Comic Book Creator #27

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Shang-Chi TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Scout: Marauder TM & ©2020 Timothy Truman.

™

$10.95 in the USA

A TwoMorrows Publication No. 27, Winter 2022

W i n t e r 2 0 2 2 • T h e Pa u l G u l a cy I s s u e • N u m b e r 2 7

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Ye Ed’s Rant: Your host’s EC Comics affliction reaches epidemic proportions!............... 2 007 WOODY CBC mascot by J.D. KING

COMICS CHATTER

About Our Cover

Belgian Dispatch: A Chat with Herr Seele: Michael Aushenker talks with Peter van Heirseele about his wacky, sublime European strip, Cowboy Henk......... 17

Art by PAUL GULACY Colors by TOM ZIUKO

Ten Questions: Italian comic book artist Roberta Ingranata chills with Darrick Patrick...24

©2022 J.D. King.

Up Front: The Roots of Bud Plant: Part one of CBC’s interview with legendary comics retailer, publisher, mail-order maven, and Grass Valley super-fan!............... 3

Incoming: Our single letter o’ comment, plus Ye Ed experiences the Kafaybe Effect...... 25 Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt talks with Full Mag publisher/editor August Uhl... 26

Shang-Chi TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Remembering Joe Sinnott: The first installment of CBC ’s star-studded tribute to the late, great, and beloved Marvel Comics inker, compiled by Greg Biga................. 28 The Gift of Blab!: Monte Beauchamp shares about the history of his great mag........ 38 Once Upon a Long Ago: Booksteve on Batman and an alien named… Galexo?........ 42 Hembeck’s Dateline: Metamorpho and pals get the treatment from Our Man Fred... 43 The Mad Peck’s Pix: The famed cartoonist on Mr. Coffee Nerves and Mr. Crime!..... 44 THE MAIN EVENT No doubt due in part to the stellar work of writer Doug Moench and our featured artist, Paul Gulacy, Shang-Chi, better known to comics fans as the “Master of Kung Fu,” is now headliner in his own Marvel Cinematic Universe motion picture! In celebration, we chose to use Paul’s outstanding cover art for Master of Kung Fu #64 [May 1978] recolored by CBC’s Colorist Supreme, Tom Ziuko!

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

Enter the Artist—Paul Gulacy and the Cinema of Comics: CBC talks with a stellar line-up of the friends and peers of the great Ohio-born artist best known for his depiction of Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu! From Paul’s Youngstown roots to walk on the red carpet for the Hollywood premiere of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Greg Biga compiles a deep dive into the artist’s life and work through the recollections and observations of the man himself and his numerous collaborators, including “Devil-May-Care” Doug Moench!........ 46 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse proves smaller is better............................... 78 Coming Attractions: Polymath/storyteller Stephen R. Bissette is coming next ish!...... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Butch Guice’s Sorcerer Supreme!............... 80 Right: Paul Gulacy recreated and hand-colored his iconic cover art for Master of Kung Fu #51 [April 1977], clearly showing the artist’s affection for the character and its inspiration, Bruce Lee. EDITOR’S CLARIFICATION: Friend and fellow TwoMorrows editor ROY THOMAS informs CBC that Ken Meyer, Jr.’s fanzine article last ish erroneously described R.T. as joining Alter Ego after the first issue, when, in fact, the current A/E editor was there with Jerry Bails from the get-go! After all— and Ye Ed shoulda known better than to have not corrected that—the Rascally One actually drew that inaugural issue’s cover and is explicitly credited as #1’s co-editor! Sorry about that, buddy!

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: $49 US, $72 International, $19 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2022 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437.

Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

Dedicated to the memories of all the lives lost to the COVID-19 PANDEMIC ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

PAUL GULACY Cover Artist

TOM ZIUKO Cover Colorist

RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO STEVEN THOMPSON Contributing Editors

STEVE THOMPSON Transcriber

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 MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK DARRICK PATRICK STEVEN THOMPSON TOM ZIUKO 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 2

My late-in-coming epiphany regarding the great comics outfit tered prose, I generally stayed away Honestly, I cannot fathom how I from EC’s horror, science fiction, and missed ’em. Except for a spell in the crime titles. Don’t get me wrong: I late ’00s, I’ve been a regular patron recognized the historical importance of comic book shops and, if not of Bill Gaines’ company if just for the necessarily a consumer of certain singular output of one H. Kurtzman. items, I’m generally aware of what’s Anyway, just as I did when I happening in the field. pestered Jerry Bails or Roy Thomas, Unlike too many of my fellow attempting to comprehend just what oldster whiners, I try not to bitch and was it about All Star Comics that moan that the comic shop’s new ofmotivated them so from the start, ferings ain’t like the days of old—say, you’ll see in this issue’s Bud Plant in the mid-’80s—when a solid amount interview that I root around and try of fresh alternative and neo-underto understand the phenomenon of EC ground stuff shared space with the Fan-Addict-dom. One likes what one mainstream on the “new this week” likes, I reckon, though I still scratch shelf. But those were exciting times, my ultra-thick noggin at times…

I confess, and you’ll forgive me for But often it just takes time for me feeling a tad nostalgic for the glorious to get it. So, 50 years after my brain sense of discovery evoked. first exploded leafing through The Maybe that’s what so many of Brothers MAD paperback on College us do: like a drug addict seeking to Hill, in Providence, my synapses recapture his glorious first high, we snapped a few weeks ago when, in a fans try to relive the experience when blinding flash, I fully recognized that certain comics or artists or writers the entire EC line truly was revofirst captivated us. Certainly, I’m a lutionary and its five or so years of seeker in that way and I go to the existence as comics publisher shop every week to hopefully find —1950–55—was a seismic event. something new to fry my brain, but Had I known that good ol’ Russ that’s a rare occurrence, to be frank.

Cochran, the late, great publisher But something recently happened who kept EC alive, actually, in the to me that I have to rave on about, Paul Gulacy by Ronn Sutton ’90s, reprinted issue by issue, every as I remain in the ecstatic throes of single New Trend and New Direction comic book, in afan amazing new revelation. The actual place and date fordable editions with crisp reproduction and blessedly I bought Shock SuspenStories Annual #4 is a hazy printed on common, glorious comic-book paper, I would memory, though it had to have been at my buddy Rob Yeremian’s Time Capsule store, where I must of bought have become nutty for the entire line way earlier. And, it cheap (bless you, Rob), and it sat ignored in my stack even better, Cochran collected chunks of each run and published annuals, a brilliant notion on his part! for a while. A week or two later, I was hanging with So, yeah, I’m now an unabashed, unapologetic superb cartoonist Rick Altergott at Rob’s shop and I noted he purchased an EC Comics reprint. And that got EC junkie, currently, after raiding Cochran’s webstore me interested to go home and dig out all my East Coast (which still has a solid number available) and an eBay buying frenzy (and help from Peck!), in possession of Comix/EC Classics/Gladstone/Gemstone reprints. most of the 63 annuals compiling the approximate 320 I’ve always been a rabid lunatic for Harvey Kurtzman’s work. My bookshelf has two different hardbound issues, and I’ve begun a chronological reading of the collections of his MAD comics, and I even own some of groundbreaking comic books. What heavenly bliss!

On the homefront, we’ve been catching up on the the originals. I had less of his war comics stuff and, I’ll deliciously wicked Tales from the Crypt HBO series on be honest, those Cochran slipcase reprint collections YouTube, and previously discussed health concerns of Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales were always have thus far abated. Yours truly has been chugging way too expensive for me (though, c’mon, get real: the along planning CBCs devoted to Richard Corben, Steve MAD edition had to be had at any price!).

Bissette, Don McGregor, Denys Cowan, and Michael And, truth be told, while I’ve read a smattering of Cho. The respective Charlton Comics and Heavy Metal/ the Feldstein-edited ECs, I think my attention deficit Metal Hurlant/adult illustrated mags of the ’70s/’80s condition (which slowed my reading considerably) caused me to be put off by the caption-dense Leroy-let- histories are progressing nicely. Keep ye eyes peeled!

cbc contributors Monte Beauchamp Greg Biga Jim Buser John Carbonaro

Michael Eury Steven Fears Clay Geerdes Paul Gulacy

D. & S. Kitchen Dave Lemieux David Miller Joe Orsak

James Payette The Mad Peck Bud Plant Greg Preston

— Ye Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com Patrick Rosenkranz Ray Sablack Cory Sedlmeier Mark Sinnott

Dick Swan August Uhl Charles Yoakum Olivia Zhao

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Paul Gulacy portrait © 2020 Ronn Sutton.

CBC Convention Photographer

My Deep EC Affliction

up front

The Roots of Bud Plant In the first of his two-part interview, the retail and mail-order pioneer on his start Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE [Francis Benjamin Plant might as well be considered a true artist by those of us appreciative of his achievements. Yes, through the ups and downs of this volatile business, Bud has survived—and sometimes thrived—and, over numerous decades, he can boast of running a legendary mail order business, one that offers the latest and finest items in the fields of comics, illustration, and, well, cool stuff. He’s also one of the nicest guys in all of comicdom and, when I fly into San Diego and he trucks down from Grass Valley, I’ve made sure to spend time for a chat. I miss his giant booth at Comic-Con International, but yakking with the guy poolside at the Marriott is still a highlight. What I think gives him an artistic flair is Bud’s outstanding taste, exemplified by his not-easily-earned recommendations, which are invariably spot-on and reliable. I’ve heard that to be given the appellation, “Our Highest Recommendation,” is akin to winning an Eisner Award… it is an absolute honor. Anyway, Bud’s history in the biz is fascinating, so let’s start digging to learn about the sprouting of Bud Plant! —Ye Ed.] Comic Book Creator: Where are you from originally, Bud? Bud Plant: San Jose, California.

CBC: And your birthday? When were you born?

Bud: May 4, 1952.

CBC: Did you have siblings?

Bud: Yeah, and I still have ’em. I have two older sisters.

One is four years older than me and the other is six years older. So, we’re all baby boomers.

CBC: Where is San Jose in relation to Grass Valley?

Bud: It’s about three hours out west, at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay area whereas Grass Valley is on the way over the Sierras if you were driving from, say, middle California, Sacramento, and driving over to Lake Tahoe or Reno. We’re on the western slope of the Sierras.

CBC: As an aside, how did you end up in Grass Valley?

Bud: Well, actually that’s kind of an interesting aside: I stayed in San Jose to finish out college at San Jose State and, the minute I graduated, I got out, but I was running my mail order business at the time, which had to be moved with me, but I was also a partner in Comics & Comix, and I was supplying them with underground comix, fanzines, books, and stuff—all the secondary, non-traditional comic book stuff. So I needed to be within striking distance of them to, at least, drive a van down there once a week to make a delivery to ’em.

I was looking around for places within shouting distance of where we had our stores, which were in Palo Alto, San Jose, and San Francisco, respectively. We also had a couple stores up in Sacramento. Around that same time, somebody—one of my old partners in the stores, actually, Jon Campbell—said, “Hey, Dan O’Neill lives up in Grass Valley. You should go check that out. It’s a pretty nice area.” And I’d been up there once and visited. So, my thenwife and my best friend and assistant in the business—in fact, my only employee at the time—we all trundled up to Grass Valley, Nevada City, and checked out the area. We said, “Wow, this is pretty cool,” and we ended up renting a house nearby and I started moving in. I rented a really COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

small warehouse, which I moved out of really quickly ’cause it had no heat and I quickly discovered living in San Jose was a lot different than living in Grass Valley at 2,500-foot elevation. I moved initially into that warehouse and that’s how we got to Grass Valley. It was all Dan O’Neill’s fault.

CBC: [Laughs] Would you characterize it as country or rural?

Bud: Well, the city of Grass Valley’s population is 12,000, but it’s in the mountains… or at least the hills. [laughs] It’s the hills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We do get snow depending on what elevation you’re exactly at. My house gets a decent amount of snow, whereas where I used to live, down a little lower elevation, we hardly saw any snow at all, so we’re right on that edge. We’ve got big pine and oaks trees here. In fact, our big problem right now, of course, is fire danger, so I’m always working on clearing out space around the property. I’ve got four acres and I’m always having to take down the trees and consider, “Oh, God. I might have to cut another tree down.”

I love the trees but they’re all gonna burn me up if I have too many of them, so…

CBC: How far from your business do you live?

Bud: I’m only about eight or nine minutes from the business. It’s really convenient to just zip over there.

CBC: You seem like a very healthy guy. Are you an active guy? Do you bike ride?

Above: A relatively recent photo of Bud Plant, proprietor of Bud Plant Comic Art, the Grass Valley, California-based art book mail-order mogul and early pioneer in the history of direct sales.

Transcribed by

Steven Thompson Below: Bud at the 1982 San Diego Comic Con in a photo taken by Alan Light.

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Bud: Yeah! I’d say that’s a yes! [laughs] For years and years and years, I ran real quite regularly, and I’m just getting back into it because the Covid pandemic started and I have more time actually at home, so I’m back to running and I try to do that. I like mountain biking. I just don’t have enough time to do it. I’ve got a nice little bike and my grandkids are just getting into bikes now, so my son and I and the grandkids are out doing mountain biking, but nothing too technical.

I used to have a bunch of buddies who were mountain bikers, so I sort of fell in with them for a while, but I know the limits of my abilities. [laughs] We’re also amongst a lot of water, so we got kayaks and my kids grew up doing whitewater kayaking around here and also out in the ocean. It’s a good active area where you can stay engaged in that kind of stuff.

CBC: Good for you! Getting back to the chronology, what did your dad do?

Bud: My dad was basically… A fancy name would be “maintenance engineer.” He worked at a big company called Jennings Radio that was doing vacuum tube switches and high voltage switching systems. They eventually got taken over by ITT, which was known at one point, but probably nobody knows what ITT is anymore. It’s one of those big electronics conglomerates.

What’s interesting is he and my mom were both first lieutenants in the war. They met on a troop ship going to North Africa before the invasion. My mom was from Pennsylvania and my dad was from Oakland. Anyway, they met and ended up getting married in Cairo, Egypt, in early 1943, right smack in the middle of the war. My dad was over there working for the Signal Corps, putting in radio transmitters in North Africa in preparation for the invasion. So he followed up the invasion doing Signal Corps work and motor maintenance stuff, all the way into Belgium. I don’t think he got into Germany, but he was in France and Italy.

CBC: So he was behind the lines?

Bud: Yeah, behind the

lines, whereas my mom was Army Nurse Corps, so she was taking care of wounded Yanks. She liked to call ’em Yanks, but it was before we really had engaged in the war, really.

But, you know, the British were fighting like crazy and they were shipping wounded Yanks down to hospitals in North Africa, so she was doing that. But she got dysentery and got shipped home early. She must have gotten it really bad.

Anyway, they came home from the war and they actually built a house! My dad was handy at everything and they built a house in San Jose in ’45, ’46, and then they had their first child.

CBC: Were they readers?

Bud: I’d say my mom wasn’t so much, maybe a little bit, but just modest. I can’t think of anything specific my mom really read. She was really more social. I mean, she went back to being a nurse, an RN, and was really active with church stuff. But my dad actually did like comics to a certain point.

I wish I could say he had memories of Batman and Captain America and stuff, but he was in the war during that time, so he really wasn’t reading that. He liked the strips, and he would bring home stuff like The Best of Blondie, and we had a subscription to Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories in, I think, in 1958 or ’59, so those were probably the first comics I ever saw. I remember all the Barks stories like the back of my hand [laughs] after I read ’em several times.

CBC: I meant did he read prose? Was he a book reader?

Bud: Well, he was willing to. He read the Burroughs books I had. He used to trash my paperbacks. I finally couldn’t let him handle them anymore ’cause he’d bend ’em backwards and break the spines. [Jon laughs] So he was willing to read, but he didn’t really have a library, per se. I think he was more into non-fiction. He was just a really casual reader. So, yeah, I can’t say either of my parents would be really what I would consider to be hardcore readers.

CBC: Did you have television in your house when you were young?

Bud: Yeah, more or less. We had hand-me-downs from my grandparents. My dad was not heavy into that sort of thing. My grandparents had a little bit more money and, every time they upgraded a TV, they’d give us their old one.

We had a black-&- white set probably by the late ’50s and I vaguely remember stuff like Howdy Doody, Romper Room, and Captain Kangaroo. And, by the ’60s, we definitely were watching television. My parents had their favorite shows, like Red Skelton and Jack Benny, maybe even Ed Sullivan… and then, you know, as a kid, I watched all the good stuff!

All the adventure shows—The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and all #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories TM & © Disney Enterprises, Inc. Rich Uncle TM & © Parker Brothers, Inc. Alum Rock Park photo by Melissa McMasters.

Above: Bud recalls his parents got a subscription to Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories in 1958 or ’59. From left, #220 [Jan. ’59], Carl Barks art; #223 [Apr. ’59], Tony Strobl art; and #229 [Oct. ’59], Barks art. Below: Bud recalls playing board games with his sisters, including Rich Uncle, a Monopoly spin-off that lasted until, at least, the mid–’60s. Bottom: San Jose’s Alum Rock Park, California’s oldest municipal park, where young Bud would bike ride.

The Great Poster Trip: Art Eureka TM & © the respective copyright holder. Fillmore West photo taken in 1970 by “Davygrvy.”

that sort of thing.

CBC: Do you remember Saturday mornings? Was that a special time?

Bud: Yep, Saturday mornings I would creep up and carefully close my parents’ bedroom door [Jon laughs] ’cause it was so close to the living room and then I’d turn on the TV and watch cartoons… Let’s see: they had The Bowery Boys and Our Gang—you know, [laughs] those really horrible reruns of Our Gang from the ’30s. And, you know, Shirley Temple movies, stuff like that on Saturday morning.

CBC: What stations did you watch? Was there an equivalent of New York City’s PIX and WOR out West, I wonder?

Bud: Yeah, there was a local San Jose station, Channel 11, and then there was one in Oakland, Channel 2. I don’t know the call letters, but in San Francisco… I’m thinking KGO but I think that was a radio station. KPIX was Channel 5 in San Francisco.

CBC: So you had your own PIX! Bud: KRON-TV. KRON was on Channel 4. There were only like four or five channels when I was a really young kid.

There were channels 2 [KTVU], 4, 5, 7 [KGO], and 11 (and maybe 8). That’s it, you know? [laughs] That was the spectrum of TV in the early ’60s, Jon! CBC: Your sisters had a few years on you. Were you influenced by them at all? Did you try to hang out with them, for instance? I mean, four years age difference is a lot as a kid.

Bud: Well, as a kid I did. We played a lot of board games together, and I have really clear memories of playing Monopoly, Risk, and Rich Uncle, and we went biking together.

I was heavy into my bike. I went everywhere on bike by myself. In fact, I had two bikes. I had a ten-speed and what eventually they now call a BMX bike. In those days, you went to the flea market and buy an old piece-of-crap little kid bike with small wheels and then you’d buy extra-tall handlebars and a banana seat and you’d make yourself a “BMX” bike that you could ride around off-road. [laughter] But anyway, yeah, I was a big fan of being a two-biker guy, y’know? A bike for every occasion.

CBC: Was it a suburb?

Bud: Yeah, it was just the edge of San Jose. We were actually on a tiny bit of a hill on the east side of San Jose.

I could walk out onto the boonie-lands and walk over the hill to a place called Alum Rock Park, which was a real nice little park. They had horse trails up there and stuff like that. The rich people lived on the hills up above us. You got there a different way than our street. Our street was a little cul-de-sac that went up the hill and then came back down again. It was middle class—a middle class suburb.

CBC: Would you describe it as a wholesome upbringing?

Was it pretty much Americana?

Bud: Yeah, I’d say so. Definitely.

CBC: How do you recall the ’60s coming on? Did the ‘60s start after the assassination of JFK, in a way? When did the cultural shift start taking place you could take notice of?

Bud: I wouldn’t say after the assassination of JFK, ’cause I was still in grade school. I remember coming home the day he was shot and my mom, I think, was a night nurse at the time. You know, she woke up in the afternoon after I got home from school and I told her and I remember her crying.

I was, like, “Whoa!” As a kid, it just didn’t have as much effect on me, you know? Because you just don’t have that kind of experience to go, “Jesus Christ! This is really a big deal!” I mean, the President’s just been assassinated, but I was 11 or 12 and was like, “Okay. Yeah. That’s kinda sad and everything.” So to me, the ’60s—if you think about the ’60s as psychedelic stuff, drugs, and all that stuff, it wouldn’t have come on probably ’til like 1966, ’67, ’68, when I was in high school, when the drugs started coming on. I was very good at resisting for as long as I could… [laughter] which wasn’t very long! I finally got stoned the first time between my junior and senior year in high school, which, nowadays, I mean, kids are getting stoned when they’re in freakin’ sixth grade! [laughs] COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

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].

CBC: Oh, yeah. How about the Beatles? Did you watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan?

Bud: I think we did. I think, as a family, we did. It was a big deal and Ed Sullivan was a regular thing for Sunday nights that the family would watch—or at least my parents would watch and the kids might float in and out, depending on what was on. But I do remember that. My sisters were into folk music, ’cause they were a little bit older, so they were into the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and that sort of thing, and I was really shocked one day when one of my sisters actually brought home Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band. It was like, “Really? This is just so hip! I can’t believe this!” I just figured they were already pretty straight.

They never got into the drug scene or anything. That was left for me to handle. [laughter] (I’m gonna sound like a real druggie if I keep going with all these drug references, but I really wasn’t. I did have to maintain.)

CBC: But it was California, after all, Bud. [chuckles] Bud: Plus we were just down the hill from San Francisco!

The guy I moved up to Grass Valley with, Michael Torres, him, his brother, and a couple other guys were really into music and we’d jump in the car, go up to San Francisco, and attend concerts. We went to the Fillmore, just before it closed. Saw Charlie Musselwhite, I think, and then we would regularly go to Grateful Dead concerts and Winterland concerts, especially the New Year’s Eve concerts…

Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and Grateful Dead… ! We’d do all these concerts in, say, ’69–’70… something like that.

CBC: Did you make it to Berkeley to see the poster stores and see the whole counter-culture thing… ?

Above: Bud discovered the book, The Great Poster Trip: Art Eureka [1968] during high school. Below: Before it closed in 1971, Bud attended concerts at the legendary Fillmore West, in San Francisco.

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that were doing ’em were being influenced by comics.

You’ve got Griffin, who got turned on to Frank Frazetta, and I had a buddy who knew Griffin and Griffin traded him an original dance concert poster. I think it was for the Who; it was a bleeding heart [Dick Swan says a Quicksilver poster.], a really well-known image. He traded that to him for my buddy finding Rick everything he could possibly find by Frazetta—all the paperbacks, comics, whatever, because Griffin didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to go out and search down Frazetta stuff, but he loved Frazetta so— boom! [laughs]—My buddy’s happy and Griffin’s happy!

So, yeah, there was definitely a lot of that goin’ on. I’m sure Moscoso was probably studying comics and, of course, Crumb was brought up with comics from his infancy.

CBC: Did you ever encounter—personally meet—Jerry Garcia?

Bud: No, I never met him personally. I only saw him up on stage. I always heard that he was really into EC Comics, so that was a fabled connection. He, evidently, and a lot of the underground guys, would shop at the San Francisco Comic Book Company, which was run by Gary Arlington, but, as far as I know, I never ran into him. I ran into Spain there once, but it was hard because it was 50 miles away, so we didn’t get up there that often. But that was really the gathering place for a lot of the underground guys ’cause so many of ’em lived in San Francisco.

CBC: How would you describe the store? And Gary himself?

Bud: [Laughs] Oh, well! You could write books on Gary!

Well, the store was not big. It was very, very tall, so Gary would have a ladder and he could nail comics on the wall going up like 15-feet high. It was so crammed that you could hardly walk in and he’d be crammed into the front, righthand corner, right behind the door. The door must have swung to the left, so he was right there as you walked in, at his little tiny counter up on a stool, and he had file cabinets with old comics in ’em… And then he had racks of the new comics and, of course, all the undergrounds he got involved in publishing. So it was a real Mecca for comics, both for normal comics and all the underground stuff.

CBC: And Gary… ?

Bud: “And Gary?” Well, Gary… [chuckles] He was a piece of work. He was a really nice guy! When we first met him, he was… just about… rotund, you know? A little overweight. Not a very good businessman. He was always having to get bailed out by other people. He’d have other people writing checks to pay bills and stuff for him ’cause I guess he couldn’t stop buying or something. [Jon chuckles] Typical early comic shop owner. When we first met him, he was still trying to complete an EC collection and one of our favorite fun stories was that he was trying to get, like a Haunt of Fear #15 and maybe a Two-Fisted Tales #18, and he had this trunk full of ECs that he’d bought when he was a kid, off the newsstands, and he had multiple copies—multiple copies, Jon!—of stuff like Weird Science and Weird Fantasy and stuff in perfect condition! And he would trade six of your choice for whatever he needed. Now, you know, it wasn’t easy to come across first-issue ECs back in 1965, ’66, but we found him a couple and managed to trade for some books. I think he must have sold a few issues to us, maybe for a couple bucks apiece back then. But he’d just sort of open up this fabulous trunk of ECs he had, which included his personal collection, too. He was the only guy I ever knew that speculated on ECs. [Jon laughs] But, yeah, he was a character, really enthusiastic about comics. Just loved them! And he really liked supporting the underground guys. He did that Nickel Library! Have you seen the Nickel Library?

CBC: Oh, I own some! They’re fantastic, yeah.

Bud: Yeah, he started doing those and, of course, he was violating copyrights all over the place! [laughter] CBC: They’re a nickel!

Bud: And he got shut down by somebody, probably includ#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Who poster TM & © the respective copyright holder. Gary Arlington photo by Patrick Rosenkranz, © the photographer. Tales from the Crypt TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. Arlington caricature by R. Crumb, © the artist.

Above: Rick Griffin’s poster for a Who concert. Below: Gary Arlington poses in the doorway of his San Francisco Comic Book Company, 3339 23 rd Street. Inset right: In 1973, Gary initiated the ambitious “Nickel Library,” 64 one-sheet imagined depictions of EC Comics covers featuring contributions by an amazing array of artists. Gary’s original plan was for 500 sheets! Below is R. Crumb’s caricature of Gary, which was used on a display ad promoting his San Francisco Comic Book.

Bud: Yeah! One of my high school classes made a field trip up there for some reason. We went to the pier area, which is… the Embarcadero, in San Francisco, there’s a bunch of piers and the boats come in and then there’s Fisherman’s Wharf, and all that.

We did a field trip up there and Michael and I both discovered this bookstore and they had a book called The Great Poster Trip: Art Eureka, and it was one of the first books that collected psychedelic posters into a softcover book. I think we both bought copies because we were just hooked on that kind of stuff. The posters were filtering down to San Jose after that, so in our store a little bit and there was another store where you’d be able to get dance concert posters and some of the handbills that they’d give out, ’cause they were all great. Collectible, right off the bat, so we all wanted to get copies of things by Rick Griffin or Robert Crumb, Moscoso… stuff like that. And that was all contemporary with the very beginnings of the undergrounds, in ’67.

CBC: As a slight aside, I just read a fantastic obituary on Alice Schenker. It just made a direct connection for me. I was just a little kid but I remembered posters were effin’ huge! And it made this direct connection to the comix that finally clicked for me. Of course, I knew there was Rick Griffin and some association between the two. I knew there was the rock posters, but nonetheless, it made me remember posters were really big!

Bud: Yeah, they were!

And the guys

The History of EC Comics © Grant Geissman. Little Annie Fanny TM & © Playboy Enterprises International, Inc.

ing Gaines. But yeah, his enthusiasm outstripped his good sense, I guess.

CBC: Obviously, he had a mania for ECs and obviously, in a certain way, you certainly had your experience with the commerce of EC Comics, this legendary thing. I mean, right now we’ve got… Grant’s book is gonna be coming out, this monster tome with the history of EC Comics that’s just so intimidating to me!

Bud: Yeah, I’ve got monster orders for it! Grant proposed doing a bookplate for me and he dug up a piece of Angelo Torres art in full color, so he signed it and the kid signed it, and then he announces the thing on… I guess there’s an EC website or something or EC chat room that I didn’t know about and all of a sudden, I’m getting all these orders for this expensive book and I’m like, what the hell is going on?

I don’t usually sell that many copies of something like that.

I’ve gotten orders for 140 copies of that right now, and it’s a $200 book! So, anyway… Grant, in case you don’t know it, was a customer in our shop, in 1968 and ’69, in San Jose.

He used to come in and buy ECs and original artwork from us, so our history dates all the way back to San Jose. That’s where he was born and raised, I guess, before he became a famous musician, which is what he really should be known for.

CBC: It’s very obvious on face value that EC Comics were very high quality, very engaging, had probably the best collection of artists of any imprint of all time, but people are nuts about it! You think that maybe it was the history of it, the sudden collapse? The Comics Code coming on pretty much neutering comics? Have you given any thought to, like, what is this obsession?

Bud: Well, are you talking about present day or are you talking about back then?

CBC: The whole thing. This endless reprinting of them!

[Bud laughs] It’s one thing, the super-heroes, that’s got its own psychological profile, you know? Why people are into Marvel Comics and all the stuff like that, but… I mean, EC cuts a swath across any number of people who otherwise aren’t necessarily into comics (or at least grew out of them).

But EC is “special”!

Bud: Yeah, that’s true. I think the right time and the right place and the right creators. Everything just came together with EC. I mean, you’ve got William Gaines, who’s really innovative and doesn’t give a sh*t what anybody else thinks. He’s gonna do whatever he wants, you know? He went counter to what his father believed in about educational comics and all that. It was pre-Code, so you could do it as far as you wanted with the subject matter, and I guess he treated his artists really super-well and so he attracted the best artists in the business. And then, it’s like Marilyn Monroe dying young. Everything gets shut down in 1955, so now you’ve got this limited group of comics. There’s only 300 EC Comics—period, y’know? So, it didn’t go on forever and it didn’t get ground into the dirt like, say, Marvel was by the ’70s or ’80s. I mean, EC, it’s really finite, like Marilyn Monroe—captured there, she’s always young, she’s always beautiful. And the ECs are sorta like that, too. And so many of those artists went on to have incredible careers, so you can go back and say, “Here’s where they started. Here they were young Turks doing their thing and caring more about doing the best job you could than about the money and all that.” Everything came together. A perfect storm in the comics world.

CBC: And it extended beyond that in the sense that, prior to that, there had been fanzines, but it was basically only science fiction fanzines. But then EC elicited so much excitement that this whole new raft of fanzines started, and from that it eventually morphed into underground comix. It’s arguable that if EC hadn’t collapsed, hadn’t been forced out of the comic book business, that undergrounds may have either not happened or have been very different. There seems to be… You talk to Spain, you talk to Crumb… They were still angry about the Comics Code! They were angry COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

that Bill Gaines was run out of business.

Bud: Right. It all came about, as you say, with that 1960s era of new liberal thinking and getting stoned and new styles of dress and long hair and everything, and undergrounds sort of came out of that whole change. Young people’s heads were changing and they went back and looked at the ECs and, I think… What I wanted to say was that ECs, I believe, represent more mature comics, and they appeal to an older audience. I have a couple friends who are 85. That means that they were reading comics in the ’40s and they basically kind of lost interest by the late ’40s. They’d grown up and were in high school, maybe even getting into the military with the draft and the Korean War and all, that but then ECs come along and it revived their interest in comics. I can specifically tell you a couple of guys who have told me that.

They were done with the super-heroes and comics in the ’40s were really…

They were mostly pointed toward a younger audience, but ECs weren’t, and all of a sudden… They could have been science fiction fans… usually, they probably were. Anybody that’s into comics very much is probably also a fan of science fiction and fantasy. But, all of a sudden, they got dragged back into comics because ECs were maturely written, for an older audience, I think, and you know, that brought these older readers back, and then of course, the Comics Code comes along and emasculates everything. Probably a lot of those guys would have again lost interest. But ECs grabbed them there, you know, brought ’em back, at least for a while.

CBC: Arguably, would you agree that Harvey Kurtzman even transcended comic books and gained stature in wider American pop culture?

Bud: Yeeeaaah… I think you’re right because of MAD. Not so much with the other ECs. I don’t think ECs would necessarily… Well, Tales from the Crypt pushed into pop culture with the television show and all that. I think it’s MAD that you’ve gotta give him the credit for because MAD did become an icon of pop culture and you’ve gotta say that’s Kurtzman. If it wasn’t Kurtzman working for Gaines, would there have been a MAD at all? Probably not. Who knows what would have happened in history? So, yeah.

Kurtzman tried again with Help!, Trump, and Humbug, but they didn’t really catch on… They weren’t that popular.

But then “Little Annie Fanny”… ! Maybe I’m a little biased, but I think “Little Annie Fanny” was a pretty big deal. Again, it was taking comics and putting them in front of adults and saying, “Look! Here’s a comic that adults can appreciate.”

He had Frazetta, Russ Heath, Jack Davis, and everybody working on the stuff, so it was beautifully drawn, too, and it was in an adult magazine. So yeah, I think he sort of did it twice, although MAD was certainly a lot bigger than “Little Annie Fanny” ever was. But still… ! There were corner-

Above: The History of EC Comics [2020] by Grant Geissman.

Below: Little Annie Fanny by Will Elder.

7

Above: Tales to Astonish #22 [Aug. ’61]. Below: G.I. Joe [’64] and Combat! trading card with TV series lead Vic Morrow [’63].

and that was the beginning of the end for me! [laughter] CBC: So, as legend would have it, you had a subscription to Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories coming into the house.

And that’s how you remember first reading comics. But you were just a reader until you were what? Fourteen?

Bud: Yeah, until ’64, I was just a reader. I would have read Comics and Stories. And then, somehow, in 1961, I was buying comics off the newsstand. I must have been getting my tiny little allowance for doing yard work and then back then the big deal was finding Coke bottles for deposit, and you got 3¢ apiece for those. Comics were 10¢, so if you could find three bottles along the roadside and cash ’em in, you almost had a comic. I actually bought Fantastic Four #1. I can’t believe how I actually managed to do it, but I bought FF #1 and that Tales to Astonish I told you about, and Brave and the Bold with the first “Hawkman” by Kubert.

“Sgt. Rock.” I think I was into that enough that I actually had a subscription to “Sgt. Rock,” by ’63 or ’64. And then somehow I got turned on to Marvel as a collector in ’64. I attribute it to when I was going to Little League, ’cause I used to ride my bike to Little League and I’d stop at the drugstore on the way home and somehow I picked up, like, Spidey #13 and FF #29 or 30, and whatever the Journey into Mystery was. Boom! All of a sudden, I was, “Okay, I can collect every Marvel comic for, what, 80¢?” No, they were 12¢ apiece by then, but you could buy every Marvel comic for one buck a month, you know? [laughs] It was very affordable and, all of a sudden, I was reading every single Marvel comic that was coming out, except for Millie the Model. I drew the line at that. Kid Colt was okay, and so was Rawhide Kid. CBC: You know there was that kind of military aspect to pop culture in the mid-’60s, especially with Hasbro’s G.I. Joe and Combat! was on TV. Were you attracted to that stuff at all?

Bud: Yeah! Combat! was a big deal! When I was in grade school, I remember coming back and the next morning we’d talk about what was on Combat! the night before.

So that was a big deal. That was pre-Vietnam War and we were just kids, y’know? Fifth grade or sixth grade or somethin’… seventh grade, maybe. So, yeah. That was a big deal. And our parents had all gone through World War II. That’s always influenced me profoundly. I have so much respect for anybody that participated in a war. That was just a different time and people were sacrificing their personal existence for years at a time—if not their lives completely, you know—during World War II. So yeah, I think I grew up in that generation. “Sgt. Rock”—more than Sgt. Fury—”Sgt. Rock” and, say, G.I. Combat, with “The Haunted Tank.”

I mean, those were things we kids could really relate to because our parents had been there.

CBC: And did you collect G.I. Joe? Bud: No. I never got into G.I. Joe. To me, GI Joe came along a little later. It’s not really 1964–’65–’66. By the time, G.I. Joe came along, I don’t think I cared much. There wasn’t any art that was interesting. I collect the Ziff-Davis G.I. Joe comics now, as an adult, because they have these wonderful covers by Norman Saunders and they’re actually good comics, but G.I. Joe in general? [blows raspberry] I don’t care. And I wasn’t into the doll or that kind of stuff anyway. I don’t hardly remember statues or dolls or anything like that.

CBC: I’m loath for anyone to hear me call it a “doll” but, dude, it was a doll. [laughs] Bud: I have no real clear memory of G.I. Joe until later on, until it came back as a comic, I guess. When I was a kid, it just wasn’t part of my existence.

CBC: You know, there’s a divergence, it seems to me, with comics and… You had mail order, so you might be able to recognize it. There was a certain group of consumers who weren’t necessarily at all attracted to super-heroes, but was to this masculine, testosterone material—Savage Tales, Savage Sword of Conan… (I guess they had to have “savage” in ’em)… the DC war books. Bikers, ex-military #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Tales to Astonish TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. G.I. Joe TM & © Hasbro, Inc. Combat! ©1964 Selmur Productions, Inc.

8

stones of pop culture, I’d say.

CBC: There was also the car culture that was coming out of Southern California.

You had your Big Daddy Roth, Rat Fink, Stanley Mouse… Also there was this monster mania taking place that culminated with Creepy and Eerie, you know, Famous Monsters of Filmland, and all the stuff like that. Was that a part of your persona pop culture?

Bud: Oh, yeah! Absolutely.

I got into hot rods and used to have a subscription to Hot Rod magazine, in the early ‘60s. And I loved the whole hot rod culture, did work on my own little clunky sports cars. [laughs] You know, my $300 sports car when I first started buying cars. And I was into model cars early on, in the early ’60s, building hot rods and normal cars, like a lot of kids were back then. I actually trashed a copy of Tales to Astonish #22, which I used to use for wiping my brushes off when I was painting my model cars. [laughter] I came across my copy of that years later and I went, “Oh, god! What in the world was I thinking?” So that dates it to probably 1960 or ’61… something like that.

CBC: As long as it wasn’t Tales to Astonish #27! [chuckles] Bud: So, yeah. And DRAG Cartoons. I got into them just a little bit. Not deeply, though. I think once I got into comics, I sorta cooled off on the whole hot rod and model car thing.

At that point, it would mostly have been reading science fiction—Burroughs and general paperback SF stuff and collecting comics, reading all the Marvels, and then discovering fandom, fanzines, and all that sort of thing.

That whole Southern Cal hot rod culture stuff… I mean, Southern California is a long way from San Jose. We would go down there to the comics shops. Say, from 1965 on, we’d drive down there once in a while, but it was a major trip to go down there, so we didn’t have a lot going on. My buddy, Al Davoren—he was the Promethean editor who was the contact with all the underground artists. He knew Griffin, he knew Crumb, and he took me to visit Crumb the first time I ever met him. He knew Robert Williams really well, so he’d go down to Southern California, but he was four or five years older than I was, and he was a family guy, had a car, had the money, had a real job, and he could do stuff like that. So he got to know guys like Robert Williams and some of the Southern California guys whereas I was just too young at that point to be out there hobnobbing around Los Angeles, ’cause I was still in high school.

CBC: You would’ve been corrupted! [laughter] Bud: Yeah! I would of been, yeah! Al’s the guy who first got me stoned, speaking of that. I had really held out. My high school buddies were trying to get me to smoke dope and I was going, “Nah, nah. I’m not into that. I don’t wanna become a drug addict!” Because I knew the next day after you smoke a joint, you’re shootin’ up heroin! No doubt about it!

CBC: Well, duh! [laughter] Bud: But, my buddy, Al, who again was four or five years older than me, finally sat me down at his art table one time and we smoked a joint and looked at underground comix

Amazing Fantasy TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

people… Did you perceive a sub-culture of comics readers who were just into certain stuff like the war comics and… ?

Bud: That’s a good question, I think to a very small extent, yes. There were the guys who liked the war comics and, more so, there were the guys who collected funny animal stuff. I mean, that was a definite sub-genre. They weren’t necessarily into Justice League and Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, but they were really into Carl Barks, maybe even Little Lulu. Not necessarily completely to the exclusion of other comics, but if a guy was a funny-animal collector, that was his primary interest. Not so much war stuff, but maybe a little bit of that, but I don’t remember… Usually all the comic books guys I knew when I first got introduced to other collectors, we were all pretty much across the board.

We liked what we thought was the good stuff, I mean, and we’d turn our noses up at what we thought weren’t. When I was a Marvel collector, before I met anybody, in ’64 and the beginning and ’65, I was buying into Stan Lee’s whole Soapbox thing about Brand Echh and how the rest of comics were sh*t, and I was actually embarrassed that I still had a subscription to “Sgt. Rock,” and I’d go, “Oh! ‘Sgt. Rock’!

That’s just so… yesterday, man. That’s not Marvel. That’s not Spider-Man and everything.” And I was going, “My god! that subscription’s gotta run out. I’ll never read those anymore!” [laughs] And then I met other fans and they really turned me back on to that whole thing. They said, “Wait a minute. Have you seen ‘Adam Strange’?” and, “Have you seen the ‘New Look’ Batman, and Strange Adventures… ?

Wait a minute! You should check out this Frazetta stuff” And then all of a sudden, boom, the world opened up and my interest in comics mushroomed into all kinds of stuff. But I was a Marvel zombie there for at least a couple of years. All I did was suck down the Marvels.

CBC: Well, they were pretty darn good, thank you, Jack! [laughs] Okay, the stereotype of a comic fan is the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. It’s somebody who is obsessed with condition, plastic bags, slab ’em, and all that. Not to disparage your consumer base at all, Bud, but… what’s wrong with that? [chuckles] What’s wrong with comic collectors and collectors in general? Why do we have such insane need to have every issue of a run? I mean, why Gary Arlington, for instance? Why me? Why any number of people I know? Do you ever think about that? Not that there’s something wrong, but there’s just something different?

Bud: Well, when you start talking about slabbing, then I think you’re talking about… There’s a diversion from what I consider my interests and my buddies’ interests. Me and my buddies are into comics to read them—to look inside and read them—so when you start to get into the whole slabbing thing, to me that represents the other side of the coin and, yes, the people who are into that are certainly my customers and they’re part of fandom and everything, but they’re not people who I can relate to… It’s much harder for me to relate to that whole thing because I wanna look inside!

So I buy slabbed comics and I break ’em open, y’know?

More and more, I’m finding it very inconvenient to break the f*cking things open because it’s so much trouble. I’d like to get my copy of a book I just bought from wherever I get it from and I’d like to open it up and look at it and now, “Oh, jeez! I’ve got to go through this whole process of breaking the slab open and cutting it carefully and not hurting the comic and blah-blah-blah.”

So, there’s a big element of making money, that whole thing about slabbing a book, then having it evaluated at a higher grade, and then making a bunch of money on it. I sort of see that and correspond with people who are into that, but it’s just not my world! I’m happy to make a buck on something, but I’m not slabbing stuff. I don’t get stuff for my collection and then slab it. That would be the last thing I’d wanna do. I wanna be able to look at it.

That’s brought a whole different element into the comics world. The good thing, I guess, is that it’s probably helping COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

Above: From left to right are the covers for Sal’s outstanding pro-zine, Hot Stuf’, with #2 by Ken Barr, #3 by Richard Corben, #4 by Ken, and #5 by Richard.

Hot Stuf’ #1 and 2 were magazine-size and all subsequent issues were comic book-size.

Below: Sal was called in by Phil Seuling at the last minute to do production work on the 1976 New York Comic Art Con souvenir book. Cover art by the co-creator of Sgt. Rock, Joe Kubert. Bottom: Covers for the final three issues of Hot Stuf’, with #6 by Rich Larson and Steve Fastner; #7 by Michael W. Kaluta, and #8 by Neal Adams.

keep the comics world healthy as it’s injecting a lot of collectors… well, a lot of investors, in it and there’s a lot more money sloshing around in the hobby that’s brought out more comics onto the market, so there’s more out there available for you.

On the other hand, it’s a completely different mindset from what I’m used to. [laughs] I’m not sure how else to put it. It’s just different, you know? I really don’t understand the whole 9.2, 9.4, 9.6 grade thing, unless it’s all about money because you can hardly tell the difference in the quality of the comic. I have gotten sucked into getting copies of comics… Things that I collected in the ’60s,’70s, or ’80s. I was happy to get a copy that was “good” or “very good,” or whatever, especially a Golden Age book.

And, in the ’60s, we didn’t even care about condition.

We just wanted a copy of the book, period. We were perfectly happy with a copy that was a “VG” copy. But I have gotten sort of sucked into, “Oh, yeah. It’d be nice to have a ‘fine’ copy of that or a ‘fine-minus,’ or a pretty decent copy, a better-looking copy.” [Jon chuckles] I mean, ECs, when they’re nice, up in the “fine” range, they look a lot better than they do when they’re “good–very good,” and sorta worn. So, I try to recollect ECs with that in mind,

Above: You’d best sit down for this factoid: this high-grade issue of Amazing Fantasy #15 sold for $3.6 million during a Sept. 2021 Heritage auction.

9

Above: Jay Kay Klein photo of some co-owners of the Seven Sons Comic Shop at the 1968 Baycon, taken about six months after the shop’s opening. From left: tall blond in white T-shirt is Jim Buser; Tom Tallmon’s back; John Barrett with raised elbow; Bud Plant with glasses. Below: Seven Sons printed artifacts.

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Photo © Regents of the University of California. Seven Sons artifacts courtesy of Jim Buser.

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but that’s as far as I get into the whole slabbing thing and having a Bill Gaines’ file copy in a slab that you’re never gonna open. It’s just not my world.

CBC: You know, I have always been very grateful for a certain renowned comics writer/publisher for giving me his fanzine collection. And when I’m looking through these old ditto ’zines, the ads didn’t discuss condition when they listed comics for sale. The emphasis was on filling out one’s collection, to buy a missing issue, not on condition…

I’m still like that now. I definitely prefer a complete run of something over high-grade, as long as it’s readable! ’Cause I wanna read it! Anyway, so you just got sucked into the spinner rack of Marvels, eh? That’s what really set you off?

Bud: Yeah, and add that point, I already had this nostalgia because I realized, “Wait a minute. I bought Fantastic Four #1. What happened to it? Where’s my copy?” And, of course, it was long gone.

CBC: Oh, no! [chuckles] Bud: I bought a copy of FF #18. Lo’ and behold, I searched around the house and found it in some stray box. This was

a year later when I started actually collecting FF, like I say, with #29 or 30, but here’s this FF #18 I’d bought and threw aside with a bunch of newspapers or something. [laughs] But it was still floatin’ around, so I still had a copy of it, so that was just funny. Yeah, once I was hooked on the Marvels and then once I got introduced to other comic collectors, friends, and fans, and to Rocket’s Blast and all that, there was just no goin’ back.

CBC: Well, how did that happen? Did you have peers in school who were collectors, too.

Bud: Yeah, I did, but those guys didn’t know anything about fandom. They were just guys that collected comics like I did, so they had their own modest collections. Although none of them got to be really hardcore guys. My big introduction was… See, I was on the east side of San Jose, so my world was sort of limited to that, but one day I’m down at the used bookstore downtown San Jose, which is about six miles from my parents’ house and…

Bear with me on this story ‘cause I’ve told it before: I went in and I was looking at the nickel comics, ’cause this was 1965 and that’s what used comics sold for, a nickel.

So I was looking at the guy’s nickel comics in this big used bookstore and this guy comes up to the counter and says, “Hey, can I look at your dollar comics?” [laughter] What!?

And I had read Jules Feiffer’s book. I either had the book or had read the Playboy article, one of the two at that point, so I knew a little tiny bit about the Golden Age, just from what Feiffer had told me about Simon and Kirby and Sub-Mariner, and stuff like that. So, anyway, this guy doesn’t buy any of ’em and then I go up to the counter and go, “Can I look at the dollar comics?” Now, of course, I’m, what? Thirteen or 12, and he shows them to me and there’s a Thrills of Tomorrow #19, with a reprint of Stuntman by Simon and Kirby, and, hey, I had a buck! So I buy this comic and I walk outside and this guy collars me and says, “Hey, are you into comics? Ya got any old comics? Ya wanna be my friend?”

You know? Boom! And that’s it. And that’s how I met John Barrett who became my partner in Comics & Comix. Jim Buser, who’s still a really good friend of mine who was also in Comics & Comix.

CBC: Are you serious? You bumped into him on the sidewalk?

Bud: Yeah, this guy approached me. He was from across town, on the other side of town, so all these guys—John, Jim… they lived 18 miles away from me. That’s a long distance when you’re 12 or 13 years old. You just don’t go over there. My mom would have to drive me over to their house for Friday night comic-book get-togethers and then eventually one of the older guys… There was a couple guys. Tom Tallmon was a little bit older, Michelle Nolan was older, and they had cars and they would gather us up, and we’d get together, and we’d go drive up to Oakland, say, and go see Barry Bauman, who had old comics. Before I even had a driver’s license, Michelle would load us all up in her car and we’d buy Blackhawks—I’d buy Blackhawks—from Barry Bauman and other people would buy whatever their favorite stuff was. This would have been ’67, ’68.

CBC: So it was that happenstance? Your life changed right there? You could have gone off and had a professional life of something else?

Bud: [Laughs] It’s possible, Jon! It’s possible! You would think that maybe something else would have come along and introduced me to the fact that there was fandom out there, but until that point, I had no idea that there were fanzines, that there was a way to get old comics, that there was a market… I had no freakin’ idea. Rocket’s Blast for a lot of people—including me—was a huge eye-opener!

There’s a fanzine that you can buy old comics from? That’s just… ! Everybody had to have a subscription to the Rocket’s Blast ComiCollector. It was another four or five years before the Comics Buyer’s Guide came along.

CBC: Do you remember the number of the first issue that you got?

San Jose News article courtesy of Jim Buser and © San Jose Mercury-News, LLC. Photo courtesy of and © Dick Swan.

Bud: I think the Rocket’s Blast was # 43. That was my first one. That’s another thing: everybody remembers their first Rocket’s Blast!

You talk to anybody up in my age group—Larry Bigman, somebody like that—and they’ll tell you what their first Rocket’s Blast was.

Jim—Jim Buser—and John Barrett, these guys, they had known about fandom for longer than I had and they were already publishing a fanzine. They had a little fanzine called Eccentric, and John had a ditto or a mimeograph machine in his garage, and he was crankin’ out things, and Jim Buser was doing amateur art for his… It was a really crappy little crudzine, you know, but they were into it! They were givin’ it a try! And Jim had a letter in Justice League #20 before I ever met him!

CBC: Oh! A celebrity!

Bud: He counted the panels. It’s a great letter, his letter, but he went through the first, whatever, 15 or 20 issues of Justice League and counted the number of panels that every hero appeared in! How’s that for obsessive? [laughter] CBC: Julie was impressed at his industriousness!

Bud: Yeah, yeah! I betcha he was! You know what? Jim still has an original cover for Strange Adventures… I think it’s #150? #150 or 151, for a letters page contribution. [Jim says he bought it for $20 at a con.] Remember when they used to give away the original art? Well, he got it! He still has it. I mean, after all these years! That’s just amazing!

CBC: Pardon me if it’s common knowledge: did you have a creative streak in you as far as writing or drawing or…?

Bud: Nooooo… I wanted to draw when I was a kid. I used to try to do imitations of Donald Duck and I did Vaughn Bodé-looking stuff. You know, guys with big feet like Cheech Wizard. You know, I just doodled stuff. I just never had enough interest to get good at it and you look at all this really magnificent stuff that you see out there in comics and illustrated books and everywhere else and I think I was just thoroughly intimidated, so I just said no, it’s not for me.

The writing part, I guess that’s a little more my shtick.

I’m not into fiction writing, but I got into correspondence, which means we would be writing each other long letters about stuff, and I contributed a tiny bit to the fanzines, but not too much. I had an article on Mystery in Space I wrote for a guy named Don Dagenais. I can’t remember the name of the fanzine, but again I was pretty busy with high school and all that and then I was busy with the store! I mean, we opened our store in ’68 and I would have been 15 or 16 when that first store opened so I just didn’t have time to be out pursuing too much like that. Then, once I got into the mail-order business, I started writing descriptions and, you know, I’ve been doing that ever since. I still tend to be pretty verbose in emails and stuff like that. It’s fun to correspond with people, and so I do it by email now.

CBC: My mother’s a bookseller online and she can be very defensive! She’s 88 years old, but she can be very defensive with me in saying, “I’m a writer, too, you know! I’ve gotta write all these descriptions to entice people to buy them and they do!”

Bud: Yeah! I think of the whole mail order business as an extension of being a collector because I like to think I’m COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

getting excited about stuff and I’m turning people on to it!

Now, there’s a lot of stuff I carry that I’m not too terribly excited about, but still, when the really exciting stuff comes along, I get really passionate about it and I think that comes through, at least for certain people, and that’s why I’ve been successful, I think in the business, because they realize that the guy who’s telling me about this really appreciates it. It’s not just another widget to him, like on Amazon.

CBC: Well, I think “Our Highest Recommendation” is just… it’s authentic, it’s true, it’s the Grail that us writers, editors, and publishers wanna get from Bud Plant. Your “highest recommendation” is something to aspire to and to get it is an achievement to be proud of.

Bud: I appreciate that.

I get a little bit of that on cover choices. I mean, I always get permission from whoever I’m doing a cover feature on… and it’s really, really, rare when I’ve not been able to do a cover feature because usually people go, “Yeah, I’d love to be on the cover of one of your catalogs, so… ” CBC: [Laughs] “I’d love to sell one of my books,” so yeah.

Bud: From that viewpoint, it’s sort of a holy grail or something, so yeah, I’m pleased with that. I wish I was still doing 50,000 print runs on my catalogs but, you know, those times have changed. One of the few times I ever got turned down on that was by Disney. Don’t ever ask Disney to do anything ‘cause there’s no way, so I couldn’t do a Carl Barks cover. And Ellie Frazetta said, “Sure, you can do a cover, but I want…” What’d

Above: Seven Sons co-owner Frank Scadina bought out his partners by the time this San Jose Mercury article was printed, renaming the store Marvel Galaxy. Below: Dick Swan stands before Comic World (co-owned by Swan, Bud Plant, John Barrett, and Jim Buser), in the summer of 1969, when it opened. Swan estimated the store, which was only a few blocks from Marvel Galaxy, was nine feet wide by 30 feet deep.

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Above: Montage of random issues of the pulp magazine, Planet Stories, and various EC Comics titles. Young Bud Plant bicycled over to the fabled San Jose flea market (also pictured), where he once scored a stack of pulps and 28 EC issues, on his “best flea market day ever.”

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girlfriend says—this is a great story!—his girlfriend says, “No, those are horrible. You should just get rid of ’em! Just sell ’em to this kid.” So the guy sold me 28 ECs—Tales from the Crypt, a couple Two-Fisted Tales, and Haunts, and Vaults and… man! I went home on my bike thinking that somebody was undoubtedly gonna rob me! [Jon laughs] Someone was gonna knock me off and take all my Planet Stories and all my ECs. [laughs] But this was my best flea market day ever, y’know?

CBC: Were there any other comic shops? Was Gary Arlington the first?

Bud: No, we were the first! We beat Gary by one month.

We opened March 3rd, technically. I’ve got a journal. I kept journals as a kid from 1965 to ’71, and I’ve got it all documented in a journal. It’s funny, because Michelle Nolan used to always think it was April Fool’s Day that we opened, but nope. Michelle, your memory is damn good, but it’s not perfect! I’ve got it in my journal. We were painting the store in February. John Barrett and I were working on painting the inside of the store and then we opened on the third.

Gary opened in April. He’s the one that opened on… I don’t know if it was April 1st, but he opened a month later. Now, there was Cherokee—Cherokee Comic Shop or Cherokee Annex—that had the comics upstairs in the Cherokee Bookstore. That was already open in L.A., as was Bond Street Books, another bookstore that had comics and I think they were open also at that time. So there were at least a couple of shops in L.A., but we were the first up in Northern California. Michelle likes to claim we were the first freestanding, totally-devoted-to-comics comic shop, but I think that’s bogus. I think we proved that Bob Bell or somebody else was probably doing it long before we were.

CBC: Ah! So you had knowledge of other places? Who came up with this idea of doing a retail store and thinking that there would be a market for this?

Bud: [Laughs] I have no idea. Collectively, we sort of just came up with a good idea, I guess. We had one guy who was 24, so he was actually an adult. He had had problems.

He had polio when he was a kid and didn’t have a job.

That’s Frank Scadina. He was the guy that actually bought the store from the rest of us, at one point. His mom wanted to set him up in something and have him have a real job, y’know… And Michelle was actually over 21. I think she signed the business license because the rest of us were still too young. So it was just this collective idea. Let’s put this thing together and sell comics! And also the point would be you’d be having comics coming through the door because nobody thought comics were worth anything back then. So we had people bringing in comics all the time that we could buy for next to nothing. Our base price for an old comic was a quarter. So, I could go to the flea market, buy a comic for a nickel, turn it around for a quarter in the store.

So that was huge! A huge profit margin! [laughs] CBC: Yeah! It was! Percentage-wise. So did you guys have ads in Rocket’s Blast?

Bud: Individually we did, but I don’t think Seven Sons ever collectively had an ad.

CBC: So anything that came through the door while you were there, you would just get first dibs…? #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Planet Stories TM & © Paizo Publishing, LLC. EC Comics TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. Journal photo courtesy of Jim Buser. Cherokee Book Store photo © Regents of the University of California.

Above: Bud kept a journal over the years, retaining evidence that Seven Sons Comic Shop opened on Mar. 3, 1968, predating the April opening of Gary Arlington’s comic shop. Below: While Seven Sons was among the first shops specifically devoted to comics, Cherokee Book Shop, located on Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, had been selling back issues for years. This Los Angles Times photo is from June 7, 1965.

she want…? $10,000 for it! [Jon laughs] “But, Ellie! I’m advertising Frank’s book, which Frank is making a commission out of, you know, getting a royalty for.” And she goes, “I don’t care. That’s our deal. You wanna use one of our pictures, you’ve gotta pay us 10,000 bucks.” For that reason, until Frank and Ellie were long gone, I never did a Frazetta cover on the catalog.

CBC: How’d the store come about? What was its name?

Bud: The store was the Seven Sons Comic Shop, and it came about from that same group of guys I had just met in ’65, so now we’re talking about Spring of ’68.

CBC: And who came up with the idea?

Bud: The six of us got together—Michelle, John Barrett, Jim Buser, Tom Tallmon, (and Frank Scadina). The six of us get together and say, “Let’s open a comic shop,” and there’s empty storefronts down in downtown San Jose.

We all contributed… I think the rent was 75 bucks a month and we all contributed something really nominal, like $35, because we just had to pay the rent and the deposit for the electricity, the permit, phone deposit, and sh*t like that, and all of a sudden, we’ve got a comic shop! Now, all we’re doing is selling used comics. Not a new comic in the shop!

And we quickly expanded into science fiction paperbacks because that was such a big area. All of us were reading Heinlein and Burroughs, and all that stuff, so we said, “Well yeah, let’s carry paperbacks.” The San Jose flea market was nearby and there was a second flea market in San Jose, so it was a ready source for a lot of stuff. I lived closer than anybody else to the flea market, so that was my haunt.

I’d ride my bike down there every Saturday morning and most often on Sunday mornings. It was three miles away.

I’d lock my bike up and run around and try to find comics for a nickel apiece.

CBC: Did you have a crate on your bike or a backpack?

Bud: Yeah, I had a little carrier. I had a carrier that I could strap a bag to. You’d get a grocery bag and… You wouldn’t do more than fill up a grocery bag, usually. You’d get a grocery bag, you’d strap it down with bungee cords and stick it on your bike. My best-ever flea market day I actually was sort of overflowing with stuff. I had come across a bunch of Planet Stories pulps and I’d got a stack of those. I just couldn’t believe it because you just didn’t come across stuff like that very often. And then, just as I was almost done, I come across this guy that has EC Comics and he’s selling them, I think, two for a quarter because he thought they were old and they should be worth a lot of money. [laughter] Which was actually the retail price of a comic at that point because comics were 12¢.

I only had about six bucks left and it wasn’t enough to buy all his comics, but his

Planet Comics TM & © Lee Caplin. ZAP Comix TM & © the ZAP Collective.

Bud: Well, if it came through the door, the best stuff would just go right straight into our collections! It would never even get sold in the store. So, that was one of the problems.

[Jon laughs] We had people bring in, like, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, and we had all these guys who collect them, so we’d just split ’em up, you know? We’d actually, literally, deal ’em out. We’d personally figure out who gets first choice, then we’d just deal ’em out and all the good stuff would go right back out the door and into our collections. Even our second store… We sold out to Scadina fairly quickly because his mom looked at the deal and said, “This is a perfect vehicle for my son to have a job. I want him to have it.” She made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, so we all got out of the store—this woulda been in late ’68.

But, by ’69, we went to our first comic book convention, in Houston, came back with a whole sh*tload of comics, that we bought from a couple guys selling their tables out. We said, “Hey, we’ve got all these comics. Let’s open another store!” So, a block away from the old, existing store that we had started, we opened up a second store, in 1969, and this time just with four partners. We were slowly learning our lessons about partners. As soon as I got started in college, I bailed out. I was starting with 18 units [college credits]. I said, “No way I’m gonna be able to run this store on top of doing this college stuff.

CBC: And what was the name of that store?

Bud: That was called Comic World. And the reason it was called Comic World was because it had been called Bead World and all we had to do was white out the word “Bead” and put in the word, “Comic,” and it became Comic World.

And the Bead shop had moved next store, so we had those guys… They had some cute girl that worked over there that I think had a thing for one of our guys, for John Barrett. So we had four partners in there. That’s when we took on Dick Swan, who’s actually, I guess, somewhat well-known in the hobby, ’cause he’s big with his comics on eBay. He was just a little younger than the rest of us. He didn’t come on until the second shop.

CBC: Do you recall what was the first underground that you saw? And when was that?

Bud: My first underground was ZAP #1. Again, good ol’ deviant Al Daveron, who was turning me on to all this other stuff told me to go down and buy a copy of ZAP #1 from… There was a head shop down in San Jose. I bought it, and read it, and did not understand what was going on. [laughter] It did not make my eyes light up nor make my hair stand on end. It took a little while—maybe not very long—but it took just a little while to understand what the hell was going on with underground comix. So, for a kid who was strictly into Marvels and DCs reading ZAP #1 at the age of whatever I woulda been in ’67 (I still woulda been like 15 or something). Oh! I couldn’t relate to it, but then things changed rather quickly on that front. Well, especially, like, I really liked Rick Griffin, so you know… ZAP #1, ZAP #2 comes out, and all of a sudden you’ve got Rick Griffin in there in ZAP #3, so I could really appreciate that. I was always again more into the art at that point than I was into Crumb and his satirical stuff.

CBC: Now what do you think about Bob Overstreet not including undergrounds in the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, which was a watershed moment for fandom to have a price guide?

Bud: You know, that’s a good question. I should’ve asked him that years ago and I never really did. I can only speculate. It could be part of it is the adult content. He could have just said, “I’m not gonna carry information on pornographic comics in Overstreet,” and that’s the end of that. He doesn’t carry fanzine information, either and fanzines are a pretty important part of early comics and very collectible now. I don’t know. His plate is full just keeping up with the comics, so in his defense, you could also just say he’s got more than enough to deal with. Between you and me, and maybe someone else, he doesn’t do real well on getting adjustCOMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

ments into the Guide. Fixing mistakes and stuff. I mean, I don’t know if he’s just overwhelmed, doesn’t have enough staff, or what the deal is but he’s already got limitations I guess, so I guess it was easier to just cut out this whole genre and say, “I’m not gonna cover it.”

CBC: Well, not including undergrounds was right from the start. The first Overstreet was around the same time as the underground movement. It would’ve been easy enough to put it in. The omission just created an artificial schism that persists to this very day. When I put underground material in my magazine, a lot of my readers just kinda shrug and couldn’t care less. They want more of the Marvel bullpen stuff, y’know? It’s kinda weird.

Bud: It’s a really good point. And there’s a limit. I mean the undergrounds sort of petered out by the end of the ‘70s, so there’s not that big a group of them to deal with. But you also have a good point. There’s a lot of people that just aren’t that interested. But then, there’s a lot of stuff in the Price Guide that people aren’t interested in. Not many people care about Gene Autry Comics and that kind of stuff, too. [laughs] But they are real comic books, as opposed to undergrounds. Undergrounds never been considered to be real comic books, by at least a certain element of our hobby.

CBC: Well, they’re wrong! [laughter] Bud: Well, they certainly got me going! After that second store closed down and I was in

Above: If you need a suggestion on what to get Bud Plant for his birthday (May 4!), his Planet Comics collection is only missing one single issue—#1 [Jan. 1940]! Cover art by Lou Fine. Below: Young Bud was quite impressed with the mind-blowing work of Rick Griffin, his favorite artist of the ZAP collective. Griffin cover for ZAP Comix #3 [Mar. 1969].

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Tront and Spa Fon, for a lot of guys like me, were the ultimate fanzines, and even though those might have cost a buck or a buck-anda-half, they were gold, because they were so special. In fact, one of the first fanzines I carried was, I think, it was Spa Fon #5. And the Squa Tronts from Jerry Weist—those were big iconic fanzines for me in the early days. I loved handling that kind of stuff. They were really special when they’d come in because they had all this great art in them and it was really fun, you know, selling those in the business.

CBC: Were you hungry for information? Like, when Steranko’s History came out, were you… ?

Bud: Absolutely! Yeah, absolutely! I’m still that way! Come visit me, really, and you’ll see the hunger. [laughs] I’ve got a room downstairs just for the history of illustrated books and illustrators. I’m just a junkie for information!

When Raymond Miller was doing his stuff for the Rocket’s Blast and they did the Rocket’s Blast Specials, Raymond Miller did one on Timely. Sh*t!

I read that thing over and over and over and over. Wow! Daring Mystery Comics! And Joe Simon was doing “The Fiery Mask”! Sub-Mariner and Bill Everett and all that stuff… I mean, I just suck that stuff down. I’ve always been a junkie for data, for information, and I still love reading histories of artists, histories of companies, whether they be comics artists like, say, the Mac Raboy book that just came out from TwoMorrows. That’s a great, great book! Or the Reed Crandall book that Roger Hill wrote. Those are really wonderful books! I love reading about the illustrators and their lives and how they did their stuff and how they contended with the real world and all that, so yeah, I’m a junkie for information.

CBC: Back in grade school and high school, were you interested in history?

Bud: [Sighs] No. History of comics: yes. History of anything else…? Probably not necessarily true. Now, when I got into illustrated books, which was around ’72, ’73, when I started discovering Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish, and all those guys, then I got real interested in that history, but that’s a whole ’nother offshoot that, you know. I’m really fascinated by the history of book illustration, which, in some ways, kind of ties in to comics. It’s not that far afield when people were doing 15, 20, 30, 40 plates illustrating fantasy stories and fairy tales and stuff, so I’m really interested in the history of book illustration right back to the 1830s on. I have a whole parallel world of interests and collecting that I’m involved with on that front.

CBC: Are there definitive histories that have been produced?

Bud: Oh, yeah! There’s all kinds of really good histories on book illustration. Real cornerstone books and then really, really good books on particular illustrators.

I was just telling somebody about it recently.

There’s a book on Howard Pyle. Howard Pyle is considered the father of American illustration. As students, he had Parrish and N.C. Wyeth. He influenced generations of students. Henry Pitz, who is an artist himself, wrote the book on Howard Pyle—a really great book—and how Pyle was just the guy who said illustration can be fine art.

Because, illustration was always looked down upon, just like comic book art used to be looked down upon. Illustration was #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Buck Rogers TM & © The Dille Family Trust. Flash Gordon TM & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. Dick Tracy TM & © Tribune Media Services, Inc. Blackhawks TM & © DC Comics.

college, I suddenly realized, “Hey!” I’d been sort of spoiled in having a store and having income and having a little money in my pocket and stuff, so I had to do something and that’s when I started the mail order business. I said, okay, I’m gonna carry fanzines, underground comix, and any possible books on comics that I can get my hands on. Now, then, there were almost no books on comics! Chelsea House was doing a couple things like the Buck Rogers, and I think they did a Dick Tracy, and then there was Nostalgia Press, who I was quickly dealing with. But man, there was hardly any books on comics. It was really few and far between, so mostly, what I was selling was underground comix and fanzines. That’s the beginning of what I still do now, 50 years later.

CBC: When you really got into comics and you went through the Marvels and you were collecting the Marvels, did you have a particular niche that you wanted every single one of… I don’t know, Planet Comics, for example.

Bud: Well, yeah, for one, everybody wants all the Planet Comics. [Jon laughs] I loved the Planet Comics. I got turned on to those early. Collecting them all was a pretty big hurdle back then. I still don’t have # 1. I’ve got every other one but there’s, like, the craziest price on that first issue after all these years. [laughter] So, me and my buddies, we all sort of had one old company that we really liked, like John really liked MLJ and Jim really liked the DC stuff—All Star and all that—and I got into Quality Comics. So, for me, at the beginning there, all of it was my gosh, Plastic Man, all the Reed Crandall stuff, Police Comics, Smash, Hit, Crack. I really thought the artwork was better on those than on the average in any other company, and I was really into the artwork. And Blackhawk…! I liked the Blackhawk team. To me, they’re sort of like the Fantastic Four without superpowers. So I collected Blackhawk. I got into Quality. But, at the same time, I was also getting turned on to all the art comics, so we were out there looking for Frazetta, Williamson, and Wood, and anybody else. You know, back issues of 1950s Atlas comics mostly.

CBC: Did you become a collector of fanzines or a reader?

Bud: Well, I say a reader. It’s hard. I’m not sure what you mean when you say a collector…? To be a collector might mean to want to buy every fanzine coming out and I’m not that. My budget was limited, so you went for the best. Fanzines tended to be a little expensive. I mean, comics were 12¢ or 15¢ or 20¢ or whatever they were…

I’ll give you a good example: Star-Studded Comics from Buddy Saunders and the Texas guys. I think they sold for 50¢ or 75¢. That’s a fair amount of money when you’re a kid. You could buy another comic for that!

So I read a couple of Star-Studded issues and I said, “Well, I’ve seen better stuff in comics. I don’t really need these amateur regional comics.” But then there was other stuff, like Voice of Comicdom who was using Richard Corben’s stuff. Then in Weirdom, and, of course, the Rocket’s Blast, and Gary Groth started doing Fantastic Fanzine. You really had to pick and choose.

Squa Tront was the ultimate. Squa

All are TM & © the respective copyright holders. The Human Torch, Captain America, Sub-Mariner TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

looked down up because if you’re doing it for hire, you’re doing it as commercial stuff, that’s not gonna be fine art.

But Pyle made the argument that it was. He used to have summer school courses for students and all kinds of his students went on to be really, really great illustrators. I like that kind of stuff.

CBC: Were you sociable in high school? Did you date? Did you play sports?

Bud: [Laughs] Noooo. I believe my social life was mostly comics. [Jon chuckles] I dated a tiny, tiny bit, but really I was painfully shy, I’d say. I had girlfriends but they were friends and trying to convert them into a…

CBC: [Laughs] Romance?

Bud: Something more was not happening. So yeah, I spent probably… Well, who knows, I might not be doing what I’m doing now if I’d been more social and, you know, knocked up some poor girl and started a family when I was young so… Maybe it benefited me. [laughter] I considered myself to be socially awkward, you know? I had glasses, I had pimples early on. I wasn’t the picture of a robust football player.

I would have been more considered a geek, I guess.

CBC: So, a lot of people get into comics, start drawing, so they start getting attention from the greater arena, for instance, me. I started to draw because I was so fascinated with comics and that got me a little out of my shell and got me attention from other people. It was able to give me some gratification, so I was able to step out of it and yet I always retained my love for comics. Then there are people using their different creative skills they branch out and away from comics. Do you think, in a sense, in a social way, that you ensconced yourself into the culture of comics and that you were quite happy being there?

Bud: I would say, yes, with a caveat. I still remember when I was turning 20 or 21 and saying, “Jesus, why don’t I have a girlfriend?” At that point, I still didn’t have anybody significant in my life. That came along fairly quickly afterward and

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

the first girl that showed any interest in me, all of a sudden boom, I was married. I thought I was really old and ancient by that point and I was only 22 or something. But comics really did provide that whole social structure, you know, and going to shows and then becoming a dealer, you were forced into being much more of a social person. You’re just doing it with people who have similar interests so it’s easier than trying to penetrate the difficulties of male/female relationships and such. I think the conventions served me well.

A slight aside is that I’ve been a part of a used bookstore now for almost 20 years. I just got out of it ’cause I just want more time to myself, but I’ve been working about a day a week for almost 20 years in this little used bookstore, a local used bookstore. It was sort of a different pace, a different feel going on than I have in my mail order business and I think that that has got me even really more social, where now I can just talk to anybody. You know what I mean? I can stand in line and start up a conversation with somebody and I recognize it’s just made me a lot more outgoing and able to carry on a conversation. Not that I was that bad previous to that, but it’s more so. Sometimes I wonder if I embarrass my kids by being more outgoing than I used to be.

CBC: A big part of me worries that the San Diego Comicon might be a thing of the past. There’s a very serious possibility that big gatherings, because of the Covid-19 crisis… I know you went there over 40 years. I went there for probably 10 years all together. There is a sense within a population that drifts through there of, I don’t know, 130,000 or 150,000 people go through there are like 25 people, for instance, or maybe more. Maybe 75 people, who make it a community. It’s really weird. It’s like this very small town where you drift through this giant gathering of humanity to go over to Bud Plant’s place in the “village.” I’m just probably making a statement. It’s like this great, kindred connection… You’re a part of my world, my San Diego community.

I don’t care about the price of things. I just think the joy of

Above: Among the fanzines impressing Bud Plant (who would specialize in selling fanzines through his mail order business in the years to come) were, from left, Dennis Cunningham’s Weirdom, a long-running San Jose-based ’zine (which included some of Richard Corben’s earliest published work) that morphed into an underground comic book by 1971—this being the last issue, #15 [Mar. ’72]; Corben’s work also graced Bill Dubay’s Voice of Comicdom, with “Rowlf” serialized in the final two issues, #16 [May ’70] and #17 [’71]; and Gary Groth’s Fantastic Fanzine (represented here with #10 [1970], cover art by Jim Steranko) lasted 13 issues, ending in 1971. Previous page: At top were some books Bud’s mail order biz offered in the early 1970s, The Collected Works of Buck Rogers [Chelsea House, 1969], Flash Gordon in the Ice Kingdom of Mongo [Nostalgia Press, 1967], and The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy [Chelsea, 1970]. At bottom is detail of Reed Crandall’s Military Comics #13 [Nov. ’42] cover. Below: From left is Rocket’s Blast Special #1 [second printing, ’64], Star-Studded Comics #7 [June ’65]; and the exemplary Squa Tront #1 [July ’67] and #2 [1968].

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Above: Bud in the early 1970s.

Photo by Clay Geerdes.

Coming next ish…

Bud on his mail order biz, foray as fanzine/comics publisher, retail adventures with the Comics & Comix chain, distribution exploits at the dawn of the direct market, and much more!

16

TO BE CONTINUED #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Photo of Bud Plant courtesy of David Miller and © the estate of Clay Geerdes. Batman, Robin TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Cool poster promoting the 2017 Oklahoma Alliance of Fans convention, a beloved old-time comics show Bud misses. Below: Logo for Bud Plant Comic Art, which graced decades worth of his Incredible Catalogs. Download his latest at www.budsartbooks.com.

comics! It’s hard to describe, but I’ll miss that village if it’s gone. Hell, I’ve missed you since your place went away! [laughs] Bud: No, I hear what you’re saying. I agree with you.

There’s a comfort level of being down there with all these people who have similar interests and seeing old friends that you’ve known for years and years and years. That’s one of the real joys, honestly, of being into comics, alongside all the art appreciation and everything else and reading the stories but it’s the friendships. I mean, geez. Michelle Nolan! I’ve known her since she was, you know, 20! And she’s 70 now! I’ve known people for 50-55 years, and I still can relate to these guys. Larry Bigman—I’ve known him since 1969. Bart Bush. God. Oh, I was so upset when he passed away, but I’d known Bart since 1969. Anyhow, so the friendships and stuff. In San Diego, you get to rekindle those even if you don’t see those guys the rest of the time.

At least you’re seeing them one time a year.

And there are other conventions. You’ve gotta give it that. That’s why I bring up Bart because Bart was putting on the OAF show, which got canceled, of course, this year, too. OAF is like an old-time comics show and man, I love that show and so do other people! They just go because it’s such a joyous occasion to get together with these guys you’ve known for 50 years and we all have the same interests and some of us are still collecting comics. I take the new books—the new Crandall book or the Mac Raboy book, and I put it out there and I love having people get turned on to it. “Oh, wow! That’s that new such and such!”

It’s a joy! It’s not the money! It’s just the joy of saying, “Yeah, take a look at this. Here’s a Nestor Redondo book. You haven’t seen that because it’s done by some obscure publisher somewhere, you know?” I love sharing that with either the people I know or the people that become friends.

CBC: That’s great. You said you had a diary of sorts from the ‘60s. Do you still have that?

Bud: Yeah. It’s a journal. What they call daybooks. You know, so you’ve got two dates on every page, and I used to write down what the comics were I bought that day or what the undergrounds I sold that day from the mail order were, or stuff about the shop, or going to movies. I’d cut out little tiny pictures of the latest James Bond movie and paste ’em in there. Just little weird sh*t like that. [Jon laughs] Like when I went back east in ’69-70, to Houston Con and New York Con, I didn’t take it with me, so I don’t have as much as I’d like to have, but I’ve got certain information in there, which is nice, because it’s pure documentation, you know?

CBC: Wow, yeah! I hope that goes to a library or something.

Bud: Well, it might. Who knows? I’ve made a couple

copies. I wish I had a spare set. I’d send it to you, but I don’t know if I’ve got a spare set. I had my sister run off four or five copies once. I sent one to Dick Swan and one to Michelle Nolan and… Yeah, just in case the house burned down I didn’t wanna lose that, because it is kinda cool. It documents what was happening. We’d go to a show and I’d come home with copies of this and that and the other thing and say, “You know how much I paid? I spend $3.25 for these seven comics!” That sort of thing.

It really brings the memory back to have that stuff written down somewhere. Otherwise it would just be… Like, conventions in general were a mush to me. I mean, there’s just too many conventions. What happened in San Diego in 1976? I don’t know! Are you kidding me? I set up at 48 separate San Diego conventions. They’re all just this mush of odd memories, you know?

CBC: Did you have that journal when you were doing the Berkeley Con? The first Berkeley Con? Bud: No, I stopped by about late ’71, which would have been my second year in college. I gave it up. So, yeah the Berkeley Con was in ’73 so that’s toast. You have to go back and talk to good ol’ Bob Beerbohm or me or… Mike Manyak’s still around! He was one of the founders of that thing. He’s a good guy. Him and Nick Marcus—one of the guys who started that show and then they realized they were in over their heads and so they came to Comics & Comix—to us—and they said, “Can you guys help us do this?”

And we said, “Yeah, man! We’re veterans! We’ve been going to New York for three years, four years! [laughs] We know all about comic books shows!” We helped to put it on and then that was the show that helped me decide I don’t wanna put on any more comic shows. It’s much more fun to be a dealer and be a fanboy than it is working behind the scenes, trying to administrate that damn show. We had to build the art show. We didn’t have a room where we could hang any paintings and we wanted to put up all this art so what do we do? We had to go out and buy four big sheets of plywood and two by fours, and we had to literally build a room within the ballroom of UC Berkeley and just put it together and hang all the artwork there… overnight! It was, like… Yeah. Ridiculous. [Jon chuckles] I remember nothing of the art show itself but I remember building it.

CBC: What’s your birth name? What’s your full name?

Bud: Francis Benjamin Plant.

CBC: Were you named for anybody?

Bud: Yeah, the name Francis Benjamin runs down through my family. My father was Henry Benjamin. My grandfather was Francis Benjamin. My great-grandfather was Henry Benjamin again. I think he was in the Civil War. It ran down through the family. I hated the name Francis.

CBC: When did you get the nickname?

Bud: My mother had a brother named Buddy, who actually died when he was, I think, eight, nine, or ten, so she nicknamed me Buddy after her lost brother. And the name stuck, because I’ve never been known as Francis. And then when I thought I was getting mature and older, around seventh grade, I shortened it to Bud because I thought Bud sounded a bit more mature than Buddy. But Buddy Saunders doesn’t think so. [Jon laughs] He’s still Buddy.

But yeah, I turned into Bud. Honest to God, I didn’t realize the botanical connotation between bud and plant until a teacher actually pointed it out to me.

CBC: Oh, dude! I thought you made the name up, man!

Bud: I know! I get that so much. Everybody thinks my name is a fake name and I go, “Not really.” [laughter] You know, Bud Plant, in Grass Valley, selling underground comix about dope and stuff! You know? Yeah… right.

CBC: [Chuckles] “Got weed? I’m knockin’ on yer front door right now, dude!” Thank you. Bud. Bud: All right. Thanks.

belgian dispatch

Weirdest Hand in the West Forty years of Peter van Heirseele’s indefatigable gag comic strip Cowboy Henk dents, the comedy team of Kamagurka and Seele have become partners in crime Really quickly—and very subjectively—when one thinks on many fronts and in many of Belgian comics, a few major characters come to mind: media: as stars of television Herge’s Tintin, of course… Peyo’s Smurfs, no doubt… specials, radio programs, Lucky Luke, Spirou… and then there is the wildest, most and theatrical tours around irreverent one of all—Cowboy Henk.

Since Cowboy Henk’s first appearance on Sept. 24, 1981, Belgium, but most famously and consistently, on their his hilarious escapades and non-sequitur episodes have been written by Kamagurka (born Luc Zeebroek) and drawn magnum opus, the Cowboy Henk strip. Yes, as anyone

by Herr Seele, ne’ Peter van Heirseele. connected to van Heirseele The Flemish Cowboy Henk series is absurdist to the on Facebook knows, the nth degree; a surreal comic strip—usually black-&-white man is primarily a fast and strips, but also full-color full pages—centered around the furious fine artist whose oil titular free-wheeling, tall, buffed blond man with that big, paintings are essentially banana pompadour. The strip is offbeat and off-kilter: the mammoth political cartoons jokes abide less by set-up and punchline, but more often on canvas, often couched following a dream logic. The art is deceptively simple, with within parodies of famous some of the cleanest character designs this side of Basil Dutch paintings. Van HeirWolverton. And since this is a European comic strip, the seele is constantly drawing jokes can be scatological one day, include grisly violence and painting portraits of the next, or sex and full-frontal nudity—often featuring friends and family members, Henk himself. However, such strips are never truly sexual often with Henk included. and Henk remains asexual—the aim is not to titillate the reader or create shock value for a cheap thrill, but rather go He spent one year painting daily self-portraits, and to extreme places just for the sake of a gag. likes to adorn his anarchic According to van Heirseele, Kama—a cartoonist in his own right who posts his own weirdo gag cartoons regularly cartoon alter ego on everything from the sides of his beloved restored old pianos to public murals on the sides of on Instagram—and Seele consider Cowboy Henk just a schools. There are also giant Cowboy Henk statues looming piece (albeit a significant piece) of a greater oeuvre of large in Belgium. creative work. Since the start of their friendship as art stuConducted June 3, 2021, via video call (van Heirseele speaks fluent English), this interview with the cartoonist is the culmination of my own personal journey with Kamagurka and Seele’s highly entertaining, timeless and subversive Cowboy Henk strip—on a par, in my opinion, with classic American strips such as Nancy, Henry, and The Little King.

As a practitioner of humor cartoons myself, I’ve long admired and read Cowboy Henk (in its various incarnations), first in English in the pages of RAW anthologies back in the 1980s and later in France’s Psikopat comics anthology magazine in the early 1990s while briefly living in Paris; and in various book collections (in French, Spanish and the native Dutch-language editions). The RAW inclusions aside, there is not a whole lot of Cowboy Henk translated into English, other than a 1994 full-color book called Cowboy Henk: King of Dental Floss, published by Scissors Books (which I felt didn’t capture the flat-out hilarity of the strips which ran in Psikopat).

But here’s the rub: As it turns out, van Heirseele says that Cowboy Henk is way more influenced

by Flemish art, the Dutch masters, and a gaggle of surrealists— from author Franz Kafka to Giorgio De Chirico and Belgian artist Magritte—than (one would think…) Bushmiller and Soglow.

Cowboy Henk TM & © Kama & Seele. Painting © Peter van Heirseele.

by MICHAEL AUSHENKER CBC Associate Editor

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

Above: Creation and creator in Peter van Heirseele’s painting.

Inset left: Quintessential Cowboy Henk strip. Below: The singular English language collection, Scissor Books [1994].

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sweeping full-page portrait sketches of Olivia and myself on the fly pages in one flowing Sharpie line… and, of course, a sketch of that irascible rascal Henk himself.

—Michael Aushenker Comic Book Creator: Peter, tell me a tad about your background growing up in Belgium.

Peter van Heirseele: I grew up in West Flanders, the hinterlands. The same region as the Flemish artists.

CBC: Which town are you from?

Peter: A small town called Torhout. It’s not as beautiful as Bruges, but only 15 kilometers from Bruges. I attended the [Royal] Academy of Fine Arts [in Antwerp] and I did some drawing there, but it was pretty useless as my best teacher was my mother. The best female artist in Flanders. She was just a brilliant artist. Expressionism was thriving here. She used a palette knife, did ceramics. She won the biggest prize in Brussels.

CBC: Was your father creative, too?

Peter: My father worked for an American multinational Outboard Marine [founded in 1907 now defunct]. He was the simple person in the family… my mother was complex.

CBC: How long were you and Kamagurka friends before you co-created Cowboy Henk?

Peter: We were friends for three years. I did my studies, quit high school. I wasn’t very good at school. I had enough of it. I was always the worst student. I wrote my parents a letter: Could I go to the fine arts academy in Ghent? And they said, “We’ll let him do it,” it’s a family of artists, it was unavoidable.

I didn’t plan on becoming a professional artist. From ages 11 to 20, I had a calling, I wanted to be a priest, a monk. The romantic idea of being in a monastery me, being able to work. #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Cowboy Henk TM & © Kama & Seele. RAW TM & © Art Spiegelman & Françoise Mouly.

Abobe: If there are American fans of Cowboy Henk, most likely that’s due to his appearance in RAW, primarily in the Penguin edition. This double-pager appeared in V.2 #3 [June ’91].

Thanks to the magic of Facebook—after decades of following Cowboy Henk from afar —I befriended van Heirseele in person, in Sept. 2018, while on a European vacation with my then-girlfriend Olivia. After visiting my relatives in England and France, we took an SNCF train from Paris’ Gare du Nord station to the touristy Quarter Royal center of Brussels, where van Heirseele and his fianceé (now wife), Katia Belloy, met me at Le Cirio, a classical brasserie with gilded columns, curved mirrors, and a façade going back to 1909. The tavern—only a short walk from the tourist destination Manneken Pis (if you know what that is!

LOL)—is a favorite of the cartoonist. Van Heirseele and Belloy had driven down from their home in Ostend—the same town where one of van Heirseele’s artistic heroes, James Ensor, was born and died in. For me, it was quite surreal to be entertained by my favorite living cartoonist with his local friends, including acclaimed cartoonist Dominique Goblet. Van Heirseele treated us all to rich anecdotes and flumes of half-and-halfs while Olivia took photos of us in converso with her high-end digital camera.

Always the dapper comedian, van Heirseele cuts quite a presence in person: When I met him, he was a high-energy, fit man of 60 with comedic rubbery facial expressions.

He is as bald as Henk is towheaded and dressed impeccably in the style of Hollywood’s old-timey comedians from the 1920s and ’30s. Van Heirseele turned out to be gregarious, garrulous, gracious, generous, and, above all, always creating, always drawing; signing up the big, handsome, full-color hardcover Spanish collection of Cowboy Henk strips (published by Autsaider Comics) which I had lugged to Europe just for this occasion. As the conversation, laughs and alcohol flowed, so did van Heirseele’s effortless hand as he conjured up

Cowboy Henk TM & © Kama & Seele. Photos © Kama & Seele.

It’s very surreal. When I look at religious paintings, its surrealism It’s a like a female thing, when someone hits you on the face and you turn the other cheek. He’s not going to hit you.

On a psychological level, you change the violence. Almost a female way of thinking. If you’re not so physically strong, you’re going to use some intelligence.

I love Gothic art from the 15th century and the Baroque period. You have to choose the more precise painting, more trompe-l’oeil with the Flemish primitives, then the Baroque. It’s more precise looking. I always had this tension in my life, this dilemma in my life.

Which way to choose? I’m a pupil of surrealism. Dali, Magritte, De Chirico, stepping back in time. In surrealism, you can choose your own reality.

CBC: Was Cowboy Henk the first work that you and Kama created?

Peter: I met Kamagurka when I was at art school then we started doing black-&-white graphic art comics. The first thing we did were photo novels [fumetti]. We used a photo booth and did silly faces and added word balloons to it. That’s the first thing we were doing. I was like a living version of Tintin, wearing the knickerbockers and hat, and Kamagurka was fascinated by that. When I came through dressed like that at the train station, they fell down in laughter. That 1930s-style. I think a man should dress in a suit.

We met at a station in Ghent, where we traveled every day. I exchanged philosophy with Kama, I was reading Kafka. We were influencing each other.

CBC: How did you and Kama go about collaborating on the strip?

Peter: We’d meet in a café. In a brasserie in Ostend. We used to write there. They didn’t really tolerate us. We were young punks with shaved heads. We had a daily comic, we COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

did it for two years. We got thrown out, then we found another brasserie.

Cowboy Henk was very anti-comic. It was very Dada. Dada is words.

It’s typography. Surrealism is more your hero walks into the space. Dada haven’t grown up into surrealism.

We did Dada when we were in the newspaper but when we went into the weekly magazine. I was looking at a lot of those classic paintings.

Everything was possible if you look at our work. Sometimes we are quite extreme. When we wanted to do nudity in a family magazine, we got away with it. Because it’s not sexual, it’s the humor. We want to make something never done.

CBC: Cowboy Henk initially appeared in the De Morgen newspaper and then soon after went to Humo magazine, where it has run ever since. What kind of a readership does the strip have?

Peter: Humo sells 350,000 copies. It has 1.2 million readers. Belgium is only nine million people. The Flemish people part of Belgium is only five million, so everybody knows Cowboy Henk. Cowboy Henk is like a monument in Belgium. It has run the same length as Tintin and Rene Magritte. The yin and yang of Belgium art: Tintin on the right wing, Magritte on the left wing.

CBC: So Cowboy Henk’s blond pompadour bob sticking up was not inspired by Tintin’s tuft of hair?

Peter: No. At the time, when we created the first Cowboy Henk, we had old comics from the 1940s. Old strips like The Katzenjammer Kids at Kama’s house.

I didn’t know how to draw a realistic comic. So I drew a strip with an Indian and with a detective. The very first Cowboy Henk, he was actually a cowboy in pajamas and he was wearing slippers. He

Above: In the mid-2000s, Kama and Seele’s Cowboy Henk had his own Belgian “Duostamp” set. Instead of featuring panels from published strips, the team devised wacky postal-themed gags for all 15! Inset left: As of September 2021, the twosome has produced Cowboy Henk strips over the last 40 years!

This pic of Peter van Heirseele (left) and Kamagurka, was taken in 1982. Below: The duo performs their own stage show (as well as create TV programs and so very much more!).

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This page: Clockwise from above is an aging Cowboy Henk on the cover of HUMO, the Belgian tabloid that featured the strip for many years; Painter Peter van Heirseele is an avid collector of pianos; and we couldn’t resist including the character’s take on super-heroics. Next page: From top Olivia Zhao’s pic taken during the interviewer’s 2018 dinner with the cartoonist; cover of the 2014 Spanish collection; and another absurd, Dada-esque Cowboy Henk comic strip.

Art Spiegelman said to us, “It’s great stuff, I love Cowboy Henk, it reminds me of Ernie Bushmiller.” We didn’t know Nancy. It’s almost anti-humor. I suppose David Lynch influenced some of Cowboy Henk. When I look back, much of the David Lynch films do not hold up. Maybe Eraserhead.

Also Luis Buñuel… that’s basically what Cowboy Henk is: Luis Buñuel. It’s about hypocrisy, it’s not satire, it’s more tragic comedy. It’s big surrealism like Franz Kafka. He’s a great school for comics, he writes everything in detail. It’s a European thing.

CBC: The next time I found Cowboy Henk comics, it was in the fall of 1991, while I briefly lived in Paris. It ran in the French comics magazine Psikopat, a sort of Fluide Glacial imitator. The feature was translated in French as Cowboy Jean. It was there where I discovered the funniest Cowboy Henk strips I’ve ever read and these strips, in truth, were when I really fell head over heels for the strip.

Years later, I discovered a 1986 Cowboy Henk book released spoofing Tintin in America, called Maurice le Cowboy. Fantagraphics also distributed King of Dental Floss, an English-translated Cowboy Henk volume in the 1990s.

Peter: We’ve never built anything commercial. We could be big, like Casterman in France wants to publish us, but we don’t care. We’ve been talking for four or five years now with [Fantagraphics associate editor] Eric Reynolds. They’d love to do it. We’d love to be with Fantagraphics. I think Cowboy Henk will do well in America. He’s a great hero.

He’s such a recognizable person and amicable. It’s less words than Zippy, it’s more visual. We take our influence from high art. From real surrealism.

CBC: Cowboy Henk has run in Humo from 1981 until present day, but, for a few months in 2013, it didn’t appear.

What happened?

Peter: There was an interruption of the Cowboy Henk [strip] for eight months. They saw their numbers drop. We had the top page. The readers always went to the first page. [The editor] said, “Try to make something else.” We did something: Big Billy, [Dikke Billie Walter], a big guy who weighs 500 kilo. It’s good, but it’s basically the same as Cowboy Henk. We gradually came back to Cowboy Henk.

CBC: Do you have a lot of sway with Humo magazine?

Peter: We’re not that involved with the magazine. We just work on Cowboy Henk because Cowboy Henk is rock ’n’ roll. We’ve never been interested in [looking polished and perfect in print]. We’re very sloppy, we’re not that interested in art and aesthetics. We love making crazy things. I make a painting a day.

CBC: It sounds very punk and DIY. Peter: The mystery of things—Rene Magritte. Kamagurka and I, we’re like the Flemish Monty Python. We’ve been doing it longer than Monty Python in Flanders. That’s what’s keep us going that big success is not there, but it may come. They should find us one day. I just like to make our stuff. I don’t care who loves it. I don’t mind if it’s small and underground. Unfortunately, in Flanders, the underground scene is only 1,000 people. #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Cowboy Henk TM & © Kama & Seele. Painting © Peter van Heirseele.

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quickly changed into a Belgian cowboy. The hair banana was more like a quiff from rockabilly. They were always dark-haired: Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley. Tall, dark and handsome. Someone interviewed Kama about the spirit of the strip and he said it’s autism, it’s not really cynical, it’s more naivety. Naivety is the great interest.

CBC: So Cowboy Henk was partially influenced by vintage American comic strips?

Peter: He was influenced by comics from the 1920s: Katzenjammer Kids, Krazy Kat. CBC: What about Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead? You’ve mentioned before that you loved the Zippy strip and Wikipedia lists Zippy as an influence. Was Griffith’s work an influence on Henk?

Peter: We were never influenced by Zippy. We discovered it later and we said, “Whoa! That’s original!” Zippy, I prefer it to Robert Crumb. Bill Griffith—he’s a great draftsman.

CBC: Have you ever met Bill Griffith?

Peter: I haven’t met him [in person], we’ve talked. Zippy is satire on such a high level that it surpasses satire and becomes something else. Also Nancy. Bushmiller is one of the great artists of the 20th century.

CBC: The earliest Cowboy Henk comics I saw were in English; the pages of Art Spiegelman and François Mouly’s RAW, in the early 1980s. How did that come about?

Peter: It came through [fellow HUMO cartoonist] Ever Meulen. RAW was very visionary in the vain of Little Lulu or Ernie Bushmiller’s stuff. We went to Paris, we met up with Art Spiegelman in a boat, in 1981. He was making Maus.

Cowboy Henk TM & © Kama & Seele. Photo by Olivia Zhao.

CBC: How do you and Kama collaborate on a strip these days?

Peter: Basically, he writes it. We still sit together, just the two of us, like a comedy team… [Monty Python’s] John Cleese and Graham Chapman. Once a week, we go to a brasserie with a view on the sea. We sit on our own, we drink, we have a beer. We start at 10 in the morning and we work until noon. We make ideas. It could wind up in a TV program, in a show for the theater, or in Cowboy Henk.

CBC: As the artist half of the equation, what is your approach to the strip?

Peter: We’re not into [aesthetics]; I like it done quickly and not so beautiful. The comic needs to be fresh, it never needs to repeat itself. The art is staying fresh. Thinking about life in society. It’s very acute and woke what we do with Cowboy Henk in a way. It’s maybe more relevant than more other comics. We work for everybody not just for the comics lovers. It’s expressionism it’s close to Van Gogh and Munch. Expressionism is not for an amateur. We like it because it looks simple but it’s not that simple to make. It’s professional. We’re similar in spirit.

CBC: What is your approach to the strip’s sense of humor?

Peter: If you want to make people laugh, you have to scare them. You look at Laurel and Hardy. W.C. Fields had a comedy theory that is extremely important: you hit a new car with a hammer, nobody is going to laugh; but if you hit an old car with a hammer, it’s very funny. I love W.C. Fields, certainly films in the 1920s, 1930s, and the film noir.

Dragnet—that’s the greatest of America. Also [like] David Lynch, Woody Allen, Ari Kaurismaki, the Nouvelle Vague, Fernandel.

CBC: The series won the 2014 Prix du Patrimoine at the Angoulême International Comics Festival and you and Kamagurka were honored at Angoulême. How did that feel at that point in your cartooning career?

Peter: We’ve never been taken very serious in the comic book world. They didn’t get our stuff. It’s very minimal.

And I’m quite an accomplished artist. Angoulême, it was a shocking thing because we were given a prize for the oeuvre. The French, they got it.

CBC: Of all your many artistic pursuits—cartooning, painting, performing, etc.—do you consider Cowboy Henk your prime achievement?

Peter: It’s not my favorite thing. Comics, it’s black-&-white; I prefer color.

CBC: What excites you about the creative work you do?

Peter: The future. The most important thing is to appear amusing in the future. I collect pianos. I have a whole oeuvre in painting. My painting is very tragic comical. I think in the future, people will not make heads or tails of it. What did this guy do in his life? I aim to confuse. Not so much for people for today, but to confuse people in the future.

CBC: You have a sizable audience on Instagram—@ cowboy.henk; @cowboyhenkcomic—and a recently re-designed cowboyhenk.com website. What has been the effect of social media and the internet on Cowboy Henk? Has it brought the strip more international awareness?

Peter: We’re still trying to work out what it actually does.

It takes away from the power of the gallery. You don’t need the agent. I supposed it’s going to give a new incentive to the art gallery. It’s good, the social media, there’s a new energy.

CBC: Do you have a sense of Henk’s fandom beyond Belgium? I know a lot of alternative cartoonists in North America who are in the Cowboy Henk cult.

Peter: It may be a small audience, but it’s recognizable.

Like Tom Jones by Henry Fielding or Don Quixote from Cervantes. He runs into a telephone pole, then he does it again the next day. He’s stupid, he doesn’t know better.

CBC: You mentioned several times that Cowboy Henk thrives on surrealism and the goal is to create visuals and gags that we haven’t seen before. Are there any rules to Cowboy Henk? Are there any things that you refuse to do?

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

Peter: When you go on for as long as we have—in September, it will be 40 years—there’s a couple of constants.

We won’t do racism or sexist things. We don’t do sexual jokes to make you horny. If we do any sex or nudity, it’s surreal, it’s not for Hustler or Playboy, it’s very close to science.

Also, we make extreme comedy but it’s very respectful.

CBC: What’s next for Herr Seele?

Peter: Yes, we’re going to make a museum. A 1,500 square foot museum about the history of piano. It will open next year.

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #10

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

4-issue subscriptions: $49 US $72 International

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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.

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

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

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #20

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #21

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #22

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #23

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #24 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #25 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #26

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.

TIMOTHY TRUMAN discusses his start at the Kubert School, Grimjack with writer JOHN OSTRANDER, and current collaborations with son Benjamin. SCOTT SHAW! talks about early San Diego Comic-Cons and friendship with JACK KIRBY, Captain Carrot, and Flintstones work! Also PATRICK McDONNELL’s favorite MUTTS comic book pastiches, letterer JANICE CHIANG profiled, HEMBECK, and more! TIM TRUMAN 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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

CBA BULLPEN COLLECTING THE UNKOWN ISSUES OF COMIC BOOK ARTIST!

COMIC BOOK ARTIST BULLPEN collects all seven issues of the little-seen labor of love fanzine published in the early 2000s by JON B. COOKE (editor of today’s COMIC BOOK CREATOR magazine), just after the original CBA ended its TwoMorrows run.

Featured are in-depth interviews with some of comics’ major league players, including GEORGE TUSKA, FRED HEMBECK, TERRY BEATTY, and FRANK BOLLE—and an amazing all-star tribute to Silver Age great JACK ABEL by the Marvel Comics Bullpen and others. That previously unpublished all-comics Abel appreciation (assembled by RICK PARKER) includes strips by JOE KUBERT, WALTER SIMONSON, KYLE BAKER, MARIE SEVERIN, GRAY MORROW, ALAN WEISS, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, MORT TODD, DICK AYERS, and many more! Plus a new bonus feature on JACK KIRBY’s unknown 1960s baseball card art, and a 16-page bonus full-color section, all behind a Jack Kirby cover!

(176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $24.95 • (Digital Edition) $8.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-105-9 • NOW SHIPPING!

ALSO AVAILABLE: DIGITAL EDITIONS OF ALL 25 ISSUES OF COMIC BOOK ARTIST, Vol. 1!

TwoMorrows also 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!

(128-page Digital Edition) $6.99

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(252-page Digital Edition) $12.99

TwoMorrows.

The Future of Comics History.

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darrick patrick’s ten questions

Time out with Busy Roberta Bustling Italian artist Roberta Ingranata takes a minute to answer Darrick Patrick’s Qs

by DARRICK PATRICK [Roberta Ingranata is an Italian comic book artist who has worked as an interior artist for European publishers, including Delos Books and Star Comics, and as a colorist for Bonelli, Astorina, Egmont and Mondadori, and Disney.

In 2014, she began providing art for American comics including Zenescope Entertainment’s Robyn Hood and Margins Publishing’s Vampire Emmy and the Garbage Girl and Anonymously Yours, as well as additional works for Voluntary. In 2016, Ingranata became the artist of the Witchblade relaunch at Image Comics. She also provides cover art for Titan Comics, Valiant Entertainment, Top Cow Productions, and Lion Forge Comics.—D.P.] Above: Roberta Ingranata.

Inset right: Roberta’s cover art for Witchblade#11 [Jan. 2019].

Below: Spread from Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious. A review on Bleeding Cool opined: “[U]nder Roberta Ingranata’s capable pen, Doctor Who comics have never looked this good. Ingranata carries the entire weight of this series, breathing life into it at all turns.

With artwork that feels alive and packed with a real sense of movement and emotion, Ingranata is a force of nature.”

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Witchblade TM & © Top Cow Productions, Inc. Doctor Who TM & © British Broadcasting Corporation.

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Darrick Patrick: What was the road that led you to working professionally within comic books?

Roberta Ingranata: I have always wanted to draw. So, since I was little, I have always drawn. I discovered a comic school while I was attending my regular school. I was 14 years old and I started going to both schools at the same time. Since that moment, I have never stopped.

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

Roberta: My father, for sure, who always believed in me a lot… and now, my partner!

Darrick: Do you have any words of advice for other individuals looking to make a career with their artistic abilities?

Roberta: Being from Italia, I would like to give some particular advice to Italian artists: Do not be afraid to go abroad and travel, and be open about going to [conventions] in America, England, and France. There is a lot of fear here, where it’s thought there is no work out there, but other countries welcomed me with great confidence. For all other artists, I just advise you to believe in what you are doing. Study, try new things, and do it without being afraid of anything!

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

Roberta: My working day is really busy! I wake up very early to go out with the dogs and [attend to] the chickens, as I live in the country.

After a big breakfast, I start working.

At noon, I go out with the dogs again.

After lunch, I go back to work and I usually finish at 7:00 p.m. I don’t like working in the evening! I usually work eight hours a day. I always try not to add on any more hours other than that.

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

Roberta: Definitely Witchblade by Image Comics, and Doctor Who from Titan Comics. Those two are for all the fans of either television series!

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

Roberta: The people who later became friends, too!

Darrick: Outside of creating artwork, what are you other interests?

Roberta: Nature, animals, the vegetable garden, walking, reading, yoga, meditation, cooking, and sleeping.

Darrick: What is your oldest memory?

Roberta: Drawing in kindergarten is my oldest memory.

It was my favorite moment! I was maybe three years old or not much older.

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

Roberta: I really like doing a lot of things other than drawing. Even though I draw comics and I’m a bit of a nerd, I don’t like being indoors during my free time. In fact, I often organize my time so that I can go out often. I like to work in the garden, walk with my dogs, meditate with the cat, and take care of the chickens. I would like to ride a horse, too, but it is difficult with having so little time. Maybe in the future.

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

Roberta: I don’t know. I’ve never wondered! Hopefully, I’ll be remembered as a serene and respectful person.

And I hope to be an inspiration, albeit a small one, for future generations.

incoming

Discovering Terry Dodson Faithful Joe Frank comments on the Terry Dodson issue—ProJunior in particular

Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Joe Frank Can’t believe I’m commenting on ProJunior; an underground player I hadn’t even heard of ’til last week. I thought it was interesting in that I’d not encountered a copyrighted character that was treated in such a way; only public domain notables such as Dracula. Another mystery: why bother, as he hadn’t been a huge success or well-defined?

Why not just create something, from scratch, they could own? Maybe it was just being playful or, for a novelty, sharing a cipher? Seeing if someone could come up with something unique?

No denying the vast improvement from the original 1958 rendition to Howard Cruse’s “Shades” character design.

The guy looks like he went to the same stylist as Count Chocula or the Space Phantom.

Really enjoyed your display of Will Eisner Valentines, all homemade. His wife, Ann, must have been delighted.

Shareholders at Hallmark Cards, not so much. Even the photos were nice.

This time, you had updates on The Charlton Companion and CBC #28. That I liked. I consider it less an ad and more a welcome hint of things to come.

I also enjoyed the look at fanzines and was jealous of one thing: why didn’t my librarian suggest The Buyer’s Guide in 1971? Only found TBG—and The Comic Reader— thanks to a classmate in 1975. Came to love fanzines. Lots of welcome information. New artists on the rise. Established artists doing drawings or even new material. A supplement to the actual comics.

Appreciated the Ditko mention in the “Comics in the Library” article. Years ago, some editor spouted off that Steve and the other Marvel greats were good in their day, but a modern reader would never accept such work. Yet, here, he was seventh on the list. Plus, has any comic ever been reprinted as many times as Amazing Fantasy #15? Older fans already have seen it so many times. So, who’s buying all the copies now? Also, is any current title selling in numbers like the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man did?

As for your main interview, I’d heard of Terry Dodson and seen some of his work—mostly covers—but never read his stories. Yet, the art on display, here, was quite good. He noted interest in art beyond comics. It shows. He knows how to show folds in the varied garments, not just spandex and beachwear.

I don’t see his women as dressed for the gym or strip club—well, aside from the early Mantra shot. The more current renditions seem more about faces and fashion looks than low-cut intimate apparel. On page 73, the lady’s in overalls; pretty low on the alluring garment scale. Yet, her face is still pretty. Same with the cover. We’re drawn to the smile, not the covered-up cleavage. Or the lady on the scooter (page 75). She’s hardly dressed for an orgy. It’s giving the characters some dignity.

Yet, Terry is capable of doing cheesecake, as proven by the Vampirella cover (page 75). Or, page 57, when Red One’s motorcycle outfit was at the cleaners.

He seems like a talented, but sensible artist: scheduling assignments ahead, so that he doesn’t have down time or wonder, in a panic, what’s next. Even his variant covers COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

make sense. They allow him the financial flow to work on what he likes with money still coming in. The nicest part?

His wife, Rachel, inks his pages, so there’s plenty of open communication about the work and finished result.

(And, since you mentioned and covered them in CBC, I’ve seen and paid attention to their new cover on Fantastic Four #37 [Oct. 2021], a charming and amusing Halloween shot.)

A nice entertaining issue—even if you covered folks I don’t recall from my childhood or teens.

[As always, chum, delighted you’ve been keeping in contact and sharing your impressions, Joe. As regarding the underground comix crowd back then, I think the whole point of everybody doing their own take on ProJunior was for the fun of jamming together and sheer camaraderie, perfectly in tune with the anti-establishment vibe of the day. — Y.E.]

The Kayfabe Effect!

Holy moley! My brother Andrew and I never imagined there would be a revival of interest in our full-length feature film documentary, Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, but after chum Ed Piskor plugged the “Shop Talk” extras on our Eisner Blu-ray on the Oct. 8, 2021, episode of his and Jim Rugg’s Cartoonist Kafaybe YouTube channel, sales went through the roof!

Seems we experienced the remarkable, tried ’n’ trusty “Kayfabe Effect,” which produces increased sales after the fellahs chat about items to their 50,000 subscribers! Thanks, Ed and Jim—and you too, Tom Scioli!

The “Shop Talk” extras are the audio recordings of Will’s interviews with comics legends, including Kirby, Kurtzman, Caniff, Kubert, etc., conducted for his Spirit magazine in the 1980s! If you’re interested, before they’re gone, check out www.montillapictures. com or search for our award-winning effort on Amazon!

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comics in the library

Full (Mag) Disclosure

Richard J. Arndt on the most interesting war comic book to come along in years

by RICHARD J. ARNDT CBC Contributing Editor [Full Mag debuted in 2017 as a full-sized comic magazine dedicated to working with military veterans and having them tell their own history in their own words. Three issues have appeared so far and CBC is happy to present an interview with the publisher/editor August Uhl.—RJA.]

This page: Covers of August Uhl’s Full Mag comics magazine featuring art by Gary Martin, with Russ Heath (below). The war title features art from a remarkable list of comics pros.

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Full Mag TM & © August Uhl.

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Comic Book Creator: Hi, August! First, how did you get involved producing Full Mag? I assume that you’re a veteran yourself.

August Uhl: I am technically qualified to be one. I was in the Air Force, working on the flight line, but I don’t want to put myself out as anything more than that. I’ve always been interested in history, so military war stories, and the history behind them, has always been of interest to me. For years, I’ve had a page of Nick Fury artwork on my wall and one day my boss asked me what that was. I told him it was a comic book page, and he said, “Oh, we should commemorate some of our defense supply chain accomplishments

in this form of art.” I knew how to commission this kind of art because artists are always looking for work. So, we did that and, when I was looking at this art, about a medical device that was used on the battlefield for bullet wounds, my wife saw it. A few minutes later she told me that I should do veteran stories in comic book form. I thought it was a great idea. So the initial idea was my wife’s. That’s the long version of how I started the magazine.

CBC: So how did you find the artists who would be willing to work with you and could draw military hardware?

August: I own a little bit of original art and, through buying that, I became aware of artists who were out there.

Some were comic book veterans and some newer talent.

The first artist I worked with was James W. Erwin. He did the lead story in FM #3. He does great work. I love working with him. I’ve also worked with Gary Martin, Ron Wagner, Mike DeCarlo, Tom Mandrake, Gary Kwapisz and, to my great delight, Russ Heath.

Initially, I didn’t have any stories, so I just started interviewing veterans. The first interview I did was with David Thatcher, one of the last surviving members of the 1942 Doolittle Raid. He happened to live a few blocks from a friend of mine, in Missoula, Montana. Once I had that interview in hand, I realized that this was real. I found artists on Facebook.

CBC: Well, it’s such a great idea. There’s been a lot of stories about real-life soldiers, sailors, so what not? But I can’t recall any that interviewed actual veterans and used their personal history for first-person stories. I think the concept is unique. The Doolittle piece from #1 is fabulous.

August: I wasn’t in the Air Force that long and so my doing the Doolittle piece was a bit like the Chris Farley Saturday Night Live skit, where he interviews Paul McCartney. In the annals of the Air Force, those guys are in the pantheon, a really big deal. So, I was totally awestruck, but unnecessary so. Mr. and Mrs. Thatcher were such warm, wonderful people. The Doolittle raid literally changed the direction of the war. The Japanese changed their entire strategy because of that single raid. There’s an entire organization— Children of the Doolittle Raiders—whose entire mission is to keep that story alive.

One of my worries was that I was going to interview a man who had probably told his story about that raid a bazillion times. I did some research and discovered that he’d also served in North Africa. I thought that probably nobody had asked him about that. So I asked to him about his experiences there. Turns out he was assigned to a B-26 squadron and flew 26 missions there. They flew those sorties out of wheat fields! His story and the artwork that accompanied it came out so well.

CBC: You’re also doing a one-page monthly strip for the American Legion magazine. How did that come about?

August: I reached out to editor Jeff Stoffer about doing a one-page version of Full Mag, a veteran story appearing each issue in their magazine. The idea was that veterans would see the early pages and reach out to us to tell their own stories. But the Legion had a different idea. They wanted me to do an on-going one-page piece called, ”Lore of the Legion,” which would detail the history of the American Legion in comic-book form. It started out to be the Legion’s history celebrating the 100th anniversary of the organization, in 2019. We thought it was going to run for about a year, but

Full Mag TM & © August Uhl. Our Artists at War TM & © TwoMorrows Publishing, Inc. Phot courtesy of August Uhl.

it caught on with both editorial and readers, and became an ongoing feature. The strip describes the Legion’s history and what they do for veterans. As a result of doing it, I’ve learned so much about the Legion and their ongoing mission to do positive things for their local and national communities, on every level.

My thoughts, since we currently have done 36 one-pagers, is to collect the strips when there’s enough accumulation of pages, ask Jeff for some articles about the Legion to accompany the strips, find some publisher like Dead Reckoning, and bring that out as a book. There are a lot of eyes that would be looking at a book like that, not all of them knowledgeable about comics in general.

CBC: I would love to see such a book. Sam Glanzman’s “This Happened to Me” collection has some of my fondest memories as a kid and it too was a one-page monthly story in a general interest magazine—in this case, Outdoor Life, a hunting magazine—where I first became fascinated by Glanzman’s work.

How did you manage to get Russ Heath to do work for you? To my knowledge, his work in Full Mag was the last comics work that he did before he passed away.

August: Basically, after my first interview, I was working with Mike DeCarlo on a story and I realized that I needed another artist working on another story because, otherwise, you couldn’t keep up with the needs of the magazine. I was aware of Heath’s work and that he was still alive. I reached out to someone on the Comics Art Fans website to see who was still around and looking for work. He sent me a photograph of Russ at a convention, sitting behind a table, and on the table was a sign with his phone number on it for people to call if they wanted a commission. I called him up and left him a message. He called back and I explained what Full Mag was going to be.

When I got the story about the P-51 fighter pilot I knew that was the story I wanted Russ to draw. That story was actually second person—all the others have been first person—but this one story came from Mrs. Drysdale, the pilot’s wife. I called Russ after that interview, the very next

day. I was talking with him and asked him if he had a scanner and he asked me, “What is a scanner?” The technology wasn’t there for him. Russ is the only artist I’ve worked with where I sent him stuff through the mail and he sent his pages back to me by FedEx. To get a package from Russ Heath was always the most exciting thing on that day.

Occasionally, he would ask me for references for, say, a particular rifle, so we worked back and forth on the telephone and through FedEx. The two stories he penciled for me are actually published in reverse order. The story in #2 was the first one he worked on. You can tell that the story in #1 showed his abilities fading a bit. The third time I tried to get him to do a story for me, he turned me down. I didn’t really realize it, but his health was failing. He did tell me that he was having a hard time hearing. He did do the pencils for the cover to #3, which Gary Martin did a great job of completing. That guy on the cover is looking right at the reader and is saying, without words, “I’ve seen things. You need to open these pages.”

I’m learning as I go on this job. I feel the stories we’ve put out so far are quality material and I’ve learned a lot—the difference between comic book-sized art and magazine-sized art is just one example. I believe the quality between the first issue and what I was able to do in issues #2 and #3 has been on an upward curve.

CBC: I think that’s how the best comics work. Thanks for doing this, August.

Top: August Uhl in Big Sky country. Above: Gary Martin panel from the “Lore of the Legion” feature. Inset left: Page by the late, great Russ Heath.

Below: Our columnist’s latest book, now available from TwoMorrows!

Fans and future fans can find info on Full Mag at https://fullmagazinepublishing. com/index.html.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

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sinnott memorial

Remembering Joe Part one of our celebration of the life of the late, great Joseph Leonard Sinnott

by GREG BIGA

Above: In 2007, your humble editor was given the opportunity to design the TwoMorrows biography of Joe Sinnott by Tim Lasiuta—Brush Strokes with Greatness—and, in return for his effort, the great inker thereafter expressed his deep appreciation for Ye Ed’s work, which will always be comforting.

[Joe Sinnott has always been a gracious and appreciative friend to Yours Truly and, if you grant me the indulgence, please allow me to share about my experience with one of the warmest and kindest creators ever to grace the comic book industry. I first met the legendary artist at the Ramapo comic con, when the Jack Kirby Collector booth I was manning was fortuitously situated next to the man. This was in 1996 or so, when I was a total nobody who hadn’t yet encountered very many pros in person, but good ol’ Joe treated me like a prince, generously giving me three Silver Surfer prints, inscribing each to my three sons. A few years later, he readily contributed to the comics anthology I edited with John Morrow, Streetwise, and a few years after that, I leapt that the opportunity to design his TwoMorrows biography, Brush Strokes with Greatness: The Life & Art of Joe Sinnott [2007], written by Tim Lasiuta. Joe always expressed a sincere appreciation for my effort, bringing it up every time we met. It was touching and I was deeply flattered. Thereafter we long planned for me to visit his beloved Saugerties, New York, and my promise stretched on for years. But I finally did find the time and, mere months before the pandemic hit, I spent a glorious Sunday afternoon with my friend. I will miss him but my love for the gent will live on.

Godspeed, Joe! What follows is my Colorado-based good pal (and writing partner in the just released John Severin biography!) Greg Biga’s marvelous compilation of heartfelt tributes to a terrific artist and lovely human being.—Ye Ed.]

On June 25th, 2020, I received a text from my pal Jon Bogdanove sharing that Hall of Fame comic book artist Joe Sinnott had passed away. I was immediately and profoundly Below: Joltin’ Joe Sinnott in his devastated by that news. Now, what is to follow is not a Saugerties home studio, 1970. traditional recap of a remarkable career. There will be nu-

A REGULAR JOE Joe Sinnott spent his formative years living through the Great Depression. Like the rest of America, he found his way out of those hard times by going to war. Joe signed up for duty and saw plenty of it as a sailor. The young man saw action at the battle of Okinawa, part of the great push to overtake the Japanese islands on the way to an expected mainland invasion. This was one of the most brutal and soul crushing times of the U.S. war in the Pacific.

Like many veterans from the time, Joe was a committed member of his local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. Like many who had gone through the hell of war, he didn’t boast of his service. (Personally, I knew nothing about my dad’s time in the service until it was shared that he was on the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’ve never heard my uncle talk about his time in Vietnam nor dared to ask why, for 30 years following his service, he never took off his sunglasses, and my grandfather, who likely shared time on the same Pacific convoy as Joe, never talked about his time as one of Merrill’s Marauders.)

These were all men who would spend time at the VFW, among brothers who had seen and done similar things, and share a relationship of service. Coming through the Depression and putting his life on the line for his country made Joe, like so many of his generation, place a premium value on working, supporting his family, and defining his daily life through the quality of hard work. #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

28

merous colleagues elsewhere who will recollect the career timeline of “Joltin’ Joe” and do so in outstanding fashion.

Joe’s impact on me was altogether different.

I had the great fortune of getting to spend quality time over the phone with Joe’s colleague Jack Davis during the last two years of that artist’s life. Upon Jack’s death, I became highly motivated to honor him. I picked up my cartooning tools—which I set down when I became a high school teacher—and commenced drawing again. Specifically, as Jack had done for the University of Georgia, I became the caricaturist for my college alma mater’s football program. Jack motivated me to become an artist again.

Joe, on the other hand, inspired me to endeavor to be a better man. In our brief phone conversations, Joe shared insights with me about decency, fellowship, and work ethics which rocked me to my foundation. All that I believed I could be—as a father, friend, and employee—changed, and very much for the better, all because of my talks with Joe. The magical thing about this is that Joe never specifically chatted about those things. He simply exemplified them. And he did so at all times. Joe stood up to be counted during World War II; he was a devoted husband and father; he loved sports and Bing Crosby; he committed his personal excellence to his craft; and he lived a life of quality into his 90s. I’d dare to say that Joe’s life is one sure-fire template for how to be a good man.

Joe filled his work, every beautifully drawn and inked page, with those qualities. It was a unique proposition to look back over his work after he entered my life. The work, some of which being many decades old, resonated with new life and purpose for me. Knowing the personal place that his brush came from opened up a new world of appreciation (which was already running at a high pitch) for me.

For Joe, that work was cartooning. He brought his portfolio to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now the School of Visual Arts) and, like Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, and Wally Wood, Joe began training for a lifelong career under the great Burne Hogarth. The skill and excellence of work that came from the guidance of Hogarth is astounding. What is just as amazing is that Joe and this gang of artists chose a life where their work time was basically spent in quarantine. Up to 16 hours a day was devoted

by Joe to toil at his drawing table. The need to give nothing less than a best effort and a devotion to financially support the household—burdens of many WWII vets—often limited the amount of time Joe spent being present with his family.

The great treasures given by Joe’s beautiful wife, Betty, was her own devotion to being a mother, tutor, and shaper of hearts in the Sinnott homestead. She made it possible for her husband to pursue his days at the drawing table and for the father of her kids not to lose sight of his kids while he established his legend. For their 56 years of marriage, until her passing in 2006, Betty was Joe’s partner, rock, and inspiration. While being married to Betty was the greatest partnership of Joe’s lifetime, there were other significant collaborators over the course of his career.

Joe Sinnott portrait © Joe Orsak.

JACK AND JOE Joe was, above all, a team player, and he was able to contribute not only his technical skill as inker, but an ability to support others to achieve their great successes. The most renowned example is his work with Jack Kirby. “Obviously, Joe’s work on the Fantastic Four with Kirby was masterful and stood out from the crowd,” recalls SCOTT HANNA, himself an accomplished inker. “Reading comics as a kid, I wondered why Kirby could look so very different from book to book, and it made me realize that the inker had a lot to do with the look of the finished product. The Sinnott/ Kirby FF was the best. Everything looked more powerful, shinier, more solid, and never lost any of the famous Kirby energy.”

GEORGE PÉREZ, who himself would partner with Joe, distinctly remembers those Kirby/Sinnott collaborations.

“Well, I don’t know if I was really aware of the Marvel style back when I first read the Marvel books, in the early 60s,” he shared, “but I knew there was something different about the darker, grittier Marvel titles compared to DC’s books,” he said. “Even as a young boy, I could feel there was a roughness and a sense of raw power in the art. None more so, in my opinion, than the early Kirby Fantastic Fours. However, even at that tender young age, I did notice a dramatic leap in the finished art in the issue [Fantastic Four #5, July 1962] that introduced Doctor Doom. There was a slightly

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

cleaner, more polished, even a bit more elegant look to that issue. I would later find out why: a new inker who just came in for that one issue and then was gone. Of course, that inker was Joe Sinnott, who, a few years later, would come back to the title as the regular inker to Jack Kirby’s ever improving, explosive pencils, and a legendary team was born—as was the defining Marvel style for much of the company’s output.”

It is within those collaborations with Kirby where the visual aspect to the Marvel house style was created. As Hanna recalls, “Joe definitely helped to create the ‘house style’ for Marvel when I was growing up, so there is no doubt that he influenced generations of new artists with his style and quality. His work was so elegant and precise while also being strong and powerful. The fact that he could not only make sense of the rather abstract Kirby style, but bring it to new heights, showed what an inker could bring to the process. He was also a great role model in being both thoroughly professional, and also a really nice guy. Both of which I have tried to live up to in my own career. (He made it look easy, but it is not.)”

Kirby power and bombast siphoned through the technical skill and mastery of Sinnott created legendary pages.

As Kirby protégé Mark Evanier put it in his excellent Kirby: King of Comics, “There is no one ‘best inker’ for Kirby and certainly others—including Joe Simon, Wally Wood, Mike

Above: This lovely portrait of the late artist was rendered by Joe’s friend and fellow New Yorker, Joe Orsak, as the cover art for the Inkwell Awards’ fourth annual Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge book. Below is the man proudly exhibiting the piece. Inset left: Jack Kirby and Joe in the mid-’70s.

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Above: Joe Sinnott and the love of his life, Betty Kirlauski.

The two were married in the summer of 1950. Together, the couple had four children.

Royer, Frank Giacoia, Dick Ayers, and Chic Stone—have their partisans. But if you are in a room of Jack Kirby fans and you announce that Joe Sinnott was the best, no one will waste much time in argument.”

JOLTIN’ JOE, BIG JOHN, AND BEYOND Joe shared with me in a 2017 interview that, along with Kirby, another favorite comic book artist was John Buscema. Joe was able to use his (by then defined) line on top Below: Newlyweds Joseph of Buscema’s painterly pencils to propel the second act of and Elizabeth Sinnott on their Marvel through the 1970s. It was the steady craftsmanship wedding day, in August, 1950. of Joe over Big John and others that kept a visual continuity and quality through many of the Marvel books.

“One of my favorite pencilers was always John Buscema,” recalls Hanna.

“He had some of the best inkers of all time working with him over the years and I would not have thought Sinnott would be an obvious inking partner, as Buscema was very different than Kirby. However, they made a fantastic team! With the Sinnott magic, Big John’s Fantastic Four work fit in 30

superbly with the Kirby issues. The Silver Surfer never looked more shiny and cosmic than when Sinnott was inking Buscema. They made a superb team that made a strong mark to a young artist.”

Storyteller BOB McLEOD also enjoyed the Sinnott pairings with Big John and the King. “I was very impressed when I discovered that he was also an excellent penciler,” he said. “My inking has often been compared with Joe’s, because it’s considered very ‘clean’ like his, and I’ve always considered that a big compliment. I, of course, respected him very much, and I’m very envious that he got to ink so much of Jack Kirby’s and John Buscema’s best work.”

Pérez has first-hand knowledge of how Joe adjusted his approach—which echoed the work of the artist behind Prince Valiant—to serve the art of his collaborators from the ’60s through the ’70s. “I remember speaking with Joe Sinnott about first working with Jack and he told me how he had to adapt his innate, more realistic ‘Hal Foster’ illustrative brushwork to Jack’s bombastic, realism-be-damned style. It took a few issues for Joe to really feel he was doing Jack justice and you can see the merging of styles develop into a beautiful, confident whole. I think Joe became an even bolder, highly adaptive inker from that point on.

Especially when he was working with other artists like the Buscema, Romita, Buckler, Byrne, Frenz, and ‘the 1970s me,’ working in what had become to be known as the ‘Marvel style.’” He also opined, “I don’t feel he was a good fit with Neal Adams or Bill Sienkiewicz though—although it did make for an interesting hybrid of styles.”

“Joe Sinnott is a sweetheart,” remembers that same NEAL ADAMS in a 2017 interview. “Sinnott on Kirby, on Buscema, on John Romita was the Marvel style. In fact, I was asked by Stan Lee to do [an issue of] Thor. So I did a two-part Thor and I said, ‘I gotta have Joe Sinnott [ink it].’

Because I want this thing to look like a Marvel book. I want people to look and wonder, ‘Who did this book? It could be Jack Kirby; it could have been John Buscema; it could have been Johnny Romita; it couldn’t be Neal. Yeah, it is Neal.

He did a Marvel book.’ And, in a weird way, Joe Sinnott established that style… that’s the Marvel style.”

Adams was already a celebrated artist when he worked with Joe on Thor #180–181 [Sept.–Oct. 1970]. Not so was George Pérez, who would later himself gain living legend status during his career and remembers well the guiding hand of Sinnott on his early work: “I don’t know how prepared I actually was, but I most certainly benefited by having Joe Sinnott inking me right out of the starting gate. By that point, Joe had become the stylistic equalizer through the FF run and he definitely made me look so much better than I was at the time and yet still managed to let my own personality show through. He made work look so professional and polished that it impressed Stan Lee enough to call me into his office and give me my first raise. My career was now on the fast track—and Joe helped put me there.

“Joe always made everyone look slick and professional.

He respected the penciler’s craft and always tried to be faithful to them. Even if the styles didn’t always mesh, there was always a professional clarity and smoothness to the finished art. It had that special sheen, that boldness—that Marvel quality.”

As award-winning inker JOE RUBINSTEIN recalls in a recent interview, “Somebody wrote somewhere that they thought the Marvel look of the ’80s was [Terry] Austin, [Klaus] Janson, and me. This totally surprised me because I always thought the look of Marvel was Joe Sinnott. It always was, always has, and always will be.”

TOM PALMER, another lauded embellisher, shares, “I share the admiration for Joe’s lush brushwork for Marvel’s comics. Understand [that] he did not visit the Marvel offices for over 20 years and few people met and knew him during those years, myself included.”

Palmer continues, “I first became aware of Joe Sinnott’s name and inking prowess while visiting Marvel’s offices #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

early in my career and viewing all the original art laying around on the desks, it was memorable viewing both the penciled and inked artwork for various books. “[I] believe I first saw Joe’s inking over Jack Kirby on the Fantastic Four… [and] Joe’s inks were impeccable and caught one’s eye immediately. He used a brush to ink and had a fluidity to his line that was distinctive over Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko.

“Unfortunately I did not get a chance to meet Joe Sinnott for many years until his 90th birthday celebration, in Saugerties, New York, along with a few lunches that Terry Austin had organized in the area. Regrettably, that was the extent of our friendship.

Palmer concluded, “I liked Joe. He was a raconteur and enjoyable to be with. He had amusing stories to tell about his early years in the business and accidentally meeting Bing Crosby in the 1940s, remaining a big fan the rest of his life. I liked Joe Sinnott, he was a good and kind man, [and I] just wish I had met him sooner. We had good laughs together!”

ALL THERE ON THE PAGE Even if a person had never met Joe, he’s still all there on the page. He’s right there in all that great Marvel work that he put his brush to. He was so self-assured, there was never any question about whose hand guided the work in his Marvel books. Whether or not the pencils were by a seasoned pro, journeyman, or newcomer, the pages were all guided to completion by an absolute craftsman.

Joe defined himself and retained his quality of line at all times. He stayed away from being overly provocative and sensual. There was always a resounding power and dignity put into every character he embellished. Sculpted by his experience during the Depression and the war, it’s as if Joe’s innate honesty and personal values found their way, very purposefully, onto his pages. This elevated the work of all of the artists he collaborated with.

“Joe Sinnott was definitely a legend of the comics industry,” Scott Hanna adamantly shared. “He made a big contribution to so much of how we view super-heroes and comic books, to this day. I also love the fact that he was still working into his 90s! A true role model for all the artists in our industry.”

The late Stan Lee shared about the artist in Joe’s 2007 biography, Brush Strokes with Greatness: “To say it was a pleasure working with Joltin’ Joe for more years than I can count would be a monumental masterpiece of understatement. The guy is so competent, so talented that it’s almost scary. If he has any weaknesses as an artist, I’ve never discovered them. His penciling is superb and, as an inker, he’s truly in a class by himself.”

After Joe’s passing, cartoonist and friend FRED HEMBECK said, “I don’t think I’m overstating things much when I say we lost a national treasure with the passing of Joe Sinnott… Joe was a tremendous artist whose precise, lush embellishing helped define the look of Marvel Comics from the moment he took up inking Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four pencils back in the mid-’60s. Of course, Joe had already COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

been working in the comics field for nearly two decades before that, doing exemplary work from the get-go. In the earliest days of the Marvel super-hero revolution, Joe turned in a handful of rare pencil and ink jobs on the fledgling ‘Thor’ feature in the pages of Journey Into Mystery. One of those stories in particular, ‘The Demon Duplicators’ [#95, Aug. 1963], really caught my attention. Joe imbued the mad scientist bad guy in that episode with an insane glint, the likes of which my ten-year old self had never seen before.

In fact, it made such an impression on me that, when Joe and his wife, Betty, stopped by our home to graciously congratulate us on the recent birth of daughter Julie—30 years ago now—it was the one comic I asked Joe to autograph.”

ALLEN MILGROM had the opportunity to go from being a fan to being an artistic collaborator to being an editor for Joe during the legend’s career. He said, ”I first became aware of Joe when I picked up Fantastic Four #5. I wasn’t quite sure about what I felt about the new Marvel line of super-heroes, in part because the books had a dark and crude look to them. But this was something special. He gave those Kirby pencils a beautiful finish—a polish I wasn’t used to seeing in those early Marvels.

“And again in Thor’s origin story in Journey into Mystery #83 [Aug. ’62]. And, lo and behold, shortly after that he penciled and inked a handful of ‘Thor’ stories as well. An inker who could draw as well as ink! I was impressed.

“I even started to pick up issues of Treasure Chest comics because I saw Joe’s name on some of the stories.

Clearly he made an impact on my young wanna-be artist’s brain. Joe was—for me and for a whole new generation of artists—the peak of inking perfection. Many of us strove to achieve the degree of slickness and polish that Joe brought to his work. Few of us ever succeeded. But he gave us something to shoot for.

“So imagine my delight when he started doing more and more work for Marvel with stunning runs on the FF, Captain America, and countless others. I realized that he had the greatest inker’s gift… he made anyone he inked look better.

Not just Kirby, but Buscema, Kane, Colan, Steranko, and after a few years had passed, a struggling newcomer: myself.

And of course part of the reason he was such a good inker was that he knew how to draw. A key factor in his success.

Above: The Sinnott brood of Saugerties, New York, in the late ’60s/early ’70s. Flanking Joseph, Jr., in the back, is Kathleen and Linda. Mark sits between Joe, Sr. and Betty.

Below: Joe retained a lifelong passion for baseball and was proud of the fact that three of his illustrations reside in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York.

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Above: Joe Sinnott and his longtime collaborator and sometime boss, Stan Lee, in an inscribed photo from 1995.

Below: Joe and Betty Sinnott.

SON OF A TITAN There is always a distinct relationship between a parent and child, and it was no different for Joe and his 32

HOMEBOY It was obvious to anyone who knew him that Joe loved his hometown of Saugerties, New York. And vice versa. Terry Austin (whose testimonial ends this installment) shared in 2019: “The nearby town of Saugerties, where Joe was born, raised, and lived most of his life had ‘Joe Sinnott Day’… on a lovely Saturday afternoon. The Sinnott family put together an exhibit of his art going back to his high school yearbooks at the Saugerties Historical Society and all of his friends from the area, the VFW and the world of comics came out to be there (I saw Barry Windsor-Smith for the first time in probably 20 years).”

As reported at the time by Christina Coulter on hudson#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

“Imagine my joy when I somehow got the Great Joe Sinnott to ink some of my work. And, as was his wont, he made my pencils look better. He helped turn a bumbling amateur into a pro. I was thrilled to have him ink a number of issues of both my Avengers and West Coast Avengers titles. Why would he saddle himself with upgrading such a mediocre new kid? Ahh… the secret, I learned, was in doing breakdowns rather than full pencils. Joe liked getting the extra pay for finishing breakdowns and I liked getting Joe to ink my stuff. If it meant getting Joe to ink my pencils, I’d do breakdowns until the cows came home.

“A few years later, I was again blessed to have Joe ink some of the titles I was editing: ROM, Hulk, Defenders… As always, his stuff looked great and… and he was a true pro.

You could always rely on him to make his deadlines. In fact, on those rare occasions when he felt the deadline pressure looming and called me fearing he might not be able to get all the pages done on time, I would often reassure him and, in order to keep him on the books, I would frequently pitch in and do backgrounds for him. That’s how much it meant to me to keep this monumental talent on my titles.

“Since Joe never came into the office, I only knew him personally through our phone conversations. He was always pleasant and friendly and, when I finally got to meet him in person at some conventions, he was everything I’d imagined. Kind, affable, and devoted to his lovely wife, Betty, who often traveled with him to those shows. I learned he was a devoted husband and father, and he seemed totally unaware of what high esteem he was held in by the army of young pros and fans alike who flocked around him.”

Milgrom concluded, “So, while we mourn his passing (and he had a pretty darn good run after all), we should also celebrate his life. He had a long and impressive career at the very top of his field, he had a great family life and so we honor him. He was a true gentleman and a true gentle man.”

youngest son, MARK SINNOTT. To look at Joe’s Web page is to be taken on a historical tour through photos of events and conventions through the decades where Joe was the star and others, surprisingly so, where Joe was the fan.

What was not surprising about the photos is how Mark was most often at his dad’s side. Joe’s fatherhood, mentorship, community spirit, and work ethic were all on display for Mark throughout his time with Joe. Mark shared about his dad and those very virtues: “Growing up with my dad, Joe Sinnott, I had a different perspective on how other people saw him,” Mark said.

“His studio door was always open and I would watch him draw daily as he received penciled pages from Marvel and embellished them into the finished product. As a kid, I knew the stories he drew long before they hit the comic racks.

Not only was his door open to his family, but to the many fans and aspiring artists who visited him over the years. I met quite a few young artists that he critiqued and watched as they became established in the comic field.

“When my dad worked for Treasure Chest, I watched in amazement as he researched all his material so that his art was as accurate and precise as possible. He took so much pride in this work that he penciled and inked himself. He thought it was the best work he ever did.

“My dad spent countless hours in our community, coaching sports teams, and providing art for various organizations. I never saw my father turn anyone down. He rarely took a vacation, as his art was too important to him. My dad always gave me his finish pages to erase [the pencils].

It was then that I really got to look closely at his work and appreciate his art. As I grew older, not only was I erasing these pages, but sometimes filling in the blacks, working across from him at my own drawing table. Occasionally he would have me ink some backgrounds. This was always a big thrill for me. Although I always wanted to pursue a career in the comic field, my dad discouraged me from that.

He thought that having a job with benefits and a pension would be more beneficial for me.

“Even as an adult, I continued to keep up with what my dad was currently working on, amazed that his talent never wavered. I know that losing Stan and the Sunday Spider-Man strip changed my dad, as this was the first time in his art career that ‘Joltin’ Joe’ Sinnott didn’t have any deadlines to meet. My dad was a great storyteller and could talk for hours on a variety of subjects. Fans who came to shows to see him gathered around just to hear him talk, as he had such interesting stories to tell. Many of these fans became good friends and part of his comic family. A lot of artists also became great friends and some even had the pleasure of sitting at Joe’s drawing table inking a panel or two. What a thrill it must have been for them to use Joe’s ink, pens and brushes. I thought I covered everything with my dad, but looking back, I wish I had asked him just a few more questions because in the short time that he has been gone, I find I would have liked to have known so much more.”

Mark said in conclusion, “I love my dad tremendously.

He was a great inspiration to me, and taught me how to be a better person. I miss him so much. Not only am I Joe’s son, but I was, and will forever be, his biggest fan.”

Fantastic Four, X-Men, The Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

valleyone.com, “The town board unanimously voted at their Aug. 14 meeting to honor iconic Marvel Comics illustrator and Saugerties native Joe Sinnott, who is retiring after 69 years of work, with a day of recognition on Aug. 31.” [See coverage in CBC #22, Winter 2020.]

“We appreciate the many, many years that Joe devoted to making childhood fantasies possible through his work with the very well-known Marvel Comic Fantastic Four and Spider-Man comics,” reads the board’s resolution. “[Joe] design[ed] two U.S. Postal Service commemorative stamps… and record covers for the American singer Bing Crosby… [I]t is a privilege to have Joe as a member of our Saugerties community (for 92 years to be exact).”

Joe loved the music and movies of Bing Crosby. As he detailed in his biography, the artist actually bumped into Crosby while walking Hollywood Boulevard in 1945 when the famous singer was filming The Bells of St Mary’s.

Crosby, along with longtime movie partner Bob Hope, entertained troops and crooned some of most beloved songs of that era. Crosby mastered the straight man role in comedies maybe better than anyone. Slow and easy is how the entertainer made life look in general. And Joe got to regularly share his “Bing love” while partnered with radio personality Jim Johnson to host a radio show devoted to Crosby.

As with his passion for “der Bingle,” Joe loved sports, especially baseball and his beloved Giants team. The artist created cartoons and portraits of various sports stars throughout the decades, and his work is displayed in perpetuity at the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, N.Y. Joe grew up idolizing Lou Gehrig, fitting as the N.Y. Yankees superstar was to baseball what Joe was to cartooning… the Iron Man. Had the artist not spent his time inking comic book panels, he would easily have been able to make a career as a sports cartoonist, akin to what Murray Olderman did for the Newspaper Enterprise Association: create stand-alone illustrations celebrating athletic efforts for a country with a zeal for loving sports.

During the early 1960s, that love of sports drove Joe to pitch to the newspaper syndicates a sports-related comic strip called Johnny Hawk, All American. The samples of those strips show the Stan Drake/Leonard Starr style of work that stands out as among Joe’s best cartooning. Alas, the daily soap opera type story, shown through the prism of major league sports, didn’t find a home. Luckily, Joe would have other strips—especially many years on Spider-Man— in his future.

SINNOTT AND SAVIUK From 1997 to 2019, Joe tag-teamed with ALEX SAVIUK on the art chores of the Spider-Man Sunday strip. Saviuk related, “The Fantastic Four was one of my favorite comics since I was 11 years old, with Jack Kirby easily becoming a favorite artist of mine. As much as I enjoyed the art, it didn’t really shine until Joe Sinnott became the regular inker with #44 [Nov. 1965]. Joe’s line was ‘liquid gold,’ and I kept admiring his talents and abilities ‘far beyond those of mortal men’… or, rather, other inkers.

“When I began working for Marvel in 1986, I was working on a few covers for the New Universe line created

by Jim Shooter, and I was incredibly thrilled to find that Joe had been assigned to ink a cover for D.P. 7, which I penciled! Over the years, Joe would ink a cover here and there but nothing with any regularity until… I accepted the assignment from Stan Lee to pencil the Spider-Man Sunday newspaper strip in the spring of 1997! Now I could behold Joe’s magic weekly on my pencils… until the strip ended in early 2019, after Stan Lee’s passing. How lucky I was to be able to work with such a master! I had to be on top of my game to make sure that I gave Joe very tight pencils so there would no guess work on his part.

“A few months into my tenure in 1997, I needed to speak with Joe on the phone (never having had the pleasure of meeting him before) regarding the art with respect to the COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

Previous page: Scott was co-creator and artist on Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, which lasted for 20 issues between 1982–83. From top is detail from Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #26 [Apr. 1987]; cover of #1 [Mar. ’82]; and house ad from Fall ’81, which features the first issue’s cover sporting a different expression on Superman’s face and Gaspar Saladino’s initial logo design, both of which were changed when published. Logo maestro Todd Klein said in a Facebook message, “My guess is it was decided the top line was too busy, and they asked me to do the final one used.” This page: Inset left is Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo; below is Andrew Speer’s pic of Scott and Sergio Aragonés at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con (found at www. flickr.com/photos/oldmanmusings/5968313394); bottom is Sergio’s spectacular Woodstock piece, which originally ran in MAD #134 [Apr. 1970], and was colored and reprinted last spring in MAD #13 [June 2020].

story. Joe was such a kind, gentle, pleasant soul who immediately made me feel so welcome during our conversation, although I am certain he treated everyone in a similar fashion, professional and fan alike. (Even, later on, when we did finally meet at an occasional convention, it was as if we had known each for years, especially since we also had baseball and the N.Y. Yankees in common!)

“In that first conversation, when I asked him if I was penciling tight enough, he actually thanked me for asking because he said I was actually handcuffing him into inking every line I had drawn, so, if I didn’t mind, could I loosen things up a bit giving him the freedom to do a little more and have some fun! Of course, I said, ‘Sure!’ Joe explained that he enjoyed spotting blacks, and I already knew he was a textural genius with his line, so I did my best not to pencil that tightly. And the results were magical for all those years we worked together.”

In conclusion, Saviuk said, “We all miss you, Joe… but I will be looking for that pot of ‘liquid’ gold at the end of any rainbow I see to remind me that you are still with us!”

Above: Joe points out his work with Jack Kirby at a museum showing.

Below: Joe poses with two commissions he drew.

GOODNESS WAS ALWAYS JOE’S WAY Creator JERRY ORDWAY remembers well his first interaction with Joe. “When I was a fan artist, a friend of mine sent a copy of a pencil drawing I did, of Green Lan33

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LUNCHES WITH JOE One of the sweetest and most heartfelt events surrounding Joe Sinnott were the lunches held for him by Terry Austin. Within the year following Betty Sinnott’s passing, Austin stepped in to help Sinnott make it to his medical appointments. These quickly became reason enough for professionals, friends, and admirers to join Joe and Terry on their regular lunches following those appointments. This group had no particular nickname—although I refer to them as the “Lunch Crew”—nor were the attendees always the same bunch. What remained constant was the communal heart and joyful reverence for Sinnott all brought with them.

The artist was—as well as he should have been—the guest of honor during these get-togethers. But Joe being Joe, there was no doubting his thrill and honor to share stories and time with these colleagues and friends. The #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

tern and Sinestro, to Joe Sinnott for a critique,” he shared.

“Joe was very gracious with his time and wrote comments about my drawing on an attached sheet of translucent vellum over my image, in addition to drawing a rough layout to show how I could make my drawing more dynamic.

I have always treasured that, and his kindness inspired me to pay it forward by always giving my time to aspiring artists, whether giving a critique, or talking to them at comic shows. Joe was a big artistic inspiration as well. I loved the textures he created in his rendering, especially. No one can draw those thick to thin radiating lines or even rocks, like Joe did! He is missed.”

Hembeck said that Joe was “a helluva nice guy,” adding, “It’s been our good fortune to live near the Sinnott stronghold of Saugerties, N.Y., and thus our paths have crossed often in the intervening decades. Whether at a Below: The inker displays his local comics convention or at a cartoonists lunch, Joe was favorite Jack Kirby page, from always personable and animated, regaling us with stories of Fantastic Four #95 [Feb. 1970]. ghost penciling for Vince Colletta at Charlton Comics, drawing bios of the Pope and of the Beatles, his life-long love of Bing Crosby, and, yeah, working with Stan and Jack.

I didn’t see him as frequently as some folks in the area did—I’m a bit of an introvert, if truth be told, and one who can still be somewhat intimidated by my elders—but I’m thankful to my pal Terry Austin for inviting me and [wife] Lynn to a small lunch with him, Jack Morelli, and Joe… It was an absolute delight, the highlight being Joe proudly showing us drawings he’d recently done in a small sketchbook Terry had provided him. His artwork was, I’m happy to report, as wonderful as ever.

“That should’ve come as no surprise: Joe’s artwork was always wonderful, whether lending his brushwork to the pencils of a grizzled veteran of the comics field or a wide-eyed newcomer. Although Joe

Above: A serious Joe Sinnott at his drawing table, in the 1970s.

inked several pages of the Fantastic Four Roast [May ’82], working over pencilers following my layouts, somehow, there never was a Hembeck/Sinnott artistic teaming. Unfortunate to be sure, but while I couldn’t call Joe Sinnott my artistic collaborator, I could call him something even better: my friend.”

Renowned artist JOHN BYRNE remembers a special interaction with Joe: “I don’t remember what year or which con, but Joe and I got into a long conversation about his love for Bing Crosby. He had a huge collection of records.

As the day wound down and Joe was heading home for the night, he asked what my favorite song is. I told him, ‘Send in the Clowns,’ from [the Stephen Sondheim musical] A Little Night Music. Next day he presented me with a 45 [single] of der Bingle singing that song. That was Joe in a nutshell: total sweetheart.”

This writer’s favorite interaction with Joe came during a phone interview with him while researching my book, John Severin: Two-Fisted Comic Book Artist. I was interviewing the artist from my school office phone and my six-year-old son, who had a cold, was playing on the carpet. Joe heard my son coughing and immediately interrupted our conversation, checking in on my son’s health and asking about the things my boy liked. We then continued on with our chat. At the end of the conversation, Joe got my address from me, tell me in case he thought of more John Severin information to provide. Two days later, a package with a picture of the Hulk inscribed to my son arrived at our house, just to make my boy feel better.

“Total sweetheart,” indeed. Joe stood out as a grandfather figure who seemed wise and caring, though he had no link at all to me or my family. However, today there is a Hulk picture on my son’s wall that speaks differently. The artist’s umbrella of “extended family” reaches over all the artists he mentored and collaborated with, all the vets he spent time with, all the fans and kids-turned-adults who adored his on-page adventures, and anyone with the good fortune to spend meaningful time with him. Joe was that family member we all wish would have visited more.

As “extended family” member George Pérez shares, “I met Joe early in my career at a New York convention and had the privilege of meeting his young son Mark and Joe’s wife, Betty. They were all so kind to me and Joe’s love for his work and respect that he had for even newcomer’s like me was truly inspiring. While we really didn’t have too many opportunities to get together through the years, every encounter felt like a family reunion. His smile was infectious and his energy incredible, even when age was starting to take its toll. I saw him for the last time a bit over a year ago, and it was a magical moment, like revisiting a beloved uncle. He bragged about still being able to ink and pencil with a steady line and how lucky he had been throughout the years. I know how lucky I was to know him and, while I deeply regret his passing, I’m comforted that he is now with his beloved Betty and his work and legacy will remain with us forever.”

Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Incredible Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

thoughts that follow are from those individuals who had that special opportunity to spend the last possible days with Joe. As someone who lost all of his grandparents early in my life, I was literally brought to tears when Terry Austin first shared with me the story of those lunches he held for Joe. It is a rare situation when someone who lived a full life, as Joe did, to be given the gift of other peoples’ time during their last days. These were not memorial events and these were not testimonials. These were events of true friendship, and doubtless an absolute blessing for all involved.

Frequent lunch participant TODD DEZAGO, writer for Sensational Spider-Man, Tellos, and The Perhapanauts, shared about Joltin’ Joe hilarity: “I’ve known Joe for years now. He and Terry Austin would invite me out to lunch with them now and then. When I was stuck at home convalescing after spinal cord surgery, he and Terry came over to my house with ice cream from Holy Cow since I couldn’t go out. And as the Marvel movies started coming out, we three would go together, Joe always patting my leg just as the movie started, telling me, ‘This is gonna be good!’ It was.

“Terry, Joe Staton, Jack Morelli, and I once took Joe and Ramona Fradon out to lunch to celebrate their October birthdays. I held my own with Joe and Jack and the movie trivia, but soon they switched to baseball and left me in the dust.

“When Joe moved into an assisted living facility last year, Terry and I would go to visit, Terry bringing him some art books or magazines, Joe showing us what he was working on, still busy inking or drawing at 93. The last time we went was just the day before they closed the doors due to the coronavirus. Terry had bought milk and cherry pie, and the three of us ate it all in Joe’s small room, balancing paper plates on our laps and drinking the whole milk that still had the cream on the top. Joe then began telling us a story about how his family, when he was a kid, had a pair of baby goats of their own that spent most the day grazing on the front lawn. He told us that the boy-goat was a tough little guy and acted like a watchdog, protecting the house or maybe he was just always looking for a fight. Joe said that the milkman—he called him ‘that poor, poor milkman’— would start up the small hill to the house, walking along with his metal basket-rack filled with clinking milk bottles… and that little goat would wait and watch him, and, Joe’s eyes got wide. ‘He’d hit him! That little goat would ram that guy again and again, he’d knock him over, milk bottles flying!’ Joe raised his arms to show how the guy sailed through the air. ‘This poor milkman trying to get up and the goat would just… Todd, he’d hit him!’ Joe told this story without a glimmer of a smile, without any humor at all. This was serious! This little goat was terrorizing this poor man!

And Terry and I couldn’t breathe, fighting not to choke on our mouthful of milk and cherry pie, begging Joe to stop ’cause he was gonna kill us if he didn’t. We were done in.

Joe never cracked a smile. That was the last time I saw Joe. And it was a good one.”

Whenever the topic turned to my favorite character (Popeye, the one-eyed Sailor), Joe would insist that he himself had never eaten any spinach. I’d say, ‘Your mother never cooked it when you were growing up on the farm? You never were served any when you were in the Seabees?’

And he would always answer with an emphatic ‘No!’ Once I stopped by to see Joe after a trip to the grocery store and I mentioned that I’d bought a bag of spinach for my cat (good ol’ Finster insists that 8 p.m. is forever and always ‘Spinach Time’ in the Austin household). And, after we did the usual exchange of dialogue recounted above, I asked if he wanted me to leave some for him. He said, ‘Okay,’ but he didn’t know how to cook it. ‘Just put it in some boiling water for five minutes, strain it out and put some butter and salt on it,’ I advised. (Finster prefers his raw). When I finally thought to ask him about it, we had the Popeye conversation a year or two later, and he didn’t remember me gifting him with any green, leafy substances. So I can only assume he put it in the refrigerator and forgot about it until it mutated into another life form whereupon it was discarded, so his record there, vis-à-vis never ingesting Popeye’s (and Finster’s) favorite vegetable, is probably intact!

“The second unbelievable claim was that he had never read an issue of Fantastic Four, which is incredible considering that he had an almost unbroken string of inking that title for more than a decade-and-a-half. You should know that this was back when the words were hand-lettered on the original art boards before they were inked (you know, the way that the Comic Book Gods intended).

As an inker myself, I always read the captions and dialogue before pitching in on a page—how else do you A GENUINE FRIENDSHIP TERRY AUSTIN, saved appropriately for last in this segment, know what the important elements are to the story shares with us a heartfelt story about Joe. Rarely have I had the opportunity to interact with someone who invested that you should emphasize such quality time with another human being as Terry Austin visually and try to lead the did with Joe Sinnott. I give a personal thank you to Terry for reader’s eye? ‘Weren’t you ever curious as to what was modeling what genuine friendship looks like. happening in the panel or Austin reveals, “My friend Joe Sinnott did many unbelievable things, from driving a munitions truck during World what someone was saying?’

I’d ask incredulously and War II on the island of Okinawa (after joining the Navy if you think that I got the because his mother thought that he would be assigned to spinach answer in return, a nice ship where he would be relatively safe), to inking a you’d be 100% correct. larger variety of comic book pencilers better than anyone Somehow, Joe instinctively else. was able to do what the rest “However, there were two claims that he made to me of us struggle to accomplish on more than one occasion that I still struggle to accept.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

Above: In the late 1960s, Joe displays his work over Jim Steranko’s pencils on a dynamic spread in Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 [June 1968].

Below: Joe hangs out with his son Mark and TV’s Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, at a con.

35

and better than any of us ever could. Still, it makes me sad to think that he missed all that snappy Stan Lee dialogue!

“I knew Joe for many years—I just took a quick flip through my photo album and see that the earliest photograph I took of him was on July 17, 1985, at an event at Mort Walker’s Cartoon Museum in Rye, New York—but casually, I suppose, even after I moved nearer his beloved hometown of Saugerties.

We’d get together for lunch occasionally with his wife, Betty, and their comic book loving son, Mark.

But it wasn’t until after Betty died that Joe confided in me how lonely his days were, with the rest of the various members of the Sinnott family at work, and I started asking him out for lunch or dinner more frequently.

“I’ve always liked to listen more than talk and, even though Joe had a lifetime of stories to impart, it soon became evident to me that I wasn’t holding up my end of the conversation. So, I began to ask other members of the local comic book community to hear Joe’s stories (and contribute some of their own). It started with Joe Staton and Fred Hembeck, but friend Sinnott would always ask, ‘Who else can we get?’ So I reached out to Dan Green, Ron Marz, Jim Starlin, Todd Dezago, and pretty soon our Cartoonist Lunches became special events with the addition of Janice Chaing, Ramona Fradon, Christie Scheele, Jack Morelli, Herb Trimpe, Bob Wiacek, Walt and Louise Simonson, and even the not-so-local Carl Potts and John Byrne (and various spouses and offspring).

“One of the old Hollywood movie studios had the motto, ‘More Stars Than There Are in the Heavens!’ I used to think of our lunches as ‘More Stars Than Most Comic Book Conventions!’ The most common complaint I’d hear was, ‘I didn’t get a chance to talk to Joe,’ so I began inviting folks back to my house afterwards for dessert and a heaping helping of Joe. We sometimes used a cartoonist who was visiting the area as an excuse to get everyone together for lunch—Jim Amash and Brian Bolland are two that readily spring to mind. One year, for his birthday lunch, I asked Joe if there was anyone he’d especially like to see and he immediately answered, ‘Tom Palmer!’ He was a huge admirer of Tom’s work and I assumed that they were old pals who hadn’t seen each other in years—Tom told me just yesterday that actually they had never met until he came up for lunch and he was absolutely thrilled to be invited and to have a chance to meet Joe. “A bit of a Battle of the Birthdays ensued as Joe invited me for lunch at a restaurant we’d never gone to before and I entered to find that he had gathered all of our friends together to celebrate my 60th. A few years later, his family asked me to take Joe out to dinner the night of his 90th because they figured that way he wouldn’t trip to the fact that they had arranged an elaborate surprise party for him. The gathering included all the members of the far-flung Sinnott clan plus his friends from the VFW and the neighborhood where Joe grew up and lived all his life. Then, a few days later, Hilarie and Joe Staton graciously hosted a party for Joe at their home with all his comic industry pals in attendance.

“After Joe gave up driving, I spent a lot of time taking him to various doctor appointments (I honestly think I remember the names of Joe’s doctors better than I do my own). One time, when his daughter Kathy called to ask if I’d be available to take Joe to one of his medical appointments, I replied, “Where Joe is concerned, the answer is always yes!” I’d turn my car down Joe’s street and I could always see him in the distance standing in the road and, when I’d pull up, he’d say, ‘What kept ya—I been waiting for an hour!” Even though I was right on time. I usually tried to remember to bring along a CD I thought he’d enjoy—Phil Harris, Hoagy Carmichael, Ukulele Ike, Paul Whiteman, Kay Kyser, and sometimes Joe’s favorite, Bing Crosby. Often Joe would sing along as we wove through traffic (he’d always comment, ‘Where are all these people coming from—doesn’t anyone have a job anymore?’) and he’d tell me where he was when the song was released and something about its history. What a memory that man had!

“One day, we were sitting in the waiting room of the lab in Saugerties, where the doctor had sent him for some blood tests. Joe was uncharacteristically fidgety and he finally blurted out, “Do you think I have much time left?” This caught me totally by surprise, but he was 88 and the fact that the time he had left on this Earth might be in short supply was obviously bothering him at that moment. I wanted to say something reassuring, but, in a panic, the only thing I could think to say was, “Yes, yes, I do. My dad lived 36

until he was 93, and he was in fairly good shape right up until the end.” This seemed to do the trick and he was in good spirits the rest of the day. Telling one of our friends that story after Joe’s passing just shy of his 94th birthday, they commented, “Joe always was good at hitting his deadlines!” Ouch!

“Among the many things that Joe loved were movies and baseball (also root beer and Nick Cardy’s “Congo Bill,” but those things have no bearing here).

I was happy that I got to take him to the first Captain America movie and the first two Thor films (he always loved to see his old pal Stan pop up on screen), but I’ll never forget the afternoon I invited him over for a fried catfish dinner and a movie. While I cooked, he looked over the mounds of DVDs that I own and picked out a movie from a boxed set of Will Rogers’ films, John Ford’s Steamboat ‘Round the Bend. After we dined and watched the DVD, I asked him why he had picked that particular film and he got a sort of dreamy, faraway look in his eyes, and said that he had seen the movie when it opened at a theater in 1935, and had never seen it since. And I knew that, in his mind, he had traveled back to that long-ago movie palace, where Will Rogers desperately tried to clear his name of a bogus murder charge and still win the big paddle boat race.

“As for his other obsession, outside of remembering the names of some of the baseball players who were members of the Detroit Tigers when I was growing up, I know absolutely bupkis! So, when Joe had a stroke and was experiencing memory problems, I recalled that my dad went through the same experience and how the medical personnel told me that, when the pathway to specific information in the brain gets damaged, it can sometimes find another path to access the same information. So I took Joe out for lunch at our favorite pizza restaurant after arranging to meet our friends Jack Morelli and Todd Dezago there. I knew that Jack knows baseball and that Todd knows movies, so the assignments I gave them was to ask Joe lots of questions about those subjects, even if they already knew the answers. The previous time I had taken Joe out he sat with his eyes closed at least half the time, and I didn’t know if he was asleep or awake. This time, he was fully engaged, his memory stimulated and he was coming up with all kinds of obscure information concerning the topics Todd and Jack threw at him. Those two guys performed their tasks admirably (turns out that Jack is no slouch with old movie knowledge, either). You’re probably wondering what my contribution to the afternoon was—I ate pizza and laughed (a lot!) at all the witticisms flying around the table… thanks for asking!

“I suppose at this point you must be wondering if we ever discussed his work. Just in the most general terms—never in the ‘what number brush did you use when you made this line’ or ‘did you ever file down your pen points so that blah blah blah’ sort of nonsense. I’m always buying and reading old comic books, so we’d be driving somewhere and, out of the blue, Joe would say, ‘Frank McLaughlin had this account and he called me up to ghost-pencil this job for him and he just did a terrible job inking it and I wish I’d have inked it.’ And I’d ask what the job was and he’d say, ‘Stan Smith’s Tennis Tips,’ so I’d go home and buy the one copy available on eBay. And, the next week, we’d look it over and he would point out certain things that he did and complain again that Frank hacked out the inking (knowing what little I knew of Frank, I suspect he would have chortled and said, ‘Tell Joe that next time he can ink it himself—as long as I can keep all the money!’).

“Joe was an outstanding inker, but he was especially proud of his penciling work. He’d wax nostalgic about his pencil and ink jobs on Kent Blake of the Secret Service or Arrowhead, and I’d bring them over and he’d point out something he thought he’d done a good job on, like a bush or an airplane, saying, ‘I must have had a good brush that day!’ I remember sitting in my car once while we both laughed until we couldn’t catch our breath over the funny expressions he’d drawn on the tough sergeant’s face in a 1956 issue of Devil Dog Dugan. We sat at his kitchen table one day looking through my copy of the life story of The Beatles that he drew in 1964, and I asked something like how he knew what George Harrison’s room looked like when he was a kid, and Joe laughed and said, ‘I made it up!’ So, there’s a tip from the pros for all the young cartoonists who might be in the audience!

“Now and again, Marvel would reprint some of his ink jobs from the Atlas days, like the recent Monsters omnibus set, and we’d take it along to the hospital and, while waiting for the results from his blood test, we’d look it over and he’d talk a little about Jack Kirby’s pencils and show the book to #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

all the pretty nurses. Or I’d bring a recent Archie digest where he was credited for the first time for inking a job that he had ghosted for his late friend Jon D’Agostino decades before, and he’d say, ‘How do they know that I did that?’ (which is something that I keep forgetting to ask!).

“Joe spent his last couple of years in an assisted living facility once his family decided that it wasn’t safe to leave him on his own. I visited as much as I could and continued taking him to many medical appointments.

For a while, I drove him across the Hudson River every Wednesday morning to the hospital to have his blood tested and receive a shot of something to bring up his white blood count. The ladies in the Oncology department always made a big fuss over Joe and, of course, he was always generous in sharing with them drawings and prints of his work. His last birthday happened to fall on a Wednesday and I suspected something might be up when I pushed Joe’s wheelchair through the double doors and saw a balloon featuring a photo of the Avengers movie team behind the nurse’s station.

Sure enough, they had a cake for him, sang and crowded around him for a photo. Another happy occasion that I was lucky enough to share with Joe! “Our group lunches being a thing of the past, I thought it was important for our friends to be able to hear Joe’s stories while they still could. (Plus, as should be evident by this part of the narrative, I’m a pretty boring guy.)

So I started asking other folks to accompany us to the hospital or meet afterwards for lunch. This proved to be great fun for both of us—and we got to eat a lot of swell food in the process—plus I appreciated the help getting Joe in and out of the car.

“This past winter, the flu bug went around and around the place where Joe was living, so sometimes I’d stop by and the facility would be closed to visitors and the decision was made to give Joe his weekly injection on the premises, which further limited the time I was able to spend with him. But I started stopping by every Tuesday on my way home from grocery shopping.

I’ve been drawing for fun since my ‘retirement’ from the comic book industry, filling sketchbooks with inked drawings of old comic book characters that most people wouldn’t remember. And every time I finished another book, I’d show it to Joe. (‘So much work on this one!’ was his most frequent comment upon turning a page). One day, I asked, ‘Joe, when’s the last time you drew a cowboy?’ He answered, ‘Oh, it’s been years and years.’

“At this point, I should explain that Joe’s wife, Betty, always told me the story of how Joe would eat a piece of toast and drink a cup of tea for breakfast, but she wasn’t allowed to put the toast on a plate; it had to be served on a napkin and, while he ate, he would draw a cowboy hat in profile on the napkin, and then draw a cowboy under the hat. And, as he ate the last bite of toast and had the last sip of tea, he would dab his lips with the napkin, crumple it up, and throw it in the wastebasket. She would always finish the story with, ‘If I only I had kept all those napkins!’

So, even though Joe was still undertaking commissions of Spider-Man and Doc Doom for people who would gladly pay for same, I was basically asking him if he ever drew just for fun. The next time I visited, I gave him a little 3" x 5" sketchbook on which I had pasted a goofy cover that I had drawn that said something like “Joe’s Fun Book.” I told him that I would never ask him if he had done anything in the book (as I didn’t want to put any pressure on him), but that I thought he should have something to doodle in if he ever felt like it. And, if he ever wanted to show it to me, I’d be happy to look at it. Maybe five months later, he announced, ‘I want to show you the book!’ In it, he had drawn in pencil head and shoulder shots of humorous gangsters, little kids, slick Lotharios, flamboyant silent movie stars, and, yes, cowboys. At 93 years of age, he rediscovered how much fun drawing could be!

“I stopped by one Tuesday and was told that the facility was again closed to visitors due to the flu. I inquired about Joe and was told that the flu bug had bitten him and hard. When son Mark emailed me that the place had reopened, I drove over, signed in, and found the door to Joe’s room open, but he wasn’t inside. I went looking and discovered him asleep in a chair in the common area, where a staff member was screaming out bingo numbers (the players all being extremely hard of hearing). I gently woke Joe and tried talking to him, but he didn’t have his hearing aid. What he was saying didn’t make any sense (at one point he asked me if I had brought the bridles) and he refused to go back to his room. So the scene quickly came to resemble something out of a Marx Brothers movie, as I shouted something to Joe that he couldn’t hear, which caused the lady next to him to yell to the number-caller, ‘Say the number again, I can’t hear the numbers!’ So the bingo lady screamed, ‘27, number 27,’ and Joe looked over at her and said, ‘I’d like to, lady, but I can’t find my shovel!’

“I’ll admit that it’s pretty funny in retrospect, but, at the time, I was frightCOMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

ened that Joe might have experienced another stroke, and I came home and called Kathy in South Carolina (as I knew that Mark would still be on his mail route) to tell her that something was clearly wrong with her father.

Mark rushed over to see him that night and said that Joe was hallucinating.

The staff was blaming liberal doses of flu medicine they were doling out and the symptoms seemed to match the information he found on Google about the medication, so we all felt somewhat relieved.

“The next Tuesday, Joe was in bed and was very weak, but making sense once more, which was reassuring. I told him some of the crazy things he had said the week before and he didn’t remember a thing. However, he was having trouble remembering the names of people and things, so our conversation consisted of him going, ‘You know who I mean,’ and me guessing and guessing until I finally hit upon the right answer. At one point, he asked, ‘Why do people always bring me cookies—I don’t like cookies!’ I asked him what he liked, and he said, ‘Pie—but the pie here is terrible!’ So I asked what kind of pie he liked, and he said, ‘You know…’ Which led to another round of 20 questions before I eventually correctly hit upon cherry. It took a while but I also finally guessed the name of the place in the area that he thought made the best pies, so I promised I would see him again the next Tuesday and we were going to eat pie until it was coming out of our ears!

“The following Tuesday, I had lunch with our mutual friend Todd Dezago, and, when I explained that I had Joe’s favorite cherry pie in the car and I’d be going over to see him next, Todd said it sounded like fun and asked to come along. Shortly we were knocking on Joe’s door and, when he said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I answered, ‘It’s Pie Day, Joe! We’re going to eat pie!’ And that’s exactly what we did. We ate and talked and laughed while Joe told us the story of the goat they had growing up on the farm who gently head-butted everyone to show affection—only no one had bothered to inform the mailman!

“Happily, Joe was himself again and, after a few hours, Todd and I told him we loved him and left, never dreaming that it would be the last time we would ever see him. The next day, New York State locked those sorts of places down due to the pandemic and poor Joe spent his remaining months isolated from his family and friends. I spoke to him twice on the telephone and he made me promise to come visit when they opened up again, a promise I’ll now have to keep by driving over to the little cemetery where he and Betty are buried.

“One last thing: that day I visited Joe when he wasn’t making a lick of sense, I brought him another little sketchbook like the one he had doodled the cowboys in and, at one point, he opened it and felt a page with his thumb and forefinger and said, ‘Huh, good paper!’ Which is how I knew that Joe was still in there somewhere. I’ll bet there’s plenty of good paper in the place where Joe is now… and lots of cherry pie!

TO BE CONTINUED [COMPILER’S NOTE: My heartfelt thanks to Terry Austin for his thoughts and for inviting so many quality people, who spent the last years with Joltin’ Joe, to share their thoughts and stories. Individual thanks also to the great artists and craftspeople who gave their fond remembrances of Joe personally and commented on the quality of and motivation provided by his work.

Those folks include Scott Hanna, George Pérez, Bob McLeod, Neal Adams, Joe Rubinstein, Tom Palmer, Fred Hembeck, Al Milgrom, Alex Saviuk, Jerry Ordway, John Byrne—and those we’ll hear from next time: TODD DEZAGO, JOHN WORKMAN, JANICE CHIANG, JOE STATON, MIKE GIACOIA, BILL WILSON, and JACK MORELLI. A special thank you to MARK SINNOTT for his support and participation.—GB.]

37

blabbing ’bout blab!

The Gift of BLAB!

Monte Beauchamp talks about the background of his great, ever-evolving anthology

by MONTE BEAUCHAMP

Above: Back cover detail from BLAB! #1, featuring CBC’s own cartoonist in residence, J.D. King’s artwork, and quote from the great “punk poet laureate.”

Inset right: Monte Beauchamp.

Below: J.D. King’s exuberant cover art for BLAB! #1.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been friendly with Chicago’s great editor and anthologist Monte Beauchamp for decades now, and I’ve long wanted to feature his amiable and massively creative self in my magazines. Very recently Monte reached out to suggest that time might be right now as he was planning a Spring 2022 revival of his great BLAB! That superb publication started out in 1986 as a self-published, professionally produced fanzine on EC Comics and then underground comix, quickly morphed into a truly great and increasingly eclectic digest-sized comics anthology (published by Kitchen Sink), and next reborn as an avant garde and even more eclectic illustration/comics showcase measuring a generous 10" x 10" (all but one issue published

by Fantagraphics).

Along the way there were BLAB! gallery exhibitions, yet another transformation—this time as a hardbound annual called Blab World (pub’ed by Last Gasp)—and various ancillary projects, including what I believe is his finest achievement, Masterful Marks: Cartoonists Who Changed the World [2014]. When I was putting together The Book of Weirdo, I wanted to include Monte’s take and he responded with a 7,000-word essay I had to severely edit for space constraints. But it included his BLAB! history, so I include it below, in lieu of discussing the mag’s revival, as that has been briefly postponed (but we’ll discuss it next ish).

Monte was born in 1953 and grew up in Moline, Illinois, spending much of his teen years as an avid EC Comics collector and, soon enough, a fan of underground comix. Through luck and talent, Monte found a career in the Chicago advertising world. By the mid-’80s, the award-winning art director was growing frustrated… —JBC.]

38

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Artwork © J.D. King. BLAB! TM & © Monte Beauchamp.

The only reason BLAB! exists is because my wife at the time suggested I draw a comic book to get my mind off the inner-office politics taking place where I worked.

The idea of creating a comic book, on top of a 40-50 hour work week as an advertising art director, I didn’t find too appealing. But then the idea of producing a fanzine about comics flashed in my head.

As an aficionado of comic art, I was aware that the underground cartoonists had flipped their lids over MAD and the rest of the banned EC comics line of

their youth, but there was never a publication that connected the threads. I thought a collection of memoirs about their EC experience would make for an interesting subject, so I reached out to the genre’s core artists to see if they’d “blab” about it. And nearly all of them responded—with a resounding yes.

Since underground comics were referred to as “comix,” I dubbed my publishing house Monte Comix Productions, and set out to produce the first issue.

In the summer of 1986, fifteen hundred copies of the first BLAB! rolled off a Chicago press. The 80-page, digest-sized endeavor sported a four-color cover with a black-&-white interior. The front cover featured an illustration by J.D. King based on a sketch I scrawled out of a one-eyed blob child picnicking under an apple tree enjoying an issue of MAD. The back cover drawing of a wild-eyed, MAD-reading youth whose brain is shooting out the top of his head was also by J.D., beneath which I ran a typeset quote by poet-songwriter Patti Smith: “After MAD, drugs were nothing.”

Consignment copies were placed about town: at record stores, boutiques, and comic shops. I also ran a few ads and mailed out review copies. Orders began to trickle in, a couple here, a couple there, and then one Saturday the BLAB! p.o. box was jam-packed with mail. For the next eight to ten Saturdays, this same phenomenon occurred again and again.

Though BLAB! was intended as a one-shot, the positive fan reaction spurred me on to attempt an encore. For #2, I decided to keep the EC-vibe alive and sought out talent who could deliver on that. I had been following Drew Friedman’s work in both Weirdo and RAW, and XNO I discovered in [independent music magazine] Forced Exposure. During a newsstand perusal of Cracked (a low-rung version of MAD), I came across a cartoonist who I just had to get in touch

hard time about it—I accepted Denis’ offer right there on the spot.

A month later, more good fortune struck. Ian Ballantine of Ballantine Books fame tracked me down. A San Francisco associate of his had sent him a copy of BLAB! #2 and Ian phoned to say he hadn’t seen this kind of energy in a comics publication since Kurtzman’s MAD. Back in the ’50s, Ian came up with the idea of reformatting the content of Kurtzman’s MAD comics into paperback books, which turned into a publishing phenomenon. And Ian stayed in touch; he’d call from time to time. He proposed that we actually work on a book about MAD together, but it never got off the ground. That initial call from Ian, however, sure put the wind in my sails.

When an advanced copy of the first Kitchen Sink edition of BLAB! arrived, I couldn’t have been happier. The printing was top-notch and the contents jelled incredibly well together.

It was incredibly im-

Above: BLAB! #2–4 cover art by (from left) Kim Deitch, Charles Burns, and Drew Friedman.

Below: From left is BLAB! #3–7 (with cover art by Joe Coleman, Richard Sala, and Dan Clowes, respectively), and promotional poster for “Chicago’s Very Own BLAB! Magazine” [1995], art by Archer Prewitt.

All artwork © the respective artists. BLAB! TM & © Monte Beauchamp.

with—Daniel Clowes. At the time, he was working under a pseudonym. And who could blame him?

Dan dug the idea of illustrating an overview of Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1949 classic—The Show of Violence, which detailed famous murder cases the good doctor had been involved with. Drew illustrated the inside front cover house ad: “Nuclear Reading for the Nuclear Family,” and XNO contributed largely to “The BLAB! Dating Depot.”

Kim Deitch, who had created several key drawings for BLAB! #1, drew the wraparound cover, which was a tip of the hat to the comic book burnings of the mid-’50s. Kim also delivered a stellar five-page story starring his underground character Waldo the Cat and EC comic book maven, Gary Arlington.

J.D. King turned in a splendid in-depth interview with legendary Mars Attacks! bubble gum cards creator Len Brown that also featured unpublished preliminary drawings

by Wally Wood. I managed to pull together another compendium on comic books: “Notes from the Underground,” featuring reminiscences by the likes of Gary Panter, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Charles Burns, Lynda Barry, and others.

Twenty-two hundred copies of BLAB! #2 rolled off the same Chicago press a year later. At that summer’s comic con, I gave a copy to Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Press, who paged through it, and then proposed a publishing deal.

Though I had no intention of seeing BLAB! through to a third number—my wife at the time began giving me a real

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Top: The first “square” ish, art

by Chris Ware. Above and below: Dan Clowes portrays Wally Wood, BLAB! #6. Inset right: Cover to the museum catalog, BLAB! A Retrospective [2008].

All artwork © the respective artists. BLAB! TM & © Monte Beauchamp.

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portant to me to orchestrate a particular look and editorial verve for each BLAB!, and, in order to accomplish this, I took a synergistic approach. The contributors and myself would discuss the ideas up front, and, once we zeroed in on a concept, they’d go straight to finished art; no preliminary pencils were necessary unless, of course, the talent preferred to work that way.

For example, Drew Friedman’s one-page strip for BLAB! #3 was based on an actual “draw your favorite comic shop clerk” event that took place here in Chicago. Amused by it, I pitched Drew on the concept of “Comic Shop Clerks of Chicago,” which he got a real kick out of. When the finished art arrived, Drew had retitled the piece “Comic Shop Clerks of North America,” which vastly broadened its appeal.

When I approached Joe Coleman about becoming a possible contributor, I pitched him on a proposed format— one illustration per page with typesetting underneath, and knowing that he had a fondness for particular wayward historical individuals, I suggested one such subject. The result? The riveting 21-page “The Final Days of John Paul Knowles” for BLAB! #3, which led to an entire series of stories.

Dan Clowes liked the idea of doing a follow-up to BLAB!’s previous feature on Wertham and this time around tackled Seduction of the Innocent. Dan knocked it out of the ball park with that one. XNO delivered more “Dating Depot” drawings, and Spain Rodriquez—of ZAP comics fame— climbed onboard, as did Richard Sala, whose work I first discovered in RAW. Bhob Stewart penned a rich history on the legendary Bazooka Joe, and Charles Burns turned in a searing tribute cover for that issue’s 55-page symposium on R. Crumb. To watch BLAB! morph from a self-published EC-based fanzine into a professional, multi-topic comics anthology was a dream I had never dreamed about.

At 1989’s release party for ZAP #12, at the Psychedelic Solution Gallery, in New York City, I laid a copy of #3 on Rick Griffin (who had written a memoir for BLAB! #1). Later that evening, we began chatting a bit, and then, just as if it were a tagline for a television commercial, he commented: “BLAB!—it’s the Humbug for the ’90s.” To have a mag that

you created compared to one the great Harvey Kurtzman created, by a creator of Rick Griffin’s stature, put me on cloud nine—exactly where I needed to be at the time because my marriage was on the rocks.

Kitchen Sink Press really sent the series cruising. They did a fabulous job of getting BLAB! into all the right places throughout the United States, Canada, and even into London. Along the way, BLAB! brought on more unique styles and talent. There was Doug Allen (Steven), Gary Leib (Idiotland), Frank Stack (a.k.a. Foolbert Sturgeon), Lloyd Dangle (Troubletown), Terry LaBan (Unsupervised Existence), Skip Williamson (Bijou Funnies), and a young contributor to RAW, Chris Ware.

In 1992, comics critic Robert Fiore noted that: “Monte Beauchamp has a knack for getting excellent work out of young and veteran cartoonists—including some who don’t appear much anywhere else—and getting this independent-minded cadre to go along with his themes.”

And, speaking of themes, #5 dealt with crime, #6 alcoholism, and #7 psychology—inspired by the psycho-babble Adult Children of Alcoholics group my wife had become involved in.

Somewhere between issues #6 and #7, an editor from St. Martin’s Press became eager to publish a Best of BLAB! collection, and presented his sales force with an assortment of back issues to shop around. Yet the title proved undefinable. A graphic novel section didn’t exist at the time and because book buyers weren’t quite sure which category to place BLAB! in, the project was shelved.

Out of the blue one day, Denis phoned with fabulous news—BLAB! #7 had won a Harvey Award (for “Best Comics Anthology” of 1992). Though the news was indeed thrilling, the thrill of working on BLAB! was gone.

So many things were taking place on a personal level: divorce and all of its bad tidings (along with finding a new job; we had built a design studio together), my parents near loss of their home, and then my dad falling ill. It was a pretty shattering time in my life. The only thing that felt certain was that if BLAB! were to continue, it would have to be rebuilt—from the bottom up.

Working in the field of advertising exposed me to an array of illustrators whose styles I found equally as engaging as many of the top comic book artists (mind you, most of the top early comic book artists wanted to be illustrators when they started out). There were also several crazy-great

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All artwork © the respective artists. BLAB! TM & © Monte Beauchamp.

talents surfacing in Chicago’s art gallery circuit. Around this same time, I began attending the Indianapolis Antique Advertising show and became interested in vintage ephemera and early graphics. So the idea of mixing all of this up with comic book art in a totally new format was extremely enticing. Who knows what could come out of it?

So I proposed this new graphic stew approach for BLAB! to Denis, who presented it to his editorial board and they, in turn, shot it down. They didn’t want to tamper with the anthology’s award-winning format. And who could argue with that? Still, I had no desire to continue on with BLAB! in its digest-sized format, so I just kind of forgot about it. Several months later, Denis phoned to schedule the next issue and when I mentioned there wasn’t going to be one, he sort of paused, then asked what it would take to get the anthology back on track. So I explained my dilemma.

Concerned and sympathetic, Denis rescinded the board’s decision.

In the fall of 1995, the new BLAB! was unveiled: 10 by 10 inches in size, 112 pages, with an interior illumined with some color. Fewer comic artists were featured to grant more space for interviews, articles, and illustration.

It sported an impeccably composed cover crafted by the wondrous Chris Ware (as well as a magnificent four-page story; which to this day I feel is his very best).

BLAB! was praised by one reviewer for its emphasis on “aesthetics over intellectuality,” exclaiming: “Simply put, BLAB! looks like a f*ckin’ million bucks.” Another critic characterized the publication’s makeover as “a distressing slide into vacuous mediocrity as it [BLAB!] courts the fine art world.”

The rebirth of BLAB! struck a resounding chord in the comics marketplace. In just a matter of months, its 5,000copy press run had completely sold out.

Just as the new BLAB! was getting started, tragedy struck. Kitchen Sink Press (who had merged with Kevin Eastman’s Tundra, in 1993) went belly-up. Fortunately, a formalized contract for BLAB! had never been signed and I was able to escape the company’s dicey bankruptcy proceedings.

Ironically, during this melee, Hollywood came knocking.

A seasoned producer was jazzed at the prospects of a feature-length BLAB! anthology movie. For an extra-long moment, I believed it would happen. I really did. He pumped me so up. Yet a concept of this nature proved to be ahead of the curve for Hollywood and the project was abandoned.

Fortunately, the anthology itself was picked up by yet another fabulous publisher—Fantagraphics Books, spearheaded by Gary Groth and Kim Thompson. The first volume that we produced together was nominated for a 1998 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for “Best Anthology” of the year. Fantagraphics and BLAB! were off to a grand start.

As BLAB! continued to evolve, I developed a five-level process for selecting artists. Boing Boing founder and founding editor-in-chief of wired.com, Mark Frauenfelder, explains: Level 1: Character. The artist’s work must be “eccentric, obsessive, cornball, carnivalesque, or have an unsophisticated charm about it.”

Level 2: Style. BLAB! embraces work that exhibits elements of “folk, minimalism, modernism, contemporary, art brut, abstract, pop, surrealism, and cartoon” styles.

Level 3: Medium. Beauchamp looks carefully at how artists make use of their media. “Acrylic, oil paint, woodcut, etching, silkscreen, gouache, colored pencil, pastel, airbrush, crayons, India ink, dyes, watercolor, mixed media, digital, sculptural, and so forth… diversity in medium is key when it comes to composing an issue of BLAB!; I like to mix it up.”

Level 4: Elements. Beauchamp looks at how the artist under consideration personalizes “line, texture, color, form, COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

space, shape, and value.”

Level 5: Emotion. “Does the work have heart, soul, spirituality, joy, or pain about it… does it communicate something personal that comes from within the artist as opposed to being merely technique?”

Just a fraction of the artists that easily cut BLAB!’s editorial mustard that I haven’t previously mentioned are: Sue Coe, Camille Rose Garcia, Jana Brike, Mark Ryden, Greg Clarke, Gary Baseman, Jonathon Rosen, Sergio Ruzzier, David Sandlin, Peter Kuper, Gary Panter, the Clayton Brothers, Christian Northeast, Al Columbia, Water Minus, Bob Staake, Ryan Heshka, Esther Pearl Watson, Mark Todd, Travis Louie, Lou Brooks, Matti Hagelberg, Peter and Maria Hoey, Blanquet, Mark Landman, Fred Stonehouse, Owen Smith, Laura Levine, Gary Taxali, Tim Biskup, Marc Rosenthal, and many, many more. Regrettably, space does not allow for me to credit all of BLAB!’s fabulous contributors.

To this day, I still pinch myself. Like, is this whole BLAB! trip real? I feel blessed to have been able to work with each and everyone of these mega talents along with all of BLAB!’s fabulous publishers. I started my career off in cement construction and as a John Deere Factory worker.

How in the world did I wind up here?

In 2005, an event occurred that I could not have anticipated and I have Sabine Witkowski of the organization Fumetto to thank for it. BLAB! was awarded its first comprehensive museum retrospective at the Kuntsmuseum, in Lucerne, Switzerland. Never did I imagine the day that BLAB! would be ushered into the hallowed hallways of fine art.

And then, another crazy thing happened. In 2006, Gary Pressman of the Los Angeles-based Copro Nason presented a BLAB! art show at Track 16, at Bergamot Station, in Santa Monica. It was a grand success—over a thousand walkthroughs; I kid you not—and Copro has been sponsoring annual BLAB! art shows at Bergamot ever since.

In 2008, Bill North at the Marianna Kinstler Beach Museum of Art, in Manhattan, Kansas, curated BLAB!’s first North American retrospective and published a 128-page full-color catalogue to accompany the show.

In 2010, New York City’s Society of Illustrators sponsored BLAB!’s second North American retrospective. By the end of the night, director Anelle Miller, invited me to pitch her on a comic book-based curatorial show. The opening night reception for the R. Crumb retrospective broke all attendance records in the Society’s 100-year history and led to my curating and co-curating additional Society shows (ZAP, Kurtzman’s MAD, etc.).

The exposure and influence of the fine art and lowbrow art world edged BLAB! further and further away from comic art which, in turn, led to yet another rebirth, this time around as BLAB WORLD by the same publisher of R. Crumb’s Weirdo—Last Gasp.

Looking back at the myriad of whys and wherefores of BLAB!, only one thing’s for certain—if it weren’t for MAD, BLAB! wouldn’t be here. And neither would Weirdo, or RAW, or Arcade, or ZAP.

Top: 2016 BLAB! show ad reimagines Elvis. Art by Tim O’Brien. Above: Kitchen Sink produced these BLAB! promo buttons in 1989. Art by XNO. Below: The next incarnation of BLAB! See next ish!

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once upon a long ago

Batman and… Galexo?

A master of time & distance joins the Dynamic Duo and takes over their comic strip!

by STEVEN THOMPSON

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just as 1972 began. There was a solo storyline with Dick Grayson thwarting a skyjacking without ever once donning his Robin togs. For nearly a full month, there were no costumed heroes to be seen.

The poor artwork in this period is unsigned except for Bob Kane’s ubiquitous pasted on signature, but the late DC writer Martin Pasko speculated to me that it may have been rough layouts from Joe Orlando, inked by Tex Blaisdell—a routine they were already doing on Little Orphan Annie at the time. It’s also sometimes attributed to Fran Matera (best known for his Steve Roper and Mike Nomad strip), but I believe that’s only because he turns up later. Pasko said, “Clearly, DC must’ve had some kind of deal that forbade the syndicate from rejecting anything they supplied to Ledger, because this is just flat-out unprofessional.” Or perhaps the Ledger newspaper syndicate was just continuing the strip on its own.

Bruce informs Dick that they are “adding to their team” in order to become “world-wide.” It’s an alien he’s kept under wraps for months. What? Aliens are real? Conveniently, Superman—also an alien—is never mentioned again.

After Bruce spends a whole week building him up as the greatest thing since sliced bread, Galexo finally debuts, somewhat imperious and looking like a caped hardhat construction worker. He’s telepathic, has “mastered time and distance,” and brings many new weapons. And he’s there because he needs the help of Bruce and Dick to fight… climate change!

In this case, though, he’s convinced climate change is artificial. He flies them around the globe showing them examples. “It could be from outer space… or it could be a devilish scheme by a group who want to wipe out all resistance so they can rule the world!”

After that pronouncement, the strip was presumed ended as what few U.S. papers had stuck with it dropped it. But the strip carried on…at least in Singapore! Galexo leaves Bruce and Dick behind and goes off on his own adventure for the next seven weeks, after which, Batman and Robin finally return to their own strip for the first time in months!

Contrary to reports that they were never seen again once Galexo arrived, the Dynamic Duo hung around for more than two months before being abandoned. Eventually, their names were dropped, the strip retitled simply Galexo, and it was now better drawn, Fran Matera actually credited as artist.

In 2016, I purchased a long run of the Batman and Robin and Galexo strips from Singapore, just in time to make them available to IDW’s reprint collections. Rarer than Detective #27, but sadly not worth as much, no one seems to know the true story behind Galexo. Fran Matera never mentioned it in interviews and anyone at DC who might have known is long gone, leaving Galexo a mysterious, fascinating footnote in Bat-history. #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Galexo action figure courtesy of Ray Sablack. Batman and Robin TM & © DC Comics. Galexo TM & the respective copyright holder.

Above: Ray Sablack created an action figure based on the virtually unknown Galexo, a character who was featured in the Batman and Robin syndicated newspaper comic strip in the 1970s! Inset upper right: Two panels from the little-seen introduction of the alien character, printed in (of all places) a Singapore newspaper! Below: One of Fran Matera’s mid-’70s Galexo Sunday newspaper comic strip installments.

When Batmania hit unexpectedly big in 1966, one way National (DC) cashed in on it was to revive the Batman newspaper strip last seen two decades earlier. Like that prior incarnation, the new version—this one officially titled Batman with Robin, the Boy Wonder—was bylined “Bob Kane.” Also, like that older incarnation, Kane had little or nothing to do with the ’66 strip.

No, the first writer was DC editor (and former Adventures of Superman TV producer) Whitney Ellsworth and the strip was initially drawn by DC mainstay Joe Giella. At first, there was a sometimes-painful effort at maintaining the campiness of the TV series. There were even celebrity “guests,” including a long serial with legendary radio and TV comedian, Jack Benny.

As the Caped Crusaders’ small screen popularity waned, the strip actually got more serious—and better.

There were stories with Batgirl, Aquaman, and even Superman. There was a long arc featuring Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Man-Bat, written by E. Nelson Bridwell with first class artwork from Al Plastino, even better when ghosted briefly by the great Nick Cardy. For a while it looked like the Batman strip would just keep getting better and better!

Unfortunately, without the TV series to boost interest, papers were dropping the strip on a regular basis. Somehow, though, against all odds, Batman and Robin limped on until 1974, during which time it took a fascinating turn with the introduction of… Galexo!

Who? Yeah, if you look him up online, you won’t run across much other than my own various blog posts from the past 17 years. They say you can find everything on the internet somewhere. Galexo is an exception.

The Batman and Robin strip, so professionally illustrated all along, suddenly began looking decidedly amateurish

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the mad peck’s pix

Crime in My Coffee MR. COFFEE-NERVES

Advertisements in comic-strip form go back almost as far as their entertaining antecedents. When newspaper funnies evolved from single drawings to sequential panels, many ads followed suit. They would invariably begin with a problem and ended with a solution, courtesy of the advertiser’s fine product.

As adventure strips proliferated, mundane problems such as body odor and dingy laundry hardly compared to the exciting dangers faced by Flash Gordon, Tarzan, and company, but accompanying ad strips could reach the same avid readership.

In 1936, the company founded by health guru Mr. C.W. Post hired adventure strip artists Noel Sickles (Scorchy Smith) and Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates) to create an ad campaign to promote Postum, his caffeine-free coffee substitute. They ramped up the excitement quotient by using the dramatic device of personifying the problem in the person of Mr. Coffee-Nerves. Being the strip’s only continuing character, he—and thus

the problem—received top billing.

Mr. Coffee-Nerves was the traditional melodramatic villain. He wore a top hat, sported a twirlable mustache, said “curses,” and had a heart devoid of the milk of human kindness. He was also devoid of pigment as he stood in pale contrast from the surrounding bright colors. He was translucent as well, befitting the amorphous psycho-chemical nature of the problem. Being an apparition, he could only be seen and heard by the victim, and his behavior was despicable! Mr. Coffee-Nerves reinforced his sufferer’s behavior and belittled attempts at helpful intervention by other characters in the strip.

These ads were designed to convince the reader that coffee-nerves was a serious menace to society, and that the plutocrats with their top hats were poisoning the population for their own evil gain.

Finally, in the closing panels, Mr. Coffee-Nerves would be thwarted by Postum. But rest assured he would be back again in the next ad trying to keep another sucker hooked to the caffeinated beverage. Eternal vigilance was required!

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Mr. Coffee-Nerves TM & © the respective copyright holder.

This page: This “Mr. CoffeeNerves” comic strip advertisement (inset right) appeared in Sunday newspaper comics sections across the United States, in January 1941. “Dad Gives a Good Tip” strip (with art by legendary team of Noel Sickles and Milton Caniff) above is circa 1938. Upper left is a can of Postum, a coffee substitute, which was quite popular in the days when the government rationed the “real stuff” during the Second World War. #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Crime Does Not Pay, Mister Crime, Sgt. Spook TM & © the respective copyright holders. Haunted Tank TM & © DC Comics.

MISTER CRIME

Jumping ahead to 1942, Silver Streak Comics, the legendary Golden Age comic book, which introduced the original Daredevil character, morphed into Crime Does Not Pay. By 1947, this collection of factual criminal biographies claimed six million readers and thus fostered the “true” crime comic book wave in the year to follow.

But back in the third issue [#24, Nov. ’42], a character named Mister Crime began appearing outside of the story action. He was part-narrator, part-commentator, and part-instigator. He may well have been inspired by Mr. Coffee-Nerves, as he was also colorless, translucent, and he wore a top hat. On the other hand, he was not handsome, the spiffy mustache was absent, and he had pointy pig ears, vampirish teeth, and crazy eyes. Although he often addressed the criminal directly, it was not clear if he was heard. Nonetheless, he spoke as if he were both the inspiration and mentor for all of the felon’s behavior.

When the malefactor came to his inevitable bad end, Mister Crime would mock him with the book’s title, Crime Does Not Pay. The net effect of his presence is open to two interpretations. Was he temptation incarnate, the Devil leading corrupt souls to their doom? Or was he simply a crime fan who found mere mortal criminals unworthy of his superior intellect because they ignored his advice? Who knows? Maybe The Shadow…

No coverage of supernatural beings in crime comics would be complete without mentioning Sgt. Spook, who made his debut in the first issue of Blue Bolt, in June 1940.

He was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty.

His spirit returned to guide a younger generation in the war against law-breakers.

Visitation by apparition was a regular feature of “The Haunted Tank” stories in DC’s G.I. Combat. Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart would appear before his namesake descendent tank commander in World War II’s European Theater. The ghost would foretell of coming battles in a Shakespearean, abstract way, which made for some often subtle foreshadowing.

This page: Far left is Crime Does Not Pay #24 [Nov. 1942], the first ish to feature Mr. Crime; top is splash from CDNP #44 [Mar. ’46]; top tier at left are random CDNP panels; bottom tier is (left) Joe Kubert cover detail of J.E.B. Stuart from Haunted Tank #1 [Feb. 2009]; and “Sgt. Spook” in Blue Bolt #1 [June 1940]; and left is Mr. Crime, CDNP #32 [Mar. ’44].

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Enter Th aul Gulacy is among the great talents who ever put pen and marker onto a comic book page. His Jim Steranko-influenced work made him a superstar artist in the 1970s, but it is his continued excellence as a striving and original—and almost impossible to copy— craftsman over the next four decades which sets him apart from so many of his peers.

Paul has grown into a storyteller whose eye befits a great film director rather than a typical comic artist. His use of panels, pacing, camera angles, chiaroscuro, drama, sexuality, a unique combination of cartoonish and realistic sensibilities, and the use of all-out talent brings to the page a wholly unique experience. If comics have a John Woo, it is Paul Gulacy.

A career that has actively prospered from the 1970s through the 2010s has too many high spots to comment entirely in this magazine. Still, this walk-through Paul’s career, with interviews with the artist and numerous colleagues and contemporaries, will give a solid history lesson on his achievements and insight as to what made the man as unique as his groundbreaking pages.—G.B.

by Greg Biga • Portrait by Greg Preston 46

Shang-Chi TM & © Marvel Characters Inc. Portrait © Greg Preston.

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

e Artist

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State University [YSU] was a waste of time as far as the art department was concerned. The faculty and most of the students embraced post-modernism, which meant that a student like me, who wanted to be an illustrator, was treated with scorn and a dismissive attitude. I spent most of my time in the theater department doing plays.”

Fellow Buckeye State artist P. Craig Russell had a different experience growing up. “I grew up in Wellsville, Ohio, on the Ohio river, about 45 minutes south of Youngstown,” he shared. “In the 50s and 60s it was still an economically vital area, but only a few years away from its slide into poverty. Once the steel mills closed and, closer to home, the potteries [closed], it was pretty much over. But until then, it was a near-idyllic small-town upbringing, close to nature and the Ohio Valley hills and woods that we spent so much of our free time playing in.”

Craig said, “I was never going to be going into the manufacturing world. Our family was one of small-town business owners. My dad grew up on a dairy farm and then took over the family men’s clothing store. One uncle had the savings and loan, another had the dairy, a cousin the gas station, etc. I was certainly driven by a need to create and was always left free to do so. When I decided I wanted to attend art school after graduation, there was no opposition. That was in 1969. It was only many years later that my brother told me that our very patriotic WWII veteran, rightwing father said he’d send us to Canada if they tried to draft us. He considered the war by that time to be a pointless disaster. He would have sent us to grad school and beyond if that is what it would take to keep us out of it.”

Paul remembers the impact steel mill town life had on his own father. “My dad retired from Schwebel’s [Bakery].

He was a driver, a delivery guy transporting goods to all the stores his whole life. His real gift was anything related to sports. As well as I could draw, that’s how talented he was in the world of sports. He had a contract to play professional baseball. But his Hungarian mother made him feel so guilty that he didn’t make the move. But he did manage our Little League team, and we went all the way to win the championship. I was the catcher. So, he fulfilled something of that.”

One defining characteristic of the Youngstown area was Idora Park, a trolley park, now condemned after several fires, which featured numerous rides and pavilions. (It was as if Six Flags had built a joyful utopia in the middle of this border town.) “My folks used to go dancing at the ballroom to the big bands,” Paul said. Idora Park is fondly recalled by Paul and his youthful times spent there were memorable.

However, as he matured, he also witnessed the region’s #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All © the respective copyright holders.

EARLY DAYS IN YOUNGSTOWN People who grew up in a city where industry was prosperous often see their upbringing through prideful eyes. What about folks who come from an area where industry has collapsed? When the steel mills of Ohio and Pennsylvania closed in the 1970s, particularly the men of the area were defined whether they remained and struggled to live a life that was “good enough for my dad,” or if they departed for the uncertainty of a different life somewhere else.

Paul Gulacy’s youth was almost idyllic prior to the economic downturn. “My best friend was Frank King,” he explained. “His parents had a garage, a gas station, a restaurant, and they raised Angus cattle for slaughter. They sold beef and supplied a lot of restaurants. [Being on their property] was like growing up on the Ponderosa. I rode horses almost every day there in summers as a kid.”

He continued, “They had an artesian well—it’s a natural spring underneath the ground—and they had this crew dig this thing out big enough where they had an island, which we camped on. You could take a boat over there and water ski on this thing. It was that big. We had a herd of horses.

Like I said, it was like a Wonderland-Ponderosa for a kid.”

As Paul grew into adolescence, his experience was common to most steel town kids. “I lived really close to the Pennsylvania-Ohio line,” he said. “We’d find out through the grapevine who was throwing a party. It could be at a girl’s house or whatever, and everybody congregates there in these GTOs and Camaros, and choppers and stuff like that.

That was my teens, man.”

Val Mayerik, a future comic book artist who emerged Above: Young Gulacy lived about 45 miles north of Dan from northeast Ohio, remembers what the economic downAdkins’ East Liverpool digs. turn inflicted on the area. “My memories of Youngstown are Below: Paul’s dad worked at not entirely unpleasant,” he said, “but I must say that, in Youngstown’s Schwebel bakery. those days, there was a lot of hostility in the air. My family was mostly blue collar, and I remember a lot of complaining and bitterness emanating from their quarter.

Alcoholism was rampant.

My attitude towards Youngstown presently is ambivalent, at best. I do think that growing up there made me more streetwise than had I come of age in a more amenable town.”

And educational opportunities proved frustrating.

Val said, “Youngstown Above: Youngstown, Ohio, street scene, circa 1950s.

Previous spread: Shang-Chi from the splash in MOKF #29 [June 1975]. Art by Paul Gulacy.

economic downturn. Youngtown was hit hard by steel mill closures, and one unfortunate consequence was an uptick in crime. “I recall it being the new hangout for [criminals],” Paul said. “And that was the beginning of the end. I’m just sayin’…

Anyway: good times. And nothing lasts forever.”

Inset left: Dan Adkins at 33, in late summer, 1970, taken for a feature article on the artist in The Evening Review, Sept.

19, 1970, the East Liverpool, Ohio, newspaper. Below: Paul Gulacy’s main inspiration, the great comics innovator, James Steranko. Further below is Jim’s Nick Fury, detailed from Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 [June 1968]. Bottom: Interlocking full-page panels from Strange Tales #167 [Apr. ’68].

Nick Fury TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DANDY DAN ADKINS Dan Adkins had worked for the great Wally Wood and became a very strong artist in his own right. He set up shop in the Youngstown area, from where he would mentor a new generation of cartoonists. In the 1970s, Val Mayerik, P. Craig Russell, and Paul Gulacy all came under the watchful eye of the West Virginia native. This group formed the crest of a tidal wave of artists who left a major mark as individual stylists in the world of Marvel Comics during that decade.

As Paul remembers it, “When I was going to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I’d come home to see my family and hang with my homies. I’d come home on a Greyhound bus. This one weekend, I came in, I sat with this girl, and we start chatting. She asked what I wanted to do with my career, and I said I was entertaining the idea of getting into comics. She said that her boyfriend did comics. She said his name was Val Mayerik. He lives in Youngstown. And so she set me up with Val. We became friends, by the way.

I met him at a dojo [martial arts class]. He was, like, this third-degree black belt. He gave me the information about Adkins and I drove to Adkins house.”

Paul continued, “He lived in this shanty. All he would do is drink Pepsi and eat Cheetos. Daily. That was almost his mainstream diet. I was sad when I heard that he had died. I thought he made Steranko look terrific. I thought Steranko’s best work was when Adkins inked him. The “Hell Hound” story with the dogs in it [Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #3, Aug. 1968]. That was awesome, man. That was some of the best stuff in the world by anybody.

“Adkins was the guy who really showed me the ropes and what to expect. He said, ‘What you want to do is work up this six-page story in black-&-white and I’m going to submit it to Roy [Thomas] with no dialogue. They want to see how you draw and how you tell a story graphically.’

And I worked that up. I’d just come back from art school.

At the time, Adkins was inking Barry Smith on a Conan [the Barbarian] page when I looked over his shoulder, when I first met him at his house.

“He had this adorable wife, real sweet and polite. But

Adkins was an old hillbilly… [and] he knew everybody. He inked Jim on SHIELD and he was the one who hooked me up with Roy. That’s when things got off the ground.”

Craig remembered his start in the profession. “Dan was absolutely instrumental in handing us all a career on a silver platter,” he said. “I have no idea how I might have ever gotten started otherwise. Coming from such a small town, I’d had no access to the fledgling convention circuit or even to any sort of fandom. I thought I was the only one in my town to even read comic books. So, Dan’s moving back to the area from New York City was an unimaginable stroke of good fortune.”

Craig continued, “Dan sponsored us by selling Marvel on the idea that he was forming a studio that would provide content for their books that he would oversee for quality assurance. Simple as that.

“Paul showed up just at the time I left the studio to return to the University of Cincinnati to finish my senior year.

(I’d taken six months off to move home and work in Dan’s studio.) Dan told me on the phone about this new guy he’d found. I think he said that Val Mayerik brought him over. I don’t recall the exact time I first saw Paul’s work. It must have been when I went home for Christmas. What struck me at first about Paul’s work, beyond the obvious Steranko influence, was the clarity of his line work. Where Val’s pencils were more painterly or impressionistic, he was Frazetta to Paul’s Steranko. Paul’s work was very clearly defined.

I had a similar linear approach to Paul, but Paul added all sorts of sharp-edged blacks and shiny reflections. It was both slick and at the same time, moody. I was impressed.”

Val agreed that luck played a role in his ascent. “I met Dan by a serendipitous turn of events,” he shared. “While in a painting class, in ’72, I was discussing comics with another student and we were overheard by an older woman student who had come back to college after a decade to finish her degree. She was from an Ohio town called East Liverpool and lived near Dan. I knew by then that a degree in art from YSU was useless, so having nothing to lose, I gathered up all my drawings and headed down to see Dan, hoping he could at least provide me with some advice.

“When I arrived there, I found Dan to be rather enthusiastic about my work and informed me that Craig was already working with him, and that Craig also had ambitions regarding comics. I moved down to East Liverpool, Craig already lived close by Dan, and we all got to work. Craig and I worked through that summer helping Dan ink and working on our own samples to submit to Marvel. Another

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

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This page: Mainstream exposure to Gulacy’s art was first in Fear #20 [Feb. 1974].

Above is vignette from same, with inks by Jack Abel. Below is pin-up with inks by Duffy Vohland.

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samples… but, when they caught up to him, he had moved to New York to take the staff job. But he still invited me to come and he would kind of mentor me unofficially.”

Dan Davis continued, “He did quite a bit of freelance work for Marvel from his home while on staff, so I saw a lot of original art, like Gil Kane covers and other jobs he would ink, etc. Sometimes he would bring cover paintings from the black-&-white magazines home from the offices and do corrections on a clear overlay. I saw him paint his Savage Sword of Conan cover [#18, Apr. ’77] there, and, while he worked, I practiced on my samples in the same studio trying to sharpen my own skills and suffer his critiques—he could be quite blunt, and that was a lesson in itself, how not to take it personally.

“He had countless stories about the biz, his time working for Wally Wood, his friendship with Steranko and his tutoring of Russell, Mayerick, and, of course, Gulacy. I was constantly entertained! My own talents were pretty raw, but he must have seen something in them—or else he just wanted an audience for his tales. I was happy to oblige and learned the business side of comics wasn’t always a happy one. So, I showed up a naïve kid with stars in my eyes and he hit me with the realities of the business so that part was invaluable. He knew a lot about art, painting, the business of being a freelancer, and of course, comics and we kept in touch right up until he passed.”

Regardless of how much time, or to what affect his guidance had, the 1970’s studio working with Dan Adkins quickly became a comics force. Along with Jim Starlin, Mike Vosburg, Mike Zeck, and Rich Buckler, the crew from Ohio gave Roy Thomas a special option to use in the groundbreaking second act at Marvel Comics.

As Roy shared, “These were people who had cut their eyeteeth on the work of the previous generation of talent, like Kirby, Ditko, Infantino, Kane… so they took what they liked from those artists and imposed their own sensibilities upon that. Gulacy reminded many of Steranko… Starlin originally was a sort of combination of Kane and Kirby… but they all also had other influences, and they soon moved off in their own directions.”

INFLUENCES AND THE BEGINNING OF AN EPOCH Most artists begin by patterning their work off of another artist. Style becomes something artistically personal only after the launching platform of influence has been cleared.

For Paul Gulacy, there were some very specific influences that kicked off his career. Among the most clearly defined influences for Paul was Jim Steranko. But Jim was not the only artistic influence on Paul as a kid.

“Right out of the gate, and more than anybody,” Paul revealed, “it was Joe Kubert. He was my man and is to this day. Sgt. Rock! I had a subscription. My mother would send in the money and I’d get it. “Enemy Ace,” “Rock,” everything. I just loved that stuff.

“I remember being at a con with Joe Kubert. I waited until things had slowed down and I shot over there when nobody was around. I went up to him and said, ‘I’m Paul Gulacy…

Would you mind signing this, Joe?’. He looked at me and said, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ So, he starts writing ‘To Tom,’, scratched it out; ‘To Steve,’ ‘To Sydney’… I #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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

Inset right is Gulacy cover, The Spectacular Spider-Man #8 [July ’77].

aspiring artist named Mark Kersey showed up and worked with us for a while but he didn’t last. We then all three, Dan, Craig and myself, boarded a Greyhound bus bound for New York City, met with Roy Thomas at Marvel and the rest as they say…”

Val added, “Paul never spent time working in Dan’s studio for any length of time, as did Craig and I did, but he did make some trips to Dan’s for advice.”

Val had very definite thoughts about the attempt to create a studio the way Dan’s former mentor did. “There was a point where Dan was hoping that we could all comprise a working studio like Wally Wood’s, but that didn’t last long,” he explained. “I don’t think Dan had the self-confidence or a clear enough vision to run such a studio. He was not a mentor in the practical sense. We learned from Dan by osmosis. He was not the type to take on an authoritative position and follow through with all that would entail. He was not at all like the mentor, say, Neal Adams had become. I do think that Dan did his best however to impart what he knew to Craig and me. He was, on the whole, a generous guy, in his own way. He was eccentric, to say the least, but had I not met Dan I don’t think I would have attained access to the business.

“When I first met Paul I believe he was still a student and just finishing his final year in art school. So, until he actually showed me his work, I had no idea what his capabilities were. I could see that he had talent and that he was influenced somewhat by Steranko.

He seemed an affable guy, had a good sense of humor and was obviously ambitious. We hung out together a few times, but our social lives were quite different and did not often intersect.”

Dan Davis, now famous as regular artist for the Garfield comic strip and future Gulacy collaborator, had the opportunity, in later years, to work under Adkins when the Marvel veteran had relocated to the Big Apple. “When I worked with Dan, it was in New York, just after he joined Marvel staff as the black-&-white [magazine] art director… or, as he called it, the ‘black-&-white art corrector,’ which was his own humorous evaluation of his job duties! I was also from Ohio and read in the Bullpen Bulletins that he had helped Russell, Mayerick, and Gulacy get into the business, and Gulacy was my favorite artist at the time, so I sent Adkins my

Superman TM & © DC Comics. Monsters TM & © Barry Windsor-Smith.

said, ‘I love it, Joe. That was beautiful.’ Then he puts ‘Paul’ down. He was my hero. He was the real deal.

“I used to go into a drugstore and there’d be the revolving racks with the comics. Dennis the Menace, Peanuts, and Gold Key… I loved that stuff. I was all over the map. But the big, foreshortened hand coming off the cover that Jack Kirby would draw would turn me off. Or I just wasn’t ready for that. And it took a while before I started to understand it.

“It took me a while to grab that [style] and to understand it. I was still young. Tastes mature with time. It was that foreshortened hand coming off the cover.

I couldn’t handle that. I didn’t know what that was until I broke it open and really looked at it page by page. Then I was saying, ‘Oh, my god! The double-page spreads… this is too much.’ This was another world I needed to take time to really study and absorb… Kirby, he’s the king. There’s no doubt about it.”

When asked his opinion of how Jim Steranko was able to separate himself from the pack, Paul was as enamored by the man as with his art. “Nobody knows. He’s like this enigma. He came out of the Kirby school, but it was like Kirby on acid. He’s off the chart as far as comparing anything [else] to him. He wrote books on slight-of-hand magic. He was just an incredible talent. All of these guys at a certain age group in Hollywood who are movie directors, producers, actors know about him.

Because he was such a unique, strong, one-of-akind talent.

“Whatever came before, when he got there and what he did with a script is what blew my mind.

He turned it into something uniquely his. You can’t mimic that. I’ve tried. You’ve got to find yourself, your own identity. I tried to figure it out.

I do pat myself on the back.

I do think I came the closest because I studied the hell out of it. More than probably anybody.

And I think I figured out what his approach was more than anybody else. I don’t want to toot my horn, but I personally feel that way because I don’t think there were any other artists who went so deep as I did trying to break this thing down with him.”

“His layouts! Are you kidding me?! His layouts are just from another planet”.

In an interview for Comic Book Artist [#7, Mar. 2000], Paul was asked how he got into Steranko. “[T]he way I found them was in a grocery store down the street, a little mom-and-pop grocery store, and they’d have these three comics in a cellophane bag, and I saw the first Nick Fury with the cover gone, a great splash page that Jim had done, and I bought it. That’s how I got all my Nick Furys and pretty soon I collected all of them. When I saw what he COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

was doing, it was just I never had seen anything like that before—it just flipped me out. This was the ’60s, and these were experimental times.”

He continued: I think a lot of comic book artists aren’t exploring other directions to go in. You look at the new guys today, and it seems that a lot of them consider Image as Ground Zero for inspiration. They seem to have no knowledge whatsoever of the scope of artistic possibilities. On the other hand, even the guys in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s were weaned on the earlier comic book guys, and just didn’t go outside comics to look for ideas. It still takes an eye and a gift to experiment and take chances. I mean, either you have that or you don’t. That’s why when people compare me with Steranko, it boils down to the fact that we both have a tremendous graphic sensibility, which makes us look very parallel and very similar. Now, if I hadn’t seen Steranko’s work ever—if Steranko never existed—my stuff would still look very strongly the way it has through the years.

I really don’t think it would look any different.

Above: Paul was the inker on Daredevil #108 [Mar. 1974] over Bob Brown’s pencils. These panels are reproduced from the original art. Inset left: Paul contributed cover art for the fanzine Contemporary Pictorial Literature, #12 [1975]. Below: Shang-Chi by Gulacy, 1974.

Too often, especially early in his career, Gulacy was, likely unfairly, tagged by some fans and a few pros as a Steranko clone.

The similarity found in their works is a certainty. Both deconstructed from the Neal Adams and Jack Kirby heightened realism and overreaching acting to a film noir-styled cinematic approach to comics. Steranko virtually “out-Kirby’d” Kirby during his three issues on Captain America, after a mind-bending “OP Art” inspired run on Nick Fury. Later, while on “Chandler: Red Tide” [Fiction Illustrated #3, Aug. ’76], Steranko had refined his style to, like Alex Toth before him, a play of chiaroscuro on the page.

THE STERANKO SIMULATION? Gulacy initially was heavily influenced by Steranko’s cinematic approach, but that affection eased as the young artist embellished each successive page with his distinctive personal touch.

Thus, from early on, Gulacy’s work was proof enough that he was far from being a mere imitation of Steranko. When asked about 51

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scenes. However, the thing I’ve always appreciated most is his sense of storytelling. He thinks like a film director or cinematographer. He always picks the best shots that will wring the most out of each single panel and pins your eye to the page. Yet every action is crystal clear. You never lose track of what’s going on. Also, he has this really unique, compelling drawing style. He’s a really precise draftsman.

The master of the heroic pose. There is a realistic base to it, yet it has an exaggerated flair, which pushes things a bit over the edge. There’s no way you can mistake his work for that of anyone else. It’s all Paul.”

As Gulacy was defining his own style, he needed a regular job in the comic industry. Through Adkin’s contacts with Marvel, Paul was able to submit pages directly to Marvel’s de facto editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas. “I did this black&-white thing, ‘Morbius, the Living Vampire,’” Paul said.

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Enter the Dragon TM & © 1973 Warner Brother, Inc. Bruce Lee TM & © Bruce Lee Enterprises, LLC. TV Guide TM & © TV Guide Magazine Group, Inc. Master of Kung Fu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All other items TM & © the respective copyright holders.

This page: It was the smashing success of Bruce Lee’s action movies that ignited a martial arts craze in U.S pop culture, a fad that included the Kung Fu TV show, which in turn inspired writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin to create Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu (debuting in Special Marvel Edition #15 [Dec. 1973], at inset left). Above are artifacts of that fad, including a poster for Enter the Dragon, the first significant mainstream martial arts movie, released in 1973, a month after Bruce Lee’s untimely passing at 32. Also seen is the album cover for the pop song, “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting”; the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character, Hong Kong Phooey; and paperback cover by Barry Windsor-Smith.

that earliest work, Roy Thomas comments, “I don’t remember those early stories well enough to say what specific differences I saw between his art and Steranko’s… but I never thought of him as a Steranko clone, nor [as Marvel editor] did I especially want one.”

Val Mayerik is adamant. “I reject the notion he was aping Steranko. Yes, he certainly was influenced by him, but so what? Look at how many artists were influenced by Neal Adams at that time. One always has to start out influenced by someone and then hopefully find one’s own way.”

Both Steranko and Adams produced numerous imitators who were in the early stages of their careers. After all, Adams might be the most influential stylist this side of Jack Kirby. Michael Nasser/Netzer, Mike Grell, and Bill Sienkiewicz are three who each became very much their own artists after having a strong Adams influence in early work.

Comics writer Steven Grant, who would later collaborate with Paul on the 2015 relaunch of The Rook, might espouse the most eloquent and in-depth commentary about Paul’s break from influence: “We were all nuts for Steranko’s work back then and there was never enough of it, so, when Paul showed up, it was like manna from heaven. It wasn’t like he was just imitating Jim; Paul had obviously learned from him and absorbed a lot of his storytelling techniques. But if you really look at the material, Paul’s approach to action and movement, as opposed to Jim’s… the apparent stylistic similarity is strong, but the underlying style isn’t all that similar. As such, Paul’s growth as an artist is fairly straightforward and natural, the result of him working out solutions for problems all on his own. Steranko didn’t draw enough issues of Nick Fury for Paul to be able to swipe all of Master of Kung Fu from. He had to get pretty inventive in a hurry, and he doesn’t get enough credit for his own innovations. By the mid-80’s, the basic Steranko influence is still there, but the styles are pretty divergent.”

Fellow artist Timothy Truman distilled a great deal of motivation in Paul’s work. “I learned a ton from studying his work—his sense of detail, his flair for characterization, the subtlety that he can get across in his characters’ expressions, his sense of lighting, and the way he stages

“Bats” TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. The Mask of Fu Manchu movie still TM & © Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Corp. The Face of Fu Manchu press book TM & © the respective copyright holder.

“That was my first gig. Roy was another pillar in my career. He always had my back.” He added, “Roy had an eye for that talent. That’s why he’s hung around.

That’s why he became the figurehead at Marvel.”

Thomas recalls, “I didn’t discover him; he discovered us. He sent in some art…

I seem to recall it as a full story. If I recall correctly, I wound up purchasing the story and publishing it, probably in one of our monster or some such books. I liked his art from the start… reminded me of Steranko to some extent, but it had its own thing going for it, and he could clearly both draw action and tell a story.”

Roy knew, even at that early time in Paul’s career, what type of story fit the artist best. “Something ‘modern’ in feel, not necessarily technological, but with a technological aspect. But mainly he draws people in dramatic situations… and that means almost anything in comics.”

STORYTELLER Writer Doug Moench was already on board at Marvel at the time of Gulacy’s “discovery.” He remembers quite vividly coming across Paul’s work and an immediate love and sense of connection to it. “Paul’s been my favorite guy to work with,” the frequent collaborator shared. “I’m not going to say who the best artist I’ve ever worked with is, but I think the combination of me and Paul has worked the best together. I use the word ‘synergy’; the whole being greater than the sum of the individual parts. I think Paul and I together are better than we are with anyone else. We are on the same wavelength is what it amounts to.”

Doug continued, “Marv Wolfman had an office at Marvel. And that is where all the art submissions ended up.

I used to go in there and look through the giant stacks of original artwork that people submitted trying to get work at Marvel Comics. I remember going in one day and flipping through stuff and seeing samples from Paul Gulacy, that, I guess, Dan Adkins had sent in or told Paul to send in.

“It was very crude, very early… but it floored me, because you could tell that this guy understood comics storytelling. Sequential storytelling, conveying things happening in a sequence of pictures and words weren’t even needed.

It’s my favorite kind of storytelling, like the Steranko/Will Eisner storytelling style. Bernie Krigstein did it a little at EC Comics, but I think it was mostly Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, Jim Steranko, and Gulacy.

“I saw that this guy understood this kind of storytelling.

Marv came into his office while I was looking at it and I said, ‘Marv, oh my god! This stuff! You gotta’ tell me to write a story for this guy. To try him out.” And Marv lets me go on and on and on, just gushing over how excited I was by these art samples before he finally says, ‘I’ve already sent him a script.’ “[Paul’s] actual drawing style improved page by page, actually. You could see him getting better from one page to the next once he got going. So, Marv told me to go home and write another story for him. So, I did. I wrote something called ‘Bats’ [Vampire Tales #7, Oct. 1974]. And I deliberately COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

did an experiment in sequential storytelling, no words in the story at all. It was a lot of writing on my part, but none of that writing would ever get published. It was just describing the sequence of pictures that I knew he would be able to draw and make work without dialogue or captions or narration of any kind. And he did. It was a cute little story.

“From there, he got assigned to the last one or the last two of the Master of Kung Fu issues with [scripter] Steve Englehart. And then Englehart dropped out and they asked me if I would do it, and told me that Gulacy was going to be doing the art. I said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ But they had just asked me to do Iron Fist. And I said that I didn’t want to do two martial arts books. I just wanted to do one. “Alright, take your pick,” said Marv. “‘Well, Paul Gulacy is the pick.’”

EVERYBODY REALLY WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING In 1974, comics—and entertainment in general—had reached a unique time. The pop culture of the 1960s was giving way to the anti-establishment movement of the new youth. At Marvel Comics, this meant the wave of new talent with their new ideas and characters began kicking down the door. Roy Thomas, always the one person in the industry who held the history and the future of comics in his hands, ushered Marvel into its second act and a new, great age.

He acquired the rights to various properties for Marvel.

Among those were Robert E. Howard’s Conan and Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu. It is the Asian super-villain who would play a gigantic role in Paul Gulacy’s life.

By 1974, Bruce Lee, the

Above: Eager to see Paul Gulacy’s interpretation of his wordless story, Doug Moench’s first collaboration with the artist appeared in Vampire Tales #7 [Oct. 1974]. Below: For better or worse, Master of Kung Fu was initially tied to the Sax Rohmer pulp fiction villain—and racist stereotype—Fu Manchu.

Above: No comic book artist can evoke sensitivity and tenderness as effectively as BWS, as evidenced by this atmospheric page of original art from Monsters.

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This page: Right out of the gate, Paul Gulacy proved his was a talent to be reckoned with as evidenced by this full-page panel appearing in the artist’s very first Master of Kung Fu assignment, #18 [June ’74].

Kung Fu Fighter, et al. So, first there was the show—and then us—and then le deluge.

“Starlin and I did the book together, as I’d done with Frank Brunner on Doctor Strange. But the sudden intensity of the reaction caused Marvel to flip the book to monthly, and start a black-&-white version, and start throwing in Annuals and [Giant-Size quarterlies]—and that had nothing to do with what Jim and I envisioned. So he bailed after the third issue and Paul came on in the fourth, and I bailed after the fifth. I said at the time that Paul was a great talent, so there was no drop-off in the art, but, as I said before, I was already contemplating my exit rather than envisioning a long run with him. In fact, that fifth issue is basically ShangChi bailing himself, in an ambiguous way, so that I could consider it the end of my very short era, and Paul and Doug could continue with Marvel’s new enthusiasm.”

Tim Truman was one future pro who stayed with reading the exploits of Shang-Chi after Englehart and Starlin left. “I first saw [Paul’s] work on Master of Kung Fu. I’d picked up the first three issues that [Englehart and Starlin] had done and really loved them. I used to sit at the dinner table with a pack of notebook paper and try to copy Starlin’s panels. I loved his work—and still do—but when Gulacy and Doug Moench took over the book, Paul made me a fan for life.

The Steranko influence is clear in his early stuff, of course, and that is probably the first thing that caught my eye—I worship Steranko. However, he soon moved past that and created his own thing.”

Englehart, although happy to leave the book, continued reading as a fan. “It seemed to me as a reader that Paul and Doug spent about a year doing ‘Shang-Chi fights big guys’ every issue, until Doug (or Doug and Paul) decided to flip the switch and then it became the classic run.”

THE MOENCH/GULACY DYNASTY With a career spanning five decades, one would think it’d be difficult for Paul to choose a favorite work. It is not. “For me, hands down, it has to be Master of Kung Fu,” he said. “I think because, at the end of the day, it dealt with Shang-Chi dealing with a dangerous and corrupt father. In his case, that had to rip his soul apart. But he got through by tremendous discipline and focus. That’s not easy to do, no matter [at] what temple you trained [to keep] your emotions in.

“That was simply how this thing started to take a life of its own. Doug and I were winging this thing. You know, when I look back, there was not much martial arts going to be found anywhere. We saw it here and there on the TV. Such shows like Kung Fu, with Carradine, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Mission: Impossible. That was it.”

Doug Moench recalls, “I liked what Englehart had done.

That’s why I picked it over “Iron Fist.” That and the fact that Paul Gulacy was going to draw it. That was no contest. Iron Fist was more like a super-hero than martial artist. I had not watched the David Carradine TV show, but, by osmosis, I knew kind of what it was without actually seeing it. I knew that the ‘fortune cookie’ philosophy stuff came from the TV show. But, that’s okay, because I’d read some Zen Buddhist aphorisms. I always thought they were really cool. I thought it would be fun to make up some new ones and make them seem like they are authentic Zen philosophy.

“So, I happily did what Englehart had been doing. After a few issues, I realized that I may have just figured out why Englehart left this. As good as it is, you can’t keep doing this over and over. This guy, who is a pacifist and wants to be left alone, never wants to fight, but he has to fight all the time because he’s the master of kung fu. So, every story starts with him walking down the street and assassins are coming up out of manholes, jumping off fire escapes, attacking him, and forcing him to fight. And that’s cool five times. Maybe 10 times. But I can’t keep doing that. It’s getting really boring and overdone.

“So, I decided that we have to change his character radically. Instead of him being attacked constantly, we’d #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Master of Kung Fu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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incomparable martial artist and star of Hong Kong action films, was, despite his passing, becoming a cultural force around the world. Theaters in the U.S. had begun showing his outrageous action movies and Lee became an almost immediate icon to teenagers. Cast in the ’60s as the chauffeur/sidekick Kato on the TV series, The Green Hornet, it was his ’70s film career that turned him into a groundbreaking superstar.

No doubt partly due to Lee’s fame, the kung fu craze had engulfed America and comics were quick to jump on that bandwagon.

The first title was Master of Kung Fu (though technically the feature began in Special Marvel Edition #15 [Dec. 1973], a comic book that changed its title to MOKF by #17 [Apr. ’74]). The series incorporated the pulp thriller super-villain (and outrageously demeaning, racist stereotypical character) Fu Manchu as its antagonist and his son, a young martial arts expert who seemed to “walk the earth,” like the character Caine, played by David Carradine, in the then hit TV show, Kung Fu. The show rode the coattails of the successful Bruce Lee movies—and, oddly enough, Lee was first considered at the lead character and may well have originally conceived the series—and, in turn, the comic book series piggybacked on Kung Fu’s phenomenal hit status.

“Master of Kung Fu” was the brainchild of two industry “young guns,” writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin, and their creation launched an entirely new trend in the business.

As Englehart remembers, “Actually, Starlin and I got in before there was any craze. We might have in some way helped create it, but that [overall] wave was bigger than us. We saw the Kung Fu TV show, which originally had just three episodes as a trial run, and I wanted to explore the [Eastern] philosophy, so we created Shang-Chi. We took it to Marvel, where it was received with a distinct lack of enthusiasm—but since we were both hot, they gave us a bi-monthly book with an obscure title that had been all reprints—and it surprised them as an instant success.

And, right after that, the wave hit. So then they created “Iron Fist” et al., and DC created Richard Dragon,

Master of Kung Fu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

give him a reason to be a little more proactive without him losing his Zen sedentary philosophy kind of thing. He could still be like that but he’d actively put himself in situations where he might be likely to fight. In other words—deliberately seek out bad guys.

“So that’s where the whole MI6, turning it into a spy-thrilling type of thing [came from], instead of this barefoot guy walking around waiting to be attacked. Joining up and enlisting in the cause against evil. And, of course, the biggest evil is his father trying to conquer the world and become this global dictator. The really good conflict is the father-son conflict, of course.”

I asked if Paul knew he and Doug were working on something iconic when they started on the book. “I think it was about being at the right time and at the right place,” he said. “It was coincidental. Thumbs up to editor Archie Goodwin. At the time, he hand-picked Doug and I after Jim Starlin and Steve Englehart moved on. The timing was right, too, because of the martial arts kung fu movie craze.

“I recall when Doug Moench and I were handed the book, I didn’t know a damn thing about kung fu. The only access for me was the drive-in movie all-night kung fu movie marathon. I recall taking a tape recorder and recording the action sequences and then describing the action: ‘Okay, this is where the guy does a spinning round house kick and sends the guy through a wall.’ That was my reference at the time. It was a slick trick. But the bottom line was the relationship between father and son. And all or most of us can relate to that to some degree. And I think that was part of the draw in its popularity. We can all relate to that.”

Friends, industry insiders, and fans in general got swept up in the intrigue, the philosophy, and the imaginative artwork in the series. P. Craig Russell remembers, “I loved the Kung Fu book, particularly the ‘Cats’ issue [MOKF #38, Mar. 1976]. Paul was gaining strength with each issue and there was such obvious passion behind everything he did.

“All careers that last as long as Paul’s can have numerous high points but certainly that early run on MOKF was the first highpoint. The highpoint that established him not only with fans, but, more importantly, for a long-running career, as an artist that writers wanted to collaborate with.”

Longtime Superman artist Jon Bogdanove had a similar reaction to the book and the kung fu films that popped up at the time and their deep cultural resonance. “David Carradine was tip of the iceberg,” he said. “It was really more about Bruce Lee, in my opinion. Here’s a possible way in: It was ethnic exploitation entertainment at first, showing at grind houses mostly to Black and Asian audiences—but it crossed over to white kids. A generation of little stoner Quentin Tarantinos lost their minds over that stuff—but the mastery of Bruce Lee was transcendent! Even dudes like me who scoffed at the fad were awed by him. It was more than his skill at fighting. He was an icon, a cultural touchstone. In my opinion, the kung fu craze of the 70s helped break down cultural walls and diminish racial stigmas, in spite of their cringe-worthy-in-retrospect tropes. Kind of like Blaxploitation did. In the end, its influence was very positive. Plus, it got a few people to study both Asian martial arts and Asian philosophy, which were not bad things to introduce into American culture.” Bogdanove concluded, “Doug and Paul are iconic for bringing that craze into comics. It needed to happen. Now they own a wee chunk of history.”

Tim Truman recalls his impressions of Paul and Doug pairing together on MOKF. “Well, they were a match made in heaven, it seems like,” he explained. “When it comes to putting a story together, it’s very clear that they shared a chemistry, and had a lot of the same sensibilities and creative influences. Two sparkplugs in the same engine.

Those comics are like watching a great adventure movie, but better, because they’re comics. With every issue they just seemed to grow and grow.”

Tim, like many future pros, had a particular favorite COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

stretch during Paul’s run on MOKF. “Well, the Carlton Velcro storyline [#29–31, June–Aug. 1975] was a big favorite. What a delightfully oily character. The “Snowbuster” issue [#31] is where Paul’s work really came into its own, I think. Sequence-wise, [it was] Shang-chi’s fight with Razor Fist. That character chilled me to the bone when I was a teenager.

Terrifying. His entire run on that series was one massive thrill ride. I’d look at those books for hours, just sucking them into my DNA.” The greatest praise for the series from an insider might come from incomparable inker Terry Austin: “Paul Gulacy was one of the young comic book artists from near-by Ohio who fairly exploded on the scene around the same time period and whose published work I eagerly sought out as a wee lad of… oh, say 22 or 23 living in Michigan. His run on MOKF with Doug Moench rightly stood comic fans (and industry pros) on their ears and showed that two creators working closely together could turn out comics on a monthly basis that were thrilling, suspenseful, and pushed the boundaries of the medium without their names necessarily being Lee, Ditko, or Kirby.”

And there it is. Marvel had gone beyond the initial phase of Stan, Steve, and Jack. New talents, brought in

by Roy Thomas, were making their own names and telling their own stories which did not have to be necessarily an extension of Fantastic Four or Spider-Man. The second Age of Marvel was its own thing.

Above: Evocative splash page, pencils by Paul and inks by Dan Adkins, graces Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #1 [Sept. 1974].

Below: Paul’s gift for caricature is evident with his rendering of a David Carradine lookalike in MOKF #19 [Aug. 1974]. The artist would go on to caricature Bruce Lee, Sean Connery, Marlon Brando, James Coburn, and others in his MOKF work.

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Above: The Moench/Gulacy team achieved new heights starting with the “Carlton Velcro” two-parter, in MOKF #29–30 [June–July 1975].

MOKF was recently cited as a “genuinely special, doggedly idiosyncratic work of art” [All of the Marvels, by Douglas Wolk], much due to Doug and Paul.

THINKING ABOUT INKING At the time MOKF was gaining fans, Mayerik was knee-deep in his own career with the House of Ideas at the time. He was not a reader of books, but a doer of books. “It may seem strange,” he admitted, “but I never really read comics. I was attracted to the field because I found comics visually exciting. I wanted to be an illustrator and comics was the first thing that brokered for me.

At that time, Doug and I were working on two other books, so, of course, I read those scripts, but I followed no particular book then, and I certainly don’t now.

Periodically, I would stop in at Paul’s place and he would show me pages he was working on. I could see he was putting a lot of effort into the book. The pencils were impressive and he sometimes complained about inkers assigned to his work, which is something

we all complained about.”

Paul’s pencils were paired with several pro inkers during his MOKF run. The one pairing that lasted the longest was when he was inked by old mentor Dan Adkins. “He knew how to nail my stuff. My pencils were super-tight. I’d get right down to the wire of the deadline. My editors are going, ‘C’mon, Gulacy! Speed it up, man!’ And Adkins would handle it.”

Dan Davis was assisting Adkins by this time. “I thought [Gulacy’s MOKF] was groundbreaking, a continuation of

Steranko,” he shared, “and it was in my favorite genre— spies! Just as Paul hit his stride on MOKF, Dan had started inking him. So, one day, I’m in Ohio, drooling over the issue Paul inked himself, I think it was “The Murder Agency” [MOKF #40, May ’76], and the next I’m in Dan’s studio and there are pages there of the Velcro trilogy in glorious blue pencils and I had never even seen original art! So my favorite book was in my hands and I would go through each new package from Paul and stare at them for so long that Adkins would exclaim, in dismay, ‘How can you look at it that long?’ But it was really mind-blowing to me to see the pencil marks, erasures, notes in the margins, and the full size of original art compared to the size and reproduction of comics that I had been reading all my life. And then witnessing Dan apply brush and ink magic to them…! It took me years to learn to handle the brushes and pens to ink competently, but I had the advantage of seeing ahead to what the goal was.”

For Paul, what was it that made the MOKF run so special? “It was a matter of great storylines we thought we had,” he said. “Plus, we now have these other characters we added to the line-up. Clyde Reston and Leiko quickly became fan favorites. Now, you have this triangle situation on top of it, so, now the plot thickens. And we have new rumblings at MI5 with a love triangle. Who’s gonna win her affections? Forget about Fu Manchu; this was more brutal.”

One of the most beloved story lines featured the deadly resolution of the love triangle in what is referred to as the Cat books [#38–39, Mar.–Apr. ’76]. This included one of the great stand-alone comic fight sequences between ShangChi and secret agent Cat. “For me, bottom line, if Shang-Chi had to go up against Cat he knew, in his heart of hearts, he was going to lose in the fight,” Paul said. “That was a powerful moment in that series. Shang-Chi was supposed to be the greatest martial artist in the world. But, in the end of the day, he was going to lose the fight. Strong stuff.”

Doug remembers fondly the creation of the Cat character. The idea germinated from he and Paul taking in a movie.

“The movie we picked was The Yakuza [1974],” the writer shared. “We come out of the movie and we loved the movie.

Paul and I are action movie fans. And this was a supreme action movie. So, we come out of it, and we’re like, ‘Okay, we are doing kung fu—that’s Chinese. We just saw this Yakuza—that’s Japanese. But they are both martial arts.

What can we steal?’ And the only thing we found that we could take inspiration from were the Yakuza tattoos. So, we went to dinner, went to see this movie, then went to coffee and cheesecake, or whatever. Over the coffee, I remember we worked out, ‘Let’s create a new character and he has a cat tattoo and he can be called Cat. “I think that two-parter might be the best thing in MOKF that we did together. The six-parter with Fu Manchu [#45– 50, Oct. ’76–Mar. ’77] that Paul ended his run with was pretty damned good, too. And the Velcro three-parter [#29–31] and the Mordillo three-parter [#33–35, Oct.–Dec. ’75]… well, just about everything he did was pretty damned good. But, in the Cat two-parter [#38–39]… if only he’d been able to ink those himself. They’d have been the best by far.”

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#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Master of Kung Fu ˆTM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

THE MASTERS’ INFLUENCE The powerful storytelling by Doug and cinematic artwork

by Paul would stimulate imaginations and motivate future comics pros. Jimmy Palmiotti, future fan-favorite and inker for Gulacy, shares, “It is exactly that run that got me to fall in love with both Paul and Doug’s work. I have every single issue and fell in love with the James Bond/Bruce Lee set up they delivered. I loved Paul when he inked himself the most and been studying his work ever since that series, hoping one day to work with him. His work reminded me of Jim Steranko, but delivered on a monthly basis. It always had the look of being cooler than anything else out there.”

Jimmy continued, “The storytelling was my favorite part.

They dynamic poses, the easy flowing storytelling and the

Master of Kung Fu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. James Bond 007 TM & © Danjaq, LLC.

way he rendered muscles and women. Paul’s work was classy, set in a world of dangerous men and sexy woman and for a kid in his teens, it was the perfect combo for me.”

Dan Davis, like Palmiotti, enjoyed the intrigue and technique of storytelling Paul used on the title.

“Before, during, and after working for Dan,” Davis said, “I devoured anything Paul was doing. I don’t think I picked up the surface style of his drawing, but I know I internalized a lot of his storytelling techniques, pacing, cross-cuts, trick shots, and layouts reminiscent of Hitchcock, Eisner, and, of course, his early Steranko influences, which I loved.

“I’m sure it’s colored by my personal experience and happy memories of seeing the originals, but those two trilogies, Velcro and Mordillo, from MOKF are my favorites to this day. They were like James Bond adventures with colorful villains, guns, gadgets, and girls! And I enjoyed the more predominant Steranko influence on display as well as Paul’s innovative storytelling techniques.”

Ron Evans, chairman of the board of the National Comics Art Museum became a major Gulacy fan during the artist’s MOKF stint. “I fell deep into comics in the early/ mid-70s, primarily with Amazing Spider-Man and The Avengers, but Master of Kung Fu really opened my eyes to what the medium was capable of. Paul infused Doug Moench’s story lines with a tense, electric excitement while keeping it all grounded, much like a Sean Connery/James Bond film. While my super-hero consumption was fun and enjoyable, MOKF was the first book that I really absorbed—the expressions, the line work, the shading—all very cinematic.

“Paul’s work on MOKF helped draw my attention to other areas within comics that I hadn’t really been aware of at the time, including the work of Jim Steranko, surprisingly, as well as Marvel magazines like The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu and Savage Sword of Conan. When I finally encountered his work in some of Warren’s horror titles, I found myself wishing that MOKF had originally been done in black and white. The two-tone palette captures the moody drama of Paul’s pencils much better, in my opinion, giving it a portrait-like quality. Would have loved to have seen him do an ongoing Black Widow series following his effort in Bizarre Adventures.”

Future collaborator Steven Grant wasn’t interested in the martial arts COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

genre. “I led sort of a schizoid existence in regard to that book,” the writer explained. “Loved Paul’s work, but [it] wasn’t a kung fu movie fan and [I] absolutely loathed Fu Manchu. Still do. Have never been a huge James Bond fan either, so you can imagine it wasn’t really the book for me. Except for that damned artwork.

Easily among the top tier and most distinctive coming out of Marvel in the mid-’70s.

Doug’s stories were fine on their own merit; they weren’t bad stories or anything, and were often quite inventive—certainly they, too, stood out from other Marvel fare—I just wasn’t the ideal audience for them.

But there were some memorable storylines.

The Velcro storyline, the Cat… Obviously, the stories I preferred, in any case, were those without Fu Manchu. But the visuals were where the real appeal of the book always was. Very memorable.”

CELEBRITY CARICATURES During his MOKF run, Paul would regularly draw likenesses of celebrities as characters in the book.

Shang-Chi’s face had a very recognizable Bruce Lee-like appearance. As Doug recalls, “I know that Archie reluctantly gave the edict that we had to knock off using Marlon Brando and James Coburn, [and] Sidney Greenstreet [in stories]. [Paul] had to stop making characters look exactly like these real people and actors.

“By then, Paul wasn’t using Bruce Lee exactly so

Above: Like the fad that spawned it, MOKF attained worldwide popularity, as the series was translated into various languages. These Italian editions from 1979 sport cover art by Paul Gulacy. Inset left: Paul’s love for the James Bond 007 movies starring Sean Connery is plainly apparent in the artist’s MOKF rendition of the spy character Clive Reston’s appearance in the series, beginning in Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #3 [Mar. 1975]. Here is Paul’s visualization of Connery in a classic 007 pose. Below: Detail of the splash page of MOKF #46 [Nov. 1976], with pencils by Gulacy and inks by Pablo Marcos.

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much anymore. He sort of developed a Shang-Chi look that started as Bruce Lee and I think ended as Bruce Lee. I think he went back to Bruce Lee when he was just doing covers.

There was a period there where he didn’t look exactly like Bruce Lee, for Pete’s sake.

“The other characters did look exactly like a lot of people. I’m responsible in the Cat story for the torch singer being Marlene Dietrich. Because I had a big crush on Dietrich in her movies at that time. I put it in the script: ‘She looked like Marlene Dietrich.’ So Paul went and got some stills, and, boy, she looked like Marlene Dietrich. I just meant she was a Marlene Dietrich type. But you can’t say that to Paul without him going wow! He locks it down.

“I personally enjoyed him doing that. It would be a little jarring the first time I saw a character that looked like Marlon Brando or whoever. It was like, ‘Oh, geez there’s Marlon Brando.’ And then I got into it and it’s like I couldn’t imagine it any other way. I ended up loving it…

A VISIT FROM THE DUDE In 1978, Paul had returned to Youngstown to set up shop in his parent’s house. He received a visit from a future pro.

“While I was using my sister’s room as a studio, my mother bobs her head around the corner, and said ‘Josh’—my nickname—‘there’s this really tall guy here named Steve at the door. Do you know him?’ I said no. So, I go out to meet Steve. He’s, like, ‘Is this Big G?’ I said, ‘Yeah, this is Paul.’

He said, ‘Is this really Big G’s house?’ My mother is there in the background, ’Steve, we’re going to have dinner soon.

Why don’t you stay around?’ I was like, ‘Mom, don’t do this.

I didn’t know who this guy was, man.’ And Steve Rude will vouch for that. He ended up staying with us and I ended up being the best man at his wedding. He met a gal from Portland.”

As Steve remembers, “I decided to get in touch with Paul Gulacy when I was 18 and just out of high school. His Master of Kung Fu issues were well into its run by then and I looked forward to each Gulacy-pencilled issue like it was year-round Christmas. Just as with others my age, I was ready to strike out on my own and see what I’m made #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Nick Fury and associated characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Paul Gulacy pays homage to the classic Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. run by the great comics visionary, James Steranko, who once remarked, “I appreciated the art of Paul Gulacy because it was like looking at my own work—without the trauma of creating it.”

Below: Teacher and student, Steranko (left) and Gulacy.

But we were told to cool it, I remember that.”

If any of the celebrities knew their likeness was appropriated, there were no complaints. But, interestingly enough, one spouse of a celebrity took umbrage.

“Here’s a funny story,” Paul reveals. “Several years ago, Linda Lee, the late Bruce Lee’s wife, decided to bring the Bruce Lee exhibit up from Los Angeles to Seattle, where they lived, making a stop in Portland’s Chinatown. I said to my wife, Nanci, ‘Whatever we do, I have to meet this woman.’ She was pretty busy with fans, but, when there was an opening, I grabbed it. We walked up to her with a hand shake and I introduced myself saying, “ I’m Paul Gu—.” She says, “I know who you are,” and gives me a friendly tap on my shoulder. I asked her about the rumor that went around that she had contacted Stan Lee and asked him to knock it off. She said, “I didn’t contact him directly. I had my people do it.”

Paul clarified, “By the way, Stan didn’t [back off]. He knew which side his bread was buttered. He loved Master of Kung Fu. When I announced to my editor that I was leaving, not only the book, but comics themselves, I received a call from a woman introducing herself as Stan’s secretary, whose name I can’t recall. She told me that Stan loved what Doug and I were doing and that the door will always be open for me at Marvel.”

Following his successful run penciling MOKF, Paul decided to step away from comics as a full-time job. “I notified Roy Thomas that I was leaving,” he recalls. “I’m not going to do anymore comics. The next group of guys [I worked with] were doing paperback cover jackets. I wanted to learn how to paint. So, my sister got married and moved out of my parent’s house. I converted [her room] into my studio.

I laid low for about a year-and-a-half putting this portfolio together of these paintings. I was really determined. My big set of heroes were like [James] Bama and [Robert] McGinnis. These guys who were peripherally outside of comics.

These guys were my heroes. So, I wanted to emulate them.

I just thought that it was the next step because Steranko had done that and was good at it.

“He’s so focused he could do anything. You put him in a crate, and throw him over a bridge into the water, and he gets out of it. That’s what makes him separate from everybody else, no matter what. It’s his magic and being an escape artist. He separates the men from the boys right out of the gate. As far as how I look at things.

“Anyway, I went to New York to do these paperback things. These [editors] are all telling me, one after another, ‘You are almost there’… ‘Not quite, Paul’… ‘Keep tying.’

And I said, ‘Forget this.’ So, I took a ten-week night class in advertising and ended up working for everyone in Manhattan. It was the most money I’d ever made as an artist.”

Nexus TM & © Mike Baron & Steve Rude. Logan’s Run TM & © 1975 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Master of Kung Fu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

of. Thanks to my lifelong love of the great Jack Kirby, and a select few of the emerging artists that came after him, I was determined to be a comic book artist. Aside from the daily practice I did at home, I most wanted to meet the artist who so affected my life in high school with his magnificent artwork on MOKF. “My first contact with Paul was when I sent him a check for $1.86. This, I was told, would cover the cost of a tube of Ben-Gay, a menthol scented balm to ease his back pain from working too many hours at the board, as they had informed everyone in the Marvel Comics letter column.

“Back then, there was none of the obfuscational nonsense associated with locating the phone numbers of prominent media figures, and so I was able to make my first phone call to my high school idol, whom I would eventually sanction the ‘Big G.’ After getting to know this hyper-enthusiastic fan from Wisconsin, Paul consented to finally meeting me in person. It was the summer of ’78, and, naturally, I called him a few days before I was to leave to give him a head’s up. I was ready to head out on the highway and hitchhike the 800 miles from Waukesha, Wisconsin, where I lived, to Youngstown, Ohio, where Gulacy lived.

It was about then, that he told me he was too busy and ‘not to come.’ I headed out anyway.

“It was a wonderful summer day, humid, but sunny, when my latest ride dropped me off at the Gulacy residence, on Friday, June 2nd, 1978. Since I’d never even seen a photo of Paul before, he thankfully ended up looking exactly like I pictured him; handsome, well-groomed, with an almost Bogart-type suave about him. Add to that his amazing talents which were off the charts. As we proceeded to spend the entire afternoon talking about his comics work, his painting, discussing the industry COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

I wanted to be a part of, and everything I could think to ask him about, my path as an illustrator in comics could not have been more set.”

Rude’s visit only amplified his appreciation for Paul.

“Gulacy’s mastery extended to more than just comics,” Steve shared. “His skill outreached what even gifted people possessed by an early age, certainly more than I ever displayed. His work in comics demonstrated all the fundamentals needed to excel: leading the eye through clever composition; dynamic figure drawing; arranging positive and negative space to charge the page design; and an attention to detail no one else in comics had ever seemed to consider before. Put that together with his incredibly inventive panel arrangements and you had the greatest artist to ever emerge from the 1970s comics scene.”

Not long after Steve’s visit, Paul relocated to New Jersey for his short-lived attempt at becoming a world-famous book cover painter.

“A friend of mine wanted to introduce me to this girl,” Paul said. After several failed set ups, of which he grew tired of, he consented to meet one more. “So, I started dating this girl, Valerie, and we got married. She got a call one night that her dad was deathly ill in Portland. And her dad owned a giant pool hall out there.

She laid out the cards on the table. She said we could stay in the city or we could go to Portland. I said, ‘Let’s go.’ And these advertising agencies wanted to work with me through the mail. That was before the ability to scan things back in the day.”

The artist gave up advertising and he and Valerie headed immediately for Oregon. “We went back and I did some of my better comics as a result of making that move,” he explained. “In regard to the pool hall,

Inset far left: Artist Steve Rude was so entranced by the art of Paul Gulacy that he, at 21, hitchhiked 800 miles to visit Paul unannounced. A few years later, Paul drew the cover of Nexus #1 [Jan. 1981].

Above: Detail from Paul’s cover art for Logan’s Run #6 [June 1977]. Below: Spectacular splash page detail from MOKF #40 [May 1976].

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This page: A couple of examples of the striking similarities between BWS’s Hulk “Thanksgiving” story panels (which was available to be seen by anyone going into the flat files of The Incredible Hulk’s editor) and panels from The Incredible Hulk #312, with art by (a very young) Mike Mignola, pencils, and inker Gerry Talaoc.

Above: Paul Gulacy’s astonishing run on MOKF ended the issue before the artist produced this awesome cover art for the title, #51 [Apr. 1977]. Below: Paul’s smashing cover for MOKF #55 [ Aug. 1977].

Valerie would come home and say, ‘You know, Paul, there is a little hole in the wall down the block from the pool hall called Dark Horse Comics. There’s a guy named Chris and a really tall guy named Mike who come in for lunch every day and they are dying to meet you.’ I said, ‘Like I have time for those bums.’ Flash forward… I gotta make an appointment to see Mike Richardson.”

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Master of Kung Fu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

WARREN AND CREATING A NEW ART FORM AT ECLIPSE From the late 1970s to the early ’80s, Paul Gulacy provided artwork for Jim Warren’s horror magazines. Warren’s books had previously been the publisher of choice for Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, Neal Adams, John Severin, Russ Heath, Wally Wood, Alex Toth, and Bernie Wrightson. As these folks left, it was new talent, along with imported talent from Spain and the Philippines, who populated the black-&-white magazines.

Some of the greatest artists in the world produced many of the best comics ever published. “I had a beard back then,” Paul said, “and Warren told me I looked like the Wolf Man. I have to look at how much I did for Warren.

I did some of my best work for him. I really had to up my game. The Spanish [artists] were wreaking havoc. They

were awesome. You have a script in one hand and a pencil in the other, and the clock on the wall is ticking away at a deadline. It’s time to roll. I don’t think the folks you mentioned [Williamson, Frazetta, Adams, Severin, Heath, Wood, Toth, and Wrightson] felt any different. They had to up their game, as well. It was also pretty cool to paint a Vampirella cover for those guys.”

While at Warren, Paul created outstanding pages.

Here, he was his own artist—pencils and inks—from start to finish. He was using techniques that pencilers don’t use to create black-&-white masterpieces of horror and drama.

Paul recalls his Sabre collaborator, Don McGregor, and he working together at Warren. “There was one in particular called The Trespasser that I did for Warren magazines [Eerie #103–105, Aug.–Sept. 1979] with writer and pal Don McGregor. That dealt with an issue more terrifying than ghouls and goblins. And that was air pollution,” he said with a laugh. “If there was anything special it would be the script itself. It dealt with some important policies regarding pollution, which was getting dangerously out of hand at that time.

“Again, you have a script in hand and the clock is ticking on the wall. You either sink or swim. You want to bring your best and bring it on time. We are still working on a deadline. You do the best you can as quickly as you can. At the end of the day the company would rather take a half-ass job than a late job. These companies don’t play. You can be the next Frank Miller, but if you’re late, they are not going to give you a sniff, because they are losing a fortune every month that a book is not in the stores” “This time I directed James Coburn as the lead boy. Did he ever have a tough time with that bunch!” Paul muses, still including the likenesses of actors and public figures in his work at the time. “Illustrator Robert McGinnis had a great line. Many years ago he said, ‘An artist is only as good as his reference.’ I tried to adhere to that. Otherwise you may find yourself trapped and not able to break free of that cartoony comic book look. But, if you don’t want to grow beyond that, that’s fine as well. Whatever floats your boat.”

It was while at Warren when Paul and Doug Moench collaborated on a story that remains one of their great collaborations. “Blood On Black Satin” [Eerie #109–111, Feb.–June 1980] is a story that Doug believes to be one of the absolute high points of Paul’s artistic career.

“Weezie Jones called and I liked her,” Doug said. “I believe she was [Walter Simonson’s] girlfriend, at the time. Even if they weren’t a couple by then, I just liked her through meeting her at ACBA meetings and wherever. It must have been her idea. She was my editor on King Conan and she wanted me to write a real long story, I forget how many pages, but it would be broken into three parts. And I can’t remember if she wanted it to be me and Paul. Or if Paul had set this up an asked her to call me. Or if she asked me to do it and asked what artist I wanted to work with, and I said Paul. I can’t remember how that worked.”

The page rate was 50% higher than at Marvel, high enough to entice Paul to come on board to pencil and ink the project.

“So, I called him, I remember that,” the writer said. “And we worked it out on the phone. He wanted to do something like a Hammer film. I said, ‘Oh, okay. I can do that easy.’ So, I came up with not quite a Hammer film; it was more like a movie whose American title was Horror Hotel. I thought it was some of Paul’s most gorgeous black-&-white stuff— black-&- white or color stuff, really. There were a few things where he said he wanted to make it a landmark thing or a personal best thing. Like a couple of issues of MOKF that he inked himself and Six from Sirius, which he inked himself and hand-colored, and this black-&-white thing for Warren. Those were the ones where he really wanted to do stand out work. The way he put it, ‘To show everybody what [I] could do.’ Boy, did he with those things. Those are all really top-notch things.”

Master of Kung Fu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Paul recalled, “I was more concerned about the technique I was going to use. It was all done in a wash. That’s a tube of black water color paint and brushes. It can be a bear to control. You can’t make errors.”

Doug laments that Paul’s pencils were not always well served during the first half of his career. “I don’t know if you’ve seen any of his penciled pages from that period. But they are by far the most meticulously worked pencils. So detailed. It was like a crime that you couldn’t just print the pencils. You could now. But, back then, it was impossible.

It had to be inked. Every time it was given to ‘some inker,’ it was, like, ‘Oh, no! That’s the end of this gorgeous page.’

“When he inked his own stuff, it wasn’t so much, “I’m going to outdo my mentor”; it was having the time to do it so it comes out the way it should. He never felt that Dan Adkins ruined him. But Adkins, as good as he was, wasn’t as good as Paul’s own inking. Adkins agreed, by the way.”

It was this fully inked type of story which resonated with future collaborator Jimmy Palmiotti. “When Paul inked himself, I always felt that was the real Paul I was seeing,” Jimmy said, “because he took his pencils even further, adding textures and details no inker could ever imagine. I love every artist you mention [regarding past Gulacy inkers such as Dan Adkins, P. Craig Russell, and Terry Austin], but one look at the issues he inked and the Sabre graphic novel and you can see what was missing from his work right away.

I stepped away from inking because I felt that most of the time, most artists were the best over their own work. There were exceptions, but not many.”

In 1978, Paul and writer Don McGregor brought Sabre, an African American adventure hero, to the long-form comics narrative. “It was the first independent graphic novel comic to make it in the direct comic shops in 1978,” remembers Paul.

Dean Mullaney, then Eclipse co-publisher of Sabre and champion of creator owned work, still holds a special place in his heart for Gulacy and the Sabre project. “Don and Paul were already planning the project when I entered the picture, in early 1977. Don and I had become friends over the previous few years and, when visiting him at his apartment one night, I noticed a drawing by Paul of what looked like Jimi Hendrix hanging on a wall. I asked Don what it was, and one thing led to another and, by April, Eclipse was formed and I was on the road to become a comics publisher!

“I’d say that Sabre was an incredibly important venture.

These were the formative days of the direct market. New comics shops were opening every week and they needed product to sell; they needed more than just back issues and the standard Marvel and DC monthly releases to keep the doors open. There was only one distributor to the comics shops – Phil Seuling’s Seagate Distribution. When I showed him Sabre, Phil drew a cartoon of himself with his hair standing straight up and his mouth agape, screaming, ‘Five dollars for a comic book!’ He reluctantly agreed to buy a few hundred copies, which sold out, and then he ordered 500 more, and on and on.”

Don shared with Jason Sacks, for Comics Bulletin, his thoughts about how Sabre came to be. “During the timeframe that I had written the original Sabre, long before I had chosen an artist, in approaching that graphic album or novel, whatever you want to call it, it was awhile before it was determined it would be 38 pages in length. That was the only determination that was in cement, in place, and there’s no way around it. Whatever was going to be in that book or not be in that book, I had 38 pages to do it in and I really worked hard at trying to figure out how much I could work into a solitary book, in a story that would hopefully satisfy readers that had been following ‘The Black Panther’ and ‘Killraven’ and the other material I have been writing.

Steve Mattison of Amazing Heroes, in posing a question to Paul on the risk of doing Sabre, asked rhetorically, “McGregor had built himself a name in comics back then, but COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

who’d ever heard of Dean Mullaney?”

Paul’s response in that AH #159 [Feb. 15, 1989] interview: “I had cautious optimism. It was a sound idea. When Don sent me the script I knew it had the potential to be something good. And, by then, I had an urge to do more comics. I thought it would be a nice change of pace and help me get away from the MOKF shadow. I thought if anything has the potential to do that, this is it.”

Mattison then asked if he realized the importance of Sabre as the first graphic novel made specifically for the direct market, and Paul responded in his matter of fact manner. “No. Not at all,” he said. “Because, first off, we had so many disagreements during the course of the thing that we never knew if the son of a bitch would get finished. The main thing was trying to get it done. We went around and around. We had a lot of ups and downs in just the creative process. The high point and the real meat of our exposure was a seven-page preview in Heavy Metal [#15, June 1978].

I figured that if they felt it was nice enough to throw in their magazine, I figured this thing had the potential to go anywhere. Direct sales market? It didn’t dawn on me at the time, none of us at all. It could have been a one-shot deal for Eclipse Comics. If this thing hadn’t moved it could have

Above: The renderer’s appreciation for the late actor and martial artist Bruce Lee shows on Paul’s cover art for MOKF #64 [May ’78], which appears on our own cover. Below: Gulacy cover art, MOKF #67 [Aug. ’78].

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Above: First edition of the early graphic novel, Sabre [1978], with cover art by Paul. Below: Paul’s evocative art for the 30 th anniversary edition, published

by Desperado in 2008.

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Sabre TM & © Don McGregor.

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been a disaster for Dean and Jan. They could have just drifted off into comic book obscurity and took McGregor and I with them.”

The AH interviewer asked if working with McGregor was less smooth going than he experienced with Moench.

“I don’t mean this as a detriment to Don’s approach as opposed to Doug’s,” the artist said. “They both have a unique way and they’re both very stylized. Some of Don’s concepts were delicate, perhaps even controversial. I didn’t know if my reading audience was ready for the issues that we were dealing with. I didn’t know if they could make the leap from kung fu to interracial relationships, and graphic scenes of birth amongst graphic scenes of violence. Right away the thought comes to mind, ‘So this is what Gulacy always wanted to do.’”

When Tim Truman was asked about what Gulacy work most resonated, it didn’t take long to veer towards Sabre. “Well, the Shang-Chi stuff, most certainly, but by far, Sabre. I picked up Sabre in its original, saddle-stitched incarnation, in 1979, at the old Supersnipe comic store, in New York City. It was probably my first foray into the city. I had no idea that the book even existed. I was a country boy from West Virginia, and there wasn’t exactly a big comic fan scene there, you know? Anyway, when I saw it, I

couldn’t believe it. I had been slavishly following Paul’s Marvel work, so it was like falling into a hole in the ground and discovering an unknown treasure. I was also a fan of Don McGregor’s writing, so, hey, double-header. Anyway, Sabre was almost certainly the comic that informed and influenced all my early work and aspirations. ‘I want to do books like this!’

“There’s no way one could mistake Sabre for something drawn by Steranko. Storytelling-wise, they’re very different.

Both are influenced by cinema, but, for Steranko, it’s more about film design and composition. For Paul, the influence is staging, dramatic lighting, and camera angles. If they were film directors, Steranko would hanging out with Orson Welles, German expressionists, and the like. Paul would be hobnobbing with John Ford, Howard Hawks, Michael Curtiz, or sharing drinks with Sergio Leone, and John Huston.

“Aside from those two efforts, the work that also had a big impact on me was the two black-&-white stories that he painted with Lamp Black watercolors: “Blood on Black Satin” [Eerie #109–111]and the Black Widow story (“I Got the Yo-Yo… You Got the String”) he did for Bizarre Adventures [#25, Mar. 1981]. Those are simply astounding. Those two stories are high water marks for both his own work and for the comic medium in general, in my opinion.”

In the wake of the Warren black-&-white work and success of Sabre, Paul continued creating work out of the norm. Back at Marvel Paul joined with writer Ralph Macchio to bring Black Widow to Bizarre Adventures, in the aforementioned tale. The title was one of Marvel’s attempts to pilfer some of Warren’s magic with a slick black-&-white magazine. This format afforded creators the opportunity to create works that were personal projects which didn’t necessarily fit into what was expected in a monthly book.

At the time, Natasha Romanov, a.k.a. The Black Widow, was a mere secondary character in early “Iron Man” stories and Daredevil in the ’70s. She also made appearances in Marvel team books, such as The Avengers. But she was rarely cast to lead in a series. That perception changed with her appearance in Bizarre Adventures in the hands of Ralph and Paul.

“Well, I think we upped her game with the story Ralph and I did,” Paul shared. “The humor was off the hook. I recall Ralph being a pretty funny guy. One of the few people I have met in this business with a genuine sense of humor.

His had a sarcastic twist. But we had a real blast with this story. I had already built this reputation for casting real actors in the storyline. This was no exception. Black Widow had her hands full dealing with Michael Caine and Humphrey Bogart in this yarn… As far as going black-&-white, I think that is what gave it that spy game/old-school charm in this particular story.”

Paul would continue his attachment to the character by creating an exceptional black-&-white print portfolio showcasing the character. In the six-plate set, Paul creates realistic images that express both the sensuality and the determination that are hallmarks of the character. And the work by Ralph and Paul certainly proved Black Widow’s viability as a main character and the ability for other creators to now incorporate her into stories as more than just a supporting character or plot point was possible.

After the success of Sabre, Mullaney’s Eclipse comics became a viable venture and a genuinely strong comics publisher. Mullaney, with then-partner Cat Yronwode, was able to attract top talent to join Gulacy among his stable of contributors. As Dean proudly recalls, “I think that Eclipse’s success in attracting the top talent in the field was because we paid equivalent (and sometimes higher) rates to the Big Two, plus royalties on every copy sold, plus I championed creator rights and creator ownership, plus high-quality printing and paper that respected the artists’ work. Have you looked lately at the crappy printing on the typical Marvel and DC comics at the time? It’s criminal.”

A female character Paul worked on at Eclipse was

Sabre TM & © Don McGregor.

Valkyrie, with Chuck Dixon [Valkyrie! #1–3, May–Aug. 1987].

This was unique because it was the first on-going character, in this case, in mini-series form, that didn’t pair Paul with Doug. But these two pros really gelled their first time together. As Paul recalls, “Well, both of us guys entered the field roughly around the same time. So, the vibe in the air would be about the same. Also, Doug was working on other titles himself while I was working with other writers. [Chuck and Doug had] different styles for the most part, but both knew what the hell they were doing in regards to strong, entertaining scripts.”

For his part, the writer recalls, “I’ve always enjoyed writing strong female leads. Not grrl power stuff. I’m no feminist. But the woman-as-underdog as opposed to woman-in-jeopardy kind of story has always appealed to me. I’m a huge Modesty Blaise fan. I wrote what felt right to me.

And having a protagonist who used to fly for the Luftwaffe required a different kind of story.”

Dean is very straightforward about why Valkyrie! was such a good series. “It’s pretty simple: a great character based on the Dragon Lady from Terry and the Pirates, a fascinating storyline, and incredible art. What more do you need?”

Paul playfully remembers his artistic approach to the Valkyrie character. “The bottom line, above all else, was capturing Valkyrie’s ’80s MTV hairstyle. The focus was on that. I was out to nail that.”

Chuck recalls, “Paul always brings it. He’s a storytelling natural, and his style makes even the most fantastic elements seem believable. His style is idiosyncratic, but I felt I’d read enough of his stuff—all of it actually—to think I understood what kind of story would be the most interesting for him to draw.”

When asked if he saw Valkyrie! as a success, Dixon states, “I certainly do. Readers loved it as well. Paul is a consummate comics professional, as well as a creator of some of comicdom’s greatest eye-candy pages. I knew I had a top talent backing me up on this one and a guy whose art I’d admired for years.”

Some of Paul’s most iconic covers can be found in the Valkyrie! series. When asked if he saw Paul’s work on the short-run as something special, Chuck states, “I do, and I think that grew primarily out of his relationship with Eclipse Comics. Dean Mullaney has enormous respect for Paul to this day. After all, it was Paul who drew Eclipse’s first publishing effort. Paul Gulacy was a major factor in Eclipse Comics even becoming a viable venture.

“As far as the covers, they were all terrific. And I don’t know how many people know this, but Paul’s original, painted, cover for the [Valkyrie!] trade paperback collection was destroyed in transit and never used. I’ve never seen it, but Dean assured me it was amazing.”

By this time, Paul had already entered Tim Truman’s life like a thunderbolt. “I’d been doing Scout for a few years with Eclipse, and had built a really tight relationship with my editor, Cat Yronwode, and Eclipse’s publisher, Dean Mullaney. One day, they called and asked me if I would be interested in developing a new line of comics for them based around the1940s Airboy title and the various characters associated with it. It seemed like a cool project. So, I became editor, and developer of the imprint, and pulled together a team I to do the work.

“I’d always wanted to find some way to work with Paul and the Airboy gig seemed to be a perfect way to make that happen. Dean and his brother Jan had been the guys who’d published Sabre and its follow-up project Dragonflame [illustrated by Paul], so I knew they could put me in touch with him. I thought I could at least ask him to do some covers or something. So I called Cat and asked her what she thought of the idea. She was all for it. Still, while I’d met and worked with a lot of my pro comic heroes by this point, for some reason, I found myself really nervous about calling him. Too much of a fan, right? I asked Cat what he was like and what COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

to expect. She laughed and told me that she thought we’d get along fine and that he was friendly, but very direct, and would probably try to size me up and see what I was all about.

“She gave me his number. I called him up.

Sure enough, he was quite friendly, but I could detect a bit of mischief in his voice. I introduced myself. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Tim Truman. I know your work. You do Scout. I can tell that you’ve looked at my stuff.’ Then he waited for my reply. There it was. The test. I laughed and said, ‘True enough. I love your work, man. Hey, did you hear the news? They say that Steranko’s finally going to publish Talon. You’ll probably be able to get a lot of new reference material from it.’ He could tell I was kidding. We both started laughing. After that, it was smooth sailing. We got along great. Started talking about music and stuff.

“He was too busy at the time to do any stories, but took time to do the Airboy #7 [Oct. 7, 1986] cover. It’s one of his classics—the slight up-shot of Airboy in a totally heroic stance with all of these cool planes in the air behind him.

Above: Killer Paul Gulacy page from his and Don McGregor’s graphic novel, Sabre. Below: The titular character rendered Dirty Harry style by Paul.

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Later, he was able to draw the three-issue Valkyrie! mini-series and a few more covers for Airboy.”

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drawing ability. Some of that Six from Sirius stuff is just beautiful drawing.

“There are [previously] so many beautiful, beautiful, tightly-penciled Paul Gulacy pages that were just pretty much ruined by the inking. And it wasn’t all just one inker; it was a number of inkers who screwed up. So, when he got the Six from Sirius offer from [Epic editor] Archie [Goodwin]… there was no deadline, ‘take as long as you need to do it.’ It was a finite thing. I think it was only four issues [#1–4, July–Oct. 1984]. It had a beginning, middle, and end.

When you got to the end, that was it. It was a job that could be completed without worrying about having to meet a deadline. He could take as long as you want to do it. All he needed was for me to give up the next plot when he was done with the one before. I said, ‘Don’t worry about that.

You call me up two weeks before you’re gonna be done, and I’ll do it right away. There won’t be one day of waiting.’

“So the stars were aligned for Paul to do what he wanted, which was to show the world exactly what he could be with ideal circumstances. And these were ideal.”

Doug remembers first seeing Paul’s fully illustrated Sirius pages as a major event. “He came here with his first, second, or third… one of his wives,” the writer shared. “He came out to the house and he brought the first completed pages, which were hand-colored with those markers. I hadn’t seen anything yet, and he had this cat-bird smile as he reaches into his art portfolio and pulls the pages out and lets me see them. Oh, my god! They’re beautiful in color. He colored right on to the actual artwork. There’s no overlay or anything. This is like the comic book page equivalent of a painting. I just couldn’t believe how good it was.

“The drawing was so much better. The inking was finally by the perfect inker. He did two issues of MOKF he inked himself. So, I knew what his pages could look like. He was his own best inker. Always. And here it was and then colored too. Wow. It was like a whole new world. I really made sure I gushed over the top to reward all of his hard work. And it was all genuine… I just kept telling him that this was going to knock everybody’s eyes out.”

Paul saw working for Archie Goodwin under the Epic banner, due to the creative freedom offered under the imprint, “A breath of fresh air!” Several other artists who worked in the Epic line felt the same way.

“Epic was exciting in the beginning,” remembers Val Mayerik. “I think we, that is artists and writers, saw it as #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Black Widow TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Creepy TM & ©New Comic Company, LLC.”Blood on Black Satin” © Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy.

Above: Paul drew an exquisite version of Black Widow in both a Bizarre Adventures story [#25, Dec. 1981] and in his six-plate Black Widow portfolio [1982].

Inset right: Paul’s painting on this Creepy #44 [Feb. 1983, Spanish edition] cover originally appeared on Eclipse, the Magazine #1 [May 1981]. Below: Paul produced a superb two-parter with writer Doug Moench, “Blood on Black Satin,” Eerie #109–110 [Feb.–Apr. ’80].

EPIC DAYS In 1984, Paul was able, for the first time, to take on the art chores from start to finish on a project. That project was the groundbreaking Six from Sirius, for the Marvel Epic line. “I recall getting contacted by Archie Goodwin wondering if I would be interested in coming up with something for their new Epic line of comics with writer Doug Moench,” Paul revealed. “The way we came up with Six from Sirius was standard procedure: either he contacts me or I give him a call and it goes like this, ‘What do you wanna do?’ ‘I don’t know, what do you wanna do?’ Out I throw something at him. He fires back something awesome. And, before you know it, we’re dialed in, and off to the races. Same thing with Master of Kung Fu. That’s how we did it. Six from Sirius was no exception. Plus, we owned everything. This was a new plateau. Owning characters under the Marvel banner was a twist, for sure.”

The “what do you wanna do” approach resulted in a gigantic artistic achievement for Gulacy. Rather than just act as penciller, Paul laid into the series as inker, and, for the first time, as colorist. Prior to the use of computer technology for comics coloring, Paul dove into his bag of tricks from his advertising days.

“One big stand out,” he said, “was when I was working in advertising in New York, for everybody who was anybody, really, I got comfortable using markers to do most everything. You have a gun to your head and the clock ticking.

To this day, my favorite tools in my studio are markers. I can wield them like paint. The science on these things are nuts.

Every job I do is done in markers.”

His desire to create full-color work was driven not just by the need for a challenge. It was also driven by sins of the past. “I can’t count how many jobs get destroyed by people who claim to be colorists,” he said with a chuckle. “It was seriously an issue. You had people, like an editor’s girlfriend, all of a sudden become colorists overnight. You have to remember that Stan’s modus operandi was getting the work in on time.

“We wanted to put our stamp on this. It was an exciting departure. We were venturing into new territory as a team and the challenge was a rush. Doug had his foot in the game, so I knew he would come through with a doozie, eventually. Film director James Cameron actually looked at [Six from Sirius] as a major motion picture. On top of that, you have one of the most beautiful love stories ever in comics.”

Doug saw the Sirius series as a new standard of excellence for Paul. “Especially on Six from Sirius, his drawing became, to me, exquisite. I thought, ‘Wow!’ when I first started with that wordless story, ‘Bats’ [Vampire Tales #7], and the early kung fu stuff, I knew his drawing ability would get better. And I saw it happen, like I said, from issue to issue and page to page.

But I’m not sure I imagined he would ever become this good in this way with sheer

”Blood on Black Satin” © Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy. Black Widow TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Marvel’s answer to Heavy Metal. There was more latitude in depicting sex and violence, for sure, but that doesn’t always portend good results. Creative rights and ownership certainly was an important step forward. Steve [Gerber] and I had full ownership of Void Indigo [1984 graphic novel and two-issue series, 1984–85]. I still own my half, but now that Steve is gone, his daughter owns the rest…”

Val continued, “I remember visiting friends in Oregon shortly after Paul had moved there. He showed me original pages and I thought they were classic Gulacy. However, I couldn’t help but notice how much nice art was covered up by large captions and word balloons. Doug did have a tendency to overwrite, at times; I mentioned this to Paul and he agreed.”

The outstanding British illustrator John Bolton remembers both the work by Doug and Paul on Six from Sirius, and the pleasure of working for Archie at Epic. “I was fully aware of the Sirius series and thought it highly original, having always liked Paul’s work contribution to Epic. It was also a great pleasure and privilege to work with Doug, who was the first writer I worked with in the U.S.A. “Working for Epic gave me a great opportunity to perfect my skills and direction as an artist. Both Archie and [associate editor] Jo Duffy were enormous fun to work with and gave me a lot of freedom, of course they were always involved. When working on The Black Dragon, Archie insisted on supplying an introduction and image for each issue, which was great fun.”

That was part of the personal ‘just right’ approach that the late and great Archie Goodwin had. Archie provided not only an open-ended working environment for creators under the Epic banner, he included personal asides about the creators and stories he oversaw as introductions in the books. Archie tapped creators who brought ceiling-shattering skills to the table and set them free to do their thing. Epic was short-lived, but still a tremendously entertaining line of books.

DARK KNIGHTS There are characters who defined eras in comic books.

Shang-Chi, as well-received as he was, had a beginning and an end, and was very much a representation of the 1970s. Beginning in 1986, Paul Gulacy put his name on an all-time lasting character, when he finally had the opportunity to draw Batman.

“If you have to have at least one super-hero on your resume,” Paul confessed, “it ain’t bad to have the bat. He’s just cool as hell, man. A great iconic American character that goes back that many years and is still out there. He and Superman; how do you beat that? America at its best.”

By ’86, Batman had already gone through a tremendous resurgence in popularity. Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams had returned the character to his roots in the ’70s, following the beloved though campy 1960s TV show. Some comics purists hated how the show starring the late Adam West seemed to bring tongue and cheek silliness into the regular Batman books. But, honestly, what kid in America didn’t love that show?

Steve Englehart, along with Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin, had followed the ground-shaking work by Denny and Neal with their own slick and outstanding run on the character. When Doug Moench took on the role of writer of the Darknight Detective, he worked with outstanding draftsman Don Newton on Batman and legendary Gene Colan on Detective Comics. All the while, the highly under-appreciated great Jim Aparo had given years to drawing The Brave and the Bold. The character had been in the hands of some absolute masters of comic illustration. Paul Gulacy was now one of them.

“Those guys did knock out work,” Paul said, “but I had my own take on him. I had my own ideas on where I was going to put the camera.” And his film noir approach to Batman was another definitive representation of the character.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

As future collaborator Jimmy Palmiotti recalls, “Paul always embraced the shadows and light in Batman, and his Batman seemed to bleed out of the darkness whenever he drew him. I think the ears and cape stand out the most, plus when Paul drew Batman and Bruce, he looked like a Hollywood good-guy hero from days gone by. His Bruce oozed class.

His Batman was dangerous and intense. He draws one of the best Batman after Neal Adams. I love both of them.

Each did something different and defined a generation.”

Paul’s two-issue run began with the cover of Batman #393 [Mar. 1986]. The image of the crimefighter holding a torch and knives in mid-flight headed in Batman’s direction remains one of Paul’s favorites among his covers. His interior brings to mind great filmmaking, like Carol Reed’s The Third Man, as Doug lays out a story of intrigue and mystery that Paul lays into with gusto. When handed one of the most treasured characters of all time to draw, Paul did not shrink from the opportunity. Rather, he dove in with purpose and absolute mastery of his craft and created one of the great stand-alone runs on the character.

Between 1990 and 2005 Paul and Doug would return to the Batman in several mini-series versions of the character in the Legends of the Dark Knight title.

“It starts with the script,” Paul explains. “When I get it in my hands and I’m reading it, I’m seeing things and making

Above: Another page from Moench and Gulacy’s “Blood on Black Satin,” appearing in Eerie #109 [Feb. ’80]. Below: Gulacy panel, Bizarre Adventures #25 [Dec. ’81].

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Above: Spread from Six from Sirius #4 [Oct. 1984], Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy’s science fiction mini-series that was published by Epic Comics.

A four-issue sequel, Six from Sirius 2, appeared in 1985.

Below: Moench and Gulacy’s Slash Maraud, a MTV-inspired character from the six-part mini-series, [Nov. ’87–Apr. ’88].

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Six from Sirius, Slash Maraud TM & © Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy.

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proved a gracious host as he drove me around on an impromptu tour of the city and his home. Hanging out with him that day is something I’ve never forgotten.

Wish we could do all of it over again, old pal!”

(Jesus Aburtov is a premier colorist in comics, one who would bring his work together with Paul’s black-&-white pages on G.I. Joe: Special Missions [#1–4, Mar.–June 2013] and The Rook [#1–4, Oct. 2015–Jan. ’16]. When asked if there was a previous series that Paul did that Jesus would like a shot at coloring if it were reprinted, he ecstatically responded, “Yeah! The Batman Prey series [LOTDK #11–15] and the Batman vs.

Predator!”

Writer Devin Grayson had the opportunity to work with Paul on one of his forays with the character in the two-issue series, Year One: Batman/Ra’s al Ghul [#1–2, Aug.–Sept. 2005]. She recalls, “Although Paul Gulacy notes. I call it ‘first flash.’ It’s what I see in my head as I’m had already achieved legendary status for his work on reading the script and intuitively what I feel in my gut. This Master of Kung Fu, among other projects, I was a DC girl. is the way I need to play it. There is no time to linger.

So, the first time I ran across his work was on the fantastic “We did things with Batman [in Legends of the Dark Hugo Strange storyline he and frequent collaborator Doug Knight #11–15, Sept. 1990–Feb. ’91; Batman: Legends of Moench did for LOTD, Prey. I was immediately taken with the Dark Knight #137–141, Jan.–May 2000] that nobody did Paul’s storytelling, which was always clear, yet unerringly through the years. We showed how and why he needed a stealth car to patrol the Gotham streets at night. We actual- dramatic. I never imagined that I’d be fortunate enough to ly show Bruce working on it. We came up with a night-time have one of my stories illustrated by him, not even while Bat-Glider and, for the first time, Batman dropping in to give I was scripting the very project he ended up so brilliantly bringing to life.” a message to Gordon at his apartment. I believe that was a Steven Grant, unlike many other creators, didn’t have first.” Plus, he says, “They made a collectible limited-edition Batmobile model based on the car I created in that series.” a reservoir of good feeling about the Batman character.

When asked about Paul’s efforts on Batman, Tim Truman “Batman is another character I haven’t paid much attention shares, “Well, heck, he made it Paul’s. All his best strengths to for a long, long time. The character bores the hell out of me. I remember Paul’s work on LOTDK, I remember liking as a ‘cinematographer’ came into play. And, as an ‘actor,’ too. His mastery of expressions and poses is on full display.” that, but one thing I always thought interesting was he drew Batman’s costume more nationalistically than most artists Terry Austin, maybe the nicest guy in comics, had already become legendary as an inker and artist before he do, and, as a result, Batman always looked (convincingever collaborated with Paul on Batman. He brought with ly) uncomfortable wearing it. But he also did Batman vs. him his joyful memories of reading MOKF with him when Predator 2, which was pretty spectacular, and a really good he was assigned the inking job over Paul. “Years later, when Catwoman run with Ed Brubaker [#25–36, Jan.–Dec. 2004], Archie Goodwin offered me the job of inking a Batman: Leg- that was some of the best work he ever did. Paul did a lot of ends of the Dark Knight series written by Doug and penciled very odd little series circa 2000, give or take, if I remember correctly, but I never had the opportunity to see most of

by Paul,” Terry recalls, “I could hardly believe it (mainly I them.” could hardly believe that I got the assignment without havAnother high point of creativity for Doug and Paul at DC ing to threaten to expose the rather juicy blackmail material was the Slash Maraud series [#1–6, Nov. 1987–Apr. ’88]. As that I had craftily collected on Archie over the years). I Paul recalls it, “Yeah, Doug and I called it, ‘MTV comics.’ was anxious to see what, if anything, I could contribute to Pure ’80s motif. All you had to have is MTV playing in the Paul’s fabled tight pencils; I suppose that I must have done something right as I was later asked to collaborate with him background as I did while working.” He added, “This is another time or two (Batman versus Predator 2: Bloodmatch when DC made a shift in their books and opened a lot of [#1–4, Dec. 1994–Mar. ’95] was a blast; strangely, somehow doors. It wasn’t your dad’s Superman comics anymore.”

The writer of the series recalls, “Slash Maraud was our second issue of The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents remains a germ of an idea. Really a vague thing.” As always, Paul unpublished to this day). reached out at the right time to get a project started with “Inking him was always a great source of pleasure for Doug, who said, “I was just offered the chance to create me and a learning experience, as well (one of the main reasons I originally decided to become an inker rather than brand new stuff. Would you want to do one of them?

“Then Slash Maraud really got fleshed out on the phone a penciler). I can honestly say that I never turned down an with him and me. And, I think, all they had to hear at DC opportunity to work with Paul—I just wish that there had was: ’And this one I want to do with Paul Gulacy.’ And it been more of them! I should also mention that we finally was, like…’Sold!’ They don’t even have to hear about it.” met when I traveled to Portland for a convention and Paul

While at the DC offices during the Slash days, Doug had a chance meeting with Alan Moore. At the time Moore was, in Doug’s opinion, the best writer working in the business.

The two were introduced by DC editors Andy Helfer and Karen Berger. After some general conversation, Doug recalls Moore’s complimentary words: “I want you to know that I learned everything it’s possible to do in the comic book form from you and Paul Gulacy on Master of Kung Fu.” Doug exclaimed, “I went, ‘Wow! Alan Moore said that in front of witnesses—Andy Helfer, Karen Berger, and two other people. You all heard that, right?’”

Harkins, who lettered all the books I did for Eclipse, moved to Lancaster for a while and lived about a half-a-mile away from us. He also lettered stories for Marvel. I dropped off some art at his house one day, and he called me into his studio. ‘Hey, you’re a Paul Gulacy fan, right? Look at this.’

There on his table was a stack of Paul’s art—eight or 10 pages of pencils for a new story he was doing. The title header read ‘Deathlok, by Moench and Gulacy.’ I’d seen Paul’s finished original art before—including the entire ‘Blood on Black Satin’ story… which a friend of mine owned—but it was the first time I’d ever seen what his penciled pages looked like. They were so finished and tight. I was amazed. I looked at Harkins. ‘You’re coming with me. Now. And we’re bringing those pages!’ I scooped up the art, we got into my car, drove to the house, ran to my studio, and I photocopied them all— nice, big, full-sized copies.

I still pull them out about once a year and gawk at them.

“Deathlok had been a favorite character of mine in ’70s and I was eager to

Above: Tim Truman recruited Paul as artist on the Valkyrie! mini-series [#1–3, May–Aug. 1987]. Below: After Shang-Chi, Paul is perhaps best known as one of the great Batman artists, whether on the regular title [1986], his Prey story arc in Legends of the Dark Knight [1989–90], Batman versus Predator II [1994–95], Batman: Outlaws mini-series [2000], or Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight’s Terror story arc [2001].

Artwork from various.

Valkyrie TM & © the respective copyright holder. Batman TM & © DC Comics.

NO END TO THE GULACY MAGIC As the 1990s and ’00s rolled on, Paul continued to remain a vital artist. Most often, he provided his art to covers and mini-series events during those two decades. While any number of artists who entered the field at the same time as Paul had subsequently taken the route of writer or editor, or had moved on to another line of work. Paul’s dogged staying power is a testament to this ‘thing’ many steel mill kids have: a refusal to be defeated despite changing times.

Paul worked. He plowed forward, continually defining and refining his style. Shang-Chi remains his best-known personal character and Batman remains the biggest tent pole character he has worked on. But the ’90s and ’00s brought a great number of high points as an illustrator into Paul’s cache. It is arguable that his best work came from these decades.

“For me, Paul’s work for Dark Horse in the ’90s was pure sugar for the eyes,” recalls Ron Evans, Cartoon Art Museum trustee. “James Bond 007: Serpent’s Tooth [#1–3, July 1992–Feb. ’93], in particular, shows how well he’s able to take an over-the-top plot and provide a much-needed visual massaging without losing any of the story’s breezy flow.

And Star Wars: Crimson Empire [#1–6, Dec. 1997–May ’98] pops right off the page yet doesn’t overshadow or downplay the intensity of Kir Kanos and his quest. This ability to shift gears just enough to suit the story without overtaking it is a big reason why I admire Paul’s talent. That and the fact that his art conveys all the emotional aspects needed to tell a tale without any narrative whatsoever.”

Tim Truman opined, “There was a short feature that he did in [Coldblood] installments in Marvel Comics Presents #26–35 [Late Aug.–mid-Nov. 1989] that features some of the best art that I believe he ever did. During the early ’90s, Tim

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see what Moench and Gulacy would do in a revival. However, when the story was finally published, I was shocked to see that it was no longer a Deathlok story and there would be no new Deathlok stand-alone title. Apparently, the powers-that-were had decided that the team should turn him into a new character called Coldblood-7. I remember being pretty disappointed that Doug and Paul’s weren’t able to follow up on their original reboot concept, but so it goes, I guess.”

Bob Layton, that renowned artist and editor, had the opportunity to come into working contact with Paul over the decades. “Back in my early fanzine publishing days (CPL and the Charlton Bullseye) during the early 1970s, the first professional contacts we made was with the Youngstown, Ohio gang, all connected to Marvel alum Dan Adkins. That group of young, upcoming artists consisted of Val Mayerik, P. Craig Russell and, of course, Paul Gulacy.

“At that time, all of them were just getting their feet wet in the comic industry and were not the legendary artists which we know today. All of them were incredibly talented, but Paul’s work was distinct and you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that his career was going to be something very special. Young Paul Gulacy was always very supportive of our efforts as fans and generously contributed drawings to our publications regularly.

“Decades passed and I became the editor-in-chief at

Storm, The X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Adastra in Africa TM & © Barry Windsor-Smith. Artwork © BWS.

Above: Epic Paul Gulacy cover art for Legends of the Dark Knight #11, part one of his and Doug Moench’s Prey storyline. Inset right: Paul is also well-regarded for his work on Catwoman, including this cover for #34 [Oct. 2004]. Below: The Coldblood serial in Marvel Comics Presents was originally intended to star Deathlok.

Batman, Catwoman TM & © DC Comics.

Valiant Comics, in the early 1990s. By that time, Paul Gulacy had become a name to conjure with. Again, I was fortunate enough to be able to hire Paul as an illustrator on some of our titles. Our working relationship has always been one of mutual respect and genuine admiration. It is rare to be connected, as friend and co-worker, to a generational talent such as Paul. I am honored to have known him for the last 45 years.”

During those years, as has been shared in various other interviews, Paul remained a steadfast James Bond fan. “When a James Bond movie came out in the local cinema, when I was a kid, ” he shared, “my buddies and I didn’t walk to the local cinema, we ran! You know, having a career doing stories dealing with a spy motif, it was really important to nail it to the best of my ability. Maybe more than any other character I worked on. Well, in this case, it’s the real McCoy and I wanted to make sure we honored that.

But, also keeping in mind, that we might have a long shot of seeing this on the big screen.”

As Doug recalls it, “With Serpent’s Tooth, he called up and said, ‘You’re not going to believe it.’ I said, ‘What?’

He said, ‘You and me, man. You and me are doing Bond.’

Because James Bond was his big love. And he knew I loved Bond also. I said, ‘Really? For who? What’s going on?’ And he says, ‘You’re going to be getting a call from Dark Horse.’

And that was it. Paul paved the way, talked to Mike Richardson, or whoever, or maybe they called him. But he secured James Bond for me and him and then it was all me… the plot, the title, and all that.” (Paul remains matter of fact about how he and Doug approach a project. “Bottom line, when Doug and I worked together were out to cut heads off. No two ways about it, that was our M.O.”) It was the heavy duty work that Paul did on Serpent’s Tooth that made it possible for Dan Davis to partner with his artist-hero. “Fast forward to my eventual return to

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The Grackle TM & © Mike Baron & Paul Gulacy. Turok TM & © Penguin Random House LLC. Terminator TM & © Skydance Media.

Ohio, went to college, got married, and, years later, finally breaking into the biz as an inker at DC. I was casting about for work and I always bugged Dan [Adkins], because he seemed to know everything and everybody. He mentioned Paul was looking for an inker after wearing himself out by inking his own pencils on James Bond. I got his phone number from Dan and made a very nervous call introducing myself. I believe Adkins had given him a head’s up. We had a nice chat, traded Adkins stories, and I mentioned how great I thought his James Bond had been. He was very encouraging and told me he would send a couple of sample photocopies of pencils for me to try out on vellum, which was how you had to do it back then. And vellum was a—well, quite tricky to work on, but that’s what you did.

The next week a package arrived and inside were about 50 pages of photocopies of his Bond pencils! Very cool and I still have them!”

Dan Davis continued, “So I sent my inks to him and anxiously awaited the verdict. I see his call on caller ID and I said ‘Hello?’ And he said, ‘Ready to get to work?’ And I think I probably jumped out of my skin while trying to sound cool on the phone. The Thing from Another World: Eternal Vows [#1–4, Dec. 1993–Mar. ’94] was a pretty tight action story and, even though it wasn’t spies, it was a lot of fun and gave me a lot of cred inking Gulacy, which was the biggest name I had inked at that time. Yeah, Paul was great to work with, and we would usually talk once an issue or so. We worked together one more time on Comics’ Greatest World: Barb Wire [#1, Aug. 1993], introducing her premiere story at Dark Horse. Then I believe he was set to do a Batman at DC and Terry Austin had dibs on that. But I was happy to have graduated to be inking Paul after interning with Adkins while he was inking Paul all those years earlier.

“Paul and I finally met shortly after that at a con where we shared a table. I had purchased a MOKF original from an ad in the Comics Buyer’s Guide and got Paul to sign and personalize it to me, and, of course, it’s framed and hanging in my studio. And it was one of the pages I had witnessed Adkins ink all those years earlier, so it means a lot to me.”

Tim Truman remembers, “I really enjoyed the Batman and Catwoman stuff. That was some pretty classic Gulacy.

His take on Catwoman was awesome. Through the poses he came up with, she finally became truly cat-like—a true creature of the night. He did some special issues of Star Wars for Dark Horse, too, that were quite good. Lest we forget, The Grackle [#1–4, Jan.–Apr. 1997], the crime book he did with Mike Baron for Acclaim. Very cool comic.”

Paul Gulacy paired with Karl Kesel (John Byrne’s Superman inker, and later, writer of Superboy) on The Terminator: Secondary Objectives [#1–4, July–Oct. 1991], for Dark Horse. “I certainly knew his MOKF work,” Karl said.

“I loved, loved, loved what he was doing there. I was really impressed by it. He has a really great style.

He has a great sense of design and a great sense of dynamics.”

Some embellishers struggle with how to bring their voice to Paul’s legendarily tight pencils. Kesel found it refreshingly enjoyable to ink the Terminator series. “His pencils are very tight, very solid, COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

very precise,” he said. “I’m sure Paul is very definite still.

When you’re a reader and a fan, that gives a certain consistency from inker to inker. His artwork stood up [to different inkers] really well.

“The thing I try to do, when I ink anybody, is to find out what the penciler is trying to get across. You look at the pencils and they are beautiful, and you try to capture the feel in the inks. If all you do is copy what is there, sometimes you make it deader or too heavy. Very subtle differences can make a huge difference in the finished product. I can’t say for sure that any light bulb went on when I inked Paul’s stuff, but I really tried to capture what, at least, I thought he wanted the book to look like. He worked very precise and I kept that precision. I don’t remember changing or modifying much at all with anything. It was really solid work.”

Karl added, “If I remember correctly Bob Wiacek was supposed to ink [Terminator]. He’d even inked part of a page, but had to back out, for some reason. And [Dark Horse] gave me a call because they needed it right away. I wanted to ink Paul and it sounded like a fun gig. So, I said yeah. It really was a really strong mini-series.

“He had a great cinematic quality to his work

Above: Page from The Grackle #3 [Mar. 1997]. Pencils by Paul Gulacy and inks by Charles Yoakum. Inset left: Turok by Paul. Below: Cover art detail, The Terminator: Secondary Objectives #1 [July 1991].

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and clearly to this day, his work on MOKF simply had no peer. Through Paul Gulacy, I knew that nothing was impossible to achieve on an 11" x 17" piece of paper.”

Steven Grant remains a Gulacy admirer through the decades. Even if he didn’t remain an avid reader of other’s work. “I have to admit I wasn’t paying that much attention by then. I had my own career to worry about by then, and not a lot of resources to spend on other people’s comics, if I wasn’t getting comps, and I frequently wasn’t. I remember his Sabre strip for Eclipse pretty vividly, and a couple of the things he did for Marvel… ”The Black Widow” and Six from Sirius, specifically—his Valkyrie! stuff for Eclipse, too, now that I think about it—but, by the ’90s, my focus was just elsewhere. I didn’t read other people’s Punisher material, I had no interest in Star Wars–I haven’t even seen any of the movies in whole since The Empire Strikes Back—and I wasn’t aware until this moment that Paul had worked on it.

“But what I have seen of Paul’s style, I don’t know that I’d say there’s been a progression exactly. It’s still what it pretty much always was, but,, like a lot of artists, he simplified and focused as he went along, and, of course, there was a shift away from dependency on line to put across more of a three-dimensional impression. He really just became more him, is all.”

Tim Truman has a special place in his heart for Paul and for his work during the last two decades. “Paul is probably the biggest influence on my own work. I love the man and I love his art. I believe I asked my editor if he could try to get Paul to do some art for the book and, lo’ and behold, he had a hole in his schedule.” That’s how Tim remembers their pairing on Turok, Dinosaur Hunter [#31–33, Oct.–Nov. 1995]; #39–40, Feb.–Mar. ’96], for Acclaim/Valiant.

When asked if he wrote to Paul’s strengths, Tim replies, “Oh, yeah. In fact, he co-plotted the story. Before I started working on the plot, I called him up to ask if there was anything in particular he would like to do. I like to work like that, whether I’m writing or drawing. It’s fun to jump into the sandbox and play, throw some ideas around.

That way, you both have a vested interest in the story. On the occasions where I haven’t been able to do it, the story usually isn’t as fun. Anyway, the idea to do a film crew in Savage Land was his. It was a lot of fun. A tip of the hat to Cooper and Shoedsack’s King Kong, you know, with a shot of Tarzan and the Lion Man. And come to think of it, didn’t Steranko’s Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. story about the High Evolutionary have something like that going on…? Hmm…” Paul’s pencils are legendary for being rendered as print-ready work. Tim was asked if he thought that Paul had been best served by a particular inker. He jokingly responded, “Probably not, because I haven’t inked him yet.

But seriously, I have a fondness for the Dan Adkins stuff on MOKF, of course. However, Paul’s work is best when Paul is inking Paul. I know from talking to him that he’s very, very picky about his inkers. And he should be.”

Jesus Aburtov responded to what he knew of Gulacy’s work before bringing his incredible color sense to Paul’s pages. “I’m in Mexico, so not all the titles and artists get noticed here, and I’m from 1978, when I was born, [and] Paul was already a star!”

Jesus added, “When IDW’s G.I. Joe editor told me I was about to color Paul Gulacy pages, I Googled him and recognized his work from Batman vs. Predator. An old friend of mine had those comics, so my first approach to his iconic #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

James Bond 007 TM & © Danjaq, LLC. Green Lantern, Jong Li, Batman TM & © DC Comics. Predator TM & © 20th Century FoxFilm Corporation.

Above: Paul Gulacy’s art graces the cover of James Bond 007: Serpent’s Tooth #1 [July 1992], first of a three issue mini-series written by Doug Moench.

Inset right: Paul performed art duties on Green Lantern: Dragon Lord, the threeissue mini-series written by (guess who…?) Doug, which starred Earth’s first Green Lantern, Jong Li of China, 660 A.D. #3 cover [Sept. 2001] inks by Joe Rubinstein.

Below: Cover detail of Batman versus Predator II #1 [Jan. 1995]. Pencils by Paul and inks by Terry Austin.

that I really appreciated and really loved. I still have a couple pages of the original art. One of the pages I kept was from very near the end of the series, where some characters are in a car driving and there is a note. This is not a page with the Terminator on it. They have this note and it has flown off in the wind and you can tell that the note ends with ‘F You,’ but you can’t see those words. I kept that original art because I just thought that it was a great page.

It was just a really, really well-staged, cinematically staged page. I always look for that in any artist who can make quiet moments have as much power as the big, spectacular moments.”

Regardless of how talented the paring of penciler and inker, there can always be a problem. In this case, the problem comically had to do with paper. Karl describes one incident: “I get the pages from Paul.

Now, Paul is a really great guy. I’ve met him many times. I love his work and I love him.

But he drew on really bad paper. I put the ink on it and it just blah’d out. I was like [WTF] do I do here? I was thinking that the paper is too soft. What do I do? So, I ended up putting every page that he drew in our oven and toasting it. It hardened the surface of the paper enough to hold the ink. There are one or two pages, I don’t think that I’ve got them anymore, that I left in too long and there are scorch marks on the back, where you can see the grid of the grating. Paul: great artist, but lousy at picking inking-paper. That’s the one Paul story I can supply that I don’t think anyone else can.”

All these years after his visit to Paul’s home in Youngstown, Steve Rude remains a friend and thoughtful admirer of Paul. “Gulacy’s style began to change as the decades followed. By the mid-’80s and ’90s, his work began to reflect a realism that, to me, stilted his work a bit. The appealing mannerisms that made his work so full of energy during the MOKF years, now appeared secondary for a greater command of straight realism.”

Steve adds, “This stylistic shift towards realism seems to be a common occurrence with most artists’ development, especially when compared to their early work. Yet what they may lack academically early on, they make up for with youthful agility and experiential verve.

With Paul’s progression in comics becoming increasingly photographic, much of the fun seem to be lost from the style that marked his earlier work. To me,

Sci-Spy TM & © Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy. Eternal Warrior TM & © Valiant Entertainment LLC.

art was there.”

Paul was not always happy with how his work was colored. Jesus shared how he thought Paul’s work had been served in recent years. “Well, there is a lot of evolution in color techniques—software and hardware. When I saw the color treatment on his work, I remember Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs.

Nighthawk [#1–4, Mar.– June 2007] was his earliest before G.I. Joe, it has very neat colors! So, I tried my best to apply all I knew at that moment of my career in order to boost the whole art and go further what I saw in my research. If I had to color him again, I would Google his work again, and look back to my old files, and try to find a way to improve again what has been done.”

THE GRACKLE, THE DRAGON LORD, AND DIXON AGAIN “I first became aware of the Big G when he took over MOKF,” remembers outstanding author Mike Baron. “Initially, I was a bit put off by his style, which was still in its formative stage. I recognized the Steranko influence. Within a few issues, it coalesced into a gripping graphic style that took off where Steranko ended. From then on, it was a tour de force, culminating in MOKF #29, a masterpiece which the Big G inked himself. Naturally, I wanted to work with him and we finally did. Met Paul over the years. He was always on, like, Funky Flashman. Always enthusiastic.

Steve Rude was also crazy about Paul’s work and, before he became famous, hitchhiked to Youngstown and showed up on Paul’s doorstep. Working with Paul on The Grackle was a dream come true.”

“Valiant wanted a crime series. I liked the sound of ‘The Grackle,’ and, from there, it was just a matter of putting it together. I used to fly by the seat of my pants, but, these days, I start with a blurb and work it up into a detailed outline before I write, comic or novel. The finished product often deviates wildly from the outline, but the outline serves its purpose by describing the story in an exciting and vivid way. The outline is meant to be read by others. The outline is meant to entertain.

“I try to write to an artist’s strength. Paul had many strengths. I can’t even recall if I drew these [Grackle] pages out or worked them up script style. Film noir was a given.”

Paul and Baron were a great match for this neo noir thriller. “Mike Baron is one of the great talents in the industry,” Paul contends. “The story line of The Grackle dealt with a detective dealing with a street drug so powerful that, at any moment, with one use, the drug can explode into spontaneous combustion with one hit.”

Paul and Doug Moench reunited for a unique twist on the Green Lantern character for DC. Paul remembers, “We COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

were both dancin’ around on other titles for other companies as well. That’s called freelancin’.”

Paul shared with Bob Gaugh (writing for Mile High Comics) his thoughts about coming together with Doug Moench to work on Green Lantern: Dragon Lord [#1–3, June—Sept.

2001]. “It was like working with a relative,” he explained.

“Dragon Lord was set in ancient China, but my original proposal was to make a feature character a gladiator, which I always wanted to do a story on way before the film.

I got overruled. [Editor Andy] Helfer set the whole thing up.

We just completed a Legends of the Dark Knight series that he edited and he threw the Green Lantern job on us before we hit the door. There was a scheduling problem and that series was very rushed—it could have been better.”

Thus not every job is a raving success. But that didn’t stop Paul from reloading for another project. Especially if Doug Moench was involved. The routine was usually that Doug would reach out to Paul with an approved story and, if Paul was interested, without major adjustments, the two would get started on the project. Otherwise Paul could pass on the project and Doug would move forward with another available artist. Sci-Spy [#1–6, Apr.–Sept. 2002], as Doug remembers, was a different process. “That was Paul’s idea.

He called me up and said that we’d have to do something together again.”

Doug continues, “He described it as a science fiction secret agent. And I said, ‘Wow! You just came up with a high concept.” And he said, “What do you mean?” And

Above: All of Paul Gulacy’s covers for his and Doug Moench’s science fiction/spy series, SciSpy, #1–6 [Apr.–Sept. 2002].

Below: Paul’s cover art for Eternal Warrior #33 [May 1995]

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Above: Unpublished page from the unfinished T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #0, originally to be published by Omni Comix, back around 1995. Art by Gulacy.

Below: In a photo by Greg Biga, Paul Gulacy smiles for the camera in his art studio.

Pic taken earlier this year.

tions, Jimmy replied, “I do, but, as always, I wish I had more time to ink some of the books we did together. I remember everything was a big rush. When we worked on Master of Kung Fu, I was especially happy with how that looked, and it was a trip back to my childhood for me. What a lot of people miss, though, is I happen to adore Paul, the lovable trouble-maker. Getting to work with him actually gave me time to get to know him and that was the greatest gift of all.

He is such a fun guy to be around, and would fit in nicely with the classic Rat Pack in the ’50s with no problem. He also has a hell of a singing voice. The guy is multi-talented for sure. I love him.”

As comic book artists became more and more home based, instead of studio based, the opportunity to interact with others shrunk drastically. Many people rarely see each other unless they are attending a convention together. As Steve Grant shares, “I don’t really have any great Paul stories. Not sure I’ve met in him in person more than three or four times. I remember talking with him on the phone once in the mid-late ’80s sometime, but I can’t imagine why. Nothing against Paul, we just didn’t move in the same circles, though we did have one particular friend in common (who shall remain nameless), who we discussed at some length then. But I specifically remember being surprised he knew who I was, because I wasn’t anyone of note and he was sort of in the rarefied heights, if you know what I mean. But it’s not like there was any hostility there or anything. Like I said, we just didn’t travel in the same circles. Our paths just didn’t cross, professionally or personally.”

Steve goes on, “Eventually, we did cross paths, on Facebook, I think it was. Paul asked me if I were interested in trying to get some projects off the ground with it. I said sure and we started discussing things. Came down to a few themes we were both interested in pursuing, and he encouraged me to go as far out there as I wanted. And I did and he really dug it. And we never did quite sell it. It was not a seller’s market, and then we got rerouted over to The Rook. Neither of us do a lot of conventions, and that’s mainly where we’d see each other, at that point. We hung out quite a bit at Comic-Con a few years back, but it was all usual stuff, lunch and dinner, and like that. I like Paul and his wife; they’re very easy to get along with. We get along great.”

He added, “We actually did finally manage to get a publisher interested in the project—unfortunately, about a week after, Paul retired. Too bad.”

Long-time friends like P. Craig Russell didn’t have the opportunity to work with Paul until many years into their careers. “It was over 25 years after those early studio days that I had the opportunity to ink Paul’s pencils on a six-issue Star Wars series [Crimson Empire] for Dark Horse Comics. I’ve inked a lot of artists over the years and some have a pick-a-line-any-line style of drawing. Paul’s pencils could have been shot ‘as is.’ Nothing needed to be ‘fixed.’ A dream to ink.”

Some of Paul’s more recent collaborators, such as Jimmy Palmiotti, relished in the opportunity to ink or write for their hero. “Each and every time I inked Paul was an exciting adventure for me, but, when I actually wrote the story he was illustrating, it took on another dimension of collaboration. I always tried to take the pencils that extra mile, but could never match what Paul did by himself. I got to see a perfect example of that when we worked on Time Bomb [#1–3, July–Dec. 2010] together for Radical. Paul inked himself and I just gave up. It’s one of his finest works, I think, and he made the story Justin Gray and I worked on come to life like nothing else.”

Jimmy added, “I think my other favorite was when I wrote and inked the Punisher special [Punisher: Bloody Valentine, Apr. 2006] with him, mainly because I knew Paul would be drawing it, so I made the elements and set-ups to fit what I love to see in his work. His design of pages and layouts were just sequential gems, one after the other.

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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents TM & © Thunder Agency LLC.

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I said, “In Hollywood, they use the term ‘high concept’ for an idea that can be stated real simply and is real commercial.

And this sounds to me like ‘James Bond meets Star Wars.” Doug recalls Paul’s response as, “Yeah, man.

That’s exactly it.”

Today, Paul says, “SciSpy is basically ‘James Bond meets Star Wars on crack.’ [Hollywood powerhouse producer] Gale Ann Hurd, who used to be married to James Cameron, showed interest in it as a film at one time. But the production costs at the time would have been sent through the roof.”

Then the MAX line, Marvel’s explicit-content imprint, offered Paul and Doug an opportunity to reunite for a short run on Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu [#1–6, Nov. 2002–Apr. ’03]. This time Paul’s pencils were paired with Jimmy Palmiotti as an inker. The return of the character might not have been major event among the editorial staff at the time, but the project was a thrill for Palmiotti.

“At Marvel,” he shared, “it was not a big deal, sadly, because at the time we were working with a lot of younger editors, but, to a few, it was like going back to a time machine and reliving the wonderful past. For me, it was totally intimidating on every level, and I did my best to make sure they both were happy with each and every page we did. I am very proud of that job and all the work we have done together, and working with Doug was a real gift to me. I just love that man’s brain. I would do it all again in a heartbeat and hope that happens again one day. Working with them finally gave me the feeling that I now have ‘made it’ in the field. I stopped inking pretty soon after.”

When asked if he thought the series lived up to expecta-

Miami Vice TM & © Universal City Studios LLC.

set up some unbelievable dynamic storytelling that always delivers. The soul of his work in in the eyes of everyone he draws.”

Jimmy also sees the strength of Gulacy in a similar way in the 21st century that Roy Thomas saw in the 1970s. “Design, style, class, his mid-century design elements, and how he can turn even a boring page into something delicious to the eyes. He has that movie poster dynamic where he grabs the characters at just the right moment and create a dynamic bigger than life scene that defines his work. Like the man himself, the art stands out from the crowd and has inspired so many like myself to try harder at our craft.”

Every Gulacy fan has their particular favorite works and collaborators like Jimmy are no different. “Sabre and his run on MOKF… as well as Time Bomb. A collection of these would be a dream book for me. I collect original art and I have pages from all three in my collection. As far as the comics go, I pretty much have every single book he has drawn in my collection. To say I am a fan is an understatement.”

Chuck Dixon reunited with Paul for Gulacy’s penultimate run in 2013’s G.I. Joe: Special Missions, for IDW. When asked if Paul’s style had changed in the 26 years since Valkyrie!, Dixon states, “Not in any significant way.

I mean, some evolution over time is natural. But it was all to the good. Paul has his own style that’s unmistakable.

But he never rests on that. His work always looks fresh.”

When asked if this work was special for writer and artist as collaborators, Chuck answered, “Well, we were kind of left to our own devices and that’s always liberating and leads to better work. We collaborated more closely on those issues than we ever had on Valkyrie! and talked quite a lot on the phone with Paul making suggestions. I always take an artist’s ideas to heart. They always know what works best on the page. And when you have an ‘auteur’ artist like Paul you let them fly.”

Chuck, like Doug Moench, had the opportunity to be part of a working relationship with Paul across multiple decades. What is it about Paul’s later work and about him as a collaborator, he was asked, that Chuck enjoyed the most?

“There’s no ego there. We were both dedicated to creating quality comics. If anything, Paul was more eager than ever to turn it up to eleven on our G.I. Joe work. Full-bore Gulacy is an awesome thing to see.”

BRINGING THE FUTURE AND THE PAST TOGETHER In 2015, Paul partnered with writer Steven Grant and colorist Jesus Arburtov to create a true triumph. The three-issue The Rook, for Dark Horse Comics. The character was the brainchild of Warren editor Bill DuBay, which originally appeared in the ’70s and early ’80s. It was said to have been, at one time, one of the highest-selling books in the Warren catalog. It was a definite product of the 1970s, with its cowboy-looking main character being a time-traveling adventurer. (Paul even contributed a painted cover in those days featuring the character.) What could have been a token project with an old character turned out to be much more. And the experience was certainly enjoyable for the creators.

“As far as working with Paul goes, it was mostly a breeze,” Steven said. “We didn’t have a lot of back and forth—we’d loosely discuss things, but Paul wanted full scripts where everything’s spelled out. That’s what I’d give him and he’d figure out great ways to draw the nutty things I asked him to draw. Once in a while, he’d have a question about something, but much more communication than the script wasn’t really necessary. He was great fun to work with. There was only one occasion where things clogged up a bit; he had approved of a storyline in principle, but when he was in the middle of drawing it, the locale was just so static and bland, he found drawing page after page of it unbearable. That was my fault, I should’ve thought it out better, more visually. When you write comics, you have to COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

think as visually as possible.

That’s a major part of the challenge. It was intended to be a two-issue arc, but, after he called, I quickly rewrote the ending of the first part and threw out the second part completely, and shifted gears. It wasn’t a problem or anything. All just part of the process, and I’m pretty sure we got a better story out of it, so his instincts were dead on.

But, aside from that, my collaborations with Paul went smooth as silk. He’s wonderful to collaborate with. I liked being around him the few opportunities I had, and I liked working with him.”

Much like how Paul brought Doug Moench on board for Green Lantern: Dragon Lord, he did the same to bring Steven Grant into the fold for The Rook.

Remembers Grant, “He was the one who got to pick, and I’m grateful he picked me. I owe it to Paul. Ben Dubay, Bill’s heir and controller of Bill’s properties, had gotten in touch with Paul about drawing The Rook, as Paul had drawn some Rook material back in the ’70s for Bill. This was when Paul and I were putting together our creator-owned series, and Paul suggested me as writer.

Ben and I started chatting. Ben originally wanted to be much more faithful to Bill’s version, but, for various reasons, I talked him out of it. It wasn’t hard; I had good reasons (not the least of which was Cowboys & Aliens [2011] had just bombed at the box office and at least temporarily murdered the concept of the science fiction cowboy, and there was a good chance that image would’ve played strongly against us). But, had he insisted, I certainly wouldn’t have fought him. Ben did have specific story ideas I incorporated, but, by and large, he gave me free rein to re-imagine and update the character, and to play out time travel concepts, as much as space allowed. He has a pretty intense personality, but he’s pretty easygoing underneath it all. The second series was pretty much entirely me; I don’t remember Ben asking for a lot of input into it at all. He was pretty content by then to just let us run amok.”

Grant comments on the faith he had in Paul after giving him full scripts to work from.

“I saw a few things early on when we were ironing out the bugs,” he said, “but, as I mentioned, he wanted to work from full scripts, not plots, so my end was usually completely done before Paul started. He’s a pretty easy artist to trust. Most of the time I saw scans of finished issues, but, you know, there’s not much reason for him to waste time scanning and forwarding work to me when he could be working, unless there were something specific he needed my input on that couldn’t be discussed over the phone.

We stayed in pretty close

Above: Previously unpublished Miami Vice cover art by Paul Gulacy, courtesy of longtime Gulacy fan, Dave Lemieux.

Below: This article’s writer, Greg Biga, poses with subject Paul Gulacy, in a recent pic.

73

This page: The Master of Kung Fu joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe with last September’s release of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The Doug Moench/Paul Gulacy creation, Razor Fist, was featured in the highly praised film. Below is Paul and wife Nanci and daughter Paige attending the world premiere, August 2021.

ON THE SILVER SCREEN On Sept. 3, 2021, Marvel Studios released Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, their first exclusive-to-theaters offering since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the film is the 25th installment of the wildly successful Marvel Cinematic Universe, ShangChi is, well, wildly successful, with a worldwide box office gross of $417 million as of Nov. 1. The movie is testament to the creativity of Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy, as it includes, for one, their villain, Razor Fist, first introduced in the Carlton Velcro storyline, in MOKF #29. In the film, the character is played by former heavyweight boxer Florian Munteanu. (The bad guy’s mode of transportation is a source of a comedic sequence in the movie.)

Paul attended the world premiere of the MCU film, on Aug. 16, 2021, at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre, on Hollywood Boulevard. The artist, who was accompanied by his wife, Nanci, and daughter, Paige, was briefly interviewed on the red carpet by FabTV, which can be viewed on YouTube.

Steve Englehart, as the other co-cre#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Razor Fist TM & © Marvel Studios.

74

touch while he was working, but I don’t think I saw most pages before completion. I was never disappointed.”

Paul was excited to have worked on the project with Grant. Grant also saw the project as a success. “I really liked it. We covered a lot of ground, quietly set up a lot of storylines and subplots, used the concept of the character to completely change the concept of the character, hit a lot of different locales. Have to say, I especially love the intro eight-pager we did in Dark Horse Presents [#14, Sept.

2015], set against the end of the Trojan War. Paul had a real field day with that one. Visually, just terrific. I loved the new origin of the Rook, the giant robot invasion of the Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love, the issue where the Rook is stranded among the dinosaurs. It was an awful lot of fun playing with all those different time periods, and Paul got more opportunity that he usually got to draw a lot of different things. It’s too bad we couldn’t squeeze one more series out of it.”

Steven Grant had nothing but positive words for The Rook’s colorist, Jesus Aburtov. “If there was ever an art team that was just meant to be, Paul and Jesus were it, and Paul, Ben and I owe him a huge debt of thanks.”

Jesus recalls the gig fondly. “The Rook triggers a lot of sweet memories to me,” he said. “Before The Rook, I was coloring Paul’s pages on G.I. Joe, [and] at the end of the series, he invited me to work on this ‘new project’ with him, then I got notice that Steven Grant was the writer. It was like, ‘Okay, this is getting sweeter than I thought.’

“Then and I learned what was this “Rook” thing. Ben Dubay [explained to] me about the history of the title, and the legacy of his grandfather, William DuBay. I’m in Mexico, so, there are a lot of successful comic titles in the U.S. we don’t notice here. But, getting back to the point: yeah, I remember the team like a little family. We had very direct and warm communication.”

Jesus brought his digital palette to the very definite black and white work of Gulacy. When asked if was a challenge to approach that work, Jesus replied with a verbal eye-wink. “Well, it’s easy for me because there are fewer areas where to add the color—ha! But the wrong color and it will take all down. Paul’s line art is very iconic because of his big black areas. He is a genius. So I tried to add volume to make this iconic and solid work, more three-dimensional. And he allowed that! Sometimes, artists want to keep this two-dimensional, iconic aspect on the final print. That would be okay, too, but not as fun, interesting, and enriching for me to work as we did.

“The experience on The Rook was always a growing one. From the very beginning, with Paul’s invitation, until the end, it was getting bigger, the story was getting more complicated and interesting (Steven Grant—oh my god!—a genius, too!), and Ben Dubay was always very communicative and adding very positive energy on it. I wasn’t sure where I was stepping in at the start on this, but then I realized I was teaming up with these two super-stars! So, in quality, my work should be at the same level as theirs, on the whole series.”

The colorist, like Paul and Steven, believed the project lived up to expectations. “Yeah! Time-travel is always interesting. Now, Steven Grant writing a time-travel tale, with Paul Gulacy art!! I would love to see more of the series!”

Painting © Paul Gulacy.. Shang-Chi TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

ator of Shang-Chi, has gone through many ups and downs surrounding the possibility of Shang-Chi making his way to theaters, “As you may know,” Steve said, “Marvel was not interested in Shang-Chi when Starlin and I brought it to them. They reluctantly green-lit it, then the kung fu craze exploded, then they created their own guy, Iron Fist.

“When Iron Fist got the nod as a TV show—and then when it wasn’t very good—I figured Shang-Chi would never see the light of day. But I kept after them to do something with him, and when Black Panther did boffo biz, I was able to point out the benefits of a truly Asian character. I was pushing for an all-Asian creative team, except with the white creator involved. In the end, they almost went with that (i.e., I’m not involved).

“So, I went from never expecting to see Shang-Chi to (thanks to Black Panther) expecting it. (All of that is very different from Star-Lord, who I not only never expected to see, but never even thought about seeing.) What I wanted them to do with Shang-Chi, and think they are doing, is marry the American super-hero concept to the Chinese “flying ghost dragon” concept, to create something both unique and super-interesting to both American and Asian audiences.”

It took Hollywood a long stretch of time to realize how bankable comic book movies could be, especially movies based largely on the existing stories and source material found in the comics themselves. The last dozen years have proved that the entertainment factor found in the average comic can be the driving force for a billion-dollars-a-movie-franchise. I, for one, hope that Shang-Chi has proven to be racial barrier-breaking, thought-provoking, and entertaining tent pole movie that his creators, and his long-tenured creative team made him to be.

WHAT THE WRITER GOT TO KNOW ABOUT PAUL Paul Gulacy is flat-out awesome.

There is no faint praise for Paul Gulacy. Words, such as ‘genius,’ ‘master,’ and ‘titan’ are often used in describing his abilities as an illustrator. His cinematic approach to the comic field is as unique as it is creative. But it is only an open window into who the man is. Paul is the whole package as a man. He possesses a fierce work ethic born of his northeastern Ohio upbringing. If you spend a few moments with hi you’d be brought to near tears from both the personal place he speaks from and the entertaining ways he speaks it.

As Dean Mullaney shared, “He’s funny as hell. As serious and precise as his art is, Paul’s wry sense of humor will just stop you in your tracks.” One example, as Dean remembers, was on a cover. “I remember visiting him one day when he was painting the cover of Eclipse, the Magazine, featuring Ms. Tree [#6, July 1982].

Paul chuckled as he included a friend’s actual phone number on the telephone in the composition… I don’t know if Paul’s friend ever got a phone call because of it!”

In our conversations, he had me at the edge of my seat recalling the facts of his life and career. He would flip the table and have me doubled over with laughter as he did narrated a cat food commercial, with amazing vocal mimicry, as Charles Bronson. If Paul hadn’t pursued art, he would certainly have fit in as a successful night club act.

That’s the uniqueness of Paul Gulacy: He’s immensely loyal to the collaborators he works with, as shown by his continual pairing with Doug Moench over the past 40 years. His serious approach and commitment to his craft, and to innovation, has created four-decades worth of astounding work. Yet fans, pros, and Paul himself, have by far the greatest reservoir of good feelings for the character COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

he worked on 40 years ago.

Comic art is a special place for fans. There’s escapism, appreciation, and even a way in to help readers define who they are that can be found in 22 Benday-dotted pages.

Paul Gulacy’s individualized and personal approach to books created far more than entertainment. He created a visual world of excitement and joy, and instilled a thirst for adventure in anyone who spent more than a glance at his work. Like Paul himself, his pages leap beyond the average. There is no holding back what Paul can achieve as a creator.

Hopefully, by our contact with him and through his work, the same can be said of all of us.

Thank you, Paul.

Many thanks go out to the following for their time spent in interviews for this piece. Val Mayerik, P. Craig Russell, Dan Davis, Steven Grant, Timothy Truman, Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, Jon Bogdanove, Terry Austin, Jimmy Palmiotti—who suggests folks visit www.paperfilms.com to see what he and wife Amanda Conner are up to!— Ron Evans, Steve Rude, Dean Mullaney, Bob Layton, Chuck Dixon, John Bolton, Jesus Aburtov, Devin Grayson, Karl Kesel, Mike Baron, and, most of all, our thanks to Paul Gulacy, the man himself. Visit www.gulacy.com and enjoy Paul’s “World of Covers and Other Stuff!”

Above: Paul Gulacy’s 1977 painted portrait of the late, great martial artist, Bruce Lee.

Inset left: Unused Gulacy pencil art intended as a cover of Master of Kung Fu, circa 1977.

75

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creators at the con

Small Can Be Beautiful

A look back at Philadelphia’s annual comics celebration, the Locust Moon Festival

Photography by Kendall Whitehouse While nothing can match the breadth of experiences at the large comic cons such as SDCC and NYCC, smaller cons can be just as exciting, without the crushing crowds and occasional chaos of larger events.

“Creators at the Con” looks back at Philadelphia’s Locust Moon Comics Fest, which ran annually from 2012 through 2015, and highlighted both local and international comics creators. Above is the event in 2015.

At left is Carolyn Belefski and Joe Carabeo of Curls Studio, in 2012.

All photos © Kendall Whitehouse.

Jim Steranko (right) showing his work to fans in 2013.

Below is 2013’s “Out from the Underground” panel, with Kim Deitch (left) and Jay Lynch (right), moderated by Richard Greene (center).

Comics historians Danny Fingeroth and Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson.

The Monstress team of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda in Artist Alley.

Dave Gibbons (far left) with the entire cast of HBO’s Watchmen, which would become a huge cable TV hit.

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MORE NEXT ISH!

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

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Denis Kitchen, 2015.

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Bill Sienkiewicz, 2015.

Chris Claremont, 2015.

CBC for me, see?

coming attractions: cbc #28 in the spring

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

From Out of the Swamp Comes SRB! The great and multi-talented STEPHEN R. BISSETTE is featured in CBC #28 in a comprehensive interview about his career and life as a vertiable Renaissance man! Not only an artist, SRB is also author, film critic, amateur paleontologist, independent publisher, teacher at the Center for Cartoon Studies (retired), and leading advocate for creatorrights! From the Kubert School to Swamp Thing to Taboo to Tyrant to today, the charming raconteur tells all! Also in this ish is part two of our wide-ranging talk with BUD PLANT, this on his publishing, retail store history, and adventures in mail order! We also catch up with MIKE GOLD, in the first portion of a career-spanning chat, from his work with the Chicago 7, launching of First Comics, and move to DC Comics! We also include an astonishing, ridiculously-detailed—and highly entertaining—look at 1972’s infamous MARVEL-OUS EVENING WITH STAN LEE at Carnegie Hall. Additionally, Darrick Patrick gets lengthly answers to his Ten Questions from DEVIN GRAYSON. And we include the awesome work of our exceptional band of contributors: Rich Arndt, Kendall Whitehouse, Steven Thompson, and (of course) Fred’s latest installment of his Hembeck: Dateline feature!

Full-color, 84 pages, $10.95

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

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a picture is worth a thousand words

from the archivesof Tom Ziuko

80

Doctor Strange and related characters TM & Marvel Characters, Inc.

Mind-bendingly beautiful black&-white Doctor Strange and crew commission art

by Butch Guice.

Tune in next issue to see my fully rendered color version…

“Same Bat-Time, Same BatChannel!”­—TZ

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

AMERICAN TV (1940sCOMIC BOOKS 1980s) Hot on the heels of Back Issue #128, AMERICAN TV COMIC BOOKS (1940s-1980s) takes you from the small screen to the printed page, offering a fascinating and detailed year-by-year history of over 300 television shows and their 2000+ comic book adaptations across five decades. Author PETER BOSCH has spent years researching and documenting this amazing area of comics history, tracking down the well-known series (Star Trek, The Munsters) and the lesser-known shows (Captain Gallant, Pinky Lee) to present the finest look ever taken at this unique genre of comic books. Included are hundreds of full-color covers and images, plus profiles of the artists who drew TV comics: GENE COLAN, ALEX TOTH, DAN SPIEGLE, RUSS MANNING, JOHN BUSCEMA, RUSS HEATH, and many more giants of the comic book world. Whether you loved watching The Lone Ranger, Rawhide, and Zorro from the 1950s—The Andy Griffith Show, The Monkees, and The Mod Squad in the 1960s—Adam-12, Battlestar Galactica, and The Bionic Woman in the 1970s—or Alf, Fraggle Rock, and “V” in the 1980s—there’s something here for fans of TV and comics alike!

(192-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $29.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-107-3 • SHIPS SPRING 2022!

JOHN SEVERIN:

TWO-FISTED COMIC BOOK ARTIST A spirited biography of the EC COMICS mainstay (working with HARVEY KURTZMAN on MAD and TWO-FISTED TALES) and co-creator of Western strip AMERICAN EAGLE. Covers his 40+ year association with CRACKED magazine, his pivotal Marvel Comics work inking HERB TRIMPE on THE HULK and teaming with sister MARIE SEVERIN on KING KULL, and more! With commentary by NEAL ADAMS, RICHARD CORBEN, JOHN BYRNE, RUSS HEATH, WALTER SIMONSON, and many others. By GREG BIGA and JON B. COOKE. (160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-106-6 • NOW SHIPPING!

OUR ARTISTS AT WAR The first book ever published in the US that solely examines War Comics published in America! It covers the talented writers and artists who supplied the finest, most compelling stories in the War Comics genre, which has long been neglected in the annals of comics history.

Through the critical analysis of authors RICHARD J. ARNDT and STEVEN FEARS, this overlooked treasure trove is explored in-depth, finally giving it the respect it deserves! Included are pivotal series from EC COMICS (Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat), DC COMICS (Enemy Ace and the Big Five war books: All American Men of War, G.I. Combat, Our Fighting Forces, Our Army at War, and StarSpangled War Stories), WARREN PUBLISHING (Blazing Combat), CHARLTON (Willy Schultz and the Iron Corporal) and more!

Featuring the work of HARVEY KURTZMAN, JOHN SEVERIN, JACK DAVIS, WALLACE WOOD, JOE KUBERT, SAM GLANZMAN, JACK KIRBY, WILL ELDER, GENE COLAN, RUSS HEATH, ALEX TOTH, MORT DRUCKER, and many others. Introduction by ROY THOMAS, Foreword by WILLI FRANZ. Cover by JOE KUBERT. (160-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $27.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-108-0 • NOW SHIPPING!

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ALTER EGO #176

KIRBY COLLECTOR #82

KIRBY COLLECTOR #83

The Golden Age comics of major pulp magazine publisher STREET & SMITH (THE SHADOW, DOC SAVAGE, RED DRAGON, SUPERSNIPE) examined in loving detail by MARK CARLSON-GHOST! Art by BOB POWELL, HOWARD NOSTRAND, and others, ANTHONY TOLLIN on “The Shadow/Batman Connection”, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, JOHN BROOME, PETER NORMANTON, and more!

“THE MANY WORLDS OF JACK KIRBY!” From Sub-Atomica to outer space, visit Kirby’s work from World War II, the Fourth World, and hidden worlds of Subterranea, Wakanda, Olympia, Lemuria, Atlantis, the Microverse, and others! Plus, a 2021 Kirby panel, featuring JONATHAN ROSS, NEIL GAIMAN, & MARK EVANIER, a Kirby pencil art gallery from MACHINE MAN, 2001, DEVIL DINOSAUR, & more!

“Famous Firsts!” How JACK KIRBY was a pioneer in comics: Romance Comics genre, Kid Gangs, double-page spreads, Black heroes, new formats, super-hero satire, and others! With MARK EVANIER and our regular columnists, plus a gallery of Jack’s pencil art from CAPTAIN AMERICA, JIMMY OLSEN, CAPTAIN VICTORY, DESTROYER DUCK, BLACK PANTHER, unseen ANIMATION CONCEPTS, & more!

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

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CBA BULLPEN OLD GODS & NEW: BACK ISSUE #133 Collects all seven issues of JON B. COOKE’s STARMEN ISSUE, headlined by JAMES A FOURTH WORLD fanzine, published just after the ROBINSON and TONY HARRIS’s COMPANION (TJKC #80) little-seen original COMIC BOOK ARTIST ended its Jack Knight Starman! Plus: The Star-

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 show how Kirby’s epic came about, where it was going, and how he would’ve ended it before it was cancelled by DC Comics!

TwoMorrows run in 2003. Interviews with GEORGE TUSKA, FRED HEMBECK, TERRY BEATTY, and FRANK BOLLE, an all-star tribute to JACK ABEL, a new feature on JACK KIRBY’s unknown 1960 baseball card art, and a 16-page full-color section!

(160-page FULL-COLOR TPB) $26.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 • Now shipping!

ISBN: 978-1-60549-098-4

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BACK ISSUE #134

BACK ISSUE #135

Spangled Kid, Starjammers, the 1980s Starman, and Starstruck! Featuring DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, ROBERT GREENBERGER, ELAINE LEE, TOM LYLE, MICHAEL Wm. KALUTA, ROGER STERN, ROY THOMAS, and more. Jack Knight Starman cover by TONY HARRIS.

BRONZE AGE RARITIES & ODDITIES, spotlighting rare ‘80s European Superman comics! Plus: CURT SWAN’s Batman, JIM APARO’s Superman, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT’s Marvel custom comics, MICHAEL USLAN’s unseen Earth-Two stories, Leaf’s DC Secret Origins, Marvel’s Evel Knievel, cover variants, and more! With EDUARDO BARRETO, PAUL KUPPERBERG, ALEX SAVIUK, and more. Cover by JOE KUBERT.

SILVER ISSUE, starring the Silver Surfer in the Bronze Age! Plus: JACK KIRBY’s Silver Star, SCOTT HAMPTON’s Silverheels, Silver Sable, Silver Banshee, DC’s Silver Age Classics, and more! Featuring BUSIEK, BUTLER, BYRNE, ENGLEHART, STAN LEE, LIM, MARZ, MOEBIUS, POLLARD, MARSHALL ROGERS, ALEX ROSS, JIM STARLIN, and more. Cover by RON FRENZ and JOE SINNOTT.

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ALTER EGO #175

Spotlighting the artists of ROY THOMAS’ 1980s DC series ALL-STAR SQUADRON! Interviews with artists ARVELL JONES, RICHARD HOWELL, and JERRY ORDWAY, conducted by RICHARD ARNDT! Plus, the Squadron’s FINAL SECRETS, including previously unpublished art, & covers for issues that never existed!

With FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and a wraparound cover by ARVELL JONES!

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ALTER EGO #174

FCA [FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA] issue—spearheaded by feisty and informative articles by Captain Marvel co-creator C.C. BECK—plus a fabulous feature on vintage cards created in Spain and starring The Marvel Family! In addition: DR. WILLIAM FOSTER III interview (conclusion)—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on the lost art of comicbook greats—the haunting of JOHN BROOME—and more! BECK cover!