Comic Book Creator #19 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

$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

82658 00355

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

™

No. 19, Winter 2019

Plus: The Savage Brush of

JOE JUSKO

and the Reinvention of

TOM GRINDBERG

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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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.

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

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

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A TwoMorrows Publication

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

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

TOM ZIUKO

Welcoming 2019

AN INTERVIEW WITH

FRANK FRAZETTA

Conducted by

Steven C. RinGgenBERG

#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].

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

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; COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

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 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. 25

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.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

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! COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

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.

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,

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.

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.

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

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. 76

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

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.

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

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#19 Savage Sword of Conan, and there was an ad in there for COMIC BOOK Above: It’s CREATOR hard to pinpoint Celebrating the greatest fantasy artist of all time, FRANK posters, as I said, with an address of Marshalls Creek, Grindberg FRAZETTA! From exactly THUN’DAwhen and EC Tom COMICS to CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPIRELLA, STEVE RINGGENBERG CBC’s Pennsylvania. I saw more N.C. Wyeth, more Pyle, more of began to transformand from theeditor an historical retrospective, including insights by current the great art and illustrators, more John Buscema, present before I Nealand Adamsand John creators and associates, memories of the manBuscehimself. PLUS: saw Frazetta. I saw more of anybody’s work than Frank’s. He artists Frazetta-inspired JOE JUSKO, and TOM GRINDBERG, ma-inspired super-hero artist of contributes our Dealer just wasn’t readily available in my realm, as I wasn’twho really theDeath 1980s andcover ’90spainting! into a more FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 of buying paperback books. By the time I was actually buying(100-page classically attuned adherent (Digital Edition) $5.95 his stuff, he had been done with doing his Creepy and Eerie the work of Howard Pyle and covers, so there really wasn’t any place that I saw his work, Frankbit.ly/ComicBookCreator19 Frazetta (among others), to be honest. but whatever the precise turnCBC: So Frazetta starting to make an impact on you, right? ing point, the change is nothing Tom: Oh, immediately. My god! Like I said before, Boris less than breathtaking, as if was doing the covers for Savage Sword and I saw these the artist was totally reborn. prints, and I’m going, “Wow! Why isn’t he doing the covers? This cover detail by Grindberg Let’s get this guy! He looks good! Who’s this Frazetta? He’s appeared as cover for the great!” [laughter] I’d already known Bernie Wrightson’s Modiphius role playing game, stuff, and he shined above all of them, every one of them, Conan the Pirate [2018]. Below: including Neal Adams. This Grindberg colored sketch CBC: Would you say that Adams and Frazetta are the looks to be a preliminary piece biggest two influences on your work? for the above cover. 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. 85