Comic Book Creator #29 Preview

DON McGREGOR Man of Wakanda, Man of Mars

Editor’s Note: Alas, it is with sincere regret that CBC has to announce that J.D. King, mas terful cartoonist of the Woody illos that have graced the above space for every issue until now, is retiring the assignment. Many thanks, buddy, for a great ride!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ye Ed’s Rant: The passing of a Comic Book Giant and presence of a Great Talent 2

COMICS CHATTER

Up Front: Herb Trimpe Abroad. Robert Menzies chronicles the Incredible Herb’s year-long visit to the British Isles in the mid-1970s, and his work there 3

Another Pinch of Herb: Thermonuclear Avocado. As an added bonus, a 1976 British interview with Happy Herb Trimpe, conducted by Roger Hutchinson 10

Ten Questions: Darrick Patrick gets 10 big answers from Devin Kalile Grayson 12

Zine Scene: Ye Ed’s new feature on zines of note, such as American Bystander 17

The Man Called Gold: Part two of our three-part interview with Mike Gold covers his hiring by publisher Jenette Kahn and days of DC’s Explosion/Implosion 18

Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt on new books in the stacks! 27

Incoming: The return of our letter column begins with a missive from Steve Rude 28

The Bloody Red Baron: Mike Baron gives Greg Biga the scoop on his latest gigs 31

Once Upon a Long Ago: E.C. Fan-Addict Thompson on how he got hooked 36

Hembeck’s Dateline: Fred creates a Rogue’s Gallery of Flash’s baddest bad guys 37

THE MAIN EVENTS

Donald Francis McGregor: Under the Gun

shared this wonderful piece celebrating two of Don McGregor’s muchadmired Marvel characters, the Black Panther and Killraven, Warrior of Mars, properties he just about made his own in the 1970s! Thank you, Sandy!

The ground-breaking writer shares an afternoon at home with Ye Ed to discuss his brilliant achievements in comics, including the “Panther’s Rage” masterwork that inspired the 2018 Marvel movie and, as a graphic novel pioneer, with Sabre, the taboo-breaking dystopian science fiction series, and so much more! 38

“It Ain’t Betrayal If It Isn’t a Friend”: Don McGregor has something to say 65

Panther’s Pride: A Ye Ed moderated panel discussion with McGregor and Rich Buckler on launching “Panther’s Rage” and maintaining a life-long friendship 66

Bonus! Tom Ziuko talks about

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly (more or less) by

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NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator

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RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $53 US, $78 International, $19 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2023 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

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Above: Sandy Plunkett

Winter 2023 • The Donald F. McGregor Issue • Number 29

DON McGREGOR Portrait by KEN MEYER, JR. ©2022 Ken Meyer, Jr.

Black Panther, Killraven TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Black Panther TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

About Our Cover Cover art by SANDY PLUNKETT

[

Herb Trimpe Abroad

Remembering the Incredible One’s year-long visit to the British Isles in the ’70s

by ROBERT MENZIES

As hard as it is to believe, Herbert William Trimpe, Jr., has been gone for nearly eight years now, but in certain ways his spirit is alive and well, at least in these pages. Yours truly was pals with Herb—and still is with first wife Linda Fite—a friendship with both going back to the early days of Comic Book Artist. So we’re proud to share—albeit from a Brit’s point of view—a look at the late artist’s extended stay in the U.K. in the mid-1970s, with appreciation to two once Marvel-affiliated Lindas, Fite and Lessmann!— Ye Ed.]

We probably know the exact moment when Herb Trimpe realized that he occupied a special place in the heart of British True Believers. He was attending his own one-man panel at London Super Comic Convention 2013 and, as the artist gazed out at the legions of fans before him, a clearly moved Herb commented—seemingly as much to himself as those in attendance—that it was the biggest crowd that had ever come to see him at a convention.

What many fans there may not have known is that Herb was the only U.S.-born Marvel creator to live in Britain during the Silver Age. Even those aware of this fact had little idea about where and when he was living in England as his autobiographical comments were generally rather sketchy. The most precise description came in the essay “To Create an Icon,” Herb’s introduction to Captain Britain: The Birth of a Legend [2006]: “I have lived in England for extended periods of time, including one year in Cornwall in the 1970s.” Other interviews and contemporary statements in the British titles gave the impression that the Trimpes re sided in England for only a couple of months, so this period in his career has always been something of a mystery.

Luckily, thanks to the kind help of Herb’s son, Alexander, I was able to communicate with Linda Fite, Herb’s then-wife and mother of Alex and two of his sisters, Amelia and Sar ah. Over and above her sense of playfulness and endless patience, Linda was a goldmine of information and, for the first time, we can fill in the blanks on this part of Herb’s life.

“I can verify that, yes, we lived in Cornwall for a year— from March 1975–March 1976,” Fite said. The departure time, if not duration, is supported by a letters page comment in Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #164 [Apr. 3, 1976], which stated, “Herb recently went back to New York after spending several months in Cornwall.”

Fite continued, “We had visited Cornwall in the autumn of 1973, stayed for six weeks in Golant, near Fowey, because my old university chum, Shelley Turner, was living there with her boyfriend at the time… Anyway, we made some good pals in that community, so… when Alex was born [in 1974] and we outgrew our one-bedroom flat in New York City and couldn’t find a two-bedroom place in Manhattan that we liked/could afford, so we said, ‘Let’s try living in the country.’ Then I said, ‘Hell, why not try living in the country in another country?’ So, because we had the Cornish connection, that’s where we went. Those two times were when we were in the U.K. for the longest periods, six weeks and one year.

“We visited England before those two times as tourists and after to attend a wedding and take Alex to unsuccess fully seek the Loch Ness monster.” (In a follow-up, Linda

added that this latter trip to Scotland happened in ’81 or ’82.)

Fite added, “While we were living in [the village of] St. Mabyn for that year, we had visits from Barry WindsorSmith and his then-girlfriend, Linda Lessmann, and from Flo Steinberg and Chris Claremont (not all at the same time, of course!).

“What is mind-blowing in retrospect is that Herb was penciling (and sometimes also inking) books in a cob cottage in Cornwall and using the Royal Post to mail the pages to Man hattan! Good thing the man had such an excellent work ethic.”

Colorist Linda Lessmann Rein hold, now married to veteran DC and Marvel artist Bill Reinhold, met Herb in August 1972, when she began working at Marvel. Among the many jobs she completed was coloring Herb’s art on The Incredible Hulk #177–178 [July–Aug. 1974]. Before the Trimpes crossed the Atlantic, Lessmann had visited their mid-town Manhattan apartment—a mere three blocks from her flat—and she enthusiastically accepted their invitation to visit Cornwall in October 1975.

Travelling with her then-partner Barry WindsorSmith, Linda stayed for ten days. She told Jon B. Cooke (in an email she kindly shares here) about “one of the most memorable trips of my life.”

She continued, “The tiny town [of St. Maybn] was picturesque and charming, as was the stone cottage where they lived. It was situated next to a very old

DIANE NOOMIN, DREW FORD, KIM JUNG GI, BILL WORKMAN, and my much-missed comrade in comics history, R.C. HARVEY

Above: Herb Trimpe at his drawing table in the 1970s Marvel Comics bullpen.

Left: A detail of penciler Herb’s Captain Britain #1 [Oct. 13, 1976] back cover pin-up. Inks by Fred Kida.

Greek amphitheater in both shape and simplicity, although, obviously, with the welcome addition of a roof.

Incidentally, Herb himself was responsible for keeping alive a myth that he and Stan appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, rather than the Roundhouse. This was repeated by Herb, as late as 2008, in Write Now! #18 [Spr. 2008]. While well-known in London as a mu sic venue, the Roundhouse is a converted former railroad shed. In contrast, Albert Hall, built to honor the husband of Queen Victoria, is a stately, Italianate concert hall that hosts some of the largest events in the U.K. arts calendar. It’s an excusable mistake by a non-native who visited the concert hall once—espe cially given both venues are circular with domed roofs—but no doubt it’s an amusing and endearing one to a Cockney.

At the event, after a welcome and introduc tion from Murray, Stan took to the stage in front of 900 fans, nearly all unaware that Herb and then-wife Linda were seated in the front row. After Stan’s on-stage Q&A with New Jersey-born Ted Polhemus, some audience

questions, and a rogue paper aeroplane soared over Stan’s head, Polhemus, introduced Herb to the crowd. There was a surprised pause before approving cheers reverberated around the venue as Herb walked on stage to join Lee and Polhemus.

Prior to the show, Murray had given Herb a quick lesson in using the epidiascope that would project his sketches onto a large screen behind the stage. Despite this, there was a brief fumbling around with the technology and drawing implements before Herb started to sketch with what Stan called, with characteristic alliteration, his “titanically talented fingers.” (One fanzine reported that the chinagraph pencil used by Herb was to be auctioned at the next London comic mart, although no evidence was found of this.) There was a beautifully unplanned dimension to that first drawing of the Hulk. Herb had posed Greenskin striding forward with a closed fist similar to the one sported by Seymour-Man—more on him later—and Stan took the posture as incomplete, telling his friend, “Herb, what would you think the Hulk ought to be holding in his hand?” Calls came from the rowdy crowd and Herb drew a dainty flower. This caused a wave of cheering and laughter, and a delighted Stan quipped to the crowd, “You didn’t know the Hulk was just a flower child, huh?” This interactive episode seemed to be too much excitement for a few attendees who immediately invaded the stage and had to be encouraged to leave. With order restored, Herb then drew caricatures of past and present Marvel staffers Jack Kirby, John Buscema, John Romita (senior, of course), Steve Ditko, and Roy Thomas, with attendees shouting out informed guesses before each was completed.

After this, Herb sat down next to Stan and there was a slide show of Marvel art. Herb’s time on stage was unfortunately all-too-brief, although the man himself seemed content to let The Man take over. One fan asked how long it took him to draw a comic. Trimpe answered, “It should, seriously, take about a week-and-a-half, but many times it takes me about three weeks, sometimes a bit longer. Shouldn’t be admitting this in front of the boss here.”

This page: Above are photos of Stan Lee and Herb Trimpe at the Oct. 20, 1975, Roundhouse event that appeared in the British Marvel comics weekly, The Avengers #121 [Jan. 10, 1976].

Inset center: Smilin’ Linda Fite in a late ’70s pic. Inset bottom left: Herb’s pencils and Frank Giacoia inks grace the cover of Captain Britain #3 [Oct. 27, 1976]. Below: A detail of the Bulletins page in The Titans #47 [Sept. 8, 1976], about a forth coming new super-hero. Bot tom: Linda shared, “It is a bunch of us on Guy Fawkes Night—I made the Guy. The little guy on the lower left is my now-48year-old son, Alexander!”

Captain Britain TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Linda Fite

photos courtesy of Linda Fite. Guy Fawkes Night pic taken by Herb Trimpe.

darrick patrick’s ten questions

Devin Kalile Grayson

The first woman to create, launch, and helm an ongoing Batman title talks with Darrick

by DARRICK PATRICK

[Professional writer Devin Grayson took on our “10 Questions” assignment as has no other CBC con tributor, sharing with us a fully-rounded, candid, and thoughtful portrait that leaves us breathless…and grateful! As you’ll learn, she’s been writing in the industry for over two de cades, notably on Batman: Gotham Knights, The Titans, Black Widow, Nightwing, X-Men: Evolution, and many others. Nominated for the Comic Buyer’s Guide Award for “Favorite Writer” in 1999 and 2000, she also was nominated for a 2001 GLAAD Media Award for “Outstanding Comic Book” for her Vertigo series User. She’s also a novelist (Doctor Fate: The Fate of Dreams). Her most recent project is Rewild, an original graphic novel published by Berger Books/Dark Horse.—Ye Ed.]

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

doing since I learned to hold a pencil. I later learned that the presence of some kind of childhood illness, or physical challenge, shows up in a great many comic industry veteran origin stories.

Maybe the final prod in the direction of writing rather than acting for a living came via positive reinforcement. I was in some kind of social studies class during my fresh man year of college and we were given an assignment to write about someone who had profoundly affected our life. And I really don’t remember why I did this—I spent most of college as a very serious student; it was highly out of char acter for me to screw around with an assignment like this— but, for some reason—probably because I was obsessing over a story—I used a completely fictional character for my essay. I ended up having to read it aloud to the class, who ended up—much to my genuine surprise—being strongly moved by it. That’s a drug. Being able to get a reaction out of people like that. I imagine any hesitation I had about be ing a professional fiction writer evaporating at that moment.

That happened at a community college, and by the following semester, I was matriculating to Bard in upstate New York to study creative writing with Mona Simpson. Still no comics, though.

They didn’t become part of my world until a year or two after graduation. I was back in California, living in a studio apartment in San Francisco with my girlfriend at the time and working in the research division of a large HMO when

Above: Devin Grayson. Inset right: Devin’ and Yana Adamov ic’s recent original graphic nov el, Rewild, a “magical realist” tale, published by Berger Books.

Below: Dixie, an Early Alert Canine at an important nonprofit where Devin volunteers. Please visit EarlyAlert-Canine.org for details.

Devin Grayson: I guess it was mostly that I fell in love with a guy in a cape.

As I’ve mentioned in other interviews, I didn’t grow up reading comic books. They just weren’t on the radar of anyone in my family and I was about as unaware of them as you can be. I knew about comic strips in the paper and that was about it. I was enamored with the idea of exploring human complexity through fiction from an early age, though, and wanted to be an actress. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area with access to lots of exciting theater programs for kids, including a Performing Arts high school in the city (shout-out to my SF SOTA alum!), and I was committed to finding a way to make a living performing on stage.

I didn’t consciously change my mind about that until I was in college. At the time, I think I felt both that I was too introverted for a life in the theater arts and that it might be more interesting to create the dialog of fictional characters rather than deliver it. But looking back, I suspect another piece of it was that I had been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the age of 14. I wonder now if diabetes might have shaken my confidence in my ability to use my body as a conduit for sharing the stories of fictional characters. I began to turn inward and spend more time writing, which is something I’d been

Photo © the respective copyright holder. Rewild TM & © Devin Grayson and Yana Adamovic.

I happened to channel surf past an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. I was not someone who watched a lot of animation and I’m not really sure why it grabbed my attention as strongly as it did except for the obvious: it was brilliant. And different. And new. Everything about it, from the way it looked to the kind of stories they were telling, spoke to me, and almost immediately I zeroed in on the relationship between Batman and Robin. It occurred to me that Batman had sort of de facto raised Robin, and that presented some kind of fictional knot in my head that I absolutely had to untie. I was instantly hooked.

And from there it just became a matter of tracking the characters down to their medium of origin, which is what finally brought me to a comic store.

The next step in my becoming-a-professional-in-thecomics-industry story was cold-calling DC Comics. I asked for “the guy in charge of Batman,” and they put me through—no questions asked—to Denny O’Neil. Fortunate ly, at the time I didn’t know enough about the history of the industry to understand how legendary he was. If I had, I suspect it would have been a lot more difficult to talk to him. But as it was, we had a really lovely first conversation that boiled down to me introducing myself as an aspiring writer who knew very little about comics and was interested in learning more. I asked if there were any books he could recommend, or courses I should look into taking, to prepare me to script comics. He was quiet for a moment and then he laughed and told me that he got hundreds of calls a day from people who had read every comic ever written and wanted him to teach them how to write, which he wasn’t sure that he could do, but that if I really could already write, teaching me more about comics should absolutely be possible. He passed me on to his editorial team: Scott Peterson, Darren Vincenzo, and Jordan Gorfinkel—and they sent me great suggestions, like Scott McCloud’s bril liant Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (a book I buy about five copies of a year just to hand out to people asking

questions like the ones I was asking back then), and Robert McKee’s story structure seminar, Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, everything Alan Moore ever wrote… you know, essentials.

I read all of those books and took that class and sent them samples of my writing (which infamously included fanfic) and a few months down the road they gave me the chance to write a short story for the anthology series The Batman Chronicles. Then there was a Batman Plus Arsenal standalone and another story for Chronicles and a Nightwing Annual, and by then I’d saved up enough to visit them in New York. Denny eventually offered me the Catwoman monthly and I perhaps unwisely quit my day job and moved to NYC to become a full-time comics writer.

Since my goal was so singular, though— to write Batman and Nightwing, which, through a combination of hard work and incredible good fortune I got to do pretty much immediately—it actually took me quite a long time to realize that I was not just “writing Batman,” but was actually making a career in an industry I still didn’t know a lot about. For the first 10 or so years of my professional life, all my projects were assigned to me. The people I was working with understood that I didn’t have a deep history with comic books and so wasn’t walking around dying to write X or Y character outside of Gotham, so they just kept suggesting things. That’s how I ended up doing self-gener ated stories like Relative Heroes in the DCU and User over at Vertigo, as well as projects like The Titans and, over at Marvel Knights, Black Widow. Stelfreeze approached me

Detail from Nightwing #78 [Apr. 2003]. Art by Rick Leonardi and Jesse Delper dang. Below: Panoramic panel from the graphic novel, Rewild Art by Yana Adamovic.

Nightwing

TM & © DC Comics. Rewild TM & © Devin Grayson and Yana Adamovic.

Above:

man called gold

Gold’s Opportunities

Mike Gold discusses his first stint as DC Comics flack and the Implosion of 1978!

Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE

When last we spoke to Mike Gold, founder of First Comics and creative marketing whiz at DC Comics, the Chicago native shared about his Windy City upbringing, media coordination for the Chicago Seven, and leadership of the National Runaway Switchboard. Here, in the second of our three-part conversation, Mike discusses his first stint at DC. (Note this talk took place during the Covid lockdown and prior to the passing of Neal Adams.)—Ye Ed ]

Above: A button for those who supported the Chicago Seven defendants during their trial in 1969–70. Mike Gold served as their public relations rep and was liaison for the underground benefit comic. Below: Chicago Comicon souvenir booklets for their 1976 and ’77. Mike mod erated a panel discussion with Marvel boss Stan Lee and DC publisher Jenette Kahn at the ’77 show, seen at bottom.

Comic Book Creator: So, where were we? I guess we’re roughly at 1970. Let’s go on from there. What were your prospects? What were you doing?

Mike Gold: After the Chicago Seven trial, I got into one of those Volkswagen Beetles, with a friend of mine, and we drove to the coast. He was moving to the Berkeley area, and we drove down as much of the old Route 66 that was still around—much more then than there is now—and he dropped me off in Los Angeles and he went off to the Bay area. (About two years later, he went underground for putting bombs in safe deposit boxes in three different cities to protest the war, and then he told everybody where the bombs were… so I kind of missed the point on that one.) He was a good friend, and he was the guy we used to call Abbie Hoffman’s “Jewish mother,” and it was he who told me that, under no circumstances, was I to give Abbie Hoffman back the $1,000 he gave us to launch the Conspiracy Capers comic book. So this guy, Ron Kaufman, was brilliant and he also had a PhD in psy chology. Good guy. After that, I came

back and we did a little thing for a couple of months called the Committee to Defend the Black Panthers. This was in the wake of Fred Hampton’s murder [Dec. 4, 1969], and there was just a lot of stuff that had to be done. We held a couple of rallies, raising money over his death. It was amazing. It’s over 50 years now and it still gets me. I was in Fred’s apartment after they killed him—much later on that same day—because the Panthers had opened the apartment for people to see just where the gunshots went. They went all in one direction, toward the bed, which still was bloodied. And there were no bullet holes in the opposite direction, even though the cops, of course, said they were returning fire. Some bullets then, huh?

So we did that and I continued to work for The Seed and I was continuing to broadcast on a number of radio stations at the time. Late in 1970, I think we started the biggest of them, which was on WEAW, where I got to work with my friend, righteous Robert Rudnick, who was pretty much from out of Detroit and New Jersey, and invented what we called underground radio. I also worked with Eliot Wald, who started out at The Seed and moved on to be writer (and ultimately, for a season, co-head writer) of Saturday Night Live. Good guy. And I got to hang out with some really good people. I did that for a few years.

It was around ’71 when I worked for a drug abuse prevention program—and I emphasize the word “abuse” to make the distinction between people who were just sitting around smoking weed, not hurting anybody, and people who are hurting themselves or others. I did a lot of work there. We established a radio show for the kids who were in the program. I taught them how to do radio and brokered some time on a wonderful radio station and did a show for like four times a week, which is pretty cool. That’s what got me into the social services field.

During that time, Byron Preiss and Jim Steranko did this drug abuse comic book story, “The Block,” and I asked By ron if he could send me some copies to use in the program. So he did and I don’t know if we helped any kids in terms of any drug situation, but I know that we turned a few people into comics fans. So, you know, I felt fulfilled. And, from there, I guess around ’73 (the years are a little misty right now), I was brought into an organization called Metro-Help, Inc. to help found the National Runaway Switchboard, which was an 800 number (that’s still around today) for kids to connect up with local services, and that sort of thing— get emergency shelter or medical attention or what have you. And I helped train some staff and I wrote the funding proposals, and helped plan out program itself to others. Very proud of that program. We helped a lot of kids and they still are helping to this day. So that’s that was it. Get a program like this funded and going for almost 50 years.

Now, because of the National Runaway Switchboard— this is what is called “continuity”—there was a magazine that was published by Xerox called Smash. And one of their editors called me for an interview, and I worked with her for days, maybe weeks, on a story about runaways and sexual molestation issues that nobody was talking about in the mid-’70s… familial issues, abuse issues… and we got a lot of press on that. And this woman and I got along really well and she told that to her publisher. And her publisher was so, I guess, impressed that she, the publisher, called me to

Chicago Comicon TM & © the respective copyright holder.

thank me for the interview. And we got into a conversation and the conversation lasted for hours. That woman was Jenette Kahn. So, about six months or so after that, Jenette became publisher of DC Comics, so I called her up, and said, “Congratulations. You know, I’m a big comics fan.” She said, “So am I.” And we talked about all of that. And we had many, many subsequent conversations. At one point, she says, “Would you like to fly out to New York? We’ll show you around DC and we’ll have lunch, and I’d like to hook you up with Neal Adams. He’s looking for a guy to help him run Continuity Associates.” Well, I had met Neal and worked a little bit with him back in the Organic Theater days, with Stu art Gordon, when Neal was about to do some work on the Broadway version of the Warp plays. (See how all of this is linked, Jon? It’s amazing!) I like Neal and loved his work (and I still do and still like him), but I really wasn’t interested in working for him. It just didn’t quite click for me. But I went out there anyway, because I’m a fanboy and I was given a tour by the publisher of DC Comics! That’s pretty cool!

Jenette and I went to a restaurant—a very good busi nessman/ritzy restaurant—and she and I talked passionate ly, and I mean passionately, about comics for three hours. This was, like, 1976, when people were not really talking about comic books in public (because otherwise you were a degenerate). Well, for three hours, there’s all these other businessmen around and you can see that they couldn’t be lieve their ears that we were talking so passionately about what was right and wrong about the comic book industry, where we thought it was headed, and where it should be headed, and what we could do about that. So, you know, we had a great fanboy conversation. And I flew back to Chicago, thinking, “Well, I had a nice lunch.” I had invited Jenette to that first Chicago ComiCon, because I was on the committee, to be one of our guests of honor, along with Harvey Kurtzman and Stan Lee. So we had both publishers of DC and Marvel there, which was seriously cool. So she took us up on that and that was the one that was held at the Playboy hotel. The day after I came back, she calls me up and says, “You know, I’ve been thinking about our conversation.” I say, “Yeah.” She said, “I don’t want you to work for Neal,” and I’m trying to figure out the polite way of saying, “Well, that’s cool and I really didn’t want to either,” and she says, “No, I’d like to have you come and work for me.” And I stopped and had one of those “Wait—what?” moments, and said, “What are you talking about?”

And we talked about the whole idea of setting up essen tially a marketing and public relations department, that sort

of thing, focusing on the direct sales market, which, by then, was an important force, but not a vital force. Meanwhile, the newsstands were cough ing up blood like no one’s business, so they had to do something. And given my role with the Chicago Con, and also with consulting for a number of Chicago area retailers and a few others outside of the area, they thought I would be a good hire. That changed everything.

At that moment in my life, I was at, as they say, between radio stations. I just left one sta tion because they changed format, and I could see the handwriting on the wall. The type of freedom that I had enjoyed on the air for the previous seven or eight years, I wasn’t going to get anywhere else. Those days had passed. So, I took the offer seriously and we talked about the job and I wound up taking it. I moved out to New York for a couple of years and became DC’s pub lic relations and marketing guy, and we started developing the first tools to promote our books to professional retailers, as nobody had done catalogs or newsletters before and we also started to advertise in places like the old Comics Buy er’s Guide… even Rolling Stone… we did paid advertise ments promoting the Superman/Muhammad Ali book.

I remember calling up Alan Light, publisher of The Buy er’s Guide for Comic Fandom, and asked, “Listen, Alan, do you take paid ads from publishers?” He answered, “Nobody has every asked me that question before!” I said, “Well, do you want to start?” He said, “Yeah! You bet!” That was a big deal back in 1976–78.

So, I went back to Chicago and executed some of those ideas, but not many, and I did other things. I went back to my role at the National Runaway Switchboard, but as a consultant this time, and that was wonderful.

CBC: So did you have a contract at DC with Jenette? Mike: No, I had a verbal one but I don’t recall having a written one.

CBC: And what was the what was the verbal contract? Was it for? Was it for length of time?

Above: Mike Gold in his first year on his DC Comics gig. From The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom #199 [Sept. 9, ’77].

Bottom left: Mike was interviewed for the third issue of Jenette Kahn’s Smash magazine [1975]. This led to a deep connection with Kahn, who remembered the Chicago native when she ascended into the publisher position at DC. Be low: Warp! flyers with artwork decidedly not rendered by Neal Adams. Mike helped to promote the Organic Theater production.

Planet of the Apes TM & © 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Warp! TM & © the estate of Stuart Gordon.

writer in progress

The Bloody Red Baron

Catching up with the projects and process of veteran comics writer Mike Baron

by MIKE BARON as shared with GREG BIGA

[Mike Baron is an author in rare air. He transitioned from a Wisconsin newspaper reporter to being one of the premier independent comic book creators in the medium’s history. The teaming of Baron and Steve Rude on Nexus remains a high point in creator-owned character successes. Mike’s other triumph, Badger, is a character that remains, decades later, almost immediately associated with the writer. Baron translated that success into working for DC and Marvel comics where he created highly regarded runs with The Flash and Punisher, respectively, as he readied to transition into the world of novels. His Biker books, starring the char acter Josh Pratt, are now ten novels deep into that series.

Regardless of his success, Mike never left behind his love of comics storytelling, nor his independent roots. Recently, he took the time to share some barbeque as well as his thoughts about narrative writing and his current (and near future) project plans. G.B.]

How Baron Did It Before

My methods have changed over the years. When I started out writing comics, I’d draw the page out by hand on a legal pad. And, by that I mean, a portrait-shaped rectangle. And then I would divide it up into panels. I would start with the first panel and I’d think, “Well, what would grab the reader’s attention? What’s compelling?” That’s how I created Nexus. I thought, ‘“What if somebody died every time the protago nist showed up—that’s dramatic!” But I didn’t want him to be a remorseless killer, so I created this backstory where he was a reluctant executioner of mass murderers because an insane alien had chosen him as the conscience of his race. He had no say in the matter, because the alien was much more powerful.

I was always in mind of a splash page. I would some times devote the first page entirely to a single image. I rarely do that anymore. Aside from a splash page where it’s legit, there are very few instances that deserve a full-page reveal. When you devote a single image to a page the story stops, it doesn’t advance; it stops. It stops, so you can admire the artist’s gift. And whenever I think of this, I always think of Bernie Wrightson’s werewolf in the original run of Swamp Thing. That just sticks in mind. Everybody remem bers that, and it’s a great werewolf. And, God knows, there’s a lot of werewolves in comics; they’re a popular genre. By drawing each page out by hand, and proceeding, without an outline, like an inchworm from panel to panel, it forced me to think what happens next.

That’s the essential question in all fiction: the reader has to care what happens next or he won’t turn the page. It makes you think. How do I advance the story? How do I make it interesting? I proceed cautiously, although some times in a great hurry. Because back in those days, I was doing a great amount of drugs, a lot of cocaine. I’d snort a line of cocaine and rip through a story. I haven’t done that sh*t in years, not in decades, and I will never do it again. In fact, it gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. I’m glad I quit when I did.

I never outlined. I get an idea in my head and I have the story structure in my head. And, by that I mean, that a story is a dynamic narrative with a beginning, a middle,

and an end. And, by dynamic, I mean that the situation is often shifting—the hero is up, the hero is down. Because if the hero was perfectly satisfied with his life, he’s got an ideal life, and nothing goes wrong, what are you left with? Well, you can be left with a compelling narrative voice and beautiful use of language. But it’s gonna lack the excitement of the hero’s journey or struggle. Because in the best stories, the protagonist changes over the course of the story, to adapt to the challenges that face him as part of the hero’s journey.

There are more books on writing than any man can possibly read in his lifetime. And many of them are very good. But there’s really only one essential book on writing, and that’s Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, and it can be read in one hour. For those who want to write, I can’t recommend that book too highly. It’s nuts-and-bolts stuff. And it really helped me and helps everyone.”

How Baron Does It Now

My methods have changed over the years. Now I outline everything but a short story. If it’s going to be a comic book series, I outline it. If it’s a novel, I outline it. I always start with that outline. I start the outline by making notes in a legal pad. Anything having to do with the story, the protago nist’s appearance, his station in life, the civilization or lack of civilization in which he lives, changes that are being forced upon him.

Another thing about writing is how do you hold the reader’s interest? You use every trick in the book, and there is an infinite number of ways to hold that interest. I’ve kind of chopped that up into a few categories, which are, by no means, complete, but they’re an ex ample. And the first one is you create a compelling character. Somebody who is so fascinating people can’t wait to find out what he does next. And to me, the archetypal example is Sherlock Holmes, created in the 19th century. Today, he is bigger than ever. There are more Sherlock Holmes novels being published today than in Conan Doyle’s day. I bet most people don’t know that Kareem Abdul Jabbar has written three Mycroft Holmes novels.

I was in the bookstore the other day. I’m a huge fan of Robert Harris, who wrote Pompeii and a series on Cicero, and many other books have been made into movies, most recently his book,

Above:

Below:

Promotional portrait of writer Mike Baron created for his Florida Man graphic novel series, rendered by artist Todd Mulrooney (with a backdrop nod to Baron’s most famous creation, Nexus).

Cover for the first volume of Baron’s Biker prose novel series, published by Wolfpack Publishing.

An Afternoon with Comic Books’ Warrior of Words

Frank Plowright was correct to say that Donald Francis McGregor’s 1970s work deserved credit for the writer’s attempt to “inject a poetry into Marvel material…” And so too did Don imbue his characters and his stories with a depth of humanity not often encountered in comic books of that era, tales that also show cased the scribe’s rarefied cour age to challenge social norms. While common today, it was unprecedented for a mainstream writer of that time to include gay characters (in love, no less!), interracial romance, and even an all-Black cast in any American comic book. Before there was Alan Moore and prior to Neil Gaiman, there was Don McGregor (and, truth be told, there’s another writer often mentioned in the same breath, the late Steve Gerber).

Of course, many concepts and characters in Don’s storyline, “Panther’s Rage,” were promi nently used in the $1.3 billion blockbuster, Black , as much a cultural phenomenon in 2018 as it was a super-hero movie. I’d hardly be surprised if his Killraven or Sabre sagas became equally successful when their motion pictures are finally made.

On a personal note, I confess that I have great affection for Don and rank him among my favorite people. He is authentic, honest, sensitive, kind, and, best of all, an engaging and tremendously talented storyteller. This feature is long in coming, one that I promised Don years ago that we’d do together. So, after delays due to respective struggles with Covid-19 (both of our house holds are now fine), I traveled to Don’s small, unassuming abode, only 20 miles away, and we started chatting on his back porch.—JBC

Black Panther TM & © Marvel Characters,

Don

You know the fact that Penguin Random House put that in with the top three classic Marvel Comics se ries… If you had told any of the people in editorial between 1973 and ’76, they would have gone, “Are you out of your f*cking minds?! Wha— ? This is terrible! We hate this stuff!” Because there really were about three people in the business at the time that I can tell you liked those books. And that was Jim Salicrup, Dave Kraft, and John David Warner. They’re the only three that I can think of who actually were like, “Man, I love what you’re doing. I don’t know where it’s going. Every time I read a new book, it means something.” And they would actually have a passion or enthusi asm. One of the neat things is the fact that I managed to live long enough for these books to get rediscovered. And let’s face it, Jon, they’re 40 years old! They could have been negatively received…

And I was very fortunate that so many people who obviously were not even aware these books existed for four de cades, are now are experiencing them… Probably they weren’t regular comic readers and didn’t realize this kind of mate rial could exist in a super-hero comic, and have reacted so positively to it. So, for all of the endurance it took to do a “Panther’s Rage,” because that was two-and-a-half years of intensely creating it from my initial ideas into finished reality.

Think of it this way, Jon, as if you’re running a race, a marathon, and the finish line is an impossibly long ways away, and all that time you’re running, you have to keep blinders on so the finish line stays in focus, that your original intent on why you undertook to write this is not lost. It was a constant commitment not to be side-tracked from the reasons I saw in my head when I started it. Not letting voices positive or negative blur

what I hoped I could achieve when the last words written at the finish line. There’s a sense that you get to the other side and the books are being very positively reviewed and certainly remembered by the fans.

I don’t want to disregard in that time frame the people who were reading the books. Thank God they were there, Jon, because it was a very stand-alone position to be in, and there was a lot of negative reaction to it, especially with the race stuff. And even now, if I’m doing interviews with somebody like you, it’s kind of what to leave in and what to leave out… Because most people don’t want to be tainted with where they were at in 1973 to 1976.

On the other hand, it’s history. And be cause I was right in the midst of that writing about race and gender issues, that means they are certainly part of my personal con cerns. And there are things I had to contend with. This country often doesn’t like to face racism, or those people who were/are racist, but listen, there’s… The way you can define pop culture in any particular point in time is not so much what’s in pop culture, but was isn’t, what you don’t see. Because that’s the stuff they don’t want to handle… Most of the time, in my experience, it’s not said out loud: “You can’t do this, you can’t do that,” but it’s still understood. You don’t see it there beforehand.

I even understand where editorial often comes off. It’s like, “Well, why should we go into this area or that controversy.? It might cause complications for me.” I think, especially in that time frame, you had a lot of editors who were also writers and wanted to make their own impact in print… If there’s going to be a mark on the comics history, they wanted to make it. There was nothing in it for them to give that chance to you. Then it made it like you’re—and it should be as a writer—you’re standing alone, doing the best books you can do. That’s what I owe you, that’s what I owe the readers… and a writer owes it to them every time out. That doesn’t mean you always succeed, but…

Interview conducted by Jon B. Cooke • Transcribed by Tom Pairan

Comic Book Creator: What a prestigious appearance for your stories to come out along with Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man and Jack Kirby’s Captain America, there’s Don McGregor’s Black Panther!

McGregor:

Above: Penguin Books launched its Penguin Classics Marvel Collection with three compilations that included Black Panther, a testament to the groundbreaking work of Don McGregor. Previous spread: At top is Don posing for a Drag onflame promo ad, pastiching a classic National Lampoon cover. Below: Penguin Random House simultaneously released an elegant hardcover edition (with gold gilded page edges) and a trade paperback version of the Marvel books, as well.

CBC: That was one of the most appealing aspects of it. Getting your stories (chapters, really) issue by issue—you know, getting them bi-monthly—and recognizing the effort you put into it… The only comparable writer at the time who was doing anything akin to that was Steve Gerber…

Don: Yeah.

CBC: Steve Gerber was really pouring into the work some thing that was… I mean, maybe I think that was why your work appealed to me so much, and you personally appeal to me so much: it’s that you’re an artist. You’re not necessarily an editorial-type person.

Don: I’m not.

CBC: You’re not, “You should be drawing in a certain way.” You’re more connected to Rich Buckler and to Billy Graham… in spirit and creativity…than most writers and their assigned artists.

Don: I just put a bunch of stuff up online about Gene Col an, commemorating the loss. You know, I got really, really fortunate, Jon, to work with a lot of really terrific people. Rich Buckler cannot be understated in terms of what he got that I was able to do as a writer. Because Rich endorsed it and embraced it. Marvel editorial did not want Rich on “The Black Panther,” which just wasn’t an important enough character at that time for an artist of his caliber. And if you think I’m just saying that, he was appearing in Jungle Action! We had 13 pages an issue! So, understand as a storyteller, I was told, “You’re going to have 13 pages, every two months, to do a story about the Black Panther set in Wakanda.” That’s it! So, there were so many things to think about while I read all the books T’Challa appeared in because, in those days, you could read every single Black Panther appearance that there was. And I realized almost immediately that it was going to have to be a novel. Not because I was trying to break ground with it…

I know some people say that it is Marvel’s first graphic novel. Maybe it is. People like yourself would probably know better than me. The purpose of it was, I thought, “Well, I’ve got 13 pages and if every 13 pages for two months, I gotta invent a new villain.” I thought, “Well, after about three issues, people are going to go, ‘Well, T’Challa, you should have stayed back in America teaching school in Harlem.’” How dumb was that? So I thought, “It’s gotta be connected. If it’s not connected, it’s not gonna work.” And that’s when I started working on the themes of what the book would be about, but I also realized that you’re going to be off the stands for two months. So, as I was devel oping the characters, I realized if you wrote a character out for one issue, that’s four months that the readers don’t see that character. Write them out for two issues, that’s half-a-year. It’s too long of a time, Jon, to ask the audience to get emotionally invested in these characters. So I was very conscious at the time, thinking, “This needs to be here.” I remember when Craig [Russell] first took over doing “Killraven”…

“Killraven” was another where you had a multiple cast of characters, and I said to Craig, “Every character has to have a moment because, if you don’t…” In the first issue Craig drew, I needed to have Old Skull in there and I actu ally drew my Old Skull and I think Jack Abel inked it… But I needed to have this character in there, because I realized I wanted readers to be invested in that character and I couldn’t have him offstage for that long of time. So that was part of the consideration, but I did have to promise Craig— when Craig realized I would kill characters—he said, “You gotta promise me you won’t kill Old Skull.” And I said, “I don’t have any plans to do so right now, Craig.”

CBC: What was it, three years you were working on “Panther’s Rage”?

Don: “Panther’s Rage” ran for two-and-a-half years.

CBC: Forty-four years later, those stories changed Ameri can culture, Don… I gotta know: what was the experience of first seeing the movie? How were you treated at the premiere? Was your work up there on screen?

Don: They sent us to the premiere. Listen, I developed Ra monda [played by Angela Bassett], she’s my character, and she’s obviously going to be prominent in the new film [Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the world premiere of which Don has been invited to attend after we go to press].

It was a great time! Going to the film, to the premiere, and being there… I was sitting with Christopher Priest, whom I had never met until that time. Well, truthfully, I gotta tell you this story, because the storyteller in you would love this story: As you know, I have a heart condition—and whether it was because I was just doing so much stuff that day, more than I would obviously be doing in a typical day… This thing with T’Challa, going into the astral plane and you know he’s dying and everything… I start getting really severe chest pains and I’m bent over… I’m trying to lean into it and I don’t want to be obvious, because I’m surrounded by com

ics people, and I’m thinking, “This is a scene where they are talking to T’Challa from the other world… This is going to be something if I die here!” I can see the headline: “Comic Book Legend Dies During His Character’s Death Scene.” [laughter] People would start to talk, “Did you hear about Don McGregor? Did McGregor really die when he was watching the Black Panther die in the movie?” [laughter] It eventually passed and I was okay. CBC: Thank heavens!

Don: And, at the end of it, Christopher Priest said to me, “You know Don, that’s your Black Panther. You belong down there [sitting with the film’s stars and director]. You don’t belong up here with us peons. You belong down there.” I said, “You don’t understand, Christopher. I’d rather be up here with you guys.” But the fact that a man of Christopher Priest’s talents and such would feel that way… That’s one of the things that stays the most with me. That was a great moment. Those are the kind of things I think as a storyteller to have another really good storyteller tell you that.

You know, the fact that Dwayne McDuffie… Dwayne McDuffie writing… [pauses] I don’t know if you’ve read his “Panther’s Rage” essay [“Our Heroes: African-American Artists and Images in the American Comic Book,” Black Ink: African American Cartoonists Showcase, 1992, exhibit catalog, published by the Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco], but the first time I’ve ever read it… He wrote a shorter version of it… When I was doing the [Marvel Masterworks: The Black Panther Vol. 1, 2010], I asked if that it would be possible to use it in the Masterworks. Dwayne said, “Yeah, but I gotta rewrite it.” And I said, “No, it’s fine.” And he said, “No, I wrote about other writers…” And I said, “Dwayne, it’s fine the way it is.” “I’ll let you do it, Don, but you gotta let me rewrite it.” So I had not read what he wrote until the book came out. And the book came out the day my daughter, Lauren, was coming into Penn Station with her family. So normally I wouldn’t be going into Manhattan, but I stopped by the comic book store on 40th Street. And the book is in, but it’s wrapped in plastic. It’s all encased. So I was the author, but I have to buy my own book! And I’m walking down toward Penn Station reading Dwayne McDuffie’s afterword and I started to cry, because Dwayne was so special to me. [long pause]

Those stories meant so much to him and to his life… That was important to me… I felt like I had a positive impact for some people. As a storyteller, I think that’s part of what you hope you can achieve, but it’s in the hands of the gods until it gets out there and to the individual people who are going to respond.

CBC: I just think it was integral to my development in my teen years, really that you infused stories with a humanity not found in many comics. As you say, you were working long form, so there was serious story development, even if the chapters were short. As I’ve told you repeatedly, Don, I had a pile of well-read Jungle Action issues (still do!) and I would loan them out to classmates: “Please, just read them! Read them!” Taking them all in in one fell swoop, it’s a heck of an experience… You gotta stay up all night to read them, of course. To have the revelation that, in my hobby, in my obsession, in my world of comics, there was somebody like this who felt like me… You’re a remarkably perceptive writer able to convey tenderness, nuances of emotion, of love, and quiet moments, as well as rage and vengeance… It transcended genre. (I’m going on too long here…) Don: Part of it was, Jon, when I got to New York, working on staff at Marvel—and this is naivete on my part—I really believed that the Marvel Bullpen would be like it was in the Marvel Bullpen Bulletin pages. And, you know, often times it was just like so many other places…. There were power plays like in any office environment. You could be stabbed in the back if you weren’t there to protect yourself. Especially if it was going to achieve someone getting one place to another higher position. A lot of writers saying, “I am trying to get a book with better sales,” or, if a book was dropping

in sales, getting off that book… I wouldn’t even know what the sales figures were, Jon.

The only thing I am interested in is one thing: what is the next line? What is the next panel? What is the next page? What is the next book? You have to maintain that vision, that energy, that passion for it—like with the “Panther’s Rage,” that’s two-and-a-half years—and it doesn’t matter whether it’s accepted, hated, whatever, that you’re going to keep those blinders on until you get to the end, and maybe it’s somewhere close to what you hoped it would be in your head when you were trying to put it together.

CBC: What was the difference between doing that and novels? You had written novels before, right? What’s the difference? Is there any?

Don: Novels are easier. Screenplays are easier. I’ve done them both, and I’ve got to write and direct a film. And I had total say on whatever I wanted to do! How many people get to do that, Jon? Seriously. But they’re easier. But the reaction is from the outside world—back in those earlier days—it’s changed now with super-hero movies and comic book movies becoming so big in the pop culture, but if you go back to the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, before all this becomes big business, comics are thought of second rate by a lot of people. And certainly even by writers in the business.

One thing I can tell you, Jon, and touching on something you said earlier, is comics were never second rate to me. I always thought they were a great medium. I loved it. And

Above: Cover of the trade paperback edition of the Black Panther Penguin Classics Marvel Collection. Below: Late actor Chadwick Boseman, who expertly personified T’Challa of Wakanda, seen here reading the Jungle Action issues by Don McGregor, much of which influenced the 2018 hit film.

Above: Don telling actor Chadwick Boseman at the 2017 Comic-Con in San Diego that his portrayal of Black Panther “captured the way I always heard and felt him in my head.”

Below: It is difficult to imagine that the Black Panther film, currently ranked as the 14th highest-grossing movie of all time, would have been made if not for Don’s “Panther’s Rage” [1973–75] featuring an all-black cast, set in an independent, technologically superior African nation, with one of the great vil lains of fiction, Killmonger. Here is Rich’s niece, Natasha (left), and Marsha and Don McGregor at the world premiere, in 2018.

when you get to something that’s close to what you saw and you had a talented artist bring their talent to it. And so, it’s not just Billy Graham and Rich Buckler and Craig Russell, and Gene Colan and Marshall Rogers, and Dwayne Turner and Tom Yeates, and Mike Mayhew—and I know I am leav ing people out who shouldn’t be left out—but to see them bring that stuff to life and make it real and care as much as I did… Those people will become my lifelong friends forever. And I will never forget to mention them. And that’s why… like today, I knew I had to do this thing with you, but it was like, this memorial to Gene Colan and I need to be up there, and his daughter and his son need to know that I have not forgotten. I convinced [Rich’s wife] Mila [Buckler] to go to The Black Panther premiere. She wasn’t going to go. I said, “Rich would want you to go, so you could be with me and watch it. So, come on.” She was. She was with Marsha and me…

CBC: You know, Rhode Island is a little bit of a backwater in its own way. It’s between Boston and New York. It can be parochial. It’s a very Catholic state.

Don: Where I grew up from very early, until I was eight, was predominantly Italian and Portuguese. In my head, I thought it was more Italian. But I realize now they had the big Por tuguese Day Picnic on the parade grounds down there. So, I guess it must have been Portuguese. I think we were the only WASP family in that neighborhood. There was a big difference. I went to a Catholic kindergarten. The Catholic Church was the only one that had a kinder garten. The public schools did not have a kindergarten back in 1950 or ’51, I guess.

CBC: What’s your ethnic background, Don?

Don: With a name like Mc Gregor, you obviously have to have… I don’t think you can avoid being Scottish in some ways… The Highlands just call to me. When I was there… [long pause] I can’t explain it, but there’s just something there.

CBC: You connected to Scotland.

Don: But I always have. My grandfather comes from Swit zerland. Back when I was first with Marsha… I got invited to be the guest of honor at a big London comic convention. And this was in the early days of when they were doing… because this would be in ’78, and I didn’t realize what an honor it was because I was the first American writer they would bring over as their guest of honor and at first I refused to go because Marsha was pregnant with our son. (There’s a reason for bringing this in. It all ties in.) When I got there for the convention—and the people of England have always been profoundly nice to me. I think maybe they loved the books, even more than my home state. So that was very pleasant. And then fans from England and Scotland put Marsha and I up… And, at one point, you know, being asked questions, somebody said, “What are you going to name the baby when the baby’s born?” I said, “Well, you know, if it’s a boy, it’s either Rob Roy or Shane (after the movie)…”

My mom had given us money to go to Switzerland to visit my grandfather. He gave us money to go to have a night in Paris, where we were locked up in the Paris Metro at midnight (but that’s another story). Marsha and I were eating at a sidewalk café, and I remember saying to her, “Welcome to life with a comic book writer. We’re eating at a Paris bistro and have no idea how to pay the rent when we get back home.”

Back in England, because we had to come back to the States from England where the comic con had made the reservations, we were on the plane, our luggage aboard, taxiing out to take-off, and the plane stopped. A jeep lunged up and the pilot said we had to get off to have Marsha checked because she was pregnant. I told them we had permission from the midwife, who would deliver the baby, and tell me that the baby will be born flat as a pancake if we take off. But other than that, she let us go home, our luggage is here and we have, maybe, $50 to our name. They swear they won’t take off, and they make us get in the jeep. And, of course, they lied. The plane immediately takes off. Nuns in Heathrow in their medical room told Marsha she was going to have to give birth to Rob in England. (And then they were surprised when her blood-pressure was high.)

For a week, the comic convention organizers tried to convince the airlines to let us go, but after more than one suspenseful possibility and another, nothing worked until… What happens is the people running the comic book con vention go and tell the airlines they are going to go to the media and tell them they are holding us… They threatened to go to the media, saying, “If you don’t let them go home, you are keeping an American comic writer hostage in London, forcing him to have his baby here.” Once they were threatening to do that, suddenly the thing came through that we could go and we had to rush. I remember his driving and, man, on those narrow country roads… I thought, “Maybe we’re just going to die here.” [laughs] Wow, then we got there and took off and we were able to come back and Rob was born in Brooklyn. That, in itself, is another story… I don’t know how many stories you want… [laughs]

CBC: So, what was the connection with Rhode Island? How did your family end up in Rhode Island?

Don: I know my grandfather… I told you he was from Switzerland…

CBC: Did you use that little episode in Killraven, I think it was? Did you have an older woman who was hitting on him influenced by your grandfather’s plight?

Don: Oh, yeah, that was in the graphic novel.

CBC: Was that related at all?

Don: No. I mean, it was unique.

CBC: Cougars is what they’re called, Don.

Don: [Then DC publisher] Jenette Kahn thought I was writing about her. But I wasn’t. It was a story I had planned in the initial plotlines I had… I just had plotlines. One was going to be kind of like a Phantom of the Opera set

Black Panther TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Photos courtesy of Don McGregor.

probably wouldn’t have had the chance—and, one night, Alex says, “Come on Don, we’re going to go see Hopalong Cassidy.” This is in early 1970s. “How are we going to do that?” “Come on!” We go down to the Port Authority and there was a secret cinema there, when you went down 40th Street, right across from a rehab center, where the transsexuals did their hooker work underneath the Port Authority bus ramps, where the bus is coming down, there were some steps. If you went down the steps and knocked on the door, and the people came and recognized you— you need to have someone verify for them that you’re alright—and there’s a movie theatre in there. And all they showed was B movies.

So we’re watching this Hopalong Cassidy movie and everything I loved about William Boyd was still there and still in me. And I said, “How did they get this film?” Alex said, “I don’t really know, but I suppose we could go ask.” The guy said, “That film is up for sale, by the way: $60.” I ask [animated], “How much money do you got on you, Alex?” I didn’t even have a projector, but I got myself a 16 mm print of a 1930s Hopalong Cassidy movie! And I was really excited and thrilled by it. That was great!

Then I got to be friends with the guy who owned the movie theatre and, at one point, he asked me, “What do you like?” “I really love to get some I Spy episodes.” So Joe says to me, “Come up to the Bronx, come up to the grand concourse, on the 200 block. I’ll meet you there Sunday afternoon, 3:00, and I’ll have an I Spy for you.” So I go up there and meet Joe and he had great films. We’d go watch them, then we’d go to the West Side Diner, and I’d be coming home at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, check out the porn stores on 42nd Street, I was heading up toward the train… I know you once said, “Don, weren’t you afraid people would see you at the porn stores?” Porn made the internet! It makes billions and billions of dollars! Everybody denies they look at it… but, come on! Stop the charade! [Jon laughs] But Joe told me, “You know that day I met you up in the Bronx?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I was afraid you were an FBI undercover agent and you were going to arrest me.” I said, “Seriously, Joe? You thought I was an FBI guy?” It’s like you thinking I would be a Trump fan! [chuckles]

CBC: Oh, come on, I didn’t think that, Don. But let’s move on from that, okay? This may reveal my white privilege, but when I was a kid, skin color simply did not register with me. We had a Black babysitter, but I only realized after the assassina tion of Martin Luther King, Jr., that she was Black, when I asked my mom what the subsequent riots were all about.

Don: I asked Alex recently about when we first met, “Did you think of me as white?” I don’t think either one of us thought in those terms… I was just Don. He was Alex. For me, coming from Rhode Island, that fact that I was now talking with somebody who could talk at length and in depth about the same things that I loved… I didn’t have a lot in common with anyone I knew here… You aren’t going to find a lot of comics lovers with whom you can talk about comics or even TV shows or…

Obviously, I am profoundly influenced by a number of writers. And maybe part of it again, Evan Hunter as Ed McBain and his 87th Precinct books, and in 1955, he’s got the first Black policeman [in detective fiction], because he’s writing about big city police force. It’s Manhattan, though he gave the city a fake name. Evan told me, “The only

reason I ever gave it a fictional name, Don, was that the laws in the city kept changing, so that by the time I had a book come out, people would nitpick and say, “Oh, that law doesn’t exist anymore!” So, by making it a fictional place, that law could still exist. But it’s all Manhattan, it’s all the five boroughs of New York City… He did a book called See Them Die, which is about two people dying on a street city in Spanish Harlem.

I remember Dean Mullaney telling me the first time he read that book he said, “My goodness, this book knocked Don all over the place.” And it did. My mom said to me at one point, she said, “I never saw you as somebody living in New York City. You didn’t even care about going to Arc tic…” Arctic [a small, urbanized neighborhood in the center of West Warwick, a Rhode Island town] is about a mile from here…

Above: Sabre, Don McGregor and artist Paul Gulacy’s booklength adventure saga set in a post-apocalyptic America, was not only among the first graphic novels, it was the very first of its kind sold in the direct market, as well as the inaugural production that launched Eclipse Comics, in 1978. The artist was in top form for the bravura effort, as evidenced by this exquisitely rendered page sporting Paul’s pencils and inks.

CBC: Yeah, I know Arctic. I edited a daily newspaper feature section near there, at The Kent County Daily Times, in the mid-’00s.

Don: So, she said, “You didn’t care about it one way or another, and then you end up in New York City.” But I knew New York City because of Evan Hunter. He was the great New York City writer. [of the 87th Precinct police procedural novel series]. The first line of his book, The Mugger [1956]: “The city could be nothing, but a woman…” And then he does a treatise on why the city’s like a woman. To this day, I mean, I can’t quote the entire thing to you, but that’s one piece of writing, “Wow! It’s great.” See Them Die… There’s one point where he just stops the book, and he goes like, “All these things could happen to people on the street. If you’re God, you know, you can do this. You can make this happen. You can make that happen.” And then he goes, “But that’s not the way it happened.” And then he describes what happens in the real world.

But, yeah, 1955: [screenwriter/TV producer] Stirling Silliphant taught me, I believe. One of the things I got from [Silliphant’s TV drama] Route 66 was you can try every time out. That doesn’t mean you always connect and make a

home run, but every time he was swinging, he’d knock it out into the bleachers if he could. You never know when that’s gonna be the last story you get to write, the last story you get to tell. And you owe the readers, you owe the people everything you’ve got. That doesn’t mean everyone’s gonna love what you do. There’s gonna be people who hate what you do. That can’t be the reason you’re doing it. I can’t do it for money and I can’t do it just…. It’s gotta be, “What’s this story about? And what do I hope I’m putting out in the world?”

CBC: You know what one of my favorite things to recog nize in particular endeavor? It’s earnestness, which doesn’t necessarily mean a work is good, but there’s something laudable in an earnest effort that it tries to be meaningful. If an artist really tries hard and has a certain vision, even if it might be totally flawed, but comes from the heart… Its earnest energy can appeal to me. Does being earnest mean something to you?

Don: I don’t actually know how to answer that, Jon. Obviously I’m not…

CBC: Believing in your characters and story with an hon est fervor… Believing in the story that you’re going to… Don: I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought of it that way. What I’m thinking about is, “What makes this scene work?” Especially in longer form works. My hope is that we’re gonna finally get to restore Billy Graham’s Sabre or the second series… because the first series almost didn’t get printed. And again, going off on my own, I didn’t think it was going to be a problem dealing with race and sex. But, the very fact that you had a black-&-white couple, prom inently displayed as the main characters of the piece… There was a point where the artist refused to finish the book, six pages from the end of it. And, in fact, I could show you the… [indicates storage container in driveway] I think the calendar’s out in that cube somewhere… I still have the Marvel Comics calendar from that time period and I have a note on there that the artist is going to make Sabre white. It wasn’t that Sabre and Melissa couldn’t have sex; they didn’t want her pregnant. It’s my book, it’s my script, I’m not changing it. If we’re going to do that, I will stay with Marvel Comics. I will put up with their grief, but that held up the book for months, and I mean months and months. You still got to stay alive economically. It was a bitch. It was hard. And if you look at the book, if you think I’m just telling you a story, go look at the indicia page and it has this thing. Dean Mullaney had to resolve it… I just kept saying, “I’m not changing it.” So I’m doing this book. And the others wanted Dean to put a statement saying, “The opinions of this book are not the artist’s or the publisher’s, it’s just the writer.”

CBC: A disclaimer.

Don: The same disclaimer that’s on so many DVDs now… I don’t know if it appears in later editions, but, probably in the first couple editions, it’s there. Of course, Dean didn’t have a problem with my story. He’s the one who’s paying for it! The thing that got me was I was the only one who hadn’t been paid for it. I think I took $300 or $400 upfront to pay the rent, but I thought the book was going to be coming out, whereas everybody else was getting paid above the page rate… the artist was getting his artwork back… These were unheard of things in 1976, ’77, I guess it was. So, when we were going to do the second series, I knew I was going to have gay characters in there. I had gay characters set up in “Panther’s Rage,” with Taku and Venomm. But that would have been my last book.

I managed to get the interracial thing [in the “Killraven” series, Amazing Adventures #31, July 1975] through, but… and that was by just getting the readers to demand: “We need to let these characters get together.” I coulda gone to Stan [Lee]. Stan was right up the hall. If I cut editorial out and went to Stan to get the okay, because I knew how to approach Stan on that kinda thing. But then that means that’s like total war with editorial. So then you have to go to editorial and say, “I want to have a meeting with Stan

Don McGregor.

Above: Eclipse house ad pro moting Sabre, a daring series [1982–85] that stirred contro versy. Below: Don receives a lifetime achievement award at Madrid Hero con in Spain, 2018. Photo by George Pratt.

This page: Ye Ed’s pic of Don showing a book spread taken in Sept. 2022. Inset right is Luigi Novi snapshot of Don, 2015. Below, from Black Panther An nual #1 [Apr. 2018], “Panther’s Heart” splash page, written by Don and art by Daniel Acuña.

you can still get it! That’s the great thing. I don’t know how much the pandemic may have altered that, although I’m sure it has, to some extent. Those are the kinds of things I miss about New York.

CBC: Do you get a taste of culture here at all?

Don: Yeah, we go to plays. Marsha did a couple of roles here at the Gamm Theatre, where the Greenwood Inn is. She’s done some stuff there, but that was before the pandemic hit. I’d been invited over to England to do a convention, which was great. I met a lot of nice people over there. At the same time, I had been invited to do the convention in Spain. George Pratt was at the one in Spain, so, I got to meet George again, because we hadn’t seen each other in years. That just added to it. At one point, Marsha had gotten sick while we were there, and she stayed in the hotel room and I went out to do… they wanted me to do some kind of panel. In Spain, I didn’t see a comic until the second or third day that we were there. Everything’s in separate, huge buildings. I used to show films or videos or do stage shows or whatever. And another place would be for entertaining. Every time you were going from one event to another, you’d have to hike across these huge plazas, and it was really hot out. I remember saying, “You need to slow it down, guys, or I’m going to be face

down here.” And I’m doing this stage show and they called me off in the middle of it. And first I thought, “Am I that bad that I’m getting the hook halfway through?” And then I thought, “Maybe it’s Marsha, because she’s sick back in the hotel room.” Someone says to me, “You’ve got to go present an award, Don. The award show is going on now. There’s some kind of comics award show. I said, “I don’t speak Spanish! How am I going to present an award?” So we hike across the plaza and I meet the head guy. He’s very nice, but I said, “What am I supposed to do?” And he said, “I’ll never tell.” So we’re sitting down in the front and people are getting their award. Most of the awards… the statues are up on the stage, on a table. And they’re down to, like, three awards. And I remember turning to Dave and I’m like, “If I’m getting an award here, you better videotape this…” And, sure enough, they gave me a lifetime achievement award and it was a total surprise! I hadn’t expected it. And there’s something about, again, when you go around the globe you’re in different places and people recognize who you are… Again, the kid from Rhode Island….

CBC: You contributed within the last few years to a Black Panther Annual [#1, Apr. 2018], correct?

Don: Yes. I turned it down to begin with. But then I think I wrote something about, because people were asking about it. They had asked me, but I first turned it down.

CBC: Why’d you turn it down?

Don: The reason my feeling was I don’t want to come back to the characters after such a long time with just eight pages. My feeling is whatever I do has to have a connec tion with my entire body of work… I’m not interested in just coming back just to get my name on a story again.

But then I had this idea. They hadn’t done anything with Monica, so I thought, “I know what I want to do. This would be a story for my readers. It would mean something to them. It’s not just to come back.” And, at the same time, they said they would let me dedicate it to Rich and Billy… because I needed all the reasons in the world to come back and do this. So that’s how I ended up doing the story and thank God I got a really good artist on it. And people seemed to like it and enjoy it, so that was fine.

CBC: In the last bunch of years, what have you been doing for writing?

Don: Trying to stay alive. laughs] I don’t know, Jon. It depends. It just depends on what’s going on. Right now, in fact before, yesterday I managed to get the artwork for the second Zorro book that’s only eight months late (and not because of me). The script was written long ago. I’ve never even met the people doing it. They did a Kickstarter for it and the first book came out, but somehow, I gave them a 28-page script somehow and they only did a 18-page story…? So the story got cut off. And, as you probably know, Jon, I time everything.

There’s one thing that I hope is clear in this interview is nothing happens just by chance. A lot of it stays very organic because I change things as I get up to it if I think something makes it better. On the other hand, it’s pretty much planned for what the format is. And, I’m well aware of the format or I don’t know what to do it until I know what the format is, because I have to think about the structure for that story.

Ending at 18 pages was nothing I was thrilled about. Be cause there was a reason I ended it at 28 pages… and I felt it now suffered from what I see in a lot of comics. People pay $4 for a comic and they can read it in five minutes, and there’s hardly anything there, so why come back? They’re

Don McGregor portrait © Luigi Novi/Wikimedia Commons. Black Panther TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The author of all of “Panther’s Rage” corrects a false narrative

Commentary by DON McGREGOR

Sadly, you may have read the claim I print below.

Sadly, I have to write these words and state that this statement is not true.

There are a number of convention panels on the Black Panther following the success of the first film. This claim is printed as a part of the individual cast history: Mr. —, who was friends with Mr. McGregor, got to be a peripheral part of the creative process, discussing story ideas with the writer and creative designs. This not true.

I never told anyone, including the artists, Rich Buckler or Billy Graham, any future ideas for stories. They knew the present book they were drawing. I did not even tell people that “Panther’s Rage” was going to be a serial.

While I often discussed page designs that were in my head with both Rich and Billy (and many of them were used), I did not seek and never used page designs even with the closest of my friends.

And I especially never sought, nor had, any story ideas from anyone other than myself when creating those books.

I learned early on that if I talked about what I intended to do and it got out to editorial, much of what is in the series would not have been allowed.

I know all the decisions I made that dictated for me what the approach to doing the series would be. Initially it was to be 10 chapters, but the story grew as I was writing it. Despite knowing the themes I hoped to present within each single issue, I always tried to keep in mind the major themes I hoped to accomplish with the series.

I did not discuss my idea with anyone, including the person that this piece says did.

I don’t want credit for anything I did not do.

But I am damned if, at this point in my life, I will quietly go into the good night, and I will fight for my work.

The person felt my writing about this “wounded” them, that he was misquoted by a reporter. I’m not sure an independent reporter would be so familiar with specific comic terminology, but even if somehow that could be true, the person never went and told people, “This is not true. I did not have anything to do with the ‘creative process’ of ‘Panther’s Rage.’”

I have always given credit to the people who have worked with me, which is why many of my closest friends are a high percentage of the artists I worked with.

I will always make sure to write about Rich Buckler and Billy Graham and Gene Colan, and their loved ones know that, because I always talk about them.

There is, for me, a sense of déjà vu about this. Every once in a while, a meme will appear stating that Jack Kirby did the “Panther vs. the Klan” storyline. That is not true.

I know Jack would never want credit for what he did not do.

When Billy Graham got my first script for “Panther vs. the Klan,” he called me, concerned, to make sure I really wanted to do this, because as he said, he lived in Harlem and the Klan would not come for him, but I was out in Flush ing, Queens, at the time. I wrote the stories.

I am thankful for the people who came forward across the world to correct this false narrative.

And thus, I feel I need to make sure that it is clear that all the storytelling ideas and execution for “Panther’s Rage” came from me.

No one else.

I had no clue at the beginning of the day I would feel the need to write this letter.

Above: Billy Graham’s pencil art for the splash page of the “Black Panther” feature in Jungle Action #10 [July 1974]. In 2000, Don inscribed the art thusly: “To Sam—I miss Billy Graham so much!”

Don McGregor and Rich Buckler’s 2016 Con Panel

Below: The original Rich Buck ler (pencils) and Frank Giacoia (inks) cover art for the very first installment of writer Don Mc Gregor’s epic “Panther’s Rage” serial in Jungle Action [#6–18, Sept. ’73–Nov. ’75] (recently de scribed the 13-part serial as “an adventure so huge, it ranged across the savannah, into the deepest jungles, and over snow-capped mountains.”) The 2018 movie adapted numerous elements from the saga.

by JON B. COOKE

[On April 16, 2016, a discussion panel took place with writer Don McGregor and artist Rich Buckler (who passed away in the following year) about their collaborations—and more!—at the East Coast ComiCon held in the Meadow lands Exposition Center, in Secaucus, New Jersey.

Thanks to con organizer Cliff Galbraith for assigning me as moderator and to Greg Biga for a timely transcript assist.

After introducing Rich to much applause, before I remember to turn on the audio recorder, our conversation starts with him answering a question posed about notable peers who established professional careers in comics at the same time as the artist entered the field.—Ye Ed.]

Rich Buckler: There were lots of notable fans, but that’s how I met Dick Giordano, Neal Adams, Al Williamson, and just a host of people.

Comic Book Creator: And you were friends with other young aspiring artists, as well…?

Rich: Yes, of course. That was my network… Arvell Jones, Keith Pollard…In Detroit, we didn’t all know each other, but there was something going on in Detroit. Maybe it was something to do with the water. [chuckles] I don’t know exactly, but there was high creative energy that had much to do with comics.

CBC: And the fanzine scene: were you involved in that?

Rich: I was publishing fanzines since I was 16. I did Super Hero fanzine [#4–6, 1966–68], a name I should have thought to trademark. [chuckles] That would have been real smart. [chuckles] And I did Intrigue [#1–2, 1966], which was a companion to Super Hero, and it featured my amateur com ics and the amateur work of other up-and-coming comics creators, some who became pros, but most did not.

CBC: So your aspirations really from early on were to be a professional comic book artist?

Rich: And also that I believed in the maxim, “publish or perish.” So I was determined to be published. And nobody was hardly offering jobs, though [pioneer comics fan and fanzine editor] Jerry Bails gave me my first professional assignment. I did a wraparound cover for him for one of his fanzines, featuring Golden Age characters. And Jerry kind of mentored me, so I was involved in the publishing early on. My main motivation at first was to publish myself, but then I just had this great network with all these great friends… Alan Weiss in Las Vegas… just people all over. Back then, there was no internet, so it was telephone and writing letters. And, actually, that’s how all this got started, okay? Who knew it was going to grow into this!

CBC: So you would mail out the fanzines to other publish ers…?

Rich: I was everything! I was a one-man operation, I ad dressed them, I went to the post office, and I mailed them.

CBC: But the network was trading fanzines…

Rich: Nobody was making money off of it. Everybody was doing it for the love of comics.

CBC: [Addressing the audience] This is Don McGregor. Let’s hear it for Don. [applause] Don, let’s talk about your early years. What got you interested in the comic books?

Don McGregor: Hopalong Cassidy. I loved Hoppy and he was a major star in cowboy Westerns in the 1950s. And the first time I got an allowance, I got a dime, and I was six-years-old, and I had to buy the Hopalong Cassidy comic book. In 1950–51, you know, William Boyd [the actor playing Hoppy] was just as big as Star Wars. When his newspaper comic strip started, in The Daily News, [Boyd made a New York City public appearance] in February, and a quarter of a million people lined 42nd Street, and he was shaking hands from 9:00 in the morning until after midnight.

So I had to have that Hopalong Cassidy comic book, I had my dime, and I got it! I came home and my father goes, “What is this? What did you do with your allowance?”

[enthusiastic] “I got this comic book, Dad! It’s great!” And then he said, “Well, that’s terrible! You just spent your whole allowance!” [Rich chuckles] There must have been a new issue out the next week, and I gotta have that Hopalong Cassidy comic! And so, when my dad came home, he said, “Well, what did you get with your allowance this week?”

Jungle Action Black Panther TM & © Marvel Characters,

Moderated

“I got another one Hopalong Cassidy comic!” And my dad said, “Well, that’s the end of your allowance for a while!” [laughter] I used to tease my dad when we got older and say, “I’m writing comics for a living, Dad. What you going to do now?”

CBC: Besides writing letters for DC and Marvel letters columns, were you involved in early fandom?

Don: Not while I was up in Rhode Island. I did advertise the first Detectives, Inc., probably in 1969, but I don’t know how I knew about [fanzine/adzine] Rocket’s Blast/Comicol lector, but there’s a full page ad in one of them for Detec tives, Inc.

Rich: I did work for RB/CC. That was the place to be. [to Don] I thought you were in touch with everybody, but I didn’t know about you though. Not then.

CBC: But you were a prominent name in the letter col umns, right?

Don: Yeah. The thing I didn’t really understand about the letter columns… I had gone to a convention—and this is before I was writing professionally—just as a fan… (Oh, I got a great Sinnott story I want to tell! I wish Joe were here! Anyhow, I’ll save it…) and I met Steranko—and I love Steranko’s work! And, you know, I’m in the letters pages of almost every one of those “SHIELD” [Strange Tales] issues. I just loved what he was doing. And so I came up to Jim’s table—people were around Steranko getting autographs— and I had his [ bound in hardcover…

CBC:

Don: Yeah, I had them leather-bound. I was pretty serious about the stuff I loved. I just loved it dearly. And I went up to Jim to get it signed, and he said, “You’re Don McGregor?” And I’m thinking, “How does Jim Steranko know who the hell I am?” Well, what I didn’t realize was—and you could bet your boots on this—that, in those days, the writers and the editors read the letters, the artists read them. So, one thing for sure was that everybody saw the letters. And you didn’t have to, you know, kiss ass; you could write anything you wanted it. But they would see all of our letters, though the letters might not all get published. And Jim said, “I’m gonna give you my room number, so come on up tonight, and we’ll get together.” And that’s where I first met Alex Simmons. And Jim did magic tricks that night and we get to be really good friends.

CBC: [To audience] If you get a chance to look at the Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Omnibus, they include the letter pag es in there, and you’ll just see how often Don is in there. [to Don] When did you determine you wanted to be a writer?

Don: I was writing at six-, seven-, eight-years-old.

CBC: Did you ever see it as a viable way to make money?

Don: I would never have spent the time I did on those books if it was all about making money. It was love… From the earliest memories I have, I loved having a story told to me or telling a story. And that was a big motivator. I mean, I was living the stuff that I saw on television, the movies, read in comics, read in books… that was as real to me as the real world that I was actually living in, and I was doing everything I possibly could to make that real. And some of the things were very crazy, and my mom had a real right to worry. Because I was trying to act out like the Republic serials, you know! I’d lay down in the middle of Main Street and a car drive over me! And it didn’t work. It just hit me right in the head. That probably explains a lot. [laughter]

CBC: Rich: how and when did you break into the busi ness? You’re in Detroit and the industry is in New York. Rich: While I was still living in Detroit, I went on one of my many trips to New York to try to get work. So, lots of times, I was turned down. The last trip I went on, I visited DC Comics, and Dick Giordano showed my work around—they always had this process anyway: you don’t go and talk to anybody; somebody goes and talks about you and shows your work to others. They represent you.

So Dick showed the work around to the editors, and came back to me, and he said, “We don’t have anything for

you.” And I couldn’t believe it. Then I thought, “Well, the whole trip was a waste.” And I’m standing there… I think I just didn’t move for five minutes or so. And Neal Adams was sitting in the same office—I visited him earlier—and he was drawing his pages. He must have noticed I was near tears. And he said, “You know what, Rich? Give me a moment, okay? Don’t go away.” And he went and talked to Dick, and he came back with Dick, and they both said, “There might be something for you.” And Dick went and got Murray Boltinoff, an editor whose name probably nobody recognizes… [notices Jon shaking his head] Well, of course you do; that’s your job! [laughter] Murray was very skeptical, but Neal said, “I’ll ink it.” So they gave me the story, which was a script by Marv Wolfman. Marv Wolfman and Len Wein were always hanging around DC Comics. I wondered, “Who the hell are they?” These were kids that would do anything. They got coffee, they would shine your shoes… they would do whatever just to be there and be in the environment, and break into the business. Well, apparently that was a breakthrough for Marv, too. So that was my first job. It was called, “The Sym bionts” [House of Secrets #90, Feb.–Mar. 1971]. I took the assignment, went home, drew it, sent it in, and everything was great. Except for one thing, there was no more work. I couldn’t believe it. (By the way, it took Neal about two-and-

This page: The year before his passing, artist Rich Buckler shared comic convention panels with lifelong pal and sometime collaborator Don McGregor. Above is the two with Ye Ed and cosplayer Bill Johnson at the 2016 East Coast ComiCon. Below is Jungle Ac tion #14 cover referred to in the discussion here. Bottom is the creative team and their respec tive partners, Mila Buckler, and Marsha McGregor at the same comic book convention.

Above

Gaiman’s

“Jack in the Green” Swamp Thing tale drawn by SRB and Totleben. This is SRB’s last job for DC.

McKean cover, Midnight Days where the story appeared.