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No. 3, Fall 2013

The New Voice of the Comics Medium

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No. 3, Fall 2013

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A Tw o M o r r o w s P u b l i c a t i o n

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #3 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #4

NEAL ADAMS vigorously responds to critics of his BATMAN: ODYSSEY mini-series in an in-depth interview! Plus: SEAN HOWE on his hit book MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY; MARK WAID interview, part one; Harbinger writer JOSHUA DYSART; Part Two of our LES DANIELS remembrance; a new ADAMS cover, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Now shipping!

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RUSS HEATH career-spanning interview, essay on Heath’s work by S.C. RINGGENBERG (and Heath art gallery), MORT TODD on working with STEVE DITKO, a profile of alt cartoonist DAN GOLDMAN, part two of our MARK WAID interview, DENYS COWAN on his DJANGO series, VIC BLOOM and THE SECRET ORIGIN OF ARCHIE ANDREWS, HEMBECK, new KEVIN NOWLAN cover!

DENIS KITCHEN close-up—from cartoonist, publisher, author, and art agent, to his friendships with HARVEY KURTZMAN, R. CRUMB, WILL EISNER, and many others! Plus we examine the supreme artistry of JOHN ROMITA, JR., BILL EVERETT’s final splash, the nefarious backroom dealings of STOLEN COMIC BOOK ART, and ascend THE GODS OF MT. OLYMPUS (a ‘70s gem by ACHZIGER, STATON and WORKMAN)!

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Fall 2013 • The New Voice of the Comics Medium • Number 3

t BAT-W©©dy CBC mascot by J.D. King

About Our Cover Art by Neal Adams Color by CORY ADAMS, Continuity Studios

Ye Ed’s Rant: Hero worship — the pathetic allegiance of many comics fans................. 2 Comics Chatter Sean Howe’s Untold Story: The bestselling author talks with Ye Ed about his acclaimed history of “The House of Ideas,” now in paperback......................... 4 Incoming: Kerfluffles & kudos dominate our first letters column................................... 10 The Good Stuff: The Fifth Beatle, a new graphic novel about the Fab Five(!), is examined by Jorge Khoury................................................................... 14 Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred chats with some of the audacious artist’s memorable characters about Hair — we mean, Herr Adams......................................... 17 Aushenkerology: Complete with gallery, Michael Aushenker talks with legendary cover painter Earl Norem................................................................ 18

Batman TM & © DC Comics.

Irving on the Inside: Part one of a Mark Waid career retrospective by Christopher Irving covering the work of the renowned comic book scripter................... 22 REMEMBRANCE Les Daniels, Facts & Fictions: Part two of a look at an amazingly creative life........ 28 L’Amour, Mon Amour: A look at the new Louis L’Amour graphic novel adaptation..... 35 With superb hues by Continuity coloring queen Cory Adams, CBC is grateful to feature what was the first version intended as the cover of Neal Adams’ Batman Odyssey hardcover collection, though the artist decided on a less “busy” layout. Revised version below. Thanks to Neal, Cory & Continuity Studios!

Dysart Out of Africa: Michael Aushenker interviews writer Joshua Dysart about his popular Harbinger, visiting wartorn Africa, and working with Neil Young................ 37 COVER STORY Neal Adams’ Odyssey: An epic interview with the fabled artist/writer about his graphic novel, Batman Odyssey, and the man’s response to his critics.............. 42 Creator’s Creators: The Story & Glory of Gentleman Jorge Khoury.............................. 79 Coming Attractions: Be here next time when we feature a career-spanning conversation with the great artist and raconteur, Russ Heath!.......................................... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: A remarkable Neal Adams rarity — art you didn’t know he did — Aurora’s 1966 Robin, the Boy Wonder, model kit!........... 80 Right: Detail from Batman Odyssey. Pencils and inks by Neal Adams.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Comic Book Creator is a proud joint production of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $50 Canada, $65 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2013 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

TM & © DC Comics.

This issue is dedicated to the memories of KIM THOMPSON & BOB BOOTH ™

The New Voice of the Comics Medium

JON B. COOKE

Editor/Designer

John Morrow

Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER

Associate Editor

NEAL ADAMS

Cover Artist

JORGE KHOURY CHRISTOPHER IRVING TOM ZIUKO

Contributing Editors

Brian K. Morris Senior Transcriber

STEVEN E. Tice STEVEN THOMPSON

Transcribers

J.D. KING

CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO

CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON

CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

Greg PRESTON SETH KUSHNER

CBC Contributing Photographers

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK CHRISTOPHER IRVING JORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO

Hero Worship

Comic fandom’s pathetic allegiance to characters over creators In the feisty, iconoclastic three-issue Occupy Comics [Black Mask], essayist Alan Moore intriguingly lays out a history of comic books from a decidedly sober — albeit radical — point of view, one that celebrates the subversive and anti-authoritarian aspects of our beloved art form. Particularly effective for Ye Ed is (and pardon me, Alan, for the extended excerpt from your commentary “Buster Brown at the Barricades” [OC #2, June 2013]) the celebrated scribe admonishes those fans who snort “tough luck” at the plight of creators (and their families and estates) seeking rightful slices of the American apple pie for their creations: The industry’s apologists have offered various glosses for the shameful act of theft upon which the vast business that supports them seems to have been founded. One of the more despicable of these constructions has it that Siegel and Shuster should have been more shrewd in signing contracts, which appears to be a variant on the well-known American proverbial advice regarding suckers and the inadvisability of giving them an even break. More lately there have been attempts to mitigate the industry’s offence with an appeal to half-baked mysticism and postmodernism, maintaining that Superman and the commercial children’s comic characters which followed him are all in some sense archetypes that hover in the ether, waiting to be plucked by any lucky idiot who passes by. Ingeniously, this sidesteps the whole Siegel and Shuster problem by insisting that creators in the super-hero field aren’t actually creators after all, but merely the recipients of some kind of transcendent windfall fruit that should be freely shared around. Even if this were true, it’s difficult to see exactly how it justifies a perhaps gangster-founded company of fruiterers (just to continue the analogy) declaring that these profitable magic apples all belong to them in perpetuity. Still, one can see why

such a morally-evasive brand of metaphysics might appeal to the large corporate concerns which steer the comics industry: to those amongst the readership whose primary allegiance is to a specific super-hero rather than the ordinary non-invulnerable human who originated him; and to those loyally and profitably labouring at franchises, who know they’re in no danger of ever creating an original idea which would be valuable enough to steal. Alternatively, those not found in the proceeding factions might question the wisdom of erecting such an important commercial and ideological endeavour on foundations so blatantly rotten and so lacking in the necessary load-bearing integrity.

In this year commemorating the 75th anniversary of the first appearance of Siegel and Shuster’s seminal character, Moore notes: “Given that Superman has been rebranded [from his more egalitarian roots as protector of the little guy] as exemplifying Truth, Justice and the American Way, it seems ironic that the first two of these qualities had been so casually dispensed with, while to judge from the behaviour of the nascent comics industry it would appear that their interpretation of ‘the American Way’ had little to distinguish it from other forms of spineless underhand deception, larceny or bullying.” Ironic, indeed. I grew up in an era when the definition of a hero was radically changing. John Wayne’s kick-ass style of G.I. justice — first mow ’em down and we’ll sort ’em out later — had fallen out of favor in the latter years of the Vietnam War. Heroes of the four-colored variety were starting to question authority that reflected the puzzlement of their young creators and audience. Some characters journeyed outside to “find” America and reveal meaning; some ventured inside their minds exploring realms cosmic to discover a sense of self. A heady time.

CBC Columnists

PATRICK RICE Studio Intern

Comic Book Creator is always in search of interviews, art and artifacts related to the field, and we encourage those interested to contact us at jonbcooke@aol.com or through snail-mail at CBC, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston RI 02892 or call (401) 932-1967 2

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

It was the stories that interested me after being lured in by the colorful characters. And it was the well-drawn and well-written comics that made me a collector. I immediately loved Plastic Man when that treasured DC Special came along in 1971, and the return of the original Captain Marvel over a year later was instantly captivating, but I recognized quickly that it was Jack Cole’s writing and drawing the India Rubber Man and C.C. Beck’s cartooning on the Big Red Cheese that was so appealing. Much as I loved Captain America, a super-hero born of the real-world cataclysm of World War II, I understood it was Jack Kirby’s rendition that touched me. In short order, I wasn’t buying every Cap comic, but I sure as hell grabbed every title Kirby worked on. Gil Kane, Barry Windsor-Smith, Wallace Wood, Steve Gerber, Marie Severin, Bernie Wrightson, Don McGregor — these were among the folks working in mainstream comics who became my heroes, sharing with me the fruits of their dreams and imaginations. Few loomed larger in my pantheon of heroes than Neal Adams. Never mind the exquisite artwork and daring storytelling. Bluntly said, Adams had balls. His “A View from Without,” a scorching, brutal denunciation of the Vietnam War published in Phase #1 [1971], is likely the most courageous anti-war comic-book story to come from a mainstream creator during that volatile era. To this day, it is able to elicit rage and tears. Though we would see less of him in the DC and Marvel comics of the day, I admired his fortitude to jump ship with Dick Giordano and start up the comics-for-advertising art agency, Continuity. No mind that the “Big Two” were not featuring his dynamic work, because if one paid attention, you’d find Adams art in National Lampoon, and other mainstream magazines, on album covers, in advertisements, etc. Plus, he put a ton of young creators to work by opening Continuity’s doors. Perhaps what I appreciated most was his vocal support, alongside former comic book artist Jerry Robinson, of the aforementioned creators of Superman, in Jerry & Joe’s successful plight to shame the character’s corporate owners to give financial aid and perpetual credit to the destitute pair. Let’s not forget the guts that took, kids: DC was one of Adams’ main clients during the same period. Like I said, the guy’s got cajones.

Tell us what we don’t know! While the emphasis of Comic Book Creator will continue to examine and give tribute to the great artists and writers of the past, we’re considering including ongoing looks at the newer creators in this wild ‘n’ wondrous art form. Do you have favorites you would like to see covered in the pages of CBC? We’re looking to make the mag more inclusive and, frankly, there are a lot of good — even great — comics being produced today, so tell us what you like nowadays, besides the old stuff, natch. Drop me an email please or send a letter, okay? Thanks!

Jon B. Cooke, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston RI 02892 jonbcooke@aol.com

cbc contributors Marilyn Adams Neal Adams Michael Aushenker Jill Bauman Stephen R. Bissette Bob Booth Dan Booth Mary Booth

Jerry K. Boyd The Clandestine Colorist Continuity Associates Andrew D. Cooke Keith M. Dallas Peter Donahue Joshua Dysart Duncan Eagleson

Tim Estiloz Forbidden Planet Int’l Patrick Ford Beth Gwinn Fred Hembeck Heritage Auctions Sean Howe Christopher Irving

Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

ye editor’s rant

(While I’m less than thrilled to include a corporateowned character on our cover (Ye Ed is much more inclined to sport creator-owned properties, in keeping with our creator-friendly mission — I’m still a hippie apparently), I am quite pleased to offer Neal space to respond to critics regarding Batman Odyssey, partly because CBC should be of service in such instances. But, truth to tell, I’m mostly honored to help a gentleman who has been an extraordinary supporter of my efforts since I first started out in this mags-about-comics biz. Neal was cover artist on the very first issue of Comic Book Artist back in 1998 and, in the third issue of that run, we focused on his ’70s Marvel Comics work (itself a favor by Neal, as the Warren issue was running late and we needed an emergency fill-in). Plus he contributed the cover to my brother Andy and my lamented comic series, Prime8. Let’s say Ye Ed is indebted and grateful to the man and, as long as I’m running it, CBC will strive to be loyal.) Back to the subject that started off this editorial, it’s always been distressing to me the more disturbing aspects of comics fandom, whether the preoccupation with the value of the artifacts with little regard for the quality of life of the creators of said artifacts, or turning a blind eye to the theft of original art perpetrated, and selling and trading said art though well aware who the rightful owners are. And then there’s my particular (petty) pet-peeve of the preoccupation of fellow collectors with super-hero movies. Oh, I could go on ad nauseum. (And it looks like I did!) But, most of all, it’s those among us who advocate the corporate side of the ongoing fights for creator rights that can be distressing… and downright perplexing. Sometimes I fear it’s yet another reflection of the polarization that continues to divide this country into red Neal Adams by Ronn Sutton and blue, right and left, us and them. It seems clearly to me to be an issue of right and wrong, and fair and unfair, and doing the right thing as opposed to getting it wrong yet again… But remember, patient reader, I was formed — and informed — by the 1960s, and the guts and courage of people like Neal Adams fortifies and sets an example to stand up for what is right. Yup, I do feel a sense of mission. In the CBC letterbag this time out, I’ve received a couple of emails criticizing the mag, one telling me CBC #1 reads like 80 pages of “Jon’s Soapbox,” the other saying the publication comes across as just another business magazine. And both wrote that they’d be less inclined to read it. Fair enough. One always gets detractors, but I sure as heck would never want it a prerequisite for readers to have to agree with the opinions herein to pick it up regularly. Anyway, I do look forward to all comments, pro and con, good and bad, happy and sad, so keep those letters coming, friends! And if you missed our first two issues, head over to www.twomorrows.com, where you can pick up either or both for 50% off through December 31! One last thing: Check out the absolutely free-to-all CBC Bonus PDF section available at www.twomorrows.com/freestuff, #3 containing more Batman Odyssey art and other coolness. Issues #1 and 3 have 16-page editions; and #2 is a whopping 32-pager! You gotta see this, man! Not kidding: FREE! — Ye Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com SPECIAL HAT’S OFF: To CBC’s studio intern (and superb manga creator) Patrick Rice, for his great job working in Ye Ed’s studio office all summer. Your former mentor hopes to see you again real soon, Pat. Excellent work! S.T. Joshi Jorge Khoury Denis Kitchen The Kirby Museum Seth Kushner Beau L’Amour Bruce McCrae Dave Mathis

David Moench John Morrow Zeea Adams Moss The Mad Peck Anne Petersen Andrew C. Robinson Kris Adams Stone Ronn Sutton

Roy Thomas The Time Capsule Mark Waid John Wells Kendall Whitehouse Chet Williamson Thomas Yeates Rob Yeremian 3

comics chatter

Howe’s Untold Story

The author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story talks about Stan Lee’s House of Ideas Interview conducted by Jon B. Cooke CBC Editor

Above: Courtesy of CBC’s own fantabulous photographer Seth Kushner, his portrait of the author in question, Sean Howe.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

then later, other people who had grown up with Stan Lee’s idea of what the Bullpen was kind of willed something like [Thank heaven for the Blizzard of 2013, when Casa Cooke that into existence in the ’70s and ’80s. Under Mark Gruenwas without power in sub-freezing temperatures and the wald’s watch [in the 1980s], there were actual practical jokes snow was threatening to trap us indoors. Why the gratitude and crazy things going on. for the second disastrous weather event to hit my region CBC: Ultimately, what was the reality of the bullpen overall? in six months? Because the downtime — no electricity, no Sean: One major difference, of course, is that there were a computer — finally gave me a chance to read, old-school lot of people who were doing heavy lifting who weren’t even style, all of Sean Howe’s coming to the office. So that, right there, was a huge gap finely-scribed history of the from what we thought. You didn’t get the idea that people House that Stan, Jack and were working from home in Long Island all the time and Steve built, Marvel Comics: having pages delivered in or walking them in themselves. The Untold Story. Sean and I You thought it was kind of like Santa’s workshop. Another difhave been in touch for some ference is that there were egos involved. They were actual time and I’m delighted he’s human beings who were interacting with each other and that agreed to be interviewed is always going to have some drama. Some people get along in Comic Book Creator. The better than others and some people feel unrecognized and Brooklyn-based author’s some people get a better deal out of things. bestselling tome, now in I don’t want to concentrate too much on the negativity. its seventh printing as It’s just that there was that schism between what everybody hardback, is imminently due grew up thinking about it and this Utopian community that for paperback release. We couldn’t possibly have been real. I don’t particularly think spoke via phone on June 10 that working for Marvel in 1974 was a bad place to work; I and Sean copy-edited the just think there is something that’s thrilling about uncovering Q&A for accuracy and clari- the mystery behind… I don’t know about you, but Marvel ty. Steven “Flash” Thompson Comics was one of the first workplaces into which I felt like I provided the transcription. had a peek. There was the school where my parents worked — Ye Editor] and then there was reading about Marvel. I was like, “This sounds amazing! If you grow up and you want to work in a Comic Book Creator: fun place, this is perfection!” So I guess that roots itself so How’d the idea for Marvel deeply in your mind that you really want to know what the Comics: The Untold Story truth was. come about? CBC: What’s your background? Sean Howe: It was really Sean: I worked in film. I worked at a DVD company called just a book I was waiting the Criterion Collection for a few years. So that certainly for other people to do. I’d served me well in terms of having a real feel for archival say for 10 years I’d been research. reading a lot of interviews CBC: What movies did you work on? in publications like Comic Sean: Only a couple hundred. [laughs] The ones I felt the Book Artist and thinking that closest to were the movies of John Cassavetes. I worked for there was a great shadow a long time on a box set of five of his films. Everything from history of the company that old Kurosawa to more recent Wes Anderson movies. And wasn’t really been collected a lot of it was just digging for archival material and finding in any one place. Like a lot what had been written about it previously. of comic fans, I grew up CBC: Is most of that digging done on the Web? reading this different version Sean: More and more. In terms of this book, I would say I of what the bullpen was used the Web a lot in order to find the resources that weren’t like, you know? One thing that I’ve said to a lot of people on the Web. Does that make any sense? is that learning more about the actual behind-the-scenes For instance, one thing that I might have Googled would events was kind of like learning that your uncle had a second be to find out, say, where Jim Starlin had given interviews in family nobody knew about. I was captivated by the idea that the 1970s. The interviews themselves wouldn’t be online but the personalities that I had grown up with functioned a bit I could maybe get a sense of which fanzines he spoke to bedifferently than I had thought for all those years. cause, up until very recently, the mainstream media wasn’t CBC: What was your childhood impression of the mighty really paying much attention to Marvel Comics. You can find Marvel bullpen? a People magazine interview with Stan Lee — you can find Sean: I think exactly what Stan Lee intended. [laughs] It a lot of interviews with Stan Lee — but if you wanted to read was this idea that this place of just laughs and hi-jinks and about what, say, Gerry Conway was thinking in the 1970s, creative people just pulling pranks on each other while they you’re going to have to dig quite a bit harder. The Comics did these amazing stories. Certainly there is some truth to Journal interviews will be pretty easy to find, but a lot of the that at different times in the history: earlier, in the ’40s and history is just in mimeographed form and not indexed in any ’50s, there were a lot of guys working together and kind of real way that’s accessible. A lot of libraries have started having a lot of fun with each other all under one roof and keeping collections of old fanzines, which I think is a really

great thing for researchers and historians. CBC: Judging by the footnotes, TwoMorrows’ publications, Alter Ego and CBA, as you mentioned, were a source for material. Sean: Yeah, because you and a handful of people at TwoMorrows were doing serious interviews with people who are no longer alive. You got in there at a time where, generationally, a lot of important creators were fading away. It’s a real shame that more people didn’t step up and try to find out the stories of people like Morrie Kuramoto, back when they could talk. When did Comic Book Artist start? Ninety-nine was it? CBC: Ninety-eight. Sean: Yeah, and I guess that started around the time that you were starting to see a lot more interviews online, but since you were focusing not on the hot new artists, in many cases, you were the only one who recorded history—as you know.

CBC: Thank you. How many interviews did you do yourself? Sean: I would say close to 150 interviews, whether or not the people are actually quoted in the book. CBC: The company started as Timely, came from pulp origins, and Martin Goodman was at the top of it. What in the general assessment is your view of Marvel Comics as it started and perhaps the copycat tradition that it had for a period of time? Sean: I guess if you’re talking about the ’40s and ’50s versus what came later, I would say that doing the book gave me a much, much stronger appreciation of the stuff that Timely was doing in the ‘40s. The variety of styles! If you go through, like, Mystic Comics or one of those anthology comics from the ‘40s, you really get a lot more of the artist’s sensibility than you would see peeking through post-Jack Kirby. Some of that stuff feels like something is just shot straight from somebody’s Id; it’s almost a kind of outsider art. There’s an amateurishness that I find to be kind of refreshing.

Below: This Marie Severin montage of Marvel characters actually appeared in an advertisement appearing in the 1982 Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, though we found the Mirthful One’s black-&-white line art gracing CBC friend Trina Robbins’ book A Century of Women Cartoonists [1993], and thought it’d be a lark to have our colorist jazz it up with his Technicolor hues and to have Ye Ed Photoshop in the trade paperback cover of Sean’s book.

“The comic book market is the worst market that there is on the face of the earth for creative talent and the reasons are numberless and legion. I have had many talented people ask me how to get into the comic book business. If they were talented enough the first answer I would give them is, “Why would you want to get into the comic book business?” Because even if you succeed, even if you reach what might be considered the pinnacle of success in comics, you will be less successful, less secure and less effective than if you are just an average practitioner of your art in television, radio, movies or what have you. It is a business in which the creator… owns nothing of his creation. The publisher owns it… Isn’t it pathetic to be in a business where the most you can say for the creative person in the business is that he’s serving an apprenticeship to enter a better field? Why not go to the other field directly?”

Stan Lee

Lamb’s Club speech New York, Jan. 20, 1971

Now, obviously, it is pretty hit-and-miss and a lot was just being cranked out with not much regard for the reader’s enjoyment. Then, in the 1950s, as Timely moves into whatever genre was popular in any given year, you can definitely appreciate the levels of craft of a lot of those artists, and there’s still a pretty wild variety of styles. But something about that ’40s material I feel is really untapped. Because it’s not as tied into the Marvel universe as the comics that came after Fantastic Four, I don’t think today’s readers really have any idea just how much wild, amazing stuff is in there. CBC: I was looking through the collection of Marvel Mystery Comics and there’s a series a called “Electro” that’s exactly how you described: rather idiosyncratic, almost amateurish, but really rather delightful to look at. Sean: Yeah. Michael Kupperman revived Marvex in the back of some Marvel comic a few years ago, just for like eight pages. It was really done tongue-in-cheek, but it really made me think, you know, how great would it be if Marvel would just take more chances and not have everything be at that same level of seriousness? Just tonally, there’s kind of a certain sense of humor that’s allowed in today’s super-hero comics… Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent. Obviously, people under the age of 60 are generally pretty indoctrinated to subscribe to the idea of the Marvel universe. If they’re Marvel fans, for a lot of good reasons, Marvel Comics just starts with Fantastic Four # 1 and… uhh… I guess that’s okay. [laughter] CBC: But there’s a lot of interesting older stuff? Sean: Yeah! There’s still so much stuff there that can surprise when you go through a random issue. It’s not because of how great a fight scene was, you know; it’s because Russ Heath was doing something brilliant. CBC: Did you interview Stan Lee? Sean: I did. Not at the length at which I’d hoped. I interviewed him on the phone and we were supposed to have follow-ups in person. I flew out to Los Angeles and his office canceled on me after I’d arrived and, to this day, has never given me a reason why. I’m not sure the book would be substantially different had he kept his appointment with me. I think he’s probably said most of what he’s going to say. Or maybe everything! [laughs] CBC: Now, Stan has always said that he’s had memory lapses. I’ve interviewed him and had conversations with him, too, and he simply says he can’t remember any number of events. Was that your experience? Sean: Yes. I thought he was a really generous interviewee. He kept telling me that he had more time to talk. He was, as you know, as genial as everyone thinks of Stan Lee being. I found him completely likable. I don’t think he is half as bad a guy as a lot of people say my book paints him to be. [laughs] If you grant Stan Lee anything less than sainthood, some people think that you’re just trying to tear him apart. He can afford to take criticism — I mean, he can literally afford to. But I hope that my portrait of him doesn’t come across as any kind of character assassination or anything because I think he did a lot for the industry. I just also think he’s maybe not the savior of the art form that some people may think he is. CBC: He’s just a human being, right? Sean: Right. He’s just a human being. CBC: He did say something that was very startling that you reference in your book in the chapter, “The Next Generation.” It was just an amazing, lucid statement about the difficulties for creative people to work in comics, coming from a man who sounds tired of the comic-book business at the time and saying, basically, “If you’re talented enough, maybe the comic book field isn’t good for you.” Do you recall when you first read that speech of his? Sean: Yeah, it was from the transcript to a National Cartoonist Society event and I remember thinking, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that he’s being so candid at this one moment in time!” I’d read so many interviews with him where he seems either kind oblivious to that idea or just sidesteps it. I think the real surprise is that he just kept going. It’s a pretty lengthy speech he gave about the ways in which comic book publishers exploit their talent. This was, I think, just before he took his sabbatical from Marvel so I guess the job was really getting to him. That, in combination with a conversation he’d had with Alain Resnais, the French filmmaker, in which he talks about how he thinks he’s not being rewarded enough for his efforts, was the first time that I realized, “Wow. He’s definitely thought about this stuff long and hard.” By the end of 1972, he was never really going to talk about it again like that. CBC: Because the publisher gave him incentives? Sean: I guess so. I mean, that would be my guess as to his change of tune. I think another thing, like I said, it was really the mainstream media at that point that was doing rather cursory interviews with comic book people with journalists taking a little tourist detail into comic books. So nobody was really asking him hard questions at that time. There’s a lot about, “So, comic books — do you feel like they’re important for kids to learn how to read?” Stuff like that. So maybe if there had been some more serious conversations with him at the time, you would have gotten at least a shade of that earlier sense of injustice that he had once carried. But, on the other hand, maybe he just very quickly decided that he was going to toe the company line and maybe he was… I don’t know. It would be interesting if someone would ask him about his remarks long ago. At this point, he would say, “Well… I don’t remember.” CBC: [Laughs] It is a long life. Sean: It is a long life. He’s 90! CBC: Do you think Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko could have been treated more fairly by the company? Sean: [Casually] No. [three beats] I’m just kidding! [laughs] #3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

With Steve Ditko, it’s a little harder to parse what Marvel did to him because he doesn’t give interviews and doesn’t exactly do a lot to clarify what the precise fallings-out were. He’s put forth the idea that deals were sort of “not honored,” but it’s hard to know, without getting his specific side of the story, how Marvel wronged him. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did. And the Jack Kirby thing… There’s not much that I can add to that beyond what’s in the book and what so many people have said more eloquently than me. You know, when you’ve got a guy going up against a company… I mean, a company has so much deniability. It’s hard to make somebody at a company accountable for something. “This is a contract that was signed before I was here,” or “This is out of my jurisdiction.” It’s really easy for corporations to screw people over without any kind of pangs of conscience because the people who work at the company don’t feel like it’s their problems, specifically. They feel like, “Yeah, maybe some other people in the company did something that wasn’t great but what can I do?” I think there’s a lot of bad that comes out of people making little small compromises with their ideals in the name of being a good employee. CBC: In generalized terms, you’ve done the history of Mar-

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vel Comics. How would you imagine they’d be treated correctly? Not just Jack and Steve, but creators in general from the past. Sean: It’s kind of different for every individual. There are a lot of different ways that people were mistreated. A lot of it just comes down to legalities. The idea that people who work in comic books aren’t going to own a piece of their creations was institutionalized for a long time. It often kind of comes down to, “What did this person think that they were getting into when they agreed to do this work?” And that’s a really hard thing to try to prove one way or another. I realize that I’m giving kind of a hedging answer but... CBC: Well, it is a legal issue in that aspect, but I’m just wondering if there’s more of a practical, good sense, public relations way of treating them, with a gratuity, for instance — however you want to phrase it. If The Avengers has generated half a billion dollars in worldwide box office sales, the creators of said characters might’n get a monetary gift, shall we say. Sean: Yeah, I think what it comes down to is that the good PR is not something that they think is financially viable. I don’t think that it’s worth it for them. My guess is that the idea of giving some kind of gift to the creators would stop with the legal team who would say, “This is ridiculous. This might set a precedent. You can’t do this.” And there’s nobody high enough up at Marvel whose battle is going to be to do something that is maybe the ethically right thing but is going to jeopardize their job. The Avengers movie came out and people protested about Marvel’s treatment of Jack Kirby and there were some campaigns of boycotting. But Marvel Entertainment looks at the box-office receipts, and I don’t think they’re worried about PR. CBC: You think it’s a different time? You know, back in the ’70s, Warner Communications was basically shamed by Jerry Robinson and Neal Adams into giving a pension to Siegel and Shuster, the creators of Superman. You think nowadays, people just don’t care? The general public? Sean: I guess, for one thing, it’s Superman. Anybody who

Above: The author tells us, “I was very excited about the 16-page color illustration insert that was supposed to be in my book. I went through an approval process with Marvel and we agreed on a price but ultimately the terms of the contact they gave me would have required that I not say anything negative about Marvel in the book anywhere. So that’s why the book has no illustrations.” But Howe was kind enough to share a mockup of that unpublished insert, two pages of which you find here.

Left insert: If your fascination with Marvel’s history is unabated after reading Howe’s tome, be sure to check out the writer’s amazing online gallery of related imagery at seanhowe.tumblr.com, the results of his scouring the Web for fascinatin’ artifacts, including this collage of Jack Kirby photos and early sketch, itself from Kirby grandson Jeremy’s Kickstarter campaign for a book on the personal life of the King (www.kickstarter. com/projects/1478125734/personal-look-into-the-life-of-jack-kirbythe-king). 7

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react to the things people were saying. Back to what I was saying earlier, I spent a lot of time trying to ensure that this wouldn’t come across as a takedown of Jim Shooter. Normally you would give someone a chance to respond, but he wouldn’t respond so, as it stands now, there are these people accusing him of being a total tyrant and there’s no counterbalance to that. Whether or not there was a counterbalance in real life, whether or not he was a tyrant, I do regret that I don’t have his voice in those parts. God knows, I kept trying to get it. [laughs] CBC: How has the book’s reception been? Sean: It’s been good! It got some very, very nice reviews. I think it’s in its seventh hardcover printing. It’ll be coming out in softcover this fall. I don’t know how much of an impact it has had on, say, the kind of person who would go see The Avengers but doesn’t know about Jack Kirby, and obviously that’s the kind of person with whom I would love to share the story. Maybe it’s a little presumptuous or egotistical but maybe that would help to change the larger conversation about ownership or, maybe even more importantly, authorship of these characters. If you look at Sherlock Holmes or Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter or any number of iconic fictional protagonists, everybody can tell you who created those people and I don’t think your average man on the street can tell you who created Iron Man, you know? To me, that says a lot about the way the comic book industry has not recognized its creators sufficiently over the years, an oversight that the larger world—and by this I mean the media, and even many comic readers—hasn’t seemed especially interested in correcting. CBC: Was there anything you had wished was included in MC:TUS that didn’t make it? Sean: I can tell you that I was very excited about the 16page color illustration insert that was supposed to be in my book. I went through an approval process with Marvel and we agreed on a price but ultimately the terms of the contact they gave me would have required that I not say anything negative about Marvel in the book anywhere. So that’s why the book has no illustrations. It wasn’t even that I not say anything negative but that I not say anything that could be construed as critical. [laughter] Which is a contract you don’t want to be on the wrong side of! CBC: [Laughs] Right. “Construed”! Sean: So I guess it’s a leap to go from my contracts to that but Marvel even almost had a piece of my book! [laughter] CBC: The Marvel Comics: the Untold Story Facebook page — even for me, a guy who’s dug pretty darn deep — you’ve have uncovered some amazing stuff! How do you find that material? Sean: A lot of it is probably too much time spent on the Web. I came across so many things in the research of the book. Sometimes I would mention an ad that ran somewhere or quote from it and I’m thinking, “This ad from 1966 itself is pretty amazing!” There’s some that ran in, like, industry magazines for newsstand distributors. I just wanted to share the primary sources wherever I could. Fanzine illustrations, stuff like that. There’s no one treasure trove source for that stuff, but it’s a lot of fun for me. CBC: What was the most surprising revelation you had besides the bullpen not being what it purported to be? Sean: Well, my usual answer to that is the stuff that you were mentioning about Stan Lee. I still find it surprising, and you’re one of the few people that really picked up on the rarity of those remarks that he made. That was a stopme-in-my-tracks moment. There were also more gradual revelations. Obviously by the time I was beginning work on the book, I already knew that the bullpen myth was just that, but I was thrown by just how bad things got in the 1990s. At the time it was happening, I pretty much had stopped reading comic books. I knew that Marvel had gone bankrupt, but I didn’t know what the human toll was. I think that all the stories about what it was like working at Marvel in that time… It was hard to believe that people who had worked #3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

works at a daily newspaper gets what Superman symbolizes and there’s an immediate hook for your story, you know? The creators of Superman and all that he stands for are just being totally screwed over. They’re alive and we can help them. TMZ isn’t going to do something about, “Isn’t it crazy that this guy who died 20 years ago who co-created The Avengers characters… Isn’t it a shame that he’s not THE THE THE getting more credit?” It’s not as sexy a hook. I feel like I’m really going down a side path here, but I guess I’m a little bit pessimistic about the ways in which corporate power and the media have changed over the years. I guess I’m coming around to say that maybe you’re right and maybe people just don’t care anymore. CBC: Perhaps the second most polarizing personality who was at Marvel is Jim "A d e fi n it iv e p o r t r a it o f c o m i c s i n A m e r i c a n c u lt u r e ." —Th e Wa ll Str e et J o u r n a l e fiivneitpivo er tproarit t r oa fit coofm ci cosm ii n c sAim n e Arm e ." e-Th e ll WaStr ll Str "A d e"A fi ndit i cearni ccaunltcuurlte u ."r—Th Wa e et e Jeto uJronuarln a l Shooter. What is your overall assessment of his tenure as the creative head of Marvel? Above: Set to go on sale on Oct. Sean: This isn’t an uncommon sentiment: I think that he 1, the trade paperback edition of was really good for the company until, in the last few years Marvel Comics: The Untold Story of his tenure, I think he wasn’t as good for the company. In features a re-hued cover color terms of the comics that were coming out at the time, that’s scheme and a few interior text a… You know, I was born in 1974, so Shooter’s time was the corrections. The hardback edition point at which I was most devoted to Marvel comics, so it’s was released a year prior. hard for me to be completely unsentimental about some of that stuff. I think, if you look at the comics that were coming out a few years before Jim Shooter was running things, contrary to what his critics say, the Marvel comics of 1977 weren’t much better. In terms of behind the scenes, how his tenure was for people who worked with him I think it’s kind of the same thing. I think people largely got along with him pretty well until… they didn’t. And that would be around 1984. I talked to Jim Shooter for quite a long time and we went Below: “Speedy” Sean Howe shared this photo from 1982 or ’83 very in-depth, but we were talking chronologically, and he of himself [right] and sister Erin. stopped returning my calls and emails before we got to the The writer explains, “My parents years where people were starting to have problems with had just bought me a comic him, so I would have loved to have gotten more of his recollection on the roadside for $20.” sponses to the things people were saying about what it was Judging by the X-Men and Frank like to work with him. I think it would have made the book Miller Daredevils amongst the stronger to have had his… not even really his side of things batch, t’was money well spent! or his point of view but to have him engage with, actually

for a company more than 20 years would be treated like that. I guess, unfortunately, that was another big surprise. CBC: I’d have to say that was my biggest surprise in the book. How difficult it was to get through the litany of corporate stuff. The fun comics stuff — even the Jim Shooter stuff — were a pleasure to read and then all of a sudden it gets to be really dense down with the reality that corporatism had really gotten more than a foothold and had taken over. Sean: Yeah! Sorry about that. CBC: It’s not your fault. [laughs] Sean: That was one of the things that I struggled with was that there’s no way this does not turn into a book about business. The company turned into more of an absolute business. I had to learn how to write about that stuff. First I had to make sure that I was understanding mergers and bankruptcy law and shell accounts well enough. That’s not stuff that I had ever written about before. And then, on top of that, to not completely lose the reader was a real challenge for me. There were not a lot of great comics that were coming out at the time, whereas in other sections of the book, if it started to be too much about business, I could just shift back into talking about the content of the comics. But when you get to 1997, what else do you write about? So I tried to talk about what was going on with the human beings at the time as much as I could. I’ll grant you there are an awful lot of numbers to sift through there for a chapter or two. But they’re an essential part of the story. CBC: What was the reaction from the players that were depicted in the book? Sean: It’s been really fantastic for me to hear from people who have told me how balanced and fair and accurate they think the book is and even more than that, a couple of people have said, like, “Wow! Now I understand why I wasn’t getting along with certain people and now I understand why the company wasn’t fun in this year that you write about.” For people to say I helped them understand more about the place that they worked really makes me feel great! There were a few people that I worried what they would think and they told me that they liked the book very much. I’m sure that there are people who haven’t said anything to me who didn’t like the book but no one has had any harsh words to my face. [laughs] It’s a lot of responsibility to take on. It’s not like these creators are celebrities, where public portrayals go with the territory. I can’t imagine what it would be like to toil as a comic book writer for years and then have somebody come along and put me as a character in a book. But to return to the question, it’s been a good reaction. CBC: Is the MC:TUS paperback going to be a revised edition? Sean: Fixing some typos and assorted little errors that almost nobody would notice. In one instance, I think I meant to write Modeling With Millie instead of Millie the Model. [Jon laughs] But no extra chapters or anything like that. And it’ll be a blue cover instead of an orange cover—so don’t get confused! CBC: What’s next for you? Sean: I’m working on a couple things that are all in really early stages. I’m writing for a few different Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

“Thank you for this tremendous honor. “I’d like to thank the dedicated scholars of the past and present, for ensuring that the historical details of the comic-book medium, and its attendant industry, are never forgotten. There’s still a wealth of information about our heritage that resides exclusively in dusty old files, curling mimeographed fanzines, and shoeboxes filled with photos, many of which are hopelessly neglected in garages or hoarded in basements. If you feel a shudder of recognition at that description, there are bright-eyed staffers at comic research libraries that would love to hear from you. “I’d also like to express my gratitude to those generous souls who shared their memories with me, who entrusted me with their stories and opened my eyes. It’s always been my hope that this book would serve as a reminder that credit should always rest with the men and women behind the comic books. No company has ever created a comic book, or a character, on its own — for that you need the creativity of individuals. I know you know this, but… sometimes we forget. Sometimes there are very enthusiastic consumers who will excitedly name the holder of a trademark but have no idea who sat behind a desk or a drawing table in 1966 and just let their imagination wander. “Maybe it’s not too late to change that. Thanks.”

Sean Howe

Eisner Award acceptance speech (delivered by Tom Spurgeon in Howe’s absence) Comic-Con International: San Diego, July 19, 2013 magazines. As of now, I am not working on the book that everybody asks me about, which is DC Comics: The Untold Story. [laughs] I understand why people would guess that that would be a natural follow-up book but… I think it would probably kill me, [Jon laughs] just to turn around and do that.

Left inset: Ye Ed met the author in person at the splendid Asbury Park Comicon 2013, on March 30, where photographer Kendall Whitehouse kindly snapped this pic for us. Sean Howe received the Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for “Best Comics-Related Book” at Comic-Con International: San Diego in July, where another 2013 Eisner Award-winner (for “Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism”), Tom Spurgeon of www. comicsreporter.com, accepted the honor on Howe’s behalf.

incoming

Kerfluffles & Kudos

The debut issue of Comic Book Creator elicits disparate responses from readers

Roy Thomas

Above: Henry Pym’s debut as super-hero on the cover of Tales to Astonish #35 [Sept. ’62], an origin officially plotted by Stan Lee and fully-scripted by brother Larry Lieber… but could have artist Jack Kirby been co-plotter? Below: Compare this, the uncropped Alex Ross painting of Jack Kirby and friends, to the printed cover of CBC #1 and you’ll note Ye Ed inadvertently placed it off-center. Our apologies to the esteemed artist for this unbalanced result.

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Comic Book Creator is a handsome package. To no one’s great surprise, you’ve shown us all once again how to put together a great-looking magazine with a lot of substance. I haven’t had a chance to read all of it yet, but I look forward to doing so. Unfortunately, the one article I turned to first was the cover-featured piece of Jack Kirby. And I was disappointed — that’s the politest word I can come up with — to find that, in your understandable and certainly defensible zeal to paint an image of a Kirby screwed over by Marvel and related entities, you succumb on page 48 to a litany of wrong statements and half-truths (I don’t mean “lies”— I mean, literally, statements that I believe are half-true and half-false). So eager are you to give the “lion’s share of storytelling” to Jack as artist, a statement that grew increasingly true as the 1960s went along, that you seem willfully unaware (and this surprises me, since I know your scholarship of the field) of Larry Lieber’s repeated statements over the years, perhaps first made in the Alter Ego Vol. 3 that grew directly out of your Comic Book Artist, that he never ever just “fill[ed] in the word balloons after receiving the penciled page.” From an almost certainly written-out Stan Lee plot, Larry wrote a full script for the origin of Ant-Man (and probably “The Man in the Ant-Hill,” earlier) and of Thor and of Iron Man. A full script is not “the skimpiest of direction, if any,” as you label

it. Sure, it’s true that Stan has said numerous times that guys like Kirby and Ditko needed little if any guidance to plot a comic book story. But the fact remains that the origin stories, and other early stories, of several of Marvel’s key heroes were fully scripted by Lee and Lieber. You have somehow managed to backdate the later practice of Jack delivering penciled pages with “the artist’s margin notes clarifying the action and suggestion speech” from the date a year or two or several later when it actually happened to 1962, when it clearly did not. You make the mistake that a lot of rank amateur analysts make (even though you are obviously not one of those) in assuming that, if an artist draws pictures which tell a story and then writes out margin notes which clarify points and suggest dialogue to go with it, that necessarily means that the artist made up the story out of whole cloth… that he was not given any directions beforehand as to what the story was. You cannot honestly and reasonably assume that, simply because there is no paper trail of a plot from Stan Lee. Some, or even many, of the plot elements might have been given to Jack by Stan, or at the very least worked out by the two of them in the conferences they often had. You weren’t privy to those conferences any more than I was, so you don’t know what happened, and you are jumping — nay, space-warping — to conclusions that may well be unwarranted. Like me, you’ve seen the plot pages done for portions of Fantastic Four #1 and #8. Jack made a lot of changes and additions to the plot of #1’s origin, most notably introducing the heroes dramatically before going into the flashback origin. That action was breathtaking and wonderful… but it didn’t create the characters or the main story, which was the origin. And in #8, as I pointed out while AE was still part of CBA, Stan’s plot even went into more detail about the actions of the Puppet Master and the F.F. than I would have imagined without reading that plot. Sure, details in both cases were changed when Stan wrote the dialogue… but some of those changes are changes that weren’t forced by Jack’s art. Sue Storm could have remained an “actress/model” or whatever it is that Stan precisely called her in the plot, with a couple of words. They could have been heading for Mars or the moon as easily as simply for outer space in #1. Your statement that Kirby (and Ditko) “are assuredly more than mere plotters. They are writers — only not being paid for it” obscures the point. First, it assumes (as they were not, always, especially in the beginning) that they were the plotters, pure and simple, rather than co-plotters… something more an article of faith (yours) rather than a provable fact. It’s not untrue, of course, that they can also be considered “writers” — because plotting, or co-plotting, is a part of writing. But the way you word it, you don’t leave much room for Stan (or for that matter Larry) to be even co-writers. You start out with a defensible aim… to show that Jack did more than he was paid for… and turn it into not much more than a more sophisticated form of Lee-bashing. You never say much of anything negative about Stan directly… you simply keep chipping away at anything and everything he may have contributed to those early stories, until the reader who accepts your point of view is left with little to believe but that Stan did little or nothing. What’s done on pp. 48-49 of CBC #1 is not far from the kind of statement Jack himself made, during the years when he had first left Marvel, when an interviewer tried to pin him down and ask him what Stan

[CBC #1’s mailbag? Not so deep, but it’s lively! First up, my esteemed brother editor, who worked under Stan Lee in the 1960 and ’70s at Marvel, and he continues a professional association with “The Man” up to the present day. — Ye Ed.]

TM & © DC Comics.

Lee did in those stories. “Stan Lee was my editor,” was all Jack would say. Jack, who of course was and remains even years after his demise one of the greatest artists in the history of the comic book medium, was given at that stage to delusions of grandeur that went far beyond even his massive talents and contributions… and your garbled characterization of the early Lee-Kirby work merely contributes to the fog. You’ll do more for the cause of Kirby and his family by making reasonable and fact-defensible assessments of their relationship than by the half-true, half “Alice Through the Looking-Glass” account that you allowed yourself to slide into for several paragraphs in CBC #1. Other than that, good show! [Thanks, Roy, for the LOC about A/E’s newest sister mag in the TwoMorrows line-up. Of course I know of the Fantastic Four #1 synopsis, and you’re right to note its existence should have been mentioned in my piece, as well as Larry Lieber’s memories. But given the Kirby-Lee method of collaboration, its presence is an oddity, unusual for a pair who reportedly confabbed verbally in those early years, and it begs for context. Was it and the FF #8 plot written to clarify Lee-Kirby story conferences? Kirby has a paper trail, printed in four colors, of prototypes for many Marvel super-heroes (compare the striking similarities of the Green Arrow story “The War That Never Ended” [Adventure Comics #255, Dec. ’58] to the Iron Man origin, for instance, never mind the blatant Challengers of the Unknown connection to FF), and I think it is safe to question whether Kirby initially presented new characters and their origins to Lee, who then passed on the plots to his brother, Larry Lieber, to script. And the margin notes: Perhaps Kirby, producing an astonishing 3,324 pages of comic book art between 1961–63, was tired of losing time traveling to the Manhattan office for meetings or devising plots with his writer-editor via telephone, and switched to convey once-verbalized story points with handwritten instructions on the comic-page borders to better economize his time (and save for posterity solid evidence of his input). Mark Evanier, former Kirby assistant and longtime friend (and biographer), who perhaps spent more time asking questions of the creator than any other comics historian, in his recent declaration for the court case Marvel Worldwide, Inc. et al. v. Kirby et al., wrote,“After Fantastic Four had been published and was a success, Lee produced a synopsis for the first story which he said was what he gave Kirby to work from. Kirby, however, consistently asserted that he never saw any kind of typed synopsis or treatment for the Fantastic Four. Given his other statements about putting his head together with Kirby to devise the comics, I find it highly unlikely that Lee acted alone in conceiving these characters.” Lee told Castle of Frankenstein in 1968, “[Kirby] may tell me [the plots]. And then he goes home and does it. He’s so good at plots, I’m sure he’s a thousand times better than I. He just about makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing… I may tell him that he’s gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I’ll give him a plot, but we’re practically both the writers on the things.” Lee also shared in his 1974 Origins of Marvel Comics, “After kicking it around with Martin [Goodman] and Jack for a while, I decided to call our quaint quartet The Fantastic Four. I wrote a detailed first synopsis for Jack to follow, and the rest is history.” Well, murky history. And let’s put those (ahem) “delusions of grandeur” in context, shall we? Jack Kirby, inarguably one of the three prime architects of the Marvel universe, was treated with contempt and disrespect in his twilight years by the company he helped thrive beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. As so too is his one-time creative partner perennially prone to hyperbole and spotty memory, perhaps we can forgive Kirby’s statements made in understandable anger. Can we agree to cut “The King” — and “The Man” — some slack? Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

But while likely none of us will fully know the truth given sparse memories and lack of smoking-gun evidence, your criticism does encourage further examination, which will be included in these pages soon. My point, however heated (and, yeah, a little over-zealous), was not designed to denigrate Lee’s contributions — whose universe-creating status is assuredly secure in American history — but to more accurately assess Kirby’s place in the context of storyteller, writing and otherwise, a status that has been chipped away at of late in legal depositions and such court proceedings. Next, directly from Walla, Walla, Australia… — Y.E.]

Robert Walker Comic Book Creator #1 was one of the best magazines I’ve read in many years. I’m a lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University and would happily refer the articles in this magazine to students as exemplars of the way that history, comment and entertaining writing can be combined. I’d single out the Kirby article in particular for its excellence, but that would hardly surprise you in that you made it the cover article. I subscribe to a variety of comic books, graphic novels and associated material through Kings Comics in Sydney, Australia, and I look forward to the next CBC; if it manages to reach the very high bar that #1 has set, I’ll be astounded. If anything, I’d moan about the advertising. I wouldn’t want to see content pages cut but I do like to see ads about what’s up for sale in my hobby fields and you just didn’t have many; can we have more? I’m just being a curmudgeon there probably.

Above: We’re not exactly sure who found this Fantastic Four #1 synopsis in Stan Lee’s hand-me-down desk at Marvel in the 1970s — one account says Roger Stern, yet he is said to report David Anthony Kraft — but Roy Thomas, in the “flipside” version of Alter Ego that graced Comic Book Artist magazine in our earliest years, thoroughly examined the Lee-scribed plot, as well as a page from a FF #8 treatment in CBA V1 #2 [Summer ’98]. The Jack Kirby Collector #61 contains a fascinating look at FF #6 [Sept. ’62], and makes a strong case for Jack Kirby being the writer, not Stan Lee.

Below: Prior to the creation of The Fantastic Four, Jack Kirby (with collaborators) ushered in another quaint quartet, The Challengers of the Unknown, whose origin is not dissimilar to that of Marvel’s premiere super-family. Here’s Kirby’s cover for COTU #3 [Sept. ’58], published by DC Comics.

Craig D. Smith While I was a big fan of the original Comic Book Artist, I don’t feel the same enthusiasm for Comic Book Creator. It reads like 80 pages of “Jon’s Soapbox.” I say stick to the historical record and leave the heavy-handed advocacy to The Comics Journal. That’s my opinion anyway. I’ll probably just stick to the issues that interest me by subject. [Hang in there, effendi! We’ve got Russ Heath, Denis KItchen, and Swampmen coming! — Y.E.] 11

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#3: ADAMS AT MARVEL #4: WARREN PUBLISHING

#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

#2: MARVEL 1970-77

Era of “Artist as Editor” at National: New NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews, art, and articles with JOE KUBERT, JACK KIRBY, CARMINE INFANTINO, DICK GIORDANO, JOE ORLANDO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ALEX TOTH, JULIE SCHWARTZ, and many more! Plus ADAMS thumbnails for a forgotten Batman story, unseen NICK CARDY pages from a controversial Teen Titans story, unpublished TOTH covers, and more!

STAN LEE AND ROY THOMAS discussion about Marvel in the 1970s, ROY THOMAS interview, BILL EVERETT’s daughter WENDY and MIKE FRIEDRICH on Everett, interviews with GIL KANE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, MIKE PLOOG, STERANKO’s Unknown Marvels, the real origin of the New X-Men, Everett tribute cover by GIL KANE, and more!

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#6: MORE MARVEL ’70s #7: ’70s MARVELMANIA

NEAL ADAMS interview about his work at Marvel Comics in the 1960s from AVENGERS to X-MEN, unpublished Adams covers, thumbnail layouts for classic stories, published pages BEFORE they were inked, and unused pages from his NEVER-COMPLETED X-MEN GRAPHIC NOVEL! Plus TOM PALMER on the art of inking Neal Adams, ADAMS’ MARVEL WORK CHECKLIST, & ADAMS wraparound cover!

Definitive JIM WARREN interview about publishing EERIE, CREEPY, VAMPIRELLA, and other fan favorites, in-depth interview with BERNIE WRIGHTSON with unpublished Warren art, plus unseen art, features and interviews with FRANK FRAZETTA, RICHARD CORBEN, AL WILLIAMSON, JACK DAVIS, ARCHIE GOODWIN, HARVEY KURTZMAN, ALEX NINO, and more! BERNIE WRIGHTSON cover!

More on DC COMICS 1967-74, with art by and interviews with NICK CARDY, JOE SIMON, NEAL ADAMS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, MIKE KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, MARV WOLFMAN, IRWIN DONENFELD, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GIL KANE, DENNY O’NEIL, HOWARD POST, ALEX TOTH on FRANK ROBBINS, DC Writer’s Purge of 1968 by MIKE BARR, JOHN BROOME’s final interview, and more! CARDY cover!

Unpublished and rarely-seen art by, features on, and interviews with 1970s Bullpenners PAUL GULACY, FRANK BRUNNER, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, MARIE and JOHN SEVERIN, JOHN ROMITA SR., DAVE COCKRUM, DON MCGREGOR, DOUG MOENCH, and others! Plus never-beforeseen pencil pages to an unpublished Master of Kung-Fu graphic novel by PAUL GULACY! Cover by FRANK BRUNNER!

Featuring ’70s Marvel greats PAUL GULACY, JOHN BYRNE, RICH BUCKLER, DOUG MOENCH, DAN ADKINS, JIM MOONEY, STEVE GERBER, FRANK SPRINGER, and DENIS KITCHEN! Plus: a rarely-seen Stan Lee P.R. chat promoting the ’60s Marvel cartoon shows, the real trials and tribulations of Comics Distribution, the true story behind the ’70s Kung Fu Craze, and a new cover by PAUL GULACY!

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#10: WALTER SIMONSON

#11: ALEX TOTH AND SHELLY MAYER

#8: ’80s INDEPENDENTS

#9: CHARLTON PART 1

#12: CHARLTON PART 2

Major independent creators and their fabulous books from the early days of the Direct Sales Market! Featured interviews include STEVE RUDE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DAVE STEVENS, JAIME HERNANDEZ, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, DON SIMPSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, MIKE BARON, MIKE GRELL, and more! Plus plenty of rare and unpublished art, and a new STEVE RUDE cover!

Interviews with Charlton alumni JOE GILL, DICK GIORDANO, STEVE SKEATES, DENNIS O’NEIL, ROY THOMAS, PETE MORISI, JIM APARO, PAT BOYETTE, FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, SAM GLANZMAN, plus ALAN MOORE on the Charlton/ Watchmen Connection, DC’s planned ALLCHARLTON WEEKLY, and more! DICK GIORDANO cover!

Career-spanning SIMONSON INTERVIEW, covering his work from “Manhunter” to Thor to Orion, JOHN WORKMAN interview, TRINA ROBBINS interview, also Trina, MARIE SEVERIN and RAMONA FRADON talk shop about their days in the comics business, MARIE SEVERIN interview, plus other great women cartoonists. New SIMONSON cover!

Interviews with ALEX TOTH, Toth tributes by KUBERT, SIMONSON, JIM LEE, BOLLAND, GIBBONS and others, TOTH on continuity art, TOTH checklist, plus SHELDON MAYER SECTION with a look at SCRIBBLY, interviews with Mayer’s kids (real-life inspiration for SUGAR & SPIKE), and more! Covers by TOTH and MAYER!

CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983! Interviews with Charlton alumni GEORGE WILDMAN, NICOLA CUTI, JOE STATON, JOHN BYRNE, TOM SUTTON, MIKE ZECK, JACK KELLER, PETE MORISI, WARREN SATTLER, BOB LAYTON, ROGER STERN, and others, ALEX TOTH, a NEW E-MAN STRIP by CUTI AND STATON, and the art of DON NEWTON! STATON cover!

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#13: MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

1970s Marvel Horror focus, from Son of Satan to Ghost Rider! Interviews with ROY THOMAS, MARV WOLFMAN, GENE COLAN, TOM PALMER, HERB TRIMPE, GARY FRIEDRICH, DON PERLIN, TONY ISABELLA, and PABLOS MARCOS, plus a Portfolio Section featuring RUSS HEATH, MIKE PLOOG, DON PERLIN, PABLO MARCOS, FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE, and more! New GENE COLAN cover!

Interviews with Tower and THUNDER AGENTS alumni WALLACE WOOD, LOU MOUGIN, SAMM SCHWARTZ, DAN ADKINS, LEN BROWN, BILL PEARSON, LARRY IVIE, GEORGE TUSKA, STEVE SKEATES, and RUSS JONES, TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST, history of TIPPY TEEN, 1980s THUNDER AGENTS REVIVAL, and more! WOOD cover!

Interviews with ’80s independent creators DAVE STEVENS, JAIME, MARIO, AND GILBERT HERNANDEZ, MATT WAGNER, DEAN MOTTER, PAUL RIVOCHE, and SANDY PLUNKETT, plus lots of rare and unseen art from The Rocketeer, Love & Rockets, Mr. X, Grendel, other ’80s strips, and more! New cover by STEVENS and the HERNANDEZ BROS.!

’70s ATLAS COMICS HISTORY! Interviews with JEFF ROVIN, ROY THOMAS, ERNIE COLÓN, STEVE MITCHELL, LARRY HAMA, HOWARD CHAYKIN, SAL AMENDOLA, JIM CRAIG, RIC MEYERS, and ALAN KUPPERBERG, Atlas Checklist, HEATH, WRIGHTSON, SIMONSON, MILGROM, AUSTIN, WEISS, and STATON discuss their Atlas work, and more! COLÓN cover!

Discussion with ARTHUR ADAMS about his career (with an extensive CHECKLIST, and gobs of rare art), plus GRAY MORROW tributes from friends and acquaintances and a MORROW interview, Red Circle Comics Checklist, interviews with & remembrances of GEORGE ROUSSOS & GEORGE EVANS, Gallery of Morrow, Evans, and Roussos art, EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER interview, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

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#18: 1970s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

#19: HARVEY COMICS

#20: ROMITAs & KUBERTs #21: ADAM HUGHES, ALEX #22: GOLD KEY COMICS & examinations: RUSS MANNING ROSS, & JOHN BUSCEMA Interviews & Magnus Robot Fighter, WALLY WOOD &

Roundtable with JIM STARLIN, ALAN WEISS and AL MILGROM, interviews with STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE LEIALOHA, and FRANK BRUNNER, art from the lost WARLOCK #16, plus a FLO STEINBERG CELEBRATION, with a Flo interview, tributes by HERB TRIMPE, LINDA FITE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, and others! STARLIN/ MILGROM/WEISS cover!

History of Harvey Comics, from Hot Stuf’, Casper, and Richie Rich, to Joe Simon’s “Harvey Thriller” line! Interviews with, art by, and tributes to JACK KIRBY, STERANKO, WILL EISNER, AL WILLIAMSON, GIL KANE, WALLY WOOD, REED CRANDALL, JOE SIMON, WARREN KREMER, ERNIE COLÓN, SID JACOBSON, FRED RHOADES, and more! New wraparound MITCH O’CONNELL cover!

Joint interview between Marvel veteran and superb Spider-Man artist JOHN ROMITA, SR. and fan favorite Thor/Hulk renderer JOHN ROMITA, JR.! On the flipside, JOE, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT share their histories and influences in a special roundtable conversation! Plus unpublished and rarely seen artwork, and a visit by the ladies VIRGINIA and MURIEL! Flip-covers by the KUBERTs and the ROMITAs!

ADAM HUGHES ART ISSUE, with a comprehensive interview, unpublished art, & CHECKLIST! Also, a “Day in the Life” of ALEX ROSS (with plenty of Ross art)! Plus a tribute to the life and career of one of Marvel’s greatest artists, JOHN BUSCEMA, with testimonials from his friends and peers, art section, and biographical essay. HUGHES and TOM PALMER flip-covers!

Total War M.A.R.S. Patrol, Tarzan by JESSE MARSH, JESSE SANTOS and DON GLUT’S Dagar and Dr. Spektor, Turok, Son of Stone’s ALBERTO GIOLITTI and PAUL S. NEWMAN, plus Doctor Solar, Boris Karloff, The Twilight Zone, and more, including MARK EVANIER on cartoon comics, and a definitive company history! New BRUCE TIMM cover!

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#23: MIKE MIGNOLA

#24: NATIONAL LAMPOON COMICS

#25: ALAN MOORE AND KEVIN NOWLAN

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #1

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #2

Exhaustive MIGNOLA interview, huge art gallery (with never-seen art), and comprehensive checklist! On the flip-side, a careerspanning JILL THOMPSON interview, plus tons of art, and studies of Jill by ALEX ROSS, STEVE RUDE, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and more! Also, interview with JOSÉ DELBO, and a talk with author HARLAN ELLISON on his various forays into comics! New MIGNOLA HELLBOY cover!

GAHAN WILSON and NatLamp art director MICHAEL GROSS speak, interviews with and art by NEAL ADAMS, FRANK SPRINGER, SEAN KELLY, SHARY FLENNEKIN, ED SUBITSKY, M.K. BROWN, B.K. TAYLOR, BOBBY LONDON, MICHEL CHOQUETTE, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and more! Features new covers by GAHAN WILSON and MARK BODÉ!

Focus on AMERICA’S BEST COMICS! ALAN MOORE interview on everything from SWAMP THING to WATCHMEN to ABC and beyond! Interviews with KEVIN O’NEILL, CHRIS SPROUSE, JIM BAIKIE, HILARY BARTA, SCOTT DUNBIER, TODD KLEIN, JOSE VILLARRUBIA, and more! Flip-side spotlight on the amazing KEVIN NOWLAN! Covers by J.H. WILLIAMS III & NOWLAN!

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Previously available only to CBA subscribers! Spotlights great DC Comics of the ’70s: Interviews with MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN on JACK KIRBY’s Fourth World, ALEX TOTH on his mystery work, NEAL ADAMS on Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, RUSS HEATH on Sgt. Rock, BRUCE JONES discussing BERNIE WRIGHTSON (plus a WRIGHTSON portfolio), and a BRUCE TIMM interview, art gallery, and cover!

Compiles the new “extras” from CBA COLLECTION VOL. 1-3: unpublished JACK KIRBY story, unpublished BERNIE WRIGHTSON art, unused JEFF JONES story, ALAN WEISS interview, examination of STEVE ENGLEHART and MARSHALL ROGERS’ 1970s Batman work, a look at DC’s rare Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, PAUL GULACY art gallery, Marvel Value Stamp history, Mr. Monster’s scrapbook, and more!

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the good stuff

The Beat Goes On!

A Look at ‘The Fifth Beatle’

Khoury talks to writer Vivek J. Tiwary & artist Andrew C. Robinson about the Fab Five by JORGE KHOURY CBC Contributing Editor

Below: Wraparound cover art by Andrew C. Robinson for The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, conceived and written by Vivek J. Tiwary and illustrated by Robinson with Kyle Baker. The graphic novel, published by Dark Horse, is available in stores on Nov. 19. Courtesy of Tiwary Entertainment Group, Ltd.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Right this way! This is your invitation to the greatest story never told behind the most mammoth musical act of the 20th century: the Beatles! This November make a reservation to be swept away by the new graphic novel entitled The Fifth Beatle by writer Vivek J. Tiwary and artist Andrew C. Robinson, with a special sequence drawn by ever-present modern master Kyle Baker. The lavish novella earnestly captures the triumphs and tragedies behind the shortened life of Brian Epstein: manager, discoverer and champion of the Beatles. The story behind this book began more than 20 years ago for Vivek Tiwary, way before his great successes as the producer of popular Broadway shows like Green Day’s American Idiot and The Addams Family, with an epiphany that came to him during his business school days. Remembering back, Tiwary recalls, “I was in business school and I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t find out more information about this guy [Epstein] so it became like a mystery to uncover. You could find out anything about the Beatles, why was there so little information about their manager? So I went about doing this research, tracking down old newspaper articles, contacting people who knew him, and this was long before

I was writing screenplays or graphic novels or anything like that! I was just a young man looking for research for a business blueprint, something for inspiration. I certainly got what I was looking for initially which was the business side of things — the story about how he managed them initially, how he got them a record deal when no one wanted to sign them, how he convinced Ed Sullivan to book them when Sullivan wasn’t interested, how he put them in their suits and suggested the haircuts. All of that is in the book and that’s a wonderful story in and of itself but it was really the human side of his story that deeply connected for me.” To the public, much about the inner workings of Brian Epstein is pretty much a mystery. Like the Beatles, he was a Liverpudlian, but unlike them he came from an a successful business-oriented family, served in the army, studied in boarding schools, and even trained to be actor at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In typical underachiever fashion, he quit acting to fall back managing the music section of North End Music Stores, his family’s department store. He proved himself to have such a great knack for retailing music that his family soon opened a second store for young Epstein to manage. On Nov. 6, 1961, Epstein’s entire word changed upon seeing the Beatles perform at the now legendary Cavern Club. Pretty much from the first sight and sound of the band, he was a believer of the tremendous talent and charisma projected from the lads. By Jan. ’62, Epstein — having never managed a band before — became the Beatles manager, one determined to take them to the top of the stratosphere. Various Beatles comics have been done before but never one with the amount of passion and energy that’s been given to this project from its creators. For writer/ entrepreneur Tiwary, this is a personal project with decades of research, one that began before the notion of ever creating a proper book took place, which simply started as a look at Epstein’s incredible success with the Fab Four. As a fan of the comics medium, Tiwary knew he could tell his story in the manner he saw fit with artistic eloquence and without any constraints. Tiwary explained, “When I first started thinking about

the story, I was thinking in colors. It’s about Brian and it does get into his childhood and a little bit about what makes him tick through dream sequences and flashbacks and that sort of thing, but really it focuses on the last seven years of his life which is the period he spent with the Beatles, hence the title The Fifth Beatle. So, really, we’re talking about 1961 to ’67, so the story starts in 1961 Liverpool, which we were discussing earlier is very dark, it’s gray, it’s rainy, it’s a bit depressed, it’s industrial. It’s very black-&-white, if you will. That’s how I thought about it. And it ends in 1967 London, the birth of the psychedelic era. It’s the dawn of the Summer of Love, it’s mini-skirts it’s free love, it really is Technicolor! So in a lot of ways, I saw the story moving from black-&-white to Technicolor. And when you think of it in those terms, for me, being a longtime comic fan, it’s a graphic novel! It’s a color palette! It’s visual! It’s the arts! It’s a painting! That’s kind of how I thought about it.” The creation of the book was a four-year journey that Tiwary completed with artist collaborator Andrew Robinson, a veteran comics artist who made his mark at DC Comics in the 1990s. For Robinson, the attraction to the project was to follow the beat set by Bill Sienkiewicz’s impeccable Voodoo Child: The Illustrated Legend of Jimi Hendrix and give The Fifth Beatles all the artistic gravitas that this compelling story so richly deserved. About his efforts in the book, Robinson said, “I think stylistically and visually it was pretty much left up to me as long as I stayed within the boundaries of history as far as researching the fashions of the time, these actual places, keeping the Beatles within their style at each of the different [periods], starting in 1961 and do the rocker look, the whole Elvis thing, when Brian becomes their manager and gets them to cut their hair a bit, get the same haircuts and the nice smart suits and all that so… Yeah, a tight script as far as dialogue and setting the scene but it was left up to me as far as deciding the panel count and the angles and close-ups and medium shots and all that.” In regards to working with Robinson, Tiwary elaborated, “From the artistic side of things, Andrew is a very collaborative person to work with. There were moments in my script where I was very detailed on what I wanted and what I was looking for. You know, how many panels and what should be the angles and the camera shots, and Andrew would deliver that or he would say, ‘I have a better idea’ and we’d talk about it. And then there were entire sequences in my script where I didn’t know how to do it. I said, ‘Here’s the dialogue. Here’s the moment. Here’s the thought and the emotions behind it. Here’s the tone that I’m going for… but I’m really not sure how to do it. And Andrew would say, here’s how I think we should do it. And then we’d talk about that. It really, really was a wonderful collaborative experience.” Concerning his secret to maintaining the energy and intensity of the story on this four-year project, Robinson responded, “Honestly, it was a struggle. I enjoyed the work, but with each page I was trying to do more and outdo the page prior to it. Up to the last page it all seemed like an impossible task. It really did. It just felt like, wow, this is all so gigantic—a painted graphic novel, and all the reference and everything. It was fun and challenging but also stressful to try to keep up that certain level of quality that I wanted.” The rich characterization of the Beatles and Epstein beautifully capture the persona of these individuals. Robinson was meticulous in researching the look and attitude of his characters. “If you’re not going to trace photographs,” said Robinson, “then you’ve got to sit there and draw. And not just draw, but it has to be a drawing that looks like John Lennon and looks like Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and looks like Brian and all the other celebrities we have in the book… but also have it in your own style! I had to draw a lot of these guys at so many different angles: from behind Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

and front, profiles, and it was a bit of a challenge to stay consistent and try to re-imagine history and illustrate these places that I’ve never been to. I’ve never been to the Cavern Club. So I was researching old photographs, short films, and whatever else I could find, just trying to pull all the pieces together. It was a huge challenge. A lot of times it was just me scrolling for hours and hours and hours through photographs I’d find on Google or whatever search engine. And building up folders of reference, going out looking for other books. Just trying to do my best to get it right and to also study the hairstyles of each year and what people were wearing, what the telephones were like and the cars… everything related to those periods in time.” Apart from telling Epstein’s story, 1961–67 is covered in the book, which allows readers to experience the maturation and sophistication that the Beatles themselves and their music had accomplished in so few years. Robinson explained, “You’re dealing with, at first, these young guys and they’re just having fun, not really taking life too serious and then,

Above: The blinding flash of discovery. Andrew C. Robinson depicts the moment when future Beatles manager Brian Epstein first encounters the irresistible sounds of the Fab Four. From The Fifth Beatle. Courtesy of Tiwary Entertainment Group, Ltd.

Contact Jorge Khoury via Twitter @KhouryJorge. 15

Above: At Buckingham Palace, Paul, George, John and Ringo [left] show off their just-awarded Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) medals given by the Queen on Oct. 16, 1965. The “fifth Beatle,” manager Brian Epstein, is standing apart, on the right.

Below: At left, writer Vivek J. Tiwary and, center, artist Andrew C. Robinson. Inset right is a detail from The Fifth Beatle, a poignant figure of the graphic novel’s subject, the Fab Four manager Brian Epstein. All courtesy of Tiwary Entertainment Group LTD.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

along comes Brian and he’s like, ‘Not only do I want to make you the most popular band in Liverpool or even England, I want to make you the most popular band in the world!’ Bigger than Elvis was what he was shooting for. And that’s a pretty big thing for these just young guys from Liverpool. So we see them starting out and getting some singles out there, climbing the charts, and then we get into Beatlemania and, again, we see Brian’s influence with marketing because he had all these marketing ideas with lunch boxes and the dolls and t-shirts. We definitely touch on that and then hitting up the United States and getting on The Ed Sullivan Show and all that. The credit goes really to Brian because he worked so hard to make that all happen.” An important matter that the book deals with head-on was the inner turmoil that the closeted Brian Epstein experienced as a gay man in an era when homosexuality was a criminal offence in the United Kingdom. Tiwary recounts, “I don’t know how much you know about Brian but the short of it is that he was gay, Jewish, and from Liverpool. And in the 1960s, those were three significant obstacles. It was a felony to be gay. It was literally against the law. If it had come out publicly that he was gay, he would have been

thrown in jail. In terms of being Jewish, there was still quite a bit of anti-Semitism in the U.K., and while this may sound strange in today’s terms, Jewish people just didn’t work in the entertainment business, especially not in the U.K. The U.K.’s music industry was run by old Catholic Knights of the British Empire. Sir Lew Grade and those sorts of folks. And thirdly, Liverpool! Liverpool in the 1960s had two very successful football clubs — Liverpool and Everton — but outside of sports there was nothing cultural going on in Liverpool. Yes, there were some local bands that the kids cared about, but in the past few years, Liverpool was voted European Capital of Culture and if you’d told somebody in the 1960s in Liverpool, or anywhere in the U.K., that, in 40, 50 years Liverpool would be considered a capital of culture, they would have laughed at you. It was a dingy port town is really what Liverpool was. But this gay, Jewish guy from Liverpool ran around saying, ‘I found a band and they’re gonna be bigger than Elvis!’ It was absurd! It was totally absurd! For me, being a young man of Indian origin, first-generation American, wanting to work in the entertainment business, I didn’t have the degree of obstacles Brian had. You know, he was facing the possibility of being thrown in jail because of his sexuality. I never had those kinds of obstacles, but I could still relate to what he was going through. His story became very personal for me. That’s what connected. I, too, much like Brian, felt like an outsider in my chosen industry. That’s why his story became so personal for me and that’s why it has been my life’s work.” By the time Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalized homosexual activities, Epstein tragically died, alone and unfulfilled, on Aug. 27 of the same year. Tiwary says, “I think the great tragedy of Brian Epstein can be summarized pretty easily in this way: here’s a guy that was so passionate about the Beatles — and the Beatles, really, their message was all about love. All You Need is Love, Lovely Rita, She Loves You (yeah, yeah, and yeah), Love Me Do — and so here is a guy who brought so much love into the world and yet he himself never had a boyfriend. And that is the tragedy of the Brian Epstein story. So, yeah, when I said that he was lonely, he had no intimate love in his life, he had no partner. No life partner.” The writer concludes, “It’s heartbreaking to think, here is a guy without whom we would never have these messages of love and yet he died without a partner. It’s heartbreaking.” For Andrew Robinson, the story of Brian Epstein also resonated strongly with him. Robinson said, “They’re (The Beatles) cool stuff, but they’re just kind of a backdrop for a much deeper personal story, which is Brian’s life, you know? Obviously, the reason we find that interesting is that he’s The Beatles’ manager but to study this guy and then to see what his life was like on the inside and some troubles that he had, personal relationships and all that, it’s a pretty amazing tale but also a tale that I think pretty much everyone can relate to. We’re all dealing with it pretty much every day, trying to balance career and love and whatever drugs or alcohol we might be dealing with. Whatever stresses of life. For him the stress of being The Beatles manager and just trying to, again, do the best he could, be the best manager and striving for the uppermost of the universe basically and have your guys be like the biggest band in the world and everybody know them. He certainly did that but there was a price to pay.”

hembeck’s dateline: @11?*

Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

aushenkerology

The Deadly Painting Hand of

Earl Norem

Long before Alex Ross, the painter endowed super-heroes with hyper-realism by Michael Aushenker CBC Associate Editor

Below: Photo of Earl Norem in his Connecticut studio in 2007. We’re unsure of the origin of this pic, so if you know the photographer, please get in touch with Ye Crusading Editor.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Today, talented guys such as Dave Johnson (100 Bullets), Arthur Suydam (Marvel Zombies), Michael Komarck (Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom), and, most famously, Alex Ross (Kingdom Come) have made painted covers on standard format comics a routine event. But in the 1970s, there were less than a handful of artists tackling such assignments. You had the Larkins and the Norems painting characters on the covers of the Marvel magazines (which escaped the comics code and suggested more adult — sexual and violent — fare) and paperback reprints. Back then, when you saw one of those magical covers, it was more novel, more special. With his enchanted paint brush, Norem brought to life an array of characters that graced the covers of magazines such as Planet of the Apes, Monsters Unleashed, Dracula Lives!, Rampaging Hulk, Tales of the Zombie, Marvel Preview, Savage Sword of Conan, and, in the 1980s, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. He first hit The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu with the Dec. 1974’s #7. Within those covers, writer Doug Moench and art-

Inset right: Earl Norem’s sombre Rampaging Hulk #9 [June 1978] cover painting features the original “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Below: Poster from Masters of the Universe Magazine #1 [Winter 1985]. Art by Earl Norem.

Imagine the great master artists Jacques-Louis David, Leonardo Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, and Michelangelo Buonarroti applying their realist aesthetics to the Marvel universe. This might be an exaggerated notion, but that’s kind of what it felt like as a kid when artists such as Bob Larkin, Harold Shull, Luis Dominguez, and Joe Jusko took to characters such as Shang-Chi, Conan the Barbarian, The Incredible Hulk, and Moon Knight with a painter’s brush. King among these Marvel magazine cover artists was Earl Norem.

ists Mike Vosburg and Al Milgrom worked on the interior. But it was the Norem wrapper, a Bruce Lee nunchuk scene, that hinted at the spectacular covers to come, which depicted Shang-Chi (starting with #9), the White Tiger (#27) and Iron Fist (#29) in colorful, hyper-realistic, fully rendered glory not seen within the pen-and-inked pages of Marvel Comics. Norem took to Deadly Hands following a few issues each by cover artists Neal Adams and Larkin. On the fifth of May in 2011 (when this interview was conducted by phone), through the window of his country home in the Northeast, Earl Norem can see a wild turkey running up the hill. Norem, 88, has made Connecticut his home for many decades, first in Wilton (“For 11 years… It got to be a bedroom town for New York commuters and got really expensive”), then New Milford, where he lives today with his wife of 62 years, Margaret (whom everyone calls “Peggy”). Norem’s daughter, Andrea, is a teacher, and his grandson, currently attending Western Connecticut University, aspires to be an art teacher. He no doubt learned a lot from his gramps. Born in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn, New York, Norem grew up in Bayside, Long Island, where, he tells us with a laugh, “I always drew everything. My dad used to say, ‘Hey stop that drawing and do your math.’” “I used to copy these super-heroes and things and then make up my own super-heroes. I was pretty good at figures.” Norem majored for a year-and-ahalf in engineering at University of Vermont before he entered the military during World War II. It was during this time that he met his wife of seven decades. “The guy that I roomed with at University of Vermont, he was an [agriculture] student but he stayed on the farm,” Norem says. “He rented a farm in Vermont from people from New Jersey. They had a paint factory. He needed paint. We went to this fellow’s house and there was Peg. She was staying with her aunt and uncle, going to secretarial school. Our eyes met and that was it.” Throughout his conversation, Norem, upbeat and good humored, punctuates the end of every other sentence with a rheumy laugh (he had recently come down with a bad cold). Norem no longer takes professional assignments. In fact, he rarely picks up a brush these days. Cataracts and arthritis have caught up with him and robbed him of the artistic gifts of his youth. These days, he observes his professional career through the rear-view mirror. Yet Norem delights to hear that he still has many fans out there in the world who delight in what he has achieved. His thoughts about fame, punctuated with a chuckle: “When I needed it, I didn’t have it.” — M.A.

Michael Aushenker: How did you embark on your illustration career? Earl Norem: When I got out of the service, in 1945, I didn’t go back to the University of Vermont. I went back to Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Polytech. I wasn’t doing too well at engineering so I took a test with the Veteran’s Association. My talent was art. One of my teachers at the Cartoonist and Illustrators School was Earl Winslow, who was an old-time illustrator. He saw my potential and kept pushing me. He started out as a newspaper illustrator before they had photographs, they used to copy them in pen-&-ink so they could reproduce them. He was out of Chicago, I think. He was a big gun in the Society of Illustrators. Michael: How did you cross paths with Marvel Comics? Earl: I was doing work for men’s adventure magazines. I was in there delivering a job and Marvel was upstairs from them. This was on Madison Avenue. One of the editors came down with a [page of art] to correct, and he wanted me to do it. That’s how I got my foot in the door. Then I got into the Conan things. Michael: Were you an avid fan of Marvel comics at the time? Earl: No, I wasn’t into Marvel that much. Back in the ’40s, I went to the Cartoonist and Illustrators School, now the School of Visual of Arts. I got my training there. Savage Sword of Conan, I started doing those. Several editors there Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

started asking me to do things. John Romita was one. He did Spider-Man. He was a great guy. I even did some work for Stan Lee. It’s been a long time since I did all that stuff. All those guys [who assigned work], they’re gone, they’re all new people [now]. Michael: If you were not reading Marvel comics regularly, how did you capture them so accurately? Earl: Marvel had their catalogs with these super-heroes. They had their whole life stories. I had a whole collection of those books on my bookshelf. I’d look them up, see what they look like, and I would take Polaroid shots of my wife and myself and put them into those poses. I never did hire those professional models. Michael: What was the hardest assignment you had to tackle? Earl: Transformers. You had to make them look like the toys. Sometimes I had the toys. I’d study how they change from cars to monsters and heroes and whatever. Now they’re so different. Michael: I know you’re very much in retirement now. At what point did you call it quits professionally? Earl: I was working until I was up there in my late 70s. All the people I got work from were retiring or passing away. Gary Gerani, he worked for Topps in New York and then he moved out to California for the movies. Every now and then, he’d throw me a bone. Michael: Do you still paint?

Above: Spectacular men’s adventure magazine cover [circa 1968] painted by Earl Norem. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Below: Planet of the Apes #28 [Jan. ’77] with cover painting by the great Earl Norem.

Below: Earl Norem’s Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #29 [Oct. ’76] cover painting. Reproduced from the original art, courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

paddle and kayak and sail and sun fish. A lot of our neighbors have powerboats. Michael: Did you get to know any of the other famed painted cover guys who worked on those Marvel books? Earl: Bob Larkin and I were friends. I talked to him not too long ago. He lives out in Long Island. We crossed paths in different accounts [back then]. Michael: What was the process on some of those great covers, such as on Planet of the Apes? Earl: On Planet of the Apes, I’d do some layout of a story that they were doing. I used to make several comps or rough drawings with a little color here and there and the art directors would pick the ones they liked or have suggestions. Then I’d flip the layout… I did most of modeling by myself. I’d sometimes have my daughter Andrea, who was a teenager at the time, pose. Make her look scared. [laughs] On Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, I did a lot of research on how these things were done. I had a little experience with Kung Fu. Michael: What about familiarizing yourself with the superhero characters, such as Iron Fist and the White Tiger, that you painted on those Deadly Hands of Kung Fu covers? Earl: Marvel gave me a package of books almost every month. I enjoyed reading those. It gets you more familiar with these characters, especially Conan. Savage Sword of Conan was my thing. The first one I did was #14, the last one was 200-and-something. Bob Larkin, Joe Jusko, and all these guys were also working on them. I spent a lot of time with Conan. Michael: What happened to the originals? Earl: Most of those paintings are gone. The collectors picked them up in a hurry. I’ve got three or four Conans. I’m waiting for the new movie to come out so I can put them on eBay. [aughs] Michael: Which of the Marvel super-heroes did you enjoy painting the most? Earl: I liked Spider-Man… Silver Surfer, Thor… I did some posters where I combined Thor, Iron Man, carrying the Hulk in a frozen piece of ice. There was a lot of action. The action was my thing. Michael: How did you go about selling painted cover art? Earl: I got letters from the editor and things like that. Also the fans wanted these paintings. With the copyright laws, the art belongs to the artist, but printing rights belong to the publisher. The Marvel stuff is all gone. Men’s adventure stories, I still got a lot of those, Reader’s Digest stuff, paperback covers. My lawyer says I have to get rid of these or else, when I

Above: Cover painting by Earl Norem for the Marvel “Big Looker Storybook” The Transformers: Battle for Cybertron [1984]. The kiddie book was written by Scott Siegel and illustrated throughout by Norem. Inset right: The White Tiger gives the baddies what for in this Earl Norem painting from Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #27 [Aug. ’76]. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Earl: It’s getting harder and harder the more you get older. Michael: What do you consider your best work? Earl: Reader’s Digest… Some of my best paintings. They were a different type of magazine than the men’s adventure. They had a series that was all disasters — an airplane crash, a building falling down. So you had to make this up from the script and get the idea of how it happened. I did that for about 15 years. I had one job where this hotel in Indonesia, it just collapsed and it had all these people running out of it. They had all these bricks and things falling. So I turned in the sketch and they have a research dept and they said, ‘Well, the building fell the other way,’ so I had to change the whole thing. [laughs] Michael: What medium did you work in? Earl: I use acrylics. I work pretty big. You take the size of a comic book and I do it about twice-up. Twice the width and twice the height, on illustration board. Michael: What kind of creatures did you excel at? Earl: Of course, the Transformers were complicated. Planet of the Apes, that was okay. I was good at animals. [laughs] Michael: What art do you think you’ll be most fondly remembered for? Earl: I’m more famous for the Marvel work than everything else. They scooped up everything I ever produced. They bought everything. [laughs] Michael: Earl, who were some artists who inspired you? Earl: Bob Fawcett… Of course, Norman Rockwell. In art school, I attended a lecture by Norman Rockwell. It was quite inspiring. Michael: How did you research your covers? Earl: I did a lot of research for [the] men’s adventure [mags]. In those days, they didn’t have the Internet, I used to go to New York public library. There was a place called Telepictures that did the research for you but they charged quite a bit. Michael: Do you draw inspiration from where you live? Earl: I live in the Candlewood Lake area. There are five towns all around it. We’re in the woods… there’s forest all around us here and we have beach rights just down the road. I’ve been a long-distance swimmer all my life. We

pass away, my daughter will have to pay a lot of inheritance tax on it. [laughs] Michael: Did you see the book that Taschen put out by Max Allan Collins reprinting the men’s adventure magazine covers [Men’s Adventure Magazines: In Postwar America]? Earl: It’s pretty good. I knew a lot of those guys who were in that book. We all got out of school at the same time, we were veterans. Those books were on the job training. It was very interesting. I really learned to paint doing those things. Michael: When you were painting those Marvel covers in the 1970s, what was the social scene like? Did you befriend any of your Marvel peers? Earl: Marvel used to have parties once in a while and we’d get together. Stan Lee, he’s a great guy. I still see him on TV every once in a while. John Romita was a good friend of mine, I worked closely with him on a lot of stuff. Michael: What was the atmosphere like internally at the company? Earl: Marvel was kind of on the rocks there for a while. A cosmetics manufacturer bought Marvel as a write off. It was not the same, they didn’t have a lot of assignments. When John Romita retired… I lost out on some of those things. At that time, I was getting into paperback and book work and Reader’s Digest. I did a series of Wizards and Warriors… sort of like Dungeons & Dragons, knights and wizards and that kind of stuff. I did the covers and 15 illustrations inside in pen and ink. It went for a number of years and I got sick of knights and wizards but it was a lot of fun. [laughs] Topps, they had some comic books based on Mars Attacks! There were a few of them, there weren’t that many. Marvel was a full-time job for a number of years. Michael: In those days, Romita was not only a star artist, but the art director, overseeing all the cover art that came in. Did he ever make you correct or fix things in your artwork? Earl: Sometimes there were changes or additions, but you have to please the art director. Even if you don’t like what he says, you have to change it anyway because you want to get more work. The only thing he ever did on my stuff, on Spider-Man, he insisted on doing the spider webs on the costume. There were certain places on [Spidey’s] face, he would do it. I didn’t mind that. Later on, I could do it myself. I had one 8" x 8" kids book on Spider-Man at the circus and I did the whole thing myself. If I had time, I knew how to do it. Michael: Did you work on short deadlines? Earl: A lot of times, I was sitting up there late at night or all night to make deadlines, then take a shower and take the train to New York. There was a guy down at Westport who worked for the post office who brought registered work to New York. If you drop a package off on his back porch, he delivered them with the name, but he was expensive. It was cheaper for me to take the train, but I’d lose a job if I had to go to the city. [Back in the day] I’d drop off my portfolio in the morning, I wasted the whole day in the city, and picked up the work in the afternoon. Michael: Was there any rivalry between you and guys like Larkin on those painted cover gigs? Earl: Not really. There was enough work for everyone. You couldn’t do more. You couldn’t do all the Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

books. I had a friendly competition with Larkin. I was happy to get the [assignments] I got. We made enough [money] that we could take time off in between. Michael: You were famous for painting the covers on those Marvel mags, but did you ever have a desire to do the interiors? Perhaps illustrate the comics themselves? Earl: I did some [cartooning] for Topps. I liked to do an assignment, get it over with, and go on to something else. I don’t think I could do a [regular] series. It was just not my thing. Michael: Do you have a website? Earl: I don’t have a computer at all, I’m not into that. I’m 88 years old, I don’t want to have anything to do with that. [laughs] Michael: Back Issue ran one of your pieces on the cover of #36 [Sept. ’09], the “Monsters” issue. A stunning painting pitting Morbius the Living Vampire versus Werewolf by Night. Earl: Those monster characters, those were kind of fun. The imagination could go wild on that. I enjoyed most of the work, no matter what it was. I still enjoy it. It’s doing what you like to do. I know guys who can’t wait to retire. They hate what they do. That’s wasting your life.

Above: One of Norem’s favorite assignments was his cover work for Savage Sword of Conan, for which he contributed (by Ye Ed’s count) 51 paintings. Here, courtesy of Heritage, is the SSOC #86 [Mar. ’83] finish, along with [inset left] preliminary pencils and color rough. Special thanks to Jerry Boyd, CEO of the Jerry K. Boyd Cartoonist Locator and Special Resources Institute of South Bay, and Alter Ego editor-in-chief Roy Thomas for helping make this interview possible. Below: Rampaging Hulk #3 [June ’77]. Can you guess the cover painter? Color yourself green if you chose Earl Norem!

irving on the inside

The Wild Ride of Writer

Mark Waid

Part 1: The scribe talks with Chris Irving about murder, mischief, and heroes remade

Comics.

Inset right: Mark Waid made a splash in Flash back in the early 1990s, focusing on the multiple manifestations of the character and with emphasis on the, umm, heroics of being a super-hero. Cover art to Flash #0 [Oct. 1994] by Mark’s frequent collaborator, the late Mike Wieringo (pencils) and Jose Marzan, Jr. (inks).

TM & © DC

Above: Mark Waid as lensed by Anne Petersen, taken at the 2010 Irredeemable first anniversary party hosted by Challengers Comics at C2E2 in Chicago. Used with permission.

“It is the luck of the draw and I haven’t the foggiest notion,” Mark Waid admits. “I wish there were some secret I knew to pass along, but you just keep slugging away. Any piece of ‘wisdom’ or advice I can give about how to stay in this business, you could point out a dozen other people who used to write comics and don’t anymore who did the same things and are now working at Chick-Fil-A. You have to be somewhat affable, understand what an editor needs without sacrificing what you need to do… By working on both sides of the desk, I understand how all sides of publishing work. I know that as a freelancer, my first job is to tell a good story, but my second job is to make my editor’s life as easy as I can. I don’t know if that helps. Everything moves in cycles. I’ve been telling very hopeful and uncynical stories throughout my career, and maybe it’s just that there seems to be a place for that in comics right now.” This is the funny thing about Mark Waid: his uncynical super-hero comics have never come when there was a time or place for them in comics. That’s probably the secret to their success. He first made waves as the writer of The Flash in 1992, when the “grim and gritty” catchphrase was fast on its way to becoming the cliché it is today; conflict was replaced with baseless angst, and superhuman feats were replaced with splash page sized ass-kicking. Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, for all their virtue, ignited the trend towards “darker” heroes that still sprouts up in the minds of less creative talent. Waid’s Flash arguably paved the way for more inspiring super-hero works to happen, like writer Grant Morrison’s take on Justice League, or Kurt Busiek and painter Alex Ross’ Marvels and Astro City (with the fantastic art of Brent Anderson). Waid and Ross’ Kingdom Come is a commentary on the “postmodernist” age of cynical heroes in a classically wrapped narrative package. So why isn’t he a washed up has-been grousing about how the market changed too much around him? That Waid found a way to change with the evolving comics market and culture is as good a guess as any. The truth, from his own admission, is that he just doesn’t know how he’s kept going. Mark Waid, even going back to college, hasn’t always known what the hell he was doing — but that’s likely what’s kept him learning throughout his life and career, and able to keep coming back for more.

Mark Waid majored at a bit of everything at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond in the late ‘70s. One semester it was broadcast journalism; another English; or chemistry — or even physics. His one stability (and the one bit of college he always comes back to) was as a disc jockey at WVCW (820 am). His handle was Captain America. This Alabama-born kid quickly learned the chief industry of the former capital of the Confederacy: tobacco. “One night, two guys just show up at the station like the Men in Black. I was expecting them to talk into their sleeves,” Mark remembers. It was an offer he wouldn’t be able to refuse — at least not at first. “They wanted to talk to the radio personalities, and were from RJ Reynolds with a marketing plan: They were looking for volunteers to go around from hotel lounge to hotel lounge in the area, doing a little nightclub act, sing a few Bobby Darin tunes, and extol the virtues of Lucky Strikes (or whatever it was they were selling at the time). It was half nightclub act/half Tupperware party, because you were supposed to gin up enthusiasm from the boozers by doing tricks and party stunts with cigarettes. I was in college, and they were offering $200 a week for a few weeks, two to three nights a week. That was good money in college. They hooked me up with this cranky old man who said all of six words to me the entire time, and we’d drive to a Holiday Inn or Ramada on the outskirts of Richmond and he’d play the piano and I’d do some tunes. I was Bill Murray doing his SNL lounge-lizard act.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

by CHRISTOPHER IRVING CBC Contributing Editor

“‘Enjoy the great taste of Lucky Strike cigarettes,’” he says in an affected radio voice. “I did this — not well — but I could carry a tune. I did this for a week, week-and-a-half and finally had an attack of conscience and realized, ‘I’m selling cigarettes.’ So, I said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’” One thing that was a constant in Waid’s life, and came with fewer moral quandaries (at least that early on) were comic books. He went from fan to fan press writer early on and, eventually, into an editorial gig at DC Comics in 1987. Crisis on Infinite Earths had just happened, a 12-issue tour de force that led into a jump-starting of the entire comics line; it was the first of many times the company would try to update themselves. “Here’s the thing: I never aspired to be a comic book writer,” Waid confesses. “Ever. I grew up wanting to be involved in comics somehow, but I wasn’t good or patient enough to be an artist, and I tried to write stories when I was a teenager and in college, but didn’t have the foggiest notion of what I was doing. I didn’t think I could ever have that many ideas, so I set my sites on editorial as my endgame. There’s an alternate world out there where I’m a 27-year veteran of the DC editorial board.” Maus, Watchmen, and Dark Knight Returns had also just come out — comic books that redefined the expectations of the medium, regardless of genre — amidst the black-&white boom of independent books that included everything from Hate! to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Zot! DC Comics, attempting to keep up with the market, was ready to get into the black-&-white game. “DC was very interested in starting up its own indy line of black-&-white comics,” Mark recalls. “They interviewed a bunch of us that for that job in April of ’87, among us Brian Augustyn and Mark Nevolow. Mark ended up getting the gig, which became Piranha Press and then Paradox Press. When I interviewed, the assessment overall was that I was not particularly well suited to head anything up at that branch of the company, but that I would be a good super-hero editor. “They called me back a few months later, and Dick Giordano put me on staff. It was a great experience: it was stressful, but I learned so much. My very first job on my very first day there was erasing the underlying pencils on all the inked pages for Green Arrow #1 by Mike Grell and Dick. As you remember, Dick was editor-in-chief by day, inker by night. In order to get both of those jobs done, there are things Dick would delegate to his flunkies, like erasing pencils. My first two days at DC were spent doing nothing but erasing 24 pages — which spoke to a lack of oversight. Nobody quite knew what to do with me, no one was quite sure who my immediate superior was supposed to be, and so I wound up being somewhat autonomous. “I really bonded with Dick Giordano and was so impressed with his creative tenor, his ability to be experimental and yet commercial at the same time. I was amazed at the adept way in which he would get what he wanted without ruffling feathers.” The affable Giordano had started from the dregs of comics in the 1950s, at oft-mediocre publisher Charlton and, after reinvigorating their line, landed at DC Comics on a couple of occasions. By the ‘80s, the talented artist/ inker was top editor, but still made the time to produce comics pages. “The single best editorial tip I learned from Dick: hire the best people and get out of the way. Be there to help, and be there to nudge along a guy but, if you’ve done your job right, you’ve hired the right people and they’ll produce good work. Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

Above: Detail of Brian Bolland’s homage cover art for the collection Flash: The Return of Barry Allen, reprinting Mark Waid’s storyline from 1993. Natch the cover artist pays tribute to Carmine Infantino and Joe Kubert’s legendary cover for Showcase #4 [Sept.–Oct. 1956].

Why would you want to interfere more? That’s double the work.” With the cockiness of youth, Waid was about to learn some very tough life lessons: “Twenty-four-year-old Mark Waid still has a lot to answer for. I want to remember that I was well-liked in the offices, but user experience may vary. I certainly had a cocky, headstrong ‘Rules are for chumps’ attitude. Those words came out of my mouth at least once, and I’m sure eyes rolled. “My responsibilities were overseeing the

Inset left: One of the very few super-hero comics Ye Ed picked up in the mid-1990s was writer Mark Waid and artist Ron Garney’s effervescent run on Captain America [#444–454, Oct. ’95–’Aug. ’96] (just before the “Heroes Reborn” debacle), where Waid effectively and poignantly put to rest the ghost of Bucky Barnes. Great stuff! Here’s a vignette of Ron Garney’s art gracing the cover of #454. 23

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

TM & © DC Comics.

Greg was a nice, mild-mannered guy… but he had an incredibly volatile temper, one of those things I look back on and see as one of those red flags you don’t notice until it’s too late. But I’m getting ahead of myself.” Neither Waid or the comics industry could have been prepared for what came next, as he tells it: “I’m sitting there at my desk one day, the fall of ’88, word comes in,” Mark recalls. “Greg came in to pick up a check or some work, all distraught and beside himself, saying something had happened to Elizabeth. She’d had fallen in the shower and killed herself hitting her head. ‘Oh, my God!’ My heart went out, obviously. “Everyone’s did. ‘What can we do to help? Whatever we can do!’ “‘I can’t believe this. I feel so bad! I feel sorry for you.’ He left my office, and I was positively shell-shocked. Again, we weren’t close, but I liked these people. I’d taken them out to dinner, I’d loaned them a $20 now and again, I’d been Greg’s champion and, while we weren’t bosom buddies, we certainly enjoyed a friendship that went beyond employer-employee. “So Greg leaves my office, goes up to Marvel, sits down with whoever he works with there, and tells them he lost his wife because she was hit by a car. “Again, I can’t stress highly enough that in the days without email and Rich Johnston and the Internet, it took a while for people to start putting things together,” Mark points out. “First it’s ‘Greg is going around telling different stories about what happened to his wife.’ Then it’s ‘Did you hear he left town?’ Then it’s ‘Did you hear he’s in jail?’ Layers of an onion, that’s how the whole saga peeled back. What I’m telling you in the space of 20 minutes is a story that took four days to unfold in 1988, in tiny bits and confusing fragments. Eventually, the whole story came out. “Turned out Elizabeth and Greg had been separated for a while — nobody knew that — and, he said, she’d come back to the apartment to let him visit with the baby and she was taunting him about her new boyfriend while he was just trying to do some work around the house, building a bookcase. That’s when it became an E.C. story. She’s taunting him. He’s got a hammer in his hand. And he snaps and loses his mind and bashes her head in right in front of their infant kid. “With no idea what to do next, he wraps garbage bags around the body and puts it in the bathtub while he tries to figure out how to proceed. It takes him days. At one point, an inker I’d rather not name stopped by to visit and asked to go to the bathroom. ‘Sorry, no, it’s broken.’ “Greg finally takes the body, uses the baby stroller to wheel it downstairs, and throws it in the dumpster. He gives the baby to the landlord and his wife to look after because, as he told them, there was a family emergency up in Canada. He hightails it to Canada for a few days to hang out with a friend, a prominent comic book freelancer. “A week or so later, he returns to New York, and the cops are waiting for him. Why didn’t they pursue him sooner, more actively? Because it took them several days to pin him as a suspect once they found the body since, as it turns out, Elizabeth wasn’t who she said she was. She was living under an assumed name! Years before, she’d embezzled money from the insurance agency she was working at, stole her college roommate’s name and identification — again, much easier to do in the mid-’80s — and made a life for herself in New York. So when the cops found the body in the dumpster and checked fingerprints, nothing matched up. “I’m relating this story in one take. We heard it over three to four days, and every new revelation was a punch to the gut. I didn’t know how to begin to process this news. So I coped with it the way a lot of clumsy, dark-humored kids would—inappropriately.

TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Comic book artist (and future wife murderer) Greg Brooks was the artist on the Mark Waid-associate edited 1988 mini-series The Crimson Avenger, written by our TwoMorrows colleague, Alter Ego editor Roy Thomas, and lovely spouse, Dann. Below: Secret Origins editor Mark Waid suffered a career setback — in the editorial realm — with his last SO’s “Ambush Bug” feature, in #48 [Apr. ’90]. Right inset: Just for giggles, here’s the unused Darwyn Cooke cover art intended for Ambush Bug: Year None #6. This oddity was examined by the Grand Comic Book Database as follows: “There is a gap between #5 (Jan. 2009) and #7 (Dec. ’09). #6 was solicited including its cover, but never published, and then an originally-unplanned #7 was solicited and published. It used the solicited cover for #6 as small comic book images at the burning pyre that Ambush Bug is tied to on the cover.”

anthology series Secret Origins and being the in-house associate on the Roy Thomas books, All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc. Since Roy worked from out-of-state, Dick decided he needed a point man inside the company to traffic the artwork, liaise with production, and so forth, but Roy still called all the creative shots. Unfortunately, by that time in his career, for right or wrong, Roy couldn’t get a lot of traction with high profile artists. He was having to become more dependent on finding up-and-comers to work on his books. I don’t know if that was because he was a particularly demanding editor, or whether he was working on material that wasn’t appreciated by more experienced artists. That’s just stating the facts: a lot of Roy’s artists were hungry up-and-comers. “One of them was a kid named Greg Brooks, roughly my age. Greg ended up being ‘my’ freelancer; Roy wanted him for a Crimson Avenger mini-series, and I used him on some Secret Origins stories. He was still learning, but he was pretty good. I genuinely liked him. He would come into the office with his wife, Elizabeth, who was awesome, and she’d bring their infant baby with them. I referred to the baby as ‘their agent,’ because it’s really hard not to give work to an earnest freelancer who’s literally showing you the mouth he has to feed.

“As time passed, I would joke about it around the office, trying to make light of something that was clearly too horrible for me to wrap my mind around… and thus began the end of my brief editorial career. The final nail in the coffin — ah! See what I did there?—came when I was assembling a DC Christmas Special a few months later, reprints of Silver Age material. In the Silver Age spirit, I decided to create some half-page fillers, one of which was ‘Cap’s Hobby Hints,’ illustrated craft and model-building tips suggested by readers, who were always given a ‘thanks to.’ I wrote one that demonstrated how to hold a nail with a comb to keep from hitting your hand with a hammer. “To my credit, I refrained from writing ‘Thanks for this tip to Greg Brooks!’ Less to my credit, I couldn’t let it go altogether and when a fellow editor suggested ‘Lee Travis,’ secret identity of the Crimson Avenger, which Greg had drawn a little of a year earlier, we giggled and I had it lettered. It was in poor taste and I make no excuses. “Then [publisher] Paul Levitz lost his mind over it. Months and months after it had gone to print, unnoticed and uncommented on by anyone on planet Earth, the ‘joke’ got picked up by Comics Buyer’s Guide and it was the scandal of the year. Paul was livid and would have fired me on the spot had Dick not interceded. Paul then gave me the choice of taking a month of unpaid leave or doing 40 hours of community service to pay off ‘my ethical debt to the company.’ I did community service. In retrospect, I should have just said, ‘Call me in a month,’ but I felt bad and was scared, and had wanted to work at DC more than anything in the world. That was my dream job. “So, I did community service as a Big Brother, I kept my nose clean, and I’d learned my lesson. But it didn’t really matter. If you’ve ever worked in an office environment, you know that once you screw up on a fire-able level, you’re forever a dead man walking. For DC, the final straw came several months later. Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming had done an “Ambush Bug” story for me for Secret Origins and, because the whole point of Ambush Bug was to be taboo and push boundaries, I did the smart thing and sent only the innocuous pages to the letterer. Most of the rest of the script, I ran past the legal department. And then I made the mistake of being out the next day, and it went Full Death Star. In my absence, the legal department had come down to my boss Karen Berger’s office to holler about the pages in question, and Karen didn’t know what was going on and wasn’t prepared, and she called the letterer to make sure he hadn’t done any work, and all he knew was that I’d sent him a handful of non-combustible pages, so he said ‘Yes, I’ve started,’ and that sealed my doom. The next morning, I was summoned to Dick’s office. “Karen was there. Dick looked very dour. And they fired me because Karen really, truly, fundamentally misunderstood every aspect of what had happened when she wasn’t looking over the shoulder of a kid who, to be fair, didn’t want people looking over his shoulder. She was convinced I’d gone rogue or something and — again, misunderstanding — told Dick that I’d tried to slip an “Ambush Bug” story past DC and that, thank God, legal had caught me trying to pull a fast one. It was positively surreal. This is the exact conversation we had: “’You sent the script to the letterer! When were we going to see all this, in print?’” “’Karen, I didn’t send it to the letterer. I’ll show you. It’s on my desk.’” “’You’re lying. You’re fired.’” “’Karen, please, I can prove I didn’t send those pages to the letterer! They’re still on my desk! Come with me and I’ll show you!’” “’Stop lying.’” Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

“’Karen, walk with me 30 feet and I will show you the sc—‘” “’It’s over. Security will escort you out.’” “There was no appeals court. It was Christmas time, 1989, and a half-hour later, I was standing on the subway platform holding a box of personal effects and seriously debating whether or not to just jump in front of the next train. The only joke I could make for days was that it had been the first day of Hanukkah, so Karen had to fire seven more people. “Obviously, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on that afternoon in the quarter-century since. At the time, I thought of myself as a wholesome, tragically persecuted victim. In the years since, having been a boss myself more than once, I’ve dealt with more than my own share of enthusiastic, energetic employees who aren’t always aware of the headaches their actions can cause and who, despite their love of comics, end up being more trouble than they’re worth. Who I’ve had to fire less because of one specific incident than because that incident was the latest drama in a long string of eye-rolling moments. I don’t think Karen was right not to listen, but I eventually became sympathetic to her position and her perception of me. I certainly bear her no ill will. Even though I still have those unsent script pages to this day, in my office closet.” “In retrospect: look, being fired was the best thing that ever happened for me.”

Above: Though their initial run on Captain America was aborted when Rob Liefeld pounced in to do his (ahem) “Heroes Reborn” version, Waid & Garney made a triumphant return to the Star-Spangled Avenger, teaming for five issues with the “Heroes Return” reboot, Captain America #1–5 [Jan–May ’98]. Though Mark would remain on the title as scripter up to #22 [Sept. ’99] — and five issues of Sentinel of Liberty — this star-crossed second chance broke the writer’s heart because of editorial interference. Here’s a spread of Ron’s work in #3 [Mar. ’98]. Below: Yes, Virginia, there was a Flash TV series back in the day. On CBS between 1990–91, to be exact. Here’s John Wesley Shipp as the Scarlet Speedster.

Losing his editorial job, fellow DC staffer Brian Augustyn stuck by him, and Waid worked with him as a writer for books like The Comet. As 1992 rolled around, The Flash was suffering from low sales after a short-lived TV show came and went. “There was more than one pundit at DC saying ‘I don’t know why we’re still publishing it,’” Mark elaborates. “So, Brian Augustyn — who was my best friend up there — no one else would hire me because, obviously, I was Satan in horn-rimmed glasses — took a chance and gave me the book, and figured ‘What the hell? They’re probably going to cancel it in a few months, anyways.’ Everybody told him not to, that I was a fanboy who would write fan fiction, and that it would be terrible. Brian stood by his guns and gave me the book.” 25

Below: Self-caricature of the late artist and frequent Waid collaborator, the “Ringo!” kid, remarkable artist Mark Wieringo, who passed away suddenly in 2007.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

The Flash had been suffering as a second stringer for about five years: when the Barry Allen version of the character sacrificed himself in 1986’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, his screw-up kid sidekick Wally West took the role over. As writer William Messner-Loebs was producing an underrated, ahead-of-its-time run on the book, with Wally West trying his damnedest to fill his late mentor’s shoes, the Barry Allen version was living on the CBS TV show. Since so much of Wally’s conflict was in coping with his uncle and mentor’s loss, the book was mired in its own (and on a metatextual level, fandom’s) worship of Barry Allen. Within his first year, Mark Waid brought Barry Allen back, but with a twist: it was actually Barry’s longtime foe Reverse-Flash experiencing a schizophrenic episode, convinced he was his enemy and trying to live on as a homicidal Barry. Waid brought Wally West as low as he could go, and then pushed him back up to overcome not only his enemy, but the ghost of his mentor, as well. By the end of “The Return of Barry Allen” storyline, Mark let Wally West finally graduate into becoming his own character. “It worked, because this is the process. You tear the character down to its foundation and find the pieces that resonate with you, the parts of yourself that resonate with that character,” Mark reveals. “You rebuild off of that. It was a perfect place to be creatively with Flash, because Brian was my best friend, he never edited my words and we could do whatever we wanted to. We’d get on the phone once a month, and I would then just write the scripts. No one was paying attention because we were totally under the radar. I had a chance to learn the craft without being under scrutiny.” By making Wally West a cipher of himself, Mark Waid gave The Flash an emotional gravitas, and thrust it out of the shadow of the old Flash. Wally West was, intentionally on

TM & © DC Comics.

Above and next page: Alex Ross T-Shirt images depicting his and Mark Waid’s characters from the 1996 mini-series Kingdom Come. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Waid’s behalf or no, the ultimate Generation X super-hero. Aided by up-and-coming artist Mike Wieringo, The Flash was a refreshingly upbeat super-hero book that was out at a time when super-heroes were anything but, one that had a modern sensibility while still embracing the optimism of comics from past decades. Nineteen ninety-five saw Mark taking over an icon on the other side, as he inherited Captain America from long-time writer Mark Gruenwald. For Waid, it was a dream come true, as he teamed up with artist Ron Garney to taken on one of his favorite heroes. It was a critically successful run that was quickly wrought with frustrations. “I love Captain America,” Mark said in 1997. “I got the job because I was called by Ralph Macchio, and he left a message on my machine that he wanted me to take over a Marvel book, and I had no idea. It was too late to call back, but there was only one book. I didn’t grow up with Marvel, but I loved Captain America. When they said Captain America the next day, I couldn’t have been happier. You could count the number of times on the fingers of one hand that the perfect assignment has come to the writer who wants him most. I loved the fact that here was a guy who was completely decisive, and thinks faster than I do, and always has a plan.” As with The Flash, Waid tore down what the hero was and rebuilt him: in this case, Captain America found himself branded a fugitive and forced to deal with his archvillian, The Red Skull. The Captain America that Waid and Garney presented was a full-throttle action book with a decidedly younger feel which, at one point, even stripped the character of his trademark stars and stripes. Captain America hit a roadblock in 1996 when Marvel, in an act of what some would consider desperation, gave four of their main titles to two of the former Marvel star artists who went on to form Image Comics — Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld — for a year. Captain America was handed to Rob Liefeld, and Waid and Garney were off the critically acclaimed run. Liefeld himself was off the title after six issues and, at the end of the year-long Heroes Reborn commitment, Waid and Garney were back. “The advantage with the first run was that nobody expected anything, it was a moribund book, and their only creative note was ‘Go nuts,’” Mark said shortly after the second run began. “When we got back, we were under the microscope and, suddenly, all these editorial and managerial types who had nothing to do with the first run’s success were convinced they alone knew the secret to making it good again. “It was a nightmare from the get-go; I had to rewrite the first plot about six times, and not because it was bad, but because upper management would say ‘We’ve decided you should use a different villain’ or ‘Hey, how about a robot dog?’ That kind of crap. That was unfortunately very indicative of my second run of Captain America. They gave me the book and then said ‘We’ve decided you don’t know what Captain America is about, but keep writing it. Keep going, we’re going to hate everything you do!’ “The second run was a complete misstep from almost the get-go. After we got past the first couple of story arcs, I was constantly at war with editorial, and it showed in the book. It wasn’t my vision, it wasn’t their vision, it was some horrible Frankenstein creation.” The straw that broke the camel’s back was the 14th issue, which gave the villainous Red Skull’s origin through the Nazi’s own perspective. Drawn by Andy Kubert and colored mostly in graytones, last minute editorial interference resulted in a rescripted book that “broke” Waid’s heart: “That was the best thing I ever wrote, and I went into it with guns blazing, flares going off and big spotlights in the sky, going ‘Excuse me, this is going to be a really touchy story. You don’t want me to tell the story, I don’t think you want to publish this!’ I was yelling loudly, and everybody said ‘Let’s take a look.’ We had it approved every step of the way, and it was heavily examined by editorial at every stage,

from the plot to the script and pencils. It was read by nearly everybody at the Marvel offices, and everybody was fine by it. It was edgy, but it was good. “We had to make some changes along the way because we were apparently making the Red Skull ‘too sympathetic’ even though he shoots Captain America point-blank in the face on page 19. I wasn’t thrilled, but I accepted the notes, because it was their sandbox. Every time they asked for changes, I’d say ‘I knew this was coming, I knew you’d want changes.’ I made all the changes, and everybody was fine with everything, and that was on a Friday. The cover had already been printed, so my name was on it. That’s how late in the game this thing was. “The thing was going to the printers, and [editor-in-chief] Bob Harras had decided that, even though everybody had read it over and over again, and given it a thumbs up, and he’d also read it every step of the way, that ‘We need this rewritten over the weekend, where’s Ralph Macchio?’ I was told about this on Monday, after it had left for the printer’s, when it was too late to do anything about it, and I demanded they take my name off it because it wasn’t my work. They were able to do it on the inside, but not on the cover, because it had already been printed. “Yet, the next issue was ‘Go do your best work!’ No, there was no incentive in doing my best work. Working with Marvel editorial after that, and trying to do your best, was like going into the refrigerator and getting the milk, finding it sour, and putting it back, saying ‘Maybe it’ll be fresh tomorrow.” Marvel was a funny place in the late ’90s: having been bought out by a junk bondsman and suffering from bankruptcy woes, it was a shadow of the company it had been mere years before. Maybe it was editorial scared to make too many waves or take too many risks, or perhaps something deeper and more political. Waid stuck on Captain America for only about eight issues more, before moving away from the House of Ideas. “Right or wrong, good or bad, I was going to make the book thematic about the American Dream. I truly believe the only way to write Captain America is to tell stories that can be told only with him. And that’s when I was told ‘Captain America doesn’t have to be about America, Spider-Man isn’t about spiders.’ “That’s my second-most favorite Marvel quote of all time, next to ‘We see writer-driven stories as an experiment that’s failed.’” Over at DC Comics, Waid had made his mark on Justice

Above: From left, moderator Christopher Irving, writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams at their July 2012 talk. Photo by Seth Kushner.

League and, even more so, with the four-issue epic series Kingdom Come, co-plotted and painted by Alex Ross, in 1997. Ross’ photorealistic work brought a reality to an aged Justice League, as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman were faced with a new generation of “super-heroes” who were more anti- than super. It was majestic, epic, and the last word on the postmodernist drek that had ruled comics for the prior decade. Waid and some of his contemporaries even tried his hand at Gorilla Comics, a stillborn imprint of creator owned titles at Image Comics in 2000. Not long after, he moved to Florida to serve in an editorial and writing capacity at CrossGen comics, a start-up launched by millionaire Mark Alessi that imploded after a few years. By that point, Marvel Comics had changed radically: a new publisher, Bill Jemas, hired creators Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti to start an imprint within the company called Marvel Knights. Given the commercial and critical success of the Knights books, Quesada was soon promoted to the editor-in-chief position. It was a new Marvel, and they were looking to Mark Waid to reinvigorate one of their oldest titles, Fantastic Four. [To be continued.]

Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

Inset left: Cover art sans trade dress for Mark Waid and the late Mike Wieringo’s run on The Fantastic Four, teaming from #60 [Oct. ’02] until #524 [May ’05]. No, that’s not for 460 issues… y’see, the numbering was retrofitted somewhere around #71 to celebrate the 500 th issue of the FF. Cover at further left is from the teams 9¢ debut (Google it), #60, with inks by Karl Kesel and colors by Richard Isanove. Near left is #509’s cover by the same art team, cover dated Mar. ’04.

Part two of Christopher Irving’s interview with Mark Waid appears in the next issue of CBC. 27

Les Daniels

Funnybook Facts & Frightful Fiction

The conclusion of CBC’s examination of the Twentieth Century Renaissance Man

Above: Les Daniels’ finest achievement, the 1978 horror novel The Black Castle: A Novel of the Macabre, which introduced his vampire (anti-)hero. Horror writer Chet Williamson said, “His leading vampire, Don Sebastian de Villanueva, is one of the few tragic heroes of late 20 th century fiction, and with him Les pulls off another splendid trick, which is to make us feel repelled by him even as we identify with his dark grandeur.” The undead protagonist would star in all of Les’s five novels. Inset right: It’s Plastic Les! As depicted by artist Tim Estiloz, the cartoon portrait of the author — in the guise of Les’s favorite comic book character — originally appeared in a Boston Phoenix profile by Tamara Wieder in Feb. 2002. Coloring is by CBC’s coveted Clandestine Colorist. Special thanks to Mr. Estiloz for its appearance here.

I’m certain the last time I saw Leslie Noel Daniels III was on Free Comic Book Day, at my friend Rob Yeremian’s Time Capsule shop, in Cranston, RI, when Les pulled up with longtime pal John “The Mad” Peck. Invariably choosing the E.C. and Disney freebies, he asked me to come visit him more often and shared a litany of medical woes plaguing his aging body. But, whether too busy or improperly attentive to the notion of friendship, I never again graced his Benefit Street basement apartment and, quite likely on Halloween 2011, the brilliant writer and astute historian died alone, his body left undiscovered for a number of days. Sad as that demise sounds, Les had an existence filled with achievement and life-spanning friendships. He was admired, to the end and beyond, by those in the disparate fields of horror fiction and comic books as one of the finest minds and writing talents ever in popular culture. In the first issue of this writer’s short-lived horror ’zine, Tekeli-li! Journal of Terror [Spring 1991], much of it devoted to Daniels, it was written, “Les is a rare bird. While fame and riches have so far been elusive, he has earned a reputation among fellow professionals as an admired writer and a contemporary master of the [horror] genre. Stephen King says that Daniels ‘tells one hell of a story. His books are rewarding, creepy and fun.’ Robert [Psycho] Bloch recently wrote to say, ‘Les is truly a major force in the field!’ Submitting Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media as evidence, Les is also horror’s most insightful (and fun-toread) historian.” No less than S.T. Joshi, noted Lovecraft scholar and supernatural fiction expert, in a chapter devoted to the Brown-educated author within Joshi’s 2004 survey, The Evolution of the Weird Tale, wrote of Living in Fear, “The most important thing to realize about Daniels is that he was already a thorough student of the field before he began to enrich it with his own novels. Living in Fear, although on the surface a ‘popular’ and non-scholarly ac-

count, is a remarkably comprehensive history of horror in all its forms — literature, drama, film, comic books, even rock music — from antiquity to the present. It is encyclopedic, accurate, and written with obvious relish… it could virtually serve as a sort of 50-year update of Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature [1927] — if, of course, one can imagine Lovecraft discussing E.C. Comics and Alice Cooper.“ Living in Fear was Les’s 1975 follow-up to his first book, the study Comix: A History of Comic Books in America, published in 1971. “[It] was based on the fact this was something I was interested in,” Daniels told the Australian horror ’zine Tabula Rasa in 1995. “In a way, it’s dated and superseded now, there were fairly few books even on horror films back then. But what makes it more unique now is that, in addition to discussing most of the significant English language horror films made up ’til that time, it also tried to deal with the literature, going back to the Gothic novel and so on.” To that end, Les not only featured a number of prose short stories by authors that included Poe, Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, and Richard Matheson, but he also reprinted the Al Feldstein and Jack Davis comic-book tale “The Model Nephew” [Haunt of Fear #22, Nov.–Dec. 1953], giving E.C. Comics equal stature to the work of the greatest of supernatural fiction writers. A companion volume, Dying of Fright, appeared the next year, an anthology of horror stories exquisitely illustrated (by Lee Brown Coye, whom editor Daniels called, “[P]erhaps the most important living American illustrator in the domain of the macabre”). Les’s longtime friend and horror anthologist Bob Booth said, “If you had to

by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor

Portrait Photography by Beth Gwinn #3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

in memoriam have only one set of books on the horror genre, one that was a history and one that sampled the best stuff, I would have this pair over any others.” (The author went on to compile an ancillary horror collection, this one geared towards students, Thirteen Tales of Terror, which he co-edited with his sister, Diane Thompson.) Les not only contributed significantly to the study of the form, he also helped celebrate the contemporary scene in those pre-Carrie years, back before the horror explosion. Along with Booth, literary agent Kirby McCauley, and small press vanguard Donald M. Grant, Les organized the first World Fantasy Convention, an annual gathering of fantasy and horror writers still held every Halloween. (According to the UPI at the time, Rod Serling was looking forward to attending the inaugural 1975 Providence gathering but suffered a fatal heart attack the summer prior.) “It was a rousing success,” Booth said, and that event eventually prompted Booth to establish the Northeast Regional Fantasy Convention — quickly shortened to NECON — held every summer in the Ocean State. It was there Les became a permanent fixture, as inevitable winner of their trivia contest, “That Damned Game Show,” and the banjo-strumming troubadour. Booth quickly grew from friend to also admirer of Les Daniels. “The two things about Les that struck me was, first, the depth of his knowledge of the field and, second, the quality of his writing. My opinion on these two things never changed. Les was just a spectacular prose stylist, who I believe, if he decided to write mainstream fiction, he could have been on a scale of an Updike or a Cheever.” Instead, after producing beautifully crafted and deeply informed books on the respective histories of comic books and supernatural horror, Daniels dove into weird fiction, scribing his widely-lauded debut novel, The Black Castle, which Stephen King called “dark and humane” and the best-selling novelist included it on his list of top 100 contemporary horror works in Danse Macabre. Set during the Spanish Inquisition, the tome introduced the leading character of all of Les’s long-form fiction, the vampire Don Sebastian de Villanueva, described by Joshi as, “a ruthless and pitiless vampire who nevertheless elicits the reader’s sympathy (or, at any rate, respect) by the cynical dignity of his bearing and his quest for knowledge.” What placed his debut novel apart from the typical fare was its theme. Joshi, in his Evolution of the Weird Tale, explains, “The Black Castle is not simply a vampire novel set in 1496, in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition: the historical ‘background’ ultimately comes to dominate the work, and the real horror becomes the Inquisition and not Sebastian. Why else do we have such lengthy and painfully precise depictions of the Inquisition’s dungeons and torture procedures, and finally a spectacular auto-da-fé where living heretics are burned and dead ones exhumed and their rotting skeletons put to the torch?” Booth is resolute in his estimation: “I stand firm that The Black Castle is a masterpiece… Think about what he is taking on! He is making his hero a vampire, who everybody usually considers evil. And he’s making the vampire’s brother, a prince of the church, into an evil monster who tortured people. So, ‘Who’s bad?’ is the question he was asking, and I think it was a profound question that needed to be asked, especially at the time, the end of the ’70s. To me, the fact that he took on the subject much deeper than most vampire novels was courageous.” What also sets the book apart from contemporary fare is the excellence of prose and the original approach. “The complex and enigmatic figure of Sebastian is clearly Daniels’ greatest accomplishment,” Joshi maintains, “although praise must also be extended to the richness of historical setting, the elaborate interweaving of genres, and in general the whole conception of a vampire stalking through history, Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

Inset right: In 1983, Ace Books released the initial Don Sebastian trilogy by Les Daniels as a paperback series with similarly designed cover paintings by Ian Craig. Just before press time, pal John “The Mad” Peck, a tremendous help for these two installments chronicling the life of our mutual friend, called to say he remembered Les telling him that the author intentionally eschewed a flowery literary style in The Black Castle, opting instead for an in-the-moment approach akin to Dashiell Hammett’s crime writing.

something he accomplishes rather more satisfactorily than his contemporary Anne Rice.” In a quirk of history, Les introduced his suite of interwoven horror novels during the same era as Rice’s hugely successful Vampire Chronicles series, featuring Lestat, which debuted in 1976. “Les despised the fact that Anne Rice was more successful than he was,” Booth said. “Not because he was conceited; he just thought that what she did to the vampire ruined that kind of character because she made him romantic. In Les’s mind, all vampires ought to be like Dracula — absolutely vicious killers. What’s funny about that, of course, is Les’s own vampire only kills to feed; he’s not only an absolutely vicious killer — but he’s also not a sweet, romantic guy like Lestat.” Still, it was hard not to be jealous of such meteoric success. Les told the Boston Phoenix is 2002, “I came out with my first vampire novel shortly after [Anne Rice], but I was writing mine when her first one came out, and my initial reaction was, ‘Oh

Above: On the cover to Les Daniels’ nonfiction horror masterwork, Living in Fear [1975], included is a detail from Frank Frazetta’s cover of Creepy #32 [Apr. 1970], a tribute to the author’s devotion to comic books. The frontispiece inside is the Jack Davis cover art detail for the first issue of that Warren black-&-white comics anthology.

good, they’re nothing alike.’ Now I think, ‘If only I’d been like hers, I might be rich now.’” Though nowhere near the runaway success of Interview with the Vampire and despite the demise of Don Sebastian at the novel’s finale, sales of The Black Castle prompted the publisher to entice Les to bring back the character. “He envisioned it as a stand-alone novel,” Booth shared, “but Scribner’s said, ‘Look, we’ll throw money at you if you do another one.’ So he had to resurrect Sebastian in The Silver Skull [1979]… and each time, the same thing: he would kill him off at the end of a book and they’d offer Les a better contract and he’d write another one. That was for the first three,” the third entry being Citizen Vampire [1981]. “Plundering history,” that’s what Les liked to do, or so he was quoted by the Providence Journal in 1989. He told Tabula Rasa, “[The novels] gave me the opportunity to tie in with a lot of historical research… The first one was set during the Spanish Inquisition, and I did a lot of work then on the witchcraft trials… And the second one was about Aztecs in Mexico… And the third one was the French Revolution, and that was great, I had such a great time with the guillotine. I found books about the guillotine, and how it was invented and all this nonsense they went through, the tests they made on dead bodies; and the different kinds of blades they tried, the effect they thought it might be having on the heads, and whether it was really humane. There’s reams of material about this. It’s just the most gruesome, insane stuff, but it was all true. A lot of people said that one of the guillotine scenes in there is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever written. And that’s totally accurate as to what people were doing at the time, it doesn’t involve any of my weird fantasies.” Les was persuaded to raise the vampire once again for a projected second trilogy, though the return of Don Sebastian was initially a stand-alone novella, Yellow Fog [1986], published by Donald M. Grant. “But an editor at TOR Books called him,” Booth explained, “and said, ‘We’d like to reprint that as a novel. Could you fatten it up a bit?’ Well, he really didn’t want to, so he said, ‘Nah, I don’t want to really do one novel, but if you sign me up to do a trilogy, that’ll be the first book.’ And they said okay, much to his surprise! He did Yellow Fog [1988] and No Blood Spilled [1991], but, at least to my knowledge, he never did the last one [White Demon].” (Yellow Fog was set in early Victorian London and No Blood Spilled in British Colonial India, the latter focusing on the Thuggee death cult. White Demon reportedly was to take place in the mythical land of Shangri-La, atop the Himalayas.) What took the writer away from his fiction (although he did continue to contribute exceptionally witty, clever — and scary — short stories to anthologist chums over the years) would be another offer, which piqued a perennial aspect of the writer’s insatiable curiosity and lead to his greatest financial reward. “I mean,” Les told Tabula Rasa, “from Comix to Living In Fear, I have a research vein… in my neck.”

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

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own vision, as he was in the Marvel book,” Thomas said, “rather than it being micromanaged by the higher-ups at DC.” But it did serve the writer well as he was tapped for a series of comic-book character histories, all tightly written by Les and finely art-directed and designed by a new Daniels collaborator, Chip Kidd, the award-winning book designer with a soft-spot for comics. (Though British book editor Stephen Jones recalled, “Published in a variety of handsome and expensive formats, [Les] often lamented to me that he made very little money out of these work-for-hire projects.”) In rapid succession, Daniels and Kidd (along with photographer Geoff Spear) would produce the Complete History series, Superman [1998], Batman [’99], and Wonder Woman [2000], hardcover books examining DC’s premiere characters. But, as noted, the publisher’s heavy hands permeated the series, often to the writer’s frustration. Steve Bissette shared in his online remembrance of Les, “[S]ince the 1990s books Les authored were all company (DC, Marvel) sanctioned projects, Les often bemoaned the great stories he wasn’t permitted to share about comics history — and there were some doozies. Alas, many comics pros (rightly) complained about the laundered nature of some of those character histories (the Superman book above all), complaints Les weathered knowing, had he had his way, those histories would have been far more insightful and revealing than they were. Still, it was work, and Les was a working writer.”

Above: John Romita, Sr., illustrated the cover to the Les Daniels’ breakout history, Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics [1991]. Below: The author’s follow-up, albeit for a rival publisher, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Greatest Comic Book Heroes [’95], with cover art by José Luis Garcia-López.

“His early study Comix [1971] was the first really serious look at the comic book as a means of literary expression,” Booth said. “He would later write the definitive histories of both DC and Marvel. That’s like being the official historian of both the Red Sox and the Yankees.” And it all started with the writer fielding an inquiry from yet another publisher. “I was actually just called by Marvel [Comics],” Les told The Boston Phoenix, “and asked if I would like to write their official history. I guess because someone there had read the old book [Comix: A History of Comic Books in America].” But Comix co-author and longtime Daniels pal, John Peck, remembers, “Two previous writers had failed at the task and Dave Buskin, a Brown roommate of Les from freshman year, suggested Daniels.” Peck also recalls that Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics was intended as something more than just a bookstore item. In 1988, Ronald O. Perelman, the notorious corporate raider (who today, according to Forbes magazine, is the 26th richest American, and 69th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $12 billion), purchased Marvel Comics from floundering New World Pictures, and he planned an Initial Public Offering for the outfit. And what the businessman needed was a sales tool. Peck recalls, “Perelman wanted a selling aid for the IPO to create a buzz… He wanted a book to shop the company around. How many copies of Marvel Ron Perelman gave away, I do not know, but it was used in part as hype when he wanted to take the company public.” Whether first, second or third candidate as Marvel author, Les took on the assignment with fervor. “I can tell you he agonized over Marvel,” Booth said. “He wanted to get it right. Where a lot of people would have hacked out what they could — and took the money and run — but, no, he wanted to get it absolutely right and if he talked to two people and had a difference of opinion, he’d talk to 15 others until he got a reasonable response.” Though the House of Ideas was not a favorite, Les conducted dozens of one-on-one, informed interviews with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Shooter, and innumerable Bullpenners, but Peck remembers one elusive player in Marvel’s history who got away. “Steve Ditko was the only person who wouldn’t talk to him, telling Les that he was saving it for his own book someday.” Peck assisted the writer by loaning his Marvel comics collection. “Les found out that Marvel did not have a library of all their sh*t, but I had at least one copy of a title published every month and the key thing was the ‘Bullpen Bulletins’ pages. And I Xeroxed each one to give to him.” When published, Peck also recalls Daniels did well with royalties from the 290-page oversize hardcover book… initially. “At first, the deal was lucrative, but Marvel went bankrupt after Perelman manipulated the stock and sh*t. The original press run was 100,000. Abrams was the publisher, but it was underwritten by Perelman. Les got a good advance, but after Marvel went bankrupt, somehow Les didn’t get additional royalties for reprints, even though it went to paperback.” Critically, Marvel was well-received, cited for its thoroughness and even-handed content. Comics historian and onetime Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas said, “Les Daniels’ 1991 Marvel history was, quite simply, the one that set the standards for comics histories that have followed it.” Important, too, was the fact that Marvel generally had a hand’s off approach, giving the tome a more objective quality than future histories of another comics publisher authored by the writer. Marvel’s “distinguished competition” took note of Les Daniels’ achievement. “Right away,” Peck explained, “DC was jealous of the Marvel book, so they hired Les to do their history. For thereon in, he was pretty much in fat city.” By 1995, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes would appear with the Daniels byline, a high production value, 256-page tome, though it was a more controlled production. “The DC book, while valuable, would have been far better if Les had been allowed to pursue his

Below: The estate of H.G. Peter, Wonder Woman artist, put this illustrated correspondence between HGP and WW creator William Moulton Marston on auction after Wonder Woman: The Complete History saw print. Called by Heritage, “an incredible piece of comics history,” the subject is the Amazon Princess’s costume design.

“These were congenial projects,” Les told Tabula Rasa, “and much more lucrative than my novels, but they kept me busy for a decade [away from fiction writing].” In actuality, besides the occasional short story, Les would never return to horror and complete the final entry of his second Don Sebastian trilogy. One volume of his DC Complete History work in particular had quite the impact. Online blogger Tim Hanley writes, “Wonder Woman’s history is beyond bizarre and, before getting Daniels’ Wonder Woman: The Complete History, I had heard bits and pieces of it. However, a lot of historians dismiss the unusual aspects of her past. Daniels dug right in, putting it all out there in black-&-white with documents to back it up. For example, his pages on [Wonder Woman creator William Moulton] Marston’s bondage controversy are a fantastic introduction to the issue… [The book] is as much pictures as it is text, and it’s lovely, but when Daniels talked about her history, he got right down to it and offered fascinating glimpses at what was going on behind the scenes. All of his books pulled off this unusual balancing act… they were lavishly illustrated, company-sanctioned books, but when you looked past the pictures to what he was writing you would learn something crazy interesting.”

And the author did reveal some amazing — jaw-dropping even — insight into the life of the creator of a certain star-spangled Amazon heroine. Les not only details liedetector inventor Marston’s curious existence as a bigamist with a fetishistic bondage obsession, but also the doctor’s sense of mission:

TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Dust jackets are compared to the actual book covers on the Les Daniels Complete History series examining the “lives” of DC’s leading characters, featuring details from the original comics and Alex Ross recreations of same. From left, respectively, details from Superman #1 [Sum. 1939], Detective Comics #27 [May ’39], and Sensation Comics #1 [Jan. ’42].

Marston believed women were less susceptible than men to the negative traits of aggression and acquisitiveness, and could come to control the comparatively unruly male sex by alluring them.... In short, he was convinced that as political and economic equality became a reality, women could and would use sexual enslavement to achieve domination over men, who would happily submit to their loving authority. This was perhaps the most good-natured and optimistic solution ever offered to end the battle of the sexes, but it nonetheless failed to address the vital issue of allocating amatory assets. In any case, it’s clear that Wonder Woman was inspired by Marston’s Utopian philosophy, which seems simultaneously daring and touchingly naive (he doesn’t seem to have imagined that power might corrupt women, or that sexually satisfied men might still cause trouble).

Dear Doctor Marston, I slapped these two out in a hurry. The eagle is tough to handle — when in perspective or in profile, he doesn’t show up clearly — the shoes look like a stenographer’s. I think the idea might be incorporated as a sort of Roman contraption. Peter

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics.

Dear Pete — I think the gal with hand up is very cute. I like her skirt, legs, hair. Bracelets okay + boots. These probably will work out. See other suggestions enclosed. No on these + stripes — red + white. With eagle’s wings above or below breasts as per enclosed? Leave it to you. Don’t we have to put a red stripe around her waist as belt? I thought Gaines wanted it — don’t remember. Circlet will have to go higher — more like crown — see suggestions enclosed. See you Wednesday morning — WMM.

And rather than primarily showcase Wonder Woman as a role model for a readership of girls, Les writes, “Marston always felt that males were the ones who needed his message most. If he really did succeed in altering the social climate, it might have been by exposing millions of boys (who would become men by the 1960s) to the ideals of feminism. After all, it’s not much of a surprise that women might want to assert themselves, but it’s quite a different matter when many of the supposed oppressors agree to go along with the idea.” Wonder Woman: The Complete History would go on to deservedly win for Les the 2001 Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for “Best Comics-Related Book,” the highest accolade bestowed on him by the field (and beating out yours truly for the prize). Dorothy Krouch of DC accepted the honor on his behalf, and extended his thanks, “Especially to the three children of William Marston, who agreed to be interviewed and provided some wonderful personal photos.” The Complete History books kept the author busy for a prolonged period but still he had hoped to do volumes on two characters closer to his heart than the Man of Steel, Caped Crusader and Amazon Princess. This writer remembers Les lamenting not being able to write the histories of the Big Red Cheese and, his favorite comics character of them all, the India Rubber Man. “Plastic Man: The Complete History, that’s what he was jonesing for,” Peck said, “and he was totally pissed that Art Spiegelman received the assignment [Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits, 2001].” At the time, Les had told Tamara Weider of The Boston Phoenix, “The [character] that I guess I relate to most is one that you don’t see too much anymore, which was Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, because I think it emphasized the absurdity of being a super-hero by the very visuals, which other characters have used, of being just this rubbery guy who could distort his shape in all sorts of ways. I can imagine being that kind of goofy super-hero better than I can imagine being one of the really stalwart ones.” Sans Daniels, oft-collaborators Chip Kidd and Geoff Spear would go on to score the Captain Marvel gig with Shazam!: The Golden Age of the World’s Mightiest Mortal, released in 2010. Les would now and again produce the odd assignment for DC, such as The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days, another Daniels/Kidd collaboration, but his comics history work would wane into the aughts. Yet, Peck explains, “Les was reasonably well-off, having inherited a fair amount of security from his parents.” Anyway, he had also discovered a whole new mania by mid-decade. “To me, the strangest thing in Les’s life was his adoption of the Boston Red Sox,” Booth said. “He hated baseball earlier in life. Then, for whatever reason, he started watching the Red Sox and he became addicted to it. Just like horror movies or mysteries, he studied it. He knew all the statistics. He would bemoan bad trades. He really got to be as passionate and knowledgeable about baseball as he was about anything else.” Les Daniels did indulge in other interests over the years, such as writing a regular column of film criticism, “MindRot,” for a Providence alternative weekly. “This was a renaissance time for horror,” his friend Providence Journal copy editor Peter Donahue explained. “John Carpenter, George Romero, Clive Barker, and Stephen King were in their heyday. But many times there were no B-movies to watch and Les would be forced to review the ‘sensitive and meaningful’ releases. To this day it brings a smile to my face remembering reviews for Sophie’s Choice and Terms of Endearment with the ‘Mind-Rot’ logo.” Les also scribed Providence Journal book reviews, and even had a stint in the late ’70s as screenwriter for a big-shot movie producer. “At the time The Black Castle came out,” Booth said, “Dino De Laurentiis was feeling his oats in the [horror] genre, so he got Michael Winner [Death Wish] as a director to find some horror guys because [De Laurentiis] didn’t know who was any good to write a script.” Winner hired Les, British author Ramsey Campbell, and another writer to hole up in London hotel rooms and each write a script Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

within a month. “It had to be horror and it had to involve disco music,” Booth continued, “because disco was hot then. So they each wrote a disco horror movie and turned them in. In Les’s case, it was sent back for revision and, by the time the revisions got done, the disco fad had come and gone. And they said, ‘We’re not going to do it, so take the money and run.’” Returning from London, Les would join Providence comedian Rudy Cheeks to screen cult movies, adding their own commentary à lá Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (though years before that cable series). Cheeks said, “[A local club owner] was screening movies there — mostly European and Japanese art films like Murmur of the Heart and The Woman In the Dunes — and bemoaning the fact that the club was not drawing substantial crowds of film buffs. Les explained that fans of these films were not likely to see them in a noisy barroom and that he should balance these offerings with a couple of nights of ‘really bad movies’ like the films he and Peck had shown at the old [Providence] Shipyard [drive-in]. [Rudy] suggested that he could host the films and ‘talk back to the screen,’ providing lively commentary for the ridiculous stories unfolding in front of the audience. Thus was born Comediac’s Bad Film Festival, a nightclub act that lasted for more than a decade in a variety of Providence venues.” Cheeks continues, “Emboldened by the fact that Comediac was proving popular with audiences, Les suggested that he, [independent film director Jim] Wolpaw, and [Rudy] make their own movie (tentatively titled Comediac: The Motion Picture), which they shot over three weekends in 1980 at the original Met Cafe, the ‘dirty bookstore’ next to the West End, Les’s apartment, and the late Jeff Thomas’s loft on Clemence Street. No one has seen this movie but we are assured by Wolpaw that a print still exists.” Booth described Comediac thusly: “Daniels [and Cheeks] conceived of a serial killer obsessed with The Three Stooges. Les spoke about it often. ‘In our movie,’ he woud say, ‘an eye-poke is really an eye-poke.’ They were unable to get sufficient financing and this project also was shelved.” Peck recalls that Les’s biggest regret was not having had the opportunity to script a classic horror movie, along the lines of Psycho. “Les recognized film was the new literature,” Peck explained, citing Living in Fear as a

Above: The coveted Will Eisner Comics Industry Award given to Les Daniels for his extraordinary Wonder Woman: The Complete History in 2001 (which beat out Ye Ed for his nominated Comic Book Artist Collection Vol. 1!).

Below: Rhode Island fantasy artist Duncan Eagleson painted this portrait of Les Daniels’ unforgettable vampire character, Don Sebastian, for an edition of Yellow Fog. Thanks to the artist for permission and the scan.

THE LES DANIELS FILES John “The Mad” Peck reminds Ye Ed that the papers of the late author will reside sometime in the near future in the Special Collections of Les’s ivy-covered alma mater, Brown University. “For people,” says Peck, “who want to study the learned man’s work… as well they ought.”

Right: Acclaimed fantasy artist Jill Bauman shared this 2006 photo of Leslie Noel Daniels III at that summer’s NECON get-together.

breakthrough that legitimized film adaptations of the classic horror literature. In later years, Les would contribute a short story if asked by the right anthologist. “‘I don’t want to waste my time on short stories,’” Booth quoted the author as saying. “‘If I have an idea, I’ll use it for a novel. Why make a few bucks when I can make a lot of money?’ But as he got more acclaim from other writers in the field, when Peter Straub or Charles Grant or Dennis Etchinson would edit an anthology, they would all call him up and ask for one. And Les found it hard to say no. But he only wrote short stories if someone he really respected asked. There’s probably not more than a dozen that he wrote. There was one he left behind.” Having so much talent that impacted different fields and, more often than not, tackling jobs only at the behest of a publisher, a question naturally comes to mind: What did Les Daniels really want to do? “I’ve been fearing this question all night,” admitted Booth. “Because the honest answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ He never told me. I think what he wanted to do was to do a good job on whatever he put his hand to. But I don’t think he had a game plan. He wasn’t that kind of writer. I think the comic stuff to him was just as important as the Don Sebastian stuff. He just wanted to be as comfortable as he could, doing what he wanted to do and doing it well. If he had inherited a million dollars, he would have done nothing. I’m serious. He would have bought all the books he ever wanted, all the movies he ever wanted, and watch the Red Sox.”

The writer once told the Providence Journal, “A horror story is a cry for help from a desperately sick mind.” Truth be told, of the Les Daniels variety, that body also stored a kind and giving heart. Booth, in his 1990 tribute for Tekeli-li! #1, explained, “Les Daniels is our Gertrude Stein. It’s true. He understands more about the English language than anyone I know. He sports a rather eccentric lifestyle like an old hat. He writes crystalline prose that will break your heart if you’ve ever tried to do it. He is taken advantage by agents, publish-

Horror historian and Daniels pal Stanley Wiater recalled, “He will always be remembered by me as an extremely talented man with a most wicked sense of humor. Yet he found the time to design an original Christmas card every year.” In the end — and this is the end of the most extensive biographical essay ever composed about the man — I’ll miss those charming hand-crafted greeting cards, invariably graced with a Les Daniels cartoon angel playing a harp, almost as much as I’ll miss the man with a deep voice, slight lisp and hearty chuckle. “Fabulous Flo” Steinberg, with her high-pitched, endearingly sweet Boston accent, and I were talking about his passing recently and we both sighed. “Poor Les,” said Flo. “He was a good egg.” [If Ye Ed can entice faithful readers to action, please consider reading Les Daniels’ superb fiction, whether his Don Sebastian novels or short story collection, all now available in ebook form courtesy of NECON Ebooks at www. neconebooks.com. Remember: no less than Stephen King said of Les’s fiction,“His horror novels deserve a much wider audience”! And, of course, great thanks and appreciation to John Peck, Rudy Cheeks, and, most of all, the late Bob Booth, a generous and kind man called Papa NECON, all sharing memories and consulted closely with Ye Ed on this two-part series honoring their friend and compatriot. — Y.E.] #3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Above and inset right: Pals of Les Daniels would receive during the Christmas holiday season, hand-drawn and spot-colored cards sporting haloed angels. Here are two from Ye Ed’s files. The magenta version included the salutation “Hark!” and the cyan card, “Rejoice!” Miss you, Les.

ers, women, critics, interviewers and lesser talents. Though he bitches constantly, he is, in a literary sense, always there when he is needed.” (So devoted was Bob Booth to his late comrade that he, suffering an illness to which he would succumb only weeks later, shared time and memories with Ye Editor about his beloved friend. Godspeed, Bob, who passed on Sept. 7.) Steve Bissette, a friend of the Renaissance man, said, “Les was a hero, a grand and funny fellow, a gifted and devoted writer, comics historian extraordinare, and much, much more.” Ventured writer Chet Williamson, “Les is also one helluva nice guy, with a wry wit and a self-effacing manner.” The Guardian’s Michael Carlson wrote in his obituary of the man, “He was the first to eschew gosh-wow nostalgia in favor of a serious, but never academic, appreciation of the medium as art, and showcased artists, among them Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman, who would not achieve mainstream acclaim until years later.” Adds Carlson, “[P]rimarily he was devoted to his writing, whether introductions for independently-produced adaptations of Lovecraft, or producing authorized histories for the big comics companies. That the same man would be trusted to chronicle two arch-rivals like Marvel and DC speaks to his objectivity, as well as his talent for researching and ordering the chaotic backstory of an industry which never assumed itself to have any value for posterity.” Donahue shared insight about his buddy. “Like the rest of us, Les would grouse on occasion, but he was genuinely warm, modest and sincere. Les was a sensitive guy (he’d have killed me for saying that) — a decent person — and what he did with his life was certainly meaningful. He was a writer through and through who supported himself solely through his craft.” “But my best memories,” Donahue continued, “were spending the evening hours in his basement apartment on Benefit Street. His movie posters, his bourbon, his bat door-knocker, his Fangoria magazines, the Aurora scale model of Frankenstein — or was it the Wolfman? We would smoke and drink the night away in that basement, our groggy heads mere feet from the brick sidewalk H.P. Lovecraft trod upon. We would watch cheap, lurid movie fare on his VCR, many of them, such as I Dismember Mama and Meat Cleaver Massacre, with titles that were much better than the movies themselves.”

chatterbox

L’Amour, Mon Amour A New Medium for the Old West Thomas Yeates & Co. present the first graphic novel adaptation of Louis L’Amour by Jon B. Cooke CBC Editor

I’m in Southern California this past summer, moseying down artists’ alley at Comic-Con International 2013, and I’m a sad, sombre hombre. This here’s my first San Diego in a few years and the aisles might as well have been the dusty dirt roads of a ghost town. Oh yeah, there are plenty of creators there, but few I knew from the good ol’ days and most of ’em not but young greenhorns. I was one lonely desperado. Suddenly I hear a “Hey, you!” and yonder there’s my pal from cons of yesteryear Thomas Yeates waving me over to his booth. Thomas is one of the finest comic book artists I know, an expert delineator of Swamp Thing, Tarzan, Zorro, Timespirits, and — yee-haw! — current artist on maybe the most revered Sunday strip, Prince Valiant. And he’s also one of the kindest, most warm-hearted dudes I’ve ever met; compassionate and a nice guy. Well, cowpokes, he wanted to know if I knew of any mags who might help promote a new graphic novel he had just finished drawing. “Well now,” says I, tugging at my whiskers and eyes roaming up to the hall rafters, “let me chew that one over a bit, Thomas…” Tales of the old West, whether dubbed Westerns or, as the late legendary author Louis L’Amour preferred them called, “frontier stories,” have been a staple of the American comic book since the dawn of the form. Particularly popular during the 1950s, when cowpokes and gunslingers abounded on black-&-white televisions nationwide, Westerns are still, at present, a viable if somewhat scarce category. Today, it’s apt to be a mashup with other genres, as with East of West (science-fiction), High Moon (horror) or “Jonah Hex” (weirdness). Rarer is a straight story of those frontier times, straight in setting, with the characters and in the telling, with no dystopian landscape or lycanthropic howling or hyper-violent weirdness… But suddenly there comes along Law of the Desert Born, the first graphic novel adaptation of a Louis L’Amour story, an authentic, understated and, well, dignified comic book story of posses and rustling and lingering resentment. This writer, prompted by a desire to help out a good pal Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

and terrifically impressed with the book, set out to talk with the famous author’s son, Beau L’Amour, who was intimately involved with the project since its inception. “My father wrote the short story, ‘Law of the Desert Born,’ in the late 1940s and it was published in a pulp magazine,” Beau said. “I think it was the third Western he’d ever written.” After Louis’ phenomenal success — with over 200 million copies of his novels in circulation! — it was decided to produce audio books as if they were oldtime radio plays, and that was when the junior L’Amour came into the picture. “I was producing and writing the scripts to some of these and I had several writers working for me who were doing even more,” Beau explained. “I had handed Law of the Desert Born off to Katherine Nolan but, although she was a really competent writer, she wrote a script that was quite a bit too long. At first we were sure we could cut it but, ultimately, the two of us had to recreate the entire story in a completely new adaptation. It was a very exciting process because we had very little time before we had to be in the recording studio. A few years later, we decided to try the story as a screenplay… it was only years after that, long after the program where Kathy and I worked together had been scaled back, that I rewrote it as a comic book.” Okay, Westerns have been a longtime staple in comics, but L’Amour had never been adapted, so why now? “To start with, we hadn’t done one,” said Beau. “It’s one of the markets that my dad [who passed away in 1988], so far, hasn’t appeared in. Also, the marketplace for comics seems like the paperback book business did in the heyday of genre fiction, the 1950s through the ’80s. That sort of bookseller enthusiasm and customer feedback is infectious. A great deal of the rest of today’s entertainment landscape is very jaded. On the aesthetic side, I like telling stories in pictures. I was trained as a filmmaker and worked in the movie business on and off for quite a few years. Law of the Desert Born was a film script at one time and I wrote it with a great deal of care as to how it would be shot… making the switch to a graphic novel was really not at all like laying out a movie, but there are similarities. It’s still telling a story in pictures and I find the efficacy and subtlety of that appealing. In many ways, I now like comics better than film; once you have accepted the realities of the medium, the compromises are far fewer.”

Above: Thomas Yeates’ cover art for the new graphic novel — the first adapting a Louis L’Amour story, Law of the Desert Born. Ye Ed calls it a perfect coupling of artist to story. The humanity and sensitivity of Thomas Yeates shines through the expert storytelling. Inset left: Thomas’ pencils to a panel from the book, courtesy of Beau L’Amour, Louis’ son and a major creative force behind the project. Below: Louis L’Amour [1908-88] as painted by Fred Pfeiffer.

Below: April 1946 edition of Dime Western Magazine, published by Popular Publications, the pulp which featured one of Louis L’Amour’s first Western stories to appear in print, “Law of the Desert Born,” adapted now as a comic.

often sending me back to rewrite or condense sections as we discovered how it was going to play out visually. “Charles had warned me that we might end up using an off-shore artist and I was concerned that any one we hired would only know Westerns through the lens of crummy TV shows or old movies. So I started creating a ‘bible,’ careful descriptions of characters, costumes, tools and the locations they would travel through. I documented all these descriptions in about 300 photographs I had taken over the years.” But on-shore artist Thomas Yeates was chosen and, “Once Thomas came on,” Beau said, “the bible only added to his knowledge of the West. Thomas grew up riding horses near Sacramento and hiking the Sierras. The two of us were often on the phone to each other two to three times a week. We would discuss upcoming scenes and sketches he had completed. Once in a while, I went out and hiked around the actual places I had envisioned as our locations, bringing back maps and video, anything to add to his reference materials. Occasionally, we rewrote sections of the script (a process that didn’t end until the final documents were sent to the printer); he followed Charlie’s adaptation closely yet made changes when he needed to, and they were always an improvement.” After the artist handed in his pages, “I followed on the heels of Thomas’ work with my old friend and Photoshop jockey, Paul O’Dell,” Beau said. “We got every scan cleaned and exposed perfectly and made needed changes in the artwork, sometimes compositing in elements that Thomas would send to us. The amazing thing about the project was that I got to supervise every stage, from beginning to end.” Beau added, “I think that my work (scripts adapted from my father’s work or other projects) tends to respond well when challenged by changing the medium several times. During each change, from short story to audio script, audio to film, and film to comic, the story has grown and deepened. Changing the medium allows me to approach the material in a fresh manner, to gain perspective as if I was a new writer who just came onto the project, yet still retaining all of the project’s history. It’s a good way to stay fresh!” There you have it, partners, a behind-the-cactus peek at the first graphic novel adapting a Louis L’Amour story. So, saddle up and git along now down the trail to the town bookstore or comics shop. Law of the Desert Born, she’s a’waitin’ fer ya! #3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Law of the Desert Born, about a posse on the trail of a killer, is remarkably poignant in a quiet way, more the tale of how impulsive decisions of neighbors can escalate into life-changing, and life-ending, events. Thomas, “Year One” Kubert School graduate, is the perfect artist for the job, imbibing his characters with a humanity and dignity that adds nuance to the simple, if ambiguous story. The graphic novel is an expert matching of the right artist to the right story. “I knew Thomas was the guy as soon as I saw his artwork,” Beau reveals. “Cartooning and caricature plays an enormous role in comics, but we were telling a story that exists in a very real world, with delicate emotions and no larger-than-life characters. Thomas tells stories sequentially, but he can produce images like an old-fashioned illustrator, a truly dying breed. I have worked a good deal as an art director for book covers and really knew what I wanted to see.” Produced in fitting monochrome, “Thomas used a technique that is essentially a black-&-white watercolor,” continues Beau. “It allows for beautiful gray tones and that really helps him focus the reader’s attention and create a sense of distance and atmosphere… literally, atmospheric distortion. Far too many current comic books crowd the frame with information, all of it having the same value. It can be a bit like ‘Where’s Waldo?’ So, allowing different parts of the image to have more or less black density really helps when used by a master like Thomas… especially in a black-&-white book.” The story of the graphic novel is not a faithful adaptation of the original short story. Through the process that started with the audio play, it morphed over time, quite likely into something better. But Beau has written, “Clearly, Louis was the creator of the entire environment in which every version of this story exists.” And the author’s son shared, “The amazing thing about Law of the Desert Born was that, back in the days when it was an audio script, we didn’t have time for that. We created the story starting with the end, sort of writing it like we were watching the movie Memento, and throwing ideas at one another in a fast and furious manner. Later drafts were more relaxed, solitary affairs.” Beau also revealed the creative process working with the comics writer of Toplin, Conan, and Ayn Rand’s Anthem, among others: “Once I pulled together a deal with the people at Bantam, I worked with Charles Santino to adapt the script into a blueprint that an artist could use to illustrate a book. He broke down all the pages into panel descriptions,

Above: Triptych of pages from Law of the Desert Born, art by Thomas Yeates. This scene depicts the opening to the graphic novel, told in sober, documentary style (befitting the black-&-white presentation) and yet not with dispassion.

the art of darkness

Dysart Out of Africa The Known Writer Soldiers On Our associate editor sits down for a chat with the acclaimed Harbinger scripter by Michael Aushenker CBC Associate Editor

[The following interview was conducted at the Venice, California home of comics writer Joshua Dysart on March 13, 2013, a week before his latest title in those late winter days, Harbinger #10, made it into the hands of readers.] He saw it coming… and he tried to warn me. Writer Joshua Dysart didn’t have to be Peter Stanchek, the telekinetic psiot star of Harbinger, his current gig at the resurrected Valiant Entertainment, to know that penciling in a discussion of his diverse adventures in comic book writing was going to be a bitch. Dysart’s a busy man, and even after it took a solid two months of message tag to nail down a sit down with the writer, there was no abating of his priority and goal: writing great comics eschewing current trends in “mainstream” (translation: super-hero) comics. That said, there was one industry-wide trend he could not escape and that’s the intra-company crossover. Nearly a year into writing Harbinger, Dysart found himself in the midst of coordinating a cross-title storyline called Harbinger Wars, pulling together storylines from his book and Valiant’s other two series, X-O Manowar and Bloodshot. He co-wrote the four-issue mini-series, which launched on April 3, with Duane Swierczynski, and Clayton Henry and Clayton Crain on art. On March 30, at Wondercon Anaheim, Valiant announced Dysart will be writing exclusively for the Los Angeles-based publisher. Sure enough, the moment when I entered his Venice bachelor pad, a stone’s throw from the internationally known and trampled on Venice Beach Boardwalk (think “Hollywood Boulevard by the sea”), Dysart was fielding calls from his editor and his artist, going over the fine points of a Harbinger story. One line of debate: some character dialogue about “going crazy,” as opposed to “going mad.” “Nobody really says they’re going mad, do they?” Dysart asks. After some back-&-forth between him and his Valiant peeps, Dysart carved a couple of hours out of a very busy day to discuss an eclectic and multifarious career that, in roughly two decades, has included everything from DC’s Swamp Thing to a Mike Mignola-supervised Hellboy spin-off at Dark Horse to DC/Vertigo’s re-imagined Unknown Soldier. Although his body of work so far has consisted of an amalgam of hired-gun gigs, Dysart has made a name for himself as a writer who can breathe a personal voice into these assignments. Always charming, conversational, jocular, blunt, and as opinionated as a film critic, Dysart sat down to discuss his diverse career –– including his interesting detours writing comics based on concepts by musicians Neil Young and Avril Lavigne (!!) — before making another call coordinated with East Coast time and jumping back into the busy ether.... CBC: From what I understand, you are an “accidental comic book writer” who kind of stumbled into the field. Joshua: My first love is documentary films. But, yeah, I accidentally became a comic book writer. And once it got Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

its hooks in me, I couldn’t stop. I’m still struggling to be a great comic book writer now, every time I sit down, so somewhere along the line, I fell in love with it. I think that when it’s all said and done I’ll feel remiss, or regret, if I don’t feel I’ve managed to achieve something of meaning in comics. I do have the desire to write in other mediums, but comics is first. As far as documentaries go, I like the old school form, like the Maysles Brothers. People who were artists and journalists. I’m not a big fan of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, or film that puts its filmmaker at the center and doesn’t struggle for contrary meaning. The documentary form is almost sacred to me, so I’m pretty opinionated about how it should be done. CBC: What about screenplays? Are you interested in writing movies? Joshua: I will write a screenplay someday. I’m very interested in it. But comics come first. And I’ll never leave comics, even if I do write scripts. You know, I also want to write a novel. But I’ve struggled too hard to get to a certain place craft-wise in this medium. Plus, there’s just nothing like the feeling when a beautiful comic page comes in. CBC: So, growing up, were you more into movies and music than comics? Joshua: I never really wanted to be a writer at all, but I was always writing. I grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas. As a very young kid, I was a total cinephile. Back then I had to special order VHS tapes in the mail if I was going to watch Juliett of the Spirits or something, and my mom had a VHS top-loader, the kind with the remote control tethered by a thick cord, the very first VHS recorder on the block. I had a cousin from Austin, Texas, he was my introduction to foreign cinema. He came down with stacks of VHS tapes and I’d watch them all weekend long. Now the tools to both find older films and make movies are the price of pen and paper… which is crazy. As I look back, I see it was all training for comics. Don’t get me wrong. Comics are not cinema, and I’ve worked really, really hard to make sure my comics aren’t just movies on paper. But actually thinking in pictures. Being visual first. I did learn that from films and comics. Think about what I do. I take an image that’s in my head, I codify it into text, I give it to my artist, the artist decodes it through his/her filters, through his/her experience, and then it comes back to me decoded through that artist’s own filters and

Above: One of the hot books at the moment is Harbinger, scripted by our interview subject, Joshua Dysart. Here’s the cover art, sans trade dress, of Harbinger #1 [June 2012], sporting art by Arturo Lozzi. Overlap is a detail from #9’s cover [Feb. ’13], by Khari Evans, featuring Zephyr, an unconventional hero. 37

Above: Joshua Dysart, comics writer extraordinare, poses with copies of his current Valiant comic series, Harbinger, for our intrepid associate editor this past March at the writer’s Venice, California homestead.

Above: The hardcover collection of the first year of Harbinger, written by Joshua Dysart, is due from Valiant on Nov. 13. The Vailant website says it comes “jam-packed with more than 20 pages of never-before-seen art and extras.”

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Just in trying to get in her head I’ve come to respect, more, the need for fandom in the fan, the comfort it gives you. Having a whole strata of pop culture like Star Wars or the Joss Whedon canon to help you relate to the world and to others. I can see where there’s beauty in it. It’s not something I naturally gravitate too. When the success of the super-hero movies arrived, I don’t think the comics industry was ready for prime time. We’ve been such an isolated culture for so long, we didn’t really know how to capitalize on the spotlight. Obviously the biggest change that has come from the success of the films was the corporatization of the comics, the corporations coming in and buying comic companies. I think we’re going to be okay, but it’s ultimately for the worst in my opinion — Disney and Warner Brothers being at the helm of the dominant market share. As an industry, we’re not reaping the same profits as other media, but we’re in the same boat now. The corporate boat. Everything will need to cross platforms to be valid in this new IP culture. In the “mainstream” — which Dean Haspiel pointed out is a ridiculous term — [before Karen Berger left the imprint in 2012] Vertigo was doing comics for comics’ sake. One of the few publishers that were. And the struggle to make comics for comics’ sake is complicated further by corporations coming in and using us for other media. However, I do think in the long run — and maybe I’m wrong since I’ve been saying it for 10 years — but in the long run, once super-hero movie fatigue sets in, we’ll get a lot more of American Splendor, A History of Violence, influences. There’s not many jobs where you have a process The Road to Perdition, Ghost World, etc., coming out of like that. It’s a real joy. And every day I struggle to separate comics and a lot less Batman jerking off… I love Batman… my cinematic eye from my comics eye, so that I’m using this in the comics. medium to its fullest potential. That’s why I’m always hesitant Maybe Warner Brothers can make a billion off of JLA to talk about my love of film in relation to comics. Comics is or whatever and then put a million money back into Vertigo. not film. Which in the long run, whether they know it or not, is their CBC: So you truly love the medium and you’re not one of most important content house. I have some new hope for a those comic book guys who is biding his time until he gets post-Karen Berger Vertigo. With Vertigo, you’ve got multiple to write TV or movies, or creating comics as storyboards for genres, multiple voices. If WB can see that value in Vertigo, movie pitches? they can re-invigorate that imprint and we’ll have great movJoshua: I have to eat, I have to live, so I’m not going to say ies based from those books and, while that’s still not comics no to an option deal. But in a perfect world, if I make a movie, for comics sake, necessarily, at least it’s a step towards the last thing I want to do is to base it on a comic book. [Unkeeping comics diversified. like many] I don’t really see the connection [between comics CBC: You’re currently working on Harbinger with artist and cinema]. Comics are way more connected to music or Khari Evans, a reboot (that debuted in June 2012) of the origipoetry. Just because they’re a visual medium doesn’t mean nal series by Jim Shooter and David Lapham first released in they’re most like movies. [The] Watchmen [movie] is a trav1992. How did you land the gig? esty, and not because of where it deviates from the graphic Joshua: [Valiant editorial chief] Warren Simons had read novel, but because of where it slavishly follows the novel. It the first trade of Unknown Soldier. On top of that, Christos thinks it’s being true to the material, but in fact it has lost its Gage had recommended me. I pitched on all of the properspirit entirely. It fetishizes violence, then forces its actors to ties. I was never interested in Harbinger actually. Unknown try and pull off dialogue that was designed to be read, not Soldier was so heavy, so couched in the real world, so next I spoken. really wanted to do something much more fun. I was actually Cinema and comics are two different ways of seeing. interested in Archer and Armstrong. But Warren corralled Cinema is defined by its motion and sound… If you’re making me onto Harbinger and I’m so glad he did. It’s exactly what I your comics and you’re thinking of a movie in your head, needed, but didn’t know I wanted after Unknown Soldier. you’re doing it wrong. When you meet a real comic book CBC: Any pressure to please the fans of Shooter’s series? artist they think in static images… Joshua: We knew our first readers would be the old Mike Mignola would tell me that he sometimes dreamed Valiant fans, so there was some pressure to not just begin in static panels. So you have to think about your medium. again from scratch (but then why would you do that with a Doing so will insures the longevity of the comic. I personally reboot?). But that wasn’t a problem, those original core condon’t need to see a Hellboy movie. And if I do ever see one, cepts were always really well-mined. It was interesting for then I’d rather see some crazy Hammer version with half the Shooter to take X-Men and to say, I can do something more budget and twice the spirit. real with this. The original was X-Men, but with them talking I don’t need to see a movie based on Watchmen nor about abortion. Maybe the execution wasn’t always as solid do I need to see Watchmen going on [in comics] without as it could’ve been and it suffered a bit from the excesses of [creator] Alan [Moore] and Dave [Gibbons]. A lot of comic ’90s comics in general, but I do think the seeds that Shooter book fans want that, but I’m a formalist. It’s the form of the planted are very interesting. I couldn’t have made the Faith original that is most fascinating to me. Not the characters or character without the core concepts of the books. But in the stories, but the form a creator chooses. In that instance, the original they would make fun of her weight, and she only the amazing nine-panel grid. weighed like 130 lbs. Now, because I can, and because it’s I’ve recently started writing this character Faith, she’s a true to the spirit of the book, I have a super-hero who is a comics fan [in Harbinger]. And I never wanted to create a woman, who is 250 lbs., and it doesn’t define her. That’s awecaricature or a stereotype of a fangirl. And that has made me some. I couldn’t have done it without Shooter and Lapham. a little bit less of a formalist and more of a fanboy, I guess. CBC: That seems almost revolutionary in an epoch where

TM & © DC Comics

companies are foisting impossibly perfect-looking, over-the-top busty characters like Power Girl onto readers. [laughs] Joshua: I took the stuff that worked from the old Harbinger and that was interesting to me, and applied the benefit of cultural hindsight and ran with it. There needs to be a plussized woman kicking ass in comics. There just does. Unknown Soldier was heavy. It was war and child soldiers and I didn’t feel there was a lot of room to move around and play, but Harbinger is couched in American culture and I feel comfortable commenting on that with a more playful attitude. My five protagonists [include] a drug addict, a fantasist, a douche-bag and a radical. I love that! I got my hands on a super-hero book that Marvel and DC would never have done. And look, I think we toe the line sometimes, we have to. But we can get very dark, very violent, very honest, as well. Next week in [Harbinger] #10, our Peter’s desire to get high, very specifically on pharmaceutical drugs, is a major theme. You’ll never see Peter Parker ask himself what pills he does to stay balanced, to stay on his game. But our Peter thinks about it all the time. And look, I get it, Peter Parker, as a property, is worth a billion dollars, I get that. But Valiant doesn’t have a choice, they have to let me be crazy. They have to make a splash. They have to be different just to survive in the market and grow. Basically, my role is to write whatever I want to write and their role is to let me know where to rein it in, but I never feel I’ve been compromised. It’s a wonderful place for a professional to be. CBC: You mentioned The Unknown Soldier, a reboot of Joe Kubert’s classic Bronze Age World War II comic, which you remade and set in contemporary Africa. From 2008–10, you wrote your revamp of Unknown Soldier for Vertigo. The storyline took place in Acholiland, Uganda, in 2002 during the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and Ugandan People’s Defence Force. Your Unknown Soldier book was critically acclaimed, nominated for an Eisner Award for “Best New Series” in 2009 and “Best Single Issue” in ’10, and it won four Glyph Comics Awards, but it didn’t sell very well and was canceled after 25 issues. Looking back, do you regret anything about the way you approached the book, or think about how you could have made it more commercial? Joshua: No, no, I’m super-proud of the book. If anything, I’d probably make it less commercial if I had to do it all over again. [Justin] Gray and [Jimmy] Palmiotti, who I consider friends of mine, did a version of it after me and I imagine they got saddled more with the expectations and intentions of the DCU. But I’m glad I got to do that book my way. CBC: From a previous conversation, I remember you mentioning that you had not gone back to read any of the original Kubert run. Why is that? Can you talk about how your take on Unknown Soldier came about? Joshua: The original [Kubert et al.] version was great and struggled for some realism at first, but at a certain point The Unknown Soldier became about him fighting a sumo wrestler or some other out-there narrative device. Believe it or not, my original idea was to be very loyal to the early Kubert version. My first pitch to Vertigo was to make it an honest World War II book. Make them the way Kubert did, but relate it to today’s understanding of war; show what Kubert’s kind of heroism looks like in regards to our modern understanding of what war, especially WWII, looks like. But when that pitch was pushed aside I decided to figure out what the face of war looks like today. And I figured out that the face of war was not an officer from West Point going into battle, it’s a young teen fighting in a loosely defined conflict. To be honest, I actually think we were very true to the spirit Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

of Kubert’s version; we tried to show what that means to be a combatant today. Not like an American Marine but the way people fight all over the world. There are far more soldiers that look like the people in my Unknown Soldier than look like an American soldier. It was [editor] Jonathan Vankin who approached me first about it, then Pornsak became my editor at Vertigo and I continued through him. There was a very long period of radio silence after I first turned in the pitch. But then I went to San Diego Comic-Con in 2007, and Karen Berger’s husband, Richard Bruning, pulled me aside and said, “I read your Unknown Soldier pitch and I’m in love with it. She hasn’t read it yet, but I’ve been thinking about it. I talked to her about it.” And that’s how it happened. CBC: I met you some years ago right when you were about to travel to Africa. I remember us talking at the Comic Bug in Manhattan Beach. You told me you were about to spend a month in northern Uganda researching the political unrest there, traveling to Africa on your own dime, in order to inform your then upcoming Unknown Soldier series. Joshua: When I was first green-lit I asked, “Can we push the production schedule a month? I want go to Uganda and meet some child soldiers.” [laughs] They were supportive. Karen was worried about my safety. I went online and I was doing some research, I found a Ugandan hip-hop artist. I wrote him, I said, “I love your music. I know I’m just another white guy visiting Africa, but I’d like to learn more about the political unrest over there.” He said, “That sounds awesome. I live in Canada now, because it sucks in Uganda. I have a friend at Makerere University…” And he gave me his friend’s number. I flew into Entebbe. I spent a night in an animal preserve there. There was a bunch of kids with AK-47s protecting these animals. I was falling asleep listening to an old lonely lion roaring in his habitat nearby. It was amazing. I was definitely broke at the time, but I got a $1,500 green-light fee from Vertigo, so I bought a ticket with it. I got to know the south, which was relatively stable through the contact I made online. My second night in the capital of Kampala we went to eat, and my contact (his name was Kajimbo Douglas — a lovely, lovely man) saw a friend who worked for one of the local papers [and introduced me]. They have two papers in Uganda: one is state-controlled, one is independent… anyway, this reporter gave me [contacts]. I began interviewing people in the two opposing political parties, and that’s when I started to live like a journalist. I woke up in the morning, arranged interviews and then, at the interviews, asked for more contacts. I’d interview anyone who could help me out with my journey. After a week I had a contact up north in the war zone (this was during the Juba peace talks and a cease fire was in place). So I headed north for a month and just spent time up there interviewing people. Journalists, child soldiers, teachers, taxi drivers, politicians, soldiers, anyone and everyone. The first time you meet a 15-year-old with an AK-47, a child with a gun, that is pretty terrifying. But after a while you kind of get used to it. They carry their gun around like a woman carries her purse around. And you just sort of go with this strange new normal. CBC: You did an interesting thing by the end of your version

Top and above: The writer went to the length of traveling to Uganda to research his late ’00s Unknown Soldier comic book series. Top is Joshua (at right in rearview mirror, with camera) being driven on a “boda-boda.” Above is Joshua at the Ugandan Independence Wall, circa 2007. Below: Dave Johnson cover art of Unknown Soldier #21 [Aug. 2010].

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

TM & © DC Comics

working on Unknown Soldier after 1946 and Unknown Soldier was taking a lot of my time and thought-space. By the time I began working on B.P.R.D. 1947, Mike already had a very clear idea on what he wanted. So I got to play a little less. Mike and I were butting heads creatively and then I was very late with the last issue of 1947, which was the final nail in that coffin I guess. Mike and I are still friends, but we haven’t worked together since. Maybe that will change. CBC: Can you discuss your exposure to comic books as a youth? Joshua: My parents were very young, they had me when they were 18 and 19. There was vinyl all over the house. I noticed Robert Crumb’s Big Brother and the Holding Company [album] cover when I was pretty young. It was so visually arresting. Later I found a stack of Playboys hidden somewhere in the house, and in the middle was a reprint of Zap #0, also by Crumb, and something clicked at very early age, I could tell this was the same artist from the album cover. So R. Crumb becomes the first cartoonist I recognized. Around this time, a full-on epic comic shop opens up in Corpus, and by ’86, when I’m 15, I’m reading Watchmen as it’s coming out in singles, and The Dark Knight Returns, Cerebus, Elfquest, Love & Rockets, Nexus, Badger, Savage Sword of Conan, Eerie, Creepy, [Norm] Breyfogle’s work on Batman… and later I start going back and discovering Kirby, Eisner, and Ditko, who always blew my mind… and Basil Wolverton, etc. CBC: An interesting couple of detours in your career concern — for lack of a better term — vanity projects by famous musicians: Avril Lavigne’s Make 5 Wishes, a pair of 2007 manga-style graphic novels illustrated by Camilla D’Errico; and Neil Young’s 2010 comic book Greendale, featuring the art of Cliff Chiang. The Avril Lavigne project was printed in seven languages with digital distribution in Asia, while the Neil Young book charted on The New York Times bestsellers list. Can you talk about those projects and how you got mixed up in them? Joshua: The Avril Lavigne comic was basically to pay 11 years of back taxes, essentially. Having said that, I’m actually really proud of that comic, but I wish somebody else had been attached to it other than Avril. I was proud of the work, but not proud of the association with Avril Lavigne. And yet, despite my comment about back taxes, I still really didn’t do it for the money. I’ve never really done anything for the money. I did it for Camilla. She approached me… she’s an artist that I take full credit in discovering. We’d been trying to work together for some time, so it was really about her. She introduced me to the Canadian publisher. They flew me up to Vancouver and they were all very lovely people. We had such a good time hanging out and discussing the book. So, like always, I did it because I liked the people. They were a little inexperienced though and Del Rey forced on us a deadline that was completely intolerable. I wrote 200 pages in less than a week. A similarly unrealistic schedule was placed on Camilla. I felt the second volume was not as good artistically, even though it’s a better script, because by then Camilla bailed. To Avril Lavigne’s credit (mostly because she didn’t give a sh*t, I think), she didn’t get involved. Conceivably, we could’ve just had her in a poster in the background, or two lesbians kidnapping her or a giant Kaiju monster attacking during an Avril Lavigne concert, these were all pitches we had. But Camilla had the best pitch, just have Avril be an imaginary friend, that way it didn’t have to feature the real Avril Lavigne, she was more like Jiminy Cricket. And that worked great. I still get emails from young girls who love that book. That makes me happy. I kind of think we rocked it, personally. CBC: What about Greendale, which I believe was inspired by Young’s concept album addressing environmental corruption as depicted through the prism of the titular seaside town’s residents. Joshua: First, let me state that it’s not just the album. There’s also a stage play and Neil Young also directed a movie based on it. There’s an art book, as well. Our adapta-

This page and next: Clockwise from above is the cover art for Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment #3 [2008], scripted by Joshua Dysart and adapted from Deepak Chopra’s novel; page from Avril Lavigne’s Make 5 Wishes, illustrated by writer Dysart’s discovery Camilla D’Errico; Cliff Chiang’s cover and panel detail from Neil Young’s Greendale [2010], scripted by Dysart, who had a working relationship with the rock’n’roll icon while on the project; detail of Igor Kordey’s cover art for The Unknown Soldier #2 [Jan. ’09], Joshua Dysart’s breakout series.

of Unknown Soldier, depicting a little boy, toting an automatic rifle, becoming the new Unknown Soldier; essentially continuing an unbreakable cycle of violence. I found that angle on your version interesting. Back in his day, filmmaker Sam Peckinpah was accused of and vilified for fetishizing violence in his films, and yet every one of his protagonists clearly has a broken moral compass, dying by the end of his films: The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Joshua: Peckinpah is concerned with human nature. He had something to say, albeit something dark to say, about humanity. He had way more content and messages in his films than Tarantino, who is often compared to him. Tarantino doesn’t give a sh*t about human nature. He never thought about it once. I’m like everyone else, or most people. I want to see violence. I want to see things explode. There’s something primal in us that craves to see this. So I began asking myself pretty early on, “What is it in us? Why are we hungry for this?” I don’t have anything against people showing violence for violence’s sake in their entertainment, and sometimes I get a kick out of it, but I’ll never do it. Unknown Soldier was all about that, about our fascination with violence. The first time you go to an “Internally Displaced Persons” camp and you see thousands of people with no electricity or running water… there’s no way you can turn that into Die Hard. So I started asking myself, what if on Xbox you had to play the little girl that gets raped by soldiers instead of the bad-ass who kills them? Or a 12-year-old with an AK-47 who was taught that God will punish you if you duck from bullets? What if you played that in [the violent video game] Call of Duty? And that’s where Unknown Soldier came from. CBC: That’s heavy stuff. Joshua: For the two years I worked on the book, I didn’t do anything but think about and read up on East African politics. But afterwards, it’s like a gate had closed. Someone tried to update me on the situation and I didn’t really want to hear about it anymore all of a sudden. CBC: You seem to have excelled in taking on assigned books across the past two decades. Joshua: Somehow I’ve retained my unique voice even as I’ve been a gun-for-hire. It’s very rare that I’m offered a gig that I’m not interested in. Somehow I’ve created a gravitational pull that attracts the kind of properties I’m interested in doing. CBC: How did working on the Hellboy spin-offs B.P.R.D. 1946 and B.P.R.D. 1947 come about? Joshua: I had been working with Scott Allie, the Hellboy editor, on a one-shot to coincide with the Van Helsing movie — we were going to do Van Helsing: The Series, and I was super-excited. We did an issue called Beneath the Rue Morgue that takes place between two scenes in the movie. Personally, I think it was a great comic. As I said, it was supposed to be a series but the movie tanked and that was it, we were done. Later, I met Mike Mignola in Dallas. Mike and I had hit it off. Mike had seen my work on Captain Gravity and Scott recommended me for a collaboration. So Mike and I met in Santa Monica at a British pub there. I sold him on my concept that Hellboy was a metaphor for the Cold War. That virtually everything in the book up to that point was a repercussion of what the Nazi’s did. Mike liked my take on it. So we were off. CBC: On a property such as Hellboy, to what degree do those B.P.R.D. series represent your creativity? Joshua: On 1946, at least half the book was mine. But even just as an editor, Mike is brilliant. I had started

tion actually takes its cues from the album and the art book. But yeah, essentially, the deal was I was asked by Karen Berger to pitch an idea. Karen had some thoughts on it and Karen brought to my attention the art book that I just mentioned, and Neil also had notes to whoever was going to end up pitching the book. So, I took all these notes and cobbled them all together into a pitch that interested me and touched on themes I found engaging, and Karen and I sent the pitch to Neil, and he dug it. Then I met Neil backstage at a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young show here in Los Angeles. CBC: What was that encounter like? Joshua: It was awesome! We discussed the pitch backstage and he got really excited. It was a wonderful feeling. Then we got to work. I would write a little and he would get the script, return back with notes, and then I’d write a little more. Pretty basic stuff. Cliff didn’t come on board until long after the script was done, if I remember correctly. What’s crazy is that it was released during summer of 2010, during the Gulf BP [Deepwater Horizon oil spill] disaster. In the book, an apocalyptic thing happens in the Gulf. The timing was crazy. It’s really, really interesting. So, in the middle of this disaster, we’re putting out a 160-page graphic novel about the dangers of oil dependence and energy consumption. Fiction is funny that way. CBC: What was the difference between working on the Young book and the Lavigne book? Joshua: It was the difference between a true artist and a shiny pop star. Neil would never put his name on anything he wasn’t deeply involved in. With Avril Lavigne, I imagine she’s just orbited by an entire corporation that puts her name on anything. Neil isn’t doing that. If his name is on it, then he got down to the business of helping make sure it’s truly reflective of him as a person. I respect that immensely. CBC: What was it like working with Neil Young? Joshua: F*ckin’ awesome! My mom, she never really understood this comics thing, but when I called her and said, “Hey, I’m writing a comic with Neil Young,” it finally hit home for her just how cool it all was. It’s like I called and told her I was now doctor in residence at a prestigious hospital in Paris. She was over the moon. There was another artist before Cliff Chiang –– [Joe the Barbarian artist] Sean Murphy. I was having a blast with Sean, but Neil wasn’t feeling his work. Of course, for all I know, Neil hadn’t seen a comic since 1975. Anyway, Neil was obsessed with Cliff Chiang’s stuff, which is amazing. He’d seen Cliff’s work somewhere, through Karen probably, and tried to get him on board, but at first Cliff wasn’t interested. Then, several years later it feels like, during the Super Bowl, Cliff went to check his email and there was a communication from Neil himself, which kind of blew his mind, I think. CBC: Was Cliff a big fan of Neil Young? Joshua: I don’t think so. I mean, everyone is a fan of Neil’s to one degree or another. You never think of yourself as a fan, and then you hear one of Neil’s core songs, and you love it, because he’s amazing. But I think, in part, that’s why it took three years or so to get Cliff on board. Drawing a graphic novel based on an aging rocker’s concept album just didn’t seem appealing to him. Which, when you put it that way, is totally understandable. But after Neil reached out to him personally and once Cliff got the full script, he signed on and became just a joy to collaborate with. He would call and challenge my layouts and storytelling and that process ended up making it one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever been a part of. Working at Vertigo on a book like Greendale, I don’t know if I’ll ever have that luxury again, but you could take your time on something like that. The joy of being on the phone with Cliff Chiang and just making great books was a high point for me. CBC: So, Neil used to be into comics? Joshua: He was when he was younger. All those musician were into Kirby. Everybody from the ’60s. He sees his Greendale project as a big-budget movie. But if you can’t make the big-budget movie you want, then he figured he’d Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

make a comic book. Which, we talked about before, is not my favorite reasoning for doing a comic. CBC: Another interesting feather in your professional cap was 2010’s six-issue comic book adaptation of the Deepak Chopra novel, Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment, written by Chopra’s son, Gotham Chopra, who for a while ran the Liquid Comics imprint. Joshua: It started as a mini and then we stopped making it. Gotham Chopra approached me and we had dinner in Santa Monica and hashed it out. Then I went out to Joshua Tree to write it in the heat of summer (I also wrote the last issue of B.P.R.D. 1946 out there). By then, I’d read a lot about Buddha on my own and spent some time in meditation with Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists. I’m not ashamed to say that I don’t personally feel the same way about the story of Buddha as Deepak Chopra does and was hesitant about the project. But the reason why I said yes was because nobody was going to pay me to sit around and think about the Buddha all day. Since I used to identify as a Buddhist, this felt like a strange and rare opportunity. Unfortunately the whole was very comic-booky. If given my druthers, I would’ve been more restrained, more real world. It was a little bit like Michael Bay’s Buddha. [laughs] CBC: Did you read Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha manga? Joshua: Yes. Which is why I feel there’s no need for another Buddha comic. [laughs] It’s a far, far superior book and interesting take on the Buddha. CBC: What about your version? Joshua: I have mixed feelings about it. I do think it communicates a deep central tenet of Buddhism on a submerged thematic level. It just sort of talks about these things, but it’s not really about these things, you know? I think, because I was adapting Deepak Chopra’s novel, I was bound to its structure to some degree. I think I’m pretty good about character and emotion but there was something inherently cold about the novel to me, and ultimately about my adaptation. I wanted to show how non-attachment isn’t a cold idea… but I don’t think I succeeded. CBC: You’ve mainly worked as an enlightened hired gun, adding your distinctive voice to other people’s assignments. What about an original project? Are you eager to create something from whole cloth, rather than customizing other people’s concepts? Joshua: I am. I’ve got a project called Helmet Girls in the works with Camilla. It’s my first creator-owned work since Violent Messiahs, and is based on her paintings. I also have folders and folders and folders of ideas. Some are mainstream, some are not. As soon as I get the script for Helmet Girls done, I have an idea that I’d like to get Alberto Ponticelli from Unknown Soldier. It takes place here, where I live. It’s about the homeless culture in Venice Beach and the gentrification of Venice. [grins] So I’ve already done the research on it. 41

SPOILER WARNING!

For those readers who have not yet read Batman Odyssey in its entirety, it behooves you to read it thoroughly to get the maximum pleasure out of Neal’s analysis and explanation, though that’s obviously not a prerequisite for the adventurous among us. Many details, including the graphic novel’s sensational denouement are discussed at length herein… so don’t say you weren’t warned, folks!

Interview Conducted by Jon B. Cooke cbc editor Transcribed by Brian K. Morris with steven thompson Portrait Photography by Seth Kushner

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eal Adams is, by nature, a fighter. Born and bred in New York City, he hit the sidewalks of Manhattan to break into the comics industry during a time when the field wasn’t hiring young talent. So, after going a few rounds in the advertising arena and upon winding up a career as the youngest cartoonist to work on a nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip (Ben Casey), the tenacious artist finally gained entry in comics, and he settled in at DC, where he soon emerged a celebrated artist. During those early years, he also rocked the House of Ideas and, at both DC and Marvel, he sparred for more innovative production techniques. Then he jumped into the fray for creators rights, whether through the Academy of Comic Book Arts, battling for better treatment of freelancers, or for the benefit of two creators down for the count — a pair of Cleveland mugs who started the whole blamed super-hero genre, Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster, the originators of Superman. By then Neal was back in advertising, only now with his own art agency, and also became a comics publisher himself with Continuity. Lately he’s decided to again lend his two-fisted talents as artist-slash-writer to the “Big Two,” having recently drawn a X-Men mini-series and made an ambitious return to a certain Darknight Detective. With Batman Odyssey though, Neal has taken a pummeling by remarkably vicious critics on the Internet, and, lacing his rhetorical boxing gloves, he invited CBC to visit for his pugilistic, scrappy retort. — Ye Ed.

All images and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Batman Odyssey, the 325-page graphic novel written and illustrated by Neal Adams, returns the author to a character with whom he is deeply associated. During his 1960s–’70s tenure, Adams had snatched the Caped Crusader from his TV camp persona and returned him to his roots as a menace on crime, only now endowed with feral masculinity and depicted with panache. The book examines whether the crimefighter would ever kill an opponent and why he refuses to wield firearms, and it features a plethora of characters from Neal’s earlier years on the series — Ra’s al Ghul, Talia, Deadman, Sensei and his League of Assassins, Man-Bat — and, of course, Robin and the Gotham regulars… never mind the usual Arkham Asylum gallery of villains, and a surprise guest or two. Batman’s quest takes him literally into an underworld and plot elements include such diverse subjects as peak oil and imperialism. By Neal’s admission, it is a dense and complex story. To some, it is confusing. To us, it is nothing if not ambitious.

Comic Book Creator: It’s a quarter to eleven and we’re at Continuity Studios in New York City. It’s a slushy Friday morning in early March and we’re here to talk to Neal Adams about his 13-issue series, Batman Odyssey. Neal Adams: People have been asking at conventions, “What’s the best project that you ever worked on?” Or “What’s the best thing you ever did?” And it actually doesn’t take me long these days to find the answer. I apologize and say, “I don’t want this to sound like an ego thing, because there are some things that I am a big fan of. I like Batman: The Killing Joke. I like Batman: Hush (but I don’t know if Hush is as much a novel, a continuous story, as much as it is a series of “incidents” Batman goes through). When I consider everything I’ve done, I thought, up to now, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali [All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-56, 1978] was the best comic book/semi-graphic novel that’s out there. Superman vs. Ali was a contrived project that [editor] Julie Schwartz threw at us that he wanted to do. Even though Denny [O’Neil] started the writing, I ended up doing the whole job. Denny wrote some pages — they were good and I kept as much of what he did, as I could but, essentially, I did the job. It was my plot. Julie chose mine, which was similar to Denny’s. Because I did a syndicated strip [Ben Casey] before this, before comic books, I did projects while working at Johnstone & Cushing [shop specializing in comics for advertising and magazine clients] that were full-out stories (like for the National Guard and clients like that), I was

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Inset left: The cover of AllNew Collector’s Edition #C-56, better known as Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, Neal Adams’ 1978 masterwork that, until Batman Odyssey, the artist/ writer considered his best work. The oversize comic book edited by Julius Schwartz, also contains the talents of Dennis O’Neil (story), inks by Dick Giordano, Terry Austin and Steve Mitchell; colors by Neal’s then-wife Cory; letters by Gaspar Saladino. And, oh yeah, knock ’em out of the galaxy artwork and scripting by some guy named Neal Adams…. Left: Vignette (and flopped) detail of the super-hero in question, taken from Batman Odyssey #1 [Dec. 2010]. Art, of course, by Neal Adams. Colors by Continuity Studios.

Above: In this issue of The Spectre, #4 [May–June 1968], Neal contributes his first comic book script, “Stop That Kid… Before He Wrecks the World,” a pyschedelic, cosmic trip worthy of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters! This comic book also contains scathing attacks on Neal the artist as letter hacks flood the LOC pages with “dump Adams” demands: “If you keep Neal Adams on as regular Spectre artist, The Spectre is dead”; “I am sorry, but Neal Adams does not have it”; “Neal Adams artwork was just terrible”; and “Neal Adams is okay — but compared to Murphy Anderson, nothing.” Yikes!

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TM & © DC Comics.

Inset right: Deadman, under the scripting and artwork of Neal Adams, was a grand epic during the characters run in Strange Adventures… and beyond. Here’s the creator’s artwork for the slipcase of the hardcover edition of The Deadman Collection [2001].

My first scripted story [The Spectre #4, May–June 1968] has become a bit of a classic and contains a theme that has been used by other writers. It’s called “Stop That Kid… Before He Wrecks the World.” Then I began a double-length story that had to do with a character called the Psycho Pirate. Then I was given the choice to go on to “Deadman” or stay with The Spectre, I chose “Deadman.” I grew up with these six-page and eightpage comic book stories that drove me nuts as a reader. I never got enough story. So when I did Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, I was already mentally ready to do a long story. It was a little short, but essentially, a story in which I got to introduce Muhammad Ali as a comic book character while still being the Champion of the World. I got to reintroduce Superman, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, an intergalactic war, a threat to our universe. I got to reintroduce Superman, kind of, because his powers were taken away and then suddenly his powers burst back. I got to do that. In the end, that comic book, for me, is a really terrific comic book that came out of the ashes of Julie Schwartz’s insane belief that we can do a Superman vs. Muhammad Ali that everybody laughed at when he first proposed it. CBC: Right. Neal: When Julie mentioned it to me, he’d expected me to laugh — and I guess I did — but it tickled my fancy to take something that seemed so insane and actually turn it into a story. So I did it and I think,

because of that and because of other reasons, it turned out to be such a good read; people bring it to me all the time now at conventions. Whitman licensed the right to print and sell hundreds of thousands of copies in their stores, and elsewhere. Now, currently, DC Comics has reprinted it in a small form and a medium-large form. (The small form is of course silly… It’s meant to be big.) CBC: Oh, they reprinted it in a large form? Neal: Oh, yeah. It’s really nice. CBC: [Notices it in bookcase] I think it’s right there. Neal: You have a good eye, kiddo. [Jon retrieves a copy from bookshelf and thumbs through it] CBC: It looks nice. Neal: That’s it. Okay, flip through it. It’s a gorgeous product and it’s a good story. And there are so many things in there, all these things that, as a fan, were great fun. This is the only Superman project I ever did and I think it’s maybe one of the best. (Jim Lee just revisited the Superman blasting through an alien spaceship in a four-page foldout in Superman Unchained #1, a theme that we find in Superman vs. Muhammad Ali.) CBC: Well, you know me. I devoted two major pieces to this [in Comic Book Artist Special Edition #1 and CBA Collection #1]. Arlen [Schumer] and I came to Continuity to talk to you about this specifically. Neal: Right. CBC: And I think it’s the best thing you’ve ever done. Neal: And notice stuff that people have revisited since then? How many times have you seen that kind of a scene [pointing to the opening city street spread] by many artists in the field? You know, never been done before, there you go, first time. For example, a massive alien armada headed to invade the Earth in Superman vs. Muhammad Ali for the first time. How many times have we seen scenes like this since then? There’s a joy to it, you know. But it’s also a good story and when you see the two, [Superman and Muhammad Ali] shake hands at the end, you go, “Well, that’s kind of hokey, but you know, I like it.” It’s a very warm-feeling thing and for other reasons, for example, in terms of racial relations in America. [Kris Adams Stone, Neal’s daughter, comes into the room] CBC: Right. Neal: People weren’t doing it that much by then. And Ali was considered by some Americans to be a hero and by some, to be not so much of a hero; except the rest of the world outside of America considered this to be a fantastic project. CBC: Was it translated? Neal: Oh, into many languages. CBC: That’s wonderful. Neal: Every country made a special deal for it. [Points to spread] Look at that. Look at all the work that Terry Austin did in the background. That’s maybe the greatest piece that Terry Austin ever did in his life. It’s just fabulous. There are guys on the roof with pigeon coops and all these vegetables I only roughly indicated, but he does it all. CBC: Yeah, Terry really cares. Kris Adams Stone: That’s the truth. He cared.

TM & © DC Comics.

mentally used to the long-form and not used to the short story form (not that I haven’t done short stories). But even when you consider “Deadman” that I did [in Strange Adventures], it’s actually all one story and it’s about Deadman in the end and not about these little incidents that you usually find in comic books. Even though certain writers got into it early on, like [Bob] Kanigher and Arnold Drake. As I took over, I was doing this long, continuous story about Deadman, which I considered was what the book was about and probably why people liked it… or not. Previously I had done The Spectre for Julie Schwartz. I assisted Mike Friedrich to get his story through by extending the story a little bit. Then I got to write Spectre.

TM & © DC Comics. TM & © DC Comics.

Neal: And so, when people ask me, I have to say it’s the best read. It’s the best comic book, it’s the best story, it’s not esoteric, it’s not overly intellectual, it’s just a get down and get crazy comic book. Perhaps it’s the best comic book ever done. I thought that until Batman Odyssey. Batman Odyssey, you have to read it. It’s a book. I told people at the beginning, you know. Now that I’m coming back, I’m going to be doing a book. I’m not going to be doing a series of stories, or you’re going to read the first story and then wonder, “Am I going to like the second story as much as I did, or didn’t, like the first?” It’s the first chapter of a book and you’re not going to know what the book is about until you get to the last chapter. And then, when you get to the last chapter, you’re going to have to read it all over again because I set all these plot strings up from the beginning. Every single thing that’s in there, ends up being resolved at the end of the book. When Robin is handling a gun with just a little too much glee and he’s saying, “I’ve gotta tell ya, this really feels cool in my hand...” CBC: Power of the gun. Neal: ...at the end of the story, Batman hands him the gun back and Robin doesn’t want it because he’s just seen — or at least thought he saw — the result of using the gun. Ah-ha, maybe guns are not so cute and fluffy. CBC: The character changed. Neal: Batman had Robin look at the consequences of his attraction for the weapon. [Points to Robin] You have to hold the gun, so your body is connected to that gun at some point. Then you throw it to me and then I seem to kill somebody. Now, for the first time, you see the result of your action. Now you don’t want it back, don’t want to touch it. That’s a little thing that I set up right at the beginning of the story and resolved at the end. What was the plan? Was Batman ever out of control? Did Batman ever consider using a gun? Did he ever consider killing somebody? Never! Never for one second throughout the story. Batman is Sherlock Holmes. Batman is the best detective in the world and he had a problem to solve. So for everybody around him — for even us, the readers — he may actually be considering being a revenger. Doing it. Killing. So I set up a story where he really has no choice. If he’s going to live, and Robin and Talia and Ra’s al Ghul are going to live, Batman must kill. Sensei has a thousand assassins out there everywhere in the world who will one day get revenge on Batman if Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

he kills the Sensei. How do you solve that problem? How do you get past that without deciding to kill somebody? Batman would never decide to kill somebody. That’s what the story is about. That’s the odyssey that Batman is on. And for people who didn’t read it all the way through and see that last book and go, “Oh, my God. He did it,” and then realize he didn’t do it and he pulled out of it — that he never would have done it — it was a plan between him and the Sensei. Out on that battlefield where they were fighting each other, they were talking quietly, when nobody could hear them, they were making the plan. And it wasn’t so much they were making the plan, Batman was telling him what he had done, and the Sensei knew what he was doing because this was the only place where you could go to the source of the Nile, that place where Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth, and find that thing. And that’s the real reason that Batman was there. He was going to give this old bastard his life back and let him live it over again.

Above: Opening spread of the legendary Neal Adams written-&drawn epic, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali [1978], with backgrounds stupendously inked by Terry Austin. From the original artwork.

Inset left: The closing spread of Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, words and picture by Neal Adams. Colors by Continuity.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

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possibly know that there was a Batcave? That under the Wayne Mansion, there was some cave? He might be able to figure out all the rest — could never — it’s not even possible to figure out that there’s a Batcave, yet he shows up in the Batcave. Impossible… How could he know that? He could only know that through Man-Bat, who is the only character we know who accidentally crawled into the Batcave. That’s the only way. You can go through all of the history of all the Batman comic books you’ve ever read and know that’s the case. It’s possible for Ra’s to figure out that he’s Bruce Wayne. It’s not possible to imagine for one second that there’s a Batcave. Who would think of such a thing? So, when Ra’s shows up in the Batcave, it’s all bullsh*t. We have a tradition in Western culture called “the lie.” Okay, you can read it in all the ancient texts of all the religions. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, you can read it there. The bad, the evil person is called “the master of the lie.” The lie is the most evil thing that you can do because it leads to death and thievery and all the rest. And the Devil — the Devil always lies, okay? Bad guys always lie. They find they have to lie. Well, that’s what Ra’s al Ghul does all the time. He lies. Everything he says is a lie. And his daughter finds out at some point that her father had her kidnapped. And he lied to her, his own daughter. Okay, this idea of identifying the liar becomes second nature to somebody like Batman; “He’s lying.” [chuckles] Then the next thing he’s going to say is a lie because he can’t stop lying, because he’s a criminal and that’s how he thinks. Ra’s al Ghul is the epitome of that, so everything he says is a lie. He may sound intellectual and reasonable, he may sound like he’s giving you evidence, but everything that he says the Sensei did, he did to set Batman up to come to try to rescue him and save his life. Sensei didn’t capture the girls. He had nothing to do with it. He just wants to kill the old man because — CBC: He’s quite old. Neal: Whatever it is that he’s now — you know, 25 years older than his father — is a lie, all of that is a lie. Ra’s could have given it to him, the Lazarus Pit… but he lied to him to keep it away from him. CBC: So everything is a front. Neal: Everything is a lie. It’s worse than a front. It’s a lie. It’s all a lie. Once you understand that when Ra’s al Ghul shows up in the Batcave all those years ago when he did, he was lying. “Yes, I found out you were Bruce Wayne.” No, you didn’t. You were told about the Batcave and then you backtrack to find this. And now you’re pretending that you figured it out. You didn’t figure it out. You’re just a liar. So from the reader point of view, you see the story from each character’s perspective if you know the characters. You have to see all the clues and as they go back, when he’s talking about the Sensei and what he did and he’s kidnapped his daughter, you have to go, “Wait a second. If he lied about this, he lied about that.” So that’s what he does, he lies. So now, everything he says has to be taken with a grain of salt… he’s a liar. He’s a liar, so you’re listening to these explanations and Batman is acting like he is believing it, and now he’s got to go and do this. And in his mind, he’s going, “What a crock of crap. I’m listening to these lies and I’m pretending to respond to it. And it’s bullsh*t.” No matter where you go, Batman is ahead of the reader. He’s not even telling his biographer. He’s telling the story to his biographer as a story because he wants his biographer to say, “Oh, I get it, I get it.” So he’s giving his biographer the same pleasure we would get as a reader by telling him the story in sequence. Anyway, starting with that, now that I’ve opened that little door, you know who, of course, the person that’s sitting across from him is, and you know that the only person it could possibly be, is Clark Kent. People forget. CBC: That Band-Aid was clever. [chuckles] Neal: Well, that was so intentional. CBC: Obviously. Neal: I talked to people at the beginning, when the first couple of books came out and they would ask me, “Who

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Above: Ra’s al Ghul, co-created by writer Dennis O’Neil and realized with intensity by co-creating artist Neal Adams (here inked by Dick Giordano in a panel from Batman #232 [ June ’71], the villain’s first appearance), propagates his first lie to the Caped Crusader. Below: Talia’s nefarious father appears again in the Batcave in this panel detail from Batman Odyssey #6 [Feb. 2011]. Inks by Neal Adams and/or Bill Sienkiewicz. Colors above and below by Continuity.

CBC: And is there a Cycle of Life thing with the Asian baby in the end? Is that the Sensei? Neal: That’s the Sensei. You just have to look at him. It’s his face. CBC: But what was the liquid from? Neal: The Fountain of Youth. This is a conversation between the reader and me, okay? I’m telling everybody a story that if you don’t pay attention for one minute, you’re not going to get it. You’ve got to go back and read it. And then, when you do and realize, “Oh, of course. Of course!” If there is a Lazarus Pit — I didn’t make up the Lazarus Pit — if there is a Lazarus Pit, there has to be one step beyond where it comes from. CBC: The source. Neal: What we call the source of the Nile, what we call the Fountain of Youth, whatever it is, it has to come from inside the Earth and it’s guarded by immortal demi-gods. CBC: Anubis. Neal: Right, and Batman has to go down and pass by them, and they have to say, “If you have the key, if you go through the door which we never go through, then you can find it and collect this little thing and take it back to the Sensei. Who in the world could take such a journey? Not even Superman. Nobody. Only Batman. CBC: Because he’s really searching his own psyche. Neal: He is that, but he’s also brilliant. He’s also smarter than us. He does the things that we can’t otherwise do. He wouldn’t go around in a costume, fighting crime. I mean it’s partial insanity, but only a guy as brilliant as Batman could figure all this out. And get this: he figured all this out back in one of the early stories that I did with Denny where we have Ra’s al Ghul talking to Batman in the Batcave, telling him lies. Do you remember? He was saying, “Well, I figured out you, Bruce Wayne, are Batman.” And Batman really doesn’t say anything. He just pretended to buy it. He didn’t buy it. He didn’t buy it for one second. He’s had the smartest people in the world trying to find out who he is, who he is as Batman. Why do we know that Batman knew that it was a lie? Okay? It’s so obvious that when I tell you — which it’s in the copy and you do have to read it over again — when you read it over again, you’ll go, “Oh, of course.” But I’m going to tell you again because I know you had a rough week, okay? [Jon chuckles] It’s within the realm of possibility that a Ra’s al Ghul, being a Moriarty, could have figured out who Batman was. But how could he

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is that guy?” And I would say, “You know, I don’t even understand why you’re asking that question because I’m just asking you to think. Who could it possibly be? [chuckles] Does it ever enter your mind that there are two professional writers in all the DC Universe? Lois Lane and Clark Kent, who throws in Clark Kent’s face the fact that she won a Pulitzer Prize and that Clark never will? Whose alter ego is a reporter and a writer and does want to get those awards and does want to get recognized for what he does professionally? It’s one thing to be Superman. He was born as Superman. Why wouldn’t he care about what he does in his career? Why wouldn’t he, being the only person in the world — really who knows — who Bruce Wayne is? They’re friends and they talk about it all the time. Why wouldn’t he approach him and say, “You know, Bruce, you could get killed any day. I could get killed any day, but there would never be a record of what you’ve done. And I know it doesn’t matter that much to you, but I think for the world, somebody ought to write this down. If you tell me never to print it, I’ll never print it. But I think I can do the best job of anybody in the world, to do that.” It certainly can’t be Lois Lane who doesn’t know who the hell Bruce Wayne really is. Somebody has to chronicle his life. In fact, you could do a whole new book on Superman or Clark Kent chronicling Batman’s life. It’d be a great title, call it The Batman Chronicles. And the only person who could do it who wants to do it, has the skill to do it because he is a professional writer. The only person in the world who it could possibly be is Superman. There’s no other person. If you could run down any clues that you might have in any books, or whatever it is, it’s not that it is Clark Kent, it’s that it has to be Clark Kent from the very get-go. Who’d he otherwise talk to? Robin? Is he going to talk to Alfred? Alfred doesn’t give a crap. He’s not a writer. He’s not going to do this. There’s only one person who would approach him and could approach him because he knows it. It’s so obvious who that guy is. This is no question when you go through the Sherlock Holmesian deduction of who that could possibly be it has to be Clark Kent. In other words, the only time he actually is Superman is when Robin wants to see him go swoosh and fly off right at the end, where that’s a little gift. It’s like, “Hey, everybody, whew! That’s so cool.” And that’s the gift at the end where you say, “Well, okay, fine.” If you haven’t figured it out by now, it’s Clark and so he flies off into the night. Then you could say, “Well, okay, is he telling a story?” Well, no, he’s not telling a story. He has to be telling his life story because he’s going back to the very beginning of his career. Before he had an official bat-costume, he had a costume that he was going to wear at the Beaux Arts and just dance around as this bat-character. CBC: It was the Beaux Arts — I meant to look that up. Kris: The Mardi Gras. Neal: It’s a kind of a Mardi Gras, a cultural, intellectual party. More often, they’ve had it in New York for years. I don’t know where else. It happens like once a year. Kris: It’s rich, though. They’re very rich people, kind of Mardi Gras. I had to look it up, too. [laughs] Neal: Yeah, right. [laughter] CBC: ’Cause I do have it written down to ask you. Neal: The rich people have the Beaux Arts and they go in costume and they socialize. Bruce Wayne’s been invited to the Beaux Arts and he goes this year as this bat-creature. And he made the costume for it and that’s the only reason. The other thing that I tried to do in this Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

Above: Wraparound cover art by Alex Ross for the hardback collection, Astro City: Dark Age 2 [’10].

book is… I like a comic book where I have to look something up. It just enhances the experience. So when I say he’s going in this bat-costume to the Beaux Arts, I want people to go to the Internet and look it up so they know what the hell it is. I’m sharing it with them. That’s what this experience is. If you take it as a comic book, it’s not. It’s not people punching one another. If you take it as a book, if you’re reading a book about Roman culture, you have to look stuff up. That’s what I tried to explain to people at the beginning. I’ve decided to write a book. This is not a series of comic book stories. So you have to view it as a book and you know, guess what? If you have to look up the Beaux Arts, you have to look up the Beaux Arts. It’s no big deal. You’ve got a computer right in front of you. Everybody’s got one you can go ahead and do it. In the next part of the story there are three things going on, you have a robbery at the Mint. You have this pier where all these dinosaur models are being stolen, and in the middle of all that, there’s a car. And a man, a scientist, and his daughter have been accidentally trapped in the middle of this melee. That car is a hydrogen-powered car — it’s a hy-

Above: Spectacular inking by Michael Golden on this Batman Odyssey #1 [Sept. ’10] page sporting an equally spectacular Batmobile re-design by the penciler, Neal Adams. Colors by Continuity.

Inset left: The faceless character Bruce Wayne is relating the story of Batman Odyssey to throughout the mini-series curiously sports a Band-Aid… Is it a clever ruse by a certain Kryptonian journalist leading a double-life? Stay tuned, Batfan! 47

Below: The sultry “Daughter of the Demon,” Talia, makes a seductive entrance in her co-creator’s Batman Odyssey #3 [Nov. ’10]. Pencils and inks by Neal Adams, colors by Continuity Associates.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

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Neal: What’s that? CBC: Henway [laughs, talking in W.C. Fields voice], the oldest gag in the book. Neal: The oldest gag in the world. CBC: And you got him! Neal: And I got him. CBC: Here’s a knock-off of your Vampirella frontispiece. Neal: That’s true and it’s a direct tracing from it. Kris: And that’s how I got Kevin Nowlan to ink that chapter, because Kevin Nowlan loved that piece. CBC: I’m sorry. I’ve got to gush. Your art is just fantastic in this book, I think, and the inkers you brought to this have as much respect for your art as I do as a reader. I mean it is just beautiful. Neal: Right, I got unbelievable work from all of them. CBC: And I thought Kevin added panache and an interest. Who inked the Hippo sequence? Neal: That’s Bill Sienkiewicz. He’s really good. CBC: A great inker. Neal: And I broke his ass on it on the way, I must say. Kris: They all brought their “A” game. Neal: Oh, those poor guys. [Kris laughs] The inkers went through hell. CBC: Sienkiewicz really gave his all for this. Neal: They all did, you know. CBC: Good! [laughs] Kris: We even had Michael Golden ink a certain dinosaur. Neal: That’s right. He also did the Batmobile. CBC: [Pointing out a Golden-inked panel] That’s beautiful. Neal: That is. Kris: And actually, if you saw this book at Superman vs. Muhammad Ali size, it would rock. [laughs] Neal: Here is the mistake I made and this is what I’m trying to correct to a certain extent: those guys on the Internet were reading it like it was a comic book. I tried to explain at the beginning, but there’s just so much explaining a person can do. But look, if you read it like a comic book, you’re not going to get it. The stupid questions brought up come from not reading, not paying attention. And then they started to roll forward and I tried to explain to people, “Look, this is a book. This is a book that’s gonna — no matter what you’re reading in Batman now — besides cutting The Joker’s face off, which I have to give a certain amount of stupid credit — you’re not going to remember all that stuff in the previous stories. You’re going to remember this. This, you’re going to remember because it’s Batman’s odyssey, and this is something you’re going to talk about for years because there’s so much stuff in here. I gave a bunch of guys a shot at inking it, knowing that they would go through hell, that it would be terrible for them. I tried to explain to inkers, “Look, you know you may think that you’re going to have a romp. It’s not going to be a romp; it’s going to be hell because, to be perfectly honest, I don’t really finish my drawings. It seems like I do tight drawings and when you look at my pencils, they look tight, but they’re not. And so the inker is going to come to these awful decisions that they are going to have to make. They’re going to have to interpret what I do into their own thing. We don’t want people to look at it and say, “This is Neal.” You want people to look at it and say, “This is Neal Adams and Bill Sienkiewicz” or “This is Neal and this guy, you know, and this guy.” I want their personality to come through. Because, when I do a pencil drawing, I also add more personality when I finish it so it’s a slightly different thing than when I pencil it. I tighten it up and now people say, “Oh, I would rather look at your pencils than your inks.” And I try to point out, “That’s because when you use a pencil, you do something different than when you ink.” CBC: Right. Neal: When you ink, you have to harden everything that you do and I draw like an illustrator like Bernie Fuchs or Austin Briggs. I draw and leave some opening for interpretation so when you get it it’s not going to be nailed. You know, you’re

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Above: The Darknight Detective blithely drinks — gulp! — the fuel of a car, proving his deduction before a startled boy wonder and Gotham City employee. From Batman Odyssey #3 [Nov. ’10]. Art by Neal Adams, colors by Continuity.

drogen/oxygen car. And that car represents the answer to all the fraud that you, as a citizen of America and the world, have been exposed to with hybrid cars and all the things that people are trying to throw in your face — electric cars and all the rest — to disguise the fact that you can get your power virtually free, from water. [Jon chuckles] And he does that thing. He drinks the emissions. It is not my intention to do a whole lecture because I don’t do that. It’s meant there to make you go, “What the hell?” and start looking it up on the Internet. CBC: And the story moves along. Neal: And the story moves along. Because now I’m a little bit confused, the relationship between Talia and Bruce Wayne as children, okay? We find there was such a tight relationship between Dad Wayne and Ra’s al Ghul that their children were going to get married when they were older… and something split that up. Ra’s al Ghul is invested in oil and the Wayne machinery that processes the oil. CBC: And Wayne was into sustainable energy. I get it now. Thanks, Neal. Neal: You understand? [Kris laughs] That is the split in their relationship and that’s how that split happened. CBC: The oil seekers and all that, right, yeah. Neal: Now of course, those guys — CBC: [Laughs] You overestimate us! Kris: Definitely! I feel like we’re into this entire new scenario. Neal: If people will just pay attention and believe when I tell them that we’re not f*cking around here, we’re actually doing a book because of all these things, you can go and look these things up and they’ll be there. Not only will they be there, this whole insanity under the Earth, stupid as it is, there’s a whole subculture in literature and on the Internet about these crazy people who believe in this “Hollow Earth” theory, which is whack-a-ding-hoy stupid and unscientific, but because it exists, it’s fun to explore. [to Kris] Go ahead. What were you going to ask? Kris: Well, a lot of people felt that was you bringing your earth science into it. Neal: Idiots. Kris: But that’s what people thought, that you’re crazy and now you’re doing earth science in the middle of your Batman. Neal: People are not given license to not think. Thinking is a requirement, I’m sorry. Stupid. Kris: But your earth science has nothing to do with this Hollow Earth theory. That’s like an important piece of misinformation out there. If you look at Neal’s science site, you’ll understand what he’s saying in regards to the Earth and growing [www.nealadams.com/index.php/science] — Neal: That’s true. Kris: [Chuckles] — which has nothing to do with what’s in the Batman book, which is more a Hollow Earth theory. Neal: Which is Hollow Earth, Jules Verne, all this totally stupid anti-science theory, but great for fiction. It’s been great for fiction since Jules Verne. CBC: Pellucidar. Neal: Pellucidar. Right, exactly. It’s nutty science, but in fact, if you go down into the Earth a mile, the walls will sweat and water will come out boiling and you will, within a matter of a quarter of a day, die. Pretty stupid. Stupid science. It’s insane, stupid science… yet good fiction. CBC: Well, there is one word I looked up on the Internet.

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not going to get Jim Lee lines that you can just ink as he penciled them. You’re going to have to use your head to figure out what it is in your mind and then put that down because I’m not going to let you do it. CBC: What made you hard on the inkers? Kris: Call Kevin Nowlan. CBC: [Chuckles] So I need to find out from him. Neal: You should. Kris: Nowlan explains it the best out of everybody. CBC: Okay, I will. Neal: I control the picture, but I don’t control the interpretation. The interpretation’s what you do with ink. I don’t like “inkers”; I like “interpreters.” I like people who render. I don’t like the idea that the inker just puts down the line that he sees; I want him to think and add something from his own personality. So, as you look at each inker’s pages, you’ll see the difference. And it’s still my drawing underneath it, yet each guy adds something to it. That’s what I look for. CBC: And it still works as a whole. Kris: We even had that problem with Bill Sienkiewicz. We were actually looking for more Bill and less Neal in some ways. Neal: Right. Kris: And Bill kept giving us Neal. Neal: Right. Like, “No, don’t give us Neal.” Kris: We want Bill. We have him inking because we want what Bill brings to the table. CBC: And didn’t he bring even something more? Neal: That’s the idea. Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

CBC: I didn’t recognize this as Bill’s inking initially but it did blow me away. I recognized it as this incredibly, wonderful detail that I want to see big! I want to see that hippo bigger and bigger! Neal: But that’s the idea of “interpretation.” [Refers to Superman vs. Muhammad Ali] If this double-page spread in Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was inked by one of Dick’s typical background guys, it would just be total crap. But it was inked by Terry Austin. I spotted that and I can tell you about this. I did the first page, okay? As soon as I did that panel, the bottom of the first, page— CBC: Page one. Neal: I went, “Okay, I can go crazy with the pencils.” CBC: How old was Terry? Eighteen. Or 19? [chuckles] Neal: I don’t even know. CBC: He was just a kid. Nobody knew his name. Neal: Right, but look at what he did, something that could have been so nothing. I mean I don’t want to expose people’s names, but nobody but Terry Austin would have done that like that. So that made it possible for me to do the second and third pages and expect him to do whatever he would do. And I didn’t know he would do this. I knew that I wanted to see this kind of stuff, but it was up to him to then decide to go ahead and do it. CBC: That’s called “love.” Neal: Well, but that’s true with all these guys. CBC: That’s right. Neal: Each one of these guys has looked for the oppor-

Above: Ye Ed was blown away by inker Bill Sienkiewicz’s powerhouse inking in Batman Odyssey, especially his delineation of that Hippo character. Two pages from #10 [Mar. ’12], sans text, and courtesy of Kris Adams Stone, the entire Continuity crew, and Neal himself, natch. They are also responsible for graciously sharing all of the words-free artwork. Thanks, folks! Below: Bill Sienkiewicz at MOCCA Fest 2011 in New York City. Ye Ed, who posed with his chum, is cropped out of this snapshot.

Above: Hey, Ye Ed knew Josh Adams, Neal & Marilyn’s son, when he was a mere rapscallion! Now Josh is all grown-up and has become an amazing talent in comics all by his lonesome! The artist also contributed inks — and a pin-up — to Batman Odyssey.

Below: Look what we found at Heritage Auctions’ website (www. ha.com)! Unfinished Batman Odyssey page, intended for #10, featuring Deadman and Robin, partially inked by Bill Sienkiewicz (who autographed the original art) over Neal’s blue pencils.

him because you’ve got these little, subtle events going on in a hard line technique. CBC: Oh, yeah, you can see there, yeah. That’s nice. Kris: So they’re like hidden gems, artistically. [chuckles] CBC: This is great stuff. Were you the only one who really knew the entire story? How did you pitch it? Neal: It wasn’t really pitched. Kris: [To Neal] Can we tell the truth about it? Neal: We started with Bob Schreck. Kris: I wanted Neal to be a true freelancer so we started this without knowing whether they were going to buy it. [to Neal] And you were, what? Two books in, I think, by the time we showed it? CBC: You had two books before you had a contract? Kris: Before we even discussed it with DC. We knew it was a gamble, but we also knew we could probably sell the originals even if DC didn’t buy the story. So it wasn’t a huge gamble. Neal: I don’t really gamble. Kris: And then [DC publisher] Paul [Levitz] got upset and said, “Well, we can’t do this. This goes against the rules.” CBC: The “Batman rules” or …? Kris: Any rule. Like they don’t want a freelancer coming in because then you are truly a freelancer and that starts fighting, “Work Made For Hire.” So Paul said to do this, “We really have to get a contract now before you end this. Otherwise, we can’t buy it.” And then at that point — Neal: Then we had Bob Schreck. Kris: Because Schreck was doing the off-the-main-course books. He was doing those Elsewhere books. Neal: And Schreck has a reputation that if he believes in you, then he just lets you go. CBC: Oh, a good editor. [chuckles] Neal: Yes, what you call a good editor. I do have some experience and reputation. I mean I could have gone senile or something, but apparently I didn’t. Kris: But Schreck also deals with the high-end creatives and gets good work out of them. Neal: Right. Kris: It obviously works. Look where he is now, Legendary! CBC: Shades of Archie Goodwin. Neal: Yeah, right. Exactly. So it wasn’t so much I had a specific outline with everything blocked out. I had enough to begin the story and I probably had more than most writers in comics have because I don’t have the same standard that comic book writers have. I know what the standard is because I’ve been in editorial sessions. At Marvel, they’re starting to get that, but they’re constraining themselves in many ways by getting too tied down and not leaving some flexibility. I like the idea of being able to know everything myself, give an overall synopsis to the editor, and then loosening myself up as I go through the story, and then tightening it all together. That way, I can have everything locked up in my head. I can give enough to the editor for the editor to be happy with the story and he likes it, and then I can go back and finesse it. I like that. And when you’re doing 13 issues, obviously — for example, a really good example is it was intended to be 12 issues. And I realized as I got to the end of the story, I could never jam it all in, in the last couple of issues. So I asked for a 13th issue, which they were able to give me. I don’t think it would so easily work without the 13th book and I was only on the tenth at that time and I’m going, “I can’t put this together. I’ve already jammed too much.” I should make this 15 books, but at least I can ask for one more book because as you go through this, what you’ll discover is there’s a lot of info on each page. Kris: There’s no easy page. Neal: Yeah, there’s no easy page. These are hard-working pages. CBC: There’s no easy issue, right. Neal: No. Kris: There’s no coasting. [laughs] Neal: And there’s also these subplots that I don’t tell you. #3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

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tunity to ink my stuff for many years and now they got the opportunity. And they succeeded or failed according to their own basic decisions and judgment, not mine. Yes, I broke their knuckles, but I wanted them and that’s what I got. In all cases, I got them, okay? And it made me look and say, you know, it’s not such a bad experience when you have really talented people out there who can actually add something to what you do. So I consider it an addition, not a subtraction in any way. All these guys did the best kind of job you could possibly expect. CBC: Was that the original plan, to have multiple inkers? Kris: Yes. Neal: At some point, I said I would do the first couple of issues and then I would start handing pieces off to people. I wanted them to handle these areas they could do well. It turns out that Sienkiewicz was so good that I gave him much more than I would have normally given him, based on my original interpretation. I think he’s got like three or four issues that he’s done. He’s done a fantastic job. Kris: Yes, if you were to say which one did the majority of inking, I would say he did. Neal: And it was hard on him and it was hard on me because when I would get let down, I would get angry at him and I would tell him. And so he would come back up because his style allows a certain kind of sloppiness. But in this, he had to have the sloppiness, which is technique, and he still had to be slightly religious in that you needed to see the story being told, so he couldn’t just slough over something. In this case, we kept on reining him back, but we never, ever said, “Don’t do what you do.” We want “what you do.” Kris: “Where’s the grit, Bill?” We kept yelling, “Where’s the grit?” [laughs] Neal: That’s right. “Where’s the grit? Yes, what I did has to be there, but we want your grit to be in there.” So we’re giving him what seems like opposing directions, but we’re not. Yes, even though we’re criticizing him by saying he has to put all this stuff in there, at the same time, we want the grit that he puts in there, that stuff people love. So he has to do both at the same time. It was terrible. I’m sure he went though all kinds of hell to do it, but you know what? That’s art. That’s just the way it works. Kris: Then we had Paul Neary do like five pages. Neal: Right. Kris: Because that’s all Paul had time to do. Neal: Yeah, that’s what we had available to do. Kris: I think he wanted to be part of it. Neal: Where does he start? He starts here. [points to Batman Odyssey #7] But this is a perfect sequence for

I don’t like to ring a bell and go, “There’s a subplot going on here.” Kris: Well, that’s in the next edition we put out. We’re going to have to put out “Here. Pay attention here. Get on the Internet. Google now.” [laughs] Neal: “Pay attention,” with little asterisks. “Google this.” CBC: You didn’t give a synopsis on the opening page of each issue. That’s a way of playing catch-up with the reader, because it’s such a dense story. You did it through the narrative of Bruce Wayne talking to the biographer. Neal: Well, I don’t think I could easily give a synopsis because I noticed that that’s what Marvel does and I don’t like it. I never read that first page. I just throw it away. Does anyone read that page? And I realized, well, it’s one thing to give a synopsis and another thing to give a kind of re-telling through the characters’ point of view. Bruce is sitting and — reflecting on what’s happening, and gives you a little synopsis. He also does it from his own point of view, from his heart. So he says, “You know, I was feeling bad about this, but now I didn’t feel so bad, but then I could do this and I could do that and leaving Robin behind, it really bothered me and I was like ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done it,’ but I knew it was a bad idea to bring him along for this reason or that reason. Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

And then you’ll hear, as I tell the story, what happened.” So to give you his reflections of what/where you are up to that point, it’s the perfect medium for doing that. It’s a comic book. It gives you one chapter at a time. I mean you don’t do that in a book because people turn the page. This is a month apart or two months apart so he starts out not by giving you a synopsis, but his reflections. And then you learn more about the character, and what he thinks about it. You’re more likely to read it. You don’t have to read it. You can just go into the story, but if and when you read it the second time, wouldn’t you like to know that layer of his reflections? CBC: He’s a surrogate for the reader, to some degree, “Wow, a lot’s happened. And that’s this, this, this, and this which is a reflection of what’s happened and what might be coming.” Neal: That’s true. It sets you up for the next story, so you’re getting a little synopsis slid in there without it sounding like a synopsis, but more like reflection. But what he doesn’t do is that he never assumes that you’re an idiot and he has to explain sh*t. So he never tells you about his father’s relationship with Ra’s al Ghul and why it broke apart and what it has to do with that hydrogen car in the middle of the warehouse. He assumes that Clark, who

Above: Now seriously, Neal. Did you not think us tried-&-true Adams fans wouldn’t recognize your own Vampirella frontispiece (inset center) from that Warren mag’s 44th [Aug. ’75] issue which you pastiched not once but twice in Batman Odyssey #11 [May ’12]? The cover is deliciously inked by Kevin Nowlan. Colors: Continuity. Below: Kevin Nowlan is lensed at the Birmingham International Comics Show, in Feb. 2007. CBC pal Nowlan contributes the pencils, inks and colors to next issue’s cover celebrating Russ Heath!

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he’s talking to, is going to go back and look this stuff up and research and figure out what that means and create the author’s reflection on his reflection because that’s what you would do, okay? That’s what happens with conversation. I assume, in all of this, you’re going to look up Hollow Earth Theory, I assume you’re going to look up a little bit more about hydrogen power — CBC: I’ve got sidebars galore. [laughs] Neal: — because I slapped you in the face with it. So you’re going to have to do it, just like Clark would have to do. And then Clark will come back in the next meeting and then say, “You know what? You were talking about the last time, when you were talking about this and not having Robin come. I didn’t realize at the time that the reason you didn’t want Robin to come is that there were some things that were going to happen that would reflect on him personally, it would hurt him and so it’s better that you just do it yourself and protect him,” which he does all the way through. He protects him all the way through the story. But in the end, he teaches him a lesson and he knows that lesson’s going to come. He knows he’s going to have Robin carry that gun and hand him the gun because right at the beginning of the story, Robin showed too much affection for that gun. And you, the reader, didn’t hear what he said Batman said, but inside his head, he said, “This is a bad thing. This is going to have to be cured. So while I’m doing all this, I will never forget this. And at the end, I’m going to have him carry that gun, and I’m going to have him hand me that gun, and I’m going to kill somebody in front of him (not really) and I want him to know how it felt for me when my parents were killed.” Not all of it because he’s already had his own tragic beginning. “But I want him to understand about guns.” Remember the story I tell right at the beginning? Where Batman is talking to Robin and Robin is up with Man-Bat? He says, “Okay, so you’re one guy and you’re in a room with 20 guys and everybody in the room has a gun, except for you. Now, who’s going to get killed first?” And Robin says, “I’m going to get killed first. I don’t have a gun.” Batman says, “No, you’re not going to get killed first. You’re going to get killed last because you have no gun, because everybody in that room is afraid of everybody else who has a gun. You’re in the least danger in that room.” Then he says, “Who’s going to survive?” Robin says, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to survive because I have no gun.” Batman says, “No, no, you’re going to survive because you don’t have a gun so you have one simple thing to think about: surviving. Everybody else in that room has two things to think about: surviving and killing somebody else, so their mind is split on killing other people because they have a gun, and then surviving. Your mind has only one thought. Survive. And, because of that, you are much more likely to survive.” Very good logic. It takes a long time for that kind of logic to drift in because that’s one of those discussions you have in a coffee shop. You know, you sit and talk about this sh*t. And he does it casually while Robin is out there, having a good time. But Robin will think about it before he goes to bed or the next night because he’s learning from this man who is his mentor. CBC: And importantly, he’s his guardian, and he’s a ward, and Bruce Wayne has a responsibility. I mean you seem to bring these characters back to their essence. You really thought of them as human beings. You said, “Well, he’s a guardian, he needs to teach lessons to his

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This page: Far left top, Neal’s pencils from Batman Odyssey #7 [Dec. ’11]; near left, Michael Golden’s inks on same; and, below left, Continuity’s brilliant hues on same. Above is a photo of Michael at Chicago Comic Con, 2009, snapped by — and courtesy of — Dave Mathis.

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surrogate son so the boy has more wisdom learned from his guardian’s experience.” Neal: Right, exactly, and he can survive. I do the same thing with my kids. CBC: Because Batman puts Robin in danger, then the boy can survive for the greater good. Neal: I have a thing in my family where while my kids were under my sway, nobody would get a broken bone. I’d heard of so many families say, once you get more than one kid, you’re liable to have broken bones. You can protect one kid alone, but if you’ve got three or four kids, you’re going to have broken bones. Until my kids were of an age when they were depending on themselves, no broken bones. Kris: Well, Jason finally did. [laughter] Neal: Yeah, but he was out of my protection. And I didn’t overprotect them. I’d just warned them at certain times, because of my life experiences, how you avoid these things, and I saw to it that they didn’t have broken bones. And broken bones don’t seem like that much to somebody until you actually analyze it. When you analyze it, you can break your bones many different ways. It can cause lifetime experiences and those lifetime experiences can last into your old age where you get arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis in those bones that were once broken. So breaking a bone is a significant thing not just for that moment, but for your entire lifetime, so there’s lots of consequences. I also taught my kids to treat doctors as the enemy because they are just as likely to hurt you as some other thing like a disease or somebody on the street because they are the same jerks that sat next to you in school who went off and became doctors, but they were the same schmucks. So you have to treat them as if they’re the enemy. My whole family, to a greater or lesser degree, has that attitude. [Kris chuckles] Ah, there’s your testimony. Kris: I always double-check. Neal: I have threatened doctors. I have pushed them up against the wall and threatened to hit them. My son — I caused it to happen — he caught his finger in a door, in the bathroom door, and split his nail and we went to the emergency room. And the guy started talking about what he could do and how he could take care of it. I said, “What’s the best way to take care of it?” “Well, maybe get a plastic surgeon and he’d have to seal the thing back up together and do this and that.” I said, “Well, are you a plastic surgeon?” He said, “No, but I can just stitch it.” I said, “No, no, [chuckles] is there a plastic surgeon in this hospital?” This was at night and he said, “Yeah, I think there’s one, a plastic—” I said, “You know what? I want him to come down here.” He said, “Well, I don’t think he’s on rounds. He’s going to be leaving soon.” “No, you don’t understand. You just don’t understand and I could just hit you.” He said, “What?” I said, “I could just hit you. And if you don’t get the plastic surgeon, I’m gonna. So get him.” “Well! You can’t talk that way to me.” I said, “I just did. But if you don’t get him, you could get hit.” “Well, I’ll make a call.” Well, you know, that may sound like a very aggressive approach to things, but it was very logical for what was happening at the time. You really have to put people back sometimes. I don’t consider those people better than me or more knowledgeable than me. And I consider my family to be way more important than them or their lives and I’m going to take Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

care of my family, but I passed it on to my kids. CBC: Protect your own. Kris: Right. [laughs] Neal: So Batman didn’t do any more or less than I would do in that case. If I’m not getting through to one of my kids one way, I try another way. This was a way to make a point with Robin that Robin, later on, would think about because he would have to agree there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the logic and that carrying a gun with you in many, many situations is a very, very bad thing to do because, guess what? People get shot. I mean if I run into a dangerous situation, I tend to — for example, if there’s a fight going on in the street, or something’s going on that’s dangerous, I go toward it. Now anybody who knows anything about combat knows that you go toward the danger. You never go away from the danger. You’d get shot in the back, all kinds of things

Above: Robin toys with the “coolness” of wielding a firearm in a panel from Batman Odyssey #1 [Sept. ’10]. Pencils and inks by Neal Adams. Colors by Continuity.

Below: Writer and artist Neal Adams risked the ire of “Batmaniacs” everywhere by depicting the Caped Crusader sporting handguns in the character’s first adventure in costume in these panels from Batman Odyssey #1 [Sept. ’10]. Pencils and inks by Neal Adams.

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can happen. As you’re going toward it, you gain knowledge so that’s what you do, you go toward it until you realize what could be the possible result. And then you either act or don’t act. So in those kinds of situations, there’s good advice and bad advice. Now, [chuckles] anybody who has any sense — and there’s a lot of writers who write for comic books, that don’t understand combat at all. Have no idea of what you do and how you take care of events. They don’t understand how you deal with it. They don’t understand all kinds of stuff, but facing guns — very, very bad situation — then you have a gun, worse situation. Pull a gun, let’s say you’re facing two guys on the street and some guy pulls a gun, and so you pull a gun. Guess what? Somebody’s going to get shot. What if the other guy has a gun? You’re dead because two guys can shoot faster than one, so you’re already in a bad situation. I had three guys attack me one night. I was taking my daughter Zeea and my son Josh home. My daughter was an adult, my son Josh was like six years old, and we got off on Sixth Avenue, we’re going toward the apartment in the middle of the block. Three guys, I saw them on the corner as I passed them and my spider sense didn’t go on. We’re in a cab, we passed them, went to the opposite corner and they were on the first corner. And because I grew up in Brooklyn and Coney Island, I have pretty good spider-sense and I’m supposed to know sh*t. For whatever reason, I missed it. Why would three guys be hanging out on that corner, just standing and talking? So I got out of the car with my daughter and my son, and we’re walking down the street, and those guys come down the other side of the street. I think, “Damn, what’s going on?” So they peeled toward the gutter, to off the sidewalk ahead of us. So I had my daughter grab my son and I told her, “Run to the front door as fast as you can and I’ll stay here.” And so with a little quick glance, my daughter is smart enough to know. She grabs Josh and runs down the street to the front door, which is further down the block. Now these guys have to make a decision. The smart one, the leader, started to veer toward my children because he knew that was the weakness. But they were running too fast — my kids run good — so they were now running too fast and he had left behind the two weaker guys, so he had to veer back some. He came back at me. So I had three guys facing me. I backed up against the wall, put my portfolio down, and I got ready to fight. And now they’re threatening me. You know, “Give me your money, we’re going to beat you up.” And I could see that they were not really tough, they were just thieves. And I’m checking their clothes and one of them had a suit on. They’re threatening. I didn’t know their back-story at this point. I’m holding and said, “Okay, just calm down. If you want to get into a fight, we can fight, but just calm down. Stay calm. Everybody stay calm.” “Well, we want your money. We want you to just shut up,” and then they’re threatening me. “You know, we got a gun. We got a gun,” and, “See, show him the gun.” And one guy pulls a gun out and it’s one of these .22s, a little pea-shooter that women have? CBC: Mm-mm. Neal: [Chuckles] And so he walks in front of me with the gun and in my head, I’m thinking, “You’re going to die. I’m going to kill you… [chuckles] because you’re holding the gun, these guys aren’t.” And one guy’s dancing around, I said, “Okay, calm down. I can take out the money that’s in my pocket and give it to you and you’re gone. We’re okay.” So the gun guy said,” Okay, give us your money.” They were

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This page: Neal Adams and Continuity offered Comic Book Creator three options as cover for this very issue of CBC. At immediate left was the original cover Neal had intended for the debut issue of Batman Odyssey (a detail of these pencils is featured in that issue), but DC higher-ups objected to having the character carry a handgun, on the cover at least. Ye Ed chose the bottom left piece, which was the planned cover for the hardback collection (but the artist deemed it “too busy”). Bottom right looks to have been intended as a cover for #3. Much thanks to all, especially Kris Stone for the help.

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really hyped up and all I could do was calm them. I reached in my pocket and I had two twenty-dollar bills, folded. I gave it to them. They were so nervous that [chuckles] they didn’t ask me for my wallet. They started to back away from me while they started down the street, they said, “Wait a second!” They came back [chuckles] and said, “Let me have your wallet.” I said, “I don’t have any money in my wallet.” They said “Well, let me see it, let me see it.” They found nothing and so they threw it down. Then they started down the street on a little jog and they slowed down. I went, “Screw it. These guys are the worst damn thieves I’ve ever seen in my life.” [Jon laughs] Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

So I got my wallet, joined my daughter, went upstairs, told Zeea when we get upstairs, “Dial 911. You’re going to tell them where we are, who we are, and you’re going to tell them I’m going out after these guys.” We got upstairs, my wife, Marilyn, was there. She’d had a bad time on business. She’d come back on the train and wasn’t paying any attention to what we were doing. Zeea went right to the phone, started to call the cops. I shoved a hammer up my sleeve and I went out and down the street to where they went and I turned the corner. They were either going to go to Penn Station or to the subway which was a block away. By the time I got to that corner, a police car was pulling in. That’s how fast my daughter got the cops and how efficient she was. It was 30 seconds, the cops came around the corner and I said, “Okay, as far as I know, there’s three of them,” I described them really quickly, “They either went to Penn Station or went down into the subway.” The cops split up and another car pulled around the corner and I had four cops, one was down the subway. Then the second cop went into the subway and then another car arrived. Unbelievable. Within three minutes, four minutes, I had four police cars, eight officers. One of the cops comes up from the subway, says, “Come here.” “Come on down here.” They stopped the other cops from going to Penn Station and I went downstairs. [chuckles] The other cop was down at the end of the platform. He had two guys up against the wall. They didn’t find the gun. I went up to one of the hoods and said, “I’ll bet I was the last guy

Above: Batman’s “show-&-tell” at Arkham Asylum proves effective as the “clowns” react to the detective’s treatment of the Sensei. Pencils & inks by Neal Adams. Colors by Moose Baumann.

Inset left & above: Beginning and beginning anew. The Sensei’s debut on the splash of Justice League of America #94 [Nov. ’71] and first appearance of his new incarnation in Batman Odyssey #13 [June ’12]. Pencils & inks by Neal Adams. Color above by Continuity. 55

Above: The artist-writer throws out a bounty of new characters to populate the DC Universe, including Dr. Slattern, a.k.a. Trigger, a cyborgian villain with massive firepower at his disposal. From Batman Odyssey #6 [Feb. ’11] with Adams pencils/inks and additional inks by Bill Sienkiewicz.

you expected to see again tonight,” and they carted him off to jail. All my kids are trained to think like that. I could depend on my daughter because she understands that in an emergency, you listen to the person that seems to know the smart thing to do and you do it as efficiently, as well as you can. The assistant district attorney called her at home, without talking to me, and said, “Would you be willing to testify?” And my daughter said, “You bet. I’ll be there.” [chuckles] And then they said, “Well, you know, very often, people don’t want to testify because they’re afraid of repercussions.” And my daughter says, “No, I’ll be there.” [chuckling] And we agreed to go down and I guess they had been in the lockup for about six months before they finally were going to go to trial. And, in the end, they didn’t need us to come and testify because it was very clear to their lawyer that we were not only glad to have come down and identify them [Jon chuckles] but we were going to describe, minute by minute, exactly what happened. CBC: You should draw this story. [laughs] Neal: There was no fear that this was going to happen, that this was going to go down. So they got two years each. We didn’t get the third guy. He must have gone for Penn Station. [Zeea Adams Moss comes into the room] Kris: [Laughs] That’s Dad: protecting the family. Neal: [To Zeea] So what happened that night? Zeea Adams Moss: [Indicates Kris] Ask her what she would do if anything happened to Kortney or Kelly… or Jade.

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Kris: I would save Jade [Zeea laughs], which is what you did with Josh. Zeea: You protect the small child. Let the big man take care of the danger there. I think Dad had an interview he was doing that night, so I was coming over to babysit Josh. Neal: I was going to be interviewed at [New York radio station] WBAI. [Participants break for lunch] CBC: My impression is that you put a great deal in the story so that a reader can get joy out of delving in deeper. But you didn’t have to. You can just take the story for its own merits. And the story is epic. It is going to the center of the Earth, basically, in very many ways. Neal: Well, not quite the center. CBC: Okay, a journey toward the center. [chuckles] Neal: Well, I’ve been investigating, as a writer, this “Hollow Earth Theory,” which is probably one of the dumbest theories that human beings have ever created, but it started a long time ago and it’s now turned into an extended mythology — a series of different kinds of creatures that live under the Earth. Some creatures are out of time — that’s why I was able to use the dinosaur stuff — and I’m sure that Jack Kirby, when he did the Savage Land [in X-Men], did exactly the same thing. I mean Jack Kirby is the forerunner of all of us in that he is the guy that read [laughs] and studied everything. And so when he did Thor in “Tales of Asgard,” he

knew what he was talking about. I don’t think there’s any other writer who could have done that stuff. And Stan, just keeping up with him, must have had him pulling out books on Norse mythology, and Jack probably sent him material as well, because it’s untypical of comic book people to go out of their milieu (I hate to use a word like that) to other areas for fiction or fact, except now we have a more educated writer in modern days so you do get a little bit of reading and research. This Hollow Earth thing is so incredibly stupid, scientifically, but so much fun, that if you were to go on the Internet (and I highly recommend people do it), you would discover the darrows and titans and the various creatures [chuckles] that are in this fantasy world under the Earth that have played a part in science-fiction and in fiction since Jules Verne, and that there’s this whole mythology built up over it. I do a science thing on the Internet and people are constantly bringing up this Hollow Earth theory, which I constantly have to point out to them is as unscientific as anything you could ever imagine. On the other hand, in the realm of imagination and fantasy fiction, it’s tons of fun. So what I did was I shifted it. I used some of it and shifted it towards a Ra’s al Ghul-kind of history. People talk about Ra’s al Ghul about him being king of the underworld. What I have done in this story is show Ra’s al Ghul, as it turns out, as the king of the under-world, the world under our world, and he draws his power not just from being some kind of criminal mastermind, but also being the leader of the negative forces that he has gathered under the Earth. So he has a new title. It’s the same as the old title, only it means something else. And part of what I did was to say, “Well, okay, you have a Ra’s al Ghul and he’s out there, committing his machinations, and you kind of go, ‘Well, he’s not Luthor, but he’s a criminal mastermind. And, in being a criminal mastermind, he has this other thing called the Lazarus Pit, which implies something under the Earth. If you use that as a clue, and you put it together with the Hollow Earth Theory, you could say that he discovered this underworld that the Lazarus Pit comes from and that he is not only a powerful manipulator on the top of the Earth, but he is the evil King of the actual Underworld.’” Taking that as a fantasy concept, now we can say, “Well, what does he do? What is he in control of? What does he manipulate?” Could he be using the Lazarus Pit to lengthen the life of engineers and scientists who may be coming to the end of their life or who may be criminalized or might be questionably ethical and turning them into a force under the Earth? Because there are clues as to where the oil is, and of his relationship with Thomas Wayne, he can control a certain aspect of the oil of the Earth. That’s where he draws his power from, and he manipulates them by access to the Lazarus Pit. So, now he has a kingdom and he’s totally in control of his kingdom, and his minions won’t ever escape him. They’ll always work for him because they’re being kept young. Now you have a circle of power that he can manipulate. So it adds an aspect to him that was hinted at with the Lazarus Pit, kind of making him a little bit mystical, but all based in good and bad science. There’s also this, when

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Inset right: Neal Adams re-imagines Aquaman, an aquatic denizen who lives under tremendous water pressure, as a massively-muscled, super-agile character. Love the fins! Art by Neal (pencils & inks) and Scott Williams (inks).

TM & © DC Comics.

you study oil, what you discover is that at the level that oil is found, you also find salt domes. So I created this community, this area under the Earth, which surrounds a salt dome. I don’t know if you know what salt domes are…? CBC: Go ahead, please. Neal: Where do we get our salt? You go, “Where do we get our salt? Do we sift the ocean?” No, we don’t. [chuckles] If you dig down in certain parts of the land, you’ll run into solid salt — [slaps hands together] a wall. Salt domes, in some cases, are as much as two miles deep, ten miles long, and four or five miles wide, solid salt. What is salt? What do they say salt is? Salt is the only rock you eat. It’s a crystallized rock made of two gases. Okay, how do these salt domes get there? Well, scientists currently say that salt domes get there from evaporations of seas, of waters. It’s a little hard to imagine a sea that’s ten miles long and two miles deep of salt. Scientifically unsound. Yet that’s the only explanation that science has. The reality is that they do exist and there are some places, like in Poland, where people have actually dug into the salt domes and built little cities inside of them, entirely made of salt. Even though it may not be abundant in a locality, salt’s incredibly abundant for the world, and it renews itself. That’s where we get our salt. And where you find salt domes, you also find oil. There’s a relationship, tectonically, between the salt domes and oil. Not in all cases. It just happens to be there at that level. So that’s an interesting thing to have added to the graphic novel. You have this salt dome that is the center of this big hollow area and then you have these engineers that are in that same area because they’re near the oil. So they use the salt domes because they’re under the earth to identify places to find oil. And then sell the information to oil companies who go ahead and drill. Now, what’s interesting about this is I’m not trying to educate people, but I am reminding them that salt domes are near oil, and is involved with oil, and that’s what Ra’s al Ghul is building his kingdom — or his headquarters — amongst, so people can go, “Ho, salt domes! That’s interesting. That’s what that thing is in the middle of the hollow earth.” I’m adding credence to an insanely stupid concept of hollow earth. “Oh, yeah. Well, they built it around salt domes.” So creating a fantasy based on reality and science and based on a stupid fantasy concept and putting them together and creating these underworld things is what the plot is all about. If you ask, “What’s wrong with Ra’s al Ghul?” then the answer is he is anti- all those alternate fuel sources that we really need to go forward because he wants to make money and have power. I’m not saying he’s the apex of the evil in the world, screwing up our atmosphere, but it actually adds an interesting aspect to him, which is what I’m trying to do in this book. It’s almost like there’s a rabble of writers doing Batman and, every once in awhile, they drop something in the road and I go with my broom and sweep them all up until I have a little bunch and keep on pushing them together and now I make a story out of this pile of refuse. All the effluvia that’s discarded along the way, becomes my story. We forgot that Batman once used a gun. The first — I don’t know — 10 or 20 stories of Batman, he had a gun and would actually shoot people. Not anymore. But it’s logical to assume that, when a revenger/avenger, whatever, went out into the world, that he would use a gun. The fact that he couldn’t actually shoot anybody was based on the concept that his parents were shot in front of him, which then would make us quickly say, “Ah!” It wasn’t taken away as an editorial decision by the editor at the time, Whitney Ellsworth. It was taken away by a Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

logical conclusion that if you can’t shoot somebody with a gun, then why are you carrying a gun? Idiot. Which is practically what I have one of the characters say, “Don’t carry a gun unless you’re willing to use it.” So he has to come to the logical conclusion that not only is he morally against a gun, he’s psychologically against it. He can’t shoot it. So that scene in the last issue [of Batman Odyssey] is essentially, psychologically, Freudian-like impossible. Could not have happened. Unless it was show biz. CBC: Okay. [Jon laughs] Neal: So that’s a piece that got left behind that nobody has played with. “Guys? Ya left this piece here! Why don’t we play with it? Do something with it?” It has been established that Robin’s parents were killed in a circus. CBC: That was great. That was an obvious! Neal: So obvious! Like… hello? That’s how Deadman was killed, that’s how Robin’s parents were killed. And when Robin comes to realize it — and Deadman doesn’t even want to tell him — Robin just freaks out. Totally freaks out. Oh, my God. Well, that’s been sitting there all this time! Totally sitting there! I didn’t make it up. I just cobbled it together from these leftover pieces, you know? Hello, everybody! Wake up! Obviously, Robin’s parents were killed under the same conditions as Deadman, at least the same kind of impersonal test of audacity and meaningless murder. Imagine if you’re Robin at that point and you’re flying on a bloody pteranadon under the Earth and you’ve suddenly discovered that that’s why your parents were killed. What a terrible, horrible thing. There are so many things I got to do! To me, it was a real

Above and background: Dick Grayson learns that the League of Assassins, the culprits responsible for acrobat Boston (Deadman) Brand’s demise are also behind the deaths of his trapeze artist parents. Art from Batman Odyssey #10 [Mar. ’12] by Neal Adams (pencils) and Bill Sienkiewicz (inks). Colors by Moose Baumann. Mighty clever of Neal to connect the two origins, eh? 57

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joyride to do these things, because I got to do them and comment on these things. You’ll see in this next little bit. When Bob Kane and Bill Finger were doing Batman… I’m loath to say “Bob Kane doing Batman.” Bob Kane had the agreement but I don’t think anybody sufficiently respected Bob Kane enough to call him the lone creator of Batman, but, anyway, he was just there for the ride and had the contract and he did fine. Bill Finger did an awful lot of creation, but essentially what they did was they copied Dick Tracy. Spongeface, and all these strange characters you found in Dick Tracy, were copied by Bob Kane, et al., in Batman. So, essentially you got a gang of clowns or weird guys. What I do in the graphic novel is I have Joker being captured by Batman in a unique situation in this Joker exhibit in the museum. In the Joker museum, I point out Conrad Veidt who played the Smiling Man. [Joker creator] Jerry Robinson would insist that the character was not based on Conrad Veidt but essentially based on the Joker card, which is the simplest and most logical explanation. But it allowed me to do that sequence in the museum and have all these interesting faces that the smiling icon comes from. And he

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Above: Particularly delightful is the return of Neal Adams’ Deadman in Batman Odyssey. Above is Neal’s full-page from #5 [Jan. ’11]. Below: Neal’s cover to Strange Adventures #207 [Dec. ’67].

has these other guys dressed up as Jokers. Anyway, I had a great time with that, just that alone. Then we have Deadman entering the body of the Joker. He turns to Batman and says, “You ever notice that you pretty much only deal with clowns?” [chuckles] And Batman is, like, “What?” “Well, I’m just saying, you know? Joker, the Mad Hatter, and all these… clowns, aren’t they?” Batman says, “Well, I deal with real criminals. I’ve put lots of people in jail.” He says, “Yeah, but essentially it’s clowns. Does it ever occur to you that maybe somebody’s just screwin’ with you? Ya throw ‘em in jail, they go to Arkham, and now you’re dealin’ with another clown? I mean, do they have a lot of clowns in Metropolis? No. No!” It’s ridiculous. Essentially Superman deals with lots of stuff but he doesn’t really deal with clowns. Batman is always dealing with clowns! CBC: It’s the Dick Tracy thing. Neal: It’s Dick Tracy but we know that from the stories. But from a logical point of view as a crimefighter, doesn’t it occur to Batman that maybe somebody’s just letting these things out to distract him from the real stuff? Or things like that! “What about societal changes that you should be fighting against and you’re busy fighting clowns. That doesn’t bother you?” And, of course, Batman suspects that this isn’t really the Joker that’s talking to him, so he gets that it’s Deadman trying to tease him. But it is awfully true, like we see in the beginning when these guys are supposed to be robbing the Mint but really the real problem is at the pier, from Batman’s point of view, is a hydrogen car. Those guys are really stealing the dinosaurs as a cover-up for the car. Because it’s a hydrogen-powered car. Ra’s al Ghul wants to get rid of that car, but he wants to do it without anybody realizing it! “Oh, wait a second!” Steal dinosaurs, hide car! CBC: “Stupid” dinosaurs. Neal: [Laughs] Stupid dinosaurs. The plot is a doubledistraction. The Mint is ridiculous — the kind of thing the Riddler would do. The dinosaurs are a distraction from the car. Batman as Bruce Wayne knows the car is there because he has got a deal to take this car from its inventor and process the concept of using hydrogen power for cars. That’s the goal! All against Ra’s al Ghul. CBC: So you’re bringing social relevance into the Batman mythos… Neal: I’m bringing social relevance because there’s not enough of it in comics. Not because I’m doing it. It’s in the world around us. We don’t have another war to fight. There’s little wars going on, but we discovered we have better weaponry than anybody. We could take out anybody, unless somebody drops an H-bomb on us. We can take out any technology that’s out there. We’re not gonna fight another war. So what are we gonna do? We’re gonna improve the planet. That’s what’s left for us to do. “Oh. Excuse me. Our planet’s screwed up?” “I’m sorry. Yes it is!” “What do we have to do about it?” “Well, I don’t have to live and breathe ecology but, guess what? In everything I do with all my neighbors and friends around the world, we do have to improve the planet so that we can live longer and our children can live longer and we can improve society.” Yes, that’s our goal. Not to have another war. Just waking you up. We haven’t got a war to fight. CBC: And send away the clowns. Neal: And send away the clowns! And you know the Mint that was being robbed? Who cares? Who will suffer by the Mint being closed down or robbed? It will not cost one American one dollar to lose that Mint. Robbing a bank will disturb some people for a very limited amount of time, but it’s relatively unimportant. It’s just record keeping. Who cares? If somebody robs a bank, nobody suffers. Nobody. There’s insurance for that. No, it’s good for the cops to catch these guys or for Batman to do that, but it’s irrelevant. So Batman immediately ignores the Mint. Then he gets into combat with the gangsters with the dinosaurs but he knows that’s the second tier of importance. It’s the car. That’s what it’s all about. The Sensei is actually about nothing but his own

personal vendetta against his father and can somebody in the world help him solve that problem? And can you do it by threatening and finding the greatest human force on Earth to help him? That’s what the book is about! It’s not about 13 adventure stories. It’s about… the changing world of Batman. CBC: Is it about taking Batman and going to another level of getting rid of the clowns? Neal: I think that clowns can be involved. I don’t think you need to take away the clowns because I had the clowns in the story. CBC: But he recognizes they’re distractions and that they’re… Neal: And that’s what Deadman is there for. Deadman is living in the world to see, to look at it! One of the things we do as artists or what we’re supposed to do… I hate to call us artists because, of course, we’re comic book artists. CBC: Excuse me? Neal: Let’s just say for a moment that we are artists… to sit on the clouds above everything and watch the world go by and say, “Did you guys notice that? That’s important.” Now, it’s perhaps an assumption to say that we comic book artists should have a responsibility to say these things but you know, we can’t help noticing them. And if we notice them we probably should say something. So, to assume it’s not the comic book artist’s place to make these comments is wrong because, guess what, we’re taking over the world. We just had an Avengers movie that grossed one-and-a-half billion dollars! When that happens, there is a certain responsibility. There are no more illustrators. Norman Rockwell is dead. There’s no Saturday Evening Post. The museums are filled with irresponsible and sloppy and crappy art that has no significance. None of the things I’ve seen in museums in the past 20 years compares with the Guernica by Pablo Picasso. None of it, in illustration or any other place, compares with the impact of Norman Rockwell and his life of creating art. Where is the art being created? I just want to remind the world it’s being done in comic books. And we do have a responsibility. Every once in a while there’s somebody who takes on that responsibility, like Eric Shanower, who’s doing the Greek myths and a history of the Trojan War [Age of Bronze]. That’s taking responsibility and having a good time, Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

doing something interesting. Significant. It doesn’t have to always be significant, but I did a book that talks about things in the world but, at the same time, I used Joker and the Riddler and all the rest. There’s no reason to abandon our characters. But it is a little difficult to see this many pages devoted to irresponsible and unimportant stuff when the opportunity arises to talk about significant stuff. We are not in the business of solving problems. When Denny and I did Green Lantern/Green Arrow, sometimes we were saying something, sometimes we were just shooting our mouths off, like the overpopulation issue, which was totally irresponsible. Yet it was an attempt to say something. During that time, I created a black super-hero. I have black guys, 35 years old, 40 years old, coming up to my table at conventions, standing in front of me, thanking me and crying. Or I stand up and we hug. Nobody ever did that before. Yeah, you had guys from Africa and guys from the ghetto in World War II who were black, but this guy is a modern guy — an architect. That did so much for so many people. I don’t talk about it but it happens all the time. The drug issues got rid of the Comics Code, for all practical purposes. We did it so powerfully that I’ve had people come right up to me and tell me that they’ve stopped taking heroin because of it! That’s a little ridiculous to even believe that such a thing would happen, but I have letters from people who stopped doing heroin because of those issues. They’re comic books for God’s sake, you know? Why would they do that? Well, the idea is for the open discussion to happen, for the rationale to be discussed and for the opportunity for change to take place. You can’t make change without discussion. That’s what it’s all about. And we are in a medium that discusses. We are not people who make pictures that you hang on the wall. We provide books. You may call them comic books but we provide books. There’s writing and there’s art. Doing pieces that just hang on a wall… outside of a Guernica or some significant, unique piece is knowing

Above: Neal Adams, bringing relevancy to comics. From left, “A View from Without,” a profoundly courageous anti-war story [Phase #1, ’71]; “ThrillKill,” written by Jim Stenstrum, dealing with spree killing [Creepy #75, Nov. ’75], and Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85 [Aug.–Sept. ’71], grappling with drug addiction. Below: Neal co-created an African-American Green Lantern, which today appears on DC’s animated TV shows.

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TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Pay attention! There will be a quiz! Neal Adams repeatedly tells us Batman Odyssey, the mini-series, was actually a book told in chapters, and it is important to read all 13 chapters to comprehend the overarching themes and resonate meaning to this seminal tale of the Batman. Reaching back to the character’s origin (and that of partner Robin, the Boy Wonder) and up to a present-day ploy to, once and for all, keep the insane criminal inmates of Arkham Asylum trembling before the Dark Knight, the tome includes many of Neal’s trademark characters from his DC tenure plus introduces an entirely new slate of characters and concepts, a gift to the future storytellers of Batman.

that you can write and draw and create literature that in the future will either be respected or not respected by the nature of what it says. How can we then sit back and say, “Why should I feel responsible?” We have to be. Okay? And you know what? I don’t give a damn if other people don’t feel responsible. I do! That’s why Batman Odyssey exists. It exists because it’s an exploration of topics that I can show in that book that don’t have to be dull and boring to talk about. Things that are significant and important. And if one kid goes and looks up hydrogen power, the nature of that book is satisfied. I would like everybody to look it up. I would like hydrogen engines to be the engine of the future. You can get everything you need power-wise from water. That’s all you need. Oil people probably don’t like that. I also think that, you know, we’ve had a big discussion about guns. It’s happening now. Guess what? I talked about it in Batman Odyssey before this last tragedy happened [Newtown school massacre]. And a discussion of guns is significant and important. Either way, it’s important to know the consequences of what guns are and what they do. Everything that this graphic novel is about is a novel. It is not a comic book story. It’s got all these layers and as you

go through it, you see all these layers. If you pay attention! If the audience is truly stupid, then I’m lost. If the audience cares and doesn’t want to listen to the idiots on the Internet and wants to read a novel in comic book form, Batman Odyssey is the kind of book to read. And in the future, those kinds of books will be more popular. Remember, we’ve grown from six-page stories to full books to continued stories. What’s the next step? CBC: How many pages is it? Neal: 325 pages. It doesn’t have all the exposition that you’d have if this were really a book; with all the descriptions and everything, it would probably be about 600-700 pages long. One of the things about the form, too, is that it allows you to do something shorter because it has the artist draw the things that the writer would normally describe in prose. Which makes the book shorter, not just the dialogue. So we’re doing a different type of book. And I have to say this again, but I don’t want it to sound like an ego-boost really, but it’s true. People remind me of images that they’ve seen me draw within the books that I do and they remember those just as much as they remember the story or more, or less, or whatever. They remember those images and the images become the descriptive literature of the books I’ve done. They see these images. They remember this drug addict who sticks his head out the door and cries with tears streaming down his face or this image of a hero or when they first saw Green Arrow with a big smile on his face. They have all these images and that’s part of our literature. So, in a way, we’re extending literature to including drawings. Pictures. That’s kind of a new thing. When has that happened before? I don’t think ever, you know? Unless the pictures are in the people’s minds when Troy was being sacked or whatever… We don’t know what the wooden horse looked like! [laughs] It probably would have paled by comparison to our imagination and our filmmakers’ imaginations. But it’s these images that become the other half of literature. When I did Batman Odyssey, yes, I put a lot of effort into the writing… and I put a lot of effort into the art, so that it becomes a whole thing. I’ve joined the artist to the writer. Even though it’s always existed before, the point that one has to make, is that this is a new form of literature. Totally new. Sure, we’ve been doing it for years and, yes, we’ve called it comic books and, yes, we have cartoons, but it’s a new form of literature. Not the unique and only form, but one of the forms of literature that we are adding to the rest. We’ll still want to read a Stephen King novel, but we want to see one of these, too, as a separate thing. Most writers will tell you that they’ve read Batman Odyssey, whereas fans will tell you that they’ve read the first six issues and they haven’t finished it yet because of the fourmonth break that DC Comics put in there. So, at conventions and such, I flip over to the last chapter of the book. [Opens to climatic spread] Blows everybody’s sh*t away. Because a lot of them read the first half and they’re waiting to read the ending. And I say, “This is to encourage you to read the rest of the chapters, why don’t you take a look at that.” They had no idea what was coming. [Jon laughs] This bunch of pages and the explanation of the rest of it is staggering in its implications to the characters in the book. And once you get to that, you then have to go back and read the book because there must have been more stuff you missed. And then, when you go back, you realize, “Oh, yes!” Batman has a gun and somebody faces him with a gun. He aims it at a tank of fuel but if he fires at that tank of fuel, every person on that train will die… and he can’t do it. Can’t

TM & © DC Comics. TM & © DC Comics.

do it. Cannot. Do. It. But if he doesn’t do it, he… dies!’ Now that’s some very deep psychology. Somebody else will have to deal with that. That tells you everything you need to know about that origin of Batman, that moment when his parents are killed in front of him. He can’t kill. And so, he’ll die. Imagine: Put yourself in that position. All you have to do is shoot the man. You could shoot the gun but likely you’ll kill the guy because the gun’s right in front of him. Then you see the guy shot and, of course, Robin is hearing this story enrapt, and says, “What’d you do? Kill him?” Then we see that the guy is killed but then we see two pages later, it wasn’t Batman that shot him. It was somebody else. But at that moment, you believe Batman kills him. You sit back as a fan and you get the same reaction from Robin: “You killed him?” Holy cow! He went up in a spray of blood. And you say, “Wow… what did you do?” What I did was I shoved it in your face and I made you realize that this is the real world and you know what? If Batman’s in it, he’s got to face all the consequences that we all have to face. It’s terrible. Everything about this is made to take us one step forward. Not a big step. Just one step further. CBC: There’s a literary element to this in that characters change as the story progresses. You sat down there with enough respect for one of your iconic characters that you drew and you thought it through. You connected the origins of Deadman and Robin, the Boy Wonder. Neal: You know, if a character has a given history, you’ve got to know that I’m not going to let him or her down. I’ve never let any character down in comics. Yet it seemed that, in certain moments in this thing, I may have let them down, 100 percent… until you get the explanation. Then you realize I never would have and didn’t. CBC: One of the things you repeatedly said here is that you did a book. Neal: That’s right. CBC: You’re constantly saying that you did a graphic novel, a book, but it actually came out, over 13 issues in 25-page increments. And yet, you say that you want to tell the whole thing and you have to say it episodically and you have these conventions that you throw in of the narrator coming in and you also do some wicked good cliffhangers, like where Batman is Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

riddled with bullets and you think, “And how the hell is he gonna get out of this one?” Neal: Right! An Edgar Rice Burroughs chapter ending. CBC: And there’s the thug about to shoot Batman directly in the face… Neal: “What do I do with him now?” says the killer. And the other guy says, “Shoot him in the face.” As an audience, you go, “That’s what I would do. If I had to deal with this character and the chances are he was bulletproof, he wouldn’t be bulletproof in the face.” What a weakness! Here, it’s, “Shoot him in the face!” That’s how you kill a Batman. So that problem had to be solved. CBC: And you had fun. [laughs] Neal: I really apologize for my joy. All that I did was find another piece that had been left lying around. And this one had been left around for decades! Shoot him in the face. Wouldn’t Batman have thought about that early on? Is he that stupid that he ignores our worst fear…? If I were wearing a costume like that, what would happen? I’d get my face all shot up. That would be it for Batman. Well, you know what? He did think of it but you just didn’t know it. He’s got the solution. Always did. But when it happens and you don’t know and the thug shoots him in the face, you go, “Oh, no! He did it!” Remember, it’s like I said: everybody had left all this stuff lying around and all I did was go and pick it all up. Even the stuff from the movies, you know, where he’s got this big Bat-car? Looks like a tank going through the city! “Hmmm, if I’m trying to hide myself from everybody seeing me, I probably don’t want to drive a tank!

Above: This ain’t your father’s Batmobile! And who needs a Batboat or Batplane when Neal Adams is at the designer’s helm? Way cool rendition of Bat’s wheels from Batman Odyssey #1. Colors by Continuity and all else by… who else?

Below: The super-sleuth uses a little persuasion to move along a reluctant group of train passengers in Batman Odyssey #2 [Oct. ’10]. Yep, they’re loaded! Art by Neal Adams and coloring by Continuity.

Below: Laura Hudson, founder/ former editor-in-chief of Comics Alliance, with her multi-part banter with blogger David Wolkin trashing Neal Adams and his Batman Odyssey, was perhaps the most visible — and scathing — critic of the artist and his work. Neal took exception to the constant ridiculing during the mini-series’ run and that prompted this discussion.

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My solution: Why don’t I do a car that looks like a car because then not everybody will notice me when I turn the corner?” It happens in the movies all the time. You wonder, how the hell do they follow that car ‘cause it looks like every other car on the screen. If it turned the corner, I would be gone. Well, Batman could make his car look like every other car, but in reality it can do anything! It can fly. It can go underwater. Now that’s a car. That’s exactly what I want to see. Everybody says, “He’s done it again. He’s made a bat car look like a car. What a great disguise!” [laughs] It looks like a car! Go underwater, and it can fly. To me that’s great technology.

I understand in the movies they want to make it impressive. The kids are going, “Wow!” But it’s a stupid car! A big, clunky, monstrous thing with big wheels! How do you hide that thing, you know? “Batmobile now on Third Avenue. Must be the Batmobile ’cause it looks like a bloody tank!” [laughs] This? Nobody would spot this Batmobile! Then it suddenly takes off. “Whhhoooaa!” Skims along the water, can act as a boat, go underwater. That’s a Batmobile. To me, that’s another thing left behind and I just gather it up. A nicely, designed car. It’s got those wings and it can be mounted from the back. Aww, man, that is so cool! You can mount it from the side or mount it from the back. One jump and I’m in the car and the hood comes down. I don’t even need to get in the car to be in the car. I can just jump and be in the car. A cute idea. And nobody’s going to say it doesn’t look like the Batmobile. It does! Some ask “What’s that design in the hood of the car that you have there, Neal?” It’s a reflection of stalactites on the ceiling in the Batcave.” “Cool!” It’s like being constipated and suddenly I get to do a graphic novel of Batman and I can do anything I want! Anything I want! And, because I know all the rules, I can pretend to break them and never break them at all! I never broke any rule in this. No matter what you see or you think you see, no rule broken, from beginning to end. Batman never kills, he lives up to his detective abilities, and he figures everybody out ahead of time. He “detects” and figures out every lie and clue. Even the poem from the Riddler, he rationalizes. He tells you the answer. He’s got it all… and this is what Batman should be! CBC: Cool. You “apparently” break the rules. Neal: Sure. CBC: You throw red herrings at the readers… Neal: Exactly! CBC: Is there a perverse pleasure in that? Neal: No! CBC: Because it happens… Neal: But that’s what literature does. It’s like Sherlock Holmes. One of the things Sherlock Holmes does when he’s faced with a new somebody is he observes him then describes him and gives his life story. The person responds, “I don’t understand. How could you do that? You couldn’t possibly know all that.” So Holmes explains how the clues tell the story and the character will say, “Oh, I thought you were doing something special, but that’s all… obvious.” Holmes turns to Watson, “See, Watson. When you explain, it just takes the magic away.” That’s the whole fantasy behind Batman. You throw the contradictions and all the rest of it at the people and they say, “Of course, that’s what it had to be.” The thing of Superman interviewing him and putting the Band-Aid on his hand, nobody has done that. In all the history of Superman, Superman has never walked around with a Band-Aid whining. But, of course, he would put a Band-Aid on his face and say, “I just cut myself shaving this morning.” Because, as a human being, that’s what would happen. I ask, “Why didn’t you guys do that? Hell, I’m gonna do it!”

TM & © DC Comics.

Right: Neal calls attention to the cover and splash page of Batman Odyssey #1 [Sept. ’10] and suggests the reader toggle between the two to experience’s the artist’s intentional visual “echo.” Art by Neal Adams. Cover colors by Continuity Associates.

So just when you figure maybe he’s Superman, you see a Band-Aid on his hand and think, “Wait, that can’t be Superman.” [whispers] Yes, he can, because that’s his disguise! [Jon laughs] He’s got a disguise. It’s a Band-Aid. I also get to do these wonderful vignettes like, you know, where Batman is trying to chase everybody off this train to save their lives and he can’t figure out what to do so he pulls these guns out and starts shooting over their heads and you, as the audience think, “He’s shooting! Oh, my God! Adams has gone nuts!” But he’s not shooting at anybody. He’s just shooting firecrackers off, he’s shooting over their heads and they run in terror! Then there’s this little old lady who’s so terrified she can’t even get up, so Batman has to take her and wrap her in his cape. She’s a wonderful, adorable little old lady and, while he’s doing that, he figures out her name. And, of course, she’s so charming that she’s a little embarrassed about mentioning this because her “boyfriend” might not like it. [Jon laughs] All this stuff has been such a joy, you know? And then I face the Internet with these people whining, “Why isn’t it a regular Batman comic book?” [laughs] Sorry! It’s a bloody novel! Pay attention! Anybody that goes from beginning to end in this will have a great romp. Then when you go through it again you’ll start to realize things. Then you can go through it a third time to see details of all… and they’re all in there! Everything is explained from the beginning to the end. When you start this story… I’ll show you something interesting. [flips through pages] Now that is just a little thing for folks. It’s like a little gift. See that? [Points to Batman Odyssey #1, cover and flips to splash page] CBC: Pay attention. Neal: Okay? Here’s Batman getting shot on the cover and then on page one, same size, he talks about how incredibly he was shot in the same place twice. The bullet goes in here and out here twice. He’s describing it. You never see this kind of thing in comics. He never talks about being hit with bullets. You see Bruce Wayne and he is a regular guy. The conductor sees this young man as a possible prize for his daughter. Suddenly Bruce becomes Batman… and he’s carrying guns! Oh no! We discover Bruce is describing his first case… when he did, indeed, carry guns. Any of us who know the history of Batman know he actually shot people with the gun. So, you can think, “Did Batman once carry guns?” Of course he did. So in the middle of the action — the middle of the action where guys are shooting at him — he realizes that he can’t shoot anybody. Now, this is the quality of the character Batman.

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He swings out here and he ends up shooting at their guns. He takes a disadvantage and turns it into an advantage and at the same time we see the beginning of his problem. Hidden, in the middle of this freight car is an oil car. Any future story that anybody wants to write that takes this story plot, this story element, and can move it into something else, can go along with the oil thing. From my point of view, this is setting all the writers in the Batman world into the opportunity of dealing with oil… not the guns. The gun is… started and ended here. It’s done. Then this fascination with the gun becomes a second thing and it’s resolved here. But now here’s the doorway open to a young Batman. What are we gonna do with a young Batman? Wouldn’t it be nice to do stories of a young Batman just beginning. You know, designing his costume, getting involved in having a Batmobile. What is he going to be? The first thing he learns is he can’t use a gun. What else does he learn? You can do a young Batman, like a 19- or a 20-year-old Batman. Do a series of stories. Who’s going to be the first to work with this underworld thing? Who’s going to jump on this bandwagon with a young Batman? It’s like anything I’ve ever done. Batman Odyssey is so dense with potential that it’s new toys to play with. It becomes a denser underpinning. Are we going to be involved in oil in Batman stories in the future? CBC: Hmmm… Neal: …Or are we gonna do clowns? CBC: There you go. Neal: Think about it: Ideas gestate for a period of time and then Havok that I created at Marvel — suddenly becomes a major player. Sauron a major player. Talia. Ra’s Al Ghul. People will find that my stuff is more subtle. It kind of creeps in there. You see this Batman character who’s a Neanderthal and think, “How can I work with it?” An interesting character. Interesting character. Hmmm, hmmm, hmmmm… You can take all the Green Lanterns in the universe and they all look like CGI characters and they’re just aliens. But if you take an African-American Green Lantern… that becomes significant. Remember, when they started with the movie, Hal Jordan was to be Green Lantern and all the kids in America went, “Who’s this ‘Hal Jordan’ guy?” [Jon laughs] “Green Lantern is John Stewart.” Because they watch it on Saturday or Sunday morning television and that reaches millions of people around the world. So all the kids were going, “Hal Jordan?” In many ways, that was part of the curse of the movie, that the world has come to know John Stewart as Green Lantern. So with him not being in the first movie, possibly with Hal Jordan helped to kill the movie! Them taking [GL artist] Gil Kane and going to [GL writer] Geoff Johns and leaving out [GL/GA writer] Denny O’Neil and the humanity in Neal’s Green Lantern… Leaving out that

Above: Sweet old lady Ruthie Diels, traumatized, soothed and then saved by The Batman was a fun side bit for the author. From Batman Odyssey #2 [Oct. ’10]. Adams art and colors by Continuity.

Above: Neal Adams’ visualization of Havok in The X-Men, with the mind-blowing costume design (first seen on this cover by Neal and inker Tom Palmer of #59 [July ’69]), was an immediate attentiongrabber among afficionados. Insert left: All reet, cool cats ‘n’ kittens! It’s the jive-talkin’, jazz -lovin’ wizard from Batman Odyssey, one crazy addition to the graphic novel’s multitudinous cast. Panel detail from #10 [Mar. ’12] by penciler Neal Adams and inker Bill Sienkiewicz and Adams. Colors by Moose Baumann. 63

humanity was another thing that killed it. So what was left was Gil Kane and Geoff Johns’ CGI characters. There was no humanity to the character. So while the Batman guys who made the Batman movies related directly to what Denny and I were doing and with all that meat-&-potatoes they made successful movies, the guys who ignored us made a failure. I’m not trying to tell people what to do. I’m just trying to give them grist for their mill… to play with. That’s all I’m doing. That’s all I’ve ever done. Anything I’ve ever done I’ve tried to say, “This is the best I’ve got. If you guys want to go and play with it, go ahead. Here. Play with it. Enjoy.” Or I’ll do it or somebody else will do it and we’ll all have a good time. That’s what this is also about. This is also about presenting all the ideas that got left in the dirt. You should have paid attention to them, now you can deal with it. League of Assassins and Robin? Kind of an interesting topic. Underworld Batman who is a Neanderthal but is intelligent? That’s interesting. I don’t create things that are light. I create dense things that have pasts and futures. And then I may just show you a piece of it. That’s sort of what happened with Green Arrow. I was given this Brave and the Bold and I said to [writer]

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Paul Neary’s inks grace the pencils of Neal Adams (seen upper right) in Batman Odyssey #7 [Dec. ’11], the reboot issue. Nope, we didn’t forget Paul, but apologies to Scott Williams for not having precise examples at press time. We were also hoping to include comments by the myriad delineators who contributed to the graphic novel, but we’ll try for this issue’s letter column in CBC #5. Please note that throughout this feature, we’ve used issue numbers reflecting the chronological placement of these chapters, but lest it seem too confusing, we’ve usually include cover dates, as well. Colors are by either Ginger Karalexis, Cory Adams or Moose Baumann, or a combination thereof.

Bob Haney, “Just give me a little thing where he’s gonna change his outfit, that’s all.” And then I took it and turned him into a modern-day Robin Hood. Now you’re seeing him on television. One thing he doesn’t do on television [in the current TV series Arrow] is smile with that charming grin, and that’s basic to his nature. When that book [BB #85, Aug.–Sept. 1969] came out, fans responded, “That’s all I get? Come on! Do something with this guy! I love him!” Well, that’s what I do. I did Havok [The X-Men #58, July ’69] and the same response. “Wow, that’s Havok? Okay, do something with him.” And guess what? They did. I built in the density. Same thing here. Same thing for everything in — the underworld, the scientist, the different characters. If you read through those characters that are in the underworld, I’ve got grays in there — alien grays! There’s jazz musicians who are magicians at the same time! CBC: [Laughs] That magician character is talking in street vernacular. You’re very strange! Neal: No, it was jazz. He wasn’t talking street talk, he was talking jazz talk. So he is a jazz musician, who is also a magician. Maybe they get a little bit of the Lazarus Pit, some of whom are involved in the jazz community because they do drugs, they’re hip, they’re cool… so he’s not alone! He’s not the only jazz musician or jazz hippie who is a magician and part of that culture. There’s a bunch of guys down there. But he is like one of the guys. So when Batman starts talking to him, he totally gets it. CBC: You reached out to TwoMorrows and wanted a place to talk about Batman Odyssey, and I volunteered the pages of Comic Book Creator. What was the reason? Neal: I reached out because I made a mistake. I didn’t answer my critics on the ’net. When I stopped doing comics, we didn’t have all these people discussing things on the Internet. So I come back doing comics, and the first thing that happens is I get the same kind of guys who would send

TM & © DC Comics. TM & © DC Comics.

letters to Julie Schwartz back in the day who wrote, “Neal shouldn’t be doing The Spectre. Murphy Anderson did it perfectly and that’s the end of it.” Julie had a letters page. And then a couple of issues later, people are writing in saying, “No, no, he should do it.” But now there’s a lot of people out there that started writing very nasty things, and of course they were misinterpreting everything that was going on and some of them were idiotic, some of them were just saying, “Why? It doesn’t sound like every other comic I read this month. I don’t know what the hell he’s doing.” “I don’t know what he’s doing” was sort of the big response, “I don’t know what he’s doing.” [Jon chuckles] And I tried to explain in interviews that I’m doing a book. And the response is, “Ah, I want to be satisfied with this issue. I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t get it. He’s crazy.” CBC: It says it’s one of 13 issues on the cover. [chuckles] Neal: Yeah! It didn’t matter to those people. Now, my instinct is to write a letter back, but when I talk to everybody, either people here or at DC Comics, their advice was, “Don’t bother with those idiots.” But that was totally the wrong advice. That was the dumbest advice I’ve ever gotten and I listened to people because I am… what, mellow? First thing I should have done is jump on the Internet and say, “What the hell are you talking about? Guess what?” And I would continue. But I didn’t. I didn’t. I listened to what everyone else said and I just let it become this crashing insanity because, what? I wasn’t living up to their expectations. Truth is, I was living beyond their expectations… as usual. It’s sort of like when we recolored the Batman and Deadman stories for the bound collections [Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams Vol. 1–3, 2003–06, and The Deadman Collection, 2001]. You’d get these five people that would write to DC and say, “How dare you recolor this stuff? It’s classic.” “Oh, you can’t do that!” To which my response would normally have been, “Are you out of your mind? Are you going to listen to the tiny vocal minority tell us what we should be doing and reading just because you have this nostalgic insanity for the crappy old coloring, printed on toilet paper that insects eat?” CBC: You were there! [chuckles] Neal: “And you’re telling me that people will choose the bad coloring and bad paper if they have a choice? You’re just going to choose your own damn nostalgic bullsh*t?” CBC: Sentimentality. Neal: Five people’s sentimentality? And I’m having to say, “Oh, well, fine. We should do this for you five trapped in time? Excuse me, we’re not doing it for you. We’re doing it for the readers, the 10,000 people who are going to buy this book and not the five guys who are going to write in to complain. Guess what? If you like those [original] comic books, go out and buy them. You can go on the Internet or eBay, or you can go to your local comic book store, and you can buy that primitive junk again because it, what, looks like sh*t.” CBC: And bind it together for your own collection? Neal: And bind it together and make your own ancient tome. Why am I listening to this crap? Even at DC, they got Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

five letters, or whatever the hell they got, and they told me, “I don’t think we should be doing this, Neal. People are not liking it.” Not liking it? People are loving it. Not you, not the geek at DC Comics and the geek who writes those letters. These guys should have become extinct with the dinosaurs. Five people or 50 wants to read crap like that; 20,000 people live here today. Nobody wants to see it. Good artists are actually coloring pages so they look like sh*t pages on this nostalgic stuff instead of brightening them up and making them good. And you’re defending that? Fine. Okay, you know what? We won’t colorize movies, just to make you happy, and we won’t do this and we won’t do that, we won’t live in the 21st century. We’ll just let you control the world — No! Okay? The hell with this. Now when Odyssey came out, people advised, “Don’t bother with these people. They’re just annoyances.” No, they affected sales. They affected other people. There’s some 13-year old kid on the Internet who did a video, sits in front of a camera, he says, “I don’t understand what’s going on. I just read #3 of Batman Odyssey and it’s great. Maybe it’s not the greatest comic book ever done, but it’s really great.” And I’m hearing all this stuff from people … “I don’t get it. It

Above: The artist laments some fan reaction to the re-coloring in the Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams three-volume set [2003–’05], which collect the entirety of his Dark Knight work… until Batman Odyssey, that is. These volumes are now available in paperback.

Right: Vignette from artist Neal Adams and inker Dick Giordano’s Batman #238 [Jan. ’72] wraparound cover, providing evidence that Neal made the super-hero’s cape a virtual scene-stealing co-star in the series during the artist’s tenure. 65

The following appeared on Neal Adams’ website upon the release of the Batman Odyssey hardcover collection. Pete Stone is a longtime Continuity employee, comics writer and the husband of Kris Adams Stone.

Pete Stone here. Neal wanted me to write something to promote Batman Odyssey, the hardcover collected edition, and I didn’t want to do the usual sell job. I wanted to be as honest and sincere as possible. So, I’m gonna start with — you’re crazy if you don’t buy this book. Neal Adams’ greatest Batman story now appears as a complete story… a novel, if you will. Thirteen chapters of perhaps the most fantastic art Neal has ever done. Am I gushing about this? Yes. As someone who has seen the art and story as it was created, I had my doubts. Issue after issue was written, penciled and inked… some inked by Neal, some by other brilliant and famous inkers like Kevin Nowlan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Scott Williams, Paul Neary, and even a few spectacular pages by Michael Golden. And all of us breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the project was completed. Thirteen issues… of Neal Adams… wow. I’m not sure any of us thought he could do it. When it came out — the reviews were harsh and (in many cases) unfair. But we all knew Neal was going to get smacked around on this one. He hasn’t touched Batman in a long time. No big deal. We’re done. Thirteen issues. End of story. Let’s move on. Then… DC sent us the Hardcover Collected Edition when Neal was out of town, at a convention. Then… in our lobby… a group of us opened the book. There was complete silence for a long time. Thirteen issues. Penciled and rendered by the very best people working today. It’s hard to find a bad page. New ideas. New characters. New worlds to explore! We, the people working around Neal every day, had to admit it… Neal’s still got it. No, that’s not fair. He’s actually gotten better. Much, much better. There will be critics, but there always are. This is not the Batman of old. He’s young and brilliant. He’s the Batman who can beat anyone in the DC Universe, face any problem, survive any death trap. As a fan, you might disagree with Neal’s interpretation of Bruce Wayne… you might not like that Robin is still Dick Grayson and just a smart-aleck kid… you might think Talia should be the assassin she is today… you might not like Aquaman’s long hair…you might think dinosaurs are silly… but read it. All of it. Twice. Three times. Then… and only then… will you understand this epic story. Come to a convention armed with your best arguments. Fight with Neal, disagree, argue, bicker even...but give it a chance. Batman Odyssey is just that. An odyssey. A trip through all of Batman’s past, present, and possible future. Even Neal’s harshest critics have to admit some of these spreads are amazing. It’s not Bob Kane or Jerry Robinson or Dick Sprang or Alan Davis or Frank Miller or Alan Moore or Brian Bolland. It’s Neal Adams and it’s new. And it’s different. But… different isn’t bad. Sometimes different is awesome. 66

reads really good… I don’t understand what’s going on.” And he sounds so confused, you know, that this insanity is going on at the same time he’s reading the book and he feels, “This is great.” There’s like three radio plays on the Internet of people acting out this book. Acting it out! Go on YouTube! Kris: Search “Batman Odyssey” on YouTube and you’ll find them. And most of them are like pretty serious. Neal: Well, one group is kind of acting up, but another group is acting it out like it’s a drama. CBC: How does it read? How does it translate? Neal: Fine. Kris: Fine. Neal: They’re just acting it. [Jon laughs] It sounds like a radio play. I wrote it kind of like a radio play. Kris: Right. Neal: So, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the dialogue. It’s literate. It all makes sense, punctuation’s good, nobody is talking funny. It’s not like reading Jack Kirby’s shorthand. It’s literate because I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, you know? And so what are they complaining about? “I don’t understand it.” Kris: Critics say, “Well, ever since he started advertising,” which he always did, “then he discovered the Pentel and now his artwork is horrible.” And this [indicates Batman Odyssey] is ink pen and brush. CBC: This is what they’re saying? Kris: Right. CBC: I started to read some reviews on Batman Odyssey to prepare for the interview and I realized, this is horrible criticism, personally attacking the creator. [To Neal] This is bringing their opinion about you, the artist and writer, into the work, which I think is absolutely abhorrent, never mind irrelevant. Kris: Yeah. Neal: But you see the mistake was… I didn’t answer. CBC: But here you are. Neal: I was far too much a gentleman and I shouldn’t have been. I should have answered. All along the way, I should have immediately answered the criticism. I should have established a dialogue because there are guys who do this well on the Internet. Brian Michael Bendis and many others have a dialogue going back and forth with readers [on their website bulletin boards]. CBC: Right. Neal: You don’t even have to argue with these people. You just have to have a dialogue. Just be nice and talk to them and say, “Hey, come on. That’s not the goal of what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to do this.” Kris: They criticized that this was way over-rendered. Neal: Unlike everything in comics today! Kris: [To Neal] That you’re over-rendering and then we’re over-coloring. Right. It’s like no matter what, it’s wrong because it’s not what they see in their minds. Neal: Sad, but true. CBC: “Oh, no! It’s not my Batman. It’s not my memory of Neal Adams.” Kris: And it’s not inked by Dick Giordano. Neal: In spite of the fact that I inked half of my own work. CBC: Right. It’s bringing sentimentality and sense of nostalgia of the ’60s and ’70s into a body of work that’s from 2011 and ’12. Neal: If even. You have no idea. It’s worse than that. There are people who think it would have been better if I’d died after I did Ben Casey [Kris chuckles] because that was my best work. And why did I go on to do “comic books”? There are people who think that I should have died after I did the Warren stuff because it was rendered, it was wash, it was this, and it was that. There are people who think I should have died after doing the [’60s/’70s] Batman stuff because that was the best work I’ll ever do. There are people who believe I should have died right after Green Lantern/Green Arrow because that was the best work I ever did. There are even people who think I should have died after I did the National Lampoon satirical stuff because that’s the best work I ever did. If you depend on these people, you cannot do anything but go wrong. All I can do is do the work, but there’s an added attraction — or subtraction. You have to respond to them on the Internet because there’s too many of them, they’ve become too powerful. They form opinions so you have to go on the Internet and say, “Okay, I’m in the room, let’s talk, okay? And if you feel this, this is how I feel, this is what we’re doing.” I didn’t respond. It’s almost like I was a ghostwriter, yeah, producing this. But I wasn’t responding to these people. And because I wasn’t responding, it just got worse because they’re just like dogs. I should have said something but I didn’t… and so they are encouraged to give me another nip at the heels. It will never happen again, believe me. CBC: You’re not going to let it go by again, unanswered? #3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Neal: I’m not going to let it go by. Kris: And I don’t think it would ever happen again because no matter what, you stepping into Batman, it was a no-win scenario. There was no way you were going to make everybody happy. We did The First X-Men with Wolverine. He’s never done Wolverine. There’s no noise. There’s no “Oh, it’s overworked, it’s over-colored, it’s this,” there’s no noise at all. It’s a Wolverine product, people like it. Neal: And the reason that happened was because Marvel put together a thing on the Internet where everybody got a chance to ask questions. CBC: Was this on Facebook? Neal: No. Kris: They did it on their own site and it was five interviewers from different Internet sites. Neal: An online chat. Kris: Right, it was Comic Book Resources and all the biggies. Neal: We got to talk back-&-forth and they did the interviews. So once that was done, it was out there. They put it on their sites, they talked about it, “Neal says this, Christos Gage says this, Marvel thinks this, blah blah blah.” But First X-Men is only half as good as this [Batman Odyssey]. Kris: But because this is Batman, it’s different. Neal: I think it’s more than that. I think it’s because I didn’t respond. Kris: There is that. CBC: It is insanity out there, Neal. People saying the most gawd-awful disrespectful and brutally repugnant things behind the cloak of “screen name” anonymity. Decorum is out Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

the window and people feel at liberty to make the cruelest comments that are just personal attacks. Neal: Right. Kris: You can’t not respond because they don’t stop. They never stop. Neal: No, but there must be a response. CBC: They’re angry and they’re mean. And [laughs] I just don’t like angry and mean. I don’t have time for that anymore. Neal: You just have to say, “Okay, guys, if you’re just going to listen to an Internet troll and not going to listen to me, fine. Listen to him, but this is what I have to say.” You really have to go out and deal with it, you have to answer. That’s just the way it is. And I’m perfectly delighted to answer because — guess what? — I’m really good at it. I mean I am the worst kind of arguer. CBC: Tenacious? You? [chuckles] Neal: I should have done it with Batman Odyssey. But I didn’t do it, it was my mistake and it’s an honest mistake. But right now, I’m saying, “You know what? I allowed the critics to go unanswered and it affected my sales. That hurts my family.” Here’s the truth: The truth is I was paid better than almost anybody in comic books to do this job. I can’t think of anybody who was paid more than me. I was paid well. Professionally I’m insulted by the fans. Not by all the fans because a lot of fans — people come up to me at conventions and will be coming up to me, and say [whispers], “I love Batman Odyssey.”

Above: Good lord! This is epic! Spread from Batman Odyssey #7 [Dec. ’11]. Pencils by Neal Adams, inks by Neal, Bill Sienkiewicz, Paul Neary and/or Michael Golden. Colors by Ginger Karalexis, Cory Adams and/or Moose Baumann. Below: Cover for the recent project, The First X-Men, this being Neal’s work for #1 [Oct. ’12]. Colors by Matthew Wilson.

Above: Continuity shared this, the pencils for Neal Adams’ The First X-Men #1 [Oct, ’12] cover variant. Inset is the published version with colors by Matthew Wilson. Pencils/inks by Neal. (Did you folks know that scripter Christos Gage is an old-time CBA contributor? Mazeltov for your success, Chris!)

Left: His first work for Dark Horse, Neal Adams has written and drawn the serial Blood, which has appeared in the most recent incarnation of Dark Horse Presents sporadically since #1. The conclusion is appearing in the October issue, DHP #29. Here’s an Adams illustration of the hyper-violent series. 68

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CBC: [Laughs] Whispering? Neal: I ask, “Why are you whispering?” [whispers] And it’s almost like they’re afraid somebody’s going to hear that they loved it. [normal voice] Well, I’ve never had that before. People who like the stuff, may agree with some people who may have some criticism, but you don’t have this vicious, slimy, nasty attitude that’s coming out of people. The Internet is a cesspool of insults and curses and insanity. Kris: Most of those people don’t even use their own faces… or names. CBC: Right, the anonymity. Neal: They very often don’t even sign their names. Kris: Right. [Kris leaves the room] CBC: But also, what’s wonderful about the Internet is to be able to connect with

like-minded people. Neal: And I think that’s great. CBC: You don’t have to listen to assholes. Neal: I fully admit that it’s my damn fault. I take total responsibility. I didn’t answer, I should have answered, but I didn’t. My responsibility. CBC: Does this cause you agita? Neal: I never have agita. I fall asleep four inches before my head hits the pillow. I’m fine. At the end of the day, I put all of it aside. On the other hand, my daughter has heard me say, [yelling] “Screw it! You know, Kris, I should have answered this jerk!” CBC: Kris just came in the room when you raised your voice just now. Neal: Right, because she knows — Kris: Naw, I just came in here because I was done with this. [indicates business paper and laughs] CBC: Oh, I thought you might have heard him. [chuckles] Neal: She knows and she’s starting to believe it now. The reason we’re talking is because I want to explain all this. If there are any questions, do you think I don’t have the answers? Do you think I didn’t think this out? Do you think I don’t know how to write? Do you think I don’t know how to draw? Do you think I don’t know how to think and plot and do my job as a professional comic book artist? I know my job. This is the best comic book I have ever done in my life. Muhammad Ali is the second best. This is so much better than Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. I had so much fun with this. I enjoy the Batman character. Look at the things I got to do, page after page of me having fun and sharing it with the fans, only to run into these geeks? CBC: When I had only read a few issues, it was a lot to take in. Neal: Well, that’s it, isn’t it? People were immediately responding to the first issue. They don’t understand it. I wanted them to be insanely curious. That was my job. Kris: Hey, you remember when we showed it to Paul [Levitz]. Paul came up here to look at our motion comic. We had shown Paul what we were doing because DC had come out with their [2008] Watchmen [motion comic], so we wanted to show Paul what we could do with a motion comic or an animated comic. We showed [Batman Odyssey] pages to Paul and the first thing he did was say, “You changed Batman’s jawline.” Neal: I was drawing Batman differently. Kris: I was like, “Really? You’re looking at like these incredible pages… and you focused on his jaw line?” CBC: [Laughs] I just want to ask who you used as a model. Neal: Yeah, he was a good-looking Batman. Kris: “I think you changed Batman.” Neal: I changed his jawline. “Oh, you mean I didn’t make it like Dick Tracy? Paul, is that the deal?” CBC: Oh, that’s the hottest Talia. Neal: Isn’t she a hottie? CBC: I think this is the best art that you’ve ever done. I just flat-out believe you’re still improving. Kris: If you believe that then you’re going to be assassinated. CBC: I’m the editor of a magazine, I said it, then I’m going to be assassinated. [laughter] Kris: Right. [laughs] CBC: But I’m saying that and that ain’t getting cut out because I do believe that’s so. Reading it all in one volume on the train ride here yesterday was just a great experience. I bought the first bunch of issues, read a few, and after the hiatus, I bought the final batch, but the break in the run, with the whole “New 52” thing, must have been murder on sales, too. [Truth to tell, Ye Ed. boycotted DC and Marvel for a spell.] Neal: We’ll tell you something about the break. Kris: Well, we had planned —

CBC: [To Neal] Was it murder on sales? Neal: It was terrible for us because this was the deal that we had. Kris: Wait, we had planned a break. Neal: Yeah, we planned a break, a one-month break. We said — CBC: Okay, but that was a month. But this was more than just two months. Number 6 and #7 had a nine-month lapse. Kris: I wanted a reset number. I thought we were going to go in, shop owners would be a little bit like, “Okay, where’s Neal at? Do we order big? Do we order medium?” CBC: Oh, you wanted a #1 again. Kris: Right. So we did #1–6, okay? And then I wanted a month break in

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order to reset numbers [restarting at #1] for #7–12. Neal: That was it, just a break — a one-month break in the middle. Kris: DC took like a three-month break on this. Neal: Oh, they did worse than that. They didn’t re-solicit so that’s actually a four-month break. Yeah, so if you don’t re-solicit, you stop soliciting and then you start again, you’ve got three months to make up. So you miss the month, plus you’ve got three months to make up because it takes three months to solicit. So it can be four months. CBC: Batman Odyssey is an enormously complex, dense [Neal chuckles] and involved story that demands attention — and then, all of a sudden, the reader is left waiting…? Neal: Some people will say to me, “I love Batman Odyssey.” And I say — and it’s the way they say, “I love Batman Odyssey.” — I said, “Did you get the book?” “Yeah, I got the book. I got the—” I said, “Did you read the last chapter?” They go… [pause] “Uh…” I said, “You don’t have to tell me. I know you didn’t read the last chapter and I’ll tell you why. Because had you read the last chapter, you would have come up to me and said, “I love Batman Odyssey, but that last chapter blew the sh*t out of me, man. That was — I thought my mind would fall out!” That’s why — CBC: [Mock excitement] “Look! It was that baby!” [laughs] Neal: So I talk to them and make them go back and read it immediately because all you gotta do is show some of them the last page and they go crazy. [They look at the electronic device under Batman’s mask] That’s another new idea. CBC: Did you invent that? Neal: Yeah. CBC: Wow, that’s awesome. Neal: In fact, I not only invented that, I suggested — CBC: That’s a great idea because that makes sense for the horns to stay up. Neal: And to keep the thing a little bit more “clothy” instead of molded and maybe not have Batman look like this in grimace. CBC: And to be connected with a database or

Above: The first issue of Batman Odyssey starts audaciously, recounting Batman’s very first adventure, when he sported automatic pistols. This evocative opening spread detail is by artist Neal Adams and the colorists of Continuity Associates. Inset left: Neal was hired by a movie studio to redesign Robin’s costume. This Adams drawing is the result. Below: Batman realizes he is the source of terrible tragedy in this Adams-penciled detail from Batman Odyssey #8 [Jan. ’12]. Inks by the gang of four; colors by the tinters three.

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Top: Panel art by Neal Adams from Batman Odyssey #1 [Sept. ’10], depicting the electronic head gear that fits under Batman’s mask. Above: Panel (pencils by Neal,inks by Dick Giordano) from Batman #232 [June ’71] that introduced Ra’s al Ghul… Right inset: …Who was played by Liam Neeson in the recent Batman movie trilogy, which nabbed Neal, co-creator of the character, a healthy chunk of change from the movie production. Ah, Hollywood!

Above: Spidey’s a real shutterbug on Alex Ross’ cover for the Marvels trade paperback collection. Courtesy of Heritage.

whatever. Neal: I suggested that to DC at one time along the way and they said, “No, we’re okay.” [Referring to electronic ‘bat ears’] Part of the design was this: This explains so many things. It explains the lights coming from the eye slits, the shape of the bat-ears, which you always seen in the shadowing. It also explains how you can put all this technology into the outfit. You put it into this headset under the mask and it’s got all the tech you need, then you pull the costume over it. So, if you’re going to deal with cloth — I mean try to imagine how this would look in a movie, right? Slap this thing on and then you pull the cloth over it so the head can turn. CBC: It’s still cloth, not plastic. Neal: It’s a cloth, so the head can turn. It can be a cloth, then you can do whatever you want with the body. It’s perfect and it’s— CBC: What do you call it? Do you have a name for it? Neal: It’s called the “Right Way to Do It.” [Kris laughs] CBC: The “Right Way to Do It”? I don’t know. Not so catchy. Neal: Too exciting? It makes all the sense in the world. Look, I’m a designer. I designed the new Robin costume. Did you know that? CBC: No, I didn’t. Neal: I’ll tell you a little story.

[chuckles] DC finally decided they wanted to do a Robin costume because they were being pushed by the film company producing Batman and Robin. They wanted a Robin costume. Robin was then wearing the elf shoes with the bare legs and yellow cape. So they called us and they said, “We’d like Neal to take a shot at designing a Robin costume.” So Kris said okay, so she offered to do it for $2,000. So I started designs and then they called back and said, “Do you know we’re having 12 other guys taking a shot at designing a Robin costume as well?” So Kris told me and I said, “Well, okay. Call them back and say we’re not going to design a Robin costume for $2,000. We’ll design a Robin costume for $12,000. And when they ask you why. She said, ‘Well, you’re having 12 other guys design a Robin costume. Chances are fine that you’re going to use one of those, so guess what? If you don’t use ours, you don’t pay us anything. But if you do, it’ll cost you $12,000…” because I’m insulted. “So you can just get out and you can say, ‘Forget it.’ Or you can say you don’t like it and pay nothing.” They said okay. [chuckles] So I started to design a Robin costume. I put leggings on the legs, I put ninja boots on his feet. In the end, I put black on the outside of his cape and yellow on the inside so that he could pull his cape over him and be dark but he could still look like Robin when his cape flapped open, made a leather jerkin on him and I took care of the rest of the costume, put these little capsules on his gloves and sleeves. That’s what they’re using in the comic books. I explained it all. The other twelve guys who just designed these like … [chuckles] I don’t know what the hell they were — they actually put out a comic book that showed all the other 12 designs which were just… well, nutty. And, of course, I’ve designed costumes for stage. I do that. It’s one of the things that I do. I know how to design costumes that work. And I’ve designed costumes for characters that I’ve created like Havok that they keep screwing with and make them worse. Every time, they get worse. Go back to the original, I’m just telling you. So they said, “Well, okay, this is looking pretty good,” They ended up spending the $12,000. They said, “Can you give us a version of this, only darker? Make it a lot darker.” So I did one and I gave it to them and I said — and Kris passed the message, “Whatever you do, don’t give this to the film company because this is the one they’ll use, because he looks like a junior Batman.” It’s just dark. All you’re doing is falling for the trap. What the film company is trying to do is a “junior Batman.” They don’t give a sh*t about Robin, or all the licensing that you’ve done for five decades. All they care about is getting a junior Batman that looks like Batman because they don’t have any respect for what you’re doing.” CBC: And what Robin represents. Neal: “So if you give it to them, and they say this is great, then they will use it. Don’t give it to them, whatever you do. I’m telling you you’re screwing yourself if you do.” So, in the end, they didn’t give it to them, but they gave them the other costume, which is what they used in the film. And then they paid me $12,000. [chuckles] CBC: Well, you got your 12 grand. Neal: But I got my 12 grand because I was insulted that they would come to the person who is the most logical person to do a redesign on the Robin costume and then they’d asked 12 other guys to do it. They have no respect. And it’s very hard to get respect in this business in general. You know, I believe in the process of earning respect. But once you earn the respect, you should have it and it doesn’t, like, mean you get some editorial assistant to suddenly become

Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

an editor and all that respect goes away. You’ve gotta have a little respect as you go along. The good thing about this project [indicates Batman Odyssey] is the editor [Mike Marts] we started with had total respect. The other editors they assigned to, after they let him go, were… well, it was a job… and it didn’t matter if they were respectful or not, I was moving. So if they had a problem— CBC: You were in motion? Neal: I was in motion, so I just continued the project until it was done. And DC became focused on planning for “52.” CBC: Ahhh. Neal: Which, by the way, is partially the reason that they didn’t support this project. There was no support from DC Comics at all, along the way, for this project. I should have spoken out about it then. But I didn’t. And it’s impossible to play catch-up. You know, you can’t go out after the fact and say, “Had I done it, we would have sold another 50,000 copies a month.” But I think this will become a perennial, the more we explain it, the more people get to see it, the more they tell other people, I think this will be a perennial and it will make those 50,000 or 100,000 copies. It’ll just take a longer time. CBC: Right. Neal: People who like it should talk about it to their friends. I’d like it to get the readership that it deserves because it deserves to have good, intelligent readers because that’s who I’m talking to. I’m not talking to the dumb heads. This is a book for intelligent people — and also, it’s got lots of action and adventure. So I want people to know the density of it, I want them to know all these positive aspects like it’s the most beautiful Talia that you’d ever want to see, the Batmobile is incredible. Because it’s 13 books, it’s almost impossible to talk about all the stuff in it. CBC: And we shouldn’t, really. Neal: Well, we shouldn’t, but I’ll bet we’re gonna! CBC: I mean it’s a discovery, right? Neal: Yeah, but from the point of view of letting people know what they will have missed… and should see. For example, to watch the interaction of Deadman. I brought Deadman into this and this is the Deadman that everybody’s been trying and perhaps failing to do. He’s this angry, crazed character and he’s in, as a side-issue, but every time he shows up, he makes this great contribution to the flow of the story. And I also introduce, or reintroduce, Aquaman. [searches the graphic novel for the Aquaman sequence] Did I miss it? Oh, here’s the Joker thing. This, by the way, reveals aspects and a certain history of the Joker. And about the Joker for the first time I’ve actually seen it on pages. Can you really do that? Yes, I think we can. Wouldn’t people like to see that image? Yes, I think they would. Wouldn’t they like to see that image? Yes, I think they would. [points to Richard Nixon image] Do they want to see that image? No, I guess not. CBC: [Laughs] Tricky Dick. A bit gruesome Joker sequence. Neal: Yep. A bit gruesome. Anyway, where is that? [continues searching through book] Where’s the Aquaman? Where is my Aquaman? Did I miss him? CBC: How come this character’s last name changes? It’s Reuben—? Neal: Reuben Irons? CBC: And then it’s “Reuben Blades.” Neal: You know what? That’s a mistake. It’s an editorial mistake. It’s the one knucklehead mistake in there and it’s my fault. CBC: Reuben Blades is an actor. Neal: Yeah, I know. That’s probably why his name changed. It changed to “Irons,” right? Yeah, it was a mistake and it didn’t get changed. You know, no matter how many times you mark a mistake, one slips through. [rifles through pages] It’s one panel, okay? But he looks tougher than any Aquaman you’ve ever seen. Look at the muscles in his face and the size of him. He’s a unique-looking character. He’s a guy who lives underwater, with all the pressures involved, should be

Above: Wraparound cover art by Alex Ross for the hardback collection, Astro City: Dark Age 2 [’10].

tougher and stronger than a regular guy, even Batman. You get the feeling that if they got into a tussle, Batman wouldn’t make out quite so easily. He’d have to depend on ju-jitsu and all his other fighting skills. So I intentionally did an Aquaman that I thought would make that visual impression where you think, “Oh, man. This guy looks tough. That is a tough-looking guy.” And I would think visually, if they could find somebody, anything like that, it would make a great TV show because you’d get this power coming out of the ocean and this creature that’s just a little bit different than us, you know, a little bit bigger. Every once in a while you see somebody who’s big and powerful like that and you respond, “God, it’s like they come from another race of people,” and that’s sort of the impression you want to get with Aquaman. I threw that in because I feel there’s not a distinction made between the characters at DC. Everybody’s got shiny teeth like they just brushed their teeth with pearls and you don’t see a difference between the characters. I like an Aquaman who suddenly looks bigger and more massive and able to resist

Above: Joker exhibit from Batman Odyssey #5 [Jan. ’11]. Below: Neal’s awesome take on the character is in this issue of Batman, #251, [Sept. 73].

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Another example of the Neal Adams influence, albeit a likely appropriated one, is his creation of Ball in the Continuity Comics series CyberRad [1991-’93], which looks awfully like the ball device used by the Tom Cruise character in the recent science-fiction major motion picture Oblivion released earlier this year. Bottom: Models of the movie version. Below: Panel by Continuity Studios taken from an unidentified issue of CyberRad.

However many the decades, the inventions — and reinventions — of concepts and characters by Neal Adams continue to have a lasting impact on popular culture outside of comic books, nevermore so than today. Take the popular CW television series Arrow, based on DC’s Green Arrow character, a once moribund hero completely reinvigorated by the artist (with help from Bob Haney and Dennis O’Neil, natch). Top left: Commission sketch by Neal. Top right: Promotional image of the hooded TV version of Oliver Queen. Above: Two panels from “The Fate of an Archer”, the final Green Lantern/Green Arrow tale, from The Flash #219 [Dec. ’72–Jan. ’73]. Pencils and inks by Neal. Colors by Cory Adams. Whether 1973 or 2013, Ollie looks good in a hood, huh?

the pressures of the ocean and is worthy of the title of King of Atlantis, rather than just a nice looking beach bum. CBC: I think it certainly needs to be said again and again that you are one of the first who really promoted creators’ rights. You started your own independent line with Continuity, had your own publishing company, have consistently worked freelance fields, whether it’s National Lampoon or Power Records. Neal: Or every advertising agency in New York City. CBC: We talked about family today, that you have a role as a provider, so why give this stuff to DC? Why not do it on a creator-owned character? Neal: Well, because I’m connected with Batman. In effect, I’m reintroducing myself to the industry that I took a break from. I actually went on strike against the work-made-for-hire provision of the law. I’ve come back now, because I know that the work-made-forhire provision is going to take longer and there have been some modifications made in the law. I can’t spend my life away from something if nobody cares about it any more. I have to be real. Kris: Well, there was no sharing in the industry when you went on strike and now there is. At DC, they do share with certain characters if they feel it’s a new creation. Neal: You see, the battle is that work-made-for-hire makes you an employee. Therefore, you have no rights and have no sharing. And, as a result of the efforts I made, royalties now exist because of threats and other things from outside DC Comics. My conversations with Paul Levitz have created a much more liberal approach because they’re now doing contracts and they’re sharing certain things. Like I got $100,000 for the first Ra’s al Ghul appearance and we got $100,000 for the third movie with the Ra’s al Ghul appearance. So I can’t complain because many of my/our goals have been achieved. Even though the wording of the laws remains the same, the reality of our industry has changed very, very much. There is more sharing going on. In fact, my policy has been for the last 30 years to fight for everybody else, get everything else settled before I even bring myself up. I’ve never gone to DC or Marvel and said, “You never gave me a contract for this, but now I want it. You never did this for me, I created this character, now I want a share.” I’ve never done it in all this time when I’ve battled for everybody else because I do fine out here. But so all my battles have been for everybody else, never for me. Never. I never once asked for anything. Kris: Because you would have gotten it and everybody else would not. Neal: Right. It’s so easy to fight. But I waited until all of that was done. Now things have settled into a reality that I can step back and finally say, “Okay, we’ve taken care of everybody else, mmmm, I created Ra’s al Ghul, I created Havok, I created John Stewart, I recreated Green Arrow, I co-created Deadman and developed the character. Now let’s talk about me.” So now we’re talking about that, and now I’m coming back into the industry and saying, “Okay, so I haven’t really finished off work-made-for-hire, but things are better. Things are nice. I can come back.” So what did I do when I came back? Well, as a reintroduction, I did Batman Odyssey. I created a new origin for the X-Men. [Kris leaves the room] So I approached Marvel with two things. The real KreeSkrull War, which has never been done — finished. I also approached them with this idea: when we first see the X-Men, it’s Professor X in a wheelchair and bald and seven or six people standing around him in funny costumes. Something must have happened before that. In other words, there must be a history. There must have been mutants, there must have been somebody that cared about them or they would all be chopped up by the military-industrial complex of crazy super-soldier people. Was there a time that somebody was collecting mutants and trying to put them together in a group

rvel Characters, Inc.

to protect themselves? And if such a person existed, who would it be? Who would it be? I’m asking! CBC: Who would it be? In the X-Men mythos? Magneto? I don’t know. Neal: Well, Magneto came out of World War II. He would still be a little young. He could be him, but he was also not a very nice guy. About this time, he’s killing Nazis. [Marilyn, Neal’s wife, enters the room] Marilyn Adams: So we came back to comics at a time when we’ve gotten Continuity into doing more finished commercials with our CGI division. So that allowed us, economically, to free up his right hand a little bit. That allowed him to be able to do comics again. Neal: Freedom. Marilyn: So it’s also getting Continuity into a solid place as a business, allowed him to come back. Neal: Right, because I did the lion’s share of everything. And with the animation, the CGI animation, I just had to design the characters and other people do the work. That’s not so bad. [Slight break while Neal talks business with Marilyn and then conversation returns to Batman Odyssey] Here’s another character. I was flipping through this and I realized I’d invented another character in this thing. I mean it’s so much, man. [Indicates Trigger, a.k.a. Dr. Slattern] There’s this guy who maintains weapons at Arkham Asylum, so he built himself a kingdom… and a rig. CBC: And a trigger? Neal: [Chuckles] Yeah, a trigger. CBC: “Trigger? Like the horse?” Neal: To trigger every gun, man. And he’s just loaded with guns, pulling down guns from everywhere. And it’s a great character. It’s one of those, like, “Oh, yeah. I like that guy. I can turn him into a character.” And he’ll become a character. “You did it.” He’s just being used as a foil. There’s a new Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

movie coming out with Tom Cruise with previews appearing on the Internet. It’s about a post-apocalyptic Earth and it’s called Oblivion. You will notice that there’s this flying ball, but flying around, it has these wings, it has guns in it, just flying around. You see multiple versions of that if you watch the trailer. What’s interesting is there’s a character in [Neal’s Continuity comic title] CyberRad called Ball and it’s a ball that flies around with these wings coming out of it and it fires guns. [Indicates Kris, who enters the room with copies of The First X-Men] As soon as we saw it, we called each other and said, “Ball’s in the new movie.” “Really?” Sure enough, there was Ball and it’s a major character in our first CyberRad comic book. Somebody just ripped it off. I asked Kris, “Look up who did the storyboards for the movie. Find out what the deal is.” So we discovered that the guy who traced my layouts to do that comic book is now out in Hollywood, doing storyboards and he just lifted the character I created and added it for that movie. So when do I get my first royalty check on that? [to Kris] Whaddya got? Kris: Zip, I got! Neal: So, my first shot out of the barrel was Batman Odyssey. My second shot was to recreate the origin of the X-Men. What would be my next shot? Well, one of the projects I’m doing is a story called Blood. That’s in Dark Horse Presents. We’re talking to DC Comics about doing something for them again. Blood is going to be a series of graphic novels that we’re going to promote as a movie.

Above: Sorry, with Neal hinting at discussing a “real” Kree-Skrull War project with Marvel, I couldn’t resist sharing this epic intergalactic scene from Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. Pencils by Neal and inks by Dick Giordano and Terry Austin. Below: The Avengers #96 [Feb. 1972] cover by Neal Adams (pencils) and Tom Palmer (inks).

a while, you run across kind of tragedies in your life or you avoid them, and some people say you can’t make up for it? I don’t really believe that. I think you can make up for any of them. So I’m hoping that people, once they get what’s going on in Batman Odyssey and the word gets shared, then everybody will enjoy it. We’ll turn it around. That’s my intention. It’s the only reason why we’re doing this interview, is that I want to turn around the vibe on Batman Odyssey, and get people to read it, not because I care about it because they’ve already paid me — [chuckles] they paid me very, very well — I share it with as many people except for those people who go, [whispers] “I love Batman Odyssey.” And I just want more people to get that and to enjoy it. That’s what this is all about. All the new characters, all the new concepts, new toys to play with, whether people pick up on the mask or whatever, I just want more people to enjoy it. That’s what it’s all about. The reason we pushed this Superman vs. Muhammad Ali for this new generation is because I want people to enjoy it. That’s what I want. There are people who’ll come up to my table and they go, “Hah! Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. What’s that?” And it becomes a joke all over again because they’re young and they’ve neither seen nor heard of it. And then they look at it and I say, “You know, that may be the best comic book you’ll ever read.” “Oh, really?” And they pick it up and start flipping through it. “Oh, cool.” Suddenly, you got a new audience and so it’s a sharing and that’s what I like. Look, my stuff stays topical. The Green Lantern/Green Arrow series is a good read, no matter what. It’s not just a good read for back then. It’s a good read for now. Yeah, The Chicago Seven are not [chuckles] in the news any more, but the subject is more than current! And so getting DC Comics to do the reprint, even though they sold it for $75… they sold 12,000 copies, which by my math is $900,000 retail and a reprint, is a good thing. And unfortunately, because of crappy editorial policy at the time — hopefully, it will get better — they sold it out within three or four months and it hasn’t been reprinted in that hardcover version for six years, maybe seven now. Well, that’s insane. People are paying $200, $250

Above: What made the Batman who he is is the tragedy of seeing his parents murdered by a thug before his eyes. An episode in Batman Odyssey forces him to relive the nightmare. From #4 [Dec. ’10]. Pencils by Neal Adams; inks by Scott Williams; and colors by Continuity. Inset right: Flashback panels from Batman #232 [June ’71] recalling the same incident. Pencils by Neal; inks by Dick Giordano. Opposite page inset: One of Neal’s very first writing jobs was for the U.S. National Guard while working at the comics-for-advertising agency Johnstone & Cushing. Here’s a repro of the cover of that very rare Adams’ written-&-illustrated rarity from 1960.

We’re also preparing stuff that we used to publish, our series of comic books that people are constantly asking about. We’d started a thing called The Rise of Magic and so we’re going to be finishing it. We’re going to try to do it the way we did Deathwatch 2000 with lots of gimmicks and magical things and stuff. And we have an awful lot of it done. It’s really quite incredible. And so my reintroduction, essentially, is Blood, Batman Odyssey, recreating the X-Men origin, doing something I will do for DC Comics, and then… ta-dah!… our big Rise of Magic. So I can’t really imagine a more auspicious jumping back in than all that. I mean Batman, X-Men, whatever we do at DC… [Kris chuckles] CBC: Big pause. Neal: Big pause. I can’t say because I know what we’re talking about and just making it tougher for everyone else to compete with me, which is exactly what I want to do, that I’m not going to make the same mistake I made with Batman Odyssey. In a weird way, it’s a tragedy, you know. Every once in

to get it. So why isn’t it constantly on the shelves? Because DC’s policy is to pay attention to some things and not to other things? You know, I have never done anything that is negative to DC Comics. I want DC Comics to promote our stuff and I want them to make money from it. How can you pass up nearly a million dollars? How much money do you have to have in the bank to say, “Nah, I don’t want another $900,000.” I don’t get it. I have no idea. So yeah, and they’ll say, “Well, we’re doing softcovers,” and you kinda go, “You know, if I was you, I’d do the softcovers and the hardcovers. You’ve got the softcovers splitting the thing up. A cover gets wrinkled and it’s like you want to get the hardcover. Why do I have to go to conventions and people ask me about it and then tell me they had to pay $250 or $300 when they bought it? It’s just out of print. Why? Why does a book have to be out of print when you know it’s going to sell? Doesn’t make any sense.” So they have resolved to me that they are no longer going to not pay attention to it, that they believe as I’d sug#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

A Simple Matter of Gratitude

Ye Ed takes a moment or three to share some appreciation for the ambitious creator Pardon the mid-feature interruption, but yours truly needs to get something off my chest about the comics master in question, Neal Adams. Every since starting in this wacky “mags about comics” biz, Ye Ed has found, from the very start, an ally and generous spirit in Neal — who contributed covers to the first issues of the two volumes of my Comic Book Artist, as well as the X-Men cover for V1 #3 — that leaves me humbled and appreciative. Plus he believed enough in a dream of my brother Andy and myself by rendering the wraparound cover for the only issue of our ill-fated (or is it just on-hiatus, bro?) comic book series, Prime8. And never mind the hours and hours Neal shared with me through interview after interview, gathering art, transcript editing, answering dumb questions… So, do you think I’m loyal to the guy? Huh, do ya?

Needless to say, when Neal asked John Morrow earlier this year if one of the TwoMorrows mags wants to feature an indepth discussion about Batman Odyssey, I was first in line. Oh, you betcha, there’s a promotional vibe to this look at the mammoth 325-page graphic novel. I mean, after all he’s given me, why wouldn’t I want to help Neal Adams when he asks for it? Answer me that, effendi! But I’ll also be completely honest about the book. When I started reading Batman Odyssey as the issues came out, it was dense and the going confusing, but I just couldn’t deny this was Neal’s best artwork ever. Then, on the train ride to New York City to interview Neal, I read it all at once — in one sitting — and I confess that I was thoroughly entertained. Is it extreme? Absolutely! Dude, it’s Neal-freakin’-Adams, the king of extreme! Nuff sed. — Y.E.

gested is true, that there ought to be a Neal Adams corner with Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Deadman and Batman Odyssey. And you know there’s enough of those to set up a corner in comic book stores, as Jim Lee suggests, and all that’ll happen is the bookstores will make money. And DC will make money. And, hey, I’ll get a little royalty check. It makes sense. What’s the down side of that? None. So why isn’t it done? And you know, they admit to me that they didn’t support Batman Odyssey and when somebody admits it to you, you kind of go, [sniffs] “Okay, I don’t think there’s a sentence after that that I can say. I think that you guys ignored it, you think you ignored it…” CBC: “How do we deal with that?” Neal: “How do we deal with it?” I think probably, you’ll promote it and talk about it because I think it’s part of history now. Now the question is how do we — because I don’t believe that DC is going to do any more than respond to the market. CBC: Right. Neal: So, if we promote it and talk about it, and people share it and they’ll buy more and then they’ll order more and DC has to go back to press. And more people will read it and they’ll have to — and that’s what I’m looking to encourage as much as possible. I don’t like to be beaten by geek fans on the Internet, just because I didn’t say anything. This time around, you know what? Write as much as you want, I will respond. But beyond that, it’s up to me to come up with the conversation that lets people know that if they read it, they will discover that I have not let anybody down, that I’ve produced a comic “book” that they can be delighted by and proud Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

of and have fun reading it over and over again. And we’ll all have a good time and that’s what it’s about. So this, for me, this is all about reintroducing Batman Odyssey to an audience that may be interested and might be happy to see it and talking about the things that are in it; the new characters, the new villains, the new concepts, the things that they will see in other comic books as the future rolls by, done by other writers and artists, so they won’t scratch their heads and say, “Where did this come from? Oh-kay, from Batman Odyssey. There you go.” It’s maybe a little bit personal on my part, but I feel I’m just getting back, a little bit that got taken away from a good project. It’s just another part of history. I promised people a novel, not a series of stories. Maybe, in a weird way, this is the first. I mean you could point to other projects and say, “Well, this is sort of a novel and this is sort of a graphic novel.” Not really. There were more segmented pieces of shared story. This is an odyssey, like Ulysses’ Odyssey. Batman goes into this world and he runs into a tribe of modern dinosaurs. And he, being the detective that he is, discovers that someone has betrayed the people and they lost their mounts, their larger, primitive dinosaurs. Instantly, Batman evaluates all the aspects of what’s going on around him, spots the culprits, and reveals them to the tribe. “These two evolved dinosaurs are the betrayers, this guy’s got two new wives, and one has a dagger that’s made from the bone of an antler of a deer that only exists on the surface world. How could he possibly get that? Unless he was given to it by somebody from the surface world, which 75

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going to come out at the end. When you see these kinds of realities happen, would that change you? Or could you hold to your resolve? And so I expose him to one human lesson after another where he must, in some cases, break arms; in some cases — and worse, he has to watch these things happen right in front of his own eyes. Will that change his view of the world and how he deals with it? Well, if you read it very, very carefully, it’s almost impossible not to be changed. You see people, based on your decision to reveal them, slaughtered in front of your eyes, other people die a horrible death because you’re there and there’s nothing else that can be done. They must die. You know, men who come back from war can really come back from a terrible experience, and they have to, then, adjust their lives to living in a civilized society where if you get pissed off at somebody, you can’t just go and kill them. They either have to adjust to coming back to society or they can kill their neighbors. So you have Batman going through that kind of odyssey. You can no longer turn to Batman and say, “You’ve never experienced war. You’ve never seen people die as a result of your opinions and what you have to say,” because he now can say, “No, that’s not true. I have been through it, I have seen it in front of my eyes. And yet [slams fist on the table] I will never kill anybody.” That’s an odyssey. I don’t know how else you can describe it. And it’s a “self-inflicted” odyssey embarked on, in order to solve the problem that was very, very clear and that only he, of anyone in the world, could solve. And he does … to our surprise and awe. This is definitely a book, a novel with pictures. And something that I have had the greatest damned great time with, I’m telling you. I flip through this and I just see joy hopping off the pages. You know, the characterizations and working with the inkers I got to work with… I mean just joyful. All these little vignettes like being in the museum with the Joker and his additional Jokers, that conversation with Batman in the car talking about clowns, Robin flying with his pterodactyl, discovering in the midst of being alone in an alien world on top of a flying reptile, about how his parents were killed for no good reason, just as a test. What a terrible lesson for him to learn. And then the transition between a Robin that considers that guns are maybe cool, to a Robin that really sees what could possibly result committed by a man that he looks to as a father, is more than just a murder. It was committed in front of him with a gun he had been carrying around. What goes on in your mind when you see your father murder somebody? Though he may deserve it. It’s a terrible thought. These are all the kind of things that can be talked about, discussed, that you can go over with friends, these are the kind of things that comic books are about. You’ve gotta know that people talk about Green Lantern/Green Arrow, you’ve gotta know that there have been discussions about the things that went through that series, you’ve gotta know that people talk about the Batman/Joker story that Denny and I did [“The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge,” Batman #251, Sept. ’73], the first set of X-Men that I did [The X-Men #56-63, 65, 1969-’70] and how they changed and the characters, that were reintroduced and Professor X was brought back to life by being replaced by the Changeling. The Avengers with Ant-Man going into the body of the Vision [“This Beachhead Earth,” #93, Nov. ’71]. That’s a major topic of discussion, these are things that get talked about — Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, so much of that is talked about. It means so much to so many people. People come to me at conventions and say, “You have no idea what you meant to me in my early life. You turned me on to comics and I’m now an artist or a writer or whatever.” And they talk about — almost like they’re the only person in the world who’s tremendously affected this way and they have to tell me. And the story happens over and over and over and

he betrayed. He betrayed the tribe to do it.” Now the tribe responds, “Whoa! These guys are real traitors.” “So what are you going to do? You have to incarcerate them and you have to punish them in some way.” And behind Batman’s back, the tribe is killing them. So, as a result of Batman revealing them, the tribe took the only course they could take. If two people in your tribe had betrayed your tribe, you don’t have, in a more primitive place, a jail… sort of like an African tribe. You know, you’re in Africa or you’re in South America and you’ve revealed that these two guys are thieves and they hurt the tribe, made it impossible for them to defend themselves. What do you do? There’s no place to put them. So you kill them. So then Batman turns around and sees that these guys have been slaughtered, as a result of his great detective work; not a good day for Batman. [chuckles] Very, very bad day for Batman. So suddenly, in his odyssey, he goes to a place where things are not the same as they are in the upper world and his actions have now caused the death of two creatures. Well, that’s a rough lesson. Maybe Batman just can’t be quite so “out there” with what he can do. In another situation, Batman gets involved in a war. Batman refuses to kill anybody. Not so good. Others are with him and are killing people. The jive-talking magicians are being attacked by an armored military vehicle, so they naturally use their magic to open up a hole in the earth, the vehicle goes into the hole, and then they close the earth again with magic. Batman has to stand there and look at it and realize those guys, buried alive, are essentially going to die a horrible, horrible death and Top: Another superb that’s what war is. Seth Kushner portrait. They’re not going Above: Neal Adams to die an easy death. commission piece, courtesy That would be bad of Heritage Auctions. enough. Now Batman is exposed to war on a personal basis, as part of his odyssey. So he goes through these lessons, you have to wonder how he’s

over again. I don’t go to any city that I don’t get this happening a half a dozen or a dozen times during the weekend. “You have no idea how you affected me. You have no idea.” Like “just me in the world, I was so turned on.” And then they tell me the first comic book they read, which I have to believe happens with other comic book artists or writers, that they — that some people glommed that one thing. They’ll hand a comic book to me. “This comic turned my life around. Can you sign it?” I say, “It’s going to devalue it.” “Nah, man,” they don’t care. They just want that signature that means so much to them. And you can’t laugh at it. You can’t say, “Are you kidding?” No. It’s so real to them. It’s like this is that turning point in their life. And I can remember the same turning point in my life. That turning point, even though I was already a comic book reader, was when I got the first issue of Tor by Joe Kubert [One Million Years Ago #1, Sept. 1953]. It totally twisted me around. I thought, “God, some guy went off by himself and started a comic book company and did a comic book not about guys in capes, but a caveman, Tor of one million years ago. And I think, “Cavemen didn’t exist one million years ago, but, Jesus, this is cool and there’s dinosaurs.” That stuff flipped me out. So I recognized that. So when people come up to me and talk about Odyssey, I know that’s going to happen with this book. People will, as time goes by, start to talk about this thing, just like people who not only whisper to me about, [whispers] “I love Batman Odyssey.” And they do all the time. They don’t say that about First X-Men. I don’t think they’re going to because I think that’s incidental. It just adds to the history. But this, [pats Batman Odyssey] this is different. Kris: People like that book. Neal: People do like it and more people like that than like this [indicates First X-Men]. Kris: Right. When people go past our booth, the ones who don’t really come to our booth but they see the cover, as they walk by they go, “That was really good, a good story.” Neal: It evokes this passion, both negative and positive. Kris: Right. CBC: Obviously, you’re going through your own odyssey with this, enough so to reach out to me and respond. Kris: [Laughs] It has become our odyssey. CBC: And do things happen for a reason? Is this criticism happening for a reason, do you think? Very often, you do your work and let your work speak for itself. It changes people, remains in print or eventually is printed again. With much of your work, it’s not been such a rough road as it is now. Do you think coming out and responding — ? Neal: I think I deserve it. I think I deserve the rough road. I think I’ve been complacent, I treated the criticism casually, and you know, sometimes you forget you’re in a ring and you have to fight. I was just doing something I was very, very confident about. I didn’t expect what came and, as much as I feel it was unjustified — Kris: Are you complacent? Neal: You know, I think it’s sort of like starting again, you know? It’s like when I started, it was like I was 18 years old and things were tough. And the idea that I would come in and so easily slip into the groove, probably Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • #3

Above: Wraparound cover art by Alex Ross for the hardback collection, Astro City: Dark Age 2 [’10].

not a good idea, you know? So maybe things happened because they should happen. Maybe I should run into this because I know I come out fine and I’m used to it, but I think a shot in the chops is a good thing. I like it. I like the idea. I don’t think you’ll want to go into a ring and not get a shot in the chops before you fight back. So, I’m cool, you know, and I’d like to see — how this works out, how the methodology works out. Lord, I’m feeling so punk.

Above: Great cover art by Neal Adams for Batman Odyssey #8 [Jan. ’12]. Boy, the man sure gets better and better with age, huh? Inset left: Neal Adams print featuring the Caped Crusader that was auctioned by Heritage.

Kudos to Continuity! Ye Ed extends gratitude to all the kind folks at Continuity Associates during CBC’s visit and a special thank you to Neal Adams for artwork and his participation, and to Kris Adams Stone for so much help with material.

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The Storyteller’s Story Official Selection in over 25 film festivals worldwide “The best comics bio I’ve ever seen… It’s wonderful, well done.” Brian Michael Bendis “An essential doc for comics fans, ‘Portrait’ will also enlighten the curious.” John DeFore, Austin American-Statesman “Entertaining and insightful. A great film about a visionary artist!” Jeffrey Katzenberg Arguably the most influential person in American comics, Will Eisner, as artist, entrepreneur, innovator, and visual storyteller, enjoyed a career that encompassed comic books from their early beginnings in the 1930s to their development as graphic novels in the 1990s. During his sixty-year-plus career, Eisner introduced the now-traditional mode of comic book production; championed mature, sophisticated storytelling; was an early advocate for using the medium as a tool for education; pioneered the now-popular graphic novel, and served as inspiration for generations of artists. Without a doubt, Will Eisner was the godfather of the American comic book. The award-winning full-length feature film documentary includes interviews with Eisner and many of the foremost creative talents in the U.S., including Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Stan Lee, Gil Kane, and others.

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The Khoury Corollary For longtime CBA-CBC contributor Jorge Khoury, it’s all about enduring friendships

the sequential arts. I mostly focus on the creative drive Well, if there’s a bright center to this universe, I’m and the classics instead of the minutia or hype. There’s from the city that it’s farthest from… and yet it was a little bit of me in everything I do. But the thing that I’m there where I discovered the joy of comic books. I was proudest of is the good friendships that comics have born, raised and educated in my hometown of Jersey given me. I have been very fortunate to work with these City, New Jersey. There I attended the now defunct St. kindred spirits who I honestly feel have brought the best Ann’s Polish School as a boy and, afterwards, graduated work out of me possible. Among these amigos are John as a man from Saint Peter’s College (now Saint Peter’s Morrow (who has published nearly everything I’ve ever University) with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. I’m done), Eric Nolen-Weathington, Alex Ross, David A. the last of the few American guys still left who was Roach, Jason Hofius, and, never last, Jon B. Cooke (with introduced to comics by girls who read Archie, Harvey whom I’ve worked with steadily for the last 14 years on all and Disney titles during the late 1970s. As a kid, I also of his magazines). became aware and endeared with the beautiful artwork Right now, with my heart of Bronze Age comics, the and stylings of John Romita, Neal Adams, Jack Davis, Al pursuit of happiness has brought me full circle with Comic Williamson, and John Buscema before I even knew their Gentleman Jorge Khoury, close pal and conBook Fever, my 13th book for TwoMorrows, about the era, respective names. Thanks to titles like The Uncanny fidant of Ye Ed, will also be co-editor on next creators, moments, places and characters that made such X-Men, The Amazing Spider-Man and Star Wars (from year’s CBC summer annual, Swampmen! Marvel in 1982), I became a really voracious comics mountainous influence on all of us during the 1970s to Released simultaneously, look for J.K.’s reader when I began to follow the books that were cre’80s. If all goes according to plan, the book will premiere magnum opus, Comic Book Fever! ated by the artists and writers whose work brought me at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2014. I’ve put evbliss — for me, it was never all about the characters. erything I have into making this tome something special, inviting, and unique. Reading comics has always been a part of my life. For it, I’ve interviewed over 50 important comics creators, spared no expense My name is Jorge Khoury. and invested three years of my life. Fever captures the unbelievable expeWriting can be extremely lonely and rience of an era where for a pocketful of coins you could pick and choose very discouraging — I’ve known this fact comic books from all sorts of different genres at your neighborhood retailer, to be true since I was first professionally an era where the titles themselves were almost as gigantic as a child’s endpublished as a teenager. Since 1997, I’ve less imagination. But it also documents the period where the business and written non-stop about comics because art of comics, subsequently, became more sophisticated, intense, and spethis medium still fascinates me after all cialized. In many ways, this is the period that remains the ever present past these years. I’ve had a hand in creating of our medium. But most of all, Fever is all about friends — real, imaginary, a dozen books (Kimota!, Extraordinary and those whose categories we’re not quite sure of. It’s about all of us. y r Khou Works of Alan Moore, Age of TV Heroes, By the way, my friends and family call me George. Feel free to call me e g r by Jo and others) and penned articles for many that as well. We’re all friends here. n i t i Catch14! print and online ventures that have covered — Jorge Khoury, CBC Contributing Editor

OO C OM IC B

R E V E F 20

coming attractions: cbc #4 in winter

The Long Trail of Russell Heath Jr.

RUSS HEATH, inarguably one of the most exquisite comic book artists to work in the field and whose sensual, vibrant ink lines have graced many of the finest stories of the last century, receives his due in the next issue of COMIC BOOK CREATOR, #4, coming at year’s end. In a frank and freewheeling career-spanning interview, Russ discusses working with fellow legends Harvey Kurtzman, Stan Lee, Joe Kubert, Archie Goodwin, and others, in an eye-popping array of venues — Lee’s Atlas comics, Kubert and Bob Kanigher’s DC war books, Kurtzman’s MAD, “Little Annie Fanny” and Help! magazine, comics and illustrations for National Lampoon, and — perhaps his best-rendered work — Goodwin and Jim Warren’s black-&-white horror and war magazines. Plus Russ covers his work as animation storyboard artist, comic strip cartoonist, commission artist, and shares thoughts on Roy Lichtenstein’s appropriation of his artwork for paintings now worth millions. And, of course, the bon vivant candidly shares stories about his swingin’ ’60s lifestyle, dwelling in the Playboy Mansion, hanging with Hef and playing with the bunnies. Rounding out the ish: Russ Heath’s extraordinary artwork is also examined by S.C. RINGGENBERG, all behind a gorgeous KEVIN NOWLAN cover. Also Michael Aushenker talks with MORT TODD about working with STEVE DITKO; Hannah Means profiles alternative cartoonist DAN GOLDMAN; Christopher Irving conducts part two of our MARK WAID interview; Aushenker scribes the delayed DENYS COWAN feature; and CBC reveals THE SECRET ORIGIN OF ARCHIE ANDREWS. Oh, all this and HEMBECK, too! Be here for our fabulous, feature-filled and phantasmagorical fourth ish!

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Neal Adams, pencils and inks. This packaging art was completed in 1966, when the wunderkind worked for the art-for-advertising agency Johnstone & Cushing, and it was drawn for the Aurora model packaging for the Robin, the Boy Wonder, kit. From the archives of Bob LeRose, who rescued this — and other treasures, which will be shared with you in issues to come! — from the trash bin back when he worked for J&C, before Bob’s stint in the DC production department. Our contributor suggests that skeptic, “Look at the cross-hatching linework on Robin’s right leg (on our left) — it’s pure, prime mid’60s Neal Adams technique.” What an artifact!

#3 • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

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PDF Extra • No. 3, Fall 2013

Neal Adams 1984

Echoes of Futurepast

Fa l l 2 0 1 3 • T h e N ew Vo i c e o f t h e C o m i c s M e d i u m • N u m b e r 3

B O N U S

P D F

T A B L E

O F

C O N T E N T S

Neal Adams & Echo of Futurepast: S.C. Ringgenberg shares a 1984 interview with the artist in his Continuity Studios talking about his comics anthology and more!.............................. 3 Neal Adams Art Gallery.................................................................................................................... 15

JON B. COOKE Editor/Designer

John Morrow

TOM ZIUKO

Publisher & Consulting Editor

CBC Colorist Supreme

MICHAEL AUSHENKER

RONN SUTTON

Associate Editor

CBC Illustrator

JORGE KHOURY CHRISTOPHER IRVING TOM ZIUKO

ROB SMENTEK

Contributing Editors

CBC Proofreader

Greg PRESTON SETH KUSNER

Brian K. Morris

CBC Contributing Photographers

Senior Transcriber

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK CHRISTOPHER IRVING JORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO

STEVEN E. Tice STEVEN THOMPSON Transcribers

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist

CBC Columnists

Cover Photo by SHEL DORF

Comic Book Creator™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $50 Canada, $65 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2013 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows.

Comic Book Creator is a proud joint production of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows

Adams: Echoes of Futurepast Conducted & transcribed by S.C. Ringgenberg

Below: Neal Adams’ Continuity Graphics produced the fascinating comics anthology of the mid-1980s, Echo of Futurepast, which serialized graphic novels interspersed with shorter stories. Notable creators included Arthur Suydam and Michael Golden, as well as a good amount of work from the publisher himself, including this cover from the first issue [1984].

#3 • Bonus PDF Edition • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

be involved in the good fight. You don’t necessarily go away with ribbons and stuff, but you feel like you did something [The following interview was conducted in 1984 in the and what we’ve done with the studio… offices of Continuity Associates in New York City. This was Perhaps one of the things that you’ve heard about is originally conducted for an Amazing Heroes article, and the this idea we had for a company called Trans-Continuity, and discussuion centers around the imprint’s new title, Echo of that was to create projects here in the United States and Futurepast, an anthology clearly influenced by the success sell them in Europe, because the Europeans have a strange of Heavy Metal. Ye Ed thanks Steve for his speedy transcrip- attitude towards things like that. The Europeans think that tion and editing, and kudos to Glenn Southwick for much the artists basically own or co-own their work, and that they appreciated last-minute loans of material. — Ye Ed.] should get royalties when the material is sold elsewhere, so they’ll buy one-time or two-time rights to use the material. I S.C. Ringgenberg: Why are you going back into comics thought that sounded like an eminently fair concept, so what again? In this way? I did was I represented ourselves as an agent, as well as a Neal Adams: Well, as you know, I’ve been in comics. I did creator, and we produced projects like Bucky O’Hare, like the Ms. Mystic stuff, the— Ms. Mystic Annual and— the Frankenstein/Dracula/Werewolf, and a couple of other Steve: Was that intentionally an annual? features to sell overseas. Neal: Nor was it intentionally a monthly, nor was it going The idea that if Marvel and DC were the only customers to be a bi-monthly. It was intended to be a comic book that in the Untied States and they were working under a workwas going to be printed when it was ready, because, as you made-for-hire provision, then we would make available see around you, we have a fully-functioning commercial art to them projects they could buy, only after they had been studio, and we owe our allegiance to Continuity Graphics purchased by everybody else in the world, so if they made more than we owe our allegiance unfortunately to the comic demands, we would say, “Well, we’ve sold them to everybook industry. Not that I have any non-allegiance with the body else, so if you want to buy it for one-time rights, you comic book business. But it’s because of the work made-for- can do that.” The idea was that America then became the hire provision in the law I was forced out of the comic-book last customer. Since we started that, things have changed in business by haying to go on a one-man strike. Superman vs. the comic book business. Whether we helped to provide the Muhammad Ali [All-New Col- change or just the time was coming for that change to take lectors’ Edition #C-56, 1978] place — it has taken place. So, the reason for Trans-Continuwas actually the last thing I ity existing is much less than it used to be. Nowadays more did in comics. and more people are travelling across the ocean and selling Steve: That was the things overseas and more and more agents are coming over main reason you got out of here and buying. So, what we have then is properties which comics? we have sold overseas, but are looking for customers here. Neal: That’s right. I couldn’t And since we started this project, I’ve gotten more and more stay in comics anymore in people interested in publishing our own material. And the good conscience with the format that we decided to publish the material in was the work-made-for-hire provicomic-book format. sion. And DC and Marvel at Steve: Just the regular 32-page comics? that time were not hiring, or Neal: Regular 52 pages. using anybody except under Steve: 52 pages? Like the old days. the work made-for-hire provi- Neal: Like the old days. I always sorta liked the 52-page sion of the law. And I felt that comic book. it was unethical and even Steve: It has a good solid feel. unconstitutional. Neal: It has a good solid feel. But more than that, I used to Steve: Is what you did the read comic books, and if I didn’t like the guy who was doing reason why it was easier for “Superman” in Action Comics, I’d like the guy who was guys like Marshall Rogers doing “Tommy Tomorrow.” Or If I didn’t like this artist, I would to go in and have an agent like that artist. If I didn’t like a particular feature, I would like negotiate? another feature. And I would read the other features, as Neal: Perhaps, perhaps. I well. I was a kid, I was interested in reading a lot of stuff; I like to think that if you take was interested in trading with my friends. That dime I spent, up the cudgel and fight, if I wanted it to count for something and, sure enough, it you don’t necessarily win, at counted for something because I could buy 52 pages of good least you help the next guy comic books. The idea behind Echo of Future Past is that we who comes along to advance basically, in spite of the fact that we call it a graphic anthola little bit more than he might ogy, it really is a 52-page comic book. It doesn’t have a lot have advanced in the past. of the things in it that you see in magazines. It doesn’t have So, we made the fight, we did arty stuff, it doesn’t have stories that you can’t understand; it our best. It’s always nice to doesn’t have articles on the Hildebrandt Brothers…

S.C. Ringgenberg shares a 1984 interview with the ambitious artist in his studio

Continuity Comics Steve: So, it’s all comics. Neal: It’s all comics, from cover-to-cover. There’s a page that introduces each story or each chapter; sometimes they’re individual stories, sometimes a chapter in a story. But they’re all comics, they’re all well-drawn, they’re all well-conceived. They have beginnings, middle,s and ends, and they’re a lot of fun to read, which is sort of what I think comic books are basically all about. I guess everybody sort of agrees with that. It just seems like although people do agree with that, people do go off on tangents and create things that aren’t necessarily in that mold, that put a lot of efforts into something that’s really not a lot of fun to read. Steve: Yeah, certain products are just sort of a drag. Neal: I can’t understand why people are doing that. Steve: So, you’re looking at recreating things like the old Fawcett House omnibus-type comics, like Jumbo and things like that? Neal: Well, I’ll tell you, No, what we’re doing with Echo of Future Past is creating an anthology comic book that has projects that are a little, a cut-above comics, but are still comics. That is, they’re not super-heroes. They’re comic book stories without being super-heroes. So, that particular package is non-super-hero comics, but still entertaining stories. Steve: Well, what’s your first issue going to contain? Neal: The first issue is going to contain “Bucky O’Hare,” of which I am handing you pages… Steve: This is Larry Hama, Michael Golden. Neal: Yes, Larry Hama, Michael Golden. This is the first page of our first issue. Steve: I remember seeing Xeroxes of some of this stuff in The Comics Journal interview with you. Neal: It’s possible you have. Some of those projects have been in production for a couple years now, very well-considered and hard-working projects: “Tippie Toe Jones,” done by two talented newcomers Lynley Farley and Louis Mitchell, the “Frankenstein/Dracula/Werewolf,” done by myself; “Mudwogs” by Arthur Suydam. Steve: Is this a new story? Neal: Strangely enough; he started “Mudwogs” in Heavy Metal, but…uhhh… perhaps it was the way he presented it? Which I don’t believe, but perhaps it was the way Heavy Metal runs their magazine; the few early stories that he submitted, short stories, were printed out of order. Steve: So it lost all the continuity? Neal: Yeah. It was a little upsetting to Arthur and a little upsetting to the people who were reading it. On the other hand, they seemed to be short stories, so it wasn’t a major thing, but what we did was the first eight pages of that 16-page feature, which is in the first magazine, are a bunch of chapters that now come together in one single story, and then we continue the “Mudwogs” story in the next eight

pages, which are pages that nobody has seen. We had a long discussion with Arthur, and the discussion had to do with what would be the price of reprinting pages that people have already seen, and we thought, for the sake of continuity — I mean the company is called Continuity — it would be better if people read those pages and then continued to read the story, than to have them drop into the story in the middle. So eight of those pages are, in effect, reprints, and then the next eight pages are new, and the story will continue from there.

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Above: Seth Kushner portrait of Neal Adams. Inset below: Detail from the Michael Golden cover from Echo of Futurepast #6 [July ’85], featuring the breakout hit of the title, Bucky O’Hare.

Below: Echo of Futurepast covers #2–4, art from left by Arthur Suydam, Michael Golden, and Suydam again. Much thanks to Ye Ed’s longtime buddy Glenn Southwick for loaning some Continuity Comics.

Steve: It looks like good stuff. Neal: It really is good stuff. It’s all a lot of fun; it’s all very readable, good comics. There’s nothing vague or esoteric there. Jean Teulé is a guy that I know from France who looks like a farm boy. I guess you don’t think of Frenchmen looking like farm boys, but he’s a freckle-faced, curly-haired, red-headed young man, who draws a rather strange strip, and this particular strip is called “Virus.” Virus is a despicable little creature and Virus culminates, I think, in the fifth issue. We’ve got six issues basically together. Steve: What sort of style is Teulé working in? Neal: Teulé uses photographs, and he inks and alters the photographs in a sort of pointillistic style, but very realistic. He uses a lot of reference. Jon Hartz: Similar to the guy in Heavy Metal, [Rod] Kierkigaard [“Rock Opera”]. It’s similar to that, but not quite as… Neal: Well, we have also discovered that one of the other things that we make a very, very strong point about is that everything is in color, there’s nothing in black-&-white. We don’t, we believe in color comics…The fact that a feature is black-&-white, there would have to be an incredibly important reason for a feature to appear in black-&-white in the magazine. We intend it always to be in color. If it’s not in color, then we’re out of business, as far as I’m concerned. And what we did with Teulé’s stuff, is that we had it colored, and it brings it together incredibly well. A couple of his things

Above: Arthur Suydam, who briefly appeared in the Joe Orlando-edited DC mystery books in the early ’70s — and just as quickly disappeared — returned in full glory with his astonishing artwork (and wacky scripting) in Echo of Futurepast. Here is a panel from #2 [1984].

have appeared in Heavy Metal. As a matter of fact, we were acting as his agent at that time we sold them to Heavy Metal. But they didn’t use them in a way that I felt to be correct; they broke them up and printed them partly on different parts of a page. It was very strange. We’re pretty simple around here. We do things straightforward, you know. “This is good, we like it.” Steve: It looks like you’ve got a pretty solid selection here. There’s a nice variable range of styles. You’ve got funny animals, and then Suydam is sort of neo-Frazetta. Neal: Right. Although there are different styles, every style is drawn well. We’re not going out of our way to find people who do an interesting style, but it’s not drawn well and just because it’s an interesting style… We want to see good drawing. We like good drawing around here. We respect it, and it’s not that we don’t think that. “Oh, things that aren’t drawn that well shouldn’t be published,” it’s that we’d rather keep well-drawn stuff in our magazine. Steve: Just keep it at a certain level of proficiency so that people know what to expect. Neal: Yeah, exactly. Steve: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about what’s coming up in future issues? Neal: Okay. There’s a feature called “Hom,” which is done by Carlos Giménez… Carlos is a Spanish artist I met about six years ago, and I saw this book and I’ve always felt that I’d love to publish it in the United States, and this is my opportunity, so I’m doing it here. Another feature we’re doing is called “AE-35,” written by Tim Ryan and drawn by Will Jungkuntz. Will worked in our studio for several years as an on-staff freelancer and, I think, he did a Doctor Strange for Marvel, and doing a science-fiction feature called “AE-35.” Steve: Who did the cover to issue #2? Neal: Let me see. That’s Arthur Suydam. Steve: That’s really superb. Neal: Yeah.

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grayline process you color Photostats, which are almost impossible to color, and the blueline process in which you color on anything you happen to want to color on. The problem with the blueline is the shrinkage and enlargement of the paper, of course. What we find ourselves doing often is reshooting the black plate, so that it matches the size better. It’s worth the trouble and if it comes out good, you’ve got a good product. We take more time; I mean we spend an awful lot of time with these pages. We spend a lot of time working out the stories and we spend even more time working out the art. Steve: Well, this fellow’s style looks rather similar to yours. Neal: It is. It’s probably because I rendered it. Steve: Oh, you inked his pencils? Ahhh. Neal: That’s Will Jungkuntz again. Steve: One thing I wanted to ask you about, Neal, is a lot of comics have been coming out with, well, I’m thinking of the Pacific product where they use laser color separations and it just looks like garbage. Do you think that colorists are going to have to relearn how to color for the new technologies? Neal: Colorists are going to have to be thought of as artists. The biggest problem with what’s going on in comics is that comic artists have thought of themselves as being in a one-color medium, and the colorists have been sort of on the side being paid $7 dollars a page… Or more recently, $15 dollars a page, to color the comic book pages, and the comic book pages now are not really colored by the colorist;

Above: Neal was inspired by European comics when he developed Echo of Futurepast and, in fact, the creator did contribute to some European anthologies, including this cover for L’Echo des Savanes Special U.S.A. #14 [1979] (rough layout by Fershid Bharucha depicting Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man.) Below: Echo of Futurepast #5–7 covers, from left art by Louis Mitchell/Neal Adams, Michael Golden, and Will Jungkuntz.

Steve: How much work are you going to be doing in the magazine? Neal: Well, we don’t trust Neal Adams too much, because he has a lot of things to do, so if Neal does a feature, we wait until it’s done before we schedule it. That’s basically how we’re running the magazine. We’re finishing the features, or getting so close to being finished that we really can’t be concerned about it, and running them that way, rather than waiting for people to blow deadlines. Steve: Yeah, or announcing something that’s not finished. Neal: Yes, exactly. That’s why we’re six issues ahead when we start the magazine. “AE-35” isn’t starting until issue #6. Steve: Is this going to be a monthly? Neal: No, bi-monthly. On the other hand, the first two issues are going to come out monthly. Hartz: The first one will be shipping the third week in April; the second will be shipping third week in May. Steve: Are you doing that — coming out in rapid succession — to grab your readers’ attention? Neal: It’s to let people know what’s going on and to show them that this is not a flash in the pan sort of thing. What else have we got lined up… I never pay attention… We’ve get a character named Shaman, who may appear in this, or may appear in another magazine [he did, in Zero Patrol #3]. Hartz: We’ve also got another character called Crazyman, which we’re toying with the idea or putting him in Echo also, if not, then we’ll put him in his own title. [They did, starting in Crazyman #1 [Apr. 1992], but initially as backup in Revengers Featuring Megalith #1, Apr. ’85] Steve: Sounds like sorts of a mock super-hero. Hartz: Crazyman is great; “Crazyman” is one of the favorite strips around here, Steve: I take it, it’s a humorous strip? Hartz: No. No, it’s not. It’s very hard to classify it into a genre. Steve: This is Will Jungkutz’s stuff? It’s real slick. Neal: The colors of that story are being done by Arthur Suydam. Steve: How is the stuff in the book being colored? Does Suydam color his own originals? Neal: Arthur Suydam colors his originals; he’s the only one so far that we’ve got who colors his originals. The technique we use constantly is the blueline technique. Steve: Do you find that superior to the grayline process? Neal: Oh, yeah. Well, the difference simply is that in the

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Inset right: One odd feature in Echo of Futurepast was “Tippie Toe Jones” by Lynley Farley and Louis Mitchell (with plenty of apparent help from Neal). Wacky stuff!

they’re colored by some ladies in Connecticut who cut out these patches of tone. Nowadays, if we’re going to get into the new technology, we have to do quality coloring. As a matter of fact… [to Jon Hartz] why don’t you grab some… Hartz: Some Megalith? Neal: Yeah, grab some Megalith and some of that Zero Patrol. [to Steve] Because I’m in the commercial field, I’ve also been an illustrator. I got into the field in a very strange way. I got in kind of backwards; I backed into the field after having done a lot of things Steve: You were doing advertising first — Neal: I was doing a lot of advertising. But my technical background has been the technical art field, so the stuff that I know is commercial art, and the quality and the constraints of commercial art cause people to do better technical stuff. In comic books it’s very difficult to do technical stuff, because they don’t want to pay for it. Nobody wants to pay for good quality reproduction in comics. Therefore, you come up with fake techniques. The color in comics is fake. It’s not that it’s bad; it’s simply fake. It’s an old-style technique. What we’re trying to do — and we’re not out to make a revolution here — but we’re trying to bring the quality or the color up to the artist’s work so that, one: the artist gets what he deserves, and two: the respect for the colorist begins to become apparent. People don’t understand that a comic book is a four-color illustration. It may not be the greatest art in the world, but it’s still four colors. Not one color with colors applied to it, and that’s the way it should be thought of. Something like Arthur Suydam, you look at it and say, well, that’s a totally different story, because he obviously applied his own color. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get colorists, who understand they, one: are expected to excellent work, and two: would be respected when they do it. You don’t get that very often. Lynn Varley is doing it on Ronin. It’s a little esoteric coloring in my opinion, but it’s still an attempt to create a style of coloring. Steve: Is there anybody else around who you think is doing good work? Neal: Sure. Cory Adams. Steve: What do you think of Tom Zuiko’s work for DC? Have you seen much of it? Neal: Tom… ? Steve: Zuiko. He did Gil Kane’s Sword of the Atom mini-series. He generally colors Gil’s work for DC. Neal: It’s very hard to tell because there are good

Above: Covers for the final two issues of Echo of Futurepast, #8 and 9. From left, cover art by Goran Delic, and William Jungkuntz & Neal Adams.

colorists around. The problem is they’re laying down colors and their colors are being followed by somebody else. So whether a person is a good colorist is hard to tell. Michael Golden colored an issue of Star Wars; fantastic job for flat color. But we’re going out of the age of flat color, I believe, and we’ll be in the age of painted color. And, in the age of a painted color, things will change. All the standards are going to be thrown away, and new standards are going to come in. And I don’t think it’s possible for it to exist otherwise, so the question is not so much, who is a good comic book colorist, the question is how many of those people who are good comic book colorists can adapt to the new style that will be coming. And I don’t know. It’s a great question. We’ll see what happens. Steve: What kind of paper are you going to print it on? Hartz: The Pacific ultra-gloss; either the Pacific ultra-gloss, or the regular Baxter standard-type paper, the same thing that you see in most of the independent $1.50 format books. Steve: Since you’re taking extra care, isn’t the reproduction costing you a hell of a lot more money? Neal: Yes and no. It used to cost a lot more. Now it costs more. It doesn’t cost a lot more. It costs more. But more can be critical. For example, it can cost between $75 and $100 a page to do the separations — Steve: That’s color, right? Neal: That’s full color… You’re doing four-up and all the right size, and they’re all they can fit on the drum that they shoot from. It costs something like $66 to do fake separation. Now, it’s a few dollars more to do those separations. It’s also a few dollars more to do that kind of printing on better stock. So you have those problems there. The other thing that’s more expensive is that you have to pay a colorist to color that stuff three times more, to do good quality coloring, so you run into another expense. Steve: Are the rates you pay a colorist that much higher than the industry standard? Neal: Yeah, sure. They have to be. Who’s going to sit down and hand-color a plate for $15 dollars a page? You can’t do it. So we pay $35 or $40 a page. Steve: That’s like DC’s starting rate for pencilers. Neal: That’s right. Isn’t that true? I mean, it’s okay, if we expect to do good stuff. If we fail — and there’s certainly enough people failing in this business, as I’ve heard — we’ll fail after having done the best we can. If we succeed, then, we’ll have broken

some new ground. That’s what I’m hoping will happen. It’s really up to fans and the buyers to say whether or not we succeed. Steve: What are you doing to sort, of pave the way, as far as advertising and promotion? Neal: Unfortunately, since we’re breaking so quickly, somehow, it’s all happening very quickly. We’ve advertised in the, uhhh… Hartz: The Buyer’s Guide. Neal: The Buyer’s Guide. We’re getting as much promotion as we can cut. We’ve sent out a folder. We’re getting articles here and there. We’re not a big company. If we were a DC or Marvel company, we’d have money coming out of our ears. Then we’d be splashing ourselves all over the place. We are hoping that the word will get around as to what we’re doing, our ads here and there will attract attention, and people will buy our thing, and we’ll make money and advertise a little bit more. We’re playing it by ear, is basically what we’re doing. If we were DC or Marvel, obviously we’d be doing it differently; big splash, big campaign. We’ve got a little splash, little campaign of ads here and there. Steve: I think it helps that you have known people in the first issue. Neal: Yeah. Steve: You have Michael Golden, Arthur Suydam, yourself— Neal: We’ll have known people all the way through. I mean the people’s work we have: Teulé, who’s in the first issue, and we will make Teulé known here. We have, later on we’ll have Giménez, and we’ll make Giménez known here. But, at the same time we’ll be having him, we’ll be having other people, for example Michael Golden’s Bucky O’Hare goes on for six issues. My stuff goes on for a bunch of issues, and we have surprises planned for later on. And we can’t talk about the things we have six issues down the line because we’re in progress with those things, and they’re sort of, like, secret, you can’t really talk about those things. But, for the first six issues right now, we’ve got Larry Hama, Neal Adams, Michael Golden, Arthur Suydam, Jean Teulé, basically going all the way through that stuff, and some new guys that nobody’s seen, but after they see them, and then later on, we’ll have more guys. Steve: Well, can you give me some or the names of the unknowns? Neal: Louis Mitchell, for example, does “Tippytoe Jones.” Louis is really terrific. He’s not really in the field. He’s doing commercial art in Brooklyn and he’s a terrific artist. He’s not cut from the general mold. In the first issue, we have a five-pager on “Tippytoe Jones,” and then we skip an issue or two before we get into the full-length “Tippytoe Jones” story. Louis Mitchell and Lynley Farley, the writer, are both unknown in the field, both terrific, both really terrific. Steve: Was “Tippytoe Jones” printed in Europe already? Neal: No, because we know that it’s good. It’s a very strange kind of strip. It’s sort of like an Alice in Wonderland, a very hard-to-describe strip, very strange strip, but logical and sensible, and good art, like that. We have customers in Europe who will probably be running it concurrently with ourselves. We’ve got a customer in France and a customer in Spain. We’re making the separations and sending them over there, and it’s a terrific, wonderful strip. “AE-35” by Will Jungkuntz is basically — he started it when nobody knew him, and was doing some stuff for Marvel, but basically “AE-35” is his first major project, and it’s a terrific project.

And by the time that thing gets out, gets into the first couple of chapters, everybody will know who Will is; as well as Tim Ryan, the writer. They’ve finished their end at of it, and they’re now working on “Crazyman,” another feature which we will either be running in there. What’s happening is that people are becoming quietly attracted to the book. It’s not underground, but it’s just… people have known about the projects that we’ve been planning for years. I missed putting in Bernie Wrightson’s Freakshow because by the time we got around to getting this project together, it wasn’t fair to hold onto the project, so we sold it to Heavy Metal. But more and more people are coming. They want to do a good, special job. They want to know that the person who is working with then will demand that they write good stories, that the stories be coherent and not just strange kinds of mouthing. Steve: Do you find that your standards are higher than a lot of the regular comics editors? Neal: I don’t know. I think I have pretty high standards. I wouldn’t like to be somebody working for me because I don’t accept a lot. I don’t like people to slough off. I don’t like people not to give me the best that they can give. And the bad thing about me, I suppose, if somebody is working for me or with me, as we prefer to say, is that I can basically tell if they’re not giving me the best that they can give me. And I remind them; Howard Chaykin for example, doing “Cody Starbuck.” I would that after he did the first “Cody Starbuck” story, in spite of the fact that he’s had a pretty good career, his standards have gone up quite a bit, not necessarily because of me, but it’s difficult to work under difficult conditions, with high standards expected without feeling that same kind of desire in yourself, to do good stuff, and I would say that his American Flagg! has shown that he’s quite an incredible talent… Steve: Besides Echo of Futurepast, do you have any plans for titles with individual characters? Neal: Here’s a bad stat of the first three covers. You’ll see ads in the Pacific comics for the, actually the one in the middle is the first cover for Armor and the Silver Streak. Steve: Is this stuff going to be distributed through the

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Above: Detail from the cover of The Revengers Featuring Megalith #1 [Apr. 1985], with art by creator and publisher, Neal Adams. Below: Ms. Mystic #1 [1982], cover art by Neal Adams, the first of the line of Continuity super-heroes.

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Below: The Zero Patrol #2 cover blurb teased a Neal Adams rarity in its pages: a juvenile science-fiction strip by the comics creator that was inspired by the Julius Schwartz-edited SF comic book anthologies over at DC comics.

they are or… Steve: That’s an excellent idea. Who thought of that? Neal: That’s what we do around here. We have ideas. Steve: Will some of the ideas just generate in bull sessions, or will somebody just come in and go: “Wow, I just thought of a superb idea.’? Neal: I’ve been creating comic book characters for a long time, and the way the characters happen is very hard to describe… We went out of our way simply to create characters, and that’s what we’re doing. I think Megalith is a good character only because it’s hard to find a character that is self-made. It seems like everybody is being bitten by radioactive animals or being caught in rays… Steve: It’s a weird accident usually. Neal: Yes, a weird accident. And somehow they have to have the wherewithal to become heroes, because I really doubt that that would happen to a whole lot of people. Megalith is a character that is as much an intellectual as he is a bodybuilder. I really believe that people, who are into bodybuilding and that sort of thing, feel very strongly about the intellectuality of it. And an awful lot of people put down people with muscles because they think that they’re stupid. And I think that there are a lot of people who would like to have somebody defend the opposite position. And if anybody can defend the opposite position, it’s Megalith. Strangely enough, you could call Megalith, of course I wouldn’t want to call him this, a super-man, rather than a super-alien. He’s a super-Earthman, in effect. And I think he’s the only one we have. There are a lot of heroes, and a lot of men that are quite good, but he’s really a super-Earthman. It sure seems like an obvious idea when you think about it. I remember I created a character called Man-Bat over at DC Comics and Julie Schwartz had as asked me for a villain because they were searching around for a villain for a new issue and I had this idea kicking around, and I said, “Why don’t we do a Man-Bat?” It just seems logical that somebody should have done it. I can’t imagine why it hasn’t been done up till now. It seemed pretty obvious. This is the cover for the first miniseries, of a set of characters called Armor and Silver Streak. Armor and Silver Streak are brothers, very unlike one another, and their origin is — I suppose I really shouldn’t talk about their origin, but they will become part of a group with Megalith, it’s going to be a group book. They’re all gonna be orphans; that’s the thing that holds them together is their orphanhood, and then this is Zero Patrol. Zero Patrol is a feature that was done by Esteban Maroto. I’ll tell you the story behind Zero Patrol: Fifteen years ago, I used to hang around Spanish Harlem and Harlem for no other reason, I suppose, than that it was of interest to me. And I used to pick up a comic book that was printed in Spanish called Cinco Por Infinito or Legonarrios del Espacio or Legionnaires of Space or Five for Infinity, drawn by Esteban Maroto. (I don’t know who wrote it, I’m sorry to say, and whoever it was, I don’t think he or she was ever given credit the writer deserved.) I thought the art was fantastic. And I thought, ‘Why can’t Americans see this artwork? It really is terrific.” And I have never had the opportunity in the past to make this work available to the American public. This is old stuff. Steve: It’s a lot simpler than the stuff he did for Warren. It’s not as rendered-up. Neal: When I was a kid I did a little feature I called “The Zero Patrol.” This was a thing that I did as a teenager and it never did anything because I never tried to sell it. As a matter of fact, we’re having a back-up feature in the second issue of this to tell the story of the old

Above: Neal Adams had loved the Spanish-language Esteban Maroto drawn science-fiction series Legionarios del Espacio (Legionnaires of Space), which he picked up in Spanish Harlem in the 1960s. Renaming it The Zero Patrol and rewriting the series, Neal also added some of his art to the Continuity-published title.

direct sales shops? Neal: Yes. Again, we’re not big enough with regular newsstand distribution. It would be very nice, but we’re being very — I mean, we’re trying to let people know what we’re doing, but we’re not going out and challenging the big guys. We’re just trying to produce good comics. Steve: Are you first trying to establish a base of readership? Neal: Oh, no. All I think we’re trying to produce is good comic books. It’s tough, because the business end of it seems to be in debate. A lot of people have their own idea about what is the best way to do business in comics. We try to produce good product, and then we try to think of ways of presenting it and selling it that we can take a living from. But the way we start is with good comics is with good work, then since we’re just starting, we don’t know what’s going to happen. This is Megalith. Steve: This is excellent. It’s weird for me to look at this because this is exactly like a character I did for the DC’s New Talent Showcase. Neal: Shhh. Really? Well, we feel that Megalith is the kind of hero people would like to see. Megalith is a self-made hero, a self-made super-hero. He’s been forced, through the conditions that happened to him, to turn himself into a super-hero. He, in effect, had no choice. He thought that what he was doing was training himself for the Olympics, and it turns out he was training himself to be bought by somebody who was going to use him for the Olympics, but not on America’s side. His parents were held captive to enforce this continued training and sale. And rather than fight back at the time this concept is presented to him, he trains himself to be so good, that he creates a link between his mind and his body that causes him to surpass himself almost into supoweredness. Steve: So be can sort of tap into those reaches of the brain… Neal: …That everybody talks about but nobody seems to know what

“Zero Patrol” that I created when I was a kid. I thought it might be interesting to the readers. And I thought, ‘Gee, that’s still a good title, The Zero Patrol, I kind of like it,’ so what I did was, I got the rights to the material, and we reshot the material. We corrected for American storytelling; a couple of the panels are redone to bring them a little bit more into the genre of today because it, after all, is an old series of stories. And we rewrote them, and lettered them and colored then because they’ve never appeared in color. The old Spanish comic book was black-&-white. It was my opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream. It’s going to be a regular feature. It’s going to be our first title as a matter or fact, the first title, with a backup feature of “Megalith.” Steve: What kind of sales are you shooting for? What would be enough to keep these things going? Neal: I think, from what I’ve been told, if we get 30 to 40,000 sales, it will stay afloat. The features that we’ve done have…We did Skateman, a reprehensible comic book. Steve: Why do you say that? Neal: Because it wasn’t intended to be for sale on this marketplace. It was intended to be a promotion for a potential movie that a producer named John Ballard wanted to do, and we sort of tailor-made it for that, for what he was trying to do. And he did that project when rollerskating was coming in. We finally with got it to print, in other words, nothing happened with the movie for that period of time, and so when we were asked if we had anything lying around, Skateman was lying around. When we asked whether or not we could get permission to print the thing, well that’s when skating was not only out but the door had shut. So I thought that we had done a fairly good job on the book and I thought that it held together very well, but it wasn’t really intended to be the kind of book that we would think of ourselves as producing. But, we did sell 70,000 copies of it and people sort of like it, and people are asking for a second issue. Steve: That’s wild. Neal: It’s incredible. A lot of people like it. Actually, when you sit down with the book and read it, it holds together. You can take it into the bathroom and read it… Steve: Do you think the fans now know you? Are you a draw for them the way you are with the older guys who remember the stuff from the ’70s? Neal: I don’t know. Ms. Mystic sold 80,000 copies. [looks at Jon Hartz] Hartz: In excess of. Neal: In excess of 80,000 copies, through the direct sales market, it’s not bad. For an imitator of Bill Sienkiewicz, I think it did pretty good. Hartz: In the direct market that’s very good. Neal: I, myself, have never been a person who has outsold everyone on the market, but I’ve always been among the

highest-selling comic book producers. Steve: Well, I remember it was almost a messianic frenzy from the fans, back in the ’70s. You were one of the people it centered on and then it shifted, maybe, to Barry Smith. Neal: I tend to attract the brighter of the fans. Steve: The people that can recognize good drawing, anyway. Neal: Yeah, at least that, and attempt to do a sincere job. So I tend to get the fans that typewrite the letters, rather than scribble them on wax paper or on a garbage bag or

Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • Bonus PDF Edition • #3

Above: Quartet of panels for Neal’s early comic strip “The Zero Patrol.” Art and a description of the early effort were featured in an article written by then-Continuity staffer Arlen Schumer, longtime chum of Ye Ed. Below: Legionarios del Espacio #1 and 2 covers. Published in Spain in the late 1960s.

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whatever. But, no, the fans, strangely enough, my fans have grown up to be Above: Perhaps the character with the greatest bald old men who are movie potential, Valeria the She-Bat was originally offered to DC producers and art directors, Comics as the female equivalent of Man-Bat, but the House and types like that who tell me of Superman passed on the offer of her creator, Neal Adams. they read my stuff when they were kids. It really hasn’t been that long since I was off the scene. But most of the young kids don’t know who I am. There’s been a sort or a rebirth of my material fortunately… Steve: Well, the Marvel reprints didn’t hurt. Neal: The Marvel reprints and the DC reprints of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series. People haven’t quite forgotten. There are a lot of fans who don’t know who I am. On the other hand, that’s not why I’m selling, is it? What I’m trying to sell to people are good comics. Whether I do them, or Will Jungkuntz does them, or whoever it is that’s doing the material does them, we’re trying to produce good comic books. So that every time I can get a shot at it, I’ll try to produce something that people will like, and every time that I sit with other people, we’ll try to produce things that people will like. We’re looking to produce good comic books. Steve: You’re talking about a sort of underground, word-

of-mouth phenomenon. Are you finding a lot of artists going to you saying: ‘God, I’m sick of super-heroes! Please let me do cowboys or something.’ Neal: Yeah, there are a lot of people doing that. A lot of people are interested in — not necessarily cowboys. What seems to be happening is that people are being asked to crank out comic books by the ton, especially at Marvel Comics — which is not intended to be a criticism of Marvel Comics, but it just seems like they’re trying to turn out so many comic books that the kind of attention to the individual comic book that used to be paid to the Marvel books is not being paid quite so much anymore. The artists feel like they’re part of army producing one of 40 Marvel titles. It just doesn’t have the personal touch anymore. Steve: What kind of stories are people coming to you wanting to do mostly? I mean, if there’s a particular genre. Neal: Interestingly enough, people don’t know. That’s the strange thing because everybody’s used to doing super-heroes. Nobody knows what they want to do. One of the reasons that you try to find somebody like myself to put together the kind of materials that I put together is that I spend a lot of time thinking about the kind of projects that I’d like to see get done, and since I’m in the position to get the things done, I can sit for a while, I can talk with them for a while… about the kind of projects that they’d like to do, rather than have them, you see, for a long time in the field, everybody has said, if I were just given the freedom to do the kind of thing I wanted to do, I could do great stuff. Unfortunately, that has not necessarily been the truth. People were suffering from the lack of freedom. What happens when you get the freedom is that, very often, you don’t know what you’re going to do. And you find that with a lot of people, when the freedom’s there, the guy or the gal just kind of stands out there, and looks and says, “Well, I’ve got the freedom now. What am I going to do with it?” So, what to do with freedom becomes an important question. And not too many people have a direction. What we’re trying to do is provide a broad direction of things to do. That is, not to say to them, “Do anything you want.” We don’t want that. You tell me what you want, I’ll tell you what I need, and we’ll try to find something in-between that satisfies the people who are reading it. But we will not accept something that doesn’t have a story: a beginning, a middle, and an end. We will not accept simply the desire to produce artwork or to do single-page drawings every other page. Steve: People have got to put their money where their mouth is, in other words. Neal: Exactly. They have to come up with good stuff. And the thing that I try to provide is a criterion. I say, “It’s got to be this good. Make it this good and we’ll use it.” Steve: What do you use for your yardstick? Neal: I don’t think there is such a thing. If I’m satisfied it with it. Steve: So it’s more of a gut feeling. Neal: Really. It really is. And I don’t think there’s anything better than that. I mean, I’ve been around a long time, and I haven’t heard anybody give me a better indication of what is really a good way to find out that you’ve got good stuff, ex-

cept that you get somebody who’s produced good stuff all their life — probably produced good stuff all their life — and sit down and look at the material that’s come in, and not deal with it from the point of view of their own material, but whether or not it meets standards of quality. Everybody knows that Batman was lousy in the ’60s, nobody had to tell anybody. The fact that I came along and altered Batman, and turned him back into a creature of the night, which should have been no surprise to anybody; everybody knew it. Every fan that read comic books knew that Batman was lousy. Everybody knew that when I started to do the X-Men and it was going to go down and get thrown away, that something had to be done with the X-Men. Everybody knows when somebody’s doing a good job. When John Byrne and Terry Austin get together and do the X-Men, they know it’s going to be good, they don’t have to have somebody come around and give them the rules and regulations; they know it’s good. Basically people know. It’s just not an intellectual thing; it doesn’t take a lot of brains. Steve: Well, I think, comics being an art form, it’s got to be something that you feel in your gut. Neal: I should think so, but you have to temper that with logical thinking… People like super-heroes. Another interesting standard that I’ve discovered, and I don’t think this is a surprise to anybody — it’s just generally not put into words — and that is: if television can do it and movies can do it, then why are comic books doing it? In other words, the thing that a comic book artist does better than anybody else in the world is he uses his imagination. Not his total imagination, because then it just comes out design, but he has the ability to create on a page, something that would cost a million dollars to create on the screen. He has the ability to do that and that’s what he should do. If he tries to reproduce, in comic book form, what you can see on television, then isn’t he basically wasting his time? Because if they can do it on television, they can do it with live people and they can go out and get the best actors in the world. No artist could possibly match that. It’s not possible. The thing that the comic book artist should do is simply do what he does: use his imagination. And the reason that super-heroes are so good is because you can’t reproduce super-heroes on television, and do it well, unless you have a tremendous amount of money. You can’t do it on the screen unless you have a tremendous amount of money. Steve: The Superman movie certainly illustrated that. Parts of it were real nice, it as real well done, and parts of it looked really cheesy. Neal: That’s right, parts of it were terrible. Steve: Like the dam collapsing. Lousy miniature work. Neal: It’s unfortunate. It’s unfortunate that that’s true. Now, the fact of the matter is that comic books are competing with television and movies. If comic books compete with television and movies, and we’re open and honest about it, we can’t compete with those people except in those areas in which we excel. If George Lucas decides to do a comic book on television, The Fantastic Four, it’s gonna cost him a

hundred million dollars to do it; a hundred million dollars. So, until somebody coughs up a hundred million dollars, we’ve got that licked. We’ve got that beat. Nobody’s going to be able to do it. Steve: That’s right. It costs a comic artist no more to draw an exploding planet than it does to show two people talking. Neal: Now, the fact of the matter is that comic books have led the way into these fantasy movies. I mean, George Lucas has gone back into out old jungle comics and has resurrected, in effect, Raiders of the Lost Ark, from comic books that appeared in the ’40s. Steve: Yes, Jungle Jim in a different outfit. Neal: Exactly. Now, in order for him… Now, he did it well, which is what we want to see, but he had to go back to those days. It’d be very difficult to go back to the super-heroes of today, or heroes of today that appear in comic books, and do them on the screen— Steve: Even though Marvel is trying with the X-Men movie. Neal: Yes, and I think that’s terrific, but the point is that we’re supposed to be out front. We’re supposed to be exploring realms of imagination. You can’t do what Walt Simonson can do in Thor. To do that would just be so incredibly expensive. Walt Simonson is way out there doing giant rams pulling chariots across space. You know, fighting aliens that are coming in by the thousands. Doing that sort of thing is just, so incredibly expensive, and he does it with a flick of the wrist, and that’s what he’s supposed to do, and that’s what we’re supposed to do in the comic books, We’re supposed to be able to do things that nobody else can do. It’s our business. Steve: Stretch the imagination. Neal: Exactly. So we’ll do it. And as long as we do it, we’ll stay ahead of everyone and sell comic books. We try to do what they do in movies. That’s why the adaptations of the movies done by Marvel for the most part are poor, because they’re just mediocre stories. They don’t stretch the imagination and the artist has already seen it on film anyway; they get shown the film before they draw it, so there’s nothing now to do, just copying what’s on the film already. He doesn’t have to go out and create anything. Steve: Even like, taking Al Williamson to do Blade Runner. It’s nice but…

Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • Bonus PDF Edition • #3

Above: Neal Adams reworked his Frankenstein/Werewolf/Dracula strips a number of times, most recently in the Vanguard Productions book, Neal Adams Monsters [2003]. The stories were serialized in Echo of Futurepast, but had originally been commissioned by in the 1970s Power Records for their comic book/vinyl record products.

Neal: It’s nice, but who needs it? There are a lot of things that l’d rather see Al Williamson do than Blade Runner or even Star Wars. Steve: Do you have any plans to talk to Al about doing some work for you? Neal: I talked to Al about doing a feature one time, and he was going to do it, and then Star Wars came up Steve: Well, he’s not doing the strip now. And I know he’s looking for work because I talked to him this morning. Neal: Well, maybe we’ll get together on something. I’d like him to have Al do something because I really believe that he’s one of the best in the field. But, I think that he has to do something that challenges his abilities and not something that lets him do what he’s been doing for years. And if we can provide that kind of a story, then maybe he’ll do a story with us Steve: Getting back to the genres for a minute. Do you have any plans to do a horror anthology like Twisted Tales or perhaps a science-fiction anthology? Neal: To me, horror is done better on the screen. There are

#3 • Bonus PDF Edition • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Above: In a Continuity Comics house advertisement, Megalith speaks directly to parents about the benefits of Neal’s imprint.

more horror films than I would ever need to do. I mean, E.C. has now been reproduced on the screen by 17 different directors. And if it hasn’t been reproduced on the screen, then it will be reproduced on the screen, so I don’t really feel that horror is where we’re at, at all. Science-fction and fantasy, yes, sure because we can do it. But I just don’t like to do stuff that’s easily done by filmmakers and TV people. Steve: So the things you’re attracted to are more visually graphic? Neal: Things that stretch the imagination… Steve: Rather than say, doing a film noir detective comic. Neal: Detective comic. I can’t imagine… that’s a thing that shocks me. When I see really good artists do a detective comic. Dear God. All the old detective movies, there is a feature that’s done in Europe that does what we can’t do anymore, it goes back to the ’30s and talks about that time. One of the reasons we can’t do that so well anymore is because we don’t have the sets and the places. For example, I was trying to convince Will Eisner that I would like to direct the Will Eisner Spirit movie. They’re doing The Spirit as an animated movie. Steve: Yeah, but William Friedkin was going to do it as a live action film with Garner in the ’70s. Neal: That’s the way I feel it should be done. I don’t feel that it should be done animated because it’s very hard to imagine the Spirit’s time and place because you can’t find it anymore. You don’t find it in television; you don’t find it in the movie theatres. It’s very hard to recreate that kind of feeling. Steve: They’re not going to update it are they? They’re going to keep it in period? Neal: They probably are, but it’s going to be animation, so when you see it in animation, it’s not hard to accept it because it’s just a bunch of people drawing pictures. I would like to see it in live action. I would like to see all that stuff recreated; find those places that look like the Eisner stuff and turn it into live action. That would be really great. But the point about that is, you don’t have to go that far to stretch the imagination. You don’t have to between have guys flying between planets; you can create an atmosphere that you can’t, won’t normally find, like the Will Eisner world. And if you can do it in a film, that would be great. One of the reasons why I think that Will’s stuff has only limited appeal now is because films have joined him and moved forward, and now his stuff is caught in time. But if you could go back to that time and recreate that on film that would be art and an admirable thing to do. I don’t see The Spirit existing today. A guy walking around in a mask is not going to be the same. A guy fighting Nazis. Nobody fights Nazis anymore. Nobody fights bank robbers and embezzlers. It’s really not done. We’ve gotten away from that, to a certain extent. I would like to see his strip done as a live action movie, not as an animated movie, but that’s just personal opinion. Steve: Speaking of films, how’s the movie you’re working on going? Neal: ‘Nanaz is doing—we have just—a block away from here is a place called Ross & Gaffney. Over at Ross & Gaffney, ’Nanaz exists. There are now over 16 reels of sound to go with the film. Making a film is a very difficult process. Very expensive. I wish I could afford it. Steve: Well, you’ve been doing it gradually over how many years? Neal: Three years now. Actually making the film, only took less than half a year. I worked for five months in my apartment editing it, and since them, we’ve been working on the editing. We finished the editing another five months later; not quite a year on the editing, and since then we’ve been working on the sound. Big, big, deal the sound. The last four or five months we’ve been working on the footfalls Steve: You didn’t shoot synch sound, I take it? Neal: Yeah, we did. We shot sync sound. But usually you can’t use sync sound. You can shoot sync sound. But try to imagine having a man walking down the street talking

to somebody. First of all, the world has to disappear for the sound to be right. And then, you take another shot and it’s a another time of day, and where you cut the film, you out the sound, and the sound on one piece of film sounds different than on the next piece of film. So you have a guy talking like this and he’s suddenly like this because the sound is different. So, you have to recreate that sound so that the sound goes through the cuts. It’s all a very complicated procedure. But what we’ve done is that we’ve finished the music. The music is being entered into the fun. We’re probably going into a mix within the month, and then we’ll have a finished film. In the meantime, I’m starting a new film, which I can’t talk about. Steve: Okay. Neal: But I am starting a new film. Steve: Okay, then tell me about your plan for ’Nanaz. Have you found a distributor for it? Neal: No. You can’t find a distributor until you have a finished film. We’ll see what happens, who knows? Steve: What sort of film is it? Neal: It’s an adventure film, a chase film about a couple of kids who have something that’s very valuable and a bunch of very bad people who would like to have it. And they have nothing to protect them except a little monkey doll, and he does, by being nothing more than a little monkey doll. Steve: From what I’ve heard, you’ve got quite a number of people from the comics business in the film. Neal: Yes. Steve: Who’s in it? Neal: Well, Gray Morrow, Denys Cowan, J. Scott Pike… who did The Dolphin? Steve: That goes way back. Neal: Yes, it goes way back. Well J. Scott Pike is not quite a young man, but…who else is in it? Ralph Reese, Jim Shooter, for a very short period of time… Gary Groth, Larry Hama is in it… Larry’s terrific. They’re all terrific. Everybody’s terrific. Everybody’s very good. I think that’s about it for the comic book people. Steve: Are you in it? Neal: Yeah, I’m in it. I’m the dad. I’m the sort of innocent, well-meaning dad. Steve: Are you going to have some kind of premiere when the film is finished? Neal: Sure. Steve: Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re finally finishing it. I’ve been hearing about this film for years. Neal: Yeah, it’s strange. A film is not the easiest thing to put together. If it was an easy thing to put together, then I guess everybody would be putting them together, but on a limited budget, a very, very limited budget, basically the money that I make that I don’t spend on my children, I put into the film, and it’s taken a long time. On the other hand, as with my comic book work, I’m very meticulous and very careful and I don’t want it to come out without my being able to say: “Well, this at the time was the best that I could do.” I don’t want people to look at it and say, “Gee, you really didn’t do that very well, did you?” Steve: Did you find that your knowledge of comics art and storyboarding came in handy when you were plotting it out? Neal: Yeah, oh yeah. Steve: Do you think that there’s a real crossover in the two mediums? Neal: I don’t think that Star Wars could have been made without comic books existing. And I think that probably the best directors are comic book fans. Steve: I know Fellini is. Ridley Scott’s a cartoonist. Neal: They all are.

Steve: Hitchcock used to do little drawings. Neal: He did little drawings for every scene in his film. If he didn’t do them, somebody else did. The best directors are pictorial. DeSica is, Lucas is— Steve: Well, what’s Star Wars, but Lucas’s version of Flash Gordon? Neal: I can’t imagine those people not being a comics fan. It must be a strange director who knows how to direct very well, and who was not a comic book fan at one point or another. The thing that I’m looking forward to is that if I can do what I expect to do with ‘Nanaz and additional movies that I’ll be making. If I can do it; if I can make the crossover, then other people will make the crossover, too — guys like Frank Miller, perhaps Howard Chaykin. Steve: What do you think of Thomas and Gerry Conway writing the new Conan movie? They’ve sort of bridged the gap. Do you think there will continue to be that kind or cross-pollination between the two mediums? Neal: Well, look, you’ve got Steve Gerber out there doing, writing animated stuff for Saturday morning animation. Steve: Dave Stevens storyboarding movies. Neal: Exactly. William Stout, too. It’ll happen more and more, and the question then will be, what kind of movies will we get? Steve: I don’t know a single person in this business who is not a rabid movie fanatic. Neal: And I’m sure that there aren’t people who that make good movies that aren’t comic book fans. Orson Welles: big comic book fan. Steve: That’s something that’s not really widely known. Neal: Really, oh yeah, he’s a big comic book fan. Steve: Well, after seeing Citizen Kane, Welles must have been looking at The Spirit. Neal: Sure. Where do you think it comes from? Nowhere? It doesn’t come from nowhere.

Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • Bonus PDF Edition • #3

Below: Neal Adams in his midtown Manhattan studio with his super-hero Megalith on the drawing board. Th is portrait is from his website. Comic Book Creator is looking forward to devoting an issue to the Comics and Characters of Continuity!

Bonus Neal Adams Art Gallery

#3 • Bonus PDF Edition • Fall 2013 • Comic Book Creator

Comic Book Creator • Fall 2013 • Bonus PDF Edition • #3

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ALTER EGO #124

ALTER EGO #125

Farewell salute to the COMICS BUYER’S GUIDE! TBG/CBG history and remembrances from ALAN LIGHT, MURRAY BISHOFF, MAGGIE THOMPSON, BRENT FRANKENHOFF, “final” CBG columns by MARK EVANIER, TONY ISABELLA, PETER DAVID, FRED HEMBECK, JOHN LUSTIG, classic art by DON NEWTON, MIKE VOSBURG, JACK KIRBY, MIKE NASSER, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

DENNY O’NEIL’s Silver Age career at Marvel, Charlton, and DC—aided and abetted by ADAMS, KALUTA, SEKOWSKY, LEE, GIORDANO, THOMAS, SCHWARTZ, APARO, BOYETTE, DILLIN, SWAN, DITKO, et al. Plus, we begin serializing AMY KISTE NYBERG’s groundbreaking book on the history of the Comics Code, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY and more!

We spotlight HERB TRIMPE’s work on Hulk, Iron Man, S.H.I.E.L.D., Ghost Rider, Ant-Man, Silver Surfer, War of the Worlds, Ka-Zar, even Phantom Eagle, and featuring THE SEVERIN SIBLINGS, LEE, FRIEDRICH, THOMAS, GRAINGER, BUSCEMA, and others, plus more of AMY KISTE NYBERG’s Comics Code history, “Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs” on those nutty comic book ads, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

Golden Age “Air Wave” artist LEE HARRIS discussed by his son JONATHAN LEVEY to interviewer RICHARD J. ARNDT, with rarely-seen 1940s art treasures (including mysterious, never-published art of an alternate version of DC’s Tarantula)! Plus more of AMY KISTE NYBERG’s exposé on the Comics Code, artist SAL AMENDOLA tells the story of the Academy of Comic Book Arts, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

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