Comic Book Creator #25 Preview

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No. 25, Spring 2021

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A TwoMorrows Publication

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Cover art by Barry Windsor-Smith

S p r i n g 2 0 2 1 • T h e B a rry Wi n d s o r-S m i th I s s u e • N u m b e r 2 5

T WOODY THE ARTISTÉ CBC mascot by J.D. KING ©2021 J.D. King.

About Our Cover Art by BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH

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Ye Ed’s Rant: Last year’s ass-whoopin’ comes home and gets personal......................... 2 COMICS CHATTER Up Front: Sal Quartuccio’s Hot Stuf’: The pro-zine publisher and portfolio maven shares about the 1970s’ comics scene and breaking in as an independent ............. 3 Rapping with Rick Leonardi: Robert Menzies talks with the veteran artist about Spider-Man: 2099 and his connection with a Scot named Hamish MacInnes......... 18 Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt on new books about seafarers and warriors......... 25 Sitdown With Shaw!: Part two of our ginormous chat with cartoonist Scott Shaw! about Captain Carrot, his animation and advertising work, and so much more.......... 26

Monsters TM & © Barry Windsor-Smith

Ten Questions: Darrick Patrick chews the fat with Chew artist Rob Guillory............... 36 Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Star Fred shows there’s more Stars in Comics, Horatio...... 37 Once Upon a Long Ago: Our newest columnist,“Booksteve,” on his Secret Origin.... 38 THE MAIN EVENT

Our cover boasts a close-up look at a page from Barry WindsorSmith’s long-awaited graphic novel, Monsters, shot from the original art.

The 370-page book, 35 years in the making, was released by Fantagraphics this past April, earning rave reviews.

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Making Monsters: An Close Look at Barry Windsor-Smith’s New Masterwork CBC’s exclusive, thorough, and intimate examination of the Storyteller’s mammoth new graphic novel includes a rare one-on-one interview with the veteran artist/ writer, a revealing and sensitive review by graphic novel expert Paul Gravett, as well as an exhaustive and extensive essay by Ye Ed on the book’s 35-year journey.

Monsters’ sojourn started as a one-off issue of The Incredible Hulk, in 1984, only to metastasize over the decades into the current 360-page masterpiece.

The book, featuring the finest, most exquisite artwork BWS has ever put to paper, is represented here with superb, high-resolution scans of the original art pages, as well as by examples of outtakes and pages from BWS’s original Hulk story...... 40 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse recalls ye olde New York Comic Con............ 78 Coming Attractions: Longtime fan fave artist Terry Dodson is coming in CBC #26!...... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Alan Kupperberg’s Evil Clown!.................... 80 Right: The life of Janet Bailey briefly intersects with that of young Elias McFarland in a chance meeting the youth will never forget. Artwork from Monsters by (of course) Barry Windsor-Smith.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to space limitations, Ken Meyer, Jr.’s “Great Fanzines of the 1970s” feature has been delayed and will appear in our next issue. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

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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: $46 US, $69 International, $18 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2021 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437.

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up front

Sal’s Sizzlin’ Hot Stuf’

Phase one of CBC ’s two-part interview with pro-zine/print master Sal Quartuccio Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE

All items TM & © the respective copyright holders.

[For many years I promised Sal Quartuccio that I’d interview him. I’d always been very curious about his presence in comics fandom during the 1970s and ’80s, as publisher of the excellent pro-zines, Phase and Hot Stuf’, publications that stretched the boundaries of what comics could be, years before the alternative comics scene matured. I’d also been aware of Sal’s print publishing during the days when it became a full-blown fad in the industry, first with the outstanding “Jungle Man” portfolios

by Neal Adams and ultimately with a batch of well-recalled Marvel sets.

What best I remember is buying a copy of Phase #1 at a Phil Seuling Comic Art Convention in the early 1970s, no doubt blowing a good portion of my allowance for the three-day show! It was money very well spent. I finally conducted the promised chat in September and here’s part one… —Ye Ed.] Comic Book Creator: You’re a Brooklyn boy, Sal? Sal Quartuccio: Yes. I was born in Manhattan, raised in Queens for the first 11 years, and then to Brooklyn.

CBC: What did your dad do?

Sal: He served with Patton in World War II. He was a tank driver. After the war he met my mom. They were both born in Manhattan and actually lived about two blocks away from each other. They got married in 1950 and in 1952 there I was! [laughter] My dad started out pretty young doing silk screening printing for a company and then, after the war, he wanted a city job and went for a policeman job, but had a little bit of shrapnel in his eye from the war, so they couldn’t take him. He then went to become a fireman, but because of the shrapnel, they couldn’t take him. He ended up at the sanitation department where they were happy to have him. He stayed with them until he retired.

CBC: How many siblings?

Sal: A younger brother and sister.

CBC: Was your mom a housewife?

Sal: Yep. Mom was a housewife.

CBC: Middle-class life, pretty much?

Sal: I’d say so. We lived on the second floor of my aunt’s house in Queens and, once all three of us were born, my dad found a house in Brooklyn, a few blocks away from his parents’ home. He took in my mother’s parents—who were still in the Lower East Side—he brought them over. So, my mother’s parents lived in our basement and my father’s parents were six blocks down the road.

CBC: So, a big family?

Sal: Yes. My father had a lot of brothers and sisters, so I had a lot of cousins. Pretty much every Sunday, everybody was at my grandparents’ house. We had a ball. It was a COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2021 • #25

nice childhood, with a nice bunch of cousins. And we’re all still in contact with each other.

CBC: Did you pal around with kids in the neighborhood?

Sal: Once we moved to Brooklyn, I did. I was just sitting on my stoop and would see this really big kid walking up the block, reading comic books. Now, I was always into comic books. So, that’s where I met John Carbonaro. He lived up the block from me. We met playing stickball. He was a real Marvel guy, but I wasn’t—I was an Archie guy as a kid, but got into DC and World’s Finest, which my mom got me a subscription to and that was great. So, I was a DC kid and John let me borrow some of his Fantastic Fours, and I said, “Holy smokes!” From that moment on, I became a big Kirby and FF fan.

CBC: How old were you when you met John?

Sal: I was 12 or 13, and John was a year older than me. He went to a different high school. He was always into comics.

CBC: Were you creative as a kid? Did you draw? Did you write? Were you good in school?

Sal: When I was pretty young, nine or 10, my mother had a typewriter. I used to love the holiday comic books: Halloween specials, Christmas specials, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that DC published every year, and all the seasonal stuff that Gold Key and Dell did, as well as the Little Archie stuff. For some reason, I became an

Above: Sal Quartuccio prompted early ’70s comics fans to take notice with the excellence of his pro-zines, the one-shot Phase One and Hot Stuf’ (which lasted eight issues, ending in 1978). The publisher (seen below) was also the behind-the-scenes production guy behind a couple of New York Comic Art Convention souvenir books.

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a big Halloween fan.

CBC: Never mind you’re destroying perfectly good comics! [chuckles] What possessed you to do that? Where did you get the idea from?

Sal: I don’t know! [laughs] I had all these comics and I loved the Halloween stuff. I guess I would just look at the stories—there were mainly short stories—and I felt that, “That type of story should go with this story and this type of story should go with that story. Little Archie should be in that story because they’re in costume.” If I ever find a copy, Jon, I’ll make a photocopy. I felt that particular stories should be in this comic book collection. So, I just redid them.

CBC: In retrospect, do you think you had a touch of obsessive/compulsiveness?

Sal: Maybe just a little bit! [laughter] I guess I just loved the idea of combining and moving things around.

CBC: Did you see fanzines?

Sal: Oh, sure. I think that was somewhere around 1966 or ’67, when I saw there were classified ads in Marvel and DC for Rocket’s Blast/Comicollector. I think that was the first fanzine I saw. From there, I found out about The Comic Reader, which I think Mark Hanerfeld was editing at the time…

CBC: On the Drawing Board, right.

Sal: Before Paul Levitz took over. Between those two, you found out who’s doing what and what’s going on. Monster Times was just starting. I was into Creepy real early, too.

You start to piece it together and found out there was fandom.

CBC: Was there an epiphany that, “Hey, somebody like me made this by hand, so I can make one just like it”?

Sal: It started to cross our mind when John and I started talking about seeing RBCC and seeing other people doing fanzines. Gary Groth was doing [Fantastic Fanzine]

and Bill G. Wilson was doing [The Collector], Martin Griem [Comic Crusader]… all that stuff I was starting to order by mail. I said, “We can do this, can we or can’t we?” John knew a few fan artists in Brooklyn and so did I. We decided to do a little fanzine called A.C.E. (Amateur Comic Enterprises), and it was a combination of some sketches we received some articles and quick interviews and a couple of comic strips by different people—none I can think of that got into comics. Selwyn Goldstein, a terrific guy in Brooklyn and some people John met in high school. I think around 1969, I was reading The Daily News, and saw that there was going to be a comic book convention in New York. We said, “Comic book convention!?” That really fried our brain.

A whole batch of us went to the city and attended the ’69 Seuling Comic Art Convention and we saw… just everything.

CBC: You read that in The Daily News?

Sal: In The Daily News. There was a little article talking about what was going on in the city that weekend… what was on Broadway, etc.

CBC: So, just a few days before?

Sal: Two days before. My father, God bless him, brought The Daily News home every day, and I read the comic section, probably the only reason I spotted that article.

CBC: What year were you born?

Sal: I was born in 1952.

CBC: So, you were 17?

Sal: I was 17.

CBC: So, would you say that seeing that article changed your life?

Sal: Totally, completely, it’s all Phil Seuling’s fault (as I say to this day—God bless him, too). We took the train in to the Statler Hilton Hotel. I was with Jimmy Ciccolella and Doug Foley… I think Jim Glenn was also there. We all wandered around and I came to the Witzend booth and I guess there was Bill Pearson selling the first maybe three issues of Witzend. That was it. I spent all my money on these three issues. The idea of a publication that size and the gorgeous paper, the gorgeous printing—the crisp, black line—that was it for me! When I saw that, we went back home. We had sketches by Neal Adams, Gray Morrow, Gil Kane, and all that. We half-heartedly finished A.C.E., which was part mimeo, part offset… we didn’t really make a go of it… we sold a few copies. After that was done, we thought we could do a whole lot better. I think I have a copy in a box somewhere. We decided to do more of a real pro-style zine.

It was Billy Graham that said, “Lose that A.C.E. thing.” So, we came up with different titles and decided on Phase. We then decided we would contact all these people we just met: Jeff Jones, Mike Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams, Gray Morrow… and we met Bil Maher from Canada at the ’69 convention, as well.

CBC: Who is Bil Maher?

Sal: He is the same age as us, but terrific art! We saw a couple of pages he had and we hired him at almost $10 per page to do a story called “Hero,” which appeared in Phase. He then went into doing different things besides comics. We wanted him to stick with adventure stuff. He had an idea for a character called Scarecrow—now, this is going way back—and it was just a great design and story idea. He would do sketches of it and we’d offer him money to do it, but though I kept asking him to do Scarecrow, he

#25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Little Lulu TM & © Western Publishing Company, Inc. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Annual TM & © DC Comics. Little Archie and related characters TM & © Archie Comics Publications, Inc..

Above: Sal Quartuccio in a photo from the mid-’70s. Next page: Clockwise from far right is an article on the Comic Art Convention that appeared in The New York Daily News, July 5, 1969, Sal Quartuccio’s first con.

The photo includes founder Phil Seuling, who was an essential component for Sal’s future success; souvenir book cover of that same show along with con badges; cover for Sal and John Carbonaro’s first collaboration, the fanzine A.C.E. (Amateur Comic Enterprises), with #1 cover art by Selwyn Goldstein; and the table of contents for same, which indicated most of the issue contained convention sketches by an impressive array of seasoned comics pros.

Below: Christmas-themed comics from Sal’s childhood, when he would create customized holiday anthologies from various titles. Vignette from the cover of Little Lulu #90 [Dec. 1955]; Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer Annual [1962]; and panel from The Adventures of Little Archie #33 [Winter ’64/’65].

editor. I took these comics apart and made up my own Halloween specials. I loved Halloween—still do! So I would take a Little Lulu story from here, a Donald Duck story from there, throw in a Little Archie from there, and I’d put them together as a comic book. I’d even staple them and type out a little sheet, saying what was in that volume. And I did about 10 or 12 of them and, somewhere in the murky depths, I think I still have them. I got a kick out of combining different characters and different stories. I had a theme. I was

Above: Neal Adams’ awesome cover art for the two volumes of The Art of Neal Adams, published by SQP Productions, Inc., in 1975 and ’77, respectively.

Below: Though promised with this teaser illo on the last page of Hot Stuf’ #1, Neal’s “Kent State Tragedy” documentary tale wouldn’t appear in the next or any other issue..

things were not too successful and I lost money on, but it averaged out.

I stopped publishing about the middle of 2017 at San Diego Con. I said, “I’ve had enough.” I stopped then and there. I could see that over the years—San Diego was the big show for us. A lot of people would stop at the booth with a list of what they were looking for. Then the toy companies started making a stronger and stronger presence. When you have to go to Hasbro to get that exclusive and you have to wait in line, and hours would go by for these people to be waiting online. Funko, much as I love them, I don’t care for the way they do business. You had to get in line to get a ticket to get on another line. So, you’d be tied up for hours, time otherwise be used for shopping down the aisles. Of course, that was the idea to tie up customers. Half a day just to get some particular item. That kept a lot of people out of the halls. You could see it over the past few years—less and less people walking the aisles. A lot of older exhibitors, Steve Schanes, Chuck Rozanski—one by one, they either pulled out or reduced their space. There just wasn’t the money in it. Attendees were just worrying about the exclusive stuff.

All the hotels outside were all starting to have little exhibits, so it really spread the crowd out. It kept people from walking the halls. By the end of that San Diego Con, I said, “I think this will be the last one, and I think I won’t be publishing anymore,” though I had quite a few planned. I just don’t think it’s worth doing. The audience isn’t there or there are so many other choices to spend their money on. Also, at the same time, we only had one distributor, Diamond.

They did the best they could, but once Capital went out of business, there went half the comic shops and we lost more than half our sales.

CBC: Was Doug Murray the one who came out with his Neal Adams Checklist?

Sal: I’m not sure… Greg Theakston did two volumes of The Neal Adams Treasury. I don’t know if Doug Murray… #25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All characters TM & © the respective copyright holders. “The Kent State Tragedy” illustration © Neal Adams.

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Sal: I did not see Frank there. I met Frank, if I remember correctly, at Chaykin’s studio down in the 20s.

CBC: Was Simonson with Howard at the time?

Sal: I think Simonson, Jim Sherman, and Starlin were there. Jim Starlin was working on the Metamorphosis Odyssey portfolio. Chaykin was working on the Cody Starbuck portfolio. Simonson was busy. I forgot what Frank was going to do—he had something in mind, but we never got around to it. Marshall Rogers did the Batman portfolio and DC was very kind to let us do it. I think that was the only DC product we did. There were a lot of people at Continuity. Then there was the Studio. There was Bernie, Mike, Jeff, and Barry.

I had a basic deal for the portfolios—a certain amount for the rate and a certain amount of free copies.

Bernie was fine, Mike was fine, Jeff was fine. When I approached Barry, he said, “Oh, no, no, I have to receive much more money than what they’re getting.” I said, “Well, thanks anyway,” so I never did anything with him CBC: Barry started Gorblimey after that?

Sal: I’m not sure when he started. I think about the same time.

CBC: That was his bread and butter for at least five years.

Sal: I’m sure.

CBC: Did you give up-front money to the guys?

Sal: Yes, we did.

CBC: Were you good with saving money? Maintaining liquidity?

Sal: For the five years I was working. I was still living at home and didn’t have any real expenses, so all the money I made, I spent on publishing. Some things were successful and made their money back and some

The forerunner to COMIC BOOK CREATOR, COMIC BOOK ARTIST is the 20002004 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.

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rapping with rick leonardi

Hamish MacInnes, Spider-Man 2099

Artist Rick Leonardi on Spider-Man 2099 and some Scottish mannie named Hamish

by ROBERT MENZIES

Below: Rick Leonardi poses with Secret Wars #8 [Dec. 1984], in the City Centre Comics shop, located in Glasgow, Scotland, on Sept. 27, 2019.

If you’re a Spider-Man 2099 fan, I know what you’re thinking: the alter ego of that character is named Miguel O’Hara.

So who’s this MacInnes gent named in our headline?

Glad you asked! Hamish MacInnes, OBE, is a Scottish mountaineering legend who climbed the Matterhorn at the age of 16 and was deputy leader of Sir Chris Bonington’s 1975 Mount Everest ascent. MacInnes also invented the “MacInnes Stretcher,” used in mountain rescue the world over, and he introduced the short ice axe and hammer with inclined picks for winter climbing. Got it?

You’re maybe now getting an inkling of how he connects to the Spidey of 2099, but let’s leave it to comic book artist Rick Leonardi to eventually fill us in on that and many other details related to Spider-Man, his black costume, and how, in the early 1990s, Peter David and Leonardi predicted Amazon’s Alexa and the cult of President Donald Trump.

First, a quick history lesson about the future The 2099 line of comics was about future versions of Marvel heroes and villains, with one entirely new character, Ravage, written by no less than Stan “The Man” Lee and illustrated by an under-appreciated Paul Ryan (who passed away in 2016). The initial four titles—Spider-Man 2099, Doom 2099, Punisher 2099 and Ravage 2099—were soon joined by new incarnations of the X-Men, Ghost Rider and Hulk. The Fantastic Four of 2099, with Leonardi helping with the launch, were originally written as the classic team only to be later revealed as copies created by the Watcher.

Spider-Man 2099 was an immediate success—the first issue [Nov. 1992] is the biggest selling book of Peter David’s entire career—and the title remained popular until the ending with #46 [Aug. ’96]. It was high profile enough that Now Comics released their parody Married with Children 2099 [June–Aug. 1993], a mash-up of the Fox TV sit-com, pop sci-fi, and 2099 characters. In the years after the line was cancelled, the characters made only occasional appearances and it was largely ignored (if not quite forgotten) until Spider-Man 2099 was revived in 2014, with Peter David returning as writer.

Information on the origins of Spider-Man 2099 is scant and what little can be found is nearly always from the perspective of writer/co-creator Peter David. He has reported that writers were asked to pitch ideas for the character and he made two core decisions: first, the new Spider-Man would not be a descendant of Peter Parker. Perhaps surprisingly, David was the only writer who proposed this genealogical distance and, for reasons Leonardi explained during our interview, it was that more than any other single idea which led Cavalieri to offer David the gig. David explained his other core principle to Newsarama, in 2009.

Pretty much every place where Stan [Lee] zigged, I zagged. Which is not to say that Stan did it wrong—quite the contrary. But my feeling was, if we’re going to make him a character unique unto himself, then we have to take all the choices that Stan Lee made with the original Spider-Man and do the exact opposite.

So whereas Peter Parker is a high school student, Miguel is a fully-realized adult working in a laboratory.

Whereas Peter was shy and reticent and didn’t know how to talk to girls but talky and outgoing as Spider-Man, Miguel O’Hara was a fully confident wiseacre with a fiancée… and as Spider-Man, relatively mute.

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#25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Secret Wars TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Photo by Chris James.

Photo by CHRIS JAMES

Accurate as this is, there are certainly a few broad similarities, especially in their origin stories. Miguel and Peter are geniuses. Their powers are gained through a scientific accident, albeit with sabotage integral to Miguel’s transformation. Neither Miguel or Peter are especially likable in the origin story and their motivations are entirely selfish: Peter created a costume for a hopefully lucrative showbiz career and Miguel modified a festival outfit to avoid capture by the pursuing bounty hunter called Venture. Unable to stand back and let others be hurt, they become reluctant heroes.

The world of 2099 had discrete references to the Marvel of today. Spider-Man’s costume is made from unstable molecules and Reed Richards tech appears in #12 and 13.

The company Stark-Fujikawa, a call-back to Tony “Iron Man” Stark, is mentioned regularly, and there is a link to

Hulk supporting character Leonard Samson (“Samsonian psychiatry,” referred to in #17) and the Alchemax School for Gifted Youngsters, in #18, is clearly inspired by Professor Xavier’s place of learning. Throughout the series there are references to the Age of Heroes, with the Thorite religion featuring regularly.

Scotland Calling It had been a lengthy gap since artist Rick Leonardi’s first visit to Scotland when, fresh out of college, in the early 1980s, he’d gone hiking in the Highlands with a friend. This included a foggy ascent of the highest peak in Britain, Ben Nevis, and a daredevil traverse along Aonach Eagoch, a narrow ridge between two mountains.

On his return in 2019, following a brief stay in Edinburgh, Leonardi and his spouse traveled to Glasgow for an appearance at MCM Scotland Comic Con, allowing me to interview Rick on the Friday night beforehand. Rick and Cynthia also kindly agreed to an invitation to a meal at local restaurant The Ubiquitous Chip, where we were joined by Frank Quitely, artist on Batman and Robin, and wife Ann Jane; my long-suffering bride, Lesley; comic art collector Mark Brogan and Yvonne; Edinburgh Comic Con owner/manager James Lundy; John McShane, co-author of Robert Burns in Edinburgh [2015]; and Chris O’Brien, owner of City Centre Comics. The meal was great, the company even better.

The next day Rick attended the convention, where he was visited by Alyssa, his talented niece living here while studying at the city’s prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Cynthia, a doctor by profession and somehow twice as smart as that calling would lead one to assume, was with Rick most of Saturday—the wares of the local shopping plazas and the city’s best coffeehouses were the preferred option on Sunday—and was especially curious about the political scene, asking for an explanation for why Britain voted for Brexit and economic hara-kiri. Being a

sane person, I was unable to offer any clarification, although I did point out that Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain a member of the EU. After the con, the Leonardis spent over a week touring the Highlands, stopping off at some of the biscuit-tin staples like the stunning Isle of Skye and the impossibly picturesque Eilean Donan Castle.

Mercifully, the usually mercurial weather was, for the most part, charitable to them.

But this isn’t a travelogue, so let’s return to the weekend in Glasgow: If Rick Leonardi is an example of the citizens of Philadelphia, then I regret having never visited the city. Soft-spoken, thoughtful, and clearly well read, he explains himself with clarity and conciseness. He has a profound understanding of comic books that I had time to barely scratch the surface of. As someone who’s been in education for two decades, it quickly occurred to me that he exhibits all the temperamental characteristics of an excellent teacher. On Sunday, he reinforced that impression throughout his instructive panel with writer J.M. DeMatteis. These are his thoughts on creative blocks and composition:

Above: Detail from penciler Rick Leonardi and inker Al Williamson’s cover art for Spider-Man 2099 #1 [Nov. 1992], featuring the debut of the future Spidey.

Inset left: Ye ed could not resist slipping in a cover [#1, Oct. 1983] from his favorite Leonardi work, Cloak and Dagger. Inks

by Terry Austin. Below: MCM (Movie Comic Media) Scotland Comic Con logo. Bottom: J.M. DeMatteis and Rick Leonardi joint panel at the same con.

Spider-Man 2099, Cloak and Dagger TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

With the important caveat that I have done very little writing, I would say if there’s a moment in the plot that’s not working and you can’t see your way forward, or the plot is in some way resisting you, is not to look at that as a problem, or an obstacle, but as a signal that the plot is telling you to go in another direction. This is the plot’s organic way of participating in its own creation. It’s an opportunity rather than a moment of panic. I have one or two simple rules. If I’ve had to erase a panel four times, then

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2021 • #25

19

sitdown with shaw!

Mr. Exclamation Point!

Part two of Scott Shaw!’s chat covers his professional comics and animation years Interview transcribed by

ROSE RUMMEL-EURY

Above: Cartoonist Scott Shaw! is all smiles for CBC Photographer Supreme Greg Preston in a circa-2014 pic. By the by, back in the early 1990s, it was Scott who first suggested that Greg begin photographing artists in their studios, a project that became the coffee table book, The Artist Within: Portraits of Cartoonists, Comic Book Artists, Animators, and Others. Below: Currently a slideshow he narrates at comic cons, Scott Shaw’s Oddball Comics feature will be compiled into a book from TwoMorrows coming to comic shops in the future!

[When last we left the cartoonist, Scott Shaw! discussed his upbringing, lifelong affiliation with the San Diego Comic-Con, underground comix work, and friendship with the King of comics, Jack Kirby. In this second segment of his career-spanning interview, the San Diego-born artist discusses his breakout with Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew and subsequent long stint in animation and licensing.

Scott was interviewed by phone in mid-2019. Initially, we discuss the roots of his “Oddball Comics” feature. —Ye Ed.] Comic Book Creator: How did you get attracted to the oddball stuff?

Scott Shaw!: As a kid, I was attracted to the monster stuff. And of course, DC and Marvel were definitely playing to the monster fans. Even the Marvel covers, I think Stan wanted them to look as close as possible to posters for American monster movies. It certainly resonated with me, so I bought just any comics I could afford with a monster, a dinosaur, or a gorilla on the cover, which of course, was by order of DC publisher Irwin Donenfeld. Apparently he was stalking me because I was proof to his bosses that it was working.

Also as a kid, I bought all the funny stuff and then started adding in books edited

by Mort Weisinger and Julie Schwartz, and also Marvel books by that time, but I was always buying all the funny stuff that was good—Sugar and

Spike and Uncle Scrooge and all that stuff. So I always had a much wider interest than other fans and collectors would, I suppose.

CBC: Right.

Scott: And, a lot of the stuff I really liked as a kid, as an adult—I’ve been writing and drawing comics for a long time—but I can see exactly why I liked it. Two of my favorite oddball comics that had lots of dinosaurs in it were “The War that Time Forgot” feature in Star Spangled War Stories.

Bob Kanigher understood that boys liked to play with plastic dinosaurs and it always cracked me up because the colorist apparently had been given a bag of those plastic figurines you’d get and they’d always color them the same way: the tyrannosaurus was always red and the plesiosaurus was always purple. [chuckles] The other one was Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle, which was Sam Glanzman’s dinosaur comic book published

by Dell, which he wrote the first 10 issues—and they all read like a pulp magazine written on LSD. [Jon laughs] They are the weirdest comics I’ve ever read in my entire life and, in their own way, they are also brilliant!

I also loved the longest-running oddball titles of all time, Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen and Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane. Even though I was a kid, I understood that Lois Lane wasn’t written by a woman because you could tell how just how much the writers hated the character! [chuckles] Every issue of these comics had a sitcom story with something freaky happening to Lois or Jimmy, and next would be serious with a little bit of Mort Weisinger gravitas to it. I mean, even though those comics are not exactly classics, they are brilliantly put together. In eight pages, I once described them as “a Fabergé egg made of crap,” because they are so cleverly made.

When I was writing my “Oddball Comics” column a few years ago, I realized you can’t leave out a single detail when describing a Jimmy Olsen or Lois Lane story or they fall apart. Everything that’s in there is put there for the payoff, especially if it involves something… DC always liked to use a gimmick called “the plastic with a memory.” Do you remember that?

CBC: No. Scott: Oh, “the gun that turns into a Frisbee.” It seemed like every other story had something in it in the ’50s—at least the ones that I was reading. [chuckles] I kept waiting to get my hands on some of that plastic.

CBC: Irwin Donenfeld told me that, at one time, Lois Lane was a top-selling book for DC. Scott: And, if or no other reason, the work in that book

by Kurt Schaffenberger was amazing. He was never a flashy artist, but if you look at his stuff, he didn’t leave anything out that was necessary. Everything was beautifully delineated. That guy was a real craftsman. On Jimmy Olsen, I’m always blown away at how good Curt Swan was at comedy! Not cartoony comedy, but actually he would have been perfect if he’d worked for Dell doing adaptations of TV sitcoms. He could get that kind of acting in his work. At the time I didn’t realize it, but that was his biggest asset—getting his characters to get the acting right.

CBC: Pretty early on, you were in the “ground-level” comics of Mike Friedrich. How did that come about? #25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Scott Shaw! portrait © Greg Preston. Oddball Comics TM & © Scott Shaw!

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Conducted by JON B. COOKE

All characters TM & © the respective copyright holders.

Scott: Mike might’ve gotten in touch with me to contribute to Quack. I might have known him from Comic-Con early on. I was already doing underground comix, so this was a stab at something a little more mainstream. He wanted to take advantage of the Howard the Duck fad and feature the work of Frank Brunner. When I got in there, he needed people to fill pages.

CBC: You came up with You-All Gibbon, a parody of something I don’t think many folks get these days. [laughter] Scott: A lot of that material is based on pop-culture that is now so obscure. Euell Gibbons was the guy who was the on-screen pitchman for Grape-Nuts cereal. I actually met him while I was working at the San Diego Zoo, when he was walking around handing out wild hickory nuts! I’m not kidding. That was his gimmick. He always mentioned something about wild hickory nuts in those commercials. He was a self-sufficient woodsman and food expert—I’m not exactly sure what his credibility was. I thought, “What’s the opposite of that? Okay, someone who exists on nothing but junk food.” So, that’s how I came up with You-All Gibbon, the junk-food monkey. Not exactly a classic, but what the hell… better than The Turd! [laughter] Duckula was another thing I did for the Star*Reach comics, another low-hanging gag. It got me into a tremendous adventure. I’d only done a few pages, but they turned up at Filmation Studios, and a friend who worked there said, “Hey, we’re working on something based on your character.” I called other friends over there and learned it was for a new Mighty Mouse show, called “Quacula.” I was young and cocky, and I managed to juggle a lawsuit against Filmation and a divorce lawsuit against my first wife. I managed to keep them separate and keep myself relatively sane and, in the process, I found out they were doing model sheets and taking essentially my characters’ features and putting them on Bob Clampett’s Daffy Duck model sheets from the ’40s. I was friends with Clampett and I called him. “Would you be my expert witness if this goes?” He said, “Absolutely,” even though he didn’t own Daffy Duck. “I’d like to sue those S.O.B.s, too!” [Jon chuckles] I got into it and realized, even though I was in the right, it was eating me alive—the anxiety of it all and the depositions.

Ultimately, we settled out of court the day before trial.

CBC: How long were you married?

Scott: Eternity! [chuckles] Fortunately, Judith (my second wife) and I have been married for 34 years and counting.

CBC: You’re keeping your hand in undergrounds… you did Fear and Laughter, that Hunter Thompson...

Scott: Yeah, I put that together and edited it for Kitchen Sink. Got a lot of top-flight cartoonist friends to do it, too. It’s apparently collectible. I can’t find copies for myself. Apparently, Hunter Thompson hated people doing cartoons of him. So, even though I’m a big fan, if I’d ever crossed his path, he probably vow to kill me!

CBC: He would have shot you.

Scott: I tried to get Ralph Steadman to see if he would let me reprint one of his drawings and he sent me a very terse typewritten note on the thinnest onion-skin paper I’ve ever seen that said, “No, I don’t wish to be involved in such projects.” I sent him a copy after it was published and he sent me this florid handwritten… looked like it was in a pool of ink—the whole back page was encrusted with ink—that said, “Congratulations, it’s a piece of sh*t. But if you do another one of these, I suggest you get some decent nibs.”

CBC: [Laughs] He said “nibs?”

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2021 • #25

Scott: Yes. Because It has that wonderful scrawl of his, but it looks like he’s drawing with blood clots! I’ve got it framed! I’ve met Ralph a few times and he doesn’t remember me, of course, but he’s a wonderful guy.

CBC: So, besides your lawsuit, how did animation start coming into play for you professionally?

Scott: Well, after the Jack Kirby poster, I had decided to back off from doing stuff that was too outrageous, so my work wasn’t ridiculously offensive. Mark Evanier, who I’d met at Jack’s house, was writing for Marvel on the Hanna-Barbera [H-B] line, in 1977 or ’78. He was working with an editor named Chase Craig, who worked for at Western Publishing editing a lot of Gold Key titles from their West Coast office. So Mark asked Chase if he’d give me a shot and the first thing I wound up doing, I inked a Yogi Bear cover by Pete Alvarado. That just snowballed from there. Then I inked those Funtastic Treasury Editions that had all those Hanna-Barbara characters. After a while, they had be drawing, writing, and inking stuff. We were

Left: Scott Shaw!’s “ground-level” comics work appeared in Quack, the Star*Reach funny animal title, which featured his “Duckula” and “You-All Gibbon” strips. The latter, seen top right, was a parody of a then-popular (though now largely forgotten) breakfast cereal spokesman, the health food advocate Euell Gibbons, seen here. Below: The cartoonist, obscured by Homer Simpsons’ doughnut, is surrounded by many of the characters he has drawn over the decades, even including his high school mascot, Coltman!

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THE INTERVIEW

PORTRAIT BY

GREG PRESTON Portrait © Greg Preston.

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#25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH

Making An Epic A conversation with Barry Windsor-Smith about his Monsters

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY

JON B. COOKE COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2021 • #25

Since the early days of Comic Book Artist magazine—1998 or so—I’ve been pals with Barry Windsor-Smith, though, by that time, I’d also been a proud fan of his art for a quarter-century. The first work of his I bought with my own money was The Avengers #100 [June 1972], yet I already had some exposure to his Conan the Barbarian my older brothers kept raving on about. But it was a few months later, when I opened the cover of Conan #19 [Oct. ’72], the gorgeous “Hawks from the Sea” splash page turned me into a fanatic and, second only to Jack Kirby, the art of BWS became a transcendent journey for me.

I was consumed with a passion I wanted to share with family so, when Conan #24 [Mar. ’73] appeared, with his exquisite “Song of Red Sonja,” I purchased multiple copies and, during that year’s Comic Art Convention, I had Barry and writer Roy Thomas sign what I later handed out to siblings as Christmas gifts.

From then on, though the man’s work was found less frequently, his artistry advanced exponentially and thus always worth however long the wait. And I followed wherever it was to be discovered, whether in prints published by his Gorblimey Press, in the pages of The Studio art book, and then, after a lapse, at Marvel in the 1980s, where began a 30-year gestation that resulted in Monsters, his new graphic novel.

Barry contributed to some of my own projects— Streetwise and Prime8, as well as participated in CBA’s Flo Steinberg issue—and he became a friend and confidant during some of my difficult years. In the ’10s, I visited his Hudson Valley home on occasion and helped him out on this or that. In September 2019, news came that Monsters was finally complete and I traveled there to scan the pages, during which we talked about his mammoth undertaking. We also discussed related subjects, though BWS edited out a bit of it to keep focused on his massive undertaking.

(Some of what I heard during that chat is featured in our adjoining essay on the backstory of Monsters.)

Special thanks to Margaret Stewart for her help and camaraderie, and (of course) to Linda Fite for helping to celebrate an end and a beginning.—JBC 43

Previous spread: Greg Preston portrait of BWS, circa 2003.

This spread: Above is the original art for pages one and two of Monsters. Below are atmospheric panels from BWS’s latest graphic novel.

CBC: This work is as embellished as I’ve ever seen in your work before. Is that because Monsters is intended to be printed in black-&-white?

Barry: Yes. It began as a color work for regular comics, but, as the page count grew to over 100, I decided that it should be in black-&-white.

CBC: That’s why all the texture? There is an intense amount of detail. Does is feel like mania to do such intricate drawings? There’s Charles Crumb, Basil Wolverton… artists who could do this level of crosshatching… when you’re working on it, do you feel that it’s too much effort?

Barry: I’m not being fussy for the sake of it and, as long as there’s a valid goal in mind, it’s never too much work. I think I know when to stop. (I try to not draw wood grain.)

CBC: I notice the lighting effects you do, when this police officer is talking to the mother through the screen door, you actually meticulously draw the screen #25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Monsters TM & © Barry Windsor-Smith.

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Comic Book Creator: [Looking through the original art] This is an enormous amount of work. The title, Monsters, indicates more than one creature, yet I see only the Hulk-like character in these scenes.

Barry Windsor-Smith: There are other monsters in the book, but they’re not apparent visually. They don’t conform to what one might consider to be comic-book monsters.

Above: The Hulk by BWS, drawn at the time he was planning his Incredible Hulk story. Below: BWS had, for a time, envisioned serializing Monsters as a five-part monthly magazine, circa 2011. Here are the prototype covers. Next page: In the late 1990s, BWS was preparing a graphic novel featuring the first date between Lois Lane and the Man of Steel.

Titled An Evening with Superman, BWS said to Valarie Jones about the “sophisticated” story: “There was to be no flying, no punching, no fighting. It’s a story about two people.”

fingers on paper. (It sounds demeaning.)

CBC: The main monster in this book was originally based on the Hulk.

Barry: One of several monsters, yes.

CBC: It was initially meant to be an issue of The Incredible Hulk, featuring his childhood. What happened to that?

Barry: My original Hulk plot was stolen, plagiarized by some Marvel hack, who turned the story into a watered-down version, ready-made for the Hulk monthly comic. I’m sick to death of talking about it, actually, Jon. If you’re astute, you’ll see some similarities between the Hulk comic and the Thanksgiving episode of Monsters. That, in fact, is the story’s original title: “Thanksgiving.” It was meant to take place mostly around the dinner table in Bruce Banner’s boyhood home, in the 1950s.

CBC: What lead you to the origin of the Hulk? Does the character ring particularly with you?

Barry: No, not the character as much as the originator Jack Kirby. It was his invention, but other than some gamma ray nonsense, the whys and wherefores of the transformation from a man to a brute was pretty much overlooked as it’s simply part and parcel of being a Jack Kirby creation. It was taken to read that a Kirby character punches things. In this, the original Hulk was really no more than one of Kirby’s monsters from his pre-Marvel years. The Hulk was more single-mindedly violent than Captain America, say, because Captain America had a purpose to some extent in fighting the Nazis in WWII, but the Hulk had no idealistic bent in punching and smashing things. His origin was wholly and simply being a creation of Jack Kirby.

CBC: But in your “Thanksgiving” scenario, the Hulk was

driven to rampages because there was a hidden dynamic.

Barry: Yes, that he was an abused child. Terrifically abused, even to the point of witnessing his mother’s murder at the hands of his father. He lived a terrible life as a child and he grew up with an internal disorder that only manifests when he’s mad and turns into a brutal monster. The unbridled, unreasoning violence can be seen for what it is, but if you want to know why he turns green, it’s simply because most of the heroes in the comics are some variation of blue and red and yellow.

CBC: So why did this story remain unfinished, why did somebody else step in and swipe it from you?

Barry: Although [then Marvel editor-in-chief] Jim Shooter loved my story, he had a problem with the use of the expletive “God Damn.” Apparently, in comics, and least as it was back in the 1980s, a character can say “God” and “Damn,” but not “God Damn.” I explained my need to use this language in my written proposal to Marvel.

CBC: You made a formal proposal?

Barry: I felt I had to do that. The story was such a radical departure from the common Hulk continuity that it required a full explanation. That didn’t stop me from drawing some 10 or so pages of it before I gave the proposal to Jim Shooter.

It was those pages that caused the trouble. They’d been photocopied over and over at Marvel and they fell into the hands of the guy who stole the concept. Prior to that, though, the problem of the language I wanted to use caused me to lay off completing the story while it was sorted out whether I could use “God Damn” or not. Eventually, I let it go for months as I was doing something else anyway. But, as I say, in the interim the story got plagiarized and turned into a regular Hulk comic.

CBC: When did you decide to remake your work into what’s become Monsters?

Barry: It was in the early to mid-1990s. When I first learned about the plagiarism and I realized that I’d been tossed under the bus (or whatever that phrase is). At any rate, my “Thanksgiving” story was no longer vital. It took me a few months, but eventually I decided to use and expand the story I already had, but I had to change the Hulk into something else. He remained a hulking figure, but I changed his face a bit. I’ve always thought that, if I started the story free of any association with Marvel or The Incredible Hulk, I would have designed the monster quite differently. He would have been a skeletal, sickly, limping thing… about as opposite as possible from a Kirby monster. Also it should be

The Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Monsters TM & © Barry Windsor-Smith.

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#25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

THE BACKSTORY

Making Monsters Below: In 2003, when BWS suggested CBC editor Jon B. Cooke investigate plagiarism claims involving comics writer Bill Mantlo, the studio provided numerous photocopies of original art pages. This one features the original story title, “Thanksgiving,” and margin notation on a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby credit.

by JON B. COOKE Around 2003, Barry Windsor-Smith, after frustrating experiences with mainstream comics publishers, had to consolidate. Giving up the John Street studio space, the artist/writer combined home and studio, moving to an impressive Kingston residence, where he lives and works today, aided by assistant and friend Margaret. Since that relocation, BWS has notably receded from the comics scene, though he still percolates with ideas and has consistently

worked on his various unfinished projects and continued personal writing. He has decidedly suffered bouts of extended melancholy, no rare state of mind and spirit for an artist of his brilliance. But still, somehow, the London-born creator has found energy to summon all of his powers to complete Monsters (a title he pluralized from The Monster, hinting at malevolent players in his epic saga, characters who might appear less monstrous than the book’s main protagonist at first glance, but festering under the skin nonetheless).

The task to finish the gargantuan graphic novel—a 360-page epic—was a monumental challenge. Even back in 1997, BWS shared, “My style has become all fiddly and my mind’s all over the place with the The Monster book. I’m so aware that it’s now black-&-white and well over half of it was designed for my color to separate and pace the word balloons. Without color, the b-&-w balloons go astray from their reading order, so I’m crosshatching the hell out of the drawings to help redefine the sequencing of the dialogue.

Some of this stuff looks like bleedin’ etchings, now. Christ almighty! But I can also do extremely simple things.”1 Long after it was first conceived as a story for Marvel Comics, Monsters has been exclusively an independent b-&-w project for decades now and, seizing the initiative, BWS, through his inking, has painstakingly added sublime textures and evocative atmospherics as this writer has never before seen in pen-&-ink work. While visiting to scan all the pages, back in September 2019, it was a breathtaking experience for this writer to absorb such an intimate, up-close look at the exquisite original art, so beautiful as to stop a person dead in one’s tracks trying to absorb it all.

In 1998, just before Barry Windsor-Smith: Storyteller ended for good, Comics Buyer’s Guide correspondent Bruce Costa was granted the rare privilege to look through BWS’s then super-secret project, mysteriously referred to his “Big Black-&-White Book.” Costa shared the experience, which describes what is doubtless a common reaction for who today have the opportunity to read their own copy:

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#25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Monsters ˆTM & © Barry Windsor-Smith.

You’re all well aware, I’m sure, how rare it is for comics—words and pictures on a page—to evoke real emotion from you and how precious it is when it does happen.

As I read this work, emotions welled up inside so often that it brought me to a new understanding of what could be achieved on a paneled page. And, more importantly, it does so with regard to perhaps one of the most important issues of our age. Fourteen years in the making, this book will be considered a milestone for our medium. It will be spoken in the same breath with Watchmen and, more appropriately, Maus.

“This was the beginning,” Barry said. “This is the book where I really learned how to write—the first thing I did where I said, ‘I’m going to tell a story in my own way.’ It has great personal and historical importance for me. There’s about 25 pages or so of it that were written and drawn about 14 years ago or more. I’ve added to it over the years.”

There are scenes within the story so powerful that I had to close my eyes. I felt like those early movie-goers who had to walk out front and take a few breaths before returning to their seats when Frankenstein was first released. It was as though I was experiencing a new,

Monsters TM & © Barry Windsor-Smith. The Incredible Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

too-powerful form of storytelling. “I don’t think I could read this in a sitting,” I said to Barry, who was looking on compassionately.

“No, you really can’t. It’s way too heavy. Breaks my heart sometimes, writing this material. If you read it in one sitting—remember, it’ll be, I’m guessing, 220 to 260 pages long—you’ll miss things.

“You’ll need at least five readings to take in everything that’s happening. And that’s just the way I want it to be. This ain’t no throwaway. It’s a killer book.”

Frustratingly, I can’t tell you more. Nor would I— this is one which you’ll want to cover your ears and do the “la la la” thing when people in the know are talking about it. Just get it and experience it.2

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2021 • #25

Recently asked if he had agonized over the years while finishing Monsters, BWS said, “Not anymore. Not since I finished it. I’ve come to terms with it. Whilst I was working on it, I agonized over it quite a lot. It’s something that’s important to me, [and it’s] probably a complete fantasy, but I’d like people who can’t or don’t read comics to read this.

How that will come about, I don’t know… But I’d also be enormously pleased if the comic book world accepted this and it was read by people who read those damn things I saw in Previews and they pick this up and want to read about what happens here and were taken by it.”3 MONSTERS Arguably the finest achievement in BWS’s half-century as comic-book maker, Monsters is an epic saga many years in the making, a span during which the author refined, refigured, and restarted over and over and over again, in an attempt to meet his exacting, meticulous, and even tortuous standards. It would hardly be a surprise to learn if the book’s 360 printed story pages match the many pages, panels, and sequences and entire subplots that were added, discarded, reinserted, omitted again, reconsidered, torn up in frustration, often even entirely redrawn, and sometimes jettisoned for good or ill from the final selection.

The writer/artist, afflicted with what can be best described as a sort of self-induced creative torment, agonized over word-balloon placement and fretted over the tiniest of stylistic shifts as his art evolved over the extended time of the book’s creation.

There were multiple instances BWS stressed over panels he had drawn years, sometimes decades, apart, differences of, say, how he rendered a woman’s hair, a detail that might be undetectable to the keenest eye of his most discerning fan. But the manner in which Janet Bailey’s hair was depicted from one page to another could become an incongruity as wide as a mountain chasm, resulting in a determination to redraw a sequence for stylistic consistency. The storyteller was, of course, fervently intent on telling the story he insisted on presenting to the very best of his ability and according to the man’s own strict criteria.

Any number of BWS aficionados may have first heard inklings of this ambitious graphic novel in a friendly, early 1990s interview he gave during his stretch producing the seminal “Weapon X” story for Marvel Comics Presents, a

Above: Thanksgiving tableau of the ill-fated Bailey holiday dinner table. Eight-year-old Bobby is represented by his grown-up, horrifically transformed “monster” apparition(?). His mother, Janet, is the woman at far left and, behind her, is the surly father, Tom. Inset left: It would be years after the publication of The Incredible Hulk #312 when BWS would discover that the premise of his then-unfinished Hulk graphic novel (titled Thanksgiving) was swiped for this issue’s story, written by Bill Mantlo. Below: Around the same time he was working on Thanksgiving, BWS sketched this rendition of the Hulk.

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ing one of the company’s most famous properties. To his inquisitor during the aforementioned “Weapon X” interview, BWS made mention of that latter narrative, one which had hit a few speed bumps along the way as the creator stood firm when some dialogue was under scrutiny by editorial.

So, to that Amazing Heroes interviewer, he hinted at an innovative storyline he was proud of, one that reconsidered a company star’s fundamental raison d’être.

“Huh?” interjects the questioner, what you’re describing resembles a development that’s now established in the series. Aren’t you aware of it? In fact, the nonplussed artist-writer and veteran comics legend Barry Windsor-Smith, is caught completely unaware and, with eyebrows raised, he has only a one-word answer in reply: “No.”4 PLUNDER The concept was clever, infusing a modern-day issue, yet one old as time—in this case, child abuse—into the origin of a universally recognized Marvel comic book character. By 1984, the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby creation had already gained world renown courtesy of a long-running and popular television series, which had ended only a few years prior (though then still in wide syndication). What if, surmised the inventive notion, long before the transformative explosion, the scientist had suffered beatings by a brutal parent as a boy? What if it was that horrific childhood trauma was the fuel feeding his alter ego’s monstrous rage, a massively muscled green behemoth prone to destructive rampages? What if it was the pain inflicted by a savage, sadistic father’s pummeling that had changed the psyche of hapless Dr. Bruce Banner’s life just as much as that chance bombardment of gamma rays had changed his physical being? What if, because Bruce hurt, Hulk smash?

The first time readers learned of this brilliant and tragic idea, one that immediately resonated, altering the character’s portrayal for years to come—even becoming the central plot point in the 2003 movie—was in The Incredible Hulk #312 [Oct. 1985], with writer Bill Mantlo’s story, “Monster.” A melodramatic reconfiguring of the Hulk’s origin, the tale debuts the man-monster alter ego’s unhinged father, a child-beating maniac who kills his wife—and son’s mother—off-panel. Mantlo, who had earned the nickname, “Fill-In King” at Marvel for scripting countless filler issues to offset any deadline calamity to arise across an array of titles, offered a direct connection between that heinous episode and the familiar and fantastic gamma-ray bomb origin.

Above: Page that was bumped from the final Monsters tale.

Below: Marvel memo sent out to all staff and freelance writers on the subject of plagiarism.

That issue, the penultimate story of scripter Mantlo’s otherwise lackluster run on the title, was called the singular bright spot in the entirety of his ordinary 68-issue run on The Incredible Hulk and four Annuals. In a span overall rife with “sustained mind-numbing mediocrity,”6 “Monster” was looked upon as a masterpiece. In 2014, Back Issue magazine regarded the tale as “the most significant and profound issue of the writer’s five-year run,” adding that it was “easily the densest of all of Mantlo’s work.”7 Perhaps, folks surmised, the writer was saving the saga on a glorious high-note as a fare-thee-well to cap his half-decade stint on the series.

Subsequent writers of the title would cite that specific 26-page “Monster” tale as massively significant in their own renditions of the Marvel anti-hero. Long-running Hulk scripter Greg Pak (whose “gladiator Hulk” was used to delightful effect in the Thor: Ragnarok film) called Mantlo’s story, “a huge influence,” even going so far as to dedicate a portion of his 100 or so Hulk stories to the writer.8 Well-regarded comics writer Peter David, who devoted a dozen years of his life cultivating a seminal and #25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Monsters TM & © Barry Windsor-Smith.

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multi-part effort that refigured the origins of Marvel Comics’ hugely popular character, Wolverine of the X-Men. While not necessarily a prolific contributor to the House of Ideas throughout the 1980s and into the ’90s, Windsor-Smith had enthusiastically produced an effective, steady, and particularly elegant body of work for the publisher, including the exquisite “Lifedeath” issues in The X-Men, a finely embellished Machine Man mini-series, and an unforgettably charming Thing story in Marvel Fanfare, as well as a good variety of handsome covers.

During this period, he also toiled on ambitious stories that ultimately went unpublished, including a witty mini-series about Benjamin Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing, as well as, importantly, another significant project involv-

The awesome forces of gamma radiation were released that day! But so was the long pent-up rage locked inside a lovelorn child… doomed from childhood to become that which his father had always feared he would become! More than a man! A monster!5

The X-Men, Wolverine TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Artwork © Barry Windsor-Smith. Proposal © BWS.

article.) As mentioned, with best mate Steve Parkhouse, Smith was determined to work at Marvel Comics—to create stories about resonate characters he felt were of prime importance—enough as to fly across the ocean and show up unannounced on the New York publisher’s threshold. The rest, as they say, is history, and, all the while and up to this very day, he never shed admiration for Kirby and retained a preference for the 1960s’ renditions of Marvel characters.

In 1984, while working on Machine Man, BWS was giving those Stan Lee and Jack Kirby creations renewed consideration and, starting to pay increased attention to contemporary Marvel comics, he became increasingly disturbed by what he was looking at. “In the mid-’80s, a new crop of Marvel pencilers turned the pleasant simplicity of Lee and Kirby’s heroic action principle into an ugly violence principle,” he shared in 2003. “I wrote an extremely lengthy—unfinished to this date—thesis about American super-hero comics’ descent into vulgarism due to the new pencilers seemingly complete lack of perspective and/or historical knowledge of the American super-hero comic book.”44 He continued, “This may sound tedious, trite, and decidedly old news, but, in 1984, I felt like I was the only observer half-awake enough to see what was happening.” So the creator fostered a “desire to bring a hitherto unconsidered significance to Lee and Kirby’s characters. That, in itself, was prompted by the graceless interpretations of those characters at the hands of the newer artists and writers—probably editors, too.”

Affirming perhaps what made the source material so great to begin with, Marvel Fanfare #15 [July 1974] contained BWS’s delightful throwback look at the classic feud between The Thing and Human Torch of the Fantastic Four. That rivalry was a fundamental component of the group dynamics as set up back in the 1960s by Lee and Kirby and BWS was out to prove it still had vitality and story potential. Titled “That Night…,” the 19-page tale centered on April Fool’s Day pranks between Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm, and it was an enchanting, loving, and spot-on homage to Kirby’s giant

Proposal by BWS to Marvel

THE HULK: A VERY SPECIAL STORY

Barry Windsor-Smith

July 4, 1984 BASIC CONTENT OF STORY: Plot centers around Bruce Banner’s childhood. The Hulk relives a particularly harrowing day in his past.

This is the story of Banner’s working-class, middle American childhood. In a mannered fantasy—Twilight Zone—tradition, The Hulk, when entering an abandoned house in refuge from a pressing military attack, relives the last days in his childhood home.

Thanksgiving Day 1950 was the day when his father, Tom Banner, a recent and embittered W.W. II veteran, turned on his family for the final irrevocable time.

Employing a battered and disconsolate childhood as the springboard for the modernday Bruce Banner’s anti-social and violent attitudes, the story explores the damage caused by mis-matched parenthood and effects of the Second World War on the heart and mind of the veteran Tom Banner.

Bruce Banner, an 11-year-old in 1950, is represented as the full grown, seven foot Hulk throughout this fantasy. The story is called Thanksgiving and details the tensions the Banner household suffers when it becomes apparent that the family dinner, planned with eight relatives in mind, falls apart as one by one, brothers, sisters and in-laws cancel the visit with feeble excuses.

The truth is that Tom Banner has alienated his family with his explosive, argumentative temper.

During the solemn dinner with only Tom, wife Janet and son Bobby (Bruce) present at the lavish setting, Tom gets inebriated. Janet’s brother, Phil, and his French wife, Nicolette, turn up suddenly (they never cancelled; Tom forgot about them although Janet didn’t) and they, unfortunately, become the targets for Tom’s drunken, paranoid hostility.

Phil was a correspondent in the war: Did no fighting; Tom hates him for that (and also hates him simply because he’s Janet’s brother) and Nicolette is French (Phil married her in France and brought her back to the U.S.) and that’s all she has to be, for in the eyes of Tom Banner, she’s a slut who must have fraternized with the Germans.

The domestic madness reaches an awful climax when Tom goes for his service revolver. Shots are fired and the police come.

The final argument and shooting take place off-camera as we are watching The Hulk, confined to his room (as was the child he is representing) wailing in agony of the lived and relived experience now as the past dissolves into the present and the sound of gunfire becomes real and the army close in on the abandoned house The Hulk is occupying.

Throughout the entire story, The Hulk is a meek background figure (despite his seven-foot green bulk) who cowers in corners and sits, pathetic and awkward, at the dinner table. He is a mark for both parents and, as tensions mount, he is either glowered at, railed at, and in several instances, struck by his aggravated parents.

It is of considerable importance to point out that this somewhat extraordinary story requires the use of what the comic book publishing world might consider profanity.

The terms I need to use in the script (all spouting from the paranoiac and drunken Tom Banner) are actually mild when paralleled to other—perhaps more sophisticated—media such as film, print and (at this date) television.

To cut to the quick: I need to employ the following terms: Damn, Goddam, Bitch, Hell (as in “Like Hell you will”), Slut These are comparatively mild terms, in my opinion. I’ve edited it down from stronger, more believable coinage.

The upshot is that for this story to have IMPACT, it must be published in the standard format (The Incredible Hulk) and without any special fanfare (I brought what could have been a 30-odd page story down to 22 for this very reason). Approval—within Marvel and to the satisfaction of the Comics Code Authority—is paramount and I’m prepared to offer any raison d’etre if it isn’t apparent.

This story is about parent abuse and childhood trauma, which is an important issue. I believe that by sliding the topic into a regular comic book involving an established Marvel Comics character, a greater, more significant understanding of the idea can be achieved. This as opposed to (I feel inclined to suggest) the Spider-Man/Drugs issues of a decade ago that, due to their pre-publicity and etc., were ultimately regarded as hype for a medium that needed attention and was asking for recognition as a relevant form of art.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Spring 2021 • #25

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IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!

Above: One of BWS’s ultimate goals has been to see produced a companion volume to Monsters that includes a making-of commentary and the immense amount of outtakes and pages before being revised, including this panel which was redrawn to view from another angle.

Below: Buddy Scalera, former writer for Wizard and Comics Buyer’s Guide (who currently is “headmaster” of comicbookschool.com), shared this photo of BWS at work in his studio, taken sometime around 1993.

#25 • Spring 2021 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Monster TM & © Barry Windsor-Smith. BWS photo © Buddy Scalera. Used with permission.

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Spider-Man #96 [May ’71], which calculatingly defied the in 2003: “I also warned Marvel that certain adult language Comics Code Authority by including scenes of drug use, had to be used, though mild by today’s standards. But that which led to a liberalization of CCA regulations, BWS said, was the problem. Although I was allowed to employ ‘god’ COMIC BOOK CREATOR #25 to be published as a fill-in during the wanted thisgraphic story and ‘damn,’ Shooter would not accept the useBARRY of the term WINDSOR-SMITH“Idiscusses his new novel ofHulk Thestory, Incredible Hulk 65¢ comic. I felt that such a ‘god-damn,’ but there was no way I was goingMONSTERS, to writeits origin as arun 1980s and its evolution into his 300-page magnum opus (includes a gallery of outtakes). venue would give the story its maximum impact; a theme ‘gosh darn!’ for a drunken psychopath about to murder Plus part two of our SCOTT SHAW! interview about Hanand story whatsoever could have expected. his wife.”62 na-Barbera licensing material andawork withthat ROY nobody THOMAS on Captain Carrot, JR. looks the great started fanzines of getting fiddly with me, I figured Once theateditors BWS stood firm. “I wouldn’t concede to Marvel’s out-KEN MEYER, 40 years ago, HEMBECK, and more! dated policies,” he said. “They wouldn’t rise to the occasion they wanted to turn the piece into some inane sh*t like (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 that Spider-Man drug story where Gil Kane drew some kid by accepting the necessities of natural dialogue in and on (Digital Edition) $4.99 walking a building ledge with psycho-bubbles floating about such important issues as spousal abuse, child abuse, and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=133&products_id=1561 his head, going ‘Oooh, th’ colors, man,’ or whatever the hell the U.S. military’s indifference to the mental and emotional it was. (I’m not an abused child myself, but I did have specifhealth of their veterans of foreign wars. Since 1984, these ically personal reasons for wanting to attach this syndrome issues have come to blinding light, of course.”63 to Jack Kirby’s Hulk.)”64 Still, while both sides stood their ground on the language issue, negotiations appeared to still be in flux and, as With perhaps naive confidence that his as-yet unfinis his wont on the projects he writes, BWS went back to his ished Thing and Hulk projects would someday see print Woodstock studio and began expanding on his innovative under the Marvel imprint, BWS worked on his own projects story, firmly convinced the child-abuse aspect made for as well as teamed with writer Chris Claremont for three a potentially groundbreaking tale. Referring to Amazing (roughly) annual X-Men fill-in issues, the first pair devoted to Storm, as well as, now and again, drawing a spate of covers for Marvel. He shared about working on a top-selling Marvel title: “[I] t was purely circumstance that I happened to start doing The X-Men. I’m glad of it; the royalties are fantastic, but I work like mad on those things. I don’t just turn them out. I drew and redrew ‘Lifedeath.’”65 As the decade wore on, BWS produced art for one issue each of Fantastic Four and Daredevil, two issues of Iron Man, and nine spectacular color covers for Conan Saga, a black-&-white magazine reprinting his entire ’70s run of the barbarian character. With The X-Men #205 [May 1986], BWS began flexing his muscles,