Comic Book Creator #21 Preview

™

$9.95

in the USA

A TwoMorrows Publication

No. 21, Fall 2019

1

82658 00389

0

The Goon TM & ©2019 Eric Powell.All characters TM & © Mark Schultz.

R. Crumb Interview Steve Mannion Diane Noomin John Romita Sr. Rick Trembles & Jack Tremblay Ryan North

ERIC ERIC POWELL: POWELL: 20 20 YEARS YEARS OF OF THE THE GOON! GOON! Cover art by Eric Powell

Fall 2019 • 20 Years of Eric Powell’s The Goon • Number 21

T DEPRESSION ERA WOODY CBC mascot by J.D. KING

About Our Cover Art and Colors by ERIC POWELL

A

B

L

E

O

F

C

O

N

T

E

N

T

S

Ye Ed’s Rant: Goodbye, MAD magazine, and Ye Ed’s plans for autumn and winter........ 2 COMICS CHATTER R. Crumb on Weirdo: A chat with the greatest cartoonist of all about his anthology..... 3 Incoming: Letters on the “All Joes” ish and about CBC’s reason for existence............ 16 Weirdos All Around Us: It’s been the Summer of Weirdo for Mr. Ye Ed and the Missus after they embarked on their epic San Diego Comic-Con adventure........... 18

The Goon TM & ©2019 Eric Powell.

John Romita Sr. on Milton Caniff: The great artist discusses Terry and the Pirates, the death of Gwen Stacy, and his two finest issues of Amazing Spider-Man.......... 22 Bearing Witness: Diane Noomin discusses her #MeToo comics anthology, Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival................. 28 Darrick Patrick’s 10 Questions for Ryan North: Q’s for the writer of Squirrel Girl .30 Trembles on Tremblay: New wave/punk cartoonist Rick Trembles shares about his dad, Jack Tremblay, Golden Age “Canadian Whites” comic book artist............ 32 Above: The Goon gets the job done in this cover drawn and colored by ERIC POWELL.

Please Note Due to international trade issues (hopefully resolved soon), to stay economically feasible, we faced the necessity to either raise the price of CBC or cut the page count and keep the same cover price. We chose the latter and thus had to postpone items intended for this issue, including part two of the Craig Yoe interview and our brunch with Joe Sinnott feature.

Look for those next time!

Don’t STEAL our Digital Editions!

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!

Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred imagines some super-hero mirror opposites...... 40 Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt talks of finding comics in the strangest places...... 41 THE MAIN EVENTS The POW! of Eric Powell: A conversation with the creator of The Goon on his background and career development, just as his publishing outfit celebrates the 20th anniversary of the character and ambitiously expands its line of titles...... 44 Man, Oh Mannion!: The terrifically talented and terribly overlooked artist Steve Mannion gives a biographical sketch of life before his creation of Fearless Dawn and his great work today for Eric Powell’s Albatross comic book line........... 66 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse lenses the 2019 Eisner Award winners!...... 76 Coming Attractions: The Lyrical Art of P. Craig Russell.................................................. 78 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Aquaman by Ramona Fradon in color!........ 80 Right: At right is a detail featuring The Goon and Franky along with some evil dead fellers from a promotional poster by Eric Powell.

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

Buy affordable, legal downloads only at

www.twomorrows.com or through our Apple and Google Apps!

& DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep producing great publications like this one!

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: $45 US, $67 International, $18 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.

up front

R. Crumb on Weirdo A rare chat with the great cartoonist on creating and editing the comix anthology Conducted by JON B. COOKE [The legendary Robert Crumb was very helpful when I was putting together The Book of Weirdo, a retrospective about the humor comix anthology he created in 1981, and (despite what he says below) I sensed his assist was because he had an enduring affection for his creation, which had ended in 1993, after 28 issues. What really clinched it for me was that the usually reticent cartoonist readily helped with the book’s promotion, whether posing with a copy alongside the author last March, or agreeing to participate in an upcoming panel talk, in New York City, to be moderated by yours truly. Plus he agreed to the following interview, which was originally made for the inaugural episode of my ongoing podcast devoted to underground and alternative comics, Subterranean Dispatch (which can be found at www. subterrdispatch.libsyn.com or from most podcast providers). The chat took place via Skype on March 28, and it was transcribed by Steven “Flash” Thompson. — JBC]

Art © R. Crumb. Weirdo TM & © R. Crumb. The Book of Weirdo © Jon B. Cooke.

Comic Book Creator: I’ve been in contact with you, as you know, very erratically for the past 12 years. And you don’t seem to suffer nonsense too easily. You can be a little… well, you know… you can be impatient with fools. [laughs] R. Crumb: Or just like stuff that I’m not interested in or I don’t think is worth bothering with, you know.

CBC: But this seems to be different—me working on The Book of Weirdo. You were extremely helpful to me and you were enthusiastic about this project. Why? Crumb: Yeah. Uh… why? I guess because you were so dedicated to it. I wasn’t enthusiastic about it and a lot of times I felt if I… the more I cooperate with this guy, the more he’s gonna ask me. The more he’s gonna want from me. That’s the impression I got over the years, you know, that every time I answered a bunch of questions in writing — like, spent hours and hours writing these long letters answering stuff — I would just end up with more questions

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

and more answers. [Jon laughs] And I thought I’d just…

Jesus. That’s why I put off sometimes answering you for that reason. I thought the more I cooperate, the more sucked into the project I’ll become. Because you just can’t help yourself. You’re so… utterly and completely like… thorough! [Jon chuckles] You could have devoted that dedication to thorough research to some great worthy project like discovering the corruption in bio-medical science or something. [laughter] Instead of dedicating it to Weirdo magazine! But, no. It’s sort of flattering on the one hand and then on the other hand, do I really wanna get sucked into this, y’know? [laughs] CBC: But you did let yourself get sucked into it!

Crumb: To some degree, but, like I said, sometimes I just would put off answering you and sometimes I wouldn’t answer you at all and you would kinda let it drop and then you’d re-contact me a few months later or a year later or whatever. ’Cause, you know, it did go on for a long time.

CBC: I sense that there’s something about Weirdo magazine that you’re proud of. Did you want a book like this done? Did you want a history of the magazine?

Crumb: No. I had no idea or desire or interest to ever have a review of Weirdo done like that. It never occurred to me. It just never even occurred to me.

CBC: And now that it’s done, what do you think?

Crumb: [Chuckles] Well, as I’ve often told you, I sit down and I always find something new in there. I never actually read it from cover to cover when you sent me those galley copies. I’d just pick up and flip through and find something of interest. It’s so vast! There’s so many people that give testimonials in there. I just… To me, after spending a few hours looking at it one day, I said, this is an unbelievable monument to Weirdo, the crazy f*cking magazine that I did, and Aline and Peter Bagge did for ten years.

It’s an incredible, amazing document! [laughter] And, like I think I told you before, to me it’s like it’s not just a monument to Weirdo, but to that decade, the 1980s. It really kinda says a lot about that time period. It’s a strong statement of that time period. As strong as anything I’ve seen! Don’t know how much attention it will get or how much people will look at it and recognize it. I don’t know. [laughs] Probably not because it’s so obscure. It’s not a… oh, how would you say it? A high-class operation, y’know? Now the whole thing — neither the magazine nor your monumental commentary on it. [laughter] CBC: I’m misguided, is that it? [laughter] Crumb: Mmmmm… maybe. I don’t know. Maybe. I have to admire your dedication. Jeez! You know? Wow. CBC: It was pretty obsessive. There was a list. I had an index. I built an index. These are real people and I can do my best to try to track down these people. Into the rabbit hole!

Crumb: You certainly did. You certainly did that. Incredi-

Above: Self-caricature of R. Crumb hawking ZAP and Weirdo. Inset left: Logo of Ye Ed’s Subterranean Dispatch podcast. Below: Drew Friedman’s cover of The Book of Weirdo.

3

This page: Above is a Topps salesman brochure produced

by R. Crumb in 1965. Below is the cover of Help! #26, the last issue of Kurtzman’s mag. R. Crumb, briefly on staff, appears in a fumetti in the issue as a party guest. Circle image is the cartoonist from the back cover, and bottom is from an actual print. Next page: At top is Weirdo #13 [Summer 1985]. At bottom is Erna Rae and Jenny Burger, modeling for a fumetti in Weirdo#3 [Fall 1981]. Photography by Gregg Gannon.

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Salesman brochure © Topps Chewing Gum Company. Help! magazine TM & © the respective copyright holder. Photo print courtesy of Denis Kitchen.

4

ble. Amazing.

CBC: I thought as a side thing, was your life at the time.

I was able to get a real true sense of you. I look at it as between the years with the IRS troubles and the house in Madison…

Crumb: Yeah.

CBC: [Between] when you moved to Winters and when you moved away, and I hope that was conveyed.

Crumb: Yeah, it’s definitely living in Winters’ Central Lane period. We moved there in 1978 and then we had Sophie in 1981 and Weirdo starts right around the exact same time that Sophie was born. Then it ends around the time we left America and moved to France and we did that one more issue in France [#28], that Aline more or less put together, that Verre D’eau.

CBC: How did the idea for Weirdo start?

Crumb: I was meditating… I was just beginning meditation and it came to me in a flash like maybe the second time I meditated. [laughs] The name and the whole idea and kind of basing it sort of partially on Kurtzman’s Humbug and on this kinda new, sorta like punk attitude that was coming up in these little zines, and all that stuff. And also, I guess, a way to continue the whole comics thing in back to a more semi-underground attitude, you know? I decided to keep it all loose and crazy and it all kind of came to me in a flash. [laughs] I even saw, like, the logo and stuff in my mind, you know? That first cover. I kind of saw it in my mind.

CBC: Besides Kurtzman’s covers, was the interior based on anything or just an amalgam of different things?

Crumb: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was an amalgamation of the old underground comix thing, the punk zine thing, and Kurtzman’s attitude in his last issues of MAD magazine and Humbug of doing all kinds of oddball stuff. And even Help!, where he had that “Public Gallery,” where he had young amateur cartoonists — including me — in there, and Jay Lynch, Paul Merta, and other people like that. And using old stuff, throwing in old stuff. Kind of inspired by that.

CBC: Just as a side thing, Kurtzman was the creator of MAD comics and then MAD magazine, and you worked for him briefly.

Crumb: Yeah, I did. I worked for him in the mid-1960s.

I went from the summer of ’64, when Terry Gilliam was working there as assistant editor and I worked with Terry Gilliam on some stuff, appeared in one of those fumettis, one of those photo funnies things, and just, you know, I was a “go-fer.” I ran around taking materials over to Harry Chester who was the production studio. Then, in ’65, he hired me to take Terry Gilliam’s place. Terry Gilliam had left for England so it would be me as assistant editor. So it would be Gloria Steinem, Terry Gilliam, and then me! [laughter] So I show up and the day I get there… I moved to New York from Cleveland with my wife. We rented an apartment and moved in and that Monday I reported for work at Help! magazine and there’s Kurtzman with a forlorn expression on his face, leaning on the wall outside of the office door and guys are taking desks and furniture out of the office so I said, “Harvey, I’m here! I’m here to start working on Help! Um… What’s goin’ on here?” He said, “Oh, James Warren decided to fold the magazine. It’s over.” [laughter] “Really? Oh jeez, I moved to New York, I rented an apartment!” He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll find you work.” He felt guilty, y’know? He felt responsible for me. So he connected me with Woody Gelman at Topps, the bubblegum company, and I worked for them for several months. It was just awful workin’ for them. Totally awful! [Jon chuckles] Woody Gelman was a nice guy, but he didn’t set the rules.

They were set by the guys who owned the place, who were just cheapskates.

CBC: Was this Nostalgia Press or Topps?

Crumb: Well, Woody Gelman had Nostalgia Press as a sideline thing of his own, but he was an executive at Topps, the guy in charge of the creative department, making card sets and other gimcracks that they sold with bubblegum — like the worst, sh*ttiest… the flat squares of gum that they used to put in with the cards. You ever see those?

CBC: Of course.

Crumb: Maybe you’re too young for that.

CBC: No, I’m not. [laughter] Crumb: Often the gum was stale. It was like hard and would crumble when…

CBC: Oh, yeah.

Crumb: It was awful. Topps was a sleazy operation.

CBC: You sent Harvey issues of Weirdo, right?

Crumb: I guess he saw it. He was kind of in decline in the ‘80s. Started getting Parkinson’s Disease and he became increasingly out of it. I don’t remember what his reaction was to Weirdo.

CBC: Yeah, you published a letter, a note. Comments from

Conducted by JON B. COOKE This spread: Clockwise from above is a detail of the Terry and the Pirates "Death of Raven" Sunday comic strip [Oct. 19, 1941], which caused a bona fide sensation in American culture at the time, outraging newspaper readers of the day; Amazing Spider-Man #121 [June 1973] cover art; Dragon Lady specialty drawing by Milton Caniff; Caniff self-portrait presumably from the 1940s; licensing drawing of Spider-Man by one-time Marvel art director John Romita, Sr.; recent candid photo of the man.

[A few years back, Ye Ed was also helming the monthly magazine ACE: All Comics Evaluated, and the following — a talk with the great Marvel Bullpen artist and all around superb human being, John Romita, Sr. (Jr.’s no slouch either!) — was featured in the first issue. Today, I can’t recall exactly what prompted me to call Johnny and ask for an interview about his devotion to Milton Caniff and Terry and the Pirates, but I’ll bet it was due to a reread of the awesome Doctor Strange cross-over in Amazing Spider-Man #108–109 [May–June, 1972], which has Caniff all over it!

Anyway, while the artist said he didn’t do interviews any more, he couldn’t resist this chance to gab about a favorite comic strip creator.

(Plus he likes me, so whaddaya gonna do?) The talk — of which here is an extended version than what was featured in ACE — took place via phone in Feb. 2014, and was transcribed by Steve “Flash” Thompson. — Y.E.]

22

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Terry and the Pirates TM & © Tribune Media Services, Inc. Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Comic Book Creator: I just read your afterward in an Amazing Spider-Man Marvel Masterworks and it’s just overflowing with gratitude — to Steve Ditko, to Stan Lee, but especially you talked about your favorite story arc in ASM, and that was the Flash Thompson Vietnam story.

John Romita Sr.: Yeah, I just got the oversize IDW book and they’re in that. I’m sittin’ there glowing and it’s making my head swell. They just did the full-size 11" x 17".

I just got a batch of books. They weigh a ton, but it’s worth it. [laughs] CBC: As a kid, I saw those stories and did appreciate your artistry. They were my favorite stories, as well, that you ever drew. I know they were influenced by your love of Milton Caniff and his Terry and the Pirates comic strips.

John: I’ve got [the Terry and the Pirates collected editions] right here on my bookcase, in one of my cabinets. I’m looking at them now. I’m afraid to open them again because every time I open them, I lose two days. [laughter] I get into the books and never come out!

CBC: I really think that there’s an entire generation who are starting to forget the history of comic strips. After all, it’s been a long time since Milt Caniff did a story.

John: Oh, yeah. It broke my heart when I sat in on Klaus Janson’s class and asked if they’d ever heard of Hal Foster,

Caniff, and Alex Raymond. I asked them to raise their hand, and out of maybe 40 kids, maybe one raised his hand.

If I were running this class, I’d have one day a week I would be teaching the evolution of comics from the book illustrators down through the comic strips — the Hal Foster initiation into adventure, and all of that stuff — and Caniff.

I would stuff you so full of it, you’d probably hate me! [laughter] CBC: But then we’d get to look at this beautiful stuff!

When did you first encounter Caniff?

John: I will say that the biggest tragedy of my life is that I was born too late. I was 10 years old in 1940 and Caniff had already been doing that for six years! And I missed those six years! So, at 10 years old, I started to notice it in the Daily News with the full-page, glorious Sunday strips… I have a box in my cabinet here with tear-sheets that are crumbling. I have all the way up to ’46 when Caniff left the strip. Yellowed pages.

I used to look through them almost once a month. And, just think, I missed some of the most glorious stuff in 1938, ’39, and ’40… and ’41 and ’42! So, it always broke my heart and when I got a chance to get these collected editions, I went back into ’34 and I just started from scratch like I should’ve done when I was a kid.

CBC: So it was in the New York Daily News?

John: It was the Daily News, on the back page of the Sunday comics section for a while, and then inside. Every Sunday, I spent two to three hours diving in and just gazing.

I’ve said this many times in my interviews: I recognized almost immediately why he did things… why he put smoke in a certain place, why he put shadows in a certain place.

I was aware, from the time I was 13 years old. I had been drawing imitation comics since I was 10. I started drawing when I was five and became a comic freak when I was 10. I was the kid in my neighborhood who discovered Jack Kirby and Milton Caniff.

The biggest phenomenon of all, something I only realized until many years later, is that almost every time I go into the Caniff stuff to look at the artwork (because as an artist I need to study it), that, by page three, I’m interested in the story and forgetting the artwork! I’m accepting the art because it’s so brilliant and such great storytelling, and I don’t have to even think about it anymore and suddenly I’m hooked! Even if I’ve read those stories a hundred times, I still get hooked on the dialogue.

Terry and the Pirates, Dragon Lady TM & © Tribune Media Services, Inc. Caniff portrait © the estate of Milton Caniff. Amazing Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

So it isn’t just that he was a great artist; Caniff was a marvelous, marvelous writer! I don’t know if he got any help as a writer… I don’t know if his buddy Noel Sickles, who did Scorchy Smith, helped him write.

I think more likely Caniff helped Sickles write Scorchy Smith! But the thing is, I realize Caniff not only made me an artist, but he also made me a storyteller, which is more important because the story is what sells a book. You can have the best artwork in the world, but the story is what gets the reader and digs into that person’s system.

CBC: What a superb writer! What a superb storyteller! That really pulls you in. For a comic strip, when you read these continuities lasting months, there’s really little redundancy that’s rather typical of other strips. It just flows very naturally.

John: Yeah, and even if you just saw the Sunday page, he used to do a recap of the week prior in the first panel and get people who missed all the dailies right up to date. He was an amazing, amazing storyteller.

CBC: What is it specifically about his art that appealed to you?

John: I used to tell young artists when I was art director at Marvel, “You must not make your stuff unpleasant to look at. In other words, it needs a certain amount of glamour.

Even if you’ve got a villain, you have to give him some humanity and glamour. If you’re doing Doctor Doom, you can make him look horrendous or you could make him look like a human being with a tragedy because of his face.” The thing is, Caniff did this without even hesitating. Every one of his characters was glamorous, even the ugly ones. He had characters like Redbeard, whose commentary was funny but deadly, but he made him a jolly looking old man like Santa Claus with a red beard. To me, that stuck in my mind.

Almost everything Caniff did stuck in my mind and I used it every one of the whole 50 to 60 years I was doing comics. I used almost everything Caniff did every chance I had.

CBC: What specifically about the art itself appealed to you?

John: Well, Sickles taught Caniff how to do the scenics, in other words, airplanes and mountains. I mean, when you were in Caniff’s strip, you were in China. I felt like the location was authentic and he did it all courtesy of a library card. He said he just read up on China and learned everything he could about it and he became a fanatic. I remember scenes that I could swear must have been taken COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

right out of the National Geographic. He was a genius about atmosphere, getting you to believe what you were looking at. Believability. The fact is, no matter how simply he did the work (he used to say he never could draw hands), he didn’t have to know how to draw every knuckle. All he had to do is do a genuine, familiar expression with the hand, the way a hand would act every day when you see people gesturing with their hands. All you have to do is make it a recognizable gesture and you don’t need to do every bone. That was another thing that was amazing to me, because he did not draw as well as, say, Alex Raymond or Hal Foster (although Foster was stiff and very limited by photography). Caniff was not limited. He got all the depth and all the convincability of every panel that he did without laboring over the art.

CBC: Would you call it impressionistic at all or minimalist?

John: It’s not impressionist; it’s illusionist. You’re giving the illusion of reality, because this is genuine. The characters in your strip are like an actor to a director. He directed his actors so beautifully. And, if you looked close, you will see that Pat Ryan had a certain body language, Terry Lee had a certain body language, Burma had her own. Everybody, all the villains, had their own body language, so subtly that you just accepted it! If you look back, you’ll see that Pat Ryan never did certain poses and Terry Lee did poses that Pat Ryan never did.

My three heroes in the world are the movie director Frank Capra, Irving Berlin, and Milton Caniff. Those are people who I consider genius in every level. When Caniff was doing Dickie Dare, he was an average artist! I mean, he was already making you care about the characters, but he wasn’t drawing slick and he wasn’t making people look like movie stars. But, by 1936, he was just… boy! I know that it’s the influence of Noel Sickles and I think they helped each other. One of them helped for the scenics and the other one helped with the human beings. Because I don’t think Scorchy Smith was great on characterization as much as it was for scenics.

CBC: Those three heroes of yours are quintessentially American guys who were from….

23

Above: John Romita, Sr., was greatly influenced by cartoonist Milton Caniff, even down to the exotic Asian setting, in his pair of Amazing Spider-Man stories, #108–109 [May–June, 1972]. Inset top right: The cover of the fourth volume of IDW's Terry and the Pirates collected editions acknowledges the impact of Raven Sherman's death on readers. Below: Caniff’s unforgettable sequence in the Terry and the Pirates daily strips of October 16–17, 1941.

Stan never knew it.

CBC: Can you give an example?

John: Sure. For instance, the death of Gwen Stacy. Stan and I didn’t plot that. I was working with a young guy, [writer] Gerry Conway. He was 21-years-old and we were instructed to kill a character. Stan Lee had just gone to Europe for his first vacation in about 20 years and [editor-in-chief] Roy Thomas was in charge. He said that he and Stan were talking about that they were thinking of killing Aunt May. When I got with Conway, I told him I don’t think we should. He said maybe Aunt May. So I told Conway and Conway and I plotted as equals. He did not try to dominate

me on plots. He actually gave me top-billing and we’d actually plot it together. I was very influential in the plot by that time. I had been that way with Stan, but it was more pronounced with Gerry Conway. And I said no, there’s no way we should kill Aunt May because all of Peter Parker’s apprehensions and fears would disappear, and the character wouldn’t even have to worry about his identity anymore.

I said Aunt May was crucial even though I know everybody wrote in and said that old lady drove ’em nuts (including John Buscema, who used to say, “That ol’ lady is crazy to draw!”). But I loved that old lady. The thing is, we needed to kill somebody important and that final decision was based on Caniff. When I must have been 13, Pat Ryan’s love died.

CBC: Raven?

John: Raven Sherman died. And now, I’m 13-years-old and I felt it like a member of my family had passed away.

I’m in the grocery store buying groceries the next day and I hear two grown-ups talking. One of them says, “Did you hear Raven Sherman died?” I jumped out of my shoes because I thought this was kid stuff! I didn’t think adults cared about Raven Sherman! That never left my mind. So you kill somebody important or don’t kill them at all. If Aunt May had gone or Mary Jane had gone, most readers would’ve taken it easier because neither one of them was as important as Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker’s love! I said, “That’s the one you kill.” Conway at the time agreed immediately. Since then his memory has gotten a little mushy and he thinks he thought of it.” [laughter] But I think I even told him that Raven Sherman was the reason for it.

Let me tell you, after 40 years, people are still asking every time they meet me. They ask, “Why did you kill Gwen Stacy?”

And I tell ’em, “Because nobody would have care if it was anybody else.”

That’s right out of Caniff!

And you’ll see when Snake Tumbler dies and when two or three other characters die in Terry and the Pirates, it’s all calculated to shock you and make you believe this is real life, this is not #21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Amazing Spider-Man, Doctor Strange TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Terry and the Pirates TM & © Tribune Media Services, Inc.

24

John: Ohio?

Yeah, that’s right. There are great artists all over the world. I mean, there are artists that I admire everywhere!

I have a long list of people who I think are great. All of my contemporaries, all the top guys, who are so great. I learn from everybody! But I took most from Caniff, and Caniff was in my mind almost all the time. It affected the way we plotted stories because, when I plotted a story with Stan, I constantly brought Caniff into the picture though

darrick patrick’s ten questions

The Inventive Mr. North A handful of queries for the taller-than-Knickers writer of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Portrait by Connie Tsang

by DARRICK PATRICK Ryan North is a professional writer who has worked on comic book titles such as The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Jughead, Adventure Time, Original Sins, The Midas Flesh, Inhumans: Once and Future Kings, etc. Books of his include How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, To Be or Not To Be: That is the Adventure, Machine of Death, Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure, and more. He is also the author of the daily webcomic, Dinosuar Comics.

30

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Photo portrait courtesy of Ryan North.

Darrick Patrick: How did you become a pro writer?

Ryan North: It was a pretty indirect path. I went to school for computer science, and in my last year of undergrad started a webcomic, Dinosaur Comics, which I still update three times a week today. After that, I went to grad school for computational linguistics, which is a field of AI concerned with getting computers to understand natural languages, and ran Dinosaur Comics the whole time. It was only when I graduated that I faced the choice between getting a job in my “field” — linguistics — or to instead become a full-time internet cartoonist. That was actually a really easy choice, because to become a full-time cartoonist all I had to do was fail to get a job, which is really easy to do! I wrote Dinosaur Comics for a decade before taking on other writing work, like writing books, choosable-path adventures, Marvel Comics, non-fiction time travel guides, and so on!

Darrick: Who are some of the people that greatly influenced you while growing up?

Ryan: I think a lot of comedy writing is making yourself laugh, and a lot of being someone who can make themselves laugh is having funny people in your life. Being able to learn from them, seeing how they make jokes, how they find their way to a punchline, the different styles of humor people have, and how that works for you. It’s kind of an always-running background process, something that you’re usually not really thinking about, but also something that can have a profound effect on how you write and how you tell jokes. So, to answer your question, it’s a lot of the people around me, especially those who made me laugh — and usually everyone in your life has made you laugh at some point in your relationship.

Darrick: Any words of advice for other individuals looking to make a career with their abilities in writing?

Ryan: Imagine someone who plays basketball just for fun, just to throw the ball around. And they do this every day for 10 years. There is a zero percent chance that at the end of that decade, after 10 years of playing basketball every day, that they’re not a better basketball player than when they started. Simply by playing the game you become better at it, even if you’re not trying to improve. You can’t avoid it. You’ll notice things, you’ll get better at things, you’re training even if you’re just having fun. Writing is the same way. If you’re doing it every day, you’ll get better at it. You can’t avoid getting better at it. You can speed that up, obviously, you can read books on writing (and you should be reading every day too if you can — you need to see what you like and how other people are pulling off the tricks you enjoy), but even if you just sit down and write, you’ll improve. So, my advice is to sit down and write.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. How to Invent Everything © Ryan North.

Darrick: How do you spend your time on a typical workday?

Ryan: I know that I work best in the morning, so I get up at 7:00 a.m. and start working then. I try to do most of my writing before noon, and then take care of other things such as emails, non-writing projects, etc., in the afternoon. There are days where I can write in the afternoon too, and those are great, but I try not to count on them. I’ve learned from hard experience that once 5:00 p.m. or so comes around, I’m pretty useless. I “can” write things, but it’s really hard and the next day it’s not very good. So, I tend to stop around then. It’s also good to have this time off to avoid burnout or feeling like you’re trapped. Throw in an hour or so break in the middle to walk my dog Chompsky and you’ve got a typical day!

Darrick: For new readers who may not be familiar with your work, what are some projects of yours that you would recommend to begin with?

Ryan: The easiest and most accessible is Dinosaur Comics, because it’s free. That’s at www.dinosaurcomics. com. I think I’m pretty standard in that I think my most recent books are my best books, so if you’re only going to read one of them, start with How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler. It’s the book I’d always wanted to read, so I finally wrote it myself. The premise is it’s a repair guide for a time machine, but time machines are incredibly complex and have no user-servicable parts inside, so instead the book tells you how to bring the future back to you by rebuilding civilization from scratch. I’d often (irrationally?) worried about going back in time and saying, “Hey, the future’s great, we have computers and antibiotics!” and people saying, “Great, how do you invent computers and antibiotics?” and me saying, “I… don’t… actually know?” But, with this book, you’ll know.

Also, it’s funny!

Darrick: Who are a few of the people in the comics industry that you hold a high deal of respect for?

Ryan: Oh, so many. Comics is an industry that’s not exactly a place people go to become rich and famous. We’ve got movies for that. So those who are working in it tend to be those who really love the medium and are just really good people. There are folks like Kazu Kibuishi, who thinks so much about what he’s doing, how his books can help people, and how to have the greatest positive effect on the world. There are mad scientists like Jason Shiga, who is without hyperbole one of the smartest people I’ve ever COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

met, making comics that push the medium into places it hasn’t gone before. And there’s people like Tillie Walden, who create books and stories that seem effortless with how smoothly they slip inside your mind, and who are just at the start of what’s going to be an incredible career. I look around me at all the talented people in our industry and I think, “Okay, perfect, I never want to be the smartest person in the room because I want my friends to be way better people than I am so I can learn from them. This is great.”

Darrick: Outside of constructing stories, what are you other interests?

Ryan: I like dogs, I like long-boarding, I like cooking. I like film — actually I did a minor in it — though that doesn’t count because my wife and I always talk afterwards about what worked and what didn’t, so really we’re examining stories and storytelling. I’m trying to think of things here that are completely unrelated to what I do, something apart from writing, and “dogs” is about as close as I can get. Dogs: they’re great!

Darrick: What is your oldest memory?

Ryan: I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen. It has a bird landing on my finger, Snow White style, and then I tell the bird a lie — knowing I shouldn’t — and it never lands on my finger again. This may be my oldest memory but it’s just the oldest dream I remember… or is it?

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

Ryan: Most people know I’m really tall, but how tall? Here is how tall: that really big cow from a few months back, Knickers, that everyone was freaking out about? I am taller than she is. (Also she’s not that tall, she’s big, but she was photographed with some small cows that look like regular cows). Anyway, I’m two meters tall, which is really convenient when trying to get things off of high shelves or seeing things over the heads of others, but less convenient when on airplanes, trains, or really any other form of transportation. My friend, Karla Pacheco, is the same height as an average cow, so when we’re together we’re a walking cow facts visualization.

Darrick: If you had 24 hours left to live, how would you spend that time?

Ryan: I’d spend it with my wife and dog! I’ve got lots of books written, so it’s not like I’d frantically be trying to write more. That would have to be enough.

Okay, that’s a lie, I might write some nice notes to my friends too. And maybe a final letter to the public. Dang it, I would write after all.

Above: Three covers to issues of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, each #1. The series, of course, was written by Ryan North and drawn by Erica Henderson. Left is the March 2015 edition with cover art by Henderson. Center is the Dec. 2015 edition, art by Henderson. Right is the variant cover of the March 2015 edition, with art by Arthur Adams.

Below: The concept of Ryan North’s fictional handbook, subtitled “A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler,” is that it contains instructions for creating civilization from scratch should the sojourner find himor herself stuck in the past.

Ryan’s effort was selected as a Goodreads Choice Semifinalist for the 2018 “Best Science and Technology Book.”

31

from the golden age to new wave

Trembles Confesses: ‘I Was The Montreal-based cartoonist of oft-outrageous alternative comix fondly recalls his lasted through much of WWII. During the war years, comics from the Great White North were dubbed “Canadian Whites” because comic [Rick Trembles, who became an acquaintance due to his books published up here were largely printed in black-&work for Weirdo magazine, is probably best known for his white (the interiors, anyway). These vanished overnight comic-strip film reviews titled “Rick Trembles’ Motion Piconce WWII ended. According to John Bell’s 2006 book, ture Purgatory,” which has thus far been collected in two Invaders From The North: How Canada Conquered the Comvolumes published by FAB Press. He describes himself as an “illustrator, post-underground cartoonist, writer, filmmak- ic Book Universe, the origins of the Canadian Whites were er, and musician,” and The Comics Journal quotes R. Crumb a result of government austerity measures: as describing him as, “Even more twisted and weird than [S]hortly after Canada’s declaration of war against me.” It was likely through a Facebook connection where I Germany, the Foreign Exchange Control Board was eslearned Rick’s dad was also an artist who dabbled in comic tablished to oversee the rationing of foreign currency, books, albeit not in the 1980s/90s alt comix period, but in something it would do with varying severity until 1951. In the Golden Age, specifically contributing to the “Canadian December 1940, as Canada’s trade deficit with the United Whites” books, World War II era black-&-white comics.

States grew, and British gold shipments were curtailed, This page: Cover of the second I had been pondering asking Rick for a feature on his dad government intervention in the economy broadened with volume of Rick Trembles’ Mo- when I learned Jack had passed away, on Nov. 11 of last the introduction of the War Exchange Conservation Act. tion Picture Purgatory collec- year, at age 92. This spring, I asked for that piece… — Y.E.]

by RICK TREMBLES

tion, which compiles his movie review comic strips. Below is a hilarious — albeit gory — example (atypical as most Trembles strips include an excessive amount of text), this one making fun of the ultra-violent Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 movie Western, Django Unchained.

Aimed at countries outside the sterling bloc, it was primarily designed to conserve American dollars by restricting the importation of non-essential goods from Canada’s largest trading partner. Among the items banned were fictional periodicals, a category that encompassed pulps and other newsstand magazines, including comic books. As a result, the government inadvertently laid the groundwork for an indigenous comics industry.

The end of the war in 1945 meant American comics were allowed to flow back into Canada and since the Canadian companies couldn’t compete, titles started dropping like flies. My father’s work is cited in this book as part of Canada’s “Golden Age” of comics, and I even got acknowledged as his son in a mention of my own work being part of Canada’s DIY small press explosion of the ’90s.

My father’s principal WWII character was Crash Carson, a pilot who’d shoot down Nazis and Japs in his fighter plane with the Devil’s Angels Squadron. Yes, racist cardboard stereotypes were the bad guys, as they were in most comic books of the era. Years later, when I found myself following in my father’s footsteps, I often joked how drawing comics was more complicated for me, because things weren’t as black-&-white anymore. So, since I was never given as clear an enemy as his generation, I decided to make myself my own worst enemy.

One year, my father drew “the enemy” replacing Crash Carson when he doctored one of his old comic book covers swapping Crash’s face for mine to turn it into a birthday card for me. For drawing these comics at the time, he was the envy of all the other kids on the block and took home three big bucks per page after mailing out each issue’s artwork to Toronto from his Verdun, Montreal, neighborhood.

Three dollars was a lot of dough for a 15-year-old back then.

I probably make less than that in the equivalent of today’s currency with my comics. I managed to hold onto a stack of preliminary sketches from various aborted comics ideas of his which I cherish to this day, along with my yellowing collection of Wow Comics.

The amateur stuff he drew as a kid before he got more polished was what gave me the courage to try my own hand at it. Young Jack made it look doable. Funny thing is, for some reason, up until very recently, the Whites weren’t #21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Motion Picture Purgatory TM & © Rick Trembles.

32

My Canadian Golden-Age cartoonist dad, Jack Tremblay, was born on the first of May, 1926, in Providence, Rhode Island. His family settled in Montreal when he was eight, and he began drawing comics by age 13. Within two years, after winning a pair of roller skates from a drawing contest held by Toronto’s Bell Features Comics, Jack ended up working for them as 15-year-old writer/cartoonist for their line of Wow Comics and Commando Comics, a gig that

the Son of a Superior Artist!’

Wow Comics cover by Jack Tremblay © the estate of Jack Tremblay.

father, onetime “Canadian Whites” Golden Age comic book artist Jack Tremblay

even worth that much to collectors, probably because they’re from Canada. Maybe they weren’t as sought after because, like my father, so many early Canadian cartoonists moved out of the field as fast as they could to pursue more lucrative careers in commercial illustration instead of sticking to comics like their American counterparts, who established enduring cartoon characters that provided the kinds of trajectories and chronologies fans like to track. The fact that the Canadian comics industry took a nosedive after WWII surely was no help.

The longest cartooning gig I ever had was drawing movie reviews done as comix splash pages called “Motion Picture Purgatory” for a free weekly, The Montreal Mirror, from 1998–2012 until the internet supposedly wiped out all print media. I’m still doing the same series, but it’s a monthly now, for the canuxploitation.com blog, and I have to make the panels scroll downwards like a roll of toilet paper, so people can read them on their phones.

One of the earliest comics I have by my father, I used to like saying preceded my movie comix conceptually by seven decades. He’d create handmade renditions of favorite scenes from B-movie actioners he watched at his local theatre and sold them to the kids on his block for five cents.

He originally “printed” them out individually on shabby newsprint by putting pencil shading all over a blank sheet to make homemade carbon paper, then he’d trace every copy onto multiple pages and bind them with string. I must have the only two duplicates left in existence, which were based on the 1941 film, “The Return of Daniel Boone.”

In 2005, New York City cartoonist Michael Kupperman published his first Tales Designed to Thrizzle comic book and alerted me that one of his stories was directly influenced by this five-cent comic my father did. I had previously explained to Kupperman the storyline of Jack’s comic COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

when he was visiting Montreal and he found the premise so funny he had to replicate it. Jack’s story consisted of one incredibly long, drawn out fight between two tough cowboys about a horse. After pummeling the bullies, our hero turns to the reader and asks, “Now does anybody else wanna know where I got that horse?”

Kupperman called his version, “Are Comics Serious Literature?” And he reproduced the fight scene, but changed the punchline; “Now who else says comics aren’t serious literature?” He even gave special thanks to my father in the credits page. Jack got a big kick out of this.

This page: Above left is photo of Jack Tremblay and son Rick Trembles from the 2014 documentary, Lost Heroes: The Untold Story of Canadian Superheroes. Above are covers of “Canadian Whites” Tremblay appeared in. Below, Tremblay doctored a Wow cover to feature his cartoonist son.

33

Above: In a rare comic book shop appearance, Stan Lee visited Joe Field’s Flying Colors Comics and Other Stuff in the summer of 2013, to help celebrate their 25 th anniversary.

By the way, little known fact: Joe actually worked for Stan and Joan Lee as publicist for Joan’s steamy novel, The Pleasure Palace, published by Dell Paperbacks, in 1987!

Below: After a visit to Rick Trembles, where he saw Jack Tremblay’s juvenile work, cartoonist Michael Kupperman was so inspired by a homemade Western sequence by Tremblay, that he swiped it for a scene in the first issue of his Tales Designed to Thrizzle [2005].

34

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Panther, Western comics panel TM & © the estate of Jack Tremblay. Tales Designed to Thrizzle TM & © Michael Kupperman.

Above: Prior to becoming a professional comic book artist, teenage Jack Tremblay created his own hand-colored comics, including a Batman knockoff by the name of The Panther.

nuances long gone since ages before I was even born. And the deceptively crude art of some of them gave me the guts to try making my own.

Examples of some of the books he’d held onto from his youth, which I still own and cherish, are Thomas Craven’s Cartoon Cavalcade [1943], Gene Byrnes’ A Complete Guide to Drawing, Illustrating, Cartooning and Painting [1948], and A Complete Guide to Professional Cartooning [1950].

Stuff like Little Nemo in Slumberland and Smokey Stover had a profound influence on me. By the late ’60s and early ’70s, when comics were being rediscovered, he’d bring home the likes of compilations such as Grosset and Dunlap’s Krazy Kat with the intro by E. E. Cummings, and the massive Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century published by Bonanza Books, anthologies such as Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes, George Perry and Alan Aldridge’s The Penguin Book of Comics (which gave a taste of the future by reproducing a page from Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat at the very end), and Les Daniels’ Comix: A History of Comic Books in America, which gave an even larger taste of the undergrounds. Soon followed A History of Underground Comics by Mark James Estren and I was a goner.

For better or worse, my parents were liberal enough to let me blow my preteen mind over these pioneering taboo-breakers. I noticed many of the undergrounders took their cues from, and even occasionally mimicked artwork from the kinds of archaic newspaper comics I’d already been devouring. Exposed to such stuff, the old and the new, I could care less about contemporary mainstream comics. I was privileged to have been exposed to this material. I was obsessed with it, but it didn’t provide for much in terms of talking points with my fellow school chums who didn’t have the same access or interests. I was pretty isolated in my obsession. Back in the ’70s, the medium wasn’t as revered as it is today. It wasn’t considered a sane career move or even worthy of serious study yet.

My father tolerated underground comix, even though I was underage. Especially Robert Crumb because he was such a “good draughtsman,” as he put it, but he’d browbeat me when other undergrounders were drawing genitalia badly. I especially remember his concerned disapproval over the inside cover of All Canadian Beaver Comix #1 After drawing comics, Jack became a successful writer where a gaping, talking vagina welcomed readers to the and commercial artist, publishing children’s books on Cana- issue. He brought me to a publishing trade show once where a distributer had a copy of Justin Green’s Binky diana, working at ad agencies, illustrating for the Montreal Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary on display and I begged Star Weekend Magazine supplement among many others, the man to sell it to me, but it was a firm no because of my and exhibiting his fine art acrylic paint canvases at nuage. The way the back cover of my copy of Don Donahue merous galleries. Being a commercial artist, he was never and Susan Goodrick’s edited Apex Treasury of Underground opposed to the brain-rot that is pop culture and actually Comics had laid out multiple samples of underground comix encouraged me as a child to delve into the history of comics with books he’d buy me that I always suspected were as covers as if they were trading cards made me wanna much for his own pleasure as mine. “Hey, whatever got the collect them all, and Binky was among them. It wasn’t long before I started sneaking into the downtown head-shops kid reading,” he probably figured. to stock up on all the actual underground comix I could Anthologies my father brought home contained mostly samples from the early comic strips he grew up with, start- find. Some of my collection still smells a little like incense ing at the beginning of the 20th century when they were still from those shops to this day. The nerdy hippies running those places tried to turn me on to super-hero comics but I experimental. They opened up a strange world of archaic wouldn’t have any of it.

My earliest efforts to emulate the undergrounds embarrassingly hybridized the likes of Robert Crumb and Peter Max even though I was still a virgin to sex and drugs. The anachronism of my doodles got further reinforced by the fact that ’60s counter-culture was petering out by that time.

But, lucky for me, punk rock was just around the corner.

Just as the minimalism of punk convinced me to start playing music in the late ’70s, it also inspired me to create like-minded comix which I submitted to every zine I could find. Even though many of the ’60s undergrounders were punk precursors, punk didn’t seem to have any identifiable cartoonists besides a tiny handful like New York’s John Holmstrom, who did Punk magazine and some Ramones LP covers, and then later, Peter Bagge, who’d eventually

doms that the internet was beginning to provide broke, disaffected losers like me by posting a blog about my “career” and upbringing on my brand new state-of-theart 1999 homemade website.

I sent a hard copy to my as of yet internet-less parents and they were horrified. I was dumbfounded because I genuinely thought they’d distinguish this particular project as a satirical take on Horatio Alger’s “American Dream,” a poke at the kinds of hackneyed rags-to-riches scenarios typical of most artist/musicians’ prefabricated self-aggrandizing promotional mythologies.

I wanted to combine my contempt for such accounts with genuine bittersweet truths to illicit shocks in tandem with yucks. “It’d be fun for me to analyze my father’s paintings one day since they were probably his most honest effort at communicating,” I wrote, “but they weren’t made for the likes of the kinds of dumps I’ve been inhabiting ever since living on my own, according to the art world, and I don’t like hanging around stuck-up people’s houses or galleries. When will the f*cken bourgeoisie fall?” “As prejudiced a judgment as any bourgeois,” my father responded in a

Above: Wow Comics announcement declaring Jack Tremblay as a contest winner. Inset left: Tremblay in 1944, training to become a paratrooper. Below: Example of Tremblay illustration work, this from the Montreal Star Weekend Magazine [1972].

All © the respective copyright holders.

help shape alternative comics. Punk borrowed a lot from horror movies, which appealed to that obsession in me, as well. The early punk aesthetic, as applied to comix, for me, meant experimentation, confrontation, and transgression just like what I thought the music represented. So I traded psychedelia for abrasive surrealistic non sequiturs, and free love for unrequited polymorphous perversity, satire remaining an important element throughout, but deadpan all the way because I hate spelling stuff out for people.

Biographical aspects eventually snuck their way in so I could shamelessly plug my own musical projects. These comix appeared mostly in music zines after all, so I figured I’d stay on topic.

One night, according to my father, when I was nine years old, brat that I was, I crept up to him in the center of his bedroom while he was squatting on the floor trying to concentrate on his yoga meditations and proceeded to dangle a bell over his head and ring it, vying for attention.

He decided to immortalize the moment in one of his earliest acrylic fine art canvases. He spent the rest of the ’70s accumulating such pieces, each becoming more and more surreal and ornate, occasionally landing himself exhibitions at various Montreal galleries.

Jack was written about in art magazines and several of his pieces are in private collections. He had quite the temper when it came to his art, a trait I’m sorry to say I inherited. As a child, I once witnessed him violently destroying a fine art canvas he was working on that wasn’t going well, right in front of the family. He cursed loudly at it as if it was alive and kicked it in, putting a massive hole through it. We thought the world was ending. Our terrified reactions were similar to the way he once drew us in a ’60s advertisement. It depicted him angrily, literally “raising the roof” of our home, revealing an aerial cutaway view of the shocked family below. He used to take photos of us for reference.

In my bitter late 30s, after having lived in one too many dilapidated dumps, I decided to abuse the free-

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

35

Comic Book Creator: Where are you from, Eric?

Eric Powell: Nashville. I was born and raised in middle Tennessee and never left. I grew up about a halfhour from here, in a town called Lebanon.

CBC: What was your childhood like?

Eric: Pretty normal for an ’80s kid: playing in the woods, Nintendo, Saturday morning cartoons… back when we still had those.

CBC: Were comics important?

Eric: Not as much as you would think. I read them, but they were not something that occupied a lot of my time. I was more into movies. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I got really hooked on comics. I can’t remember not drawing. I was also writing stories to go with my illustrations. When I was a teenager, a buddy lent me some comics of his and I suddenly understood, “Oh, this is what I should be doing.” Drawing and telling a story. Which is what I had already been doing in my notebooks. That’s where the love of comics came from.

CBC: What comics were you getting?

Eric: I grew up reading the typical stuff. There was a lot of Superman and Spiderman, The Hulk, and stuff like that… the comics that drew me into the modern stuff.

I remember reading some Wolverine, some , and I really got into Bernie

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke • Transcribed by Rose Rummel-Eury 44

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Goon, all art TM & © Eric Powell.

This year has been a pretty big one for artist/ writer/publisher Eric Powell. It’s mostly due to the fact that 2019 marks the 20th anniversary since the first appearance of his signature creation, The Goon. Not only does the cartoonist have an exhausting schedule of 24 stops on the tour celebrating his milestone, but he’s also relaunched The Goon as a continuing series with his Albatross Funny Books. That ambitious imprint also publishes other creator-owned properties, such as Grumble, MegaGhost, Galaktikon, ’Namwolf, and Spook House, as well as another Powell creation, Hillbilly, which he describes as essentially a sword-&-sorcery epic set in Appalachia. Plus there’s progress being made on the long-planned animated movie adapting The Goon, with no less than David (The Social Network) Fincher attached as producer and Tim (Deadpool) Miller as director. So, by any measure,for this country boy made good, 2019 sure is a year to remember. This interviewed occurred in August.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

45

46

Wrightson and Swamp Thing, and all of my artistic taste came from getting into Bernie Wrightson and backtracking his influences.

CBC: That’s an interesting time for Bernie. Can you put it down to a year when you were introduced to Wrightson?

Eric: Not really. I was familiar with his art before I knew who he was. I could look at a Swamp Thing cover and say, “There’s that artist I like.”

CBC: When you got attracted to it.

Eric: I had seen his stuff when I was a kid. I had seen some Swamp Thing that an uncle of mine had copies of.

I can’t remember when that was. When I got back into comics, I remembered him from those books. I had that connection to his work.

CBC: It’s interesting that, by the mid-’80s, post-Frankenstein, Bernie agreed that he was a little past his prime or was in a slump by then.

Eric: He did this book, Batman: The Cult, and that was one book that brought me back into comics. It wasn’t his best work, but it was definitely enough to influence me and get me to look at his older stuff.

CBC: When you were younger, before as a teenager, you were watching a lot of movies? Which ones were you attracted to?

Eric: Anything that was horror. Every Sunday when I was a kid, they would play the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. Then there were the monster movies, like Godzilla or Creature from the Black Lagoon. I got into those pretty early, the Universal stuff. Anything that had a monster in it or some kind of horror, fantasy, or science fiction, I was all about it.

CBC: How old were you when you had a VCR in the house?

Eric: I’m trying to remember. I was around maybe nine?

CBC: You were young. Did you go to the video store and haunt the horror section?

Eric: Yeah. The funny thing was, the first video rental place in town was out of the back of a Dairy Queen, an extra room or something they had. They lined the walls with shelves of VHS tapes for rent. Every weekend, we’d go there and rent something. My sister and I always had a set rule: We’d have to rent a scary one and a funny one. I always attribute that to where The Goon has come from — funny and scary — and that’s what has always appealed to me.

CBC: Was The Goonies of appeal to you? Poltergeist?

Movies that had humor and elements of horror?

Eric: Oh, yeah, and The Evil Dead. Yeah, any dark comedyslash-horror movie is right up my alley.

CBC: Did you have other siblings?

Eric: It was just me and my sister. We did have a foster brother for about a minute.

CBC: What’s the age difference with your sister?

Eric: She’s a couple years older.

CBC: Were you friendly?

Eric: Yeah, with all the typical brother/sister stuff going on.

She had her thing going and I had mine. We weren’t bosom buddies, but we get along well.

CBC: It’s good to have sisters; gives you a different perspective. So, black-&-white movies didn’t turn you off. What were your favorite movies growing up?

Eric: It depends. I was one of those kids who definitely had stages. I got into things for a year and got into another thing #21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Best Cellars TM & © the respective copyright holder. Monster Boy TM & © Eric Powell. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Previous spread: At lower left is cover detail from the forthcoming book, The Art (and Many Other Mistakes) of Eric Powell, a self-portrait of the man. On right is Goon promotional art.

This page: Above is the original art and printed cover featuring a very early Powell effort, Monster Boy [Best Cellars #1, 1995].

Below is Eric’s cover for Swamp Thing #21 [Jan. 2006].

Godzilla and related characters TM & © Toho Co., Ltd. King Kong, Universal Monsters TM & © Universal City Studios, Inc.

the next year. In my teens, as I started junior high, I was into movie special effects and stuff and thought about doing that for a living. I was all into any kind of horror with big special effects. I was into Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. I liked all of it.

CBC: So you read Fangoria?

Eric: Oh yeah. I loved Fangoria. It was a little hard to get where I lived, but anytime I saw it on the stands, I would grab it.

CBC: Is there any reason you need to rectify the hyper-violent stuff that was coming out in the ’80s and ’90s, and the classic mood-centric stuff like James Whale and any number of horror movies from that period, which relied more on atmosphere and the implicit, in contrast to the in-your-face explicit material? Or did you like it all?

Eric: I liked it all. As an adult, I can analyze this and, like you’re saying, “This is more atmospheric and the directing and cinematography are more artistic,” but I found validity in all of it. There was always something I could take from it, even the cheesy stuff. “That was a dumb movie, but it was fun and this effect in it was cool. This camera angle was cool.” There was always something I could take something positive from it. Maybe to justify my taste! [chuckles] CBC: I was never into the slasher movies and hyper-violent movies, but I remember seeing Nightmare on Elm Street and remembering how simple and effective the effects were. Some of these movies were clever. When you were in junior high, what were your aspirations? You said you wanted to be a special effects guy?

Eric: I wanted to do something like that, but growing up where I did, that seemed like an unattainable goal, a lofty ambition that would never happen. I knew I wanted to do some kind of art, but wasn’t sure exactly what I could do.

For some reason, when I got the comic bug, it stuck. It never went away. I maintained a laser-focus, that this was what I wanted to do.

CBC: When you were doing proto-comics when you were young, was it all monsters?

Eric: Yeah it was all monsters! There was a lot of influence from the monster movies I was watching at the time. In one of the early ones, I had was a character named “Roadkill.”

It was like a Freddy or Jason character who drove around the desert in a hot rod. [chuckles] Not a lot of deep plot going on there. [laughter] CBC: Your parents didn’t mind you watching all this violent material?

Eric: They never stopped me, but they didn’t approve of it.

They thought it was a little weird, but didn’t hinder me.

CBC: What did your mom and dad do?

Eric: My mom worked at Northern Telecom, a phone plant, and my dad was in construction and owned a drywall company.

CBC: Were you a latchkey kid?

Eric: [Chuckles] Yeah, but where we lived, I wouldn’t call it “latchkey,” because we never even locked the doors!

It was pretty rural. We never worried about anyone breaking in.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

CBC: How far away were your neighbors?

Eric: Maybe to the nearest neighbor… about a quarter mile.

CBC: Did you have pets?

Eric: Dogs; we always had dogs.

CBC: Did your parents have a garden?

Eric: Yeah. We had a cornfield. We lived in a trailer at first and there was a cornfield beside it that was fun to play in when I was young.

CBC: Throughout your childhood, did you have the same bunch of friends?

Eric: You would have that best friend for a year and then change classes and meet new friends. It seems like I had a new best friend each year, but there was at least one friend I palled around with year after year.

CBC: Were they of like mind? Did they like monster movies?

Eric: For the most part, but I don’t know if anybody liked them as much as I did.

CBC: Were you a weird little kid?

Eric: I was weird, though I can’t say I was picked on anymore than the average kid.

I wasn’t singled out or had a rough childhood. I was pretty average. I was one of those kids scooting along and getting by.

CBC: Blending in?

Eric: Right.

CBC: How were you known in school? Were you shy?

Eric: Yes, I was a shy kid, but I was definitely known as the artist of the class every year. I was always the one everyone knew could draw. The content of my drawing was sometimes not approved of. It was always monsters or something weird or gross. I wasn’t necessarily asked to draw school mascots because teachers were too afraid of what I would draw. [laughter] CBC: Did your art teachers like you or were they wary of your interests?

Eric: For the most part they liked me, but I had one teacher that didn’t like me at all. In fact, I think she went out of her way

This page: Top left is Eric’s rendition of the Toho monsters — a gatefold wraparound cover for Godzilla: Monster World #1 [Mar. 2011]— which had an impact on the artist as a boy, as did King Kong, seen above (Kong of Skull Island #1 variant cover, June 2017], and the Universal monsters, seen below (Universal Monsters: Cavalcade of Horror TPB cover, 2006).

47

54

The first few years of that were kind of crazy the way it was escalating.

CBC: Did it improve your standard of living?

Eric: Oh, yes! Leaps and bounds.

CBC: Were you able to get a house?

Eric: We actually bought my parents’ house. They found a house they liked and we bought the other one from them.

CBC: Wow. Cool. Is that the house you grew up in?

Eric: For half of my life. Like I said, I grew up in a trailer in rural Tennessee and then Dad built a house.

That’s the home I purchased, which I’ve since sold. That was the first house I bought.

CBC: Was it far from the trailer?

Eric: It was 20 minutes away. We

were still in the same area.

CBC: How many issues did you self-publish?

Eric: Four books and a trade paperback.

CBC: Did you stick with the same printer and everything was the same throughout that experience?

Eric: The local printer I used and traded advertising with was in Murfreesboro, and then I started using Brenner Printing, out of Texas. They did the other books and the trade paperback.

CBC: All this inventory was in your parents’ house?

Eric: Yes, in the garage.

CBC: Did you have to fill single orders or fulfill orders for the distributors?

Eric: We did all of it. We did mail orders, but not too much of that.

CBC: What were the demands on you besides doing the regular book? Did you do a lot of shows?

Eric: I did a lot of shows for promotion. The timeframe of self-publishing was so short, though. Before our fourth book was out, I’d already agreed to go to Dark Horse. You’re talking maybe six months.

CBC: You put them out fast!

Eric: I think the first few books were around monthly or bi-monthly, but I was churning them out as fast as I could. It was my source of income.

CBC: You were grabbing it before it went away?

Eric: Yeah.

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Goon TM & © Eric Powell.

helped me a lot to get them to go, “Okay, yeah.”

CBC: Did they call you back or was it through email?

Eric: I don’t think we were using email at that time. It was just through the mail.

CBC: How many did they order?

Roughly?

Eric: I can’t remember… it would have been around 1,000 to 2,000, which isn’t a lot, but considering it was done by us, out of our house, we were able to turn a profit.

CBC: Did distributors reorder?

Eric: They did. It took off almost immediately. I can’t remember our orders, but they climbed by several hundred every issue.

CBC: How many printings did the first one go through?

Eric: Just one printing.

CBC: Did you hold on to a box of first printings?

Eric: Yes, I did.

CBC: Has that been profitable for you?

Eric: It has. [chuckles] I held on to a few copies of the old issues and, every once in awhile, we’ll throw them out there.

CBC: What’s the highest it has gone for? Do you know?

Eric: Oh, I don’t know. Somebody was telling me the very first Goon #1 was over $1,000 now.

CBC: Cool. I have a friend who bought #1 and remains an avid, crazed fan of The Goon ever since.

Did you have fans right out the gate?

Eric: Come to think of it, I can’t say we weren’t using email, because the internet helped us at the start. We immediately got buzz on the web. There was a lot of comics guys online talking about the book. It was weird. I’d been struggling all these years and, all of a sudden, I put out this one book and it just kept escalating. “Oh, the first book came out and we made some money. Oh, look, the second book came out and we made more money. That’s cool. Look, all these people are talking about it!

Wow! Hey, Dark Horse called and they want to publish it!” Then it comes out from Dark Horse and we got all this buzz and got nominated for an Eisner.

59

The Goon TM & © Eric Powell.

Above: Piece done for the Mondo Gallery exhibition celebrating The Goon’s 20th anniversary, which took place last spring at their Austin, Texas, location.

Below: A relatively recent Albatross Funny Books release is Eric’s Hillbilly, a sword-&-sorcery storyline based in the wilds of the Appalachian mountains.

very important artist to our company CBC: I think Steve is a big secret. Not enough people know of his art, which is absolutely delightful. I’ve been a friend of Frank Forte for many years now, who introduced me to Steve’s work. Any plans to do a regular Mannion series?

Eric: We have some stuff in the pipeline we want to get Steve on. I think we’re open to anything he wants to do.

CBC: What is Grumble?

Eric: Grumble is a book by Mike Norton who’s known for about a thousand books. He’s worked for Marvel and DC doing just about everything. He’s known for Battlepug. He’s done a book at Image that’s very popular. It’s a book about a con artist wizard who turns himself into a pug to avoid bounty hunters and can’t get himself unstuck. It’s kind of like an on-the-run road book. It’s been described — and I think it’s a good description — as “Hellblazer meets Howard the Duck.” It’s a really fun book.

CBC: How did you publishing him come about? Did you approach him? Did he approach you?

Eric: I did. I think it was Chicago a couple years back. I told him, “Hey, if youIFever want to do anything, I’ll publish YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, it, whatever it is.” HeCLICK said, “Be you ask for THEcareful LINKwhat TO ORDER THIS because I have this ideaIN of PRINT a guy who into a FORMAT! pug.” He ISSUE ORturns DIGITAL described it as “Hellblazer meets Howard the Duck.” I love Mike’s stuff and love any kind of crazy stuff, so it was right up my alley.

CBC: We met up at San Diego Comic-Con this year. How was San Diego for you?

Eric: San Diego was great and seems to be the same thing every year. It was a good show.

CBC: What makes for a good show?

Eric: For us, personally? Some people do not have a good time at San Diego because of the crowds and so many shiny objects for people to be distracted, but we seem to always have a good show there and I think one of the best things about it — because it draws such a weird and diverse crowd, we’re able to expose people who aren’t aware of our stuff to it.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #21 CBC: And, obviously, Comic-Con is a huge media thing.

ERIC POWELL celebrates 20 years of THE GOON! with a caHollywood is there.

Do you get in-person inquiries from reer-spanning interview and a gallery of rare artwork. Plus CBC editor and author JON B. COOKE on his new retrospective THE people in the business?

BOOK OF WEIRDO, a new interview with R. CRUMB about his Eric: Yeah, all the time. have nocomics ideaanthology, was The work on thatThey legendary humor a lookGoon at DAVE COCKRUM’s design work Auroraoptioned?”

Models, JOHN ROMITA is. They walk by and ask, “Has thisforbeen It’s SR. on his admiration for the work of MILTON CANIFF, and more! constant. “Has this been optioned?” There’s a lot of fishing (100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 going on. There are people out there who want to swipe up (Digital Edition) $5.95 http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=133&products_id=1514

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Illustration, Hillbilly TM & © Eric Powell.

60

perennial out of The Goon.

Eric: Yeah. It’s been in print since I started publishing with Albatross. It’s not been out of print.

CBC: That’s outstanding. Spook House: is that just for Halloween?

Eric: It’s a labor of love. I had an idea to do a horror anthology for kids, because it’s something I would’ve enjoyed as a kid. Something fun for me and other creators to do around the Halloween season to give a little something to the kids and try to get them into some comics.

CBC: Is that tied into the Steve Geppi’s Halloween comics giveaway—not Free Comic Book Day—but the event they sponsor at Halloween…?

Eric: Yes, Halloween ComicFest. We’ve been involved with that the last couple of years.

We do a Spook House mini-comic for that.

CBC: I’ve seen that. It’s clever. You’re going to do another one?

Eric: Yeah. We’ll do it this year.

CBC: Are you beginning to get a stable… not a studio necessarily, but a group of artists you’re helping to develop?

Eric: I wouldn’t say “helping to develop,” but we have guys that are definitely “Albatross guys.”

We have Steve Mannion.

He’s worked on Spook House, Hillbilly, Galaktikon.

He’s done a lot of work for us. Always dependable, always takes care of the project and does good work. He’s a