Comic Book Creator #24 by TwoMorrows Publishing

™

A TwoMorrows Publication

No. 24, Fall 2020

Scout Master 1

82658 00418

Cover art by Timothy Truman

F a l l 2 0 2 0 • T h e Ti m o t h y Tr u m a n I s s u e • N u m b e r 2 4

Ye Ed’s Rant: Keepin' nose to the grindstone in this new Covid-19 landscape............... 2 CANDIDATE WOODY CBC mascot by J.D. KING

About Our Cover Art and Colors by TIMOTHY TRUMAN

COMICS CHATTER Up Front: Scott Shaw! Cartoonist. Part one of our entertaining and informative chat with the Captain Carrot co-creator and renowned Flintstones designer............ 3 Funnybook Mutts: Master cartoonist Patrick McDonnell annotates a passel of pastiches featured in his Mutts Sunday strips of iconic comic book covers............ 22 Ten Questions: Darrick Patrick gets smart insight from writer John Ostrander............ 26 Incoming: On the late Joe Sinnott and the great P. Craig Russell, and lots more......... 28

Scout: Marauder TM & © Timothy Truman.

Janice Chiang, Woman of Letters: Michael Aushenker talks to the veteran letterer.... 30 Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt tells us of the Covid-19 chaos in school libraries..... 38 Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred shows that there's more than one Sandman...... 39 Remembrance: Relevant man Dennis O’Neil is remembered by Bob Brodsky............. 40 THE MAIN EVENT

Above: This issue’s featured creator produced this portrait of Victorio Santana, protagonist of the upcoming Kickstarter-funded series, Scout: Marauder. To keep tabs on this exciting series, search “Scout Marauder” at www.kickstarter.com. EDITOR’S NOTE: Sincere apologies to CBC go-to colorist Glenn Whitmore for omitting his credit on last issue’s Hembeck’s Dateline feature. Bad Ye Ed!

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!

Timothy Truman: Scout Master. Killer artist Tim Truman shares his life-journey from backwater beginnings in West Virginia; training at the Joe Kubert School; early work with role-playing game publishers; breakout with his co-creation Grimjack (soon to be a cable TV series); creator-owned success with Scout; establishing his own imprint, 4Winds; forays into graphic histories; accomplishments as a life-long musician; work on The Grateful Dead Almanac and illustrating Robert Hunter lyrics; collaborations with Joe R. Lansdale; career as Conan writer; and much more. We also learn of his latest, the launch of a new series featuring concepts and characters that long ago helped establish the artist as a fan-favorite, Scout: Marauder ........................ 42 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: The (Virtual) 2020 Eisner Awards by Kendall Whitehouse............ 78 Coming Attractions: The big one is coming with Barry Windsor-Smith in CBC #25!..... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Trevor Von Eeden gets totally batty!........... 80 Right: A detail of Timothy Truman’s original art for his 1985 Scout retailer promotional poster, featuring Emanuel Santana, better known as Scout! Scout TM & © Timothy Truman.

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

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

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly (more or less) 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 601, 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. NEW! Two-issues subs: $23 US, $34 International, $9 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2020 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

This issue is dedicated to the memories of RAYMOND “NORMAN DOG” LARRETT, FRANK BOLLE, DENNIS O’NEIL, and JOE SINNOTT ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

TIMOTHY TRUMAN Cover Artist and Colorist

RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO STEVEN THOMPSON Contributing Editors

STEVEN TICE ROSE RUMMEL-EURY Transcribers

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON CBC Contributing Photographer

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE CBC Convention Photographer

CBC Columnists To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail Comic Book Creator c /o Jon B. Cooke, P.O. Box 601 West Kingston, RI 02892

@CBCMagazine

Keeping laser-focused on organizing and the job before me

the book was labor-intensive, but I find the What a truly weird year this is. The “carpet-bombing” approach to be so intimes, they are truly ominous, as a vigorating and gratifying. Y’see, the trick terrifying and lethal pandemic ragis to get the participant’s involvement, es across an America divided and make them invested in the project, and around an increasingly troubled then it becomes smooth sailing. Of world. Our industry continues course, few projects could inspire as to be in flux, hobbled, but still much enthusiasm as Crumb’s mag, so I somehow limping along, despite got really lucky there. (And we may not massive layoffs and cascading have won the Eisner Award, but being ramifications. The only thing we nominated for “Best Comics-Related Book” know for sure is that the future is one and losing the honor to one of alt-comics true big stinking pile of… the unknown. greats, Lynda Barry, makes my publisher, Besides feeling compassion for the sick, Last Gasp, and I more than lucky enough!) grief over the dead, and sympathy regarding TBOW is not the first time I’ve apthose working in the overburdened health-care proached a subject with such a wide system, I have chosen to focus on work, despite net. In fact, I’ve done that from the any trepidations I may have for the indeterminate start, with Comic Book Artist Vol. future. I ask you: what else can I do? 1’s first issue and in any number of As long as the orders keep coming in books—The Warren Companion, The and shops continue to stock Comic Book T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Companion, Kirby Creator, I’ll keep at it, and hope to main-100, etc. And all of this background is tain a steady schedule and emerge from my way of announcing my project for this nightmare crisis. I admit I took next year, (currently titled)The Charlton most of this spring and summer Companion, an insanely comprehento completely re-organize my sive look at the third-tier, notorious studio-office, taking advantage comics publisher (1944–87), the Derby, of the home “lock-down” to file Connecticut-based house renowned away some 15 years worth of nefor sub-standard printing, sometimes glected comics and magazine purchases, Timothy Truman awful comics, and the very occasional as well as correspondence and newspaby Ronn Sutton burst of creative brilliance. per clippings, never mind sorting out audio tapes and Maybe readers will think a deep dive into that digital archives—generally getting my house in order. This exhaustive process—alphabetizing thousands all-in-one publisher is an odd selection to make coming on the heels of a look into the celebrated Weirdo of comics and magazines, sorting by subject many hundreds of books, and backing up an ungodly number magazine. Maybe it is. But I will promise you it will be of electronic files—has led to rediscovering material in eye-opening, informative, exhaustive, entertaining, and definitive. It will surprise you. Of that, I have no doubt. my possession, the existence of which I too often had forgotten entirely. And instantly my mind started racing And I vow it will be much, much more than a mere compilation of my two CBAs on Charlton from 2000–01, as to what future projects might emerge from these but rather a full-on narrative encompassing its 40-plus unearthed treasures. Possible tomes started coming years of existence and its continuing impact. into focus when, in early July, esteemed publisher and Clearly, I’m nuts for taking on that crazy task in the close buddy John Morrow sent me an email with the limited time allotted, as I will also meet my obligations subject header, “It’s book time!” As so many of you have heard ad nauseam, I’ve just to CBC (with upcoming issues on Barry Windsor-Smith, Terry Dodson, and Paul Gulacy); co-authoring a John come off a massive project a dozen-years in the makSeverin biography; designing a Don Newton book; ing, The Book of Weirdo, my exhaustive 2019 survey gathering interviews for my history of Métal Hurlant of R. Crumb’s legendary underground comix anthology and Heavy Metal ’s first decade, and a Last Gasp retmagazine. Overall the book is 288 pages, with my rospective celebrating their first 50 years. I only hope 52-page historical essay being the result of about six month’s worth of work, almost entirely full-time. A good that, at 61, I’ll have energy enough to finish all this stuff! Doing these histories is like having Christmas every chunk of the remainder, 125 pages worth, contains testimonials from 123 contributors, mostly accumulated day, gifted with treasures virtually daily, whether in rethrough email requests (though some cobbled together search, e-mail inbox, post office box, or by phone. I am blessed. Stay safe and good health to you and yours. from phone interviews). Yeah, sure, the remainder of

cbc contributors Roger Ash Michael Aushenker Greg Biga Bob Brodsky

Janice Chiang Tom Foxmarnick Sam J. Glanzman Jason Guidry

Heritage Auctions J.D. King Evans Lee Marvel Comics

— Ye Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Greg Preston Ervin Rustemagic Cory Sedlmeier Scott Shaw!

Ronn Sutton Steven Thompson Timothy Truman Rick Welch

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK STEVEN THOMPSON TOM ZIUKO

A Future Unknown

up front

Cartoonist Scott Shaw! Part one of CBC’s career-spanning chat with the witty co-creator of Captain Carrot Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE

Portrait © Greg Preston. Captain Carrot TM & © DC Comics. The Flintstones TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc.

[A ubiquitous guest at just about every Comic-Con International: San Diego since its beginnings, cartoonist Scott Shaw! (always with an exclamation point, don’tcha know!) has, over the last 50 years or so, also maintained an impressive presence in the fields of animated cartoons, licensing art, and comic books from his Southern California environs. Maybe best known in comics for co-creating (with writer Roy Thomas) DC’s funny animal-slash-super-hero series, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, Scott is also renowned for his hilarious Oddball Comics Live! presentations—soon to be translated as a bona fide book coming from TwoMorrows. He was interviewed by phone, in a world quite unlike our present one, in the Summer of 2019, and it was transcribed by Rose Rummel-Eury.] CBC: Where are you from originally, Scott? Scott: I was born in Queens, New York in the Navy hospital. My dad’s ship was capsized at Pearl Harbor. Obviously, he survived or I wouldn’t be here to speak with you. Since the Navy suddenly really needed officers, Dad was made one very quickly. They referred to guys with that promotion a “Mustang.” We lived on Long Island in the servants’ quarters of a mansion because my father had been assigned to be an aide to an admiral. We moved to San Diego when I was about two-anda-half. Again, it was because my dad was in the Navy, but he had always wanted to live in San Diego because that’s where he went to boot camp before he was shipped out to Hawaii when he was a kid. I consider myself a San Diegan, but my secret origin is in New York City. CBC: Do you have siblings? Scott: Nope, I’m convinced that I became a weirdo due to being an only child. Frankly, I enjoyed it and never yearned to have a sibling. I liked to read and draw and watch television, so I was never bored. When you’re an only child, your parents give you plenty of room. Now kids are practically forced to take piano lessons on Monday, singing lessons on Tuesday, judo lessons on Wednesday, and so on. My parents apparently had been trying to conceive for a while and I was finally the big payoff. They never had another kid; I don’t know if it was a biological problem or not. I was in the first group of kids in California to go be in the San Diego City School System’s GATE program for “Gifted and Talented Education.” I think they were targeting the smartest kids to guide into science and math so we could help President Eisenhower destroy the Commies. [chuckles] This was in the ’50s. I was born in 1951. My teachers told my folks that I could “do anything I COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

put my mind to,” which was the worst thing they could have told any parent. It set their expectations waaaaay too high. Besides, I had zero interest in being like the other smarties in my class. I was interested in paleontology and cartooning. When a teacher told me that studying paleontology would land me a good job at a big oil company, I decided, “Well, it’s cartooning for sure.” [chuckles] Then, of course, in 1960, HannaBarbera’s The Flintstones came out, and that prime-time show kinda changed my life. CBC: How old, roughly, were your parents? Scott: They were probably in their late 30s, which was about ten years behind most parents. Kinda unusual for their generation. CBC: You had a lot of time to yourself? It was a suburban neighborhood you grew up in? Scott: Yeah. The great thing about living in San Diego was, once we moved there, we never had to move again. There were nine active Navy bases in town

Above: Greg Preston portrait of the cartoonist in question, here surrounded by Simpsons figures he designed. This pic was taken in or around 2016.. Inset left: Detail of Captain Carrot from Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #4 [June 1985], with art by Scott Shaw! Below: Besides the wielder of cosmic carrots, Scott Shaw! is well-known for his work as animator of The Flintstones characters, the cartoon show that changed the cartoonist’s life when it debuted in 1960.

Above: Irreverent from the start, Scott Shaw! mugs for the camera while out strolling in his baby stroller in the early 1950s. Below: The future cartoonist’s very first super-hero comic book was the innocuous Superboy #57 [June 1957], with its “Strong Boys of Smallville” cover feature, written by Otto Binder with pencil art by Curt Swan (and, according to The Grand Comics Database, quite possibly Ray Burnley inks).

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Superboy TM & © DC Comics.

and my dad was like an honest “Sgt. Bilko” because he really knew how to “work the system.” I think growing up in the Depression made him bolder, too. Anyway, if it was time for him to be reassigned, and if he wanted to work on Coronado Island for a while—this was back before San Diego’s Coronado Bay Bridge was built, in 1970, and he had to take a ferry to go to work—he’d make a few calls and probably call in a few favors, and boom, they’d move him to Coronado. He went from one base to another for two decades. The most exciting thing that ever happened for him (and me!) was when he was made the commanding officer of San Nicolas Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara. It was the island in Scott O’Dell’s The Island of the Blue Dolphins, a popular book with Californian fourth-graders. That was a top-secret facility and he had to go to school in Florida to earn top secret clearance. Again, he managed to “get his bearings” (as he’d refer to his routine of getting his way), and wrangled a way to fly me out there on a Navy plane for ten days. I was nine years old an I felt like Jonny Quest, though it was 1960, so this was pre-Jonny Quest, which didn’t air on ABC until 1964! There were live sea elephants on San Nicolas and flocks of cormorants. They had an undersea cave with petroglyphs of whales, sharks, and seal lions on the walls. It was the wildest place I’ve ever been. My dad even found a human skull and some bones from an ancient tribe that the gulls and cormorants unearthed; we donated them to the Museum of Man, in Balboa Park. It was very cool experience for my dad, who was stationed there for a few years. He’d drive back home every other weekend and bring abalone

and lobsters that the sailors on San Nicolas had caught for him. After he finally moved back to San Diego, it wasn’t long before the Cuban Bay of Pigs crisis. Because he had top-secret clearance, I’m pretty sure my father was aware that San Diego would be one of the foreign missiles’ targets if the situation turned bad. Of course, America dodged that nuclear bullet. CBC: Were you tight with your dad? Scott: Yeah. I never knew this until his funeral, but some of my father’s friends from the town where he grew up traveled out to San Diego told me that my dad had wanted to be an artist, too. Apparently, he had hoped to be a commercial artist—a sign painter, that sort of thing. At least that’s what they said. Oddly, my father never said a word about it to me. But looking back, his interest in art was obvious. Dad enjoyed lettering, and when I was a little boy, he taught me how to letter with speedball pens. He brought home those early versions of marker pens that had so much solvent in them you could probably inhale the fumes and the pigment in ’em would color your nose green. He loved to spend time painting those then-popular paint-by-number kits when he was away from home, and he made some very elaborate Christmas displays to decorate our house, which, in the ’50s, was a big deal in California’s suburbs. At the funeral, his buddies asked, “Oh, did you know your dad wanted to be a cartoonist too?” I said, “No, he just showed me how to do stuff.” Looking back, he wasn’t much of a handyman, but he was great with the stuff I was interested in. I kinda took it all for granted, y’know? “Oh, he’s my old man. He knows how to do everything.” I had so many cartoonist heroes at a young age: people like Dr. Seuss, Mort Walker, Jay Ward, Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera, and many others, Dad probably thought, “Oh, I’ll sound like an a-hole if I say that I wanted to be an artist, too.” He was a very humble guy. CBC: What was his name? Scott: Garlin. CBC: And your mom’s maiden name? Scott: Dorothy Lacy. They were both from the same place in a fairly large town in the middle of Illinois—Decatur, known as “the Soybean Capital of the World,” which was on a sign posted on the way into town. My dad lived on a farm, but his father also owned the first beauty shop there. My mom lived in town. Many of Decatur’s residents worked at Staley’s, the corporation that owned the local soybean plant, but my dad wanted to see the rest of the world, so he joined the Navy. He and my mom both attended the same high school and even lived in the same house at different times but never knew each other until after World War II when, at a mutual friend’s urging, they started corresponding with each other. CBC: Interesting. Did she go to college? Scott: No, they were both high school kids. Mom was more or less self-educated; when I was in high school, she was the office manager for an insurance company. They were both smart people but for some reason, they rarely read for pleasure, just the San Diego Evening Tribune for the news. I was always reading, so I was the odd one in the family. My dad’s favorite thing was to lay on the living room floor in his underwear, staring into the flames in the fireplace. I have a feeling that was how he handled his memories of the terrible stuff he experienced in WWII and, later, the evacuation of Vietnam. CBC: Did you have newspapers coming into the house? Scott: Yep, newspapers and comic books. I was born in 1951 and my parents were already buying me comic books when we lived in New York City, so I was under two. Decades later, I asked my mother, in reference to Dr. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, “Were you trying to turn me into a juvenile delinquent?” Mom rolled her eyes and said, “All I know is you seemed to really need them.” Comic books and comic strips gave me the opportunity to teach myself how to read before kindergarten. The pictures

Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. Orlando Busino photo from Facebook.

and words support each other, so if you’re visually oriented, it’s a very effective way to learn how to read. When I was five, I had my tonsils out in the hospital, an only child, on my own in a place full of strange, ailing kids. The nurses kept saying, “You’ll get all the ice cream you want.” I didn’t care about that, but they also said, “You can read all the comic books you want.” I was very excited about that! I remember my mom and dad showing up and bringing me the tallest stack of new comics I had ever seen in my life. I still remember some of the comics in that stack. It was only two or three inches thick, but still, that was a lot of comics when you had to buy them one at a time and dimes were not plentiful. CBC: Which comics come to mind? Scott: I remember issues of Mighty Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Uncle Scrooge, Tom Terrific, and the first super-hero comic I’d ever seen, Superboy #57, with the cover-story, “The One-Man Baseball Team!” Then and now, I’ve absolutely no interest in sports, but Superboy—Wow! I wanted to see what that was all about. Those ’50s issues of Superboy are about as mild as comics can get. I bought a copy of Superboy #57 a few years ago and I realized I must have already known how to read then because I instinctively knew what the next sentence was going to be. I thought, “Holy crap, I must have studied this stuff to the point that it’s buried in my self-consciousness!” It was amazing. CBC: [Chuckles] Were your drawn to the anthropomorphic animal characters? Scott: I was trying to draw everything! I remember specifically an issue of New Funnies, which was all Walter Lantz characters and the lead story had Woody Woodpecker in a diner out in the middle of the desert and Buzz Buzzard drives up and orders a piece of pie from Woody. I was drawing all the time by then, too, and I specifically remember looking at that pie and thinking, “Oh, it’s a triangle on the top and another triangle is right underneath,” (I didn’t know what parallel was) “And then you connect ’em.” That was the first time I thought, “Hey, I’m teaching myself to draw.” I’d trace the characters and did it so often that I’d eventually figure out their formula and I’d be able to draw them without any reference. When kids tell me, “I like to draw, but I trace too often,” I say, ‘No, that’s a great way to teach yourself how to draw the basics of the forms.” CBC: Did you show off your drawings to your parents? Scott: I showed them off to everyone. I drew on place mats when we went out to eat, I drew in school—constantly getting in trouble with my teachers for drawing in class—and I’d draw for my friends. In fact, I’d sell them my cartoons. I skipped the fourth grade but I remember in the fifth and sixth grades, I was charging my friends three cents for a headshot and five cents for a full figure—usually of surfers or monsters. I’m not kidding! [laughter] That’s how I’d earn money to buy more comic books, which in turn would provide more examples of good cartooning that would allow me to teach myself how to draw more characters. I’m still operating on that basis; I’m just adding a few extra zeroes! [chuckles] One of the sources that really helped me teach myself how to draw was Archie’s Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats, one of the most influential comics in my life. Its co-creator, Orlando Busino, is an unacknowledged genius-level cartoonist. I’d teach myself how to draw every monster he drew, then I’d draw ’em on my friends’ book covers for cold, hard cash. My parents would say, “Yeah, that’s how to do it.” They had been both Depression-era kids and were pleased that I wasn’t bugging them nearly as often for dimes because I figured out my own way get my hands on those funnybooks myself. CBC: Who was this artist, Orlando? Scott: Orlando Busino. He only drew three issues of one comic book series. It was called Bats, sort of a MAD ripoff… “Sort of”? It was totally a MAD rip-off, its full title was Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats! It was a funnybook that COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

had a monster-theme. It came out 1960 and was a response to James Warren’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and the whole Shock Theater TV phenomenon. And it was funny. Busino combined the appealingly bouncy style of Mort Walker with the creepy-cool style of Jack Davis… and, to me, that was the best of both worlds. I was already studying MAD and Beetle Bailey, so this Orlando Busino guy really blew my mind. We’ve never met, but we’re now Facebook friends and I love it when I post images of my cartoons and Orlando comments on it. CBC: Oh, so he’s still around? Scott: Oh, yeah! In fact, the third issue of Bats has the greatest flying saucer design I’ve ever seen. It’s a parody of the War of the Worlds tripods and I have put that same flying saucer in TV commercials, in comic books, in educational material, record album covers, whenever I needed a flying saucer, that was the one. I once told Orlando “I owe you a lot of money for ripping you off.” He laughed it off, saying, “No, I’m happy because you’re ripping off Archie, not me!” That’s because Archie Comics’ brass told Orlando and George Gladir, the comic’s other co-creator, that they’d be receiving profit participation based on the sales figures. Of course, being Archie Comics, they never delivered. They got Samm Schwartz to imitate Orlando’s style through the rest of Bats’ run He was pretty good… but not nearly as funny. CBC: What else is he known for? Scott: Orlando is a respected figure in the world of gag cartoons. His panel feature about a lovable and messy dog, Gus, appeared in Boys Life and other periodicals for decades and his gag cartoons have appeared in all of the big-circulation, slick magazines. CBC: Was he out of New York? Did he work for Johnstone and Cushing? Scott: I don’t think so, but he was definitely a

Top: A visibly grateful Scott Shaw! displaying his basket of goodies on a 1950s’ Easter Sunday morning. Above: Recent pic of cartoonist Orlando Busino. Bottom: The first few issues of Archie’s Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats contained Busino’s work, a huge influence on young Scott Shaw! This Busino cover is from #3 [Mar. 1962].

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Little Orvy TM & © the respective copyright holder. Donald Duck TM & © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Life magazine TM & © Time, Inc.

contributor to Boys Life magazine, which they packaged. Only Boy Scouts could subscribe, which always upset me, because Boys Life featured a lot of great comic stories, all by top cartoonists. CBC: I’d love to connect with him. That would be a great accoutrement to this piece with you. Scott: Orlando Busino is definitely a name and style that humor cartoonists know and respects. Unfortunately, most fans don’t have much interest in funny gag cartoonists. Mainstream gag cartoons get the reaction: “Oh, no, that’s too ordinary for us.” But he’s great! CBC: Were you into any comic strips? Scott: I absolutely loved Beetle Bailey, which I studied for both Mort Walker’s cartooning style and the construction of his gags. Admitting this might get me in trouble, but I also liked Li’l Abner a lot. I think it was where I realized I liked girls. Al Capp, of course, was a sexual predator, but that wasn’t a well-known fact with the public yet. Whether it was Frank Frazetta, Bob Lubbers, or whoever was drawing the women in Li’l Abner at that time—even the wealthy dowagers looked sexy to me—but it definitely registered with the male in me. I also loved Capp’s drawing style – not that far from Will Eisner’s—but I never attempted to imitate it. I loved Dick Tracy, especially after the introduction of Moon Maid. From that point on, it was apparent even to a kid like me that Chester Gould was getting weirder than

ever, and I dug it. And I liked an obscure educational sci-fi strip called Little Orvy that was about a boy with his own time machine. It was written and drawn by Rick Yager, the guy who took over Buck Rogers when Dick Calkins retired. What attracted me were the stories set in prehistoric times, with lotsa information about dinosaurs. I have to admit, other than comic books, comic strips, and animated cartoons, it was dinosaurs and monsters all the way for me. Anything that involved prehistoric stuff immediately caught my attention, and of course, dinosaurs were the only ”monsters” teachers would allow let you study in school. CBC: Can you pinpoint when it started? For instance, Life magazine came out way early in the ’50s that really jump-started the whole dinosaur fad… Scott: It sure did. My dad actually mailed those issues of Life magazine to me when he was in Florida to train for his top-secret clearance. I remember those Rudolph Zallinger murals were incredible, crammed so many dinosaurs that they were tripping over each other. I studied those for hours at a time. Another important influence on my interest in paleontology also came from my dad. We were at the Santa Fe train station in downtown San Diego—he was leaving on a trip, possibly the one to Florida—and at the station’s newsstand, he bought me the 54th issue of Donald Duck by Carl Barks (whom I became friends with decades later). The lead story was titled “Forbidden Valley.” It was Carl’s only “Lost World” story, albeit told with cartoons. It flipped a switch inside my head. I was already obsessed with jungle movies and exotic animals, and the San Diego Zoo was one of my favorite hangouts. When I was older, I was the teenage president of the San Diego Junior Zoological Society. During college, I even worked at the zoo as a trash man, although my official job description was “Waste Control Technician.” In addition to my interest in cartooning, I’ve always been interested in animals, especially prehistoric ones. They’re a lot of cartoonists’ favorites because no one’s never actually seen one, except in boys’ dreams. CBC: Did you have pets? Scott: Lots of pets. By the time I was a teenager, my dad had retired from the Navy and was hired by the world-famous San Diego Zoo as its Chief of Security. (When you grow up in San Diego, you’re trained to always say “world famous” before “San Diego Zoo.) He loved animals, too— remember, he grew up on a farm—and would bring home animals that had been donated. The zoo always had a surplus of local pets, many of which were ones that most people considered exotic. Thanks to my father, we had our own desert tortoise (illegal after a while), our own talking myna bird, and our sweet mutt, Rusty. I was always catching polliwogs and lizards, one of those kids who didn’t like sports, but was always out in the nearby canyons, digging up trapdoor spiders or capturing pepsis wasps. Most cartoonists I know are into natural history. CBC: Did you naturally observe animals; the way they move and the way they work? Was it a benefit to you in the future when you were doing animated work?

Juvenile art © Scott Shaw! Bullwinkle and Rocky TM & © Ward Productions, Inc. Alvin and the Chipmunks TM & © Bagdasarian Productions, LLC. Patch © Zoological Society of San Diego, Inc.

Scott: Not necessarily. Quite honestly, the kind of animals I like drawing are the kind that walk around on their hind legs. I’ve drawn a couple of children’s books lately starring Everglades animals and some of their limbs have to work like the real thing, so I can do it when I have to. But I primarily preferred funny animal characters such as Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, and Rocky and Bullwinkle CBC: So, you were the perfect age for the emergence of Hanna-Barbera… Scott: And Jay Ward! Jay Ward was as important an influence on me as Hanna-Barbera. Frankly, I think their stuff holds up even better in some ways, especially the writing. When I was a kid, we had access only to certain cartoons, but not many If you got up early enough, you could see Terrytoons’ Farmer Al Falfa, which aired immediately after The Farm Report, which goes way back to when we actually had farm reports on TV in California. We watched all eras of Popeye and Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s Tom and Jerry, for MGM. There was also a package of older Warner Brothers’ cartoons that had been released to TV. There were no books on animation in the library, but as an observant kid, I had to teach myself about the history of animation. While watching old cartoons, I’d consult my parents and maternal grandmother who lived with us. Sometimes the pop cultural references would date the material. Since my dad served in WWII, so if this stuff took place in World War II, if there were wartime elements in a cartoon, I knew it was from the 1940s. My grandmother could identify a lot of the celebrity cameos in Bugs Bunny cartoons, which were good clues, too. I began to create a mental layout of the history of animation. I was so obsessive, when a Los Angeles station was airing four different episodes of Jay Ward’s Rocky and His Friends cartoon show—with four different storylines—every Sunday morning, on an L.A. station morning, I’d get up at dawn and made myself a chart so I could follow the cartoons and keep track of which storyline they were running at the time. [Jon laughs] That’s how into it I was. CBC: Did you have a natural attraction to the good stuff, or it was wide open? Scott: I look back on the cartoons I preferred and I think had pretty good taste. People often ask me, “Why do you like Hanna-Barbera so much? Their cartoons are terrible.” That may have been true when I was working at H-B but certainly wasn’t the case during the era I was watching. I remember getting really upset when Bill Hanna started Xeroxing the cels on The Magilla Gorilla Show halfway COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

through the series. I didn’t particularly like Magilla (or his stupid shoes), but I absolutely hated the scratchy Xerox linework. It was all downhill from there! It seems to surprise a lot of people because it wasn’t produced by Jay Ward or Hanna-Barbera, but I think that The Alvin Show was the by far the best example of that creative early-1960s period of prime-time cartoon shows. It was from Format Films, which was a later version of the original UPA studio. Even though UPA still existed, Herb Klynn, the original production manager, relaunched the studio as Format, which mainly made TV commercials, those cheap Popeye cartoons, and that cool Lone Ranger show. By the way, I love Popeye cartoons, especially the early Max Fleischer ones. In fact, Popeye was my first favorite cartoon character and the featurette Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor is one of my all-time favorite cartoons. It’s odd, although I’m kinda known for my funny animal characters like the Zoo Crew, most of my favorite cartoon characters are human—the Flintstones, the Simpsons, Popeye, Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo, and even Commander McBragg. But they’re all constructed like funny animals. If you trace Fred Flintstone and Yogi Bear’s outlines, they’re practically identical. CBC: I’m curious about your take on it. Where was the well where the ideas came from for the HannaBarbera shows? Was it all live action situation comedies they were taking their concepts from? Where did the concepts originate? Scott: Lemme tell you a true story: Back when I was producing Ed Grimley— actually the full title of the Hanna-Barbera series for NBC was The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (wonder why that wasn’t used in TV Guide?)—we were editing the first episode that had just come back from overseas. NBC picked up the show very late, so we had to animate the show at two different studios in the Philippines. We were trying to cut all the footage together. And this was the first time I’d ever edited anything. It was on a Saturday and my childhood hero Bill Hanna is directly teaching me how to edit on an old-style Moviola with reels of film on spindles and we’re editing it physically by cutting and taping together pieces of film—and it was my birthday. I was stressed out in a million ways, but the cosmic importance of the situation didn’t escape my notice. Trying to be a wise-guy, I blurted, “When I was a kid, if someone told me I’d be spending my birthday with Bill Hanna, I would have thought it would have been the greatest time ever. How come we’re not having more fun?” He looked at me like I was absolutely out of my mind, so I thought

Previous page: Clockwise from top is Rick Yager’s Sunday-only comic strip Little Orvy [1960–62]; panel from Carl Barks’ story, “Forbidden Valley,” Donald Duck #54 [Aug. 1957]; R.F. Zallinger’s art graces the cover of Life magazine [Sept. 7, 1953]; Scott titled this pic of himself as a young’un, “Swinger Scott Shaw.” This page: Clockwise from top left, Scott’s first published artwork; Jay Ward’s Bullwinkle and Rocky; The Alvin Show [1961–62], Scott says, “was the by far the best example of that creative early-1960s period of prime-time cartoon shows”; San Diego Zoo patch.

This page: Clockwise from above is an article in his high school newspaper about Scott’s creativity on display at the San Diego Zoo; the cartoonist on the job at same; and a parade of HannaBarbera characters from a 1966 animation model sheet book.

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All characters TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc.

I’d really blown it. But after we got the episode trimmed down to length and made a list of re-takes, we walked out to the parking lot together. Bill seemed to be pleased that I was a fast learner. I think his intention was to give me some valuable advice for my birthday. He was a little guy, but he reached up and put his arm around me, and what he said next, I knew was the truth since I was a kid. He said, [mimicking an old guy’s scratchy voice] “Kid, don’t create anything if you can steal it.” (Bill had throat cancer from smoking; ironically, he made all those Flintstones-smoking-Winston-cigarettes commercials, about which he liked to say, “We all make mistakes.”) [chuckles] I didn’t know how to respond so I kinda laughed as if he were telling a joke. “Yeah, sure, Mr. Hanna.” But it was absolutely true. Bill and Joe even stole Yogi Bear from themselves! There’s “Downbeat Bear,” a 1956 Tom & Jerry short that features an escaped circus bear whose hat and dancing motions imitate Art Carney. The Flintstones is The Honeymooners. Top Cat is Sgt. Bilko. The Jetsons is Blondie. That’s why Penny Singleton, who played “Blondie” in a lot of movies, was also the voice of Jane Jetson. The only early H-B cartoon that wasn’t an obvious lift was Quick Draw McDraw. That show was parodies, not of characters, but of the most popular genres of prime-time TV at the time—Western shoot-’em-ups, detective shows, and the domestic sitcom. I think Quick Draw McGraw, is by far, the best of H-B’s early era. That’s when the writing was funny, the cartoons looked pretty good, their system worked, the cartoons looked good, the timing was really funny, and they weren’t rip-offs of anything in particular. All three segments of that show—Quick Draw and Baba Looey, Super Snooper and Blabber Mouse, and Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy—were great. But if Hanna-Barbera didn’t steal from somebody else, they’d steal from themselves. They were like the animation equivalent of the Native American: use every piece of the buffalo, sometimes re-using it over and over and over... CBC: [Chuckles] You must have been old enough to recognize when The Flintstones debuted… Scott: I don’t mean to cut you off, but this is worth telling: Because my parents had been told that I could do anything I put my mind to, they decided to expose me to music. I could understand that if I didn’t have any other interests but I was already obsessed with cartooning and paleontology. Maybe those educators used a hypno-disc on them. At one point, they had me taking accordion lessons and violin lessons. At that time, The Flintstones, which wouldn’t be airing on ABC until Friday, September 30, 1960, was being promoted in the newspaper and TV Guide, even admitting that it was essentially an animated version of The Honeymooners. I was getting really excited because at that time, I already loved H-B’s Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, and Quick Draw McGraw—and here came The Flintstones. “Holy crap! Not only is this about prehistoric animals and dinosaurs, but the lead character looks like my dad!” Meanwhile, Mom and Dad are signing me up for more music lessons and they’re on Friday nights, during what would be The Flintstones time-slot. Therefore, a few weeks before their premiere, I launched a relentless campaign to convince them how absolutely necessary it was that I study every episode of The Flintstones from the very beginning. Maybe it was due to my being their only child but my folks finally gave in. On the night of the premier, only a few weeks after I turned nine years old, I was sitting on the floor of our living room, only about three inches away from the screen of their blackand-white television. As the first episode of The Flintstones

The Flintstones TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc.

wound down, I remember thinking to myself, “Man, that is what I’m going to do.” I literally thought that to myself. I fully realized that there were millions of Americans watching the same show I’d just viewed and loved, but I still felt that somehow, Hanna-Barbera had made The Flintstones specifically for me. From the second episode on, I sat there with pencils and a sketch pad and attempted to teach myself how to draw Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty. They didn’t move much so I thought it would be pretty easy. What didn’t occur to me was that the cartoonists at Hanna-Barbera were still attempting to teach themselves how to draw Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty. It took a while but I eventually got good enough at ’em to draw them on dozens of shipping tags and won a sixth grade election. My number one goal was learn how to draw those characters. I even made my own model sheets for Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, because none of them existed yet. I was truly obsessed. What helped a lot were Flintstones comic books, coloring books, sticker books, playing cards—all produced by Western Publishing—and a well-drawn syndicated comic strip by San Diego cartoonist Gene Hazelton all gave me plenty of reference. What I didn’t realize was that print stuff was the first licensed Flintstones stuff to come out because it was the fastest and easiest to produce. It was a lot harder and took a lot longer to get toys manufactured, but by the fall, in 1961, there was a lot of figural Flintstones merchandise for me to pester my parents to buy for me. That’s when my “only child” status really became handy. CBC: Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was the first animated television show to be released in prime-time in the United States, right? Scott: No, it wasn’t, but that’s how it got promoted. The first prime-time animated television series was CBS’ The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show, composed of a variety of UPA cartoons in the mid-1950s. Gerald, a little boy who spoke in nothing but sound effects, was created by Dr. Seuss. CBC: Right. Why did they give this such a publicity push? Do you have any idea? Scott: Although H-B’s first series, Ruff and Reddy, was definitely aimed at kids, their other early series had appeal to children and adults. Like Jay Ward’s output, their cartoons were written so adults would could enjoy them as much as young audiences. There were even Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear fan clubs at a lot of colleges! Jay Ward was content to have a small studio, but Bill and Joe were very ambitious. MGM had shut down their careers a few years before and they wanted to avoid that situation, so their goal was to dominate the field of made-for-television cartoons… and, for a long time, they did. Decades later, I worked directly with both Hanna and Barbera. They decided to split their responsibilities: Joe would create and sell the shows; Bill would oversee their production. CBC: Right. The Flintstones was a game changer, right? Scott: They were for the studio and they certainly were for me. I think that The Flintstones were the first most successful thing H-B ever did, but I think that The Smurfs and Scooby-Doo outperformed The Flintstones. I think ScoobyDoo is now their—or rather, Warner Brothers’—biggest moneymaker, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, premiered on CBS the same month I entered college, but no amount of drugs could make me enjoy Scooby-Doo. [laughter] I’ve worked on Scooby quite a bit, but I’ve never enjoyed the experience. Frankly, the character’s inconsistent anatomy is hard to draw and the storylines are usually about as creative as Mad-Libs. I did like Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated a lot but it’s my understanding that die-hard Scooby fans absolutely detest it. Obviously, if my taste was worse, I’d be a wealthy man now, but Scooby-Doo never did it for me. CBC: What is it about The Flintstones that made them so resonant? Scott: I think that using The Honeymooners’ vibe was something that most people could relate to because the COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Flintstones were in an iffy situation that everyone’s been in at some point in their lives. They’re living in a crummy space, they don’t know if or when they’ll ever move out, and they don’t get along very well. It was a cartoon show that admitted the reality of lower-middle-class lifestyles. Fred was a loudmouth blue-collar worker, his wife, Wilma, was sarcastic and made jokes about her husband being a fat slob, they didn’t or couldn’t have any kids; and Fred was a hot-head who was always threatening his wife. Fred even got arrested and hauled away in an Ankylosaurus paddy wagon in “The Swimming Pool”! That just wasn’t the sort of stuff you saw in cartoons made for kids. The prehistoric angle was just one of many possibilities. Joe’s team developed a lot of concepts, including a modern family in ancient Rome, which they eventually got around to doing, but it didn’t take off. Then there was The Jetsons, set in the distant future. All these were things they were thinking about, but Bedrock was probably inspired by two sources: Max Fleischer’s Stone Age Cartoons series of shorts and Tex Avery’s MGM short, “The Last Texas Badman Bill,” and Joe had worked on Tom and Jerry at MGM alongside Tex Avery, who considered him to be the best cartoon director ever. Even an egomaniac like Chuck Jones privately worshiped him. Tex’s “The Last Texas Bad Man” was a Western set in prehistoric times, with the bad guys and the good guys all riding dinosaurs and chasing each other. It was even designed by the same guy that designed The Flintstones, Ed Benedict. CBC: The tropes I remember best about The Flintstones, besides, when I was a child, it was… not the gags, but every season they’d come up with something new. They had the little Martian guy… It really appealed to me when they had these little changes they’d come up with in that sitcom world. It was really the tropes of imagining modern-day conveniences being done by dinosaurs or by using prehistoric things. Scott: That “wise-guy critter” shtick was (other than mimicking the action) popular both with kids and adults, and much easier to do in the pre-digital era. When I was overseeing all

Above: Soon after its 1960 prime time debut, The Flintstones animated show became a cultural phenomenon. This TV Guide cover [July 1–7, 1961] is evidence of that success. Below: Fred was star of this 1966 feature film, a spy spoof.

Above: This issue of MAD, #69 [Mar. 1962], with its Kelly Freas painting cover art, was the first issue of the satire magazine that Scott Shaw! purchased.

Below: Senior portrait of Scott Shaw!, shot for the 1968 Will C. Crawford High School yearbook.

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MAD magazine TM & © E.C. Publications, Inc.

of those Pebbles TV commercials, it became tougher because as evolved, there were no parts to see. I remember having to design a VCR with a pterodactyl’s head sticking out of a “rocky” console and Fred had to put a VHS workout tape into its mouth. It looked funny, but other than mimicking the action of a real VCR, it didn’t make much sense to me. By the way, whenever I speak at elementary schools on career days, I used to often get asked the question, “How many TVs do the Flintstones own?” I’d react and say, “What do you mean?” Their answer? “Well, when Fred runs, he runs past about five of them!” [laughter] And they were right! Kids notice this stuff. I knew it was a repeating pan background when I was a kid although I had no idea what it was called. It’s not like I was a child genius, but kids who are visually oriented and aspiring young cartoonist analyze this stuff in a way that the average viewer never does. We’re obsessed! When I was first working at Hanna-Barbera, someone said, “This is called a ‘held cel.’ This is one that will be in the scene and, but at some point, it animates, and we have to keep it consistent so it’s a still element until we need it.” I thought, “Oh, yeah, this is why in a cartoon, that branch on the tree you knew was going to break, breaks.” I’d already figured this out as a kid. I know Bobby London and Floyd Norman, and all my cartoonist buddies who’ve worked on animation, all agree, “We kinda figured this out before we were actually doing it.” CBC: They gave it a terminology. Scott: There’s definitely something in our DNA make-up

that says, “You are visually acute.” Unfortunately there’s no money in scientists researching why so many of us seem to know we’re cartoonists from the beginning, with similar experiences and obsessions, like the kids in Village of the Damned. CBC: Was it the quality of the material you were giving this obsession to, or do you think in a different time, it simply would have been something else… quality be damned? Is there an aesthetic magnetism that you have toward the compulsion? Scott: I think I had good taste. I never liked Spunky & Tadpole, or anything from Filmation—anything! (Don’t tell Andy Mangels!) I didn’t like Underdog because the style reminded me of Jay Ward cartoons, which I liked, but there was nothing funny or clever about them. The style made me yearn for something that was cool and hipper. I started reading MAD magazine with #69, in 1962, at ten years old, so that definitely informed my tastes. A lot its political material was over my head. So I started reading the newspaper, an effort to enjoy MAD more. CBC: Did you start assimilating or noticing the New York humor, let’s say, of Jay Ward and the Warner Brothers’ cartoons? Basically the Jewish sensibility that permeated American humor? Scott: Absolutely. When I grew up, most of my friends were Jewish. That GATE Program that I mentioned placed me in advanced classes with those same kids from elementary school through high school. They kept us together because we were their little hothouse flowers, to nurture us and turn us into scientific geniuses. The GATE Program was the equivalent of modern magnet schools, within the class of 1,200 students I graduated with. I had lots of Jewish friends from elementary school on and that led me to assume, “Jewish people are smart.” Sure, a lot are, but that’s the case with any cultural group. Once I became a parent, I realized that my friends’ Jewish parents valued good education! Their families, like my family, had come to San Diego from New York City. So, although I’m an atheist, I hung out with the Jewish kids, who always welcomed me and who still refer to me as an “honorary Jew.” One of us would buy the latest cool comedy LP and we’d gather at one of our parents’ houses to listen to the album while trying not to look each other in the eye so we could pretend we actually watching the comedian on stage. It was funnier that way. Whenever I’d be at a Jewish household, my friends’ parents would be blasting the latest Broadway show cast album on their record players. Their bookcases were bursting with books of all kinds. There was artwork hanging on the walls, often by Jewish fine artists. None of that ever happened in my parents’ house. My close relationships with Jewish people gave me a sense that “there’s a lot of good stuff out there to enjoy, so let’s enjoy it before it’s too late.” I still thank them for rubbing off some of their sophistication on me. CBC: Did you recognize the Jay Ward commercials? “Oh, yeah, this is the same guy doing the Rocky and Bullwinkle”? Scott: Oh, yeah! I still think the Quisp and Quake commercials are the most brilliant ad campaign ever aimed at children because they’re hilarious, beautifully executed, and essentially sell the same cereal under two different names. No matter which one you bought, the Quaker Oats Company still won. In fact, when I was working on all of those Post Pebbles cereal commercials I kept saying, “Let’s make Fruity Pebbles Fred’s cereal and Cocoa Pebbles Barney’s cereal.” It drove me crazy that Barney had to steal from Fred and I thought that competition was a more legitimate motivation. (I also wanted to imitate Jay Ward’s Quisp and Quake spots.) Ogilvy & Mather’s research department always answered, “Our focus groups have proven that children believer that if something’s worth stealing, then it must really be good!” [Jon laughs] Wow, is that effed-up or what? It’s a good thing the ad agency didn’t have an automobile

Coltman TM & © Scott Shaw!

account! The Quisps, Quakes, Cap’n Crunches, even King Vitamins with Joe Flynn’s voice—I love all that stuff! I even had an opportunity to intern at Jay Ward as a kid. I was in the 11th grade and was a teacher’s aide—at my old junior high school, with my old teacher, the only art class I ever was allowed to take, due to the GATE program—assisting her operate her art class. One of the school’s other art teachers had an ex-husband who worked at Jay Ward. She was very supportive of my goal to become a cartoonist and asked if it would be okay to sent my sketchbook to her ex for a critique. His name was Jim Hiltz and he was one of Jay Ward studio’s top animators and directors; he even worked on Yellow Submarine, my favorite animated film! Anyway, he must have liked my samples, because at his suggestion, Jay Ward’s management contacted my parents for permission to ask me, “We like to know if you’d like to come here and work as an intern?” This was when George of the Jungle was airing on ABC—the only show Ward ever entirely animated in the U.S.—which was blowing my mind every Saturday morning. Somewhere along the line, no one had told our contact that I was a 14-year-old high school student. It was an insanely wonderful opportunity, but my parents weren’t going to move from San Diego to Los Angeles so I could have a free job for a few months at a cartoon studio. It just wasn’t in the cards. If that had happened, things would have worked out even better for me… or not. Who knows? CBC: Do you think you could have just as well been a writer? Scott: I think writing is easier than drawing and I think my writing is better than my drawings. I started writing most of my comics about twenty years ago. I’m willing to work with writers I trust and whose work I respect, but there aren’t many of ’em left other than Mark Evanier. CBC: Why? Scott: If you’re gonna be a writer of animated cartoons or comic books, it’s necessary to have a keen sense of visualization. Unfortunately, most don’t. Things might be better if the editors who hire writers had keen senses of visualization, but they usually don’t either. Those are the people who give you scripts that are impossible to draw. The average writer doesn’t seem to understand that you can’t have somebody climbing a ladder and carrying six items at the same time. Nobody wants to get stuck drawing a story about a guy who repeatedly climbs up and down ladders. That’s a typical example. Writers, even good writers, need to have their material fixed a bit. And of course, since I mainly do funny stuff, most writers who think they’re funny do not share my sense of humor, and that’s always a bad situation. So now, with a few exceptions, I write the stories that I draw. If I write, “The Prussian Army is coming over the hill,” then I’m the sucker who has to draw it. My scripts intentionally give myself challenging things to draw that may take me a week to draw for almost no money. But, at my age—I’ll turn 69 in September 2020—I feel it’s important to keep getting better. Will Eisner and I talked about adjusting your approach to fit what you’re capable of drawing. So far, my eyesight is good, my hands are steady, and my brains still firing on all plugs, so I want to get a lot of challenging cartooning work done while I still can. I don’t want to give you the same ol’ stuff. I realize that lots of cartoonists kinda grind it out. I don’t ever want to be the guy who grinds it out. CBC: You don’t want to be a hack. Scott: Nope, not me. Never. Uh-uh. CBC: What’s your favorite piece you’ve ever done? Scott: I don’t have one. CBC: Top ten? Scott: I really don’t know. I’m constantly thinking about my next thing. If you’re a freelancer, you kinda have to, but my brain is always cooking up new stuff. I’ve got an agent pitching a number of graphic novels of mine, some for kids, some for adults. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Y’know I am proud of those Pebbles cereal commercials that made half of America’s children diabetic, [chuckles] but it was because I got to help make the Flintstones funny again and animated much more fully than most of H-B’s original episodes. I did dozens of ’em yet I’m always surprised when people know which ones I worked on, because most people don’t keep track of commercials. We had the time and the budget to animate them here and to make ‘em the way I intended. But even those have flaws or one sort of another. I know that no one notices them but I do and I’m a perfectionist. When look back at my body of work, I see all the flaws, and think, “Well, I’d better not do that again.” CBC: Were comics always of big interest to you? Scott: Comics, cartoons, and any application thereof. I was interested in editorial cartooning. I did editorial cartooning for my high school and college papers and I really admired editorial cartoonists; I especially liked The Los Angeles Times’ Paul Conrad. It’s bad enough that newspapers are dying, but even worse, editorial cartoonists are being attacked for doing their job in an era of history when they should be considered essential workers. Some people think like comedians and editorial cartoonists shouldn’t have the right to mock the government. Geez, at least in the case of editorial cartoons, this is why they were created in the first place. My response to those haters is “Haven’t you ever heard of Thomas Nast?” And their response is, “Who’s that?” CBC: Hmm. When was the first time you were published?

Above: San Diego Evening Tribune article on anti-drug and pro-comic book Scott Shaw! printed during his senior year (and reprinted in Rocket’s Blast Comicollector #63).

Below: As his Crawford High School mascot was a colt, Scott Shaw! produced his super-hero parody comic strip, Coltman, for his class newspaper, The Pacer.

Scott: In fifth grade, I did a watercolor painting of what I imagined downtown San Diego would look like at midnight on New Year’s Eve. It wound up in a San Diego City Schools art show in Balboa Park and they did a nice, published booklet that reproduced my painting in it. That was 1960. When I went to Horace Mann Junior High, I initially just stole newsprint paper from the math department to draw endless serialized comics about school life, which I’d pass around among my classmates. In ninth grade, I wound up working as a columnist and the staff cartoonist on our school’s paper, The Cougar. My first comic strip was a direct swipe of a Short Ribs Sunday strip. I really liked Frank O’Neal’s drawing style a lot. It looked like a combination of the house-styles of Jay Ward and Hanna-Barbera. My strip was called Waldo Wipeout, a surfer because San Diego was a surfing town. I edited out a few panels from the original Short Ribs, but otherwise, it was pure juvenile plagiarism. CBC: Like he said… “steal.” Scott: No wonder I liked Hanna-Barbera—they con-

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Gory Stories Quarterly TM & © the respective copyright holder. The Turd TM & © Scott Shaw!

This page: Of acute notoriety during Scott Shaw!’s earliest comic book work is his odorous swamp monster parody, “The Turd,” which appeared in Gory Stories Quarterly #2½ [1972].

vinced me that “it’s okay to rip off people!” Hey, that’s how you sell cereal! [laughter] Two years later, I was writing columns and drawing comics for Will C. Crawford High School’s The Pacer, a bi-weekly newspaper. My first comic strip was called Coltman because our school mascot was a goofy red colt. He was a super-hero with a colt’s head. It wasn’t a swipe, but it was a parody of super-hero comics with gags that nobody but my fanboy friends understood. Was I just ahead of my time? After a dozen installments, I was convinced to retire Coltman and focus on more familiar high school topics in a new feature called Shaw!s Strip. (Yeah, I’d been attaching that exclamation point to my name since Waldo Wipeout.) Crawford was by far the biggest high school in San Diego, therefore we had enough comics, sci-fi, and monster movie fans that we had our own club, The Underground Film Society, bearing that name since it sounded cooler and more mysterious than The Comic Book, Sci-Fi, and Monster Movie Fan Club. We even had a smart, cute track-star girl as a member! Nobody messed with us. In fact, a lot of us were involved in the creation of the San Diego Comic-Con. CBC: Who else was in the group? Scott: Cartoonist/illustrator/commercial artist/painter/fine artist John Pound was two years behind me and we collaborated on fanzines and episodes of both our Pacer strips. He took over job of staff cartoonist for our newspaper after I graduated. Both of us were first published in a comic book called Gory Stories Quarterly, published by Ken Krueger, one of the co-founders of the San Diego Comic-Con. CBC: Featuring Scott Shaw!’s “The Turd.” Scott: Guilty as charged. Our fan group also included science fiction author Greg Bear, who has won multiple Hugo Awards, and Professor Roger Freedman, who’s a physicist who’s also an author of textbooks, has taught classes in “science fiction for scientists,” and used to letter my underground comix stories. David Clark, my only friend who got drafted to Vietnam, was also a key member who’s both a sommelier—a wine salesman—and a poet. Jann Morris, the only fangirl in our gang, lost touch with fandom after graduation for 40 years, but now is a popular presence at various San Diego fan events. We had a lot of people there making it pay off. Many of us went to the same junior high, so we really knew and trusted one another and our supportive criticism and friendly competition were great influences on honing young creator-types’ skills. CBC: How would you describe San Diego of your youth? Did it have a small-town feel to it? Scott: It was a Navy town. A major portion of the local population was affiliated with the Navy—being in the Navy, working for the Navy, having businesses that relied on the Navy, or having a relative in the Navy. San Diego was a wonderful place to grow up, at least to this middle-class white son of a naval officer. We had Balboa Park, the beaches, the mountains, Belmont Park and, just across the border, Tijuana. But downtown San Diego was the opposite, filled with strip clubs, pool halls, card rooms, porn shops, and flop house hotels. It wasn’t a savory place for drunken recruits on shore leave, so definitely not for naive fanboys. But that area also contained a huge public library and a lot of used bookstores and movie theaters, destinations which made it irresistible to my group of cultural weirdos. There were three grindhouse theaters in San Diego’s Horton Plaza, where you could see three movies for a mere 50¢. Three or four of us would take the bus downtown, grab lunch at Woolworth’s counter, enjoy a few monster movies, scrounge around Broadway’s Ye Old Magazine Shoppe and the Lanning Bookshop, and triumphantly return home via the bus. Before each expedition, my practical dad would warn me [dad voice], “Make sure you take a flashlight because when sailors on shore leave go on a drinking binge and one of their buddies can’t hold his liquor, they park him in a theater until he sobers up, and he winds up puking all

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World TM & © SnK Productions, Inc. Jonathan Winters photo © the respective copyright holder.

over the seats. Use that flashlight so you don’t sit in someone’s puke! And if someone puts their hand on your leg, get up and see the theater manager!” But downtown San Diego was great fun and we never had a bad experience there. My dad was painfully straight with me because he loved me, and I think he was concerned that my obsessions blocked out my view of reality and that made me vulnerable, which was true. Dad, an experienced veteran of 25 years, once very seriously told me, “You don’t ever want to get drafted. Your own men will kill you in boot camp.” He was absolutely right. I couldn’t possibly adjust myself to military life. I’d be utterly obnoxious, screaming the whole time, “It’s a mistake! I’m really a cartoonist!” The very best thing about growing up in San Diego was Balboa Park. It was my second home. The zoo was a wonderful way to spend any day. I drew a lot of animals there, but I drew more at the park’s Museum of Natural History because the animals didn’t move. [chuckles] It will always be my favorite aspect of San Diego. CBC: Do you remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? Scott: Yeah, I do, but I wasn’t that focused on it. I was busy learning how to draw The Flintstones! CBC: You didn’t notice…? Scott: I do remember my dad seeming a bit nervous. CBC: Do you remember JFK’s assassination? Scott: Oh, definitely. His assassination was a major taste of reality to my generation. Nothing had ever taken over the media like that. Suddenly you couldn’t watch TV or read the newspaper or do anything without people talking about the murder of the President. Like most kids at the time, I really liked JFK. We were unaware of some of his shenanigans, but he was a handsome war hero who seemed hip and cool, and played games on the White House lawn, and we perceived JFK as an improvement over Eisenhower, who looked like our tired grandfathers. Comic books and monster magazines nor Beatles and Beach Boys LPs were enough to drown out President Kennedy’s death. Fortunately, my parents lived about three blocks from San Diego’s only Cinerama Theater. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World had just premiered a week before Kennedy’s murder. I was there and absolutely loved it, never realizing I’d see this longish director’s cut ever again. But after JFK’s murder, I was so depressed that I went there five times over the next seven days. It’s not considered a particularly wonderful movie, but like Mark Evanier, IAMMMMW remains one of my favorites. To me, Jonathan Winters is its star. He was one of my heroes since I was a kid, and I would up working with him a lot in animation. I even illustrated a book of his, The Twelve Husbands of Maudie Frickert, that was never published due to Jonathan sadly losing interest in everything after his wife died. To think that he was my childhood hero and wound up being my friend, is still mind-blowing… and I’ve worked with and been befriended by a lot of celebrities in a number of fields. But Jonathan was special. They looked so similar, he could have been my father’s brother. He was the first person I ever saw on television that I thought was weirder than me, in a good way (although watching Ernie Kovacs through the bars of my crib is my earliest memory.) Jonathan was also a gag cartoonist, which I was unaware of until 1965, his hardback collection of gags, Mouse Breath, Conformity, and Other Social Ills, turned up at the local Fedco [department store]. I saved up money and bought it. There were two owls on the cover and one was telling the other, “You have mouse breath.” When CBS was airing his TV show in the late 1960s, my dad sent Jonathan a copy of an interview with me in the San Diego Evening Tribune. I was asked who my favorite comedians were, and I replied, “I only like one, Jonathan Winters, and I can’t even say he’s a comedian because he doesn’t tell jokes, he’s just weird.” Jonathan sent me back a big envelope stuffed with original drawings of cartoons, some re-creations of gags from his book. When we would up working together on The Completely Mental MisadCOMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

ventures of Ed Grimley, at H-B, I brought it in and asked him sign it. You could tell he was pretty blown away that I had this old beat-up book I’d carried around since I was a little kid. After that, we were friends. I’m so lucky to have gotten to work with so people I’ve admired. I know I sound cocky, but I’ve been lucky to have had so many great experiences. CBC: Do you remember the surfer culture rising up, with Rat Fink… in Southern California? Scott: Absolutely. CBC: What was your experience? Scott: You probably remember the plastic model kits of Hot Curl the Surfer, based on a statue that was on Windansea Beach, in La Jolla, in the early ’60s. He was created by two San Diego cartoonists, Mike Dormer and Lee Teacher. The surfing thing was a big deal; even if you weren’t a surfer, if you were a San Diegan teenager, you read Surfer magazine, where I was first exposed to Rick Griffin’s “Murphy the Surfer” cartoons, which I copied and incorporated into my own growing style. The only time I went surfing, which was only about 100 yards from my dorm room at Cal Western, in Point Loma, I lost my trunks in front of an audience of people I lived with, so I immediately decided that surfing wasn’t my thing. I still listened to the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, though. [laughter] CBC: How did you get out of the water? Scott: I held my surfboard in front of me and said, “Yes, it’s that big.” CBC: Did you have a car? Scott: Yeah, but it was frustrating because since I skipped a grade, all of my friends could drive before I could. My dad gave me his red-faded-to-pink 1962 Pontiac Catalina. The first thing I did in that car was to drive down the hill to the Mayfair Market (located next to the Cinerama Theater) so I could buy the latest comics. CBC: Were you there at the beginning of Marvel? Scott: No, I wasn’t there for Fantastic Four #1. I jumped on board about two years in, and believe me, it really was “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Before that, I went through the same “evolution” that most comic fans experienced in the Silver Age. As a boy, I read lots of “kiddie” and funny animal comics and continued to read Carl Barks’ Disney ducks, even though I didn’t know his name, I could easily recognize Barks’ stuff and collected it into adulthood. I bought Sugar and Spike, The Fox and the Crow, Little Archie, The Flintstones, and all the other Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward titles. Then I started reading Mort Weisinger’s line of Superman titles. He may have been one of comics’ meanest editors, but he was also brilliant in how he and his freelancers built the Superman universe, which for years existed apart from the rest DC with the exception of his World’s Finest friend, Batman. Everyone talks about what a great Superman artist Curt Swan was, but looking at the early issues of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, I think he could have had a great career doing humor comics, specifically, adaptations of TV sitcoms. Swan really

Above: Jack Davis illustration for the It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World movie poster. Below: Comedian Jonathan Winters.

Above: Teenage Scott Shaw!, perhaps on his way to Casino Royale or (more likely) a high school prom. The cartoonist labeled this “Weirdo on Wheels.” Below: Encountering Wonder Wart-Hog, first in the pages of Drag Cartoons, prompted Scott to place creator Gilbert Shelton as a major influence. This cover detail is from (Not Only) The Best of Wonder Wart-Hog #1 [1973]. Drag Cartoons #33 [Nov. 1966] with Shelton cover art.

Metal Men, Challengers of the Unknown, Doom Patrol, and “The War That Time Forgot”—dinosaurs!—in Star Spangled War Stories. Meanwhile, I also started eying those “pre-hero” Marvel monster comics drawn by Jack Kirby, but my mom wouldn’t allow me to have any because they were “too scary.” Of course, decades later, I asked Mom, “By the way, you know that monster comic you wouldn’t let me buy because it was too scary?” “I think so.” “Well, we named your grandson after that man that drew that scary comic.” [chuckles] Her eyebrows almost flew off of her head. Then along came the early Marvels. I recognized Kirby’s style from a reprint of his first “Challengers of the Unknown” story, and, by the end of their second super-hero year, I was a Marvel maniac. Juggling various jobs, I could usually afford to collect the comics I liked the most. I was open to everything because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, except I knew I was going to draw funny comics. But there were certain artists whose work made me think, “Maybe I could draw super-heroes.” When I met Herb Trimpe, I said, “You’re the guy who gave all of us hope.” [chuckles] I was careful not to hurt his feelings, and Herb readily admitted that he was still figuring things out. [laughter] You look at his early stuff and I liked his drawing but in every story, he’d always do a long, wide, shallow panel, with a close-up of a person’s face and one finger sticking up. I always thought, “That’s not only a bad cheat, it looks like a d*ck.” Barry Smith was another one who “gave us hope”… CBC: And then he left us all in the dust! What year did you graduate high school? Scott: Nineteen sixty-eight. CBC: What were your prospects? Scott: In 1968, it was the era that when you had any kind of cultural background or physical issues or financial needs then you would qualify for a college scholarship. I didn’t qualify for any of that, but suddenly, out of nowhere, I received a full year’s scholarship to a local college, Cal Western, on San Diego’s Point Loma. I never understood why I got the scholarship, because my family was about as white as you could get—our coat of arms should be a Wonder Bread wrapper! The editor of the school’s newspaper asked me if I was interested in being the staff cartoonist, and before long, I was given a full page to fill with my cartoons every week. Years later, I realized that I got the scholarship because the school wanted a cartoonist for its newspaper. That’s the only logical explanation. Cal Western University was attended by mostly wealthy kids who weren’t really interested in getting an education, but wanted to take a lot of drugs and get laid. I was only a middle-class nerd, but that sort of recreation became the most valid “education” I received there. I was excited to learn that Jonathan Winters’ son was also attending Cal Western, but it was difficult to connect with him. But things were starting to work out for me. I finally got a few eccentric girlfriends, which was nice. I fell headlong into the counter-culture and emerged with most of my brain cells intact. The first week of college, some new friends and I drove out to La Jolla and in a hippie sandals shop, I bought my first underground comic… err, “comix”… Gilbert Shelton’s Feds ‘N’ Heads! I was already a huge fan of Wonder Wart-Hog. I collected Drag Cartoons and Help!, and all the other magazines he appeared in. Gilbert was already one of my favorite cartoonists and a big influence on my cartooning. And now he’s writing and drawing underground comix? This was a real eye-opener for me. Before that, my friends and I often discuss, “Why are comics just about the standard genres? Why can’t comics be about things outside of those genres?” We thought Marvel and DC—especially Marvel—were putting out some tremendous stuff, but how come comic books don’t span the range of actual literature? I was working at B. Dalton Bookseller at the time and we were all intelligent nerds—we didn’t just like comics and stuff… we read real #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Wonder Wart-Hog TM & © Gilbert K. Shelton. Drag Cartoons TM & © Orah Mae Millar.

knew how to draw realistic humans in humorous situations and get precise acting out of them because he was so good with expressions. The other person from Weisinger’s stable of artists is Kurt Schaffenberger, who drew Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane for years. He was an incredible draftsman who didn’t cheat anything. Everyone and everything looked perfect. You can even see meaningful details of figures waaay in the backgrounds. Mr. Schaffenberger didn’t just knock out those pages, they were beautifully delineated and it’s easy to see he took great pride in doing a good job. I liked goofiness, so I never forgave Mort for replacing the hilarious-yet-pathetic “Tales of the Bizarro World” with the wonky “Legion of Super-Heroes” as the back-up feature in Adventure Comics. I’ve hated the Legion ever since. It was the biggest funnybook disappointment of my youth! “Where’s Bizarro?!” [chuckles] After a while, Weisinger’s Superman universe was starting to run out of steam. I checked out the month before Supergirl revealed herself to the Superman universe, but I barely regretted missing it. Instead, I started noticing DC’s Julie Schwartz-edited titles which struck me as being more sophisticated, with more complex plots and more exciting artwork, including a “new look” for Batman. I also enjoyed

Fear and Laughter TM & © the respective copyright holder.

books and saw real movies that didn’t include dinosaurs or explosions. So, encountering this funny underground publication about dope-motivated hippies really impacted with me. I thought, “Wow! We were just talking about this sort of comic and here it is!” Those were very exciting times for us. CBC: Did you say you had a full-page in the newspaper? Scott: Yup. CBC: What was it? Scott: It varied from week to week. I asked the editor, “Can I do anything?” And she said, “Yeah.” So sometimes I’d write and draw comics, sometimes I’d write about comics. I remember I did a page about DC and Marvel product during the late ’60s period of relevancy. Somehow, I got my hands on some promotional stats of socially-relevant covers that hadn’t been published yet, like Justice League of America where its heroes were all choking to death because of the smog. I did a drawing of Jack Kirby’s Forever People to include in that article, because they were some of the first hippie super-heroes. For Halloween, I cut up an issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland, made a collage, and added cartoons of myself interacting with the monsters. I taught myself—often by accident—what would print and what wouldn’t. “Okay, this is shot in halftones so it will reprint. This photo won’t print unless you do something with it.” I enjoyed working on the school paper. I’d go in and paste up the editions and burn the crap out of my hands with the hot wax. I always felt that if didn’t work out to become a professional cartoonist, I’d be a journalist. And indeed, when I was in college at Cal State Fullerton, I did have a double-major in art and journalism, but ultimately dropped out the semester before I would have graduated. CBC: What was the name of your full page? Scott: It didn’t have a name because I changed the theme and approach every time. CBC: Did you have an interest in the New Journalism? I see that you did some Hunter S. Thompson stuff… Scott: That was my next major obsession. While attending my second college, Cal State Fullerton, I worked in a B. Dalton Bookseller in a mall in La Habra, California. H.S.T.’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had just come out in hardback. I had already read the serialized version in the pages of Rolling Stone. The local the police busted our store because we also had a spinner rack of underground comix for sale. They even arrested the store’s manager and confiscated all of the comix, and even some of my own comic books I had in the receiving room. I was so outraged, I embraced Hunter Thompson and the hilariously twisted psychedelic code of Gonzo journalism became my way of messing with authority. In general, H.S.T.’s writing taught me how to laugh at the stuff that scares me the most. In 1977, I edited an underground comix titled Fear and Laughter, for Kitchen Sink Press, that was an anthology of different cartoonists’ short pieces referencing Hunter Thompson in one way or another. At the time, he was a very big deal to me and my friends. We started printing mystifyingly strange, but funny flyers and fanzines we’d hand out at Comic-Con, a vibe that I like to refer to as Gonzo Fandom, a uniquely San Diego phenomenon. We even had a bizarre band, Dr. Raoul Duke and his All-Human Orchestra, which would perform parodies of songs like “Valley Girls” and “Pinball Wizard.” The appeal of H.S.T. wasn’t so much about his drug intake as his deadly humor and writing style. My favorite quote of his is, “My heart feels like an alligator.” Right there, he got it. [laughter] I never got to meet Thompson, but I was fortunate to spend time with his illustrator, Ralph Steadman. He was a very thoughtful man; storms had stranded us at O’Hare International we ended up spending a few hours in a pub were he told my teenage son, Kirby, “Watch out for George Bush. He wants to turn you into cannon fodder.” I really appreciated that. When a stranger is worried about your kid getting killed in warfare, that’s one good stranger. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

CBC: Were you anti-war? Scott: I was very anti-war. My dad was not a right-wing guy, even though he’d been in the Navy most of his life. He was a moderate Democrat. My parents weren’t real political people, but I was against the war, and thanks to my father, terrified that I was gonna get drafted. I was also extremely upset by the enemies of Civil Rights. There weren’t a lot of Black kids in my high school, but plenty of Jewish, Asian, and Latino students, so my friends were pleased to expose me to their cultures. I never knew this until I was in my 40s, but my mom had been quietly grooming me to be interested and accepting of people of all backgrounds and races. I didn’t know this until a few years before my mom died, when her internal editor evaporated and she revealed our “Big Family Secret.” “The reason you don’t know my father’s name is

Above: Fear and Laughter, a play on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s various Fear and Loathing titles, was a comix tribute to the gonzo journalist. Below: Scott, in skull T-shirt, was member in the Dr. Raoul Duke and his AllHuman Orchestra tribute band.

Above: At Baycon 1968, left to right, David Clark, Scott Shaw!, and Greg Bear. Below: The San Diego Five String Mob, from Jimmy Olsen #144 [Dec. 1971]

Scott: Actually, the draft avoided me. I got a very high number, 232. So I think the Vietnamese Army would have had to invade Kansas for me to get drafted. CBC: Did you know any guys with a low number? Scott: Unfortunately, yes. One of my best friends was drafted, David Clark, who was also one of the guys who started Comic-Con. He received an Inkpot Award at the 50th anniversary of Comic-Con International. He saw a lot of bad stuff in Vietnam. Dave made it home in one piece and now he deals with the aftereffects of Agent Orange. Every so often, he’s in the San Diego Veteran’s Hospital, still getting treatment for health issues created by the chemical weapon. CBC: Was the aspect that L.A. and Hollywood wasn’t that far away, was within hours of driving, right? Scott: Oh, yeah. That’s one of the reasons I enjoyed Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood so much. That was the period I often drove up to Los Angeles. Cal State Fullerton was halfway there but after I moved back to San Diego, I’d drive up there every couple of weekends to check out all of the bookstores, liquor stores, and newsstands would receive new comics a few weeks before we’d get them in San Diego. I liked being in L.A. Spending so much time exploring downtown San Diego prepared me for Hollywood, which was really crummy back then, but in a strangely exciting way. CBC: New York was too. I’m still nostalgic for New York in 1972. Scott: I love New York City, but I don’t know how I’d handle living there now. CBC: The aspect of the animation studios were up in L.A. Scott: Absolutely, but at the time I thought animation was beyond my reach. I felt I’d be lucky just to land some more gigs in underground comix. By that time, I had already managed to get a few stories in print. In 1972, Ken Krueger published my first story, “The Turd,” in the pages of Gory Stories Quarterly #2½, along with my high school pal John Pound. CBC: Had you done, besides the newspaper strips, had you done any sequential work, any multi-page narratives besides “The Turd”? Scott: This is how hilariously overconfident I was: After I saw a comic book advertisement for Wallace Wood’s pro fanzine, witzend, I asked my parents to order them for me as a Christmas gift. I said, “ Please get me these fanzines. They’re $5 apiece and I want all of them.” Of course, when they received them in the mail, my parents ran across Reed Crandall’s Barsoomian nudes and wondered, “Oh, should we give them to him?” Later, I thought, “These are the most chaste nudes I’ve ever seen drawn in my life! Nobody would get ever have a sexual reaction to any of those!” Ultimately, Mom and Dad decided to give the witzends to me. After studying them, I came to the ridiculous conclusion that “I think I could contribute to this magazine.” Archie Goodwin had a parable story in the first issue of witzend, and his drawing was a lot more cartoony than the other stuff, “Well, they’re taking cartoony stuff, too….” So, I drew a 10-page story starring a Italian kaiju monster named Gorgonzola. I never got around to submitting it because although it was my most ambitious project to date, I admitted to myself that it wasn’t remotely good enough. CBC: Was the Gorgonzola… was it… umm… funny? Scott: Moderately. [chuckles] CBC: Were Warren Publications a part of your whole development? You said Famous Monsters… did you pick that up in the early years? Scott: Oh, yeah! Every once in a while, David Clark, John Pound, Greg Bear, or I would coerce one of our mothers to drive us to Hollywood to visit Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forry Ackerman’s famous “Ackermansion.” That’s how he became one of our first San Diego Comic-Con guests—we invited him to its one-day tryout. I do remember a strange situation that demonstrates even though I was a #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen and associated characters TM & © DC Comics.

because he was in the Ku Klux Klan. Your grandfather wouldn’t allow me to marry the man I loved before I met your father because he was Italian. He had a Mediterranean complexion and my father called him a [n-word].” She also told me that he was a creep, hitting on my mom’s high school girlfriends when they came over to see her. So, my mom—and to a lesser degree, my dad, whose Navy experiences taught him how to get along with everybody—made sure that she broke the chain of hatred and that I would have respect for people different from me. What she went through must have been incredibly painful, but she passed on a wonderful gift to me. CBC: How did you avoid the draft?

“20 Cool Things About San Diego Comic-Con” © Scott Shaw!

dope-smoking hippie, I was still kinda naive in a charming sort of way. I remember the Paras brothers’ newsstand, on 30th Street, had all of the Warren books—Famous Monsters, Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella—spread out across the bottom of the comics rack… and here was this Heidi Saha magazine. I picked it up and put it back down. I was in college and had girlfriends (not in dirty publications but real girlfriends) and I thought to myself, “Who th’ hell is gonna buy a magazine full of photos of a 14-year-old girl wearing a bunch of different super-hero, fantasy, and science fiction costumes?” It’s kinda sweet that I could still live in innocence, unaware of what pedophiles were all about. But it’s absolutely true, I didn’t have the slightest hint how creepy that Heidi Saha magazine really was. CBC: That was weird. We’d go to the Seuling cons… Scott: I’m very happy report that Heidi Saha, now an adult, has done interviews and written articles online set the record straight. Heidi has said her parents were legitimate sci-fi fans and no adult ever got creepy with her. At its worst, she found cosplay and fandom to be merely boring. But the creepy intent of the magazine is disgustingly clear. Most of the men who wrote florid testimonials for Heidi Saha advertisements, including Forry and Isaac Asimov, have been revealed to being sexual predators. I guess many middle-aged sci-fi guys aren’t exactly socialized. CBC: [Chuckles] How did you get into an underground comic book? Scott: Ken Krueger was interested in publishing a half-fanzine/half-underground comix called Gory Stories Quarterly. He asked John Pound and I if we wanted to contribute and, typically, John took it more seriously than I did. John was a very dedicated cartoonist. He doesn’t draw many cartoons now; he’s more of a fine artist, but he did all those Garbage Pail Kids cards and a large body of cool commercial artwork. I remember in high school, watching him painstakingly re-draw every panel of a Wallace Wood MAD comic with a ballpoint pen. John really took cartooning much more seriously than I did at the time. I thought the process of drawing a cartoon meant you sat down 10 minutes before it’s due and that’s when you write and draw it. [chuckles] John was a much better cartoonist that I was for a long time. Eventually, I wised up made an effort to improve my work; I finally “got it” while working at H-B, surrounded by old pros who were happy to share their knowledge with me. John came up with a cute funny-animal character named “Ronald Rabbit.” Dave Clark wrote a story that seemed to be a version of the corny story in which it’s Ronald’s birthday, but none of his friends are acknowledging it. Of course, in the end, all of his animal pals yell out, “Happy birthday, Ronald!!!”… and then they all eat him! I wrote and drew “The Turd” for Ken’s comix, who turned out to be my most infamous character. It was based on the Glob, one of the Hulk’s villains. (I didn’t mention that to Mr. Trimpe, but I probably should have.) That final three panels of Herb’s story follow a sequence in which the Glob has fallen off a radio tower, he depicted pieces of the Glob inching back together… and he drew them to resemble dog turds. I’ve always thought, “You know, DC exploited themes of gorillas and dinosaurs on their covers, due to its editorial director, Irwin Donenfeld… but Marvel’s equivalent were referred to as “muck monsters”! You wrote a entire book on muck monsters, didn’t you, Jon? CBC: [Chuckles] I did! Swampmen: Muck Monsters and Their Makers! I wish I had room for “The Turd”! Scott: Aww, you could have squeezed him in—or out! [Jon groans] As a kid, examining those pre-hero Marvel monster comic covers, I often wondered, “Why are those people so scared of mud?” When I got a bit older, I realized, “Oh, it’s not supposed to be mud… it’s crap!” That’s the only logical reason people would be horrified by them. Then, the cover of one of Marvel’s reprints of horror stories from its “Atlas” period confirmed my theory. It was a cover COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

drawn by Johnny Romita, featuring a muck monster lurking in a ranch’s corral surrounded by chunks of dung! It’s unmistakable! Anyway, the The Turd was a muck-monster who was born in the sewers under San Diego. Hungry, it climbed out of a manhole to eat all of the toilet paper in town. I wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered all 10 pages over a weekend. I swiped a Kirby drawing of the Army, but I did it in a cartoony way, just using Jack’s layout. Gory Stories Quarterly went through three printings. Ken wound up with so many copies of it that when he was working for Pacific Comics running their distribution division, he’d use copies of Gory Stories as packing in boxes of new mainstream comics that weren’t completely full. He’d also use copies of Wild Animals, a funny animal anthology I edited for Pacific Comics. A lot of my work was floating out there because it made really good packing material! [laughter] CBC: Wild Animals? I don’t see it listed here. What year was that? Scott: Nineteen eighty-

Above: Scott shared this page depicting fun stuff to do at the annual Southern California get-together, an event he has attended almost every time. Below: Scott named his son Kirby in honor of idol and friend Jack Kirby. All seen here in at the 1992 San Diego Comic-Con.

Below: Scott’s flyer art for the very first San Diego Comic-Con, in 1970, composed with a wide array of characters and designed to appeal to a whole array of pop culture fans.

for many of them. The two who weren’t newcomers to the Golden Age of Comics were Mike Towry and Richard Alf, both successful mail-order comic dealers. Richard was doing so well, when we launched the San Diego ComicCon, he actually loaned the show $2,000, which is why we consider him to be one of the con’s three founders. Both he and Mike became early chairmen of the con. Bob Sourke was there, as were Will Lund, a fanboy Navy sailor, and Shel Dorf, a middle-aged Dick Tracy fan who had been involved with Detroit’s Triple Fan Fair. After the meeting, I immediately shared the news with my Crawford High fan-pals: “We’re not alone!” Of course, I was referring to San Diego fan-groups, not fandom in general. I’d already been exposed to the wildest example of fandom ever, the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention held in Berkeley, California! It was my first con experience, which I attended with my buddies Dave Clark and Greg Bear. I was already living in a dorm at Cal Western and discovered in nearby Ocean Beach a unique bookstore run by Ken Krueger. He sold two specific genres of books: science fiction—out front—and pornography—in the back. The latter financed the former, a business model for more book shops than I ever realized before knowing Ken. He was a really savvy guy, probably informed by the necessity of staying one step ahead of the authorities. Ken was an attendee at the first World Science Fiction Convention at New York City, in 1939, so he became a member of “First Fandom.” Ken published lot of books of the same genres his store sold. He was a nice guy and like a lot of old-timers we met, seemed to enjoy our naiveté and enthusiasm, and potential. In other words, we reminded him of the “Good Ol’ Days,” when Ken and his buddies were young fanboys. His bookstore became our hangout. We formed a club, variously known as “The Pro/ Fanests”—because some were pros and some were fans—and “The Junior Woodchucks”—named after Carl Barks’ parody of the Boy Scouts in Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge funnybooks. When the two groups got together, there was genuine synergy. One group was primarily fans who liked to collect or sell comic books; the other half were fans who also collected comics, but also hoped to create comic books, science fiction, and scientific theories. We perfectly complemented each other. We decided to start our own fan event, but carefully, with a one-day convention. We had meetings, some on my parents’ indoor patio, and in San Diego’s Balboa Park, where we all could sit on the grass in a ring for discussions. We put together the first one-day show and, since that one seemed to work out, we staged a three-day one later that year, with Jack Kirby and Ray Bradbury as our special guests. Two years later, it was Neal Adams and, next, Jim Steranko! Kirby, Adams, and Steranko were overhauling mainstream comics and fandom was mesmerized by all three. We certainly were. The next year, at the show on Shelter Island, Carmine Infantino was the special guest. He showed up dressed like a mod mobster with a sexy “escort” on his arm. He looked like he’d walked out of a vintage Warner Brothers gangster movie and a lot of us dismissed him as a crude and corny corporate tool. (I once heard Roz Kirby refer to him as a “putz.”) I’ve always had a hunch that, when Neal and Jim returned to New York City, they may have spread the word that the San Diego Comic-Con (or whatever the hell we were calling it any given year) was okay… something like, “They treated me fine and it was a nice getaway.” The presence of the counter-culture and underground comix gave us an unintentional hipness that attracted a different crowd than the collectors. But I think that the main factor that triggered the San Diego Comic-Con’s evolution into America’s biggest and arguably finest fan event is—and most people never seem to think about this—San Diego itself. Since much of our committee grew up in San Diego, I think we took San #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Turd TM & © Scott Shaw! Superman TM & © DC Comics. Mickey Mouse TM & © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Forbush Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Mr. Natural TM & © R. Crumb. Beetle Bailey TM & © Hearst Holdings, Inc.

Above: As Scott Shaw! explains on camera for the SDSU Library his outlandish recollection of cosplaying The Turd at the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention, the debacle of his melting costume led to a ban of “edible costumes” thereafter at the event’s masquerade contest. Here’s Scott and his liquescent attire during that convention.

two. It was a comic that Sergio and I were going to self-publish. Our dual divorces put an end to those plans, so it sat in a drawer until the Schanes brothers called me because they suddenly had an open slot in their printing system. CBC: You also did L.A. Comics and Savage Humor? Scott: I did an inside-back-cover ad featuring the Turd in L.A. Comics #1 [1971], for the short-lived L.A. Comics publishing company. As for The Print Mint’s Savage Humor [1973], I drew a story that my buddies Barry Siegel wrote and Bruce Simon laid out. I also wrote and drew a fourpage story, “Jones of the Jungle, Inc.,” for a comic called Arc [Alternative Reality Company, 1979]. It was about an accountant whose plane crashed in Africa, so he became an accountant version of Tarzan. It wasn’t the funniest idea I’ve ever come up with, but it was very early in my career. CBC: It’s really interesting that back in the day… okay, so you look at organized fandom and a lot of that was superheroes. That translated into the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, which did not include undergrounds, a notable omission… the segregation started taking place immediately. But, in 1970, you guys started the San Diego Comic-Con, and fandom was all mixed up—undergrounds, mainstream, foreign comics… all kinds of things… Scott: Yeah, even though I was only 17 years old when I designed SDCC’s first publicity poster, I was trying to appeal to the general public. I thought, “Superman is the most famous super-hero,” so I drew a huge image of the Man of Steel. Then I added Snoopy and Beetle Bailey because everybody loved Peanuts and Beetle Bailey was my favorite comic strip. To represent underground comix, I including Mr. Natural. Irving Forbush was there because the was a Marvel character that the hardcore fans would recognize. I wanted to make it clear that the San Diego Comic-Con was about Pop Culture. When people gripe, “I don’t like Hollywood’s presence there,” I tell them to check out my poster from 1970 because it mentions “Movies.” Back then, it might be a 16mm print of King Kong or Richard Corben might send us a print of Neverwhere, an animated movie that he made. Believe me, I’ve worked in Hollywood and I’m not thrilled by relentless marketing at Comic-Con International, but they have every right to be there and it would be utterly illegal to refuse them as exhibitors. Unfortunately, marketing manipulates everything, not just at Comic-Con, it’s everywhere, 24/7. CBC: What are the origins of Comic-Con that you remember? Scott: This is how I remember it: I was working at B. Dalton Bookseller, in San Diego’s newest upscale shopping center called Fashion Valley, located in Mission Valley. A fellow came into the store who was looking for those Prince Valiant children’s books. His name was Bob Sourke, and he mentioned that “Some friends of mine have started a club for comic book fans in Claremont. Maybe you’d like to attend a meeting.” So, I did. I remember they met in someone’s apartment and one of the activities that day was a slideshow of Golden Age comics’ covers. Most of the kids there were much younger than me, so it was probably an eye-opener

Wild Animals TM & © the respective copyright holder. Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew TM & © DC Comics.

Diego’s allure for granted. We also had no knowledge of pro cartoonists’ personal lifestyles or tax deductions. Because our East Coast guests were giving us a good recommendation, other cartoonists began to realize, “Hey, even if I’m not invited, I can take the family to San-effing-Diego and I can deduct our expenses under “business costs” for our taxes! Not only will the wife and kids think I’m a great guy because they’re won’t have to stare at the back of my neck hunched over my drawing board, but we’ll also be in the best city in America to have an actual vacation!” I think that’s exactly why things took off so fast for San Diego Comic-Con. CBC: When did you first meet Jack and your relationship? Scott: I first met Jack in… when did all the Fourth World stuff start coming out? CBC: Summer of 1970. Scott: I think I met him in 1970, but got to know Jack in the summer of 1971. Some of the SDCC committee members had already been introduced to him when Jack and his family was living in Irvine. When I first met Jack and Roz, they were living in the first of their two homes in Thousand Oaks. I also met Mark Evanier for the first time there. About a dozen of us kids—and Shel—drove up from San Diego and I’m sure that and Jack and Roz expected us to visit for only an hour or so, so Jack would still have plenty of time at the drawing board. But we arrived about 10:00 a.m. and we were still there at 1:00 p.m. Even worse, one of the boys’ mother insisted on tagging along and Roz caught her looking through the cabinets in their bedroom. Roz was not delighted about that. Thanks to Shel’s utter obliviousness, leading the pack and forcing requests on Jack, we didn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon, so Roz sent Evanier and, I think, Steve Sherman out to McDonald’s and they got a few big bags of cheeseburgers for us. Jack was very patient with us. In fact, he liked us! He was even getting chummy with us. Jack said, “I can turn anybody into a comic book character—even you guys.” We immediately said in unison, “Okay, do it!” I remember seeing, for fraction of a second, that “what-have-I-done?” look flash across Jack’s face. But a few months later, he proved that he was a man of his word. It was mind-blowing to see ourselves as the “San Diego Five String Mob” in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #144 [Dec. 1971] and 145 [Jan. 1972]. In the second issue, Jack got rid of us real fast, but it was still an honor for all six of us. Yeah, Jack added “Barri-Boy” after he’d already named it. I was insanely happy to be connecting with the Jack Kirby, but the whole time, I was distracted by the thought, “When is he going to get any work done?” Despite that, I got Jack off to the side and asked, “I know you’re very busy, but if you ever find the time, could you please send me a drawing? You’re my favorite non-cartoony cartoonist. He laughed and said, “I think I’m pretty cartoony.” I said, “Yeah, you are, and that’s why you’re my favorite. My estimation of your work jumped when I saw you draw funny stuff in Not Brand Ecch.” Seeing his approach to comedy—I was unaware of his assignments on humorous comics, which were many— absolutely blew my mind more than anything I’d ever seen of his. I thought, “The guy doesn’t have just one style,” although the comedy stuff was still in the Kirby style. That blew my mind. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Two weeks later, I got a package in the mail from Thousand Oaks. It was a cartoon of King Kong trying to strangle me! Kong’s head is so tall, it looks like one of those British Busby helmets. Kong’s wearing a wristwatch that says, “Kill” but there are no numbers on it. And there’s a guy flying by in a biplane saying, “This doesn’t sure look like San Diego!” Jack absolutely “got” me. King Kong is my favorite movie but I never mentioned that to him! [chuckles] Then I asked him what he thought of underground comix. Jack said, “I think they’re great.” So, I jumped to the conclusion, “Wow, so Jack doesn’t object to the crude material associated with underground comix!” (More on this later.) It was getting late, around 4:00 p.m., when it was obvious, to me at least, that Jack was letting us know that he didn’t have any more time for us. He said, “So, boys, is there anything else I can do for you?” Dorf pulled out copies of Jack’s first three issues of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, The Forever People, New Gods, and Mister Miracle, as well as a tape recorder. Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back: “Jack, I’d like you allow me to record you reading all of the captions and dialog in these comics of yours, doing the characters’ voices as you hear them in your head, and add any annotations that might occur to you as you read?” Jack just stared and him and said, “No.” We got out of there pretty quickly after that. A few months later, I decide to create an underground image based on Jack’s art. “After all, Jack personally told me that he thought comix were great!” I decided to do a perverse version of Jack’s cover for Marvel’s Strange Tales #98 [July 1962]. The comic’s cover features a gigantic alien who resembles a humanoid bulldog, standing in the middle of an area and boasting, “Your planet is doomed! For no human can beat me!” My icky iteration bore the title Deranged Tales, and featured the same cocky alien, now with a schlong the size

Top: Comic-Con panel with [from right] voice actor June Foray, Mark Evanier, Michael T. Gilbert, Lee Marrs, Scott Shaw!, and (we think) Sergio Aragones. Above: Scott edited and drew the cover of this funny animal comics anthology, in 1982. Below: The Zoo Crew at “Sandy Eggo” Comic-Con. Cover art by Scott Shaw! for Captain Carrot and the Final Ark #1 [Dec. 2007].

Above: Three facets of pop culture nerd Scott Shaw! Art by the man himself. Inset center: Scott Shaw! started adding his trademark exclamation point to his moniker while in high school.

TO BE CONTINUED

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Self-caricatures © Scott Shaw! Photo portraits © Greg Preston.

Bottom: As he relates in his introduction to Greg Preston’s The Artist Within 2 book, back in 1992, Scott Shaw! was the guy who first suggested that Greg start compiling portraits of “professional cartoonist types in the lairs where we spend most of our waking lives: our personal studios.” On the left is Scott with his beloved son, Kirby, in a pic taken around 1993. At right is father and son, this one taken around 2016. Greg, who is CBC’s official Contributing Photographer, has been a huge asset to Ye Ed, ever since the first incarnation of Comic Book Artist, always coming through with requested portraits. The least we can do is offer Greg a gratis ad, seen opposite, and we heartily recommend— nah, demand!—you buy his great tome of 250-plus photos!

of a Greyhound bus, saying, “Your planet is doomed! For no human can beat me off!” Ummm…yeah. [laughter] Even worse, at the bottom, it’s signed, “By Shaw!—after Kirby.” [chuckles] My friend had a thousand of these printed as 11" x 17" black-&-white posters. (I think he had regrets and burned them!) So, I took one to Jack and said, “Here, Jack, I did this for you!” He stammered and stuttered and finally said, “But, I can’t put this up… I’m a family man.” [Jon chuckles] I said, “Jack, I thought you said you liked underground comix.” He said, “I like underground comix because the artists own their own material, there’s no house style, they draw it and they write it like they want and it gets printed. That’s why I like them.” He didn’t actually read underground comix; he just liked the notion of underground comix! I finally “got” Jack, but gave it one last shot and suggested, “Maybe you can hang it in the closet.” He wasn’t upset, he was just stunned. Now, if somebody had done that to me, my wife would have said, “Let’s call the police.” But Jack and Roz were cool about it. They liked me and knew there was no malice in my dopey effort to “honor” Jack. One day, about 10 years later, we were having dinner and he said, “Now you’re singin’ with the choir.” I said, “Jack, I’m an atheist. What are you talking about?” He said, “You haven’t brought me any posters in a while, so you must have eased off on that stuff!” I said, “Believe me, you made it clear that I wasn’t to draw stuff like that again.” [laughter] You know, the Kirbys were always so nice to me and they treated

everyone that way. The fellas that owned Landmark Entertainment, a company that designed theme parks all over the world, were huge Jack Kirby fans. I think they’d even hired him to do development art for their company. I’d worked for them, too. They planned a big birthday dinner for Jack, at the Smokehouse, a nice restaurant near the studios along Barham Boulevard, an old Hollywood tradition. They invited Neal Adams, William Stout, every significant cartoonist in L.A.—even me! They got Jack to stand at a podium with a microphone, and they tell him, “Hey, we have somebody you might know,” and then brought in a stripper dressed as Wonder Woman. I had heard about this earlier and had pleaded with the Landmark boys. “Guys, please don’t do that. Roz is going to be there. It’s not a boy’s night out. Please don’t do that. Jack hates that kind of stuff.” I guess I didn’t want this to turn into a Deranged Tales moment! But they insisted, “No, no, he’ll love it.” So this cute Wonder Woman joined Jack at the microphone. Jack started talking to her… and then she takes her top down. Jack started uncomfortably distancing himself from her, sounding like he was receiving an award or something: “Well, you’re a beautiful young lady, and I appreciate the gesture very much.” It felt a lot like Groucho Marx’s interviews on You Bet Your Life. Afterward, even though I wasn’t involved with organizing the party, I told Roz, “I’m sorry about that.” She said, “Eh, don’t worry about it. I’ll just take that photo home and paste my photo on her naked body!” [laughter] One time, Roz said in front of Pete Von Sholly, a buddy of mine, “Jack, take out the trash.” Pete burst out, “But Jack’s the King.” Roz countered, “And I’m the Queen!” CBC: Bada boom! Scott: She’s probably had already said that to Jack a million times.

the art of homage

Funnybook Mutts Patrick McDonnell has his Earl and Mooch pay tribute to iconic comic book covers [If you’re any fan of newspaper comic strips, you’re fully aware that one of the great practitioners currently working is Patrick McDonnelI, the masterful cartoonist who produces Mutts, called “one of the best comic strips of all time,” by no less than Charles Schulz. For 25 years now, the New Jerseybased creator has chronicled the charming antics of Earl the dog and Mooch the cat, in both daily and Sunday strips. For the latter, the cartoonist has made clever and often hilarious “title panels” that are direct parodies of everything from famous paintings to cereal packaging. And many times, McDonnell paid homage to classic comic book covers. So, after connecting for The Book of Weirdo (in which he talked of being pal and neighbor of Peter Bagge), I asked if we could include a feature of his best comics pastiches and—yesh!—here ’tis, along with P.M.’s comments!—Ye Ed.] I’ve always loved comic art. Some of my earliest memories are of looking at my mom’s Pogo and Jules Feiffer paperback books. I recall being mesmerized with how alive those pen-&-ink drawings were on the page. Later, I discovered Peanuts in our local newspaper and became totally hooked. I grew up in the ’60s and devoured all the amazing groundbreaking comic imagery of the time.

The newspaper comics (Harold Gray, Chester Gould and Ernie Bushmiller were still producing their classic strips); the kid comic books (Dennis the Menace, Little Archie, Richie Rich); MAD magazine (Don Martin and Sergio Aragonés); the Golden Age strip reprint books (Krazy Kat, Popeye); and all the super-hero stuff (some DC, but mostly Marvel, particularly Kirby and Ditko). And, in my teens, Robert Crumb and the undergrounds. These all had an influence on my Mutts work. So, on occasion, I pay a direct homage to a favorite. The Sunday newspaper funnies have a title panel, also known as the throwaway panel, because some papers choose not to print it. So cartoonists can pretty much use them as they wish. In my Mutts title panels, I have fun recreating images from the worlds of art—fine art paintings, film posters, magazine, album and book covers, and, of course, comics. Presented here a few Mutts title panels that pay tribute to my comic-book inspirations. I’ve also included a couple of entire Sunday strips that do likewise. —Patrick McDonnell

Left: MAD #1—The Nov. 2, 1997, Mutts Sunday strip. “Harvey Kurtzman has a wonderful spontaneity and looseness in in his art.” 22

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Photo by Kim Levin. Mutts TM & © Patrick McDonnell. Superman TM & © DC Comics. MAD TM & © E.C. Publications, Inc. Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Superman #1 – The June 16, 1996, Mutts Sunday strip. “Although I wasn’t thinking of it at the time, my first comic tribute was to the first Superman comic.”

Mutts TM & © Patrick McDonnell. ZAP Comix #0 & 2 © R. Crumb. Cheap Thrills TM & © the respective copyright holder. Hellboy TM & © Mike Mignola. The Incredible Hulk, Tales to Astonish, Devil Dinosaur TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Far left: ZAP #0—The Nov. 16, 1997, Mutts Sunday strip. “At an early age, Peanuts inspired me to want to become a cartoonist. Discovering R. Crumb confirmed that conviction.” Above: ZAP #2 and album cover—The May 26, 2002, Mutts Sunday strip. “The strip is also a take-off on Crumb’s cover art for the Big Brother & the Holding Co. vinyl record.”

Right: Hellboy: The Corpse and the Giant Shoes—The Oct. 26, 2003, Mutts Sunday strip. “I love Mike Mignola’s drawing and inking, at once so modern and yet so classic. A few years ago, we exchanged art and I now own a Hellboy hanging out with my Earl, Mooch and Crabby.”

Right: The Incredible Hulk Annual #1—The Aug. 10, 2003, Mutts Sunday strip. “Jim Steranko revived my interest in super-hero comics with his innovative psychedelic visions.” Bottom: Tales to Astonish #34—The Oct. 25, 2009, Mutts Sunday strip. “Jack Kirby is one of my all-time favorite artists. The strip is also a variation on Jack’s incredible double-page spread from Devil Dinosaur #4.”

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Above: Bone Vol.1—The Mar. 9, 2014, Mutts Sunday strip. “My good friend, Jeff Smith, does amazing work.”

Above: Amazing Spider-Man #31—The July 24, 2016, Mutts Sunday strip. “There was Kirby and there was Ditko. ‘Nuff said.”

Patrick McDonnell’s latest book is The Art of Nothing: 25 Years of Mutts and the Art of Patrick McDonnell. You can get signed copies and learn more about Mutts at mutts.com. 24

Left: Fantastic Four #49— The July 27, 2014, Mutts Sunday strip. “Galactus! One of the greatest comics ever. I was young, but had the exciting experience to visit the local luncheonette weekly to scour the comic racks in anticipation of the next issue.”

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Mutts TM & © Patrick McDonnell. Bone TM & © Jeff Smith. Amazing Spider-Man, The Avengers, Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: The Avengers #1—The July 22, 2018, Mutts Sunday strip. “With all the movie hoopla, I thought it would be nice to honor its Kirby roots.”

Mutts TM & © Patrick McDonnell. Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Dick Tracy TM & © Tribune Media Services, Inc. Flash Comics TM & © DC Comics.

Far left: Fantastic Four #51—The Mar. 24, 2019, Mutts Sunday strip. “This is a dream come true. Last year I had the pleasure to meet Kirby inker supreme Joe Sinnott. It was suggested that it would be fun if he would consider inking a Mutts Sunday page. At the young age of 93, he agreed. The final here is a take-off on the classic Fantastic Four story, “This Man This Monster,” by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (and inked by Sinnott), recreated by McDonnell and Sinnott. That this happened would have blown my 10year-old mind.”

Above: The July 25, 2014, Mutts daily strip. “Just about every summer, I pay tribute to the San Diego Comic-Con by having the squirrels, Bip and Bop, harass unsuspecting super-heroes.” Right: Dick Tracy #8—The Feb. 3, 2002, Mutts Sunday strip. “Chester Gould was a master in his use of black ink, his tight storytelling, and cartoony villains.” Left: Flash Comics #1— The Mar. 9, 2003, Mutts Sunday strip. “Cats can be fast when they want to be.“

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darrick patrick’s ten questions

The Ostrander Method Grimjack’s co-creator and Suicide Squad re-inventor has some words for newbie writers by DARRICK PATRICK [What better writer to showcase in this issue celebrating artist Timothy Truman, than his frequent collaborator John Ostrander? Prior to his start at Chicago-based First Comics in 1983, John was an actor with the legendary Organic Theatre, the group that originally produced the science fiction and comics-centric play, Warp! Early on at First, the writer co-created Grimjack with Truman. (An adaptation of Grimjack is currently in development as a TV series, produced by no less that the Russo Brothers of The Avengers: Endgame fame.) Other notable work includes John’s Suicide Squad reboot, The Spectre (with artist Tom Mandrake), and a number of Star Wars stories at Dark Horse.—Y.E.] Above: Nabbed from his Facebook page, a 2017 photo of writer John Ostrander.

Above: Superb Sandy Plunkett Spectre cover [#3, Feb. 1993], during John’s lauded run. Below: The team’s line-up by Luke McDonnell, from Who’s Who Update ’88 #3 [Oct. 1988].

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The Spectre, Suicide Squad TM & © DC Comics.

Darrick Patrick: What was the journey that led you to writing professionally within comic books as a career? John Ostrander: I was always a reader, back as far as I could remember. I still am. Anything and everything. My family first learned I could read when I was reading the back of a cereal package (or maybe it was a milk carton) at the table. It’s the one thing I could do really well: read. That especially included comic books, but my mother was influenced by Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (I don’t know if she read it or just heard about it), so super-hero comics were forbidden, which meant, of course, that I had to find them and then hide them. It was sort of my childhood porn stash and, every once in a while, my mother would find them and throw them out amidst a great deal of angst on my part. Some of the comics that were thrown out would be worth a great deal later on. (I should mention that, later on, my mom was quite proud of my comic book career, although I’m not sure if she actually read any of them. Take that, Dr. Wertham.) In high school, I discovered the theater and acting and pursued that into college, all the time still reading comics. I also established a friendship with Mike Gold, which would pay off later. After college, I was involved in various theater companies in Chicago (running one—very badly—as well). I also made the acquaintance of Del Close and took improv

classes from him as Second City in Chicago. This would prove very influential on me. Mike was one of those starting up First Comics and, knowing my love of the medium, gave me a shot. And the rest, as they say, is hysteria. Darrick: Who are some of the people that greatly influenced you (in your personal life) while growing up? John: Let’s assume outside of comics. I’ll start with my twin brother, Joe. He’s my fraternal twin and we don’t look, act, or behave alike. To show you how little we are alike, in college Joe came up to me with a Sweet Young Thing he had recently met and said to me, “She doesn’t believe you and I are twins. Get out your driver’s license and show her.” I grimaced and got the license out, but as I did so, I said, “Is he pulling that stunt again? I’m his cousin from California and we just happened to be born on the same day. He pulls this gag all the time.” Sweet Young Thing said, “I knew it!” and flounced off. Joe sputtered, “But… but… but…!” He growled at me and went off pursuing Sweet Young Thing. I never saw her again so I assume it didn’t work out. Joe and I shared a bedroom together all through grade school and most of high school, too, I think. Joe was more of an extrovert; I was a bit of an introvert. He was the alpha of we two, but I found ways to get back at him by being sneaky and subversive—traits I still have. We both do Elmer Fudd impressions and have dueling Elmer Fudds whenever we get together or even just call. We start with a round of “Hewwo?” on the phone. I was the Best Man at his wedding, as he was at mine. He made me the godfather to his first child, Julie. My mom used to say that, as babies, we’d be out for a walk with her. If she sat on a bench, he would turn to me and say something in baby twin gibberish and I would respond and then we would take off in different directions. Mom was bigger and faster and was able to round us up pretty quick, but it was still a near thing. At some family gatherings, we’re not allowed to sit together because we can get up to something pretty fast. He’s my brother, my buddy, my co-conspirator. I love him. There were others: family, of course, and my gang— Jerry Gavin, Pat Devaney, and Rick Rynders. In grade school, I wrote one-page serials for each of them almost every day, which, I believe, they never read and threw away, but I wrote a lot of crap out of my system and could be considered the start of my writing career. I even adapted one as a screenplay and, with the Super 8 movie camera that Jerry’s mom owned, we made our own movie one summer. I intended to sync it up with a tape recorder so we could have sound, but that never worked, so it wound up just a silent. It ended with a pie fight. We were going to put it on in a basement and charge neighborhood kids a quarter to see it, but my mom heard and made us give all the money back. Ghod help me, but the last time I talked with Jerry, he said he had a copy of that film somewhere, so it could yet haunt me on YouTube. A girl I was crushing on in sophomore year went to an all-girl’s Catholic high school, Marywood, in Evanston. They were having auditions for a play and they needed boys for the play. I had never acted, but I figured, if I got in the play, maybe I might sorta kinda

run into her at her school. I talked Rick into auditioning with me. We got to the front door and I got cold feet and almost chickened out. Rick was firm. “Oh no. You got me to come this far, we’re going in.” We both got cast (thank you, Mrs. Crawford). I never did see my crush, but I found a new love—theater. Acting. My family came on opening night and afterwards, Joe blurted out, “Mom told us to tell you did good even if you didn’t, but you really were good!” (Joe was a blurter.) Mom sighed heavily, “Joel!” But it was fine. That was my start in theater and, for the next few years, I did the Marywood school play every year. Pat and Jerry joined us the following year; they were no fools and they did the math—a few boys in a school that was all girls? They liked the odds. I did, too, but I liked the theater even more. That led me into theater as a major in college and then into semi-professional and professional theater in Chicago after college. Theater, in turn, has fed me into my writing career. Much of what I’ve learned about plotting, theme, dialogue, and more in my writing has come from my theater experience. One thing leads to another. Darrick: Do you have any words of advice for other individuals looking to make a career with their abilities in writing? John: My standard reply when asked how to break in to comics was “Through the roof with a pickaxe on a dark moonless night.” I think I can do better than that. 1. What does a writer do? A writer writes. Do the work. Write every day whether you get paid to do it or not. Do it for five or ten minutes a day to start if you have to, but do it every day. You want to get into the habit of writing. You’re either a writer or a wannabe. A writer writes. Do the work. 2. Theodore Sturgeon, the famous science fiction writer, was asked, “What do you say to the accusation that 90% of SF is crap.” Sturgeon shrugged and said, “90% of anything is crap.” Everyone has crap in their system and the only way to get rid of it is to write it out. Ninety percent, at least, of what you write will be crap, especially to start. You learn by doing. Write it out. 3. Write every idea down. You don’t know what you have until you write it down. Don’t tell anyone the idea until after you’ve written it down; if you blab it you’re letting the steam out of the engine and it won’t go anywhere. Write. It. Down. 4. Don’t edit to begin with. Don’t worry about spelling or punctuation. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Actually, here’s a secret – it won’t be. Not on the first draft. That’s what a rewrite is for. You can flush out the crap later. Just get it down. 5. Read. What do you like to read? Why do you like it? Read everything. Read the news from a lot of different sources. What is happening in the world, what is happening to you, and how do you feel about it?

Grimjack TM & © John Ostrander & Timothy Truman.

6. There are no monsters. There are just human beings and some of them are pretty f*cked up. Hitler, unfortunately, was not a monster; he was human. All your characters are human and all of them are you. You have it within yourself to understand any of them. I wrote a villain once who was a racist and, to write him honestly, I had to dig down and found out what was racist in me. Not a pleasant journey, but it was there. We are monsters and we are heroes. Every character you write or can write is in you. Find them. 7. Live. Have a life. That’s what you’re drawing on. It’s what my late wife Kim Yale referred to as “restocking the fish pond.” If you want your writing to feel alive you have to live first. 8. Write. Write. Write. Do the job. Darrick: How do you spend your time on a typical workday? John: I get up at some point; when depends on when I fell asleep the previous night. I have breakfast, read the paper, check Facebook and e-mail, anything else I can do to delay actually getting down to work. I’m better if I have an assignment or a deadline, but otherwise I’m really undisciplined. I love writing once I get down to it but sometimes the idea of sitting down to write is beyond me. Darrick: For new readers who may not be familiar with your work, what COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

are some projects of yours that you would recommend to begin with? John: Grimjack probably would head the list. It’s the cornerstone of my career. The Spectre is high on the list. I did 10 years of work on Star Wars comics for Dark Horse, usually with Jan Duursema. Legacy is probably the top-rated there. (We’ve also done out own Star Wars-ish sorta project called Hexer Dusk which can be found on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.) Wasteland is a… unique… read, and there’s also my long run on Suicide Squad. I did The Kents, a historical Western, over at DC, and a few more Westerns at Marvel. I think I’ve destroyed forests with my output. Darrick: Who are a few of the people in the comics industry that you hold a high deal of respect for (and why)? John: Let’s start with Mike Gold, one of my oldest friends, my first editor, and the one who got me into comics in general and then later, when he went to DC, he brought me with him. One of the best editorial minds in the biz. Tim Truman, my bro, who started Grimjack with me and is one of my best friends ever. Tom Mandrake with whom I did Spectre and Jan Duursema with whom I did Star Wars; we all used to live near each other in New Jersey, and were often in and out of each other’s houses. Most of the artists I’ve collaborated, if only for putting up with me, but also because they were great collaborators. They’ve made me look good. Dennis O’Neil showed me how one could write on serious contemporary topics in comics. I like Gail Simone a lot and we’ve worked together on a few things. Very talented writer. People in the past who I may have met, but didn’t actually know: Will Eisner—I discovered him before I hit my teen years and was always enthralled by his storytelling. Also wrote some damn fine instruction manuals. Stan the Man Lee. Joe Kubert—I taught at his school and met him a lot. Great guy, as well as a great artist. If I try to list all my influences this will be a book and I really need to finish this interview and get it in. Darrick: Outside of creating stories, what are your other interests? John: Reading is probably number one. Cooking, although I haven’t done as much of it lately. Films, TV—almost anything with a narrative. Listening to music. Movie soundtracks are a favorite; they aid my writing. Darrick: What is your oldest memory? John: I’m not sure. I sometimes think that I’d forget my own name if it wasn’t written in my underwear. Right now, I seem to be going by the name of “Hanes.” But seriously, folks. . . I grew up Roman Catholic in Chicago, and we lived across the street from the church, a behemoth-sized place. I lived literally in the shadow of the church, depending on where the sun was. The school I went to was attached to it and I was late nearly every day. I remember one summer a storm rolled down and it was raining on the other side of the street but the sun was shining on our side. That influenced my thinking later on the city of Cynosure [pan-dimensional hub]. Chicago, in fact, was very influential on my thinking of Cynosure; all the different neighborhoods had different cultures and sometimes architectural styles. Thinking of them as different dimensions made Cynosure more real to me. I remember, when I was about 10 years old, I was on my bike just outside our yard. It was summer and the sun was out. A funeral was going down our street past our house, heading for the entrance to the church. As the hearse went by, I got the sense that someday I would be in the hearse and a boy would be watching me go by. We also had several deaths in the family and we seemed to be always going to a wake and a funeral. All of which gave me a sense of mortality at a relatively early age. I have a strong streak of melancholy that runs through me and I think this was a large part of its development. Darrick: Tell us something about you that most people don’t know. John: I sometimes get shy. When I get nervous, I tend to blather. Darrick: When you’re no longer amongst the living, how would you most like to be remembered? John: That’s nothing I have any control over. If people remember me, it will be how they remember me and based on their interaction with me. I’ll be dead and I won’t know, so I don’t care. If, in 20 years, someone reads something I wrote and likes it—that would be great. Inset top: Detail of Tim Truman’s cover art for Grimjack: Killer Instinct #1 [Jan. 2005]. 27

incoming

PCR, Joe, Chadwick, and Don Art of a prince, passings of a master and of a king, and the humanity of McGregor Write to CBC: jonbcooke@aol.com or P. O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892

Below: Mark Sinnott, who kindly facilitated Ye Ed.’s visit to see his father, Joe, last September, was very kind to send a prayer card after the artist’s passing this past June. The reverse had “An Irish Blessing.”

Bottom: In answer to a letter writer, here’s the Frank Quitely pic not seen in CBC #22

Terrific interview with Joe and Mark Sinnott! I was expecting something far shorter and significantly lighter: a brunch conversation. Here, instead, an abundance of new information about Joe, himself, and his years away from Marvel. How ironic that Joe unintentionally learned of Treasure Chest from an issue his daughter brought home. Joe’s likenesses of the Beatles were, indeed, excellent. What I especially loved is all the new photos of Joe surrounded by his fellow professionals on Joe Sinnott Day. People who liked his work and, more importantly, appreciate him as a cherished friend. Or the family photos of Joe graduating and on his wedding day. As for the ending and questions you could have asked, well, maybe that could be an occasional new department? It could be the way to have readers write in, too, to suggest areas you might’ve missed. I don’t think with 15 pages, you shortchanged us, but I had some curiosity about two things. First: how did the five Sinnott Thors come about—Journey Into Mystery #91, 92, 94–96)? Extra time in Joe’s schedule? Why that instead of inking the Fantastic Four again on #14, 15, and 17–19, on sale at that same time? Secondly, when Joe returned for good, in ’65, why the X-Men #13 and “Nick Fury” stories in Strange Tales #139 and 140? Was he to take those over? Or just fill-ins till they saw how astoundingly improved he made the art, as inker, on Fantastic Four, with #44? That interview, to me, would have been enough to love the issue, but you doubled-up with a great P. Craig Russell talk, as well. Thirty pages, but they zoomed by. You even hit on something I thought isolated to me. That is, I love his work on operas without even being an opera fan. I’ve only attended one, to keep a college friend company, and didn’t care for the experience. Too much loud singing! (My friend was amused. She told me, “Loved you

sneaking furtive looks at your watch.”) Yet, in his adaptations, there’s clearly a story told but in a way—visual rather than auditory—that captures my interest. So, the same material but in a preferable form that wins me over. I’m sure, for opera fans, it’s doubly pleasing. They like the music and art. Me, hardly so cultured, I still am amazed to be hooked. Yet, the storytelling and distinctive art is undeniably amazing. Even when he’s tackling fine literature, same thing. Identical story; more charm his way. Though I prefer his art, solo, he’s also proven himself a respectful inker over other favorite artists such as Steve Ditko and Gil Kane. Superb workmanship! His Rom issues, over Steve, were extraordinary. I didn’t care about the story or premise, but the artistry was outstanding. Sad they didn’t combine, later, on something with more substantial content. Yes, he must be self-assured in that he’s not tied down to one company or character. He’s still working and turning out fine material, for which I’m thankful. Nice to anticipate new work and not just reprints. Additional gems this issue: Gil Kane’s Tomb of Dracula rough; the Frank Quitely hotel wall art; and the Bill Schelly tribute. That was unexpected and a shame. What a unique career: as a kid and an adult with a 20-year hiatus in the middle. Regardless, plenty of reasons to be glad he returned: meticulous coverage of fandom’s founders and early practitioners, along with in-depth biographies of Joe Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman, and James Warren, among others. He accomplished a lot, covered topics and individuals in great detail and added, significantly, to the history of the form. Best of all, it sounded like he really enjoyed it. A tremendous issue, Jon. One of your very best. [Thank you, Joe! Your loyalty as reader and letter writer is greatly appreciated! Joe Sinnott’s son Mark can’t authoritatively answer your question, he did say, “Remember, at that time, my dad was still considered a penciler and inker.” A quick look-see on the Grand Comics Database for 1963 indicates the Joltin’ One was working steady for any number of clients—much of it pencils and inks—including Dell, Charlton, Dell, Marvel, and the aforementioned Treasure Chest (George A. Pflaum, publisher), so I’m betting he was already booked solid!—Ye Crusading Editor.]

Ian Millsted On my first visit to the local comic shop after stores started to re-open here in England, I found CBC#22 waiting for me, probably arrived there just as things were closing down. Glad to see it as I wondered if it might have got lost in the shuffle with the Diamond temporary closure, etc. Quite a full issue, but I feel I should start with the tribute to Bill Schelly. I never met Bill, although we did correspond by email a couple of times over a suggested contribution to his section of Alter Ego, which I never got around to doing for various reasons. Despite not having met, I felt a genuine sense of loss when I heard he had died. I enjoyed the Comic Fandom Archive and a range of his books. I felt I knew him a little from his memoir, Sense of Wonder. I also admired his ability to have an idea and then make it happen. Having recently committed to writing a biography of a British science fiction writer, I look to Bill as a model for how to do it. Half as well as Bill and I’ll be happy. Sad too that this issue should reach me so close to the #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Frank Quitely hotel room art photo by Mike Best.

Joe Frank

death of Joe Sinnott. I knew of the Treasure Chest work, but had never seen any of it. So, far as I know, it was not available in the U.K. (but, if any British Catholic friends know otherwise, please correct me). I enjoyed the P. Craig Russell interview. I was left a little curious about the economics of his work. I’d love to think we live in a world where 400 pages of The Ring of the Nibelung in comic form sells enough copies to pay for work of that quality. Do the royalties from Sandman collections still roll in? Anyway, it’s an impressive body of work and still quite a lot of it I’ve not read and can still look forward to.

Steve Andrews I’ve been a TwoMorrows fan for 25 years or so (going back to the first Comic Book Artist, and the beginning of Alter Ego and Back Issue). I enjoy every issue of each mag and keep a large files of each series. This is the first CBC where I can actually read it and comment on time. For some reason, I order the book each time, and the Shoppe sometimes comes through and most of the time doesn’t. So then, eventually, I order the back issue from TwoMorrows and usually months later. If Diamond ever starts up again, you may want to check on that. I loved the Joe Sinnott article for so many reasons: good questions, a lot of interesting information, and the surprise of all time for me, the relation to Mack Sennett. I don’t recall Simon Lovish mentioning a lot of background to Sennett’s name in Keystone: The Lives and Clowns of Mack Sennett, but I may have to check it. Very interesting crossover in ancestry. “Comics in the Library” is always interesting. I really enjoyed the Frank Quitely interview, but I have a question: how is it that you mention the picture of a dog and people on a Vespa and not show the picture? Did I miss it? My eyes are not the best any more. [See previous page.—Y.E.] I have loved Mr. Russell’s work for years, especially his Killraven and, naturally, the Sandman. So much good information and pictures. I always find the interviews in CBC interesting because you always find pieces of information that has not been addressed in many places. The last page of pictures about Karen Berger (who you should interview), why no caption for the final two pics, including her new staff? I have no idea who these people are, but I would like to.

Jungle Action, Black Panther TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

[My bad, Steve. Here’s the names of participants, all from left. Top photo of “An Introduction to Berger Books” panel, 2017 New York Comic Con: Richard Bruning, Karen Berger, Ann Nocenti, Anthony Bourdain, Joel Rose, Dave Gibbons, and José Villarrubia. Bottom photo of “Berger Books: The Second Wave” panel, 2018 NYCC: standing are Ann Nocenti, Martin Marazzo, Christopher Cantwell, Dean Haspiel, Karen Berger, Ariela Kristantina, and Richard Bruning; seated are Darin Strauss, Adam Delva, Joel Rose, Corin Howell, and J.M. DeMatteis.—Y.E.]

Michael Mead

world stops, you freeze and the world seems to tumble down into pieces. We need good people who can be heroes to us to draw us back to a world of love, where you are protected until you can fight your own battles. I was thinking about all this when I saw your recent Facebook post on the Dauntless One, Don McGregor. I also happened to be catching up on my endless pile of back issues and I was reading his Jungle Action with the Black Panther. Previously I’d found McGregor’s stories overwritten, verbose, and I remember not even being able to get through his Killraven as a teenager. But now, when I read the Jungle Actions I see his style and that of other writers of the time, such as Roy Thomas, as like an illustrated novel. His comics are meant to be read, not just experienced visually like today’s comics which are like minimalist film storyboards. He wrote at a time when we had more time to read and his commentary really adds to building the imaginative world, it immerses you more in the place he wants to take you. The effect is you feel part of something bigger, you belong somewhere when you’re reverberating with the disassociation, the disaggregation that abuse has left you with. You’re no longer separated and powerless, you have a different world to be in and you can reclaim your identity though the characters. From Jungle Action #13 [Jan. 1975], page 14: “It is a night when a man can reach and believe he can touch the stars… that he is a part of the cosmological scheme of things! A night when a man could believe that he is an integral part of the universe, not omnipotent, not superior, just unique and unto himself.” A 45-year-old comic written for teenagers can still speak words of hope to a 54-year-old man. [Thanks, Mr. Mead! Folks, look for Michael’s heartfelt piece on the 50 th anniversary of Jack Kirby’s Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #133 soon! — Y.E.]

Top: In 2017, prior to the release of Marvel’s blockbuster film Black Panther, CBC pal and renowned comics writer Don McGregor had an opportunity to meet super-hero movie’s headlining actor, (the now late) Chadwick Boseman. Don recently shared in a Facebook memorial comment, “He understood the tone of voice, the grace of spirit and physical movement, and the poetry and humanity of T’Challa.” Above: T’Challa, King of Wakanda. Below: Sequence from Jungle Action #13 quoted by letter writer Michael Mead. Art by Billy Graham (pencils) and P. Craig Russell (inks).

Really enjoyed CBC #21, as per usual. I particularly wanted to recognize your courage to speak out about what happened to you, in the article about Diane Noomin’s new book, Drawing Power. Talking about it publicly can make others feel less alone and also give them hope as they see it is possible to live a full, creative life, as you have done, even if, as you say, the impact still lingers. Unfortunately, I had a similar childhood experience and like you, I can trace its effects throughout my life. Comics helped me through some of that. They have provided security, hope, energy, belief that you can get through things, that sometimes the hero wins. When abuse happens, your COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

a chat with chiang

A Woman of Letters

Michael Aushenker talks with letterer Janice Chiang about her long career in comics Conducted by MICHAEL AUSHENKER CBC Associate Editor

Above: Among the myriad comics titles Janice Chiang’s lettering has graced, DC’s Impulse [1995–2002] was a particularly charming book. This cover is from #48 [May 1999].

Below: The woman herself, Janice Chiang, in a 2012 photo.

Comic Book Creator: You’ve worked with so many luminaries in the comics industry. And yet, because of the assembly line nature of American comics, you probably have yet to meet many of your collaborators! Janice Chiang: I recently teamed up with Danny Fingeroth on a short story for a collection named Yiddishland, where the theme is about cantors who ventured into vaudeville. I’ve lettered many projects, so I know the majority of freelancers by name only. I thought, ‘Oh, so that’s Mike Vosburg! He sounds like a really nice guy.’ I had met Rich Buckler while waiting on line at the Big Apple Comic Con, in October, 2009. We had teamed on some books back in 1975, when I was working in the Marvel Bullpen. Rich said he remembered me… nice to find a living witness of my first staff job in Marvel. CBC: What are some misconceptions about letterers? Janice: People think we’re just copying words and we can’t think for ourselves. It goes back to how I approach lettering. My background is fine arts. My fonts… it doesn’t look like anyone else’s. I studied at Hunter College. We were a very creative family. My mother could look at a dress and sew that dress. She could see a sweater and knit it. My father could build things. A big promotion by the age of 12 for me was to use a circular saw. My father had so much faith in us that we could do the process. I learned how to do crafts at age five, how to do create something out of nothing. I’m the first generation-born here. My parents #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Impulse TM & © DC Comics.

[A legend among letterers, Janice Chiang is a familiar name to any avid ’80s comics reader. She broke into comics in the mid-’70s, when she began freelancing for Marvel, and she continues to letter to this day. Best known to the Bronze Age generation for her lettering on such books as Transformers, Visionaries, and ROM, Janice also worked long stints on some of comicdom’s most popular series: Conan the Barbarian [1982–90), Alpha Flight [1987–94], Iron Man [1987–90], Ghost Rider [1990–96], What If? [1990–95], and Impulse [1999–2002]. She has also toiled for Dark Horse, Scholastic, Acclaim, and Tokyo Pop. “I simultaneously freelanced for Marvel, DC,and the now-defunct Tundra,” she tells me. “I worked on Disney Adventures—whatever editor Heidi MacDonald gave me. I recently worked on Archie Loves Betty and also an Archie Loves Veronica.” (And contrary to a credit on her Wikipedia profile, she did not do any work as a colorist!) “I lettered Mark Texiera on Ghost Rider, Mark Bright on Iron Man,” Chiang says. “I did Rob Liefeld’s first work for DC, on Hawk and Dove, as well as work by Jim Lee and Kelley Jones.” Janice added, “I continued as freelance letterer for Marvel and DC until 2004, then I took a break from comics. From 2001–04, I worked for the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Harlem on “Harlem Week” campaigns as a freelance graphic designer.” Since the late 1990s, Chiang has not only returned to form, but she has adapted quite smoothly to the digital revolution that changed comic book production forever circa 1993. Her Random House work includes Kagetora [vols. 2–5], Suzuka [1–3], and Air Gear [vol. 1–4]. “It’s great to see the young Japanese characters having the same problems as the kids have here,” she says. “In my youth, there were no positive images of Asian people. It was either the Fu Manchu stereotype, kungfu, or the nerd. These books reinforce sophistication and tolerance.” For Papercutz, she recently worked on Smurfs comics and the Italian translation of Disney’s Fairies. Emma, Vol. 1, was chosen by NewType anime/ manga magazine as book of the month in September, 2006, and by the Young Adult Library Services Association as one of the greatest graphic novels in 2007. In 2009, The Village Voice named Danny Fingeroth’s adaptation of Stud Terkel’s

Working, one of the best graphic novels of the year, in which Janice lettered two short stories. However, she is much more than the sum of her credits and the writers and artists she has teamed up with. She is a thoughtful, philosophical, complex and multi-layered artist with personal tastes that transcend her ostensible métier. One of her favorite movies is Old Yeller, and one book impressed her was George Leonard’s The Art of Mastery. Referring to her son, Janice said,“I gave Calvin this book, when he was ten years old, to help him gain some perspective of what is conditional, subjective, and what he could truly control on his path to whatever he decided to master.” Janice shares, “If we can express our mutual understanding of how passion, diligence, and principle drives our work and other aspects of our lives… Sometimes we get lucky and we are able to pursue what we initially target as our passion. Other times, we find ourselves in situations that we never anticipated. The elements that comprise ‘passion’ may be applied in other arenas. If we’re fortunate, we do get another chance, as I am experiencing now.” For 37 years, Janice has lived in Woodstock, New York, with her husband, Danny Louie. When asked how she’s managed to work so far away from Manhattan early on in her career, she responded that, in the old days, “Federal Express helped me out. I’d overnight it from Woodstock. Basically, we built up the Federal Express business here. It was insane… When I was doing a lot of monthlies, I’d work on 5 to 10 pages at a time… and I never dropped the hot potatoes.” Most of the following interview originally appeared on my Cartoon Flophouse blog in 2011, though Janice shares an update as an addendum. —M.A.]

ROM, The Transformers TM & © Hasbro, Inc. Photo © Kendall Whitehouse.

grew up in China. My mother’s name was Hop Kun. My father’s name was Bay Doc. My father came to New York when he was 13½. In 1892, after Chinese came to build the Transcontinental Railroad, there was an economic crisis. A lot of scapegoating went on with the immigrants. The Manchus were in control of China. The immigrants had to wear a long braid to differentiate them from the Manchus—a lot of Chinese had long braids… My father was sponsored as a paper son [fake relative] with a Chinese laundry or restaurant business. He did hand laundry. My mom and dad ran a business at home. They were really accessible. Basically, where we lived, they did hand laundry at these apartments on East Elmhurst, in Queens. I had two older sisters and a younger brother. One of my sisters is Fay Chiang, a well-known poet. As far as the immigration experience, China was not a friend to this country until an open-door policy in 1962. It was not comfortable being Asian. You would keep a low profile. Look like what they did to the Japanese[-American] people [in California, during World War II]. Basically, all of us connected with the fine arts. The creativity in the family home situation fit into writing and artwork. My sisters, Fay and Jean, were at Hunter College, already studying fine arts. So I was the third Chiang in there. When we went to Hunter, Fay was in the anti-war movement. She was bringing literature in the house from the Black Panthers. It gave me a broad view of what was going on. What really got me angry was when they murdered Fred Hampton. It made me question, “What’s this democracy and who are we helping?” I became active in the anti-war movement. A lot of students were active. They’re killing people who look like us over there. Fay started organizing ethnic studies and we were very active in the Asian-American organization. Like what’s going on right now in Arizona, if you look Latino, you’re going to be stopped. We were all there [at Hunter] at the same time. Basement Workshop, an Asian-American multi-arts organization, was taking up community issues, Civil Rights issues. Larry Hama was part of that organization. He’s an artist and musician. That’s how I got into comics. Larry’s sort of my mentor. His mom is really talented. She had her own dress shop. She made couture clothing and she would copy it. Larry told me, “I love hanging around women! They smell nice and they’re creative.” CBC: So that’s why Larry was off to a red-tag sale when I caught him for a phone interview [in Jan. 2010, for Back Issue]! Janice: When he was 12, he got a subscription to Vogue. I’ve known Larry since I was 13½. They would do these Asian arts festivals that he was a part of. This was back in 1972. The great thing about New York City is that it’s multi-ethnic. Back then, there was a big structure being built and no Asian-American workers on site. We said, “Something’s wrong here.” There were no Chinese policemen and there’s a big language gap, no bilingual teachers. There were a lot of things to be done, and we were inspired by the African-American movement. There was a real flow of creativity. CBC: How did a fine arts major such as yourself start on a path to lettering? Janice: I never finished Hunter College; I just left. Basically, I made a lot of decisions that were unconventional. Struggle is a big part of my life. You see something and you move forward rather than stand there and being scared. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Larry Hama’s partner, Ralph Reese, taught me how to letter. They were working together under the name of Crusty Bunkers [the gang of inkers at Neal Adams’ Continuity Studios]. I’d go there and Ralph would show me a few things, and then I’d go home and work on it. Different kinds of lettering and somehow it evolved. CBC: Which letterers were you studying at the time? Janice: The big-name letterer I really liked was Joe Rosen. The others were a little clumsy. I loved Joe’s hand because he had an interplay of thick and thin lines. I don’t like blocky, one-dimensional strokes. That goes back to my background. My father taught me how to use a calligraphy pen. CBC: Were you already reading comics? Janice: No! [laughs] I read books! I sort of stumbled onto comics. I tell my comics editors: “Just remember that my mother didn’t raise me to letter comics! [laughs] At Neal’s studio, there were some things floating around that were pitched to me. Neal called me over to Marvel Bullpen. He contacted Danny Crespi. He was a letterer, too. His daughter, Susan Crespi, is the production manager now at Marvel. Thanks to Neal, I was in the Bullpen at Marvel, doing lettering corrections. CBC: What was the Bullpen like in 1975 when you came aboard? Janice: The Bullpen was one big open area. Freelancers would come in and drop off their art. I was younger than

Above: Among titles from the 1980s in which Janice Chiang worked as letterer are ROM and The Transformers, both based on toy properties and licensed by Marvel Comics. Janice has some 2,782 citations on the Great Comics Database (at comics.org), and while we’re loathe to determine a precise figure from that total number (which includes reprintings), suffice to say she’s been an incredibly prolific (and excellent), as well as in-demand, comics contributor in her professional career. Below: Participants on the 2017 New York Comic Con panel, “Women in Comics: Celebrating Over 100 Years”: (from left) Dr.Sheena Howard, Janice Chiang, Karen Green, and Amy Chu. One observer shared, “Chiang spoke out not just on behalf of women, but of the power of the medium to impact lives.” Photo by Kendall Whitehouse.

Above: With her sister, the late and renowned poet Fay Chiang, Janice participated in the Basement Workshop in New York City’s Chinatown, an association that led her to meet comics artist and editor Larry Hama and starting a career as comics professional. This 1972 photo is by Bob Hsiang. Below: Janice’s social activism, prompted by unfair hiring on the construction of Chinatown’s Confucius Plaza (with action organized by Asian Americans for Equal Employment), led to her meeting, in 1974, her now husband of four decades-plus, Danny Louie.

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Basement Workshop photo © Bob Hsiang. Demonstration photo from the AAFE website.

most people there. I was 19. CBC: This must have been a great place to learn. Janice: I was fixing letterers: Jean (Simek) Izzo, Annette Kiwecki, Sam Rosen. I didn’t keep track on whose work I was on. John Verpoorten was my supervisor. CBC: Who were the Marvel peers you socialized with? Janice: I didn’t hang out with comics people. Working at the Bullpen taught me that I worked better by working by myself. I worked there for three months, and then I left the comics industry, going back to the community organizing. I worked on how to get the word out if there’s a demonstration by creating graphics. I did that for a couple of years. Once you know time/date/place, you’re off and running. I would do artwork, I learned to silk screen. Back then, you were a rebel, a mover and shaker, a revolutionary. That’s why it’s appropriate that my son is working at Radical. [laughs] CBC: How did you meet your husband, Danny? Janice: To get jobs for Asian-American construction workers… [like] the African and Latin construction workers, a lot of us people came out of the anti-war movement. They would teach us how to close down a construction site. That’s how I met my husband, Danny Louie. Around the construction of Confucius Building. In 1974, construction began on the Confucius Plaza high-rise development, a federally-funded project, in the heart of New York’s Chinatown. Despite city policies requiring employment opportunities for minority workers, the builder refused to hire Chinese applicants. Outraged by this blatant discrimination, a coalition of Chinatown residents, students, and professionals came together to demand the right of access for Asian Americans to some of those construction jobs. The leaders formed Asian Americans for Equal Employment (AAFEE, later to

become AAFE, Asian Americans for Equality) to coordinate demonstrations, marches, and picketing around the Confucius Plaza site. After six months of unrelenting demonstrations, the Confucius Plaza struggle ended with AAFE’s first victory for minority rights and equal employment opportunity when the builder was pressured into hiring 27 minority workers, including Asian Americans. One time, I jumped on a crane and the construction workers said, “Don’t worry! We’re not going to move it. We rather not work today!” [laughs] CBC: How did you get back into comics? Janice: I spent five years in Chinatown. For a period, I worked in auto factories for Cadillac and at the GM plant. I worked at a Ford plant, in Mahwah, New Jersey, on and off over those five years. In 1980, my son, Calvin, was born and now I was thinking, “How am I gonna raise him?” So I said, “Let me see if they would remember me over at Marvel.” Luckily, the Bullpen was intact: Danny Crespi, Morrie Kuramoto, and Jack Abel were there. Marie Severin. Mary McPherson was the front person answering the phone. This time, when I got to Marvel, Louise Jones Simonson was the editor there. I was so happy to see a woman there. This was so nice. Louise gave me my first book, a Conan issue drawn by John Buscema. CBC: Do you remember which issue it was? Janice: I have no idea, but it scared me. I thought to myself, “Take a deep breath! Sit down! Once it’s on paper for posterity, I was really nervous. I‘d pencil it and come back and ink. It took so long. It took two hours for one page. I thought to myself, “This is ridiculous!” That became a long-running series for me. What happens is, you get what people can’t handle. You get the overflow…I looked at it as a learning experience. Before [Liquid Paper] whiteout, there was something called Snopake. That stuff is gummy. CBC: Where were you physically doing the lettering work? Janice: I lived in Jersey City… [B]asically for 15 years— there were no weekends. I don’t know how I did it. My husband was able to be out in the woods and bring my son. He worked in advertising. You’ll have to ask my family that, but basically we’re all alive and standing! CBC: How did you adapt to the digital turnover in how comics are lettered? Janice: In terms of going from lettering to digital lettering, it was not difficult. What was difficult was that nobody would show me. This was in 1996. Marvel did a lockout on hand-letterers in ’96. That whole year, I didn’t letter a comic. John Babcock, he pulled a bunch of us traditional hand-letterers: Jack Morelli, Phil Felix, Mike Higgins—at John’s house. He said to us, “You guys need to see how this works.” When I was doing hand lettering very intensely, I’d gauge how long it’d take when to take a break. It’s a different temp today. With digital, you get first stage, second stage… CBC: So is your life is easier now because of digital? Janice: Not necessarily. When I hand letter now, once it’s on the page, it doesn’t move. Sometimes I get the wrong dimensions. Whenever you’re involved with teamwork, people have to find their rhythm. After 30 years in this industry, I’ve seen everything. CBC: How is your digital lettering different? Janice: If you look any of my work, it’s as if I hand lettered it. Not one sound effect is repeated. I’ve learned to use Illustrator as if I’m hand lettering. But I find it very straitjacketing to use InDesign, as in the Manga translation industry. I feel so much freedom using Illustrator to create sound effects. That’s the fun of it. It’s acceptable, but quite mundane. Every job brings new challenges. I went to Parsons to take classes that showed us all the twirls. My husband and I rolled our eyes. We were the only artists in that class. CBC: What is the trick to being a great letterer?

Ghost Rider TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc., Superman TM & © DC Comics.

Janice: You don’t want to overwhelm the art, you want to enhance it. Basically, we’re like the soundtrack to a comic. We’re integral [yet] you can’t really notice it, but it enhances. It’s subtle. CBC: What was one of your wildest assignments? Janice: On Ghost Rider, I did this crazy flaming balloon. When I came into the industry, it was pretty straightforward. I would think, “Let me do something special for Ghost Rider.” Why don’t they run away and scream? It’s a skull with a flaming head. I was working out at the gym and had an idea. “I know: let’s give him a flaming balloon.” That was fun. CBC: What was your drug of choice while working on those classic Marvel Comics? Janice: My drug of choice was the Walkman. Now I’ve got my iPod. Music is a big part of my family. My husband’s music collection goes back to the ’20s. Coffee. Food. In our house, we cook from scratch. CBC: What music are you listening to while lettering? Janice: Jazz fusion, Pat Matheny, Al Jarreau. I really liked (and this is a plug for a friend) Robbie Robertson. A friend of mine, Jerry Marotta, is a drummer for him. (He and his brother were on this group, Orleans; they did a song called “Dance With Me”). I listen to a lot of news, too. I owe it to myself and to my craft to engage myself. I better know what’s going on. I love to run the BBC in the background. CBC: The digital revolution has had a profound effect on our industry. How difficult was it for you to transition from hand lettering to digital in the early 1990s? Janice: I picked it up pretty easily. Jim Starlin called me from San Diego, in ’92. He said, “Hurry! Get your lettering in digital form.” But, at the time, I couldn’t drop it. Strategically, it was the right thing to do. I said that to my son before he went to RISD. The main thing is to pick something you have the passion for that will engage you creatively. To my son, I said to him, “Whatever you’re doing, even the mundane— folding laundry, cooking—do it with passion.” I’ve been lifting weights for 35 years. There’s always a different way to do things. For anyone in the industry, there’s a time when there’s a lot of work and there are fallow points. You have to be ready to change of style or methodology. CBC: Do people ever swipe their lettering style from you? Janice: Pick up a Judge Dredd reprint book and I see they’re lettering from my style in 1988…like I wouldn’t know the difference. I do know the difference. There was a lot of plagiarism even when I was hand lettering. Someone at Malibu Comics took my font and copied it. I recognized it. Everyone in editorial recognized my lettering. My creative DNA is so strong, anyone who knows it would know it flows from me. Little do they know that the work plagiarized from me is facilitating the industry. At Tokyo Pop, I know who I am. CBC: What are your tools of the trade? Janice: I use a Crowquill, Speedball C6, B6 to outline and bold lettering; a C6 for the regular balloons; a B5.5 for Sound effects C4; and a Crowquill for balloon points. CBC: What were those days like as the industry went through that seismic shift from manual to digital? Janice: In 1996, the hand letterers had no work. I just sat down and drew the letter forms, balloons, and sound effects. I created a glossary for myself. I have a basic working for 40 original styles that came from drawing them from pen and ink. But for what I handle, in general, is about eight to ten. You don’t want to make things too complicated to stop [the flow for the reader]. Bob Harras threw out all the letterers at Marvel. I was really happy when Chris Eliopoulos took it on. He started from the bottom up. He paid his dues. The way Marvel portrayed hand letter vs. digital—it was sort of an Amish-shunning being a woman and the male bonding thing. I think a lot of people who ran digital thought I would drop by the wayside and disappear, but, having done it for so long, you don’t stop the way you’re doing something. If you learn a new way to look at things you don’t start. The people who were there at the digital divide when they see you hear they’re uncomfortable. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Above: Caption to come. Below: Caption to come.

CBC: Can you discuss working on the licensed toy books ROM and The Transformers? Since these books featured robots, were they more of a challenge, lettering-wise? (I’m assuming you sometimes lettered in different “voices” for these books?). Was that a challenge or a pain? Janice: Oh, no, it was the fun part. CBC: You worked on quite a few titles written by Bill Mantlo. What was he like? Janice: He was a very sweet guy, very energetic, very curious. Comic people either they originate from their love of comics or they’re intellectuals where their scope is really broad. Bill was one of them… Walt Simonson. Sam Rosen, Artie Simek, the hands were really blocky the sound effects were really square not too many curves. But, with Neal Adams, Walt, and Bernie, the lettering got looser in the mid-’70s… But then there was permission to use a more calligraphic style. In the ’80s, there was a loosening under Jim Shooter’s editorial hand… David Sharp used elliptic templates to make balloons that sort of killed the organic balloons. I pull out the corners and make them more organic. It’s interesting to see the letterers I can tell at what point they started reading comics by the kinds of balloons.

Above: Janice is quite proud to have developed the “flaming word balloon” motif for Marvel’s Ghost Rider series in the 1990s. This page from Ghost Rider #15 [July 1991] sports artwork by Mark Texeira. Below: Janice gets a shout-out from Gene Luen Yang as letterer on his Superman Smashes the Klan graphic novel [2020].

CBC: Did you ever get reader response for your work? Janice: I would get fan letters in-house for pushing the boundaries, but it never got to my hands. I think the two fan letters. It was nice to get a response. [laughs] CBC: Is there a difference lettering for Archie or The Smurfs, compared to the super-hero and fantasy stuff? Janice: Not really, it takes a lot of engagement. The stories are really funny, working on two levels: for the kids and for the adults. It’s so smooth you don’t know what’s happening. I’m laughing while I’m lettering. The only difference is scale: the lettering is larger. CBC: You worked on Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer… Janice: It was when the TV show was popular. It was a strong woman character. For Scholastic, they did a version of Goosebumps. It didn’t do that well, I only lasted on it for a year. For Tundra—at the time I was working for DC and Marvel. They had stacks and stacks… I could’ve gone to the trough and eaten, but I thought it was best to work for a variety of comics. At Acclaim, I worked on the Toy Story comic when it came out, Pocahontas, The Mighty Ducks… That was when I could really use my digital lettering. That’s when it was viable. The computer I was using––a Quadra–– in terms of processing, it was slower than the Power Mac, but the software was unstable. The hard drives were one gig or 500 megabytes. But with the Acclaim stuff, I really finally got the flow of it even though I was on this clunky machine. I’ve been through seven Macs. I’m now working on a MacPro, the 17" one. CBC: You attended the first-ever Asian American Comic Convention, in New York City, a couple years ago, where Larry Hama was the first honoree. How was that experience? Janice: I attended the Asian-American Comic Book Convention [in May, 2009]. I was in the audience at the Time Warner panel in support of Secret Identities. I found out about [the convention] by Googling. I showed up and the panelists introduced me. [The books’ creators] were like, “Oh my god! We should have called and asked you to letter!” The Secret Identities project has introduced me to a new grouping of younger comic creators. Their talent is nothing short of stunning, which makes me quite proud to witness their contribution to comics history. In terms of the artists who created a lot of these artists on independent projects want to collaborate with me and I’ll say sure, I’m capable. A lot of these creators are my son’s age (40). I feel the same kind of relationship. There’s no “You’re over the hill,” there’s no dissing. People know that, as you stay with your art [in the Asian culture], you master it. CBC: How does your husband handle your lettering career? Janice: Pretty well, I suppose. We celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary last year. That’s me, constant and faithful. 34

CBC: As dependable as you are as a letterer… Janice: I sound like a dog! Old Yeller! [laughs] [Following is a recent interview giving readers an update.] CBC: Can you talk about lettering Storm King comics line of John Carpenter comics? Are there unique challenges to creating the lettering for this genre of books? Janice: Firstly, it is an honor and privilege to have the opportunity to collaborate with John and Sandy King Carpenter. They have brought together creative collaborators in the Storm King Comics from diverse sources [including] novelists, screenwriters, fine artists, and concept artists from the video game industry. I’m the lettering department for Storm King, with free rein to interpret lettering in our books. My biggest challenge with [the Carpenter line] is to reflect the caliber of writing and art with my lettering. I still get nervous when I begin a new series. The first book is usually the learning curve for the team on how we will collaborate for the rest of the series. For me, I have to understand the storyline and characters. CBC: You’ve also recently lettered the total opposite of Storm King: The Smurfs and Gumby for Papercutz and worked on DC’s DC Super Hero Girls. Can you share some insights regarding these family friendly comics? Janice: Papercutz editor-in-chief Jim Salicrup and I had worked together at Marvel. He brought me into Papercutz, where I lettered the 12-page tryout story that the licensee had sent. I faintly remembered that The Smurfs were blue elf-like beings. I had to call my son, Calvin, and ask if he remembered the cartoons on television. They loved the lettering for the story and thus began my path to lettering 24 Smurfs graphic novels as well as other Peyo titles. Assistant editor Michael Petranek was a great team member to work with. I lettered a few issues of Gumby before I finished my tenure with Papercutz. DC Super Hero Girls was originally an animated series. DCE saw that there was a growing market of new young adult readers who would enjoy their adventures. What appealed to me the most about this book was each character had a specific super-power and one costume (instead of a closet full of gowns) and they would pool their abilities to solve problems. Whichever character had the super-power best suited to the particular storyline, she would take the lead along with Wonder Woman. It was great to work again with Marvel friends and colleagues Bobbie Chase and Marie Javins. The Young Readers Department has grown exponentially over the past few years with a variety of storylines with DC characters. CBC: You also have a long history lettering for Archie Comics and recently, you've lettered comics based on the CW’s Riverdale series — a tonal twist. How’s that been? Janice: I began working with Archie on stories for their collections. The first series that I lettered was Life with Archie… When the Riverdale television series was created, they decided to create a comic version of the storylines. The strength of Archie’s books and TV shows is they reflect present times with a twist that defines it as “Archieverse.” CBC: Your son has followed you into comics working for DC. What kind of work he has done out in Burbank and has you two working in comics been bonding for both of you? Janice: When Calvin was very young, he would accompany to the Marvel offices. He was four months old when I first strolled him in. It was always fun for him to visit the office because everyone was very kind. He would visit with Danny Crespi, head of the Bullpen and my mentor. Then, we’d say hello to Flo Steinberg, Morrie Kuramoto, Louise Simonson, Larry Hama, Pat Redding Scanlon, Bobbie Chase, Mark Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio, David Wohl, and many other friends. (When I meet old Marvel friends who know Calvin, I ask them when they began working at Marvel. From their answers, I can figure out how old Calvin was when he met them.) Calvin attended Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in illustration and animation, so he has a broader range #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

of skills than I do. He was hired by David Wohl at Radical Publishing for production and design work. He was able to figure out how to convert files for Radical’s collection of published comics to upload for sale on iTunes. This was before Comixology made comics available for digital purchase and download. At DC, Calvin is part of the digital production department. Here, new and reprinted books are prepared for different digital platforms as well as for the printed format. Many of his teammates are also accomplished designers and illustrators. They also handle internal projects that need their special skill sets [including] rebuilding files of archival comic books of which few exist. CBC: We all know that 1993 was a turning point when the industry went digital. However, has the art or the business aspects of lettering changed in more recent years? Janice: Digital comic art and digital lettering are constantly evolving with the challenge of how to best tell a story in the comic medium. Technically, there are more choices of textures, effects, and color, because of digital art programs. Lettering assignments will differ accordingly to each client. When I work on stories for DC, the lettering supervisor, Josh Reed, will send me the correct templates, a list of fonts chosen for the books created for specific audiences. Also, the editor will place the most current version of the script and balloon placements in my folder. I will submit a first-stage lettering PDF for proofreading. A marked-up PDF will return with comments about corrections I need to make. This process continues until I get the green light to move onto final lettering files. CBC: Can you share a few impressions on a few of your industry friends and acquaintances who we have lost in the past couple years: Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott…? Janice: I had never directly worked with Stan Lee until I began hand lettering the Spider-Man daily newpaper strips. Our team here was Larry Lieber as the penciller and Alex Saviuk was our inker. Later, I lettered the full-page Spider-Man strip for the Sunday edition. Alex was penciler and Joe Sinnott was our inker. For both assignments, I’d letter from Stan’s script, which would be annotated with editing notes. It was not lost on me that I was in a rare situation of being a team member with two of the original creators of Spider-Man. I felt greatly privileged that I was treated as a peer. We kept in touch through occasional emails and I was amazed when he would answer back. I had tried to say hello to Stan during New York Comic Con or at San Diego Comic-Con. However, I could never get past his security detail, which was to be expected. Then I decided the best way to visit Stan was to try to schedule an appointment at his office in Beverly Hills. His executive assistant Mike Kelly, with whom I worked on the Spider-Man strips and Sunday pages, scheduled the appointment. It was a momentous occasion and I wanted Stan to meet my husband, Danny, and Calvin, too. In August 2016, we went to visit. Stan was so smart and humorous. It was on our trip home from Amsterdam that I had watched the documentary, With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story. I saw footage of the many Marvel friends I knew and worked with in the office in their younger years. The epiphany that I had was this was my family’s home movies. When Stan and I began our conversation, we knew and worked with so many people in common that it was very as if we met before. His Beverly Hills office was in many ways a replica of the Manhattan Marvel offices. Calvin even recognized posters in Stan’s office as the same he had seen in Manhattan. I was finally able to thank Stan for all the good things in my life that flowed from his role in Marvel. I discovered a skill that provided me a livelihood. I was able to buy a home, send Calvin to college, and be part of a community of creators. Most importantly, the books that we create inspire others to dream, hope, and ultimately change lives and society. Marvel is a global brand with a distinct message. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Stan was touched by my gratitude and I was happy to have the opportunity see and speak to him in person. With Joe Sinnott, we had worked together on West Coast Avengers. Often, with hand lettering over art, schedules would be tight. Joe lived one town over from me [in Saugerties] and I would often hand-deliver pages so we wouldn’t lose a day in transit. It wasn’t until 25 years later, when we worked on the Sunday Spider-Man strips, that we had gotten to know each other better. Joe’s kindness and generosity were equal to his talent as an artist and his intellectual curiosity. He gave me a better understanding of comic history by sharing his personal history, about his career and contemporaries. And he was always encouraging and trying to prod me back to drawing again. Every year, he would say, “Why don’t you come to the Albany Toy and Comic Show?” I did attend twice and had a great time seated between Joe Staton and Joe Sinnott. Joe’s love of history was infectious and showed great depth of thought and understanding. We spent time discussing current events, too. It was difficult to say goodbye to Stan and Joe. Both were great influences on me by the manner in which they conducted their public and private lives. I said to [inker] Terry Austin, “Everyone has a piece of Joe because he was always encouraging and accessible. Always a positive force that will continue to flow through us.” CBC: What has been/is the best aspect of working in the comics industry for you? Janice: I love being part of a team going in the same direction. Also, when, as a community, we band together to create fundraising anthologies for publicizing an event or situation, such as Love is Love, which covered the tragedy at the Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida; Where We Live, about the Las Vegas mass shooting; Ricanstruction: Reminiscing and Rebuilding Puerto Rico, about the effects of Hurricane Maria, etc. I’ve been able to team up with many different creators. Our industry is small, so many of us continue our collaborative relationships at different companies. The majority of us freelance at home and never actually meet in person. Through social media, we may connect with one another and keep current with projects and friendships. At conventions, I’ll make a point to go through Artist Alley and say hello.

Previous page: At top is (from left) Danny Louie, Janice, and their son, Calvin, during a California visit; two pics of Janice with her baby boy; and a recent snap of Janice with the man who first got her into comics, Larry Hama. This page: At top is Janice and husband Danny flanking Stan “The Man” Lee, in 2016. Above is Janice and her good buddy, Joe Sinnott. Below is interviewer and interviewee at 2010 Comic-Con International: San Diego.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #5

DENIS KITCHEN close-up—from cartoonist, publisher, author, and art agent, to his friendships with HARVEY KURTZMAN, R. CRUMB, WILL EISNER, and many others! Plus we look at the triumphant final splash of the late, great BILL EVERETT, Prof. COMIC BOOK CREATOR #8 CAROL L. TILLEY discusses the shoddy research and falsified evidence in the book The creators of Madman and Flaming SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, DENYS Carrot—MIKE ALLRED & BOB BURDEN— share a cover and provide comprehensive COWAN interview part two, and more! interviews and art galore, plus BILL (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 SCHELLY is interviewed about his new (Digital Edition) $4.99 HARVEY KURTZMAN biography; we present the conclusion of our LASH interview; STAN LEE on 4-issue subscriptions: BATTON his final European comic convention tour; fan-favorite HEMBECK, and more! $45 US

JOE STATON on his comics career (from E-MAN, to co-creating The Huntress, and his current stint on the Dick Tracy comic strip), plus we showcase the lost treasure GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS drawn by Joe! Plus, Part One of our interview with the late STAN GOLDBERG, JOHN WORKMAN’s Mighty Aphrodite, GEORGE KHOURY talks with artist LEILA LEIZ, plus HEMBECK and more!

WARP examined! Massive PETER BAGGE retrospective! It’s a double focus on the Broadway sci-fi epic, with a comprehensive feature including art director NEAL ADAMS and director STUART (Reanimator) GORDON, plus cast and crew! Also a career-spanning conversation with the man of HATE! and NEAT STUFF on the real story behind Buddy Bradley! Plus the revival of MIRACLEMAN, Captain Marvel’s 75th birthday, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

$67 International

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #9 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #10

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #12 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #14 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #15 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #16 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #17

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

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

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

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

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

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.99

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #18 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #20 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #21 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #22 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #23

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

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

ERIC POWELL celebrates 20 years of THE GOON! with a career-spanning interview and a gallery of rare artwork. Plus CBC editor and author JON B. COOKE on his new retrospective THE BOOK OF WEIRDO, a new interview with R. CRUMB about his work on that legendary humor comics anthology, JOHN ROMITA SR. on his admiration for the work of MILTON CANIFF, and more!

P. CRAIG RUSSELL career-spanning interview (complete with photos and art gallery), an almost completely unknown work by FRANK QUITELY (artist on All-Star Superman and The Authority), DERF BACKDERF’s forthcoming graphic novel commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, CAROL TYLER shares her prolific career, JOE SINNOTT discusses his Treasure Chest work, CRAIG YOE, and more!

WENDY PINI discusses her days as Red Sonja cosplayer, & 40+ years of ELFQUEST! Plus RICHARD PINI on their 48-year marriage and creative partnership! Plus: We have the final installment of our CRAIG YOE interview! GIL KANE’s business partner LARRY KOSTER talks about their adventures together! PABLO MARCOS on his Marvel horror work, HEMBECK, and more! Cover by WENDY PINI.

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.99

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

PRINTED FILE COPIES OF CBA VOLUME 1 FOR SALE! HURRY, ONLY A FEW COPIES AVAILABLE! The forerunner to COMIC BOOK CREATOR, CBA is the 2000-2004 Eisner Award winner for BEST COMICS-RELATED MAG! Edited by COMIC BOOK CREATOR’s JON B. COOKE, it features in-depth articles, interviews, and unseen art, celebrating the lives and careers of the great comics artists from the 1970s to today.

#12: CHARLTON

#13: 1970s MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: THE 1980s & DAVE STEVENS

#16: 1970s ATLAS/ SEABOARD COMICS

#18: ’70s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983! Interviews with WILDMAN, CUTI, STATON, BYRNE, SUTTON, ZECK, KELLER, MORISI, SATTLER, STERN, LAYTON, TOTH, a NEW E-MAN STRIP, and DON NEWTON!

From Son of Satan to Ghost Rider! THOMAS, WOLFMAN, COLAN, PALMER, TRIMPE, PERLIN, ISABELLA, MARCOS, HEATH, PLOOG, and more!

Interviews with WOOD, MOUGIN, ADKINS, LEN BROWN, TUSKA, SKEATES, a TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST, 1980s THUNDER AGENTS REVIVAL, and more!

Independent creators DAVE STEVENS, HERNANDEZ BROS., MATT WAGNER, DEAN MOTTER, PAUL RIVOCHE, SANDY PLUNKETT, and more!

Interviews with ROVIN, THOMAS, COLÓN, MITCHELL, HAMA, CHAYKIN, AMENDOLA, HEATH, WRIGHTSON, SIMONSON, WEISS, MILGROM, AUSTIN, and more!

STARLIN, MILGROM, LEIALOHA, WEISS, BRUNNER, ENGLEHART, FLO STEINBERG interview with TRIMPE, FITE, WINDSOR-SMITH, lost WARLOCK #16, and more!

(112-page magazine) $10

(128-page magazine) $10

(112-page magazine) $10

#19: HARVEY

#20: ROMITAs & KUBERTs

#21: HUGHES, ROSS, & JOHN BUSCEMA

#22: GOLD KEY

From Hot Stuf’, Casper, and Richie Rich, to Joe Simon’s “Harvey Thriller” line! KIRBY, STERANKO, EISNER, WILLIAMSON, GIL KANE, WOOD, CRANDALL, SIMON, KREMER, COLÓN, and more!

Joint interview between Marvel veteran artist JOHN ROMITA, SR. and son JOHN ROMITA, JR.! On the flipside, JOE, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT share their histories!

ADAM HUGHES ISSUE with interview, unpublished art, & CHECKLIST! Also, ALEX ROSS, plus a tribute to the life and career of JOHN BUSCEMA, with art section!

RUSS MANNING’s Magnus Robot Fighter, WALLY WOOD’s Total War M.A.R.S. Patrol, Tarzan by JESSE MARSH, JESSE SANTOS and DON GLUT’S Dagar and Dr. Spektor, Turok, Doctor Solar, and more!

(112-page magazine) $10

(112-page magazine) $15

(128-page magazine) $10

#23: MIKE MIGNOLA #25: ALAN MOORE Exhaustive interview, huge art gal& KEVIN NOWLAN lery, and comprehensive checklist! Plus a JILL THOMPSON interview, ALEX ROSS, STEVE RUDE, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, JOSÉ DELBO, interview, and HARLAN ELLISON!

Focus on AMERICA’S BEST COMICS! Interviews with MOORE, NOWLAN, O’NEILL, SPROUSE, BAIKIE, BARTA, DUNBIER, KLEIN, VILLARRUBIA, and more!

(112-page magazine) $10

(128-page magazine) $10

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

CBA Vol. 2 #1

CBA Vol. 2 #2

CBA Vol. 2 #3

CBA Vol. 2 #4

CBA Vol. 2 #5

CBA Vol. 2 #6

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

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

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

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

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

Double-sized tribute to WILL EISNER! Over 200 comics luminaries celebrate his career and impact: SPIEGELMAN, FEIFFER & McCLOUD on their friendships with Eisner, testimonials by ALAN MOORE, NEIL GAIMAN, STAN LEE, RICHARD CORBEN, JOE KUBERT, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, JOE SIMON, and others!

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(112-page Digital Edition) $5.99

(252-page Digital Edition) $12.99

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comics in the library

What Covid Has Wrought

Arndt outlines the dire straits of school libraries during this coronavirus pandemic by RICHARD J. ARNDT CBC Contributing Editor

Above: Panels from Amazing Spider-Man #33 [Feb. 1966].

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Amazing Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

I attended the San Diego Comic Fest on March 5–8, 2020. There was a lot of worry, hand-washing, and guest artist cancellations during that weekend. On the 13th, my school shut down. Now, as I write this, it’s August 27, more than five months since that shut-down. One day before starting our professional days’ start this fall, the school board extended the no-students-inschool requirement by another two months, from our planned start on August 31 to (as of this late August writing) October 29. There is, of course, no guarantee that students will be allowed back in the building and classes then. All classes are being taught online. All teachers, regardless of years of experience, are essentially starting their first year of the “new normal.” And libraries and librarians are in a particularly precarious place. First, because practically no function that a library routinely engages in is easily accomplished online. Part of that is simply expense. Library acquisition budgets are always too small for reader demands. Online book acquisitions are as or nearly as expensive as buying an actual book and, while an actual book may be in a library for months, years, even decades, an online digital book is only available for library use on a system not based on time or permanent purchase, but on a certain number of downloads. Usually nine to 11, sometimes longer, depending on the publisher. On a popular book, you can use up all those downloads in a day. Then you’d have to repurchase the book for any future use. Online book purchases, at the current time, are neither practical nor cost-effective at all. But what, you might ask, about free digital books— many of them genuine classics? True, they don’t cost much, are often free or available at very low price, but only because they’re out of copyright. The copyright cutoff is currently creeping through the 1930s on books—which is why Conan stories can be published by both Marvel (authorized versions) and other companies. Howard’s original stories are gradually losing their copyright protection. Basing your library’s ability to maintain readers on books that are 90 years old is no way to maintain or gain young readers. Nobody wants a digital online library where nothing written in the last 90 years is available. Graphic novels fare even worse in a totally digital “check-out system.” Most reprint graphic books are using the traditional comic-book page as their digital template because that’s how the print comics were originally done. However, you can’t really see and read a comic page that way: enlarging the page to regular size means only half the page is visible. The full effect of splash pages that run two pages or more can never been seen on any modern viewing screens (except possibly a large TV screen). Why do that if you can watch a movie or TV show that actually speaks and moves on that same screen? Especially if you’re a kid? In reality, the best way to read future comics (not reprinted comics) is for the comics to move to a two-tier horizontal page that is the size of half a current comic-book page, which moves from side to side, not

up and down. That’s a fundamental change in how comics are currently read and a fundamental change in how they are both published and marketed. There’s no budget in the foreseeable future for upgrading or changing libraries to even go digital. In addition, I lost 172 books when we shut down last March due to students simply not returning their checked-out books. I had roughly 600 books checked out on March 13. Every student was notified individually via email and by several all-call phone communications about not only the cost of those books, but how to return books safely to the school library. Two-thirds of those students did exactly that, but one-third did not. We lost $3,200 worth of books—pretty close to my total book budget for a year. After five months, the possibility of getting any of those books back is practically nil. Because of the shut-down and resulting tax loss to the state, there is no budget in this school year for either replacing those books or acquiring new ones. Two full years of purchasing gone. No way to replace the lost books, many of which are standards that every library should have. Nothing new at all. Last spring, when it became clear of the magnitude of the library loss, I informed my principal that even if things return to whatever normal may mean for the 2021–22 school year, it would take a minimum of seven normal years from 2021–22 to 2028–29 to recover from the losses of 2019–21. That’s a minimum only if everything, including budgets, return to a 2019 standard, which is no guarantee. The reality is that it likely will take even longer. In fact, it’s possible that libraries may never recover from this. Yesterday, one of my fellow librarians at my district called in somewhat of a panic as she began to realize exactly the same thing that I had: that libraries, unable financially to transfer easily to full online digital, hit with a massive financial loss from at least two angles, unable to maintain the flow of either new or old books to patrons, unable to have “seats in the seats”—i.e., live patrons—are fundamentally crippled. A library needs patrons, either online or in-person, to function. How long will it be under these conditions before school districts and towns and cities began to drop the funding of libraries that can’t perform their function? Although I and every teacher in the district are back working in the physical school (sans physical students), each one of us shares the knowledge that we will likely lose a huge percentage of learning students this year, who will not recover from the loss of direct, in-person education. Not the smart, unconventional, or energetic kid, who will find a way to succeed, but good kids who struggle with learning, even the lazy kid or the kid who is fundamentally a cheater. How can you monitor cheating when the ability to cheat is available just out of range of a computer’s camera? How do you teach a child whose only wish is not to sit in front of a computer learning? I’m an educator and I don’t like online learning. It’s boring as hell. Your comments are welcome.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

The Sandman and related characters TM & © DC Comics. Spider-Man, Sandman TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. COLOR BY GLENN WHITMORE.

a relevant man

Godspeed, Dennis Bob Brodsky bids a grateful farewell to the “Dean of American Comic Book Writers” This page: Counter-clockwise, from below is Bob Brodsky’s fanzine, The O’Neil Observer, dedicated to Denny’s “storytelling and the craft of comic book writing.” It lasted five issues between 1999–2004. Portrait of the late scribe, taken at the 2011 New York Comic Con by Kendall Whitehouse. The original cover art for GL/GA #76, which was auctioned for $442,000, in 2015.

Denny and Neil. And Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan were real people, who showed anger, humor, passion, and more. I still believe that Ollie Queen is the most complete, realistic, and human comic book character ever. With personality nuanced down to his love of chili. A former journalist, Denny seemed to me to write from the outside looking in, while Steve Englehart approached his work from the inside looking out. Denny was not a fan boy, he was a professional writer. How this quiet man from Missouri put those words in Ollie’s mouth, I will never know. Much of Denny’s best work came in 1971 and 1972, including the classic Superman [#233, Jan. 1971] story “Kryptonite Nevermore” (the start of “The Sandman Saga” arc), and my all-time favorite comic, “Daughter of the Demon” [Batman #232 [June ’71]. Both stories had great artwork by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson and Neal and Dick Giordano, respectively. Ra’s al Ghul, Talia, the crazy, murdering Joker, horrifying Two-Face, Leslie Thompkins, Lady Shiva, Crime Alley, Arkham Asylum, The Shadow, and even the enjoyable guilty pleasure, Shazam! I believe the twin pillars of modern DC are the work of Denny/Neal and Jack Kirby. Inspiration comes and goes, and I don’t think Denny could have taken it much further then he did in the early ’70s. For reasons including alcoholism (something he talked about openly), and changing times, Denny’s work became more workmanlike, as his (now sober) professionalism began to overshadow his inspiration. Still, there were great stories to come, like the classic “There is No Hope in Crime Alley” [Detective Comics #457 [Mar. ’76], which stands with his early ’70s work. I lost touch with Denny’s work during a two-decade break from comics, in the mid-’70s, but I’m glad he returned to DC after a stint at Marvel in the ’80s. I’m glad, too, that by 1986, he became editor of the Batman line, and lived to see Ra’s al Ghul on the big screen, portrayed by Liam Neeson, in the fine 2005 film, Batman Begins, starring Christian Bale. In the late ’90s, it was my honor to write and edit The O’Neil Observer, a fanzine covering Denny’s work and the craft of comic book writing. The magazine was approved by Denny and his wife, Marifran. Through the magazine, I was able to spend some time with the devoted couple, and I know Denny was in great pain following her unexpected passing, in 2017. May God bless them both, and thank you, Denny, for all the pleasure your work has given me. You are truly the “Dean of American Comic Book Writers.” —Bob Brodsky #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The O’Neil Observer © Bob Brodsky. Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76 TM & © DC Comics. Dennis O’Neil portrait © Kendall Whitehouse.

Denny O’Neil, who passed away on June 11, 2020, was one of comics’ greatest talents. Like Stan Lee at Marvel in the 1960s, Denny’s work at DC during the late ’60s and early ’70s was truly revolutionary. Stan, working with magnificent talents like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, powered the Marvel Age mainly with original heroes who, for the first time ever in comics, portrayed in-depth characterization, realistic dialogue, and “real world” situations. At DC, Denny, often with Neal Adams, recreated iconic characters that had grown staid as real brick&-mortar people, taking Stan’s concept to the next level. Denny also, usually (but not always) with Neal, created new characters who, to this day, stand as vital parts of the DC narrative. Neal, of course, introduced his revelatory visual versions of Batman and Green Arrow in a pair of stories for The Brave and the Bold written by Bob Haney, in the late ’60s. Using Stan’s work as a starting point, Denny re-imagined comic book heroes as literary figures equal to those found in the best of fiction. The magic began at the cusp of the ‘70s, with Denny and Neal’s seminal Batman story, “Secret of the Waiting Graves.” “The Batman” was back, though now with humanity and realism never known in the 1940s, haunting the reader from shadows in the night. Actually, O’Neil’s abilities as a mature writer were first shown with Mike Sekowsky, in the “New” Wonder Woman, with the “Dr. Cyber” adventure being one of the most exciting—and underrated— comic book stories ever. Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76 is one of the most important books in comics. Endlessly reprinted, the book launched the medium’s most important series. “Relevance” was

For this interview, it was initially agreed that yours truly would make the six-hour or so drive to creator Timothy Webster Truman's Lancaster home, located deep in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, for an extensive discussion, but the Covid-19 pandemic squashed those plans might quick. So, in this Brave New Age of Zoom, we settled on conducting online chats to complete the career-spanning Q-&-A that follows. The conversation took place in late March, over three sessions, just as the virus was realizing its first-wave spike in the U.S. It was an especially anxious time for both subject and inquisitor (as well as the world!), but it was a welcome diversion to examine the life and work of such a multi-talented straight-shooter.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Still, the ample time allotted to this interview was simply not enough to delve sufficiently into the sheer magnitude of the 64-year-old West Virginia native's work, whether as role playing game character designer; comic book penciler/inker/writer/editor; graphic historian, book illustrator; painter; publisher; comics packager; teacher; and (of particular pride for him) band-mate, songwriter, and kick-ass guitar player. Winner of the 1991 Haxtur Award for his Hawkworld, Tim is a remarkably humble, unassuming, and regular guy, a “mountain boy” who lives with his wife of 43 years, Beth, and is father to two talented 30-something children, writer/game designer Benjamin and collage artist/instructor Emily. — Jon B. Cooke

Comic Book Creator: This is the strangest time in history to be talking to a guy who is renowned for a dystopian storyline…! Timothy Truman: Oh, man. It’s been weird, for sure. I took a little walk around the block this afternoon and the kids who live up the street were out playing by the street. Adorable little kids… the youngest is no more than threefeet tall, dressed in this country dress, with rubber goulashes on her feet—very “Punky Brewster meets Norman Rockwell.” She came running over to me to say hi, smiling, glad to see me, and held out her hand. I had to tell her “Oh, no, sweetheart, better not touch.” She walked away looking sort of downcast, like she was wondering if she’d done something wrong. The whole thing really depressed me. CBC: That’s sad. It’s just a sad, emotional time. Let’s get some distraction, Tim. I’m very grateful for you participating in CBC. I’ve always loved your artwork. Please tell me the status right now of your latest, Scout: Marauder. Tim: Scout: Marauder is going really well. I’m really having fun with the art and story, working on it every day. It’s taking me a lot longer than I thought it would, though. The Grimjack Amazon TV series held things up a bit. It’s just been a monumental task. Other than the basic color flatting and the lettering, I’m pretty much doing the whole thing solo—writing it, penciling it, inking it and doing the digital Visit Timothy Truman via the painting, too. I put a lot of pressure on myself because I’m internet at (you guessed it!): so used to meeting deadlines. The Kickstarter community www.timothytruman.com and those who’ve pre-ordered the book at my website have This page: Top row, left to right, is Wilmer Truman, Tim's father, in 1942; Wilmer during World War II, when he was in the U.S. military; six-year-old Sandra Truman and her one-year-old little brother, Timothy; and an atmospheric tourism image of scenic Gauley River (directly under the same-name bridge), in the Mountain State and near where Tim spent formative years. Second row is young un' Tim (the littlest here) posing with his sisters and cousins, in Jodie, West Virginia, in 1961; and Tim's mom, Judy Truman, on the occasion of her birthday, in 1964. Inset right is our esteemed interviewee during a 2012 visit to Arizona.

been amazingly patient and supportive. I’m so thankful for them. People seem to be very understanding and eager to see it. CBC: Are you shooting for a date or just doing the best you can? Tim: I’d like to have it done in a few more months, hopefully by September, because that would be the 35th anniversary of the publication of first issue of Eclipse’s Scout #1. That would be pretty cool way to celebrate the occasion, right? Meanwhile, I’m posting monthly updates and letting people know I’m still working on it. It’s a real labor of love. I think it’s the best artwork I’ve ever done. That said, I have to admit that it’s a little tough to work on it the last few weeks. The situation that’s going on has been a little distracting, especially given the fact that, as you pointed out, Scout: Marauder is a dystopian story. For example, a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I was writing a diary entry for one of the characters, and he’s talking about something called the “Numo-C Virus,” In the story, it’s a deadly respiratory virus they have to watch out for in the various refugee and mission camps in the story. Basically, it breaks down the lungs, turns them to jelly. I was writing about this before I knew anything about the symptoms of Covid-19. So, yeah, it’s gotten a little weird, imagining these fictional worst-case disaster scenarios and then—bam!— here we are. #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Rifleman © & TM Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions, Inc.

CBC: Where are you from, originally? Tim: I’m from a little town in West Virginia, born in Gauley Bridge, which is pretty much in the center of the state, where the New River and Gauley River meet. During my pre-teen years, my dad was an insurance salesman. He was a good salesman, so he was transferred to different towns and cities in West Virginia, where the company wanted to improve sales. We also lived across the river in Proctorville, Ohio, for a year. Dad decided to quit insurance and went back into coal mining, which he’d done after he and my mother were first married. It was a union mine, so he made better money in the mines than as an insurance salesman. So, around the time I entered fifth grade, we moved to more rural areas, closer to Dad’s job. We finally ended up in Dixie, West Virginia, and my folks bought a house. I lived there from eight grade until I graduated from high school. CBC: Coal mining is dangerous work. Tim: Yeah, absolutely. Mining was a big tradition in our family. My mother’s dad had been killed in a big mine explosion in the 1930s. Her stepfather lost his arm in a mining accident. Mining actually ended up killing Dad, too. He developed cancer due to an old spinal injury which had occurred at work several years before. Dad was the head electrician at the mines. He was the only guy down there that they didn’t like to see working because it meant a piece of equipment was down. All the machines were powered by electricity. The main piece of equipment was a thing called the Continuous Miner, which goes in with these big arms and scoops the coal into these cars after the coal had been blasted out of the rock. Dad’s responsibility was making sure that thing was always running. Union Carbide owned the mines. It was a pretty vast operation. I worked for two summers there, outside the mines, doing routine maintenance; cutting brush, painting buildings, things like that. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and Union Carbide Corporation had established a program for high school students, so we could make money for college. The pay was great—three times better than what you would make working at a grocery store or burger joint. CBC: Do you have brothers and sisters? Tim: I have three sisters. I am next to the youngest and the only boy. CBC: [Chuckles] The “baby boy.” Tim: Much to my sisters’ chagrin and amusement, yes. My sisters are all great. Very beautiful, sweet, and talented women. Mom was a housewife, as was usual for the era. She was a very strong, smart lady. Besides working in insurance and the mines, my dad was also a Baptist minister, so we grew up in the church. CBC: What is your first memory of church? Tim: My main memories of church were listening to my dad preach and of mom beside me, singing. She had a beautiful voice for harmonies. I would sometimes draw dad’s sermons while he was preaching. I’m intensely ADHD and was a very fidgety kid, but, as soon as mom put some paper and a pencil in my lap, I’d settle down and start drawing pictures of whatever Dad was preaching about. Whenever Mom wasn’t looking, I’d flip a page and draw racing cars and super-heroes. [Jon laughs] Dad was an American Baptist. American Baptists are real spiritual people, but they weren’t like the Hollywood-stereotyped sort of fundamentalists. CBC: Not Bible-thumpers? Tim: Well, it was Appalachia, so Dad and his fellow ministers could get pretty energetic! We were country folks. There was a lot of testifying going on. Let’s just say I wasn’t expected to draw Bible stories. When Dad was preaching about folks such as Moses, Samson, or Elijah, they were pretty exciting characters to visualize. I only recently realized it, Jon, but that was probably one of the roots of my COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

becoming interested in interpreting or visualizing stories in illustrated form. Also, when I was in first grade, I had this wonderful teacher who encouraged the arts. She would play these Disney story vinyl records and ask us to imagine pictures about what we were hearing and draw it. She’d also have us copy and illustrate poems, once a book of 16 poems, each with an accompanying illustration at the top, and I’m sure that it helped stimulate my interest in storytelling. I’ve always credited that teacher with kick-starting my drive to interpret stories visually. But, when I think about it, some of it may go back to my attempts to draw the Biblical stories that Dad used for his sermons. There’s a bit of storytelling involved in preaching. So, both of those influences must have had an impact on what I’ve done as a visual storyteller. CBC: Did you go to Sunday school? Tim: Yes, Mom was a Sunday school teacher and youth leader. We did all the church plays. CBC: I remember being impressed as a kid by those epic stories of Noah and the flood, Samson, and these amazing, grand stories. Tim: I would read that stuff. I was fascinated by the Book of Revelations because there were all these descriptions of monsters, angels, apocalyptic warfare. There’s a lot of mysterious, supernatural, blood-curdling stuff going on in there. That said, I’m generally more of a Universalist now in my outlook. As I was growing up, I started seeing things in other religions that I found interesting—Zen Buddhism and all that stuff. My wife is Jewish, so she and her family certainly helped broaden my outlook. I’ve become very openminded about that sort of thing. CBC: Was it a merciful God you grew up with or one of fire and brimstone? Tim: Well, if you didn’t believe in Jesus, you were going to Hell, which started to seem kind of unfair to me, especially after I started meeting people from other persuasions. I tend to think there’s something out there, some force that’s beyond our understanding, and we’re all just trying to bring it into a frame of reference that we can somehow make sense of. CBC: Was it a middle-class upbringing? Tim: Yes. Very middle-class. Smack-dab in the middle class. CBC: You had a TV in the house? Tim: We did. That was a big influence on my drawing and storytelling, too. I would sit down in front of the TV with paper and draw—once again visualizing stories, right? Cisco Kid was one of my favorite shows. Branded, Johnny Yuma, Paladin [Have Gun—Will Travel], The Rifleman… all those 1960s Westerns… I was really attracted to them. I would draw pictures of whatever the week’s episode was or take the characters on entirely new adventures. Usually

Above: Young Tim Truman began to hone his imagination upon hearing vivid descriptions of Biblical stories his preaching father gave during Sunday sermons. The youngster was especially fascinated by apocalyptic visions expressed in the Book of Revelations, including the Four Horsemen (imagined here in this 1887 painting by Viktor Vasnetsov). Below: Growing up, Tim was also captivated by the pervasive Western shows on TV, including Chuck Connors in The Rifleman [1958–63].

Above: Another strong influence on Tim Truman's burgeoning interest in drawing was when his first grade teacher asked her students to delve into their imaginations while listening to Walt Disney story vinyl records and to draw what they envisioned. Here's a few of those Disney albums from 1963. Below: A November 1945 photo of the USS Magoffin, the assault transport ship assigned to Tim's father during World War II, which saw action in major Pacific Theater engagements.

the few conversations we had where he opened up about any details, he said that they carried Marines to the beach for two days, back and forth, back and forth, with every Japanese gun on the hillside aimed at them because hitting one landing craft meant taking out 60 Marines. During the Kamikaze attacks, he helped man the Magoffin’s deck guns and the ship is credited with downing two planes. He served in the Pacific for four years. His last job was ferrying admirals from ship to shore in Hawaii, in 1946. About five years before he died, he made me a list of all the engagements he was in. I showed it to Sam Glanzman. (Sam had been in the Navy, too, during WWII.) Sam just got real quiet, then said, “Wow, your father really saw some stuff. He was in some big ones.” Like I said, Dad wouldn’t talk about it much. I’m certain he saw some pretty rough things, but he carried it well. Maybe you have had the same sort of experience talking with vets, Jon. Guys who were under fire usually don’t talk about it much. That’s just how it goes. Occasionally I could get Sam to open up about some of the things he experienced. We would be okay for 10 or 15 minutes, but then he’d suddenly shut down. “Tim, I just can’t talk about this anymore.” His mind just didn’t want to go back there. CBC: Yeah, good ol’ Sam. He was always prone, in my company, to tears. He was very emotional. Tim: Yeah. There was so much more to Sam. He pretended to be such a tough old curmudgeon, but he was a really deep, emotional person. That always fascinated me about him. I had access to all his sketches he did during the war, including the illustrated letters he’d written to his family back home. I was trying to find a publisher for his stuff, but it didn’t work out. Anyway, he saw some stuff. Let’s put it that way. He saw some traumatic things. CBC: And Sam was luckily able to express that trauma in a certain way through his storytelling; that’s what I think. Tim: Oh, yeah, of course. His USS Stevens stories. What a brilliant autobiography. By the way, I let my Dad read the two Sailor’s Story graphic novels and he loved them. CBC: So many veterans, like your father, were reticent to talk about it openly because the trauma was still fresh and so overwhelming. Tim: Also, I think that generation didn’t see the experience of going to war as being something to boast about. They are immensely proud of their service and seem to approach the subject with a lot of reverence. Like I said, my dad was very young when he went into the war—17-years-old. I can’t imagine some of the things he would have seen. If I’d been under such trauma at 17, it really would have affected me. CBC: West Virginia: that’s a little bit backwater. Tim: Maybe someone not used to Appalachia would think so. During my early grade school years, first to fifth grade or thereabouts, we mostly lived in large towns—Parkersburg, Dunbar, Beckley. They were sizable industrial towns. So you could probably compare it to growing up in someplace like Pittsburgh or Akron, really. Around fifth grade, we relocated to more rural areas, when Dad started working in the mines. However, any time we needed anything, we’d have a town or city within 20 or 30 minutes away— usually Summersville, Montgomery, or Charleston. I’m proud of the place and culture that I came from, and I always have trouble with Appalachian stereotypes. I can drive around Pennsylvania and the rural communities here are very similar, really. We just had a cooler accent! CBC: Was it Mayberry? #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Album properties TM & © the respective copyright holders.

I would run out of paper and my sisters would give me their corrected homework. I flipped the paper over and drew on the backside. If I needed a big canvas, my mom would get the brown paper bags leftover from trips to the grocery store and split them open, and give me a nice big sheet of paper. I’d have this long, wide panorama to draw on. CBC: Mostly Western series? Tim: Cartoons, too, of course. Popeye, Quick Draw McGraw, Yogi Bear, Beany and Cecil, re-runs of old 1930s and ’40s cartoons, and Loony Tunes. Then came the science fiction wave. I was a big fan of the Gerry Anderson stuff, Supercar and Stingray. After school, one of the stations where we lived also ran chapters from old movie serials and TV shows: Flash Gordon, Rocket Man, and even episodes of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. On Friday nights, I could stay up and watch horror films on Chiller Theater. And, on weeknights, there was Jonny Quest, Time Tunnel, Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Green Hornet, Batman, Star Trek… I was really, really attracted to Westerns, though. CBC: How about war shows? Tim: Yeah, when they were on. Combat!, The Rat Patrol—that sort of thing. CBC: Your parents weren’t concerned about the violence? Combat! was wicked violent! Tim: No, not at all. In retrospect, my dad was in WWII and he enjoyed Combat! He had been in the Navy, in the South Pacific, and was there almost the entire war. We’d go see war films like PT 109 at drive-ins and watch John Wayne films when they were on TV. CBC: Was your dad under fire? Tim: Yeah. He and his three brothers joined in 1942. Dad was only 17, but lied about his age. He was assigned to the Seabees at first, the Navy’s construction division, building airstrips at Guadalcanal after it was retaken. Soon after, he was reassigned to a ship and was in several major engagements—the Battle of Tarawa, invasion of Marshall Islands and the Philippines, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. After Leyte, he was reassigned to the USS Magoffin, an amphibious assault transport ship, and drove landing crafts at Okinawa. According to records that I’ve found, the Magoffin was the first assault ship to unload Marines, so Dad would have been with the first wave to land at the beachhead. In one of

Tim: Let’s say they were typical, middle-class, rural communities. I love to watch The Andy Griffith Show because it strikes me as not far from home. I get it. [chuckles] CBC: That’s moving around a lot as a kid, Tim. Do you recall what age you were with every move? Tim: I spent nearly every year of my grade-school life in a different school. A time or two, I went to two different schools during the same year. It was that way until maybe seventh grade, when we moved to the last area where we settled—a town called Dixie, believe it or not. I went to Gauley Bridge Grade School and Gauley High. CBC: Was Dixie the poorest of the towns you lived in? Tim: At that time, most folks in the area actually made a pretty good income. The coal mines were all unionized, so that guaranteed a good wage. There were also lumber mills and a large metallurgy factory in the area, so most people made a solid living. I’ve seen “holler” communities really deep in the mountains and, in the southern part of the state, that were far poorer and more isolated. But, for the most part, it was very much a place of typical rural, middle-class people and small rural towns. It’s heartbreaking to return now to the places where I grew up because West Virginia has just been so devastated. Mining companies and petroleum companies took trillions of dollars out of there and left absolutely nothing for the people in their wake. It really saddens and infuriates me when I return there now. CBC: The drug scourge is terrible in Appalachia… and everywhere really. Would you say, in retrospect, that it was tough as a kid to replant yourself every year into a new class. Were you introverted? Were you shy? Tim: Yes, I was, but it almost certainly got me more interested in reading, writing, and drawing. I guess the most regrettable thing was, I’d make these friends and then, a year or less later, we’d move and I’d have to leave my buddies behind. So, I don’t have the experience of childhood friends one keeps track of. My folks felt badly about it too, but Dad had to make a living. CBC: That’s tough. Tim: I don’t have any bitterness now. I just wonder what it would’ve been like, and what some of those kids finally ended up doing. I had some good mates. CBC: Tell me about reading: when did you pick up a book for the first time for yourself? Tim: I was a voracious reader. In grade school, I usually read every book in the class library. We had bookmobiles, too, that would come around to the schools. Also, Mom was extremely encouraging to my sisters and me when it came to reading. She bought the World Book Encyclopedia set for us when we were little—the big, red ones—and I would spend hours with those, reading them and looking at the illustrations. And, when I turned nine, she got me a subscription to a Grosset & Dunlap book club. Every month they’d send a nice hardcover book in the mail—historical and biographical novels about the USS Nautilus, the Alamo, the life of Geronimo, the Pony Express, and the like. They were wonderful. Great stories, filled with black-&-white illustrations by some of the top artists of the day. Those books really made an impression on me and were a huge influence, I’m sure. I still have them. The World Books, too. As far as comic books, the first ones I saw belonged to my cousins. Our families were really close, so I saw my cousins a lot and loved digging into their comic book collections. So my initial exposure was through them. Then, on my first day of grade school, when we lived in Dunbar, West Virginia, Dad and I were walking down the street and I was scared to death about leaving home and starting school. At that time, there was no kindergarten in West Virginia, so I was going directly into the first grade. Dad had his hand on my shoulder. He could tell I was frightened. We passed by a barbershop and I just stopped. I saw a copy of Our Fighting Forces in the window, with Gunner COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

and Sarge. Dad saw me looking at that cover and then said, “Come on, we have to get to school” and dropped me off. After school, I was sitting in my room moping and Dad came home from work and dropped that copy of Our Fighting Forces in my lap. [chuckles] He must have stopped at the shop on the way home and talked the barber out of it. He knew I’d probably have a tough day. CBC: That’s sweet. Did you read before you started going to school? Tim: That’s a good question. I don’t think so, but maybe. Reading came extremely easy to me, though. I could certainly read anything I wanted by the time I left first grade. CBC: Were you teacher’s pet? Tim: [Laughs] Yes, probably. I was fidgety, but not one of those kids that run out-of-control around the room shrieking. I was quiet and good natured. Once there was a book or a sheet of paper in front of me, I was in a world of my own. Truth be told, I was my mom and dad’s pet, too, because I was the only boy of the family in Appalachian patriarchal society of the ’50s and ’60s. I still get a lot of ribbing about that from my sisters!

Above: West Virgina state seal—with its official Latin motto that translates as "Mountaineers Are Always Free")— and map of the Mountain State with a star indicating Dixie, W.V., where Tim spent his high school years as a teenager.

Below: From left, Tim’s dad, Wilmer Truman; cousin-in-law, Carol “Kee Kee” Truman; sister Sandie; cousin Joe Truman (married to Carol); and sister Julia; plus, in front, young Tim, “in the real cool Red Flyer Wagon.” Tim adds, “FYI: Joe was the son of my dad’s oldest brother, Delbert, who became vice president of Kaiser Aluminum!”

Above: Tim thinks this may have been the very issue that started his passion for comics, Our Fighting Forces #70 [Aug. 1962]. Cover by an artist who likely became the greatest influence on Tim, Joe Kubert. Below: Tim's senior portrait from the 1974 Gauley Bridge High School (seen at bottom) yearbook. Inset right: Tim's uncle, Eddy Seacrist, received airplay with this 1958 rockabilly single on the short-lived KRC label.

However, any time they sat me down with a book or a comic, they didn’t have to worry; I’d be totally focused. With a pencil and paper it was the same. No one can remember when I first started drawing. They just said as soon as they gave me a pencil, I was doing it. CBC: Were you exposed at all to comic strips? Tim: Sure! A favorite was Lee Falk’s Phantom. I loved Prince Valiant, Mandrake the Magician, and L’il Abner, too. Dick Tracy might have been my favorite, though, with the Moon Maid and the little hover cars and the two-way wrist radios. That stuff always fascinated me. After we got home from Sunday school, Dad would read the paper and automatically hand me the funny pages. I’d stretch out on the floor and read the strips. I wrote an essay about that in one of the new Prince Valiant volumes. CBC: Were you close to your dad? Tim: Not as much during my teen years. We didn’t have many interests in common. But we came became very close again and really started to appreciate each other once Beth and I got married and had children. I always loved and respected him and Mom. Because Dad was a minister, as a teenager, I was quite careful about what I got into. I self-policed, because I knew if I got into some of the same things my friends were doing, it would reflect badly on Dad. He was a quiet man and not the “huggy” type, so he didn’t outwardly show affection until his later years. He eventually loosened up more in that regard. It was a family thing, really. His brothers were the same way. CBC: How about your mom? Tim: Mom was very hands-on. [laughs] She was a housewife and raised four kids, while Dad was working at the mines or selling insurance. Actually, Mom was a bit hyperactive, like me. She almost never sat still. Very strong willed. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. But she was very loving and affectionate, extremely devoted. Very regal in her own way. She watched over us like a lioness. When people meet her they feel very at ease with her. She was Dad’s right-hand in every way. They were totally in love. Great role models. CBC: A wholesome environment…? Tim: Absolutely. Probably the only trouble I had came during my high school and college years. I had a lot of inner turmoil about what I wanted to do with my life. I was interested in music, I was interested in writing, and I was interested in drawing, but I had absolutely no idea how to go about it. Mom and Dad didn’t quite fathom that I could make a profession of being an artist. That was a very foreign to them and outside their realm of experience. Art was basically looked upon as a hobby, not a vocation. They didn’t actually know anybody who made a living as an artist, except for art teachers and maybe some sign painters in the area. If we’d lived in New York City, maybe it would have been different, if I was raised in Brooklyn or the Lower East Side like Jack Kirby and those guys. And, as far as music went, well, that usually meant playing gigs in honky-tonks, clubs, and beer joints. It wasn’t looked upon as a very wholesome, vice-free kind of endeavor. Plus, we had someone in the family who’d actually tried that: my Uncle Eddy Seacrist, who was a rockabilly musician in the 1950’s and ’60s. He was the first white guy to headline at the Apollo Theater, as a matter of fact, in 1954. However, he’d finally realized it was too hard to raise a family and be a full-time musician, so he threw in the towel. Anyway, my folks didn’t discourage my interests—they recognized that I loved to play music, write and draw—but they didn’t wholly encourage it either. They just wanted to be certain that I’d be able to support myself. CBC: How old were you when you moved to Dixie? Tim: Around 1970. I’d have just turned 16. #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Our Fighting Forces TM & © DC Comics.

CBC: You were probably a cute kid. Tim: I suppose so. They had to keep their eyes on me, though. When I was playing, I was always getting into something. I got hurt quite a few times! CBC: What was the most dangerous thing that you got into? Tim: Well, when I was really little, I did a lot of climbing. I would actually climb dressers using the handles like a ladder. I got to the top of the dresser one time, and fell off and broke my collarbone. Once, I fell off a bed as a baby and split open my ear lobe—I still have the scar from it! [Jon chuckles] One winter, a friend and I saw these big, three-foot-long icicles hanging along the gutters of our two-story house. Of course, we decided “Wow! Those would make great swords!” We started heaving snowballs and chunks of ice at them, trying to knock a couple down. I bent down and—wham! One of those icicles fell and hit me right on top of the head. Lots of blood, seven stitches, and another scar. A lot of episodes like that. CBC: So they had to keep their eyes on you! Tim: Oh, yeah. This sounds horrible, but it’s really not: When I was a toddler, Mom was trying to do some work in the front yard and I was pestering her to death. Dad came home from work and thought he’d remedy the situation: he went to the backyard and built a playpen for me out of wood and chicken wire! My mom took one look at it and said, “Wilmer, that’ll never hold him.” Dad just laughed and lifted me in, then they both went back to work in the front yard. About 10 minutes later, I came strolling around to the front yard, smiling, a piece of wood in my hand. They went around to the backyard and looked at the playpen. I’d totally demolished it—tore it up and gotten out. [laughter] Another time, I tricycled down the stairs of the really tall front porch one time, just to see if I would make it. Of course, I didn’t. Whatever popped into my mind, I’d try!

CBC: Did you see the 1960s through your sisters, so to speak? Did you see what was going on in the country to some degree of that things were loosening up culturally? Tim: Well, my oldest sister, Julia, was already married by that time. The next oldest, Sandra, was going to radiology school and working as a telephone operator, and my youngest sister, Cindi, was considerably younger than me. I really became interested in the counter-culture and music on my own. I was the “hippie” of the family, I guess. I started learning how to play the guitar just before we moved to Dixie. I analyzed music as intensely as I did comic art. In fact, I was probably always more into collecting music and guitars than collecting comics. It would have pleased me to no end to hitchhike out to San Francisco and join a band. [chuckles] CBC: What kind of radio stations did you have out there? Tim: The radio station from Charleston was really good and played a lot of underground rock and stuff. Then, at night, I would get a little transistor radio and put it under my pillow, and it would pick up Chicago, Detroit, and New York stations, when the ionosphere bounced the signal down to us Appalachians. I picked up on that stuff. Mike Gold and I figured out that, when he was a DJ in Chicago, I used to listen to him. We correlated the years and the hours and he said, “Oh, that would’ve been me.” CBC: Was there seminal moment for music? A band or a song that woke you up musically? Tim: We had to put our TV antennas on top of the mountains, so if there weren’t any branches laying across the antenna line, we could pick up the Charleston PBS station. West Virginia had a remarkable PBS station. That’s where I first saw Bukka White, Hound Dog Taylor, and a lot of other blues musicians. They also featured a music series from San Francisco. I remember specifically watching a thing called Go Ride the Music with Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service, and A Night at the Family Dog with Jefferson Airplane, Santana, and the Grateful Dead. I thought, “I want to do that.” Another thing that really turned my head was when Derek and the Dominos were on The Johnny Cash Show. Eric Clapton and Carl Perkins played “Matchbox.” As soon as I heard Clapton play guitar, I thought, “It’s over. I have to play guitar.” Not long after, Midnight Special and Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert started appearing on Friday nights. My mom and dad and sisters and I were into variety shows—Mac Davis, Johnny Cash, Andy Williams, Dean Martin—shows with a lot of musical performances. We ate that stuff up. There was always music around. My family is very musical in the Southern church tradition. Really talented harmony singers. Two sisters played piano. CBC: Did you sing as a family? Tim: I was always bashful to sing in front of my sisters and parents because they were so good. I was self-conscious for some reason. If we were going to church in the car, they would all start singing these perfect gospel harmonies. That’s how they’d pass the time. I’d read my comics or draw. Mom sang while she was working. There was always music on the stereo or radio. I always had music around me. I have a really vivid recollection of Mom standing at the sink, doing dishes, listening to the radio, and hearing Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” for the first time. That’s probably the first time that I was totally transfixed by a song. CBC: My mother used to play piano and having it in the house—having these little performances in the house. I don’t know if kids experience that much these days. Tim: I know exactly what you’re talking about. My kids, Ben and Emily, got to hear it a lot when they were growing up, when I played guitar in the evening or had some of my friends over to play. But I know what you mean. CBC: It was special to have live music in the home. Tim: All my sisters have good voices and Sandy was pretty exceptional in that regard. I remember her sitting at the piano and bursting into song. My youngest sister plays piano COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

and sings, too. And Julia, the oldest, was in a vocal group with two of her friends. Good memories. CBC: Did your mother or anybody in the family garden? Did you have much connection to the soil? Tim: Mostly with houseplants and things like that and I like to do work in the yard. I’ve gotten some of my best story ideas doing yard work. The best way to solve problems is to take a break from them. My mom and her mother always had houseplants in the windows and on the front porch. Dad wasn’t as into gardening. He really didn’t have time for it, since he only got one day off a week, being a minister. We had a couple of gardens over the years, though. The most experience I had was with my mom’s stepdad, whom I spent a lot of time with during the summer. He was a one-armed man, tall and skinny as a scarecrow. He had worked in the mines when he was younger and the roof caved in and pinned his arm under a ton of coal slate. His buddies couldn’t pull it free and the company doctor couldn’t get there quick enough. So his friends had to amputate it without anesthesia, otherwise he would have bled to death. His right arm was gone almost up to the shoulder— he had a four-inch stub. However, he developed all sorts of techniques to do about anything a guy with two hands could do. I can see him in my mind’s eye with the how in one hand, hoeing a row of plants, shifting the handle over to the other side so that he could hold it beneath the stub, then bending down and grabbing some Blue Dragon fertilizer to throw onto the pepper plants and bean vines. He could load and shoot a shotgun, tie his shoes… Try doing it with one hand sometime— it ain’t easy!… even roll a cigarette. He was something to watch. Anyway, he’d take me into the garden with him and he’d teach me things. One thing we always had to be aware of when we were in the garden was rattlesnakes and copperheads. He and Grandma lived near a lumberyard that attracted poisonous snakes. Grandpa had been bitten about three times working in the garden. You really had to keep an eye out for them when you were out there or walking in the woods. Here, in Pennsylvania, I’ve never seen a snake when I’m out walking or hiking, but I still keep my eyes on the ground ahead of me! It’s just habit from my childhood. CBC: What made them attracted to the lumberyard? Tim: I’m sure there were mice, bird’s nests, and things like that between the rows of planks, which were about nine feet high and neatly stacked. Also, West Virginia is like a rain forest in the summer, extremely hot and humid, so they’d lay between those stacks of lumber in the shade. When it started to cool down in the late afternoon and evening they’d come slithering out, looking for prey. Of course, in the garden, they could find chipmunks, birds, beetles, and things like that. CBC: Did you have pets? Tim: Yeah, we almost always had a dog and a few cats that I fondly remember. I would always have a dog. I loved them. We had a really smart cocker spaniel named Twinkles… No, Jon, I didn’t name him…

This page: It was the guest appearance of legendary guitarist Eric Clapton, with his then-band Derek and the Dominos, on The Johnny Cash Show, which compelled young Tim Truman to play the same instrument as "Slowhand." Here, from left, is Carl Perkins, Clapton, and Cash, performing "Matchbox," on that Jan. 6, 1971, ABC broadcast. Below: Tim is renowned for his Grateful Dead Almanac illustrations and album covers. Detail from Tim's illo, "Jerry's Guitar."

Above: Awesome commission by Tim featuring a fave Jack Kirby character. Below: Tim has stated Sam J. Glanzman's Kona comics [Dell, 1962–67] made a profound impact. Inset right: Photo of SJG with his beloved dog Lucky, circa 2000.

Tim: Yes, the Boy Scouts. In grade school, when we moved to the country, I was always in the woods. Always. In high school, we lived in the New River Valley with steep escarpments, so I also did a lot of rappelling and mountain climbing. CBC: Who taught you that? The Scouts? Tim: My art teacher! He was in the Marine Reserves. In high school, he got together a few students he thought would enjoy this sort of thing. There was a group of about five or six of us, plus my older cousin, Eddie. We would go spelunking, camping, mountain climbing, and rappelling. His name was Glenn Toler. We still get in touch with each other. I’ll say, “Man, the stuff we were doing in those days! Nowadays, the parents would probably sue you!” We have a laugh about that. We did some outrageously cool things, but, in hindsight, yeah, it was pretty risky! [laughs] Taking 16- and 17-year-old boys off the side of a cliff! However, Glenn made absolutely certain we learned everything thoroughly and that we were doing things safely. CBC: Did you rock climb with pitons and chocks? Tim: Sure did. We also rappelled on belay. We learned how to do all that. Someone would have you on a line when you were rappelling—rock climbing, too. Glenn made sure we kept things safe. It was a great experience—very formative. You learned how to get past fear, work as a team and depend on the guy on the rock above you. It was way cooler and more interesting than being on a football team! CBC: Did you know the climbs? Were they graded? Tim: Glenn would scout things out on hikes and if we saw a place that looked cool, we’d come back and go for it. We were the first guys in the New River area to even try doing such a thing! It’s funny. Now there are books about the best places in the gorge to rock climb and they’ll name certain areas and say, “The first person to climb this point was blah, blah, blah, in 1980.” We’ll say, “Naw, we were the first in 1972, ’73, when we were freakin’ 16- and 17-years-old!” CBC: So you and the art teacher hit it off? Tim: Glenn? Sure. He’s had a fascinating career. He started the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. He used to be a leader with Outward Bound, where they bring troubled city boys out camping. He started that in West Virginia. He also is a renowned potter. I owe him a lot. He was very encouraging. CBC: Was he not that much older? Tim: We figured out that he wasn’t much older, five or six years. CBC: Was he in Vietnam? Tim: No, he was in the Marine Reserves. However, we hung out with guys who were Vietnam veterans. If we spelunking or doing a more difficult climb he’d sometimes a friend along to help him out. One was also a teacher, a former Green Beret medic, who had spent a lot of time in the highlands with the [indigenous] Montagnards. He had some amazing stories. Then, there was Glenn’s cousin, a Marine who’d been in the thick of the action in Vietnam. They were fantastic guys. They’d watch out for us. CBC: Did Glenn influence you, artistically? Tim: Yes, very much so. He was the first guy who encouraged me to keep pursuing art and help me see that I might be able to make a career of it. CBC: Did you ever travel to Chicago or New York when you were younger? Tim: No, but we had family members in Alabama and Detroit that we visited, but I never really got to experience a major metropolitan area until I went to Columbus College of Art and Design, in Ohio. I didn’t even see the ocean until I was in the Kubert School, and Beth and I went to the Jersey shore. I was awestruck. I fell in love with the ocean. CBC: Let’s talk about the comics: After Our Fighting Forces, when did comics become a habit for you? Tim: Probably fifth and sixth grade. We lived in a little rural town outside Summersville, West Virginia. Every week or so, Mom would go to Summersville to do our shopping and #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Kona TM & © the respective copyright holder.

CBC: Tim says, “I didn’t name him!” without missing a beat. [laughter] Tim: We had a beagle named Hoosier—“Old Hoot.” He was the greatest old beagle. I had really pretty mixed-breed dog named Penny. I saw Penny get hit by a truck one evening and it devastated me. I remember going out every evening for a week after that and sitting by the road with a lapful of rocks. If I saw that red truck that hit Penny, I was going to unload on them! CBC: Did you go hunting? Tim: I sure did. Everyone hunted. CBC: What kind of rifle did you have? Tim: When we’d go deer hunting, Dad had a .30-06. For small game, a 12-gauge Remington shotgun. They wouldn’t let me hunt alone until I was 11 or 12. CBC: You went hunting on your own? Tim: Yes. Dad and his brothers were into gun safety, so they had trained me and my cousins how to use, handle, and walk with a gun. My cousins and I would shoot squirrels and rabbits. However, I developed a distaste for hunting one time when Dad and I went out hunting for small game. We were taking a break, sitting on a fallen tree and, all at once, there was a big commotion in the brush beside us and we saw something darting directly toward us. It really startled both of us. Without even thinking, Dad raised the 12-gauge and shot. I would have sworn that a wolf was coming at us out of the woods, it was so sudden and scary, but it was a doe. And there was a fawn there, too. The little one stood at the edge of the woods and then ran off. Dad told me that felt really bad about that. From then on, I didn’t enjoy hunting as much. CBC: Were you in the Scouts?

Hawkman TM & © DC Comics. Photo by Terry Fox. Kothar the Barbarian TM & © the estate of Gardner F. Fox.

she’d drop me off at a little corner drugstore. I’d spend all my time there checking out the comics. That’s also where I was introduced to Robert E. Howard’s Conan and to Gardner Fox’s Kothar the Barbarian stories. I have fond memories of that place. I would mow lawns, do odd jobs, save a dollar, go to that drug store, and come out with eight 12¢ comics. CBC: Were they always adolescent comics or did you get into kiddie comics? Tim: Humor comics and the like? No, except for MAD magazine, perhaps. After I entered high school, my cousin and I would go to Charleston, West Virginia, to used bookstores and we’d find old comics in there. As far as comics I was attracted to, I liked Gold Key and Dell titles a lot when I was really young. I liked the Marvel titles—anything Jack Kirby drew, I was on it—Thor, Fantastic Four, Captain America, The Hulk. I liked Sgt. Fury. When Steranko’s S.H.I.E.L.D. came along, he was a real game-changer for me. Then Wally Wood’s Tower Comics stuff—Dynamo and NoMan. For DC, I liked Hawkman and Green Lantern a lot, and loved Kubert’s Tarzan. The DC war comics, too. Later, I started collecting the Warren magazines, the black-&-white horror stuff. I totally got into black-&-white. CBC: Besides Jack Kirby, who were the first artists whose styles you started recognizing? Tim: Joe Kubert, Sam Glanzman, and Jack Kirby. Those were the guys, initially, before I got into Steranko and that next wave. CBC: You were drawing pretty regularly then? Tim: Yeah. CBC: What were you drawing? Tim: Oh, gosh. Mostly barbarian stuff… spies—remember The Man from U.N.C.L.E.? I would invent spy scenarios. I’d also sit around and try to copy Kirby and Kubert figures. CBC: Did you make up stories? Tim: Yeah, the stories and the illustrations. I have a few of the illustrations tucked away. CBC: Even prior to Dixie, did you have a friend you were completely in sync with, who liked the same stuff that you liked? Tim: A few kids in Dunbar, though I can’t remember any names. One guy and I really connected with MAD magazine, especially the Mort Drucker movie parodies. I had a good group of pals in Parkersburg. We’d trade comics. I often wonder what happened to those guys. The main guy, though, was my older cousin, Eddie Seacrist, Jr., whose dad was the rockabilly artist I mentioned earlier. Eddie and I exchanged comics, paperback books, rock LPs, went to movies together—we were very tight. CBC: You kept moving. What was happening when you got to Dixie? Tim: Still reading, still drawing, but I also got even more heavily into music then. I had a pretty solid base of pals there, and a lot of guys to play music with. CBC: Were you in a band? Tim: Oh, yeah. We called ourselves the Snyder’s Hound Band. My cousin Eddie thought of the name. It comes from an obscure Appalachian adage, “faster than Snyder’s Hound.” It’s also used to describe something quick and mischievous. We thought it was a pretty cool name. CBC: You listened to the San Francisco sound. Was that what you wanted to be like? Tim: Yes, and British hard rock… stuff with loud guitars. Cream, Free, The Who, Robin Trower, Yes, Wishbone Ash… Jimi Hendrix, and American hard rock like Cactus and Mountain. British blues, too. In 1973, I got hardcore into Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher. British blues, too. The original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green… CBC: John Mayall? COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Tim: Yes, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Ten Years After. Savoy Brown—that kind of thing. I was a big Southern rock fan, too—Allman Brothers, Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels Band, The Outlaws… Of folks in the San Francisco scene, I was probably most into Santana, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Hot Tuna, and Jefferson Airplane. It was a real kick to work with Hot Tuna later. I did a CD cover for them. CBC: Wow. What about the Grateful Dead? Tim: Yes, especially Workingman’s Dead, the Skull & Roses live album, and Europe ’72. We had an eight-track tape player in our car and I would take my guitar out there and pop the Grateful Dead’s Skull & Roses eight-track in and try to figure out Jerry Garcia’s leads. I still have some real good memories of that. CBC: Were girls a part of the scene? Were you shy? Tim: Oh, yeah! On both counts. CBC: But you were a musician, dude! Tim: Anytime you pick up a guitar… CBC: They come running, don’t they? Tim: In fact, except for my musician friends and my dear friend Jim Duda, whom I still in touch with, most of my friends in high school were girls. They were the ones that I talked to, mostly. CBC: Because you had sisters? Tim: I’m sure that was a part of it, but guys usually won’t talk. You can be as open as you want with girls. Play them songs you’re working on. Show them notebooks with your poems and stories. Especially during that time in our culture, guys were a little more reserved. CBC: I’m interviewing Ron Turner of Last Gasp and that’s what he said: “Girls want to talk about things. Guys just want to talk about cars or sports.” Tim: I loved that. I could write poetry and songs and hand to one of my female pals and they’d be totally into it. CBC: Are you still friends with some of them? Tim: A few of them, especially high school friends. Facebook has been great for that, of course. CBC: Were you sensitive? Tim: Sure. The angst-ridden creative kid, you know? CBC: Were you bullied? Tim: Occasionally, but my mom and

This page: Above is a Joe Kubert' drawing of Gardner Fox's winged creation. Inset left is the writer in latter years. Below are two Jeffrey Catherine Jones' covers for Fox's sword-wielding barbarian, Kothar.

Above: In 1978, Tim enrolled at the nearly brand-new Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, located in Dover, New Jersey, which was originally housed in the Baker Mansion. Below: The great Joe Kubert, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1990. Bottom: Early ad promoting the institution drawn by (who else?) Joe Kubert.

Tim: I’m prone to aggravation. CBC: [Chuckles] Prone to annoyance! Tim: I never looked for fights and I kept pretty much to myself. I’ve got this sense of pride and never liked being either patronized or looked down upon. I got that from my mom and dad. Especially as a young professional, if something occurred with an employer or whomever and I that I didn’t like or thought was unfair, with an employer or whatever, I wasn’t shy about speaking up. CBC: In the Kubert School, were you teased about your West Virginia accent? Tim: A little bit, but no, not so much. I certainly had an accent, but by that point, I’d been around my wife and her family and had adjusted it a bit. Beth’s a Northern girl, from the East. We met at West Virginia University, three years before I went to the Kubert School. CBC: Now, what did you want to do? Was it comics? Tim: I wanted to do comics and didn’t know how to get there. That’s why I went to Columbus Art and Design. They were an illustration school. Ralph McQuarrie and a lot of big illustrators came out of there. I did badly there, though. I wanted to do illustration right off the bat, and was really discouraged to find out that the first year was a foundation curriculum. I think I just wanted to experience life outside of Dixie, mainly. CBC: For our readers: What does foundation year mean? Tim: That means you have English and a lot of rudimentary classes like life drawing classes and design classes, color theory classes. Let’s just say I would’ve paid more attention if I had realized their importance. If I could’ve advised my younger self, I would’ve told him to “Pay more attention to this stuff!” So it goes. I caught up with it in later years. CBC: Were you cognizant of what was going on in the comics world as far as Bernie Wrightson and Michael Kaluta? These real illustrative guys were starting to come along… Tim: Oh, absolutely. Wrightson, Kaluta, Barry Smith, of course, and Jeff Jones, too. They had huge impacts on me. When I saw Bernie Wrightson’s “Nightmaster” stories that he did for DC, they just bowled me over. “Oh, this reminds me of Frazetta.” Also, at about the same period, Master of Kung Fu, from the first issue when Starlin did it. I totally became enamored with Starlin’s work and then, whenever Paul Gulacy took over, I became a Gulacy-head, probably because he reminded me of Steranko. Paul is probably my single biggest influence, in many ways. I was into all those guys. There was Howard Chaykin’s “Ironwolf.” Howard remained a continuous influence, especially with the Cody Starbuck stories he did for Star*Reach, and the big, fully painted trades that he did with Byron Preiss. I was really into some of the less-recognized guys, too, like Tom Sutton and Pat Boyette, all the stuff they were doing for Charlton. Those high school years were quite important for that sort of thing—the more “illustrate-y” look—in addition to the Creepy and Eerie influence. CBC: Did you have any exposure to a comic shop? Tim: No, this was the early and mid-1970s, before the direct comics market, so they didn’t exist, really. We had to get comics at the grocery store, or at that drugstore I was talking about, or at head-shops for the underground material. For back issues, though, I cruised used bookstores. I discovered that they usually had boxes full of comics. There was one great one near West Virginia University, in Morgantown, where you could find all sorts of stuff—even fanzines and things like that. I guess out-of-state students were trading them in. You never could tell what you were going to find. Then you could walk a block-and-a-half to this great little newsstand and check if there were any new books by any of the artists I was into. I was more into writers and artists than characters. As far as writers go, I mainly followed Doug Moench, Don McGregor, and Archie Goodwin. I’d look for anything they worked on. At about that time, new artists like P. Craig Russell, Marshall Rogers, and #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Baker Mansion photo courtesy of Tom Foxmarnick. Joe Kubert photo courtesy of Ervin Rustemagic. Illustration © The Kubert School.

dad helped me get around that. Dad and his brothers were two-fisted kinds of guys. Dad said, “Tim, never start a fight, but always finish one.” Basically, if you let someone bully you more than once, you were giving them permission to do so. Mom was a hard cookie about that sort of thing, too. I especially remember one episode, after we moved to Ohio. When I would get on the school bus and walk down the aisle, there were these kids who started to pick on me. They were a couple of years older and wanted to pick on the new, little kid, right? Mom noticed I was afraid to ride a bus and asked me what was going on. I said, “Well, there are these guys who are pinching me and kicking me when I walk by.” She went to the sewing box and fished out this big diaper pin! “Here, take this, and the next time they do that, you jab it into their arm or leg.” My mom didn’t fool around! [laughter] CBC: Mom says, “Shank ’em, son.” [laughs] And you did it? Tim: It worked! And their philosophy proved to be right: if somebody picked on you, end it there. Even if you get the worst of it, they’ll probably not do it again. However, when I was in the eighth grade, there was a little lunch place beside the high school where we’d get hamburgers and hot dogs. One week, these high school juniors sort of targeted me and started picking on me for some reason. I knew that I couldn’t let it go on, so I ended up fighting with one of them. I had a blackout during the fight. I just remember throwing a punch and then nothing. The next thing I was aware of was feeling someone pulling me up from the ground by the belt. I was looking down at this guy laying on the ground under me with a bloody cut over his eye. But I remembered absolutely nothing about the fight. I’d completely blacked out. That was sort of scary. Anyway, I didn’t get picked on much after that. CBC: You were never prone to rage?

Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Ming the Merciless TM & © Hearst Holdings, Inc.

Michael Golden started showing up, too. And Heavy Metal magazine, with Moebius, Druillet, and those guys… CBC: How about Neal Adams? Tim: I really liked the work on X-Men that he was doing, but I didn’t totally appreciate Adams until later on. I had the same experience with Alex Toth’s work, and even John Severin and Russ Heath. I wouldn’t truly, fully appreciate them until later, at the Kubert School. Then I became totally enthralled by their work. Milt Caniff—same thing. I’m a total Caniff-head now. I came to Milt Caniff through Hugo Pratt. When I was in the Kubert School, Joe had a lot of European comics there. I saw the Hugo Pratt stuff and just became hypnotized by the drama and simplicity of his linework. From Pratt, I doubled back to Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles. CBC: With Joe Kubert’s work, was it the organic aspect to it that appealed to you, or what? You’d seen it all your life. Did it maintain a perennial appeal to you, or did it fall out of favor for you? Tim: The kinetic aspect of it and the cinematic aspect of it appealed to me. The inventive storytelling techniques he used, his flair for characterization, “camera-angle” choices, that fast, organic inking technique—Joe was the mind-blowing master of it all. His whole style is embedded in my DNA. I can’t avoid it. After I graduated from the Kubert School, though, I put all his work away in a closet for a couple of years just so I could more fully develop my own “look.” He had an incredibly powerful influence on me, between him and Gulacy. If I point to my ultimate influences for comics, it’s those two. Illustration is a different story. CBC: I wonder if part of the appeal of Gulacy is that Steranko wasn’t prolific by the mid-’70s and you could get a dose of almost-Steranko with a regular book, Master of Kung Fu. Tim: There was something intrinsic in Paul’s work. When he started to develop in Master of Kung Fu, I think he grew beyond his Steranko influences pretty quickly. I often say that Steranko is the guy who you’d see hobnobbing with the really stylistic European filmmakers and Gulacy would be the guy in the bar having a drink with John Huston and John Ford. He’s very cinematic and I like that aspect of his work. CBC: Like watching movies. Tim: Absolutely, and Kubert was the same way. In 1978, whenever Sabre came out, that was just the ultimate for me. “Oh, my gosh. This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Still is. I love to tell Don McGregor that. And Don loves to hear it! Don’s such a great writer. Great to talk to, too. CBC: Sometimes it takes a long time to listen! He lives 20 miles from me. We’re two short guys from Rhode Island who get along well… Tim: I started seeing Don at the Chicago conventions, back in ’83 or ’84, when I was doing Grimjack and Scout. I’d be sitting with the First Comics gang at the hotel bar having a beer and he’d wander in and have the whole table rolling in laughter. CBC: He was a real inspiration in comics. Tim: He still is. Don is a good man. He was doing some really adventurous writing. Really poetic and groundbreaking. CBC: It changed my life. Tim: There’s a rock-poetry aspect to his work that I really appreciated and latched onto. CBC: I think it’s also his sensitivity; he’s sensitive to female COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

points of view and he’s had gay characters and, obviously, he had African and African-American characters, and he could get inside their heads, it seemed to me. Tim: Years ago, I showed one of these comics to Beth’s uncles who happened to be gay and he got Don’s work into a museum that chronicles LGBT portrayals in literature and popular culture. He was really impressed by the fact that Don didn’t play down or patronize gays. The portrayals are well-informed and genuine. He was very impressed with that. CBC: How were you able to go to college? Did your parents pay for it? Tim: I got a scholarship to go to Columbus Art and Design the first year, so they just had to pay for my dormitory expenses and food. As we discussed, I didn’t do too well, so I went to West Virginia University the next year. That’s where I met Beth. I also got a scholarship there. CBC: What was your portfolio like? Tim: I really didn’t need much. I was able to show them some of the work I had done at Columbus Art and Design. I majored in art education, but figured out that becoming a teacher wasn’t really going to satisfy me. After the first semester, I quit WVU, but I wanted stay in Morgantown because I’d met Beth. She was in the anthropology department—she has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, which is probably why she married me. [laughter] She got her degree and then got really interested in nursery school and preschool teaching, and she decided to get a master’s in child development. So she stayed in Morgantown complete her degree and I wanted to be wherever she was. CBC: How did you meet Beth? Tim: At WVU, my roommate was one of the high school friends that I mentioned, Jim Duda. The day after we moved into the dorm, he came into the room and told me he had met this girl who seemed really cool and needed help bringing stuff into her dormitory. Jim volunteered to help her out. After they had finished bringing her stuff in, he had asked her out for dinner. So when he got back to the room to get ready, he ended up asking me if I’d like to come along. I think he thought that I’d say no, but I said, “Sure.” A little while later, Beth came down to meet us and when I first laid eyes on her, I immediately thought, “Okay, there she is. She’s the one.” I fell completely in love with her. That’s how that happened. Forty-three years later, we’re still here. CBC: Where’s she from? Tim: New Jersey, then Maryland. Her parents had relocated to Lancaster. Her dad was a highly respected physician in this area. He designed the physical therapy department at Lancaster General Hospital. CBC: Is there any relation to you and Beth ending up there yourself? Tim: Beth’s parents lived here, and the area seemed nice. At the time, I still had to go into New York with my portfolio and it’s only a three-

Above: Timothy and Beth Truman, on their wedding day, Sept. 3, 1977. Inset left: Italian reprint, ShangChi, Maestro Del Kung Fu, #54 [Oct. 1979], sporting Paul Gulacy's cover art originally seen in Master of Kung Fu #64 [May ’78]. We are having this classic Gulacy image recolored—by Colorist Supreme Tom Ziuko!— for the cover of our forthcoming tribute to the artist, currently scheduled for CBC #27. Bottom: Tim Truman is merciless with his caricature of Flash Gordon's reviled nemesis, Ming of the Planet Mongo, which was drawn for a Kubert School flyer promoting a Sept. 1980 event.

Above: Tim's 1980 class assignment during his stint at the Kubert School. Below: What's more appropriate than for Tim's first professional comic book work to appear in a Joe Kubert war title? His three-pager, "To the Last Man," was in Sgt. Rock #354 [July 1981].

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

“M.C.” © Timothy Truman. Sgt. Rock TM & © DC Comics.

hour train ride into New York City, so it seemed like a good location. We’d be outside the New York and New Jersey sprawl, but still have access to the city, plus we’re near Philly, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., as well. CBC: So, in your portfolio, was it mostly illustration? Was there any comics work in there? Tim: No. Beth and I stayed at WVU for two years while she finished school. One day, I opened up a DC comic book and there was an ad for the Joe Kubert School. I couldn’t believe it. “Joe Kubert!” He was my idol! I called, sent them my application, and arranged to have a portfolio review at the school. I had comic-book stuff on loose-leaf sketchbook paper at comic-book size. I had no idea that you drew comic pages larger on Bristol board. I went and had my interview with Joe. When Beth and I approached the school, Joe appeared at the back door with this really tall, young guy beside him. Joe introduced himself, then fellow with him. Rick Veitch! I couldn’t believe it. I was as excited about meeting Rick as I was meeting Joe. I was a huge fan of underground comix and Rick had done Two-Fisted Zombies with his brother Tom. So that was a pretty exciting day. Joe took me inside and looked at my portfolio and explained to me that “We draw on Bristol board and it is 11" x 17", and we use India ink, not ballpoint pens and Magic Markers,” but he accepted me for the school. Joe accept-

ed just about anybody at that point, I think! [chuckles] So, when I left there, I was walking on air. I went out to the front porch to look for Beth and there was a this lanky, bearded guy in glasses, sitting there on the steps with his sketchpad. He smiled and asked, “So, how did you do?” I said that I did pretty good and told him and gushed about meeting Joe Kubert and Rick Veitch. The guy just smiled and nodded his head. I looked down at his sketch pad and whatever he was drawing looked really, really good. “Wow, that looks great, man! What’s your name?” He said, “Steve Bissette.” [laughs] Later Steve, Rick, and I got to be great friends. I had to wait for another year before I could actually come to the school, though. I needed to save up some money. Beth and I had just gotten married, Beth was finishing studies for her master’s degree, so I worked at a frame shop and delivered flowers to put towards tuition and an apartment. When I finally entered the school, ours was the first threeyear class. Previously, the curriculum had only been for two years. That was a pretty cool experience. CBC: Did you talk to any professionals beforehand? Did you read up on like what life was like as a professional comic book artist? Did you look at it in a practical way? Tim: I had no idea. The only professionals I met were Stan Lee, Val Mayerik, and Doug Moench, and I didn’t get a chance to talk with them about things like that. CBC: Where did you meet them? Tim: While we were living in Morgantown, there were two science fiction conventions at WVU… do you know Steve Saffel? CBC: Sure, Titan Books [acquisitions editor]. Tim: Steve was from Morgantown. A local boy. He was the promoter and organizer. He had managed to get all these great guests—Stan Lee, Val Mayerik, Doug Moench, and Harlan Ellison and L. Sprague de Camp as well. Those were the first comics professionals and fantasy/SF writers that I ever met. Mayerik was so great. When I showed him some of my work, he was very encouraging. I love Val’s work, so that gave me a real shot in the arm at a time when I really needed it, after flunking out of two art schools, you know? At the con the following year, Stan Lee saw my portfolio and he wanted me to send stuff to Marvel. I have no idea why. I was so horrible at that point! [Jon chuckles] Whatever the case, I owe a big debt to Steve because those were the first comic book professionals I ever had the chance to meet. I was a clueless country boy. CBC: What did your parents think about your decision to go into art? Tim: My art instructor, Glenn Toler, had talked to Mom and Dad, and said, “Hey, he can make a living at this. He can probably even get a scholarship.” So they became supportive, but, of course, were very disappointed after I did so poorly at Columbus Art and Design. When I decided to go to WVU, I said, “This time I’m going to go into art education. I’ll become a teacher.” They thought that was fine because Glenn, my mentor, was an art teacher and he seemed to be doing well. By the time I dropped out of WVU, they had met Beth. They fell in love with her. I also had gotten a job and was supporting myself, so they were okay with me staying in Morgantown. I was on my own! CBC: How did the in-laws take to you? Tim: They were wonderful. They liked me and could tell that Beth and I were going to be a team. They knew artists and had creative people in the family. They thought the school seemed interesting and were very supportive when I told them I had a desire to go back to school. CBC: Was it expensive? Tim: I don’t remember, Jon, but it was definitely more expensive than West Virginia University. At that point, West Virginia residents could go to the University for a minimal fee, plus I’d gotten a semester scholarship. I wish I could remember how much it was. CBC: What was the plan? Work while you went to school? Go full-time?

a lot of problems with it, as many WWII and Korean vets did, at least at first. That caused some friction between us during my high school years. Luckily, Dad and I became very close after I married Beth and after we had kids. We got to approach each other as adults, so it was really cool. CBC: I always thought you were in the second Kubert class, the year after Bissette, Rick, and Tom Yeates went in. Tim: No, the second-year bunch was Jan Duursema, Tom Mandrake, Ron Randall, Kim DeMaulder, Kevin Altieri, the animator, and some other people. They had a lot of amazing folks in the second-year class. I was in the third-year class. CBC: Who else was in your third-year class? Tim: Mike Chen, who is now the school’s head administrator; Bob Hardin; Tod Smith; letterer Tim Harkins; Rod Ollerenshaw, who became Gray Morrow’s assistant and then did a bunch of work with Archie Comics; and John Bisson, who became a Hollywood special effects and make-up guy. Some of the other guys became art directors and got into advertising. One of our classmates, Barry Goldberg, got into children’s book illustration, helped develop Bob the Builder, worked for Nickelodeon and got

Above: Caption.

This page: Fresh out of the Kubert School, Tim was employed in the role-playing game industry, designing characters and illustrating. He also produced comic book stories like this (plus the cover) for gaming magazine Ares [#12, Jan. 1982].

Tim: Beth and I had decided to take turns. I’d worked while she’d gone to school in Morgantown, so she would work while I was at the Kubert School. I was employed as a night janitor at a local community college for a few nights a week during the first year, but, other than that, I was a fulltime student. I committed to put my nose to the grindstone. I learned my lessons by then: “Don’t blow this opportunity.” I did the work and sucked up everything I could. I was pretty psyched about the instructors. Dick Ayers was there during my first year, Dick Giordano, Hy Eisman, John Belfi, Bob Oksner, and Joe himself. All these comic book professionals. Also, the classes were set up very differently from Columbus of Art and Design and WVU, in that all of our classes were studio classes. We sat down at a desk and drew, eight hours a day, with a comic book veteran looking over your shoulder, giving you tips, and telling you what you were messing up and how to do things better. CBC: Backtracking with Glenn: Did he mentor any other success stories? Tim: I was sort of considered his “accomplished” artist. There were a couple of girls in my graduating class that were really good, but Glenn could tell I wasn’t just an “easel painter.” He could tell I was quite serious about art and took me under his wing. He had a lot of confidence in me. I owe him quite a bit. CBC: He was a veteran; your dad was a veteran. Did you have any thought of going into the service? Tim: No. This was during Vietnam, Jon. I was terrified. Some people argue that music can’t change your life, but it sure changed mine. I heard the single, “Ohio,” that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young had done. Before that I was pretty pro-war. As soon as I heard that single and learned about the implications at Kent State, I became anti-war. CBC: Did you have arguments with your dad? Tim: Yes. I didn’t grow my hair long while I was at the house. Dad was pretty conservative in that regard. My mom was more sympathetic toward anti-war causes. Dad had

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Above: Tim's "Star Trader" story on the previous page was adapted and fully colored for an appearance in the one-shot (featuring Tim's RPG comics and illustration work), Killer… Tales by Timothy Truman [Mar. 1985], published by Eclipse. As your editor could not locate a copy, Tim kindly sent one, adding the inscription seen below.

Inset right and below: Illustrations by Tim done for TSR (which was bought by Wizards of the Coast some years back).

Totleben, and Thomas Yeates. They shared a house in Dover and I hung out with them all I could. It was really inspirational being around those guys. Tom was doing a lot of work with Al Williamson and doing Heavy Metal stuff. Rick and Stephen were doing stuff for Epic and Heavy Metal. CBC: What did you want to do? Did you think there’d be a regular market for you at Heavy Metal? Tim: Of course not, but I could tell that something new was coming at us, just around the corner. I decided to keep my eyes open for whatever it was, but, in the meantime, I’d try to get into illustration. During my last year of school, Dungeons & Dragons and the whole role-playing game scene got really big. I was like, “Wow, that looks appealing. I could draw crazy monsters and fantasy characters all day long.” So the week before graduating, I sent out about 10 portfolios to various game companies and got a call back from SPI Games, in New York City. I took my portfolio into the city and started doing a lot of work for SPI, which was later bought by TSR Hobbies, the Dungeons & Dragons folks. A lot of people I worked with at SPI suggested to the art director that they hire me. That’s how I ended up at TSR. Before that, during my sophomore year at the Kubert School, I was doing comics and illustration at Creative Computing magazine, which was located in Morristown, New Jersey, very close to Dover. I could drive my work out to them. I started utilizing a tip from [Kubert School instructor] John Belfi: “Tim, when you take in one job, bring in an idea for another.” So I started doing that. It worked for me over and over again, whoever I worked for. I ended up creating my own jobs. It was probably the best advice I received while at the school. CBC: Give me an example. Tim: At Creative Computing, I turned in a batch of single illustrations for a new magazine they’d just started called Sync. When I brought in the illustrations, I also showed them presentation drawings I’d worked up for a humorous science fiction comic strip called “Crash Cursor and Sync” they could also run in the magazine. They liked it! I did the same thing with SPI. They had Ares, a gaming magazine. I was doing covers and spot illustrations for them. I brought in ideas for original four- or five-page comic stories and they started running them. Later, with Eclipse Comics, I compiled them in a collection. I don’t know if you remember a book that Eclipse published of mine—Killer… Tales? That was a collection of all the SPI strips I had done. CBC: I saw that in a bibliography and wondered, “What’s Killer… Tales?” Tim: It’s really poorlydrawn stuff, Jon. However, it gave me chance to work with Gardner F. Fox. I met him at a Gen Con gaming convention and we ended up become friends. I talked #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Killer… Tales © Timothy Truman. Illustrations © Wizards of the Coast.

into the whole TV scene. He did a lot of design for Walt Disney Productions—both Disneyland and Disneyworld—doing set design and things like that. When I was teaching here in Lancaster, at the Pennsylvania School of Art and Design, I’d often use Barry as an example for the students in my class. At the Kubert School, I remember sitting in a life drawing class and, for some reason, the instructor got really annoyed with whatever Barry happened to be drawing. He ended up glowering at Barry and saying “Barry, you’ll never go anywhere.” We were all pretty shocked by it. Of course, Barry was pretty offended. He made his mind up that day he’d prove the instructor wrong. Sure enough, after we graduated, he was the first guy out of our class to get land an art job with a regular paycheck—working for Neal Adams’ Continuity Studios! Barry worked with Continuity for a long time. He was really good with an airbrush and that ended up giving him an edge. Another student, John Bisson, became a film designer. He started out doing stuff with Troma Studios, but he later did a lot of work for Sam Raimi, designing costumes, masks, prosthetics, and stuff. CBC: What was your idea? Was it to be a mainstream comic book artist? Superheroes and the like? Tim: Not so much. I became really involved in what was going on in the European comics scene. When Joe would go conventions in Europe, he’d bring back all these anthology magazines and graphic novels from there, and I knew “This is it! This is what I want to do!” I was into Epic and Heavy Metal… Adventure, fantasy and science fiction stuff. It seemed to be the future. That was the way for me to go. European-style things. I wasn’t so much into super-heroes, especially at that point, in the late 1970s. They seemed pretty lame, except perhaps Frank Miller’s stuff, and I wasn’t really keeping track of that. I was more into the things coming out of Europe and in the American black-&-white magazines—the Warren magazines and the some of the non-super-hero books that Marvel was producing. I really wanted to do that sort of thing. CBC: So you were thinking anthology work or did you have any ideas about making your own characters? Tim: Oh, yeah. That was the goal from the beginning, to write and draw my own stories. One of the big inspirations for that was the Flying Dutchman Studios. I became really good friends with Bissette, Veitch, John

Illustrations © Wizards of the Coast.

Gar to come out of retirement and write a story for me for Killer…Tales called, “The Saving of Sayera,” starring Daral the Barbarian! CBC: How did you know of Gardner Fox? Tim: From the DC Comics, the work he did on Hawkman and Green Lantern. Plus his novel Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman was the first paperback book I ever bought. I saw this older couple at this gaming convention, sitting in the hallway and struck up a conversation with them. Gar was very dignified. I don’t know if you ever met him. CBC: No. Tim: He was a wonderful cat. He said, “I’m Gardner Fox.” I said, “Oh, my gosh! I’ve known your stuff for years.” I told him that the first paperback fantasy stuff I ever bought in grade school was his Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman, and all about that. I said, “You’re the reason I’m here. Your book is what got me interested in the fantasy genre.” It was true. He really liked that. We started corresponding and, when I got the chance to do Killer… Tales, I said, “Hey, would you like to return to comics and do a story for me—just an eight-pager? The money’s good and we’d own the story.” So he did it. The cover of Killer is actually an unpublished cover that I painted for Ares—a skull-faced warrior in a horned helmet standing with flames behind him. I kind of liked that cover, but, at the time, I wasn’t much of a painter. When at TSR, I specialized in black-&-white interior illustrations mostly. It wasn’t until 1999 or 2000 when I finally developed a painting technique I was comfortable with. CBC: Were you particularly ambitious? Did you have a laid-out plan for yourself? Tim: I was hard-nosed and I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me no. If I set my mind to it, I was going to do it. I was going to become a professional illustrator and comic book artist. I wanted to do both. I had some stumbling blocks along the way. When I was still at the Kubert School, I went to DC Comics with Thomas Yeates. He said, “I’ve got to turn some stuff in to Joe Orlando. Why don’t you come with me and show him your portfolio?” I did and Joe Orlando did not like my portfolio whatsoever. “You’re pretty good at ‘big foot’ humor stuff, but you really can’t draw comic books.” [chuckles] I was pretty shattered, but I sort of took the “Barry Goldberg attitude,” and was going to prove Orlando wrong. It was a kick in the pants when I needed it. CBC: The other Joe, Kubert, got you work in the back pages of Sgt. Rock? Tim: He sure did. That was a program he set up in the school to allow us to see our work in print. We didn’t get paid much. We got paid like $30 a page for pencils, inks and lettering, I believe. When we weren’t doing our own original stories, we were working from Robert Kanigher scripts. Kanigher and I did not get along. He was one of the instructors at the school during my first year. I was pretty obnoxious to him—and I hate to speak ill of the dead—but there was a lot of friction between us. He kicked me out of his class several times. CBC: [Chuckles] Dude, that’s a badge of honor! Tim: Once, after I’d walked out on one of his classes, Beth had come to pick me up at school. She was standing in the hall waiting for me and Kanigher came out of the teacher’s lounge. “Who are you?” he asked. She said, “I’m Beth Truman, Tim Truman’s wife.” He sneered at her. “Tim Truman! Hah! Good luck!” [laughter]. He was convinced I was going to be a troublemaker. CBC: Did you work on his scripts after he threw you out? Tim: Oh, yes, and Joe said, “If you see anything in there you want to change, just go ahead!” [laughter] CBC: I’ve always thought Bob Kanigher was one of the best writers comics had and sometimes one of the worst. Tim: Yeah, towards the end of his career. I think Joe had to rework a bunch of his stuff. CBC: Even way back when! Talking machine guns was pretty out there, Tim. Tim: Well, Will Eisner and Jules Feiffer had done it in COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

The Spirit , Jon, so no big deal! George Evans used to live real close to us here in Lancaster and we became really good friends. I will say that his opinion of Kanigher exactly mirrored mine. CBC: George Evans was one of the nicest people I have ever spoken to. Tim: He was such a great guy! It was an honor to hang out with him. Later on, one of his grandsons, Roger Peterson, was my apprentice at the studio for about a year. That was a big honor. I have seldom used an assistant, but how could I turn George down? As it turned out, Roger became an amazing comic book artist. CBC: He is great! When did Beth get pregnant with Benjamin? Tim: When I was working at TSR Hobbies. She was three weeks late with Benjamin. She was still working at TSR, though, in marketing and sales. She’s a little tiny thing, and she was walking around the office with this huge belly. She finally had to be induced. The doctor said, “This kid’s gotta come out of there.” I guess Ben had a video game in there. [laughter] CBC: What’s his birthday? Tim: Ben’s is September 23, 1983. CBC: Was it neat to work at TSR? Was the money good? Tim: Oh, yes, the money was great, all

Above: RPG illustration by Tim titled "Iron Lord," from 2003. Below: Star Trader characters drawn for SPI in 1981.

Above: Sample of Tim's illustration work for the magazine Ares. Inset right: Tim designed this RPG character for TSR, with his illo gracing the packaging.

Below: Keith Parkinson, fellow TSR alumni, who Tim calls a brother, in a promotional portrait. Tragically the renowned illustrator/game designer passed away at 47 in 2005.

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Dungeons & Dragons TM Wizards of the Coast.

things considered. When I started there, it was $18,000. The year before that, Beth and I had a combined income of $7,000 for a year, so $18,000 seemed pretty good! Later on, they gave me raises: $20,000, $21,000… good money for 1982. We were able to buy a house. CBC: Wow. Buy a house. You were pretty young. What was management like? Nice place to work? Tim: I loved the guys I worked with in the studio: Keith Parkinson, Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, and a couple of other guys were on the crew when I first came in. Later, Clyde Caldwell joined us. Keith and I were birds of a feather. We became like brothers. I really miss him. There are days I really want to give him a call. Sadly, he passed away from cancer, I think it was 2005. The doctor thought he contracted leukemia from the benzene he used in his oil paints and thinners. A little warning to anyone out there who is an oil painter: be careful with that stuff. It was horrible. CBC: How long did you stay at TSR? Tim: I was here about two years. CBC: Things were going on in the comics world with the development of the independent market. Tim: Right. I was following Pacific, Eclipse, and First, and found out that First was based in Evanston, Illinois, outside of Chicago. A buddy of mine had been going to these once-a-month Sunday comic book shows in Chicago. He said, “You ought to come along. That new company, First Comics, is always there.” So, I came along to the show and took my portfolio. I was specializing in evil magic stuff and grungy, science fiction, mercenary types in a lot of my TSR drawings. I had a pretty good folio of illustrations and had some comics, too. I showed them to Mike Gold and Joe Staton at the First Comics table

and they liked it. Mike told me “We’ve got a new project that might be up your alley. It’s a science fiction mercenary title.” I said, “That’s cool.” A couple of days later, I was sitting at my drawing desk at TSR and the art director came in. “Hey Tim, you have a phone call.” I took the call and they were offering me the “Grimjack” back-ups in Starslayer, right there in my boss’s office. [chuckles] At that point, I was pretty tired of TSR. I’m not a nine-to-five guy, even though I loved the other artists I worked with. TSR was going through an expansion and there was some ugly office politics going on. It was a mess. Layoffs were happening because they had expanded too quickly. So, I thought, “Thank God, get out while the gettin’s good.” That’s what I did. CBC: Was the plan to work from home? Tim: Yes. To make sure that things would work out, I did a few of the “Grimjack” back-up stories at night after work, while still at TSR. I said, “I’m going to make these look really good, so I can get a book.” Luckily, things worked out well and I was able to quit TSR and work on “Grimjack” full-time. I turned in the “Grimjack” work and they offered me Starslayer, too, the main feature. I’d do the Starslayer lead feature and the “Grimjack” back-ups. That was pretty cool. Then “Grimjack” became successful, as they were getting such a great response, so they wanted him to spin off into its own book, so I ended up doing a full issue of Grimjack and a full issue of Starslayer at the same time—two books a month—penciling and inking, for the most part. CBC: That must have been murder. Tim: It was. I can’t stand the look of those issues. I became a less careful draftsman and developed some really bad habits in my drawing style during that time. I was just cranking it out, taking shortcuts to get the work done. I became a speed-artist and got stuck in that gear. It took me a long time to overcome the feeling that I had to work at that pace. CBC: What are the implications of “speed-artist”? Tim: Well, they knew I would get the work done on deadline, no matter what, no matter how many pages. On some days, I was penciling and inking five pages a day. Because I was doing it for two or three years, it became a habit. I got stuck in that gear and probably couldn’t have slowed down even if I’d wanted to. It was my comic-book grind. Even when I was doing Scout once a month, I was doing the covers, writing, pencils, inks, and letter column usually, too. I just got used to it. CBC: Did you enjoy yourself? Tim: I enjoyed creating stories and art. I certainly was able to execute a lot of ideas and get them out of my system. And I enjoyed being someone that my editors knew who could turn to and depend on. However, by the time I was in charge of doing the 4Winds Publishing imprint for Eclipse, I wasn’t able to spend as much time with the family as I wanted to. I became a real monster during that period; I had taken on too much. At Eclipse, I was doing Scout and editing some of the Airboy products and some of the other foreign material that was coming in we’d do under 4Winds—Hotspur, Skywolf, you know—and I was editing those and producing my own book. Sometimes I’d write and draw Airboy. It was a grind! So Beth had a “come to Jesus” meeting with me and told me I had to slow down and spend more time with the family, and that paid off. I was able to slow down a little more. I look back at those days and wonder how I did it. These days I take more time and pace myself better. “I’ll answer some emails today and do some layouts.” I work at stuff until it looks the way I want it to. As a result, I’m developing my style the way that I should have been doing when I started out! CBC: You have an organic, Kubert-esque style that’s really appealing. Tim: Thank you. Like I said, I can’t stand to look at my old

Grimjack TM & © John Ostrander & Timothy Truman Starslayer TM & © Michael J. Grell.

stuff, but there’s something about it that people seem to like. There’s a drive to it, I guess. Rick Veitch told me once, “There’s a drive to your work that can’t be ignored.” I don’t know where it comes from; it’s just the way I draw. I was lucky. CBC: There was a period in the ’80s when it was almost like you had a “Tim Truman School.” You could recognize the books you were associated with at 20 paces. I can see it in Airboy and Skywolf. I can see it with Scout and Grimjack … since you were literally drawing a lot of the covers. I’m not sure I can explain it, but you seemed like an industry unto yourself. However, for you to then jump into Hawkworld just seemed to be a real natural move for you. Tim: I guess it was a school of sorts. I just wanted to do stuff that was very adventure oriented. After I met Chuck Dixon, I saw that we were of a like-mind about storytelling and the kinds of comics we really wanted to do. Even if we were doing super-hero books, we were going to make them adventure books. I took a tip from the Eisner & Iger shop and Simon and Kirby studio had packaged comics for different publishers. I started thinking, “Why isn’t anyone doing that nowadays?” So, I put together 4Winds and started packaging comics for Eclipse. Chuck and I started pulling together a stable of artists—good folks whom we’d met at conventions, whom we knew could meet their deadlines. It also sort of gave us a sort of “union.” If one month, one guy’s check was late, I could say, “We’ll just withhold work we’re doing until our buddy is paid.” CBC: When did you first meet John Ostrander? Tim: That was when I was still at TSR. When they accepted my samples for the “Grimjack” series, that sort of lit a fire at First, they were like, “Oh, this is really interesting.” I had really put a different spin on the look of the concept and gave it the “SF-noir” look that it needed. Mike Gold was a big fan of the underground comix, too, so he could see that Spain Rodriguez influence in my work. He dug it. He and Joe Staton saw that I could take it to some unique places. They arranged for me to meet John and, the first time we talked to each other on the phone, we became instant brothers. Beth and I still lived in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and weren’t far away from Chicago. I said, “Why don’t you just take the train up and spend the weekend with us?” He came up, we threw a bunch of ideas around, got to know each other better and the deal was sealed—brothers forever. We’re very simpatico in every way—storytelling and politics and general outlook on life. It was like we’ve known each other all our lives. CBC: The first professional comics work you did was the back-up “Grimjack work” in Starslayer, besides the DC war stuff? Tim: Right, that was my first professional, as in makinga-living-in-comics, work. I was very lucky. It was the right time and right people to be involved with. For whatever reason, my work got popular. DC still wouldn’t have hired me, at that point. I heard from others that it was because they considered my work so underground comix-looking! At the end of my tenure with First, I was invited to do some book signings in California with my dear pal Thomas Yeates. After the tour, I took a week off and stayed with Thomas at his place in Jenner, on the coast north of the Bay Area. It was a great little vacation. [Eclipse publishers] Cat Yronwode and Dean Mullaney lived close to Tom, so they invited us over to their place for dinner one night. They invited me to do some work for Eclipse. First we did the Killer… Tales and, COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

after that worked out so well, I pitched Scout to them. They loved it. CBC: Were the “Grimjack” back-ups intended to be a spin-off? Tim: Sort of. It was a try-out. After the very first issue, First was getting such positive fan response to it that they thought, “Hey, we’d better spin this off into its own book.” From the first or second appearance, it was pretty much sealed. They waited on me to be freed from my TSR job and gave it a few more issues to make sure. After three or four appearances in Starslayer, they were ready to launch it and we were ready to oblige them. CBC: In a nutshell, what is Grimjack? Tim: He’s a science fiction mercenary, a crusty old warrior/detective in this part-science fiction, part-fantasy setting. He operates in a metropolis called Cynosure, where all these realities meet—a dimensional confluence. Grimjack knows the whole city and he knows how to navigate these dimensions, so he’s part Solomon Kane, part … CBC: Eternal Champion? Tim: Sure! That idea that there are different incarnations of Grimjack did not really materialize until later,

This page: Tim's breakout in comics came with his work on the Starslayer back-up strip written by John Ostrander, "Grimjack. Soon enough, not only was Grimjack promoted to his own title, but Tim also drew Starslayer, illustrating two regular titles for First Comics.

around the time that I was leaving the book. He has a lot of Michael Moorcock influence, but also has a lot of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. He’s a private detective who carries a sword and wears a beret in this very science fictional setting. Because of the inter-dimensional aspects, anything goes, so I could draw anything. John would come up with these wild concepts, humorous, wacky influences, and inject them into the stories, but still keep them rooted in traditional hard-boiled detective novels, you know? It was a neat concept. We portrayed Grimjack as an older guy. We envisioned him as an “old man” of 50 years old. [laughter] The fact he became popular as an older character was really cool and proved the power of the character and the stories that John was writing. CBC: What specifically can you point to that, in the storyline and setting itself, that you added besides the visualization? Tim: I created a lot of side characters. I was talking about the Belfi influence earlier and every time you turn in a job, also bring something else to lay in front of them. So I’d do sketches of new characters we could introduce to the mix. I did Jericho Noleski; he

was mine. He was kind of a motorcycle outlaw. I introduced Bob, the Watch Lizard. I figured that Grimjack’s hangout, Munden’s Bar, needed a mascot, so I drew a picture of Bob drinking beer and lounging on the counter. On the art I wrote, “This is Bob the Watch Lizard. He’s a real party animal…” CBC: Quite literally! Tim: Quite literally! He was Munden’s watch-lizard. He lives here now. John loved it. That was one great thing about John: he’s really open to collaboration. We were in lock step in almost every aspect of the book. CBC: Who came up with the idea for Munden’s Bar? Tim: That was John. It was based on this seedy old bar he used to frequent in Chicago or Evanston. When the Rolling Stones were in Chicago, they liked to drink there. It was a total dive bar and the few times that I went there with John, the place was almost empty. It was a really interesting place. The bartender was great. He was an old gent with this little twinkle in his eye who seemed like he already knew everything about you. CBC: When did the idea come up to use that as a springboard for a back-up series that was all over the place? Tim: They wanted to do some back-up stories that would still have Grimjack content. It was also an excuse to have the opportunity #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Grimjack TM & © John Ostrander & Timothy Truman Starslayer TM & © Michael J. Grell. Time Beavers TM & © Timothy Truman.

Above: Tim Truman’s original art for First Comics’ Starslayer and Grimjack T-shirt. The back of the apparel had the legend: “Cynosure: My Kind of Town.” Margin notes reveal that “Cynosure: Love It or Leave It” was considered. Inset right: Tim’s OGN, a SF tale of time-traveling rodent saviors of reality. Below: Time Beavers character by Tim.

Grimjack TM & © John Ostrander & Timothy Truman Starslayer TM & © Michael J. Grell.

to work with some cool artists who might have time in their schedules to fit an eight-pager into. John could explore Munden’s a little more and it would give me a break from drawing so many pages. People really liked the Munden’s concept. It turned out to be real fun to do. I wrote a couple of stories and John got to work with all sorts of amazing artists. It was cool. [chuckles] CBC: So, there’s a Grimjack TV series in the works? Are the scripts done? Tim: Yes. I’m told that, despite the Covid-19 crisis, preproduction work on projects continues. CBC: At what stage is it? Tim: We’ve read two or three versions of the pilot draft. I’m not at liberty to say much because of the non-disclosure agreements, but they’re looking good. John really likes them. One thing that we have to our advantage is the producer and the screenwriter are total Grimjack fans. They even knew the names of different letter writers and asked if we knew what had happened to some of them. CBC: Letter hacks? Tim: Yeah, they were hardcore into it. So they seem to have a pretty good idea what Grimjack is all about. CBC: So, you went out and met Cat and Dean. How long was Scout percolating in your head? Tim: About a year. Whenever I was sitting in my studio, I was usually listening to news on the radio or watching it on TV. It was the Reagan era and I saw a lot of stuff that was bothering me politically and socially. At the same time, I really got involved in studying Native American history and culture, especially Southwestern tribes, the Apache tribal groups in particular. I started thinking about different environmental and social things that were rearing their ugly heads. I’ve always been a fan of dystopian science fiction, and started thinking about life after a series of apocalyptic events that did not include the dropping of an atomic bomb. I realized that the person best suited make it in the apocalyptic scenario that I started envisioning would be an old-style traditionalist Apache. These people were able to thrive in the harshest desert environment and run 60 miles a day on foot in intense, 110-degree heat. The environment that they chose to live in has literally shaped Southwestern Native culture in every way. They are the ultimate survivalists. The ultimate survivors. Ideas started percolating. A concept started shaping up. I went to visit Mike Baron, in Madison, Wisconsin. We were sitting around the swimming pool at his apartment complex. He asked me what I wanted to do, “If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?” Without even thinking, I said I would do “an Apache character with a Samurai sword, riding a motorcycle.” I suddenly envisioned the character. Everything started coming to fruition out of that. I would eventually ditch the Samurai sword, but pretty soon all these various ideas and influences lined up. I knew that if I would do the story, it would take a lot of research, so I started gathering research. CBC: It’s interesting that Grimjack inhabited a universe that was inter-dimensional and you had a great concept for a back-up series where you could do whatever you wanted, and then, with Scout, it immediately established that had its own history and it had its own universe, yet a futuristic extrapolation of the reality of Reagan’s America. It’s interesting that these things immediately started expanding into comic-book universes. Tim: I was reading a lot of science fiction novels and for the type of stories I liked, I knew these guys were doing a lot of research. I also realized that there was a degree of world-building involved. I determined that if I was going to do comics and have my own characters, that I’d do world-building, just like “legit” prose science fiction writers. I would research the heck out of stuff and make it very believable. One thing I learned at the Kubert School was, if you want the reader to believe stuff, you had to research it. Joe COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Kubert often told me stories about the research Russ Heath and John Severin put into their work. I took that to heart and saw that it was clearly the way to go. Create your own world and have it backed up with input from the news, history, and culture. That way, the story and the images you create will always be more believable. CBC: Do you have other children besides Benjamin? Tim: Yes. Emily—she’s an artist, too. CBC: How much younger is she than Ben? Tim: Two years. When I was doing Scout, I took a break around issue #7, while Emily was being born. I asked Thomas Yeates to draw that issue. I wanted to spend time with her and

Above: Grimjack #1 cover re-creation by Tim. Left: Starslayer #14 cover detail, also by Tim.

Above: Splash page for Grimjack: The Manx Cat [2019] by Tim Truman (cover below).

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Grimjack TM & © John Ostrander & Timothy Truman.

Beth and help watch after Benjamin. I wanted to enjoy the experience. CBC: Did you go to Lamaze class? Were you involved in the childbirth? Tim: Oh, yes. CBC: Wow! That’s cool. That’s quite the experience. Eye-opening, for sure! Says the three-time father! [laughter] Tim: I went to all the classes with Beth. When I was with Beth and saw our children born, I was amazed. It was pretty incredible. No matter what happens to you, these people will make their own marks and carry on. CBC: Were you involved in childcare? Tim: Yes, as much as I could be. I had to adjust my hours. I was a night owl. CBC: Are you still? Tim: I split it up. Mainly daytime hours, though. Beth has always gone to bed early, so I’d usually put a few more hours in after everybody had gone to sleep. When the Emily

and Ben were in grade school, I started working during the day so I could spend time with them when they came home. It took a bit of adjustment, because physiologically I’m worthless until noon—my brain just does not kick into gear until after lunch. It was something that I had to make myself get used to. CBC: Throughout your entire career—art school, your career—where did music fit in? Tim: I’ve been into playing guitar and creating music since I was 15. In Morgantown, West Virginia, while Beth was in college, I got a little reel-to-reel player and started trying to record my own stuff. After I started making a little money I started buying little four-track cassette recorders moved from that to a reel-to-reel, multi-track recording set-up. After Keith Parkinson quit TSR, he and his wife moved here to Lancaster and he play drums and I’d play guitar, and I found a couple other guys in town and we’d have little jam sessions. By the time I was doing Wilderness, I had built a 16-track reel-to-reel project studio in the basement, then a 16-track ADAT setup. I was doing a lot of recording and putting songs together and started bringing in my buddies to do that with me. I’ve also produced, engineered, and mixed a few albums for a couple of bands in town. CBC: What kinds of bands were you involved in? Tim: In Morgantown, I played bass with a country rock band. When we moved to Lancaster, I started playing lead guitar for a local country band. I also played and recorded with The Terry Strong Heart Band. Terry is a Cherokee singer and songwriter. It was a really cool Southern rock electric band, but doing original songs. The good thing about playing with Terry was the fact that we did lot of pow wows and museum special events. We’d play afternoons or early evenings, which was great. I’d played with some local country rock bands, but we’d be out playing at honkytonks until three or four in the morning, then dragging these 60-pound amps and a couple of guitars into the house, trying not to wake up Beth or the kids. The next day I’d be absolutely worthless. CBC: Did you make money? Tim: You don’t make much money as a gigging musician. We’d make about $75 apiece. These days, the places are still paying pretty much the same! Bar owners do not give you a cost of living increase. [laughs] Unless you’re gigging four or five nights a week, you do it for the fun of making music. CBC: Did it bug Beth that you were out at all hours? Tim: No, she was always supportive of it. She was always very encouraging because she knew that got me out of the house and studio and among humanity. Also, she knows how important music is to me. It was a way for me to get that out. I could indulge in that interest. CBC: Wow, you really marry get the right one! [laughs] Tim: I totally did—in every way. CBC: One thing that was fascinating to me was to hear of the Indigenous Comic Con. What is your connection? Tim: I’ve been to three of them. We were getting ready for the fourth, re-branded IndigiPop X fest when the Covid-19 lock-down hit. It’s always been an amazing, relaxed, uplifting event. The convention itself is a celebration of Indigenous creativity throughout all realms of pop culture. Comics, novels, film, TV, comedy, printmaking, music… everything. Last year, they even included a group of professional wrestlers. It’s pretty incredible. I’ve made some amazing friends there. Initially, the promoter, Lee Francis, who is Pueblo, gave me a call. He wanted me out there for what I’d done with Scout. I was one of the few non-Native creators they invited. It turns out that a lot of the Native artists and writers and actors really took to Scout. The character was well-regarded in the Native community. They’ve told me that in the 1980s and ’90s, Scout was the first Native American character in comics that they could really relate to. “Tim

Grimjack TM & © John Ostrander & Timothy Truman.

does his research; he pays attention to Native American tradition, this Scout character is not a sidekick. He doesn’t need a white Anglo to ‘rescue’ him. He’s the central protagonist in every way.” Also, people liked the fact that I gave the series a futuristic setting. The character wasn’t some historical artifact. I don’t regard or depict Natives as a “dead” culture—they live and will always survive. I feel really honored that so many Native creative people were into the character. Some of my Native friends have told me they were surprised to find out that I am non-Native. CBC: That’s really cool. You always drew from the time you don’t even remember, but when did writing come in? Did you always consider yourself a writer? Tim: I started writing in grade school. Because I was a big reader, I decided I wanted to write, too. It started with little journals. In high school, I’d write short stories. When I was in the 10th grade some of my poetry was chosen for a college poetry collection. For me, writing was as big of a compulsion as art or music. CBC: When you eventually pitched Scout to Cat and Dean, did you say, “Hey, I want to write it, too.” Did they know you could write? Tim: They wanted me to write as well as draw whatever I decided to do for them. They were aware that I’d written some “Munden’s Bar” back-up stories and the Time Beavers graphic novel for First, as well as all those stories that were collected in Killer… Tales. They trusted me. I typed out a little pitch with two or three character sketches and we took off. Cat was a great editor. She really trusted me to do the right thing. I’ve always been a lefty and she was probably even farther left than me! Subsequently, she appreciated where I was going with a lot of my stories. We’d get on the phone and chat for an hour or more every week. She didn’t interfere with anything I wanted to do. She’d give me feedback but basically she gave me carte blanche with what I wanted to do. CBC: Explain Scout to the reader. It’s obviously about Santana, a mercenary who is a Native American. What is the epic? What is going on? Tim: It’s set in a dystopian world. When I came up with the concept, we were in the middle of the Cold War. Everybody was worrying about the atomic bomb falling. From what I could see about what was shaping up environmentally and culturally, I thought we don’t need to worry about an atomic bomb wiping us out. In Scout, dystopia has occurred due to natural disasters and America’s depleting its resources, and not able to draw help from other countries because they made a lot of enemies along the way. We become this worn-out, Third World nation. Scout is Emanuel Santana, a former Army Ranger who went AWOL. He has these visions that the Four Monsters of Apache tradition have returned and are contributing to all this trouble on the Earth. He sees these various politicians and businessmen as the Four Monsters. He can see past their physical veil and see them as they really are. He starts assassinating the Monsters. Of course, the government wants to bring him down so they bring in a crew of Army Rangers to take him out. As it happens, these Rangers are folks that had served with Scout. That’s where it takes off. I envisioned the project as a long dystopian science fiction novel. Each of the issues would basically be chapters in a novel. I wanted it treated as a big story with a lot of continuity involved, and I wanted the characters to go through dramatic changes as the story progressed. I was quite young and had a lot left to learn, but my writing improved as the series progressed, I believe. CBC: In the last issue, you wrote in your signature, “1987,” then a number, something like 497 maybe. Was that how many pages you had done? Tim: I took that tip from Moebius, Jean Giraud. When he was doing the Blueberry stories, he would double-number his pages at the bottom. I got the impression that one number was the page of the particular story, the other was COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

the number of the page within the context of the entire Blueberry series. That seemed pretty cool. I wanted to keep track of how many pages I had done for the entire project. No particular reason, other than to do it. CBC: Was that the plan, to do 24 issues of the first series? Did you map it out? Tim: I did, usually in six- or seven-issue chunks, but with a basic idea where I wanted the character to end up in the final issue. I recently found some of my old planning notes. When I plotted out the stories, I’d keep it loose enough so I could change little things along the way as I saw fit. Before I began the series, I’d figured out that the most important thing to do would be to figure out the theme of the series. For me, theme is as important as the plot. A plot to carry the action and basic story along and a theme to carry weight— the broader implications of the tale you’re telling and what you want the reader to think about. CBC: You allowed spin-offs? Tim: Yeah. After I finished the first Scout series, I brought some buddies in so I could take a four-month break. I got

Above: Tim’s Grimjack: Killer Instinct trade cover [2005]. Below: Grimjack commission, 2019, by Tim Truman.

Tim: Pretty much conservative Republican area, with some nice folks, though. There are some real right-wingers, but a lot of old Eisenhower Republicans. CBC: Really? I didn’t think there were any moderate Republicans left. Tim: Yeah, older folks. A lot of Reagan era and Bush era GOPers. I can have discussions with those sort of folks. Heck, my best friend, Keith Parkinson, was on that side of the fence, but we could always discuss our viewpoints reasonably. In fact, we enjoyed it. CBC: Are you comfortable there? Tim: I don’t mind it. To be absolutely honest, though, this place never really felt like home for me. I’m a mountain boy. There’s just something about people who are born and raised in the Appalachian Hills. You just like to be there. It’s just a part of your DNA. It’s in your blood. The mountains keep calling to you and you miss them. My family—on both sides— have been there since the 1700s. Both families came to America in the 1600s. Dad’s came into Virginia near the Maryland border and Mom’s into North Carolina. An interesting thing happened, Jon, when I was trying to track down my ancestors: there’s one part of the Lancaster county where we now live that I’ve always felt very close to. Beth and I would drive through that particular area and I’d get this really comfortable, homey feeling. I’d say, “Hey, this isn’t bad at all. I really like this area. Why didn’t we move here? It’s great.” After digging into some research, I found out that a branch of ancestors on my dad’s side of the family were actually part of the original Mennonite group that settled that same area in 1710–11 as part of the William Penn grant. Their farm was located exactly in this same little section of the county that I’ve always been so attracted to. Strange, huh? I’m a firm believer in ancestral memory. CBC: You started 4Winds and you touched on how you got the group together. What was the plan for it? Was it just to be a studio or did you also have publishing in mind? Tim: It sort of evolved naturally. Even though we have gone our separate ways in intervening years, Chuck and I were pretty tight at the time I was working with Eclipse. Cat and Dean liked the way I approached stories and wanted me to revamp the old Airboy concept for them and act as creative advisor. The idea of putting together some sort of Eisner & Iger-style creative shop had occurred to me and Chuck and I had been talking about the figuring out a way to do it. When Cat and Dean approached me about doing Airboy, we realized that this could be the opportunity to launch the shop idea. 4Winds grew out of that. When we were negotiating to do the Airboy project, I proposed that

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Scout TM & © Timothy Truman.

John Ostrander to write New America and Chuck Dixon to do Swords of Texas. Those were four-issue mini-series. It allowed me to take a few months to refresh my batteries and have some time off with the family. CBC: You already had another mini-series set in mind? Tim: Yeah. I envisioned a multi-generational tale. Scout: War Shaman was set 15 years after the original series. For War Shaman, I wanted Scout to be a father. We had Emily and Ben at that point ,and I was exploring some of my own feelings about fatherhood. During the 15 years between Scout and Scout: War Shaman, the reader finds out that Emanuel Santana had married and had two sons, Victorio and Tahzey. His wife, who was a Diné Navajo, has died. Scout is wandering across the wasteland with two small children, trying to survive and keep them safe. CBC: It’s not to get rid of the Four Monsters; it’s just to survive? Tim: To survive, yes. In its own way, it’s an exploration of fatherhood. CBC: Where does the story go beyond War Shaman? Tim: That’s what I’m currently working on. Big spoiler here, but, at the end of War Shaman (stop here if you don’t want to know), Scout dies. CBC: No! Tim: In the last issue War Shaman, Scout and some allies are ambushed by a militia that’s been tracking them. Scout makes a last stand so that his friends and the boys can get away. As a result, the two boys are split up. Tahzey, the oldest, is taken under the wing of a militant Christian missionary. However the youngest, Victorio, can’t be found. In Scout: Marauder, the graphic novel I’m working on now, we learn that both the boys are alive. However, they’ve been separated for 15 years. Tahzey, was raised by this militant missionary and has lost touch with his roots. Victorio has been a wild boy in the desert, apparently learning lessons from the Gahn hill spirit that mentored their father. The story is about how they are reunited and how they have to get to know each other again. CBC: You have a finite plan with this? Tim: I found my original notes that I wrote in the early ’90s, and so there was a definite plan to do a new series featuring the sons. I’ve had to adjust it little of course. A lot of things have happened to America and the world between the ’90s and now, so there were new situations that could be used to fuel the background of the story. Ben helped me co-plot it. He’s brought in some fantastic ideas, too. CBC: What’s the political scene where you live? Is it Trump country?

Scout TM & © Timothy Truman.

we put together an imprint separate from Eclipse. I told them I wanted to get Chuck to do the writing. We’d both put a concept together and put together a team of artists. I’d do some art, design the look of the book, and act as editor and creative director. It was kind of groundbreaking for its time. We created a nice little buzz there for awhile. At the time there were 15 different distributors for comics. We’d go to distributor shows with Dean Mullaney and be on panels with him when he was explaining Airboy and the 4Winds imprint. We were the only artists/writers there. The retailers loved that. We got tons of attention and stole a lot of buzz from the other publishers! The next year, all the other publishers started doing that, too—bringing in a few of their hotshot writers and artists. It was pretty cool. Then we also started accompanying Dean to the ABA [American Booksellers Association] shows. It’s a huge convention specifically for publishers and booksellers. Suits and ties, you know? I came away from the ABA show with a lot of ideas about doing graphic novels and perhaps even starting our own little publishing group, which we eventually did. CBC: You enlisted the talents of a number of Kubert graduates? Tim: Yes. Stan Woch, Ron Randall, and Tim Harkins, specifically, but also people we’d meet at conventions and wanted to invite on board. Tom Lyle and Flint Henry, plus Gary Kwapisz, who was doing books at Marvel with Chuck and John K. Snyder III, who worked with me on Scout. CBC: How did Sam Glanzman get involved? Tim: I was put in touch with Sam through Beau Smith. Beau had been communicating with Sam and called me one day and said, “You’d love Glanzman. He’s a crusty old curmudgeon, just like you.” So, I called him up and we got along great. CBC: You published Sam’s Attu, right? Tim: Yes. Like I said, after ABA conferences, I got the idea to have our own publishing company, doing only graphic novels. At first we reprinted a lot of things that had been produced in Argentina for the European market. After doing a few of those, we had put together enough money to solicit some all-new, original work. Attu was the first all-original work that we produced. I asked Sam if he had the chance to do something, what would he do? He sent me the pitch for Attu. It was something he’d wanted to do for a long time. Sam kept all the rights and we were able to give him a pro rate for COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

his story and artwork. It was a great experience for both of us and really cemented out friendship. Later, when the chance came for me to do Jonah Hex, I suggested Sam as the inker. DC went for it. CBC: Did you put your money up for all this? Tim: Yes. Totally self-published. We saved up and did it. CBC: How did you do? Tim: Pretty good, but Chuck started losing interest. One big disadvantage we ran into was that since we had incorporated as an LLC, we were taxed on our inventory of books as an asset. That ate into a portion of the income. We were still making plenty enough to keep things afloat, but Chuck bowed out and I bought his shares. Right after that, I produced my Wilderness book. That was a great success and went through four printings—twice as a two-volume set with 4Winds, then it was collected into a single volume by Eclipse, and, some years afterwards, it was reprinted again by a publisher in Canada. I’d saved a lot of money after I had done Hawkworld and used it and what I’d made on the other 4Winds books to finance myself through the first six months of doing my two Wilderness books, which are historical graphic novels that take place during the revolutionary period. They’re the biography of a renegade named Simon Girty. CBC: Who was Simon Girty? Tim: Simon was a really interesting cat, a true-life figure during Ohio Valley Indian Wars. When he was nine years old, he was captured with his family here in Pennsylvania and was adopted into the Iroquois Nation as a Seneca. He spent his formative years among the Seneca and, many years later, as a result of a prisoner exchange, he was released to the garrison of Fort Pitt with his brothers, who had also been captured. In the period leading up to the Revolutionary War, Girty was a valued, trusted, and well-respected scout and interpreter and guide for the traders and the garrisons there at Fort Pitt. But, during the war, he switched sides. He became a liaison and interpreter between the Native tribes and the British, and, as a result, was branded as a race traitor. I was really fascinated with Girty’s story. I’d first heard about him in West Virginia history classes in grade school and high school. He had made several forays into West Virginia. I 65

ElfQuest TM & © Warp Graphics, Inc.

This page: All from left. Top row is Beth, daughter Emily, and Tim Truman grinning for a group selfie in 2015; a First Comics reunion at the 2015 Baltimore Con (from left, Marc Hempel, Mark Wheatley, Mike Grell, Mike Gold, Joe Staton, John Ostrander, and Tim). Second row is young father Truman horsing around with his kids, Benjamin and Emily; Tim and son Benjamin, 2016; Tim sans baseball cap, 2018; Tim during his Kubert School days. Third row is cartoonist Don Simpson and Tim in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1985; and Tim with a faraway stare in 2012. Fourth row is Tim and frequent creative partner, writer John Ostrander, in 1995; Tim sitting with classmates Patty Thomas and Linda Crul during their days at Gauley Bridge High School. Fourth row is Tim sporting his T-shirt referencing the Mothman flying monster of West Virginia folklore that haunted locals in the late 1960s; and Tim with artist/writer/TV producer Jay Odjick, at the 2016 Indigenous Comic Con, where Tim was a guest. #24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Masque of Red Death webcomic © Wendy Pini.

This page: All from left. Top row is Tim Truman's Pennsylvania home studio; and Tim at aforementioned drawing table. Second row is fellow graduate Thomas Yeates and Tim standing before a Prince Valiant Sunday page by Hal Foster during a 2018 visit to their alma mater, The Kubert School; Raymond Foye's undated portrait photograph of Tim; and Tim and his wife, Beth. Third row is another snapshot of the long-married couple; and Joe R. Lansdale and oft collaborator Tim, in a 2013 photo. At left is Tim during a 2016 trip to London, England. At right is a TSR character design by Tim, entitled "Evil Fighter," dated 1982. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Above: After the 24-issue Scout run, Tim Truman green-lit a pair of four-issue mini-series spin-offs, including Swords of Texas [’87–88], written by Chuck Dixon, with art by penciler Ben Dunn and inker Mark McKenna. Below: The final chapter of Emanuel Santana was chronicled in the 16-issue series, Scout: War Shaman [’88–89].

to do an illustrated graphic novel of the book that could be sold at the gift shop, at the outdoor drama, and also be sold in the comic book market. I immediately jumped on board, pitched it to Cat and Dean at Eclipse, and ended up painting the book and adapting the script of the outdoor drama. CBC: Have you done since any true-life history comic book stuff? Tim: No, but I’d love to get back into it if the right project came along. I’m 64 now, but one of my dream projects if I had the years and energy left for it is to do something based on the life of Mother Jones, who was an union activist and labor leader in the early 1900s. Or else something involving with the Mine Wars in West Virginia. CBC: The Molly McGuires? Tim: The Molly McGuires were up here in Pennsylvania, but it was linked to it; the big union movement that swept the country from the late 1800s and culminated in the largest civilian insurrection in U.S. history, which was the Battle of Blair Mountain, in West Virginia. My mom’s stepfather was involved in that. Between 15–30,000 coal miners marched towards Mingo County to avenge the assassination of a labor martyr named Sid Hatfield. If you’ve ever seen the John Sayles movie, Matewan, Sid plays a significant role in that movie as the leader of a big shoot-out against coal company thugs. He was later assassinated in broad daylight on the courthouse steps by detectives who’d been hired by the coal company. CBC: Are you a union man through and through? Tim: Oh, yes. All my family was involved in the union. I’ve heard union stories my whole life and I only see benefits in having a union. It’s instilled in me. My Grandpa Truman used to say, “I’m a union man, a Baptist, and a Democrat—not necessarily in that order.” [laughter]

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Scout, Scout: War Shaman, Swords of Texas TM & © Timothy Truman.

This page: Clockwise from above is panel from Ghost Rider #14 [Oct. 1975], with art by George Tuska and Vince Colletta; cover of same by Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia. Science teacher Richard Pini from the 1978 Journal yearbook of Taunton High School; Hayden Planetarium, where Richard worked upon graduating MIT; and, on occasion, Wendy produced illustrations for Richard’s planetarium slide shows.

rediscovered again him reading Allan W. Eckert’s Frontiersmen book, a Pulitzer-nominated historical account of the Ohio Valley Indian Wars. Girty plays a prominent role in that book. I grew really intrigued and started researching him. To get some ideas about where to go for research, I ended up calling Allan W. Eckert. He became very supportive of the idea and he started providing research material. For instance, there’s this thing called the Draper Manuscripts, which were accounts written by people who were alive in Girty’s time. I also started checking out library books—some of them from the 1850s, trying to learn the story of the Ohio Valley Indian Wars and what actually went on with Simon Girty. He’s been branded as a monster and turncoat traitor. However, I found very little evidence that he was the villain he was made out to be. He became the scapegoat for Manifest Destiny. CBC: You did two volumes. Tim: I did. I’ve been talking to someone about reprinting that stuff. Originally, I sold it through comic shops, but I also discovered this whole untapped market of people involved in muzzle-loading rifles and historical reenactments. I set up a table reenactor events and rendezvous and did ads in Muzzleloader magazine and Wild West magazine. They loved it. I also filled regular orders to gifts shops and museums in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Dad was my West Virginia sales rep! He got really excited about it. That was really a joy for both of us. CBC: When did the Tecumseh! graphic novel come about? Tim: Probably right after I finished Wilderness. I had become friends with Eckert. Among his other accomplishments, he had written the Tecumseh! outdoor drama, which is a long-running play, in Chillicothe, Ohio. He had the idea

Scout, Scout: War Shaman, New America TM & © Timothy Truman.

CBC: How did Hawkworld happen? Did you pitch it to DC? Tim: I’d become friends with Gardner Fox and during one of our communications “Hey, if you have any story ideas, let me know. Maybe we can work together again.” He sent me a letter and said he would like to do a Hawkman story, but make it more science fiction/fantasy oriented and set on the planet of Thanagar, Hawkman’s home-world. I got pretty busy with Airboy after that, but, in time, my schedule opened up, so I decided to write him a letter one night. “Hey, let’s pitch your Hawkman idea to DC.” I folded the letter, put it in an envelope, and thought I’d mail it in the morning. The next day, Gar’s wife called and said he’d passed away. He had died at the same time I was finishing up that letter to him. Mike Gold, who had been my editor at First, was working at DC by then. Not long after Gar had died, he called and said, “Hey, man, if you ever want to work for us, let me know which character you’d want to do.” Gar’s Hawkman idea immediately came to my head. As a tribute to Gar, I worked up a plot and pitched it to Mike. CBC: What was the description? Tim: He didn’t give me many details, other than that he was envisioning this very action-oriented story, with very Edgar Rice Burroughs style science/fantasy aspect. Milehigh buildings and stuff like that. Specifically, he wanted to explore the world of Thanagar more. It sounded very interesting. So, I took those vague suggestions and started fashioning my own story from them. It was very much in tribute to Gar and in his memory. CBC: The readers liked it? Tim: Yes, it was a bestseller! It did gangbusters. CBC: Were you cognizant about what Alan Moore had done in Swamp Thing about Thanagar?

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Tim: No, it wasn’t a consideration. I wasn’t really keeping track of the book. I knew I just wanted to do a story of Hawkman and Hawkwoman before they came to Earth and were living on Thanagar, sort of like an origin story that would keep a lot of the Gardner Fox traditions alive, but viewed through my own cultural and political lens. CBC: What were the politics? Tim: Being a union-minded kind of guy, I always had it instilled in me that corporations built their power on the backs of labor. I wanted to play with that aspect of it—that this world had built itself on the backs of the underclass and created this great empire. I also wanted to explore themes of what it is to be a hero—are they made or were they born? Or are they actually created to suit the needs of others? I had Hawkman as an historian who is obsessed with the ancient stories of Thanagar and the ancient founder-hero, Kalmoran. He was always taught to believe that this Kalmoran, a historical father figure, he was always a great hero. Hawkman finds out quite differently that he’s not the hero he thought he was but rather a brutal conqueror. CBC: Did you get royalties from Hawkworld? Tim: Yes. That’s how I was able to afford to do Wilderness. CBC: Where did the notion of doing a regular Hawkworld series come from? Tim: The mini-series was so successful, that they wanted to follow with an ongoing series. When I leave something, I’m pretty much done with it, so I was not really that interested in doing it. I wanted to move along to my Wilderness project. I said, “Let’s get John Ostrander to write it and I’ll co-plot it.” I would still be involved, but John would get the bulk of the money for it. We handled it that way. I wanted

Above: The military rise of General Rosanna Winters is depicted in the other four-issue mini-series spin-off that ran between Scout series, New America [’87–88], written by John Ostrander and Kim Yale, with art by penciler Gary Kwapisz and inker Aubrey Bradford.

some animation work for DC and everybody loved his work. All his work was really catching on at that point. DC wanted him to do Jonah Hex and he said, “Sure, if you can get Tim Truman to draw it.” That’s how that came about and we’ve been associated ever since. Over the last several years, especially after I started writing Star Wars and Conan for Dark Horse, really started to focus the artwork side of my career towards illustration. I’ve illustrated tons of Joe’s books for Subterranean Press, both painted covers and interiors. It’s been a long association. He’s like a brother to me. CBC: You even did The Lone Ranger and Tonto [four issues, 1994] with Lansdale. Tim: I did. Once you have success with one concept, you get pigeonholed for a while into doing that sort of material. We’d done a successful Western with Jonah Hex and so the next company to come along offered us Lone Ranger and Tonto. I was less into that personally. I loved it when I was a kid, but it was hard for me to draw a clean-cut Lone Ranger character. I was more interested in Tonto. [chuckles] CBC: How did Turok: Dinosaur Hunter come about? Tim: Same thing, basically. Because I had been known for my portrayals of Native American characters, someone at Valiant called me up and said, “Hey, would you like to do Turok?” I’d been really into Turok as a kid and loved Alberto Giolitti’s artwork on the old Dell and Gold Key books. At first, I told them no. I really didn’t want to do a modern Native American character wearing feathers. It just seemed to play to too many bad stereotypes. They had someone else do the first couple of issues. I think I came in with the third issue of it. In the meantime, I had done some thinking about ways to do the series by sort of bringing a traditionalist character into a modern world. I found some ways to do the series in a way that I was comfortable with and pitched the idea to them. They liked it. CBC: How come not so much work from Marvel? Tim: During the Jim Shooter period, I’d heard so many horror stories from friends and fellow professionals about how restrictive some aspects of Marvel were at that time. I had great relationships with DC so I didn’t really worry

it to be set, shall we say in the 1960s, whenever Hawkman first came to Earth, and the publisher insisted that it to be more contemporary. That inadvertently led to tons of continuity problems with the series. If they had kept it in the 1960s as a retro series, they wouldn’t have had the continuity problems. Whatever the case, the stories that John wrote were pretty fantastic. He did a great job on that title. CBC: Did you ever have pitches you made to DC that were not bought, that were rejected? Tim: No. I think everything I pitched them, they accepted. They would be after me to do something. That’s how both Creature Commandos [six issues, 2000] and Guns of the Dragon [four issues, 1998–99] came about. They wanted me to pick old characters to revamp. I’d had a lot of success with that, not just with Hawkworld, but also with Airboy and The Spider for Eclipse, so I guess that for a while I gained a rep as a “revamper.” They’d ask me what characters I wanted to do and I’d throw wacky characters at them. CBC: You’ve had a long association with Joe R. Lansdale. How did that come about? Tim: Steve Bissette first hipped me to Joe. “Tim, I’ve found a writer that writes like you draw.” One thing led to another and Joe and I got in touch with each other. He knew my work and he really dug it. We started talking on the phone and getting along really well. Joe had written

This page: Inspired by Golden Age comics packagers, Tim and writer Chuck Dixon founded 4WindsPublishing Group, producing various Airboy titles for Eclipse [1986–89], and publishing the original Sam Glanzman graphic novel, Attu [’89].

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about it. They had called a few times. They wanted me to do Punisher and even asked me to do artwork for a Gambit series. I did do Ka-Zar for Archie Goodwin when he was an editor there. I loved Archie. Not much work for them beyond that aside from drawing a few pages for Savage Sword of Conan. At one point, one of their editors had really pissed me off. I was already getting a set page-rate from DC and I was at the upper end of their page scale. When Marvel called me, I asked them what the pay was and the editor sort of guffawed, and said they could only pay me their beginning rate, because, after all, I’d “never worked for Marvel.” That left sort of a sour taste in my mouth. CBC: What was the Helix series, Black Lamb. Did you write that also? Tim: Yes, I wrote and drew Black Lamb. I’ve always been sympathetic with monsters. I started with the concept that he was a vampire, but instead of a Dracula-type, he was instead a sort of a Shadow or Batman—The Avenger for the monsters. He protected them from humanity. Also, he would deal with monsters that went rogue and preyed on humans. CBC: Kept them in line? Tim: Yeah. It would bring too much attention to their secret community. The book was a lot of fun to do. I could do what I wanted with him. It was a horror story, but it took place in a future society, with the monster as a hero. Another Truman mash-up! It’s a fun book. CBC: You spent a decade writing Conan? Tim: Yeah, 11 years. That’s the longest I’ve ever been affiliated with one concept or character. CBC: Were you able to inject mature themes into a sword&-sorcery strip? Tim: Not as much as I would have probably liked. However, I did a lot of stuff with Conan that I set out to do. I wanted to keep it very, very true to Howard. In all his Conan stories, he’d always drop hints to other stories from Conan’s past. I put together those little clues that Howard left in his own stories and use them to do the segments in-between the direct adaptations of Howard’s stories. We’d adapt a Howard story and, in order to get Conan to move along through the chronology, I’d draw upon the clues he’d left and put together my new stories. So there was a lot of detective work involved; creating stories based on the little hints Howard had dropped along the way. It worked out well. I was honored to do those stories, and am especially glad that I got to work with Tomas Giorello, the artist who drew most of the stories. He’s incredible. CBC: That’s a long time to work with Robert E. Howard’s prose. What’s your ultimate assessment of Howard as a writer? Tim: He was a huge influence on me. I discovered him when I was still in grade school—probably sixth or seventh grade. I had read Gar’s Kothar Barbarian Swordsman and then, the next time I went to the drugstore I picked up Conan the Conqueror. I was just blown away by it. Conan became my favorite character and Howard became my favorite fiction author for a long time. CBC: In retrospect, do you think the material is adolescent or mature? In a politically-correct world, it’s hard to rectify, in certain ways, aspects of Conan as a character. The character is… problematic. Tim: I suppose so, if you only view the character through a modern lens. However, there are not many authors who can say that they actually singlehandedly created an entire genre of fiction, like Howard did. Howard was a poet, I enjoyed seeing the way he’d put words together. For instance, when we were doing the adaptations, I became very fascinated by the fact that he would describe something and you would see it in your mind. But, once I would try describing certain monsters for artists to draw, I realized how little description that Howard was actually giving. Somehow, he could make one see these things fully blown in your mind, yet many times he wasn’t delivering specific descriptions. His ability to do that mystified me. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

CBC: Kind of magical, huh? Tim: Absolutely. He had a way of suggesting things to you and you’d see them. Battle scenes, otherworldly scenes, magic in a nighted landscape… There’s a certain poetry there that I admire. He delivered things in a single paragraph that would transfer you fully into the scene. CBC: Did you like Conan as a character, as a “person”? Tim: Yes, especially when I was younger. I think that Conan was a far more complex character than some folks realize. [chuckles] I remember, when I was in high school, I was playing softball and I was shortstop. The pitcher pitched and the batter hit the ball and this line drive came right into my chest, so hard that it knocked the breath out of me. This is a weird thing: My first thought was, “What would Conan do?” [laughter] I kind of willed the pain away, picked up the softball and threw it to the first baseman. Batter out! Pretty hilarious. CBC: I thought Conan would’ve killed the pitcher. [chuckles] Tim: Getting back into the game was my very first thought! I was a 16- or 17-year-old pipsqueak. For a brief moment, Conan gave me the will to man up! [laughs]

This page: Inspired by his friendship with legendary comics creator (and Hawkman creator), the late Gardner Fox, Tim produced a three-issue mini-series, Hawkworld [’89], which inspired a same-named ongoing series between ’90–93. 71

This page: Cover art by Tim Truman for his 1996–97 Helix mini-series, The Black Lamb.

Half-Life. It was actually one of the first times that something like that was attempted, where you reboot a classic game. Now it’s done all the time. They were one of the first groups try it. CBC: When did you first collaborate with Ben? Tim: Right after he graduated from college, we worked on some concepts together. We were working on something called Inner Station, which was a science-fiction version of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. We were re-imagining Heart of Darkness and setting it a science fiction setting, a sort of space opera universe. I was trying to develop a really different style for the artwork. We were going full steam ahead, and then Avatar came out and all the press said Conrad’s novel was the inspiration for it. We were pretty excited about it, but the early movie deflated our balloon. We didn’t anyone to think we were copping Avatar. In hindsight, we should have gone on with it, because by the time the film was actually released no one even mentioned any sort of Conrad influence. CBC: That was going to be a comic book or graphic novel? Tim: A graphic novel. We had some people interested in it. Then we collaborated on a couple of Conan stories for Dark Horse. Ben came up with some great stuff—some really key elements and imaginative twists and scenes that I never would have thought of. After that came A Man Named Hawken—a six-issue horror Western I did with IDW. It was later collected into a graphic novel. Both of us are really proud of that. Until this Scout: Marauder project, the artwork I did for Hawken was the first that lived up to the standards I had set for myself when I was in the Kubert School. It came out like I always wanted my work to come out. Ben and I had a fantastic time doing that series. We really worked well together. CBC: You had occasionally done some horror stuff, right? Tim: Occasionally. I’ve done more horror in illustration than I’ve done in comics. The horror genre in general was never something I was attracted to in literature. I couldn’t say that horror was a big influence except for monster movies. I loved Hammer films and all the old B-movie horror. They were pretty prevalent when I was growing up. CBC: Did Bissette teach you a lot about horror? Tim: Well, Bissette teaches you a lot about media just about any time you talk to him. He’s freakin’ amazing. He and Michael H. Price, who worked with me on The Prowler, for Eclipse. They’re both walking, living libraries of film culture. Anytime you talk to Steve, he’s teaches you something about horror. He draws together a lot of connections that most people don’t think of. CBC: How did you and Ben work together on Hawken? Tim: Hawken turned out to be a breeze of a process. Ben moved to Tucson, Arizona and Beth and I went out to visit. As is apparent in my Scout stuff, I’ve always loved Arizona, especially the Sonoran Desert. I feel like I was born there. We decided to take a week-and-a-half long, whirlwind trip around the state, from top to bottom, Tombstone to the Grand Canyon. Along the way, a character started formulating in our minds and Ben and I started making notes. Ben had asked me if anyone had ever survived scalping. I told him, “Oh yes, there are a lot of

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CBC: Was Benjamin crawling around in the studio when he was a little kid? Tim: Of course! Both of the kids did. We had Ben when I was doing Grimjack and we had Emily when I did Scout #7. It was funny, when they went to grade school, most of their friends had dads that would go to the office. They suddenly realized that their daddy got to stay home and was home all the time for them, especially during the summers. They thought that was fantastic. I feel very thankful that I got to see them grow up in a way that a lot of fathers at that time weren’t able to. CBC: Did you sense creativity in both of them? Tim: Both are very creative. Emily works as a proofreader for an advertising firm. She’s very gifted with things related to the English language. Also, she’s a natural painter. She went to art school for two years. She could paint right off the bat. Right now, she does collage work and she’s exhibited in some major galleries in the state and a few in New York City. Before all this coronavirus blew up, she had been offered a solo show featuring her work at a gallery in the state capital, Harrisburg. She does really well and gets good prices for her work. She does CD covers, as well, for independent bands. We’re real proud of her. Ben also has a natural gift for drawing. When he was two or three, I realized that he wasn’t drawing straight-on horizontal views of things that most kids do. Most kids stick with the horizontal until they get things figured out. Ben was doing these wild perspective shots— worm’s-eye views, aerial views, really difficult angles. It blew my mind. However, he started gravitating more towards writing. When he was in grade school, he started reading dictionaries, finding words that he liked and copying them down in notebooks. He was really involved in language. Then, he started developing his own stories and scenarios and creating characters. We have notebooks and notebooks of his stories and drawings. So, as far as drawings go, it’s mostly character creation. He’s been able to put all that to good use, particularly in the gaming industry. He and some friends started Crowbar Collective in college and they started work on a game called Black Mesa. They worked on it for 14 years and it was just released the final version a few months ago, on Steam. On the first two day of its release, it was in the number one spot against Doom or some other big games with a million-dollar promo behind them. It stayed in the top ten for weeks. CBC: Does he have partial ownership? Tim: Oh, yes. They have profit sharing. They had released different Beta versions as they progressed, and he and the other guys have made good money off it. They did it without any sort of capital behind it, no investors, no advertising budget. It’s all word of mouth and being real savvy with social media. It really shows the power of independent creativity. CBC: He was the conceptualist? Tim: Ben was the story lead and did a bunch of programming for it, wrote lots of dialogue and even did some voice acting. He was with the project all the way and very heavily involved with it. CBC: What kind of game is it? Tim: It’s a reboot based on the popular games of the ’80s from when Ben was growing up,

frontier accounts about it.” It was esoteric frontier stuff. I’m like the Steve Bissette of esoteric frontier stuff. [laughter] I described it all to him and before we knew it, this seedy, revenge-crazed mountain man was forming in our minds. Everywhere we went, we saw new material to add to the tale. By the end of the trip, we had our character pretty much mapped out. When Beth and I got back to Lancaster, Ben and I would do phone calls every couple of days and he’d email plot notes to me and I’d give him feedback. It was like working with John Ostrander or Joe R. Lansdale. He had fantastic ideas and I was feeding him ideas of my own. It was a great collaboration. We came out with a neat little story that I’m really proud of. CBC: Give it to us in a nutshell, please. Tim: Hawken is one of those prototypical, historical Western figures like Kit Carson or Wild Bill Hickok—a man who seems to cram 12 lifetimes into one. Hawken has been a bouncer in a bar, a mountain man, he’s been a regulator, an outlaw, a lawman. Now, he’s gotten really old. There’s this curse on him and he’s haunted by the ghosts of everyone he’s killed (which, as it turns out, is a lot of people.) He is in this vendetta against a group of businessmen called the Tucson Ring, based on a real organization that existed in Arizona at the time. What they used to do was foment trouble with the Apache tribes, so they’d be able to call in the U.S. Army Calvary and build forts in the area. These businessmen were the same guys who were contracted to provision the forts with food, livestock, ammo, etc. Thus, the more trouble they stirred up, the more Cavalry was called in, the more supplies were need, the more money was made. It was a real good source of income for them. Hawken used to work for the Ring but started souring on what these guys were doing. They set up an ambush him and left him for dead, and that’s when he started being haunted by the ghosts. He wants to kill the leader of the Tucson ring and he thinks that will free him from being haunted by all these people he has killed throughout his career. We wanted to take a lot of the Western stereotypes and turn them inside out and do crazy things with the genre. CBC: Roughly, what time period is this? Tim: Around the 1880s, when Geronimo was making his last stand as a 63-year-old war leader, running along the cliffs of the Sierra Madre Mountains. CBC: Not to provide a spoiler, but is it open-ended or does it come to a conclusion? Tim: We would love to do more. I can’t blame it all on IDW, but they really didn’t promote it much. Most months it wasn’t on their website. It seemed to fall by the wayside in favor of licensed projects. CBC: Was it well-received? Tim: Oh, yes. People who read it really dig it. They really get it. It really kind of sidesteps the Jonah Hex stuff. It’s a whole different slant on that sordid genre. CBC: Is it more gruesome? Tim: Well, you can’t out-gruesome Lansdale! [chuckles] It’s funny, when I work with John Ostrander, I find myself gruesome-ing things up a bit and when I work with Joe, I find myself pulling back on it. It’s really funny. CBC: Are there any other projects that come to mind we haven’t discussed? Tim: I’m going to get through Scout: Marauder. That’s where I’m focusing my energy. Other than that, I’ve also signed a contract with Cover COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

Press for a big book of my illustrations to showcase my non-comics work, like a 200-page book. A lot of people have never seen my illustrations—between my rock-&-roll stuff, book covers, illustrations I’ve done for children’s books, and the role-playing game art, I’ve been as prolific as an illustrator as I have been as a comic book artist. By and large, the illustration stuff is my best work and probably out-shines my comic work. CBC: Did you work with Denis Kitchen on the Grateful Dead stuff? Tim: Oh, yes. I was the only artist involved in all nine issues of the Kitchen Sink Grateful Dead Comix. I’ve also been in every issue of the Grateful Dead Almanac. I’ve done… how many album covers for them? Probably seven or eight, and various live things, and compilation projects. They specifically asked for me to be the person to kick off the Grateful Dead Singles project. They released all their singles chronologically with new cover art as limited editions via their website. I was honored that they asked for me to be the first guy. They wanted

This page: In 1991, Tim Truman began his association with the band as contributing artist to Grateful Dead Comix, an affiliation that continues to this day, as he has illos in every edition of the Grateful Dead Almanac. Tim also collaborated with late Dead lyricist Robert Hunter (below). Inset left is Tim’s CD cover art for Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions [’99].

CBC: Have you been in contact with Lansdale? Tim: Not in a couple of months, but I’m getting ready to call him. Joe is like my big brother. We’re very fond of each other. We understand each other. Texas culture is a lot like West Virginia culture. We have a lot of the same opinions on things. He and John Ostrander are like family. CBC: You stay in touch with John? Tim: Yeah, especially recently, as we’ve been discussing the Grimjack option. CBC: Have you had other properties optioned? Tim: Yeah, Scout was optioned about two-and-ahalf years ago. The option has lapsed and I’ve had other offers for it. I’m real picky about who handles my properties. It’s got to be a Native American production or have heavy Native American affiliation. Hollywood writers don’t get it. CBC: What’s the plan with Marauder? Are you self-publishing? Tim: Yep. We did a Kickstarter that was really successful. It’s taking a long time. It’s the best artwork I’ve ever done in my life. I’m taking my time with it. There are pages I’ve redone three times to get the right look down for the thing. Hopefully it will be my magnum opus. Pre-orders are available on my website [timothytruman.com]. It will be the first of two books, each a100-page graphic novel (though the first one might be a few more pages). I want to give the backers a few extra as a reward for being so patient. It’s coming out well.

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me to set the template that other artists could use for the rest of the series. CBC: You worked with [Dead songwriter] Robert Hunter? Tim: Yes. That developed while I was doing the Grateful Dead Comix stuff. I had stumbled on an unproduced opus called “Eagle Mall” that Robert had written. There was no music, but it was amazing poetry of this post-apocalyptic, science fictional setting. I just loved it. So, I left a message with Grateful Dead Productions that I would love to talk to Robert to see if he would be interested in me adapting it for the Grateful Dead Comix. Robert called the very next day and said he’d love to do it. He gave full approval and I launched into it. It led to a really wonderful association between Hunter and me. He got very into comics. He fell in love with Neil Gaiman and a couple of other British writers in particular. He even wrote a couple of scripts for short comics stories. I ended up collaborating with him on an all-original graphic novel for DC Comics called Dog Moon. I was really, really fond of Hunter and am so honored that I got the chance to work with him. The day he passed away [Sept. 23, 2019], I was finishing up my last Grateful Dead Almanac comic strip. I just lettered the last caption and my wife called fro the kitchen and said, “Oh, no, honey. Robert Hunter has passed away.” It was a really strange feeling. He was saying goodbye to me as I was finishing up that last strip, I guess.

Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, LLC. Hawken TM & © Timothy & Benjamin Truman. All others TM & © their respective copyright holders.

Previous page: At top is Tim Truman's depiction of Jonah Hex for the 1994 Vertigo trading card set. At bottom at two pages from Tim's forthcoming Scout: Marauder. This page: With regret, we were unable to give adequate space for visuals from any number of important Truman projects over the years, but these will have to suffice. At left is his cover for Conan and the Songs of the Dead #1 [July 2006]. Hawken #1 [Dec. ’11] cover art. Tier below are commission pieces sporting Tim Truman characters. Bottom, from left, Wilderness collection [’99]; adaptation of Allan W. Eckert's Tecumseh! [’92]; Timothy Truman and the Dixie Pistol’s Marauders album cover [’87].

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

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IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB Digs up the best of FROM THE TOMB (the UK’s preeminent horror comics history magazine): Atomic comics lost to the Cold War, censored British horror comics, the early art of RICHARD CORBEN, Good Girls of a bygone age, TOM SUTTON, DON HECK, LOU MORALES, AL EADEH, BRUCE JONES’ ALIEN WORLDS, HP LOVECRAFT in HEAVY METAL, and more!

EXPANDED SECOND EDITION—16 EXTRA PAGES! Looks back at the creators of the Marvel Universe’s own words, in chronological order, from fanzine, magazine, radio, and television interviews, to paint a picture of JACK KIRBY and STAN LEE’s complicated relationship! Includes recollections from STEVE DITKO, ROY THOMAS, WALLACE WOOD, JOHN ROMITA SR., and other Marvel Bullpenners! (176-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $26.95 (Digital Edition) $12.99

HERO-A-GO-GO!

MICHAEL EURY looks at comics’ CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, and TV’s Batman shook a mean cape!

(192-page trade paperback) $29.95 (Digital Edition) $10.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-081-6

ER EISN RD AWAINEE! NOM

JACK KIRBY’S DINGBAT LOVE

The final complete, unpublished Jack Kirby stories in existence, presented here for the first time, in cooperation with DC Comics! Two unused 1970s DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET tales, plus TRUE-LIFE DIVORCE and SOUL LOVE magazines! (176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-091-5

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES:

THE WORLD OF TWOMORROWS

Celebrate our 25th anniversary with this retrospective by publisher JOHN MORROW and Comic Book Creator magazine’s JON B. COOKE! Go behind-the-scenes with MICHAEL EURY, ROY THOMAS, GEORGE KHOURY, and a host of other TwoMorrows contributors! Introduction by MARK EVANIER, Foreword by ALEX ROSS, Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ, and a new cover by TOM McWEENEY! (224-page FULL-COLOR TPB) $37.95 (240-page ULTRA-LIMITED HARDCOVER) $75 (Digital Edition) $15.99

8 Volumes Covering The 1940s-1990s

MAC RABOY

Master of the Comics

OR -COL FULLDCOVER HAR RIES SE nting me f docu ecade o d y! c a e h s histor ic com

MAC RABOY perfected his art style on such 1940s comic book creations as DR. VOODOO, BULLETMAN, SPY SMASHER, GREEN LAMA, and his crowning achievement, CAPTAIN MARVEL JR., before moving on to illustrate the FLASH GORDON Sunday newspaper strip. Author ROGER HILL documents the life and career of the master artist in a full-color hardcover with never-before-seen photos, a wealth of rare and unpublished artwork, and the first definitive biography of a true Master of the Comics! (160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-090-8

TwoMorrows. The Future of Pop History.

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

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

ALTER EGO #167

ALTER EGO #168

ALTER EGO #169

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #25 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #26

Salute to Golden & Silver Age artist SYD SHORES as he’s remembered by daughter NANCY SHORES KARLEBACH, fellow artist ALLEN BELLMAN, DR. MICHAEL J. VASSALLO, and interviewer RICHARD ARNDT. Plus: mid-1940s “Green Turtle” artist/creator CHU HING profiled by ALEX JAY, JOHN BROOME, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and Mr. Monster on MORT WEISINGER Part Two, and more!

Two RICHARD ARNDT interviews revealing the wartime life of Aquaman artist/ co-creator PAUL NORRIS (with a Golden/ Silver Age art gallery)—plus the story of WILLIE ITO, who endured the WWII Japanese-American relocation centers to become a Disney & Warner Bros. animator and comics artist. Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, JOHN BROOME, and more, behind a NORRIS cover!

Spotlight on Groovy GARY FRIEDRICH— co-creator of Marvel’s Ghost Rider! ROY THOMAS on their six-decade friendship, wife JEAN FRIEDRICH and nephew ROBERT HIGGERSOM on his later years, PETER NORMANTON on GF’s horror/ mystery comics, art by PLOOG, TRIMPE, ROMITA, THE SEVERINS, AYERS, et al.! FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and Mr. Monster, and more! MIKE PLOOG cover!

BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH discusses his new graphic novel MONSTERS, its origin as a 1980s Hulk story, and its evolution into his 300-page magnum opus (includes a gallery of outtakes). Plus part two of our SCOTT SHAW! interview about HannaBarbera licensing material and work with ROY THOMAS on Captain Carrot, KEN MEYER, JR. looks at the great fanzines of 40 years ago, HEMBECK, and more!

Career-spanning interview with TERRY DODSON, and Terry’s wife (and go-to inker) RACHEL DODSON! Plus 1970s/’80s portfolio producer SAL QUARTUCCIO talks about his achievements with Phase and Hot Stuf’, R. CRUMB and DENIS KITCHEN discuss the history of underground comix character Pro Junior, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his wife, HEMBECK, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

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(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Summer 2021

BACK ISSUE #123

BACK ISSUE #124

BACK ISSUE #125

BACK ISSUE #126

BACK ISSUE #127

SUPERHERO ROMANCE ISSUE! Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark’s many loves, Star Sapphire history, Bronze Age weddings, DeFALCO/ STERN Johnny Storm/Alicia Pro2Pro interview, Elongated Man and Wife, May-December romances, Supergirl’s Secret Marriage, and… Aunt May and Doc Ock?? Featuring MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB LAYTON, DENNY O’NEIL, and many more! Cover by DAVE GIBBONS.

HORRIFIC HEROES! With Bronze Age histories of Man-Thing, the Demon, and the Creeper, Atlas/Seaboard’s horrifying heroes, and Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch) rides again! Featuring the work of CHRIS CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, ERNIE COLON, MICHAEL GOLDEN, JACK KIRBY, MIKE PLOOG, JAVIER SALTARES, MARK TEXIERA, and more. Man-Thing cover by RUDY NEBRES.

CREATOR-OWNED COMICS! Featuring in-depth histories of MATT WAGNER’s Mage and Grendel. Plus other indie sensations of the Bronze Age, including COLLEEN DORAN’s A Distant Soil, STAN SAKAI’s Usagi Yojimbo, STEVE PURCELL’s Sam & Max, JAMES DEAN SMITH’s Boris the Bear, and LARRY WELZ’s Cherry Poptart! With a fabulous Grendel cover by MATT WAGNER.

“Legacy” issue! Wally West Flash, BRANDON ROUTH Superman interview, Harry Osborn/Green Goblin, Scott Lang/Ant-Man, Infinity Inc., Reign of the Supermen, JOHN ROMITA SR. and JR. “Rough Stuff,” plus CONWAY, FRACTION, JURGENS, MESSNER-LOEBS, MICHELINIE, ORDWAY, SLOTT, ROY THOMAS, MARK WAID, and more. WIERINGO/MARZAN JR. cover!

“Soldiers” issue! Sgt. Rock revivals, General Thunderbolt Ross, Beetle Bailey in comics, DC’s Blitzkrieg, War is Hell’s John Kowalski, Atlas’ savage soldiers, The ’Nam, Nth the Ultimate Ninja, and CONWAY and GARCIA-LOPEZ’s Cinder and Ashe. Featuring CLAREMONT, DAVID, DIXON, GOLDEN, HAMA, KUBERT, LOEB, DON LOMAX, DOUG MURRAY, TUCCI, and more. BRIAN BOLLAND cover!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Jan. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships March 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships May 2021

KIRBY COLLECTOR #79

KIRBY COLLECTOR #81

BRICKJOURNAL #66

RETROFAN #13

RETROFAN #14

See “THE BIG PICTURE” of how Kirby fits into the grand scheme of things! His creations’ lasting legacy, how his work fights illiteracy, a RARE KIRBY INTERVIEW, inconsistencies in his 1960s MARVEL WORK, editorial changes in his comics, big concepts in OMAC, best DOUBLE-PAGE SPREADS, MARK EVANIER’s 2019 Kirby Tribute Panel, PENCIL ART GALLERY, and a new cover based on OMAC #1!

“Kirby: Beta!” Jack’s experimental ideas, characters, and series (Fighting American, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, and others), Kirby interview, inspirations for his many “secret societies” (The Project, Habitat, Wakanda), non-superhero genres he explored, 2019 Heroes Con panel (with MARK EVANIER, MIKE ROYER, JIM AMASH, and RAND HOPPE), a pencil art gallery, UNUSED JIMMY OLSEN #141 COVER, and more!

YUANSHENG HE’s breathtaking LEGO® brick art photography (and how he creates it), the many models of TOM FROST, and the intricate Star Wars builds of Bantha Brick’s STEVEN SMYTH! Plus: “Bricks in the Middle” by KEVIN HINKLE and MATTHEW KAY, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS, and more!

Exclusive interviews with Lost in Space’s MARK GODDARD and MARTA KRISTEN, Dynomutt and Blue Falcon, Hogan’s Heroes’ BOB CRANE, Wham-O’s Frisbee history, Twilight Zone and other TV sci-fi anthologies, Who Created Archie Andrews?, oddities from the San Diego Zoo, & lava lamps, with ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, and SCOTT SHAW!

Behind-the-scenes photos of many of your favorite Sixties TV shows! Plus: an unpublished interview with Green Hornet VAN WILLIAMS, Bigfoot on Saturday morning television, WOLFMAN JACK, The Saint, the lean years of Star Trek fandom, the Wrestlemania video game, TV tie-in toys no kid would want, and more fun, fab features from FARINO, MANGELS, MURRAY, SAAVEDRA, SHAW, and MICHAEL EURY.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Spring 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Feb. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2021

creators at the con THE 2020 (VIRTUAL) EISNER AWARDS Due to the global pandemic, many comic cons were forced to cancel or go online in 2020. The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, traditionally held at San Diego Comic-Con, became a virtual ceremony this year. As an echo of the usual gala event,

This year, Emil Ferris was awarded the Eisner for “Best Single Issue/One-Shot” for Our Favorite Thing Is My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Above: Emil Ferris accepts one of the three Eisner Awards she received in 2018 for My Favorite Thing Is Monsters.

our convention photographer presents photos of some of this year’s Eisner recipients at previous events. (For a full list of 2020 award winners, see: www.comic-con.org/awards/ eisner-awards-current-info)

At this year’s virtual event, Mariko Tamaki received two Eisners, one for “Best Writer” and one for “Best Publication for Teens” (along with Rosemary Valero-O’Connell). Above: Tamaki accepts the Eisner Award for “Best Graphic Album—New,” in 2015.

Stan Sakai received two Eisners in 2020: “Best Lettering” for Usagi Yojimbo and “Best Archival Collection/Project” for Usagi Yojimbo: The Complete Grasscutter. Above: Sakai receives another “Best Lettering” award in 2018 for Usagi Yojimbo and Groo: Slay of the Gods.

This year Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran received Eisners for “Best Adaptation from Another Medium” for Snow, Glass, Apples. Left: Gaiman at the 2013 Eisners, where he was a presenter: Right: Doran at New York Comic Con 2016.

Photography by Kendall Whitehouse 78

This past July, Raina Telgemeier received two Eisner Awards for Guts: “Best Publication for Kids” and “Best Writer/Artist.” Here, Telgemeier approaches the stage to accept the Eisner for “Best Writer/Artist” in 2015:

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

This year, Chip Zdarsky received an Eisner along with Jason Loo for “Best Digital Comic” for Afterlift. Left: Host Phil LaMarr congratulates Zdarsky in 2019 for his Eisner for “Best Single Issue/ One-Shot” for Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #310.

Advertise With Us! RetroFan & BrickJournal Ad Rates: Back cover or inside cover: $1000 ($900 for two or more) Full-page interior: $800 ($700 for two or more) Half-page interior: $500 ($425 for two or more) Quarter-page interior: $300 ($250 for two or more)

Alter Ego • Back Issue • Comic Book Creator • Draw • Jack Kirby Collector: Back cover or inside cover: $800 ($700 for two or more) Full-page interior: $600 ($500 for two or more) Half-page interior: $300 ($250 for two or more) Quarter-page interior: $150 ($125 for two or more) AD SIZES: COVERS & FULL-PAGE: 8.375” wide x 10.875” tall trim size, add 1/8” bleed. (7.625” x 10.125” live area.) HALF-PAGE: 7.625” x 4.875” live area (no bleeds). QUARTER-PAGE: 3.6875” x 4.875” live area (no bleeds).

Call or e-mail for frequency discounts! Send ad copy and payment (US funds) to: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 919-449-0344 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

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George Takei received the Eisner this past summer for “Best RealityBased Work” for They Called Us Enemy. Above: Takei in publisher IDW’s booth in 2019, shortly after the graphic novel was published.

CBC for me, see?

coming attractions: cbc #25 in the spring

BWS: The Return of the Storyteller! CBC #25 features “The Return of the Storyteller,” as we conduct an in-depth discussion with the legendary comic book artist and illustrator BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH about his mammoth new graphic novel, MONSTERS, a tour de force decades in the making! We delve into the epic’s origin as an INCREDIBLE HULK one-shot back in the mid-1980s and its subsequent evolution into perhaps BWS’s greatest magnum opus, a 300+ page saga about fury, family, and forgiveness. Also included is a gallery of rare out-takes from Monsters. This issue also contains part two of our scintillating chat with SCOTT SHAW! about his Oddball Comics obsession, underground and ground-level comics work, Hanna-Barbera licensing material, and—of course!—his collaboration with Roy Thomas, Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew! Also, our Scottish correspondent, Robert Menzies, makes a visit to RICK LEONARDI to discuss his Cloak and Dagger work and much, much more. In addition, Ken Meyer, Jr., looks at the GREAT FANZINES OF THE 1970S. Plus the first segment of our talk with ’70s pro-zine maestro and portfolio mogul, Mr. Hot Stuf’ himself, SAL QUARTUCCIO! And we also check in with with our exceptional crew: Rich Arndt, Kendall Whitehouse, Darrick Patrick, as well as Full-color, 84 pages, $9.95 revel in the latest hilarity of Hembeck’s Dateline installment.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2020 • #24

a picture is worth a thousand words from the archives of Tom Ziuko

In 1983, I had the good fortune to be tapped by writer Robert Loren Fleming to color Thriller, the new series he had created for DC Comics. The artist on the project was Trevor Von Eeden—whom I considered to be one of the most creative and truly innovative artists of his generation—known for his unique layouts, sense of design, and approach to storytelling. I commissioned Trevor to create a Batman drawing for me, encouraging him to let his imagination run wild. I offered him twice his page rate, and provided him with paper twice the size of the usual original art pages being done at the time (22" x 34", rather than the standard 11" x 17"); and told him to go with whatever layout inspired him. To my delight, he trimmed the paper to a square 22" x 22", and turned it on its axis as you see here. My only stipulation was that the picture include Batman, Batgirl, and Catwoman—with none o’ that stinkin’ Robin. Just the Caped Crusader and the women in his life. The results are pretty spectacular, wouldn’t you say?—TZ

#24 • Fall 2020 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

RetroFan: The Pop Culture You Grew Up With! If you love Pop Culture of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, editor MICHAEL EURY’s latest magazine is just for you!

RETROFAN #11

HALLOWEEN ISSUE! Interviews with DARK SHADOWS’ Quentin Collins, DAVID SELBY, and the niece of movie Frankenstein GLENN STRANGE, JULIE ANN REAMS. Plus: KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER, ROD SERLING retrospective, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST, TV’s Adventures of Superman, Superman’s pal JIMMY OLSEN, QUISP and QUAKE cereals, the DRAK PAK AND THE MONSTER SQUAD, scratch model customs, and more fun, fab features! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

RETROFAN #6

RETROFAN #7

RETROFAN #12

Hollywood interviewer CHRIS MANN goes behind the scenes of TV’s sexy sitcom THREE’S COMPANY—and NANCY MORGAN RITTER, first wife of JOHN RITTER, shares stories about the TV funnyman. Plus: RICK GOLDSCHMIDT’s making of RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, RONNIE SCHELL interview, Sheena Queen of the TV Jungle, Dr. Seuss toys, Popeye cartoons, DOCTOR WHO’s 1960s U.S. invasion, and more fun, fab features! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Dec. 2020 Look for #13 in February 2021!

RETROFAN #8

RETROFAN #9

RETROFAN #10

Interviews with MeTV’s crazy creepster SVENGOOLIE and Eddie Munster himself, BUTCH PATRICK! Call on the original Saturday Morning GHOST BUSTERS, with BOB BURNS! Uncover the nutty NAUGAS! Plus: “My Life in the Twilight Zone,” “I Was a Teenage James Bond,” “My Letters to Famous People,” the ARCHIE-DOBIE GILLIS connection, Pinball Hall of Fame, Alien action figures, Rubik’s Cube & more!

With a JACLYN SMITH interview, as we reopen the Charlie’s Angels Casebook, and visit the Guinness World Records’ largest Charlie’s Angels collection. Plus: interview with LARRY STORCH, The Lone Ranger in Hollywood, The Dick Van Dyke Show, a vintage interview with Jonny Quest creator DOUG WILDEY, a visit to the Land of Oz, the ultra-rare Marvel World superhero playset, and more!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with the ’60s grooviest family band THE COWSILLS, and TV’s coolest mom JUNE LOCKHART! Mars Attacks!, MAD Magazine in the ’70s, Flintstones turn 60, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl, Honey West, Max Headroom, Popeye Picnic, the Smiley Face fad, & more! With MICHAEL EURY, ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, and SCOTT SHAW!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with ’70s’ Captain America REB BROWN, and Captain Nice (and Knight Rider’s KITT) WILLIAM DANIELS with wife BONNIE BARTLETT! Plus: Coloring Books, Fall Previews for Saturday morning cartoons, The Cyclops movie, actors behind your favorite TV commercial characters, BENNY HILL, the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, 8-track tapes, and more!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Celebrating fifty years of SHAFT, interviews with FAMILY AFFAIR’s KATHY GARVER and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour’s GERI “FAKE JAN” REISCHL, ED “BIG DADDY” ROTH, rare GODZILLA merchandise, Spaghetti Westerns, Saturday morning cartoon preview specials, fake presidential candidates, Spider-Man/The Spider parallels, Stuckey’s, and more fun, fab features!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

RETROFAN #1

RETROFAN #2

RETROFAN #3

RETROFAN #4

RETROFAN #5

LOU FERRIGNO interview, The Phantom in Hollywood, Filmation’s STAR TREK CARTOON, “How I Met LON CHANEY, JR.”, goofy comic Zody the Mod Rob, Mego’s rare ELASTIC HULK toy, RetroTravel to Mount Airy, NC (the real-life Mayberry), interview with BETTY LYNN (“Thelma Lou” of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW), TOM STEWART’s eclectic House of Collectibles, and MR. MICROPHONE!

Horror-hosts ZACHERLEY, VAMPIRA, SEYMOUR, MARVIN, and an interview with our cover-featured ELVIRA! THE GROOVIE GOOLIES, BEWITCHED, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, and THE MUNSTERS! The long-buried Dinosaur Land amusement park! History of BEN COOPER HALLOWEEN COSTUMES, character lunchboxes, superhero VIEW-MASTERS, SINDY (the British Barbie), and more!

Interview with SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE director RICHARD DONNER, IRWIN ALLEN’s sci-fi universe, Saturday morning’s undersea adventures of Aquaman, horror and sci-fi zines of the Sixties and Seventies, Spider-Man and Hulk toilet paper, RetroTravel to METROPOLIS, IL (home of the Superman Celebration), SEA-MONKEYS®, FUNNY FACE beverages, Superman/Batman memorabilia, & more!

Interviews with SHAZAM! TV show’s JOHN (Captain Marvel) DAVEY and MICHAEL (Billy Batson) Gray, the GREEN HORNET in Hollywood, remembering monster maker RAY HARRYHAUSEN, the way-out Santa Monica Pacific Ocean Amusement Park, a Star Trek Set Tour, SAM J. JONES on the Spirit movie pilot, British sci-fi TV classic THUNDERBIRDS, Casper & Richie Rich museum, the KING TUT fad, and more!

Interviews with MARK HAMILL & Greatest American Hero’s WILLIAM KATT! Blast off with JASON OF STAR COMMAND! Stop by the MUSEUM OF POPULAR CULTURE! Plus: “The First Time I Met Tarzan,” MAJOR MATT MASON, MOON LANDING MANIA, SNUFFY SMITH AT 100 with cartoonist JOHN ROSE, TV Dinners, Celebrity Crushes, and more fun, fab features!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

New from TwoMorrows OLD GODS & NEW: A COMPANION TO

JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD For its 80th issue, the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine presents a double-sized 50th anniversary examination of Kirby’s magnum opus! Spanning the pages of four different comics starting in 1970 (NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE, MISTER MIRACLE, and JIMMY OLSEN), the sprawling “Epic for our times” was cut short mid-stream, leaving fans wondering how Jack would’ve resolved the confrontation between evil DARKSEID of Apokolips, and his son ORION of New Genesis. This companion to that “FOURTH WORLD” series looks back at JACK KIRBY’s own words, as well as those of assistants MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN, inker MIKE ROYER, and publisher CARMINE INFANTINO, to determine how it came about, where it was going, and how Kirby would’ve ended it before it was prematurely cancelled by DC Comics! It also examines Kirby’s use of gods in THOR and other strips prior to the Fourth World, how they influenced his DC epic, and affected later series like THE ETERNALS and CAPTAIN VICTORY. With an overview of hundreds of Kirby’s creations like BIG BARDA, BOOM TUBES and GRANNY GOODNESS, and post-Kirby uses of his concepts, no Fourth World fan will want to miss it! Compiled, researched, and edited by JOHN MORROW, with contributions by JON B. COOKE. SHIPS FEBRUARY 2021! (160-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $26.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-098-4

their respecti

ve owners.

CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS POP CULTURE!

All characte

rs TM & ©

Break out the candy canes! HOLLY JOLLY is a colorful sleigh ride through the history of Christmas, from its religious origins to its emergence as a multimedia phenomenon. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER explores movies (Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life), music (White Christmas, Little St. Nick), TV (How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), books (Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol), decor (1950s silver aluminum trees), comics (super-heroes meet Santa), and more! Featuring interviews with CHARLES M. SCHULZ (A Charlie Brown Christmas), ANDY WILLIAMS (TV’s “Mr. Christmas”) and others, the story behind DARLENE LOVE’s perennial hit song Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), and even more holiday memories! Written and designed by MARK VOGER (author of the TwoMorrows’ books MONSTER MASH and GROOVY), the profusely illustrated HOLLY JOLLY takes readers on a time-trip to Christmases past that you will cherish all year long!

NOW SHIPPING! THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT! (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-097-7

TwoMorrows. The Future of Pop History.

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