Comic Book Creator #19

$9.95 in the USA

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CELEBRATING THE GREATEST FANTASY ARTIST OF ALL TIME

A TwoMorrows Publication

No. 19, Winter 2019

Plus: The Savage Brush of

JOE JUSKO

and the Reinvention of

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Death Dealer TM & © the Estate of Frank Frazetta.

TOM GRINDBERG

Cover painting by Tom Grindberg

Winter 2019 • The Frank Frazetta Issue • Number 19

T WOODY THE BARBARIAN CBC mascot by & © J.D. KING

Painting by TOM GRINDBERG in the USA

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No. 19, Winter 2019

Plus: The Savage Brush of

JOE JUSKO

and the Reinvention of

TOM GRINDBERG

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Ye Ed’s Rant: Goodbye to old friends and hello to 2019 (and TwoMorrows’ 25th!).......... 2 COMICS CHATTER

Ten Questions: Darrick Patrick finds out about artist Greg “Chevy Man” Land............ 16 Hembeck’s Dateline: Fred throws light on Steve Ditko’s Shade, the Changing Man.. 21 THE MAIN EVENTS Art God: An Interview with Frank Frazetta. In 1984, writer/comics historian Steven C. Ringgenberg visited the great fantasy artist at the then just-opened Frazetta Museum, in Pennsylvania, and he came away with an entertaining and informative talk with the most renowned genre painter of all time......................... 22

Death Dealer TM & © the Estate of Frank Frazetta.

Cover painting by Tom Grindberg

Longtime comics pro TOM GRINDBERG jumped at the chance to depict the savage Frank Frazetta-created character Death Dealer when we asked and we could not be more impressed with the results! The artist has alluded to a possible project with Frank Frazetta, Jr., involving the axe-wielding brute, to which we heartily hope will come to pass. Our special thanks to Frank, Jr., for giving Comic Book Creator permission to use Death Dealer on our cover. Visit www.frazettamuseum.com for information and to peruse the many Death Dealer… umm… deals and other items!

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C’mon citizen, DO THE RIGHT THING! A Mom & Pop publisher like us needs every sale just to survive! DON’T DOWNLOAD OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE! Buy affordable, legal downloads only at

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Frazetta Fest. Ringgenberg shares a veritable feast of features on the great artist, including Frazetta’s caricature work, rarely-seen public service strips, and the lost E.C. Comics story, “Came the Dawn”… the “one that got away”!................... 38 The Savage Brush of Joe Jusko. A career-spanning and enormously enlightening conversation with Frazetta disciple Joe Jusko, one of the finest fantasy and superhero painters working today. Included in the chat are a look at his hard-scrabble upbringing in the mean streets of Manhattan, stint as Big Apple cop, and breakthrough with his Marvel Masterpieces trading card set, plus much more............... 48 The Reinvention of Thomas Christian Grindberg. He started off as a Neal Adams clone, morphed into a busy comics pro absorbing the work of John Buscema, and completely reinvented himself to join the ranks of great fantasy illustrators such as Frazetta, Roy Krenkel, and Al Williamson, Grindberg shares about his love of Edgar Rice Burroughs, work on Tarzan, and future with The Darkness........ 74 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Photographer Kendall Whitehouse captures the living spirits....... 94 Creator’s Creators: We look at the career of guest-editor Steven C. Ringgenberg ....... 95 Coming Attractions: The “Not Your Average Joes” special is coming in CBC #20........ 95 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Kyle Baker knows The Shadow!................. 96 Right: A detail of Frank Frazetta’s cover painting used on the Flashing Swords #1 hardcover edition [1973].

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

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: $43 US, $66 International, $20 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2019 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

© The estate of FRank Frazetta.

Death Dealer TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Painting © Tom Grindberg.

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Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt selects some of the best war comics available..... 15

$9.95

A TwoMorrows Publication

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Fleener in the Forefront: Mary’s Busy as a Bee. Part two of our jaunty interview with the great cartoonist Mary Fleener from her mini-comics work to Weirdo to Slutburger to her current-day debut, with Billie the Bee, as graphic novelist........... 3

About Our Cover

CELEBRATING THE GREATEST FANTASY ARTIST OF ALL TIME

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This issue is dedicated to the memories of RUSS HEATH, MARIE SEVERIN, GARY FRIEDRICH, STAN LEE, and MICHAEL CHANDLEY ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

STEVEN C. RINGGENBERG Guest Co-Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

TOM GRINDBERG Cover Painter

GEORGE KHOURY RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO Contributing Editors

STEVEN THOMPSON STEVEN TICE BRIAN K. MORRIS Transcribers

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON CBC Contributing Photographer

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE CBC Convention Photographer

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

Farewell to old friends and hello to a very busy new year!

Expo Center, New Jersey, which will host many Weirdo contributors — Peter Bagge, Kim Deitch, Kaz, Mark Newgarden, and Carol Tyler, so far — plus my good chum Drew Friedman, The Book of Weirdo cover artist! For details, visit the website of pal Cliff Galbraith’s great annual Secaucus show at eastcoastcomicon.com.

I am also helming a special celebration of TwoMorrows Publishing — The World of TwoMorrows — a book marking the 25th anniversary of John and Pam Morrow’s company.

It goes without saying that yours truly owes much of his career to the publisher and I’m pleased as a pickle to share that appreciation by editing a detailed history of the Raleigh-based outfit’s many accomplishments.

Details are still being worked out, but suffice to say, it will debut at the 2019 I write these words just beComic-Con International: San Diego, fore we close the books on 2018, where — ye ghads! — I have been eagerly awaiting the coming invited as a guest of the convention! new year. To keep readers in In addition to moonlighting as the loop, Ye Ed will be extremely an editor at It’s Alive! Press (where active in 2019, with the release publisher Drew Ford is reprinting of his 12-years-in-the-making some fascinating items of yore, tome, The Book of Weirdo, being importantly a collection of the great released by publisher Last Gasp anti-war war series, “The Lonely War come May. This will likely be of Willy Schultz,” by Will Franz and my magnum opus, an insanely Sam Glanzman), I am co-authoring Frank Frazetta by Ronn Sutton exhaustive history of Robert John Severin: America’s Two-Fisted Crumb’s legendary 1980s humor Talent.

Co-writer Greg Biga hosted my visit to Colorado comics anthology, a retrospective to which over 130 in June when we visited the home of the great comic Weirdo contributors participated, including Mr. Crumb himself, who said book artist’s daughter, Michelina, and we scanned an amazing array of Severin artwork. This TwoMorrows my efforts made book is tentatively shceduled for late fall/early winter. for a “great As if that isn’t enough to do, I have written a fourbook,” adding, act play with longtime creative partner and li’l brother “So, from a, you Andrew, for which we’re currently conducting table know, historical readings with New York City-based actors. The first act perspective, you performed a read-through of The Golden Age — a poignant comedydrama based in the studio of fictional outfit Wonder great service.”

Comics and set during the birth of the form — went Choke! The 288spectacularly and the Brothers Cooke are tremendouspage retrospecly excited at the prospect of an actual stage production. tive will be offiGreat White Way, here we come! cially released Alas, we couldn’t fit in the latest portion of Michael at the East Coast Aushenker’s mammoth Rich Buckler interview this ish, ComiCon, May but will strive to include next time. We do our best…

17–19, at the Gotta go… I’m off to tackle the layout and design of Meadowlands Roger Hill’s Mac Raboy: Master of the Comics!

See all of you fine people in 2019!

What a cascade of tragic passings in the last few months, losing so many legendary comics creators in such a short period of time, including my dear friends Russ Heath and Marie Severin, as well as pal Gary Friedrich and Stan “The Man” Lee, who was generous with yours truly.

Godspeed, my friends.

Also mentioned atop this page is the fine Providencebased bookseller Mike Chandley, whose sudden death stunned the book-loving community. His Cellar Stories and Books store was the stuff of legend and he long supported Ye Ed’s various projects. From my mother and myself: rest well, Mike. Memories of you will be treasured.

cbc contributors

Kyle Baker Comicartfans.com Mary Fleener Brent Frankenhoff Frank Frazetta, Jr.

Drew Friedman Tom Grindberg Fred Hembeck Heritage Joe Jusko

Denis Kitchen Stacey Kitchen Dimitri Mais Mineshaft magazine Tom Palmer

—Y e Crusading Editor

Darrick Patrick Rob Smentek Kevin Sollenberger J. David Spurlock Ronn Sutton

Wayno Kendall Whitehouse Glen Whitmore Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Frank Frazetta portrait ©2019 Ronn Sutton. The Book of Weirdo © Jon B. Cooke. Cover art © Drew Friedman.

TOM ZIUKO

Welcoming 2019

fleener in the forefront

Mary’s Busy as a Bee Part two of our career-spanning chat with awesome alt-cartoonist Mary Fleener Conducted by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor

Chicken Slacks TM & © Mary Fleener.

[Last issue we presented the first portion of CBC’s career-spanning chat with the great Mary Fleener, California-based alternative cartoonist — and now, with her forthcoming Billie the Bee, graphic novelist! — where she discussed her mom’s Disney Studio connection, her other life as rock band member, early contributions to Weirdo magazine, and growth as top-notch creator emerging from the quasi-underground of the Reagan era. We pick up where we left off: Mary’s time in the mid-’80s. —Ye Ed.] Comic Book Creator: Mary, can you explain for our readers, what is a mini-comic?

Mary Fleener: A mini-comic is usually 4¼" x 5½", because most people will take a sheet of typewriter paper, which is 8½" x 11", fold or cut in half, and then fold that half, and that gives you eight pages… or it can be more. It all depends on big your stapler is!

CBC: There was a mini-comics movement of a sort, right?

Mary: There sure was. What happened was, copy machines got better and paper stock got better, and people didn’t want to rely on a publisher to publish their artwork because really, in the ’80s — and this is why I was so intrigued that you’re doing the book on Weirdo — there was a real attitude against people who didn’t draw the super-hero style and “comics were for kids,” and they had to be nice and pure and everything. But a lot of people wanted to have an artistic bent to it that involved more attitude, and a more creative viewpoint that bordered on fine art and/or outrageous drawings, like XNO, for example. So it was easier and more fun, and quicker to make your own mini-comic, get 500 copies, go home and lay ’em on the floor of the living room, put them in piles, fold them, and staple them yourself.

It was a good way of getting your name out there. Nobody wants to be handed a stack of drawings to look through. It’s much more impressive to hand them a little book, and I think that’s why they became so popular. And it was cheap to mail stuff back in the ’80s, too. It was before they started all of that Zone 1, and 2, and 3, and 4 stuff.

CBC: Was there any money to be made or was it purely just for fun?

Mary: We made money for the post office. [laughter] Spending $1,000 for copies, stamps, and shipping and mailing in a year was not uncommon, and I think the best part of it was we were doing something most publishers wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. The first mini-comics were the Tijuana Bibles, as we all know. Those were the sex comics which came out of Mexico that were cheaply printed, and they would put common cartoon characters like Batman or Popeye or Donald Duck, in compromising situations. And, because of that format, there was enormous freedom for people to do it, and so it was fun and naughty and rebellious. It seemed like thousands of people started doing this all at once in the ’80s.

CBC: What were your mini-comics?

Mary: The first one I did was actually a calendar called “Girls! Girls! Girls!,” in 1986, and instead of having classic pin-ups, I did my cubistic style girls, so I thought it would be fun to make up a hundred of these and mail them to my favorite underground comix people sort of as a gift and just COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

to introduce myself. “Hi, I’m Mary Fleener, I draw cartoons, and here’s a calendar. I hope you like it.” I really wasn’t that into writing then, so I hooked up with a guy named John Eberly (They Were In Love) from Iowa and another guy named William Clark (The Dead Girl), who later appeared in Weirdo. John and William wrote the stories and I only illustrated them. I did a couple little coloring books called Color My Totem, where I would just do little tiny drawings, like maybe 30 on a page, anything that popped into my head. And then I decided to go to the digest-size, which is 5½" x 8½". And I got the idea of illustrating rock ’n’ roll lyrics, because, let’s face it: a lot of those songs tell stories, they’re poetry, and I’d seen that done with sheet music when I worked in a music store. I published four issues of Chicken Slacks and had various people contribute. I didn’t pay them very much, maybe $10 a page, but we had to stop after four issues because we were breaking copyright laws because you can’t reproduce song lyrics any time you feel like it. You’ve got to pay BMI or ASCAP money. After a while I got a couple of orders from lawyers up in Hollywood, and I thought, “Okay, end the series. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

CBC: What notable contributors to that?

Mary: Oh, really, it was amazing. Robert Armstrong, XNO, J.R. Williams, Dennis Worden, Krystine Kryttre, Roy Tompkins, Wayno (of course, who’s now a big syndicated guy), Lloyd Dangle, Gary Wray, and many more.

CBC: Every single one of those people also contributed to Weirdo.

Above: Mary Fleener titled this ’10s pic of herself, standing before a mural painted by her lonesome, “Fleener Leucadia Jam Session Mural 7 11.”

Below: Mary produced four issues of her mini-comic Chicken Slacks, which featured song lyrics made into comic stories.

She ended the title when music lawyers started to catch wind.

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#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

“Imported Erotika” © Robert Armstrong. The Little King TM & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. Dynamism of a Dog © the respective copyright holder.

Top: It was a Robert Armstrong “Mickey Rat” one-pager in Weirdo #8 [Summer 1983] which gave Mary Fleener the idea to start exploring new art styles, which, in turn, led to her “cubismo” approach. Above: Otto Soglow’s The Little King comic panel was, with its usage of geometric shapes, an influence on Mary’s work. Below: Yet another source of inspiration was Giacomo Balla’s painting, Dynamism of a Dog [1912].

Mary: It was natural that there was a crossover because a lot of those people I met through the mini-comic movement. The network was pretty tight with the underground people by the time Weirdo came out. By probably #10, everybody knew who was submitting and everybody knew who was doing what.

CBC: And you went down to San Diego Comic-Con somewhat early in your career, by 1986?

Mary: Yes, 1986 was my first one. I went with Dennis Worden. We went to the old convention center on B and Second Street, and it took us about… let’s see… we parked about two blocks away. [laughter] It cost seven dollars to get in. We waited in line maybe three minutes. Yeah, that’s where I first met Ron Turner, who had a table with R. L. Crabb and Kate Kane around the other side, and usually there’d be Don Donahue. So we quickly knew where to go to hang out and I met Pete Bagge there. We kind of walked around for, like, five hours, and then I looked at Dennis and I go, “I gotta get outta here! I’m gonna draw until my hands fall off! This is amazing!” And the next year we met all the girls like Dori Seda and Krystine Kryttre, and of course, the infamous Eric Gilbert who worked at Last Gasp and was usually decked out in leather from head to toe. It was a little more exciting the next year and then SDCC moved down to Harbor Drive to the new, huge convention center.

CBC: Do you still go?

Mary: Oh, of course! It’s so easy for me. I live just up the coast. We have commuter trains and Amtrak, so I just hop on the train, go down to San Diego, hop on the trolley, and

it stops right in front of the Comic-Con. It’s fun. I used to drive down and back in one day. Then I used to stay down there in hotels because it was just easier. You could stay up and party all night! But then I couldn’t afford the hotels anymore, so I just usually go one or two days. The train is fun, it’s easy, it’s a nice cruise, it goes along the beach, and it’s so pretty.

CBC: So when did you develop your cubismo style? How did that come about?

Mary: Well, it was kind of a swipe, if you really want to know the truth. I was very aware that there was a million people drawing the Jack Kirby and I just figured all the slots are filled, I wanted to think of something original. I loved Robert Armstrong’s Mickey Rat, and in Weirdo, I think #8, there’s a little short story that he does of the Rat in a porno theater as he’s watching this stuff on the screen, but Robert drew the actors in a Picasso-style. And then, at the end, Rat goes, “Enh, the book was better.” And I thought that’s an old one, but I was intrigued at the drawing, using that socalled “modern art/cubist” style, and I thought, “Well, hell.

That looks like fun!”

I also really liked The Little King. I liked geometrics and I used a lot of geometrics in my fine art work, so I just started making drawings look like that. And instead of making a round eye, make a triangle eye; and instead of having one profile, I’d do five profiles. It was very liberating! And I also was influenced by the Futurists, an Italian fine art movement where they did paintings that looked kinetic. A well known example is Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash by Giacomo Balla. It’s a painting of a person walking a dog and the dog’s got, like, a hundred little legs. So I wanted that feeling of movement. Also, I was influenced by psychedelic posters coming out of San Francisco. I loved what Victor Moscoso and Rick Griffin did, and all that. But, really, it was when I saw that comic strip by Robert Armstrong, I went, “Heyyy….” [laughs] “This is a good idea.”

CBC: Are psychedelics a factor for you?

Mary: Do psychedelics affect my art…?

CBC: No, a factor. Yeah, in your creative development.

Was it something that interested you or involved in it at all?

Mary: Interested me…? Yeah. [laughs] It interested me a lot. Well, let’s just say I’ve been experienced. It was a lot of fun growing up. I used to go to concerts and you could just laugh and be trippin’, and everything was crazy and we had so much fun. I guess I grew out of that. It didn’t influence me artistically whatsoever though. I know Robert Crumb said that it helped his drawings. I will say this, I used pot and LSD way before drinking. I grew up with too much booze around me and found it very low conscious. I always hated bars, but then I ended up working in them when I started doing gigs with bands!!

CBC: You came into comics in the ’80s. By that time, underground comix had a pretty long history. It was certainly a settled community. For instance, Wimmen’s Comix was being edited by Trina Robbins. Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Diane Noomin started their own Twisted Sisters in something of a reaction to Trina. There were politics that were taking place. Here you are, coming into a field, and there is women’s comix, comics specifically devoted to women.

I don’t know exactly how to phrase it, but you’re there at a stage in the development of women being treated with some modicum of equality and respect within the industry.

What was your point of view going in? Did it seem silly and dumb in the way that men treated women? Was it an issue for you? How did you look at it?

Mary: Okay, let’s not forget there was also T*ts & Cl*ts that was published and edited by Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli down in Southern California, in Laguna Beach, at almost the same time. I experienced a little bit of dumb stuff at my first comic convention in 1986. I was walking around, and I was going to meet Pete Bagge there because he was going to give me a whopping $10 for my Madame X from Planet Sex strip [that appeared in Weirdo]. I remember

Twisted Sisters TM & © Diane Noomin and Aline Kominsky-Crumb. Wimmen’s Comix TM & © the respective copyright holders. Mary Fleener self-portrait from DEMO © Mary Fleener.

this guy looked at me, and he just goes, “Are you looking for your kids?” And I go, “What do you mean?” And he goes, “Well, if you’re looking for your kids, they’re probably running around here.” And I go: “‘Kids’!!!!??!!! What makes you think I have kids? Sir, I am a cartoonist! An underground one, at that!” I was really pissed off!

I come from the fine art world, you know, college, it was 50/50, you know? I thought that was a little strange, but the fact that there weren’t very many women drawing didn’t bother me. Most of the artists in the newspaper Sunday funnies were men, so I figured the most talented people got published and that’s the way it worked. Then, when I met Joyce Farmer, I think I saw an issue of Wimmen’s Comix after somebody mailed me a copy, and I’m not sure how it happened, but Joyce happened to be editing the “politically correct” issue, which I think was #10. And so I wrote her, she wrote me. I was delighted that she lived in Laguna Beach. That’s only an hour drive from my town, Encinitas.

I went up to meet her, and that’s when she told me about T*ts & Cl*ts and I just went, “This is great! Oh my gosh!” So I kind of related more to the T*ts & Cl*ts scene because it seemed for a while that Wimmen’s Comix was awfully PC. I think a lot of them felt like they’d been slighted, but in my opinion, a lot of the people that were in Wimmen’s Comix weren’t very good. You could see the potential, but I thought the stories were a little too political, a little too preachy, and a little too “I love all women, let’s all embrace, we’re all sisters.” Well, now, we’re not all sisters. I’m sorry. No, we’re not all sisters. And I wanted to be a bad girl. I wanted to do stuff like the ZAP Comix guys, and so did Krystine Kryttre and Dori Seda. We wanted to write and draw X-rated stuff.

I wasn’t interested in being part of the collective of women, but I did acknowledge that it was great that there was a comic that would include everybody. So I think that was important that a publisher would take a chance on unknown names. Everybody should get a chance. I think the whole idea was there was a revolving editorship. But there, once again, you were supposed to live in San Francisco and go to a meeting…? Well, that’s counterproductive. That’s not expanding a philosophy or a goal. It should be all-inclusive.

I didn’t see the point in all the meetings they had up there.

However, when the collection came out from Fantagraphics, I had a different point of view: “Well, this is very historical. This has been preserved. This is good.” Anyway, after I got to know Joyce a little better and heard all the gossip, I found it very typical… artists are always bickering amongst themselves it seems. These San Francisco people were pretty feisty, I’ll tell you that!

CBC: What do you mean?

Mary: Well, there were a lot of feuds going on, with this person and that being called a camp follower, and “somebody said this,” and “somebody said that,” and “I slept with him,” and “he slept with her.” So I’m glad, at age 33, I was pretty much an old married lady by that time [laughs] when I got involved in comics because everyone seemed to be…. pretty “active,” to put it mildly! I’ve always had a rule: when you’re in a band or you’re in a job, you don’t mess around.

The very first question several publishers asked me when I first met them was: “Are you married?” WTF? I’m at a con to talk about my art and the first thing I’m asked is if I’m “available.” Even if I were single, I wouldn’t be going to a comic con to meet any guys, let alone hook up with anyone I happened to fancy. Once again, that was a hippie thing I always thought was a little unseemly. Not that I didn’t have my experiences, but I was single when I lived it. I found it all this behavior a little tawdry… [chuckles] Isn’t that funny coming from me?

CBC: Oh, it did get messy, right? You know… relationships.

Mary: I mean, going to bed with the publishers?!!? Come on! I mean, come on! Just don’t do that. Don’t go to sleep with the head of the record company.

CBC: You were involved in Twisted Sisters, right? You did a cover?

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

Mary: I was in the first book, Twisted Sisters: A Collection of Bad Girl Art [Penguin Books, 1991], edited by Daine Noomin, then Kitchen Sink published four 32-page comics that were then collected in Twisted Sisters 2: Drawing the Line [1994]. I did the cover to #1 of the floppy, and then the cover for the book. I was — and still am — quite honored!

CBC: I guess the pretense for T*ts & Cl*ts was that is was an erotic women’s comic… Was that it? And you said you were more attracted to being in that than to be in Wimmen’s.

Was that just Joyce’s attitude? Or you were more friends with Joyce while Wimmen’s was a little too politically this or that?

Mary: Well, the whole idea, according to Joyce — and she’s repeated it many times — was that women like sex and have sex, but there are consequences to that activity. Men have no idea at all what it’s like to have a period every 28 days, bloating, mood swings, cramps, bladder infections, and that little thing called pregnancy that can happen at any time. T*ts & Cl*ts dealt with those issues. Women have to deal with the consequences of sex, and dealing with birth control and just the “icky factor” guys don’t have to worry about. We gotta worry about the ick. And it seemed that Wimmen’s Comix were trying too hard, because of ZAP Comix and all that, and I understand that because ZAP has a lot of very provocative material in there that many find offensive. But I wanted to do outrageous underground stuff. Joyce shared my appreciation for the raunchy UG stuff. I helped her edit #7 but, by that time, she’d lost all interest. The submissions we got were a big letdown for me. The art wasn’t as wild or crazy as I’d hoped. It was about 1988. Ron Turner was being difficult. We had some stories that had bondage and S&M in it, and he wouldn’t let us print that because he said, “That bondage and S&M stuff is over.” [laughs] And I’m going, “Ron, where have you been? You live in San Francisco.

It’s just starting.” And this is before that book Modern Primitives came out, and the Reagan era, and everybody was afraid and the retailers were getting busted right and left. You know, in Laguna Beach, a bookstore (appropriately named “Fahrenheit 451”) got busted for selling T*ts & Cl*ts to an undercover officer, but then, when the police came, all the issues had been sold, so there was no evidence…

Above: Twisted Sisters, reviving the name of Aline KominskyCrumb and Diane Noomin’s jam title from the ’70s, was a ’90s comics anthology open to all women cartoonists, including Mary, who contributed the cover of #1 [Apr. 1994]. Below: Wimmen’s Comix was the first all-women underground anthology, one that was periodically revived after its start in 1972, and one that featured Mary.

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Above: For a period in the ’90s, Mary had not one but two solo titles, Slutburger Stories [1991, Rip Off Press, and 1992–’95, Drawn & Quarterly] and Fleener, published by Matt Groening’s Zongo Comics Group from 1996–97. Below: In this pic taken at Jim’s Records, cartoonists Wayno (left) and Mary Fleener pose for a Polaroid, taken when Mary visited Wayno on her way back from France, in 1992.

against this?” And they go, “Yes, do you want to hear about it?” So I was able to go to a city council meeting here and I accused the whole city council and the police department of supporting child pornography. [laughs] And they didn’t like hearing that, but the abortion people never came back.

So the CBLDF has been very good to me.

CBC: When was this?

Mary: In the mid-’90s.

CBC: So were you political by nature?

Mary: A little bit.

CBC: Or just when they started opening up your mail?

Mary: Well, that will get you political! [laughter] Trying to throw you in the slammer for lines on paper. I started getting political locally here in Encinitas about 1988 and I know it doesn’t seem like a very serious issue, but they wanted to ban dogs on the beach, and there’s nothing I loved more than going down to the beach with my dog, and they’re banned everywhere else, but we still had a couple of beaches where it was okay to do it, but the problem is, people didn’t clean up the dog mess, and so the surfers and everybody had a legitimate complaint. It’s toxic. So we tried to educate people. Over a two-year period, we went to meetings, we got involved. It was the first time I had ever done anything like this. We went to meeting after meeting after meeting. We raised money, and we cleaned up the beach, and we made signs, and all this stuff. And, of course, being as naïve as I was, they rode me like a jockey, and in the eleventh hour got all these people to say we were terrible and dogs were biting people, and we lost. But, boy, did I learn a lot. So the next time an issue came up, in 2004, which had to do with land issues and the exploitation of Encinitas, we prevailed. It’s a real learning curve, and it takes a lot out of you, and I remember telling a friend about this, and she goes, “Why do you care?” I said, “I care because I live here, and don’t want to see it turn into Los Angeles.”

And it’s something that I felt I had to do. And when it came to that issue in 2004, I used guerrilla art. I put up probably 3,000 flyers in our town with cartoons and stuff addressing the issue that was at hand, and people responded. But I had to go around and use disguises. I had this little staple gun, and drove around the entire town and plastered flyers on every phone poll and wood surface I could find. It took about two weeks .But it worked! Screw the meetings and screw working with these people. They don’t listen and they don’t care. They make up their minds way before the city council meetings. However, the fight will never be over, I’m afraid. The developers and building industry are still conjuring ways to monetize and ruin this place and line their pockets.

CBC: Wow. [laughs] Mary: Never annoy a cartoonist!

CBC: [Laughs] So what did Weirdo mean to you?

Mary: It was fantastic, because I thought the undergrounds were dead forever after all the head shops had closed and went out of business, and to see this anthology with all this new art, crazy stuff, stuff that was really so damn expressive… I mean, that’s what I think is so interesting about you, Jon, is you have a super-hero, classical, appreciation of the classic Silver Age and Golden Age material, and you can also focus on Weirdo. Tell me: did you think that the art was good or bad, or did you just look at it like, “This was something different”?

CBC: Well, I have a pretty wide appreciation for comics.

Anyway, so you were doing anthologies that were coming in Weirdo’s wake. There was Prime Cuts, Buzzard, any number of anthologies coming out and you were in a lot of them.

Mary: Yeah, but Weirdo was the child of Arcade, and Arcade was the child of ZAP, so that’s the way I look at Weirdo. I also think that Denny Eichhorn’s Real Stuff was the child of Weirdo. He had so many artists in there that were new, but they were better. Really, you could see that the technique and everything was getting better by leaps and bounds… Mark Zingarelli, for god’s sake! He’s great. #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Fleener, Slutburger Stories TM & © Mary Fleener.

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though I might have the story wrong. The bookstore got raided, but they didn’t have copies of T*ts & Cl*ts, but they’d heard they had them, but that was enough to shut down the store and make Lyn and Joyce extremely paranoid.

CBC: Was that #7?

Mary: No. It was several years before I met Joyce. And I know how that feels, because I had my mail opened at my post office box here in Encinitas in the ’90s, when I was working for magazines like Hustler. Their envelopes and stationary were very discreet, but the fan mail I was getting had weird stuff glued on the outside, pictures of naked women, and silly things like that, and it caught the attention of a self-appointed “censor” who worked at the post office. Then I noticed my mail had been tampered with, some of it opened and inspected, and I realized a clear message was being sent to me, so I closed my P.O. Box and stopped going to that branch. I was well aware of what trouble this could bring, and I’d read about many cases of “entrapment” that were orchestrated by the government to catch “bad guys.” Sure enough, four months later, somebody sent a solicitation for child porno films to my home.

It was a sting operation. It was so obvious it wasn’t funny. I called up an attorney at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and asked, “What the heck do I do?” It was horrible, Jon. It was a picture of a nine-year-old naked boy, full frontal. There was a “quiz” you were supposed to fill out that let them know just how much of a perv you were.

Such questions as: “Do you like underage sex? Do you like movies with underage actors? Do you have fantasies about underage actors?” It was disgusting and 100% sick and wrong. So the CBLDF helped me out, told me how to handle the post office cops and the procedure to surrender the document, as an “outraged citizen,” of course, but, as a result, my mail and packages were opened for years… they are still being opened to this day. If you get on the radar of the government, it’s not a good place to be, because you can go to jail. They can, and will, totally F-you up. Both Joyce and I agree that this kind of thing changes you.

CBC: Wow! Mary: Yeah, but I got some use out of this experience. Bill Clinton passed the child protective pornography act, which said any depiction of children that’s lewd or obscene can land you in jail. And that became useful for me when we had those anti-abortionist people. They were trolling our town, sitting in front of high schools with pictures of dead babies. Oh, it was disgusting. And so, once again, I called the CBLDF and said, “Isn’t there a law

Hoodoo © Mary Fleener.

The magazine Mineshaft is certainly carrying on the UG tradition.

It took a while to get in Weirdo, though, because I had just started getting into comics and the first submissions I sent to Robert were very minimalistic. I was drawing with Sharpie pens because I didn’t want it to look like Robert Crumb or any of that crosshatching or anything, and I thought, well, I’ll draw punk rock style, just as simple and crude as I can. But then he quit, and Pete [Bagge] became the editor and I got rejected for years. [laughs] But the stuff I was sending Pete stunk. It wasn’t that great. It wasn’t that original. So finally, when I got my first my first Madame X from Planet Sex in there, I was pretty excited.

And then the other anthologies that came along… you had Prime Cuts, from Fantagraphics. I was in #5 of that. The page I had in that was dealing with the Mexican workers that were here, how they had to live and how tough it was for them. (Who knew it was going to get even tougher, right?) And there was Rip Off Press, and I was in a lot of those because Kathe Todd liked me, liked my stuff, and so that’s when I really started finding my voice with autobiographical stuff, in Rip Off. I always figure if I was going to learn cartooning, it would be like learning a musical instrument, and to get really good at a musical instrument, you must give yourself at least three to five years. It’s just the way it is. It took me ten years to learn how to draw hands. People go, “Why do I have to redraw hands?” And I go, “Well, look at your hand. There’s a big bump under that thumb.” You know? [laughs] And once you crack the code of how to do that thumb angle, then you’re okay and they won’t look like sausages. But it took me a while, and that was after taking eight semesters of live drawing, and going to school, and everything. You just need to sit down and draw, draw, draw, draw. There’s just no other way to get better. So, anyway, those anthologies were terrific. The pay was always pretty bad, but who cared? I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait to go on to the next project.

CBC: When did you start doing autobiographical stories?

Mary: I’m thinking probably the first autobiographical stuff I did was in Rip Off Comics, and that would have been in the late ’80s.

CBC: Well, you did tell a story to [Weirdo editor] Aline [Kominsky-Crumb] about having a conversation with your mom, and then she said, “Well, why don’t you make a strip out of that?” Isn’t that right?

Mary: Yep! We decided to go up north to visit Bob Armstrong and his wife, and then we wanted to meet the Crumbs, and they were living in Winters. And then we went to see Bob and Kate Crabb up in Nevada City. And so, when we went to visit Bob, I was really, oh god, I was so nervous.

I just let [husband] Paul do all the talking. Because, you know, when you meet your heroes… They were exactly like I thought they were going to be and all that, but I just clammed up. So Aline started talking about her mother, and I go, “Oh god, yes. You should hear about my mother.

She’s really a Jewish lady even though she was raised Catholic.” I told them about a conversation I had on the phone explaining what I was working on and it was T*ts & Cl*ts, and of course, like most moms do, she turned the conversation into the Theatre of the Absurd. The Crumbs said, “Oh, you’ve gotta do that!” And I’m like, “Okay, deal!” [laughter] “It shall be done!” It’s funny. My dad, you know, he didn’t like me doing art, and wanted me to get a real job, but, he used to cut out the Little Annie Fanny episodes from Playboy, because he always had a stack of Playboys by his bed and dirty novels, stuff like that. So maybe that’s why I was so hellbent on being a bad girl. [Jon laughs] But he would cut out these Little Annie Fannys and give them to me because the art was so fantastic, and I thought that was cool that he did that, and my mom thought that was weird.

She was kind of a prude, but when I told her I was doing T*ts & Cl*ts, she didn’t bat an eye.

CBC: You did autobiographical comics for Rip Off. How COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

was Kathe Todd as an editor? How was the experience? I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about anybody contributing to Rip Off Comix and it was a good anthology.

Mary: Oh, Kathe was great. Kathe was very easy. The themes of the Rip Offs were fun. One was about cops, one was about rock ’n’ roll, one was about sex… As usual, the contents were a mixed bag. There were some people who were really, really good, and some stuff that I would have not used, but I think when you get into undergrounds and anthologies, that’s part of the journey is taking a chance.

I’m not wild about some people, but there’s always some everybody thinks are the greatest, but I might not particularly care for. So, anyway, she was great. Rip Off Press was the first publisher of Slutburger.

CBC: What was Slutburger?

Mary: Slutburger was primarily an autobiographical comic, 32 pages. But, at the time, I was so slow. It took forever to do a page in those days. As someone who is a freak magnet and has about 100 guardian angels watching over me, I’ve had a colorful life and I’ve always enjoyed telling these “party stories.” So I decided they would make great comix.

I was trying to make it not all autobiographical stuff because there were some things I wanted to reprint from, things I had maybe done in Europe that nobody was ever going to see. One really neat job I had was for a magazine called DAS, which came out of Switzerland and I met this lady who was an editor for DAS when I went to Angoulême in 1992. They wanted people to take a classic novel and

This page: Original cover art for Hoodoo, a solo Fleener one-shot which featured her adaptations of African-American author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston’s tales and was published

by Ray Zone (of 3-D comics fame). This comic book is cited as her “first official work,” and it was a collection encouraged

by Zone after Mary had adapted ZNH in the mini-comic DEMO.

7

8

well as two other one-shots, one by Kim Deitch and the other by The Pizz.

CBC: When you did the stuff for Hustler, were you doing stuff for other slick magazines?

Mary: Yeah! This guy named Robert Newman who knew Denny Eichhorn, he contacted me out of the blue and got me my first job at Entertainment Weekly, and he kind of held my hand and told me the polite things to do in the biz… follow-up letters, making calls, and the pleases and the thank-yous, and he really helped me. I don’t know why he did it, but he did, so I was doing stuff for Guitar Player magazine, Musician, Spin, Village Voice…Then there was a magazine that Tower Records put out called Pulse that was terrific. But, yeah, it was a real mixed bag of stuff.

And because of Hustler, I did some work for a magazine called Pure. It was a men’s magazine that was done by women, and they used nothing but women writers, photographers, models, and artists. And that was liberating. [laughs] So it was great. And then my husband got laid off. He was working for Teledyne Ryan, a huge corporate defense plant down in San Diego, and they laid off 200 people one day, and he was one of them. And right about this time I was doing all these, maybe two or three jobs a month for Hustler, so I was bringing home the bacon, and it was great. I even voted for Larry Flynt for governor when he ran a few years ago. That guy championed First Amendment rights, darn it!!. He’s a good guy.

But it’s interesting about Hustler. I have to mention this: Apparently, when you do these porno magazines, you have to have two articles that are intellectual in nature, so the articles that I was illustrating were pretty serious. Like the fact that we weren’t teaching sex education and warnings about AIDS in the Southern states in the schools, and they were predicting that it would be a disaster in 20 years, and that’s exactly what’s happened. There were pretty intellectual articles… was one about CIA assassination, how they can program just normal Joes and turn them into these nut-cases. And I actually got censored by Hustler, the only place I’ve ever been censored. From the CIA assassination article, I cleverly — or so I thought — put a phallic symbol in there that was kind of geometric, and the editor called me back and goes, “They said, ‘Tell Fleener to take the dick out of there and put a gun in there instead.’”

And I went, “Allll right.” And then I had to do an article about designer drugs, so I figured, okay, designer drugs, got a catwalk with the women with their gowns. So I had them holding bottles of pills, and bottle of a tank of nitrous oxide, and this one girl had a hypodermic needle in her arm, and the editor called me up and said, “Cannot do that!

We cannot show insertion.” [laughs] #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Artwork © Mary Fleener.

condense it into one page. And I was like, “Wow!” So I did 1984, Lord of the Flies, The Sea-Wolf, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I put those in Slutburger because I thought that would be kind of interesting. So it was mostly autobiographical stuff, and then I had a big letters section, because people would write me and every letter was great. And then, by #5, I lost interest, because having a Canadian publisher, even in Montreal, and dealing with the hassles of mailing… We didn’t have computers then, and then you had to mail the original artwork and just hold your breath for two weeks and hope it got up there. And, about that time, at the end of Slutburger, I was getting illustration work and I really liked it. It was easy to do, the money was great…

I’d do a two-page illo for Hustler and that was as much money as I got for doing five months of work doing Slutburger. I couldn’t pass it up! Because in the world of illustration, you don’t last very long. The fads come and go.

That terrific illustrator you used to see everywhere, where’d the hell did he/ she go? Then styles change, everybody wanted to go the Xerox look, and the airbrush look was yesterday’s news.

So when I got these offers for these jobs, I wasn’t going to say, “Well, I’ve got to finish Slutburger. I’ll get back to you.” No way! They’d go on to the next person. I must say, the money for doing illo work in the ’90s was really good!

Anyway, after five issues of Slutburger, I stopped. I got bored.

CBC: Who is Ray Zone?

Mary: Ah, Ray… Ray was a good pal o’ mine… (R.I.P., 1947–2012). He was an L.A. guy whose expertise was 3D, and he’d do all these 3D comics and all this Betty Page stuff. I believe Peter Bagge listed some minis and such in Weirdo, and one of them was for Ray’s “Illustories” which were small print runs of work by people he liked. No 3-D stuff, just black-&-white. I was becoming more interested in southern Voodoo stuff, so I sent him an eight-pager, a story of someone getting cursed by a voodoo doll, and he printed it in his “Illustories” series. I met Ray and his wife, Gail, at the San Diego Comic Con that year, and Gail took one look and said, “You’re Mary?!!!?” I guess they were expecting some Rasta-haired wild woman. And then there was the L.A. gallery scene at La Luz de Jesus, that started the Lowbrow art movement, and I’d run into Ray there all the time because I started showing my fine art up there a lot. And the openings were always fun because rock ’n’ roll people would be there, and actors, and it was very underground. Then I put out a zine with some friends called Demo, and in there I adapted a Zora Neal Hurston story and Ray said “Why don’t you do an entire comic of her stuff. I’ll publish it. So in 1988, Ray put out Hoodoo, as

Twisted Sisters TM & © Diane Noomin and Aline Kominsky-Crumb. Wimmen’s Comix TM & © the respective copyright holders. Mary Fleener self-portrait from DEMO © Mary Fleener.

Let that sink in for a minute!

CBC: [Laughs] Hustler magazine.

Mary: I know! [laughs] So that was a nice ride for about a year.

CBC: So those were the salad days for you?

Mary: No. It’s really been feast and famine with me.

CBC: Yeah? Is one necessarily the most lucrative days of your career?

Mary: No. No, I’ve had some years where I’d be selling art, comic art, for about six months, and then nothing. So you never know what’s going to happen. Or you might have some artwork in a restaurant, where nobody buys art in restaurants. There’s a little place here in town that in the last year I’ve sold two paintings for a couple thousand dollars — each. That never happens, and these were weird pieces, too. One was a 48" x 60" painting of the song lyrics to “Surfin’ Bird”, and the woman who bought it looked like Aunt Bea from Mayberry RFD! You never know. So the best thing you can do is live frugally, don’t spend more than you make, save your money, and just keep drawing.

CBC: Are you able to take vacations and travel?

Mary: Well, I hate flying and my husband hates flying, but there’s a place that we go to every year, in Central California called Jalama Campgrounds, near Lompoc. The Air Force owns a lot of the land, there’s no aqueduct, so it’s old, natural California cliffs with no buildings, no nothing, and it’s fantastic. And, gosh, where you camp there’s mountain lions, coyotes, and wild pigs that come down to the beach and eat the sand crabs, and we’ve seen orcas jump out of the ocean, and whales breeching themselves. Once you get north of Point Conception, it’s a whole different climate than everything here in California because it sticks out, and once you get above there, the waves are dangerous, the water’s colder, there’s great white sharks, it rains more. We’ve been doing that for many, many years. Once in a while I’ll hop in a plane. But I hate it. I suppose I’m going to have to do a lot of stuff when my book, Billie the Bee, comes out. I’m not looking forward to that. When I went to Zine Machine 4 years ago, I was in such a state, I sketched about 50% the entire plot to Billie on that four-hour ride, and the other 50% on the ride back home. I hate airplanes!

CBC: Did you know Matt Groening?

Mary: Not really.

CBC: How did you get hooked up with the Bongo Comics?

Mary: I would see Matt at Comic Con, and he’d be at the art shows, but we didn’t socialize. I knew one of the people that worked for him. Her name was Mili and she said, “Well, you know, Matt’s thinking of trying to start a line of underground comics and why don’t you talk to him?” And I go, “Well, that might be kind of fun. It’s all-ages? Yeah, maybe I can do that.” Because after I stopped doing Slutburger, I was kind of like going, “Hmm.” So I called him up and he told me what he had in mind. He said, “Yeah, the other person I want to publish is Gary Panter.” I go, “Oh god! So we can do whatever we want?” And he goes, “Yeah! Just try to make it all-ages.” So it sort of happened like that, but we never hung out or anything. I really don’t know him. Just through the circle of friends, you know, the art. Like Ray Zone… with Ray, we hit it off more. I mean, it’s kind of hard to make friends with famous millionaires, you know? Well, they’re always surrounded by people. You see them at an art show or something and there’s, like, 20 people standing around looking at them, going, “Gahhh.” You know how it is.

CBC: You had a comic book with a title that was your name. How many other cartoonists can say that?

Mary: Well, I didn’t like the idea. I got pressured into that decision. Lesson learned!

CBC: Did you get pressured?

Mary: Yup. Quote me on that. I thought it was stupid. Matt said, “Oh, you’ve got such a weird name. It’s so unusual, and it’s kind of wacky-sounding.” And then his attorney goes, “Oh, I like the name. That’s the name we’re going to use.” I’m thinking, “But I can think of something so much COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

better. And nobody knows who Mary Fleener is. I’m not to that point where I have that recognition.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. Jim Woodring did Jim.” Well, yeah, that’s different. I just didn’t think Fleener was very catchy and apparently nobody else did either, because the orders were so dreadful. That’s why I stopped the book after issue three. I also think it was too soon to change genres after doing Slutburger.

CBC: Right around then you had your first collection, Life of the Party…?

Mary: Life of the Party was 1995, Fleener #1 was 1999.

In 1994, I was in an art show at a place called Vox Populi, up in Seattle, with Jim Woodring, so Paul and I went on one of our rare flights and stayed with Jim and Mary.

And they had a big party for us with all the Fantagraphics people. And Gary came up to me and he goes, “Well, it’s time to do your book.” And I go, “Okay!” [laughs] “When do you want to do it?” And he goes, “That’s up to you.”

I go, “Okay.” And that was it. So I compiled all my stuff, and since my drawing style was so black-&-white, there weren’t a lot of halftones and gray scale, or washes, so I was able to just Xerox everything and mail it to Fantagraphics. Isn’t that something? And the printing came out great and everything.

CBC: Yeah, it’s a beautiful book.

Mary: I didn’t have a computer yet, so I wish I had done the cover color, but it came out well. And then Ray, who was one of those guys who knows all these big, million-dollar words, seemed like the right guy to write something in my book so I said, “Please write my introduction and make it as pompous as you can. I mean, I want people to have to have a dictionary next to them at all times.” And then, in the meantime, I found all this fabulous art, like the monk in the wheat field, and all that stuff that I had at the beginning.

I was at the library and was looking through these books, and I stumbled upon this stuff, and I go, “Whoa! What I’m doing isn’t so new after all!” In fact, when they invented the camera, I think it was 1857 or 1853, within a week there were naked pictures of women all over Paris. [laughter] CBC: Okay. So how do you approach making a cubist drawing? How do you plan that out? I mean, because there’s negative and positive space, the effects that you have within the art itself. How do you plan that? Pencil it out first? Is it in your mind?

Mary: I sometimes rough out ideas. I have all these sketchbooks that have no chronological order or rhyme or reason. I just grab the closest one and just start drawing stuff and sometimes it’s simple, and sometimes it’s exactly what I want the final drawing to look like. But, for Billie the Bee, I skipped that step and went straight for the Bristol board, because I wanted something out of my brain that hadn’t been done before. So, if you do a face, for example, a face is an oval with two round things for eyes, and a thing

Above: Mary labeled this “How to Do a Fleener Painting in Six Easy Steps.”

Previous page: At top is “Blue Note” and at bottom is “Funkadelicized,” by Mary Fleener and included in the “Six Strings Series” of post cards put out by her Fleenerwërks, in 1997.

Below: Fantagraphics published Mary’s complete autobiographical comics collection, Life of the Party, in 1996.

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Above: Mary did over 100 installments of The Less You Know, The Better You Feel in two years for a local newspaper, The Coast News. “I wanted to challenge myself,” she shares, “and see if I could do a single-panel cartoon every week…” The feature ran between 2012–14. Below: Example of Mary’s political activism… that is, of putting her cartooning to use for the greater good. SavePacificView.org is, according to their website, “a grassroots group” joined to save an Encinitas school site to remain in the public domain..

using the pen to make the “rays” and going back and forth, and then filling them in. Sometimes people say, “Oh, it looks like Charles Burns.” I go, “No, I’m influenced by Albrecht Duher from the 14th century. Get a clue.” Anyway, when he showed me how to do that, that was a breakthrough.

CBC: So Burns taught you that?

Mary: Yeah! Up in Winnipeg. They had some art thing where they invited Charles, Chester Brown, and me to this Misfit Lit show. It was traveling around the country and I scored a free trip, and went up there and got to know Chester and Charles on that trip. And Charles Burns, he’s a riot. He’s a really funny guy.

CBC: Mary, did you ever do work for Marvel or DC? Mary: No. The only thing I did for DC, and you probably read all about it on Facebook, was when they had Paradox Press and they were doing the Big Books, and Heidi McDonald contacted me to be involved in the Big Book of Wild Women. And the woman who was writing all the text was a gal named Susie the Floozie, and I’d met her at Comic-Con, and she was really great. She was sort of like a cross between Valerie Perrine and Dolly Parton. And smart, really smart, but she was unfortunately blessed with charms that detracted from her brain. [laughter] But a really neat lady.

And she said she wanted to do Rusty Warren and I agreed, and we did it, but the book got shelved in 2004. And that was my only experience with DC. But I got the rights back to my story. It took a long time because, you know, it was work for hire. But I found the cancellation letter that laid out the process for getting the rights back, and I got the rights back to my Rusty Warren story, and so that’s going to appear in the next Mineshaft.

CBC: Oh, really? Far out!

Mary: And I wrote an introduction about the whole story, about me meeting her, and finding her records at the thrift store, and what a hassle it was getting the rights back.

But, by god, I got ’em back! And [attorney] Mitch Berger helped me do that, because he used to work for DC. And it was really funny, too, because after the Comic-Con this last year, [Columbia University Curator for Comics and Cartoons] Karen Green, who I know, wanted to come by my house and see my broken tile mural, because my whole house is a mural, a mosaic. And she brought her boyfriend, Paul Levitz. [laughs] And I said to my husband Paul, “Keep your damned mouth shut. Don’t even bring up Rusty Warren. He doesn’t work for them anymore, but I don’t want to talk about this because I’m almost there. I’m this close.”

CBC: It’s very interesting in the sense that you’re at the end of underground comics, and you fit comfortably with those guys, and with the alternative scene that came out in the ’80s, when you really rose up, you fit comfortably with those guys. Then you had the alternative comics scene that came in the ’90s And, of course, there was Fantagraphics throughout. You seem to easily fit into it all. And now, Mineshaft. You almost couldn’t get more small press than that. And you just seem to have a nice relationship with everybody. Does it feel that way? Do you feel comfortable and happy no matter pretty much what circles you’re in, if it’s not mainstream, at least? It’s all cartooning?

Mary: Well, if you want me to be perfectly honest, sometimes. Sometimes people butt heads, sometimes things are said that are misinterpreted, and sometimes there are disappointments. And that’s certainly happened to me. So, at about 2001, I just said, “Screw it, I want to rock ’n’ roll.”

An L.A. friend, Tom Gardner, started coming down and jamming with us, and about that time I met this amazing drummer, a woman named Rebecca Olachea, and all of a sudden we had a band, and all of a sudden we started playing everywhere… almost every weekend, and in 2002, we made a CD. I was doing paintings during this time, and an odd illustration job here and there, but in 2002 I started a bi-weekly strip for a local paper, and I wrote about “what I knew,” mainly, Encinitas! I called the strip Mary-Land, and did that for two years. I’d never had a deadline like that and #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Artwork © Mary Fleener.

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in the middle for your nose, and a thing at the bottom for your mouth. Okay, so you have these things. Well, instead of drawing them normally, you start exaggerating them. Instead of the idea being the same shape as the other eye, maybe eye five times bigger and make it a circle. And where are you going to put the pupil?

Well, maybe we’ll put it in a triangle around the side.

So I just started forgetting all the rules I know and making up new “rules.”

I generally pencil out the whole thing, and when I’m satisfied that I have enough on the page, then I get my circle template, one of those old-fashioned plastic ones that you used to be able to buy for 49¢? I’ve got three of them and I take out one of my technical pens and I do the circles first. For big circles, I’ll use wine glasses or records or plates — anything I have laying around to get the curvature. And I’ve got it down pretty good with plates, too. In fact, when I’ve been at Comic-Con, I’ve had to use quarters and pennies for the circles. And then I do all really tight-ass finishes — because I want all the circles to be perfect. In fact, with these pages I did for Billie, I scan them and corrected the solid dots in Photoshop. I mean, it’s really neurotic, but that makes it look better. And then, when I’m through doing that, I ink with a brush. I was using those Winsor-Newtons, but I got one of those Raphaels, and I inked the whole book with that #3 brush, and it was really a good brush, and it’s getting hard to find the Winsor ones. So I just thought I’d try something new. I’m glad I did.

Anyway, after I ink all the lines, then I start filling in the blacks, making sure that the black is opposite the white.

And then in the light areas I start doing the feathering with the brush, that traditional feathering like Charles Burns does. (And Charles taught me how to do that, too.) You have to hold that brush perpendicular to the paper. You don’t hold it like a pencil. Before that I was

Artwork © Mary Fleener. True Swamp © Jon Lewis.

I loved it. Amazingly, no one here in Encinitas has any idea of the comic books I’ve done! However, I needed some downtime because I’d had a couple people disappoint me, a couple projects that didn’t work out, a couple publishers who were assholes. So it happens to everybody, and then I went back to Comic-Con and got a booth for two years in a row. I think it was 2006 and ’07, and all those people were coming up to me and going, “Do you have anything new?” I’m going, “Uh, no.” So I thought, “I’d better get my act together.” Then I got really political and started doing a weekly strip for another Encinitas paper called The Coast News, and my strip was called The Less You Know, The Better You Feel. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could do a single-panel cartoon every week, and I did over 100 cartoons in a two-year period, from 2012–14. It is very hard work and I’d say I got my message across about 60% of the time! I didn’t have any interest in the direct market, because, well… I just didn’t. Then, two years ago, in February 2016, my optometrist found a hole in my retina and I had this little shadow in my eye. The doctors flipped out and said that I could go blind at any minute. I had to have laser surgery and that it was a big wakeup call. I said to myself, “Okay, Fleener: time to do the book. Get off your ass.”

Y’see, this had been going on for a long time. Every two years I’d call up Kim Thompson [the late co-publisher of Fantagraphics]. I’d go, “Kim, I’ve got an idea for a book!”

“It sounds great! Do it!” But I wouldn’t do it, because the reassurance was enough, and then some job or some distraction in my life would get in the way. I’d call him back two years later. “Oh, I’ve got a better idea!” He’d say, “All right! Do it!” [laughs] And then he died. So I started thinking about that, going, “Geez. Time is just passing me by.” So after my eye healed, I went to that Zine Machine thing in April 2016, and I wrote Billie the Bee. Then I had a fire lit under me and I was rarin’ to go. One person who really got me interested in comics again was Everett Rand who publishes Mineshaft with his wife, Gioia Palmieri. About 10 years ago, they contacted me, sent me some issues, and started re-printing some of my local political stuff and best of all, they actually acted like they gave a sh*t about me and my comics, something that was rare in the comic world. Plus, the quality of the work in Mineshaft inspired me. I started seeing that ol’ crosshatching done well, and it was exciting to see. I reviewed some books for them, mainly Special Exits by Joyce Farmer and Need More Love by Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and I realized I really liked writing. My association with Mineshaft has been a real blessing. Then going to Durham for Zine Machine in 2016, and meeting them and the other Mineshaft artists was a real meeting of the minds.

So it wasn’t always just everything fell in my lap. But it was surprising, because at Comic-Con that year, 2016, I brought my sketchbook with my little Bee story. I had a hundred pages, and if you saw my rough sketchbooks, you would not be impressed. They look like I’m drawing with my foot. But I showed it to Gary [Groth] and he liked it, and I couldn’t believe it. Then reality hit! “I’d better get down to business.” Because I knew it would take me at least two years. And that’s kind of also the reason that I kind of needed a little break, because I thought, “Well, I’m going to COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

go to the next step and do a graphic novel, which I have to do, I will have to sacrifice many months and work on it every day.” I had to think of something new.

CBC: And what is that?

Let’s talk about Billie.

Mary: I don’t know where I got the idea from. [laughs] I would lie in bed and, one night I just started thinking about this crazy idea. Like, how’d they think up Rocky and Bullwinkle, for example? It’s such an oddball combination of animals.

And I thought, “Rocky and Bullwinkle. Yeah, I want to think of something that’s as wacky as that.” I was also inspired by True Swamp

by Jon Lewis. About 20 years ago Jeff Mason from Alternative Press gave me a pile of books and True Swamp was one of them and I loved it because the lead character, Lenny, was a foul-mouthed frog who lived in the wild, and his buddies were coarse and vulgar, and… guess what?

The acted like animals!! No cutesy stuff, no woo-woo storyline, this was True Grit! I thought Jon’s approach was reckless. I pondered this idea for a long time. There was something there but I couldn’t pin it down. ( I bought four copies of that book, I liked it so much.) So then, three things happened in my life that kind of got me thinking about bees. One, we had this huge beehive right above my studio that was in this tree. The hive was, at least, 48 inches long. Right out in the open, millions of ’em! They’d been hanging there for years. Then one day the neighbor next door was trimming his tree, and they got spooked and split. (By the way, when the whole hive leaves, they have “absconded.”)

And then, the second thing was we had the bee colony collapse where there were, like, 80,000 dead bees just laying on the ground in my yard. I’d heard about this bee collapse in the news, but I was surprised having a pretty fertile garden and all. The bees all died the next day.

The third thing is I found a hive under my drawing table. [laughs] Because there was a little tiny ventilation hole right outside the wall of my shed, and the bees were able to get into a nice warm spot, and they built a hive, and you could actually feel the warmth of the bees on the floor. They have to keep the hive at 95 degrees to keep the queen fertile, because she lays 1,800 eggs a day. And you could hear them. It sounded like running water, it was quite mystical.

And then I had to move everything out of the studio, and the

Above: Grinning Mary shows off her poster for her “American Music” exhibit that took place at the Encinitas Library in 2016.

Inset left: Luke Miller had a tattoo reproducing the accompanying Mary Fleener illustrated tattooed over much of his upper body!

Below: In her interview, Mary makes mention of Jon Lewis’s True Swamp, which features, “Lenny, was a foul-mouthed frog who lived in the wild, and his buddies were coarse and vulgar, and… guess what? The acted like animals!! No cutesy stuff, no woo-woo storyline, this was True Grit!” Lenny proved an inspiration to Mary when composing her Billie the Bee graphic novel (coming in 2019).

11

This page: Mineshaft might be the best pseudo-underground comix around today, particularly considering the inclusion of many of the finest cartoonists.

Including, of course, Mary.

The above appeared in the latest ish, #36, [Oct. 2018]. Below is her cover for #33 [Spr. ’16].

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

“Rusty Warren” © Mary Fleener. Mineshaft © Everett Rand & Gioia Palmieri.

12

Bee Removal company had to saw a hole in the floor and lift up this huge hive that was there. The problem is honeybee hives can rot the wood in your floor. Honey is 18% water.

For whatever reason, like three years later, I started thinking about honey, and you know that people always say, “Well, honey’s nothing but bee poop,” or bee pee, or bee vomit. And I started to go, “What is it really?” So I got on the internet and started researching it and going, “Oh, my god!” And the more I learned, the more fascinated I was, and the more I learned about the society of bees and how brutal they were, I go, “This is underground comix material.

I mean, it’s right here in front of me!” So I just started thinking about the story every night as I lay in bed and I’d go on to the next couple of pages that I could see in my mind.

And this is a mental trick I’ve used for a lot of my work, too. I have a little movie in my mind and I can see it. It’s like a little film. So, when I was satisfied with what I’d thought of, and I got on that airplane in 2016, I just started drawing and writing. I decided just to wing it. But the place where all the action in the graphic novel happens is a place called the San Elijo Lagoon. I took 300 pictures of this whole area because Paul and I love to go there. We have places where we sit and zone out, and there’s a lot of wild animals. It’s a natural estuary that’s near the ocean, and then there’s a highway between the ocean and the lagoon. So it’s freshwater and saltwater. That’s our spot. That’s how it happened and, after that, it was just single-minded determination and drawing every damned day for 21 months.

CBC: Did you write everything down first?

Mary: I had my sketchbook story written and rough drawings for approximately 100 pages, but I knew it would be longer so I penciled one page at a time, and changed a lot of things as the story revealed itself to me. I had an ending, but I even added to that.

CBC: You didn’t know where you were going to go?

Mary: Nope! I just opened up my little sketchbook. I wanted to keep it fresh, and if an idea came into my head, I would have the room to add it, and I don’t like to do really tight pencils. There’s something in that pencil that’s just so beautiful and then when you ink it, it changes it into something as beautiful, but it’s still different. I think when you write it, like traditional paragraphs, you get trapped, and I prefer to let my mind be free when I start to do stuff like this. And now, you know, I like to write. I think I drive people crazy, because when they email me, I always send them back a novel, right? [laughs] It’s so effortless for me.

I really enjoy it.

You know, because I’d do the thing where you’d have the story, the text at the top of the panel, and then you’d do the drawing to illustrate that text. I mean, it went pretty easily, but, after I learned more about the animals that I was drawing about, I was able to use that as plot points, things to take the story in a different direction, because when I found out that skunks can eat rattlesnakes, that they’re completely immune to the venom, I went, “Okay, great, I’ll have a skunk eat all the snake babies! That’ll work!” So it was an ongoing process even up until the last page. There was so much that I found interesting…

I found out something about turtles. I didn’t know turtles could smell underwater, but they can!

CBC: Okay. A technical question for you: insects are cold-blooded, right? Actually, I don’t even know if they’re blooded…

Mary: Reptiles and amphibians are cold-blooded, so lizards and snakes have to lay out in the sun to raise their body temperature and they have to do that every day.

Insects don’t have to do that. They have a whole different system. Insects stay “supercool” to survive cool temps by producing alcohol in their bodies that lowers their freezing point to prevent cell damaging ice…in other words, they make anti-freeze in their bodies!

CBC: How do they generate heat?

Mary: Bees in a hive, they just get close together. They just pack themselves in. They can get very warm, like when they kill an enemy, they will “bee ball” and they get the temperature up to 116 degrees, and that will overheat the animal and kill it. Like a hornet, for example, if a hornet gets near a hive, immediately the guard bees will surround the animal and they boil it to death, basically.

CBC: So does that mean that the bees that are closest to the wasp in this instance die, too?

Mary: That’s a good question! [laughs] Because worker bees can kill the queens that way, too. [Mary later added: I looked it up, and the bees are constantly moving so they don’t stay in one spot long enough to get fried.]

CBC: Bees are brutal.

Mary: Oh, they chew off the wings with their mandibles and sting them. Bees can sting other insects over and over again. It’s the skin of mammals that are a problem because their barbed stingers get stuck in our epidermis.

CBC: So how did you pitch the idea to Gary?

Mary: Oh, we went to lunch at Nobu across the street, and I just yak, and yak, and yak, and yak, and showed him the pages and explained what the story was, and he’s just like, going, “That’s amazing!” Then I’d show him something and he goes, “That’s amazing! This is great!” I’m sitting there going, “Wow! I’m on a roll!” And he goes, “I think you might have invented a new subgenre!” I’m going, “Well, I hope so, because my whole goal in life is to be original!” I learned that from Sam Phillips, who managed Elvis Presley, and I think that’s a really good attitude to have in life. Be original! You may not be the best and you may not be the

All © Mary Fleener.

worst, but, if you’re original, you’ve got something!

CBC: You’re going to have to describe this graphic novel in shorthand. How do you describe it now? It’s a graphic novel and it’s… what is it, Mary?

Mary: Oh, the description of my book? I tell people now that it’s a nature story that’s set in a lagoon about a group of animals that live there.

CBC: That’s shorthand but it’s a whole lot more than that.

Mary: Well, that’s the description that you would put on the library card. [laughs] CBC: I mean, it’s not a science book. Though there’s a lot of information that’s conveyed on it, it’s very entertaining.

Mary: Well, thanks. Well, in preparation for this book, I read The Secret Life of Bees and that’s how I found out the honey has melatonin in it, because in the South, it’s very common to have a dollop of honey in a spoon before you go to bed. The pineal gland converts the tryptophan that is found in honey into serotonin, which is converted into melatonin, which is a common sleep aid. I learned that from reading The Secret Life of Bees, and I watched the movie. The book was better. [laughs] Saw Watership Down, read the book, hated the movie.

Rewatched Bambi, rewatched A Bug’s Life, and one prevailing thing in all of this stuff are the animals act like people, especially Watership Down. You’ve got the boss rabbit and he’s overweight, smoking a cigar, and he’s got whiskers, and, you know, “Do you want any female rabbits?” You know, he’s a pimp, and I’m like, “This is just ridiculous.” The book was better for that one, too.

When I was watching Bambi, which I hadn’t seen for years, I didn’t realize what a badass Bambi was. When his mother dies, nobody can get beyond that in the movie.

They just go into shock. But at the end, Bambi grows up, and he’s courting a female doe, and a rival shows up.

Remember that fight they have and Bambi launches this guy over a cliff and into the river? He kills him! And I was like, this is what I want my book to have! Because Disney always seemed to have really of heavy stuff in their movies. And then they would gloss it over with Velveeta cheese, whatever they had to do to make it all happy again and stuff. But I was really inspired by that, and that’s why I wanted my animals to act like animals. As close as I get to human behavior in the book is where two characters think another animal is responsible for something and they’re going to form a lynch mob, but they don’t quite do it. That was as close as I wanted to get to what people would do. But I really didn’t like the fact that they never have any animals that act like animals. Animals eat each other and they fight. They’re territorial… and another thing I did in that book, I don’t know if you picked up on it, is they’re all females.

CBC: Oh, yeah!

Mary: And there wasn’t a feminist reason for this; there was a biological reason for this, because the females have babies and cubs and snakelets, and if I do Book Two, I fully intend the coyote to have a litter of puppies. But you can’t do that when they’re boys! [laughs] So then I started reading about, you know a lot of animation films, they never have strong female characters. It’s very rare with the animal films. I thought, “Well, you know what?

Let’s make them all females. Let’s see what happens.” Because the females of the species are actually more vicious than the males. They’ve got to defend their young and raise these little animals, and find food for them.

They’re badass!

CBC: So, Mary, how do you look at your career so far in comics? Has it been worth it in the long run?

Mary: I was born an artist, and it’s the only thing I ever wanted to do because it’s the one thing I COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

do well. I had intuitive knowledge of what my life would be like, and I made decisions when I was very small, and I’m grateful I had that intuition, because it kept me on my path.

Oh a few times, I rejected art, and walked away, and…

I was lost. I was a late bloomer and restless, so it took a long time for me to calm down and work hard, and what’s neat about comics is you have to be able to write and draw.

There’s no bullsh*tting like the fine art world. You can’t nail yourself to a Volkswagen and expect to be taken seriously.

Craft is appreciated and even though I am not a huge fan of super hero stuff, no one can deny the brilliance of those Golden and Silver Age guys. There is a refreshing lack of ageism in the comic world. Doesn’t matter what you look like, if you have the chops, that’s what has value.

Comics people share a camaraderie, a sense of the absurd, and sure, there’s some Divas, but cartoonists know how to laugh at themselves. I always wanted to do comics, even as a little kid, and I am a lucky chicken that I had an opportunity to do that, and on my own terms.

Is it a career in the usual sense? No, not really, but for me, it’s an ongoing attempt to do really good work, and lately, I’m feeling pretty positive.

Above: Mary included this introductory comic strip as the inside front cover of Slutburger Stories #2 [1991]. Below and inset left: Due for release at precisely the same time this issue hits the shops, Mary Fleener’s Billie the Bee is her first graphic novel and, we say, one delightful read!

13

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

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comics in the library

This Means War (Comics)

Part one of Rich Arndt’s two-part look at the comic books of man’s eternal conflicts

The Vietnam War: A Graphic History © Dwight Joe Zimmerman and Wayne Vansant. U.S.S. Stevens, Toro TM & © DC Comics.

by RICHARD J. ARNDT CBC Contributing Editor War comics as a genre have been ailing for some time. Neither of the main two or three companies currently publish a regular war book but they, and many other publishers, are reprinting the vast backlog of comics that appeared in the earlier, more genre friendly, publishing climates.

The best all-in-one reprint, from Dover Press, is the massive U.S.S. Stevens: The Collected Stories by the late, great Sam Glanzman. The volume collects every single U.S.S. Stevens short, from 1970 to 2013 — most from the feature’s 1970s run in DC Comics’ war titles — and includes a brand new last chapter done by Glanzman shortly before his death in 2017.

The sheer omnibus size of the book — 75 stories are collected — may intimidate some readers, but the stories themselves are mostly four-page efforts, with a mere handful as long as ten pages. Don’t let the short story lengths fool you, however. These are some of the hardest hitting, most emotional and truly human war stories you will ever read, or expose a young reader to.

The list of classic stories would include “The Kunko Warrior,” ‘Kamikaze,” “In Tsingtao,” “Dreams,” “What Do They Know About War?,” ‘Color Me Brave!,” “The Sea Is Calm… The Sky Is Bright…,” “Toro,” “Lucky… Save Me,” “…and Fear Crippled Andy Payne,” and so many others that it’s impossible to do them justice in the space I have to talk about them. However, the groundbreaking “Toro” is arguably the first sympathetic story in mainstream comics to deal with homosexuality and does so without any slur or slang. In fact, it never even mentions homosexuality. Toro is simply a troubled, sensitive man, who has been turned into a killer, and finds he cannot come back from it. All done in five pages. Of all the comic book creators, only Will Eisner can lay claim to having created so many tight, taunt tales in so few pages as Glanzman does here. Every library — and frankly every comics reader’s home — should have a copy of this great book.

Another couple of fine war books are Fantagraphics’ Corpse on the Imjin! and Other Stories by Harvey Kurtzman and Bomb Run and Other Stories by Kurtzman and illustrator John Severin. Corpse on the Imjin! collects every story and cover Kurtzman wrote and/or illustrated for the E.C. Comics war titles — Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat — that he edited. In and of itself, that would make a great book, but the editors also include 11 other stories from those series, with art by Alex Toth, Reed Crandall, Johnny Craig, Russ Heath, Dave Berg, Gene Colan, Ric Estrada, and Joe Kubert. What a line-up! To finish it off, it includes an excellent essay by Frank Stack.

Bomb Run features 32 stories written by Kurtzman and illustrated

by John Severin. The concluding essay is by S. C. Ringgenberg and is as good as the Frank Stack piece in the previous volume. The two volumes are thick, the pricing is good and the black-&-white reproduction COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

actually enhances the excellent stories, giving them an added depth that may not have been apparent in their original colored appearance in the 1950s. Great books.

Not every great volume of war comics comes from familiar publishers. World War Two: Against the Rising Sun by writer Jason Quinn and illustrator Naresh Kumar is from a publisher called Campfire, part of a publishing group from Kalyani Navyug Media, a company based in India.

It’s a story set during the Japanese advance into Asia in 1941–42, and, frankly, it’s a superb graphic novel. The brutality of war, and of the Japanese in particular, is not glossed over and the writing and illustration are top-notch. This is a highly recommended book.

The Vietnam War: A Graphic History by writer Dwight Jon Zimmerman and artist Wayne Vansant is a faithful and accurate history of that conflict that covers the politics, from the civilian, government, and military perspectives, which formed the rationale behind the war, as well as the protests against it, and it offers excellent coverage of the actual battles.

Vansant is a current master of coherent war comics and Zimmerman is himself an excellent historian. This is an essential volume in any graphic library’s inventory.

Another war book that does well for us is Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion by Billy Tucci. This is a rare Sgt. Rock story that doesn’t have the hand of Joe Kubert in it somewhere, but Tucci does a masterful job of combining the fictional Rock with the real-life Nisei (Japanese-American) units from the 442nd Regiment. Tucchi’s artwork is always beautiful, even in the context of a war comic, and his writing serves the story well, allowing an explanation of the reason behind an all-Japanese-American unit in those days of race segregation and prejudice. The crew of the Haunted Tank also make a welcome appearance in this book, as do a number of Bill Mauldin gags from his WWII era Willy and Joe strip from Stars and Stripes. This is another highly recommended book.

If we’re going to fit in art from any of these books, I’ll sign off now, but do note that next time we’ll talk about Jack Kirby’s war.

Above: Wayne Vansant cover art to his and writer Dwight Jon Zimmerman’s The Vietnam War: A Graphic History. Inset left: The mammoth collection of Sam Glanzman’s U.S.S. Stevens stories. Below: Toro from same.

15

darrick patrick’s ten questions

Greg Land, Chevy Man One man’s passion for super-heroes and illustration makes for an outstanding artist Darrick: Do you have any words of advice for other individuals looking to make a career with their artistic abilities?

Greg: Work hard, work long hours, and work harder than Greg Land is a professional artist who has worked on various comic book titles such as Uncanny X-Men, Birds of the other guys. The competition is tough but put your mind into succeeding and don’t listen to the naysayers. Stay Prey, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Weapon X, Sojourn, Nightwing, Mighty Avengers, Spider-Woman, Action Comics, Iron positive about your work. Listen to the client or editor, and deliver the project as requested and on time.

Man, Black Widow, Future Imperfect, Gambit, Supergirl, Darrick: How do you spend your time on a typical work Wolverine, JLA, Incredible Hulk, Astonishing X-Men, Ultiday? mate Power, Avenging Spider-Man, Nightcrawler, etc.

Greg: I wake up early around 6:00 a.m. and get upstairs soon to start my work day, usually within 30 minutes of wakDarrick Patrick: What was the path that led you to ing. I go for a while until it’s time for breakfast, then get back illustrating professionally within the comic book format? at it. I will take short breaks throughout the day to check Greg: Even as a child of five or six, I was hooked when I emails and lunch. Typical days go from eight, ten, or eleven came across comic books for the first time. The outlandish hours. It all depends on the day’s page and deadlines. As a (pun intended) characters with crazy superpowers and side bonus of working at home, I get to work in shorts and costumes were a smash hit for me. I always focused my T-shirts. No shoes! classes around art courses all through school, taking as Darrick: For new readers who may not be familiar with many as I could. In my junior year of college at Indiana your work, what are some projects of yours that you would State, I started working for a screen print company doing recommend to begin with? a wide range of designs for T-shirts, hats, and all types of Greg: DC fans would like my early work on Nightwing sportswear. This sidetracked me from comics, but they and Birds of Prey. At Crossgen, I did a book called Sojourn, were always there with me as I continued to collect my which features an archer, evil overlord, trolls, and dragons. favorite titles. As I was approaching my 30th birthday, I deGreat stuff for fans of fantasy books. Early Marvel work cided to put together a comic book-based portfolio and hit the conventions with the hope of breaking into the business. would include Phoenix: End Song and Ultimate Fantastic I was able to get small press work, which gave me some Four, which debuts the Marvel Zombies!

It hardly seems like it, but I have been with Marvel since great comic work experience. This was for Sky Comics and 2005. In that time I have gotten to work on many X-Men I did two issues of StormQuest. I showed these samples books including Uncanny X-Men and Astonishing X-Men. at the Chicago Wizard show. I stood in lines all weekend, Iron Man, Mighty Avengers, Spider-Woman, and The handing out sample packets to many editors from different Incredible Hulk are some of the titles I have also penciled. companies. It was on the last day of the show, and I had one more sample to give out. In addition to regular books, I have provided covers to many other Marvel books. Several of those have been variants.

The line that I was in was taking forever and the show Darrick: Who are some of the people that significantly was ticking down. I decided influenced you while growing up?

Greg: My family, most definitely. My parents for always to leave that line and make supporting my artwork. My grandparents for buying me all one more swing around the my early comics. They all taught me about work ethic. To show floor. An editor at the work hard and do a good job. My grandpa owned his own DC booth, Pat Garrahy, was 18-wheeler and delivered produce throughout the Midwest reviewing a fellow’s portfolio. I figured I would wait and and Southern states. My mother ran her own upholstery shop, a very labor intensive job. So if I think a page is tough show my portfolio to him.

Back home, a few days after or not going well, I think of the work they did and realize being able to draw for a living is a pretty good gig. They are the show, Pat gave me a call and offered me the New my heroes!

Another person that needs mentioned is Steve LingenTitans Annual. felter, my junior high art teacher. Of all my teachers and Darrick: Who are a few professors, he was the only one that encouraged a career of the people in the comics industry that you hold a high in comic books. He saw it as a viable medium that showed imagination and drawing skill. He often gave us projects, deal of respect for? that while not comic book oriented, were fun and gave us Greg: Gil Kane for the freedom to include comic-style material. Thanks, Link! energy of his work. You can Darrick: Outside of creating artwork, what are your other feel the movement and acinterests? tion of his characters. John Buscema for his pure draw- Greg: I am a car guy. I still own my first car, a 1955 Chevy that we bought when I was in high school. It has been ing and inking ability. He is painted a few times, and my mother and I did the upholsuch a versatile artist, able stery back in the ’80s. I had the car completely rebuilt and to handle so many types of customized a few years ago and she is beautiful. The ’55 characters… superheroes, has been featured in Super Chevy magazine, and, in 2015, sword-&-sorcery, space, etc. And, of course, the King, was chosen as a Top 25 Pick at the Tri-Five Nationals, in Jack Kirby… for everything! Bowling Green, Kentucky. I only wish my mom was still here

by DARRICK PATRICK

Above: Greg Land’s variant cover for Amazing Spider-Man #800 [July 2018].

Below: Darrick Patrick’s 2015 snapshot of the artist.

Next page: Land’s epic drawing of the mutant team was incorporated as the wraparound cover for X-Men #500 [Sept. 2008].:

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Amazing Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Photo of Greg Land © Darrick Patrick.

16

X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

to have done the interior again. I carry a piece of the old material with the registration in the car. It is a four- or five-inch section with a button in the center of the square tuck pattern. I made all the buttons, over 150, and mom sewed up the pattern.

I also enjoy spending time with my wife and daughter. We enjoy just hanging out, or going on vacations.

Darrick: What is your oldest memory?

Greg: I can remember watching the old Batman TV show [1966–67]. I would have been three or four years old. Along with getting comic books back then, it set me on a life path that lets me illustrate comics for a living.

And that is something that would have thrilled that little red-headed boy!

Also, looking at old magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland, with ads for Universal monster models with my grandparents. My grandma and I would go shopping for these models on the weekends. I was down to the

last one in the series that I didn’t have yet… the Forgotten Prisoner. One Friday night, she surprised me with the model by hiding it under the covers of my bed. I was so excited that sleep was forgotten! I still have this model and a few others on the shelves in my studio.

Darrick: Tell us something about you that most people don’t know.

Greg: I am still married to my wife, who I met in high school. It has been 33 years in October. I picked her up for our first date in the ’55 Chevy!

Darrick: When you’re no longer amongst the living, how would you most like to be remembered?

Greg: I would like to be remembered for being a good husband, son, and father that was always there and provided a good life. These are important things to strive for. In terms of comic books, I would hope that the passion I have for super-heroes and illustration is evident in my work. I have been blessed to be able to create art for a living.

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2

JOE KUBERT double-size tribute issue!

With comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. KUBERT INTERVIEWS, rare art, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, and interviews with JOE KUBERT, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT, RUSS HEATH, and FRANK THORNE! (164-page FULL-COLOR mag) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $7.95

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #4 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #5 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #6

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!

SWAMPMEN: MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS dredges up The Heap!

Man-Thing! 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!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #8 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #9 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #10 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #11 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #12

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; fan-favorite 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!

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!

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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 present-day 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!

Celebrating 30 years of artist’s artist MARK SCHULTZ, creator of the CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS franchise, with a feature-length, career-spanning interview conducted in Mark’s Pennsylvanian home, examining the early years of struggle, success with Kitchen Sink Press, and hitting it big with a Saturday morning cartoon series. Includes rarely-seen art and fascinating photos from Mark’s amazing and award-winning career.

A look at 75 years of Archie Comics’ characters and titles, from Archie and his pals ‘n gals to the mighty MLJ heroes of yesteryear and today’s “Dark Circle”! Also: Careerspanning interviews with The Fox’s DEAN HASPIEL and Kevin Keller’s cartoonist DAN PARENT, who both jam on our exclusive cover depicting a face-off between humor and heroes. Plus our usual features, including the hilarious FRED HEMBECK!

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 underground), 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!

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The forerunner to COMIC BOOK CREATOR, CBA is the 2000-2004 Eisner Award winner for BEST COMICS-RELATED MAG! Edited by COMIC BOOK CREATOR’s JON B. COOKE, it features in-depth articles, interviews, and unseen art, celebrating the lives and careers of the great comics artists from the 1970s to today.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #1

ALSO BY JON B. COOKE:

WILL EISNER DOCUMENTARY WILL EISNER: PORTRAIT OF A SEQUENTIAL ARTIST is the definitive documentary on the life and art of the godfather of the American comic book. Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, this award-winning feature film includes interviews with KURT VONNEGUT, MICHAEL CHABON, JULES FEIFFER, ART SPIEGELMAN, FRANK MILLER, STAN LEE, GIL KANE as well as the never-before-heard “Shop Talk” audio tapes featuring JACK KIRBY, HARVEY KURTZMAN, MILTON CANIFF, NEAL ADAMS, JOE KUBERT and more!

(96-minute DVD, all regions) $20 • (BLU-RAY) $26

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #2

Previously available only to CBA subscribers!

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

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

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TwoMorrows now offers Digital Editions of Jon B. Cooke’s COMIC BOOK ARTIST Vol. 2 (the “Top Shelf” issues)

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NEAL ADAMS/ALEX ROSS cover and interviews with both, history of “Arcade, The Comics Revue” with underground legends CRUMB, SPIEGELMAN, and GRIFFITH, MICHAEL MOORCOCK on comic book adaptations of his work, CRAIG THOMPSON sketchbook, and more!

Exhaustive FRANK CHO interview and sketchbook gallery, ALEX ROSS sketchbook section of never-before-seen pencils, MIKE FRIEDRICH on the history of Star*Reach, plus animator J.J. SEDELMAIER on his Ambiguously Gay Duo and The X-Presidents cartoons for Saturday Night Live.

Interview with DARWYN COOKE and a gallery of rarely-seen and unpublished artwork, a chat with DC Comics art director MARK CHIARELLO, an exploration of The Adventures of Little Archie with creator BOB BOLLING and artist DEXTER TAYLOR, new JAY STEPHENS sketchbook section, and more!

ALEX NIÑO’s first ever full-length interview and huge gallery of his artwork, interview with BYRON PREISS on his career in publishing, plus the most comprehensive look ever at the great Filipino comic book artists (NESTOR REDONDO, ALFREDO ALCALA, and others), a STEVE RUDE sketchbook, and more!

HOWARD CHAYKIN interview and gallery of unpublished artwork, a look at the ’70s black-&-white mags published by Skywald, tribute to Psycho and Nightmare writer/editor ALAN HEWETSON, LEAH MOORE & JOHN REPPION on Wild Girl, a SONNY LIEW sketchbook section, and more!

Double-sized tribute to WILL EISNER! Over 200 comics luminaries celebrate his career and impact: SPIEGELMAN, FEIFFER & McCLOUD on their friendships with Eisner, testimonials

by ALAN MOORE, NEIL GAIMAN, STAN LEE, RICHARD CORBEN, JOE KUBERT, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, JOE SIMON, and others!

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Career-spanning discussion with STEVE “THE DUDE” RUDE, as he shares his reallife psychological struggles, the challenges of freelance subsistence, and his creative aspirations. Also: The jungle art of NEAL ADAMS, MARY FLEENER on her forthcoming graphic novel Billie the Bee and her comix career, RICH BUCKLER interview Part Three, Golden Age artist FRANK BORTH, HEMBECK and more!

NOT YOUR AVERAGE JOES! Interview with JOSEPH MICHAEL LINSNER (CRY FOR DAWN, VAMPIRELLA), a chat with JOE SINNOTT about his Marvel years inking Jack Kirby and work at TREASURE CHEST, JOE JUSKO discusses the Marvel Age of Comics and his fabulous “Corner Box Collection,” plus the artists behind the Topps bubble gum BAZOOKA JOE comic strips, CRAIG YOE, and more!

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#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#19: HARVEY COMICS

History of Harvey Comics, from Hot Stuf’, Casper, and Richie Rich, to Joe Interviews with Tower and THUNDER Simon’s “Harvey Thriller” line! Interviews AGENTS alumni WALLACE WOOD, LOU with, art by, and tributes to JACK MOUGIN, SAMM SCHWARTZ, DAN KIRBY, STERANKO, WILL EISNER, AL ADKINS, LEN BROWN, BILL PEARSON, WILLIAMSON, GIL KANE, WALLY WOOD, LARRY IVIE, GEORGE TUSKA, STEVE REED CRANDALL, JOE SIMON, WARREN SKEATES, and RUSS JONES, TOWER KREMER, ERNIE COLÓN, SID JACOBSON, COMICS CHECKLIST, history of TIPPY TEEN, 1980s THUNDER AGENTS REVIVAL, FRED RHOADES, and more! New wraparound MITCH O’CONNELL cover! and more! WOOD cover!

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JACK KIRBY’S DINGBAT LOVE

In cooperation with DC COMICS, TwoMorrows compiles a tempestuous trio of never-seen 1970s Kirby projects! These are the final complete, unpublished Jack Kirby stories in existence, presented here for the first time! Included are: Two unused DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET tales (Kirby’s final Kid Gang group, inked by MIKE ROYER and D. BRUCE BERRY, and newly colored for this book)! TRUE-LIFE DIVORCE, the abandoned newsstand magazine that was too hot for its time (reproduced from Jack’s pencil art—and as a bonus, we’ve commissioned MIKE ROYER to ink one of the stories)! And SOUL LOVE, the unseen ’70s romance book so funky, even a jive turkey will dig the unretouched inks by VINCE COLLETTA and TONY DeZUNIGA. PLUS: There’s Kirby historian JOHN MORROW’s in-depth examination of why these projects got left back, concept art and uninked pencils from DINGBATS, and a Foreword by former 1970s Kirby assistant MARK EVANIER! SHIPS OCT. 2019!

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All characte

(288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $45.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-089-2

their respecti

In the latest volume, KURT MITCHELL and ROY THOMAS document the 1940-44 “Golden Age” of comics, a period that featured the earliest adventures of BATMAN, CAPTAIN MARVEL, SUPERMAN, and WONDER WOMAN. It was a time when America’s entry into World War II was presaged Look for the 1945-49 volume by the arrival of such patriotic do-gooders as WILL EISNER’s Uncle Sam, HARRY SHORTEN and in early 2020!

IRV NOVICK’s The Shield, and JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY’s Captain America—and teenage culture found expression in a fumbling red-haired high school student named Archie Andrews. But most of all, it was the age of “packagers” like HARRY A CHESLER, and EISNER and JERRY IGER, who churned out material for the entire gamut of genres, from funny animal stories and crime tales, to jungle sagas and science-fiction adventures. Watch the history of comics begin! SHIPS JUNE 2019!

ve owners.

OR -COL FULLDCOVER HAR RIES SE nting me f docu ecade o d y! each s histor ic m o c

rs TM & ©

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1940-44

MAC RABOY Master of the Comics

Beginning with his WPA etchings during the 1930s, MAC RABOY struggled to survive the Great Depression and eventually found his way into the comic book sweatshops of America. In that world of four-color panels, he perfected his art style on such creations as DR. VOODOO, ZORO the MYSTERY MAN, BULLETMAN, SPY SMASHER, GREEN LAMA, and his crowning achievement, CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. Raboy went on to illustrate the FLASH GORDON Sunday newspaper strip, and left behind a legacy of meticulous perfection.

Through extensive research and interviews with son DAVID RABOY, and assistants who worked with the artist during the Golden Age of Comics, author ROGER HILL brings Mac Raboy, the man and the artist, into focus for historians to savor and enjoy. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER includes never-before-seen photos, a wealth of rare and unpublished artwork, and the first definitive biography of a true Master of the Comics! Introduction by ROY THOMAS! ISBN: 978-1-60549-090-8 • SHIPS AUG. 2019!

(160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.95 Roger Hill’s 2017 biography of REED CRANDALL sold out just months after its release—don’t let this one pass you by! Pre-order now!

Silver ary ers Anniv -2019 1994 ears 25 Y

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

21

COLORS BY GLENN WHITMORE

Shade, The Changing Man and all related characters TM & © DC Comics. Dateline strip © Fred Hembeck.

AN INTERVIEW WITH

FRANK FRAZETTA

Conducted by

Steven C. RinGgenBERG

22

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Conan TM & © Cona

The following interview was conducted in 1984 within the first Frazetta Museum that was situated on the top floor of an office block Frank Frazetta purchased to give sons Frank Jr. and Billy store fronts for their businesses. It was winter and the room was cold that day. After an hour or so, we relocated to the Frazetta home to finish the rest of the interview in Frank’s studio, where the unfinished Wild Ride sat on the easel. Frank had been my hero since about the age of 13, and it was a thrill finally getting to talk to the master in person. (I had done a brief phone interview with him in 1983, but this was the first time we’d met.) Over the course of several hours, we discussed Frank’s career, his approach to his work, and Fire and Ice, the animated film he’d just worked on with Ralph Bakshi, one based on his characters and concepts. In person, Frazetta was what you might expect from viewing his work: brash, funny, opinionated, and supremely confident. I can say without reservation that he was the coolest man I have ever met. Frazetta passed away in 2010. — SCR.

Portrait of Frank Frazetta © Drew Friedman. Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc.

Steven C. Ringgenberg: When did you start working on the museum?

Frank Frazetta: I have to say it’s at least… right after I came back from California, so that would be, maybe, oh early ’83, I suppose. We bought the building and it even may have been an afterthought, quite frankly.

SCR: You bought the building first and then… ?

Frank: Yeah, I think that’s the way it worked, and I think we bought the building because it was here and we needed storage for our poster business; we were running out of room back home, this kind of thing, and T-shirts, etc., and the rest of that commercial stuff. And then it grew. I said, “My Gosh, we’ve got a storefront. My boys can go into business for themselves,” and then this… Oh yeah, the museum idea. It was basically all [Frank’s wife] Ellie’s idea. I’m not business oriented…

SCR: You said that opening the museum was kind of an afterthought. What made you open it at all?

Frank: I think it was due to the popularity of the work. You know, the fans were constantly asking if they could come to see the originals and so on and so forth, and the best we did through the years was have some exhibits at different conventions and that was kind of inconvenient, to haul the paintings around, and that kind of thing, and worry about security. And we’re simply doing it for all the people that have had fun with my work. No other reason. It’s not for profit, because… you know, the money’s here. I could’ve sold the paintings and gotten rich, probably, and they’re here for the world. You can’t take them with you, you know. And I think my joy is in showing the work.

SCR: So that’s basically the primary purpose of the museum.

Frank: Absolutely. No other reason that I can imagine.

SCR: Will there ever be any other artists displayed here?

Frank: We have considered it, but that would be in the adjoining room, the gallery room, and we have been considering that and talking with other artists, and they’re interested, but we’ll have to wait and see because we suddenly found that I have an awful lot of drawings that, like you mentioned; little doodles and watercolors and so on that simply don’t fit in in this room, and we may have to utilize our addition for that purpose. As long as people want to see them.

SCR: Would you ever like to display some of Roy [Krenkel]’s paintings?

Frank: I don’t have any… You mean Roy’s? I don’t have any of Roy’s paintings.

SCR: I thought maybe if you could assemble a show or something. His stuff is probably pretty scattered by now.

Frank: Well, since he died, I know that some of his work is being handled by the estate, you know, [Al] Williamson and some of those people, and I don’t know anything about it or what they’re doing with it, and so on. I really don’t know.

SCR: When you were working for Ace back in the early ’60s, did [editor] Don Wolheim keep a lot of your paintings or did you get your work back?

Frank: Ace kept them. I don’t know… I wouldn’t say Don kept them, but Ace, that was their, that was the way they operated. They kept the original

art, and that was pretty standard, I think, for most publishers at that point and one of the reasons being that most artists didn’t care. I mean they painted it and got paid and forgot about it. They really didn’t take much interest in their original art, and they kind of thought I was strange for wanting to retain the original. And that is primarily the reason I think some of that art is inferior because I saw no reason to work much harder than was necessary. The price wasn’t especially wonderful and I knew the art was just gone forever. So, I just approached the question very casually.

And too many people, fans included, consider that, like, part of my growth.

They look at it and they see what they consider an improvement, you know, and it’s really not so because the work I did later, like for Lancer, is really no better than what I was capable of in the ’60s, not to mention the ’50s. So, it’s just that that’s the way I feel about my work. I have to feel that the effort is just worth something. If the art is awfully good, I just can’t see it just being shipped around and lost and being put into some stockroom or something like that, and I was obviously right, since the world is awfully happy that, I do have, certainly, most of that.

SCR: How many originals of yours do you still have, Frank, as far as paintings?

Frank: I don’t know. I really haven’t counted… I’ve got… This is only a fraction [gestures to the 60 or so paintings on the museum walls].

SCR: Have you ever had your originals cataloged? You know, gone through everything to know exactly what you’ve got?

Frank: No, not really. The posters were cataloged at some point. You know, I’ve got closets and big cabinets filled with them, you know, that sort of thing, pen and inks or…

SCR: Do you just have little doodles that you draw and go, “Oh that’s nice,” and then put away?

Frank: Yeah, I’ll tell you. I used to give them away, and you know… No longer.

Previous page: Frank Frazetta’s cover painting for the Lancer paperback edition of Conan the Adventurer, first of the celebrated series. Left: The artist’s preliminary sketch (showing quite a different title placement) and printed version.

PORTRAIT by DREW FRIEDMAN This portrait originally appeared in Drew Friedman’s Heroes of the Comics [Fantagraphics, 2014].

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Above: The Conan the Adventurer Frazetta painting was used to promote the motion picture, Conan the Barbarian, in the European market.

Below: Frazetta cites his Cat Girl as likely his most popular painting, an image that was used as cover for Creepy #16 [Aug. 1967]. The painter later revised the image to make the female a brunette with (ahem) decidedly less clothing.

very personal, but I’m unusual in that I do feel for people and I do paint for people. I think I always have.

SCR: Do you have an ideal audience in your head?

Frank: No, I had specific people, you know, I don’t have to mention names, but they are specific people in the course of my life that I was so close to, and I literally painted for them. Krenkel was one, you know, and so on, and there were others before him and others after him certainly, school teachers, art teachers, and I was like a little kid pleasing your father and all, ‘Look what I’ve done’, and this is literally what turned me on; of course the audience kind of grew.

SCR: You have sold some of your paintings through the ’70s. I know you were dealing with Russ Cochran, the art dealer. What’s your criteria for whether you keep a painting or not?

Frank: I look at it and think, well, I can live without that one. I think. Of course, I may need a few bucks suddenly.

And, if I see a few paintings that are just taking up space, I’m not particularly happy about them, I don’t think they’re successful from where I’m coming from. They’re okay, possibly, good enough so that someone might enjoy them for, of course, a far smaller price and they’re better off in someone’s hands. There are others I simply won’t part with. They’re just too valuable. I’ve turned down offers of upwards of a hundred grand for any one of these [points to the walls] and if you’re talking about the Conans, forget about it. It’s out of sight.

SCR: What do you think is the most popular painting that you’ve done? If you had to pick just one.

Frank: I don’t think it’s been seen yet, the Cat Girl may very well be, but I think probably, well, the Conans, of course, are extremely popular. I think Death Dealer seems to have been in the last, since, it seems to be the most popular one, but I couldn’t be sure.

SCR: When the Conan films came out, did they approach you to do the poster?

Frank: Oh yes. In fact, they did that and they decided that maybe they’d maybe just… They did use the original Conan in Europe. Not here.

SCR: It hasn’t been seen here?

Frank: No. That’s right. They felt, well, the Europeans, it’ll be like a new thing for them, so they used that. I understand they had the billboard, like 50 feet high, the original, The Avenger. And they approached me to get involved in the film, too, in some capacity, you know. I really…

SCR: What did they want you to do, designs or something?

Frank: Oh, probably. Inspire them or try to get some of the quality that was in the paintings and I discussed it once or twice, but I wasn’t really expecting anything…

SCR: Why did you decide to make the film [Fire and Ice, 1983] with Ralph Bakshi then?

Frank: Well, Ralph offered me co-producership. That’s quite a difference there. It’s not like, you know, being an advisor or hanging around and growing grass under your feet. With him I was certainly co-producing, which meant I got to certainly play a big part in making a film.

SCR: Didn’t you also work as a second unit director directing the rotoscope sequences?

Frank: Oh, yeah. I got involved in all the action, certainly and some of it that wasn’t action… Literally, a lot goes on the cutting room floor, and when you’ve got animation, I was also working with all the artists. This is a quite a difficult task, and it’s not just producers working with live actors, and then you work with editing, and now you’re suddenly… You’re editing, but you’re also drawing. You’ve got probably 7,000 frames. That’s a lot of pictures! You know, and I’m working with 40 or 50 different artists and so they can’t all be on the very same level in terms of talent and so I had to work pretty hard with them, after the shooting was done, in getting a certain look, a certain quality, and it wasn’t unsuccessful in its part. Some of the weaker parts of the film are in the storyline, which I was never too thrilled #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc. Cat Girl TM and © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

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SCR: Ellie put a stop to that, did she?

Frank: Ellie put a very, very solid stop to it… You know what brought that on, I used to… when I first started painting: “Oh, you like it? Keep it.” But it was a little irritating to find that they suddenly turned around and sold it when they were offered money. And the next person in turn sold it for even maybe double, then triple, and I just watched this market create itself out there and I began to feel like a fool. You know, I have to eat too, and pay the rent and here I’d given something away and here it was wandering around the country and going for, like 5,000 bucks. That was $5,000 I certainly could’ve used, happily. So, at that point we kind of wised up.

SCR: When was this, mid-’60s?

Frank: Yeah, I guess. Even earlier than that, even earlier…

SCR: Well, during the period when you were doing comics, when you got a job back, didn’t you used to just give the pages away sometimes?

Frank: Yeah. Oh, sure. The only time I ever really kept something or insisted on keeping or retaining an original, I just happened to think it was pretty special, and I thought it was too good to part with.

SCR: Well, you still have the originals to the Buck Rogers [Famous Funnies] covers you did, don’t you?

Frank: Yeah, because I knew that they were good and I knew that they had a lasting quality, and I don’t know that I thought that they might be worth lots of money or anything like that, I just know when I had something really good, like you were, you just bought it, greedy. I was giving away some good work, but not an awful lot, and I’m delighted that I didn’t. I feel it was in the cards; the reason being this museum. Because not only had I given everything away or sold everything, that was it, the money would’ve been spent, the paintings would be anywhere, everywhere, and I delight in really doing a piece of work and watching people’s reaction, and that’s the joy, I think, of any artist, any performer, right? You perform, the applause, Wow! They live for the applause. I’m not looking for applause, but I like some feedback, you know, and I used to get it through the mail and all that, but what’s better than in person, having conversations and discussing it and I also learn, that way.

I pick up a feel about people and what their reaction is, positively, negatively, and I think that’s part of my learning process. Most of what I do is very pleasurable to me and

Artwork, Death Dealer TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

about. The art was inconsistent at best, but it had some moments and I don’t know how you feel about the action — I was happy with the action because I directed it.

SCR: Isn’t it true that at a couple of points you had to come in and draw the wolves and the giant lizard because the artists they had couldn’t do it?

Frank: Oh, yeah. They couldn’t do it. No, I did quite a few drawings.

At that time I’d done a tracing paper set-up that they had and overlays and so on, and I literally did a whole series of drawings of the wolf running and the mouth opening and snarling, and that sort of thing, which involves, god, a number of individual drawings and movements.

SCR: Would you do the key illustrations and somebody else would do the in-betweens?

Frank: I would work… Well, that’s what I would do basically is work with a girl, it was a girl, Debbie Tucker, who did the keys, and I would check out all her keys and go over them and go over them. At first it was difficult, but she got better as we went along and better and better and better and better, and there was less work required at my end because she was really picking it up pretty well.

SCR: Did Bakshi have a pretty good crew assembled?

Frank: Well, you know, it was… What can you say? You’re not going to find the top-notch illustrators getting involved in that kind of thing. You’re going to get people who draw reasonably well who don’t mind sitting in there in that little cubbyhole painting cels.

It’s very boring, but trying work, but it was reasonable. It wasn’t great. But at the Disney studios, I don’t know that they could handle it.

SCR: Their newest film, The Black Cauldron, is pretty disappointing by all accounts.

Frank: Is it? I mean drawing rubbery little creatures is one thing. Bakshi’s crew could do beautiful work on that, I mean totally animate a little character, but we’re shooting for realism, you know;

in quotes, and that’s difficult. You know, you can’t render in light and shadow, it’s got to be done with a line. Yes, you rotoscope, but, my god you’d be shocked if you saw how we buried that. We just could not actually trace a figure. It had to look like a Frazetta figure, no matter how wonderful they looked in person, something about the lack of dimension, you know, when you’d suddenly draw the outline of one of the hero actors who felt fat, so you’d have to exaggerate like mad, at least another almost another 50% at times.

Crazy! I could not believe it, and the girl was a perfectly delightful young girl with a wonderful figure, [and] fell flat, again. In fact, it was quite a learning process for me. I didn’t realize how voluminous my women are. I found out when we had what was a Frazetta girl playing the part and then we proceeded to just trace her figure from a photograph and there’s this little tracing — Good grief! There’s nothing there. You know what I mean? It’s that our eyes see… [or] make more of it, I guess or at least, let’s say light shadow and including all that enhances it, but when you’re just doing an outline, it’s gone. So, in order for it to come off, you either shoot the outline in flat color to at least come close to looking like some of my overblown characters, you had to exaggerate. Unfortunately, there were some areas that were grossly exaggerated, but those kind of slipped by me. I just didn’t see every drawing. But, I was there every day for when I was needed after the shooting and that sort of thing.

SCR: How long were you actually working on the film, for the whole year-and-a-half?

Frank: We actually shot the film live, for maybe a total of eight weeks, something like that. I could be way off on that, but I remember two weeks at a stretch and then a gap and then maybe another two weeks, and then a gap and maybe two weeks, and let’s say

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This page: Frank Frazetta’s fame skyrocketed when his work appeared as album cover art, particularly those of the Southern rock band Molly Hatchet. At left is the “Phantom Warrior” statue, based on FF’s Death Dealer, stands watch at Fort Hood, Texas.

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eight weeks, what the hell. Eight separate weeks, and then of course the rest was done in the studio. The artists now had all these 8" x 10"s from the whole set-up and so on, and they’re animating… Well, at that point Ralph and I are discussing the storyline, we’re discussing the next shoot, and you know, I worked with the artists and see how it’s going. I worked with the colorists, and so on, right down to the final editing, and even looping the voices, and so on.

SCR: How close do you think the colorists came to capturing the vibrancy of your own colors? The subtlety?

Frank: I’m told that the original artwork was very impressive. I, unfortunately, have never seen it in a theatre. I have only seen it on tape. So, I don’t really know.

I’ve heard different opinions.

Some think the color was great, some said it was flat, so I guess it depends on the print they got, or the quality of the projector or the

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Artwork © Frank Frazetta. Fire and Ice TM & © Polyc International B.V.

Above: This interview took place during Frazetta’s involvement as co-producer on Ralph Bakshi’s 1983 animated movie, Fire and Ice, which was scripted by no less than comic book writers Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. Below: FF concept drawing for Fire and Ice, 1982.

theatre or what have you, so I don’t know. But I know that Ralph worked real hard on getting the best possible print, but something has to be lost in the transition and did. Even when I’d bring in my originals and worked with the printers, and boom! You cannot get… I knew how, possibly, 150 different color hues and they’re starting with four, so I mean there’s no way you’re going to get it, and the same with them, the background artists did some wonderful work. The originals are quite something. And from what I saw on the tape, the background paintings and so on are just nowhere as magnificent as some of the paintings, so they must have lost something even on film, I’m sure.

SCR: How would you characterize your experience on the film working with Ralph over all?

Frank: Very enlightening. Different.

SCR: You learned a lot about the movie business?

Frank: I think so. I certainly learned that I was very capable of telling a story and moving people around, casting, that sort of thing, not that I’m a writer, you understand. If you provide me with a good story and I’m inspired by that story and work with the writer and kind of recreate what he’s expressed, I find that I can pretty much make it work visually. But, no point in talking about it because my movie didn’t go very far. I know that it had some good points, I thought it had some bad points, but I won’t take total responsibility for it.

SCR: Didn’t Ralph re-edit it after you were off the project?

Frank: Yes, of course. That was five or six months, at least, after working with it, and the next time I saw it, it was quite different. But, my input was there. I did what I could, and I’m very pleased with some of the moments, certain [parts] where I did my thing and I did it well, and at times where things I wish I hadn’t done, done it differently, whatever, but Ralph felt very different; he’s got his own ideas about what people react to, and they’re quite different from mine. Pretty interesting relationship. [chuckles] SCR: Had you done any animation before, back in the ’40s or ’50s.

Frank: Never on film, if that’s what you mean. No, I’d never worked on a film.

SCR: I know you did some funny animal comics.

Frank: Yeah, I can animate comics, that kind of thing. And I can do very humorous, light stuff in lieu of what you see here, I mean, this is heavy. And if you have talent, you can adapt in a whole bunch of areas with something like that.

That’s a talent. A painter is one thing, a draftsman is another, a singer is something else. A guy that knows he’s got a natural talent can pretty much adapt and make almost anything work. That’s what I have, basically, talent. Sometimes I feel I have too much and I’ve never really stayed in one area long enough to perfect it, but that’s why I did it. I’m into photography. I know what he’s doing with that little Minolta [He gestures to photographer Steve Bryant]. You’re going to have to get the new one with the autofocus button.

Steve Bryant: Oh, yeah, everything else is automatic.

SCR: When we interviewed Harvey Kurtzman), I got a picture of him standing behind Harvey going like this [makes “bunny ears”]. We were debating whether we should send it to him. We didn’t know whether it would appeal to Harvey’s sense of humor or not.

Frank: It might. (Laughs.)

Bryant: I can never resist.

Frank: How is Harvey? I haven’t seen him in years.

SCR: He looked real well. I met his wife; she’s a doll. I really liked her.

Frank: Are they still happy?

SCR: Yeah.

Frank: I haven’t seen him in so many years. He was out here for an exhibit that they had in town and I was really distressed that he didn’t come stop by the house and see me. [Burne] Hogarth did.

SCR: Since you did Fire and Ice, have there been any more solid film offers?

Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc. Art © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

Frank: There’ve been a few teasers, people talking about what we may do in the future, but nothing really solid. There were a bunch before Fire and Ice; it’s really incredible to me.

SCR: Animated films?

Frank: No. Live actions, everything, but not as a producer.

Why would they think of Frank Frazetta as a movie producer? I’m an artist. They can’t imagine that I can sit there and direct and actually show the stunt men how to move, and leap and twist and turn and bash heads and that kind of thing. They can’t conceive of that. They think that I just sit around and paint and wonderful things happen. But when I was there, I had the stuntmen learn some things from me.

SCR: Yeah, I remember, I think it was in the interview you did with Steranko, you were saying that if you did do another film that you wanted to do a live action film…

Frank: Well, Ralph, understandably, didn’t think it was possible, to do a Frazetta-like film live you know, and I can understand why he felt that. It would be difficult to envision, I think. It would probably be pretty incredible, let’s face it.

How are you going to get people who look like that?

SCR: Where are you going to find someone who looks like your Conan?

Frank: I’ll find him.

SCR: It might take a little looking.

Frank: I’ll find him. I grew up with guys like that. Believe me, people are looking in the wrong places. They look in the gym. I don’t look in the gym. I’d find the right neighborhood with guys that look like that just because of what they eat, and there are guys like that, the scars, the works. Nasty.

SCR: You grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood.

Frank: Yeah, well in Brooklyn, you know.

SCR: Parts of Brooklyn are still pretty bad.

Frank: You’re goddamn right, in a different way, but I knew guys like that if you saw them just come after you, boy, you’d just cut across the street. Bruisers, everything, prize fighters. Some big heavyweight who’s been around, could be closer to Conan than some of the actors that have played him. I mean weight lifters are cute and all that, but that’s stuff and nonsense. I want a guy who can knock down an oak tree with one swing of an ax. And there are guys like that, incredible strength, brutes, animals.

SCR: What did you think of Schwarzenegger as Conan?

Frank: He’s a nice guy and a Frazetta fan and all that, but he’s not a bruiser, he’s not a killer, right? Let’s face it.

SCR: You know who I thought might have been closer to your Conan was the guy who ended up playing Conan’s father, William Smith with the craggy face…

Frank: William Smith came out for my movie, by the way. I got to meet him… He’s a great guy and a terrific actor, and a great body…

SCR: He always plays bad guys, though.

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Frank: Yeah, always has. I don’t know why.

SCR: I thought he was closer to Conan than Schwarzenegger.

Frank: He’s a sweetheart. He’s far from a bad guy, that’s the art of it. He’s a good actor, he’s very convincing.

SCR: He was very good in that movie Red Dawn, where he played the Russian colonel.

Frank: He came out for the part. I considered him for Darkwolf… and he came out and what happened was he got offended when Ralph asked him to run through the park and show his stuff, and I know what he can do, and I said, ‘No, you don’t have to do that.’ And he got offended and took off in his Trans Am. But I love him. He was a fun guy.

SCR: Well, Frank, if it did materialize, what kind of film do you think you’d like to make?

Frank: I could certainly do any horror film and do it well. I may not be Hitchcock you know, but I think I could probably produce a horror film that would scare the living crap out of you, I mean really do it…

SCR: Heart attacks at the premiere, that sort of thing?

Frank: Yeah. I think I could have them really frightened, but I think it would be probably a little old-fashioned. I don’t think I’d be as obvious as… gory as… you know: disgusting. Mine would fit more over the category of the classics, more like the great Frankensteins, the old ones that had a flavor that they’ve never matched. And they tend to overplay and they really don’t know…

SCR: They’re going overboard with the gore.

Frank: They’re going overboard. I don’t think it’s necessary. I’d like to get the suspense element, you know? And somehow, make it exquisitely, beautifully, horrible… Yeah, you just sit there and you’re titillated, you’re really loving it, not being repelled by it. You know, sometimes I want to throw it up… I’m unfamiliar with the names, but I’ve seen some of them and you can’t sit there… it’s disgusting. It’s not frightening, it’s disgusting. Here’s the difference: if you have to frighten people by making them disgusted, that’s no way to do it, and there have been some wonderful…

One of my favorite all-time films is Night of the Hunter… Brilliant, brilliant film, you know, I mean that’s the kind of thing I would love to do. I think that’s really… .

I would have to be aware of just how sophisticated they are today or how unsophisticated, whatever. I mean that was a film that was ahead of its time apparently because it didn’t go anywhere. But anybody with half an ounce of brains realizes its worth. It’s an artistic gem. Every shot. At home I have it on tape and I marvel at it. A true genius and then what’s happened to it? It wasn’t fast enough or horrible enough or obvious enough… brilliant movie… [Mitchum] was brilliant.

Everybody was brilliant. Laughton, whoever deserved the credit for it really ought to get it…

That’s what I consider a marvelous film, and I can see, you know, and the old King Kong is still great. It’ll never die.

SCR: Speaking of Kong, when they did the remake, you did a painting of Kong that was on the paperback cover.

Frank: Oh, let’s see, I did one for Ace. Did I do both for Ace…? One represented the movie and… [producer] Dino [DeLaurentis] came out to my house. He flew into the little airport out there… and he was dickering about me doing maybe four paintings of King Kong.

Four paintings! Good grief. That’s a bit of overkill,

Above: In his conversation with Steve Ringgenberg, Frank Frazetta discusses movie character actor William Smith, who appeared as Conan’s father in Schwarzenegger’s first film.

Bottom inset: Frazetta expresses that his favorite movie is The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton’s 1955 film noir thriller starring Robert Mitchum as the villainous drifter Harry Powell.

Below: Conan sketch by FF.

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Above: Triptych of Kong imagery created by Frank Frazetta. At left is a paperback cover [1976].

Center is FF’s cover for the paperback publication of Lorenzo Semple, Jr.’s script of the 1977 remake. At right is his “Queen Kong,” which was featured as the cover for Eerie #81 [Feb. 1977]. Below: FF’s poster for Clint Eastwood’s The Gauntlet.

that one [Indicates the original Death Dealer painting on a wall], but boy, they’re damn close, or maybe better.

SCR: That same character, huh?

Frank: Same character, with one difference. This time I own him. Not the Howard Estate [as with] Conan… But this is my guy. I own him. So, you know, like… the Howard Estate, I got so many negative comments in the past. They hardly acknowledged that I had anything to do with the success of Conan and crap like that… they were very specific in the questioning that they were giving me a lot of credit for this thing and, uh, he said, Oh, I don’t know. I prefer some of the other artists, and he reeled off other artists’ names and that sort of thing, which really kind of struck a pretty sensitive spot on me, you know? Get serious! What do they think I’m going to do? Hold them up for royalties or something? You know it’s like they’re running frightened. Frazetta, they know Frazetta did this with his own little fat fingers and maybe technically he’s got something coming to him, but I didn’t care. I really think that’s…

SCR: What are the Death Dealer covers for? Are they going to be paperbacks?

Frank: They’re going to be paperbacks and whatever else comes after that. And if they want to merchandise the sh*t out of it, good luck! I doubt that they could. I’ve had quite a problem even getting stories written around him. I mean, what do you do with a death symbol? It’s very difficult, so I’ve been supervising the writing and going back and forth with different writers, having a hell of a time making this guy work. So, I’ve created different worlds and so it’s a little more believable. But basically, the thing is to have a nice package, a nice cover. Very few people that I know read Conan.

SCR: A lot of people just collected them for the covers.

Frank: That’s right. So I’m not going to concern myself with all that. Hopefully, we’ll be getting some nice written material, for sure.

SCR: Are you going to deal with Ballantine again?

Frank: Yeah.

SCR: And what did they do? They commissioned a writer to write stories around this character?

Frank: No, he’s gotten this writer and that writer, and I’ve chucked a bunch of them out because I don’t think they understood what I’m looking for. It’s not that they can’t write; they’re very competent. This is unusual. This is difficult. It’s not a barbarian, it’s not a cowboy. What the hell… I myself hardly know what he is. I just created an image, a one-shot image, you know, my death symbol, on the battlefield, you know, and there he is sitting up on his black horse, and it’s gone, forever. And to suddenly get this guy and work him to death, presents a problem. But, I’m going to make him work. #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

King Kong TM & © the respective copyright holder. The Gauntlet © Warner Bros., Inc. Queen Kong TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

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you know. Let me do one great painting, then we dickered and nothing ever happened. Then he tried to get me to do more for him and I did some doodles and nothing came of that. And anyway, sometimes my approach is a little too artsy-cutesy for these guys, you know.

The thing I did with Clint [Eastwood], The Gauntlet…

He says I want it to look like that and he’d specify a certain painting, you know and just go on and on and how am I going to do that? And that was the one [points to the opposite wall], Dark Kingdom, that’s the one, the one that had that look. How can I have Clint standing in front of a bus, involved, looking like a barbarian? I said, ‘Well I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I’ll do this,” so I made, oh, five or six little sketches, very uncliché Clint Eastwood actions, and it wasn’t the typical, standing tall Clint… See? If you want something different — These are different. Really moving quickly, and lots of action in spite of that bus just sitting there in the background, and then for good luck, for good measure, I threw in the standard Clint standing tall, and that’s the one they liked… Ellie said, “Don’t send that, that’s the one they’ll pick.” I said, “I can’t stop. I can’t see how,” because the others were so good — that’s the one they picked. I should have known better…

SCR: Why haven’t you done more movie poster work, Frank? I know your work’s in demand.

Frank: Well, they call. I mean, they call, actually, but… I get called all the time for commissions, but some of them are so silly.

They want barbarians with beer cans and stuff like that. It’s a real total waste of time, you know. I don’t need the money, you know, for that kind of crap. I can sit down any day of the week and do 10, 15, 20 little drawings and — whhssst! — put ’em into a little book, overnight, just like that, if I needed it. Well, the poster business does well, so it’s not like, you know, financially compelling. I live off the posters, my kids are doing well. There’s no point. What I am doing, I guess I’ll fill you in, is a new series.

SCR: I was going to ask you about that. Ellie mentioned that you were doing a new series of the Death Dealer character.

Frank: A new series. It’s no big secret. The Death Dealer… I’ve got, how many have I done? Four. I don’t know if they’re as good as

Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc. Artwork © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

If nothing else, you’ll own some damn nice pictures, I’ll say that.

SCR: Are you writing down story ideas, things that come to you when you work on the paintings?

Frank: Not really. I’m just visualizing this world that I’ve conceived of, and I just pick a scene, a moment, an action, and try and make it as fairly believable as I can. Those four paintings I have are pretty strange. Well, not that different, from the paintings in overall quality, but perhaps a little sinister, a little eerie you know, and they don’t tell you an awful lot. You just know that this guy is strange and he lives in an even stranger place… So we hope that the writers can just create this world and work with me on this world.

I mean, what the hell, Burroughs created Pellucidar and places like that, why not? You know can get…You can’t take yourself all that seriously, it’s just entertainment, and I’m an artist… and for a change I learn from my mistakes, and instead of just being the asshole that gets paid a pittance to do the picture and they all get nice and fat and then deny your existence, that sort of stuff really hurts. Frazetta? He had nothing to do with Conan. I never had anything to do with anything.

SCR: Are the Death Dealer paintings the first ones you’ve done since you worked on the film?

Frank: No, I’ve done some little paintings that are not really commercial. I’ve done some scenic-type things and I’ve done a beautiful painting of a girl riding a horse on, a California beach…

SCR: Are these things just for yourself?

Frank: They’re just for myself.

SCR: Are they ever going to be seen?

Frank: Yeah. They’ll be printed up, yeah.

SCR: Maybe in the books?

Frank: I don’t know.

Some of the formats are wrong for paperbacks, you know. They’ll be in the Bantam books, or whatever… (I might) make a deal for it in the calendar. They’ll certainly be prints. And… (We’re) going to have a bunch of prints. (We’re) going to do a bunch of posters… (He walks COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

away from the mike to get out samples of the museum poster, and holds them up for display.)

Bryant: I was admiring that poster.

SCR: Your wife even promised us copies.

Frank: Oh, she did, huh?

SCR: I’m going to hold her to that. [Frazetta holds up the posters for examination.] Oh, two different versions.

Frank: Well, some of them… You’ll have to contact her about that. She said, “Don’t you give anybody any of these posters.” So, I don’t know what she said to you… I don’t dare get on her bad side.

SCR: I’d better ask her in person.

Frank: You’d better ask her. One of these, I think the white ones will be signed, limited editions and these will be purchased, probably at the museum, and/or through the mail, whatever. The painting is a representative of the museum itself, is what it is. But, there’ll also be, you know, a little print in the book, that’s a good idea [talking to the photographer, he holds both posters up for a photo] You want them both?

A waste of film. It’s getting cold in here. I knew it would.

SCR: Yeah, it’s kind of overcast today…

Frank: People see these ideas, they think I gotta be strange to say the least, painting this stuff, and being offended if I look at the artistic… Goddamn, there must be a 20 millimeter lens in that… Just put your hand like this, Frank… [inaudible talking and

This page: Frank Frazetta’s breathtaking series of Conan paperback book covers — 11 in total, produced between 1966–71 — still possess the ability to mesmerize and captivate, even some 50 years after their initial release. The first effort was Conan the Adventurer (seen on pg. 22). Below are the painters preliminary color comps — done in watercolor — working out the precise posing of the different elements.

The prelims are quite small, 4” x 5–6”, and both sold at auction for about $3,500 each in the ’00s.

Frazetta’s Conan the Conqueror painting (seen top right) sold at auction for $1 million in 2009.

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This page: Behind-the-scenes photos of the live action portion involved in the production of the 1983 animated motion picture Fire and Ice. As with his earlier production of Wizards, director Ralph Bakshi relied on the technical process known as rotoscoping, where live-action sequences are filmed, developed, and thereafter animators trace the filmed figures to create the animated action. At top left is actor Randy Norton, who portrayed the main protagonist Larn. Inset right is director Ralph Bakshi (left) and co-producer of conceptualizer Frank Frazetta. Below, Fire and Ice live-action performance actors, including Randy Norton, horse around on the movie set.

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All photos © the respective copyright holders.

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laughter as Frazetta jokes with Bryant]… Where a hand comes out, like yeccchhh! And they do horrible things to me, in the past.

Bryant: I just got a couple more…

SCR: Frank, we touched on this earlier, before we started the tape. Do you ever feel confined by what your audience expects from you? Your past performances?

Frank: Oh, yes. You betcha. That’s called pressure, pally, and I did feel it for quite a while and perhaps I still do because it depends on just how high they rate you. If they think you’re god’s gift to mankind, you know? What do you do after that? I’ve had some paintings that I did extremely well, almost beyond my known capacity. I don’t really…

I hardly know where they came from, it’s almost magical and why? I don’t know. Call it youth, excitement, inspiration, whatever. But sometimes that’s not there and now if you’re this well known, and this popular, and people are anticipating more of the same and if you can’t turn it on, you worry a lot. Look at singers, like Sinatra and everything. They have a wonderful voice and at one point everything is like magic and they feel the pressure and suddenly the voice slips a little, you know.

I haven’t slipped, I just haven’t been all that inspired or that hungry or that anxious, but the Death Dealer paintings that I’ve just done are at least as good as anything you see here. So, I haven’t slipped.

SCR: When did you do those?

Frank: And it’s more methodical. It’s like a job because I want to get a series out, but I’m not, I don’t find myself really exhilarated.

SCR: You’re not really cranked up like you were in, say the ’60s?

Frank: Not at all, no. [It’s a] much more deliberate, very methodical approach. And they’re quite good. They don’t…

By that I mean, I don’t mean that the work looks like it’s very mechanical. My approach is so deliberate and so methodical to make sure it looks like it was done with that casual fire.

SCR: So could you say that your approach now is more intellectual than visceral?

Frank: Far more. Far more. But one thing I do have is an awareness of what I’m all about. And I know what I’ve done that was really successful and why. I know when I’ve hit those valleys and all those peaks, and I know why. But this is hard to account for, amazement or sometimes even more than that, and then it’s like… But unlike some people, entertainers, artists who insist that they’re better than ever, I mean I’m tired of that sh*t. They’re always better than ever, at that moment. I’m sure you’ve heard that.

SCR: Sure.

Frank: Better than ever.

The guy may have slipped, you know, 85% and he thinks he’s better than ever. But once that happens, you’ve had it, you’re gone. It’s all over. But I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve had peaks and valleys, and I know when I’ve slipped, and I know when I’ve slipped, and I know when I’ve lost something, and there are moments when I think, “Gee — I can’t do it anymore.” It’s not coming out. The fire isn’t there. It’s getting awfully mechanical. Some, I noticed the color was better, purer, richer. The design is more effective, stuff like that. The drawing is even more perfect, I think.

But that pizazz, something’s not there, until I find out that part of that reason for the pizazz is I didn’t know as much. I didn’t know as much… I said, “What the hell?” The pizazz is a crazy wild brushstroke going nowhere and it worked.

My instinct made it work because I somehow had a way of disguising a lack of knowledge.

But now I know more and the more you scrutinize your work, the more careful you are in every area. And what this tends to do is inhibit the hell out of you. And well, so, pretty soon you’ll do something too goddamn careful. I’ll never get this done, you know, if every square inch of the painting has to be perfection: the design, the color, and balance, well, it’s going to slow you down. Nonetheless, pretty much the way I work now and most of the time, it’s less fun. But, if I’m successful, it almost defies…What’s the word I want? — Not “description,” but “criticism” — whereas some of the older work, you love it or you don’t, and a real… critic could find fault if he looked hard enough, but some of the later ones, even if perhaps they lack a certain swashbuckling quality, they’re hard to be too critical of, you know. You’re letting the enjoyment that… you can’t criticize these paintings…

Everything is in the right place, you know. The drawing’s perfect, the balance is right. I don’t always enjoy it as much as the older ones, probably for that same reason. It doesn’t have that crazy, casual, going anywhere quality, but I’m aware of that, you see. There’s where I’m safe. I’m aware of it. As long as I’m aware of it, I can adjust; I always have in the past. And then really get back to that kind a pace… and just work hard. Paint a lot. Get crazy, get freerer.

But I paint, you know, the way I work. Hell, I’ll let a year go by sometimes and then I’ll sit down, “I think I’ll paint a masterpiece.” You know, I haven’t touched a brush in a year, and I mean, by that, you shouldn’t be able to draw, all. You should not be able to draw. You should be like all thumbs and sometimes I’ll sit down and I am. I actually can’t

Death Dealer, artwork TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

draw. But I know it’s going to be a day and I’m startin’ to fly again, startin’ to warm up. But the point is, what I have to do to be at my very best is to start from there. Do a painting, get all the bugs out — It may not be the best, but go right on into the next one, and you’ll have learned a lot from that warm-up. It’s a simple way to put it there. You learn a lot.

You’re going to make a lot of mistakes, struggle and zip into the next one. And if I do that — think about a boxer going into training — I don’t want to overtrain, so I guess you gotta work up to it. And, if I do that, by the time I get to painting number three, providing it’s been spontaneous, one right after another, I will suddenly start getting the fire back, and like I’m in a groove, as they say. And, if I maintain it, I can do ’em that fast… In 10 paintings I will do some pretty spectacular paintings. I never can get myself to do it. I just feel like doing two or three, and then I sit on my laurels, I rest, and then I just cool off again. That’s what I did when I did all those paintings, I just kept going.

SCR: When you were doing all the Conan paintings, were you doing them right in a row, one after another?

Frank: Right in a row.

SCR: Really? What kind of time frame are you talking about? How long did it take you to do all these?

Frank: Well, I was doing a painting… I was working fast and I was doing drawings, you know. I was drawing as well, and that’s the difference. I was having fun drawing and I was meeting other artists… and it was a young, happy time. It was a new ballgame and I was excited, and I was growing and learning, and swallowing everything. I swallow life up in one big gulp, boy, this was all now. And, like I’ve done all that and either I get off the train again and experience a new approach or I’ll just be bored to death. I can do it forever, but I can’t because art has to be fun, and it’s not fun. And much as I appreciate the fans wanting to see more of the same, it’s not fun for me and I regret it. The trick is: can I look at that through different eyes now and still move the audience? Or is it like a lot of people like to think, the subject matter and just good timing. I’ve always been accused of having excellent timing.

SCR: Talent has nothing to do with it.

Frank: No, no. Just timing… Actually, I’ve had artists say that to me. “Frazetta’s got good timing, that’s all.” Just timing. He’s always had that. The world was just ready for Conan the Barbarian. It was also ready for Frazetta’s scenes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, twice. And “Phoenix Prime,” “The Sea Witch,” all the sh*t I did for Warren, it was always waiting for me. It’s interesting. Well, let’s see if they’re ready for “Cat Girl.” I guess my timing’s right. That and the fact that I originally painted it in 1966.

SCR: Now, when you’re painting, describe your working habits. How you get into a painting now? How you work up the idea?

Frank: It seems I have a backlog, you know, of pictures in my head, really, unpainted pictures and it really doesn’t take an awful lot for me to decide to start after that. Forget the backlog. Suddenly I want to paint something different, new.

The word different is very important… [editor/writer Archie] Goodwin used to laugh at me. “You’d be different just for different’s sake.” And he’s right, I really would. I like to confound my fellow artists or peers for a minute. I like them to look at my paintings and say, “Not only is it good, but how the hell did he dream that up?” You know? This is really part of the game. It wouldn’t… I’ve had too many like this, anybody can make that now… would make you do this?

Where did you think of it?’ I don’t know. This is the problem I have. Not just repeating the old stories, doing something technically perfect and wonderful and rich and all that stuff.

Different, like maybe the “Spider Man” with that strange, eerie circle of color: red, green, a little blotch of green. I’ve been asked what it is. I don’t know. I just thought green would look good right about there. Who can say?

A lot of people paint an ice shot and show a little, put a little, a little red spot in the corner. It’s silly. You just know COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

instinctively that it belongs there. There is no explaining it.

So, when I paint, there’s an expression, a creature, a thing, a look, a movement, an action that’s almost even maybe contorted, bent out of shape and wonderful. And it works.

The trick is that it has to work. And that’s what I take great pride in, I think I’m far less concerned about whether the anatomy is perfect, whether the architecture and everything is perfect and whether what they’re doing is physically possible. I couldn’t care less as long as you’re convinced.

And, in fact, the more I can stretch that and bend it and contort it and make it work, the more pleased I am if it sells, you know what I mean?

SCR: Uh-huh.

Frank: That’s the challenge, I guess.

SCR: To sort of take reality and — Frank: Oh, kick the hell out it and have people just wonder about it. “How in the name of God did you dream that up?”

That’s the imagination part of it, and I think, in a sense, that’s what I work hardest at. The actual drawing comes so easily to me you wouldn’t believe it. I draw with my eyes closed, literally.

SCR: You’ve had tremendous facility for years.

Frank: I can draw so easily, that it’s why I draw like that… I can draw. I probably can draw anything under any conditions, doing anything you can dream of and it’s: “How beautiful is it? How magnificent? How unusual is it? How different? How exciting?” All those things, not just drawing a perfect figure. I’m sure you’ve met comic book artists that sit there and look at the line work. I don’t give a sh*t about the line work. What’s that saying? Is it different? Is it sparkling? Is it just meat you control? I couldn’t care less about that. You’ve seen my early work […] I could draw circles with a brush, or a pen. Backwards, forwards, back

This page: Initially used as album cover art for the debut (and self-titled) vinyl record of Southern hard rock band Molly Hatchet [1978], Frazetta’s creation, Death Dealer, was featured in a number of subsequent paintings by the master, including these, though none achieved the fame of the first.

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Above: Frank Frazetta magnificent canvas, The Sea Witch, was cropped to use as cover art for Eerie #7 [Jan. 1967].

Below: In his interview, Frazetta mentions that he often throws in elements within his paintings if simply to try something different. He cites the random fluorescent green color inserted into his 1966 painting he titled Spider Man.

get in some of the paintings, that’s why they’ve really lost it.

A lot of them have so many subtleties that are immediately overlooked by the average layman or fan. They just look and say, “Oh, great figure!” Or great this, or great that, and overlook all the little subtleties that are… building you up to this point. As you go back, you go back to find it, you’ll find more and you’ll find more, and the more there is, the longer it lasts. It’s as simple as that, providing everything is well thought out, perfectly balanced, and the shapes are pleasing. Why do we like pleasing shapes? I don’t know. But, we do. Buttocks, very exciting.

SCR: Nice and round.

Frank: A silly, simple shape like that and we’re intrigued, because it’s perfect. Why? I don’t know. Ask him [points at photographer].

SCR: Is that one of the things you got from your classical art training, with your teacher back when you were a kid?

Frank: No, no. Not at all. That was instinctive since I was three years old. I’ve always had that feeling and I love pears. Certain images and the way they move, and that’s another thing. I guess we left out the, probably the most important word of all. I suppose you can learn to draw, you can learn to paint. You may even do very well at design, you know, whatever the ingredients that make a nice piece of work, the last but far from least is taste. I don’t pretend to have the most perfect taste, but, I think that’s what separates the men from the boys: taste. Knowing what to leave out. And when you do put it in there, it’s just the right thing, and it’s in just the right place, and it’s done with taste so that you’re not offended. It could be sensuous as hell, the taste makes it even more sensuous, and not a bit offensive.

SCR: Well, the sexuality in your paintings, it’s always there; that sensuousness, it’s always present. But it never bubbles out and gives you too much. #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Paintings © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

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part of the pen, anything. And, so who cares? That’s not all.

That’s just some kind of strange little skill that you might develop. It has nothing to do with the statement, you know.

And everything that can be done has been done. What does Frazetta do possibly different? But this is where I’m at: always different, a different look, a fresh look. That’s the reason my stuff is still really alive and well, because really, most of these concepts are so different. They’re all the same now because they’re all Frazettas, been around for all these years, but they’re different. Each and every one had a look about it that you never tired of, and I worked very hard at getting in this kind of lasting quality, whatever that is. Perhaps it’s a certain flow, like good music. I mean, why else are some pieces of music classics? They last forever, you never tire of them. Others catch you for a moment and they’re gone forever. Do you know what I mean?

SCR: Yeah, sure.

Frank: How do you explain that? I mean, why is that?

I mean you’re using notes; one note following another note, following another note, so why is it that this particular piece died in a week and this one goes on for 50 years? It’s hard to say. It’s hard to measure the quality and the balance and the beauty, whatever it is. And this is what I try to

Paintings © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Vampirella TM & © Dynamic Entertainment, Inc.

Frank: I try not to. I go to extremes I suppose, in the physical dimensions of the people, and some of their actions are extremely erotic, in the way they move, and if there’s a more a fluid feel in that movement that I can paint beyond, then I’m going to go out for shape. There’s a feeling of texture, the flesh is somehow softer and more flexible and more real. The colors are designed so that you really identify, “Yes, that’s skin.” You know. Fur is fur and so on. Textures are important. But its taste is in, I don’t know, selection of the action, the expression. Just how much or how little, you know…

SCR: It all goes back to what you were saying about being a storyteller. Choosing which story you tell, which moment you stop the camera at.

Frank: That’s still part of all that stuff. Exactly. That’s what I’ve gotta do. I didn’t get it first shot. Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t sit there and say, “Put the pen to the paper and draw the action and it’s perfect.” No, not at all. If I do, it’s pure luck. But I knew, in the back of my mind, that it should be, you know, have a certain mood and a certain quality and I’ll kick it around like a sculptor, you know. Nope, nope.

I’ll draw say, a leopard, and I’ll have it moving in a certain manner, and I’ll say, ‘It’s all right, it’s perfectly okay.

I mean they do look walk like that and they could look like this’, but it’s not blending just that right look, you know what I mean? I may have his paws, a little limp paw, and it looks funny. What the heck… It may be perfectly all right; I can’t take a camera… to know quite when to snap it, that’s what you get. That’s the difference between a little masterpiece; you know, the perfect moment or the not so perfect moment. And this is whatever they call it, just where is the head? Here? Here? Here? Like move it along, an expression, how far to tilt the head? Where does that girl really seem to all come together? It’s like you’re looking, you just love it, even if you don’t know why you love it. I mean instinctively, all of us, you know, we know and react to the same things.

Some of us can’t intellectualize about it. You know, you just say, “Hey man, that’s cool.” You know, they don’t know why.

SCR: Do you think that’s one of the reasons why your stuff is that popular? You’ve got a mass audience that cuts across cultural barriers.

Frank: Exactly. Because I’ve considered, everybody’s intelligence from the teenyboppers right on up. The teenyboppers will look at it for all the superficial qualities and identify with it, but they’ll also be excited by the shapes, not knowing this, you understand. They will not know it that that’s what’s really focusing them where I’ve lead them. The intellectuals, on the other hand, will just bypass the obvious and move around in the background…

SCR: All that subliminal stuff you put in.

Frank: Exactly. So, I have all the little tricks and gimmicks, but that’s perfectly legit because it’s still honest. I wasn’t that personal that I said, “Well, I’m not interested in this element, you know, my stuff is geared for professionals like myself.” And then I get really super-intellectual and of course, what happens is that I stumble all the little teenyboppers and people like that. But I know everybody will get a big kick out of it, and that’s why this information’s successful, because the kiddies buy it for their reasons, the next group buys it for their reasons, college professors buy it for their reasons. My stuff’s being taught in college art classes for a pretty good reason, too, and yet you’ve got eightyear-olds buying it. Eight-year-olds are not buying Rembrandt, Michelangelo.

Isn’t that a fact?

SCR: Sure.

Frank: Not because I’m better, but because I’m interesting. His stuff is done on a COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

This page: Examples of Frazetta’s zaftig women, with their voluptuous figures. In his interview, the masterful painter relates, “There’s a feeling of texture,” in his paintings, “the flesh is somehow softer and more flexible and more real.”

Above is The Moon Maid. Inset left is Escape on Venus. Below is the Vampirella Limited Edition print image painted in 1997.

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#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Artwork © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Weird Science-Fantasy TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.

This page: Though rejected by comics editor and Frazetta friend Stephen Douglas to use as a Buck Rogers cover for Famous Funnies, Frazetta made a deal with E.C.’s William Gaines for them to use as cover art (slightly modified to mask the Buck Rogers identity) for Weird Science-Fantasy #29 [May– June 1955] and to get back the original art, an unusual arrangement for Gaines, who usually insisted on owning artwork.

I’m very flattered. So, I’m just telling you up front that the stuff’s going to be around for a long time. A lot of it is better than most people think, or did think in the first place. That’s another reason I kept the art because they didn’t know how good it was. I’m sure you heard the old story of Bill Gaines and that Famous Funnies cover… Did you hear anything about that?

SCR: That was the only time he printed something that he didn’t own, wasn’t it? That one cover?

Frank: I did that for Famous Funnies. They rejected it because it was violent… and Bill Gaines had brought over the guys over at E.C. and they flipped out. “Can we print it?!” And Bill Gaines had a policy, you know, he kept all art, which was okay, but, I said, “No, sorry, Bill. You can’t have this one.”’ Because I knew it was that good. No way he’s gonna get that for 30 bucks. He’s gonna use it on the cover and keep that… I knew that stuff was priceless. But that particular piece is still a doozy today, even now. Priceless.

And I’m going to give it to Bill Gaines because his policy is to keep the originals…? No way… “I’ll sell you that for 60 bucks.” Sixty bucks is what he paid, I beg your pardon? I got that backwards, [it] became 30 bucks and I’d keep the art. Bill jumped up — “You got it!” Thirty bucks was a big deal, you know, in those days. Thirty bucks I got. I didn’t care. I’d have let them print it for nothing, something he doesn’t seem to know about, though. I just wanted to see it printed. There was no way I was giving that away. I hate to tell you how much I’ve been offered for that.

SCR: [Points to illustration used as cover for Weird Science-Fantasy #29] That piece?

Frank: Yeah.

SCR: I love it. It’s been called the greatest single piece of comic art that anybody ever did.

Frank: It is. It really is. I say that with all modesty. If I saw something better, I’d be the first to admit it, but I haven’t.

And I know Bernie Wrightson’s been giving it some good shots. He’s trying. A lot of guys have tried, but that’s pretty incredible. And I did it overnight. I happened to be sitting in Al Capp’s studio, and I did that overnight. That’s me… Just call me Mr. Overnight… Capp left me there at the office.

“Are you gonna stay here?” “Yeah I got this cover to do.”

He came in in the morning and he says, “Jesus Christ! Look out!” I didn’t even know… I just went beyond myself.

SCR: That’s one of those pieces that just worked.

Frank: That’s wild! I mean I just, Shoooo! [makes rocket certain level for a certain class of people. I’m a salesman. noise]. I could make pen-&-ink, or brush-&-ink, or whatever, I’m a guy, you know, on the head. I grab ’em all, but not at a combination of both, actually, in those days. Even if, you the sacrifice of quality. That’s not easy. I’ve covered the spectrum… That’s what I’ve achieved, I guess, probably the know, I can criticize it for some of it that’s overdone, but what the hell. I was only a kid. You know, I was only about most incredible thing to me is, I entertain everybody… But 24.

I’m not a fine artist; I’m an entertainer. I love my work.

SCR: This piece is a real favorite of mine.

SCR: I’m sure you don’t lose too much sleep over that.

Frank: Not too much. Not lately. But, you hit it, that’s really Frank: A lot of people would agree with that. I think that’ll the funny part about my work, and it’s also criticized for that. be, we’ll probably hang that up in here because I happen to like it. The original is far more crazy. It’s unbelievable.

Well, it can’t be any good if 13-year-olds like it. Generally SCR: What size was the original on this? that’s true. Sh*t, generally speaking, that may very well be right on the button, because they’re not very educated; they Frank: A standard comic book page.

SCR: About the same size anybody else did covers, right? couldn’t possibly know about the varied little nuances in Why didn’t you do any more of the Buck Rogers covers after a good piece of art, so they’re going to look for stuff that’s that last one? Because they rejected that last one? rather simple and obvious and generally poorly [executed].

Frank: They stopped.

I mean, at the worst now it could even be tasteless. On some token, I’m sure that many of the say, 13-, 14-year-olds SCR: Oh, they stopped publishing?

Frank: They just stopped, as far as I know… Those were that love my stuff couldn’t tell me from my imitator or care done… Yeah, but that was Buck Rogers, done for Famous less. That’s okay. They’ll end up buying me too, you know?

Funnies.… Steve Douglas, the guy I was working with, who But, I enjoy it because the people that really are into what I dearly loved, suddenly died… I think somewhere around I do, and really understand what I’ve done and really can then he got sick and died. And I don’t know, they were intellectualize about it and how wonderful it is, but I know just… I didn’t want to work for the rest of them just then. I that that’s not possible. You cannot educate everyone. And had friendships and I work for only people I liked. Like, I’m I don’t know if I’ve tried, but in a sense, I have, but what very sensitive to some of the pettiness of art directors, you happened to me was, those kids grew up. You know, not long there, watch the kids grow up, you know. They liked my know? They can’t understand an artist, the true artist.

SCR: You had that problem with Playboy for a while, didn’t work at 10 and… grew up and said, you know he’s better than we thought when we were 10, and when they got to be you? You swore for years you’d never work for them, and 30, better than I thought when I was 20. It’s very interesting. then you went back and did that one painting for them.

Buck Rogers TM & © The Dille Family Trust. Famous Funnies TM & © the respective copyright holder.

Frank: Well, what happened there, that’s an old story.

Playboy, I had nothing against Playboy or Hugh Hefner or any of those people. I didn’t even know anyone, and the fact is many years ago, supposedly, and I say supposedly, Al Capp’s brother [Eliot Caplan] showed Hefner some of my little cutesy drawings, you know, with the little women and that kind of thing, and I thought it would be very appropriate for Playboy and according to Capp, you know, it may be a lie, it may be bullsh*t, but, Hefner thought it was very nice, but it didn’t seem right for Playboy, which I found, I was very offended by. I thought it was perfect for Playboy. It had little bouncing boobs and wonderful little chicks, and all it needed was a little punchline, you know. I said, “What? Are you kidding?” So, I took that to heart, but the truth is, now, it’s very possible that they were never shown. Because, now and after hours… it may be a bunch of garbage. But I did take it somewhat personally. I mean, really.

SCR: Even with feeling that way, you still did some work on “Annie Fanny” for Kurtzman.

Frank: That was hard work, I love [Harvey], but that’s hard work.

SCR: Were you doing actual painting on the pages?

Frank: Yeah.

SCR: Or just laying down pencils?

Frank: Yeah, it lost a little, but the [images] are pretty small. You’d like to see the way Kurtzman [laid out the pages].

[The interview moves from the museum to Frazetta’s studio, where the rest of the interview takes place.]

SCR: Frank, along with your enormous popularity, you’ve had to deal with being one of the most plagiarized artists of the century. I was just wondering, what goes through your head when you see one of your paintings airbrushed on the side of a van, or done on somebody’s T-shirt?

Frank: Something like that? I don’t feel too concerned about that. I think that’s kind of cute when someone, you know, a novice, a child, a little boy, sits there and paints his motorcycle. I think that’s precious. I really like it. I just worry about them capitalizing on it, and working for a company and mass-producing these sort of things, and making a lot of bucks off of me. But they certainly, I feel they’re entitled to copy some of my work and do minor things with it up to a point.

SCR: I’ve even seen tattoos of some of your designs.

Frank: Have you?

SCR: Yeah.

Frank: Well, legally, they can’t do it, but I don’t concern myself, I’m not too thrilled about artists ripping me off left and right, especially when they take credit for creating work that I’ve created. Copying my style? Well, that’s another story, but literally copying concepts and characters and costumes and all Well, that’s going a bit far. That’s pretty blatant.

SCR: I remember one of the Burroughs films with Doug McClure had some scene backgrounds that were exact rip-offs of some of your paintings…

Frank: Oh yeah? Obviously I didn’t see it.

SCR: It was the People That Time Forgot movie.

Frank: Oh yeah?

SCR: Yeah. And, what it was, was on the set, they had these paintings on the walls that were rip-offs of your stuff.

That one painting with the sorceress and the giant, you know? The black woman with the snake wrapped around her.

Frank: Really?

SCR: Yeah, it was shown on the wall of a throne room in the film.

Frank: And used as a backdrop?

SCR: Yeah, it was a background in several scenes. It was used in The People That Time Forgot.

Frank: Damn! Good thing, lucky for them Ellie didn’t see it.

SCR: She’s pretty ferocious about taking care of your rights, isn’t she?

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

Frank: Yeah, she’s… She really gets pretty adamant about it. I guess I’m just getting used to it, and as long as people appreciate that I did and give credit where it’s due, I’m satisfied. I just… I’ve had some questions asked of me in the past that were so dumb… or heard things quoted like, they list Frazetta and they mention three or four other artists, school of art, in quotes. They’re talking about me and three or four imitators, and they’re throwing me in there, it’s a so-called “school of art.” Me, and Joe Shmoe, and Jack Shmotz, and Freddy Birnbaum, you know? “School of art”?

What the hell are they talking about? That’s really irritating.

That grates on me a little bit.

SCR: It’s sort of like throwing you in with those guys, like it’s the Brandywine school.

Frank: They’re throwing me in with them, and they came, like 30 years later. And suddenly it’s a “school of art,” and I’m a member, you know?… People are looking like Frazetta, and all, and that’s a little boring. But, I go on…

SCR: Your style, the style you’ve created, is so ubiquitous, it’s like it’s entered the mass consciousness.

Frank: That’s their argument. There is, I’ve been told by some imitators that, “Gee. Frank, we can’t help but look at your work and it’s like, that’s the only way to go.” And of course, I find that ludicrous to say the least. It’s lucky, and

This page: Frank Frazetta’s Famous Funnies covers from the early 1950s that featured space opera hero Buck Rogers were many a future fan’s first exposure to the awesomeness of the man’s incredible artistry.

Both covers are from 1954.

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you’ve seen for yourself the variety of styles that I have right here, from the funny animals to the silly little cartoons to the heavy stuff, to the light and silly. The style, the paint technique, is irrelevant. There’s no one style of paint application. That’s silly. I mean Howard Pyle and any number of illustrators apply paint in their own way, magnificent. Perhaps better than me, what’s the difference? It’s not the style or the way you apply the paint. It’s what you say. It’s the statement you make with the art. Now how could someone sit there, look at me and say: “That’s the only way to do it.”

What are they referring to? The colors? The way I apply paint? No, they’re talking about, just plain ripping off the figures, and concepts. There no such thing, that’s the only way to go. I just select a peak action and use it. You know, they can find their own peak [action] somewhere. That’s all there is to it. There’s no point in saying that’s the only way a girl could be sitting on that damn horse, you know? As a matter of fact, I think I’ve painted her about ten different ways and couldn’t decide which I liked best, and at this point I’m not even sure I’ll stay with that. So, how can they go and take one look and say, “That’s it”? So, if they were to decide to paint the same scene, well, the girl would be in exactly the same position, which is really odd. I can consider countless actions, and it would work. And just out of sheer pride, they might at least try to be a little adult and a little creative and a little personal.

You know, I’ve never really swiped that I could think of, and if I have, it was so minuscule it’s ridiculous… And I pride myself on that because that’s the whole joy. I can’t, frankly, look at any of my artwork if I know that I’ve lifted it. I just never get the same joy out of it, and I can’t pretend to sit there and in pride and watch people admiring it and saying, “Wow, how did he think of that one?” if, in fact,

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Flashing Swords TM & © the respective copyright holder. Painting © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

Above: Frazetta’s cover art for the Lin Carter-edited sword-&sorcery paperback anthology series, Flashing Swords. This piece graced the first volume — of five, in all — of the series published by Dell and lasting 1973–81. Contributors to the heroic fantasy title were part of an informal writers group who called themselves the Swordsmen and Sorcerers’ Guild of America — SAGA, for short.

Frazetta contributed cover paintings for the first hardcover volume and two paperbacks.

someone else did it first, and it’s pretty dumb. And they worry too much about opening themselves to ridicule if it’s less than perfect or less than wonderful, or less so, you know. Each happens if you use a crutch. I’d rather that it’s less than perfect.…

I think that’s the essence of it: it can be less than perfect, but it’s honest. And that you have a statement to make, you’ll make it, and if you don’t make it right away, you’ll make it eventually. If you have nothing to say, get the hell out! Don’t pretend to be a creative artist if you’re not. If you want to fake your way through it, or pretend you’re better than you are by simply ripping off people, and copying this and copying that, and then take all the credit in the world for it. You really don’t belong in the field. You know that words like genius and great are tossed around very lightly and very casually and it’s so much crap. I’d rather look at an artist who’s technically far from perfect, but at least I look at, and I’m sure you too, you look at and you know say, “We know it’s him. It’s coming from the heart.” You don’t question the drawing ability, really. You know, it’s just what’s happening. What has he said here? I mean he’s chucking in joy, you know. But, then when you look at someone, who, has for the most part ripped the thing off in bits and parts or in toto, you know, you look and you say, “Gee, I don’t know.

Something about that face, something alien. It looks good, but…” As long as you have that feeling, it takes the joy out of it. But you want to look, you take one look and you know, “I’ve never seen anything quite like that before now.” He admits that it was it was quite freely stolen. That’s the name of the game, at this point. I can’t stress that enough, you know? And it is more difficult certainly, to be totally original and creative; it’s hard work. Perhaps that’s the reason for it. Maybe they’re lazier than I am, I don’t know. But I pride myself on that.

SCR: That kind of honesty and creativity, that’s your bottom line in painting?

Frank: Without a doubt. At that point. Then people can begin to decide whether they like your work or not, whether they like the work, or even whether it’s the skill with which you apply you know, your concept, or the message that you perhaps are stating or maybe your color sense, for example, whatever it is that you’ve got going for you. You’ve gotta have something or you really shouldn’t be in the field.

I’m not impressed with the artists and illustrators, where hundreds of them sit around, very proudly, getting patted on the back, and they have these pictures and paintings and drawing that are just obvious photographs, or bits and parts of photographs and slides that they’ve taken in Arizona and horses that they’ve lifted, from countless photographs in their swipe file. Granted, the end result might even be spectacular, but it… I might say this is a great picture, but if I feel that it’s totally dishonest, that everything has a source, everything he’s done there, it’s not really from the heart, from the soul, from his imagination. I’m, at the very least, not impressed with the artist. In quotes, the artist himself…

I have that kind of eye where I recognize anything that’s a photograph or a rip-off, or just taken from somewhere.

Perhaps it may be too perfect, too right, too accurate. The lighting is just too deliberate and all those things, which I find less than fun. I like when the guy is guessing and poking around and reaching into his imagination and I can see the mistakes, and the lack of perfection, but the effort and the energy by the artist are, you know, what I mean? If he’s got something working, I enjoy that part of it, that ad libbing, that creating, that making up, that reaching out to what he thinks you’ll remember, what impressed him, and working hard at trying to recapture that, is wonderful. I have nothing but respect for good artists… but I would not be critical of his work. I would say, well you know, the ankle of the horse really doesn’t work quite like — I don’t care. If it seems genuinely to be working, I’m delighted, as against someone else who found a photograph. It wasn’t a particularly wonderful photograph, but he used it, because, what the hell, it was

Comics Interview TM & © David Anthony Kraft. Paintings © the estate of Frank Frazetta.

right. You know, boring as hell. He didn’t sit there and decide that, ‘I want to get this feeling of great speed,’ and force things out of proportion, and he’d catch it, great speed. So what if the ankle’s in the right place?

I much prefer that than the guy who sat there and selected whatever he could find. A horse running, in this case, however boring, or however uninteresting a photograph, just so long as that ankle was in the right place, and he was delighted with that. That’s nonsense. That isn’t what art’s all about. That’s what’s surrealism, that’s what abstract art is all about, don’t worry about it… worry about perfect duplication of what’s out there. That was art is. You just sit there and have an image of what you think you saw, in quotes, what you think you saw. Paint what you think you saw. It doesn’t matter that isn’t exactly what you saw. It’s what you think you saw. And that automatically will add some quality to the work, that makes it fun, and I just resent the critics that sit there and pick things apart… Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about that, and the description of an artist.

And really, the honest definition is a person who’s not only a creator, you can be a creator of this crap, you know, instead of that, but it’s a person who’s a creator but who provokes some kind of an emotional response or reaction, in people, hopefully positive, but he’s also a creator, that’s the key word, to me, an artist who sits there and renders things to death and is worried about perfection and recapturing life exactly as it happened, down to the minutest detail is a draftsman, if he’s successful. So perhaps he’s a good draftsman, depending on the skill with the final application. I don’t give two cents worth of sh*t about that or who — I’ve been accused of rendering detail. That may be so, but I still made it up.

I’ve created weapons that I know never existed. Horses running like I doubt that they could. Women looking like nobody I’ve ever seen, quite frankly, and super-heroes like nobody I’ve ever seen… but I made you up, I make up the sea, I make it up, that’s the fun. That’s the challenge. I’m not worried. I’m not going to sit here frightened that. Gee, maybe the rocks around Santa Barbara don’t look quite like that. Let me check that out. Who gives a damn? If you’re incapable, where you have to refer to this, well you’re that

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

much less an artist. So you’re that much less a creative artist. Don’t you agree?

SCR: Yes. Frank: That’s how I separate the men from the boys.

Those who can sit here with a blank canvas and just start doing these wonderful paintings, you know, if they’re not so wonderful. They’re still original. Not the ones who go to the library and start rounding up all their equipment, I need a tree for this, I need this… a meadow for here. I need some snow-peaked mountains. Then I need some models and then I need some… and then they boast about what a wonderful piece of work they’ve done. Frankly, any one of my sons, who have no training, can do that, and I have proof of that. Frankie can sit down, you know, [and] I’ll give him all this material. He’ll put together a painting as good as any professional out there, really.

Above: Snapshot of the painter and the interviewer taken during the conversation at the Frazetta Museum in 1984.

Below: This talk originally appeared in Comics Interview #42.

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Steven Ringgenberg shares a feast of fascinating factoids featuring Frank Frazetta!

The Fire This Time (or, How to Make a Great-Looking Documentary on America’s Greatest Painter With a Teeny Budget and Still Have Fun) “Frank Frazetta is probably the most influential artist of the last half-a-century.”

— Illustrator and publisher William Stout, quoted in Frazetta: Painting with Fire

Although Frank Frazetta has been dead since 2010, these can still be seen as still heady times for the maestro’s legion of fans because of the torrent of new Frazetta projects and merchandise pouring forth due to the concerted efforts of his children and grandchildren. Although it was not produced by a member of the Frazetta clan, one of the best Frazetta projects is a documentary chronicling his life and career entitled, Frazetta: Painting with Fire. Produced by a small independent production company called Cinemachine, the film is a triumph. Not only is it a vivid portrait of America’s most dynamic painter, it’s one of the best documentaries on any artist, worthy to stand beside a modern classic like Terry Zwigoff’s award-winning Crumb.

Divided into different sections with titles like Power and Drama and An Artist Emerges, the film traces Frazetta’s life from his earliest days right up the present, exploring virtually every aspect of his art career and punctuated with commentary from friends, colleagues and famous fans like Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, Nick Meglin, Bill Stout, Dave Stevens, Michael Kaluta, Neal Adams, Bo Derek, John Milius, Ralph Bakshi and Berni Wrightson. Frazetta’s children, Holly, Heidi, Frank, Jr. and Bill (with the notable exception of his wife, Ellie), were also interviewed, providing a unique view of this protean artist, whom they knew simply as “Dad.” From their comments, however, it sounds like Frank and Ellie Frazetta were fun parents.

While Frazetta’s career built to a steady stream of triumphs from the mid-’60s onward, and his artwork is always dynamic, there is a slightly melancholy tone to this film because of the section where Frazetta and his friends and family discuss his long periods of ill health due to a misdiagnosed thyroid problem followed by a series of strokes. Frazetta survived his harrowing brush with death, but it’s a little startling to hear a man as tough and self-reliant as Frazetta’s always been talk about contemplating suicide because of his seemingly unending health problems for an entire decade. Still, the film ends on a happier note, showing an older, slightly battered looking Frazetta recovered and playing (and drawing) with his grandkids.

Despite being shot on the proverbial shoestring, the film is well mounted, with Michael Goodis’s rousing, classically tinged score striking just the right notes to evoke the grandeur of Frazetta’s paintings. The film’s crisp editing and cinematography imbue it with an aura of slick professionalism, coupled with vast respect for its subject, while the filmmakers’ innovative use of animation software brings several of Frazetta’s most famous paintings to life in visually dazzling ways, at one point even allowing the artist to wander into one of his own landscapes. The film’s startling opening sequence shows The Barbarian, Frazetta’s first Conan painting, writhing and moving while the flames in the background flicker and dance. Frazetta: Painting with Fire is an artistic triumph, and apt tribute to one of America’s finest painters.

FRANK FRAZETTA: PUBLIC CITIZEN A look at the masterful artist’s public service work from his early years in the comic book biz

Once upon a time, comic books had to run two pages of text stories in order to maintain their second class mailing privileges. In addition, in order to improve the trashy, low-class image of the comic book industry, some companies including DC, Famous Funnies Publications and others, also ran public service advertising. These ads encouraged their readers to engage in wholesome activities like joining the Boy Scouts, attending church, staying away from drugs, deploring racial prejudice, etc.

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It may come as a surprise to those who know Frank Frazetta’s work only from his paintings to learn that he did a handful of public service ads during his career as a cartoonist in the early ‘50s. He drew the last one in the mid-’60s just as his painting career was to forever take him away from the seedy, low-rent world of comics. Frazetta’s public service comic strips constitute a tiny, but interesting, body of work that includes one of only two complete comic books Frazetta illustrated, and one of the very last pieces of sequential art he ever did.

The very first of these ads was the anti-drug diatribe “We Can Stop the Enemies of Youth,” which first appeared in 1951 in the first issue of Eastern Color’s Buster Crabbe series, a comic Frazetta was to contribute to several more times in the coming years. “Enemies” was often reprinted during the ’50s, in comics like Black Diamond Western #31, Crime Does Not Pay #106 and 114, Daredevil Comics #82, Fight Against Crime #5, Famous Funnies #198, Crime and Punishment #46, Boy Comics #73, and even into the 1970s in black-&-white magazines like Murder Tales #10, and Tales of the Killers #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Images © the estate of Frank Frazetta,

[Greetings, fellow Frazetta aficionados, and welcome to a series of articles originally intended for a column I did called “The Frazetta-Phile” in the pages of Comic Book Marketplace on various aspects of the career of the incomparable Frank Frazetta. Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the publishing business, CBM was cancelled before I was able to get more than a couple of columns into print, since they were intended to explore some of the lesser-known or even unexplored aspects of Frazetta’s work both as a cartoonist and illustrator, and of course as one of the most successful painters of the 20th century.—SCR.]

All © the respective copyright holders.

Comics #9, Famous Funnies #202, Heroic Comics #75, My Friend Irma #23, Crime Does Not Pay #114, Airboy Comics V9, #7, Romantic Confessions V2, #9, and two subsequent issues of Crime Smashers, #12 and 13.

His next PSA was a one-page advertisement for the 1953 Boy Scout Jamboree that first appeared in Heroic Comics #81 and was reprinted in the next two issues of that title, as well as Buster Crabbe #9, Famous Funnies #205, and elsewhere. Frazetta rarely drew children except in his Heroic stories, so this ad features one of his infrequent depictions of young boys. It’s a well-designed page that includes a modern train and a wagon train with an atmospheric bit of background in the lower part of the page showing the Scouts’ vast tent city. In addition to its use as a full page, at least one issue of Heroic featured a cropped version of this same image.

Frazetta’s next PSA is unique in at least one respect, for it gave Frazetta a chance to draw Buster Crabbe, an actor he could draw better than anyone else in comics. The “Red Cross New Method of Artificial Respiration,” which featured a photo of Olympic swimmer and serial star Buster Crabbe at the top of the page, and then went on to show four panels of his cartoon likeness demonstrating a then-new life-saving technique. This PSA was first published, naturally in the pages of Buster Crabbe #4 and was subsequently reprinted in Heroic Comics #72 and Personal Love #16. It was not as widely circulated as his other PSAs. #10. The one-page strip featured three panels showing an unnamed youth being lured into using drugs by a fedora-hatted hood, becoming a pusher to support his own drug habit, and then finally being shunned by the clean-living teenagers in his neighborhood. “He’s a dope fiend! We’d better keep away from him!”

Frazetta’s next foray into public service ads was “Prayer Works Wonders,” whose five panels depicted a handsome young blond man, who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the romance comics Frazetta was doing a few years later, getting relationship advice after a lousy date from his sweet, gray-haired mom. Mom’s advice: “Your best friend Ben shows his girl how he much he cares about her by taking her to synagogue every week! Why don’t you try the same thing and take your girl to church? There isn’t a girl in the world who wouldn’t appreciate and respect such an invitation!” At the bottom of the page was the admonition: “Attend the church or synagogue of your choice…”

Back in the ’50s, atheism was rare and widely scorned, and regular church attendance was the norm for most Americans, though to a modern audience mom’s advice probably seems quaint and rather out of touch. This ad first appeared in Real Clue Crime Comics, V7, #6) and, like Frazetta’s other PSAs, was reprinted in a variety of titles from many different publishers, including Buster Crabbe #7, Dead Eye Western COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

His most impressive PSA contribution was drawing the cover and 28 pages of interior art for the comic book, Li’l Abner and the Creatures From Drop-Outer Space, an assignment he got after joining Al Capp’s staff of ghosts.

This black-&-white comic chronicles the adventures of Danny Driftwood, a promising but aimless young man, whom Li’l Abner takes under his wing to encourage him to seek more education or vocational training so he can get a better job in the future. This comic was packaged by Capp’s studio and published by Toby Press, the comic book company owned by Al Capp’s brother, Elliot.

Frazetta did some of his very early comics work for Toby, John Wayne Adventure and the Billy the Kid Adventure (often in collaboration with frequent art partner Al Williamson).

In addition to penciling the Li’l Abner Sunday page for several years, Frazetta would occasionally ghost some of the daily strips and did incidental artwork for Capp’s studio for promotional materials, product design, and advertising. A highlight from this period was the illustrations he did of Dogpatch’s pulchritudinous female cast members to accompany an article on the actresses then currently appearing onstage in Top left: Anti-drug pcomics page drawn by Frank Frazetta and published first in Buster Crabbe #1 [Nov. 1951], and reprinted in innumerable other titles in that era. Top right: BSA page from Eastern Color’s New Heroic Comics #81 [Mar. 1953]. Left: Page from Real Clue Crime Stories #78 [Aug. ’52] 39

the smash-hit musical Li’l Abner, in the pages of Playboy [May 1957]. Another noteworthy project from this period was the 16 watercolors Frazetta did for a series of greeting cards depicting the various denizens of Dogpatch, including Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy and Pappy Yokum, Eagle-Eye Fleagle, Moonbeam McSwine, et al.

Frazetta’s final PSA appeared about a decade after the earlier work, and was directly attributable to Famous Monsters of Filmland and Creepy publisher James Warren. Although he was under no compulsion to run a PSA, Warren felt he owed it to his mostly teenage readership to discourage them from smoking. In retrospect, it’s cruelly ironic that Frazetta, a lifelong smoker himself, did an anti-smoking ad, especially when you consider his

massive health problems later in life, including several strokes that left him paralyzed on his right side, when he had to re-learn how to paint using his left hand.

Interestingly, the ad didn’t emphasize the health risks of smoking, though it did mention being “winded” from smoking, but instead, mostly targeted the expense of smoking, showing readers how much it cost to smoke even one cigarette a day, up to 20 cigarettes a day. It’s a magnificent piece of work, executed in a polished ink wash technique, and of course it features a fetching bikini-clad teenage girl in two panels to draw the eyes of the presumably mostly male audience. This lovely half-page ad first appeared in Eerie #3, then again in the subsequent issue, and was reprinted in Eerie #23 and 35, as well as the 1970 Eerie Yearbook. Other Warren magazines that ran the ad include: Creepy #9, 30, and 34, Blazing Combat #4, and Vampirella #8 and 13.

Taken as a minor subcategory of Frazetta’s larger oeuvre, his PSAs constitute a small but fascinating body of work, and are an interesting window into an earlier, more innocent time.

Top left: This anti-smoking strip appeared in the Warren titles of 1966. Left: Produced for the U.S. Job Corps as a giveaway — and years after he left Al Capp’s employ on Li’l Abner, Frazetta had a hand in the 36-page comic from 1965. Top right: FF’s Daisy Mae.

Frank Frazetta: Ace Caricaturist A look at the painter’s ability to expertly capture the likenesses of celebrities and dignitaries

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occasional appearances in the Li’l Abner strip.

This was not the first time Frazetta essayed celebrity portraiture, however. He contributed excellent likenesses of Buster Crabbe to the covers of the eponymous comic for #4 and 5, as well as in a public service ad about learning the “Red Cross New Method of Artificial Respiration,” which featured a photo of Olympic swimmer and serial star Buster Crabbe and then four panels of his cartoon likeness demonstrating this life-saving technique. This public service advert first appeared in Buster Crabbe #4 and was subsequently reprinted in Heroic Comics #72 and Personal Love #14. Frazetta also did a beautiful sample Sunday page for a proposed Buster Crabbe newspaper strip, and (according to Al Williamson) did 90% of the inking on the headshots (including all the headshots of Buster Crabbe) on an untitled 1954 story for Lev Gleason’s revival of Buster Crabbe comics, The Amazing Adventures of Buster Crabbe, collaborating with Williamson, Angelo Torres, and Roy Krenkel. This story was later totally rewritten by Wally Wood, and re-lettered by Inset above: Frazetta contributed the pasted-on chess piece heads on the cover of Earle Doud and Alen Robin’s political comedy album from 1965. Left: Dust jacket illustration of a jovial Dwight D. Eisenhower done for President Eisenhower’s Cartoon Book [1956]. #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Li’l Abner, Daisy Mae TM & © Capp Enterprises, Inc. All other items © the respective copyright holders.

Frank Frazetta has long been known for his versatility; his career includes drawing charming funny animals, outrageously sexy women, and tough, sword-slinging heroes. However, one aspect of his art career receives scant attention, as it has been overshadowed by his epic fantasy paintings and comic book art in the affections of his fans. In looking at the totality of his work for Al Capp’s Li’l Abner strip, his movie poster art, and record album covers, it’s quite plausible that Frazetta could have made quite a good living, as a caricaturist, like his colleagues Jack Davis and Mort Drucker.

One need only look at his cover to “Welcome to the LBJ Ranch” with its caricatures of LBJ, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller and other political figures of the ’60s to imagine Frazetta caricatures gracing the covers of Time or Newsweek.

Back in the ‘50s, his pencil caricature of President Eisenhower was so powerful and lifelike that it was used as the back dust jacket illustration to President Eisenhower’s Cartoon Book, and as the cover illo for the paperback edition, the only time it was ever reproduced in color. In a volume that includes artists such as Alex Raymond, Bill Mauldin, Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly, all better known than Frazetta, it’s a tribute to Frazetta’s skill that his illustration was chosen over their work. It’s also one of the few times Frazetta ever drew Eisenhower, despite Eisenhower’s

Buck Rogers TM & © The Dille Family Trust. Li’l Abner TM & © Capp Enterprises, Inc. Herman’s Hermits album © the respective copyright holder.

Williamson’s then-wife, Arlene, and was subsequently published in the first issue of witzend, under the title “Savage World,” and has subsequently been republished several times, first in black-&-white in Marvel’s Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction magazine and finally in color in Alien Worlds #3 with a totally new script by Bruce Jones. Fellow Fleagle Nick Meglin christened Frazetta “the Buster Crabbe drawer of all time,” which was Al Williamson’s professed reason for enlisting his friend’s assistance on what was first going to be a rush job just done for the money, and resulted in one of the all-time classic “Fleagle” stories. It was also, to my knowledge, the last time Frazetta and Williamson collaborated on anything.

You might think that was the extent of Frazetta’s depictions of Crabbe, but you’d be wrong. Frazetta also managed to sneak portraits of the actor into two other stories, the classic “The Vicious Space Pirates,” which appeared in Danger is Our Business #1 (pg. 6, panel 5, where Captain Comet suddenly looks like Crabbe, probably done from a movie still Williamson owned). His other use of the Flash Gordon star’s likeness appeared in “Untamed Love” (Personal Love # 32, pg 3, panel 3), though for the rest of the story, the cowardly villain is clearly modeled on Al Williamson, probably from reference photos taken by Frazetta. Although he would frequently deny using photo reference on his paintings, photographic evidence exists that Frazetta would, on occasion, employ it, though the bulk of his work simply came from his imagination and prodigious talent. A final printed Buster portrait appeared as the back cover of witzend #1. It was a beautiful likeness of the handsome action star executed in watercolor, but unfortunately only ever printed in black-&-white.

Two other comics job that featured Frazetta’s gift for realistic likenesses were done for Movie Love #8 and 10. The story in the former (done in collaboration with Al Williamson) chronicles the early life of movie idol William Holden, with the latter’s story, done solo, telling the life story of Burt Lancaster in “Leaping Lancaster.” Another possible celebrity portrait is featured on the cover of Tim Holt #17, depicting the Ghost Rider coming to rescue of a gent who looks exactly Victor Mature, an actor Frazetta would caricature about a decade later for the movie posters of After the Fox. Frazetta proved that he was quite facile at drawing realistic likenesses or cartooning the features of ’50s celebrities such as Estes Kefauver, Richard Nixon, Jack Benny, Milton “Mr. Television” Berle, Liberace (lampooned as Loverboynik), Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Gleason, and so on for the Li’l Abner strips he ghosted. The Sunday page featuring his luscious portrait of Monroe is notable as the only Sunday completely penciled and inked by Frazetta. It was one of the only pieces of Abner art that Frazetta retained after breaking with Capp. However, one person whose face never appeared in the Abner strips of that decade was then-president Dwight Eisenhower. In a bit of respectful reticence that would be unheard of today, Capp and his team of ghosts only drew Eisenhower from the back or in silhouette, never showing his face.

In Frazetta’s case, this wasn’t because he couldn’t draw a good likeness of the 34th U.S. President. He’d already demonstrated that he could in President

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Eisenhower’s Cartoon Book. Frazetta drew Ike at least once more later in his career as the head of a chess piece on the jacket of the comedy album, Welcome to the LBJ Ranch. Of course, Frazetta’s portrait of the legendary general wouldn’t have been out of place on the back cover of Both Sides of Herman’s Hermits, which featured Frazetta’s cartoonish portraits of Peter Noone, et al. on the front, and a back cover that showed then-president LBJ, former president Harry Truman, and Nikita Khrushchev attending a Herman’s Hermits show in an audience of world figures that also included Fidel Castro, Chairman Mao, the Beatles, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and other prominent ’60s pop culture figures.

By the way, Frazetta had earlier depicted Harry Truman in an untitled story in Heroic Comics #72, pinning a medal on a soldier’s chest in the first panel.

Top right: The movie serial action star’s likeness is nicely captured by Frazetta on this Buster Crabbe #5 [July 1952] cover. Inset left: The audience is full of celebrity caricatures on this back cover of the record album, Both Sides of Herman’s Hermits.

Below: Li’l Abner sequence from Jan. 7, 1956.

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Of course, we can’t conclude a survey of movie star portraits without at least mentioning his long run (mostly done in collaboration with Al Williamson) on John Wayne Adventure Comics. Frazetta and Williamson did around 50-plus pages of comic stories featuring the Duke that appeared in #2–8, and were reprinted numerous times in subsequent issues, as well as being endlessly reprinted in various fanzines throughout the ’60s and ’70s. The Frazetta/ Williamson likenesses of Wayne are fairly accurate and consistent, though these pages were one of their earliest collaborations. All of their work on John Wayne Adventure Comics was drawn between 1950–51. It deserves be noted however, that both artists radically improved in the next two to three years.

Frazetta’s painting for the Jonathan Winters’ comedy album Movies Are Better Than Ever [1964] is one of his earliest record jackets, and it’s a delight, featuring caricatures of the comedian as Frankenstein’s Monster, a big game hunter, Robin Hood, and a convict. This would not be his last foray into humorous album cover illustrations, however. In addition to his gallery of political caricatures for the Robin-Doud’s LBJ Ranch comedy album, Frazetta added a small portrait of President Johnson to a color photo of Mount Rushmore for the same comedy duo’s Score Three Points album [1967], and one of Frazetta’s least-known album covers, Lyndon Johnson’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [’67], features headshots of LBJ, Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, and other prominent personalities — all retouched

by Frazetta — pasted onto the bodies of a military orchestra. Frazetta’s distinctive style is nowhere in evidence here, though he did receive credit.

Frazetta’s justly famous movie poster art was often recycled for the accompanying soundtrack album, and in one case, Frazetta painted a large, realistic headshot of Roger Miller that was added to Jack Davis’s original movie poster art. That wasn’t the only time Frazetta and Davis worked on the same film project either. The 1967 Rankin-Bass animated feature Mad Monster Party employed both Frazetta and Davis. Frazetta’s detailed pencil rough was used for the movie poster, as was a watercolor showing the cast arriving at the Baron’s castle that was included in the film’s press book

and used for the “B” poster. Davis did his own black-&-white movie poster, as well as providing the character designs. (By the way, if you’ve never seen this charming monster romp, it’s pretty entertaining, due no doubt to the participation of MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman in co-writing the script.

Honesty compels me, however, to admit that the songs in the film are all pretty barfy. Still, the production design is excellent, and the entire movie is a treat for vintage monster fans.)

The only other animated film for which Frazetta provided a poster was Fire and Ice, the animated feature he designed and co-produced with animator Ralph Bakshi. The poster is a full-color oil painting done in his archetypal fantasy style, and many moments in the film are direct visual references to specific Frazetta paintings and illustrations. Frazetta executed a magnificent series of pencil illustrations for the film’s prologue that were later issued as a set of portfolio plates (available on the Frazetta Museum website).

It’s interesting to understand that Frazetta never intended to start painting movie posters; it was never on his radar prior to the mid-’60s, and it was an assignment that fell into his lap when someone from the United Artists art department saw Frazetta’s lushly rendered portrait of Ringo Starr, done for a parody shampoo ad printed on the back cover of MAD # 90. What resulted was his artwork for the “A” and “B” movie posters used to promote What’s New, Pussycat? [1965], a very fun sex comedy that featured Peter O’Toole, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Ursula Andress, Romy Schneider, Capucine, and Paula Prentiss. Frazetta had a field day here, with his cartooned portraits of the gorgeous female cast members looking particularly lovely. Aside from the posters and show cards for the film, Frazetta’s artwork from both the “A” and “B” posters was used on the soundtrack album, the jacket for a 45-rpm single featuring Tom Jones’ infectious title track, and for the paperback novelization of the film. Portraits of the cast not printed elsewhere, were featured in the film’s press book. As Frazetta noted many time in interviews, that was a true turning point in his career; he made an entire year’s salary in one afternoon.

Frazetta’s movie posters from the ’60s up through the early ’70s, the period when he was the most active in that particular field, really showcased his skills as a celebrity portraitist and caricaturist.

However, one way in which this work was severely limited in artistic breadth was the art directors’ usual insistence on forcing Frazetta illustrate a mob of crazy characters chasing another character, a style pioneered by Jack Davis in his classic illustrations for Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In fact, a great many of the movie posters Frazetta illustrated are done in that style, including his first movie poster assignment, What’s New Pussycat. After the success of that assignment, Frazetta was off and running

All items © the respective copyright holders.

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All items © the respective copyright holders.

Previous page: Top left is a portion of a page from Frank Frazetta’s work on John Wayne Adventure Comics #8 [May 1951], where the young artist drew The Duke. At inset center is FF’s album cover art for Jonathan Winters’ comedy album, Movies are Better Than Ever [1966]. At bottom are items FF produced for the 1965 movie comedy, What’s New Pussycat starring Peter Sellers, Peter O’Toole, and Woody Allen. This page: Frazetta movie poster work from the 1960s, including (clockwise, from top left) The Secret of My Success [1965], with Shirley Jones and Stella Stevens; The Busy Body [’67], with Sid Caesar and Robert Ryan; The Night They Raided Minsky’s [’68], with Brit Ekland and Jason Robards; The Fearless Vampire Killers (or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth are in My Neck) [’67], with Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski; and Hotel Paradiso [1966], with Alec Guinness and Gina Lollobrigida.

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All items © the respective copyright holders.

as a movie poster artist. At the same time his movie poster work was in high demand, his career as a paperback cover painter was exploding.

A rare exception to chase motif present in so many of his movie posters is his art for the now-obscure comedy The Secret of My Success. It features nicely executed, somewhat cartooned likenesses of the film’s stars James Booth, Shirley Jones, Honor (Pussy Galore) Blackman, Stella Stevens, and Lionel Jeffries as the film’s mad scientist villain. Frazetta has some fun with a fantastic element from the story, the giant spiders controlled by Jeffries. The press book contained some additional Frazetta artwork that didn’t make it into the poster. Also around this time, Frazetta did a charming portrait of Patty Duke for a film titled Billy, though his artwork was never used.

His poster for The Busy Body [1967] depicts star Sid Caesar being chased by the likes of Robert Ryan, Godfrey Cambridge, Richard Pryor, Anne Baxter, Marty Ingels, and Arlene Golonka.

In addition to the poster, a cropped version of Frazetta’s painting appeared on the cover of the movie novelization. The poster for Hotel Paradiso [1966) shows Alec Guiness, Robert Morley, and Gina Lollobrigida cavorting and prat-falling inside said hotel, with Ms. Lollobrigida fetchingly draped in a hotel towel. That same year, Frazetta did the movie poster art for After the Fox, featuring caricatures of Peter Sellers, Akim Tamiroff, Victor Mature, Britt Ekland, and a luscious portrait of relatively obscure Italian actress Maria Grazia Buccella that is one of the loveliest women he ever depicted. Frazetta did two posters for the film and elements from both the “A” and “B” posters were re-used for smaller show cards and the film’s press book, as well as the front and back of the jacket for the soundtrack. These posters burst with life and action and are some of the best he ever did in this genre.

In 1967, Frazetta was commissioned to do an illustration for Roman Polanski’s horror

comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers, which would seem to be right up his alley. However, his art was not the principal image on the poster, but was used as a strip across the bottom of the poster, again depicting a humorous chase featuring the principal cast — including portraits of Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, Jack MacGowran, Ferdy Mayne as Count Von Krolack the vampire, and his loutish hunchbacked assistant and other monsters — all pouring out of a castle in the background.

The following year, Frazetta returned to his western comics roots by executing a charming and funny western scene for the Roy Orbison comedy musical The Fastest Guitar Alive, though again, only a portion of Frazetta’s art was used on movie poster, with the large portrait of Orbison done by an unknown artist. The art was shown in its entirety on the jacket of the soundtrack album. However, it did not feature any caricatures of Roy Orbison or other cast members. Frazetta began the poster art for A Man Called Dagger [1968], a spy spoof, though, for whatever reason, he never finished it, but the surviving art boasts excellent portraits of star Paul Mantee, villain Jan Murray, Sue Ann Langdon, and a hulking Richard (James Bond’s “Jaws”) Kiel.

Frazetta’s next two movie poster assignments were interesting for very different reasons. The posters for Fitzwilly [1969], a Dick Van Dyke caper comedy about a larcenous butler, were executed using a technique Frazetta never employed on another movie poster. The art directors insisting on using pasted-on headshots (retouched by Frazetta) of Dick Van Dyke, Barbara Feldon and the other cast members, with Frazetta executing the rest of the art. The loose-limbed figures of Dick Van Dyke show Frazetta veering into Jack Davis territory.

While he did art for two posters, only one of them was used, though both paintings are used on the front and back of the soundtrack’s jacket.

His paintings for the two posters advertising the jungle adventure Luana [1968] didn’t feature any good celebrity portraits, but are among the finest work in this genre, despite some sloppy touch-up work on Luana’s costume by a studio hack on the “B” poster. A color rough by Frazetta was used as an advertising stand-up, and the “A” poster art was used for the movie novelization paperback.

His other big movie poster assignment for this period, William Friedkin’s The Night They Raided Minsky’s, was noteworthy for several reasons. For one thing, it was one of the few times

featuring his art, Frazetta backed away from movie posters for a while after this since most of the subject matter didn’t interest him, and he never liked repeating himself. Then, in 1976, he got an unexpected phone call from a fan named Clint Eastwood, who wanted Frazetta to do the poster for his latest film, The Gauntlet. The result was a magnificent oil portrait of Clint Eastwood standing tall before a wrecked bus, with co-star Sandra Locke at his side. In addition to his $20,000 fee for this painting, Ellie Frazetta

All items © the respective copyright holders.

Frazetta’s movie poster art was censored. Frazetta’s original painting, a chaotic scene of a burlesque theater being raided by the cops, featuring portraits of Jason Robards, Britt Ekland (for the second time), as well as a bevy of voluptuous Frazetta females in skimpy showgirl costumes, originally boasted some pink balloons with nipples floating in the background, and a woman’s legs, with panties around her ankles. These elements were excised from the printed version of the poster, though they remained on Frazetta’s original painting. A final change was made to the art before publication, but for a sadder reason than corporate prudery. The faces of comics Burt Lahr and Norman Wisdom were switched to make Lahr’s face less prominent since he had died before the film was released. Frazetta collectors should also note that the press book for The Night They Raided Minsky’s includes some art that isn’t printed elsewhere.

One of the more staid movie posters he executed around this time was for the Henry Fonda-Lucille Ball, Yours, Mine and Ours, a comedy about the travails of blending two large families. The top of the poster featured static portraits of the two different families, while the bottom of the poster depicted a typically frantic chase-type scene in Fonda and Ball’s bedroom.

As usual, Frazetta’s art for the poster was recycled for the soundtrack album. Very similar in design and execution was Frazetta’s art for a similar comedy, Mixed Company, which again was illustrated with three panels, one a calm family portrait of Joseph Bologna and Barbara Harris’s original family, a second panel showing their reactions to their racially mixed new children, and a final big panel showing (you guessed it) a chaotic chase scene with overflowing suds and kids tumbling down a staircase.

One element in this poster probably wouldn’t fly in today’s highly charged PC world: Bologna is shown charging after their new black child, who is shown stark naked but still dribbling a basketball as he tries to run away, presumably from the bath that generated all of the suds pouring down the staircase in the background.

There is one Frazetta movie poster assignment that almost no one has ever seen, his aborted design for the Lee Marvin-Clint Eastwood-Jean Seberg musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). It is reputedly one of Frazetta’s most ambitious efforts, with portraits of Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, and Jean Seberg and what Frazetta described as “hundreds” of vignettes featuring cartoonish miners, treasure maps and other visual elements of the Gold Rush. To this day it remains unseen except by Frazetta’s family and possibly some friends. Frazetta never finished it. “I got tired of doing all those little vignettes and didn’t go any further.”

One of his last movie poster assignments was one of the most fully realized paintings he did for the movies. For Mrs. Pollifax—Spy [1971], Frazetta executed a well-rendered oil painting that featured a nice portrait of star Rosaline Russell, with co-star Darren McGavin almost lost among the throng of characters speeding down a mountain road. There are some nice details in this painting, including a beautifully executed castle in the background and some delightful mushrooms.

Since Frazetta’s painting career was at or near its peak at this time, and he was deriving loads of additional income from the sale of posters

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Page 44: At top left is Frank Frazetta’s original art produced for the Victor Mature and Alec Guinness film comedy, After the Fox [1966]. At center inset is the album cover

by FF for the soundtrack to The Fastest Guitar Alive [1967], starring Roy Orbison.

At bottom inset is the Henry Fonda section of the Yours, Mine and Ours [1968] poster artwork. Previous page: Frazetta’s spectacular work for the now completely forgotten B-movie, Luana (who would be featured in Vampirella #31 [Mar. ’74], which featured the top right poster art as cover). This page: FF poster for Mrs. Pollifax-Spy [1971], which starred Rosalind Russell and Darren McGavin.

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Frazetta did other movie posters after the Battlestar Galactica assignment, some of which were never used, such as his poster for the documentary The African Elephant, or simply left unfinished for a variety of reasons, like The Barbarian Brothers, which only exists in rough form.

Frazetta turned out a finished painting for a science fiction film titled 3000 AD that was never released to theaters and the poster remained unseen until it was published in Legacy (Underwood Books, 1999), an excellent collection of Frazetta’s paintings and drawings, accompanied by some very perceptive and well-written articles. Fortunately, Frazetta’s talents weren’t used solely for promoting schlocky fare like 3000 AD and The Barbarian Brothers; he still occasionally got poster assignments for films by prominent directors like Ken Russell. Unfortunately, Frazetta’s poster for Salome’s Last Dance was never used, and remained unpublished until it appeared in Testament (Underwood Books, 2001), the third of a superb series of Frazetta volumes edited by Arnie and Cathy Fenner. One of Frazetta’s best examples of celebrity caricature was seen by very few people since it was commissioned for John and Bo Derek’s production company, Svengali, and features a voluptuous portrait of Bo Derek as the puppeteer for a John Derek puppet. That wasn’t the only work Frazetta did for the Dereks; he also painted a poster for the film Ghosts Can’t Do It (1989), which includes a realistic headshot of star Anthony Quinn.

Frazetta’s final published celebrity caricature was printed, of all places, the cover of Mad magazine (issue # 338, 1995). It depicted Judge Dredd star Sylvester Stallone nabbing Mad mascot Alfred E. Neumann in the act of tagging. Frazetta’s career as a caricaturist wound up lasting for more than 40 years, if you include his comic book work. Of course, he is most famous for his fantasy paintings of Conan, Tarzan, and the like, but the work discussed here represents a distinct, and usually humorous, aspect of his oeuvre that isn’t often discussed. Taken as a separate body of work, it’s as impressive as the entire careers of most other artists. #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Poster © the respective copyright holders.

negotiated and received additional monies for the sale of the original to Eastwood.

The year 1978 had Frazetta again returning to the movie poster arena with a poster for the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Paradise Alley. Frazetta didn’t really want the assignment, so he quoted Stallone a price of $40,000 for the painting, figuring he’d never agree to such a high price. Remarkably, Stallone, still riding high from the unexpected success of Rocky, agreed.

It is reportedly another return to Frazetta’s comic movie poster style, with caricatures of Stallone and the rest of the cast, but it was never used and remains unseen by general public today. That same year, Frazetta did a rough for a proposed Star Trek painting, but then never progressed to a finished painting. George Lucas asked Frazetta to do the cover for a lavishly produced Star Wars book, but dissatisfied with the fee, and not wanting to part with his original art, he turned Lucas down. He did, however, agree to do four paintings to advertise ABC’s Battlestar Galactica TV series.

They were published in black-&-white and ran in five different issues of TV Guide magazine that appeared between Sept. 16, 1978 and Jan. 20, 1979. (One painting, “Darkness at Time’s Edge” was used twice, once in a cropped format.) These paintings, while excellent, aren’t notable for good likenesses of any of the stars except for Richard Hatch. The painted versions of Dirk Benedict and Maren Jensen are rather generic, and none of the rest of the cast is shown full-face.

THE ‘ONE THAT GOT AWAY’ FROM FRITZ The lost art of the legendary unpublished E.C. story drawn by Frazetta, “Came the Dawn”

All items © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Shock Illustrated TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.

It would be hard for any artist to top the luscious blonde Wally Wood drew in the original “Came the Dawn” (Shock SuspenStories #9, June–July 1953). However, in the surviving panels from the unfinished Picto-Fiction version of the same plot, intended for publication in Shock Illustrated #4, it’s easy to see, even in the panels that are barely penciled, that Frazetta managed to do it. When EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines decided to pull the plug on the innovative, though ultimately stillborn, Picto-Fiction magazines, he offered to pay everyone who was working on a story when they turned it in. Frazetta, always the independent artiste, decided he’d rather keep his art than get a paycheck, so he never finished the job and hung on to it for decades. There it remained, unseen, somewhere in Frazetta’s archives for many years, seen only by a select few friends of the Frazettas.

The Picto-Fiction line came and quickly went, the comics industry tanked in the mid-’50s, and Frazetta labored for almost a decade as Al Capp’s uncredited ghost on Li’l Abner. After a falling out with Capp over rates, Frazetta left and tried to get work doing comics again. But the industry had changed since the ’50s and Frazetta found very little comics work, mostly inking Reed Crandall pages for The Twilight Zone, and some inking for George Evans on Frogmen until Jim Warren began publishing Creepy. Frazetta, who contributed the story “Werewolf” to the first issue and two single-page “Loathsome Lore” pages to Warren’s mags, as well as a host of now-classic covers, tried to interest Warren in publishing the unfinished story, but the two men were never able to come to terms and so the story languished, largely unseen in Frazetta’s personal horde of art, except for an odd panel shown here or there in various fanzines. That is, until Russ Cochran included it in the Shock Illustrated volume of Complete Picto-Fiction set that collected all of the stories and covers from the Picto-Fiction line, as well as all of the finished but unpublished stories Bill Gaines still had in his files.

Fortunately for Frazetta aficionados, his sons published the unfinished art as a limited edition portfolio titled “Came the Dawn.” It was issued in a limited edition of 2,500 copies, some of which are still available for sale on the Frazetta Museum website (http://frazettamuseum.com/).

This page: Various artifacts by Frank Frazetta for his unfinished E.C. “Picto-Fiction” story intended for the never-published Shock Illustrated #4. Drawn in 1955, the story, “Came the Dawn,” would have been a remake of a ’53 Shock SuspenStories tale of the same name.

The cover by Rudy Nappi of Shock Illustrated #2 [Feb. 1956] is at right.

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Red Sonja TM & © Red Sonja, LLC.

Photo portrait © Kendall Washington.

Blame it on Jusko, I reckon! It was his phenomenal effort creating the Marvel Masterpieces trading card set — a “hellacious” effort to produce 104 paintings in almost as many days! — that launched the non-sports card craze of the 1990s. It also firmly established the man’s stature as one of the foremost painters in comic books and the world of fantasy, opening up entirely new opportunities. Today he is still a busy working professional and frequent guest at comic cons, one who dreams of tackling his “big cats” project in his Pennsylvania-based studio. As comic book icon Stan Lee had died only the day before, the telephone interview begins with talk about “The Man” and Jusko’s work at Marvel Comics…

Comic Book Creator: Did you know Stan?

Joe Jusko: I knew Stan casually. We had met a few times over the years. I can’t say that we had a great friendship or anything, but the times I had interacted with him were very positive.

I posted a story, actually, on my Facebook page yesterday about an event way back in 1978, when Stan was still up at Marvel and pretty much overseeing day-to-day activities. All the covers and all the art had to go through his office first and he would give approval on it. The only cover I ever had killed was killed by Stan because he absolutely hated it and reassigned to Earl Norem.

But it’s ultimately a funny, and educational story. It taught a young artist about not taking things for granted. I was 18 years old and I was painting covers for Marvel, and the third cover I ever did was killed by Stan, of all people! I thought my career was over!

It taught me to never do less than my best work — to never take a job for granted, which was invaluable for somebody at that age.

CBC: I was looking through your earliest covers and I’m surprised how many of them made a strong impression on me at the time. I vividly remember your first Heavy Metal cover.

Joe: Oh, the one with the girl and the saber-tooth head?

CBC: Right!

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Joe: I painted that the summer I graduated high school. I had never painted before, and I had won something called the “DC Comics Award for Excellence” back when I was in New York City’s High School of Art and Design, which was essentially the only vocational public high school of its kind in the country, with a pretty advanced art curriculum taught by top commercial illustrators and comic artists.

Legendary E.C. Comics artist Bernie Krigstein was one of my teachers. This was when, upon graduation, DC Comics would give out an award every year to the person they thought had the most promise, and I won that award that year (which was essentially a gift certificate to an art supply store and a letter from DC President Sol Harrison).

I had come to the realization when I was graduating that as much as I had always wanted to be a sequential comic artist, I was never going to be fast enough to do a regular book.

You know, there are guys who are just natural draftsmen, but I’m a guy who really has to work at getting stuff correct, and there was no way in the world I would ever be able to pump out 20 pages a month. But I thought, “Hey, if I paint, I can put everything into one image and move on from there!” Looking back, it was a really naïve thought to have had, but at 17, you just think you can 49

Page 48: Joe Jusko’s cover art for the Red Sonja title coming from Dynamite. Above: Jusko’s first pro sale, the cover of Heavy Metal [June ’78, V3 #2].

Inset right: Drew Friedman’s portrait of Bernie Krigstein, from Heroes of the Comics [Fantagraphics]. Below: Notification from DC Comics production manager Sol Harrison that Jusko was winner of the “Award of Excellence..

Joe Giella, Larry Hama, Art Spiegelman, Ralph Bakshi, and forward to me, Jimmy Palmiotti, Mark Texeira, Joe Madureira, Michael Davis, Jamal Ingle, and Joe Rubinstein.

You can just keep going down the list of people who came out of that school during those years. Celebrities like Tony Bennett, Harvey Fierstein, Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, and fashion icons Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs are all alumni, as well. It’s a wonderful school for those lucky enough to attend. To this day, they remain four of the best years of my life.

CBC: You mentioned Bernie Krigstein. Are there any other names we might recognize that instructed you?

Joe: Not at that time. He was the only comic-book guy on the faculty, and, at 17, I didn’t really know much about Bernie, because the E.C. comics were a little bit before my time. But I did know of him and his work. I asked him if he was that guy, but he didn’t much like talking about comics. If he liked or respected you, he would acknowledge that he was that guy, but he never really got much into it. He was more into teaching you illustration techniques. He was one of my illustration teachers, not a cartooning teacher, so he was not really into teaching comics.

CBC: Did you get a sense that he might have been ashamed of the comic book stuff?

Joe: I don’t know if he was ashamed of it. I think that basically his job was to teach you other stuff. I remember I was working on something one time — I forget what he was teaching us how to do… I think he was teaching us crosshatching — and he wanted us to do a crosshatching of the crucifixion, believe it or not. So I was supposed to be crosshatching Christ on the cross, but instead I was doing this brushy-ink Frazetta/Tarzan-type thing, and he came over to me and went, “All right, Jusko, we know you know how to use a brush. Now how about seeing how you use a pen.” He just plucked you off from what you were doing to work the way he wanted you to work. But he was a nice guy, really friendly, but also really serious about teaching you art. He took his job very, very seriously. I really liked him.

CBC: Did you ever stay in touch with him at all? Did you ever go back and see him?

Joe: I went back to school a few times after graduation to speak in some of my old classes, something I did for the first few years. The teachers liked it because I had just graduated and was already working, so for the teachers it validated the school to the kids still there. Jimmy Palmiotti told me he was in one of those classes that I went back to speak to.

But then a lot of the teachers that I knew retired, so there was really no point in going back anymore. I do think I’d be interested in giving a graduation commencement address, though, as the forty years since my graduation have taught me a lot that I think would be of worth to today’s students.

CBC: But you obviously recognized that Bernie was one of the greats.

Joe: Like I said, I knew of him, I knew of E.C. Comics, I had seen a bunch of E.C.s comics because I worked in a comic store when I was 15 or 16, so I knew who he was. But you got the feeling that you couldn’t broach the subject with him too much more than casually. He acknowledged who he was, but didn’t want to focus on it. I don’t really know if he was ashamed of it, but I think he just didn’t consider it pertinent to what his mission was at that point.

CBC: I know that his “Master Race” is being auctioned right now, and I’ll bet you it’s going for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Joe: The last time I looked at it, it was up to something like $170,000. [It eventually sold for $600,000.] It’s ironic. I was #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Heavy Metal TM & © Metal Mammoth, Inc. Bernie Kriegstein portrait © Drew Friedman. DC logo and characters TM & © DC Comics.

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do anything. So, I spent that DC Comics award gift certificate on myriad paints and brushes, and that Heavy Metal cover was one of the sample paintings I did that summer while trying to teach myself different mediums, from oils to gouache to acrylics. It’s a mixed media approach of watercolors and Higgins colored inks.

CBC: With the presentation of the award, did anyone from DC hand it to you? Who was the judge?

Joe: Apparently, DC kept an eye on student work and teachers submitted those whom they thought were qualified for the award. It was handed to me in class by my teacher a week or so before graduation.

CBC: So the school was actively encouraging — and not against — kids going for a comic book career?

Joe: It’s the High School of Art and Design. By junior year half of the curriculum was art. It was like an art college, but still a public high school, and they were teaching different fields of art. You could major in illustration, cartooning, photography, fashion design, architecture, etc. It was a really diverse school, and there were so many people from our industry, actually, who came out of that school in the ’70s and ’80s. The alumni are a who’s who of talent going back to Alex Toth, John Romita, Sr., Neal Adams, Dick Giordano,

witzend TM & © the estate of Wallace Wood.

Above: Two pages featuring young Ralph Reese’s artwork for Wallace Wood’s witzend prozine. On left are illustrations accompanying the editor’s poetry from #1 [1966], and at right is Reese art from #2 [’67].

just talking about that story, at a convention in Spain with a bunch of people, and there was an artist who has been in the business almost as long as I have who had no idea who Bernie Krigstein was, and I was like… really…? “Master Race” is one of the most famous comic stories of all time, at least amongst comic pros. And he just had no idea who he was. So it’s ironic this popped up now, because I had been just talking about this story.

CBC: So where did you come from?

Joe: I was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, down in Alphabet City. My grandparents came from the other side. I’m Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian, so my grandparents on both sides were immigrants, but my parents were born in the states. My mother was born in Bridgeport, Conn., and moved to New York City as a child and my father was born there. Of course, back then, there was a “neighborhood,” you lived there, you got an apartment maybe four blocks away from your parents, and that’s how you grew up. I think it was my and my brother’s generation that finally decided to migrate out of that area as we got older. Yeah, I grew up down in the Lower East Side in the ’60s and ’70s, when it was a hot spot of crime and poverty. It wasn’t the greatest neighborhood back then.

CBC: So were there a lot of hippies around there?

Joe: Hippies, that seems so dated now, were everywhere but more so in Greenwich Village, on the west side. It became a fairly depressed area, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City — tenement buildings with low-income families.

We didn’t have a lot of money. The apartment wasn’t the greatest. It was just… if you watched Taxi Driver and other movies from that era that showed New York City, that’s exactly what it was like. It was a fairly high-crime area, a lot of drugs, junkies, muggers, burglaries. There were four police officers shot to death, two on my very street. It was COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

a mixed bag, a melting pot of people back then. It was very Hispanic back in the ’70s, but then you had the Polish and the Ukrainian communities, and you went down to Houston Street and Orchard Street and there were the Jewish communities around, where Jack Kirby came from. So I didn’t grow up too far from Jack. A two-minute walk and I was on the street where Jack grew up.

CBC: When Kirby was growing up, he said that there were two guys that basically were the role models for kids in the Lower East Side: Louie Lepke, head of Murder, Incorporated, and James Cagney, who made it big on Broadway and became a star in Hollywood. Was it rough and tumble when you were growing up? Were there gangs?

Joe: It was incredibly rough and tumble, actually. I grew up a street kid. If you think West Side Story but only on the Lower East Side, that’s essentially what it was like. A lot of racial stress, but mostly amongst my parents’ generation.

Very blue collar, working class all around. My father was supposedly a construction worker before I was born, but all the while that I was growing up, he made his living a card dealer in mob gambling joints. Sometimes when he was stuck watching me I would go with him and just sit in the corner. I would drink Cokes and read comic books while my father was dealing cards at these mob joints. It was an interesting childhood.

CBC: Did you belong to a gang?

Joe: No, we all just hung out together as friends with no affiliations. There were no gangs, except for a brief run in the 1970s — the Dynamite Brothers, the Young Katos, and their sister gang, the Kato’s Muchachas, and several others, I think. Everyone pretty much kept to themselves, however.

It was just, it was a rough and tumble neighborhood, but you learned how to get along because you had to… but you fought when you had to, as well. New York City in the

Above: Clockwise from top left, Joe Jusko and his mother, Sonia, in 1963; Sonia at 19; Joe’s parents, Bill and Sonia; Joe in his confirmation portrait, 1969; Joe and older brother Danny in 1965; the artist, age 14, showing off his early work; Sonia; and Joe, center, the tallest kid in his kindergarten class, 1965. Below: Joe grew up at 511 East 5th Street, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

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’70s was a lot different than it is now. The Lower East Side and Alphabet City… there were streets I wouldn’t have run down when I was a kid, and now they have bistros and art galleries and everything. It’s just totally different. Gentrification has completely changed that entire neighborhood, to the point where it really isn’t anymore a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else.

CBC: Plus, it was the ’70s, when the city had garbage strikes…

Joe: Plus the city was bankrupt! There was a big headline on The Daily News about the President’s reaction to the financial crisis in New York City: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” It was just a very depressed city at the time.

CBC: It’s funny: my brother and I used to go to the Phil Seuling cons, up in midtown, and my sister lived in the twenties, 21st, 22nd Street, wherever it was, and even though we were little kids, I was probably 12, my little brother was 10, we would walk the 20 blocks, sometimes very late at night. It was scary and (I’m just saying as an aside) yet, these days, I’m kind of weirdly nostalgic for that time… a little bit. [chuckles] Joe: So am I! So am I, Jon. I’ve often said I wouldn’t want my kids to grow up the way I grew up, but I would never trade how I grew up for anything, because I became streetwise really early. You learned to be independent. I was what was called a latchkey kid who had his own key from a very early age and came and went as I pleased because my mother worked and my father was out doing what he was doing all the time. He never had a really good job, as far as I can remember, but he was out doing his thing with the card dealing and stuff. And my mom worked in a supermarket as a cashier, but from the time I was young, I went to Catholic grade school because she wanted to ensure that my brother and I got the best education we could, and when I was seven, eight years old, I would go to and from school by myself, and that’s the way it was back then. Nobody thought twice about it, because that’s just the way things were done. I walked in on a guy robbing our apartment once when I was 10 or 11. The apartment doors were still wooden with dimpled glass panels in them and he had used a screwdriver to pry the glass out enough to reach the door locks.

I think he was more surprised than I was when I came in.

He told me to take off my pants and get in the bedroom — whut!? — so he could run away without me chasing him.

The landlord covered all the doors in the building with sheet metal after that. Cheaper than new doors. The helicopter parents of today would have a stroke even thinking about all that.

CBC: You had an older brother, Danny, right?

Joe: Right.

CBC: Any other siblings?

Joe: No, that was it. My brother was nine years older than me.

CBC: That’s a long span.

Joe: Well, there were a couple of miscarriages in be-

tween, so I came a little bit later. He passed away a couple of years ago, unfortunately, so, yeah, I’m the last one left from my immediate family.

CBC: What’s the ethnicity of the name? Is the name Polish?

Joe: It’s Ukrainian, actually, but my mother was Polish and Ukrainian, and my father was Russian and Ukrainian.

CBC: Any cousins? Any other Juskos in the world?

Joe: Yeah, there are. I have two male cousins from my father’s brother. My Uncle Joe had two sons, so they’re still around. But after that, that’s about it. Growing up pre-internet, the only Juskos in the phone-book were related to me.

CBC: Did you avoid getting in trouble?

Joe: Yes. I wasn’t a troublemaker as a kid, because we grew up learning to respect people and respect things. I mean, you learned to take care of yourself when you were outside, and how to stay out of trouble. A cop brought me home one time because I was playing in a construction site I shouldn’t have been, and my father kicked the crap out of me for it, because if a cop brought you home, it was embarrassing. Unlike today, where the cops really can’t do anything, back then it was really not good if a cop brought you home…

CBC: So you were able to stay out of trouble?

Joe: Correct. From the time I was a kid, I liked to draw, so my friends were out playing baseball and football — well, street ball, because we had no ballparks, really, since we grew up in the city. There were no fields or anything, so you’d play what we called “sewer to sewer,” where those were the goalposts. You’ve got the street, and one sewer to the other sewer were the end zones. And you’d play football that way, or stickball, stuff like that… punch ball.

But I never thought I was going to play for the Yankees, so I realized from the time I was a kid that my talent and my ambition were rooted in drawing. I somehow had tunnel vision from the time I was a kid and realized that that was what I wanted to do. As soon as I realized I could draw, I became obsessed with it. So it really kept me out of trouble.

CBC: I read that, no mat#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

New York Daily News TM & © Daily News, L.P. The Avengers TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Trio of photos taken inside the Jusko Lower East Side apartment, evidence of the artist’s humble beginnings in New York City. Below: Infamous New York Daily News front page emblazoned with a headline for the ages, featured in the Oct. 29, 1975, edition.

The day prior, President Gerald Ford announced the federal government was not going to spare the nation’s most populated city from bankruptcy, a low point for the Big Apple. Bottom: Snapshot of Joe’s Staten Island apartment studio, circa 1988.

Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc. The Avengers TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. John Buscema painting © Tom Palmer. Artwork © Joe Jusko.

ter what, your mom made sure you had art supplies…?

Joe: Right. We didn’t have a lot of money, but my father, like I said, would sit in a bar or a club with some of his friends, and he would send me around to the candy store, you know, he would give me a couple of bucks, and comic books back then were 12¢, so I’d come back with a handful of comics and sit in a booth with a pad of paper and copy stuff out of the comics while I was drinking a Coke. My parents both nurtured my interest in art for different reasons, my mother because it kept me out of trouble and my father because it kept me out of his hair. My father’s interest in parenting was pretty much non-existent. I think that mostly they liked the fact that I had something that kept me interested, that kept me out of trouble, because many of the people I grew up with ended up either dead or in jail, and many others became cops or firemen. You went one way or the other… it was a fine line back then.

CBC: Did you have an allowance? How were you able to buy comics?

Joe: Well, I worked from the time I was a kid. The guy down the street who owned the bar, I worked running errands for him. I shoveled sidewalks in the winter for the superintendents of various buildings on my street. I was eight-, nine-years-old and I already had a job, and it’s just what you did back then to make money. And, when I was 13, I went to Cardinal Spellman Center’s day camp during the summertime, and that also kept you out of trouble when school was in recess, so my mother would pay whatever it cost (which was really nothing back then) to go to this CYO [Catholic Youth Organization] day camp. I had also gone to their kindergarten. Cardinal Spellman’s Center was the Catholic equivalent to the Boy’s Clubs of America. When I was 13, I decided I wanted to get a real job, even though at the time you had to be 14 to get working papers. Do you remember working papers?

CBC: I do.

Joe: Back then, you had to apply for working papers to show that you were of age to get a job and pay taxes. I went to the rectory of St. Brigid’s, where I had just graduated eighth grade and told the priest that I wanted to get a job at the Catholic summer day camp. The priest was aware that it was a low-income neighborhood and nobody had any money, so he actually wrote me out a duplicate baptismal certificate that said I was 14 and not 13, and that’s how I got my working papers. So when I was 13 and should have been a camper, I was actually a counselor at this summer day camp. I was voted “Best Counselor” by the campers at the end of the summer, which is ironic and pretty funny.

CBC: Was it instinctive that you knew that you wanted to get out of this place, that you wanted to get out of the Lower East Side?

That nurturing your artistic talent was the way to go?

Joe: No. I don’t think it was, at least early on, because when you grow up in a particular environment, that’s kind of all you know. I mean, you see things on TV, you know people have more COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

money and stuff. All through grade school I went to school with kids who lived in that neighborhood, and that’s just where we lived, so all my friends lived in the same types of apartments and under pretty much the same financial circumstances. So it didn’t seem unnatural at the time. We never had a car. My friend’s family had a car, and I thought that it was the greatest thing in the world, that they had a car. You didn’t need on in Manhattan because public transportation got you everywhere. Most of my friends who still live in the city still don’t own cars. It wasn’t until I got to high school, when I went to Art and Design, that I began to see how just much we didn’t have compared to others.

A&D wasn’t a neighborhood high school; it was a city high school, and people came from all over the city to go to this school. You had to take an entrance exam and come with a portfolio of your work. The qualifications, again, were pretty high, actually. So you met kids from Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island… who all came to this school because you had something in common. And that’s when I realized that some of my friends lived in private houses in other boroughs and had somewhat more comfortable lives than we had. I remember my friend Mike Coppola, who lived in a nice private house in Middle Village, Queens, came to pick me up at home one time. We were juniors or seniors in high school and he came to pick me up with his father’s car. He came into the building, knocked on the door, and I was embarrassed to let him into the apartment. I said,

Above: Joe Jusko drew and colored this John Buscemainspired tableau featuring Conan the Cimmerian. Center inset: This pair of Avengers issues — #57 [Oct. 1968] and #58 [Nov. ’68] — introduced young Jusko to the brilliant artistry of John Buscema, who became a huge influence on the burgeoning artist. Below: Tom Palmer’s great portrait of “Big John” Buscema.

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ever having a real friend. He was an angry alcoholic who never really provided for the family, as whatever money he made dealing cards he would then lose during multi-day gambling/ drinking binges. Supporting the family was left up to my mother, whom he was emotionally and physically abusive toward. The horror stories I could tell about him are exhaustive and truly jaw-droppingly awful. My mother and I used to hope that he would get mugged and killed on the way home from one of his binges just so we would be free of him. Finally having enough of it, I grabbed him by the throat when I was 18 or 19 as he once again went after my mother and told him I would kill him if he ever picked up his hands to her again. Something in my eyes must have told him I meant it, because I did, as he never touched her again. He developed a fear and respect for me that day that kept him pretty much in check for the rest of my mother’s life. He was a coward full of self-loathing that he took out on those weaker than him, as cowards do. I didn’t speak to him for 10 years after my mother passed away. My brother and I felt absolutely nothing when he died, and deservedly so.

CBC: So would you say that going to the high school was just, you were the luckiest guy in the world, in a way, to be able to go to that school?

Joe: Yeah, I guess I kind of am!

Because my brother drew, that’s how I started. My brother was nine years older than me, and he was really, really good. And, all through grade school, he would draw. But I think he lost interest in it when all of his friends were going off to other high schools, and I think that he wanted to go where his friends were going, so he… I don’t remember if he took the test for Art and Design, or the nuns at the time in the Catholic school were trying to gear you toward furthering your Catholic education, but he ended up going to LaSalle Academy, and he gave up art. He veered away from it. I’ve always said that if he had kept it up he would probably have been better than I am. By the time I was graduating Catholic school, there were a lot more lay teachers as opposed to nuns in the school, and they recognized the kids who had certain specific talents, and they nurtured them. The teachers really encouraged me to take the entrance exam for Art and Design, so I and a couple of other kids who drew took the test. Me and one other kid got in, I believe. It definitely was opportune that there were teachers who pushed you toward something that would help you in life rather than just a generic education that left you a bit rudderless..

CBC: Were you any good in junior high or middle school as an artist? #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Centurius TM & © Joe Jusko. Artwork © Joe Jusko.

“Okay, hang on, I’ll be right out.” I left him in the hallway. We’re still in touch all these years later and he’s never forgotten that. And that’s when I started to realize that there was probably something better than where I was, and my aspirations to want to have something a little bit better than what I had began to materialize.

There was a housing complex on the corner of or street called Village View that my mother had wanted to get into forever. She had applications in to this place for years. It was much nicer, much more modern than the tenement building we were living in.

Several of my friends lived there. But she never got called. Ironically, a year after she passed away, they called her for the apartment… At that point, my father was by himself and he saw no reason to move, so he just stayed where he was.

CBC: Did you go uptown much at all?

Did you go to the museums, take in the culture?

Joe: Oh, yeah, sure! As kids, like I said, back then you kind of had free rein. Basically the rule was you’d come home when the streetlights came on. So we went everywhere.

We’d go up to Greenwich Village, down to Wall Street, and walk the streets. City kids knew the city, and as I got older, I would go up with a couple friends from high school, go to museums, and stuff like that. But, yeah, it wasn’t the way it is now, where you’re kind of sequestered because everybody’s afraid something’s going to happen to you. You went out, and you were out unsupervised and you just learned to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. As long as you were home when you were told to be.

CBC: Did you bump into city tough kids? Did you ever get your ass kicked?

Joe: You lost some; you won some.

CBC: Where you able to protect yourself?

Joe: Well, early on I guess I wasn’t as, I would say, accomplished as I was when I got to high school. When I got to high school, I started to box and started to work out. But by that point, I think that that entire mentality of street fighting was gone already, by the late ’70s. But early on, the late ’60s/early ’70s, it was still a rough neighborhood where you kind of had to just stand up for yourself. And, like I said, you won some; you lost some.

CBC: Was it an angry world where you were? I’m getting an impression your dad was a pretty angry guy.

Joe: Yeah, I don’t have anything good to say about him, except that he’s dead. He was pretty much worthless as a parent, and a husband. He was the most extreme example of what not to be as a man, I guess, is the nicest way to put it. I don’t remember him

Centurius TM & © Joe Jusko. Artwork © Joe Jusko. Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc.

Were the lay teachers perceptive?

Joe: They always pulled me out of class to design the bulletin boards and holiday signs in school, so I guess I was okay. I mean, they sent me up to the High School of Art and Design. I made it into the school. So obviously they saw something in me that was there. At A&D there were a few teachers when I first broke in, when I first got into the school, who really took me under their wing. I was one of their favorite students, because in hindsight I think I was probably a little more advanced than a lot of the other kids. But I was also really hungry, and it was very much a passion of mine. I put one hundred percent effort into every project they gave me. And I believe they appreciated that. And I had decided early on, when I was eight-, nine-, ten-years-old, that comics were what I wanted to do for a living, and it somehow never occurred to me that I wouldn’t do it. I was just obsessed with doing that for a living, with getting better at what I did. I was obsessed with drawing, and learning how to draw, and I don’t think I ever considered that it wouldn’t work out. Like I said, that could just be the naiveté of youth. It wasn’t really ego. It was just, I was just kind of tunnel-visioned, goal-oriented and determined, I guess is the best way to put it.

CBC: Did your mom believe in you?

Joe: Oh, yes, she really did. She was always very proud of what I did. She was proud of me at the school, proud that I did as well as I did, proud when I graduated and won that award. She always encouraged me. We didn’t have a whole lot of money, but she made sure I had pencils and paper. If she had friends of hers who worked in offices, I would get reams of typing paper to draw on and stuff like that from her friends. And the money I did make on my own, I would spend on comic books or markers from the stationery store.

I remember they sold sheets of oaktag, and I would buy sheets from the stationery store, as well as pencils and markers, and I would draw my own comics and pin-ups.

And I learned somewhere along the line about India ink, and I bought some and a couple of brushes and pen nibs.

I don’t remember exactly where I learned about India ink… probably from one of the art books I had gotten. Walter T. Foster had a whole series of art books out at the time.

They were, I believe, a dollar apiece, and they had books on figure drawing, cartooning, animals and art supplies, as well as a hundred other topics. I think I learned about some of the art supplies from those books, and I went to the art store and bought some of those supplies and would try to teach myself how to use them in the living room. There was, we had a big armchair that had flat arms on it, and I remember I would put the bottles of ink and stuff on there that would eventually spill, and I ruined that armchair… Yeah, new slip covers were on that armchair constantly because I always spilled ink all over it. But they never got pissed off at me. In hindsight, it’s just amazing that they were as supportive as they were.

CBC: Do you remember, in the art store, they would have these booklets, these saddle-stitched booklets with cardboard covers, full-color covers with black-&-white interiors, which taught you how to cartoon… Do you remember those? Are those what you’re talking about?

Joe: I do not remember those, which is odd because I collect old art instruction books. They’re still publishing those Walter T. Foster books. If you go into [craft supply store] Michaels, you can still find the Walter T. Foster books. There aren’t anywhere near as many as there used to be. I mean, there were a couple hundred of them at one point that were out and they were a buck apiece. They were large, oversized, 11" x 14" books, and the first two of them my mother ever bought me, I was maybe 12, and I didn’t know who he was at the time, were by this guy Fritz Willis, whom I later discovered was a big pin-up artist back in the ’50s and ’60s. One was called The Model and one The Nude, and they taught drawing the female figure. And my mother bought those for me. I was 12 years old! “Can COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

we get these?” And she bought them for me. You know, I would have Playboy centerfolds, because there was a second-hand bookstore near us where I would buy old comics, and I bought a couple of Playboys, and I would have both centerfolds hanging in my bedroom and I was teaching myself to draw from them, and it never seemed to bother her. It really didn’t, because she believed that I was using them to learn how to draw, and the sad part is, I really was! [laughter] I mean, they were cool to look at, but I was also teaching myself how to draw from the old Playboys and stuff. It was really funny.

CBC: Did you ever find out whether you had cousins or other family members who were creative?

Joe: My mother was a seamstress. She made a lot of her own clothes. She was a brilliant seamstress, actually. She worked in the Garment District when she was younger, and she made coats for my sister-in-law, she made me clothes when I was a kid. She used to make clothes for my G.I. Joes! I remember she designed an entire clear plastic raincoat for my G.I. Joe when I was, maybe 10-years-old, and she stitched it on the sewing machine and everything.

She was brilliant, she really was.

CBC: These were the big G.I. Joes, right?

Joe: The 12" G.I. Joes, yeah. She was great. My mom’s brother, Joe (whom I’m named after, actually), who died before I was born, he was a violinist and played the piano.

So the talent really comes from my mother’s side of the family. There’s nobody on my father’s side, I think, who had any particular talents.

CBC: What was her maiden name?

Joe: Jablonski.

CBC: Cool. So did you have a newspaper coming in to the

Previous page: Back during his high school days, Joe Jusko created his own take on a certain Cimmerian, the bearded Centurius the Barbarian, with an art style that exhibits the young artist’s devotion to Marvel artist John Buscema’s work. Below: Big John’s depiction of Conan the Barbarian in over 200 stories was a seminal influence.

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Above: Joe Jusko’s high school senior portrait, taken in 1977.

Below: This fanciful and impressive Joe Jusko self-portrait — a pastiche of John Buscema’s self-caricature produced for the fan club Marvelmania in 1970 — appeared in the1977 Art & Design “portfolio” yearbook.

Above: This Reese/Wood collaboration was intended to appear in the aborted Warren magazine The POW Show in the early ’70s. It finally saw print in Creepy #87 [Mar. ’77].

pin-ups on your wall that you used for reference. [laughter] Joe: Go figure, you know? [chuckles] I know. And coming back from school, I would take the Second Avenue bus down, because Art and Design was on 57th and Second Avenue in Manhattan, and you could take the Second Avenue bus all the way back down to Fifth Street and get off and walk down a couple blocks to where I lived. But there was an old bookstore. Back then, Fourth Avenue was considered book row, and there were secondhand bookstores up and down Broadway and Fourth, between Eighth and 14th Street. And there was one in particular that I would go into that sold old National Geographics for a quarter apiece, and I would buy them by the armload. As much money as I had, I would buy those, and would go home and cut them up, and I would keep reference photos for myself for different things.

And this was in high school, and I realized the value of these magazines for learning how to draw different things.

Plus he sold old Playboys at 50¢ apiece, so I would buy an equal amount of old Playboys and National Geographics and cut them up… I still have two four-drawer file cabinets full of that stuff here, and I’d say that half of it is stuff that I cut out of those magazines when I was in high school. I learned the value of building up a “swipe file” really, really early. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.

CBC: You and I are the same age, and I can attest, and I’m sure you’ll agree, it was a golden age in a certain way that there was incredible talent emerging then — the young Turks like Bernie Wrightson and Barry Windsor-Smith were coming out with this amazing work. Plus, there was the undergrounds comix, plus Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, John Buscema, were all doing their greatest work. Plus, the reprints were coming out, just this treasure trove of what was coming out. I mean, we have heard your serious side about drawing and technical aspects. What did you do for pleasure?

Joe: There wasn’t a whole lot to do on the Lower East Side. As I said, there were no ball fields or anything, but you would use, like, schoolyards and everything, because the schoolyards would be open all the time, and they would let the kids play there. I went back there recently, and a couple of the schools where we used to play are all gated up now.

You can’t get in there if the school was closed or you don’t belong to the school. It’s changed completely. So, as a kid, you did kid stuff, you played tag, Ringolevio, manhunt, stickball, football, skelzies [skully]… stuff like that. And then all the other times I was drawing and watching monster movies and building Aurora monster models. All the things kids of our generation were into. I loved monster movies.

My very first published art is actually a portrait of Frankenstein that was printed in the letter column of The Monster Times. As I got older, I boxed a little bit, but I was never really fast enough to be any good at it, and I was always worried about hurting my hands, so I stopped. But I started working out in high school, and I enjoyed that, so I kept at it for a good number of years. I also played competitive league darts for years and won numerous trophies and championships. I still have a board in my studio surrounded by many of the plaques I’ve won.

CBC: Did you date?

Joe: I didn’t date before high school. There weren’t a lot of girls in my neighborhood growing up. There were maybe two or three girls, because the families were all moving away, so I didn’t really date until high school, and just sporadically. I didn’t have a real girlfriend until probably the end of junior year and into senior year, and that ended when high school ended. And I started to date after that. As I got older and I was able to go to bars, because when you were 18 you could go to bars back then, and obviously you met people. I started bouncing in bars on weekends when I was 18, and there’s no better way for a single guy to meet girls than working in a bar. But, as a kid, nobody really dated in my neighborhood.

CBC: Your reading material and television…? #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Joe Jusko self-portrait © Joe Jusko.

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house? Did you have The Daily News?

Joe: The New York Daily News, right. I was born and raised on The New York Daily News!

CBC: So there was Dick Tracy and Li’l Abner…

Joe: Dick Tracy, Li’l Abner, Terry and the Pirates… We didn’t get Prince Valiant or Flash Gordon or strips like that.

Those weren’t carried in the New York papers. They weren’t carried in The Post, they weren’t carried in The Daily News.

I didn’t even see Prince Valiant until years later, when some of the books, the hardcover books with the prose and spot illustrations came out and were advertised in the back of the Warren magazines. Still, the stuff that I was drawn to were the more realistically drawn strips. I discovered a newspaper called The Menomonee Falls Gazette that reprinted old comic strips, which is where I first read Secret Agent Corrigan, Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, Scarth A.D. 2195, The Seekers, Modesty Blaise, etc. I was a huge fan of On Stage with Mary Perkins by Leonard Starr, and I used to cut Sundays and the dailies out of The Daily News and keep them in a folder. I still have tons of them, actually, from when I would cut them out back then because I just thought the draftsmanship was so incredible. I was fortunate enough to purchase the original art to one of my favorite Sunday pages from Leonard some years back and moderate a spotlight panel on him at the San Diego Comic-Con. More so than the funny stuff, I was really drawn to the more realistically drawn strips.

CBC: Well, that was a romance strip, right?

Joe: It was a soap opera, yeah, about a girl who worked in New York’s Theater District.

CBC: You were a pretty serious kid, right? I mean, you had

All characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Stan Lee photo © Marvel Characters, Inc. Daredevil art © Gene Colan.

Joe: I was a voracious reader when I was a kid. When I was in grade school, my math and science skills were somewhat suspect because I just had no interest in it.

Because my brain lent itself more toward artistic endeavors than the sciences and math, I never fully grasped or had much interest in them. But I had college-level reading scores when I was in sixth grade, and I remember I did a book report in sixth grade on A Portrait of T.E. Lawrence, and the nuns were like, “You actually read this?” I’m like, “Yeah! It looked interesting.”

CBC: Who was your favorite author?

Joe: God, there were so many, but I read everything so I don’t know that I had or have a favorite. I never got into Shakespeare, but I read Nathaniel Hawthorne, Steinbeck, and books like that when I was younger. As my brother was older than me he had a lot of paperbacks he had read in high school eating around the house and I would pick through those. I read many, like Hound of the Baskervilles simply because I liked the cover art. It always came down to the art, it seems. As I got older, I got to reading more diverse material. I was always a huge fan of the Edgar Rice Burroughs books because they encompassed a lot of stuff that I was really interested in, and I thought that as visual a book as you could possibly read would be a Burroughs book. They became a bit repetitive after a while, but the visuals never really diminished. Today, I’m very much into crime fiction; classic stuff like Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, and contemporary authors like Lee Child, Jana Deleon, and Blake Pierce.

CBC: Did you read pulp stuff… Doc Savage…?

Joe: I never read Doc Savage. When I was a kid, there was a store called Brentano’s that was on Eighth Street and Broadway, in Greenwich Village. I would go in there, and I really couldn’t afford to buy all the paperbacks, but I loved the paperback art, so I would go in there and I would tear all the paperback covers off the books and put the carcasses back behind the other books, then I would walk out with a pocket full of paperback covers, all the Frazetta Conan stuff, and the James Bama Doc Savage books, and stuff like that. And I tell it to people today and they’re horrified to hear that, but I liked the art and couldn’t afford the book.

What can I say? [laughter] CBC: Like all of us, you were a comic reader to start, right?

Joe: Well, there were always comics in my house when I was growing up. My brother read them, my father liked to read them. So it wasn’t like my parents were like, “What is this crap?” My father loved comic books. He was a blue-collar street kid himself growing up, so he loved comic books, and my brother was into art, so he liked them. I remember there were issues of Turok, Son of Stone and Doctor Solar, and all that kind of stuff when I was growing up in the house. Famous Monsters of Filmland. Then, when I was about eight years old, there was a kid selling second-hand comics in a playground. I was going through the stacks that he was selling, and he had Avengers #57 and #58 [Oct., Nov. 1968], the first Vision story

by Roy Thomas and John Buscema. I looked in those books and they were a revelation to me. I looked at that stuff and I was like, “Holy crap! This is what I want to do, what this guy does!” And John became my idol, I think, from the moment I opened those books up. I taught myself to draw by copying John’s stuff when I was a kid, so much so that a lot of his stylistic nuances are readily discernible in my work today. I bought anything that he drew, and basically anything else that I had the money for. I bought a little bit of everything. I bought DC Comics, I bought some Gold COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

Key stuff, but most of all I was a Marvel kid. From the time I was young, there was something about Marvel comics that really struck me as being different than anything else out there. They seemed to be written on a higher level, and so I really, I obsessed over the Marvel stuff when I was younger. And, what other comics would teach a kid words like “fatuous,” “loquacious,” and “Brobdingnagian”?

CBC: [Chuckles] So did you have favorite titles or was it favorite artists?

Joe: I was an Avengers fan when I was younger. There was something about the group and the costumes… I loved the blue-&-yellow Goliath when I was a kid. There was a Spanish record store on Avenue B between Fifth and Sixth Streets, and I loved Spider-Man because I loved… I’ll get to Spider-Man. That Spanish record store would sell used comic books from behind the counter. And there was a nickel pile, a dime pile, and a quarter pile. The older they got, or if they were thicker or whatever, they were more expensive. And the funny thing I remember was, this guy looked just like Doctor Octopus. He had the same haircut, he had the same glasses, the same shape of face. But I would go in there and I filled in full runs of stuff from this old record store. And I liked The Avengers at the time, I loved the Gene Colan Daredevil.

I was a big Spider-Man fan, and I liked Spider-Man — speaking of Stan, who just passed away— because I loved the Peter Parker stuff. I loved the way the characters developed and the way he wrote those characters, because you always felt that you wanted them to be your friends, you know? And I remember I had a full run at one point of Amazing Spider-Man from #1 through whatever the number it was up to at the time when I was in sixth or seventh grade. And I

Above: Joe Jusko’s devotion to Amazing Spider-Man wasn’t necessarily the super-hero aspects of the top-selling Marvel comic book as it was his identifying with webhead’s alter-ego, Peter Parker. Once, on a sick day off from school, Jusko read the entire Spider-Man run, though only the “soap opera” sequences featuring Spidey’s public persona. This John Romita piece was featured in the 1975 Mighty Marvel Calendar. Inset left: Smilin’ Stan Lee, repro’d from Fantasy Masterpieces #1 [Feb. 1966].

Below: Gene Colan’s version of Daredevil made an impact on young Jusko. This commission was inked by Luke McDonnell.

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stayed home sick from school and I read through the entire run of Amazing Spider-Man, but only the Peter Parker stuff.

I didn’t read any of the Spider-Man sequences. And it read like a soap opera. It really did. I was fascinated by how the characters were written, and that was really the magic of Stan is that he really made those characters believable and likable, and each one had an individual personality.

Whereas Batman was fighting a super-gorilla or something that month, the Marvel stuff was just written as real people, and that was the magic of Stan.

CBC: Did you have buddies, friends when you were a kid, who also read comics, with whom you could talk about comics with?

Joe: There were a couple guys. My friend Jose Carrera was into comics, and he liked to draw also, so I would sit with him and we would draw on construction paper and make up our own comic strips. That lasted a couple years until, I guess, he moved away. But, yeah, he was the only one besides me who was really into comics. None of my other friends really were.

CBC: Did you make homemade comics?

Joe: I did some. I remember something called Space Agent X that I did, and there was another one, Centurius, a Conan-type barbarian thing that I created when I was in high school. I think any kid who was into comics made his own comics.

CBC: For me it was picking up The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer, and he actually had the nerve to show his crude childhood comics, hand-drawn comics and stuff, and I was like, “Well, if he can do it…” [laughs]

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Monster Times TM & © the respective copyright holder. Vampirella TM & © Dynamic Forces, Inc.

Above: At age 13, Joe Jusko saw his name in print for the first time after sending in a fan sketch of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster to The Monster Times, a pro-zine tabloid published in the early 1970s.

The art appeared in #10 [1972] .

Below: Jusko began a lifelong appreciation of Vampirella upon buying Vampi #21 [Dec. 1972].

Joe: I wish I still had some of my childhood stuff. I have some work I did in high school, but I don’t have any I did in grade school or before. I really wish I had kept some of that stuff, but it’s gone. I have no idea what happened to it.

CBC: Were you ever shy about the fact that you liked comics? You never grew out of it, right?

Joe: No, never. Well, I don’t read them anywhere near as much as I used to. If you asked me one contemporary storyline, I couldn’t tell you, so I don’t read them anymore, really. I’ll read a book if I have to work on it or do a character thing. But, yeah, I don’t read comics much anymore. I’ll read some trades when they come out and people recommend them or I hear that they’re good. I love stuff that Sean Phillips does, all the crime stuff, now. I’m not so much into super-heroes anymore. I think I’m kind of “super-hero-ed out,” even though I do a ton of them for my job. I can’t read super-hero comics anymore. I guess, like anything else, you just drift away from certain types of stories.

CBC: But you didn’t hide the fact from your peers when you came of age?

Joe: Well, no, mainly because, when I was a kid, you’re a kid, I read comics. My friends knew I was into comics.

And then when I was in high school, I was in an art school, so everybody was into art, and that was just my thing, and people knew that that was my passion and what I did. I was considered one of the more talented kids in the school, I guess, so people respected what I did. And then, the summer I graduated, I began working almost immediately, so there was never anything I really had to hide. There was a period of years early on, though, when the general public looked down on it, and I would tell people I was an “illustrator” who painted book covers without actually mentioning comics. Because of the movies today, drawing comics is almost like being a rock star in many people’s eyes, but there are still those who look down on it. My wife and I struck up a conversation with a couple a little older than us while standing in an airport customs line last year, and when I told her I worked in comics, the woman looked at her husband, chuckled and dismissively said, “Well, I guess someone has to do it.” And they turned away from us. [laughter] CBC: Did you go to any comic conventions in Manhattan?

Joe: I didn’t until I started working. I don’t think I was aware of them. I had no idea. I didn’t know anybody who would go, and I wasn’t really aware of the early Phil Seuling cons. Or, I would read about them and not know exactly what they were or whether I could go, so I was pretty oblivious to the comic cons in the city when I was a kid. So, no. I think the first one I ever did, the first con I’d ever done was a Creation Con in 1978, and that was after I had sold my first couple of covers to Heavy Metal.

CBC: So you went as a pro?

Joe: Right. I’d never gone to a con as a fan, though now I do remember a small Sunday show I worked when I was working for a comic shop during my high school years.

CBC: So did you have any experience talking to a comic book professional, trying to find out what you were getting yourself into?

Joe: You mean before I started? No, not really. I knew it’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t know how I was going to break in. I remember there was a Marvel Comics internship program at Art and Design, and you could apply for that and intern for six months after one semester of school, but I think I was a little intimidated. I didn’t know if I was good enough at the time, and I didn’t want to take the chance. I didn’t apply for it, but I did bring up a bunch of samples and drop them off at the receptionist’s desk at Marvel when it was on Madison and 57th Street, because it was a short walk up from high school. I was on 57th and Second, and Marvel was on Madison and 57th. So I went up there and I dropped off an envelope with a bunch of sample drawings and some sequential pages and stuff like that that I did, and John Romita was the guy who would look at them. So

Vampirella TM & © Dynamic Forces, Inc. Fan artwork © Joe Jusko.

I dropped them off, and was told to come back a few days later to pick them up. So I went back a few days later after I dropped them off, and I got back my samples with a letter from John telling me that the stuff showed promise and I needed to work on this and that, and to bring back samples again and they hoped they would see me again. And that was that. That was maybe tenth grade, and then I didn’t go back again until I went looking for work after I graduated.

CBC: So even though the main comic companies were in New York at the time, you didn’t go to try to visit…?

Joe: No, I didn’t really do that. Like I said, I was a kid. I taught myself how to draw. I knew what I wanted to do. I never thought about going up to the offices to look around or to show my work and introduce myself. I had friends of mine who did, but for some reason it just seemed… I don’t know. It seemed sort of an alien concept for me to do that, I guess, and I don’t know if it was because I was insecure about it, or I just didn’t feel that it was the right thing to do. I don’t know.

CBC: So who was the first professional that you met?

Joe: That would be Howard Chaykin.

CBC: Is that right? Tell me the story behind that.

Joe: There was a comics shop in Greenwich Village, on Sixth Avenue and Third Street, called Village Comic Art, run by a guy named Bill Morse, who was one of the earliest proponents of the direct market, actually. And I was working at a comic shop on the East Side called Black Star Comics when I was, like, 14-, 15-years-old. I was actually running the store when I was 16. It started as a secondhand store that was owned by a guy who owned a moving company.

This guy, David Day, owned Day Moving and Storage, and what he had done is he opened up this storefront to sell all of the stuff that people would leave in storage and never claim. So he had this store, which was full of all second-hand stuff, including some comics. A guy named Richard Singer, who worked for him on the moving trucks, was also a big comic book fan and knew comic books, so he would run the store for Dave when he wasn’t actually working on the trucks, and he convinced David to turn it over into all comic books, because the comics were selling better than anything else in the store. It became a comic COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

book store that I came across one day just walking around the neighborhood. I stopped in and made friends with the guy who was running it, and I started to work there. And, once you started to work in the store, you got to know all the other owners because you’d go from comics store to comics store. I became friends with the guys who owned and ran Village Comic Art. I was in there one day, I had just graduated high school, and I had those three sample paintings I did the summer I graduated; that Heavy Metal cover with the barbarian girl and saber-tooth head, a Conan-esque barbarian painting, and a werewolf and a girl painting. I did a little bit of a sword-&sorcery theme, I did the female thing, and I did the horror piece. And I happened to have my portfolio with me in there because I was showing the guy my work, and Howard came in.

Village Comic Art was the comic store that everyone went to. All the guys in the industry would shop there. It was cool, it was one of the newer models of stores that didn’t look like some pedophile’s basement, unlike the place I worked in, with the bare floors, and the open ceiling with the old hanging light fixtures and stuff. Black Star was a dump, it really was. Howard came in and my friend John, who worked at the store, introduced me to Howard and told him he had to see my work. I showed him the three sample paintings, and it just so happened that Howard’s assistant was just leaving to pursue other opportunities. Howard was looking for an assistant who knew how to work in color. I had just turned 18, so this is probably October or November, and he asked if I would be interested in working as his assistant. I obviously knew who Howard was because I followed comic books and I said, “Sure!” (And the irony of it was — and Howard and I laugh about this to this day — is that I wasn’t the biggest Chaykin fan, but I was like, “Yeah, of course! I’d love to!”) So that December I started to work for Howard while he was working on Empire, that Samuel Delaney graphic novel he was doing at the time. I came in for the last third of Empire, and immediately he was letting me paint on the pages, doing special effects, painting backgrounds and trees and just all kinds of stuff, which absolutely amazed me that he would let this 18-year-old kid without experience do this. Howard was just, “Here, do this. I wouldn’t let you do it if I didn’t think you could.” We would sit in this little, tiny bedroom where we couldn’t back our chairs up at the same time without bumping into one another. He would work on something, then pass it to me — “Do this, do that” — and it was a really great working relationship. We got along really well. He was smart and acerbic, and I was somewhat quick-witted and knew about a lot of things that Howard was interested in, which I think amazed him. He would constantly say, “I keep forgetting there’s a brain in that huge body.” So we got along really, really well.

Inset left: Jusko’s cover featuring Vampi in the clutches of her greatest nemesis for Vampirella and the Blood Red Queen of Hearts.

Above: Jusko’s depiction (drawn in high school) of planet Drakulon’s most famous native.

Below: Jusko in 1977.

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Above: Howard Chaykin, comics creator who hired a green Joe Jusko as his assistant, primarily working on the Empire adaptation. Inset right: HVC’s cover.

Below: Page from Empire on which Joe worked on, his first assisting Chaykin. “I did the ray gun effects, highlighted the face at the bottom, and laid in the texture behind the figure.”

Joe: Two-hundred and fifty dollars. I would have given it to them for free, because in 1977–78, the magazine to be in was Heavy Metal. People don’t realize that now, but back then, that magazine was hot sh*t, because it was something new and unique, and every artist wanted to be in Heavy Metal.

CBC: But wasn’t that the cover of #22 or something? I mean, it was really early on…

Joe: Number 15.

CBC: Fifteen? Wow, that is early in the run.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. And it was such a hot magazine. I was shocked. They bought the piece, they stuck it on the cover, they commissioned another piece for the calendar. And then, when I handed them the calendar piece, they asked me to do another piece for them, another cover for their Thanksgiving issue in 1979, and I ended up doing that.

But I asked them if I could do a wraparound and they said, “Sure! You want to do a wraparound, do a wraparound.” And I did a wraparound, and it’s a girl and a saber-tooth (I’m sensing a theme) on an alien planet. It’s like a turkey hunt, a Space Age turkey hunt, prehistoric turkey hunt, and the girl’s topless. She’s a topless jungle girl. I figured Heavy Metal does nudity, it’ll be no big deal. So, I brought the painting in, and they looked at the painting, and they went, “Wow, you know, we really, really like it, but she’s nude,” and they were vacillating. They had never put nudity on the cover before. And they were going to use it as a centerfold instead, instead of the cover that they commissioned, but they finally decided that they liked the painting so much that they used it on the cover. And I believe, to this day, that it’s the only time there’s ever been nudity on the cover of a Heavy Metal magazine. So, yeah, I was flattered by that. They liked the painting enough to sort of break tradition and actually stick it on the cover. Then nothing happened. It was Heavy Metal.

Nobody cared.

After I sold the covers to Heavy Metal, Howard said, “Well, now that you’re a professional and you actually have a cover under your belt, I think you should go up to Marvel, because you now have a credit.” He made an appointment for me to go up to Marvel and show my stuff. And I went up there with the same three paintings (though I think I might have done one more at that point). I went to see Rick Marshall, who was the editor of the magazine line at that time, and Ralph Macchio was the assistant editor, and they looked at the stuff and gave me a cover. And that’s how I started doing covers for Marvel.

In hindsight, I look back on it and I realize I’m one of the worst guys to ask how to break into the industry, because it just kind of happened. And it didn’t seem the least bit odd to me. Early on, I was so tunnel-visioned… it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t work in the industry, that I don’t think until years later, in hindsight, when I look back on it and go, “Wow! It’s really kind of remarkable how easy it was for me to break in.” Because I really didn’t know what I was doing!

I mean, you look at those early covers and they’re not the greatest things in the world. But maybe it’s just being in the right place at the right time, I guess, you know? Meeting Howard was the most fortuitous thing that could have ever happened to me. He opened doors that would probably taken years for me to get through.

CBC: But, also, I have to say, they’re memorable. They’re well-designed. They feature a surprisingly sophisticated design to them that one just wonders whether you were charmed.

Joe: Well, thank you. Like I said: I put a lot of years in before that. It sounds odd, but, really, from the time I was #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Empire © Samuel R. Delaney.

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I had those same three sample paintings, and he said, “Well, do you know what? I’m going to send you up to Heavy Metal.” When I started working for him, he said, “I’ll give you five months before you’re working on your own.” Which astonished me, because I really had no idea how to break into the industry. He was doing some work for Heavy Metal, and he called up Julie Simmons, the editor at Heavy Metal, and said, “Listen, my assistant is here. He’s got some stuff I’d like you to see, so I’m going to send him up.” And based on Howard’s recommendation, I got an interview up at Heavy Metal and they bought that first cover, that first sample painting of the girl with the saber-tooth tiger, for a cover, and instantly commissioned another piece off me for their 1979 calendar. So I went up to Heavy Metal, sold the cover, and came out with a commission.

Which blew me away. And I came back and I told Howard about it, and he seemed less surprised than I was, actually.

CBC: They paid you $250 dollars for that cover?

Starlord, Marvel Preview TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Ad art © Joe Jusko.

eight, I really put the time in to teach myself how to do all this stuff. I guess it was a combination of natural talent and just a hunger to learn, but how much I didn’t know became evident pretty quickly once I started working for Marvel.

The first thing that Marvel ever gave me was a StarLord cover [Marvel Preview #15, Summer 1978] and Marie Severin did this nice color sketch for me as to show what they wanted for the cover, and I went home and looked at her sketch, and I realized that I couldn’t do the figure in the position that she had drawn it. So I redid the figure completely into a much worse position and destroyed the design, because she had the figures opposing each other, and I had them both now on the same angle on the same plane. But I was 18, I didn’t know what I was doing. It didn’t occur to me, compositionally, that it was so much weaker than what Marie had done. So I did that first cover, and the first cover is really…. I didn’t know how to paint. I was still teaching myself how to paint. I only had three paintings under my belt, and I kind of faked my way through that first one. But they saw something in that painting, and they gave me another one to do, and then I did a Hulk cover [#12, Nov. 1978] that was pretty much as crudely rendered as the StarLord. But there was something about what I was doing that must have filled a niche at the time when there weren’t a lot of people doing painted work in comics.

I was talking to Jim Shooter at a con last year about those days, and he said, “Your work may not have been the most polished stuff in the world, but it had a power and an excitement to it, which is what we were looking for. You kind of knew what we wanted as far as a feel for a cover.” And Marvel just took a chance on me and kept giving me work.

And I wanted to make it better. I realized that I was competing with guys like Bob Larkin and Earl Norem, which was mind-blowing. I was 18! But I realized that if I wanted to keep getting work, I’d better get better quickly, so I studied what those guys did. I really looked at everything that Bob and Earl did on those covers, and I tried to emulate that. We became pretty much the cover art trifecta at Marvel for a number of years.

CBC: When you got the $250 check from Heavy Metal, did you go pick it up when you handed in the job?

Joe: Yeah.

CBC: Did you bring it home and show it to your parents?

Joe: Of course, yes! I said, “Look, I sold a cover!” Heavy Metal cut me a check right there, actually. The day they bought the painting, they cut me a check.

CBC: Holy moly!

Joe: They went down to the accountant, and they got a check cut, and they brought me a check.

CBC: That’s got to be like, in today’s dollars, that’s got to be like $650, $700 bucks, right? That’s a lot. [A calculation at the U.S. Department website figures $250 in 1977 dollars is equal to $1,080.71 in 2018 dollars.]

Joe: Right! I know when I went to Marvel, they said, “Well, what would you like for a rate?” I said, “I don’t know. Heavy Metal paid me $250 dollars.” They said, “I think we can do better than that.” I think my first cover I did for Marvel was $600 bucks. So I went from the $250 at Heavy Metal to $600 at Marvel!

CBC: Did you do any “mad money” kind of thing with some of it? Did you treat yourself?

Joe: I knew I needed a better drafting table, because I had this really rickety thing, so I bought a drafting table. Because if I’m going to be doing this for a living now, I’d better have something to work on. I still lived with my parents. I had this little tiny bedroom that was, like, 7' x 7', so I bought a drafting table to put in that little bedroom. And an art light to stick on the drafting board. I think I bought stuff to help to facilitate doing a little bit better work. And comics!

CBC: You know, for an artist, you’re an awfully practical guy. [laughter] Joe: Yeah, well, at the time, I was! I also grew up with nothing, so you kind of learned early on that you should COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

probably buy the stuff you need, you know? I think I became a little more of a spendthrift as I got older, but early on you did what you had to do in order to survive. I also started giving my mother more money toward the bills since I was living at home.

CBC: When you worked with Howard, you worked on Empire?

Joe: Yeah, that was the first thing I did for him right when I got there. He was finishing up the last third of Empire, and I ended up doing a lot of the painted effects and color blocking on Empire.

CBC: Do you recall his frustrations with Byron Preiss, working on that?

Joe: Well, I believe it was the first thing he did with Byron, so I think Howard was really enthusiastic about it. As he did some of the other projects, The Stars My Destination in particular, he was becoming less and less enamored with Byron. At one point, and this is after I had stopped working for him, I was visiting Howard one day and he was working on Stars and he made me promise that if he ever said he was going to work for Byron again that I should punch him in the face. [laughs] So I think working with Byron became a bit of a hassle for Howard.

Above: Jusko-drawn ad for the comic shop where he first met Howard Chaykin. Below: Jusko’s cover for Marvel Preview #15 [Summer 1978].

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Above: The inside cover of Hulk #26 [Apr. 1981] sported John Buscema’s original sketch, which was used as the basis for this Joe Jusko cover painting.

Below: Jusko’s first Hulk cover, #12 [Nov. 1978]. Between 1980–81, Jusko produced a number of cover paintings for the newsstand magazine.

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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CBC: Did you know Byron at all?

Joe: I met Byron once when I was working with Howard and he was doing a piece for Byron’s Beach Boys book [1983]. Byron asked me to do an illustration for the California Girls piece in the book. He wanted, like, a billion different girls in this thing, which Howard thought was stupid. Howard thought I should do just the consummate “California girl” as the piece for the book, but Byron insisted on having a multitude of girls in this piece. It never got done because of an incident with my father, who destroyed the piece while I was working on it, during a drunken fury. So, that piece never got published. It was embarrassing, but Howard explained the situation to Byron. It was my first professional assignment. I believe it came after the Heavy Metal cover, which was a cold sale and not a commissioned job. I did do a couple of paperback covers for Byron years later — a S.H.I.E.L.D. cover for a paperback that Steranko did the interior illustrations for, and I did, I think, a Generation X cover, also. I don’t believe Byron ever made the connection between me and the kid who from the Beach Boys assignment, and I wasn’t going to remind him.

CBC: Were you known for drawing sexy women back in high school days?

Joe: Not really. It was never really an ambition to become a pin-up artist. I liked comics. I liked super-heroes. I got into Conan. Oddly enough, I only got into Conan and sword&-sorcery stuff after John Buscema took over the comic from Barry Smith. I never read the comic when Barry was

drawing it, but I followed everything that Buscema did. So, when I heard that Buscema was taking over the Conan the Barbarian book, I started to buy it, and that was really my first introduction to Conan. I was familiar with the paperback covers just from seeing them on the stands, but I had never read any of the novels or followed any of the books.

CBC: Actually, what I was asking about was your women, the way that you draw women. Were you known back in the day for drawing sexy women?

Joe: Well, you try to learn to draw everything. I drew them as a matter of course but I wouldn’t say I was known for it. I bought every kind of comic book that came out when I was a kid, and, when I was in probably seventh grade, around 1972, I was in the local candy store where I normally bought all my comics, and I saw an issue of Vampirella #21 [Dec. 1972] on the stands. The Enrich cover that was on there really attracted me to it, and I picked it up and I went through it, and the artwork was really a lot different from anything I was obviously used to from Marvel and DC comics. And I fell in love with the character, and with José Gonzales’ story art, and Enrich’s covers. So she became a comic that I really enjoyed, and I started to draw pictures of her on my own. I sent a couple in to the Warren magazines for the fan pages but they never got printed.

So Vampi was always a fan favorite character of mine since I was a kid, and I guess that was my first introduction to painting the more sexy characters in comics. I did a few in high school, but it was never really an ambition. And even today, I don’t really do pin-up art or cheesecake stuff. I try to keep the female characters in some sort of a realistic context. I think the things that fans respond to in the Vampirella covers that I’ve done over the years is that I tried to keep the class and glamour of the Warren era and not make it a T&A painting, because I think it kind of cheapens the character. You don’t need a character’s cooch hanging out for her to be sexy. I remember one thing Howard had said to me when I was working for him is that my women were sexy and not offensive because I actually got laid and wasn’t working out my fantasies through my artwork. [laughter] CBC: So do you do commission work?

Joe: I do a lot of commission work, yes, when I have time.

I enjoy the commissions because it gives me a little bit more time to work on the stuff, and a little bit more freedom to handle things the way I want. Although even with covers and commercial work today, people kind of know what to expect when they hire me. They kind of give me a lot of creative freedom on the stuff that I work on.

CBC: What’s the weirdest request you’ve gotten?

Joe: Ever? Somebody at a con asked me to do a sketch of Supergirl being mounted by Krypto. I didn’t do it. [laughs] I declined that one.

CBC: That’s pretty f*cked up, Joe. Joe: Yeah, that’s obviously somebody working out some issues. And then there was another guy who used to ask for topless Wonder Woman pieces. He used to go around to conventions all the time. There was another guy who wanted naked scuba girls… There were a few guys who would go around to conventions and ask for bizarre stuff. But the Supergirl being mounted by Krypto was by far the strangest thing that I had ever been asked for.

CBC: How long did you work with Howard?

Joe: I started in December of ’77, and was probably out on my own by May or June of ’78, I think. So he had predicted when I worked for him that I would be with him about six months before I was out on my own, and he was almost exactly on target.

CBC: Was that Beach Boys thing the final straw? How soon did you move away from home?

Joe: Oh, I didn’t move away from home until after I became a police officer in the mid- or early ’80s. I was still living at home until I was about 23. The Beach Boys incident was not as much a factor for the confrontation I had with my father

Cops: The Job TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

that I spoke of earlier as was my finally having enough of the way he treated my mother. I do have to admit that moving out and leaving her alone was concerning, but whatever point I had made was driven in deep enough.

CBC: So what happened after Howard?

Joe: After Howard, I started to get covers for Marvel, so I continued to work for them. I decided I needed to dedicate more time to actually building my career, so Howard and I parted ways, and I think Peter Kuper became his assistant after I left. I really applaud Howard for continuing the tradition of giving starts to new talent, as his mentor Gil Kane had done for him. I’m not sure how common a practice that is today. Back to Marvel. I was doing various covers for Marvel, here and there, but I wasn’t making a great living.

I was continually teaching myself to paint while doing the stuff at Marvel, and I would basically take anything that they would give me. There was a Japanese Spider-Man television show, and they had wanted to print a fumetti magazine of the show, the story being told in photographs and screen grabs from the actual TV show, and I painted the cover for that. The magazine never came out as the quality of the screen grabs they got from Japan was terrible. I became one of the regular rotating artists on The Hulk magazine. I did some other stuff up there. The only magazine I wasn’t working on at that point, early on, was Savage Sword of Conan, because Roy was still in charge of the magazine and I don’t think Roy was a fan of my stuff. The first SSOC cover I got was from new editor Louise Jones [now Simonson] after he left. I was doing black-&-white house ads for the magazine line and stuff for Epic magazine, for Archie Goodwin. Like I said, basically, anything Marvel would give me, I would do. But when it all added up, I wasn’t really getting a whole lot of work. I didn’t really branch out to anywhere else because I didn’t feel secure enough yet in how much I knew. I think I was comfortable with the idea that they would give me work and I was learning while I was there, so I didn’t really go anywhere else. And, because of that, I wasn’t really making enough money to support myself. I was living at home. I made enough money to go out, and pay some bills, buy things I needed, and stuff like that, but it wasn’t a job that was helping me survive in any way outside on my own.

CBC: How long did the hard times last?

Joe: Well, I don’t know if they were “hard times.” I was young, I was working at Marvel, I was trying to build a career… I don’t know if I would call them hard times. It was an obligatory entry level learning period that most young adults today want to skip over by starting at the top, where I wasn’t really making enough to be self-sufficient, which is what prompted me to join the police department. After about a 15-year moratorium, the NYPD reopened the test for the department because there were a lot of guys who were retiring and they needed new police officers. The other thing that always interested me from the time I was a kid was police work. I had two uncles who were cops, and I followed every cop show that was on TV. For some reason, it always appealed to me, the entire idea of being a cop. I had spoken earlier about the neighborhood I grew up in. Right on my block, in the early ’70s, there were two cops who were killed during a car stop, and I remember watching out my window as the response came down, and it was just maniacal on the street, eight billion police officers down there. And there was just something about the profession that always appealed to me. So when they opened up the test, my mother at that point had realized that I was now 21 years old and I still wasn’t really making enough of a living to support myself, even though she was really supportive of the art all through my youth and through my early career. I mean, she was taking Savage Sword covers to work with her, because by this point I would get fan mail printed in the letters pages, and she would bring them in to work to show people that, “Look, my son gets fan mail from Australia!” So she was really proud of the fact that I was doing it, but she COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

was also concerned that it wasn’t turning out to be the most lucrative profession in the world, so she suggested that I maybe take the police test and look at that as an option of something to do. So I took the test. I took the test, and myself and a few of my friends passed it, and I got called to enter the police academy. I think I was working on something for Archie Goodwin at the time, and I had mentioned to Archie that I wasn’t going to be able to finish it, that they called me and I was going to be going to the police academy in January of ’83. And my plan at that point was that I would join the police department, I would still try to produce artwork on the side, and then I would retire in 20 years and go back into comics and take up art full-time again. Which sounded great. But once you got on the department, of course, there were six months in the academy where you couldn’t do anything but do that, then it was six months in a training unit and you couldn’t do anything but that.

If I remember correctly, there’s absolutely no work for me dated 1983 because I was in the academy in my training unit at the time, and there was no time to do any work. And then, after I got transferred to my official precinct after my training unit, at one point Larry Hama had called me up and asked me if I would be willing to do a Savage Sword cover, because he was now the editor of the magazine. And I thought it was cool idea, so I did that. You’ll notice if you look at the Savage Sword run, #77 was the last issue I had done up until #96, and that period between #77–96 is when I was in the academy and in my training unit in the police department. So what I started to do was I started to take my overtime in the police department in time, because you had an option of doing time or cash, and if you took cash, they really taxed 63

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the hell out of it, so it really wasn’t worth it, so I would take it in the equal amount of time that I worked overtime, and I would use that time to work on covers for Marvel. So I was both a police officer and doing freelance work for Marvel at that point. After a few years, I realized that my real passion from the time I was a kid was really art, and I had to make a decision as to what I wanted to do, and I realized that I was more serious about art than I was about the police department, and decided to leave and go back to art full-time again. And that was about, I’d say, the end of 1985 when I left.

CBC: So did your fellow officers know you were an artist?

Joe: Oh, yeah. There were guys in there who actually followed some of my stuff at Marvel. I did a bunch of material for the community affairs office in the precinct. Then I also took the test for the art unit down

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Marvel Team-Up, Spider-Man, Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc.

Previous page: For a spell in the mid-’80s, Joe Jusko joined the New York City police department, an experience he put to use in the mini-series he co-wrote with Larry Hama, Cops: The Job [1992]. Above: Believe it or don’t, Joe Jusko posed in the guise of Captain America on this cover of Marvel Team-Up #128 [Apr. 1983].

John Morelli plays SpiderMan in this Eliot R. Brown photo.

Right: Jusko channels his inner John Buscema.

at police headquarters, the guys who do all the composite illustrations, but it’s like a three-man unit down there in police headquarters and they never retire. Those guys were down there forever, but one guy was thinking of retiring, and from what I understand, I was next in line to get that position, but then the guy decided not to retire and to stay on. One of the guys down there in the unit actually was familiar with the Marvel work that I did, which I found pretty funny. But it just became a decision after a while of what do I really see myself doing? Where is my real passion? And as much as I really enjoyed being a cop, art was really my calling from the time I was a kid, so it seemed to be the right decision for me. So I took the gamble and left even though I wasn’t really guaranteed work. At that point in time, Tom DeFalco was now the editor-in-chief up at Marvel, and I spoke to him and said, “Tom, can you guys guarantee me work?” He said, “We’ll give you as much work as we can find.” And that’s when I started doing a lot of the Marvel press posters.

CBC: Was it dangerous, the police work?

Joe: Yes and no. Police work, it’s not like you see on TV shows where there are shootouts and gunfights all the time.

You deal a lot with domestic disputes, which are actually incredibly dangerous because you never know how they’re going to turn out. Car stops are probably the most dangerous thing you can do because you don’t know who’s in the car. I had some incidents. I was shot at. I shot at somebody.

I was slashed across the chest with a straight razor, but the vest stopped it and it just caught the vest. I had both shoulders dislocated at different times during arrests and situations. And that was just in the two-and-a-half years that I was on. It was active. I worked in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan, and then the South Bronx, which were both very busy areas. But I was really more at home with that than I would have been in midtown Manhattan because I grew up in an area that was very similar to those neighborhoods. So I was a street kid who was now dealing with street people, as opposed to, like, recruits who came in from Long Island and didn’t understand what was going on, and really had no sense of discretion. So, when I got into the South Bronx precinct, the old-time cops really liked both myself and my partner. We were new guys, but we were streetwise, and they kind of appreciated the fact that we weren’t totally green and we understood the situation with the people we were dealing with.

CBC: So was that the time when crack epidemic really hit?

Joe: Yeah, the early, mid-’80s was the start of both the AIDS and crack epidemics. Crack had come into play at that point, so things got really hairy in a short amount of time.

You constantly had to be worried about sticking yourself on syringes when you searched people because, you know, people carried needles in their pockets and stuff like that, so you always had to ask people, “Am I going to stick myself on anything when I search you?” And a lot of times they would say no, but you’d pat them down and you would find out that they actually had something on them that you could stick yourself on. We had a couple of guys who stuck themselves on needles in our precinct, and they turned white, because, at the time, you’re talking very early on with the AIDS epidemic, I mean, guys didn’t know if they were going to catch something or not. So it was a pretty freaky time back then and fairly dangerous. And crack was just… crack became an epidemic, and the violence and everything that came with it after that was just madness. People were shooting each other all over the place over crack deals. We were always responding to gun calls or finding dead bodies.

CBC: Were you always a big guy?

Joe: Yeah, I guess. Eastern European blood! I was looking at my class photo from kindergarten. I’m the tallest kid in the class. I was always the biggest kid in grade school. I think I was six-feet tall and close to 200 lbs. when I graduated eighth grade, so I was always a big kid.

CBC: So you weren’t bullied at all? Did bullies stay away

“The Roaches” TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. “Let the Dreamer Beware”© the respective copyright holder.

from you?

Joe: Well, like I said, it depended on the area and the time.

My neighborhood was not a good neighborhood when I was a kid, and you learned there were certain streets you didn’t walk down. There was a big public high school at the end of my block on the way to St. Brigid’s, P.S. 71, and P.S. 71 was really a gladiator school. It really was. It was every kid who didn’t make it into a good high school went to P.S. 71.

So I got mugged a couple times when I was really young, when I was in fourth, fifth grade, on the way to school, and I learned to circumvent it and go a different way to school and stuff like that. But, as I got older, that stopped. You know: you get older; you get bigger.

CBC: So, in high school, you started working out? Did you go to the gym a lot?

Joe: In high school, I didn’t start working out until junior year of high school. I had a friend of mine who played Pop Warner football and he worked out. He had talked me into joining a gym, and we joined a place called the Mid-City Gym, up in the Times Square area, the Theater District. It was a major body-building gym, not a health club. There weren’t any health clubs yet. It was a sweat-&-grind body-building gym where a lot of the guys were Mr. New York, Mr. America, and Mr. Universe competitors. So I started working out there when I was about 16. I guess that was my first foray into working out.

CBC: And you boxed. Did you box into adulthood?

Joe: I boxed a little bit, never seriously. It was another thing to do as far as working out. I enjoyed the whole physical culture thing, so I worked out, I boxed a little bit on the side. But, like I said, I was never really fast enough to be good at it, and my joints are fairly small, so my hands and my wrists would hurt after a while, and I realized if I wanted to draw and be an artist, hitting stuff with my hands probably wasn’t the smartest thing for me to do. My wife bought me a heavy bag set up for a gift a few years ago, so I still like going a few rounds on the bag.

CBC: Getting back to comics: did you realize pretty quickly that you couldn’t do sequential work? Did it take a while to realize it was too time-consuming?

Joe: No, I realized that before I graduated high school. I knew that I was never going to be fast enough to do regular comics, which is why I switched over to painting and decided that that might be a little bit more beneficial for me to do single illustrations and move on to something else. As much as I enjoyed sequential work, I just realized that I was not one of those guys who was going to be able to do it on a regular basis.

CBC: Right, but you still did some.

Joe: I did some occasionally over the years. I would get an itch every now and again, but it wasn’t until years later, really, that I did any sequential stuff. I started doing something for Archie Goodwin and the Epic line right before I became a cop, but that got shelved, and then years later I did a Vampirella mini-series. It was a fully-painted sequential two-part thing. I did a fully painted Tomb Raider book that was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Society of Illustrators. I filled in on three issues of the Black Panther for Marvel Knights. I still every now and then get the itch to do sequential work, but my attention span is really short, so doing the same thing over and over again kind of bores the crap out of me.

I remember when I was doing Black Panther, by the time I got to the third issue, it was like pulling teeth. It really was. I’m so used, and my mind is so trained, to moving on to something else, doing one thing and moving on to something else, that doing the same character over and over and over again just really doesn’t suit my makeup. I admired the guys who could do a hundred issues on a book and do the same thing over and over and over again to the exemption of everything else, and that’s never been the way my mind has worked… or my temperament.

CBC: So magazines were starting to not be so popular by COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

the late ’80s, right?

Joe: Yeah, the only magazine Marvel had left really by the late ’80s was I think Savage Sword, and they would do some movie specials every now and then. Warren was gone. Warren had folded just as I was about to approach them, actually, because I always wanted to do Vampirella covers. As I mentioned, I was a huge Vampirella fan, and I wanted to go and do some covers for Warren, and just as I was about to go up to Warren, when I felt like I was confident enough to get some work from them, they went out of business. They were doing all reprints for a certain time and then they just folded. So I thought that any chance I had of ever doing a Vampirella cover was gone. And that’s actually one of the regrets of my career is the fact that I never got a chance to even get one cover on a Warren magazine. They had such an incredible stable of artists there. I idolized guys like Enrich and Sanjulian, and to see a cover I painted along side theirs in that line would have been great, but, yeah, that was probably my one regret from that period, that I never got a Warren cover before they folded.

CBC: So by the early ’90s, Alex Ross came around. Did that change the game for you?

Joe: I not sure when Marvels appeared, but I believe it was later. [Marvels #1–4 was published in 1994.] The Marvel Masterpiece cards were ’92, and I think Alex might have been a couple years later. At that point, from the time I came back after leaving the police department up until I did

Above: Joe Jusko’s cover painting for Hellriders: The Last Run of T.J. Hackett, Jusko’s unfinished fully-painted graphic novel assigned by Epic Comics.

Below: Jusko’s imagined Savage Tales #2 cover. From the 2016 Marvel Masterpieces “What If” trading card set.

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the Marvel cards, I was doing a great amount of the painted stuff up at Marvel. I was doing their posters, magazine covers, a lot of ad work, and stuff like that, so I was kept pretty busy. Then I had branched out and was doing other stuff at that point for other places. I was doing ad work for the World Wrestling Federation, painting some of their major campaigns. I was doing stuff for other magazines, for gaming companies, album covers… So, at that point, I had branched out and I was doing much more than I was early on in my career.

CBC: What was the work that you did for Wrestlemania and the Royal Rumbles?

Joe: I got a call from an art director at the World Wrestling Federation one day, and they had said that they were looking for someone to do a couple of posters. I think the first one was for the Royal Rumble in ’91, and I was recommended to them by Mary Wilshire, the comic book artist. She had drawn Red Sonja and a bunch of other stuff for Marvel, and was doing a lot of the black-&-white art for their catalogs at the time, but she didn’t paint. They asked for a recommendation and she recommended me… which I always found to be absolutely amazing, because I had never met her before in my life! Mary and I had never crossed paths. I don’t think we had ever spoken, but I was able to thank her years later for recommending me for that job. But I guess she was a fan of my stuff, and I was the name that popped into

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

World Wrestling Federation, Royal Rumble, associated characters TM & © World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Hulk Hogan TM & © Hogan Holdings.

Above: Joe Jusko’s poster art for the World Wrestling Federation’s 1991 “Royal Rumble” extravaganza. Incidentally, with the “Royal Rumble” assignment, Jusko was first to design the WWF’s then-newest character, The Undertaker. Below: Jusko shares this Wrestlemania VII image of Hulk Hogan was on buses in New York City and a 40'-wide billboard in L.A., and WWF boss Vince McMahon hung the original in his office.

her head. But, yes, I started doing some ad posters for them — the Royal Rumble in ’91 and a follow-up in ’92. I did the poster campaign for Wrestlemania 7, a big painting of Hulk Hogan holding an American flag that they plastered everywhere. It was in cable bill inserts, magazine ads and even a 40' billboard in L.A. I did a few other things for them, as well, including the box art for a hockey game for Remco. I did the initial designs for The Undertaker, actually. They told me that they were coming up with a new wrestler based on an undertaker-type thing, and they wanted me to do some concept designs for him, so I did a few concept designs early on for a character that is still around today, amazingly.

CBC: In ’92, the Marvel Masterpieces trading cards: how did they come about and how were you pitched for that?

Joe: Marvel was doing a whole trading card line at that point. They started in ’91, I believe, with Marvel Universe 1, then they did a second set, and a set after that, Marvel Universe 3, and they were basically pen-&-ink drawings and little color drawings for the trading cards. As I said, I was doing most of the painted work up there on the certain projects, so when Marvel Universe 3 came around, they wanted to tie all the cards together with some kind of a cosmic background, so I hand-painted, airbrushed this big cosmic background thing that they inserted the figures into, so if you look at those cards from Marvel Universe 3, if you put them all side-by-side in order, the background all matches up, because they superimposed the figures onto this background that I painted for the cards. And then after that they did a Jim Lee set, because they were trying to constantly progress in the way they approached the cards.

So they did those three Marvel Universe sets, and then they had Jim do an X-Men set because Jim was the hot X-Men guy at the time, so Jim did their first solo artist card set. Still pen-&-ink, colored drawing stuff. And then they thought the next natural progression was to do a painted set sort of like the Batman and Mars Attacks! cards of the ’60s, and, since I was the guy who was doing most of the painted work up at Marvel at the time, it was natural that they would ask me if I would do it, I guess. And I thought it was a really fun idea.

It was also the most money I was ever offered to do a job before. So I jumped at it. I thought it was just a really, really cool idea. And most of us just thought it was a really cool idea, but we had no idea that it was going to become what it became.

CBC: And what it did it become?

Joe: Well, to this day, it’s the most popular thing I’ve ever done. I sign more of those cards than anything else I’ve ever worked on. Which is ironic, because it is, by far, not my best work. I had three months to paint 104 trading cards, so I was working night and day for I think it was 92 days to paint all 104 cards. It came out at the same time as The Death of Superman cards by DC, and we were convinced that the Death of Superman cards were going to overshadow the Marvel cards. We were like, “Sh*t, this is our competition. No one’s even going to pay attention to these things.” And I think Death of Superman did come out first, and then a month later I think our cards came out. And they just blew up. The reaction to those cards was something that took all of us completely by surprise. I believe they printed something like 350,000 boxes of cards, which by today’s standards is absolutely insane, and they sold out of the entire run. I did tours, signing tours, around the United States with those cards. Those cards just, they hit a nerve, and pretty much are credited I think at this point with starting that whole trading card boom in the mid- to late ’90s.

CBC: What was it? Was it that they were painted?

Joe: To this day, I don’t know. A lot of people tell me that because, I mean, they were ubiquitous. They were everywhere, those cards, and I don’t think that people who didn’t follow comics had ever seen the characters painted before, it seems, and I get so many people to this day who tell me that they had never seen the characters look so realistic. It was just something of its time. It filled a void in a way that

All characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

people hadn’t seen before, and they-- It’s one of those things you can’t explain.

They just took on a life of their own, and they became this juggernaut that people just couldn’t get enough of.

And, like I said, it’s ironic because it’s by far not the best work I’ve ever done, before or since, because they were done so quickly. But they became just something that’s really indefinable as far as popularity goes.

CBC: How big was each painting?

Joe: They were small, because I had to do them so quickly. I believe they were 6" x 8½" inches, because I knew they were going to be trading cards. You really couldn’t do full-size paintings and, one, expect to get them done in time, and two, there was no point, because they were going to be shot down to 2½" x 3½" inches. Had I known that they were going to be reprinted later on in book form and things like that, I would have painted them a little bit larger, because as they blew them up, they really fell apart, because they were really, the paintings weren’t really paintings.

They were colored pencil, magic marker, gouache, watercolor, acrylic… They were basically anything that I could use to get the cards done and get the effect that I needed to get them done. So they were a total mixed-media kind of thing. And they were fairly loose, in a lot of ways, because they weren’t fully rendered paintings in a lot of cases, and when they blew them up for those comics, they did a four-issue comic collection of them, they really looked like crap. Guys who came after me had a little bit more insight as to how these things were going to be used, so they painted them at least to book-size so that, if they did get reproduced, they looked okay. But that first set, it just really, it’s become something indefinable for me and my career. It basically changed for me overnight. I had already been working for 14 years in the industry at that point, and overnight I became “master painter” Joe Jusko because of this card set. And it completely changed the trajectory of my career. I have nothing but good things to say about that card set. I owe editor Bob Budiansky so much for thinking of me for it.

CBC: Do you think that that, chronologically speaking, might have set the stage for Marvels? The success of that?

Joe: No, I don’t think so. I think Alex [Ross] embarked a whole separate journey. He loves the entire history of comics, and you could tell that he absolutely loves these characters, and I think that he and Kurt had a unique vision.

I don’t think the card set had anything to do with Marvels.

Marvels was just something else completely, an entity unto itself…

CBC: I’m talking about marketing. ‘We’re going to do a full comic book that’s going to be fully painted.” Maybe Marvel responded very positively to your card set because of its phenomenal success…?

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

Joe: I wouldn’t presume to think that my card set had anything to do with Alex and Marvels. The ’90s was a really great time, as were the ’80s, because they were very experimental at Marvel. They were letting you do a whole bunch of stuff that they had never done, and they were throwing their hat in a million different rings, and they were very excited to try new stuff… new books, new subjects, new topics. Which I don’t think gets done today. I think they’re a much safer company today. I mean, back then Larry Hama got The ’Nam going, I’m not sure a book that would get done today.

Larry and I did a book called Cops: The Job, and Larry asked me to co-write it because Larry’s all about authenticity. We did a four-issue mini-series about the New York City police department, and we based a lot of what happens in that book on what happened to me when I was a cop. And all the terminology is correct. I based characters on people that I knew when I was a cop. And, when that book came out, we started to get letters from cops all over the world who said they bought it as a joke when they first saw it, but once they started to read it, found it was the most realistic depiction of police work they had ever seen in a comic.

And that flew under the radar. We had dialogue, we had a couple of racist cops in there, and we wrote dialogue that would never get into a comic book today. But they were willing to try different things back then, and I think Marvels was just one of those things where they thought, “Oh, this is incredible. Let’s do this.” You know, they loved the proposal that Alex and Kurt came up with, and they went with that.

But, again, that’s speculation, because I really don’t know.

But I just know that Marvel was a very experimental company back then. They were willing to try a whole bunch of

This page: Joe Jusko entered the big league with his painted portraits of Marvel superheroes in 1992’s Marvel Masterpieces trading card set, which is widely credited with having launched the trading card boom of the 1990s. Jusko produced the collection of 104 paintings in just over three months, a phenomenal pace by any measure!

Some 300,000 card packs were sold and the artist achieved newfound stature in the field.

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Above: In 2016, Joe Jusko was enlisted by Upper Deck to revisit the artist’s earliest claim to fame, the Marvel Masterpieces trading card set with an entirely new collection of paintings — in all, 132 images — which were subsequently compiled in the 9" x 13" hardcover published by IDW (a book that includes ten new pieces). Below: Though instructed to simply render portraits of the most popular characters of the House of Ideas, for some Jusko added certain elements, as seen in the background of his Hulk card for 1992’s Marvel Masterpieces set.

wasn’t sure that I would be able to come up with the same enthusiasm for it, so I told them there was no way I could do it. I only had 16 or 17 cards in the second set and those were all reprinted pieces that I had done as sales incentives when they published the first set in comic form.

But Mike Friedlander had contacted me about the possibility of doing a card set for him, and the original concept was basically anything I wanted to do. It could have been Joe Jusko’s “Barbarians and Babes” thing, or I could do sci-fi, I could do… whatever! I could do anything I wanted to paint for 100 cards. That sounded really enticing, with a lot of creative freedom. Basically, whatever I could think of I would paint for a card. And we agreed. And then, about a week or two later, he contacted me and said he was negotiating for the rights to both Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard properties and asked if would I be interested in either one of those? And I had done Conan covers at Marvel for years, but I wasn’t really a big sword-&- sorcery fan. I read a couple of the books. I wasn’t the biggest Conan fan and I wasn’t really into dragons and sorcerers and stuff like that.

But the Burroughs stuff I had always loved, and it was everything I loved to paint. It was Tarzan and animals — I’m a big wildlife art fan — amid natural backgrounds. I asked him, “Does this include everything that Burroughs ever wrote or just the Tarzan stuff?” He said, “It’s everything.”

And I said, “I want the Burroughs material.” Because I was a big John Carter fan, as well. I thought that stuff was absolutely incredible. So the minute I heard I was able to do the Burroughs library and do everything that Burroughs ever did, I said yes.

CBC: So were you just familiar with all the books?

Joe: I was familiar, I had read a bunch of them early on.

I didn’t read all of them, so I read through them as I was working on the books. And we also had another guy named Rick Ulaky who was reading the books I couldn’t get to, and he was making me sort of CliffsNotes on the books, threeor four-page synopses of the stories and he would pick out key scenes for me that would make good illustrations, and what I would do is I would get these CliffsNotes and I would go back and I would read through those chapters of the books to get a visual feel for what was going on, and figure out what scenes I thought would make good pieces and stuff like that. The hardest part of doing the Burroughs set is we did 120 illustrations, but you’re also talking about 60 to 80 books, so you can only pick one to two images per book, and it was hard picking out what scene to do for a book, because there were just so many that would make great illustrations. And that was the one thing about it. I could have done 500 paintings for that card set and still not run out of ideas or concepts for cards. The books are just that visual.

CBC: How long did you have to work on the ERB paintings?

Joe: The ERB set I was taking maybe three to four days per painting. They were a little bit bigger. I was painting them at 9" x 12", and instead of just doing single-character shots like I did with the Marvel set, I was doing actual multi-character scenes from the books, so they needed a little bit more space for me to work. And, still, that was a fairly fast clip to try and do full scenes and multiple-character paintings for the card set. And, looking back at them, I’m amazed I got as much work into them as I did. They’re not all… as would be expected with any card set, they’re not all going to be perfect paintings because you’re doing such a large volume of work at one time, but I think they still really stand up today, and they’re still really popular among ERB fans.

CBC: So you took over a year making them?

Joe: Close to a year-and-a-half, I think, to do all 120 paintings.

CBC: And how were you able to support yourself through that? Were you doing other jobs?

Joe: No, I was getting paid really well by the card. The #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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new stuff.

CBC: Now, what did Marvel give you for reference for the Marvel Masterpieces? Did you know all the characters in the reference work that you did?

Joe: Well, I grew up a comic fan. I was working for Marvel for 14 years at that point, like I said, so I was familiar with almost every character at that point, and there were a couple of current characters that I had to look up, but for the most part, yeah, I knew them all by heart, so that was never an issue as far as doing the cards. I grew up on Marvel Comics, so doing the Marvel Masterpiece cards was more of a historical documentation for me than anything else. I tried to, when I could, put in little aspects of their origin.

The Doctor Octopus card references the atomic plant from the first Ditko issue. I did the same thing with the Hulk and the atomic bomb in the back. So as much as I, I’ve always considered them to be sort of little encyclopedias of the characters as much as possible. And I knew all the comics already, so that was never an issue.

CBC: Did you get a piece of the action for the cards?

Joe: Yes, there were royalties back then. They did pay really well. It was a great job for me.

CBC: Did you have an apartment? Were you living in the city?

Joe: By that point I was living on Staten Island. I was renting an apartment in a two-family house.

CBC: How did the Edgar Rice Burroughs thing come along?

Joe: Those came about specifically because of the Marvel Masterpiece cards, which, like I said, changed the entire trajectory of my career. Mike Friedlander, who today is my best friend, was running a small publishing company called FPG. He was a young kid who had started a company in Pittsburgh to do fantasy trading cards.

He loves fantasy art, and I think the first set he did was Ken Kelly, which blew up and took off. After Marvel Masterpieces, really just everybody and their mother was producing trading card sets then because of the popularity of our set, and trading cards became really popular. It was amazing. If you remember back then, you couldn’t get away from trading cards. They were everywhere, and there were countless card companies forming almost weekly. He had done a Ken Kelly set, then a Chris Achilleos card set, and he had contacted me after the Marvel set came out.

Marvel had contacted me, actually, to do the second Masterpieces set, the 1993 set. It was right after I did ’92, they automatically wanted to do a second set, and they wanted me to do it, but the deadline was basically the same as the first one. There was no way in the world that I was going to be able to paint another hundred cards in three months. I was exhausted, and I just couldn’t see putting that kind of time in again. Because it really was, it was working night and day. It was just exhausting, and I

Tarzan, John Carter TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

income on those was a lot greater than the Marvel Masterpiece cards. And, by that point, I had moved to Pittsburgh and living not far from the FBG offices when I was working on that set back in ’93, ’94. The set came out in ’95. I supported myself off the cards. That wasn’t a problem at all.

CBC: Did you have favorites of what you did?

Joe: Yeah, there are some. I have some favorites in the Marvel Masterpiece cards. There were some favorites from the Burroughs card. The ones that, like anything in life, you have ones that came out the way I wanted them to.

Obviously, I have a little bit less of an affinity for the ones that fought with me and didn’t come out quite the way I wanted them to. I see issues with them, but I see issues in everything I do. That’s one of the reasons I hang very little of my own work at home, because once you hang it, all you have a tendency to see are the things you didn’t get right, or the things that didn’t work out the way you wanted them to.

My whole house is covered in art, and very little of it’s mine.

It’s mostly all stuff that inspires me.

CBC: Did you do a lot of work for Wizard magazine?

Joe: Yes. Back I guess around 2000, late ’90s, early ’00s, I was doing a ton of covers for Wizard. I’m really good at likenesses, always had a knack for them, so any time they had movie properties that they were covering, I was the guy that they called. So I did a lot of the X-Men covers when the X-Men movie first came out. There was a painting I did of Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man when they were announcing him as Spider-Man, which is an interesting cover, because originally we had him pulling the mask off, and you could see Tobey Maguire’s entire face, and his agent nixed the cover. We couldn’t show Tobey Maguire’s face on the cover, so the way we got around that was I lowered the mask on it so all you can see are his nose, and his mouth, and his chin.

But the likeness is good enough where you can actually tell exactly who it is just by seeing a small portion of his face.

So that cover, we got around the whole Tobey Maguire image rights issue thing by only showing a portion of his face.

There was the very first X-Men cover I did for them, for the first movie, with four of the characters. It’s got Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, and Anna Paquin. They are in the actual Marvel Comics costumes, because there was nothing released yet to show what their costumes in the movie would look like. So that cover is the only place you’ll ever see any of them wearing the actual comic-book get-up, which I had heard later on pissed off the guys at the movie studio because it wasn’t indicative of anything in the film. But they couldn’t do anything about it at that point. So, if there was a likeness to be done, I was the guy they called.

CBC: So around that time you started doing Tomb Raider work?

Joe: Right. I’ve always been more attracted to the more reality-based characters, even though I’ve done a ton of super-hero stuff over the course of my career, and still do.

I always feel more comfortable with characters that I can relate to more, and that’s really more adventure stuff like Tomb Raider, or Conan, Tarzan, something that’s a little bit more grounded in reality rather than the cape-&-tights crowd. I can do a ton of that, but I can never see them as anything more than painted comic book drawings. Which is one of the things I admire about Alex Ross. Alex can mentally visualize them as real people. I don’t see them that way. It kind of takes the childhood magic away from me when they look too realistic. So our approaches are, I think, totally different as to how we handle those characters. No one does what Alex does better than Alex. But the more reality-based characters I feel I have more of a knack for.

So when Tomb Raider came out, I was really attracted to the character’s visuals, the whole concept of the character, and I had talked to the guys at Top Cow, Marc Silvestri and Matt Hawkins, about the possibility of doing a fully-painted Tomb Raider book. If I was going to do a book, it had to be something that was going to really keep my attention for the COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

time it was going to take to paint it. And the Tomb Raider book was just something that I really, really, really wanted to do. To this day, that book is probably the thing I’m most proud of, page for page, and pound for pound. I don’t think there’s anything I would change about it.

CBC: How long did you work on it, and how many pages was it?

Joe: It was 38 pages. It took a long time. A loooong time.

I was working on it in between other jobs that I was doing, so it took a few years to get that thing painted, but it’s so ridiculously detailed. I photo-referenced all the characters.

I basically painted my own movie, and it won a Certificate of Merit from the Society of Illustrators in New York City after I submitted it one year. And it’s just, for me, I think it’s the pinnacle of what I can do as far as painted comics. Although it also convinced me that I would never do another painted comic, because it came and went and half the people that were meant to see it never even knew it came out.

I remember talking to Michael Kaluta at one point when I was working on it, and he said, “You know, just be careful.” And also Charles Vess. They both warned me about putting too much work into this thing because it’s got a shelf life of a month, and no one’s ever going to see it again. But I got obsessed with just painting that thing the best I could.

And, like I said, the finished product is something I’m really, really proud of, but I think it killed any desire I had to ever do another painted book again.

This page: As a follow-up to his Marvel Masterpieces success, FPG recruited Joe Jusko to render the 1995 Art of Edgar Rice Burroughs trading card set, a set of 60 paintings depicting various ERB adventure stories.

Above features the writer’s most renowned character, Tarzan, and below is John Carter, warrior of Barsoom.

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Tomb Raider, Lara Croft TM & © Square Enix Limited.

CBC: Wow. Did you use models?

Joe: Yeah, I shot, photo-ref’ed everything. Jasi Jovingo, who’s now a stuntwoman in Hollywood, posed for Lara. A friend of mine who lived in my building posed for the male lead, and I had two kids I knew from the local deli posing as some of the South American rebels. So, yeah, I did. It was one of the few times that I actually photo-ref’ed everything for a project, because I wanted it to be as realistic and accurate as possible.

CBC: Did you take the photos yourself?

Joe: Oh, yeah. They just came over. I laid the entire book out and used the layouts as directions for the models, and they ran around outside the house, hanging on tree branches… They did whatever I needed them to do as far as getting the shots. And then, of course, you just adjust them for what you need for the book. I mean, Jasi is really short. She’s a really small-framed girl, really tiny, so I had to elongate her and make her more imposing as Lara. So that’s the kind of stuff you do when you use photo-ref. It’s a guide for you to do what you need to do.

CBC: How often have you used models?

Joe: I don’t do models anywhere near as much as people

think. I have years of life drawing under my belt, so I’m able to fake a lot of stuff, and I’ve got a huge photo morgue where, if I need to correct stuff, I can reference pics I have in there to adjust it to what I need to make sure that the light is correct and everything. But I don’t really shoot the models as much as people think I do. I kind of like it when people can’t tell if I used a model or didn’t use a model, because in some pictures, I’ll have referenced one figure, shot reference for one figure, and made up the others, and if you can’t tell, then I did my job.

CBC: Have you done portraits of people?

Joe: I can do likenesses. The only portrait I’ve really done of anybody was I did a Barbara Eden portrait for the 50th anniversary of I Dream of Jeannie. We were going to be on tour together in Australia at a convention, so I did a special lithograph for that con. But, yeah, I don’t really do sitting portraits. That’s a whole separate discipline. Like I said, I can do likenesses if I have to for, like, movie stuff, but a portrait artist is really a totally different discipline.

CBC: Do you stuff for family, for personal, for friends?

Joe: On the rare occasion. My family, they’re fans of what I do. My wife has finally gotten me to hang several of my pieces up in the house that she really likes. I’ve done a couple gifts for a family members here and there, but, for the most part, not really. No. CBC: Do you have a thing that you’d like to do in your life that you haven’t done yet? Obviously, you said you don’t want to paint another comic book (darn it). [laughs] Joe: Well, as I mentioned before, I’m a huge wildlife art fan, specifically big cats. I’ve been following different wildlife artists for years, and my ambition is really to be able to take a year off from doing commercial work and take a photo safari in Africa and just do big cat paintings for a year or so. It’s been something that’s been on my back burner for the better part of a decade, and it’s something that I would really like to do.

CBC: Cool. Has it been a steady living for you? Does it go up and down?

Joe: Well, since I came back, this is all I’ve done as far as making a living. So I’m very fortunate in the fact that, all these years later, I’m still working. I’m actually busier today than I’ve ever been. I knock wood that that’s happened, but it did slow down a bit around the turn of the century, when computer-generated art was starting to come into play, and companies thought it was the next big thing. I remember when Fleer was producing those Fleer Flair cards, and they were absolutely horrendous. God, they were absolutely horribly colored by computer. Muddy, and blurry, and garish.

Nothing like the advanced coloring you see today. And they were trying to convince me that computer-generated art was going to make painted art obsolete, that basically in ten years there would be no more hand-painted art. Which I knew was ridiculous, but for a while, it slowed down for me because everybody was doing CGI-ed art. That’s all companies were using. But, after it slowed down a bit, it started to build back up again, and I think they realized that the individuality of the painted art, of hand-painted traditional art, is something you really can’t duplicate with computers. You’re never going to mistake a Sanjulian for a Frazetta, for an Earl Norem, for an Alex Ross. But pick up an annual of fantasy art that’s all computer-generated, and by the tenth page, you have to start looking around to see who did what, whether this guy who did a piece on page nine is the same guy who did the piece that’s on page 31.

Justin Sweet is a guy whose work I really admire because you recognize his work instantly. And there are a few other guys. But I went through an annual just recently and I didn’t know who did what because it all looked the same. And I think that once companies realized that traditional art had a unique feel, and a unique look, and a unique voice, it came back into vogue again, and they went back to using a lot of traditional art.

CBC: So you’ve been steady. Have you pretty much just

Wizard: The Comics Magazine TM & © Wizard World, LLC. X-Men, Spider-Man, Wolverine TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Tomb Raider, Lara Croft TM & © Square Enix Limited.

done covers? Is that your thing?

Joe: Yeah, for the most part, for the most part I’ve done covers. Aside from the special projects mentioned, I’ve don’t think I’ve done much of anything other than that. I do a lot of private commissions because, like I said, that leaves me up a lot of free time. But I’m a one-and-done type of guy.

I really like doing single pieces and putting everything into those, and then moving on to something else.

CBC: And conventions, have you always been a presence at conventions?

Joe: I did that first one back in ’78. I didn’t do them again for a number of years, and then a friend of mine had suggested back in, I guess, the mid- to late ’80s that I come out to San Diego to the convention, that I would really like that.

So I went out to San Diego back around, I guess, ’87, ’88.

I think was my first one. And then I did it for maybe 20, 25 years in a row after that. And, as time went on, I started to do a few more conventions. I do a lot of conventions every year, but nowhere near as many as some. The past decade or so I become fairly regular on the convention circuit. I do maybe ten to 15 a year, I think, but I really cut them down.

Especially this year, now, because I’m really busy. I have to cut down the appearances because they take a lot of time to get ready for, they take a lot of time to do, they take a lot of time to recuperate from, and you lose a lot of work time the more of them that you do. There are guys who make their living on the convention circuit now, but it’s more like a paid vacation for my wife and me to do conventions, so we try to do them in places where we haven’t been before. Especially if you want to fly me to Europe, I’m more than happy to go. But I do enjoy them because I sit by myself 12–16 hours a day and it’s nice to get out and actually talk to people and meet people and get some direct response to your work, which keeps you motivated. And my wife really enjoys them because she enjoys meeting the fans and the people, and she loves the enthusiasm of fandom. She’s not a comic fan per se, but she loves art, and she really appreciates the passion of the fans when they come to the table. So we really enjoy doing cons. It’s something that I’ve come to look forward to as far as interacting with the people who actually follow my stuff.

CBC: And do you have a lot of friends in the business?

Joe: Well, over 40 years you get to know a lot of people. Yeah. So, yeah. That’s another reason to do conventions, because, unlike early on when we all lived around Manhattan (because you had to be in Manhattan since everything was in Manhattan back in the ’70s and ’80s), now everybody lives all over the country, so a lot of times the only chance you get to see anybody is when you’re at a convention. So that’s another reason I like doing conventions, because I get to catch up with a lot of my old friends.

And the fun part of this business, too, is making friends with the guys that you admired growing up. I still find it amazing that I’m good friends with guys like Joe Sinnott, or that I was friends with Gray Morrow and Al Williamson, guys who were idols to me when I was a kid. You’re now a peer, which to me is surreal… and they know your work! If you stop and think about it, I was ten when I was looking at Joe Sinnott’s inking on Fantastic Four. I wanted to ink like Joe Sinnott, and now Joe and I are friends. It’s an interestCOMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

ing industry where lines get blurred and suddenly there’s no wall anymore between you and the guys that you grew up admiring.

CBC: Did you ever meet Frank Frazetta?

Joe: I knew Frank, yes. Interestingly enough, the first time I met Frank was at San Diego in ’95. I think it was the last convention that Frank attended in San Diego, and Joe Mannarino, who was running Christie’s comic art auctions at the time — Frank was signing at the Christie’s booth — came over to my table and he said, “Hey, Joe, how are you doing?” He goes, “Frank wants to meet you.” I said, “Frank who?” And he goes, “Well, Frazetta.” I responded with a sheepish, “Uhhhhh…okay.” [chuckles] So I went with Joe over to meet Frank at the Christie’s booth. And I was stunned. Frank spent a good hour talking with me about art and telling me how much he thought of my stuff, and how he thought I was doing some of the best stuff out there, and why he liked my stuff, because it had movement to it, and life. And it floored me, because I had absolutely no idea that Frank even knew who I was, or much less liked my work.

It was really such a surreal experience to have Frank just take the time. He was talking to somebody else when Joe brought me over, and Joe interrupted him. Frank gave him a dirty look, and Joe said, “Frank, this is Joe Jusko.” And Frank just stopped whatever he was doing and acted like he couldn’t be happier to meet me. It was just, it was really just one of the most bizarre experiences of my life, because I really, like I said, I had no idea that Frank would

Previous page: In 2005, Top Cow published the one-shot, Tomb Raider: The Greatest Treasure of All, a fully-painted comic by Jusko and writer Dan Jurgens.

This page: By the late 1990s, due to of his ability to render likenesses, Jusko found steady cover work with Wizard: The Comics Magazine, painting the stars of super-hero movies.

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Burroughs were done when we had started the card set back in ’92. There was nothing really on the market at that point other than I think they had a belt buckle that they were merchandising.

And, based on our decision to take on the ERB property, I know that Michael started to field inquiries from a whole bunch of other people. Mike Richardson at Dark Horse had contacted Michael about the viability of Tarzan as a property, which is really how the Dark Horse Tarzan comic books came along. I know that Michael had written a pitch for Danton Burroughs to send to Disney for the Disney cartoon, and that’s how the animated movie came about. So, we revived a whole lot of interest in Burroughs simply by deciding to take on that card set. I don’t think they’re dead. I think people need to be reminded about them, because they are sort of fade out now and again… Tarzan especially can be considered by people to be a somewhat dated property, but the books themselves are a visual feast of imagination, so I think that if the visuals are handled properly, and the stories are promoted correctly, they could still remain popular. You just need the right people, I think, to handle and promote them. People with true passion. Marvel has the Conan books again. I’m curious to see how they’re going to handle that, whether they’re going to treat them the way they did back in the ’80s, or whether they’re going to sort of do a different take on them. I’m currently involved in a project with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate where I’m painting all-new covers for every single Burroughs novel for an entirely new comprehensive library, which has never been done before.

They’ve never had one artist do every single book. So this is probably the most excited I’ve been in years, because I love this material. It’s a project that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and we finally came to an agreement and decided the time was right to do this. Hopefully, like the card set of 1995, these covers will help nurture another new fan base. #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Frazetta artwork TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Joe Jusko: Maelstrom © Joe Jusko.

Top: Joe Jusko makes a pilgrimage to the home of the work of the greatest fantasy painter of all time, the Frank Frazetta Art Museum, in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Above: Jusko with the man himself, at the 1995 San Diego Comic-Con. Inset right: Jusko purchased this Frazetta pencil piece directly from his idol, who inscribed it to “Joe, a terrific artist.” Below: There are a few books available that are singularly devoted to Jusko’s painted work, including Joe Jusko: Maelstrom and Savage Beauty (both published

by Eva Ink), and The Art of Joe Jusko (published by IDW)..

have any idea who I was. And when it was all over, he was selling drawings at the booth, and if you bought one of the drawings, he would sign it for you. None of them were signed.

So I bought this drawing of a lioness, a leaping lioness, off the wall, and Frank leans over to sign it, and he writes, “Best regards to Joe.” And he stops and looks up at me and he says, “Now, I don’t do this sort of thing,” and he continues, “A terrific artist. Best wishes, Frank Frazetta.” And I’ve got that thing framed and hanging in my studio to this day. And I don’t care if nobody else ever likes my work. That thing right there validated my entire career for me.

CBC: Wow. Did you see him again?

Joe: A few times, yeah. We ran into each other at Mega Con in Florida. I was at the grand opening when they opened up the Frazetta museum back in 2001. So, yeah, I ran across him a few times over the years, and he was always just the most gracious and warm human being to me. I was honored to be featured in the Painting with Fire documentary which profiled Frank’s life.

CBC: So you did a couple art books, Maelstrom and The Art of Joe Jusko?

Joe: The Eva Ink books, Savage Beauty and Maelstrom, are a combination of convention sketches and some covers that I did over the past decade or so. We’re planning another in the near future. Desperado Publishing did a huge, 329page comprehensive book that covered the first 30 years of my career that came out back in 2008, and has since been reprinted by IDW. It’s a book that I’m really proud of, because it really covers about my entire career up to that point, and Joe Pruett did a beautiful job designing it.

CBC: Beautiful. I’m just curious, do you think the time of the pulp, Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, do you think the days are over for that material?

Joe: I don’t know. I know I’m a fan. I know there’s still a following for those properties. People thought Tarzan and

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One need look no farther than this issue’s magnificent Frazetta-inspired cover to find evidence of Tom Grindberg’s artistry, imbued with a kinetic energy and lyrical style. Recently, the long-time comic book artist finished a stint drawing the Sunday Tarzan newspaper strip (written by Roy Thomas!) and today he is toiling as artist on The Darkness for Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow Productions.

The following conversation took place via telephone in two sessions.

This page: Tom Grindberg channels his inner Howard Pyle in this pirate-themed oil painting entitled “Dead Men Tell No Tales.” Next page: At top is the artist himself working on his Tarzan assignment. At center inset is a Tarzan promotional drawing.

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CBC: Are any of your siblings and parents creative?

Tom: Well, my dad, he’s a musician. He plays drums. Beyond that, nobody else really had any aspirations or any artistic abilities like I have.

CBC: What kind of music does your dad play?

Tom: Jazz, swing, contemporary. He worked dance jobs in Washington, D.C., so they’d be playing the top pop hits at these clubs that he’d go to. But primarily his background is jazz and swing music from the 1940s.

CBC: Was he a professional musician?

Tom: Yes, a professional. He couldn’t read music, though, because a while back my dad said he should have taken it a little more seriously and he might have had an actual career in music. But, for the most part, he was just taking on small, little gigs with a small group of guys.

CBC: And he could make a living from it?

Tom: No. If he had, he would have had to have been on the road quite extensively, and would never see his family, like most professional musicians.

It’s a grueling life, I can imagine.

CBC: So what did he do? What was his day job?

Tom: Good question! He bounced around from one gig to another job, but primarily he was doing clerical type work, I believe. He did work with the FBI early on, but then he left that job and went into the private sector. I mean, it’s Washington D.C., where so many governmental jobs are available and whatnot.

CBC: Was your mom working, did she work?

Tom: Oh, yes. My mom worked in the House of Representatives office building. She worked for congressmen primarily from the state of Texas — I don’t know why, but for some reason. Oddly enough, to this day, she lives in Texas — Dallas… [laughs] But that was a little bit more glamorous. There were a lot of interesting people, especially the fact that she worked for congressmen that were heading up the Air and Space Administration. So I got to meet the entire crew of the Apollo-Soyuz mission. I’ve met Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, from the Apollo 11 moon mission. I mean, I got autographs from these guys.

CBC: Wow! #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Dead Men Tell No Tales © Tom Grindberg.

Comic Book Creator: You’re from the beltway, Tom? Tom Grindberg: Yeah, I’m from inside the beltway. Chevy Chase, to be exact. It was a nice area, a very, very pretty area. On our street, Chevy Chase Lake Drive, there was huge woods that you couldn’t build on, so it was an idyllic location to live on. I called it my “Tarzan woods.” We had ropes to swing on, we had treehouses… you name it. Bike paths ran through there. There was a nice creek with triple waterfalls. It was just so cool, in the midst of all those homes back then. Chevy Chase was really quite a nice area. Very, very fun.

CBC: So you had a gang of kids that you hung out with?

Tom: Not a big gang. It was a close-knit little group of guys, but a few of them were into comics. One of my friends actually, I migrated to Pittsburgh where he was located, and I hung out up there for about three years. But, for the most part, it was like, New Wavers, punk rockers, and people like that… [laughs] mostly into music, but a few were into the arts. I was a loner type. I stuck to myself. I did my art. That was just one of those things. My teachers couldn’t really reach me. They didn’t know what to do with me, so to speak. They just said, “You know, when this guy gets out of school, put him in an art school. Just get him out of school. Literally. Just take him. Go. He’s too beyond what we’re even doing here.” It would have been nice, but I never did receive formal art training. I learned all just from looking at books and whatnot, picking up on what was available.

CBC: Do you have siblings?

Tom: One brother passed away about two years ago, though. I had two brothers and one sister.

CBC: Where are you in the line-up?

Tom: I’m in the middle. I didn’t get spoiled and I didn’t get neglected… [laughs] I was not forgotten, mind you, I just, I was the middle kid. I think it’s the same way with a lot of middle kids who grow up in the center like that.

ˆTarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Tom: When the first photographs of the Mars mission came off the wire, she brought them home and I thought, “Holy crap, this is so cool!”

The first ever images of Mars like that.

CBC: She was connected to NASA? Tom: Well, when you head up the committees for money to give to NASA, that’s what this one congressman was. And prior, before that, she worked for another congressman who was there when the Kennedy shooting happened, and, oh, God, all kinds of craziness back then. My mom was always in government. She was at the Pentagon, and from the Pentagon to the House office buildings, and, after that, she went into the private sector. Now she’s fully retired, obviously, and pushing 90.

CBC: So you were pretty much a middle-class, latchkey kid?

Tom: Yeah, middle-class, but lived in the most affluent area of Chevy Chase you could ever imagine. The rich kids that lived up the street, they’d literally had a butler answering the front door. [British accent] “Sabrina is upstairs.” [laughs] It was crazy. But we lived a pretty privileged lifestyle.

CBC: Was being middle-class and living in an affluent neighborhood an issue? We know class can be problematic sometimes.

Tom: No. I had a few friends who had parents who were quite affluent, but it didn’t really affect my relationship either way, so it never really bothered me whatsoever. But it’s funny, because when I went up to DC’s offices I met Julie Schwartz, and when I said Chevy Chase, he COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

knew the exact zip code. Apparently, Julie Schwarz knew plenty about Washington, DC, I guess. But that was funny. People that know about Chevy Chase go, “Oh, blueblood. Okay.” [laughs] But I’ll tell you, Chevy Chase is nothing compared to what Potomac was. Potomac was another area that was just incredibly affluent, even more upscale than where I lived. But I know that my mom, she wanted us to live in a nice, affluent, nice area with good schools. It never really affected me. I had a lot of middle-class friends. They lived in Bethesda, for example. I lived in a gated community, so we had a guard. [laughs] CBC: Did you go to public school?

Tom: Yes, I went to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, BCC. CBC: Were you sociable, athletic? Did you date?

Tom: Nah. I was a good runner in junior high and, by high school, I was just full-blown into into art, totally… and the music scene, of course. New Wave was coming in, and I was listening to more and more progressive music and less of commercial music. I never got into bands like Rush, you know? I was more into more progressive kind of stuff.

CBC: Did you have a best friend?

Tom: Yes, actually, I had a really good friend.

He actually has a bookshop in Pittsburgh, too: Bill Boichel.

CBC: Cool. So was he into fantasy stuff, comics?

Tom: Oh, hell yeah! Big time. In fact, he was going to shows like in Silver Spring and Wheaton, Maryland. There was always a show going on there. In fact, he was with me when I met Neal Adams. That 77

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Tom: I mean… $20, Jon! But, back then, you have to understand, $20 would buy a whole week’s worth of groceries, probably…

CBC: Did you read the Robert E. Howard books?

Tom: Yes, actually, I did. Once I discovered the Conan work, and then, of course, all of Roy [Thomas]’s writing and talking about Robert E. Howard, then I started picking up some of the books, the ones that had Frazetta covers on them. The whole genre of sword-&-sorcery was just blossoming back in the ’70s. It was crazy. Frazetta just took off huge. There was his Molly Hatchet album cover, plus Nazareth… and he was just making a splash all over the place with fantasy art. For that matter, it was the same with Boris, too. I loved Boris’s stuff. And there was also Tarzan.

I loved anything that was kind of terrestrial, you know?

Organic. Those type of things I gravitated more toward, less on drawing super-hero stuff, but I ended up drawing super-heroes, regardless, as that was the only thing that I could get at the time. Still, hey, look: I lucked out. I definitely lucked out. I got to play with everybody’s characters up at Marvel and DC Comics.

CBC: Did you make a conscious decision that you wanted to be a comic book artist or illustrator at a certain age?

Tom: Yeah, at about 14, I made up my mind I wanted to be a comic book artist, quite literally.

CBC: So you were in middle school at the time?

Tom: Right. I was copying Sal Buscema’s work, and sometime another artist’s splash page here or there, if it was something I really dug, and just got more and more involved with drawing. I just gravitated towards it and I said, “I want to do this… in the worst way possible.”

CBC: You were going to graduate high school in the late ’70s. Was there any thought to going to the Joe Kubert school, which had opened in ’76? It really wouldn’t have been that far for you to travel.

Tom: I saw that little coupon in the comics back then, which advertised Joe Kubert’s School of Art. But I couldn’t afford it, and my parents couldn’t afford it either, so I never went. I actually know a friend of mine who actually took John Buscema’s classes. But those were the only two places that were teaching comic art. And, if I went to college and majored in art, I guess I would never have entered the comics industry, either. I would have been doing still-lifes or whatever… maybe graphic design or something.

CBC: How were your grades in high school?

Tom: They were horrible.

CBC: Just no interest in school? What did you do?

Tom: What did I do? I showed up. I showed up and took six periods of art. [laughs] Literally. My studies weren’t the

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Conan the Barbarian TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc. Red Sonja TM & Red Sonja, LLC. Ace Reporter Dan Wright TM & © Tom Grindberg.

Above: Citing John Buscema’s work on the Marvel comic book version of Conan the Barbarian as a “big, big influence,” young Grindberg would soon discover the artistry of Frank Frazetta, whose work he was first exposed to through an ad in Savage Sword of Conan.

Below: Nothing if not ambitious, Tom Grindberg produced this pitch piece for Ace Reporter Dan Wright in 1983. It is notable for the obvious influence of the work of Neal Adams, for whose studio — Continuity — Grindberg would soon be working.

was cool. That was back when John Byrne had maybe four people at his table!

Neal had just come out with Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, and there must have been 150 people waiting in line to get that thing signed by him. I did get a chance, at the very end of the show, just before he was leaving, to have him flip through my portfolio. And… let’s put it this way: he had some rather encouraging words.

So it was nice.

CBC: So when did comic book material, fantasy stuff, when did those things come into play for you?

Tom: I wasn’t into super-heroes until maybe when I was 12 or 13. I was mostly into funny animal books, to be honest with you. And I really didn’t give comic books that much consideration. I mean, I liked to draw, but I gave it up for a few years, and then I discovered super-hero books like Spider-Man, Hulk, and whatnot… Batman… Swamp Thing by Bernie Wrightson, for example. All these people working in the field were great. I mean, it was just cool-looking stuff, and that’s what molded me and started directing me more towards fantasy artwork.

Then, of course, there was Conan, a big, big influence.

I loved Conan, particularly John Buscema’s work. I saw Boris’s covers, and I’m like, “Wow! This is great stuff.” Then I saw an ad in Savage Sword of Conan for Frazetta prints and, at that point, I went, “Why isn’t Marvel getting this guy to do the covers?” [laughter] But, yeah, I loved Conan a lot.

In fact, I collected comic books quite a bit much to the dismay of my parents, who couldn’t believe some of the prices that I was paying for the earliest issues (which, back then, were completely cheap compared to today). I think I spent 20 bucks on Conan the Barbarian #1.

CBC: Whoa!

New Talent Showcase TM & © DC Comics. Constructive Anatomy © the respective copyright holder.

greatest, I’ll tell you that. They were not the best.

CBC: But you were accomplished in art class?

Tom: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Actually, I got a C in art once, which I was pissed off about. I guess the teacher didn’t dig me or something like that.

CBC: Otherwise, do you remember your art teachers?

Tom: The ones from high school? Yeah. He’s passed on, but Mr. Motovich was a hands-off guy. If he gave me an assignment, I’d do the assignment in one period. Where everybody else would take the better part of two weeks to do it. Like I said, there really wasn’t a lot of instruction given to me.

The one good thing I pored over was Bridgman’s books on anatomy. I loved that stuff, absolutely adored that stuff.

Bridgman was a very powerful influence. To this day, you see his influence on me. It’s good construction — it was blocky, it was dynamic. I always thought there was two schools: I saw the Burne Hogarth book of anatomy and I realize, yeah, technically, he’s got all the muscles and where they should go, but it just looked too wobbly, too rubbery, and I liked instruction with a little bit more of a solid-structure. That’s why my art teacher said, “Get him out. Put him in an art school. I can’t deal with it.” It was not that I was off the walls with him. He just couldn’t handle me. He didn’t know what to do with me.

CBC: Where did you encounter Bridgman?

Tom: It was in our art class in high school.

CBC: You had one there?

Tom: Right. I took the damned thing home. Nobody else cared to learn anatomy. They just didn’t dig it.

CBC: How many of your generation, of your professional peers, discovered him like you did? Are you able to talk to other people about Bridgman’s influence among your generation?

Tom: Insofar as Bridgman with other people, I don’t know.

I never really brought it up. I never really asked, “Hi, what did you study?” I just never really talk about it.

CBC: So your influences were not necessarily something you would return to over and over again when you talked shop? He was an influence at the beginning and then you launched off on your own?

Tom: Oh, I still have his books.

CBC: You must talk shop every now and then, right?

Tom: Well, yeah, but I don’t know, I never really get down to the nitty-gritty of what my absolute influences were from the very git-go.

CBC: Gil Kane, for instance, could go on and on — and on and on! — about Bridgman.

Tom: Oh, I imagine so. Well, I love Gil Kane’s work, too. For that matter, I noticed when I was looking at Bridgman’s book, and I was looking at Gil Kane’s stuff, and I thought, “Wait a tick! This looks just like Bridgman.”

So, I gravitated to guys like that. Then, when I discovered Prince Valiant and I’m looking at guys like John Buscema, I realize, “Oh, he’s a huge Foster fan.

Okay.” So I can make this correlation about the people influencing the artists I admired, primarily. But that was the guys who were “professionals’ professionals,” had been in the business for already probably 25 or 30 years, wanting to find out who they were influenced by. Which led me to guys like Hal Foster and, before that, Howard Pyle. So, yes, I can shop talk with guys. We talk about Pyle, for example, and N.C. Wyeth’s lighting… that type of shop talk… but, for the most part, it’s not like I have a book sitting out where I have to resort to. I will get a photograph if I hit a stumbling block in drawing something or other.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

CBC: We’re basically the same age, and I recognize through talking to generation after generation of comic book artists that really like in mid-’70s, the influences had become more and more incestuous. That is, incoming artists were just looking at other comic book artists.

Tom: Right.

CBC: When the classic crew had come of age, like Kirby, Kane, Buscema, and Alex Toth, there were three names constantly being referred to as the main influences: Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, and Milton Caniff (by way of Noel Sickles). That’s the wellspring where everyone in the adventure/super-hero comics field went back to. In your generation, by my estimation, the influences were Kirby, Neal Adams, Gil Kane, and John Buscema… maybe Toth…

It seemed, by the time you came of age, the well-spring was being ignored. But I’ve read some of your interviews, and you wax on about Howard Pyle. Howard Pyle had not been alive for quite some time and his book illustration was many years prior. His heyday was right in the early part of the century.

Above: Page from Grindberg’s first published story, from New Talent Showcase #7 [July 1984].

Below: The anatomy books of legendary art instructor George Bridgman were of seminal importance to Grindberg.

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Above: Tom Grindberg joined Continuity Studios as Neal Adams’ outfit was launching their Continuity Comics line, with characters that included Megalith, seen here in a sketch by its creator. Below: Adams-influenced piece by young artist Thomas Christian Grindberg.

vention?

Tom: Hmm… my first was probably in Silver Spring, at a Howard Johnson’s.

CBC: Did you go to Creation cons? Did you go to the bigger ones?

Tom: No, I couldn’t get up there to the Phil Seuling conventions, which I would have loved, loved, loved to attend. I never went to any big, big shows. Of course, San Diego was always out of the question. I could never get out that far.

And still I haven’t been to San Diego Comic-Con. Still haven’t, after all these years of being in the business. But that’s okay. We’ve got New York Comic Con in my backyard.

Primarily I went to just little, tiny shows. We had Geppi’s Comics, we had Mark Feldman, who had a dingy little comic book shop in Silver Spring, on Sligo Avenue.

Geppi’s World was just up the block. Then there was the Barbarian Bookstore, in Wheaton, Maryland. That was run

by Carl, the most funniest guy. So laid back. The Barbarian Bookstore was the best. And I would ride my bike up and down East-West Highway to get to Silver Spring, and then in the opposite direction, on Connecticut Avenue to get to Wheaton. Man, those places were great. The smell of old comic books when I used to walk in, ah, the aroma, it was just intoxicating. It was comics, man. It was great! And they had everything. All the paperback novels with Frazetta covers, Jeff Jones covers, Roy Krenkel covers… All these guys. And it felt like home. [laughs] CBC: Did you have a job?

Tom: On and off. I worked summertime doing maintenance work to support my comic book fix. I also had newspaper routes — you know, just kids’ stuff. I had a job working as a cashier like at our pharmacy, where they had the comics that would come in every Wednesday, I think it was. That was like the job to get. (Today, some kid would just go, “Pfft, who cares?”) I was bagging groceries at the supermarket and occasionally I’d get a tip for taking the bags out to the lady’s car or something like that. [laughs] I was a dishwasher once…

CBC: Were you sketching? Was that what you were primarily doing, or were you making homemade comics to start?

Tom: I was doing a little bit of comic book stuff, but actually I was trying to build up sample work. Mediascene, the magazine that Steranko used to put out: I loved that magazine. Mediascene was probably the coolest thing ever. It was tabloid-sized, and then there was this one issue where Steranko asks, “So you want to break into comics?”

Oh, my god. I think he burst my bubble on a lot of stuff, man.

He just said, “Quit trying to do fancy camera angle stuff. It’s too confusing… it’s this… it’s that.” All these kind of cool shots that you couldn’t really make much sense of, he made sense of. He was able to get away with a lot of stuff. He knows it, but he also had a good foundation. Neal didn’t talk too much about it, but Steranko did. I revered Jim Steranko quite highly. In fact, I told him face-to-face when I met up with him at Gray Morrow’s house, out in Pennsylvania, what a tremendous influence that one particular issue was, and he goes, “You know, I had a lot of people, even professionals, that were saying, ‘Wow, thank you for putting it out.’”

So, when young artists are developing, they’re just doing the stupid pin-ups like everybody normally does, and then they bring that stuff to a convention and have a professional look through their portfolio, and they go, “What do you think? You think I got a career in comics?” With pin-ups? No, no! Absolutely no. The people in the industry want to see storytelling. They want to see panel-to-panel continuity. They want to see how fast you can do this, too, because a lot of these gigs, they give you two weeks and that’s it, dude. You’ve got 22 pages to cram out in 14 days, you know? So I was gearing my mind more and more and more towards trying to be somewhat professional and less on creating fanboyish kind of pictures. So I was doing more finished work and just trying to develop a craft and, by the #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Megalith TM & © Continuity Comics/Neal Adams. Batman TM & © DC Comics.

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Tom: The grandfather of illustration, right there.

CBC: Well, there you go. You use the word “illustration,” not from comics, not from comic strips. So where did that come from?

How did you become exposed to this material?

Tom: Well, we had a lot of very, very nice art books at home. Time-Life put out these volumes of these great artists, pumping out a new volume once every month, I guess, or something like that. Today you can find them in second hand bookstores. And actually I did manage to frequent a really great bookstore in New Jersey. I think it was called the Bookworm, which had those books which I would just pore over them. I learned about Vermeer, for example, then about Van Gogh, then Velazquez… all these different artists… Michelangelo… and on and on. Classic stuff. Today I highly revere those artists.

But when I was a kid, yeah, the only stuff that we had was Neal Adams, whenever he would occasionally do a comic book. It was far and few between, mostly cover work. But John Buscema was a huge influence on me, my god.

Because I had read every darned Conan the Barbarian comic book! I stopped collecting Conan probably around #200 or #230. The key guys there always talked about Foster, Caniff, and Alex Raymond… I discovered at that time that Al Williamson was a huge Alex Raymond fan and that Frazetta was a huge Hal Foster fan. It was like connecting the dots and going back in time and going straight to the original stuff.

Now, unfortunately, I had to adhere to a more contemporary look, and that constituted three artists: Neal Adams, Neal Adams, and Neal Adams. Bill Sienkiewicz had just come out with Moon Knight, and I’m looking at it going, “Gee, I could do that.” Or what John Byrne was doing. “I can do that.” It’s a horrible thing to say, but they were watered-down versions of whom they were looking up toward.

But my main interest always has been illustration, usually the early 1950s illustration work, which is just unbelievably fine work to me. When you pull out these magazines like Look and they’re all illustrated inside, the stories that accompanied them, gorgeous, perfect-looking women, along with gorgeous, perfect-looking guys, all done with incredible draftsmanship. Basically, these were work done by illustrators you aspire to become, like Albert Dorne.

John Buscema was a big Albert Dorne fan and you can see it in the characterizations that John did. Dorne was very expressive. Al Parker was another incredibly gifted artist.

And these guys, they knew how to tell a story in a single picture. They weren’t doing comic books. They were just doing one simple illustration that summed it all up. Albert Dorne did a 1950s Chevrolet ad that was just absolutely gorgeous stuff.

CBC: For instance, how did you find out that Al Williamson had an Alex Raymond fetish (or however you want to characterize it)? Were you reading The Comics Journal?

Tom: Oh, certainly. Yeah, I loved The Comics Journal! That was great. That magazine was fandom’s best gift. I was reading it practically from the very beginning, when it first came out, I think. How long ago was that?

CBC: 1976. They started as The Nostalgia Journal.

Tom: Right. I was there for that.

CBC: Did you go to conventions at all early on?

Tom: Oh, hell, yeah. Lots of them.

CBC: What was your first comic con-

Armor and Silver Streak TM & Continuity Comics/Neal Adams.

time I was 19, I thought I was ready to go up to Marvel and DC’s office and try to get work. And it was my samples that got me my first gig with Marvel.

CBC: So what was in your portfolio?

Tom: Oh, I had a three-page Spider-Man sequence. I think I did a horror story for another one, and then something more in the barbarian realm, more than likely. The funny thing was, I didn’t have an appointment with them, but I did have an appointment on the same day, across town, at DC Comics. I’d gotten on the phone and called Marvel and tried to make an appointment, but they just said, “Just stop by.”

CBC: So you just bought a bus ticket and just went up there?

Tom: No, I flew up there. Took an airplane.

CBC: You had saved the money to do that?

Tom: Yeah, well, I was working in another office and I was pulling in actually some pretty good money, a job that really had nothing to do with art or anything like that, but I’d bump into a number of contacts. [Editorial cartoonist] Pat Oliphant was leaving The Washington Post or there was some political cartoonist like that who was leaving, and I went in to show them my samples. I floored the advertising department. They said, “Holy crap!” [laughs] And they asked me, “What art school did you go to?” I said, “I didn’t go to any art school. I’m self-taught.” They were like, “Oh, come on!” [laughs] CBC: Did you have John Buscema’s How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way? Tom: Oh, I had that book. I loved that book. I saw a copy of it today.

CBC: Did it have any influence on you?

Tom: Oh, it certainly did. I think that came out about the same time as Bring On the Bad Guys which Stan Lee put out. There weren’t many graphic novels back then, but I saw the Buscema book and I thought, “Why not?”

Who else was putting out a how-to-draw-comics book?

Absolutely nobody. I think that book is still is an important tool for any new artist… or old artist, for that matter. I think it’s a thoroughly enjoyable book to look at, and there is a lot of insight in it, as well, especially when he goes about the dynamism versus something that’s mundane. I was always looking at that one going, “Definitely.” You know, you can tip the camera angle a little bit and create a little bit of tension in a panel where it otherwise could just be something straight, stiff, and flat. But, certainly, I highly recommend that book, and it’s still in print today. The only education I really got was looking at stuff like that, you know?

CBC: So you just showed up at The Washington Post?

Tom: Well, I had an interview with them. I did have an appointment, and a friend of mind that was working in the same office, and she had known a fellow that was an art director up there in the advertising department, and I thought, “Well, maybe I can do something with him. Maybe I can be a paste-up artist or something.” Because that was back before computers, mind you. But they didn’t have anything for me, unfortunately, but they were very, very impressed.

CBC: So what was in your portfolio?

Tom: Oh, I had paintings, I had black-&-white illustrations, I brought comic stuff. You know, an assortment of things since, quite honestly I didn’t know what to expect when I got there.

CBC: And where did that lead?

Tom: Well, it didn’t go anywhere. I did not get a gig from them. Went back, of course, to concentrating my efforts on putting together a decent portfolio to finally get to show these people up at Marvel or DC Comics.

CBC: I saw a credit for the Associated Press Award Winner in Graphic Journalism…?

Tom: Oh, that’s much, much later. Much later. That happened, like, maybe 15 years ago.

CBC: Oh, we’ll get to that when we get to that, then. I see that you broke in about 1981, right?

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

Tom: Correct. Yeah.

CBC: All the databases I’ve looked at have you down as your first work being printed in the first half of 1984.

Tom: Right. That’s because nothing previously got published. Everything was all inventory assignments I got from Marvel. I got about three jobs, with two being Iron Man stories and one was a Ghost Rider story. And I completely flopped. I mean, just flopped. Now, mind you, beforehand [Marvel editor-in-chief Jim] Shooter saw my work and he goes, “Where the blank F have you been hiding?” And I thought, “Well, gee, I guess you like my work?” And he goes, “Yes, it’s great! Here, take some scripts. Go over here, you need paper? We’ve got paper. You’re gonna need vouchers. Get vouchers”… “You like meat?” [laughter] Shooter said, “Freelance! That’s what you want to be. Freelance!” And, to me, it was so spontaneous and happened so quick and, before you know it, I’m out the door going, “Did that just really happen? Did I just get a gig from Marvel? And they’re going to pay me a hundred bucks a page because that’s the lowest rate they have?” I mean, honestly, you know? [chuckles] I went to DC and I met up with Ernie Cólon, and Ernie couldn’t give me anything at the time, but he really thought I had a lot of potential. Ernie said, “You’d probably be really good on something like Batman.”

I’m thinking, “Oh, that’d be great! Batman!” But they just didn’t have anything, so I went back to Marvel. Actually,

Above: Page from Armor sporting Tom Grindberg pencils with Neal Adams and Rudy Nebres inks. Below: Armor #1 [Sept.

1985], for which Grindberg contributed interior pencils.

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This page: One notable project Tom Grindberg worked on at DC in the ’90s was Batman: Bride of the Demon, a graphic novel written by Mike W. Barr (and colored by Tom’s first wife, Eva). The artist added a graphite sketch of Batman in the bottom margin. Grindberg says he stretched the story from “maybe like 50 pages and I think I extended it close to 90 pages.”

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Batman: Bride of the Demon TM & © DC Comics.

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Marvel wanted me to leave my portfolio there with them, and I said I couldn’t, I had another appointment somewhere else. Ha-ha, I didn’t want to tell them where I was going.

And then came back to Marvel, met up with Jim Shooter and he hired me, right then and there. And after that I came back home higher than the airplane. [laughs] That was a pretty incredible day, I’ll tell you that, absolutely incredible.

CBC: So that led to inventory jobs. How many of them?

Tom: I got about three inventory jobs from Marvel. And then, there were so many people up there giving me conflicting instructions. “No, draw it this way.” “No, do it that way.” “No, do it this way.” And I’m like, “Ugh. Why can’t I just do it my way?” But it just wasn’t, I wasn’t ready for it.

But I was very grateful that they gave me the opportunity right off the bat. And it made me feel really good. So after Shooter excused me from Marvel Comics, and for a number of years I didn’t work for them, and Jim did not really want me back up there. Which is fine. I mean, just about that time I was starting to get some work with DC, and I had also sent sample work to Neal Adams’ studio at Continuity, and Neal, after a couple weeks, Kris Adams calls me up and she goes, “Can you make it up to New York City? We would like to talk to you.” I’m like, “Wow, okay.” “We have a whole new comic book line coming out. Would you be interested to do something like that?” I said, “Of course, yeah.” Neal was one of my big idols, you know? Why not? I loved it. So

that’s where the gaps in time occurred between 1981–84, because the inventory jobs never saw the light of day. They just sat in a drawer and were never inked, never lettered, or nothing. So the work was just a write-off.

CBC: So then you went back home and… were you still living at home at the time or did you have your own place?

Tom: Not yet. I couldn’t afford any place yet. When I started getting regular work with DC, and then working with Neal Adams, of course, then I said, “I gotta get outta here.

I gotta move.” So I landed up in Pittsburgh for about three years up there. And I was gone from the house, from the roost, at that point.

CBC: Now, when you first met Neal, Neal gave you some advice. How would you characterize the advice?

Tom: Well, hmm…

CBC: You seem to be diplomatic when it comes to talking about Neal.

Tom: Well, Neal’s a tough cookie, I will admit, and maybe this is the footnote before I get into the discussion about him, but I would attest to a lot of people that have gotten into this business to go work for Neal for a week or two weeks, because he will set you straight. He really will.

And he used to love setting me straight quite a few times. [laughs] And stylistically, you know, I think it was his way or basically there’s the door, hit the highway. And I didn’t have any other work coming from anybody else at that point, so I adhered to what he wanted. And I think when I was working on this one title, Armor and the Silver Streak. I guess at about #3 or #4, I exploded. He came in and had about three pages of Toyboy that he had penciled the night before, and slapped them down on the table. [Neal’s then-wife and colorist] Cory’s sitting next to me. And he goes, “Here, look at what I did last night.” And I’m looking at Neal going, “Well, Neal, you’ve got 25, 30 years more experience than I do.

Give me a little time, you know?” That’s Neal. So that’s just the way the guy is. I think he saw a lot of potential in me, obviously, and he knew that I could do this stuff, and that’s the only reason why I think he would even give a damn and try to do something like that, to instill in somebody… It’s kind of like tough love, you know what I mean?

CBC: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s one way to put it. Generous as Neal is, he can still be a ball-buster.

Tom: Oh, hell, yeah. There used to be a kid who would come up there habitually, every week, and I was like, “Oh, God, this poor kid. He’s goofy as all get-out.” And Neal would sit there and go through his stuff. I mean, that was just the generosity of the guy. I mean, he didn’t have to put up with that. He could just put a picture of this kid that used to come up and pester him every week on the door down the front, and the doorman wouldn’t let him in, you know? [laughter] But, no… Aside from Neal being a very tough cookie and being a hard person to impress, I did some really fine work with him. We did advertising work, too, a lot of Pepsi-type ads, juice ads, people drinking sodas, things like that. And then the comics…

CBC: Can you think of the main things that he taught you?

Tom: Draftsmanship, for one thing. We had Win Mortimer and Jack Sparling up at Continuity. Win would have this scribbly little fuzzy working around the figure kind of stuff, and Win was a find draftsman, he had everything anatomically right there. It just wasn’t Neal’s stuff. So when Neal rendered over it for advertising, it just ended up looking like Neal’s stuff. So good draftsmanship is one thing I really admired the most about Neal, and, of course, his dynamism.

He’s the total package. You look at his Batman, you look at his Green Lantern… you put that side-by-side with another comic book and it was just like day and night — completely, absolutely.

CBC: Did you have a Neal Adams-esque style going into Continuity?

Tom: Well, I certainly placated to what the industry was wanting at that time. I mean, when you see Bill Sienkiewicz, you saw Marshall Rogers, guys who actually worked with

Daredevil, The Kingpin TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Neal… Alan Weiss, Larry Hama… But the only one I felt that had his own unique look was Michael Golden, when he was doing The Micronauts. I think Frank Miller was almost finishing up Daredevil at that point, or still working on it. He hadn’t done Dark Knight yet and he also came from Continuity. So it was kind of a clearinghouse for guys who had worked with Neal, and they would get what they could out of Neal and go out and develop their own stuff.

Neal, on the other hand, was too much of a major influence, because basically I just felt like, “Well, if I don’t just draw it the way he wants it and it comes out looking like his style, then so be it.” And then I had Rudy Nebres inking over me, and Rudy was excellent. I started looking more and more at his ink style. I loved the way he captured line-work.

But, by that point, the industry was down on Rudy a little bit. They weren’t really hiring him as much — or at least I didn’t think they were. That whole Filipino crowd of artists, Alfredo Alcala, Rudy, even Niño, guys like that… incredibly talented, incredibly gifted, the inky-syrupy line type work.

Leyendecker… you name it, all that kind of influence stuff that they really dug. But Neal, it was just the fashion of the day. I didn’t have any other samples but Neal’s stuff when I came back to Marvel and I got hired right on the spot for Marvel again. Which, when Jim Shooter found out about that, uh-oh… the blank hit the fan.

CBC: When he found out about what…?

Tom: He didn’t want me back at Marvel.

CBC: What was Jim’s problem?

Tom: He didn’t like me. I think my last conversation with Jim was, “What do you want me to draw?” [loud voice] “Draw it like this!” And he was getting very, very, just got completely incensed. I said, “Well, I’m not going to draw it like Sal Buscema. I’m sorry. I’m not gonna draw it like Sal.” I mean, it was just stupid and, when I came back to Marvel, he wasn’t too thrilled with it. In fact, Bob Harras, who was assistant to Ralph Macchio, and they were just getting, I think, X-Factor or books like that to work on. I had Ralph, I had Bob Harras, Larry Hama I think was there, and Michael Higgins… they were all, “No, no, no! We want Grindberg here.” And they actually went to bat for me, actually went up to the suits, and said, “Look, this guy is trying to kick this guy out, and he’s damn good.” And so they agreed with the editors. The editors really had my back, which was pretty cool. And, from that point forward, it wasn’t but like maybe a year afterwards that Jim was let go. They said, “Enough.

Bye. Go.” CBC: So was Jim frustrated with you because you stood your ground, do you think?

Tom: I guess. I mean, quite honestly, when I was doing those inventory jobs, I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground. And I was getting eight different conflicting stories from eight different editors up there — “Do it this way, do it that way” — so I had no clue. Fortunately I got jobs, but, my god, it soured horribly because of that.

CBC: Because you were getting conflicting instructions and became frustrated?

Tom: Well, I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground, I would think. I drew, but I was, didn’t know which end to turn up, which way to go with this.

CBC: Did you think you were arrogant?

Tom: Me? Probably a little bit, but the fact is that I would have done anything to maintain that position, to keep work flowing… and yet, when he dismissed me, and via a letter that I got, I flew back up to Marvel (or did I take the train?

Whatever.). I literally went straight to Marvel’s offices and confronted Jim. “What seems to be the problem? Can you please explain to me why?” I asked. “Well, you don’t listen,” he said. “You don’t do this, you don’t do that.” And I said, “I’m listening to eight different people here! What do you want from me? I’m trying to do my best.” So, if I came off sounding arrogant, it was certainly with due cause. And he had my best interests at heart. It’s just that, for some reason I wasn’t able to adapt exactly as he wanted. Maybe he felt COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

that you don’t need coddling. You want to work in the big boy club, then act like one, or something like that, to that effect. I said, “Well, I wish I could, if I could get a clear-cut understanding of what you guys really want.” So I bent ass over backwards, I think, for these guys in so many different ways, and it tarnished my reputation a little bit by standing up for myself, or at least just wanting to find out what the problem is so I can rectify it.

CBC: Did you hope to get that one book that you could be identified with in the ’80s?

Tom: Yeah, I would have loved to have drawn Conan the Barbarian. I would have loved to have drawn a lot more Batman. I did get one book, finally, and that was Silver Surfer. That was a lot of fun to draw. Spider-Man would have been an incredibly fun book to work on. I didn’t get too much Spider-Man work to speak of. No, they put me on titles that were not selling, not the hot sellers. I got one shot at an X-book. It was an X-Factor or something, an annual. And after that I never saw another X-Men book ever. Nothing. But lesser titles that what I worked on…? I worked on Daredevil, but Daredevil sales were down, and they felt, “We can experiment, or we can get other artists to work on it. We’re not going to get Frank Miller. We’re not

This page: Tom Grindberg worked on Marvel’s Daredevil title for a spell in the ’90s, as evidenced by this page (above) from DD #337 [Feb. 1995]. Below is Grindberg’s cover for What If…? #73 [May ’95].

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Above: Spectacular doublepage spread from Silver Surfer #102 [Mar. 1995] sporting “Devourer of Worlds” Galactus and his one-time cosmic herald with pencils by Tom Grindberg and inks by Bill Anderson. The title was a favorite assignment for Grindberg during the ’90s.

The artist shared, “That was great. I loved that.” Below: The Sentinel of the Spaceways in a Grindberg commission piece.

Did you try?

Tom: Never did try, really. I mean, I could co-plot something with somebody and give them ideas, perhaps, but for the most part… with Roy Thomas, for example, he’s very cool about that. He asks, “Well, what do you like?” I said, “Well, a lot of stuff. Ancient history.” He says, “Ah!” Because I knew that Roy, being a history major and loves that kind of material. When we worked together on Tarzan, that worked great, because we had the Romans and lost cities, all this cool-looking architecture, and everything like that from that period. That was a fun story. So I’ve had very little input as far as writing or anything to that nature.

I did co-plot one Conan story, but it never reached fruition because Marvel had lost their license by that point, and I never got to do it, unfortunately. Funny enough, when Roy and I were working on Tarzan together, Dark Horse offered both of us a crack at doing a Conan series. But, of course, that fell through again. So — go figure — I just never could seem to really get a Conan assignment with Roy. But we’ll see what happens. I don’t know. But as far as plotting and co-plotting, I got a script from whoever it was and drew the thing up.

CBC: So you lived the freelance life? You worked at home…?

Tom: Totally, yup.

CBC: You never worked in the studio besides Continuity?

Tom: Continuity was about the only place. That was it.

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going to get David Mazzucchelli or somebody like that.” So I worked on pretty much every character at both companies.

Every character, you name it, I’ve probably drawn it. Teen Titans, Batman, Green Lantern, Aquaman. Justice League…

And, at Marvel, as well. I never did the Fantastic Four, but I did draw them in oddball books at Marvel. Silver Surfer was a big push. That was great. I loved that. And it was a single character. I didn’t really like team books because it was just too many characters to draw. Just too much.

CBC: As far as getting published, was it your work in New Talent Showcase?

Tom: Right. New Talent Showcase was edited by Sal Amendola and then Karen Berger. This was before Karen started all her Vertigo line, when she had her humble beginnings like everybody else, I guess. So she was my editor for that.

CBC: Was it a series? Because you were in multiple issues, right?

Tom: The book was a tryout title for a bunch of new guys like myself who were trying to break into DC Comics. By that point I was already working with Neal Adams, so when that material finally came out, I was already fully working with Neal on his books. So it was just a means and a way to get published, primarily, which, happily, of course, I did. That was it. Just little, simple, six-to-eight-page stories.

CBC: So they were one-shot stories?

Tom: Right, all one-shots.

CBC: Did you have aspirations to be a writer at all, ever?

Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, Inc.

lived close enough, in New Jersey, I’d go into the city about once a month just to pop my head in and say hi and occasionally pick up an assignment.

CBC: Did you become pals with anybody in the offices?

Tom: Not really, no. I mean, these are editors and they like to keep their social life private. Everything was purely business. Sometimes we’d go out to lunch together, have a few yuks about whatever, but nothing more beyond that, actually. We never had any outside social interaction with anybody in the comic book industry, to be truthful.

CBC: You’ve mentioned going over to Gray Morrow’s house…?

Tom: That was later on, actually, towards around the late ’90s. I hooked up with a couple of friends who used to go to this Ramapo convention up in New York, and there I met pretty much anybody that was left from E.C. Comics. Marie Severin, Angelo Torres, Al Williamson were there… Through Al, I met Mark Schultz, for example. Mark was impressed with my work. He loved the stuff. Al Williamson was fairly impressed. Actually, he said he wanted to ink me. Then he looked at my work again and goes, “Wait a minute. You’re a brush guy, aren’t you?” I’m like, “Yeah, pretty much.” He goes, “Aww, rats. I’m a pen guy.” [laughs] We never collaborated again, but he certainly had an interest in my work.

From there a friend of mine and I drove together to Gray Morrow’s, and we went up to go see Gray and his wife, Pocho, in their house out in the sticks of Pennsylvania. That’s where I met a lot of other people, as well. I reunited with Sal Amendola… Steranko came out there… Angelo Torres was up there. You name it. It was amazing. Ernie Cólon, he was there. It was just so cool to see all these people congregating at Gray’s place.

CBC: So it was a party that you went to?

Tom: Exactly. I went there a couple years in a row. I had a great time. Gray was a very cool guy. He really loved my stuff, as well. We actually exchanged artwork. He took one of my pieces. In exchange he gave me a Tarzan Sunday, with the color separations that he had done, hand-colored.

So I thought that was pretty cool.

CBC: Did you ever meet Frank Frazetta?

Tom: You know what? That’s one thing I really regret.

It’s just weird, because I’ve gone a number of times to…

Actually, I went to their first museum, in East Stroudsburg, but, of course, Frank wasn’t there. He was at the house. I met Ellie, of course, all the time. She was the front man, his protector, I guess. And I went out to his current museum, where the house is at, on the estate. There was a friend of mine up there and we hung out for a little while. I asked Ellie if Frank had a few moments. She said, “No. Frank’s sleepy now.” She just felt that I think Frank just wasn’t up to meeting anybody, or something like that. So there were just a lot of missed opportunities, I guess, but I never met the guy. Never once.

CBC: Do you remember when you first encountered his work?

Tom: I never even knew his stuff until I was reading COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

Savage Sword of Conan, and there was an ad in there for posters, as I said, with an address of Marshalls Creek, Pennsylvania. I saw more N.C. Wyeth, more Pyle, more of the great art and illustrators, more John Buscema, before I saw Frazetta. I saw more of anybody’s work than Frank’s. He just wasn’t readily available in my realm, as I wasn’t really buying paperback books. By the time I was actually buying his stuff, he had been done with doing his Creepy and Eerie covers, so there really wasn’t any place that I saw his work, to be honest.

CBC: So Frazetta starting to make an impact on you, right?

Tom: Oh, immediately. My god! Like I said before, Boris was doing the covers for Savage Sword and I saw these prints, and I’m going, “Wow! Why isn’t he doing the covers?

Let’s get this guy! He looks good! Who’s this Frazetta? He’s great!” [laughter] I’d already known Bernie Wrightson’s stuff, and he shined above all of them, every one of them, including Neal Adams.

CBC: Would you say that Adams and Frazetta are the biggest two influences on your work?

Tom: Well, certainly Neal is a huge influence on me, because of the realism, the dynamism, the emotions that he put in the work. Without a doubt. I don’t think most anybody in the business of my generation could not say or deny the fact that Neal had no impact whatsoever. If a Frank Miller, for example, said that, you would say [sarcastically], “Pfft, yeah, right, Frank! You worked with the guy, for god sakes!” Klaus Janson, who inked Frank Miller, was another guy who worked with Neal.

Above: It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Tom Grindberg began to transform from the Neal Adams- and John Buscema-inspired super-hero artist of the 1980s and ’90s into a more classically attuned adherent of the work of Howard Pyle and Frank Frazetta (among others), but whatever the precise turning point, the change is nothing less than breathtaking, as if the artist was totally reborn.

This cover detail by Grindberg appeared as cover for the Modiphius role playing game, Conan the Pirate [2018]. Below: This Grindberg colored sketch looks to be a preliminary piece for the above cover.

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Above: Tom Grindberg’s frontispiece for a recent edition of Savage Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Below: Promotional art by Grindberg in support of his Tarzan strip.

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Sketch © Tom Grindberg. Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

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I also loved Bernie’s stuff. And then the other guys, like Joe Kubert, Alex Toth, then all the other guys that came prior before those guys. So it was just a lot of different styles to kind of pick and choose from, even back then. The Filipino artists… my god! I used to adore Alfredo Alcala’s work over John Buscema. It was just gorgeous. Absolutely.

CBC: You got a chance to work with an outstanding Filipino artist, right? Rudy Nebres?

Tom: Yeah! Rudy inked me on Armor and Silver Streak for Neal’s line of books. Rudy loved it. By the fourth issue, Rudy was going, “Oh, Tom, you did too much in this one.

This is just crazy.” No, I thoroughly enjoyed Rudy’s inks over me. I think Neal did the faces, and then he gave that in turn to Rudy to do the rest.

Rudy’s an incredibly fine draftsman. Incredibly fine.

CBC: For a period of time you were considered, like Bill Sienkiewicz at the beginning, a Neal Adams clone, right?

Tom: Pretty much. Like I said, when I came back

to Marvel, that’s all I had — the Continuity work — sample-wise. And it was the best-looking stuff I had, too. And I was hired right on the spot by Larry Hama, I think. Right on the spot.

CBC: Were you just comfortable doing super-hero comics? Did you want to do adventure comics?

Tom: I do prefer adventure. I like the Tarzan work that I did, primarily, and I think that was one of the reasons why my work really, really shined its best. I read an article somewhere where somebody said, “Grindberg finally found exactly what he really enjoys drawing and Tarzan was tailor-made for the guy.”

So super-hero work… ehh… it’s good, it’s all right. I mean, I can do it. It’s just that I’ve drawn it so darned long that how many times can I have Superman beat the living tar out of Lex Luthor or something like that, you know? It just didn’t make much sense to me. Of course, today’s stuff is a lot more adult-oriented, and less comprised of fight scenes or whatever, a little bit more cerebral, I guess, so maybe I’d like super-hero books again. I would love a nice Batman story where it’s a little bit more low-key, not as all this inyour-face action stuff (which I can draw perfectly fine, mind you). But I just loved working on the Tarzan stuff immensely, and I like short stories, like what E.C. Comics did in their shock/suspense anthology titles that has something a little bit more meat on the bone, storywise.

CBC: Did you get much of a chance to do that kind of stuff?

Tom: Never. I did a Creeps six-page story, which was… ehh. It was all right. It was tongue-in-cheek horror, nothing really super-great. I certainly did a good job on it, though, but I think something that has a little bit more meaning and more impact to it is what I’m really looking at these days.

Super-hero stuff is fine and dandy, and all that, but I really would like to do something a little bit more like short stories, and beginning/middle/end type stuff, where you don’t have too much continuation, or contracted story arcs.

CBC: Both Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian launched any number of knockoff characters… armies of them, really. Do you have any kind of character inside you which you could exploit… You know, Simon Bisley did his character, Slaine, for instance….

Tom: Not really. I’d rather create one-off situations, short stories. Not so much characters that, say, develop into a series or that kind of thing. I think I would get bored after a point, and to me it’s just like I don’t know how some of these characters can just live on for so many years and how these writers just keep coming up with newer and newer stuff, having to come up with new material all the time for the same character, over and over again. It just seems it’s just so monotonous.

CBC: Isn’t that where the money is, though?

Tom: I guess. I mean, how many times can you illustrate Wolverine, no matter how popular he is? Actually, I watched Logan, and, actually, I liked it. I thought that would make a great, cool story for comics, you know? It certainly had its ultra-violence and whatnot in it, but I thought that was pretty cool, how they did something totally when he’s not in costume, so to speak, where he’s just a normal guy. That kind of thing. That would be like, I guess, if you took Bruce Wayne and got him out of that ridiculous-looking Batman costume, you know? That sort of thing, I guess. But, no, I just really never had much interest in developing characters like that. Maybe it hasn’t appealed to me yet, or I just don’t have that desire within me to do something like that.

CBC: Can you make an okay living?

Tom: Yes, I can. I’m working with Image Comics now on The Darkness and it’s steady work. It feels like I’m working back at Marvel again. But with Tarzan… that was ridiculous. I couldn’t make a dime working on that, and it’s just the way my contract was written. I just capitulated and said, “Look, I want to give this a shot. How can we do this?” We couldn’t do it with a syndicate, so I just said, “Marvel and

Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

DC are doing online comics and maybe we could give that a shot?” They didn’t even know what the hell that was. And, in order to keep Roy on, we paid Roy okay. But for myself, it was all contingent on how many subscribers we would get. Well, we didn’t get nearly those subscriptions, so I didn’t make a whole lot, to be honest. I did sell a lot of my originals, which supplemented my income.

CBC: Has Tarzan been collected in print?

Tom: No, actually. Dark Horse has the ERB license and it’s been sitting basically in their lap for the last three years now. But they’ve done nothing with it, absolutely nothing.

CBC: How many strips did you do?

Tom: I did about 60-plus strips for them and I think they hoped for something on the order of around 80. The story that Roy and I did ended after 60 episodes, so I told them, I says, “Look, after this, that’s it. If you want me to do anything additional, like a back-up feature or something like that, to fill up the rest of the book, you could also throw in Roy’s scripts, my layouts, do a little bio, have Roy do an introduction, and fill out the book. Just pad to get the page count up a little bit.” They thought that was okay, and then all of a sudden they were saying, “Well, let’s get Pablo Marcos’s work in with yours.” I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! No. With all due respect to Pablo, mind you, this is my book, not his, and I’m not about to share it. I’m sorry. I created this site and allowed guys like Pablo and Ron Marz and everybody else to come in and basically get their shot at writing or drawing some Edgar Rice Burroughs character. But I wasn’t about to have my stuff paired up with somebody else’s work.

If this is my stuff, it should be that way, I felt. But, like I said, I gave up asking them about maybe a year-and-a-half ago COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

what their plans are. So that work is just sitting somewhere.

CBC: The understanding is that you would get a piece of the action if it is indeed collected?

Tom: Oh, definitely. That was the whole point of me doing this.

CBC: How was ERB to deal with overall?

Tom: Really easy.

CBC: You approached them, right?

Tom: Oh, of course. I approached Jim Sullos up at Edgar Rice Burroughs, and I got this whole ball rolling. I had contacted Roy initially, and then I contacted Ron Marz, to give him fair credit. He had done about two or three samples of continuity published I had made sample work for, which I then in turn gave to Edgar Rice Burroughs to pursue us, and from there they went to the syndicates with it, and the syndicates didn’t want to do it, and they took about a year sitting around waiting to give me a decision on that, and they finally came up, “We’re not interested in continuity strips.” Oh, all right. They’re into one-panel gag strips. Okay. So, gee, thanks for telling me a year-and-a-half later! So, yeah, I developed the whole thing with Jim and got the whole thing rolling.

CBC: Obviously, you had a love for the character. Did you

Above: This Tarzan Sunday comic strip perfectly captures artist Tom Grindberg’s enthusiasm for drawing the jungle man.

Still, the artist confessed, “[T]hat was ridiculous. I couldn’t make a dime working on that, and it’s just the way my contract was written.” Words are by TwoMorrows brother editor Roy Thomas! Below: Another promotional piece drawn

by Grindberg hyping Tarzan.

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Above: One can detect a J. Allen St. John vibe in this awesome splash panel by Tom Grindberg. St. John was, of course, an early and particularly spectacular illustrator of Edgar Rice Burroughs stories, most prominently the early Tarzan adventures. Below: Grindberg’s knack for delineating wildlife is evident in this Tarzan Sunday comic strip. Of his stint on the feature, the artist told ERBzine #6276, in August 2012, “In every Sunday, I am trying to give the readers as much art as possible without making it looking like a pile of mini-panels unless it warrants it for something narrative or cinematic.”

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Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

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do it to create work for yourself? What was the motivation?

Tom: Well, it was a means for me to finally get to do something that I actually thoroughly enjoyed doing, first and foremost. It had flora, it had fauna, it had Tarzan… it had all this organic stuff all over the place. And that’s what I was really keen towards doing. I really love that stuff. Plus, I wanted to develop my style to where it really, really shined.

I felt that this was my last shot at illustrating anything. At that point there was not a single company out there that would hire me at all.

CBC: Why was that?

Tom: Good question. I don’t know. Stylistically, I don’t think they thought my work was what they wanted. I wasn’t drawing their house styles. I wasn’t doing, not to name names, but I imagine a lot of people will understand, my work compared to what the hot players of the month were, I just was not doing what they were doing. Nor did I like doing what they were doing. So this was a means for me to do what I actually came to this business with some 37 years ago, and given the fact that maturity in age and

working for this long being an illustrator and artist, I basically pulled out all the stops with Tarzan. And it really worked. I have no clue if anybody even liked the stuff that I was working on anymore, but I think, thanks to Facebook and social media, it certainly woke me up, and it woke up a lot of other people, and it woke up a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs fans.

CBC: I’ll be honest with you, it was almost for me it was like, “Oh, here’s another artist named Tom Grindberg.” [laughs] Because I knew the Neal Adams-esque guy, but then there was this, holy sh*t!

Which is kind of, I mean, to me seems to be almost a completely different approach to the material.

It’s more impressionistic, very stylized, rather than the hyper-kinetic realism of the Neal Adams school. Did you see it as a reinvention?

Tom: Basically, yes. I reinvented myself, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you at all. I went back to the roots. I stopped looking at anybody contemporary. I said to myself, “Tom, what are you doing?

You can learn even more looking at, say, Frank Schoonover, or N.C. Wyeth, or Howard Pyle. And they’re black-&-white, which may look a little old-fashioned to many, it doesn’t have the glitzy linework to many, but it is rock solid, 100% incredible, and done in such a simplistic matter that it just became patently clear to me that’s the secret of the sauce, so to speak.

CBC: Can we get into the specific chronology of this?

When did this first start getting into your mind? When did you, “Hey, I’ve got to take a different approach. I’m going to do this.” How old were you? Roughly around what time was this in your career?

Tom: Well, I mean, it’s been about six years… actually closer to eight years.

CBC: So pretty much when you turned 50 years old?

Tom: Pretty much, yes.

CBC: And what was the situation when you turned 50?

Tom: It was bad. It had become either get a job working at someplace like a taxi driver… Anything but art.

CBC: Were you making half of what you had been making in better times, or a quarter… or was it panic time?

Tom: Not even a quarter. Let me be honest with you.

Actually, my first paycheck from Edgar Rice Burroughs was for $16. That was for four fully penciled, inked, lettered, and computer-colored Sundays. Sixteen dollars.

CBC: Holy sh*t!

Tom: I was so crestfallen. I was so morbidly depressed.

You can’t even imagine. I was like, what happened to this grandiose database email of Edgar Rice Burroughs fans who are out there? It just proved to me that there are so few Edgar Rice Burroughs fans out there. There really are.

CBC: Well, those who are willing to spend money, anyway. [laughs] Tom: Well, right, exactly! Today they’re buying $200 or $300 books, that one that Buddy Saunders put out… my god, that thing was, like, $1,200 dollars. My lord! Not many people, though. I think Buddy took a shellacking on that, but he didn’t care, because he had loads of money and he didn’t care. He said, “I’m producing this thing however I want to,”

Illustrations © Tom Grindberg. Korak TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

and he did. It’s a beautiful book.

CBC: So you said you made $16 dollars on that first month. How much did you sell the original art for…?

Tom: Most of the strips sold for over $1,200. Some are over $2,200.

CBC: Apiece?

Tom: Uh-huh.

CBC: That’s awesome.

Tom: But the thing is, it broke my heart having to sell those pages. It wasn’t my intention to do that whatsoever.

But, when the handwriting was on the wall, at that point I had to shift gears and I had to just accept it — okay, fine.

I’ll still maintain the quality, the integrity, and all that, of my artwork, and I’ll do this to sell the originals and keep going until we can finally get a book deal to where finally, perhaps, I might get a little exposure. I got none. I got no exposure from this Edgar Rice Burroughs thing — very little, very little at all. If you weren’t an ERB fan, let’s put it this way, nobody else on the planet knew who the hell I was. Absolutely nobody. So then my wife says, “Well, why don’t you get a Facebook site?” I’m like, “Why? What for?

I’m not buying into that social media nonsense.” She says, “Well, suit yourself… but you could probably connect with a bunch of people.” I said, “All right, fine.” I created a Facebook page, drew up a couple of little sketches and, all of a sudden, 10 to 20 people are writing back going, “Holy crap! What is this?” [laughs] And I’m like, “You like it? Get outta here!” I had no clue. Honestly, I had no clue whatsoever.

CBC: On the practical side, does your wife have a job?

Tom: Yes, though she’s in-between gigs right now. She’s an accounting graduate and she’s trying to get a job working in that field right now.

CBC: Did you ever have to work outside of comics to make ends meet?

Tom: Oh, yes. Definitely. I went worked for a moving van company… I tried working as a taxi cabbie, but it was just, they gave you the worst shifts possible, and there was very little money in that. I guess I just couldn’t “hack” it. [chuckles] I was mostly selling off artwork. I have not one smidgen of original artwork left. By the time I was finished up with Marvel and DC I had somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe close to 3,000 pages of art. Today, I’ve got maybe five to ten pages. That’s it.

CBC: Tell me about the Associated Press award that you won.

Tom: Well, that was for Graphic Journalism. Actually, I’ve got it up on my wall. [laughs] It’s my one accolade that I think I got from drawing. [Reading] It says, “Award in excellence to Tom Grindberg, Newsday, in the category of reprints.” And another one for miscellaneous, and another one… we came in third place for graphic journalism. So we were competing with pretty much every major newspaper in the United States, and [Long Island newspaper] Newsday got third place, which was pretty cool.

CBC: For what? What is “graphic journalism?”

Tom: It was an educational comic with a super-hero/ fantasy bent to the character, and it was about cyber-technology — going into the past and into the future, and, say, going to when Einstein was coming up with his theories of relativity, for example. It was educational. So that was what the story was mostly about: historical and educational.

CBC: Was it cool to work on? Was it, did you enjoy it?

Tom: Not really. [laughs] And they were tough, because they wanted everything historically accurate, too, because it’s a newspaper and, of course, it has to match the integrity of the newspaper. So it was a lot of referencing and researching, and things like that stuff. I don’t mind doing that, but after a point, it’s just like, “God, when can I get finished drawing this?” [laughs] I mean, it’s not very natural, like what I did on Tarzan, for example. I had a lot of artistic license in that, a tremendous amount, because it’s fantasy. Certainly I looked up visuals for a couple of COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

buildings from ancient Greece, the Acropolis or whatever, just to get things right and capture the feel of that era. But primarily the rest of it was all just off-the-cuff, made up. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I actually enjoyed doing that. I watched The Scorpion King last night and was noticing some of the backdrops that’s all off-thecuff stuff. You think any of that stuff ever existed? Probably not. [laughs] It’s just cool-looking. It’s really no different than John Buscema drawing a city, you know, going into it and it’s all what John saw from books and magazines. “Okay, I’ve seen enough. Now I’m going to go off and do my thing.” [laughs] CBC: So the ERB work, for the Tarzan stuff, what’s your final assessment? It was obviously frustrating financially, but was it gratifying, creatively?

Tom: Oh, it was totally gratifying creatively. Absolutely.

When you get 200–300 people going, “Wow, ooh,” likes, thumbs up, and this is just for a panel, a teaser.

“Here guys, this is what I’m working on next.”

“Oh, man! I can’t wait to see this thing inked up!” That was a lot of the impetus there. “Thanks.” It really was.

And I was always trying to encourage people that, for $1.99, I said, you can’t even buy a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. Why don’t you subscribe to this thing?

Give it a shot for a month or two. It’s not going to cost you but a couple of bucks.” I mean, still to this day, I get $1.99 taken out of my account,

Above: Western-themed illustration by Tom Grindberg.

Below: Tom Grindberg’s depiction of Korak, Son of Tarzan.

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Above: Tom Grindberg’s painting of Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer, “Inferno of Hell.” Below: Grindberg recreates the stunning “under the boardwalk” splash panel of Frazetta’s “viciously vivacious” art in the E.C. Comics story, “Squeeze Play,” from Shock SuspenStories #13 [Feb.– Mar. 1954]. Grindberg professed a desire to do his own take on the acclaimed tale of comeuppance written by Al Feldstein.

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Death Dealer TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Photo © Tom Grindberg.

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you know, for Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’m not even working with them on the strip anymore. So it’s nothing to me. I can spend $1.99 in a flash, for a candy bar, for crying out loud.

Nothing. But for some reason, people just didn’t want online comics; they want something to hold in their hands. And that’s fine. So I’m thinking to myself, “Well, once we’re done with this thing, then we can have a book put out, a very nice book.”

CBC: And how long did your Tarzan stint last? Five years?

Tom: About five years. I stretched it out because I had to take on those other work, and I had to do commissions for other people. I had to take on other stuff while working on that. I was moving pretty steadily in the beginning, and then it was just becoming more and more difficult for me to maintain doing the work while at the same time I had nothing in my bank account. I’m forced to basically have to draw or having to print money, as somebody once said, and I can’t do the latter. It took a while to finally get the rest of the Tarzan strip done, and I was pretty upfront with them.

I said, “Look, I mean, you know how much I’m making. I have no other choice but to do this.” When Buddy Saunders came along and offered me that Martian Legion book which I worked on with him, that was great money, really good money. That took care of about maybe half-a-year or three-quarters of a year of paying my rent and putting food on my table. I certainly wasn’t making that kind of money at all with Tarzan. That strip could have been done a lot sooner if I didn’t have to rely on so many other sources for income.

CBC: So where did you go? You worked on the Buddy Saunders thing. How did everything lead up to The Darkness?

Tom: Let’s see… After I was done with Tarzan, Dark Horse gave me a couple of Conan projects to work on, just

cover assignments, and I was doing a few painted works for the new Edgar Rice Burroughs reprint books that are coming out now. And then a friend of mind suggested me contacting Creeps magazine, and I did, and, of course, Rich Sala couldn’t afford my rate. I wanted a much higher rate and he says, “No way. I can’t afford that.” So it was a very, very low rate, and I headed home and I said to myself, “You know what, Tom? You gotta get something out there!

Anything, really.” I wasn’t getting any exposure whatsoever.

So I did a Creeps story, and it’s still not published yet, but I sure as hell promoted the hell out of it, and posted the whole thing up on Facebook, pretty much. And, after I had done that, that’s when Image Comics contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in working on The Darkness. Mind you, Marc Silvestri is a friend of mine on Facebook, so I’m certain that he has seen some of the stuff that I’ve been working on. He gave, on occasion, a “thumbs-up” on my stuff. So I knew that Marc liked my work, which, is a plus.

(Thank god there’s no “thumbs-down” yet on Facebook!) So I gathered that was probably might have been the reason why, because there just wasn’t anything else coming out, so I had no other choice. I said, “Well, I’ll do this story for you, Rich, for the peanuts you’re offering. Why not? I need to get published.”

CBC: I assume with Mike W. Barr, you did The Bride of the Demon graphic novel?

Tom: Yeah. That was a lot of fun. It had Ra’s Al Ghul in it, Talia, of course Batman. I think I made the book too long. It could have been done in maybe like 50 pages, and I think I extended it close to 90 pages. But, hey, whatever… they liked it. That was an incredible deadline. I thought I had a full year to work on that thing. Denny O’Neil at the time was the editor, and he said, “No, no, no. We need it by October.”

Now, here I was at just about June, I guess, and I only had maybe like 20 pages done.

CBC: Whoa! [laughter] Tom: Yeah, plus it was hand-colored. It was all done on blueline back then. There wasn’t any computer coloring.

Yeah, actually, that was done while my wife from my first marriage was carrying my son. She wasn’t feeling up to snuff most of the time, and I ended up coloring the vast majority of it. That was a lot of work, an awful, awful lot of work.

CBC: Was this back in the day of sharing in royalties?

Tom: Actually I got an advance against royalties just so that I could pay my bills. It was okay. I made out okay when it finally came out. I think, combined with the advance and then the actual royalty check, I made probably a couple thousand more than what my actual page rate if I had just done it normally as a page rate… because I didn’t get a page rate for that. It was all a back-end deal.

CBC: What do you say to kids coming up to you when you’re at conventions, when they ask for advice about becoming a comic book artist?

Tom: Sometimes I do get kids coming up to me, yeah. The last time I was in New Jersey, a father actually dragged his kid up, and the boy didn’t really look like he wanted to talk about himself at all or anything like that. He was just very shy. And the dad was doing most of the talking. But I forewarned the boy. I said, “I’m not going to dissuade you from taking a career in art, but just know that it’s a very difficult business, and I’m freelance, and I would have a back-up plan just in case. If you’re going to take business classes, please do so, so that at least you might, if you strike out in comics or find yourself with nothing to lean against, at least you’ll have something like that to use as back-up.“ So I never really dissuade any kids, but, yes, occasionally they do come up with their parents and they just feel it’s so cool. There’s plenty of kids out there that still would love to get into this business.

CBC: Would you do it all over again?

Tom: [Long sigh] You know what? I think yes and no. Yes, because I really wanted to break into comics as a kid, and

Death Dealer TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Illustration © Tom Grindberg. Photograph © Dimitri Mais.

I did. But what I really failed at doing was not going into any other direction. Such as, when I was doing advertising work with Neal, for example, we did a gig and we probably earned around $15,000 for a bunch of storyboards that we made in one night. One night! Fifteen grand, or ten grand, or whatever… It was just incredible, silly money coming from advertising. And, if I’d have stayed with Neal, or if one of the ad reps from one of these advertising agencies in Madison Avenue, if I’d have approached them, I might have been able to maybe get a good art director gig and probably would have made an awful lot of money. And god only knows where that might have led me to because it would be just the contacts, and the people that come in through that front door of these agencies, these are Hollywood people.

That’s the big time, right there. But I chose to stay in comics.

And it looked great for a number of years. It really did. I had no problem finding work. In fact, I used to have editors almost virtually tackle me in the elevator, going, “Tom, what’s your schedule like? This other guy’s flaking out on me,” or something like that. “Man, can you do seven or eight pages over the weekend?” I’d said, “Yeah, give it to me.” I look at it and go, “Pfft, okay, no problem.” [laughs] So I felt for a long time very secure in comics, and I was making pretty decent money. I mean, I bought three homes in my lifetime, so there was no question of me not being able to support a family and paying my bills, and all that sort of thing. And then all of a sudden it just started to dry up. Literally. After ’95 it was starting to get a little shaky because I think that investor market out there, they saw there was no return on all their Death of Superman comics and their X-Men #1, Spider-Man #1, anything that came out that these companies were selling two million copies, I guess, of each of these books. There was just a flood of COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

them out there. But this was not a Superman #1 where there’s only like 18 copies known to exist. Yeah, sure, if I found one in some footlocker from somebody’s house that was back in the 1930s, sure, I’d run to Sotheby’s tomorrow and probably make half-million dollars off the damned thing, you know, depending on the condition. I’m sorry, Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 is not going to reach that number, ever. There’s so many of them in print. And, of course, Marvel was shooting themselves in the foot, with DC doing the same thing. They were pumping out #1 issues every month. I mean, there must have been 10, 11, 12, 15… I don’t know how many, and these are like flash-in-the-pan books. Yeah, the first issue would sell great and then the second issue would sell “enh.” By the third, fourth issues they’re almost ready for cancellation, you know? It was devastating. I mean, I was just shaking my head, going, “What in the hell’s going on?” But I saw what they were doing. I mean, I got all the free books from both Marvel and DC, so I had all the comp copies, and I’m like, “What in the world are these guys doing?” Then those variant covers, and multiple covers, and all this stuff. And I was like [sighs], “It’s too much.” I mean, the price tag of the books was getting up there, too. I just didn’t find a market, trying to find where there would be a market to sustain this. So I kind of saw what was going on, but there wasn’t really anything I could do? All I cared about was the content. I wanted something that was well-drawn, great story, you know, something meaningful like maybe if I did a shock/suspense story or something to that affect, which I wasn’t getting. I was still getting the same super-hero stuff, the same old stuff… So I was trying to experiment a little bit, stylistically, toward the end, and eventually it all kind of just dried up altogether.

CBC: So what’s your family situation now? When did you

Above: Fingers crossed for a Death Dealer project illustrated

by Tom Grindberg to arrive in the near future! His rendition of Frazetta’s character is superb!

Below: Featured as one of his Facebook profile pics, Tom Grindberg notes, “My good friend and photographer Dimitri Mais took this shot of me under the Brighton Beach Q train,” in Brooklyn, New York, where both artist and photographer reside.

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Death Dealer TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Illustrations, painting © Tom Grindberg.

marry your second wife?

Tom: We got married in 2009.

CBC: And you’ve got young children?

Tom: Yes, we have one. Her name is Katie, and she is going to be eight years old in December.

CBC: Heh. You’re kind of old for an eight-year-old kid, Tom. Tom: Yeah. Starting all over again. By the way: in every aspect, it was starting all over.

CBC: You have other children? How many other children do you have?

Tom: I’ve got a son from the previous marriage, and he’s now about 27. He was born in 1991, so he’s about 27 right now.

CBC: What’s his name?

Tom: Harrison, like Harrison Ford.

CBC: Are you in a relatively comfortable place right now with The Darkness? Is that an open-ended commitment?

Tom: Yes, it is, actually. Matt Hawkins has been more than generous, and more than generous time-wise with me, too.

He says, “You can stay on the book for as long as you like.” I’m like, “Wow.” So this is great. Image has been

very, very, very generous, and very patient. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to what I’ve had to deal with in the past.

CBC: And how long have you been on the assignment?

Tom: Since June.

CBC: I saw a reference that you did character design and licensing work. Is that so?

Tom: Oh, yes. The character designs were a lot of turnaround work I did for DC. They had put out all these statues and whatnot. This is all through their licensing division. That was the only one thing I was getting from comics was the licensing department out at DC during the lean years, there, when I wasn’t getting anything from editorial, so I did an awful lot of licensing work with them.

CBC: Why is it called “turnaround”?

Tom: Well, you have like a front view, a side view, a back view…

CBC: Right. So that was for DC and Marvel?

Tom: Just DC. Nothing really from Marvel, no. Marvel dried up completely. Everybody that I knew that was left up at Marvel had either washed their hands of guys like me, or the editors who actually used to give me work were long gone, and the new ones that were on board, they had their stable of artists and very unapproachable… extremely unapproachable. I gave up trying with Marvel years and years ago. Actually, I met up with C.B. Cebulski. Funnily enough, I met him in Poland, of all places, and he gave me his business card, and he checked out my stuff. He goes, “Wow, this is beautiful stuff, Tom. Here, contact this editor.”

And I did. And the guy wrote back, “Well, this is nice, but that’s not the type of coloring we do.” And I’m like [laughs] I know what kind of coloring you do. It’s overproduced. You take somebody’s black line and turn it clean into mud. My god. I’m not doing that with my work. And it wasn’t because I had bucked them on that and said, “Look, it’s either my way or the highway.” I just wanted to get a paycheck, for god’s sake. But, literally, I really haven’t gotten anything from Marvel in just a long, long time. Nothing at all.

CBC: I see a reference here that you had something published in Creeps…?

Tom: I did a frontispiece for #17, which is due out this month or next month. Then that story that I did will be in there.

CBC: I also see a reference here to computer game design…?

Tom: Computer game design?

Yeah, I think that was with DC. It was a Batman, Joker, and Catwoman. Another “let’s see what this looks like all drawn up” or whatever kind of thing, and I did backgrounds and what. I don’t think it ever got developed into a game at all.

The Darkness TM & © Top Cow Productions. Tarzan TM & © Edgar REice Burroughs, Inc. Tarzan illo © Tom Grindberg.

CBC: Commission work. How did that come about?

Tom: Somebody approaches me and asks me do I take commissions. I go, “Sure, what are you looking for?” “Well, can you give me a really nice Red Sonja or something like that?” I’m like, “Okay, sure. Here’s my price.” And off I go.

So that’s pretty standard, I guess.

CBC: What’s the weirdest request you’ve gotten?

Tom: Oh, god! [laughs] CBC: Do you get pervy requests sometimes?

Tom: Well, they always want, if I draw a female character, which is primarily the case, they want it to be as sexy as possible. And I (no pun intended) draw the line at certain points, you know? I’ve done a little bit of risqué stuff, but nothing to where it’s hardcore or anything to that degree, because one day I know that stuff is going to surface. [laughs] “Look what this guy drew! Oh my god!” I’ve kind of drew a red line on myself. [laughs] CBC: Now — who knows? — somebody in the industry could be reading this interview, and you never know what could happen. What is the dream job they could offer that you would almost drop everything for and pursue if the money was good?

Tom: An anthology book! If somebody tomorrow were to come out with shock/suspense comics, I would jump on it in a nanosecond. Literally. But I’d want the format big. I don’t want a comic book format. I want a nice, big treasury edition-sized book. Big pictures.

CBC: Really?

Tom: Oh, yeah. I don’t care about the conventional comic book format stuff anymore. I think it’s too small, and to me it’s like, why are people buying 60", 70" diagonal TV sets?

Because they want a theater effect. They want that. They want something large. I want something big to see. I love the IDW “Artist Edition” books, everything shot up the exact size of the originals. Heck, I owned a Wally Wood page. I have several treasury editions here from back in the ’70s when they were putting those things out. I mean, Jack Kirby’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example. You pull out that splash where the guy’s tripping out and, like, whoa! Just incredible, you know? You feel like you’re watching 70mm film when you’re looking at a treasury-edition-sized thing.

And I literally have a few stories that I’ve started to develop that I’d like to get Roy to finish up one, and I’d like to get Bruce Jones to finish up on one of them, too. And it would be good in that format. It would be double-page spreads throughout the whole damned thing, literally. But I would gear it to where that page splices. It’ll be saddle-stitched, not perfect-bound, because perfect-bound, you can’t bend the damned thing over, you know? At least if you have it saddle-stitched, you can do that. Anyway, that’s just the technical aspect of something like that. What I’d love to do. What I really, really would like is something like that.

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Short stories. Little six-, seven-, eight-page story. Done.

Let’s move on to the next one. God. Do science fiction. Do hardboiled detective. An adventure strip. Horror. Anything.

CBC: With the E.C. bullpen, they all were each very distinctive. Jack Kamen did the husband-and-wife murder stories, and Jack Davis did Civil War stories, and Wallace Wood did science fiction… Let’s say if we were to say that you were like one of these guys, who would you say, would it be all of them?

Tom: It’d be closer to Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, and Wally Wood.

CBC: That’s a great idea, to have a treasury edition-sized anthology.

Tom: Hey, Jon, it would be beautifully illustrated. Let’s put it this way. There is no damned question about it. And I’ll send you a couple of scans or something of what I’ve done, and you be the judge of it.

CBC: That’d be great. Cool. We’ve massively jumped over your specific chronology, but there were things that I wanted to talk about beyond the chronology, if you don’t mind. We know you worked in the industry, both for Marvel and DC, for quite a while, even for a freelancer who hasn’t often jumped outside of the mainstream.

Tom: Right, right. When I got onto Surfer, those who wrote letters were just talking about the storyline and how they didn’t like it or something like that, and never mentioned once about my work on that…

I penciled my butt off on that book, let’s put it this way. And Bill Anderson, who was inking me, I always called him the guy blessed with the brush. I wanted the Surfer to look like a chrome bumper. Nobody got into that. Nobody. And it just, there’s never ever any indication from these companies, no pats on the back, like, “Great job, Grindberg,” or anything like that. Nothing. I just did my work, and that was that. And that’s been throughout my whole career, basically, in comics.

CBC: Well, you did a great cover for us, and I think it’s wonderful, and we’ll give you a great presentation. Thanks, Tom! Tom: You’re welcome, Jon. My pleasure.

Above: Though it’s still months away, Grindberg fans are salivating at the prospect of steady work by the artist in an upcoming relaunch of The Darkness by writer Matt Hawkins, Grindberg, and colorist Bryan Valenza. At left is Grindberg’s pencils and, at right, his finished inks. The Darkness is coming from Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow Productions and will be published by Image Comics. Previous page: Pencil and painted work by Tom Grindberg featuring Frank Frazetta’s axe-wielding warrior, Death Dealer. Below: Tom Grindberg illustration of Tarzan of the Apes.

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creators at the con

KEEPING ALIVE THE SPIRIT!: Clockwise from right: Joe Simon’s granddaughter Emily at the Joe Simon Memorial Celebration at New York Comic Con 2012; Joe Simon’s granddaughters after that same gathering; Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson, granddaughter of early comic book publisher Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, before the panel “Hermes Press: A Celebration of Women Artists in Comics During WWII,” at San Diego Comic-Con 2015; members of the Kirby family — Jillian, Lisa, Tracy, and Jeremy — accept the Bill Finger Award for “Excellence in Comic Book Writing” on behalf of Jack Kirby at San Diego Comic-Con 2017; Tracy Kirby (far left) and companions at the annual Jack Kirby tribute panel at Comic-Con International 2012; Jens Robinson on a tribute panel honoring his father, Jerry Robinson, at the San Diego Comic-Con 2012; The granddaughter and great-grandson of Batman co-creator Bill Finger, Athena Finger and Benjamin Cruz, at San Diego Comic-Con 2014; and, at center, is Joe Simon’s son Jim at his dad’s memorial observance at New York Comic Con 2012:

Photography by Kendall Whitehouse

All photos © Kendall Whitehouse.

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creators’ creators

Our Ringer Ringgenberg

This issue’s guest co-editor, longtime E.C. Comics specialist Steven C. Ringgenberg Steven Ringgenberg was born two weeks before Sputnik I flew in 1957, making him a true “Space Age Baby.” Born into an Air Force family, he grew up with a lifelong fascination with aircraft and space flight that morphed into an eternal love of science fiction, including the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Alfred Bester, among others. He also developed a love for the works of Robert E. Howard, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells.

As a child, he spent three years in Japan, before moving to Texas for seven years, and then Tucson, Arizona, in 1970. In the early 70s, while still under the spell of Burroughs, he discovered E.C. Comics and became a serious comics fan. Unlike many collectors, Steven didn’t follow characters as much as he collected the work of certain artists, like Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, Roy Krenkel, Wally Wood, Alex Toth, John Severin, Jim Steranko, Gray Morrow, Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby, Moebius, Michael Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson, J.C. Jones, and Mike Ploog.

Inspired by his love of comics, Steven started attending science fiction and comics conventions, including the 1972 San Diego Comic Con. He hasn’t attended every subsequent con, but has attended about every other year since then; he plans to attend the 2019 con for the 50th anniversary.

After high school, he attended the University of Arizona, earning a degree in Creative Writing. While at the school, he was the film critic for their newspaper, the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

He moved to New York City, in August 1979, determined to pursue a freelance writing career. He wasted no time, selling his first short story in the summer of 1980, and pitching science fiction and mystery plots to DC Comics. His first sale was a one-page science fiction gag strip. At DC, he worked with editor Nelson Bridwell on Weird War Tales, and Marv Wolfman on New Talent Showcase. In 1982, he briefly worked on the staff of The Comics Journal and Amazing Heroes, forging a long association with Fantagraphics. While working there, he wrote news stories and interviewed Al Williamson, Archie Goodwin, and George Pérez.

Around then he sold a Black Hood script to editor Rich Buckler, and three comics scripts to Heavy Metal. He also did interviews for The Comic Times with Jules Feiffer and Michael Kaluta. After meeting Kaluta, he saw the first production of Starstruck and met Elaine Lee and Charles Vess. Upon leaving Fantagraphics, he continued to contribute interviews to TCJ, including conversations with underground cartoonists Howard Cruse and Robert Williams, respectively, as well as horror novelist Clive Barker.

During the early ’80s, he was a prolific interviewer, talking with Frank Frazetta, Jerry Robinson, P. Craig Russell, Arthur Suydam, Walt Simonson, and many others. In 1983, he sold a Moon Knight script. From 1986–87, he worked at Byron Preiss Visual Publications as an editor, writing three Tom Swift 3000 graphic novels, including one that was eventually re-formatted into the Robin 3000 mini-series in 1993.

In the late ’80s, he began writing the first of six Young Adult mysteries for Simon and Shuster and moved to upstate New York to attend SUNY New Paltz, earning a teaching certificate. He also began contributing to Russ Cochran’s Complete E.C. Library, interviewing Angelo Torres, Marie Severin, and Al Feldstein. Working for various fanzines and magazines, he has conducted Q&As with many of the other E.C. contributors, including Harvey Kurtzman, Bill Gaines, John Severin, George Evans, Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Jack Kamen, Jack Davis, and Sheldon Moldoff.

Since returning to Arizona in 1991, he has continued writing for various fanzines. In 1999, he began writing “The Dossier” media column for Heavy Metal, which he continued for 11 years. He returned to writing about E.C. in the early teens, contributing the artist biographies to all the volumes in Fantagraphics E.C. Artists series.

In 2014, Steven published a short story collection, Zombie Gundown and Other Tales, and, in 2017, he wrote his seventh novel. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, has one daughter, Kat, and he continues to write for Comic Book Creator, while finishing a new horror novel and plotting world domination.

coming attractions: cbc #20 in summer

Cry for Dawn TM & © Joseph Michael Linsner.

The ‘Not Your Average Joes’ Special Ish! “Not Your Average Joes” is the theme of CBC #20, headlined by an exhaustive interview with JOSEPH MICHAEL LINSNER on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his signature creation Cry for Dawn, discussing his many years as a comics professional, and current work on Vampirella.

(We also talk with Joe’s significant other, KRISTINA DEAK-LINSNER, about the distinction of being Vampi’s first female artist!) Then CBC spends Sunday Brunch with the great JOE SINNOTT, catching up with the legendary artist to discuss his years at Marvel, inking Jack Kirby’s work, and his nearly forgotten masterworks produced for Treasure Chest. Plus JOE JUSKO returns to our pages to talk about his early exposure to the Marvel Age of Comics and his fabulous “Corner Box Collection,” which honor the great ’60s cover design element produced by the House of Ideas!

We also track down the elusive artists behind the Topps bubble gum BAZOOKA JOE comic strips, and visit with a guy named “Yoe,” CRAIG YOE, the creative force behind Yoe Books. Plus, we showcase another installment of our RICH BUCKLER interview and, of course, HEMBECK! Full-color, 100 pages, $9.95 COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

95

a picture is worth a thousand words

This is my coloring for a recent Dare 2 Draw promotional poster with art by Kyle Baker, whom I worked together with on The Shadow back in the 1980s. (Dare 2 Draw is a terrific not-for-profit organization that mentors up and coming young artists in the comic book field; check out the good work they do at www.dare2draw.org). — TZ 96

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast

from the archives of Tom Ziuko

BACK ISSUE #111

BACK ISSUE #112

BACK ISSUE #113

BACK ISSUE #114

BACK ISSUE #115

ALTERNATE REALITIES! Cover-featuring the 20th anniversary of ALEX ROSS and JIM KRUEGER’s Marvel Earth X! Plus: What If?, Bronze Age DC Imaginary Stories, Elseworlds, Marvel 2099, and PETER DAVID and GEORGE PÉREZ’s senses-shattering Hulk: Future Imperfect. Featuring TOM DeFALCO, CHUCK DIXON, PETER B. GILLIS, PAT MILLS, ROY THOMAS, and many more!

With an Earth X cover by ALEX ROSS.

NUCLEAR ISSUE! Firestorm, Dr. Manhattan, DAVE GIBBONS Marvel UK Hulk interview, villain histories of Radioactive Man and Microwave Man, Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy, and the one-shot Holo-Man! With PAT BRODERICK, GERRY CONWAY, JOE GIELLA, TOM GRINDBERG, RAFAEL KAYANAN, TOM MANDRAKE, BILL MORRISON, JOHN OSTRANDER, STEVE VANCE, and more! PAT BRODERICK cover!

BATMAN MOVIE 30th ANNIVERSARY! Producer MICHAEL USLAN and screenwriter SAM HAMM interviewed, a chat with BILLY DEE WILLIAMS (who was almost Two-Face), plus DENNY O’NEIL and JERRY ORDWAY’s Batman movie adaptation, MINDY NEWELL’s Catwoman, GRANT MORRISON and DAVE McKEAN’s Arkham Asylum, MAX ALLAN COLLINS’ Batman newspaper strip, and JOEY CAVALIERI & JOE STATON’s Huntress!

BLACK SUPERHEROES OF THE 1970s!

History of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire! A retrospective of artist BILLY GRAHAM, a TONY ISABELLA interview, Black Lightning, Black Panther in the UK, Black Goliath, the Teen Titans’ Mal and Bumblebee, DON McGREGOR and PAUL GULACY’s Sabre, and… Black Bomber (who?). Featuring MIKE W. BARR, STEVE ENGLEHART, ROY THOMAS, and a BILLY GRAHAM cover!

SCI-FI SUPERHEROES! In-depth looks at JIM STARLIN’s Dreadstar and Company, and the dystopian lawman Judge Dredd. Also: Nova, GERRY CONWAY & MIKE VOSBURG’s Starman, PAUL LEVITZ & STEVE DITKO’s Starman, WALTER SIMONSON’s Justice Peace (from the pages of Thor), and GREG POTTER & GENE COLAN’s Jemm, Son of Saturn! With a Dreadstar and Company cover by STARLIN and ALAN WEISS!

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DRAW #36

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: The 1990s

ALTER EGO #158

ALTER EGO #159

ALTER EGO #160

FCA SPECIAL! Golden Age writer WILLIAM WOOLFOLK interview, and his scripting records! Art by BECK, SCHAFFENBERGER, BORING, BOB KANE, CRANDALL, KRIGSTEIN, ANDRU, JACK COLE, FINE, PETER, HEATH, PLASTINO, MOLDOFF, GRANDENETTI, and more! Plus JOHN BROOME, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and the 2017 STAR WARS PANEL with CHAYKIN, LIPPINCOTT, and THOMAS!

Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt writer/artist PETE MORISI talks about the creative process! Plus, his correspondence with JACK KIRBY, JOE SIMON, AL WILLIAMSON, CHARLES BIRO, JOE GILL, GEORGE TUSKA, ROCKY MASTROSERIO, PAT MASULLI, SAL GENTILE, DICK GIORDANO, and others! Also: JOHN BROOME’s bio, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and BILL SCHELLY!

REMEMBERING STEVE DITKO! Sturdy Steve at Marvel, DC, Warren, Charlton, and elsewhere! A rare late-1960s Ditko interview by RICHARD HOWELL— biographical notes by NICK CAPUTO— tributes by MICHAEL T. GILBERT, PAUL LEVITZ, BERNIE BUBNIS, BARRY PEARL, ROY THOMAS, et al. Plus FCA, JOHN BROOME, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Spider-Man cover by DITKO!

MIKE HAWTHORNE (Deadpool, Infinity Countdown) interview, YANICK PAQUETTE (Wonder Woman: Earth One, Batman Inc., Swamp Thing) how-to demo, JERRY ORDWAY’s “Ord-Way” of creating comics, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, plus Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY! May contain nudity for figure-drawing instruction; for Mature Readers Only.

Year-by-year account of the decade when X-MEN #1 sold 8.1 million copies, IMAGE COMICS was formed, Superman died, Batman had his back broken, and Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN led to the VERTIGO line of adult comic books. Go behind-thescenes in that era of gimmicky covers, skimpy costumes, and mega-crossovers. By KEITH DALLAS and JASON SACKS.

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships April 2019

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships June 2019

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships August 2019

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Summer 2019

(288-pg. FULL-COLOR Hardcover) $44.95 (Digital Edition) $15.95 • Now shipping!

TwoMorrows.

The Future of Comics History.

BRICKJOURNAL #56

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #20

KIRBY COLLECTOR #76

KIRBY COLLECTOR #77

LIFE-SIZE LEGO and what it takes to build them (besides a ton of LEGO brick)! HELEN SHAM’s sculptures of giant everyday items, MAGNUS LAUGHLO’s GI Joe®-inspired models, military builds by ERIC ONG, plus “Bricks In The Middle” comic by KEVIN HINKLE, “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art, Minifig Customization by JARED K. BURKS, & more!

NOT YOUR AVERAGE JOES! Interview with JOSEPH MICHAEL LINSNER (CRY FOR DAWN, VAMPIRELLA), a chat with JOE SINNOTT about his Marvel years inking Jack Kirby and work at TREASURE CHEST, JOE JUSKO discusses the Marvel Age of Comics and his fabulous “Corner Box Collection,” plus the artists behind the Topps bubble gum BAZOOKA JOE comic strips, CRAIG YOE, and more!

FATHERS & SONS! Odin/Thor, Zeus/ Hercules, Darkseid/Orion, Captain America/ Bucky, and other dysfunctional relationships, unpublished 1994 interview with GIL KANE eulogizing Kirby, tributes from Jack’s creative “sons” in comics (MUMY, PALMIOTTI, QUESADA, VALENTINO, McFARLANE, GAIMAN, & MILLER), MARK EVANIER, 2018 Kirby Tribute Panel, Kirby pencil art gallery, and more!

MONSTERS & BUGS! Jack’s monster-movie influences in The Demon, Forever People, Black Magic, Fantastic Four, Jimmy Olsen, and Atlas monster stories; Kirby’s work with “B” horror film producer CHARLES BAND; interview with “The Goon” creator ERIC POWELL; Kirby’s use of insect characters (especially as villains); MARK EVANIER’s column, Golden Age Kirby story, pencil art gallery, and KIRBY/POWELL cover!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

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(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships Summer 2019

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

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Relive The Pop Culture You Grew Up With!

Remember when Saturday morning television was our domain, and ours alone? When tattoos came from bubble gum packs, Slurpees came in superhero cups, and TV heroes taught us to be nice to each other?

Those were the happy days of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties— our childhood—and that is the era of TwoMorrows’ new magazine RETROFAN!

#5: Interviews with MARK HAMILL and Greatest American Hero’s WILLIAM KATT! Blast off with JASON OF STAR COMMAND! Stop by the MUSEUM OF POPULAR CULTURE! Poke fun at a campy BATMAN COMIC BOOK! Plus: “The First Time I Met Tarzan,” MAJOR MATT MASON, Moon Landing Mania, SNUFFY SMITH at 100 with cartoonist JOHN ROSE, TV Dinners, Celebrity Crushes, and more fun, fab features!

SHIPS JUNE 2019! #6: Interviews with crazy creepster SVENGOOLIE and Eddie Munster himself, BUTCH PATRICK! Call on the original Saturday Morning Ghost Busters, with BOB BURNS! Uncover the nutty Naugas!

Plus: “My Life in the Twilight Zone,” “I Was a Teenage James Bond,” “My Letters to Famous People,” the ARCHIEDOBIE GILLIS connection, the PINBALL Hall of Fame, Super Collector DAVID MANDEL’s comic art collection, Alien action figures, the RUBIK’S CUBE fad, and more fun, fab features!

SHIPS SEPTEMBER 2019!

DON’T RISK A SOLD OUT ISSUE AT BARNES & NOBLE!

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

RETROFAN #1

RETROFAN #2

RETROFAN #3

RETROFAN #4

THE CRAZY, COOL CULTURE WE GREW UP WITH! LOU FERRIGNO interview, The Phantom in Hollywood, Filmation’s Star Trek cartoon, “How I Met Lon Chaney, Jr.”, goofy comic Zody the Mod Rob, Mego’s rare Elastic Hulk toy, RetroTravel to Mount Airy, NC (the real-life Mayberry), interview with BETTY LYNN (“Thelma Lou” of The Andy Griffith Show), TOM STEWART’s eclectic House of Collectibles, and Mr. Microphone!

HALLOWEEN! Horror-hosts ZACHERLEY, VAMPIRA, SEYMOUR, MARVIN, and an interview with our cover-featured ELVIRA! THE GROOVIE GOOLIES, BEWITCHED, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, and THE MUNSTERS! The long-buried Dinosaur Land amusement park! History of BEN COOPER HALLOWEEN COSTUMES, character lunchboxes, superhero VIEW-MASTERS, SINDY (the British Barbie), and more!

40th Anniversary interview with SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE director RICHARD DONNER, IRWIN ALLEN’s sci-fi universe, Saturday morning’s undersea adventures of Aquaman, horror and sci-fi zines of the Sixties and Seventies, Spider-Man and Hulk toilet paper, RetroTravel to METROPOLIS, IL (home of the Superman Celebration), SEA-MONKEYS®, FUNNY FACE beverages, Superman and Batman memorabilia, and more!

Interviews with the SHAZAM! TV show’s JOHN (Captain Marvel) DAVEY and MICHAEL (Billy Batson) Gray, the GREEN HORNET in Hollywood, remembering monster maker RAY HARRYHAUSEN, the wayout Santa Monica Pacific Ocean Amusement Park, a Star Trek Set Tour, SAM J. JONES on the Spirit movie pilot, British sci-fi TV classic THUNDERBIRDS, Casper & Richie Rich museum, the KING TUT fad, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

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RETROFAN SUBSCRIPTIONS! Four issues: $38 Economy, $63 International, $16 Digital Only

Silver ary ers Anniv -2019 1994 ears 25 Y

TwoMorrows.

The Future of Comics History.

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