignment was as regular scripter on Superman: The Man of Steel between 1999–2003, Mark has also contributed to most of the major companies. Below: In the late ’90s, Mark joined with friend Michael Ryan to produce the “Stormforce 10” four-issue mini-series, SubHuman, which was drawn by Roger Petersen.

tent market for the stories. Xenozoic’s been almost continually in print since the stories originally appeared. Like you were talking earlier about Dave Stevens’ work, same thing, I think his degree of finish and care helps guarantee longevity. CBC: How much longer do you see yourself doing Xenozoic? Do you have the entire epic mapped out? Mark: To me, Xenozoic is about following the lives of the characters. It’s not a novel with a specific ending. I compare it to Prince Valiant — it’s the life story of these people. I don’t have a particular end in mind. I left a big storyline within the greater story hanging, at the end of #14, which I have plotted out to the finish. I’m working on a stand-alone 64-page story right now that will appear in a “graphic novel” format. I chose to get back into Xenozoic with a standalone story, because I think I can handle the amount of pages involved that in a reasonable amount of time. Which means a couple years, anyway. For me, that’s a reasonable amount of time. And if that goes well, then I’ll get back to finishing the storyline I left hanging, which I figure will take between 100 and 120 pages. That’s a little more daunting, getting involved with that many pages. But if the story I’m working on now goes well, then I’ll get on to that. And after that… I don’t know! I figure I’ll be getting close to 70 at that point, so I don’t know how many more stories I’ll be able to do! [laughs] Hopefully more. But my immediate goal is just to take care of what I left unfinished. CBC: I’ve always found it difficult to find Xenozoic Tales in the back-issue bins. Mark: I don’t know what to say about that. I see comments on the Internet occasionally, saying that it’s difficult to find. Where does one go for back issue these days? Has the Internet taken over for back-issue boxes in brick-&mortar stores? I guess conventions are still a good resource, but I have no idea about the availability of Xenozoic back issues. CBC: What’s the name of the graphic novel that you’re coming out with? Mark: I don’t have a name yet. I’m still playing around with that. CBC: Is it going to be in color? Mark: It might be limited color. I’ve been thinking about this, because I could go full-color if I wanted to but, for me, Xenozoic is a black-&-white series. A lot of that comes out of my love of b-&-w cinematography and photography. I like what you can do with lighting and composition in b-&-w. So, I’m trying to figure my options here — do I want to stick with something that approximates the look of the screens, the Zip-A-Tone, from the original series, or… ? What I’m thinking now is to drop in one flat color. Just kind of like, recently, we saw Darwyn Cooke do with his Parker series. It’s a technique that was very popular in illustration in the early to mid-20th century. A limited color thing. Aesthetically, I find it very pleasing, so I’m thinking of adding just one neutralized color, and maybe switching that out depending on if it’s an interior or an exterior scene. But keeping it essentially monochromatic. CBC: The earlier stories did appear in color, right? Mark: Well, they were reprinted by Marvel’s Epic comic line in color. We colored the first six issues for those reprints. And that’s an iffy thing because I do the stories with the idea that they’re going to be reproduced in b-&-w. I put in a lot more lighting effects and heavier blacks, heavier tonal things than I would if I knew it was going to be printed with color added. So I think the color gets a little heavy in most of those. It’s a little much, added on top of all the rendering I put into the work. CBC: So you obviously would rather prefer them not to be in color. Mark: Right. I knew it was going to be in b-&-w, so I rendered it as something that I felt would work best in b-&-w. But when the opportunity presents itself to be reprinted by Marvel in color, [laughs] you take advantage of that.

CBC: Do you do personal commissions? Mark: Yes. A limited amount. CBC: Is that a solid part of your income? Mark: It is these days. Because I am so slow, I sell the original artwork of jobs I’ve done for publication. But I also have a clientele for original commissioned work. CBC: Do you feel pulled in different directions with that? Are commissions a necessity? Mark: Actually, commissions have freed me up. I don’t have to take on so many jobs-for-hire that I’d rather not take on. For commission work, I’ve got certain subject matter, certain characters I’ll do. I don’t do characters that are the property of others. I’m not going to do Batman, for instance. If it’s not mine, or it’s not in the public domain, it’s not worth it. I want to be free to reproduce the commissioned artwork in the collections published by Flesk, the Various Drawings and the Carbon collections. I’m not about to reproduce an image of someone else’s property without permission, and some parties are pains in the ass. So, long story short, I’m pretty selective about what I will do, because it needs to be a subject I enjoy,

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Above: Mark reveals that he hopes to again collaborate with his friend, paleontologist Michael Ryan, for another SubHuman mini-series. This cover for #2 [Dec. ’98] is by Mark. Below: The co-creator’s pencil sketch of Dr. Krill Stromer, lead protagonist of SubHuman.

This page: Examples of Gary Gianni’s art on his eight-year stint on the Prince Valiant Sunday newspaper strips, which were mostly written by Mark Schultz. In his book (above), The Prince Valiant Page, Gary describes his journey as assistant to John Cullen Murphy and subsequent ascent to becoming only the third artist in the history of the renowned adventure strip created by the legendary Hal Foster — a feature now in its ninth decade. Mark was recruited as writer of the series a mere eight months after Gary’s debut as solo artist, and the creative team continued on Prince Valiant until Gary’s departure in 2012. Inset right is Gary’s depiction of the strip’s characters and, below, a detail from the Aug. 12, 2010, installment.

settled on “Carbon.” And that worked out for the best — it’s a nice, punchy name. CBC: So what’s the genesis of this beautiful book, Storms at Sea? Mark: I had a notion, back around 2007, that I wanted to do a collection of interrelated illustrations that featured all these different worlds. It was just a collection ideas for visuals. It took literally years for it to frame up around the story it became, which is a crime/conspiracy/ science fiction/future history mish-mash. It’s a cryptic history of the Earth and its future, and somewhat of a back-story for Xenozoic Age. It’s the bigger picture behind how we get to there and what comes after that. But it’s a standalone story which comes out of my love for, again, black-&-white cinematography, the great films that featured beautiful lighting and compositions, as well as classic illustration, detective and science fiction, and all that stuff jumbled together. CBC: I have such a passion for those two films that were filmed simultaneously, King Kong, and The Most Dangerous Game. Looking at this book, I see some Flash Gordon influence here and there, but it’s almost as if that’s the only two films you needed to see! [laughter] Mark: Again, it has to do with cinematography in black-&-white films. You can do so much with lighting and composition that gets lost in color. When you go to color film, obviously that brings something huge to the table, but you lose something, too. B-&-w design allows the use of dramatic light and shadow to compose shapes, and, as you mentioned earlier talking about comics work, to create a sense of depth. You look at a film like King Kong, which used light streaming through layers of glass paintings on miniature sets to create this fantastic feeling of depth to the film’s jungles. There’s a sense of mystery there. There’s the recognition that there are things you can’t quite see, hidden behind other objects, that I found fascinating as a kid. And I still do. They created a sense of mystery and awe. It’s important to me, that atmosphere that goes into telling a story. It’s important. CBC: What I was surprised and delighted with was the violence in Xenozoic, which echoes the literal rendering of bodies in the uncensored versions of both King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game (with the stuffed human heads)… the violence was real and truly visceral before a backdrop of a fantastic scenario! People could really die. Mark: You’re right: the violence is still sort of shocking, in the context of the time the films were made, but it was done efficiently and without being sensationalistic. Is that the right word? Like now, you go to see a horror film and it’s so graphic. The gore is lingered over — it’s all about creating the most basic shock and revulsion — about transgression for its own sake. There’s a point where any sense of personal involvement that has locked me into the story becomes shattered by repulsion. The extreme stuff breaks the spell — it gets between me and my being able to really invest in the story. But I’m not making a statement; it’s just my preference. I don’t like things ground into me. The neat thing about Kong is that while these fantastic things happen, you sense that there’s a real danger to people, that they could die and some do, as opposed to

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a good paycheck and something publishable. CBC: Have you had gallery showings of your work? Mark: I’ve been involved in several different showings. In Majorca, Spain, the Casal Solleric museum did an exhibition of my work, in 2005. That was wild. But, by and large, I don’t consider my work as something that’s made for gallery display. It’s made for reproduction. I’m not associated with a gallery or any venue that would regularly show my work. CBC: So an understanding with commissioning work is that it can published in sketchbooks? Mark: Yes. Flesk Publications, my regular publisher, has been publishing my drawings since 2005, on a more-or-less bi-yearly schedule. The first five volumes I did with them were under the title Various Drawings. Since then we’ve started a new series that I call Carbon and we’ve had two volumes so far. CBC: What is the significance of the name Carbon? Mark: It’s the element in most all my drawing materials — ink, graphite, charcoal — if it’s black, it probably contains carbon. And carbon is the key component for building the structure of life on Earth. It’s what holds us all together. CBC: And it’s a cool name. [laughs] Mark: Yeah, we screwed around with it a lot before we

what I call the video game filmmaking we see now in action films, where anything can happen. People are bouncing off the walls and coming back for more. The [2005] remake of King Kong was just so uninvolving. There was no sense of danger to anyone because all the action was arbitrary. Kong is carrying Ann and flinging her all over the place and every bone in her body would be broken in a heartbeat. So Ann is not a real person — there’s no consistency to the consequences. It was totally a video game reality in that film — compare it to the original Kong where he’s cradling Ann when he carries her! He’s carrying her very carefully. So there is that sense that he knows that she’s fragile and that follows through everything — Ann is a real person, in serious danger, in the original. So now I’ve disrespected both contemporary horror and adventure movies, grumpy old man that I’ve become. CBC: Personally, I can’t get over how despite the arch corniness of The Most Dangerous Game it remains absolutely chilling in concept and execution. Mark: What do you find corny about The Most Dangerous Game? CBC: Certainly the opening dialogue, just like in Kong, though I absolutely love the authenticity of Joel McCrea — there’s something timeless about him — but the other performances are so over-wrought and theatrical. Mark: McCrea is incredibly underrated! You’ve seen The More the Merrier? The comedies he did? He’s fantastic. He could do it all. CBC: I agree! I’ve seen Sullivan’s Travels just recently. Mark: Sullivan’s Travels — he’s got an American sensibility that perfect for that film. The reason I ask about The Most Dangerous Game is that I’m constantly trying to get students — young people — and even folks my own age, to look at movies from this era that featured an acting style and direction that kept the film moving and done in an efficient hour-and-a-half. Great storytelling. I think The Most Dangerous Game is just an hour. What is seen now as corny was purposeful — bam-bam-bam! — it kept the story moving! It’s a different style and it’s hard to get people today to make that jump and understand the context. It’s like looking at a painting by Rubens and thinking, “Well, that’s horrible. He didn’t know how to draw women. They’re way too heavy!” They were right for the time—he knew what he was doing. Every time has its own set of problems to be solved and an audience to be served. Maybe the dialogue in these films is perfunctory and corny — it’s not their strong suit, for sure. But it served its purpose, it kept the film moving, and it got you to the thrills and the creepiness, without boring you. CBC: Right. It served its purpose. It served a purpose for Robert Armstrong to go, “Gee, swell,” because he was an optimistic, enthusiastic huckster and it served the purpose of the Count to be seemingly fey and effeminate, but in reality was extremely lethal. Mark: I think Zaroff was portrayed as a decadent European sort as a counterpoint to All-American McCrea. Let me ask you this: for me the weakest thing in King Kong is Bruce Cabot. He was new to the screen and he’s very

stiff. Can you imagine if they’d put Joel McCrea in that role instead of Cabot? CBC: That would have been extraordinary! Mark: Wouldn’t that have been something? Not that there’s a lot for him to do, except be all heroic, but McCrea would have brought a level of connection between his and Fay Wray’s character that’s not really happening in Kong as we know it. CBC: No. Bruce Cabot wants to possess Fay, not so much be her partner. Kong is tender with her. Mark: Right, Kong comes off much more sympathetic than Bruce Cabot does which maybe is a good thing. The key scene between Ann and Driscoll is them on deck together. He’s a jerk! What does she see in him? But if that had been Joel McCrea, I think we would’ve got what she sees in him. CBC: There’s something about your lead female character, Hannah. You obviously draw her sexy, but she’s got gumption! She’s a significant part of the story. You tell me, but we don’t really know exactly why she’s there, right? Mark: Well, we know that she’s more or less a spy. You’re right that we don’t know the whole story and that’s something that I would like to eventually get to. I wanted her and Jack to be equal-weight characters. In fact, the bigger, longer story hinges more on her than it does on Jack. I’m more sympathetic to her point of view, a science-based look at the world, as opposed to Jack’s more faith-based outlook. He was brought up to believe in certain quasi-religious dogma, which he doesn’t really

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This page: On April Fool’s Day, 2012, Kubert School of Cartooning alumnus Thomas Yeates’ artwork began gracing the Prince Valiant Sunday newspaper comic strip, an assignment that continues to this day. The exploits of Prince Val drawn by Yeates have been written by Mark Schultz, continuing his assignment that started in 2004. Yeates, of course has a comics career that dates back to the late ’70s, when he first began contributing to DC Comics’ anthology titles and soon enough was assigned to his breakout work on The Saga of the Swamp Thing. Other unforgettable Yeates assignments include his work on Zorro, Airboy, Aztec Ace, Timespirits, and — on a character he would return to time and again — Tarzan of the Apes. Above is a May 11, 2014 Prince Valiant detail and, below, a fan commission sketch.

Above: In response to the Comic Book Resources website, Mark discussed why it took 10 years to produce his illustrated novella Storms at Sea, published in 2015. One reason was the medium. “I sort of hoped that working in carbon pencil — instead of my usual brush and ink — would somehow speed up my process… As it turned out, my unfamiliarity with carbon pencil probably slowed things down. And then there’s the unfortunate fact that as both the story, and my understanding of the medium, evolved, I wound up redoing a good chunk of the illustrations. Below: Barbara Stanwyck.

a handle on how to draw Hannah in the beginning. I was just trying to copy Wally Wood’s sexy women, but then I figured out that Hannah has this roman nose which is more or less Barbara Stanwyck’s nose. Stanwyck always takes command whether she’s doing comedy or whether she’s the good girl or the bad girl. She commands attention. Her characters are forces to be reckoned with. I’ve tried to instill that into Hannah’s character. CBC: I’ll be flicking through the clicker and one of the only shows that I will stop and watch is The Big Valley. [laughter] A) ‘cause they’re so long and epic — the episodes — but B) just because of her. She’s one tough mama-jama! Mark: By that time, she was like the old iron woman. CBC: [Laughs] She’d go out there and rope a calf and… Mark: I remember those being on when I was a kid and that was probably the first time I ever saw Stanwyck, and I really didn’t understand the show at that age, when it was new. It was aimed at a little bit of an older audience and it was too much of a family drama for me. There wasn’t enough action, I guess. But now you look back on it and think, jeez, what a career she had. My god! CBC: So who would play Jack? Mark: I always say Jack is more or less a combination of John Wayne and Burt Lancaster. CBC: Physically? Facewise? Mark: Well, he started out… His hair and his general look was inspired by Burt Lancaster’s. And I always liked John Wayne’s calm confidence. Again, these were guys I grew up with, seeing them in the movies. Wayne was toward the end of his career by then, playing grandfatherly sorts by that point, old curmudgeons, but he was still a force, and

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question, whereas Hannah is much more questioning. I wanted that balance between the two. It took me a while to figure this out, but when I was creating these characters back in the ’80s, there weren’t a lot of tough female characters in contemporary adventure stories that carried equal weight with the male characters. But I’d grown up seeing, on TV, old black-&-white films from the ’50s, ’40s, and ’30s, and if you look at those films, especially the pre-World War II films and even up through the war, there were films where the female characters were presented as strong and independent — on equal footing with the men. Those roles were largely lost after WWII, when there was this big national effort to get women out of the workplace and back into the kitchen — to turn the workplace back over to the men, now that they were home from the war. But, through the ’30s and ’40s, through the Depression and the war years, story content coming out of Hollywood was much more focused on independent women. One of the Hollywood directors who consistently pushed adventure films in that direction was Howard Hawks. You know his works? CBC: Of course. His Girl Friday was just going through my mind right now. Mark: Right! That’s what I’m talking about. There’s a sexy tension between the guy and the girl, but for the time — and, again, you’ve got to look at it in context for the times — they’re on equal footing. I like that dynamic between the male and female characters. CBC: So, if you were to cast Hannah, would it be Rosalind Russell or Barbara Stanwyck? Mark: Barbara Stanwyck, 100 percent. I didn’t quite have

I was seeing all his older films on TV. Burt Lancaster was still, in the ’60s, was doing great work. He did a film with John Frankenheimer called The Train, where he plays, of all things, [laughs] a French underground operator, stopping the Nazis from stealing artwork from France. Man, it must have been ’64 or ’65 when that came out and I saw it in a theater. He was just such a physical presence in that movie. He was a real athletic guy and would do these stunts. There was no break away from him during action sequences, no hiding his face. He looked like he was carved out of granite. CBC: Is Governor Dahlgren based on Prince Valiant? Mark: [Laughs] Does her ‘do look that bad? It’s supposed to be something between Louise Brooks’ helmet and how my wife was wearing her hair at the time. CBC: She also has this Arthurian kind of thing going. Mark: You mean her costume? That was just me trying to come up with a different look for her. I don’t think I was thinking of Prince Valiant. CBC: Do Jack and Hannah become intimate? Do they have time where they spend together? Mark: In fact, in the “Dangerous Ground” story, I do show them canoodling. But, yeah, throughout the stories, I dropped little hints that they were, on occasion, getting it on. CBC: And does Jack has something going on with Governor Dahlgren? Mark: They have a past relationship that’s implied. CBC: Would you say that there’s a romantic triangle aspect coming? Mark: [Laughs] I don’t know. I kind of dropped that in there but, well, there could be. It might be fun to play around with

that, but I don’t know that that would be a priority, trying to get done what I can with the time I have left on this planet. [laughs] It’s definitely a very secondary consideration. Let’s put it that way. CBC: What else have you drawn sequentially? Mark: Oh, not much. I penciled a story — something like six or eight pages — for one of The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror Halloween issues that Al Williamson inked. It was a pastiche of an EC science fiction story. I did one Prince Valiant fill-in for Gary Gianni. I’ve done a couple individual things for myself that we’ve put in the Various Drawings collections, but I haven’t done much. I’m probably forgetting something, but I’m so slow I just haven’t drawn a lot of continuity myself. I’ve written a lot of continuity for other people but I’m so slow, Jon! That’s why I’ve stuck mostly with covers and single images in recent years. CBC: Didn’t you do something for Dark Horse? Didn’t you do an underwater kind of series? Mark: I co-wrote SubHuman and I did the covers for that. That’s co-owned by my friend Michael Ryan and I. Michael is a paleontologist and he knows the science end of all this stuff and actually we’re still writing a prose short story that is part of that SubHuman world. So we have plans for the property going forward. It’s just finding the time and the right venue. We’d like it to be more of a vehicle for education… that sounds so dry. But we want to keep it a fictional, SF-adventure story that also delivers science fact and fosters an appreciation for the importance of the oceans — how they affect our weather and everything in general. So, down the road, yeah, I hope we can do more with that. CBC: When did SubHuman come out?

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Above: In his 2015 CBR interview, Mark shared about his illustrated novella, “I guess, if you want a theme, Storms at Sea is mostly about the difference between accepting what we’re told to believe, and so remaining reasonably comfortable, and risking that comfort by challenging the ‘truths’ we’re fed. I don’t believe in global conspiracies, and I don’t believe in cryptic history — extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof! — but I do believe that we tend to blindly accept what people in positions of power want us to believe.” Below: Burt Lancaster in The Train [1964].

talked to somebody who just came back from Alaska and they said the depreciable difference of the glaciers was just astounding! Mark: That’s the thing: This warm up is happening much faster than it ever has before. CBC: How would Jack look at that? Mark: Well, Jack is an old blood mechanic. He’s part of this quasi-religious cult. They’re very hardcore in the belief that we are very much responsible for what happens in the world. And there’s no excuse for us doing anything as human beings technologically that’s going to have any kind of negative effect on the planet. Their belief stems from the idea that this great cataclysm that changed the world and brought around the Xenozoic Age was the result of human malfeasance. Like I say, it’s a faith-based belief and he would take it to an extreme. Jack, today, would be in the pulpit. He would be a fundamentalist, more or less, railing against the sins of the human race, warning that we’re going down the wrong road. He would present things in more supernatural than scientific terms, arguing a sort of sinful behavior that is going to end up biting us on the ass. There’s going to be retribution coming for us all. CBC: There’s a branch of evangelical Christianity right now, Faithful Earth Stewardship, and their belief is that we’re the planet’s caretaker. We’re supposed to be taking care of this world and not plundering it. Mark: Well, I don’t know anything about that organization specifically, but what you say sounds about right. It’s all open to interpretation, but I know a number of Christians on both the more liberal and the more fundamentalist ends of things that interpret the Bible as saying not that we have dominion over the Earth, but that we are caretakers of the Earth. I don’t know enough about the Bible to know whether dominion or caretaking is a more accurate interpretation of the original intent. Obviously, I’d side with the caretakers, and a rejection #15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Mark: Nineteen-ninety-eight. That was a four-issue mini-series, though Dark Horse never collected it. CBC: Roger Peterson drew it. Mark: Yeah, Roger did that. That was not his first comic work, but it was his first major series. CBC: He’s George Evans’ grandson, right? Mark: That’s correct. Roger is a great guy. He’s doing beautiful work now, which I wish was more widely seen. He’s mostly published in the Philadelphia area, where he lives. CBC: He’s doing editorial work? Mark: Yeah, some editorial work and some strips appearing in local publications. And gallery work, too. CBC: George was such a good guy. Did you know him? Mark: I got to meet him several times. I didn’t know him well. But he was certainly a super-sweet guy. CBC: He might be the oldest person I have ever interviewed. He actually remembered Lindbergh’s flight. How appropriate, too, right? Mark: I was gonna say. That probably was an incredibly influential event for him. CBC: Oh, yeah. Just amazing! What was the fictional story of SubHuman? Can you give it to me in a nutshell? Mark: [Laughs] You’re asking me to think way back! The whole SubHuman mythology revolves around this ancient matriarchal line that is very involved with exploring the oceans, with which they have an intimate relationship. And they have all sorts of adventures. [laughs] CBC: Now, you have this environmental subtext that runs throughout Xenozoic, though perhaps less so in the beginning… Mark: That was the element that brought it all come together for me. CBC: If Jack was here today how would he feel? I heard that the North Pole experienced a day of 56 degrees Fahrenheit last year. I just

of the idea of any preordained right to put our immediate well-being and comfort above a broader responsibility. CBC: When did you become aware of the Greenhouse Effect. In the ’80s? Mark: Oh, I think it was before that. I was in high school. I was in the ninth or tenth grade when the first Earth Day was organized, in 1970. The reason I bring that up is I can remember the concern at that time over the unregulated industrial emissions going into the air. Smog, and air quality in general, was just horrible then. It’s still not healthy, but it was a much, much greater problem then. Anyway, I did a school poster promoting the first Earth Day activities. CBC: [Laughs] You have a fossil fuel vehicle but it runs on dinosaur guano, right? Mark: Which isn’t a great thing, either, because methane emissions are not good for the atmosphere, either. I’m working on retrofitting Jack’s engines to be hydrogen-fueled. CBC: But you put the dino-sh*t fuel in as an alternative? Mark: Yeah, because they’d have lots of dinosaur crap laying around, so that’s what they could use. CBC: Do you want people to take away that this is entertainment? Are you building up to the Great Cataclysm, so to speak? Giving a message? Mark: My feeling is if you have a message, the worst thing you could do is to preach it, to hit the readers over the head with it. The danger is turning off the reader, “Oh, he’s trying to teach us something here.” It turns me off, when I feel that an issue is being pushed on me, whether it’s something I agree with or not. I just think it’s bad storytelling. I hope that I’m doing is entertaining readers, but maybe, also planting a seed that will eventually grow into something. Make them question things that maybe they’re not questioning already. CBC: Do you travel at all? You’ve been to Europe? Mark: Yes. CBC: How do they respond to your work? Mark: Pretty well, I guess — it varies, country to country. As I’ve said, Spain has been particularly good to me. I’ve been invited to numerous conventions and events there, and, as I said, in Majorca they’ve even given me an exhibit. I think, right now we’re in print in at least Spain, France, Italy, and maybe Portugal. Xenozoic has a decent presence over there, especially as I haven’t had anything new out in a long time.

Previous page: Above is Storms at Sea illustration and, inset below, cover art for that 2015 book. This page: At top is Mark’s pencils for his “Hannah Stalks” illustration. At right is Mark’s wraparound cover art for the 2010 Xenozoic collection published by Flesk.

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CBC: have you been doing other stuff or just how long this all takes? Have you been doing any non-comics stuff, besides Storms at Sea? Mark: Well, I still write Prince Valiant for the newspapers. CBC: How long have you been doing that? Mark: Since 2004. Twelve years. The first eight years were with Gary Gianni doing the artwork. Since then, it’s been with Thomas Yeates. It’s great fun — both of them are really collaborative and I love the part of developing the story where you’re just bouncing ideas off each other and coming up with variations on how it might be told. Then you settle on something that works for both parties. The artist obviously has a much more time-consuming, labor-intensive job than the writer, so I want to make sure that the artist is happy with the story he’s going to be drawing. Beyond that, I draw covers, write pieces here and there, both prose and the occasional comics story. Plus there’s the commission work. So a little bit of this and a little of that and, knock on wood, between all that and the collections of my work that Flesk Publications puts out, and other projects like the IDW Artist’s Edition of Xenozoic Tales, this all adds up to a living. CBC: What’s one of your favorite story arcs in Prince Valiant and how long do the episodes last? Mark: Aw, jeez. Oh, man. [laughs] We just finished up one which is a big sword-&-sorcery epic, with Val fighting a despot who has imperialistic leanings, which may or may not have comparisons with a particular world leader right now. [laughs] As far as how long do the stories take? Prince Valiant appears just once a week, so that leaves limited room for pushing the story forward. Between catching people up on what happened last week in the first panel, and then setting up a cliffhanger in the last panel, that leaves us two, maybe four, panels actually advance the story. So, our stories just move at the rate that they need to, which is leisurely by a lot of standards these days. We’ve done storylines that have gone on for two years. CBC: Really? Was that true for Foster as well? Mark: No, but Foster had a lot more real estate to work with every week. He #15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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.

would go back and forth between epic stories that would last a few months. and intersperse them with pieces that would focus on individual characters — relationship dramas,or comedic bits, that might last two, three, four weeks. He’d mix things up quite a bit and we’re trying to do that now. Again, we’re finishing up this big epic story. Now, for a change-up, we’ll do a series of shorter, character-oriented pieces. CBC: How many papers are you in? Mark: King Features tells us around 300, which is healthy for any strip now, but especially for an adventure strip. There’s just not many adventure strips left. CBC: Have you read the entire Hal Foster run? Mark: The entire run? I think I’m missing some from the late ’50s/early ’60s that I haven’t read but I’ve read maybe 95% of it. CBC: And do you get inspired? Mark: Oh, absolutely! The guy does not get the credit he deserves as a storyteller. He was wonderful with character development and his sense of humor was sharp. Foster was a really, really efficient storyteller. I think a lot of people write him off as an “illustrator” who just happened to fall into the comics medium. But he understood continuity. He understood, and even pioneered, elements that are specific to comics storytelling. So, yeah, for me, he’s a constant inspiration. Something else about Foster, and something he doesn’t get enough credit for, is his female characters — especially Aleta, Val’s wife — are kept front and center and capable. He did stories where Aleta is the complete focus, and Val does not come in and save her in the end. She takes care of business herself and Val just stays back and lets her do it. Some of these stories were taking place in the ’50s, when there was this pervasive cultural movement then, taking women out of the workplace and back into the kitchen, and Foster’s treatment of his female characters went counter to that trend. CBC: Can you tell me about your siblings today? Mark: My sister, who is a year younger than me, is a business administrator COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Previous spread: Across the top is an exclusive look at Mark’s future graphic novel continuing the Xenozoic Tales saga, which is as yet untitled with no firm release date announced. The artist shares about the projected 64-page book, “It’s the primary project I have going now but to subsidize it, I’m going to need to supplement my income otherwise. So I’ll be picking up other work on occasion, but I’m concentrating on this project as much as possible.” Inset below are two pages from Mark’s sketchbook, featuring Hannah (left) and Jack. Right: An exclusive appearance of inked panels from Mark’s forthcoming Xenozoic Tales graphic novel. Bottom: At left is (left to right) Mark, Denise, and Olena, with the Schultz family felines. Mark shares, “We didn’t have our own biological children. We do have a daughter, Olena, who came over as a foreign exchange student from Ukraine. She came over when she was 15 years old, stayed, and is our de facto daughter. And, I’m happy to say, became a U.S. citizen this past October.” At right is a 2016 “selfie” of Mark and Denise. Next page: At top is Mark’s print of “Raptors at Dawn” and, inset bottom, is the cover of the 2013 omnibus collection published by Flesk. The 352-page tome reprints the comic book series (plus the Death Rattle story, but not the Xenozoic Tales back-ups drawn by Steve Stiles). The compilation is available on Amazon. Visit fleskpublications. com to search for Mark’s recent work, including his Carbon sketchbooks and more.

at vocational-technical high school. And my brother works with a resort, in charge of maintenance at a time-share complex. He’s got the mechanical skills in the family. CBC: Have you ever done any work for motion pictures? Mark: Not really. I did some preproduction stuff and that didn’t go well. I didn’t enjoy that process. I guess it’s too collaborative, but also I just didn’t like that they wanted to retain the rights to the original artwork. The production company I worked with was not higher echelon, either. CBC: What was the movie? Mark: It was going to be an animated Conan feature, but it disappeared. I guess they never got financial backing. It didn’t get past a certain point of development. CBC: You mentioned you’d like to work with Michael Ryan on SubHuman again and you’re obviously working on Xenozoic. Anything else that you’d like to do? Mark: I’ve got a number of other story ideas where I’d

love to find the time to either develop a script that might interest someone else to draw, or develop a prose piece, maybe a novel. Again, at this point, it’s making priorities and figuring out what is the best use of my time. But, yes, I do have a back stock of projects I’d love to be able to get to. CBC: Are you happy? Mark: I hope so. Basically, yes. CBC: [Laughs] “Basically?” You should know. Mark: Well, you know, as I tell my students, if you’re serious about your work, you’re never really happy because you’re always feeling you should be doing better. I always feel that I’m not accomplishing enough, and the quality of the work isn’t what it should be. I know that I’m lucky that I get to do what I do, and make a living at it, so no complaints there. It’s just that you want to do more and you want to be better at what you’re doing. CBC: So you’re a teacher?

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Mark: I teach on occasion. I try to teach! I do the best I can. I’ve taught at the Savannah College of Art and Design, in Georgia. That’s the institution I’ve been most often affiliated with. They bring me down for special programs and use me to fill in, as needed. On a couple occasions, I taught over the course of a semester for instructors who were off on sabbatical or whatever. I’m also working with the MFA program of a school in my area here, Marywood University, guiding students taking a sequential art course. CBC: Do you like it? Mark: I do. It gets me out and interacting with humans. [laughs] I hate to say this, I sound so old, but I enjoy spending time with younger people. It’s good for me to get out there with people who have different notions of how things should be done and different perspectives on things. These kids and their computers. So, yes, I do enjoy it. CBC: Have you mentored anybody who’s young, entering the industry? Mark: I’ve been involved in mentoring programs through these schools and there are individuals with whom I have an on-going relationship where I give them feedback. But there’s no formal situation where I’m mentoring an individual or working with someone in my studio. CBC: Is there anyone you’ve instructed that you know has gone on to work in the industry? Mark: Oh, there’s been a number of people that I’ve had as students at SCAD and stuff that are working professionally now. I’m not going to be able to recall names on the spot. CBC: Are you still associated with Dark Horse at all? Mark: Well, I’m working with Denis on a project and Kitchen Sink Books is now an COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

imprint of Dark Horse. Every so often, I’ll get a call from an editor that needs a cover or something, so I have done covers. I did a Conan cover last year. They’ve got a collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar stories coming out for which I did a cover. Actually it’s pretty cool because it’s collecting the DC Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff that was done back in the ’70s. Michael Kaluta did some beautiful work for that run, and I don’t think that stuff has ever been collected before. So yeah, I still do work for Dark Horse, but nothing regular. CBC: Is there a Conan story or a Tarzan story in you that you would like to do in an ideal world? Mark: I do have an idea for a Conan story that I’d love the chance to script. I’m just hoping for the right circumstance. I’d been contacted, more than 10 years ago now, back when Dark Horse had just gotten the contract to do the Robert E. Howard stuff. An editor asked me to submit a proposal for a Conan story, which I did, and never received a response. Typical comic book lack of professionalism. But there’s new editors popping up all the time, so maybe at some point in the future that’s a possibility. CBC: What about Edgar Rice Burroughs? Mark: I don’t have any specific stories, but under the right circumstances, that would be fun to do. Thomas Yeates has been doing future Tarzan stories for Dark Horse, which are a good spin on the character. I don’t know what I’d have a take on the character that would hold up to those. I don’t have any strong notions for those characters, much as I love ’em. I just don’t know what I’d do. But it would be an interesting problem to come up with a John Carter of Mars story. Or a Pellucidar story. I’d enjoy that. 75

creators at the con THE BUDDY SYSTEM — CREATIVE PALS: The comics industry forms a close-knit community, and comic book creators are often fans — and friends — of other funnybook creators! Here’s five examples of the camaraderie… Clockwise from right: writer Matt Fraction (left) clowns with his Sex Criminals collaborator, the artist Chip Zdarsky (also a scripter!) at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2014; The chums and co-creators of The Cloud, a graphic novel drawn by Vincenzo Balzano (left) and scripted by K.I. Zachopoulos, snapped at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2016; Writer Noelle Stevenson (left) and co-writer/ editor Shannon Watters embrace after accepting an Eisner Award for Lumberjanes at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2015; Image Comics cohorts Todd “Spawn” McFarlane (left) and Marc “The Darkness” Silvestri are all smiles at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2015; and comics legend Howard Chaykin (left) and his onetime assistant — and now big shot cartoonist in his own right — Dean Haspiel are all buddy-buddy at Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con 2016.

Photography by Kendall Whitehouse

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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The Heroes & Humor of Archie Comics! In separate interviews, COMIC BOOK CREATOR #16 catches up with cartoonists DEAN HASPIEL and DAN PARENT, who together contribute a jam cover featuring Archie Comics’ humor and heroes! From his early years as assistant to comic book greats Howard Chaykin, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Walter Simonson, to collaborations with legends Harvey Pekar and Jay Lynch, to his own creator-owned Billy Dogma and Red Hook, we chat with Dino about his multi-faceted career, with one foot in the alternative realm and the other firmly in the mainstream. Plus, the artist dishes on his work on The Fox! Dan Parent talks about his experience at the Kubert School, long

career at Archie Comics, breakthrough with the heralded “Love Showdown” storyline, and his creation of the Riverdale Gang’s first gay character, Kevin Keller, as well as his creator-owned Die Kitty Die! comic book series. In addition, we pay tribute to the late RICH BUCKLER with an incisive feature by Michael Aushenker, and, courtesy of “Mad Dog” artist and Hollywood story-boarder PAUL POWER, we finally present 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. Plus there’s HEMBECK!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

Celebrate JACK KIRBY’s 100th birthday!

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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! Plus FCA, GILBERT, SCHELLY, and RUSS RAINBOLT’s amazing 60-foot comics mural!

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BACK ISSUE #102

BRICKJOURNAL #48

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!

100-PAGE SPECIAL featuring Bronze Age Fanzines and Fandom! Buyer’s Guide, Comic Book Price Guide, DC’s Comicmobile, Super DC Con ’76, Comic Reader, FOOM, Amazing World of DC, Charlton Bullseye, Squa Tront, & more! Featuring ALAN LIGHT, BOB OVERSTREET, SCOTT EDELMAN, BOB GREENBERGER, JACK C. HARRIS, TONY ISABELLA, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT, BOB LAYTON, PAUL LEVITZ, MICHAEL USLAN, and others!

ROCK ’N’ ROLL COMICS! Flash Gordon star SAM J. JONES interview, KISS in comics, Marvel’s ALICE COOPER, T. Rex’s MARC BOLAN interviews STAN LEE, PAUL McCARTNEY, Charlton’s Partridge Family, David Cassidy, and Bobby Sherman comics, Marvel’s Steeltown Rockers, Monkees comics, & Comic-Con band Seduction of the Innocent. With MAX ALLAN COLLINS, JACK KIRBY, BILL MUMY, ALAN WEISS, and others!

MERCS AND ANTIHEROES! Deadpool’s ROB LIEFELD and FABIAN NICIEZA interviewed! Histories of Cable, Taskmaster, Deathstroke the Terminator, the Vigilante, and Wild Dog, plus… Archie meets the Punisher?? Featuring TERRY BEATTY, MAX ALLAN COLLINS, PAUL KUPPERBERG, BATTON LASH, JEPH LOEB, DAVID MICHELINIE, MARV WOLFMAN, KEITH POLLARD, and others! Deadpool vs. Cable cover by LIEFELD!

THE WORLD OF LEGO MECHA! Learn the secrets and tricks of building mechs with some of the best mecha builders in the world! Interviews with BENJAMIN CHEH, KELVIN LOW, LU SIM, FREDDY TAM, DAVID LIU, and SAM CHEUNG! Plus: Minifigure customizing from JARED K. BURKS, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art, & more!

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TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #17

KIRBY COLLECTOR #71

KIRBY COLLECTOR #72

KIRBY COLLECTOR #73

The legacy and influence of WALLACE WOOD, with a comprehensive essay about Woody’s career, extended interview with Wood assistant RALPH REESE (artist for Marvel’s horror comics, National Lampoon, and undergrounds), a long chat with cover artist HILARY BARTA (Marvel inker, Plastic Man and America’s Best artist with ALAN MOORE), plus our usual columns, features, and the humor of HEMBECK!

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: The 2016 Silicon Valley Comic-Con Kirby Panel, MARK EVANIER, STEVE SHERMAN & MIKE ROYER panel, WALTER SIMONSON interview, & unseen pencil art galleries! SIMONSON cover inks!

FIGHT CLUB! Jack’s most powerful fights and in-your-face action: Real-life WAR EXPERIENCES, Marvel’s KID COWBOYS, the Madbomb saga and all those negative 1970s Marvel fan letters, interview with SCOTT McCLOUD on his Kirby-inspired punchfest DESTROY!!, rare Kirby interview, 2017 WonderCon Kirby Panel, MARK EVANIER, unpublished pencil art galleries, and more! Cover inked by DEAN HASPIEL!

ONE-SHOTS! We cover Kirby’s best (and worst) short spurts on his wildest concepts: ANIMATION IDEAS, DINGBATS, JUSTICE INC., MANHUNTER, ATLAS, PRISONER, and more! Plus MARK EVANIER and our other regular panelists, rare Kirby interview, panels from the 2017 Kirby Centennial celebration, pencil art galleries, and some one-shot surprises! BIG BARDA #1 cover finishes by MIKE ROYER!

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(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Summer 2017

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TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

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a picture is worth a thousand words

from the archives of Tom Ziuko This is Kevin Nowlan’s color guide for his pin-up page featured in Wonder Woman #50 [1991]. I learn something new every time I see Kevin’s masterfully subtle coloring. — TZ “There weren’t any specific guidelines from DC; they just asked for a pin-up to include in the anniversary issue. I asked if I could draw the Golden Age WW, but they said they’d rather have the current model. I sort of split the difference. And who knows where that corpulent Minotaur came from? I think I was just trying to have fun with the piece and letting my weird imagination run wild.” — K.N. [from his blog]

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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

(164-page FULL-COLOR mag) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $7.95

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #4 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #5

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!

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!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #6 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #7 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #8 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #9 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #10

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!

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!

(192-page paperback with COLOR) $21.95 (Digital Edition) $9.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #11 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #12 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #13 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #14

Retrospective on GIL KANE, co-creator of the modern Green Lantern and Atom, and early progenitor of the graphic novel. Kane cover newly-inked by KLAUS JANSON, plus remembrances from friends, fans, and collaborators, and a Kane art gallery. Also, our tribute to the late HERB TRIMPE, interview with PAUL LEVITZ about his new book Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel, and more!

JACK KIRBY’s mid-life work examined, from Fantastic Four and Thor at Marvel in the middle ’60s to the Fourth World at DC (including the real-life background drama that unfolded during that tumultuous era)! Plus a career-spanning interview with underground comix pioneer HOWARD CRUSE, the extraordinary cartoonist and graphic novelist of the award-winning 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!

Comprehensive KELLEY JONES interview, from early years as Marvel inker to presentday greatness at DC depicting BATMAN, DEADMAN, and SWAMP THING (chockful of rarely-seen artwork)! Plus WILL MURRAY examines the nefarious legacy of Batman co-creator BOB KANE in an investigation into tragic ghosts and rapacious greed. We also look at RAINA TELGEMEIER and her magnificent army of devotees, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

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REED CRANDALL Illustrator of the Comics

From the 1940s to the ’70s, REED CRANDALL brought a unique and masterful style to American comic art. Using an illustrator’s approach on everything he touched, Crandall gained a reputation as the “artist’s artist” through his skillful interpretations of Golden Age super-heroes DOLL MAN, THE RAY, and BLACKHAWK (his signature character); horror and sci-fi for the legendary EC COMICS line; Warren Publishing’s CREEPY, EERIE, and BLAZING COMBAT; the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS and EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS characters; and even FLASH GORDON for King Features. Comic art historian ROGER HILL has compiled a complete and extensive history of Crandall’s life and career, from his early years and major successes, through his tragic decline and passing in 1982. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER includes NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PHOTOS, a wealth of RARE AND UNPUBLISHED ARTWORK, and over EIGHTY THOUSAND WORDS of insight into one of the true illustrators of the comics.

Printed in China

(256-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-077-9 • NOW SHIPPING!

It’s

GROOVY, baby!

Follow-up to Mark Voger’s smash hit MONSTER MASH!

From WOODSTOCK to THE BANANA SPLITS, from SGT. PEPPER to H.R. PUFNSTUF, from ALTAMONT to THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY, GROOVY is a far-out trip to the era of lava lamps and love beads. This profusely illustrated HARDCOVER BOOK, in PSYCHEDELIC COLOR, features interviews with icons of grooviness such as PETER MAX, BRIAN WILSON, PETER FONDA, MELANIE, DAVID CASSIDY, members of the JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, CREAM, THE DOORS, THE COWSILLS and VANILLA FUDGE; and cast members of groovy TV shows like THE MONKEES, LAUGH-IN and THE BRADY BUNCH. GROOVY revisits the era’s ROCK FESTIVALS, MOVIES, ART—even COMICS and CARTOONS, from the 1968 ‘mod’ WONDER WOMAN to R. CRUMB. A color-saturated pop-culture history written and designed by MARK VOGER (author of the acclaimed book MONSTER MASH), GROOVY is one trip that doesn’t require dangerous chemicals!

(192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-080-9 • DIGITAL EDITION: $13.95

SHIPS OCTOBER 2017 • Free preview online now!

TwoMorrows. The Future of Pop History.

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com